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| Today is an important day for California, OnPolitics readers. |
| California voters could decide to recall Governor Gavin Newsom or replace him. President Joe Biden took a trip to the Golden state yesterday to urge voters to keep the first-term Democrat in office. |
| While results are expected to take some time, polls show Newsom is likely to keep his job. |
| Speaking of voting, Senate Democrats are ready for round two as they unveiled a new voting rights bill today. |
| The new bill – the Freedom to Vote Act – is more scaled back than previous pieces of voting rights legislation like the For the People Act but would establish some federally mandated election rules. Some of those rules include expanding early voting options, voter identification requirements, access to mail-in ballots, and allow for same day registration on Election Day. |
| It's Amy and Mabinty, with the day's top news. |
Top Senate Democrat blasts Biden administration's Afghanistan withdrawal |
| Democrats are not ok with what happened in Afghanistan: Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blasted the Biden administration's handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as "fatally flawed" and threatened to subpoena Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin if he doesn't agree to testify "in the near future." |
| The sharp rebuke came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken faced a second day of intense questioning by lawmakers furious over the chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan. |
| Blinken strongly defended President Joe Biden's decision to end America's 20-year war in Afghanistan and the administration's handling of the evacuation. He said no one in the U.S. government predicted the Afghan security forces would surrender to the Taliban so quickly, a surprise development that paved the way for the militant Islamic group to take over the country within days. |
| What did the GOP have to say? Republicans called Biden's handling of the withdrawal an epic military and foreign policy disaster, even some of those who previously supported the decision to end the war. |
| 'Stop with the hypocrisy': Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said she and other senators tried for years to speed up the special immigrant visa (SIV) process for Afghans who served alongside U.S. troops, as translators and in other roles, but those efforts were stymied by Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration. |
| She said it's hypocritical for GOP lawmakers to express outrage now over their fate and the fate of Afghan women. |
Real Quick: Stories you'll want to read |
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Proud Boys leaders want out before Capitol riot trial |
| The latest on the Capitol riot: Leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group accused in the deadly Capitol riot made a new appeal for pre-trial release Monday, with their lawyers asserting that Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs presented no future public safety risk. |
| Nicholas Smith, Nordean's attorney, said the government's opposition to release, based on a finding of "future dangerousness", required the defense to "prove a negative." |
| "It is so essential that the politics of this doesn't overwhelm the facts," Smith argued, referring to the polarized political environment that gave life to the Capitol assault that left five dead. |
| Did the judge buy the argument? Not exactly. |
| The attorney's remark brought a biting response from U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who ordered the men detained in April, saying then that it was "no exaggeration to say that the rule of law, the durability of our Constitution's order and in the end, the very existence of our republic, is threatened by such conduct." |
| "The politics of this have nothing to do with this (hearing) – not a wit," Kelly said Monday. |
| There are still a few days left to enjoy summer before fall arrives 🍂 — Amy and Mabinty |
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