When Brian Zahra learned he had impregnated Alyssa Jones in May 1983, he grabbed the Yellow Pages, found an abortion clinic in the Detroit suburbs and made an appointment, she said.

Now he’s a judge who tried to block abortion rights from the ballot. 1/x nbcnews.com/politics/polit… Zahra, then a 23-year-old student a little more than a year away from enrolling in law school, is up for re-election to the Michigan Supreme Court. 

He again has the support of Michigan Right to Life, which is spending to tell anti-abortion voters he’s their guy.

2/x

Indiana’s top law enforcement official, Republican AG Todd Rokita, thought the villain in the rape of a 10-year-old girl was the doctor who treated her.

It bears repeating. This is not an activist. It’s not a church official. It’s not someone sitting in a Lazy-Boy shouting at his TV.

This is the person responsible for making decisions about how to protect the state’s citizens from threats and exercising prosecutorial discretion.

Follow the thread:
NY’s new congressional map is forcing democrats to play musical chairs.
DCCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney, who is white, plans to run in a district that takes in most of the constituency of Rep. Mondaire Jones, who is Black 1/x nbcnews.com/politics/2022-… That could mean a matchup between Jones and Maloney, who runs the party’s campaign arm, or Jones and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is also Black. 2/x

NEW: Dems jockey for possible post-Biden ‘24

@BernieSanders⁩ talks bid w/advisers, rallies for @RepSummerLee today

@SecretaryPete⁩ raises $ for Minn Dems.

⁦@SenWarren⁩ & ⁦@GavinNewsom⁩ rip Dem strategy

W/⁦⁦@natashakorecki⁩ nbcnews.com/politics/elect… Faiz Shakir, who managed Sanders' 2020 campaign, said promoting progressive candidates and causes can be an end in itself or a launching pad for the next race: "You can do both," he said in an interview.

A nasty primary highlights split over Israel and direction of the Democratic Party nbcnews.com/politics/2022-… “I’m not drinking my own bull crap. I’m just working my ass off. That’s all you can do.”

In 72 battleground districts identified by House GOP campaign arm, Trump donated to only 2 candidates: Ryan Zinke in Montana and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin.

Trump is sitting on a fortune. Republicans want it for the midterms.

w/⁦@akarl_smith⁩ nbcnews.com/politics/2022-… The vast majority of Trump’s donations have gone either to loyalists in primaries on the “revenge tour” or incumbents in safe Republicans seats. We have a nifty chart embedded in the story.

Follow the thread: On July 26, former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” PAC donated $1M to a nonprofit called the Conservative Partnership Institute. 1/x

Trump gave $1M to Meadows nonprofit weeks after Jan. 6 panel's creation nbcnews.com/politics/polit… That’s the outfit where Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, landed as a senior partner a few weeks after the Jan, 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 2/x

I gave Politico everything I had — covered Congress, the White House, elections, a scuttled space shuttle 🚀, and everything in between. What did I get from Politico: everything and everyone. So privileged to have worked with and learned from @amieparnes @mkady, @maggieNYT 1/ @JakeSherman @cbudoffbrown @GlennThrush @jmartNYT @benyt @bresreports @mkraju @rachaelmbade @seungminkim @marincogan @meredithshiner @apalmerdc @carolelee @reidepstein @ByronTau @poconnorWSJ @RachelSmolkin @lkmcgann @timgrieve @sbg1 @scottwongDC @burgessev @dsamuelsohn et al 2/2

It was November 2003, and President George W. Bush was on the cusp of adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. 1/x

https://twitter.com/steventdennis/status/1456420555700191235

He needed House Republicans to go along with expanding the entitlement program, and it was a heavy lift.

Already, House leaders had twisted arms on the floor on an earlier Rx drug benefit vote to get the process rolling.

Democrats were mostly opposed—to deny Bush a win.2/x

Democrats now have two tax proposals that are easy to conflate because they use the word "billion" in them. Here's a brief, handy-dandy, Twitter-friendly guide to what they're talking about. 1/x The one that was announced first yesterday (and was praised by Sen. Sinema) creates an alternative minimum tax of 15% for companies with $1 billion or more in annual profits. There are some wrinkles, but easiest to think of this as the corporate billionaire tax. 2/x

Eight news quotations to get you started this Monday ... 1/9 "What's left of al-Qaeda does not pose an imminent threat to the homeland," Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl to senators in a private briefing

axios.com/newsletters/ax…

2/9

The Cheney/Kinzinger chess explained as clearly as I can.

1. They will not lose their other committee assignments.

1/x 2. Under House rules, members are put on committees and taken off of them by a vote of the House. It is usually non-controversial and involves agreed-upon assignments and changes.

Cheney/Kinzinger would have to be removed by the Democratic majority (not happening). BUT..

2/x

regular reminder: McCarthy doesn't have the authority to take Cheney & Kinzinger off standing committees as punishment for joining 1/6 panel.

Removing them from regular committees requires House vote. GOP is in the minority--meaning they have less than a majority on floor votes. Here's the resolution removing MTG from committees. There was a vote. It was 230-199. McCarthy was against removing her from her committees and was thus on the losing end of that vote.
congress.gov/bill/117th-con…

A new nugget for gig workers from the new Covid relief bill: A change in the "de minimis exception for third party settlement organizations" means more gig workers will be able to substantiate past income for unemployment insurance and get Social Security benefits later. This is a major change that has been recommended by GAO and Treasury's IG because the number of workers who don't qualify for income stubs under existing law has exploded with the rise of Uber and similar employer-employee constructs. 2/x

This is the start of a thread. I wrote about the federal economic response to coronavirus and its effects on different segments of society. The rich got richer, in large part because even tools for backstopping the real economy enrich Wall St. first 1/x

nbcnews.com/politics/congr… In theory, Fed has a dual mandate to stabilize markets and employment. But the Fed is limited by law and by expectation, and its response to coronavirus made borrowing a LOT cheaper for banks, drove investors into stocks and had minimal effect for people who don't own things. 2/x

There have been a lot of stories from various outlets including @propublica @latimes & @washingtonpost about COVID contracts. I wrote about the absence of gov't oversight on them. nbcnews.com/politics/white…
@PhilMcCausland @cyrusfarivar & I continue to report on the response. 1/x Even with all the cash flowing out of federal coffers, nearly every decision made to spend money on equipment and services is a choice to forgo alternatives. That's particularly true in an environment in which so many big deals are being made without any competitive bidding 2/x

There are, of course, different ways of choosing to run a government’s response to a national crisis. @PhilMcCausland @cfarivar and I, with some help from @akarl_smith, have spent the last several weeks detailing how President Trump and his task force approached it.

1/x We’ve spoken to senior administration officials who say Trump has been a singular force in providing relief and federal, state and local officials who say his slow reaction, subversion of existing response system and favorite-playing in getting and giving supplies did harm.
2/x

When you turn on HGTV for the first time and you know the house hunters. (Ok, not the *first* time). And they’re looking in your neighborhood ...

This week has brought back some memories of my first times watching the Senate in person as an adult in the mid-1990s.

1/ Robert Byrd comparing the Senate to Nebuchadnezzar dethroned, “bereft of reason and eating grass like an ox” during debate over the line item veto.

2/

When you hear a lawmaker arguing that a War Powers resolution does not have force if it is “concurrent” rather than “joint,” he or she is effectively saying Congress doesn’t have the power to stop a president intent on fighting a war without two-thirds votes in each chamber. 1/x A joint resolution requires a president’s signature, while a concurrent resolution does not. The War Powers Act contemplates both methods for ending a war. If a president were intent on continuing a war, he would veto a joint resoluton. 2/x

Short thread on following the money:

1) President Trump has tried to shift several billion dollars in funds appropriated for other purposes to build a border wall -- a move that has been temporarily blocked in federal court because 1/x 2) President Trump unilaterally suspended $391 million in funds appropriated by Congress to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russia. He has been impeached by the House of Representatives for using that money as leverage to force the announcement of political investigations 2/x