Mike Pence is Still Twisting the Truth for Trump
Plus: What Next?: Strategy After the Prigozhin Mutiny
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WILLIAM SALETAN: Pence Still Twisting the Truth for Trump.
REPUBLICANS HAVE LARGELY agreed on a unified message about Donald Trump’s indictment for abusing classified documents: The former president, they say, is the victim of a partisan Department of Justice.
This message is false. Trump is being prosecuted because he—unlike other former officials who were found to have such documents—withheld and sought to conceal his documents from the government, even under subpoena. His apologists try to obscure this distinction. They pretend that he’s been targeted not for his conduct but because he’s a Republican.
KIMBERLY WEHLE: Supreme Court Smacks Down Radical ‘Independent State Legislature Theory.’
WHEN THE SUPREME COURT HANDED DOWN its decision on Tuesday in Moore v. Harper, the collective exhale among experts in voting rights and constitutional law was almost palpable. The case involved the so-called “independent state legislature theory”—a cynical maneuver by Republican lawmakers and lawyers to essentially immunize state legislatures from any review whatsoever for passing anti-voting legislation, however draconian and however violative of state law. The proposed doctrine gained steam in connection with the sixty-plus Big Lie lawsuits filed in the wake of the November 2020 election. The fact that the Court agreed to entertain the theory in the first instance by granting certiorari in this case was alarming. The fact that Chief Justice Roberts in his majority opinion resoundingly put it to rest once and for all—despite the availability of a ready off-ramp—is very good news.
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GISELLE DONNELLY: What Next?: Strategy After the Prigozhin Mutiny.
L’affaire Prigozhin will have at least one durable effect: It reveals the fragility of Vladimir Putin’s project of Russian revanche. What we just witnessed presages, as did the events of 1989, another large-scale implosion of the Russian empire. The question now—as then—is whether the United States and its allies can comprehend the historical moment and make the most of it.
For a host of reasons—not only George H.W. Bush’s natural pragmatism and strategic caution, the delicacy of reuniting Germany within NATO, and the hope that Russia would reform itself but also exogenous events like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait—Bush and his successors did not realize the dream of “Europe whole and free.” History had ended and its arc bent ineluctably toward liberty and prosperity.
BILL LUEDERS: Confronting the Horror of Racial Violence in America.
LOWERY SAYS THE GOAL of his book is “to put human faces on the relentless cycle of violence that has defined American history—to put flesh and bone on our discussion of white supremacist terror.” He does so by taking a deep dive into six episodes of racial violence from the Obama and Trump years—four during the former and two during the latter—including the 2012 mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and the 2017 white supremacist marches that turned violent in Charlottesville. All involve pulling at threads of racism that can be found woven throughout the nation’s history.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Burn on, big river, burn on… Cleveland’s historic Eagle Ave. Bridge is likely to meet its maker soon, as costs to preserve are far more than demolition.
DaVinci in D.C… The D.C. Public Library with a field trip worthy exhibition—as if libraries weren’t field trip worthy enough.
“The consequences will be really important….” Gen. Michael Hayden in an important new ad from our friends at the Republican Accountability Project.
“A crack of diplomacy?” The Russians have landed at Dulles after a circuitous flight to Washington.
Ukraine, martial law, and elections… And Republicans and Russian propaganda.
A Bulwark reader walks into a bar… And talks politics with a bunch of NYC’s finest.
Tuberville touts broadband money… That he voted against. And his staff calls him “coach.” Seriously.
Meanwhile, in Missouri… State AG Andrew Bailey thinks he knows better than a judge and wants a cop’s conviction for killing a man overturned.
A resignation in Pinal County, AZ… A blistering letter from the elections director.
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