| Former president Donald Trump is trying to do something that is without modern precedent: use executive privilege — even though he's no longer president — to stop Congress from investigating his role in fomenting the violence of Jan. 6. A special, bipartisan committee looking into the insurrection wants to know everything he did on that day, and they're asking the government for federal records about his White House conversations, telecommunication companies for call logs and social media companies for tweets and other posts. Trump says he'll fight it all by claiming his communications are protected as president.  Trump addresses supporters on Jan. 6 before they attacked Congress. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) | Legal experts I talked to say he can claim executive privilege and tie up the investigation in courts, but he probably would lose. People involved in the investigation point out there's a long history of the White House handing over sensitive communications to Congress when it's in the greater public interest, and they argue that the origins of the Jan. 6 insurrection certainly fit that mold. Still, by then, it might not matter: If Trump can drag this out until January 2023, Republicans may have control of the House of Representatives and may drop this Jan. 6 investigation altogether. Can members of Congress dodge these investigations, too? That same committee is looking into what certain Republican members of Congress did on or around the day of the insurrection. The committee has asked telecommunication companies to hold onto phone records they deem pertinent; CNN reported that some of those call logs are of GOP members of Congress. Republicans, you can imagine, aren't taking this well. The top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, threatened these companies by saying they are "violating federal law" and could lose their right to operate in the U.S. if Republicans take over Congress next year. Except … legal experts have no idea what federal law he's referring to. There isn't a law stopping these companies from handing over information to Congress. In fact, it's arguably the opposite. Law enforcement agencies subpoena private companies all the time to get information, said Stanley Brand, a former lawyer for the House of Representatives. The committee is asking these companies to voluntarily hand over the records and could issue a subpoena forcing them to do so soon. And "once a subpoena is issued," said another former House lawyer, Michael Stern, in an email, "the companies have a legal obligation to respond to it." The most restrictive abortion law in the nation, explained  Abortion rights advocates protest Wednesday in front of the Texas Capitol against the state's new abortion ban. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP) | Overnight Wednesday, Texas became the first state in modern times to ban most abortions. The Supreme Court did not act on a request to stop the law, which has some abortion rights advocates worried that the court might be inclined to revisit Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old decision protecting a woman's right to abortion. Here's more about the law. What the law says: Any pregnancy where a heartbeat is detected cannot be aborted. That effectively means that if you're six weeks pregnant, you can't have an abortion in Texas. A ban that early is on extremely shaky legal ground, considering courts have knocked down abortion bans about midway through pregnancy in other states. The law does something else novel: It effectively incentivizes the public to police abortions. It allows a person — anyone living in the state of Texas — to sue an abortion provider they suspect is "aiding and abetting" abortions after that six-week mark. It sets a $10,000 award for any successful lawsuit to stop an abortion. What could happen next: The Supreme Court could still decide to stop the Texas law at least temporarily while lower courts debate its merits. This fall, the justices will hear separate arguments over a Mississippi abortion ban, which could give us a clearer understanding of how this conservative Supreme Court views abortion rights. The right's viral misinformation campaign on Afghanistan The U.S. military says it did not leave any military dogs behind in Afghanistan. (It appears that about 50 contract dogs might have been left behind.) A man hanging from a helicopter was not being killed by the Taliban; fact-checkers said it appears he was trying to place a Taliban flag on a building. Biden did not skip a ceremony for the final 13 Americans killed in Afghanistan. And the Taliban did not seize $80 billion in American weapons and gear from the war (though it's estimated they did salvage billions worth of gear). But the political right — from Trump to Sen. Ted Cruz to Fox News's Sean Hannity — have elevated, promoted and at times even appeared to deliberately mislead on what's happening after the U.S. left Afghanistan. From a political strategy perspective, pushing so much misinformation is perplexing. "Even as the GOP has been served up a cudgel to use against Biden [on the Afghanistan withdrawal]," writes The Fix's Aaron Blake, "it has for some reason spent its time exaggerating the situation." | 
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