Obama Interviews Author About Faith, Democracy

By WILL WEISSERT (Associated Press) WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is spending $50 million through the end of June, a blitz that includes its first television ad trumpeting Donald Trump’s felony conviction and signals that the Democratic incumbent is seeking to make his Republican opponent’s legal woes a bigger issue heading into November. The advertising push comes with Election Day still months away.

By ALI SWENSON, DAN MERICA and GARANCE BURKE (Associated Press) Adrian Perkins was running for reelection as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, when he was surprised by a harsh campaign hit piece. The satirical TV commercial, paid for by a rival political action committee, used artificial intelligence to depict Perkins as a high school student who had been called into the principal’s office.

This is what justice looks like, and the only surprise is that it hasn't yet happened in more states. That it's finally happening in the state that was the setting to The Wire is a beauiful thing, since the stark TV series showed how the war on drugs corrupted everyone involved.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) dismissed concerns that a Republican member of his committee used drugs while serving two presidents in the White House. During a Sunday interview on Face the Nation, CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Turner about reports that Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), a former White House doctor, used alcohol and Ambien while on an overseas trip where he was in charge of caring for a president.

On this day in 1971, singer-songwriter Carole King began a record-breaking 15-week run at the top of the US album charts with Tapestry. Digby's Hullabaloo: Get In The Fight! Progress Pond: The Right Shuts Down the Stanford Internet Observatory and Election Integrity Partnership. Crooked Timber: Macron’s gamble and the myth of the Republican Barrier. Attention space nerds!

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo turned to Ben Carson to ask if President Joe Biden would live to see the 2024 election. During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Carson claimed that Americans "don't have leadership." "Well, you have somebody who's impaired with the nuclear codes in charge of the military, in charge of the safety of the people of our country," Carson said. Bartiromo asserted there were "questions about President Biden's capacity" because of his behavior on a recent trip to Italy. "You're a doctor," she told Carson.