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ESSENTIAL READING (get yourselves behind the paywalls…):
1. The new New York Times poll seems pretty spot on regarding the midterms:
For now, the fury over abortion and the renewed spotlight on Mr. Trump have helped mask deep Democratic vulnerabilities that might ultimately make Republicans favored to retake Congress — if Republicans could refocus the electorate on the economy and inflation. Republicans would lead by six percentage points in the race for Congress, if they could merely win over voters who say they agree with the G.O.P. most on the economy….
[V]oters trust the Republicans more on the economy by a 14-point margin, 52 to 38 percent. And they say that economic issues will matter more to their vote than do societal issues by an 18-point margin.
Yet 9 percent of the voters who trust Republicans more on economic issues and say that those issues are most important are voting for Democrats, anyway….
Just 15 percent of voters said that Mr. Biden’s policies had helped them personally, while 37 percent said that his policies had hurt them. Nearly half said the president had not made much of a difference either way — including 59 percent of voters younger than 30….
Democrats held an overwhelming 73-to-18-percent lead among voters who said that “societal issues” like abortion or threats to democracy would be most important in their vote this November, rather than economic issues like jobs and the cost of living.
2. David Brooks, on what I have said before is the biggest political challenge facing America:
You would think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would have at one point stepped back and asked some elemental questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is the core audience here? Which strategies have worked, and which have not?
If those questions were asked, the straightforward conclusion would be that most of what we are doing is not working. The next conclusion might be that there’s a lot of self-indulgence here. We’re doing things that help those of us in the anti-Trump world bond with one another and that help people in the Trump world bond with one another. We’re locking in the political structures that benefit Trump….
Can Trump win again? Absolutely. I’m a DeSantis doubter. I doubt someone so emotionally flat and charmless can win a nomination in the age of intensive media. And then once Trump is nominated, he has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him.
3. The Washington Post gandered at some subpoenas in the Justice Department probe of Team Trump and thusly suggests the scope of things:
the effort to replace valid Biden electors with unearned, pro-Trump electors before the formal congressional tally of the 2020 election outcome on Jan. 6, 2021
the rally that preceded the riot that day
the fundraising and spending of the Save America political action committee, an entity that raised more than $100 million in the wake of the 2020 election, largely based on appeals to mount pro-Trump legal challenges to election results.
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Tip sheet ledes: