memeorandum: The Real Reason Republicans Want to Give Tax Breaks for Embryos (Tessa Stuart/Rolling Stone)

12:30 PM ET, June 5, 2023

Top Items:

Twitter's U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue — In internal forecasts, the company projected that ad sales would keep declining, handing a tough challenge to its new chief executive. — Ryan Mac reports on Twitter, and Tiffany Hsu reports on misinformation.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, CNN, New York Post, New York Daily News, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, TechCrunch, Joe.My.God., 9to5Mac and Bloomberg, more at Mediagazer »

The Economist:

Ukraine's counter-offensive appears to have begun — Its armour strikes in the south-east; but there is more to come — For months a guessing game has played out in military circles worldwide: where and when would Ukraine conduct its counter-offensive? Most expected it to come through …

Discussion: The Kyiv Independent, Reuters, NPR, Associated Press, Metro.co.uk, Voice of America, Financial Times and The Guardian

CNN:

Exclusive: Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks, sources say — Ukraine has cultivated a network of agents and sympathizers inside Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets and has begun providing …

Discussion: The Kyiv Independent and Political Wire

Samuel Charap / Foreign Affairs:
An Unwinnable War — Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine — Russia's invasion of Ukraine …

Discussion: Human Events

BBC:
Ukraine war: Russia says it thwarted major Ukrainian offensive

Discussion: The Hill, UPI, Associated Press, The Guardian, Reuters, TASS, The Kyiv Independent, Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg

Washington Post:

Trump lawyers meeting with Justice Dept. on classified documents case — Attorneys for Donald Trump came to the Justice Department Monday morning to make their case that the government should not charge the former president in connection with his possession of classified documents after leaving office …

Discussion: Bloomberg, CBS News and The Gateway Pundit

Politico:

Trump lawyers visit Justice Department — The visit comes as special counsel Jack Smith nears a decision about whether to charge Trump in the classified-documents probe. — Lawyers defending Donald Trump in an investigation related to his handling of highly sensitive national security documents …

Discussion: NBC News, CBS News, Raw Story and Washington Post

CNN:
Trump's lawyers meet with Justice Department officials following complaints about special counsel probe

Discussion: USA Today, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Associated Press, New York Times, HuffPost, NewsNation, Political Wire and The Hill

Chris Sununu / Washington Post:

I'm not running for president in 2024. Beating Trump is more important. — Chris Sununu, a Republican, is governor of New Hampshire. — I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024. — Our party is on a collision course toward electoral irrelevance without significant corrective action.

Discussion: NBC News

Jill Colvin / Associated Press:
Former Vice President Pence filing paperwork launching 2024 presidential bid in challenge to Trump

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Times, CBS News, CNN, ABC News, USA Today, Washington Times, National Review, The US Sun, The Daily Caller, Reuters, Just The News, GZERO and NewsNation

Politico:
Suddenly, things are actually going the Senate GOP campaign arm's way

Discussion: RedState and Political Wire

Max Tani / Semafor:

CNN lost trust over COVID coverage, internal report found — The Scoop — The Atlantic's Friday profile of the embattled CEO profile Chris Licht drew cringes at Hudson Yards — but also anger over Licht's criticism of the network's award-winning pandemic coverage.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Variety, The Hill, New York Magazine, The Daily Caller, Eschaton and Instapundit, more at Mediagazer »

New York Times:

S.E.C. Accuses Binance of Mishandling Funds and Lying to Regulators — The S.E.C. said the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange mixed “billions of dollars” in customer funds and secretly sent them to a separate company controlled by Binance's founder, Changpeng Zhao.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, NBC News, TechCrunch, Metro.co.uk, The Verge, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, Protos, Semafor and Financial Times, more at Techmeme »

Katie Baker / The Daily Beast:

Casey DeSantis Is the Walmart Melania — She'd better hope that pleather is pudding-proof. … The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back …

Discussion: HotAir, Washington Examiner, TheBlaze, Mediaite, Balloon Juice, Raw Story, Fox News, Twitchy, Digby's Hullabaloo and Insider

Rick Porter / Hollywood Reporter:

Showtime Pulls ‘Vice’ Episode on Ron DeSantis — An installment delving into the Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate's time as a U.S. Navy JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay was quietly shelved without explanation. — Showtime quietly pulled an episode of its Vice newsmagazine last week …

Discussion: Forbes, Raw Story, New Republic, HuffPost, Crooks and Liars and Political Wire, more at Mediagazer »

Ben Smith / Semafor:

Inside the high-stakes clash for control of Ukraine's story — The News — Journalists covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine are engaged in a running, low-grade conflict with the Ukrainian government, which many believe uses access and accreditation to shape their stories.

Discussion: Outside the Beltway and The Kyiv Independent, more at Mediagazer »

Politico:
Playbook: Christie. Pence. Burgum?

Discussion: Vanity Fair and CNN

Lawrence Hurley / NBC News:

‘Trump too small’ trademark clash to be decided by Supreme Court — The dispute is over whether lawyer Steve Elster can register “Trump too small” as a trademark for use on T-shirts. — WASHINGTON — A crude joke that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., used to mock what he said was then-2016 …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS News, CNN, Politico, Associated Press, USA Today, Washington Examiner, The Hill, Bloomberg, Washington Post, SCOTUSblog, The Daily Caller and Los Angeles Times

Jim Geraghty / National Review:

DeSantis and the Nebulous ‘Charisma Threshold’ — On the menu today: I'm not interested in discussing whether you think Ron DeSantis is charismatic or not. What I want to discuss is how seemingly overnight, so many people decided that the single most important measuring stick of DeSantis …

Discussion: Salon

Wall Street Journal:

Targeting Toyota for Its Electric-Vehicle Heresy — Public pensions and proxy advisers try to punish the company using corporate governance as a pretext. — By The Editorial Board — It wasn't long ago that Toyota's hybrid vehicles were all the rage with the climate-change left.

Discussion: RedState

New York Times:

What Happened When a Brooklyn Neighborhood Policed Itself for Five Days — On a two-block stretch of Brownsville in April, the police stepped aside and let residents respond to 911 calls. It was a bold experiment that some believe could redefine law-enforcement in New York City.

Discussion: NewsNation and Outside the Beltway

Michael Scherer / Washington Post:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tests the conspiratorial appetite of Democrats — One of the most famous living descendants of the most famous American political dynasty shows early strength against Biden in polls — INDIANAPOLIS — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a candidate for president supported …

Discussion: Breitbart, Insider, Joe.My.God., Raw Story, The Hill and Trending Politics Conservative, more at Techmeme »

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:

The GOP's Authoritarian Acceleration — Internal resistance to its anti-democratic turn has all but vanished. — In May 2017, Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey, crashing through the first of many important democratic norms. While FBI directors technically can be fired …

Tessa Stuart / Rolling Stone:

The Real Reason Republicans Want to Give Tax Breaks for Embryos — Wisconsin lawmakers are trying to “clarify” the state's 1849 abortion ban in a bid to make the wildly unpopular and anachronistic law palatable to modern voters — REPUBLICANS IN THE Wisconsin legislature introduced a package …

Daniel Lippman / Politico:

Democratic Senate hopeful claims primary residence in Arizona — and D.C. — As part of a VA loan application, the Arizona congressmen pledged the D.C. home was his ‘principal’ residence. — When Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego bought a house near Capitol Hill last year …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Dan Ladden-Hall / The Daily Beast:

Sex Offenders Who Voted in GOP Florida County Not Prosecuted: Report — HMM... A Republican state attorney in Florida chose not to pursue cases against six convicted sex offenders who voted in a majority GOP county in the 2020 election, according to a report, despite the cases being similar …

Discussion: Raw Story, Orlando Sentinel and Political Wire

Jeff Asher / The Atlantic:

The Murder Rate Is Suddenly Falling — The first five months of 2023 have produced an encouraging overall trend for the first time in years. — Official crime statistics are only released after a substantial delay, so for nearly a decade I've collected and compiled big-city crime data …

CNN:

CNN Exclusive: New Hampshire GOP Gov. Sununu says he will not run for president in 2024 — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a frequent Republican critic of former President Donald Trump, said Monday in an exclusive interview with CNN's Dana Bash that he will not seek the party's 2024 presidential nomination.

Discussion: The Hill and Politico

Washington Post:

Sonic boom heard across D.C. region caused by military flight, officials say — An authorized Defense Department plane caused a sonic boom heard across the D.C. region Sunday afternoon, officials in Maryland said. — The sonic boom was related to an incident involving a Cessna that crashed in Virginia …