Must Reads

• Wisconsin’s supreme court upholds law restricting collective bargaining.
• Governor Andrew Cuomo’s gay marriage legislation is one vote away clear passage. It could happen Friday.
• A federal district judge denied a motion to dismiss the 2010 decision striking down California’s gay marriage ban on the basis that the ruling judge in

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• The consensus on last night’s GOP presidential primary debate —Bachmann emerged, Romney skated to victory — is so ubiquitous it’s almost unsettling.
• It largely reflects public polling, but the scant sections of the debate on foreign policy were the least hawkish of any GOP forum in recent memory.
• The debate may have widened the

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• Bachmann, Cain, Paul, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Romney and Santorum will attend the first Republican presidential primary debate tonight in New Hampshire.
• Romney goes into the debate in strong shape nationally.
• He’s jumped on Obama for calling dismal job numbers in May “a bump in the road to …
  

• Mitt Romney will skip Iowa’s vaunted Ames straw poll. (Nevermind the chicken suit from ’07.)
• The New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC will crowdsource the Palin e-mails Alaska is releasing today.
• The Biden debt ceiling talks pick up speed.

• From the magazine: This recession is different. Don’t expect Washington to help.
• Minor stimulus a la December 2010’s tax cut deal may be on the table in debt ceiling talks.
• It goes without saying, but more polls find widespread economic pessimism means problems for Obama.
• The White House floats Warren deputy and former banker

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• Obama presses Bahrain.
• Weiner’s not getting any help in Washington or New York.
• The great Retailer-Bank battle is joined: The Senate will vote today on a delay for swipe fee regulations.

• Disapproval of Obama’s handling of the economy reaches new highs in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. Twice as many American now say the country is on the wrong track than on the right one. (However, support for the effort in Afghanistan ticks up.)
• Austan Goolsbee, one of President Obama’s more effective communicators on the economy,

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• Nobel-winning economist Peter Diamond has withdrawn as a Federal Reserve Board of Governors nominee after more than a year in confirmation limbo. Republican Senator Richard Shelby was the primary obstructor, but the White House has appeared sluggish, if not downright apathetic, about getting appointments like Diamond’s through. As the

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• The economy appears to be in full stall: Just 54,000 jobs were added in May, the unemployment rate rose to 9.1% and data from April and March were revised down.
• The unemployment rate matters for incumbent presidential reelection efforts, but it’s not as simple as the topline number.
• Krugman sees two years of inadequacies coming to

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• Mitt Romney’s presidential announcement Thursday in New Hampshire will opportunistically hit on economic themes.
• This estimate of minuscule job gains for May should scare President Obama’s economic and political teams. The official report will be out Friday.
• Jim Tankersley doesn’t think a soft patch necessarily means it’s time to

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• House Republicans head to the White House to meet with Obama on the debt limit.
• Walter Shapiro is bearish on the prospects for a deal. (Me not so much.)
• Jon Huntsman takes a pretty standard Republican line on deficit reduction.
• Jim DeMint reopens the door to 2012.

• House Republicans are poised to bring up and reject an unconditional increase to debt ceiling.
• Rep. Anthony Weiner says a lewd photo sent from his Twitter account was a hacker’s prank. He has lawyered up.
• Obama’s approval rating appears to be on an upswing, but economists expect slow economic growth in the second quarter.

• Elizabeth Warren (or anyone else for that matter) won’t be recess appointed over the Memorial Day break.
• David Leonhardt is worried about the recovery.
• What happens if the U.S. defaults on its debt? It did, on April 26, 1979.
• This may not come as a great shock, but Mitt Romney is running for President. He’ll announce June 2 in

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