Good afternoon, Former House Speaker John Boehner continues to leak out bits of his dishy new memoir, including an anecdote about an alleged interaction with former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Boehner tells a story about him turning down Bachmann for a role on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Her response to me was calm and matter-of-fact. 'Well, then I’ll just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox,” she said, 'and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio, and tell them that this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made it possible for the Republicans to take back the House... I wasn’t the one with the power, she was saying. I just thought I was. She had the power now. She was right, of course. [Read more from Axios] Keith Ellison is among a bipartisan group of attorneys general asking online retailers to crack down on the sale of "blank or fraudulently completed COVID vaccine cards." [Read the letter] Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz's family has powerful roots in Midwestern politics, with his grandfather a North Dakota politician whose appearance at the state Republican Party convention in 1964 went down in state political lore. Or as journalist Lindsey Ellefson put it, "Matt Gaetz's grandfather was Jerry Gaetz, or as people from North Dakota say, 'no, yah, that Jerry Gaetz.'" [ Read more from the Forum News Service's Sam Easter] An interesting article from the progressive Mother Jones looking at what Joe Biden's love of pop historian Jon Meacham says about his approach to the presidency. [Read more from Mother Jones' Kara Voght] Donald Trump famously did poorly among suburban voters. Now that he's gone, can Republicans come back in the suburbs? It's a question with huge import for 2022 and beyond. Of course, the realignment of the suburbs began long before 2016, but Trump appears to have accelerated it. Can suburban Republicans fight back now that he's out of office? [Read more from NPR News' Don Gonyea] Local angle: Consider this chart showing the net vote margin for the Democratic and Republican top-of-the-ticket candidates in different parts of Minnesota since 2006. While Greater Minnesota's lurch right only started in 2016, the Twin Cities suburbs have a longer-term leftward trend, but one that accelerated starting in 2016.
Something completely different: Yesterday's newsletter included a roundup of political April Fools Day hoaxes, but I didn't want to omit this story of an unforgettable prank allegedly masterminded by a young Conan O'Brien involving jackhammers and a night in jail. [Read more from Harvard Magazine's Lee Hudson Teslik] Listen: I currently am in desperate need of a haircut to remove my quarantine shag, but those readers who are spared that particular problem might relate to Chicago blues singer Tail Dragger Jones' lament, "My Head is Bald." [Watch]
