Attorney General Merrick Garland probably did not need to appoint a special counsel to investigate the discovery of a small number of classified documents dating from President Biden’s tenure as vice president—but his decision will ultimately frustrate Republican efforts to weaponize Congressional oversight hearings.

The Justice Department’s special counsel regulations require the Attorney General to first determine that a “criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted” before appointing a special counsel—and such a determination would seem unjustified, at least from publicly known facts.

Garland also reminded the American public today that he fully believes DOJ would be capable of investigating any matter with independence and integrity, but this is the second time in less than two months that Garland has appointed a special counsel......

The newly formed Select Committee under the House Judiciary Committee will find its efforts to “oversee”—read: interfere with—active criminal investigations thwarted by the existence of an active Special Counsel investigation given DOJ’s historic resistance to speaking about active investigations.

Grand jury work – typically a part of almost every criminal investigation – will provide further protection since it is governed by rules of secrecy that prevent the government from speaking about the matters before it.

In contrast, if Garland had simply exercised his authority and determined that no special counsel criminal investigation was warranted, then House Republican investigations would have had greater leverage, since they would have been seeking to investigate a closed matter.

COVID-19 is killing more Republicans than Democrats, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study, titled Excess Death Rates for Republicans and Democrats During the COVID-19 Pandemic, used voter registration and death records to answer a question: is there a link between political affiliation and rates of COVID related death in the U.S.?

The short answer is yes. “In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” the study said. “Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021—after vaccines were widely available—the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021.”

The study attributes this to the vaccine uptake disparity between Republicans and Democrats, which has been widely documented as more Republicans refused to take the vaccine; the most vocal anti-vax voices were Republican politicians and some conservative news outlets: “The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available,” the study notes.

Is it possible that anti-vax Republicans dying from COVID affected the midterms? “If Republicans are dying in increased numbers relative to their Democratic colleagues in a political climate where there are so many close electoral contests, could that have been the decider in a particular particular race?” Jason L. Schwartz, an associate professor of Health Policy at the School of Public Health at Yale and one of the authors of the study, told Motherboard. “Our study can't answer that. But it certainly seems plausible given just how stark the differences in vaccination rates have been, among Democrats and Republicans.”

Breaking scientific news: Researchers have identified a previously unknown species in D.C. Like cicadas, this species stays underground for years at a time, typically in four- or eight-year intervals. Its members hide away until there is an auspicious change in the ecosystem. Then, they bust out and wreak havoc.

This species: Republicans who care about deficits.

From 2017 through early 2021, members of the species lay dormant. Coincidentally, though, a nearly identical-looking sister species, Republicans who love debt, ruled Capitol Hill in their stead. With unified control of the House, Senate and White House, these debt-loving Republicans gleefully spilled red ink across the nation’s capital and beyond.

The GOP’s budgetary bloodletting began with a 2017 tax cut that cost $1.8 trillion. Their fiscal rampage then continued over the next few years, mostly on the other side of the ledger. In fact, between 2017 and early 2020, President Donald Trump added roughly as much to deficits through new spending as through tax cuts, appending his signature to more than $2 trillion in unfunded spending program expansions, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Matt Schlapp, a top Republican political operative, along with his wife Mercedes Schlapp, a one-time Donald Trump aide, are being sued by a former Herschel Walker campaign staffer over allegations that he sexually assaulted him while on the campaign.

A lawyer for Schlapp acknowledged the lawsuit in a statement on Tuesday and said he was considering “counter-lawsuit options” following a newly filed legal complaint. The suit was filed on Tuesday in Virginia circuit court for the city of Alexandria.

Timothy Hyland, a lawyer for the accuser, told the New York Times that they would be seeking at least $9.4 million in damages. Reached for comment, Schlapp’s attorney Charlie Spies called the complaint “false,” and said the “Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress” as a result. Schlapp also tweeted the statement from Spies.

“No family should ever go through this and the Schlapps and their legal team are assessing counter-lawsuit options,” said Spies, who is representing the couple. Mercedes Schlapp is a former adviser to Donald Trump.

The lawsuit follows claims earlier this month by the former Herschel Walker campaign staffer, who said Schlapp sexually assaulted him in Georgia in October while Schlapp was visiting the state to stump for the Republican Senate candidate.

Resentment lingers within the Republican caucus following the contentious voting for House speaker Kevin McCarthy, with some members still bitter over the deals cut by the California Republican to get the support he needed to prevail.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) has reportedly considered retirement after he was passed over as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in favor of McCarthy ally Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), and the 71-year-old lawmaker voiced his displeasure to him on House floor during the speakership vote, reported Puck.

The publication reported that Buchanan "exploded" after losing his potential spot on the committee.

“You f*cked me," Buchanan told McCarthy, according to a source on the House floor. "I know it was you, you whipped against me.”

After being booted from her committee assignments by a majority of House Democrats and Republicans, in the new Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) will sit on the prime Homeland Security Committee.

Greene has been accused of helping to organize and support the Jan. 6 insurrection and attack on the U.S. Congress in 2021. Her participation was part of a hearing where Georgians attempted to have her removed from the ballot using the 14th Amendment saying that no one who participated in an insurrection could hold elected office. Since Greene hasn't been convicted of attempting to overthrow the government, it has made it more difficult for critics to accuse her of being an insurrectionist, even if she supported the cause.

"DHS efforts to counter terrorism and prevent targeted violence," the Department wrote on Twitter last June. "We provide resources to communities, schools, and law enforcement personnel on how to prevent, protect against, and mitigate acts of targeted violence and terrorism."

As part of her war against moderate Republicans, Geene demanded in 2021 that 13 GOP colleagues be removed from their committee assignments after they voted to support the transportation package. Specifically, she didn't understand a key piece of the Homeland Security budget provided in the bill.

When Josh Shapiro is sworn in as Pennsylvania’s governor next week, he will take the oath of office on a stack of three Hebrew Bibles, including one that was on the bima, or prayer platform, at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue during the 2018 mass shooting that killed 11 worshippers.

“It was regularly used on Shabbat mornings, and would have been used that fateful morning, but the services were abruptly interrupted by gunfire,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the spiritual leader at Tree of Life, told Jewish Insider. “The Bible survived without any damage and Tree of Life is honored by its presence at the inauguration.”

On the campaign trail, Shapiro’s Jewish identity played a prominent part in his pitch to voters. One campaign ad showed his family having Shabbat dinner, which he pledged to continue in Harrisburg. In his stump speech, and in his election night victory speech, Shapiro quoted from Pirkei Avot, or Teachings of Our Fathers: “No one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it,” he told a cheering crowd in November.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s outgoing attorney general, will also use the same family Bible he has used at each swearing-in since he was first elected to the Statehouse in 2004, a spokesperson for Shapiro confirmed to JI.

The third Bible — a copy of “Readings from the Holy Scriptures for Jewish Soldiers and Sailors,” which was given to soldiers when they entered the military — belonged to Herman Hershman, a World War II veteran who earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star on D-Day. Hershman, who died in 2013 at age 88, attended Beth Sholom Congregation, the same suburban Pennsylvania synagogue that Shapiro attends. The Bible is on loan from the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

The White House is escalating its fight with newly empowered congressional Republicans, with officials Tuesday calling on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to “come clean” about secretive deals he made with hardline members that helped him eventually land the top job.

“An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this month’s chaotic elections and claim the gavel,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement shared first with POLITICO. “It is well past time for Speaker McCarthy and the ultra MAGA Republican House members to come out of the dark and tell the American people, in-full, what they decided in secret.”

While McCarthy has insisted he made no formal agreements in exchange for getting conservative holdouts to vote for him, conservative members have said they received certain promises from the new speaker. They have also pointed to action on their priority legislation as a direct result of the recent House leadership negotiations.

The White House had long been gearing up to paint the incoming House Republican caucus as beholden to their most conservative members. But President Joe Biden has tried to turn the policy implications of Republicans’ priority bills, including legislation to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace more progressive income taxes with a national sales tax, into a political cudgel. White House officials also said the Republican leadership talks laid the groundwork for the House to vote on a national abortion ban and argue the GOP will use the debt limit standoff to try to force cuts to Medicare and Social Security.