Washington Post Political Reporter and Post Politics Now Anchor John Wagner

President Biden delivered an emotional speech Friday announcing an array of steps aimed at bolstering abortion rights, responding to growing demands from activists that he take bolder and more forceful action two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Biden, joined by Vice President Harris, gave his fiery and at times angry remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House before signing an executive order to enhance access to reproductive health-care services. While abortion activists generally welcomed the move, many said it would likely do little for women in states where abortion is banned.

Biden himself acknowledged the limits of his executive powers as he railed against the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, calling it “the Supreme Court’s terrible, extreme and, I think, so totally wrongheaded decision.” He said the court’s majority is “playing fast and loose with the facts” by misrepresenting the history of abortion rights in America. “What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment,” Biden said. “It was an exercise in raw political power.”

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Elon Musk announced Friday that he will abandon his tumultuous $44 billion offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. Twitter immediately fired back, saying it would sue the Tesla CEO to uphold the deal.

The likely unraveling of the acquisition was just the latest twist in a saga between the world’s richest man and one of the most influential social media platforms, and it may portend a titanic legal battle ahead.

Twitter could have pushed for a $1 billion breakup fee that Musk agreed to pay under these circumstances. Instead, it looks ready to fight to complete the purchase, which the company’s board has approved and CEO Parag Agrawal has insisted he wants to consummate.

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Shayna Jacobs is a federal courts and law enforcement reporter on the national security team at the Washington Post

Payton Gendron, who is charged with carrying out a racially motivated massacre at a Tops Friendly Markets store in May, might seek to introduce a psychiatric defense in his state terrorism and hate crimes case, his attorneys said at a court appearance Thursday. The accused gunman, 18, allegedly drove three hours from his Binghamton, N.Y.-area hometown to methodically gun down Black people after casing the site on a previous occasion. Investigators believe he posted a lengthy screed online before the shooting describing his white-supremacist motivations and ideology. Defense lawyers must provide formal notice by Oct. 6, the date of the next court appearance, if they decide to move forward with a psychiatric case. Erie County Court Judge Susan Eagan gave the attorneys a three-month extension from their legally mandated deadline, which passed several days ago.

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Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 67, was shot and killed during a campaign speech in western Japan today. News that the former Prime Minister had been assassinated in broad daylight Friday shocked not only Japan but the entire world, which has come to associate the relatively low-crime nation with strict gun control.  Japan, with a population of 125 million, had just 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, resulting in one death and four injuries, according to police. Tokyo had zero gun incidents, injuries or deaths during that same year, although 61 guns were seized there.  Although major universities in Japan have rifle clubs and Japanese police are armed, most Japanese go through life without ever handling, or even seeing, a real gun.  Stabbings are more common as a fatal crime. And so the debate over the right to bear arms is a distant issue in Japan and has been for decades.

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A fundraiser set up to help 2-year-old Aiden McCarthy, whose parents were both killed in Monday's mass shooting during a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, has raised about $2.6 million since it was created on Tuesday. 

As of Wednesday evening, the GoFundMe has raised $2.58 million, with its organizer, Irina Colon, noting that she created the fundraising effort with permission of the boy's family. The toddler wasn't injured in the shooting.

Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Irina McCarthy, 35, were among those killed during the mass shooting, and Aiden was separated from his parents during the chaos. 

Remembering James Caan.

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Among tax lawyers, the most invasive type of random audit carried out by the I.R.S. is known, only partly jokingly, as “an autopsy without the benefit of death.” The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.

One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as FBI director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received a book after his dismissal.

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Governor Gavin Newsom announced Thursday a plan to allocate $100 million in state funding to have the state make its own insulin. "Nothing epitomizes market failure more than the cost of insulin," said Newsom. "Many Americans experience out-of-pocket costs anywhere from $300 to $500 per month for this life-saving drug."

Half of the funding will go towards developing low-cost insulin products, and the other $50 million will be spent on a California-based insulin manufacturing facility.

This is in hopes of creating new, high-paying jobs and a more robust supply chain in California.

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His guest is Ishaan Tharoor, foreign affairs columnist, Washington Post

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced his resignation, saying that he is “sad” to be “giving up the best job in the world,” in a speech to the nation Thursday outside No. 10 Downing Street, his official residence.

It comes after more than 50 members of his own government resigned in the past 48 hours in open revolt against his leadership. Ministers and aides, including several members of his Cabinet, said they no longer had faith in his leadership after a series of scandals, the latest involving an ally accused of sexual misconduct.

Johnson insisted he would continue to serve as prime minister until his successor is chosen — despite criticism from many lawmakers from his own party who insisted he should step down now.

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The end of the Fourth of July weekend arrived with a blast of troubling economic developments as bonds flashed signs of a coming recession and oil prices plunged, suggesting that millions of consumers who have spent more than a year rocked by rising prices could face even more upheaval.

Tuesday’s events suggest that gasoline prices could be poised for a sharp descent, though there could be a multi week lag. While the U.S. average has pulled back from its June peak above $5 a gallon, further declines might not be of much consolation to consumers because they could run into an economic downturn that further pressures stocks and could spill into the labor market.

Arizona already lost a Supreme Court Case that mandated proof of citizenship in their state to vote.  Now, they are working on an end-around to mandate a citizenship test for people voting by mail, which 70+% of their citizens do.  

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That prospect recently drew unmistakably closer, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court. First, justices overturned more than a century of legal precedent that had allowed communities in California to limit public gun possession — endangering laws that have spared us from some of the American epidemic of gun deaths by murder, suicide and accident. Then, the court reversed Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion — a right protected by our state constitution as a right of privacy and supported by majorities of Californians of every political party, region and demographic group.

Is the Great American Experiment dead, or simply on life support? And, if it is, how do we revive it?

“The Great American Experiment can be summed up as rejection of the European Ancient Regime in favor of political equality in the form of a constitutional republic. While America’s founding fathers excluded African slaves, native Americans and women from this equality, with devastating results, still the American Revolution was a first step – a turning point in human history.

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