Politics

Sacramento’s NBC News affiliate reports: California on Thursday scheduled a Sept. 14 recall election that threatens to drive Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, the result of a political uprising driven by widespread angst over coronavirus orders that shuttered schools and businesses. The election in the nation’s most populous state will be a marquee contest with national implications, watched closely …

Politico reports: He’s one of Donald Trump’s most vociferous backers. But Tucker Carlson has told multiple people that he voted for pop star Kanye West last year instead. Shortly after the presidential election, the Fox News host started telling some program guests that he had cast his ballot for West, according to two people familiar with those conversations. Given Carlson’s …

Axios reports: Former Kentucky state representative Charles Booker announced Thursday he will run to challenge incumbent Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for his seat in 2022. Booker became a rising star in Kentucky politics last year when he ran as a progressive in the race to challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. He narrowly lost a primary to Democrat Amy McGrath, …

The Los Angeles Times reports: The Supreme Court on Thursday extended new privacy rights to conservative charities that raise money in California, ruling they may not be required to reveal their big donors to the California attorney general. The justices by a 6-3 vote ruled the forced disclosures violate the freedom of association that is protected by the 1st Amendment. …

CBNC reports: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 to uphold Arizona voting rules supported by Republicans that Democrats alleged unlawfully discriminated against the state’s Native American, Hispanic and Black voters. The case concerned two Arizona voting rules that a federal appeals court found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act, citing their disproportionate impact on minorities. One …

Page Six reports: Meghan McCain is bidding farewell to “The View,” according to a new report. The conservative co-host is set to announce her resignation on Thursday morning’s show, ending her four-season run at the end of July, according to the Daily Mail. “We have tried to keep her, but she is adamant that now is the right time for …

Reuters reports: China’s President Xi Jinping on Thursday warned that foreign forces attempting to bully the nation will “get their heads bashed”, and hailed a “new world” created by its people as the ruling Communist Party marked the centenary of its founding. In an hour-long address from Tiananmen Square, Xi pledged to build up China’s military, committed to the “reunification” …

Gothamist reports: The head of the non-profit, non-partisan group that created the software used by the city Board of Elections to carry out the ranked-choice voting tabulation process said offers to help with a smooth ranked-choice counting process were ignored. The BOE’s first tabulation of in-person votes (including early voting and on Primary Day) led to sheer chaos on Tuesday …

The New York Times reports: A day after New York City’s Board of Elections retracted a tabulation of ranked-choice preferences, throwing the primary contest into chaos, the board on Wednesday released a fresh tally of ranked-choice preferences among those Democrats who voted in person last Tuesday or during the early voting period. The tally showed Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough …

The New York Times reports: Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense for Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George W. Bush, who presided over America’s Cold War strategies in the 1970s and, in the new world of terrorism decades later, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died on Tuesday at his home in Taos, N.M. He was 88. The cause …

From the editorial board of the New York Times: New Yorkers have endured the incompetence of the city’s Board of Elections for so long that complaints on the subject blend into the background noise of life in a megalopolis, alongside gripes about overstuffed subway cars and putrid piles of sidewalk trash. This page called the board “at best a semi‐functioning …

The New York Times reports: The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.” The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric …

The New York Daily News reports: It’s all about the absentees. Eric Adams’ lead in the city’s Democratic mayoral race shrunk drastically after ranked-choice tabulations were released Tuesday — with Kathryn Garcia trailing him by less than 16,000 votes, meaning the winner will be determined by scores of yet-to-be-counted absentee ballots. After 11 rounds of ranked-choice counting, Adams, Brooklyn’s borough …

The Associated Press reports: Mexico’s Supreme Court ordered the government Monday to issue permits for the personal use of marijuana and for the growing of limited amounts of pot plants, after the country’s Congress took too long to approve a limited legalization law. In 2019, the court ruled that prohibiting marijuana was unconstitutional, and gave lawmakers until this past April …

Axios reports: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Monday that the federal prohibition on marijuana may no longer be needed because of the government’s “mixed signals” on the issue. Why it matters: Thomas, one of the court’s conservative justices, wrote the opinion Monday as the court declined to hear the appeal of a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary that was …

Reuters reports: Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim. The rare public comment on Kim’s health come after foreign analysts noted in early June that the autocratic leader, who is believed to …

The Guardian reports: Mike Gravel, a former US senator from Alaska who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and confronted Barack Obama about nuclear weapons during a later presidential run, has died. He was 91. Gravel, who represented Alaska as a Democrat from 1969 to 1981, died on Saturday, according to his daughter, Lynne Mosier. Gravel had been …

The Texas Tribune reports: A group of Texas House Democrats and legislative staffers is asking the Texas Supreme Court to override Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent veto of a portion of the state budget that funds the Legislature, staffers there and legislative agencies. More than 50 Democrats, a number of state employees and the Texas AFL-CIO have signed on to a …

The City reports: Andrew Yang’s supposedly defunct mayoral campaign served competitors papers in a preemptive lawsuit filed ahead of the city’s counting of ranked choice votes — charging on even after conceding the race Tuesday. Pre-emptive suits can preserve a campaign’s right to correct any errors in election returns so that a judge can step in if necessary. Going to …

Politico reports: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a pair of bills Thursday that would dramatically expand video coverage of federal court trials and other proceedings while putting Supreme Court arguments on camera for the first time. Both bills have bipartisan support, including the endorsement of the panel’s chair, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), and the longstanding backing of the committee’s ranking …