Fulton County investigators sent Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) a subpoena recently seeking testimony this week. | Bill Clark/Pool via AP
Rep. JODY HICE (R-Ga.) has received a subpoena from Fulton County D.A. FANI WILLIS instructing him to “appear Tuesday morning before the special grand jury,” our colleagues Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu report for Congress Minutes. “But in a filing Monday morning in Fulton County Superior Court, Hice moved to transfer the jurisdiction of his subpoena to federal court, contending that his role as a federal official permits him to adjudicate it in the U.S. District Court of Northern Georgia.” He joins Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), RUDY GIULIANI and JOHN EASTMAN as recent recipients of subpoenas in the Fulton County investigation.
MEANWHILE, AT THE BANNON TRIAL — NBC’s @ryanjreilly: “This town: the daughter of one of DC’s shadow senators has been struck from STEVE BANNON’S jury panel. … Shadow senator’s daughter mentioned her that her father had been shadow senator since the 90s and that he had a DUI in the 2000s when she was a child, which means it’s PAUL STRAUSS.”
HEADS UP — CNN’s Manu Raju (@mkraju): “The House will vote this week on a bill to codify same-sex marriage, in the wake of CLARENCE THOMAS’ views of the precedent set by the abortion ruling.”
—Thought bubble: How many Republican lawmakers might join Democrats in voting for this messaging bill? And will GOP leadership whip votes against it?
WHERE THE CHIPS FALL — “Several U.S. semiconductor firms are deliberating whether to oppose a package of chip industry subsidies if the final language of the legislation awaiting a vote in the Senate disproportionately benefits manufacturers like Intel Corp,” Reuters’ Stephen Nellis reports.
CLIMATE CRISIS — As a record-setting heat wave strikes Europe, WaPo’s Chris Mooney and Harry Stevens lay out the the global stakes for America’s climate goals in a new analysis piece: “In 101 months, the United States will have achieved President Biden’s most important climate promise — or it will have fallen short. Right now it is seriously falling short, and for each month that passes, it becomes harder to succeed until at some point — perhaps very soon — it will become virtually impossible. That’s true for the United States, and also true for the planet, as nearly 200 nations strive to tackle climate change with a fast-dwindling timeline for doing so.” The very climate provisions that Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) axed from Dems’ reconciliation bill, they write, would have gone a long way to help meet these targets.
Good Monday afternoon.
A message from Amazon:
Andre wasn’t sure what his future held after dropping out of high school to support his family. But then he started at a fulfillment center at Amazon and enrolled in the associate-to-technician program to learn new skills.
Now, he works as an IT technician for Amazon. “It was probably one of the biggest deals that happened in my life, knowing that Amazon would put even more effort into developing me,” he said.
CONGRESS
STATE OF THE UNION — “Staffers who work for at least eight House Democrats are wasting no time in their plans to unionize, filing petitions Monday to kick off the process,” Roll Call’s Chris Cioffi writes. “Now they must wait on the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to vet their petitions before holding a secret ballot election to decide whether they want a union to represent them.”
The offices: Reps. JESÚS “CHUY” GARCÍA (D-Ill.), ANDY LEVIN (D-Mich.), RO KHANNA (D-Calif.), ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.), MELANIE STANSBURY (D-N.M.), ILHAN OMAR (D-Minn.), TED LIEU (D-Calif.) and CORI BUSH (D-Mo.).
ALL POLITICS
WHERE DEMS THINK THEY CAN WIN — In most of the country, Democrats will largely be on defense in the midterms this fall. But in California, party leaders see an opportunity to pick up a few seats. “Five of six candidates added to their ‘Red to Blue’ program on Monday are in this state, according to an announcement by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,” L.A. Times’ Seema Mehta reports. “Many of the California Democrats in the program are running in districts made more favorable in the redrawing of congressional maps after the U.S. census.” Read the story for the full list of newly targeted districts
PRESSURE CAMPAIGN — Progressive group Demand Justice is dropping a six-figure digital ad buy in Illinois to turn the screws on Senate Majority Whip and Judiciary Chair DICK DURBIN to “hold more judicial confirmation hearings during the August recess,” Marianne LeVine reports for Congress Minutes.
NEW CHENEY POLL — A poll released on Friday showed Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) down by 22 points. A new one shows things looking even worse for Cheney. “NBC News’ Marc Caputo got his hands on another Wyoming poll — via WPA Intelligence for the conservative Club for Growth — which shows [HARRIET] HAGEMAN up 28 points among likely primary voters, 59%-31%. (The Club for Growth has endorsed Hageman.),” NBC’s Bridget Bowman and Ben Kamisar write. “From Caputo: ‘Those results are based on a model in which 13% of the primary’s voters are Democrats (Wyoming allows party-switchers to vote in primaries). The poll tested two other scenarios, where Democrats are 20% or 25% of the electorate, and Hageman still leads Cheney by 18 percentage points and 12 points, respectively.’”
TAKING ON TRUMP — Retiring Rep. CHRIS JACOBS (R-N.Y.) told the Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski that former President DONALD TRUMP “lost his mind” between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, and called for his party to look elsewhere for its 2024 nominee. “I think it would be best for the party if we embrace the new generation of leadership,” Jacobs said, though Zremski notes that Jacobs “did not identify any of the particular leaders he would like to see come to represent the party in the next presidential election.” Jacobs’ critique is notable because he voted on Jan. 6 not to certify the election results. “Now, though, he criticizes Trump as an ungraceful loser, citing the 1960 presidential race in which JOHN F. KENNEDY narrowly beat RICHARD M. NIXON as an example of how to lose more gracefully.”
ABORTION FALLOUT
IN THE STATES — “A judge has extended a temporary restraining order through tomorrow that blocks Louisiana’s ban on abortions. District Judge DONALD JOHNSON, who made today’s decision, also issued a temporary restraining order last week that blocked the enforcement of the ban until today’s hearing,” per WAFB.
AMERICA AND THE WORLD
PULLOUT FALLOUT — “Pentagon leadership is reviewing an assessment of the military’s role in the Afghanistan conflict but hasn’t decided if aspects of the highly classified document will be released,” WSJ’s Gordon Lubold scoops. “The draft report, which was submitted to top Pentagon officials earlier this month, is one of a series of assessments — known as after action reports — that each agency is conducting to assemble a record of the American role in Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s report was sent back earlier this year for revisions to broaden its scope, according to a Department official.”
GUNS IN AMERICA
HAPPENING TODAY — “Buffalo mass shooter to be arraigned on federal charges,” by AP’s Carolyn Thompson
RED-FLAG RED LIGHT — While discussions about red-flag laws circulate on the federal level, there’s not much momentum for them at the state level. “While 19 states and the District of Columbia have passed red-flag laws — mostly in the years following the shooting in Parkland, Fla. — numerous other red-flag bills … have fizzled out in the same time period, mostly in GOP state legislatures,” WaPo’s Kimberly Kindy reports. “A Washington Post review of legislative battles in those states suggests that the bills were defeated through campaigns organized by local and national gun rights groups, including the NRA. Faced with heavy lobbying, Republican lawmakers have echoed the groups’ concerns in hearings and public venues.”
JUDICIARY SQUARE
THE NEW SCOTUS — NYT’s Adam Liptak has a good perspective piece on the state of the Supreme Court as Justice KETANJI BROWN JACKSON takes the bench. “In joining the court, Justice Jackson returned to a familiar setting. She had served as a law clerk to Justice STEPHEN G. BREYER, whom she replaced, in the term that ended in 2000. But that was a very different time — and the differences illuminate both the extraordinary transformation of the institution and the challenges its newest member will face.
“In an end-of-term overview that July, The New York Times’s Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse, asked JOHN G. ROBERTS JR., then a prominent lawyer, for his assessment of the court’s major decisions. ‘Which cases were most visible to the public this year?’ asked Mr. Roberts, who would become chief justice five years later. ‘Probably school prayer, abortion and Miranda, and the conservatives lost all three.’ The term that ended last month also featured cases on school prayer, abortion and Miranda. This time around, though, the conservatives won all three. … It was by most accounts a happy place. That too has changed.”
A message from Amazon:
A2Tech—associate-to-technician—is just one of Amazon’s programs designed to give associates a way to advance into higher-paying and in-demand careers.
POLICY CORNER
MAJOR IMMIGRATION REPORT — Trump-era immigration enforcers deployed mobile location data to track people’s movements on a larger scale than previously known, Alfred Ng reports, raising “new questions about federal agencies’ efforts to get around restrictions on warrantless searches.”
The details: “The data, harvested from apps on hundreds of millions of phones, allowed the Department of Homeland Security to obtain data on more than 336,000 location data points across North America, the documents show. …This location data use has continued into the Biden administration, as Customs and Border Protection renewed a contract for $20,000 into September 2021, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed another contract in November 2021 that lasts until June 2023.”
THE ECONOMY
DATA DIVERGENCE — “The U.S. is adding workers at a strong pace over the past three months. It is also losing workers. The conflicting employment data come from two different surveys — one of employers and one of households — used to calculate employment, unemployment and other key figures in the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report. The divergence raises questions about the labor market’s overall strength as more signs point to a slowing economy,” WSJ’s Jeffrey Sparshott reports.
VALLEY TALK
INSIDE THE NEW AMAZON — In Amazon CEO ANDY JASSY, the company has entered a “new era,” particularly in D.C., where Jassy “has quietly put his own imprint on Amazon, making more changes than many insiders and company watchers expected,” NYT’s David McCabe and Karen Weise write. He’s popped up on Capitol Hill and at the White House multiple times since taking over last July and made himself no stranger to two of Dems’ biggest power brokers in White House COS RON KLAIN and Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER. “The starkest difference with [JEFF] BEZOS may [be] the new chief executive’s far more hands-on approach to regulatory and political challenges in Washington.”
THE PANDEMIC
FOR YOUR RADAR — “A deadly virus was just identified in Ghana: What to know about Marburg,” by WaPo’s Adela Suliman: “The highly infectious disease is similar to Ebola and has no vaccine.”
WAR IN UKRAINE
— “Russia ordered its forces to target the long-range missiles and artillery weapons that Western countries have recently supplied to Ukraine, a sign of how Kyiv’s additional firepower has begun to reshape the conflict,” write WSJ’s Brett Forrest and Mauro Orru from Kyiv.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
NATIONAL NIGHTMARE — “Air Travel Is Broken. Here’s Why,” by WSJ’s Benjamin Katz and Alison Sider: “Cutbacks in 2020 mean there aren’t enough baggage handlers, pilots and others. When something goes wrong, it ripples through to flight delays, cancellations, long lines and lost luggage.”
MEGATREND — “Foreign Purchases of U.S. Homes Fall to New Low,” by WSJ’s Nicole Friedman
PLAYBOOKERS
Deb Haaland broke her leg on a hike in Shenandoah National Park this weekend.
Val Demingshas Covid.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Luis Miranda is now deputy assistant secretary for comms at DHS. He most recently was assistant commissioner for public affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and since April has also served as the deputy senior coordinating official for external affairs for the Southwest Border Coordination Center.
TRANSITIONS — Scott Hodge is transitioning to become president emeritus and senior policy adviser at the Tax Foundation, after 22 years as president and CEO. … Sarah Gilmore is joining the Retail Industry Leaders Association as director of supply chain. She previously was coordinator for global government affairs at Airlines for America.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD — John Huston, a summer associate at Jones Day and a Trump Education Department and Luke Messer alum, and Lauren Huston, a Navy JAG officer and an alum of Ajit Pai and the Senate Commerce and House Judiciary committees, on July 9 welcomed Grant James Huston, who joins big brother Clark. Pic … Another pic
BIRTHWEEK (was Sunday): Steve Spinner
BONUS BIRTHDAY: LS2 Group’s Jim Gwinner
