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  View in browser   BY  ELANA SCHOR House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in 2021. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images MCCARTHY’S MATH   — He hasn’t claimed the speaker’s gavel yet, but House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is already yoked to two brutal political narratives. They’re both prematurely baked — and they’re distracting his critics from what’s really at stake in the next Congress. The first premature assumption about McCarthy is that he’s somehow not savvy enough to lead the House GOP if it wins the majority in November. Demeaning his erudition is a popular pursuit in Washington ( practiced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi  herself), as if book-smarts have ever been a must-flaunt accessory in the party of  college C-student Ronald Reagan .    Yet even beyond that portrait of McCarthy as an intellectual lightweight, critics say he’s failed in his own efforts to clear his conference of conservative gadflies who could prove ungovernable in a future majority. ...

September 14, 2022 Heather Cox Richardson Sep 15   It appears that John Durham’s investigation into why the FBI opened an investigation into the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives is coming to an end. Durham’s investigation was a prime example of Trump’s attempt to use the Department of Justice not to enforce the nation’s laws, but to hurt his enemies, a charge former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman has made in his new book. Trump, Berman said, wanted his friends protected and his enemies—including former secretaries of state John Kerry and Hillary Clinton—prosecuted. In April 2019, the month after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s  Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election  finally saw daylight, Attorney General William Barr tapped United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the circumstances under which the FBI began to look int...

  SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER President Biden, a New Book and a Poll Say American Democracy Is Under Grave Threat January 6, 2021 Capitol Attack (Source: Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) By  Pam Martens : September 7, 2022 On Thursday evening, September 1, President Joe Biden addressed the nation from Philadelphia, the  second location of the U.S. Capitol in its early years . During his remarks, Biden  spoke these words : “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. “Now, I want to be very clear — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. “But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidat...