Harry Litman: “It’s difficult to overstate how dangerous this moment is. Using the machinery of criminal justice to pursue manufactured charges against political predecessors is the stuff of strongmen and collapsing democracies…”

“It corrodes trust in democratic transitions, chills dissent, and redefines political opposition as criminal subversion.”

Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) “has been accused by a beauty pageant titleholder of threatening to release intimate videos and private images of her after she ended their romantic relationship,” CBS News reports.

“The FBI is forcing out at least two agents, including a former acting head of the bureau, as the director, Kash Patel, continues a purge at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency,” the New York Times reports.

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Conservative podcaster Candace Owens recounted a conversation she had with President Trump about French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte:

TRUMP: She’s old and this is really, really impacting her. I saw her up close and she looks like a woman to me, I had dinner with her at the top of the Eiffel tower.

OWENS: Respectfully Mr. President, it’s not my fault that he married somebody with a penis.

Indiana state Rep. Matt Pierce (D) told CNN that Democrats will “use every procedural maneuver available” to “pushback” on Republican efforts to redistrict his state.

Said Pierce: “We are in a fight for democracy, a fight for our democratic lives. And I think that if the Republicans can have their will in these deep red states, the Democratic states have to step up. We have to have a national fight about this, and we have to preserve democracy.”

He added: “We have to have pushback. The Republicans have to learn that they can’t get away with this, because if they do, it’s all downhill from here. And we will not have a democracy.”

“Anybody who has been around me for the last few years saw this coming… Donald Trump has sucked the life and soul and the direction of the Republican Party out. And also, you know, all the solutions that I seem to want to use in public policy seem to be opposed by Republicans and there’s a — there’s a platform on the Democratic side. And so, for me, this switch has been inevitable and it’s an opportunity.”

— Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, in an interview on CNN, explaining his switch to the Democratic party.

Politico: “When he ran for Senate in 2022, Conor Lamb was thrashed by over 30 points in the Democratic Senate primary. He lost every county in the state as the left rallied behind John Fetterman and against the young lawmaker who was dismissed as a centrist stooge and veritable Joe Manchin clone.”

“Progressives want you to know they’re sorry about that.”

“In light of Fetterman’s seeming estrangement from the Democratic Party and his evolution into ‘Trump’s favorite Democrat,’ the left has reconciled with Lamb, wondering if maybe they were a little too tough on the once up-and-coming lawmaker who had shot to national attention by winning a deep red district in a 2018 special election.”

M.G. Siegler: “First, I simply must apologize to Mark Zuckerberg. As embarrassing and cringe-worthy as his shows of fealty to Donald Trump may have been in the past, they don’t hold a candle to the show Tim Cook just put on – in the Oval Office, no less. I mean, this video is just so comically pathetic that it almost makes you wonder if Cook has been brainwashed…”

“Visitors to the White House bestowing Presidents with gifts is nothing new, of course. The difference here, with this particular President, is all the overtly obvious quid-pro-quo going on.”

“Texas Democrats had been out of state for less than 48 hours when Gov. Greg Abbott moved to have their seats declared vacant,” the Texas Tribune reports.

“The emergency legal filing represents an unprecedented escalation of Abbott’s effort to pass a new congressional map that adds additional GOP seats, as demanded by President Donald Trump. It flies in the face of Texas’ own founding documents, centuries of legal precedent and a recent Supreme Court of Texas ruling…”

“But just because legal precedent is not on his side doesn’t mean Abbott’s case is doomed. The long-shot filing is before the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, where Abbott has appointed six of nine justices.”

There are 175 federal employees, mostly civil servants, named on “watchlists” posted online by the American Accountability Foundation, “which wants them removed from their jobs for allegedly promoting liberal ideologies,” Reuters reports.

“Many are women and people of color with long careers under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most have little or no public profile and have spent their careers in behind-the-scenes government roles.”

Foreign Policy: “For the French political elite, this is a moment of scarcely concealed glee. The Trump administration’s deep hostility toward Europe—including the imposition of steep new tariffs, verbal attacks on European values, open support for far-right parties, and threats to invade Greenland—vindicates the vision of a strategically autonomous continent held by generations of French leaders.”

“It was French President Charles de Gaulle, after all, who repeatedly expressed his belief in the 1960s that it was France’s mission to liberate Western Europe from its role as a de-facto U.S. protectorate after World War II.”

“In his first half-year in office — amid his tariff campaign, government-slashing moves and immigration crackdown — President Donald Trump has also repeatedly delivered for conservative Christians, who form the bedrock of his Republican support,” the AP reports.

“The Trump administration has green-lit political endorsements from the pulpit and encouraged religion in the federal workplace. Trump has established faith-focused entities with numerous influential Christian appointees. He’s energized supporters with assaults on cultural and academic targets long seen as liberal bastions. His administration and his Supreme Court appointees have expanded areas for religious exemptions and expression in the public square.”

“Congress’ website for the U.S. Constitution was changed to delete the last two sections of Article I, which include provisions such as habeas corpus, forbidding the naming of titles of nobility, and forbidding foreign emoluments for U.S. officials,” 404 Media reports.

The Library of Congress later said the error was caused by “missing code.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that the FBI “had agreed to his request to help track down dozens of Democratic Texas state lawmakers who left the state to prevent a vote on a redistricting plan,” the New York Times reports.

“The activation of federal agents could create a standoff between the Trump administration and state leaders in Illinois, where some of the absent Democrats have taken refuge.”

“The whereabouts of the Texas lawmakers are widely known, but until now at least, they had considered themselves safe from arrest because they were far from the jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement agencies.”

“The White House is sending nine Cabinet secretaries across the country to try to sell President Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ to skeptical voters — a move underscoring the administration’s increasing urgency as it pivots toward the 2026 midterms,” Axios reports.

“The stakes are huge. Top Republicans believe the Trump team’s ability to make the massive tax-and-spending bill more palatable to voters will go a long way toward determining the GOP’s prospects in next year’s elections.”

Jonathan Martin: “Congressional Republicans have, with little resistance, accepted all manner of indignities since Donald Trump’s rise to power. They’ve been made to answer for his likening a porn star’s looks to a horse, his testimonial to the endowment of a deceased golfer and, more regularly, swallowed a tariff regime that is about as faithful to the foundations of their modern party as Das Kapital.”

“But the president now is testing whether party loyalty ever asks too much in the Trump era by all but signing the political death warrants of a handful of blue state Republicans.”

“That’s what the president is inviting with his demand that Texas Republicans redraw their House boundaries this year to hand him more seats, which he thinks will protect the GOP majority next year and protect him from what he dreads: being impeached a third time.”

For members: Trump’s Map Gambit Could Hand Seats to Democrats