<.....And this is coming from a man normally allied with those who are most actively forcing the impeachment issues: the Freedom Caucus.

This is not normal.

Buck is certainly the most outspoken among the GOP critics of the impeachment inquiry, but he’s hardly the only one. A number of them spoke out in advance of McCarthy’s announcement last week. A handful have offered qualified support for the inquiry since then, but it’s clear that plenty are saying the evidence is simply not there.

Which is not where we were with Trump’s impeachments.

Trump’s first impeachment — also focused on Ukraine — was a particularly slow build.

By the time then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the inquiry in late September 2019, a CNN whip count showed 158 House Democrats had called for one, more than two-thirds of the party’s conference.

The morning of her announcement, the effort got a shot in the arm thanks to a letter from seven of the most politically vulnerable House Democrats — in contrast with how reluctant vulnerable House Republicans have been this time.

At the time, there was little in the way of an effort to prevent the Democratic Party from going down that road before it did. About the most outspoken Democrat was Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who appeared on Fox News days later and said there was “nothing that has turned up that truly is impeachable.” But that was after Pelosi’s announcement. (Van Drew would become a Republican less than three months later.)

The only other Democratic vote against the impeachment inquiry, when Pelosi ultimately held one in October, was from then-Rep. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota, who late in his tenure represented the most Trump-friendly district held by a Democrat.

A handful of vulnerable Democrats kept their powder dry after Pelosi pushed forward, but almost nobody spoke out in advance, as Buck and Reps. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) have, to question the evidence — even as Democrats were clearly queuing up a possible inquiry.

This would appear to be a reflection of where the public is at large. While polling when Pelosi announced the Trump inquiry showed a slight majority of Americans and independents supported that decision and about an even split on ultimately impeaching Trump, early polling shows that the Biden inquiry is quite short of majority support and that Americans tilt against ultimately impeaching him.

That could change as the investigation progresses. But there is far less direct evidence to point to when it comes to Biden’s actual conduct, which has often been the subject of patently false or baseless claims or speculative theories — after months of Republicans floating them.

There is also far less margin for error, with McCarthy able to spare only around five votes — compared with the 15 or so Pelosi could lose.

And if one of those five members happens to be in the House Freedom Caucus, of all caucuses, effectively accusing his party of imagining its case for impeachment, that’s going to significantly compromise the effort.>

<An excellent test for assessing the constitutionality of any governmental action is to switch the names and political parties of the actors involved. If the outcome is the same, it is a good sign there is some neutral principle at work. If the outcome is not the same, then there is a good chance that partisanship, not principle, is guiding the analysis.

The impeachment inquiry against President Biden that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced last week clearly fails this test. In 2019, McCarthy, then Republican minority leader in the House, complained loudly and often that the full House should have authorized the House's impeachment inquiry and that that the majority Democrats should not have authorized the impeachment inquiry focused on then-President Donald Trump's request for "a favor" from Ukraine's president.

McCarthy and the leaders of the Republican charge to impeach Biden are proceeding without any such authorization. McCarthy has now said that he is proceeding in this manner because then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had "changed the precedent" in 2019, when she allowed an impeachment inquiry without full authorization by the House. Of course, a few weeks later, the full House did authorize an inquiry culminating in Trump's first impeachment.

McCarthy also complained, in 2019, that Democrats were not prioritizing the national budget or "all the other things the American people want"(The government then was nearing a budget shutdown, just as it is now). Now, McCarthy has shown no concern prioritizing impeachment over the possibility of another government shutdown.

While there is a lot of McCarthy's hypocrisy on display, there is no principle in sight.

The Republican-led inquiry arguably makes sense as an exercise in political theater. Casting it as impeachment-related supposedly will broaden the subpoena and investigative authority of the three committees charged with searching for evidence of any Biden misconduct. Perhaps more importantly for Republicans, it may draw attention away from Trump's legal troubles and provide a showcase–or, more accurately, a political circus–for "alternative facts" and outlandish conspiracy theories. As we know from past attempted presidential impeachments, that kind of table pounding will not substitute for the kinds of evidence and legal support that presidential impeachments require for their legitimacy.

At a minimum, some credible proof of "treason, bribery, and other high crimes or misdemeanors" on the part of the person who is threatened with impeachment is usually the basis for initiating such an inquiry. The House need not come up with exhaustive evidence, but it usually does some fact-finding before launching impeachment inquiries. It is telling that the inquiry unleashed by McCarthy lacks anything remotely like the factual foundations for the impeachments of Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.

For example, in Nixon's case, the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Watergate had conducted meticulous investigations and fact-finding before the former began an impeachment inquiry of Nixon. In Bill Clinton's case, the House Judiciary Committee did no fact-finding of its own but deferred to the allegations and evidence set forth in a report assembled by Independent Counsel Ken Starr and his team (including Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice). And, with Donald Trump in 2019, the House Judiciary Committee did not conduct an impeachment inquiry until after it received the House Intelligence Committee's report of its weeks-long investigation into the nature and consequences of the "favor" then-President Trump requested from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.....>

<.....The current inquiry also tests several constitutional safeguards against the abuse of impeachment authority. One of the most important is the division of impeachment authority between the House and the Senate. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers, impeachments "will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. . . In such cases, there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strengths of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."

If the political accountability of House members did not keep them in check, the Senate was expected—given its members' longer terms and final decision-making on important matters such as removal and confirmation—to be capable of more dispassionate, less partisan decision-making. Perhaps not surprisingly, a Democratic Senate acquitted Clinton, a Republican Senate acquitted Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, and Republicans controlled enough seats in the Democratic Senate in 2021 to thwart the two-thirds approval necessary for Trump's conviction then.

McCarthy and other Republican leaders in 2019 complained that the House was wasting its time in considering the impeachment of Trump since the prospects clearly favored his acquittal in the Senate. But McCarthy and other Republicans leaders now manifest no concerns about wasting the time the inquiry will take on its way to the inevitable outcome of acquittal of President Biden in the Senate.

The fact that the Senate acquitted Clinton in 1999, and Trump twice during his single term, undermines further McCarthy's justifications for initiating an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. In 2019, all Republicans except for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah rejected any evidence of wrongdoing by Trump (who has since been indicted for more than 90 felonies), proclaimed Biden—and especially Hunter Biden—as corrupt, and maintained that Trump's actions did not rise to the level of any impeachable offense.

Though seven Republican senators defected to vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial over his actions on Jan. 6, others voted to acquit because they said they did not believe the evidence, consider any of it as showing he committed any impeachable offense, or that Trump was no longer in office at the time of his trial. Thus, to the extent Senate precedents are pertinent, they favor not proceeding with any impeachment inquiry of Biden because of the likelihood of acquittal and the absence of any evidence of misconduct, much less anything remotely close to Trump's abuses of power in 2019 and 2021.

With a slim majority of seats in the House, McCarthy has the numbers to impeach. But he has nothing else, besides partisan fervor, to back the inquiry he has set in motion. It is sadly telling that many Republicans, whose party once proclaimed itself the defender of "law and order," will ignore the fact that Donald Trump has been indicted for more than 90 felonies in favor of a witch hunt they desperately need for political cover.

The longer the circus lasts, the more the American people are likely to hold McCarthy and his Republican colleagues accountable for the absences of principle and facts to guide their inquiry.>

<A Republican effort to shift control of the North Carolina State Board of Elections from the governor to legislators closed in on final General Assembly approval Tuesday as the House passed a bill that could oust the state elections director a few months before the November 2024 election.

On a party-line vote of 60-41, the chamber approved a slightly different version of a bill the Senate passed in June that would strip the governor's power to appoint state elections officials, as well as local administrators in all 100 counties. One more Senate vote is required before it reaches the desk of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is expected to veto it. Republicans hold narrow supermajorities needed to override his vetoes.

Should the bill become law, the change could result in potentially hundreds of new election board members taking office next summer as the nation’s ninth-largest state prepares to cast ballots for president, governor and scores of other positions.

The board, which currently consists of three Democrats and two Republicans, would grow to eight members under the bill and likely become an even split between the two major parties. The House speaker, the Senate leader and the minority party leaders in each chamber would each get two picks.

Rep. Destin Hall, a Caldwell County Republican, said the changes are needed to improve fairness and public trust.

“It's not hard to see how folks might think there are problems in our elections when the very entity that's overseeing those has a partisan lean,” Hall said during floor debate Tuesday. “This bill takes that partisan lean out of it.”

Former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud have prompted a wave of GOP election laws and administrative overhauls as he mounts his campaign to take back the White House. North Carolina was Trump’s narrowest victory in 2020 and is expected to be a battleground next year.

The legislation also raises the possibility of replacing current Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell if she is not retained by the new board. If the board cannot hire an executive director by next July 15, Republican legislative leaders would make the appointment themselves. A new top administrator could start work fewer than four months before Election Day.

“This is a recipe for potential chaos in a state where elections have been run very well in the past, and where the margins of victory have been among the most narrow in the country,” David Becker, executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer, said recently.

Democratic Rep. Allen Buansi, of Orange County, raised concern that crucial decisions could “essentially get held hostage because of a tied board.” That gridlock, he argued, would benefit the party that controls the legislature because the bill would let the General Assembly intervene in some cases when election boards can't make personnel decisions.

The bill is the latest in a yearslong struggle between the GOP-led legislature and the Democratic governor to reshape the power balance in a Southern swing state. Past attempts to erode Cooper’s election authority have been have been struck down by courts or defeated by voters.

North Carolina’s 7.3 million registered voters already must navigate new voter identification requirements, beginning with local elections this fall, after the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court upheld a 2018 law in April.

Another bill that the House approved and sent to the Senate on Tuesday would create a public electronic record of voter choices for each ballot item. Under current law, voted ballots and related records are confidential and only election officials may access them.

Although identifying information would be redacted from those records, state elections board attorney Paul Cox raised concern Tuesday that some precincts are so small or receive so few ballots that voters could still be identified.

“You have only a few Democrats in one precinct or you only have a few Republicans in one precinct, so using the cast vote record, seeing which contests were voted on by each ballot, you could use that and other information that's publicly available to identify how a particular voter voted,” Cox said.

An election bill Cooper vetoed last month that is awaiting override votes in the legislature would end a grace period for voting by mail and allow partisan poll observers to move about voting locations, which critics say could lead to voter intimidation.>

<Republicans fighting to preserve Wisconsin legislative electoral maps they drew argue in new legal filings that a key liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice must recuse from the case despite the dismissal of complaints against her related to comments she made about redistricting.

Democratic allies asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out the Republican maps counter in court filings Monday that the judicial commission's actions are further proof that Justice Janet Protasiewicz can legally hear the case.

If Protasiewicz doesn't recuse herself from the redistricting cases, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to consider taking the unprecedented step of impeaching her.

Protasiewicz's win flipped majority control of the court to 4-3 for liberals when she took her seat in August. In her first week, two lawsuits seeking to overturn the GOP maps were filed.

The Republican-controlled Legislature argued that Protasiewicz prejudged the case and must step down from hearing it, which could leave the court deadlocked 3-3. Republicans pointed to comments she made during the campaign calling the maps “rigged” and “unfair” and her acceptance of nearly $10 million in donations from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

Protasiewicz never said how she would rule on a redistricting lawsuit.

The Wisconsin Judicial Commission earlier this year rejected complaints filed against Protasiewicz. She released its May 31 decision earlier this month and then asked both sides in the redistricting cases to weigh in on how that action affected their arguments.

The commission did not give a reason for why it dismissed the complaints, but said in its letter to Protasiewicz that it had reviewed her comments, the judicial code of ethics, state Supreme Court rules, and relevant decisions by the state and U.S. supreme courts.

The commission's decision confirms that she didn't break any law and should not step aside, attorneys in both redistricting cases argued.

“Without such grounds, each Justice has a duty to hear this case,” attorneys representing Democratic voters argued.

Furthermore, Protasiewicz's comments not only don't warrant recusal, they should be expected from judicial candidates who “must communicate with the voters who bear the constitutional responsibility of choosing judges,” the attorneys argued.

The question looked at by the judicial commission is different than the one facing the state Supreme Court, the Legislature’s attorneys countered. They argue that the U.S. Constitution’s due process clause and state law require her to recuse from the cases.

“Perhaps those statements were permissible on the campaign trail, as judged by the Judicial Commission, but Justice Protasiewicz cannot hear a case she has prejudged,” attorneys for the Legislature argued in filings Monday.

The commission also did not consider the nearly $10 million in Democratic Party donations, Republican attorneys said. They also point to the $4 million the Democratic Party promised to spend countering Republican efforts to possibly impeach Protasiewicz as evidence that she can't fairly hear the case.

The legislative electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 cemented the party’s majorities, which now stand at 65-34 in the Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate. Republicans adopted maps last year that were similar to the existing ones.

Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most gerrymandered nationally, with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Both lawsuits ask that all 132 state lawmakers be up for election that year in newly drawn districts. In Senate districts that are midway through a four-year term in 2024, there would be a special election, with the winners serving two years. The regular four-year cycle would resume again in 2026.

One lawsuit was filed on behalf of voters who support Democrats by Law Forward, a Madison-based liberal law firm, the Stafford Rosenbaum law firm, Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, Campaign Legal Center, and the Arnold & Porter law firm.

The other case was brought by voters who support Democratic candidates and several members of the Citizen Mathematicians and Scientists. That group of professors and research scientists submitted proposed legislative maps in 2022, before the state Supreme Court adopted the Republican-drawn ones.>

<Researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University conducted a new study on the causes of Alzheimer's disease. They identified a unique form of cell death that operates like a snowball and rapidly impairs cognitive functions, according to the Annals of Neurology journal.

During their study of post-mortem brain tissue from a dementia patient, scientists were able to identify a specific form of cell death in the white matter composed of myelinated axons, which accelerates cognitive decline.

This particular type of cell death is known as ferroptosis and is induced by the accumulation and toxic influence of iron. In this process, immune brain cells in Alzheimer's and vascular dementia are destroyed.

Immune brain cells called microglia die while performing their job of cleaning up "garbage" cells. However, if the "garbage" contains myelin particles rich in iron, it triggers a snowball effect, causing the death of other cells.

Myelin creates a protective layer around nerves and gets damaged due to neurological stress. This leads to ferroptosis – the death of microglial cells in the brain's white matter.

"Everyone knows that microglia get activated to mediate inflammation. But nobody knew that they die in such large numbers. It's even strange that we didn't pay attention to this nuance before," write the authors of the study.

While suppressing ferroptosis is seen as a treatment goal for Alzheimer's, this new discovery may offer a completely different perspective on the development of new treatment methods for the disease. Perhaps scientists will be able to slow down the progression of neurodegenerative diseases.

"We've missed the primary form of cell death in Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. We haven't paid enough attention to microglia as vulnerable cells and to the degradation of brain matter," emphasize the researchers.

Now, pharmaceutical companies will have a new target - to develop compounds that limit microglial degeneration. This will pave the way for the creation of entirely new and effective drugs for the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.>

<This week's decision by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to relax the Senate dress code has led to widespread criticism and mockery from Republican lawmakers and commentators directed at Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is notorious for wearing sweats and a hoodie and who is thought to have been the main reason for the rule change.

Undaunted by the criticism, Fetterman hit back on Tuesday, dismissing his critics' choice of priorities with a brutal sideswipe at another member of Congress who recently made the news for how she presented herself in public.

"I figure if I take up vaping and grabbing the hog during a live musical, they'll make me a folk hero," wrote Fetterman.

Fetterman is referring to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who last week was ejected from a Denver theater along with her date for causing a disturbance during a performance of "Beetlejuice." Security camera footage showed Boebert vaping in front of a pregnant woman and blowing off her plea to stop.

It also showed her and her date groping each other in full public view, and Boebert could be seen flipping off an usher who escorted them from the premises, demanding if they knew who she was.

Boebert, who recently went through a divorce, initially denied vaping in the theater, but admitted to it and apologized after the footage was made public.

When accosted by a TMZ reporter after the incident, Boebert said that she and her date, whom she apparently did not know was a Democrat, will not be seeing each other again.>

One might say that <bimboebert> will no longer be going whole hogger with her recent conquest.

<The Republican Party’s war on itself has turned its inoperative House majority into a “clown show” and a “dysfunction caucus” and is handing wins to the Chinese Communist Party – and that’s just what some of its own members say about it.

Days of recriminations between far-right hardliners, moderates, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his nihilistic tormentors reached a new peak on Tuesday in extraordinary scenes of inter-party infighting on the south side of the US Capitol.

The legislative train wreck made clear that more is now at stake than McCarthy’s loosening grip on a job he craved for years and the capacity of the GOP to fulfill the chamber’s most basic function – setting a budget to run the country.

The Republican majority’s farcical self-harm now increasingly appears to be putting America on a path hurtling toward a government shutdown ahead of a deadline for new federal funding at the end of next week. This could mean furloughs for federal workers who provide basic services, that troops could go unpaid and the possibility of severe damage to an economy that can’t afford more knocks if the impasse is prolonged.

A shutdown – provoked by the demands for massive spending cuts by GOP hardliners that they have no hope of forcing through the Senate or getting President Joe Biden to sign, could sour voters on the small House majority they gave to Republicans in the midterm elections. More broadly, it could raise fresh doubts about the capacity of a polarized nation – featuring an ever more extreme and performative Republican Party in ex-President Donald Trump’s image – to govern itself.

And the chaos could spread beyond the US. Another failure Tuesday to pass a defense bill raised the possibility that political discord now and in the future could hamper US readiness amid a challenge from a rising Chinese superpower. And Ukraine’s fight for survival looks increasingly hostage to the House’s unwillingness or inability to finance a new lifeline of arms and ammunition.

What the standoff is about

McCarthy’s leadership team is still struggling to find a way to pass a stop gap spending bill known as a continuing resolution – or a CR – to keep government open and buy more time to end a fierce internecine dispute over demands for massive spending cuts by hardliners. But the radicals may have the numbers to stop the measure from even reaching the House floor and demand more concessions.

“I don’t know how they will get to 218,” South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, referring to McCarthy’s magic number to pass a bill, said after leaving a conference meeting.

In Congress, chaos and ill-feeling often reach their most extreme pitch just before the fever breaks and a creative solution emerges to punt a problem weeks down the road. McCarthy has been hoping this is the case by refusing to abandon the CR. But the Republican majority is so thin – the speaker can lose only four votes with its current margin – and the party is so bitterly divided, that past experience may be a poor predictor of outcomes. And for some a smallish block [sic] on the extreme edge of the pro-Trump conference, the chance to close down a government that many of them disdain could get them points from base voters and the ex-president and may be an end in itself.

Rep. Mike Simpson, a veteran member for Idaho, bemoaned the situation where recalcitrant members can hold the rest of the chamber hostage. He said it’s “frustrating that the place doesn’t work anymore.”

Simpson added: “We’re being dragged around by 20 people, but 200 of us are in agreement. … They want their way or the highway. And that’s not the way this government works.”

Simpson’s comment encapsulated both the reality of the tiny GOP majority and also the fact that the GOP radicals essentially reject the premise of constitutional divided government itself. They have failed to build sufficient public support through elections to win power – but they are trying to wield it anyway – an approach that threatens democracy but is in keeping with the character of much their [sic] party in the age of Trump.....>

<.....Could a tie-up between moderate Republicans and Democrats save the day? There is however one potential solution that could head off the crisis – an emerging discussion of a tie-up between a number of moderate House Republicans whose seats are at risk in 2024 and Democrats that would extend government funding and even potentially furnish Ukraine with new aid.

A complex set of maneuvers could send a spending bill out of the House that a sufficient number of senators of both parties in the Democrat-led Senate could agree on. Still even this arcane answer is a long shot. For one thing, the use of the so-called discharge petition would take time to work through legislative hoops as the shutdown clock runs down.

That means a compromise between moderate Republicans and Democrats might be a more viable option to end a shutdown than to prevent it. It would also require minority Democrats to decide to line up alongside GOP lawmakers from states like New York whom they will target in their bid to take back the majority in 2024. So handing a win to the critical Republicans on whom the GOP majority depends may be a poor strategy. And a partnership might also have the effect of bailing McCarthy out of a situation in which his conference looks incapable and dysfunctional and from which Democrats can profit.

On the other hand, Democrats might enjoy the optics of hijacking the House chamber and making the speaker look even weaker. Intrigue about a potential revenge of the moderates spiked on Tuesday after Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, from a New York swing district, said he was open to working with Democrats.

“If the clown show of colleagues that refuse to actually govern doesn’t want to pass the CR, I will do everything we need to make sure that a CR passes,” Lawler said.

“The bottom line is we’re not shutting the government down,” he added....>

<.....In a sign that Democrats are considering their options, their leader Hakeem Jeffries will meet the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus on Wednesday. The group has a bipartisan plan to fund the government by temporarily extending current spending levels and include aid for recent domestic national disasters, Ukraine funding and some border security provisions. But underscoring potential tensions within the Democratic Party over any eventual deal, the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced a meeting to discuss their perspective on the budget negotiations.

The notion of a moderate revolt and cross-party bipartisan solutions from the political middle have often been mooted in age of hyper-partisan fury in Congress. On odd occasions they’ve worked – for instance in the infrastructure program passed by President Joe Biden in a win that eluded his predecessors. But such efforts usually collapse on the logic of partisanship. Sometimes, they are used as a feint by party members to call the bluff of more radical members of their conference. And any decision by a handful of Republicans to split with McCarthy, who supported them with fundraising and advice in the midterm elections would be a tough one, personally and politically. It could also make them persona non grata on their own benches.

“If moderate Republicans sign a discharge petition with Democrats, they are signing their own political death warrant and they are handing it to their executioner because it won’t be me and the conservatives off hunting the moderates,” Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, McCarthy’s most prominent GOP critic, said. “It’ll be the very Democrats that they would be working with under that hypothesis.”

And weighing on Republican moderates will be the risk they could cost the speaker his job. A bill that passed the House with Democratic votes could be the final straw for McCarthy’s enemies and cause a vote to unseat him.

The House can’t even fund the military

The plight of a speaker saddled with a tiny majority and a rebellious conference in a party that rewards extreme rabble rousing rather than legislating and governing was laid bare on Tuesday when five conservative members killed an attempt to pass a defense bill that was loaded with GOP priorities – normally one of the easiest legislative lifts.

“They just handed a win to the Chinese Communist Party as a result of this vote,” Rep. Mike Garcia, a Republican from California and an ex-Navy fighter pilot, told CNN’s Manu Raju.

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Biden swing district, commented to reporters as he motioned toward the House floor: “The dysfunction caucus at work.”

The bizarre circumstances of the House crisis were encapsulated during one appearance before reporters on Tuesday by McCarthy when tensions appeared to boil over when he was asked about aid to Ukraine – that Biden warned at the United Nations on Tuesday was critical to winning a war that would spill far beyond its current footprint amid Russian expansionism if the US abandons Kyiv.

“Was Zelensky elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think so,” McCarthy said, in a striking outburst against a Washington ally fighting a war for his country’s survival. Zelensky will be in the Capitol on Thursday, on a mission to shore up his country’s desperately needed aid pipeline from the US.

Even to a leader from a war zone constantly under attack from Russian drones and missiles, Washington’s utter failure to govern itself is likely to look like dysfunction run riot.>

<A group of Republican Wisconsin lawmakers on Thursday proposed impeaching the battleground state's top elections official as Democrats wage a legal battle to keep the nonpartisan administrator in office.

Democrats say the GOP-controlled state Senate acted illegitimately when it voted along party lines last week to oust Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe. In a lawsuit challenging the vote, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul accused Republicans of attacking the state's elections.

The resolution introduced Thursday by five Assembly Republicans makes Wolfe the second state official GOP lawmakers have threatened with impeachment this month. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Wisconsin's top Republican, created a panel last week to investigate the criteria for impeaching liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose installment in August tipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court to liberal control for the first time in over a decade.

Wolfe has been targeted by conspiracy theorists who falsely claim she was part of a plot to rig the 2020 election in favor of President Joe Biden. The lawmakers proposing her impeachment have played a role in advancing those claims and some pushed to decertify the results of the 2020 election.

“A gaggle of well-known election deniers is once again attacking Meagan Wolfe, a nonpartisan election administrator who has served Wisconsin and our democracy with the utmost respect and dignity," Democratic Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard said in a statement.

The 23-page impeachment resolution reiterates conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and faults Wolfe for election administration decisions that were made by elections commissioners. As the elections commission’s nonpartisan administrator, Wolfe has little decision-making power and instead implements decisions made by the three Democrats and three Republicans on the bipartisan commission.

“No matter how many times some politicians misrepresent my actions and how this agency works, it does not make what they’re saying true,” Wolfe said in a statement. “It’s irresponsible for this group of politicians to willfully distort the truth when they’ve been provided the facts for years.”

Republican Rep. Janel Brandtjen, one of the resolution's authors, lost her position as chair of the Assembly elections committee and was even kicked out of a GOP caucus last year after Republicans said they lost trust in her for promoting election lies. Brandtjen has frequently butted heads with Vos and other GOP leaders, and she endorsed Vos' Republican primary opponent in the 2022 midterm.

The resolution to impeach Wolfe would need approval from Vos to move forward. He did not respond to an email or text message seeking comment Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu also did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Numerous reviews have found that the 2020 election in Wisconsin was fair and the results were accurate. Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump in 2020 by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, an outcome that has withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, a conservative law firm’s review, and multiple state and federal lawsuits.>

<Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee went about as well as expected, with a seemingly endless series of exchanges about the investigation into Hunter Biden. The New York Times noted:

As the Times’ report added, neither Jordan nor his GOP colleagues “provided concrete proof for their claim — or elicited responses from the attorney general that backed up those conclusions.”

Or put another way, it was another multi-hour Capitol Hill hearing featuring Republicans, certain of their righteousness and confident in their conspiracy theories, making a variety of unproven assertions without uncovering any new information that might bolster their dubious claims.

And yet, there were several references to what “everyone knows.” Jordan declared with confidence that “everyone knows” about the attorney general’s secret scheme to help President Joe Biden’s son — an initiative that appears to only exist in Republicans’ imaginations. Later, in same hearing, the committee chairman added that “everyone knows” that Justice Department prosecutors also took deliberate steps to help Hunter Biden.

Soon after, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana added that “everybody can see” that the Justice Department gave “special treatment” to the president’s son. Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas said that “everybody can see” that Joe Biden was part of a bribery scheme.

Rep. Matt Gaetz also pointed to obscure details about Hunter Biden that the Florida Republican said “everybody knows.” So did Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who added that “everybody in the country” knows that the Justice Department helped Hunter Biden.

Time and again, House Republicans took their turns at the microphone. Time and again, they told us what “everyone” and “everybody” is well aware of.

What these GOP members neglected to do was point to any meaningful or credible evidence to support their claims.

The fact of the matter is that producing evidence is hard. Simply asserting that “everyone knows” how right you are is easy.

But Republicans aren’t experts in what the public does and does not know, and their incessant assertions don’t make baseless claims true.>

<Rolling Stone cofounder Jann Wenner, who left the publication in 2019, is coming out with a new book, "The Masters," about rock legends — Bono, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger among them. And while his list of seven "philosophers" of the musical genre doesn't include any artists of color or women, Wenner says that there's a reason.

"They just didn't articulate at that level," Wenner told The New York Times in an interview with columnist David Marchese.

Wenner's book is composed of interviews conducted during his Rolling Stone days, including his watershed conversation with John Lennon in 1970, in addition to a new one with Bruce Springsteen. Marchese confronted Wenner on an acknowledgement in the introduction of the book that female musicians and musicians of color are simply not in Wenner's "zeitgeist," and pushed him on how he selected his subjects — and Wenner pushed back.

The "zeitgeist" Wenner was referring to was specifically in reference to Black performers, not women, he told the Times. His selection was "intuitive," based on some criteria, but steeped in his "personal interest and love" — and it's worth noting that many of the artists featured are his friends. Artists like Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, or Joni Mitchell wouldn't have brought the same philosophical reflections on the genre as the white men he had spotlighted across his career, Wenner said.

The Stones are the highest-grossing live act since 1980, per Pollstar, taking $2.1 billion. Two Stones tours are on Billboard Boxscore's top 10 list and it's the only act to appear twice. The Rolling Stones were formed in 1962 and are still one of the world's most famous and adored rock bands.

Mick Jagger's band is big business, selling tickets worth more than $2 billion since 1980.

The Stones have also sold over 66 million albums in their career, per RIAA figures, placing them 16th on the top 50 best-selling artists list.

As Jagger celebrates his 80th birthday, we take a look at how the Stones became a musical — and commercial — juggernaut.

Correction: July 18, 2023 — An earlier version of this story imprecisely described the origins of the Rolling Stones. The initial lineup included Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Dick Taylor, Tony Chapman, and Ian Stewart, not just Jagger and Richards.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which Wenner helped found, said in a statement sent to Insider on Saturday that Wenner had been removed from the organization's Board of Directors and its Foundation.

In a statement to CNN through his publisher Little, Brown and Company, Wenner apologized for his comments, saying that they "diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists."

Wenner said in the statement that "The Masters" was "not meant to represent the whole of music and its diverse and important originators." Rather, he said that the book represents his own career and body of work, and "an idea of rock 'n' roll's impact on my world."

Wenner's comments represent a real moment of saying the quiet part out loud, and were thoroughly dissected — and widely criticized — on social media: Rock is a genre that, while indebted to Black artists and Black musical traditions, has historically pushed them to the periphery. In an excerpt from his book "Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination" published in Slate in 2016, Jack Hamilton effectively summarized how focusing on individual "geniuses" — some could say "masters" — predicates exclusion.

"There is a tendency toward stories of individual rock 'genius' that foreclose discussions of race by celebrating individual artistry and intellect," Hamilton wrote. "While many black performers of the 1960s have been relegated to book-length histories of black music generally, white artists like Bob Dylan or the Beatles receive increasingly lavish biographies and isolated critical treatments of musical output."

When it comes to women, it's easy to name a number of influential rockers — and name them Marchese does, from the aforementioned Joplin, Slick, and Mitchell, to others like Carole King and Madonna.

When Marchese asked how Wenner could know that artists like Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield couldn't "articulate" at the same "level" as the white artists he had interviewed across his career without actually speaking to them, Wenner said that his judgment was based on reading prior interviews or listening to their discographies.

Ultimately, however, Wenner said that his own interest was paramount.

<Kristen Welker received a cacophony of criticism for the execution of her "Meet the Press" debut interview with former President Donald Trump. But media analysts say while the interview was a failure for Welker, it also doesn't bode well for future media coverage of Trump as he runs for president once again.

The interview on Sunday morning was full of lies from the former president, which was anticipated. What was surprising to many was the lack of effort by Welker and NBC to effectively fact-check Trump and his egregious attempts to avoid the truth, something experts say needs to be rectified to avoid media mistakes from coverage of Trump's run for president in 2016.

"It's not even that they're making the same mistakes as the 2016 election," Media Matters for America news director John Whitehouse told TheWrap. "It's that they don't even seem to have understood that the 2016 election happened and what we could have learned from that. It's just bizarre."

Whitehouse said he was "incredibly disappointed" by the execution of the interview. "Sunday shows have been on a slow decline for a number of years in terms of their influence," Whitehouse continued. "This was just like a new low."

Press Watch editor Dan Froomkin told TheWrap, "There's absolutely no point in interviewing Donald Trump unless you're going to confront him with his lies and hold him accountable for all the things he has said that are not true. The alternative is just to have him on and have him lie all the time, which is not exactly a service to the public."

An NBC representative declined to comment for this article.

What "Meet the Press" could've done

During the airing on Sunday, Welker provided fact-checks throughout the show to combat Trump's aversion to the truth. NBC additionally published an online fact-check which featured 11 lies debunked, including "Was the 2020 election 'rigged,' 'so rigged' and 'crooked?'" and "Did the U.S. give $85 billion worth of equipment to the Taliban?"

But media analysts told TheWrap that the efforts to mitigate Trump's misinformation by NBC weren't nearly enough.

"At the very least they should have stopped rolling the tape every time he said something that wasn't true and rebutted it with facts or put it in the proper context," suggested Froomkin. "Because what's the value of letting him just go on and on?"

Welker "let him filibuster and fill up this amazing amount of time just saying thing after thing that wasn't true," the Press Watch editor said.

Trump's interview on "Meet the Press" reminded many of CNN's controversial town hall with the former president, which led to the dramatic ouster of the network's CEO Chris Licht in June. But NBC learned one lesson: opting to prerecord the interview, something CNN was repeatedly slammed for not doing after their live town hall.

The Media Matters news director expected more from a prerecorded format because it offers additional opportunities to contextualize the former president's lies, "but there was none of that," Whitehouse said. He was "bewildered" that CNN's Kaitlan Collins did much more to fact-check Trump in real-time, while Welker simply tried to "keep it on track."

"She wanted to have this particular interview with these particular things and was just dumbfounded that Trump would ramble over her when that is his entire brand," Whitehouse said.

Whitehouse likened Welker's lack of Trump challenges to what "you would see on any given day in right-wing media."

If Trump says that the election is rigged, which he always does, Froomkin says a response should already be prepared.

"No single question with Donald Trump is going to be the silver bullet," asserted Froomkin. "You have to keep telling him that he didn't answer the question. Then when he lies, you have to argue and tell him what he lied about."

Why take the Trump risk?

Media analysts also questioned NBC's motive for hosting a Trump interview of this nature, which was timed to Welker's debut at "Meet the Press" host as she took over for Chuck Todd. "Maybe they think it's better television but for who?" Whitehouse said.

Froomkin speculated that NBC hosted this interview to "boost up their ratings and the excitement about Welker," while making a concerted effort "not to be argumentative or provocative to such an extent that he would not be willing to be interviewed by them again," the Press Watch editor said. "Which is a pretty lousy reason to interview the guy."

But Whitehouse stressed that viewers are going to return to a program or its specific host for "the rigor that you put into the work and how good you are at doing it."....>

<.....Should this worry those who were hoping for a fresh start with Welker hosting "Meet the Press?"

CNN's Oliver Darcy says yes, writing in his Reliable Sources newsletter that the "Welker era of 'Meet the Press' is off to a bleak start."

"When there's a new host that comes in, you're always hopeful that it's going to take the show to bigger and better things," said Whitehouse. "And to see the exact opposite of that. Instead of a roadmap to relevance, it was a roadmap away from it."

Whitehouse views the Trump interview and subsequent segments as a "red flag," for Welker's tenure as host of the news program, adding that the network seemed to be in "denial" over "how bad it was."

"I think it's a bad sign to me that the first episode continued in the recent history of 'Meet the Press,'" assessed Whitehouse, comparing Welker's debut negatively to Todd's run.

"It bodes very ill for her," Froomkin said of Welker. "The problem historically with 'Meet the Press' has been that the host will ask a tough question and then doesn't follow up. It really becomes a tremendous platform for people like Dick Cheney and Donald Trump to just go out there and lie."

Beyond "Meet the Press"

But ultimately, analysts agree that this is a much bigger issue than just "Meet the Press."

"This is absolutely a problem beyond Kristen Welker and it certainly is a problem for NBC management," the Press Watch editor said. Froomkin believes NBC has proved that they are "not ready to take on the challenge" of interviewing the former president, who faces multiple indictments during his run for president.

"There is a power dynamic at work here. To get an interview with Trump, if you're CBS, ABC, or CNN, you have to beg the guy to talk to you. You're sort of beholden to him," Froomkin said. "It's very hard to imagine broadcast news getting Donald Trump to sit down for an interview where he knows he's not going to be able to get away with stuff."

"But when he's going on your network and lying, if you're not opposing him with the truth, you're doing a terrible disservice to your audience," the Press Watch editor continued.

"As for broadcast news in general, one can still hope that somebody at some point will confront him the way he needs to be confronted," Froomkin told TheWrap.>

<Legal experts are raising red flags about a motion by Donald Trump's legal team, calling it part of a "nefarious" plot to manipulate United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan into allowing their client to continue to incite his followers.

In a column for MSNBC, former prosecutor E. Danya Perry, attorney Josh Stanton, and Joshua Kolb, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, cited the move to get Churtkan [sic] to recuse herself at the same time that she is expected to rule on a limited gag order designed to keep the four-time indicted former president from intimidating prosecutors, witnesses and jurors.

Noting that any gag order runs the risk of being construed as a curtailment of the defendant's First Amendment rights, the three legal experts concluded she'll have to walk a tightrope when placing restrictions on Trump so that, if he is convicted for his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, it won't become a central complaint in his inevitable appeal.

As they wrote, "The solid foundation for a limited gag order may explain Trump’s motives in asking for Chutkan’s recusal. Legally, the recusal motion looks to be a non-starter. The bar for recusal is extremely high, judges have significant discretion, and nothing in Judge Chutkan’s record exhibits the requisite bias or appearance of bias necessitating recusal under the law."

However, "The timing of the recusal motion — a month after the indictment — also hints at Trump’s strategy. Chutkan’s remarks that supposedly showed her bias toward Trump were made before the August indictment, so the former president could have brought this motion sooner — for example, before Chutkan set the trial date. Yet he chose not to do so until after Smith’s office requested a gag order."

According to their opinion piece, "As we saw in the battle over the trial schedule, the arguments that Trump’s lawyers make are not just intended for the judge, but also for a broader public audience. Public intimidation is a crucial tactic in Trump’s legal and political strategy, one he has deployed successfully in the past."

The three legal experts wrote that Chutkan should not back down because it could impact all four of his criminal trials.

"While there is no perfect solution, to avoid addressing Trump’s statements — which are clearly intended to spoil the possibility of a fair trial — would unfairly permit Trump to run roughshod over the judicial proceedings, and it also would incentivize the type of public framing Trump and his lawyers have engaged in so far, " they warned.>

<If you thought you’d heard the last of the term “special master,” you were sorely mistaken.

Ken Chesebro, a lawyer who drafted a legal memo asserting that the 2020 election could be overturned by then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, on Thursday attacked the Georgia racketeering (RICO) case he faces by calling the warrant “defective” and seeking to exclude email evidence he maintains was illegally seized.

Why? Because a special master was never appointed to sift through the materials for potentially privileged communications.

Chesebro claimed the search warrant the Fulton County District Attorney’s office served on Microsoft for his emails was in violation of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA) § 17-5-32(c), a statute that outlines rules for issuing a search warrant “for any documentary evidence in the possession or custody of an attorney who is not a criminal suspect.”

The lawyer’s lawyers maintained in a footnote that there’s “no basis” to the idea that Chesebro was a “suspect” at the time of the warrant was executed, since he “was one of dozens of witnesses who waived objection to appearing before the special grand jury, and prior to the indictment the District Attorney’s Office never gave any indication that he was regarded as a suspect, despite the fact that it did send formal target letters to co-defendants and unindicted co-conspirators in this case.”

The warrant for Chesebro’s MSN email account was signed on July 20 and Chesebro was indicted on Aug. 14, the lawyers said.

Beyond that, Chesebro argued, there was no probable cause that there was any real threat that documentary evidence would be destroyed.

“[Y]et on the date the warrant issued there existed no such concern, because months earlier Microsoft had archived all the e-mails in question, pursuant to a preservation order,” the motion to suppress continued.

Chesebro’s attorneys further said that warrant’s specification for sending the seized materials to a “filter team” within Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ (D) office “does not actually comply with the statute” because the warrant “failed to appoint a special master to accompany the person who served the warrant” and failed to “notify Mr. Chesebro or any counsel for him of the items being sought under the search warrant.”....>

<.....From OCGA § 17-5-32(c)(1) [emphasis ours]:

At the time the warrant is issued the court shall appoint a special master to accompany the person who will serve the warrant. The special master shall be an attorney who is a member in good standing of the State Bar of Georgia and who has been selected from a list of qualified attorneys maintained by the State Bar of Georgia. Upon service of the warrant, the special master shall inform the party served of the specific items being sought and that the party shall have the opportunity to provide the items requested. If the party, in the judgment of the special master, fails to provide the items requested, the special master shall conduct a search for the items in the areas indicated in the search warrant.

The defendant argued that the “filter team” in question is a) not a special master and b) “never gave Mr. Chesebro or his counsel the opportunity to state that an item or items should not be disclosed due to privilege.”

“No such items have been sealed, and no hearing has been provided as required by the statute,” the motion said. “The search warrant and its service are therefore defective, and the seizure — and any subsequent search of the requested materials — are illegal.”

Chesebro’s lawyers accused prosecutors of making a “half-hearted attempt” at complying with the statute and suggested that was business as usual for the DA’s office:

The prosecution’s half-hearted attempt here to disguise its search warrant as compliant with O.C.G.A. § 17-5-32 is hardly the first sign of trouble on this front. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office had already violated this Code section in another case less than two months before the search warrant here was issued. There can be little doubt that the Office will continue to violate the statute in future cases unless and until a judge applies the remedy for such conduct identified by the Legislature: exclusion of the improperly obtained evidence.

Chesebro is now asking Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to throw out “any evidence derived from the search warrant.”

Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Chesebro, a trio of pro-Donald Trump attorneys, were indicted in the Georgia RICO case over the summer and accused together of unlawfully conspiring in December 2020 to “cause certain individuals to falsely hold themselves out as the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from the State of Georgia, public officers, with intent to mislead the President of the United States Senate, the Archivist of the United States, the Georgia Secretary of State, and the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia into believing that they actually were such officers.”

Chesebro recently filed a motion to dismiss the indictment under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and filed a demurrer, claiming the indictment goes “beyond the ambit” of Georgia’s RICO statute and “fails to allege a nexus between the enterprise and the racketeering activity as required to survive a demurrer.” Former President Trump himself embraced these arguments.

In the motion to dismiss, Chesebro argued that the alleged conduct at issue occurred after Dec. 8, 2020, the “Safe Harbor” deadline, so said conduct can only be addressed by federal law, not state law.

Chesebro described his pre-Safe Harbor deadline involvement as “limited” to “his drafting of a legal memo” — which was sent by email — to overturn the 2020 election.

“Even if Mr. Chesebro agrees that drafting this memo was improper (and not subject to attorney-client privilege), this memo in no way touched or concerned Georgia or its rules, processes, or procedures it had implemented as a result of its congressional delegation via the ECA,” the prior motion said. “Therefore, the charges against Mr. Chesebro are wholly invalid as drafted in the indictment and should be struck accordingly.”>

<Some House Republicans are rejecting Donald Trump's criticism of a plan the group developed to avoid a government shutdown that now appears to be at risk of failure.

The former president took to social media Wednesday night shortly after news broke of the strategy, calling on Republicans to prioritize defunding the Biden administration' "weaponized government" and the "political prosecutions" he's facing.

"A very important deadline is approaching at the end of the month. Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden's weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State," Trump said in a Truth Social post.

"This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots," he continued. "They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!"

According to The Hill, some House GOP members have committed to trying to use the appropriations process to cut funding for federal agencies like the Department of Justice and the FBI, accusing the government of weaponizing the departments against Trump and conservatives at-large in the wake of his four criminal indictments.

While many Republicans in the House share Trump's stance and have extended support to him throughout his legal battles, they're also continuing to back the framework deal.

"He would've made the same call," conservative Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Thursday, adding "this will put us in a position to use leverage that he's talking about."

Other representatives, however, have cast aside Trump's opinion as the GOP infighting in the House intensifies ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

"He's not here, we are. We need to deal with our business in this house," moderate Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, said Thursday. "And the mechanics of it are such that the only way we can continue on is to do a [continuing resolution] because we're not going to be able to get all the appropriations bills passed by the end of the month."

"This conference has focused on trying to get our appropriations bills done that we have crafted in the appropriations process," Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga., added, asserting when asked about the former president's influence amid spending talks that "House Republicans are focused on the business of House Republicans."

Republicans appeared to reach a turning point in the talks late Wednesday as members expressed optimism about the conference moving toward a deal, but by Thursday enough of them had banded together against the proposal to defeat it.

The partisan plan, considered dead upon arrival in the Senate, included spending cuts and changes to border policy, and would have pushed the shutdown deadline through the next month to give negotiators more time to eke out a larger deal for government funding in the 2024 fiscal year.

As the GOP continues to battle over the proposals, two freshman Republicans in the House have leveled the possibility of circumventing party leadership and collaborating with Democrats to fund the government, NBC News reports.

Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler, New York Republicans representing the Hudson Valley-area districts, said they're willing to consider a "discharge petition" to force votes on a short-term funding bill in the event their party fails to reach a compromise.

"It is absolutely an option," Molinaro told reporters outside the Capitol. "Working to ensure the government remains functional and that Congress is making the legitimate choices as it relates to funding ... is an important principle."

Lawler said that if Republicans can't come together to pass a continuing resolution to approve short-term funding, he "will move forward with a discharge petition."....>

<.....It's unclear what the underlying bill would be and whether enough members of the GOP would be willing to leave behind Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to work with Democrats to force legislation to a vote.

After the House failed on Thursday to pass a rule to begin debate on a military funding bill for the second time this week, Lawler told reporters that as a long as Democrats have control of the Senate and the White House, "any final bill is going to be bipartisan. And if somebody doesn't realize that, they're truly clueless."

The discharge petition the representatives are floating is a rarely utilized tool giving legislators the power to force a vote on legislation even if the House speaker doesn't want to. It requires signatures from a majority of the chamber and is time-consuming: a bill must first sit in committee for at least 30 legislative days. Though it's not a viable option for preventing a shutdown at the end of September, it could, however, be a last-resort to reopen the government if the GOP stalemate continues.

While he's still open to teaming up with the Democrats, Molinaro also used Thursday afternoon to work with one of the Speaker's main opponents, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to rekindle negotiations about determining a path forward on the spending bills.

"I was asked to try to help find a way to a framework that allows us to move appropriations bills. I presented something that made sense to both ends of the ideological spectrum. And that allows us to remain committed to the belief that we spend too much of taxpayers' money and ultimately have to focus effectively on national defense," Molinaro said.

The House is split 221-212 with Republicans taking the majority and two vacancies. With those numbers, at least five Republicans would have to divest for a discharge petition to succeed, and potentially more could if not all Democrats sign it. So far, GOP centrists have not shown a willingness to break from their leaders, while right-wingers are urging colleagues against doing so.

"I don't think it's healthy, obviously, for Republicans to say they'll go work literally with Democrats," Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said. "To try to prevent Republicans from pursuing Republican policies — yeah, I think that would be an unhealthy thing."

Other hardliners say Republicans who level the idea are making empty threats.

"That's been said for weeks. That's old news," said Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. "We're making tremendous progress forward to pass 12 appropriations bills. That's what I fought for in January, and that's what we're going to continue to fight for right now."

Democratic leaders have minimized the possibility of a discharge petition to resolve the turmoil and noted one hasn't been filed.

One potential option for a discharge petition is a new proposal raised late Wednesday by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that would seek to fund the government through Jan. 11 at levels agreed to in the recent two-year budget deal in addition to unspecified border enforcement policies, aid for Ukraine and disaster relief.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that if the GOP border provisions look anything like "Title 42" measures to turn away asylum-seekers, a significant crop of Democrats won't sign on.

"That's a non-starter. It will not happen," Jayapal said. "They would lose too many of us on the discharge petition."

The GOP fissure over spending legislation puts Democrats in a unique position to leverage power it wouldn't typically have as the minority party in the House, according to Politico.

While McCarthy continues pushing new CRs in an effort to appease hardliners until he finally secures a majority — similar to his January strategy to secure the speakership — and the Problem Solvers Caucus floats a potential discharge petition, Democrats are mulling over what role they could play if GOP holdouts make good on their threats to vote to oust McCarthy from his role.

On one hand, they could all vote against the California Republican and aid the hardliners in triggering a new speaker election — though no one is really sure which Republican would ascend to the position in the process. On the other, Democrats could also lend their votes to McCarthy and save him from removal, a route that would come with a very high price.

In the meantime, per NBC News, Jayapal said that Republicans should agree to a simple stopgap bill at current funding levels with supplemental requests if Republicans want help from their Democratic colleagues.

"We're not inclined to save them," she added.>

<Tesla has been accused of several unethical business practices over the years. The latest, according to a new, extensively reported piece from Reuters, is that the electric vehicle company misled consumers about the battery range of its cars.

Not only that, but according to the report, Tesla also created an entire secret “Diversion Team” to thwart customers who complained about the issue.

“Range anxiety” — the fear that your electric vehicle could run out of battery in between charging stations, leaving you stranded — has been an issue plaguing electric vehicle manufacturers ever since EVs have been sold.

To combat this consumer fear, EV makers have managed to develop efficient and reliable batteries that can hold hundreds of miles worth of charge.

But Tesla apparently went one step further, advertising range estimates that were not based in reality, going as far as to rig the range-estimating software within its cars.

Per Reuters, “a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts” said that Tesla’s range meter would show “rosy” projections for how far a car could travel on a full battery. Then, once the battery fell to under 50% charged, the projection would switch to a realistic number so as to avoid actually leaving drivers stranded with an empty battery.

However, drivers who noticed the abrupt switch thought something was wrong with their cars and scheduled service appointments. That’s where the “Diversion Team” came in.

The team was reportedly tasked with identifying customers who had scheduled appointments based on the misleading range estimates. From there, they were meant to tell those customers there was nothing wrong with their cars and that they should cancel their appointments — without ever telling them what the actual issue had been.

The issue of Tesla’s range estimates being inaccurate has been reported previously — earlier this year, the South Korean government fined the EV maker $2.2 million for failing to tell customers about the shorter driving range of its cars in low temperatures, Reuters reported.

However, the extent of how intentionally Tesla misled its customers and then attempted to cover it up had not previously been known.

Tesla has been forced to settle several lawsuits over violating consumers’ rights, including a recent one in which the company was accused of doubling the price of its solar roofs after customers had already signed a contract.

In addition, experts have said that the company’s misleading marketing around its “Full-Self Driving” feature, which still requires driver supervision, has led to unsafe driving practices and accidents.>

<A New York judge peppered Donald Trump's lawyers with questions Friday as they tried to persuade the court to throw out a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general accusing the former president and his company of deceiving banks, insurers and others by exaggerating his wealth.

At times, Judge Arthur Engoron argued with Trump attorney Christopher Kise. In one case the judge ended a back-and-forth by simply saying, “Disagree.”

Later, the judge pounded his fist on the top of his bench in disagreement with Kise’s interpretation of one law, opining the intent of that law is, “You cannot make false statements.”

The hearing served as prelude to a trial that could begin as soon as Oct. 2.

A lawyer for New York Attorney General Letitia James also tried to persuade Engoron to hand down a summary judgment on the lawsuit's most significant claim — that Trump committed fraud by inflating property values and exaggerating his net worth by as much as $3.6 billion on annual financial statements used by him and his company to secure financing.

The judge also questioned the state's lawyer, Assistant New York Attorney General Andrew Amer, but his tone was less combative.

At one point, Engoron reminded those in the packed courtroom that he was trying to be fair to both sides, suggesting that the tenor of his questioning shouldn't be seen as an indication of how he will ultimately rule.

The judge indicated he would rule no later than Tuesday on the requests from the two sides.

Last week, Trump’s attorneys filed a lawsuit accusing Engoron of abusing his authority, one of several lawsuits Trump has filed against the judges overseeing his various trials.

A state appellate court is expected to rule Monday whether the suit against Engoron will proceed. If so, it would push back a trial date.

Trump's lawyers had sought a delay but Engoron turned them down.

James, a Democrat, sued Trump and the Trump Organization a year ago, accusing him of inflating the value of assets like skyscrapers, golf courses and his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

But Trump's attorney, Kise, hailed Trump's “investment genius” during the Friday hearing at a court in Manhattan.

“This is why billionaires are billionaires,” Kise said.

He said the property valuations the former president used in financial documents were not meant to be formal appraisals, but Trump's predictions of what the properties could be worth in the future.

Among the allegations made by James were that Trump claimed his Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan — a three-story penthouse replete with gold-plated fixtures — was nearly three times its actual size and valued the property at $327 million. No apartment in New York City has ever sold for close to that amount, James said.

Trump valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — more than 10 times a more reasonable estimate of its worth. Trump’s figure for the private club and residence was based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential use, but deed terms prohibit that, James said.

“Defendants have clearly stepped through the looking glass,” said Amer, the lawyer representing the attorney general. He said there was “a complete disconnect” between the real-world market value of Trump’s properties and “the grossly inflated” valuation asserted by the former president in his financial paperwork.

Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing in sworn testimony that it didn’t matter what he put on his financial statements because they have a disclaimer that says they shouldn’t be trusted.

James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House in 2024. He has been indicted four times — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.

James’ lawsuit is a civil, not criminal matter, so it does not carry the potential of prison time. She has asked the court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from ever again running a company based [sic] New York. She also wants $250 million in penalties, and a five-year ban on Trump and the Trump Organization engaging in commercial real estate acquisitions.>

<The Colorado judge overseeing the first significant lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 presidential ballot on Friday issued a protective order prohibiting threats and intimidation in the case, saying the safety of those involved — including herself and her staff — was necessary as the groundbreaking litigation moves forward.

“I 100% understand everybody's concerns for the parties, the lawyers, and frankly myself and my staff based on what we've seen in other cases,” District Judge Sarah B. Wallace said as she agreed to the protective order.

The order prohibits parties in the case from making threatening or intimidating statements. Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state representing Trump in the case, opposed it. He said a protective order was unnecessary because threats and intimidation already are prohibited by law.

It was sought by lawyers for the liberal group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot under a rarely used Civil War-era clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gessler said heated rhetoric in this case has come partly from the left.

“We do have robust political debate going on here,” he said. “For better or worse, this case has become a focal point.”

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed around the country seeking to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment clause barring anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from running for office. Their arguments revolve around Trump's involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.

The case in Colorado is the first filed by a group with significant legal resources. The issue is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the insurrection provision in section three of the 14th Amendment.

Wallace has set an Oct. 30 hearing to discuss whether Trump needs to be removed under Colorado law prohibiting candidates who don't meet qualifications for higher office from appearing on ballots. She has said she wants to give the Colorado Supreme Court — and possibly U.S. Supreme Court — as much time as possible to review the decision before the state's Jan. 5 deadline to set its 2024 presidential primary ballot.

A parallel case in Minnesota filed by another well-financed liberal group is scheduled to be heard by that state's supreme court on Nov. 2.

Trump's attorneys are scheduled to file two motions to dismiss the lawsuit later Friday. One will contend the litigation is an attempt to retaliate against Trump's free speech rights. Wallace has set an Oct. 13 hearing to debate that claim.

Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, proposed the protective order in court Friday. He cited federal prosecutor Jack Smith last week seeking a gag order against Trump for threats made in his prosecution of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“At least one of the parties has a tendency to tweet — or Truth Social," Grimsley said, referring to Trump’s own social network where he broadcasts most of his statements, “about witnesses and the courts.”>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in hot water after an offensive comment she made Friday on President Joe Biden's social media post.

Greene, who was recently criticized for a poor shooting comparison, was responding to Biden's comment on potentially banning assault weapons.

Biden said, "It’s time to again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And let me be very clear: If members of Congress refuse to act, then we need to elect new members of Congress who will act."

Greene didn't comment on the meat of the argument made by Biden, instead choosing to insult him.

"Whatever you old fart," she said Friday. "We are electing a new President. Turning 45 into 47." She did not mention that Trump is slightly younger than his Democratic opponent.

Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican, had an extremely simple response. He said, "The moral and intellectual leader of the Republican Party," sarcastically referring to Greene.

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan picked up on that post, joking that not Greene but Sen. John Fetterman is the leader of morality.

"But I was told it was John Fetterman who was ruining decorum and tradition in Congress with his shorts," Hasan wrote on Friday.

Keith Olbermann also chimed in, calling Greene a "semi-Sentient lawn ornament."

"Marjorie Barney Rubble Body Double Greene wants to lose a chop war," he added.>