Scott MacFarlane/Twitter:
FLASH: House Select Jan 6 Committee subpoenas House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep Scott Perry (R-PA), Rep Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ) as part of its growing investigation
Committee chairman Rep Bennie Thompson (D-MS) to GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy: “Unfortunately you declined voluntary cooperation”
Committee: Leader McCarthy was in communication with President Trump before, during, and after the attack on Jan 6
The committee has already completed approx. 1,000 interviews. Its public hearings begin in less than a month
NY Times:
How Overturning Roe Could Backfire for Republicans
The party was making headway with suburban women on crime, schools and inflation. Now the abortion debate is front and center.
Sandra Sloan, 82, is the kind of voter Republicans are counting on to help them reclaim this contested section of a newly purple state. Yet Ms. Sloan, a retired high school teacher who lives in Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood, is uneasy about the party for one main reason.
“I am a Republican, but I still believe that it’s a woman’s right to choose,” Ms. Sloan said.
Dan Froomkin/The Nation:
The New York Times Has Badly Lost Its Bearings
Its next editor, Joe Kahn, needs to get it back on course.
When the current editor, Dean Baquet, took over the top job in 2014, American politics still worked more or less by the same rules that had applied for decades: The two rival parties largely agreed on the facts; they just interpreted them very differently.
Enter Donald Trump, on a wave of ignorance, disinformation, and white grievance, taking the Republican Party to what had been considered an extremist fringe of alternate facts and conspiracy theories. The differences between the parties were no longer about policy; they were about truth and lies.
Craig Gilbert/Milwaukee Journal Sentinal:
Ron Johnson needs to maximize his base, and draw in some anti-Trump Republicans, to win reelection
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson faces a Wisconsin electorate that is more negative toward him — and more polarized over him — than ever.
He has lost significant ground in the past few years with key voting groups such as women, moderates, independents and suburbanites, including voters in the once lopsided GOP stronghold of the “WOW counties” outside Milwaukee.
And the dividing lines over Johnson have deepened since he was last on the ballot in 2016.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
J.D. Vance, migrant babies and the unhinged GOP enemy hunt
The first of these got started when Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) posted photos depicting baby-formula shortages in stores. Despite these hardships, she complained, “they” are sending “formula to the border.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) then amplified the claim. The administration is providing “baby formula to illegal immigrants,” he railed, “while mothers and fathers stare at empty grocery store shelves in a panic.”
Except it’s a crock. As Glenn Kessler shows, in supplying formula to migrant kids, the administration is following the law, which requires temporarily holding them before transfer to guardians. That includes mandated nourishment. The Trump administration did the same.
Republicans don’t say outright that starving detained migrant kids is preferable, that Biden should take formula away from them and give it to American parents. So why link the two developments at all?
John Stoehr/The Editorial Board:
Actually, the Democrats are pretty good at messaging
The problem isn't messaging. The problem is infrastructure.
The status quo, whatever that is, however bigoted it might be, is in the Republicans’ favor. The status quo is in the favor of the people who own the most lucrative media properties. We have seen attempts by liberals to create a liberal Fox. Guess what? They can’t make money.
Anthea Butler/MSNBC:
How the conservative Christian right is hijacking homeschooling
The conservative Christian right has been working hard to dismantle public schooling for years.
One of the main purveyors of homeschooling was a fundamentalist, Rousas Rushdoony, whose work beginning in the 1960s in establishing Christian day schools grew into the homeschooling movement. He saw homeschooling as a way to cut the government out of educating Christian children and to prepare them to take their place in a theocratic government. Julie Ingersoll, author of “Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction,” says Rushdoony “was one of the intellectual godfathers of the Religious Right, but he is often treated like a crazy uncle.”
Crazy or not, homeschooling materials inspired by Rushdoony’s theology are on sale today to parents who homeschool in America, and many of those materials reached parents during the pandemic. Cameron’s documentary promoting homeschooling is not an aberration; it is part of a larger project about dismantling the public education system in the United States.