The 24 Seven: The Hill to Dine On Edition
24sight News' twice weekly newsletter collecting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House
1 Promise made, promise kept
Former president Donald Trump finally made it to the Hill, three and a half years after his last attempt was thwarted by the Secret Service.
Back then, it was a bit more chaotic – “praying grandmothers” were smashing police officers’ heads into the Capitol steps, splashing blood across the marble. Protesters armed with guns were smashing windows and stabbing police with flagpoles. And a gallows was erected with the stated intent of hanging the vice president. (Since then, partisans have debated whether it was constructed sturdily enough to murder a public official.)
Back then, Trump watched it all unfold on television – frozen, seemingly unable to call off the attack – according to testimony from his top aides.
Thursday he returned to the Hill for the first time since January 6th to tell some targets of the January 6th attack, members of Congress, what a possible second term would look like. Trump also told his Republican colleagues they really need to ease up on the abortion stuff.
Former longtime conservative talker, now a leader of the Never Trump movement, Charlie Sykes, told 24sight News for the next episode of the podcast that the same lawmakers who met with Trump Thursday made a Faustian bargain with him eight years ago when they decided to look past Trump’s endless scandals in return for getting the policies they wanted – like an end to federal abortion protections.
The piper, he said, has now collected his due: “At some point, if you pretend long enough to believe the crazy at a certain point, you become the crazy.”
Check back here at 24sight News shortly for the full pod with Sykes.
2 Mifepristone access
The Supreme Court, including three justices appointed by Trump, unanimously tossed out a challenge to the abortion drug mifepristone. As 24sight News reported in March, justices immediately sounded skeptical of conservatives’ arguments that mail-access to the drug amounted to harm against doctors who refused to prescribe the drug
3 Political Prisoner
Russia announced it will try Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich on baseless allegations that he is a spy. Unlike in countries, like the U.S., which have strong Constitutional guarantees of due process and legal protections for the accused, Russia routinely puts on show trials with little regard for the people who have been imprisoned.
4 Wake up to Politics
Veteran politics reporter, Gabe Fleisher, is now on Substack – check him out
!!The veteran tag here is somewhat ironic because Fleisher is freshly graduated from Georgetown University. BUT he’s been covering politics religiously for more than a decade now, since he was in grade school.
Gabe’s a great reporter, I’ve seen him regularly at campaign events, highly recommend subscribing.
5 Getting Signals
One of the most consequential clandestine affairs – short of Trump’s own tryst which resulted in him being convicted of 34 felonies – the affair between Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis and former special prosecutor Nathan Wade, is back in the news after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tripped up Wade with a straightforward question: When did their affair start? Wade looks off camera for a bit and says that he’s “getting signals” from his media handlers, who then come in and end the interview.
Watch the whole exchange here.
Among other things, the outing of the affair by one of Trump’s co-defendants has resulted in the criminal case against Trump and his allies for trying to bully Georgia officials to change votes for him, likely being pushed past the 2024 election.
6 Polling Errors
Veteran journalist Richard Tofel, founder of ProPublica and author of
has some sage advice for political reporters: stop reporting partisan toplines from the polls and start focusing on self-identified independent voters.If “independent” was a party, it would be as powerful as the Republican and Democratic parties – and is arguably moreso now, as the ranks of Americans disillusioned with the growing extremes of the Ds and Rs and ideological orthodoxy have steadily dropped their party affiliations.
7 Homers
No one knocked it out of the park Wednesday night, but the Congressional Republicans still cleaned up in the annual Congressional Baseball Game, clobbering the Democrats – 31-11. In one ironic exchange, GOP starting pitcher Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican and Trump diehard, struck out New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman, who was the lead counsel in the first impeachment of Trump for extorting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The height of excitement came when a group of climate change protesters jumped on the field and were quickly arrested by Capitol Police staffing the annual charity game. (No word yet on whether the protesters have blamed shadowy forces for instigating them to storm the field.)