Friday, August 26, 2022

Right-wing media erroneously claim Biden “facilitated” search of Mar-a-Lago

CYDNEY HARGIS & CHARIS HOARD/Media Matters

In their latest attempt to dismiss the hundreds of classified documents found at Mar-a-Largo, right-wing media coalesced around a bogus claim that President Joe Biden “facilitated” the search by rejecting former President Donald Trump’s executive privilege.

On August 8, the FBI executed a judge-approved search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as part of an investigation into possible mishandling of classified documents. Earlier this year, reports surfaced that the National Archives and Records Administration had retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago in January, some of which contained classified materials.

According to a recent report from The New York Times, over 300 classified documents have been seized from Trump’s Florida property over the course of three searches since January. Trump has since filed a motion asking for a special master to review the documents seized by the FBI, which would block the Department of Justice from further reviewing the documents until that third-party arbitrator is appointed, and return any property not within the scope of the search warrant. If a federal judge approves Trump’s request, it could delay a federal criminal investigation into whether Trump violated the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act.

The August 8 search came after months of reported resistance from the Trump team; according to a May 10 letter from U.S. Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran released this week, Trump tried to delay the FBI’s review of the retrieved records and his lawyers consistently asked for more time to determine if the records included documents they considered protected by executive privilege. In the letter, Steidel Wall wrote that government lawyers determined that executive privilege rests with the current president, not a former one, and that Biden “defers to [her] determination” whether the FBI could view the records. After consulting with the Department of Justice, she ultimately decided not to honor Trump's claim of executive privilege, which allowed the FBI to begin viewing the documents.

On Monday, August 22, conservative journalist and Trump liaison to the National Archives John Solomon published the Steidel Wall-Corcoran letter on his website Just the News in an attempt to prove that the Biden White House sparked the investigation by choosing to waive executive privilege. Despite zero evidence, right-wing media ran with the report and accused Biden of “siccing the FBI” on his political opposition.

Legal experts dispute Trump’s claims, and historical context confirms executive privilege can be revoked

Conservative media have repeatedly framed rejecting Trump's claim of executive privilege as an extreme step that ignited the FBI's search of his Florida residence. This view ignores the fact that the former president was under investigation for mishandling classified documents for months prior to Steidel Wall's decision, that the current administration is well within its right to reject claims of executive privilege, and that the Biden administration is not the only one to have done it.

National security lawyer Bradley Moss: “Ironically, Trump’s media guy shows how NARA was bending over backwards for Trump before it finally gave the FBI access to the classified records.” [Twitter, 8/23/22]
Executive privilege is for the benefit of the republic, not the individual. According to forum Just Security, which provides legal analysis and is based out of the New York University Law School, the 1977 Supreme Court case Nixon v. GSA made it clear that executive privilege is “a governmental privilege, not a personal privilege.” Executive privilege, therefore, can be waived by the current president, even if it is asserted by the former president, especially when such a veto would benefit the enforcement of existing laws and statutes — such as the ones at question in the ongoing FBI investigation. [Just Security, 11/4/21]
The Supreme Court ruled that executive privilege is not unlimited, even for a sitting president. In the 1974 case United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court found that the current president’s communications with advisers pertaining to “the process of shaping policies and making decisions” were privileged. However, that privilege yielded to a special prosecutor's need to obtain evidence as part of a criminal investigation. [Time, 10/8/21]
Biden is not the only president to reject a former president’s claims of executive privilege. Former President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege over White House documents related to the CIA’s advanced interrogation techniques. However, in 2014, former President Barack Obama rejected the privilege claim and released the documents as part of an ongoing court case. [Just Security, 9/30/21]

Right-wing media still baselessly claim that Biden “facilitated” the FBI’s search

FBI found 184 classified documents in boxes returned by Trump, redacted affidavit says, prompting search

By Rebecca Shabad, Ryan J. Reilly and Ken Dilanian/NBC News

WASHINGTON — A redacted copy of the FBI affidavit used to justify the Aug. 8 search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was unsealed Friday, revealing details of the federal government's efforts to recover classified documents, including top-secret information.

The 36-page affidavit, much of which was heavily redacted, said that in mid-May, FBI agents conducted a preliminary review of the contents of 15 boxes Trump returned to the National Archives from his Florida property in January, and "identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the FIFTEEN BOXES."

The affidavit said that agents found 184 unique documents that had classification markings. It stated that 25 documents were marked as "TOP SECRET," 67 documents marked as "confidential" and 92 marked "secret." According to the affidavit, agents observed markings denoting various control systems designed to protect various types of sensitive information, including markings that designate intelligence gathered by "clandestine human sources," such as a report by a CIA officer or someone who works for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The release of the FBI affidavit came after U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled Thursday that the document could be unsealed after the Department of Justice submitted proposed redactions.

Reinhart approved the warrant that allowed federal agents to search Trump’s Florida property Aug. 8 after determining that the affidavit provided probable cause. He reiterated earlier this week that he found “probable cause that evidence of multiple federal crimes would be found” at Mar-a-Lago and that he “was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable.”

The affidavit contains substantial redactions in its section on providing probable cause for the August search, which is about 20 pages. One almost completely blacked-out section is titled, “There is Probable Cause to Believe That Documents Containing Classified [National Defense Information] and Presidential Records Remain at the Premises.”

Ultimately, FBI agents removed 11 additional sets of classified documents, including some labeled secret and top secret, during the Aug. 8 search, according to the property receipt of items that were recovered. There were also papers described as “SCI” documents, which stands for highly classified “sensitive compartmented information.”

The Justice Department had argued against releasing the affidavit. The document itself says that any “premature disclosure” of the affidavit and other related documents could "have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates.”

The affidavit noted that based on the federal investigation, the government believed that the storage room where boxes of presidential records were kept at Mar-a-Lago, as well as Trump's suite, his office and other spaces "within the premises are not currently authorized locations for the storage of classified information."

In June, Justice Department lawyers sent Trump's attorneys a letter that reiterated that Mar-a-Lago couldn't be used to store classified information, according to the affidavit. The Justice Department asked in the letter that the room where the documents were stored "be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice."

New documents shed light on vast right-wing plan to disrupt democracy

Travis Gettys Via Raw Story

Newly revealed documents shed light on a secretive right-wing group, its well-connected members and extensive efforts undertaken to overturn Donald Trump's election loss.

The Center for Media and Democracy has published the agenda for a recent CNPCouncil for National Policy meeting, in late February, and the watchdog journalists at Documented has obtained the membership roster and the most recent tax filings for the nonprofit organization, and those newly released materials show CNP's role in disrupting U.S. democracy, reported The New Republic.

"CNP archives illustrate the extensive planning its members undertook to discredit the 2020 election results, undermine local election officials, and incite the protest on January 6, 2021," the magazine reported. "The House select committee on January 6 has subpoenaed CNP election expert Cleta Mitchell, and the panel is also examining 29 texts exchanged between then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas (a board member of the CNP’s lobbying arm) in support of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election."

CNP has spawned numerous shadowy offshoots that frequently change their names or vanish, such as the Conservative Partnership Institute, which got $1 million from Trump's "Save America" PAC and counts Mark Meadows as senior partner, and Ginni Thomas ally Cleta Mitchell runs the "Election Integrity Network" under its umbrella.

The February meeting elected a new slate of CNP officers, including new president Tom Fitton, who heads the conservative Judicial Watch; vice president Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who oversaw the key state's troubled 2004 election; secretary Jenny Beth Martin, who took part in the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally; board members Jerry Boykin, a retired Army general and infamous Islamophobe, and Chad Connelly, the national director of faith engagement for the Republican National Committee from 2013 to 2016.

The group also added about two dozen medical professionals, including Jan. 6 and anti-vaxxer Simone Gold, and James Todaro, part of America's Frontline Doctors campaign, which was orchestrated by the CNP and the 2020 Trump campaign to spread coronavirus misinformation.

Founding members Richard Viguerie and Morton Blackwell still play a role in CNP, whose February meeting highlighted a COVID initiative led by Gold and efforts to strengthen ties to the Koch Network and other relationship with other longstanding partners, and Rachel Bovard, CPI's senior director of policy, joined the board of directors at CNP Action in her first year as a member, which signals that offshoot group's importance to the project.

"The Conservative Partnership Institute was recently cited in an Axios report as a prime architect for “Trump 2025,” Trump’s plans for demolishing the federal government should he win a second term," reported The New Republic. "However, Mike Pence became a “dues-paying member” of the CNP this year as well, and there can be little doubt that there are active conversations with Ron DeSantis. The CNP’s leaders have made it clear that their objective is not the personality, it’s the outcome."

DOJ worried Trump's 'criminal confederates' might flee or tamper with evidence in Mar-A-Lago case

Travis Gettys via Raw Story

The Department of Justice wanted to keep the Mar-A-Lago affidavit sealed because investigators were concerned about tipping off additional suspects in the case.

A federal judge ordered the affidavit supporting the search warrant to be unsealed, with redactions of sensitive material, and the document showed that investigators were concerned about revealing the scope of their probe and their sources of evidence, arguing that witnesses could be threatened and their work could be obstructed.

"It is respectfully requested that this Court issue an order sealing, until further order of the Court, all papers submitted in support of this application, including the application and search warrant," said the FBI agent who signed the affidavit. "I believe that sealing this document is necessary because the items and information to be seized are relevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation."

They cited concerns about notifying those "potential criminal confederates" that their involvement was under investigation, which could give them a chance to interfere with the probe.

"Premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates," the affiant wrote.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Republican CNN contributors promote anti-LGBTQ Libs of TikTok account

SOPHIE LAWTON via Media Matters

On CNN, conservative contributors Scott Jennings and Margaret Hoover recently voiced support for the anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok.

Libs of TikTok is a right-wing Twitter account run by Chaya Raichik that targets educators and businesses that support LGBTQ rights, inspiring harassment from followers. Raichik has expanded the Libs of TikTok brand to Facebook, Instagram, and a personal Substack account, though Facebook reportedly suspended the account for less than 24 hours last week after it led an anti-trans campaign against Boston Children’s Hospital.

On August 17, conservative political commentator Margaret Hoover boosted the account, saying that “gets traction because it's in response to, you know, a changing of the curriculum to diminish some of the core themes of American civics education and that is, that is actually a real thing.” Hoover went on to suggest parents are supportive of Libs of TikTok because their kids aren’t learning enough about the Constitution.

On August 18, after a panel of parents discussed their anxieties about their children returning to school in the fall, conservative commentator Scott Jennings referenced a parent comment about Libs of TikTok, saying, “They’ve gotten quite famous posting videos of people from schools.” Democratic strategist Maria Cardona called out the misinformation and disinformation around online videos in classrooms and argued against Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” law. Jennings replied, “You can't deny, there have been some anecdotes, some examples, of teachers who have tried to inject some of these things.”

Anchor Alisyn Camerota and Cardona were quick to call out Jennings for citing Libs of TikTok, with Camerota saying, “You can’t use that as your source.”

Right-wing media promise to harass Anthony Fauci in retirement if Republicans win back control of Congress

ERIC KLEEFELD, BUSHRA SULTANA & SHELBY JAMERSON via Media Matters

When presidential medical adviser Anthony Fauci announced h

is plans to retire in December after five decades of public service, right-wing media personalities predictably attacked him, calling him a “sociopathic liar and political hack” who “needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.”

On Monday, Fauci announced he intends to step down as President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser and as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In response, right-wing media mounted a public onslaught, claiming that Fauci is stepping down to avoid investigations if Republicans take control of Congress in November, directing the GOP to investigate Fauci if the party should take control, proclaiming Fauci should face criminal charges and be sent to prison, and generally attacking his character.

Even Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, who had previously served as a seeming voice of reason and who has previously interviewed Fauci at the network, pressed the retiring public servant about whether his retirement was really just “a way to avoid Republican investigators.”

Right-wing media, especially Fox News, have been maligning Fauci since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted, then-President Donald Trump’s “media supporters could not or would not try to directly challenge the president,” whose administration’s response included recommendations of stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures, “and settled instead on targeting Fauci, who was a face of the administration’s response.” The smear campaign against Fauci didn’t stop; over a roughly 10-month period in 2021, Fox News personalities attacked him over 400 times.

Fauci may plan to retire at the end of the year, but the right-wing echo chamber is prepared to hound him for years to come if given the opportunity.

Claims that Fauci is stepping down to avoid oversight

Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson speculated that Fauci may have resigned because he thinks the Republicans are going to take over Congress in the midterm elections and does not want to be investigated by them. “So it's possible that Tony Fauci might want to resign before he has to explain all of that to a new Congress,” Carlson said. “He might want to get out of town now and move to, say, Cambridge, find a safe place to hide before the reckoning. Just a thought. Because honestly, there's a lot to answer for.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8/22/22]
Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham speculated that “Fauci thinks this retirement would save him from a congressional investigation or a subpoena.” She then interviewed Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who said congressional Republicans would want to investigate Fauci based on the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was human-made. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/22/22]
Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton claimed, “Sociopathic liar and political hack Fauci is making a run for it before Republicans can take over the House.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
Right-wing radio host Dana Loesch claimed Fauci “doesn't want that GOP-controlled House oversight.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed that Fauci “seems to think stepping down before Republicans take the House will get him off scot-free.” Watters made this pronouncement just hours after Fauci appeared on Fox and told Neil Cavuto that he would not avoid appearing before Congress. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/23/22]
The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam: “BREAKING: Fauci to step down right before Republicans are expected to take control of Congress and commence investigations into his funding of the Wuhan Lab and pandemic response.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
Conservative pundit Mercedes Schlapp claimed “it's no coincidence” that Fauci announced he will step down in December, noting that it “is right after Republicans will take back the House and immediately plan oversight into our pandemic response and his funding of gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Calls for congressional Republicans to investigate Fauci

Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity declared that “Fauci still needs to be held accountable for all of the lies and misdirections.” He then interviewed Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who predicted that if there is a Republican-controlled Congress, it would subpoena Fauci to testify next year. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/22/22]
Fox’s “news side” presented a more respectable face for the right’s determination to investigate Fauci. Fox contributor Marc Thiessen discussed the need for an “after-action study” of the nation’s COVID-19 response, while blaming Fauci for various aspects of both the pandemic response and its economic consequences. Concluding the segment, co-anchor Bill Hemmer said that in “2023, I think we’ll see him again.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/23/22]
Fox anchor Sandra Smith asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS): “What do you want to see happen as far as holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his actions during this pandemic?” Marshall then repeatedly and falsely accused Fauci of covering up the supposed creation of COVID-19 in a lab, statements which Smith did not challenge. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/23/22; FactCheck.org, 5/19/22]
Former White House adviser Peter Navarro said on Newsmax that the government should to “take that SOB’s passport” so Fauci cannot flee a Republican-led congressional investigation. Navarro himself was recently indicted for a charge of contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. [Newsmax, Eric Bolling: The Balance, 8/22/22; NPR, 6/4/22]

Calls for Fauci’s to face criminal charges and/or prison

“Stop the Steal” organizer Alex Bruesewitz wrote that Fauci “should be investigated, and quite frankly arrested, for what he put our country through.” [Twitter, 8/22/22; Media Matters, 7/27/22]
Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk declared that Fauci “belongs in prison.” He continued, “Seize the passports. Freeze his pension, distribute it to his victims. Lawyer up. Time to hold him accountable for the last 3 years.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
Right-wing radio host Clay Travis wrote that Fauci “belongs in prison,” claiming he is the “most destructive bureaucrat in United States history.” Travis also said Fauci’s “‘leadership’ on covid will — in the decades ahead — come to be seen as one of the greatest and most destructive failures in our nation’s history.” [Twitter, 8/22/22]
Right-wing podcasters Diamond & Silk: “Fauci doesn't need to just step down, he should be arrested for Crimes Against Humanity!” [Twitter, 8/22/22]

Attacks on Fauci’s character

DOJ releases unredacted Barr memo on Trump obstruction in Mueller probe

By Ryan J. Reilly and Dareh Gregorian via NBC News

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday released the unredacted version of a 2019 memo that made the case to then-Attorney General William Barr that President Donald Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation.

The nine-page memo from Mar. 24, 2019, was written by then-Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel and Ed O’Callaghan, who served as the DOJ's principal associate deputy attorney general. Barr, a critic of then-special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, had announced that DOJ would not prosecute the case the same day the memo was sent to Barr.

Released in response to a lawsuit by a government watchdog group, the memo states that volume II of Mueller's report "is not, in our judgment, sufficient to support a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the President violated the obstruction-of-justice statutes." It was made public following a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Even if there weren't any constitutional barriers to charging a president, the memo argued, the DOJ should decline to charge Trump.

The Mueller probe did not establish any "underlying crime related to Russian interference" and it wasn't clear that Trump didn't want the investigation, the memo's authors wrote in their rationale against bringing charges.

"In the absence of an underlying offense, the most compelling inference in evaluating the President's conduct is that he reasonably believed that the Special Counsel's investigation was interfering with his governing agenda," the memo states. "Even if the President were objectively wrong about the intentions of the Special Counsel, many, if not all, of his actions could be viewed as lacking the intent element under the relevant statutes."

Barr cited the memo by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel as a reason for not pursuing the charges against Trump after he received Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The portion of the memo that Barr cited was released last year.

When the left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sought the memo under the Freedom of Information Act, the DOJ argued it wasn’t required to release the document under an exception covering materials intended to aid senior officials in making decision.

In a ruling last year, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson criticized the government's position, saying the memo did not fit the exemption for “deliberative” documents. In an earlier ruling, she said Barr's mind had already been made up before the memo was written.

The Justice Department appealed the decision ordering the release of the full document, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against DOJ last week. “Because the Department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the Department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,” the ruling said.

The Mueller report identified 10 episodes that could be considered potential obstruction of justice, but did not come to a conclusion on whether to charge the president for them.

After reading the Mueller report, many people had strongly disagreed with the analysis laid out in the memo. Hundreds of former federal prosecutors argued in an open letter that Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president.

In a statement Wednesday, CREW said the unsealed portions of the memo present "a breathtakingly generous view of the law and facts for Donald Trump. It significantly twists the facts and the law to benefit Donald Trump and does not comport with a serious reading of the law of obstruction of justice or the facts as found by Special Counsel Mueller."

Growing Evidence Against a Republican Wave

By Nate Cohn via New York Times

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a G.O.P. advantage.

At the beginning of this year’s midterm campaign, analysts and political operatives had every reason to expect a strong Republican showing this November. President Biden’s approval rating was in the low 40s, and the president’s party has a long history of struggling in midterm elections.

But as the start of the general election campaign nears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find any concrete signs of Republican strength.

Tuesday’s strong Democratic showing in a special congressional election in New York’s 19th District is only the latest example. On paper, this classic battleground district in the Hudson Valley and Catskills is exactly where the Republicans would be expected to flip a seat in a so-called wave election. But the Democrat Pat Ryan prevailed over a strong Republican nominee, Marc Molinaro, by around two percentage points, outperforming Mr. Biden’s narrow win in the district two years ago.

The result adds to a growing pile of evidence suggesting that Democrats have rebounded in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in late June to overturn Roe v. Wade. No matter the indicator, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage.

One special election would be easy to dismiss. But it’s not alone.

There have been five special congressional elections since the court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe, and Democrats have outperformed Mr. Biden’s 2020 showing in four of them. In the fifth district, Alaska’s at-large House special, the ranked-choice voting count is not complete, but they appear poised to outperform him there as well.

On average, Republicans carried the four completed districts by 3.7 percentage points, compared with Donald J. Trump’s 7.7-point edge in the same districts two years ago. The results aren’t merely worse than expected for Republicans; they’re straightforwardly poor. Republicans need to fare better than Mr. Trump, who lost the national vote by 4.5 points in 2020, to retake the House — let alone contemplate winning the Senate.

But strength among high-turnout white voters can get a party pretty far in low-turnout midterm elections, which tend to have a relatively whiter electorate. Perhaps in part for that reason, there is a decent historical relationship between special election results and midterm outcomes. And before Dobbs, Republicans were outrunning Mr. Trump in special congressional elections. Since then, the pattern has reversed.

While there’s plenty of room for debate about exactly what the special election results mean for November, there’s no dispute that the results are plainly positive for Democrats.

Democrats have made steady gains on the generic congressional ballot, a poll question asking voters whether they prefer Democrats or Republicans for Congress.

Overall, Democrats now have the slightest advantage on this measure, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. That represents about a three-point swing toward the Democrats since mid-June, when Republicans led before the Dobbs ruling.

A tight generic ballot represents a real improvement for Democrats. If the polls are right — a big “if” after the last few cycles — it suggests a fairly competitive district-by-district battle for control of the House, rather than the expected Republican rout.

Realistically, Republicans would remain clearly favored — the House map is still modestly tilted in their favor, and Democrats would have to win an outsize share of the competitive races to hold the chamber. But the notion that Democrats can even dream about House control is a remarkable turn from earlier in the cycle, when the House was all but penciled into the Republican column.

It’s still a little early to look at polls pitting Democratic candidates against Republican ones in specific races. Many candidates remain unknown, and the general election campaign is just getting underway.

But the early state and district polls do look relatively promising for Democrats. That’s especially true in the Senate, where a simple polling average might even show Democrats poised to make gains.

The House polls are consistent with the generic ballot results. On average, Democrats are running about 4.7 points behind Mr. Biden’s performance across 40 nonpartisan House polls taken since the Dobbs decision. That would be consistent with a close national vote.

After the last few cycles of polling misfires, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of state surveys — especially in the relatively white working-class battleground states where the polls seem to have consistently underestimated Republicans.

But here again, the long-awaited “red wave” is nowhere to be found.

This is a bit of an odd one, but it’s a surprisingly useful measure and it doesn’t show much of a red wave either.

Washington State has a top-two primary in which all of the candidates from both parties appear on the same primary ballot; the top two candidates advance to the general election.

As a result, the Washington primary is a lot more like a general election than the typical primary — not only is every voter eligible, but voters can also select the Democrat or Republican of their choosing in every race. For good measure, Washington has universal vote-by-mail, which tends to keep the turnout pretty high. It’s more like the typical midterm electorate than some of the recent special elections.

The results of the Washington primary usually do a decent job of predicting the outcome of the fall election. In some years, Democrats do a bit better in November than in the primary; in other years, Republicans do. But it’s not usually hugely different. In retrospect, the solid Republican showing in the 2020 Washington primary was one of the better reasons to doubt the polls heading into November 2020.

This cycle, the Democratic candidates for House ran two points behind Mr. Biden’s performance in 2020 (excluding the two districts where pro-impeachment Republicans in safely Republican districts clearly benefited from considerable levels of strategic crossover support from Democrats).

Yet again, it’s a result that’s consistent with a fairly evenly divided national vote for the House.

Of all the indicators, primary elections are probably the single messiest measure of the national political environment. From state to state and cycle to cycle, voters may either have a very compelling reason to show up — or no reason to vote whatsoever. A strong or weak Democratic or Republican primary turnout can mean absolutely nothing.

But if all the states are added together, the vagaries of individual state primary elections more or less cancel out. Over the last few decades, partisan primary turnout does correlate relatively well with the results of midterm elections.

In 15 primaries since the court’s ruling, 52.5 percent of primary voters have cast Republican primary ballots compared with 48 percent in the same states in 2018, according to data compiled by the pollster John Couvillon. The last midterm is used as the point of comparison because of the one-party presidential primary in 2020.

Of course, 2018 was a good year for Democrats. In the end, they won 54 percent of the major party vote and carried the House easily. So they have room to fare quite a bit worse than they did in 2018 and still put up a respectable showing. Indeed, a 4.5-point shift from 2018 would yield a pretty close House national vote, with maybe a slight Republican edge depending on how one looks at uncontested races.

And that 4.5-point Republican overperformance is a little worse for Republicans than earlier in the year. Before Roe, Republicans were running 6.7 points better than in the 2018 primaries in the same states. It’s hard to read a lot into this shift — primaries, again, are very idiosyncratic, with the competitiveness of different races and eligibility rules making a big difference. But the shift, however unreliable, is nonetheless consistent with the broader national story.

There’s still one measure that’s positive for Republicans: President Biden’s approval rating.

It’s stuck in the low 40s, according to FiveThirtyEight, though it seems to have risen along with Democratic fortunes over the last few months.

It’s hard to think of any precedent for the president’s party to fare even half decently with such an unpopular president. The closest recent analogue might be Jimmy Carter in 1978. He held control of Congress despite an approval rating around 50 percent. (His approval rating was similar to Mr. Biden’s in August, but it increased after the Camp David Accords in September.)

Perhaps someone could construe the Democratic hold in the House in the 1950 midterms as somewhat analogous, though Democrats lost 28 seats and saw a net seven-point shift toward Republicans.

Ultimately, it’s possible that Mr. Biden’s approval rating will drag down the Democrats. It may even begin to drag them down by the other measures even before the fall election.

But for now, his approval rating stands apart as the only hard measurement that argues for a decisive Republican victory this fall.

Motor City Liberal