Anthony Fauci to step down as chief US medical adviser at end of year – as it happened

The United States’ top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci announced he would step down in December, ending his nearly four decades of service after becoming a national name during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, a new poll showed Republicans coalescing around Donald Trump following the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, while Democratic voters showed surprising enthusiasm for the upcoming midterms.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Trump’s legal problems could actually hurt him among Republicans, The Washington Post posited, reasoning that other GOP candidates might offer voters the same policies with less political baggage.

• A federal magistrate judge now looks to be leaning against releasing much of the affidavit justifying the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

• Conservatives cheered Fauci’s departure announcement, while House Republicans signaled they expected answers from him if they retook the chamber following the midterms.

• Rusty Bowers, formerly a top Arizona Republican state lawmaker who was ousted by GOP voters for defying Trump, talked to The Guardian about his decision.

In rural Texas, the climate for polling officials has become so bad the entire election department of a rural county resigned weeks before the midterm elections, the Associated Press reports.

The officials said they’d been threatened and harassed for their work in Gillespie County, which is heavily Republican and overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the 2020 election, and didn’t want to relive the experience. Across the state, voters are struggling to cast valid ballots following the passage of a strict election law last year that led to thousands of mail-in ballot applications being rejected in recent polls.

Here’s more from the AP:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Part of why Terry Hamilton says he abruptly left his job running elections deep in Texas wine country is by now a familiar story in America: He became fed up with the harassment that followed the 2020 election.

But this was no ordinary exit.

On the brink of November’s midterm elections, it was not just Hamilton who up and quit this month but also the only other full-time election worker in rural Gillespie County. The sudden emptying of an entire local elections department came less than 70 days before voters start casting ballots.

By the middle of last week, no one was left at the darkened and locked elections office in a metal building annex off the main road in Fredericksburg. A “Your Vote Counts” poster hung in a window by the door.

A scramble is now underway to train replacements and ground them in layers of new Texas voting laws that are among the strictest in the U.S. That includes assistance from the Texas Secretary of State, whose spokesperson could not recall a similar instance in which an elections office was racing to start over with a completely new staff. But the headaches don’t stop there.

The resignations have more broadly made the county of roughly 27,000 residents — which overwhelmingly backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 — an extraordinary example of the fallout resulting from threats to election officials. Officials and voting experts worry that a new wave of harassment or worse will return in November, fueled by false claims of widespread fraud.

Hamilton, who has clashed with poll watchers in Gillespie County in past elections, said he didn’t want to go through it again.

“That’s the one thing we can’t understand. Their candidate won, heavily,” Hamilton said. “But there’s fraud here?”

The top House Republican Kevin McCarthy has given the clearest indication yet that the GOP intends to call Anthony Fauci to testify, should they gain control following the November elections:

A magistrate judge indicates he may be leaning towards keeping the affidavit justifying the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago away from public eyes, HuffPost reports.

Bruce Reinhart is the magistrate judge handling requests from news organizations and others to make public the affidavit justifying the FBI’s entry into Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, where they were investigating potentially unlawful keeping of government secrets by former president Donald Trump. At a court hearing last week, he sounded sympathetic towards at least partially releasing the document, but now seems to have changed his mind. Here’s more from HuffPost:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“Having carefully reviewed the affidavit before signing the warrant, I was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart wrote in a 13-page order based on a hearing in his courtroom last week.

Reinhart said during the hearing that he was leaning toward publicly releasing a redacted version of the affidavit — with names of FBI agents, witnesses and investigative details blacked out. He ordered prosecutors to provide him such redactions by Thursday, and said he would then decide whether to release that version or propose his own.

On Monday, Reinhart said he may decide prosecutors were correct when they argued that the necessary redactions would make what was left lacking in both content and context.

“I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the government,” Reinhart wrote.

Releasing the entire affidavit, the judge said, would hurt the ongoing criminal investigation by revealing names of witnesses and investigative techniques, which could lead to “obstruction of justice and witness intimidation or retaliation” in the first instance and damage prosecutors’ ability to continue gathering information in the second.

Both of those arguments were laid out by Department of Justice lawyers in their written filing and during last week’s hearing. Reinhart added one new argument of his own: that releasing the affidavit would make public details about the physical layout of Mar-a-Lago, which would make the Secret Service’s job of protecting the former president more difficult.

“This factor weighs in favor of sealing,” he wrote.

The Democratic-controlled Congress has in recent months managed to pass major legislation addressing health care costs, fighting climate change and boosting semiconductor production, on top of last year’s Covid-19 relief bill and overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.

So what will Democrats do when they return from recess to start what could be their final months controlling both chambers of Congress? According to Politico, the Senate will likely be stepping up the process of confirming federal judges, giving Joe Biden the chance to leave his mark on the nation’s judiciary.

While the confirmations wouldn’t undo the conservative majority on the supreme court, appointing Democratic-aligned judges to the lower ranks of the federal judiciary improves the chances that laws and policies from across the country survive court challenges. It’s also a tacit recognition that high inflation and Biden’s low approval ratings mean the party could lose control of the chamber in a few months time, and the new Republican majority may stop confirming judges altogether.

Here’s more from Politico:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}While President Joe Biden has seen more judges confirmed at this point in his presidency than his three White House predecessors, some Senate Democrats and progressive advocacy groups want the chamber to start picking up the pace. Judicial confirmations will come to a standstill if Republicans win back the Senate in the fall, they warn.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put it this way: “Democrats really need to step up on judges.”

Warren added that she’s spoken to Majority Whip and Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), “who I know feels the urgency of this moment, and he was talking about how much we’re going to have to double down in September,” she said. “We need more days, more hearings, more everything but we need to get these judges through.”

The prospect of a September dominated by judicial confirmations comes as the Senate continues to openly mull the rest of its fall legislative agenda. The chamber is expected to vote again on legislation to cap the cost of insulin and could take up a same-sex marriage bill. Government funding also runs out at the end of September. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Democratic leaders say they’ve reached an agreement to include permitting reform as part of a funding package to keep the government open.

But the focus on judges, in addition to a boon for progressives who want to see a faster pace, is a clear sign that the legislative agenda is slowing down ahead of November. Nominees had to compete for summer floor time with Democrats’ other priorities, including their signature climate, prescription and tax package, legislation to increase semiconductor manufacturing and a veterans health care bill. With those bills now sent to Biden’s desk, the Senate can spend more floor time on confirmations.

The top Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress are pressing the Biden administration to allow them access to documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound earlier this month, Politico reports.

The request comes from the so-called “gang of eight”, which consists of the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, plus the heads of the chambers’ intelligence committees.

Here’s more from the story:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Privately, Capitol Hill aides have expressed frustration about the fact that Congress has learned little about the investigation into the former president, especially since it reportedly involves matters of national security. The executive branch has historically resisted congressional inquiries about ongoing law-enforcement actions, arguing that it could compromise the investigation.

The FBI search warrant unsealed earlier this month revealed that the Justice Department was investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act and obstruction of justice in relation to Trump’s storage of White House materials at his home.

At a hearing last week in south Florida, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, said the investigation is still in its “early stages.”

James Comer, the Republican most likely to become the party’s top watchdog in the House of Representatives if the party takes the chamber in the upcoming midterms, has joined in the chorus threatening Fauci with investigations, even if he leaves his job:

Republican senator Lindsey Graham has been fighting a subpoena compelling his appearance before a Georgia special grand jury, and over the weekend won a temporary reprieve.

A judge hearing the case has given a timeline for both Graham and the district attorney in Fulton County, which is investigating the attempt by Donald Trump’s allies to disrupt the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, to settle the matter, Politico reports:

Rand Paul threatens Fauci with investigation

Perhaps to the surprise of no one, Kentucky senator Rand Paul greeted Anthony Fauci’s resignation news with a threat of investigation and a hefty dose of conspiracy theory as to Covid-19’s origins.

He tweeted: “Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.”

Yet another Democrat has cast aspersions on Joe Biden’s plans to run for a second term. This time, it’s Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

In an appearance on Fox News, he said he would “duck the question” of whether the president should stand again in 2024:

Earlier this month, Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney found herself in hot water for saying she didn’t think Biden would be back on the ballot:

McConnell downplays Republican midterms expectations

The art of politics is often as much about setting expectations as describing reality and so any predictions from people like senate minority leader Mitch McConnell should be taken with a pinch of salt.

But the Republican party boss does seem to be tamping down ideas of an easy capture of the senate by his side this November.

He told NBC News:

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said, according to NBC News. “Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

McConnell added: “Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.”

Read analysis of his remarks here on the Washington Post.

The United States’ top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci announced he would step down in December, ending his nearly four decades of service after becoming a national name during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, a new poll showed Republicans coalescing around Donald Trump following the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, while Democrats got a surprise enthusiasm boost.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Trump’s legal problems could actually hurt him among Republicans, The Washington Post posited, suggesting that other GOP candidates could offer their voters the same policies with less political baggage.

• Conservatives cheered Fauci’s departure announcement. He’d earned their enmity for breaking with Trump during his administration, as well for his policies meant to stop the spread of Covid-19.

• Rusty Bowers, formerly a top Arizona Republican state lawmaker who was ousted by GOP voters for defying Trump, talked to The Guardian about his decision.

With Covid-19 less of a concern for many Americans, Anthony Fauci’s public profile has decreased recently, but that doesn’t mean conservative have let go of their issues with him.

Many, in fact, cheered his departure. Here’s Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation:

Rightwing radio host Buck Sexton linked his decision to the upcoming midterms:

Diamond and Silk, the erstwhile Fox News guests who are now with Newsmax, had one of the more outlandish reactions: