EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

SCOTUS likely to maintain abortion pill access. Biden and Trump poll equally in Economist average. Ronna McDaniel ousted from NBC amid controversy. Trump promotes bibles with Lee Greenwood during Holy Week. Hamas rejects hostage deal post-UN vote; US State Dept urges more aid access to Gaza. NY judge restricts Trump from attacking witnesses. GOP candidate Kari Lake doesn't defend defamation suit. Former WH lawyer Pat Philbin reveals chaos in Trump's final election days. RNC faces financial struggles with significant unusable funds. Russia orders oil output cut to meet OPEC+ target. CBO projects Net Interest on Debt to surpass spending on Social Security and Medicare by 2054. Analysis of squatters' rights, highlighting NYC exception. Democrats flip Alabama State House District 10; Lands defeats Powell in special election.

1.) NBC: Supreme Court signals it is likely to reject a challenge to abortion pill access (for now…).

The Biden administration is defending FDA decisions that lifted restrictions on mifepristone, including one that made it available by mail.

Access to abortion pill likely to continue: SCOTUS oral arguments on abortion pill are complete. Consensus among lawyers following the case seems to be: “Very unlikely that this challenge will succeed.”

2.) The Economist polling average now has Biden even with Trump:

3.) [UPDATE] on Ronna McDaniel: She’s OUT at NBC.

NBC News Chairmen Cesar Conde emails staff to let them know he made decision to cut ties w Ronna McDaniel “I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor” He also apologized & took accountability “I approved it and take full responsibility for it.”

[TS] I guess it deserves a nod, but this just feels like corporate speak. What’s it apologizing for? Hiring someone?…..ok??? Why would that demand an apology? Where’s the “why” here? It does not acknowledge why it was a mistake. The reason not to hire her was that she compromised their mission as a news organization.

Tom Nichols: “The people who are trying to equate hiring McDaniel with hiring, say, Jen Psaki or some other former administration official are eliding the difference between people who work for politicians and spin for them and people who were trying to undermine the US constitutional order.”

Semi-related: Also, during her interview Sunday she said “Montana Democrats are "suing to say, ‘You should be allowed to be registered to vote in two states.'” That statement is “mostly false.”

[MORE INFO] on her hire

[UPDATE] She’ll likely be entitled to compensatory damages for breach of contract if she’s not paid what she was promised. Unclear if she will look to sue NBC — and even less clear as to what she would sue for.

[UPDATE 2] Trump opines about the situation on Truth Social:

[TS] The irony here…Considering Trump was the reason she was out at the RNC in the first place.

4.) Trump is doing a paid endorsement to sell bibles with Lee Greenwood during Christianity’s “Holy Week.”

[TS] There is nothing this man won’t sell. King James too? Thank goodness. I figured Trump was a strict King James kind of guy.

Two Corinthians walk into a bar…

Ha! I hadn’t seen this before:

5.) ISRAEL / GAZA NEWS

• Hamas has informed mediators that it rejects the latest hostage deal after Israel made significant concessions and offered the release of 800 prisoners for 40 hostages. The rejection is a direct consequence of Monday’s UN vote.

• Hamas violated two of the resolution's demands:

  • 1. It launched indiscriminate rocket attacks and rejected the Qatar-brokered framework for a temporary, six-week ceasefire.

2. It rejected the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages.

• US State Department Monday (25th) said (timestamp: 1h17m40s) they had “not drawn the conclusion that they [Israel] are in violation of international humanitarian law when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. That said, we do believe there is very much more that they can do to let humanitarian assistance go in.”

• ATLANTIC: THE WAR AT STANFORD. Student at Stanford calling for Joe Biden to be assassinated, and expressing a preference for Hamas to rule America. [TS] The opening anecdote is wild:

[TS] I don’t see any opportunity for nuance here. These views and beliefs are dangerous. All is not well at Stanford.

[UPDATE] The student above is a religiously conservative Muslim, not a movement leftist.

• POLITICO: In the weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Rep. Jamaal Bowman not only publicly cast doubt on reports that Israeli women were raped, but also called those accusations “propaganda” in a recently resurfaced video:

  • [UPDATE] Per Politico: Bowman recently reversed after calling reports of Oct. 7 sexual assaults in Israel ‘propaganda.’ In a statement Thursday, the New York Democrat said: “The UN confirmed that Hamas committed rape and sexual violence, a reprehensible fact that I condemn entirely.”

  • [TS] Politico says “in a statement Thursday” but I could not find the statement they’re referring to. And what Thursday are we talking about?

• NYT: Israeli Hostage Says She Was Sexually Assaulted and Tortured in Gaza

Amit Soussana is the first former hostage to publicly say she was sexually abused in captivity. A U.N. report has said it found “clear and convincing information” that some hostages suffered “conflict-related sexual violence.”

6.) POLITICO’s Kyle Cheney: NY judge issues a gag order restricting Trump's ability to attack witnesses, prosecutors, their families or jurors. Doc Link:

7.) WaPo: Kari Lake, a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona who has amplified former president Donald Trump’s false claims about rigged elections, has decided not to defend statements she made about a top election official in the state’s largest county who sued her for defamation.

Kari asks the court to enter a default judgment against her and for the court to determine the extent and amount of Richer's damages.

Richer filed the defamation suit last June, after dealing with months of unfounded claims from Lake and her supporters that he was somehow involved in election fraud in Maricopa County's 2022 election, in which Lake lost her bid for Arizona governor to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Kari Lake in August ‘23:

[TS]:

“There’s not a damn thing you can do.”

[Gets sued]

“I’ll never stop fighting!”

[Lose on motions to dismiss]

“NEVER SURRENDER!'“

[Loses on appeals of motions to dismiss]

…

[Face trial]

…

“Ok, I’ll surrender.”

8.) POLITICO: **‘Assured failure’: Ex-White House lawyer provides new details of final days of Trump’s 2020 election gambit.**Pat Philbin gave his first public testimony about the chaotic final days of the Trump presidency.

Pat Philbin broke three years of public silence Tuesday, describing the chaotic final days of the Trump White House and his last-ditch effort to convince Jeff Clark to back down.

Donald Trump’s deputy White House counsel, Pat Philbin, was nervous.

It was just a few days until Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was slated to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and Trump had suddenly resuscitated a plan to replace the leadership of the Justice Department with Jeffrey Clark, a little known DOJ official who Trump expected to mount a sweeping nationwide effort to help him remain in power.

So Philbin called Clark, a colleague from their days in private practice dating back to the 1990s and tried to talk him out of it.

“I tried to explain to him that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin recalled Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure … If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.”

9.) DAILYBEAST: The RNC’s Fundraising Hole Is Even Deeper Than It Looks.The Republican National Committee is already way behind in the money wars for the 2024 election. But it’s even worse than almost anyone knows.

On the surface, the RNC currently has more than $11 million on hand for this upcoming election cycle. While that’s less than half of what the Democratic National Committee has in the bank at the moment—and far less than the $77 million the RNC had on hand at this point in the 2020 cycle—the RNC has pointed to fundraising numbers in recent months to suggest the party has turned a corner after a historically bad stretch last year.

However, a close examination of the RNC’s recent financial statements reveals that those numbers are hiding some holes. A lot of the RNC’s recent fundraising—millions of dollars of it—is unusable for political spending. Instead, that money can only support a limited range of activities.

The Daily Beast’s analysis of Federal Election Commission filings found that, of the roughly $22.3 million that the RNC has reported raising this year, more than $8 million of it—about 36 percent—cannot be used for political expenses. (At this same point in 2020, the money in the RNC’s Cromnibus accounts accounted for less than 10 percent—$7.5 million—of the total $77 million cash on hand.)

That means that one of every three dollars the RNC has raised this year went into its auxiliary accounts, with the “legal” account alone receiving more than $4 million. By way of comparison, the DNC has reported about $34 million in receipts this year, with roughly $4 million of it—less than 12 percent—directed into its segregated Cromnibus accounts.

10.) REUTERS: Exclusive: Russia orders companies to cut oil output to meet OPEC+ target.

Russia's government has ordered companies to reduce oil output in the second quarter to ensure they meet a production target of 9 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of June in line with its pledges to OPEC+, three industry sources said on Monday.

[TS] Typical granola, lefty Russia - pushing for “Keep it in the Earth, for Our Planet's Worth!” energy policy.

11.) By 2054 CBO projects that based on current law, Net Interest on Debt will be the largest category of spending in the federal budget. At 6.3% of GDP, interest on debt will be larger than Social Security and Medicare... and the entire discretionary budget:

12.) [TS] ‘Popular Information’ writer Judd Legum had an interesting thread/substack about Squatting/Squatters rights.

It does happen occasionally

But is it a growing crisis?

Are the decks stacked against landlords?

We looked into it

The hysteria is baseless

[TS] Legum explains that squatters “almost everywhere” would find it “extremely difficult to establish a legal claim to a home by living there.” However, as Legum points out:

One notable exception to this dynamic is New York City, where a squatter is considered a tenant after 30 days.

This doesn't mean the squatter can stay in the home indefinitely, only that a landlord would need to go through an eviction process, rather than simply call the police to arrest the squatter for trespassing.

NYC put these rules into place because they wanted to do what they could to get people off the streets and many landlords were abandoning less desirable properties.

[TS] That is a pretty big exception, given that NYC is home to 8.5M people (2.5% of the total US population).

13.) Alabama State House District 10 Special Election: Democrats have flipped state House District 10 Tuesday.

Marilyn Lands (D) wins. [TS Note - this isn’t a congressional house seat, it’s a state house seat)

USATODAY - Lands, a licensed professional counselor, beat Republican Teddy Powell, a Madison City Council member,in the race for an open seat in Alabama’s state house that was left vacant after former Republican Rep. David Cole pleaded guilty to voter fraud. Lands ran against Cole in 2022 for the 10th District seat, which represents an area around Huntsville, but lost by seven points.

J. Miles Coleman has a nice 2022 v 2024 map comparison:

The election was one of the first tests of how Alabama voters felt about the state court’s February ruling, which threatened access to IVF when it found that frozen embryos were legally considered children.

[TS] We could see reproductive rights have a big impact on the ballot this Nov…