Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
The New York Times:
Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law Signals a Broader Christian Agenda
Gov. Jeff Landry wants his state to be at the forefront of a national movement to advance legislation with a Christian worldview.
Taken together, the measures have signaled the ambition of the governor and the Republican-led Legislature to be at the forefront of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview. And Mr. Landry, a Catholic who has been vocal about his faith’s influence in shaping his politics, wants to lead the charge.
Brian Beutler/”Off Message” on Substack:
Why Conceding To Lies About The Economy Is A Big Mistake
It's not just about voter sentiment ahead of the election, it's about what kind of party we want Democrats to be in a post-Trump future.
If we grasp the many ways the Supreme Court as currently constituted is corrupt and illegitimate, we can clarify our thinking about accountability and reform, distant as they seem. If we wrap our heads around what life in a second Trump administration might look like, we can brace for it, and for rebuilding all over again, long as that might take.
So: Not typical media doom and gloom, where the news is always bad, or dark clouds always hover, and not the inverse, where copium flows and things are always better than they seem. This was meant, much like Off Message, to be more like realism undergirded by resilience.
But not every social or economic and political trend is headed in the wrong direction. Confronted with a remarkable run of economic good fortune, as we’ve seen in the past year, we might have probed reasons public sentiment and economic fundamentals had decoupled, and how to align them again. We wouldn’t go looking for obscure metrics to explain why the strong economy is secretly weak. We’d never convince ourselves that sources of promise were merely fools’ gold, in order to align ourselves with the country’s dour mood.
Yet that’s what much of the political establishment has chosen to do—and not just MAGA.
Simon Rosenberg/”The Hopium Chronicles” on Substack:
With Thursday's Debate, and Biden's Clear Gains in New Polling, The Election Is Entering A New Phase
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In yesterday’s post I went over new polling showing Biden making meaningful gains including in new Fox News polling. In today’s 538 national poll average Biden has his first national lead this year; has gained 2.7 pts since early March; and in 538’s election forecast Biden is currently projected to win MI, PA, WI, NE-2 and win the election. The election is becoming bluer. It’s very encouraging stuff.
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We are entering a new phase of the campaign as over the next 10 weeks we will have 2 debates, the Trump sentencing, the two Conventions and who knows what else. We are now officially deep into the General Election, and need to be upping our intensity level and work. Lots of voters are checking in now, and collectively, we have to be as loud as we can be as they do. That’s why we’ve been working so hard to make June count (see below). Please sign up for volunteer shifts, make a few more donations, work your networks with good news. It’s show time everyone, and we have a bit of momentum now.
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A reminder that we’ve continued to have really good economic news in recent weeks. Inflation was ZERO in May. Prices did not rise and the price of many goods fell. The May jobs report was 50% higher than expected.
Charles Sykes/The Atlantic:
The Flimsiness of Trumponomics
Trump’s latest reported idea would result in massive tax cuts for the ultrarich—at the expense of other Americans
Economists are warning that Trump’s reported idea to eliminate the income tax and replace it with massive tariffs on imports would cripple the economy, explode the cost of living, and likely set off a trade war. And because the math doesn’t come close to working, it would also tremendously increase the national debt.
In other words, Trump’s latest notion is both economically and fiscally illiterate. “If a 20yo interviewing for a House internship suggested replacing the income tax with a massive tariff, they’d be laughed out of the interview,” Brian Riedl, a conservative budget expert, wrote on X.
The politics of Trump’s latest scheme are perhaps even worse, because this plan exposes the hypocrisy of his faux populism. Indeed, what’s striking about the idea is just how regressive and non-populist it is. Replacing the income tax with tariffs would result in massive tax cuts for the ultrarich—at the expense of middle and lower-class Americans. Brendan Duke and Ryan Mulholland of the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimate that Trump’s proposal would raise taxes by $8,300 for the middle 20 percent of households, if American consumers end up bearing the full brunt of tariffs on imports.
Michael Scherer/The Washington Post:
Biden settles on a message against Trump: He’s even worse than before
The president and his allies argue that Trump “snapped” and has become more self-obsessed, more dangerous and more extreme since his 2020 loss.
“When he lost in 2020, something snapped in him,” Biden said, a bumper sticker slogan he has been repeating ever since.
The notion that the former president changed — becoming more self-obsessed, more dangerous and more extreme — has since been seeded throughout Biden’s campaign, the result of months of polling, focus groups and ad testing, his advisers say. Independent Democratic groups that plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help reelect Biden have come to similar conclusions in their own research, according to people familiar with that work who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the strategy.
CNN:
Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the domestic violence gun ban
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who has been raising concerns about the Supreme Court’s approach on history in recent cases, penned a brief concurrence criticizing how some lower courts were looking for near-identical historical gun laws when examining modern regulations.
“Imposing a test that demands overly specific analogues has serious problems,” Barrett wrote. “It forces 21st-century regulations to follow late-18th-century policy choices, giving us ‘a law trapped in amber.’”
Amy Coney Barrett is clearly the sharpest of the court’s conservatives. I would not be surprised to see her as chief justice some day. That’s an observation, not an endorsement.
Cliff Schecter and Matt McNeill on abortion: