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I have been meaning to weigh in on [cue scary music] Special Counsel David Weiss’s sham indictment of Hunter Biden on felony gun charges for a few days. I am glad I waited.  It’s not that I have changed my mind about the indictments, or company man Weiss. Everyone knows he is on the job as an interior decorator, whose primary task is to produce window dressing for the Department of Injustice so that its two-tier deployment of police power is not too obvious to the casual onlooker. Weiss has supposedly been investigating Hunter Biden for the last five years. Wouldn’t you know it, the statute of limitation on many of the tax charges is passing by like that herd of cows outside your train window even as I write.

At midnight Friday, more than 12,000 workers walked out of factories owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, marking the first time in history that the United Auto Workers union has gone on strike against all of the Big Three auto manufacturers at once. The UAW started contract negotiations asking for a 40 percent pay increase over four years and a four-day work week. The Big Three have countered with an offer of an approximately 20 percent pay increase, which would make up for real wage decline due to inflation since 2008. Neither side has moved significantly since bargaining began two months ago.  The unprecedented strike is centered in the Midwest, but it no doubt has major political ramifications back in the nation’s capital.

For more half a decade, the massive nonprofit now officially blessed by Bidenworld to be its main backup on the outside has been soliciting donations via ActBlue, the Democrats’ top online fundraising tool. It turns out that this is almost certainly illegal. According to website archives, the Future Forward USA Action (FFUSA) has had a “donate” button on its homepage that links to an ActBlue site since at least 2018. Groups like FFUSA are usually given about two years to get their paperwork in order, but for a group this big to be this far behind in getting its act together is raising eyebrows in the campaign finance world.

You don't need to be a political genius to see that this Hunter Biden indictment is an obvious smokescreen for the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill. The three-part indictment is very simple and straightforward and could’ve been brought a long time ago... so why this week? Why does it come after a rough opening to September for Democrats, with horrible polls released concerning Joe Biden's age and approval ratings — and particularly the same week that Republicans finally pulled the trigger on an impeachment inquiry? First, it serves to muddy the waters.

Lauren Boebert first gained notoriety back in 2019 as the pint-sized, gun-toting citizen who confronted Beto O’Rourke over his “hell yes” pledge to take our AR-15s and AK-47s. Since then, of course, Boebert has been elected twice to the US House of Representatives, where her behavior — “clashing with Capitol Police after setting off metal detectors,” feuding with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House floor — habitually makes headlines.   Yesterday, news broke that Boebert and a companion had been escorted out of a musical adaptation of Beetlejuice in Denver for “vaping, singing, recording and ‘causing a disturbance’ during the performance.

Impeaching a president may not have the same power it once did in Washington. But the announcement of an official inquiry today by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is the first time Capitol Hill Republicans have seriously deployed impeachment in a quarter century. Much as Republicans hated Barack Obama, and much as they could have found a path to impeaching him with their large post-Tea Party Congressional majorities, they never went down this path. This is the new aggressive politics in an age of lawfare — but it’s also justified by what we already know, and what we’ve learned in the past year. “I’m directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy announced.

The Democrats are having a hard time keeping their story straight on abortion. Last week, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki claimed on her MSNBC show (which should be called The Spin Zone) that “no one supports abortion up until birth,” only to then describe all of the scenarios in which she would support a late-term abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris similarly balked in a CBS interview Sunday with Margaret Brennan when asked if she would support any limits on abortion. Instead, she opted to reiterate several times that “we need to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade.” The inability of Democrats to articulate what abortion limits they support is a feature, not a bug.

“Everything’s bigger in Texas” is one of those clichés that happens to be entirely true. With the diminution of the importance of impeachment as a political issue on the federal level, the Lone Star State seems obliged to take up the slack — and the impeachment of controversial Attorney General Ken Paxton is turning into a process that pits the highest-paid power lawyers in Texas against each other in a duel to the death. There's been plenty of color in the proceedings, and not just from Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee, whose heavily tanned appearance led him to take to Instagram to accuse "reputable media organizations" of editing his skin tone in photographs (watchers had started passing around memes of Buzbee as an Oompa Loompa). "So you think the news isn’t bias [sic]?

Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze in place and was unable to answer questions for an agonizing period. The incident raised concerns about both his age (eighty-one) and health. But it should spark a larger debate about the gerontocracy that sits atop America's government. In January, the Pew Research Center reported that the Senate's median age is now 65.3 years old. That's up from 62.4 years old as recently as 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency. More senators have been eligible for Social Security than not for years. Just this Monday, an Associated Press poll found 77 percent of Americans think eighty-year-old President Biden is too old to effectively govern in a second term. That included 69 percent of all Democrats.

First lady Jill Biden, who received the Covid-19 vaccine and boosters, has tested positive for the virus again. President Joe Biden, while presently unafflicted, is instead battling dismal approval ratings. A Wall Street Journal poll this week found that “voters overwhelmingly think President Biden is too old to run for re-election and give him low marks for handling the economy and other issues important to their vote…”Similarly, an Associated Press-NORC poll released last month found “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89 percent of Republicans say that, so do 69 percent of Democrats.

The signals coming from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are that his Republican majority will soon launch a formal impeachment investigation. The final decision hasn’t been announced — and an investigation is still a far cry from a full House vote. But setting up an impeachment committee is an essential first step. Most of his caucus wants to take it.  Most, but not all. The reservations of some Republicans and the calculations behind them are why McCarthy has moved slowly. The speaker’s problem is more than rounding up votes. The other problem is the investigation carries real risks as well as benefits.  The biggest benefit is a technical, legal one.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where you should never let a crisis go to waste, and Donald Trump isn’t wasting any time bashing Ron DeSantis even in the midst of hurricane recovery efforts, hoping to stomp on what could be an opportunity to show off his good governance chops. The White House, meanwhile, is struggling not just with frustration over their delayed response to the Maui disaster and the president’s insistence on repeatedly telling his exaggerated anecdotes about a house fire, but also the anniversary of another, different kind of disaster: the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which brought Gold Star families to bear against the administration this week. The guys discuss all this and more on the latest Thunderdome podcast — listen and subscribe here today!

Before we get to the main item, a quick bit of housekeeping. Today’s DC Diary will be my last. I’m leaving The Spectator, but am happy to report that the Diary will live on after my departure. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to try and make sense of the often confusing, sometimes maddening news out of Washington over the last few years. I leave you in the more than capable hands of my talented Spectator colleagues.  For a brief time on Wednesday night, America was offered a glimpse of a Republican Party not dominated by Donald Trump. Candidates on the debate stage swapped views on important issues. From Ukraine to abortion, the conversation was substantive, occasionally fiery and, I imagine, illuminating for an undecided primary voter who tuned in.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where at long last, the 2024 debate is joined by our would-be champions. And also Asa Hutchinson was there. The night held surprises for several candidates, including going against much of what prognosticators thought would happen. But how much does it mean without the presence of Donald Trump, who ditched the debate, did a pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson that produced no news, and had his squad of surrogates rejected at the doors of the spin room? We discussed all of this, winners and losers, and more on the latest podcast — listen and subscribe today!

What, if anything, is at stake in tonight’s Republican primary debate?  The front-runner is skipping the event, instead providing voters with a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, before heading to Fulton County, Georgia, tomorrow to turn himself in. As for the eight candidates who will be on the stage — and I don’t want to sound uncharitable here — none has shown any hint of being capable of making a dent in the former president’s commanding poll lead. Underscoring the extent to which this primary is proving to be a rerun of the Trump show, Fox News will reportedly be playing clips of the former president as part of the debate.

Democrats constantly downplay Hunter Biden’s troubles and any felonies he might have committed. The legacy media avoid them entirely. What do they say when they can’t bury the story? Their most common defense is also their most important: Hunter Biden’s troubles matter only if they can be linked directly to his father and specifically to Joe’s official position. So far, they say, those links are weak and unproven. What other defenses do they put forward? First, they say that whatever money Hunter made from his foreign business dealings, he did not benefit from any official action taken by the vice president. Neither did Joe himself. Those points are crucial. Second, it’s not a crime to benefit from your family name.