Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. But there are some green shoots, too.
Three House Republicans helped thwart a White House push to block lawmakers from moving to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs until July 31, by which time the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the duties’ legality.
The 214-217 vote Tuesday evening to reject a rule that would bar use of a fast-track disapproval resolution for the tariffs came after House leaders delayed a floor vote scheduled for early afternoon while they tried to pressure Republicans to switch votes.
After the rule’s defeat, which GOP leaders expected after their whip effort fell short, the Rules Committee met again to report out a revised rule minus the tariff provision.
Perry Stein and Salvador Rizzo at WP:That would allow several unrelated bills to come to the floor this week if adopted, but also opens the door to an onslaught of Democratic tariff disapproval resolutions — starting as soon as Wednesday with an attempt to overturn Trump’s tariffs levied on Canadian goods.
GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Don Bacon of Nebraska, who declared their opposition early, remained firm and voted against the rule, joining all Democrats.
A federal grand jury in D.C. refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Federal prosecutors last year launched an investigation into the lawmakers — all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies — after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.”
The lawmakers include Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut from Arizona, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst from Michigan, both of whom sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. They have criticized the administration’s attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials and conduct strikes on alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
It is exceedingly rare for grand juries to reject indictments, in part because prosecutors only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed — a relatively low threshold. But the Justice Department’s campaign to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries has repeatedly been rebuffed by grand juries and judges, including in its efforts to prosecute former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).Jeremy Roebuck and Patrick Marley at WP:
The FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims of widespread election irregularities in Georgia as it persuaded a federal judge last month to sign off on plans to seize 2020 voting records from the state’s most populous county, court documents unsealed Tuesday show.
In a pair of Jan. 28 search warrant affidavits, authorities said they were seeking evidence that would determine whether “deficiencies” in the vote tabulation in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were the result of intentional wrongdoing that could constitute a crime.
But many of the issues they cited — including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images — have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election. Independent reviews have backed up that conclusion.
