Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) conceded the deep unpopularity of the twice-impeached one-term president who rules the Republican Party.
The South Carolina Republican, who famously declared "we will get destroyed ... and we will deserve it" if the GOP nominated Trump, told Politico the former president's 52-percent unfavorability rating wasn't enough to sink Glenn Youngkin in Virginia's gubernatorial race.
"Trump played it pretty well, not to give any more air to the Trump card," Graham said. "Being associated with an unpopular politician [like Trump] is an oft-used strategy. However, if that's all you got, you're not going very far."
Republicans are already studying the race, where Democrat Terry McAuliffe tried to tie Trump to Youngkin like an anchor, as a template for next year's midterm election, which the former president has already made himself a factor by hand-picking candidates for a variety of races up and down the ballot.
"Being part of a conservative movement created by President Trump wasn't a liability," Graham said. "The effort to disqualify Youngkin by constantly associating him with Trump didn't work."
William Barr feared that Rudy Giuliani would get Donald Trump impeached, and that's what eventually happened.
The former attorney general wrote in his memoir, One Damn Thing After Another, which is out Tuesday in paperback and excerpted by Newsweek, that he loathed the former New York City mayor and warned Trump that he was trouble, but the former president continued to work closely with Giuliani on the Ukraine extortion scheme that led to his first impeachment and kept him on as attorney afterward.
"President Trump's impeachment was a self-inflicted wound," Barr wrote. "Much of the blame for getting the president impeached, in my view, must be laid at the feet of Rudy Giuliani."
Barr had urged Trump to release a transcript of his call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to get out ahead of allegations that he had extorted the nation's leader, but he said Trump waited nearly a month -- which he said provided then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi an opening to launch impeachment proceedings.
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"The whole scheme was bound to backfire," Barr wrote. "And Giuliani's public grandstanding, and the unsavory figures he got involved with, ended up seriously undermining his credibility — not to mention tainting the president."
"Rudy Giuliani saved New York City after 9/11 and should go down as probably the most consequential mayor of a big city in American history," he added. "But he will also go down as the man who helped President Trump get himself impeached — not once but, as it turned out, twice.
Trump made reference to the former attorney general in his Sept. 25, 2019, release of the transcript, which Barr complained caused an "avalanche of questions" about his involvement in the scheme, but he emphatically laid the blame on Giuliani.
"From the beginning of my tenure, I'd worried that Giuliani was an unguided missile, and Ukraine, a morass of misinformation," he wrote. "I was determined to steer the department clear of them as best I could and, if we had to deal with them at all, do so with the utmost caution."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her reelection in 2022 by only around 600 votes -- and her Democratic opponent from last year is gearing up to make her pay for missing a key vote on the debt ceiling deal that passed last week.
The Daily Beast reports that Democrat Adam Frisch pounced on revelations that Boebert missed the big debt ceiling vote despite the fact that she was so publicly outspoken against the deal.
Even though the bill passed overwhelmingly and didn't hinge on Boebert's vote, Frisch argued to The Daily Beast that her actions nonetheless show that she simply doesn't take her job representing Colorado's 3rd Congressional District seriously.
“She’s not focused on the job,” Frisch said. “She’s focused on herself.”
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Frisch is also emphasizing to voters in the district that Boebert's missed vote wasn't just a one-off mistake but part of a pattern -- and The Daily Beast notes that he has data to back up his claim.
"In the session of Congress beginning in January, Boebert’s rate of missed votes has been among the highest of any member," the publication writes. "From January through March, she was in the 89th percentile of missed votes. From April through May, she was in the 96th percentile of missed votes."
June 6, 2023
"Texas lawmakers closed a background check loophole, but many gun measures failed to pass" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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The first legislative session since the worst school shooting in Texas history ended with several proposals that would have limited some access to guns failing to get traction, though one firearm safety bill became law.
Senate Bill 728, from Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, closes a loophole in state law that allowed people who had serious mental health issues as juveniles to legally purchase firearms. Despite a previous state law, courts were not reporting juvenile psychiatric hospitalizations to a federal gun background check system.
Under the new law, a judge’s orders that a minor receive inpatient mental health treatment will now be reported in the background check system that federally licensed dealers are required to check before they sell someone a firearm.
In an investigation last year, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found that local courts were not reporting juvenile records because of problems with the way the law was written, vague guidance from the state and conflicts with other Texas laws.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill Friday. It takes effect Sept. 1.
It was a rare instance of a bill that could limit some gun access making it through Texas’ Republican-led Legislature, which has steadily loosened firearm restrictions. Lawmakers supporting the measure argued that it didn’t change existing state or federal laws.
Notably, lawmakers did not pass a bill that would have raised the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic firearms from 18 to 21. The families of Uvalde school shooting victims passionately and vocally pushed for House Bill 2744, from Rep. Tracy King, D-Batesville.
A House committee unexpectedly advanced HB 2744, but the bill missed a key legislative deadline the following day. Lawmakers’ efforts to revive the provision through amendments subsequently failed, and neither chamber ever debated the idea or held a record vote on the proposal. The Uvalde gunman legally bought his firearms within days of turning 18 and soon after killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Lawmakers also passed a bill aimed at preventing credit card companies and banks in the state from tracking the purchases of guns, ammo and accessories. In an interview with Dana Loesch, bill author Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, said that gun control advocates — including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — have been pushing credit card companies to begin such data collection.
Other bills received some support but didn’t make it to Abbott’s desk. They included one that would have designated August as Firearm Safety Awareness Month, another that would have outlawed tiny devices used to modify handguns essentially into fully automatic firearms and another that would have restricted straw purchases, which is when a person buys a gun for another person who is not allowed to have one.
State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, carried SB 728, the gun bill closing the background check loophole. He represents Allen, where a gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle killed eight people and wounded at least seven others in May at an outlet mall.
“There are many individuals and many groups whose first response — and they tell us to do something, just do something — they want us to do something and I’ve always kind of resisted just doing something because I think that we should do the right thing,” Leach said in laying out SB 728 11 days after the Allen shooting. “We should be interested in being careful and safely guarding our Second Amendment rights but also doing the right things that can curb unnecessary and tragic gun violence.”
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