WaPo: “Republican governors in 15 states are rejecting a new federally funded program to give food assistance to hungry children during the summer months, denying benefits to 8 million children across the country. The program is expected to serve 21 million youngstersstarting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country. The governors have…

NPR: “Fifty billion dollars is on its way to state and local governments over the coming years. The pool of funding comes from multiple legal settlements with pharmaceutical companies that profited from manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers. As that money continues to be dispersed, officials are trying to figure out how to spend it best…

Political Wire: “The Republican Party of Florida ousted its chairman on Monday, more than a month after the police in Sarasota confirmed that he was under criminal investigation for sexual assault,” the New York Times reports. “For weeks, Christian Ziegler, the chairman, resisted calls for him to step down, keeping the scandal in the headlines and exasperating…

Political Wire: ““District Attorney Fani Willis improperly hired an alleged romantic partner to prosecute Donald Trump and financially benefited from their relationship, according to a court motion filed Monday which argued the criminal charges in the case were unconstitutional,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.”

NY Times: “President Biden sought to rally disaffected Black supporters on Monday with a fiery condemnation of former President Donald J. Trump, linking his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the nation’s history of white supremacy in what he called “the old ghost in new garments.” Speaking from the pulpit of the South’s oldest…

NY Times: “White evangelical Christian voters have lined up behind Republican candidates for decades, driving conservative cultural issues into the heart of the party’s politics and making nominees and presidents of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. But no Republican has had a closer — or more counterintuitive — relationship with evangelicals than Mr. Trump…….

Political Wire: “Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor who has been helping President Biden implement his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, is leaving the White House to be a national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign,” Axios reports.”

truthout: “Around the country, LGBTQ+ students and the campus groups founded to support them have become a growing target in the culture wars. In 2023 alone, 542 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced by state legislatures or in Congress, according to an LGBTQ-legislation tracker, with many of them focused on young people. Supporters of the bills say…

WaPo: “Nikki Haley continues to do damage control for her omission of slavery in response to a question about the causes of the Civil War last month, and on Thursday defended her response in part by noting, “I had Black friends growing up.” …. “If you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third…

NY Times: “Since the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump and 18 of his allies last summer on election interference charges in Georgia, a delicate question has gone unanswered: Would criminal charges also be coming for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a longtime Trump supporter and one of the most ambitious politicians in the Southern…