Amy Klobuchar

First Lady Melania Trump held a roundtable on Capitol Hill Monday with victims of revenge porn, deepfakes and sextortion in support of the "Take It Down Act." The “Take It Down Act” is a bipartisan bill cosponsored by Senators Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar that would require social-media platforms to remove any nonconsensual intimate images within forty-eight hours of a victim’s request. While the act passed the Senate with a unanimous vote, FLOTUS hopes it will be passed with the same enthusiasm in the House before being signed into law by her husband. She called for the prioritization of “robust security measures and to uphold strict ethical standards to protect individual privacy.

The Republican National Committee’s memorable four-day convention came to an end in Milwaukee last night. With an unusual performance from Kid Rock, a shirt-ripping Hulk Hogan and dozens of Trump-humanizing speeches, the RNC managed to throw a party that drew some attention, some laughs and certainly some tears — from worried Democratic strategists and enamored Trump-fans alike.It was, as The Spectator’s James Heale put it, “the first convention in twenty years where polls suggest the Republicans are on course to win the White House, producing an air of expectation and excitement.

Marianne Williamson entered the 2024 race hoping to be its Bernie Sanders. But it looks like she’s the new Amy Klobuchar. The spiritual leader and author entered the Democratic primary to challenge Joe Biden earlier this month. Now Politico has spoken to "twelve people who worked for Williamson during her 2020 presidential campaign" who "paint a picture of a boss who can be verbally and emotionally abusive." Congratulations to Politico for finding a dozen people who worked for Marianne — and revealing that her last run was not so namaste... Politico reports, "Williamson would throw her phone at staffers... Her outbursts could be so loud that two former aides recounted at least four occasions when hotel staff knocked on her door to check on the situation.

Katie Porter, darling of the liberal media, is having a rough couple of weeks. The California congresswoman has recently been accused of: firing an employee who allegedly gave her Covid; using racist language, and fostering a hostile workplace. These are explosive allegations to be levied against a high-profile Democrat, yet the general public would never have heard of any of them were it not for an anonymous Instagram account that did the job of the entire DC press corps. “Rep. Katie Porter fires staffer after both test positive for COVID,” Dear White Staffers posted last week, sharing Signal messages purporting to be from Porter’s now-former staffer where the congresswoman berated her employee. “Well you gave me Covid,” Porter’s messages read.

A major anti-Big Tech bill is heading to the floor of the Senate after a frustrating markup session in the Judiciary Committee. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, as it's called, majorly changes how online retailers can sell and promote their own branded wares and apps. It even bans Amazon and Google from suggesting their own products over those of a third party. Supporters from both sides of the aisle are portraying the bill as a great leveler of sorts. They believe it helps consumers and the so-called “little guy” against the Big Tech companies.

Bob Dole passed away this week, and according to the press coverage, he took with him an entire golden age of senatorial comity. The New York Times characterized Dole's time in the Senate as "the days when Republicans and Democrats at least tried to work together" while praising "his instincts as a deal maker." It was yet another lament for a supposed Pax Bipartisana gone by — and it's not like the Times is entirely wrong. Congress really was less dysfunctional during the 1980s and 90s when Dole was at his prime. But just as the famous Ronald Reagan/Tip O'Neill working relationship is overrated (Tip in his memoir: "It was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became president"), so too was Dole not just some huk-yukking back-slapper.

The long slog towards government regulation of social media is snaking its way towards reality. The House and Senate hold hearings this week on bills enacting rules on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Many of these proposals revolve around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a rather innocuous 1996 law protecting online platforms from civil liability for hosting and moderating third-party content. Section 230 includes language praising “the vibrant and competitive free market” existing for the internet and tech companies, without state or federal government rules. It’s all about to change twenty-five years later, with both major parties seeking to get their pound of ideological flesh from Big Tech.

Long before her Senate confirmation hearings, we knew Judge Amy Coney Barrett was smart. A Supreme Court clerkship and prolific career in the legal academy added up to someone uncommonly capable of hard work. That she is Catholic with seven kids — the ‘dogma lives loudly in her’, to borrow Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s immortal slur — is well known. What we didn’t expect was the hearing’s greatest surprise: Judge Barrett is normal.That is no minor relief in an America that increasingly seems a little unhinged. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse came to the Senate floor bearing an incomprehensible series of partially hand-scrawled charts, like a conspiracy theorist storming a town hall.

Move over, Kamala — there’s a new bad sheriff in town. After the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s prosecutorial record is finally coming under serious scrutiny. While Harris copped a fair share of criticism during the Democratic primary for her stint locking up African Americans, Klobuchar managed to evade a similar onslaught. But now, with Minnesota in flames and her hat in the Veep ring, people are paying attention: in 2006, during her tenure as Hennepin County attorney, Klobuchar failed to criminally charge Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with killing George Floyd.

As we inch closer to the Democratic National Convention in August, the question looms ever larger: who will Joe Biden choose as his running mate? Running mates are usually chosen to inoculate the party’s ticket from a vulnerability. in 2008, for instance, Sen. Biden was the career statesman running mate chosen to cover for Barack Obama’s inexperience. In 2016, Mike Pence was the evangelical bonafide Republican picked to help Donald Trump the outsider. Biden’s team knows he must pick someone who will act as a human shield against his biggest issue: women.

With just under six months to go, now is a good time to assess where things stand in the 2020 presidential election. You would think that with the Wuhan virus pandemic, predicting the outcome of the 2020 election would be even harder than normal. Given the sheer ‘redness’ and ‘blueness’ of most states, however, the only meaningful change will occur in the 10 or so states we’ve categorized as battleground states over the last five elections. Historically, the last real landslide presidential election occurred in 1988 when George H.W. Bush won 40 states and 426 electoral votes as he earned 53.6 percent of the popular vote. Bill Clinton’s 370 electoral votes in 1992 papered over the fact he only received 43 percent of the popular vote.

Joe Biden needs a co-president. Not just a running mate, not just a potential vice president, but someone who will be president-in-waiting should Biden win in November — the month he turns 78. The idea of Biden running for a second term in 2024 at the age of 81 is hard to take seriously. So far, this is something everybody knows but nobody is taking seriously enough. The question of Biden’s current mental acuity has become a campaign issue, but even Democrats who believe Biden is up to the job of being president in 2020 will have a tough time arguing that he’d be fit to serve a second term. In looking at the Democratic ticket this year, voters will in effect be asked to vote not just for a president but for a 2024 nominee as well.

Perhaps the intense wave of establishment Democratic party consolidation around Joe Biden over the past 48 hours isn’t a concerted conspiracy — no smoke-filled rooms, no corrupt deals, no villainous blackmail schemes. But the Democratic party establishment (which we’re often told does not exist) is clearly making every effort to give the appearance of something conspiratorial going on.Take yesterday, for instance. Pete Buttigieg meets for breakfast with 95-year-old Jimmy Carter (?), ensures the visit is well-publicized, then heads home to South Bend and pulls the rug out from under his campaign. Wait, what? Is this the same Pete Buttigieg whose aides just a few days earlier released an elaborate memo detailing his surefire path to a formidable delegate acquisition?

Unlike the previous snoozers where all the candidates pretended to like each other, the debate in Nevada ahead of their caucuses, was exciting. It’s what happens when six politicians, picked to be on a stage together, stop being polite and start being real. But it’s unlikely to make a blip of difference. For one thing, most of the candidates didn’t do what was in their self-interest. Joe Biden had one real job — take the nomination away from runaway train Bernie Sanders. Instead, he let the Mike Bloomberg media campaign get into his head. Bloomberg isn’t on the ballot in Nevada and he isn’t on the ballot in the next contest in South Carolina either.

Two big stories have emerged from New Hampshire. The first is not surprising: Bernie Sanders has won. The second is that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have stolen Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden’s thunder. The ‘Klobucharge’ is the surprise of the evening. She is replacing Warren as the leading woman in the race and Biden as the moderate centrist. Warren’s campaign is not disintegrating quite as fast as Biden’s, and she was expecting a bad night — but not this bad. The polls in recent days have shown Klobuchar thriving, but she seems to have surpassed even those. It is widely thought she did best in the last two TV debates.