Team Normal’s New Hampshire Nightmare
Plus, Reflections on Mom’s Eviction
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CHARLIE SYKES: To Charge or Not to Charge (A debate over the greatest danger.)
THE NEXT LEVEL: Blue Undertow. 🔐
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TIM MILLER: Team Normal’s New Hampshire Nightmare.
I was feeling a little masochistic in the lead-up to Liz Cheney’s martyrdom last week so I flipped on my old buddy Steve Bannon’s War Room Pandemic podcast for a little audial self-harm, as one does.
In the segment I tuned in for, Bannon was salivating over the defeat of the McCain machine in Arizona and the coming ouster of the Cheney and Murkowski dynasties in Wyoming and Alaska (2-for-3, Steve-o). But there was a fourth legacy GOP scalp the slatternly Rasputin was preemptively claiming: the Sununus of New Hampshire, who are expected to be the capstone to a successful Ultra MAGA primary season on September 13.
The Granite State’s current governor, Chris Sununu, comes from a long line of mainline establishment Republicans. His father, John H. Sununu, was the state’s governor, chief of staff to George H.W. Bush, and a hilarious but oft-off message Mitt Romney surrogate during the 2012 campaign. Chris’s older brother, John E. Sununu, represented the Granite State in the Senate from 2002-2008, during which he was the body’s youngest member.
With no evacuation plan in place to get Afghan allies out of Kabul, people like veteran Elliot Ackerman helped organize a "Digital Dunkirk" that rescued thousands. Ackerman joins Charlie Sykes today to share his story, and to warn of the dangers of politicizing the military.
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Sarah, Tim and JVL place their bets on which party will control the Senate after the midterms. Plus, the pros and cons of indicting Trump.
MONA CHAREN: Try Trump at the Ballot Box, Not in Court.
Last week, responding to Damon Linker’s persuasive arguments about the dangers of criminally prosecuting Trump, I ventured that we might have to sacrifice justice on the altar of prudence. The column provoked a fierce backlash, and while it may seem odd to say this, I’m in sympathy with my critics, and offer these reflections in all modesty. I may be wrong. Perhaps the right path is to pursue justice “though the Heavens fall.” But we cannot pretend that there is no risk to this path. In fact, the stakes could not be higher—the stability of our society—so it’s worth considering all of the possible outcomes before barrelling forward.
The prosecute-and-be-damned party believes fervently that any hesitation to hold Trump criminally liable for his crimes amounts to appeasement and cowardly submission to what Michelle Goldberg calls “the insurrectionists’ veto.” Acknowledging that some on the right are “heavily armed” and speaking “lustily of civil war,” she objects that “The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?”
BILL LEUDERS: Reflections on My Mom’s Eviction.
Last fall, my then-97-year-old mother, Elaine Benz, was evicted from the senior living facility known as the Regency, in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where she had lived for ten years. My sister, Diane, was told on Thursday, October 28, that our mom would not be allowed to return the following morning, as planned, from a physical rehabilitation center to which she had been sent following a fall. The Regency had decided her needs had gotten too great.
It was a staffer at the rehab center and not someone from the Regency—officially ProHealth Regency Care Communities New Berlin—who broke this news to Diane. As she recalls, the staffer told her that the Regency would turn Elaine “away at the doors” if the center tried sending her back. We needed to find her a new place to live.
I have written elsewhere about my family’s efforts to negotiate a different outcome, both by appeals to the Regency and contacts with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, which regulates nursing homes and other residential care facilities, including the Regency. The details of my mother’s displacement, and subsequent events involving the state’s regulatory apparatus, have been documented in more than a dozen articles for various outlets, including an 8,500-word piece in the Progressive earlier this year. I have received hundreds of pages of documents in response to open records requests.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Finally… The Mueller-era Trump prosecution memo. Charlie Savage at the NYT has these thoughts (unrolled).
There’s a non-zero chance… These ‘victims’ of cancel culture will be the new McCloskeys.
DeSantis encourages violence against Dr. Fauci. Remind me why he’s a serious candidate again? (And I realize he’s using a flourish, but throwing somebody is clearly assault.)
Uhoh... J.D. Vance’s charity didn’t do its homework.
We are going back to the moon. God speed, Artemis 1, launching on 8/29.
Bill Weld… is back in the news after coming to help compel Lindsay Graham’s to testify in Georgia. (An earlier version got this backwards, below is an excerpt.)
Gee, you wonder why there is a teacher shortage… Part 124,252 in an ongoing series, a thread of Fox News chyrons.
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