Good morning! Welcome back to 10 Things in Politics, your weekday look at the biggest stories in DC and beyond. Sign up here to receive this newsletter.
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Here's what we're talking about:
- Rep. Liz Cheney torched Trump and fellow Republicans who refuse to acknowledge he lost
- There's a reason you might be having a hard time finding chicken wings, diapers, or a new car
- Trump's absence from the Virginia GOP's governor race is making for a bonkers campaign
One thing to look out for today: President Joe Biden travels to New Orleans and Lake Charles, Louisiana, to talk about his jobs plan.
With Jordan Erb
Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
1. EXIT, STAGE RIGHT: Rep. Liz Cheney is not going quietly. The No. 3 House Republican is now expected to be stripped of her leadership post as soon as next week. On the same day former President Donald Trump and her fellow top House Republicans signaled their turns against her, she wrote a scorching Washington Post op-ed article arguing that Trump's refusal to accept he lost the 2020 election was an unprecedented assault on American democracy. The Wyoming lawmaker also added a parting blow to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
- "The Republican Party is at a turning point," Cheney wrote: "We Republicans need to stand for genuinely conservative principles, and steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality."
- This isn't her first fight: She's tangled with her party many times going back to her pre-Congress days.
Trump's power is undeniable: Cheney is more conservative than Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the lawmaker favored to take her post, by almost every measure. Cheney has higher lifetime marks from the American Conservative Union, the Club for Growth, and The Heritage Foundation's political arm. And yet, none of this matters.
Stefanik is mainly following her district, The Washington Post's Paul Kane points out. She's switched from a more moderate member to a Trump loyalist as her district trends more Republican.
- More details: Stefanik even voted against the party's 2017 tax law, the legislative achievement held so dear that many lawmakers refused to even consider President Joe Biden's efforts to revisit it to pay for infrastructure. She was one of just 12 House GOP lawmakers to oppose the law, citing its cap on state-and-local-tax deductions.
Democrats are all too happy to spotlight the civil war: "It's a question of 'cult of personality' that if you're not 1,000% for Donald Trump somehow, you're not a good Republican," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Washington Post during a live event.
- Even Biden weighed in: "I don't understand the Republicans," the president told reporters.
2. Trump's absence from the Virginia GOP's governor race is making for a bonkers campaign: His absence is making for significant chaos as Republicans get ready to go to the polls Saturday to pick from a wide-open field that includes a millionaire first-timer, a woman who bills herself as "Trump in heels," and an establishment player backed by the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. More on what to expect this weekend in our in-depth report.
- Key quote: "Anybody who tells you they know what is happening is full of s---," one former Trump White House official keeping tabs on the state race told Insider.
3. White House supports waiving intellectual-property rights for COVID-19 vaccines: The move, sought by developing nations, would allow other countries to manufacture vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna without fear of sanctions at the World Trade Organization. The Biden administration had previously joined with the European Union in resisting the call. Pharmaceutical trade groups have argued that waiving IP rights would stymie innovation. The announcement comes as India is experiencing its worst wave yet.
Nicole Gaudiano/Insider
4. Meet the Prince devotee teaching yoga and meditation to burned-out DC Democratic insiders: Reggie Hubbard is an Ivy League progressive activist turned yogi who has been helping his friends in politics heal through yoga, meditation, and - when the moment calls for it - the music of Prince. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, during her previous job as a member of Congress, have taken classes with Hubbard. More about the activist who has led protests and is a yoga guy.
- Key quote: "I really value the fact that Reggie is this unicorn and he is someone who is both in the movement and someone who was thinking a lot about the health and well-being of the movement," said Muthoni Wambu Kraal, the Democratic National Committee's national political and organizing director last cycle.
5. A federal judge scrapped a nationwide moratorium on evictions: Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its authority when the moratorium was put in place during the Trump administration. It is now set to expire June 30. The ruling adds further chaos to the system that has continued to evict some renters because of loopholes and different interpretations, The Post reports. The Biden administration quickly appealed the decision and is fighting to delay Friedrich's ruling from taking effect.
6. Conservatives are apoplectic over Trump's Facebook ban: Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and other conservative lawmakers torched the Facebook review board's decision not to immediately let him back on the platform. Republicans framed the decision as an example of social-media bias against conservatives.
- What's next: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to obey whatever the mostly independent board decided, but the board didn't fully come down on one side. It agreed with the initial decision to suspend Trump's account but also slammed the indefinite nature of the punishment, saying it was "indeterminate and standardless." It urged Facebook to review its decision within six months.
7. Caitlyn Jenner repeatedly mentioned her private plane in an interview with Sean Hannity: "My friends are leaving California," Jenner, who is running to be California's governor, told the Fox News host. "My hangar, the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar and I said, 'Where are you going?' And he says, 'I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona, I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless.'" More from the interview here.
8. Thieves jacked the Republican National Committee for fancy cups of Joe: Fraudsters stole almost $44,000 just before the 2020 election from the Republican National Committee - another in a string of thefts from prominent federal political operations. The thieves spent more than $35,500 of the RNC's money at EZ Coffee & Tea, a Pennsylvania-based merchant that sells various products including high-end espresso machines. The RNC initially described the thefts as "office supplies" purchases.
9. A GOP-backed Arizona auditing group is burrowing through ballots in search of bamboo fibers and Chinese paper: The group wants to prove the far-fetched theory that 40,000 ballots for Biden were flown in from Asia and smuggled into the state. The theory rests on the idea that tracings of bamboo would prove the ballots were created abroad, even though not all paper made from bamboo is milled in Asia; in fact, there are several bamboo forests in the US. More on the heavily criticized recount effort here.
Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
10. There's a reason you might be having a hard time finding chicken wings, diapers, or a new car: The above photo is from March 2020, but as the US economy continues to reopen it's now seeing a shortage of items as varied as computer chips, corn, bacon, and hot dogs. Insider rounded up some of the major supply shortages and explained why they're lagging.
One last thing.
Today's trivia question: A relative of this world leader is credited with creating what became the FBI. Who was he? Hint: He was a complex man. Email your guess and a suggested question to me at [email protected].
- Yesterday's answer: The NASA astronaut Alan Shepard is the only person to have played golf on the moon. The United States Golf Association, which has the makeshift club he used, even went back to calculate the distances of his drives based on photographs of where the balls landed.