“Understanding the full scope of Vance’s answer requires a quick recap of how Trump’s lawyers wanted January 6, 2021, to play out. The so-called Eastman memo outlined the necessary steps to prevent a transfer of power. It proposed that officials in a handful of states won narrowly by Joe Biden should submit alternative slates of electors and that then-Vice President Mike Pence should invoke his unilateral authority “without asking for permission—either from a vote of the joint session [of Congress] or from the [Supreme Court]”—to count only the Trump-supporting slates from those states.
If state legislators in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other disputed states failed to take the bait, there was a backup plan in which Pence would cite “all the evidence and the letters from state legislators calling into question the executive certifications” as grounds for refusing to count the votes from seven disputed states.
“At the end of the count, the tally would therefore be 232 for Trump, 222 for Biden,” Eastman wrote. “Because the 12th Amendment says ‘majority of electors appointed,’ having determined that no electors from the 7 states were appointed…TRUMP WINS.”
It’s unknown whether this would have worked. Certainly, it would have drawn an immediate lawsuit from the Biden campaign, but it’s unclear how the Supreme Court would have viewed its role in such a dispute.
Crucially, Pence refused to play his part in the scheme. For doing so, he’s become a pariah in Republican politics—though he deserves to be remembered for maintaining his courage in the face of both a literal and metaphorical partisan mob.
Vance indicated in the All-In interview that he would be willing to do the opposite. Asked twice whether he would refuse to certify the election, Vance fell back both times to his claim that he would have simply asked states to submit alternative slates of electors and allowed Congress to have a debate about what to do.
That’s a cowardly response that fails to give a clear answer, but there can be no doubt about the signal Vance is sending. He is effectively saying that he’d have followed the path outlined in the Eastman memo—a path that would allow the vice president to claim he was merely letting Congress debate the outcome, and then use the chaos and uncertainty created by that same debate to throw out the results from certain states in pursuit of a different outcome.”
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“It’s also worth engaging with the underlying notion here: that the country or Congress needs to debate the results of the election. That is also nonsense.
The country did debate the 2020 election. For months. Votes were cast, results were tallied, and the Electoral College determined the winner. The final certification of the results is not the time or place for that debate to take place. Indeed, the Trump campaign took advantage of many other opportunities that are built into the system to challenge results in specific places, and none of those efforts found systemic fraud or other reasons to doubt the outcome.”
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“What Eastman proposed (and what Vance is nodding along with) is a reversal of all that: a substitution of the vice president’s and Congress’ opinion for the will of the voters. That’s not constitutional, democratic, or even populist. It’s just authoritarian.”
“The U.S. government has limited influence over those global prices, which are shaped by market and geopolitical factors. Gas prices dropped during the early months of the pandemic, for example, because millions of people stayed home and dramatically reduced their gas consumption. But as the Bureau of Labor Statistics documented, prices surged as society reopened and the economy started to rebound.
While energy prices have consistently been higher under Biden than they were during Trump’s first term, they have dropped from their heights in 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global prices soaring. As the Agriculture Department noted in February, fuel and oil costs saw significant declines in 2023 and are expected to decline again in 2024, thanks to drops in global energy prices. U.S. oil prices in the past few days have dropped to their lowest level in two years as OPEC+ says it will increase its own oil production later this year and fuel demand in China looks weaker.
And it’s not clear green-lighting more domestic drilling would have much impact on energy costs. For one thing, the U.S. is already producing record amounts of oil and gas, not to mention renewable energy like solar, wind and hydropower. The Biden administration has also approved more permits to drill for oil on federal land than many of its predecessors, even as it moves to restrict how much federal land is available for drilling.
Several economists also told POLITICO that while energy costs are a factor in every part of the food supply chain, they’re just one of many inputs companies consider when setting prices.”
“this doesn’t necessarily mean the parties are back to being Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. “There are some strengths and some weaknesses,” she said. For example, the formal rules and structures of the parties are still weak; Democrats had to rely on informal levers of power to oust Biden from the race. All the coordination in the world couldn’t have forced Biden to withdraw without his acquiescence.
And those informal levers only work when elites are united behind a singular goal.”
“For Tim Walz, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a deeply personal issue—or at least he made it seem that way. In several recent interviews, the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate implied or outright suggested that his own two children were conceived using IVF.
One problem: It’s not true. Walz’s children were conceived using intrauterine insemination (IUI), not IVF. These are two very different things, and the policy conversations about them are fundamentally distinct; many religious conservatives want to prohibit IVF—which can result in the destruction of unused fertilized embryos outside the womb—but not IUI.
Yet Walz tried to link his own personal experience with potential efforts by Republicans to ban IVF. This is misleading, since he and his wife used IUI, not IVF.
It was an oft-repeated error. On Facebook, Walz wrote that his family had taken advantage of reproductive health care options like IVF, which is true enough. But then he told the Pod Save America podcast that his two kids were born “that way,” in reference to IVF. Worse still, on MSNBC, he flatly stated: “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.”
It makes sense that some people who have little familiarity with either procedure use IVF as shorthand for both. But Walz should have a more granular understanding of what they involve. Moreover, he has accused his opponents of wanting to ban IVF. Walz attacked his rival, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, saying: “If it were up to him, I wouldn’t have a family, because of IVF, and the things that we need to do reproductively.””
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“The best major media exposé on Walz’s incautious truth telling came from CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who revealed that Walz repeatedly lied about his 1995 arrest for drunk driving when he ran for Congress a decade later.
Walz was stopped for driving 96 mph in a 55 mph zone and admitted to police that he had been drinking. His blood alcohol level was .128.
“But in 2006, his campaign repeatedly told the press that he had not been drinking that night, claiming that his failed field sobriety test was due to a misunderstanding related to hearing loss from his time in the National Guard,” wrote Kaczynski. “The campaign also claimed that Walz was allowed to drive himself to jail that night. None of that was true.”
These were direct lies, and there’s no excuse for them.”
“it’s misleading to suggest that the president—and by extension, the major political party to which the president belongs—is singularly or even primarily responsible for the success or failure of the job market. Rather, individuals in dynamic economies operate independently of the political party that happens to occupy the White House.
Clinton’s numbers are technically right: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 2.63 million nonfarm private sector jobs while George H.W. Bush was president. During Clinton’s two terms, the economy added 22.9 million jobs. Only 1.37 million jobs were added during George W. Bush’s terms, with another 11.57 million during Barack Obama’s tenure. During Donald Trump’s single term, the economy lost 2.72 million jobs, and in Joe Biden’s term through July 2024, the economy has added 15.81 million.
In total, that equals 51.56 million net jobs added since January 1989—50.28 million under Democratic presidents and 1.28 million under Republican presidents. That’s not the whole story, though.
Many of the presidents’ terms coincided with substantial external forces. Trump left office during a recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic: In his first three years in office, the economy actually added 6.4 million jobs. Similarly, George W. Bush left office amid the Great Recession, during which the economy shed nearly 7.4 million jobs. Calculating Bush’s term up to December 2007, the economy added 5.7 million jobs.
On the other hand, Clinton served during the dot-com boom. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite more than doubled between January 1999 and March 2000. But then the bubble burst: The economy entered a recession in March 2001, just weeks after Clinton left office, and the Nasdaq would lose 78 percent of its value between its March 2000 high and October 2002.”
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“National economies—particularly those as large and complex as ours—are dynamic, with an infinite number of inputs and externalities. “Month-to-month job creation is just a function of the dynamic U.S. economy that’s bigger than one person,” Chris Douglas, associate economics professor at the University of Michigan–Flint, told Marketplace in 2022. Central planning fails for this reason: Dynamic economies are driven by individuals, each operating only with his or her own knowledge and interests in mind.”
“House Republicans are all but officially giving up on trying to impeach Joe Biden.
GOP lawmakers on the Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees released a nearly 300-page report on Monday detailing the findings of their impeachment inquiry, accusing Biden of engaging in “impeachable conduct.” The Republicans said they’re still investigating, but even they didn’t directly call for an impeachment vote, leaving that up to the wider GOP Conference.”
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“House Republicans have spent months on their investigation, which has largely focused on the business deals of Biden’s family members. A hefty chunk of their report on Monday delves deeply into the financial affairs of Hunter and James Biden, including their business ventures and loans the two received. While the report notes the inquiry remains open, both Comer and Jordan have said their investigations are largely over, though a handful of legal battles remain.
Republicans say they traced $27 million to the Biden family and their associates from foreign entities, and allege that they would not have received the funding had Joe Biden not been in office. They also uncovered examples of Hunter and James Biden leaning on their last name, and their connections to Joe Biden, to bolster their own influence.
But investigators struggled to find clear evidence that shows a direct link between actions Biden took as president or vice president and those business deals or that Biden committed a crime.
Some former business associates told investigators that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during meetings with potential business partners, though they said the conversation was limited to pleasantries. In other instances, witnesses recalled Joe Biden stopping by dinners or lunches — but that business wasn’t discussed at those moments. Hunter and James Biden have both denied that Joe Biden has been involved in their business deals — a denial repeatedly echoed by the White House.
In their report, GOP investigators argued they didn’t need to show evidence of a crime or a quid pro quo — but that’s exactly what some of their colleagues said they needed to see in order to approve a Biden impeachment. And Democrats quickly claimed victory on Monday, arguing that the report effectively cleared Joe Biden’s name.”
“H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser to former President Donald Trump,..said that Trump needs “a competent team around him” because he is susceptible to being manipulated.”
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“He added of the Republican presidential nominee: “People know kind of how to push his buttons, especially buttons associated with maintaining the complete support of his political base.””
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“In an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal, McMaster lamented how Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed Trump’s buttons: “Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery.”