Featured Stories

Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and Arizona 'fake electors' charged with state crimes

(NBC News) A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted Trump aides including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and Boris Epshteyn, as well as so-called "fake electors" who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, after a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state. Trump is described as “Unindicted Coconspirator 1” in the indictment, which includes charges of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. Also among those charged in Arizona is Kelli Ward, who served as chair of the Arizona GOP during the 2020 election and the immediate aftermath.

'Missing in action': Analyst sees Trump's 'family man' defense killed by Melania's absence

(Raw Story) The failure of Melania Trump to make an appearance at the Manhattan courtroom where her husband Donald is facing 34 felony counts related to paying off an adult film star is hurting his defense in multiple ways. That's a claim made by analyst Amanda Marcotte in her column for Salon, where she said that the former first lady's absence is likely crippling a line of defense his lawyers would like to use to gain some sympathy from jurors.

Johnson: Republicans 'don't have a functioning majority' in the House

(The Hill) Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) joined Jesse Watters Wednesday to discuss the massive foreign aid package that recently passed both chambers, and the difficulties Republicans have faced getting immigration-related reforms passed with a Democratic Senate and President Biden in office. Watters pushed back on the Speaker, saying Republican representatives are frustrated because while they hold a majority in the House, they aren’t getting what they want, which is increased border security measures. “Well, that’s not true. We don’t have a functioning majority,” Johnson countered. “When you can only lose one vote, if one person has a different idea, we don’t.”

Democratic Donations Surge

(Political Wire) Democratic donors gave a total of $151 million to House and Senate races through the ActBlue fundraising platform in the first quarter of 2024,” Punchbowl News reports. “The ActBlue data reveals an increase from the same point four years ago, indicating growing Democratic grassroots support as the 2024 election season heats up.”

Thursday TOONs

'So appalled': What witnesses told special counsel about Trump's handling of classified info while still president

(ABC News) In the summer of 2019, only hours after an Iranian rocket accidentally exploded at one of Iran's own launch sites, senior U.S. officials met with then-president Donald Trump and shared a sharply detailed, highly classified image of the blast's catastrophic aftermath. The image was captured by a U.S. satellite whose true capabilities were a tightly guarded secret. But Trump wanted to share it with the world -- he thought it was especially "sexy" because it was marked classified, one of his former advisers later recalled to special counsel Jack Smith's investigators, according to sources familiar with the former adviser's statements.

Rare visit by House speaker to campus escalates tension at Columbia

(Washington Post) House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues were met with boos, laughs and pro-Palestinian chants after parachuting into one center of the roiling protest movement against Israel’s war against Hamas: Columbia University in New York City.

The Republicans Who Want American Carnage

(The Atlantic) Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint. On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Last week, Cotton posted on X, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.” He later deleted the post and reworded it so that it did not sound quite so explicitly like a demand for aspiring vigilantes to lynch protesters.

The man who audited Trump's social media company misspelled his own name in 14 different ways

(Business Insider) The accountant hired to audit former President Donald Trump's social media company seemed to have a lot of trouble spelling his name, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Ben F Borgers, the founder and managing partner of the accounting firm BF Borgers, spelled his name in 14 different ways in regulatory filings, the Financial Times reported, citing data it had reviewed from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Some variations, like Ben F Brogers and Ben F orgers, appeared to be minor spelling mistakes. But others, like Blake F Borgers and Ben F Vonesh, were entirely different names.

NYT reporter says their nonstop coverage of Biden's age is retribution

(Politico) According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense. The newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.