- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: ‘Stranger things have happened’: Trump hedges when pressed on declaring election emergency
The fact that the president left the door open to a constitutional crisis ahead of the midterms is, to understate matters, profoundly unsettling.
- Dan Lamothe, John Hudson, Andrew Ba Tran, and Joyce Sohyun Lee @ The Washington Post: Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat
The White House said the president was aboard Air Force One as he left a NATO summit. Instead, his departure included an elaborate ruse that concealed his travel.
- Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump Goes Over Jeanine Pirro’s Head on Reflecting Pool Lawsuit
Donald Trump simply cannot accept that his Reflecting Pool lawsuits were a total bust.
- Margaret Talbot @ The New Yorker: The Delusions of John Roberts
The Chief Justice insists that his Supreme Court isn’t biased even as it keeps making dramatic leaps rightward.
- Seth Klamann and Shelly Bradbury @ The Denver Post: Lauren Boebert’s son faces felony charges over sex tape with 17-year-old, court records show
Tyler Boebert, who was 18 at the time, arrested on charges related to sexual exploitation of a child.
- Whitney Curry Wimbish @ The American Prospect: Disgraced Anti-Sex-Trafficking NGO Gets $244 Million to Rep Migrant Kids
The founder and CEO of Our Rescue resigned in 2023 amid allegations that he had sexually abused and trafficked women himself.
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: James Fishback Wanted a Scandal. He Got One.
Florida’s seemingly never-ending Republican primary race for governor will finally be settled next Tuesday. With Trump pick Rep. Byron Donalds far ahead in the polls, it looks like groyper favorite James Fishback’s political ambitions are doomed—for now.
- Patrica Calhoun @ Westworld: The hand that rocks the cradle of birthright citizenship
John Eastman's name doesn't appear in Donald Trump's latest executive orders, but his fingerprints are all over them.
- Michelle Goldberg @ The New York Times: He Says Obscene Things About Mothers and Children. Mike Johnson Is Raising Money for Him.
Because this is a family newspaper, I cannot quote the piquant term that Brandon Herrera, a Republican House candidate in Texas, used to refer to children in a 2023 video. I can only report that he called them “trophies” for getting a man to ejaculate. Nor, alas, am I allowed to repeat the obscenities that Herrera, a gun influencer, used to explain why the opinions of mothers are without value. I can only say that he argued, essentially, that getting pregnant requires no special skill. Two weeks ago, ahead of a fund-raiser that Mike Johnson, the House speaker, was holding for Herrera, The Austin American-Statesman reached out to Herrera’s campaign about these resurfaced comments. Herrera’s team responded with a crude visual pun that, once again, is too vulgar for me to describe here.
