good morning. and welcome to way too early. on this tuesday, june 21st, i m jonathan lemire. thanks for joining us. we are now hours away from the fourth public hearing by the january 6th committee. this afternoon, we will hear much more about this infamous phone call. all i want to do is this. i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. so what are we going to do here, folks? i only need 11,000 votes. fellas, i need 11,000 votes. give me a break. that was former president trump calling georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger days before the insurrection, pressuring him to find the votes needed to win georgia. 11,780. raffensperger is one of three republicans testifying today. the other two are raffensperger s top deputy, gabe sterling and arizona house speaker rusty bowers who says trump and rudy giuliani called him after the election asking for help to overturn president biden s victory in his state. we re also goi
strained relationship between china and the united states. and on capitol hill, kyrsten sinema is in the spotlight. the arizona senator is staying sigh leapt on whether she will support a major bill for her own party. good morning and welcome to way too early on this wednesday, august 3rd. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for being with us. we re going to begin with that major victory for abortion rights. voters in kansas have rejected an effort to remove the right to the procedure from the state s constitution. this marks the first time abortion rights was put to a vote since the supreme court overturned roe v. wade back in june. with the november midterms coming up, the kansas vote signals that abortion could be an energizing issue. according to an associated press estimate, turnout for yesterday s primary far exceeded other recent contests with about 900,000 kansas voters casting a ballot. president biden celebrated the win, writing in part, this vote makes clear what
Reporter for bloomberg news, our friend josh. let s start with reproductive rights. the president issues second executive order. give us a sense what is the white house saying as to how this could blunt the impact of that supreme court overturn and how it could help people looking to access the procedure if they live in a state that has banned it. john, as you know, president biden has been under pressure since this roe ruling came down and since it leaked before that to do something. a lot of democrats were underwhelmed with the measures he took in the hours and days after the ruling came down. they have sort of been searching the cup boards. biden is quite hesitant to shall we say push the limits of what their legal authority could be in a way that his predecessor, trump, sort of barged through and would do. so, the kind of core couple of things here is that they re trying to direct the use of medicaid funds for travel across
Sense what kind of relief it could provide? and is there any climate change provisions being discussed? this is the big jump ball. and joe manchin, if he wants energy provision, wants some for conventional energy, west virginia, a coal state, and so this is one of the sort of things that is up in the air, and yes, that is one of the things that joe biden is talking about there being in. there he has been hinting at this, john, sort of pulling back the curt an bit and saying he thinks they now have the votes. it is tough to transition, remember, to reduce the deficit, which they want to happen so they can say it is fighting inflation, among other things, he needs to raise revenue and the other senator, kyrsten sinema of arizona, has been sort of a thorn in the side of the biden administration, has been cooler to some of the revenue proposals. so man chip on the one side on energy, getting his bite, and one thing, and then paying for it all, cutting that deaf sit on the other side, the
Cards this week, and needless to say they are looking at a bill that would reduce the deficit and raise revenue, probably by taxing ormgs corporations and high earners, joe biden pledges not to tax people earning under 400 grand a year and cut the cost of insulin and that sort of thing to save some families money on one end if they can t do much on the other end when it comes to gas prices and you heard joe biden spoke with larry summers and summers has been an oracle on this, and saying inflation is running away an getting worse than the administration was willing to admit at the start, and one of the thing he is saying, for inflation to cool off, he thinks we need a sustained high unemployment rate for several years and the unemployment rate is hovering near modern lows right now so he is signaling and presumably told joe biden yesterday in a phone call that there is some pain ahead on this. and josh, if this were to get done and i think democrats are skeptical with anything with j