THE SHOW NOTES: DC Crime Chaos, Suing the NCAA, & Stacey Abrams Closes Up Shop

Welcome! Tennessee and Virginia are suing the NCAA.

WHAT: Joe Biden is tweeting about Elmo and it’s worse than you think.

NEW: Lead prosecutor in Trump’s Georgia case dodges testimony on Willis allegations - Axios

WIN: Florida bars transgender people from changing the sex on their driver's licenses - NBC

DATA: Two-thirds of men say “No one knows me well.” - IFS

HEADLINE: Seattle to Pay $10 Million to Protesters Who Claimed Police Used Excessive Force During 2020 Riots - National Review

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The Grift in Georgia Goes Off the Rails

Stacey Abrams’ voting machine is winding down. Fair Fight is laying off staff. In 2022, Stacey Abrams penned a prominent op-ed in the New York Times on how to turn a red state blue. It was a hubristic act by a hubristic politician who later turned up in Star Trek as the President of Earth. Brian Kemp, on the night of his 2022 election victory used a sharpie to reverse the words in the title of Abrams’ op-ed. So now what is there to show for it all?  $25 million in legal fees, $10 million to her campaign chair's law firm. And $2.5 million in debt. Fair Fight still owes back pay to 20+ young activists who believed in Abrams’ cause. That’s a hell of a legacy.

DC Crime Wave

Crime in the nation’s capital reached a new crisis level when a former Trump official was shot in a popular part of Washington, DC in broad daylight on Monday.

Details: Mike Gill, who led Trump’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is in critical condition after a carjacker shot him before driving off with his vehicle. The same suspect shot and killed another person in a carjacking a few hours later before being killed by police in Maryland.

More: Monday’s string of violent attacks in broad daylight is hardly an outlier. Just yesterday, a gunman fired multiple shots into rush-hour traffic striking a man commuting home from work. Last October Congressman Henry Cuellar was carjacked by three armed individuals. Earlier last year Congresswoman Angie Craig was physically assaulted in her DC apartment.

Democrats risk a new progressive rebellion as Biden embraces border deal

Progressives are frustrated with President Joe Biden for embracing the bipartisan border security deal that’s emerging in the Senate. And they’re starting to rage against it more loudly.

It’s not the only area where the left is fuming at the Biden administration — its handling of the the Israel-Hamas war has sparked public protests by progressive activists for months. Once the border deal sees the light of day, however, liberal anger is likely to boil over.

Full story at Politico.

Trump Risks Losing More Than Half of Swing-State Voters If Found Guilty

More than half of swing-state voters wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump if he were convicted of a crime, according to a new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, a warning sign for the Republican frontrunner who continues to lead President Joe Biden in key states.

The poll found that 53% of voters in the seven closely watched battleground states would be unwilling to vote for Trump in the general election if he were found guilty of a crime, a figure that grows to 55% if he’s sentenced to prison. Trump’s 91 criminal charges in four separate indictments and related court appearances have so far fueled his standing in the Republican primary field and campaign fundraising efforts, but the data released Wednesday indicates there’s a limit to how much his legal battles will help him politically.

Voters’ reluctance to support a convicted Trump is one of the few dark spots for the former president in the poll that otherwise shows him growing his margin over Biden in a head-to-head contest. Trump leads Biden by an average of 6 percentage points in the seven critical swing states that will likely decide the 2024 presidential election, according to the poll.

Full story at Bloomberg (paywall)

Israel and Hamas Weigh Three-Stage Cease-Fire

Israel and Hamas are considering a three-stage deal that would release hostages in Gaza beginning with a six-week cease-fire, according to officials with knowledge of the draft agreement hashed out by international intelligence chiefs in Paris this week.

Washington says a deal to free more hostages and stop the clashes in Gaza is closer than at any time since the collapse of a cease-fire in December. Getting it over the line would mean surmounting internal divisions and entrenched differences between the warring sides. Officials say the obstacles make an imminent deal unlikely, but suggest that if they are overcome an agreement could be completed within a week to 10 days.

The willingness of both sides to even consider the architecture of a deal indicates a small but significant shift in negotiating stances. It also demonstrates the pressures on Israel and Hamas as the war in Gaza heads into its fifth month, having brought the region to the brink of full-blown regional conflict.

Full story at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)

Trending news:

• Fani Willis Axed Employee Who Blew Whistle on Misuse of Federal Funds - Free Beacon

• ‘A recipe for violence’: Election officials on edge for ruling from Georgia judge - Politico

• U.S. winning world economic war - Axios

• The real MAGA campaign begins - WNG

• Far from Ukraine and Gaza, Another War Just Killed 50,000 People - Newsweek

• Exclusive: Hotelier Robert Bigelow gives Trump $1 million for legal fees - Reuters

• Biden to travel to East Palestine nearly one year after train derailment disaster - Fox News

• Tennessee Chancellor goes scorched earth on NCAA - Barstool

• Travis Kelce blames ‘f–king d–k’ Justin Tucker for pregame incident: ‘Don’t paint me as the bad guy’ - NY Post

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