"After a confidential human source claimed then-Vice President Joe Biden agreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions, FBI agents used what's called an FD-1023 form to record the allegation. Now FBI Director Christopher Wray is defying a May 3 congressional subpoena to provide this form. On Tuesday, in response to Wray's refusal to hand over the documents, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer announced the House will move to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.

"It isn't that announcement -- or even the other explosive ones released over the past year by Comer's Senate colleague, Chuck Grassley -- that prove the most telling, however. Rather, it is the combination of all the details, big and small, that suggests the scandal set to unfold over the coming weeks will be bigger than anyone imagined."

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"West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) is leading incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) by 22 points in a hypothetical U.S. Senate matchup in 2024, according to a poll released Tuesday.

"Justice leads Manchin 54 percent to 32 percent, with 13 percent of respondents saying they are undecided, according to an East Carolina University Center for Survey Research poll of registered voters in West Virginia.

"The same survey found that Justice has a job-approval rating of 57 percent and a 29-percent disapproval rating. Manchin's job-approval rating sits at 33 percent, with a 59-percent disapproval rating."

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"The debt ceiling deal reached by the Republican leadership and the administration is far from perfect in the eyes of anyone who cares about runaway government spending (which is the only government spending we know of). But it appears House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was able to block, at least for a year, the hiring of a field army of IRS soldiers. Like a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it's a good start, though there's still a long way to go.

"Among the hundreds of sections in the 99-page bill, No. 251 is 'Rescission of certain balances made available to the Internal Revenue Service.' More specifically, the legislation, if passed and signed as is, cuts almost $1.4 billion 'of the unobligated balances of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available for activities of the Internal Revenue Service' through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022."

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"The Supreme Court scaled back the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to regulate 'waters of the United States' broadly under the Clean Water Act, a win for landowners and business groups that argued the agencies have been overregulating small bodies of water such as wetlands.

"In a technically unanimous ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said the 1972 Clean Water Act's reference to 'waters' that can be regulated are limited to "geographic[al] features that are described in ordinary parlance as 'streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes"' and to 'adjacent wetlands that are "indistinguishable" from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.'

"While the ruling was unanimous, the justices were divided in their reasoning, issuing four separate concurrences. They ultimately contended the landowners lacked enough connection to a nearby lake, meaning they're not required to get a permit under the CWA."

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"The IRS opened an examination of journalist Matt Taibbi's 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve of last year -- three weeks after he exposed sensitive documents about government officials pressuring Twitter to censor content.

"The House Judiciary Committee said Wednesday it obtained that detail and other information about the case from the IRS following the outcry over a tax agent visiting Taibbi's home on March 9, 2022 -- the same day he testified to Congress about the 'Twitter Files.'

"Documents provided to the committee 'raise more questions than they answer,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel in a letter requesting that he make further disclosures."

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"President Joe Biden has another headache emerging as he continues navigating the debt ceiling.

"His $400 billion-plus student debt transfer is under attack on three different fronts, threatening to undo a campaign promise and nix a policy strongly favored by progressives and younger Democratic voters.

"'President Biden's student loan transfer scheme shifts hundreds of billions of dollars of payments from student loan borrowers onto the backs of Americans who did not agree to take out the loans,' Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) told the Washington Examiner on Monday. 'I am proud to lead the fight against President Biden's reckless, unilateral, and unauthorized action that would unfairly penalize those who worked hard to pay off their loans or who never took them out in the first place.'

"Good and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced House Joint Resolution 45 in March, which would use the Congressional Review Act to repeal Biden's program. Republicans have had success at passing resolutions under the Congressional Review Act through the House and Senate to Biden's desk and fought against the debt transfer from the day it was announced.

"The House is scheduled to vote on the resolution today."

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"The prevailing account says Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is walking a tightrope over a shark tank in the debt ceiling talks, sidling precariously between a federal default on one side and the loss of his Speakership on the other.

"The prevailing account might have it all wrong.

"As McCarthy and President Biden race to find common ground on extending the government's borrowing authority, the Speaker has defied the doubts that came with his arduous path to the gavel, building up trust among his conservative naysayers and creating what appears to be a comfortable space to battle Biden over the terms of the debt ceiling hike.

"McCarthy has dragged Biden to the negotiating table, which the president resisted for months. He's taken any tax cuts -- which Democrats have demanded in past debt limit fights -- off the table. And the Speaker's success last month in shepherding a Republican debt-ceiling package through the House -- despite a tiny GOP majority -- has buoyed even some of his fiercest conservative detractors."

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"When Sen. Tim Scott announces his candidacy for president, the South Carolina Republican will try something slightly unusual: He will sell voters on a vision of hope and national reconciliation, rather than the populist grievance currently fueling his competition at the top of the polls.

"No one in Washington doubts the messenger. The party looked to Scott, an eloquent orator and the only Black Republican in the Senate, to offer their rebuttal to President Biden's first address to Congress. The question is whether a primary electorate wants the message. ...

"Scott is expected to kick off his campaign Monday during a rally in Charleston, where campaign staff have already set up headquarters. It is a decision with natural and strategic significance. The state hosts the third-in-the-nation primary, and sources familiar with the plan say that gives the Palmetto State's chosen son a built-in advantage: The Republican electorate there has already voted for him three times. He won his race last year by 25 points, carrying six of seven congressional districts."

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"Top Democrats are scrambling for ways to avoid a catastrophe in New Hampshire in which Joe Biden may not appear on the primary ballot, ceding the first unofficial contest of 2024 to a fringe candidate.

"The bizarre predicament is one of the president's own making, after he pushed for changes to the party's presidential nominating calendar that stripped the Granite State of its first-in-the-nation primary. The move was designed to reward South Carolina, which catapulted Biden to the nomination in 2020.

"But there's a state law requiring New Hampshire's contest be held a week before any others, and Republicans in charge of the governor's office and state legislature are refusing to touch it. If they don't, a primary may well be held without the sitting president putting his name on the ballot."

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"Democrats and commentators reacted dismissively to the conclusion this week of a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion inquiry, with some critics of special counsel John Durham citing a 2019 inquiry to claim the matter had already been settled.

The Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, did indeed examine FBI conduct in the Russia investigation during the Trump administration. Horowitz's findings were highly critical of the FBI and came with a list of recommendations for sweeping changes to the bureau, many of which its leaders adopted.

But the media, and even people involved in the Russia investigation itself, have recast the 2019 inspector general report as an exoneration of the FBI in light of the far more aggressive allegations leveled at the bureau by Durham."

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