Amidst all the concern about President Joe Biden being 81, director Rob Reiner thinks he’s still a better choice in the 2024 race for the White House than his GOP rival Donald Trump, who is 77.

“Okay. Here’s the truth. Biden is old. But he is a decent moral person who is incredibly effective at governing. Trump is old. But he’s a pathologically lying criminal who is incapable of governing and will destroy American Democracy,” Reiner tweeted on Tuesday.

Jon Stewart in his return to “The Daily Show” Monday night was less enthusiastic about backing Biden, given his age: “These two candidates, they are both are similarly challenged and it is not crazy to think that the oldest people in the history of the country to ever run for president might have some of these challenges,” he said.

Articles about Biden’s ability to govern, such as Time magazine’s “Why Biden’s Age Has Become a Bigger Deal Than Trump’s” and a similar New York Times editorial, abounded after special counsel Robert Hur described the sitting president as an “elderly man with a poor memory” in a report that fully exonerated Biden of criminal wrongdoing — and didn’t base the memory assessment on anything real.

https://twitter.com/robreiner/status/1757442676129988824

Tennessee lawmakers gave final approval to legislation that would allow public officials to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, sending the controversial bill to the governor, who has not said whether he will sign it.

Tennessee’s House Bill 878 states that a person “shall not be required to solemnize a marriage” if they object to doing so based on their “conscience or religious beliefs.” While the bill would prevent officials including county clerks from being required to solemnize a marriage — a right that already exists — it would not give officials the ability to deny marriage licenses to couples based on their own beliefs.

The measure passed the House in March 2023, just days before the state’s General Assembly deferred consideration of the bill until 2024. State senators voted Monday to substitute a companion bill in the Senate with the House version, passing the revived bill in a 27-5, party-line vote.

It now heads to Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who will have 10 days to either approve or veto the bill once it reaches his desk or let the measure become law without his signature.

Lee has not signaled whether he will sign the bill, though the governor made headlines last year for signing nearly a dozen bills targeting LGBTQ rights, including the nation’s first law restricting drag performances. A federal judge in June ruled that law unconstitutional.

Tennessee state legislators moved on Tuesday to advance a bill that would ban people from taking minors for an abortion without parental permission – an act that the bill has dubbed “abortion trafficking”.

If someone illegally “recruits, harbors, or transports a pregnant unemancipated minor” for an abortion, they could face three to 15 years in prison under the proposed bill, which has now advanced out of a state house subcommittee after a hearing.

Although Tennessee already bans almost all abortions, as do more than a dozen states across much of the southern and midwestern United States, abortion opponents remain frustrated that people have continued to procure abortions since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Some individuals have fled across state lines for the procedure, while abortion rights advocates continue to give out abortion pills in a grey market so that people may “self-manage” abortions at home.

Medical experts widely agree that, early on in pregnancy, it is safe to use pills to perform an abortion on your own.

In the Tuesday hearing, the bill’s sponsor, Republican state representative Jason Zachary, said he saw the bill as an important shield for “parental rights”.

“In the state of Tennessee, you cannot take a child to an emergency room or any medical facility to obtain treatment without their parents’ permission if they’re under 18,” Zachary said.

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A company allegedly tracked people’s visits to nearly 600 Planned Parenthood locations across 48 states and provided that data for one of the largest anti-abortion ad campaigns in the nation, according to an investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden, a scope that far exceeds what was previously known.

The details in Wyden (D-Ore.)’s letter, sent Tuesday morning, reveal what’s believed to be the largest publicly known location-driven anti-abortion ad campaign. Abortion rights supporters have feared this type of data could also be used by certain state governments to prosecute women who get the procedure after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to an abortion.

Wyden’s letter asks the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Near Intelligence, a location data provider that gathered and sold the information. The company claims to have information on 1.6 billion people across 44 countries, according to its website.

The company’s data can be used to target ads to people who have been to specific locations — including reproductive health clinic locations, according to Recrue Media co-founder Steven Bogue, who told Wyden’s staff his firm used the company’s data for a national anti-abortion ad blitz between 2019 and 2022.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the campaign last May, focusing on the anti-abortion group Veritas Society’s efforts in Wisconsin, along with Arkansas, New Jersey, California and Colorado.

The chair of the House Intelligence Committee is warning that time is running out for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders — and he's pushing Speaker Mike Johnson to step up.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) spoke days after leading a bipartisan congressional delegation to Kyiv, his third visit to the embattled nation since Russia’s invasion, where he tried to assure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that reinforcements are on the way.

The situation back in America has not been so encouraging for Zelenskyy: GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is taking fresh aim at America's foreign aid commitments, and questions abound over just what Johnson's intentions are as the Senate presses forward with an aid package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine.

The message Turner brought back from Kyiv is that there’s not a moment to spare: Soldiers, he said, “are already rationing munitions” and “are unable to fully defend themselves on the battlefield.”

“We have to get this done,” he said. “This is no longer an issue of, ‘When do we support Ukraine?’ If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine.”

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Monday refused to speed up a challenge to a congressional redistricting plan that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022, likely meaning the disputed map will remain in effect for this year’s elections.

The court issued a one-sentence order that did not explain its reasons for denying a request from voting-rights groups and other plaintiffs to shorten timeframes and hold arguments during the first week of April.

But with a qualifying period scheduled April 22 to April 26 for congressional candidates, lawyers for the plaintiffs acknowledged in a Feb. 1 motion that the disputed map likely would remain in effect for this year’s elections unless the Supreme Court expedited the case. In addition to seeking early-April arguments, the motion included requesting a shorter schedule for filing briefs.

“Without an expedited briefing schedule, petitioners and Floridians will again vote under a redistricting plan of questionable legality,” the motion said, referring to the disputed map also being used in the 2022 elections.

The Supreme Court order came after attorneys for Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the Legislature filed a document Friday objecting to speeding up the case. The state’s attorneys wrote that a 1st District Court of Appeal ruling, which upheld the redistricting plan, has offered certainty for elections officials as they prepare for the 2024 elections.

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Monday refused to speed up a challenge to a congressional redistricting plan that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022, likely meaning the disputed map will remain in effect for this year’s elections.

The court issued a one-sentence order that did not explain its reasons for denying a request from voting-rights groups and other plaintiffs to shorten timeframes and hold arguments during the first week of April.

But with a qualifying period scheduled April 22 to April 26 for congressional candidates, lawyers for the plaintiffs acknowledged in a Feb. 1 motion that the disputed map likely would remain in effect for this year’s elections unless the Supreme Court expedited the case. In addition to seeking early-April arguments, the motion included requesting a shorter schedule for filing briefs.

“Without an expedited briefing schedule, petitioners and Floridians will again vote under a redistricting plan of questionable legality,” the motion said, referring to the disputed map also being used in the 2022 elections.

The Supreme Court order came after attorneys for Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the Legislature filed a document Friday objecting to speeding up the case. The state’s attorneys wrote that a 1st District Court of Appeal ruling, which upheld the redistricting plan, has offered certainty for elections officials as they prepare for the 2024 elections.

A CNN report published Sunday details how a group of House Republicans are taking heat politically and financially for leading the coup that saw former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., ousted from the speakership in October.

The report noted that conservative Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Bob Good, R-Va., have "arguably received the most incoming fire," as each politician faces "serious threats" to their primary reelection. CNN also reported that Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who recently joined the Senate race in his state, is likewise being buffeted by certain Republican sentiment for his vote to boot McCarthy.

GOP sources close to the situation told CNN that an external Republican spending group and McCarthy himself have readied plans to be involved in the races against both representatives. Good came under fire for aligning himself with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis instead of former President Donald Trump, ahead of DeSantis' official bid for the 2024 presidential race, which he has since dropped.

Two Washington D.C.-based center-right-leaning groups, the Main Street Caucus and Republican Governance Group, have let go of Mace, with one House Republican telling CNN, "She really wants to be a caucus of one. So we obliged her."

Broader discontent with Mace has ostensibly been mounting for some time — it was recently reported by The Daily Beast that the entirety of Mace's D.C. staff had turned over since November 1, 2023, alleging a "toxic" workplace and "abusive" behavior by the congresswoman.

When Ryan Busse, a Democrat from Kalispell, announced his bid for Montana governor in September, Don Kaltschmidt, chair of the state Republican Party, immediately condemned him as an “anti-gun extremist and radical environmentalist.”

Busse, a longtime environmental advocate and former firearms industry executive, chuckled.

“Insert laughter,” he told HuffPost. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve sold 3 million guns. I hunt and fish with my kids every chance I get. I don’t even know how many guns I own.”

Busse is seeking the Democratic nomination to take on first-term GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte in November. He sees Kaltschmidt’s attack as part of a GOP facade meant to distract Montana voters from the Republican Party’s extreme positions on guns, climate change, reproductive rights, taxes and more.

“These are just made-up terms to scare people,” he said. “I think a lot of Democrats just sort of go hide in the corner when they get screamed at with these overarching, pejorative names that I don’t even know what they mean. I’m not going to do it. I’m throwing the punches back. There’s nothing about me, at all, that’s radical.”

As for being painted a “radical environmentalist,” Busse posed a question: “Does that mean I want to keep our rivers clean and air clean, and not have environmental disasters that kill wildlife or kill our way of life? Guilty. Guilty.”