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Jerry Taylor, the co-founder and president of the Niskanen Center, recently resigned from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank after being charged with violently attacking his wife, according to court records obtained by POLITICO.

Taylor, who previously had been a longtime top official of the Cato Institute, was arrested in early June on a misdemeanor charge of assault and battery of a family member in Arlington, Va.

He denies the accusations, but says he pleaded guilty in exchange for the charges being dismissed as long as he successfully completes a domestic violence and substance abuse prevention program.

On the night in question, Taylor had been up late after celebrating his son’s high school graduation. When his wife saw him drinking and using his iPad, she urged him to go to bed and threw his iPad in the trash, according to what she told a police officer who responded to the scene and wrote handwritten notes for a criminal complaint.

Taylor, 58, then allegedly pushed her onto the kitchen floor and put his hands around her neck and slapped her, the officer recorded in her notes. After she told him he shouldn’t do that, Taylor allegedly pushed her out of the house and pushed her down the front steps, injuring her, according to the complaint.

The officer, who responded at around 1 a.m., said in her police report that she observed “fresh scrape marks on her left leg and left ankle” of Taylor’s wife and that the woman also complained about pain from her right shoulder and her back. He had no visible injuries.

According to the complaint, Taylor told the officer that his wife had thrown his iPad down the front steps, smashing the device, and then turned around and pushed him. He said he pushed her back, causing her to fall down the steps. He denied slapping her or putting his hands around her neck and said she was emotionally and psychologically abusive to him, the complaint said. Taylor was arrested that night and held in custody for around a day and half.

The Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court in Arlington found on July 20 that the facts were sufficient in the case to sustain a conviction but deferred a finding on the case until next July as long as Taylor exhibits good behavior, completes an “abuser’s intervention program,” undergoes a substance abuse evaluation, follows all treatment recommendations and abides by a protective order requiring him to forgo any contact with the complainant and her daughter. Taylor is appealing the protective order.

Two weeks after the incident, Taylor’s wife filed for divorce, claiming she had been abused.

In his divorce response, he said she had started the fight and tried to force him to leave the house. He acknowledged that he “very lightly smacked her” and claimed that “such a theatrical gesture would get her attention and wake her up to what she was doing.”

In a statement in the criminal case file seen by POLITICO, Taylor’s wife said he was an alcoholic who “cannot stop once he starts.”

“He has totaled a car under [the] influence, broke his foot under [the] influence, yelled, made crazy comments and has used abusive language. His drinking got worse over time, with extremely drunken episodes occurring more than once in a week,” she wrote, adding that he drinks almost five days a week and has called her expletive-laden names.

“The alcohol makes him a person who is aggressive, self-centered and abusive,” she said in the statement filed to the court.

She also said that she had told him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous, but he told her the group had informed him he didn’t have a problem with alcohol.

“My wife’s allegations about the events that evening are not grounded in reality. Those events for the most part did not occur and I’m confident that the charges will ultimately be dismissed,” Taylor said in a statement. “I sincerely wish my wife the best as she wrestles with the issues she’s dealing with.”

A lawyer for Taylor, Nicholas Balland, said in a statement: “There’s no corroboration to her representations. There were no witnesses present, and she never requested medical attention or medical treatment until two weeks after this occurred.”

Taylor’s wife, who POLITICO is not naming because she’s not a public figure, did not respond to a request for comment. Kathryn Leckey, an attorney for Taylor’s wife, declined to comment citing ongoing litigation.

Louisa Tavlas, a spokesperson for Niskanen, also declined to comment, but a person close to Niskanen said the board was made aware of the incident in early September and immediately put Taylor on administrative leave. He resigned a few days later, on Sept. 6.

POLITICO reported last week that Taylor had resigned from Niskanen and that Tavlas did not disclose a reason for the departure.

Tavlas said in a statement at the time that the board of directors thanked Taylor, who co-founded the think tank in 2014, “for his leadership in building one of the most effective, principled, and strategic thought leadership institutions in the political world.”

The think tank has attracted attention for supporting a carbon tax to fight climate change and has advocated for libertarian and conservative policies on issues like immigration and regulation.

National politics seeped into Tuesday night’s Virginia governor debate, with the candidates weighing in on the reconciliation price tag, the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and a potential 2024 presidential run for former President Donald Trump.

Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe said he thought $3.5 trillion was “too high” for the Democrats‘ reconciliation bill.

“They got to stop their little chitty-chat up there, and it is time for them to pass it. Let’s get this infrastructure bill passed for America,” McAuliffe said, slamming lawmakers for this week’s chaotic back-and-forth on how to get President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package through Congress.

Republican Glenn Youngkin, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump earlier this year, also didn’t avoid taking his time to weigh in on the national political scene. When asked about Afghan refugees in Virginia, Youngkin took the opportunity to slam Biden on the Afghanistan withdrawal and an influx of migrants at the southern border.

“We saw an abject failure of leadership from Joe Biden: He abandoned our military. He abandoned American citizens. He abandoned our allies, and he abandoned Afghans who had gone shoulder to shoulder with us, trying to make a way forward,” Youngkin said, before turning to Texas’ “open borders” — tapping into another common Trump talking point.

McAulliffe frequently criticized Youngkin as a “wannabe Trump” during the debate, prompting Youngkin to call out how often his opponent said the former president’s name.

During one of the final questions, Youngkin was asked whether he would support Trump as the nominee in 2024. Youngkin, who has made somewhat of an effort to pivot toward the center of the Republican Party after winning the GOP nomination, gave a shaky response.

“Who knows who is going to be running for president in 2024?” Youngkin said, before being pressed again on whether he’d support the former president as the nominee.

“If he’s the Republican nominee,” Youngkin said, “I’ll support him.”

Blue-state Democrats are fighting hard to repeal a cap on how much of their state and local taxes Americans can deduct from their federal taxes. Often left unspoken is that the tax most at issue isn’t state income taxes, it’s local property taxes.

Reinstating the full deduction would make a hypocrite of any Democrat who claims to care about income inequality or systemic racism. That’s because the deduction is one of the biggest drivers of inequality in blue states.

In fact, unlike most debates in Congress, this one doesn’t actually pit red states against blue states. Rather, it pits the interests of wealthy blue districts against less wealthy ones. That’s why liberals who care about inequality and systemic racism should be willing to let go of the deduction.

Better known by its acronym, SALT, the deduction allows taxpayers to subtract their local and state tax bills from their income and reduces the amount that they pay in federal taxes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by former President Donald Trump limited that deduction to $10,000. Trump’s motives weren’t egalitarian — he imposed the cap to help offset the costs of the other tax cuts in the package, tax cuts that went primarily to the wealthy and large corporations. Many Democrats saw that move as a partisan financial hit aimed at blue states, and many now want to eliminate the limit.

But while Trump may have done the right thing for the wrong reason, lifting the cap now would be doing the wrong thing, full stop. Here’s why.

Property taxes are a large non-federal tax bill for many American homeowners. And the largest benefits of the deduction go to homeowners with the highest property taxes: residents of middle-class and wealthy communities that impose higher taxes to fund local priorities like better schools.

Consequently, places that can afford those higher taxes end up with better schools. When the unlimited SALT deduction was in place, the federal government essentially gave up being paid taxes by the homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods so that those homeowners could fund those better schools.

Many liberals are beneficiaries of this system. Many take out large mortgages to send their children to the public schools funded by those high property taxes. New York Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents a wealthy part of Long Island, argued that Congress should repeal the state and local tax deduction limits because “we built a whole system around it.”

He’s right: We have built our whole housing system around it. That‘s why it’s called “systemic” racism.

The footings of this system of inequality reach deep into the ground of history. Developers on Long Island like Levitt & Sons put racial covenants in their deeds to prevent anyone except white people from living in them. The company had a financial reason to prevent Black residents from moving in: The Federal Housing Administration guaranteed loans only to areas that limited a neighborhood to white residents. The Levitts weren’t alone; most large developers on Long Island did the same thing. One of the effects is that residents of places like Levittown paid only to fund their own schools, which served only white students.

The inequality created by the system persists today. A major investigation by Newsday showed that, as recently as 2019, real estate agents didn’t show Black homebuyers houses in white neighborhoods. White Americans, meanwhile, rarely move into neighborhoods with more than a token number of neighbors of color. Home values in integrated neighborhoods, as a result, rise slower than in all-white neighborhoods and generate fewer property taxes to invest in schools.

This perpetuates systemic racism in two ways. First, it means that students of color disproportionately enroll in schools with fewer resources. And second, Black Americans and other Americans of color for decades were locked out of the real estate market and the opportunity to build equity and generational wealth. Well into the 20th century, in both the North and the South, federal, state and local governments allowed the seizure of Black Americans’ property at the same time that racial covenants and the racist basis for FHA loans that Levitt and others used locked out Black Americans from real estate markets.

Because FHA loans were central to this wealth, the federal government was the architect of the huge Black-white wealth gap built on the system Congressman Suozzi described. The wealth of Long Island villages like Manhasset, Great Neck and Glen Cove were built on this system. The system has also prevented Black Americans from enjoying the benefits of homeownership like increasing wealth and well-funded schools.

Let’s be clear: At this point, preventing the SALT deduction from returning will not reduce inequality between school districts. But by letting taxpayers keep money they would otherwise pay to the IRS, the federal government would continue to subsidize this system that maintains wealth inequality between white and Black Americans.

No evidence exists that the Republicans removed the SALT deduction to reduce inequality, and the rest of their tax cut legislation increased inequality. And the Republican Party opposes efforts to increase federal spending to improve educational outcomes while complaining any time racial inequality is even mentioned.

But just because Republicans bumbled into doing the right thing doesn’t mean that Democrats should reinstate the SALT deduction. Reinstating the SALT deduction would cede ground to Republicans who could call out Democratic hypocrisy — correctly.

By removing the SALT deduction, Congress dismantled one pillar of a racist system, one that impedes racial equality. We should not rebuild it. Instead, let’s fund programs that will actually take steps to make America more equitable.

Colorado’s new independent redistricting commission passed a congressional map late Tuesday that would give Republicans a decent shot at controlling four of eight House seats in a fast-growing state that’s become reliably blue.

In a marathon, six-and-a-half-hour Zoom meeting, all but one of the 12 commissioners agreed on one of nine proposals just minutes before their midnight Mountain Time deadline. The map now goes to the state Supreme Court, which is almost certain to give its sign-off.

The new map’s breakdown: four Democratic-leaning seats, three where the GOP has an advantage and one competitive district. It’s a disappointing result for Democrats who have been ascendant in the state over the last four years, winning a House seat, a Senate seat and notching their largest presidential victory margin in decades.

Yet even as Colorado grows more blue, Democrats may still only control four of the state’s eight House seats. They currently have a 4-3 edge over the GOP and hoped that the state’s new House seat gained through reapportionment would be a blue district. Instead, it’s likely to be among the mostly closely contested seats in the country.

The commissioners’ virtual meeting Tuesday oscillated between friendly banter, terse sniping and emotional pleas as the hours ticked by. But, ultimately, their seventh round of voting resulted in an 11-1 tally for the new map, with only one Democratic commissioner opposing it.

“We had our spats. We had our Kumbaya moments,” said Simon Tafoya, the Democratic commissioner who voted against the plan. “And I think at the end of the day we’ve all learned a lot, and through this experiment we call democracy.”

Barring the unlikely event that the state Supreme Court determines the commission “abused its discretion” in applying the criteria for the new map — these will be the new set of political boundaries for the next decade in a rapidly diversifying swing state.

The new redistricting marks the first time that Colorado amended its boundaries through an independent commission. Its creation was a bipartisan compromise from 2018. The Democratic state house and the GOP state Senate referred an amendment creating the commission to the ballot that year, and voters overwhelmingly approved it.

The commission includes four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated members.

Privately, some Democrats in the state were wary of ceding control over redistricting in a year when it seemed likely they would control both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship when it came time to draw the maps

In considering a new map, the commission had to take into account communities of interest, the location of existing counties and towns and the competitiveness of a given district. They are not, however, allowed to enact any map that has “been drawn for the purpose of protecting one or more members of or candidates for congress or a political party.”

“The plan we have is competitive,” said Danny Moore, a GOP commissioner, “But we didn’t sacrifice community of interest for competitiveness. No plan itself is perfect, but I believe this plan reflects the will of the people of the state of Colorado.”

This map would leave all incumbents in a strong position to win reelection. According to a POLITICO analysis, Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Jason Crow would all have districts that Joe Biden won by at least 25 points. Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter would have a seat Biden won by about 15 points.

Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn and Ken Buck would represent districts Donald Trump carried by double-digits; he would have carried fellow GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert’s seat by roughly 8 points.

The new 8th District would be the most competitive seat in the state by far. Joe Biden would have carried that by roughly 5 points last year, though now-Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper won it by only 2 points in the same election.

The House committee investigating Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is quietly devising plans to pressure hostile witnesses to spill their secrets.

The select panel’s leaders are preparing a narrow set of legal and tactical options as they brace for Trump allies to invoke a wide range of constitutional protections to avoid testifying — from claiming executive privilege to invoking their constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

Whether it’s coaxing reluctant witnesses with offers of immunity or bludgeoning them with criminal contempt of Congress, lawmakers say they’ll be ready for whatever obstacles witnesses throw their way. The goal: prevent lengthy court battles that could derail the Jan. 6 investigation the way Trump stymied House and Senate investigators for his entire term.

“We have the full panoply of sanctions available for people who refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), one of the Jan. 6 Committee’s nine members. “We want the truth to come out, not just about the foot soldiers but about the generals too.”

“We’re very aware that time is of the essence,” added Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the panel and a veteran of three presidential impeachments.

The Jan. 6 panel signaled its impatience last week when it skipped the usual haggling over voluntary invitations to testify, instead slapping former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and national security aide Kash Patel with subpoenas. Only one of the witnesses would comment in public — Patel, who complained about the process.

Based on interviews with seven lawmakers on the Jan. 6 Committee, here are the options the committee is poised to pursue, should these witnesses and others decide to fight back:

1) Civil and Criminal Contempt

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) previewed the possibility of holding resistant witnesses in contempt last week, emphasizing that while Congress’ citations often went ignored during the Trump presidency, the Biden Justice Department is less likely to stand in the way. It seems to be the first step the Jan. 6 committee will take if any Trump allies defy subpoenas.

Asked about the possibility of contempt proceedings, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) told reporters the committee had “discussed all the actions, and we will wait to see how people respond and then decide what the appropriate action is after that.”

2) “Use” Immunity

Congress has been reluctant to offer immunity to witnesses in politically sensitive investigations, fearing that extending even limited protection to potential wrongdoers could derail potential prosecutions. But the Jan. 6 investigation could be an exception.

Multiple members of the panel said that, if necessary to cajole testimony from a reluctant witness, immunity offers were in their arsenal. And they emphasized that their decisions are carefully coordinated with the Justice Department to ensure they don’t disrupt the DOJ’s parallel Jan. 6 investigation.

“There has been ongoing conversation with the Department of Justice as we move forward,” Thompson said.

Congressional investigators could drill down even further on this tactic and offer a specific immunity known as “use” immunity, according to Lofgren. Use immunity permits witnesses to testify about their conduct without risking prosecution for anything they say in the deposition.

Though prosecutors could theoretically still bring charges based on evidence collected separately, the Justice Department has encountered major problems in the past in prosecuting witnesses who testified under such immunity. As such, “use immunity” provides significant protection for witnesses to discuss potentially criminal actions that they or their associates might have committed.

One odd wrinkle could aid the committee’s information gathering. Lofgren noted that anyone pardoned by Trump for conduct connected to the committee’s investigation would be unable to invoke a Fifth Amendment right to decline testimony. It’s unclear which witnesses might fit this description, but Trump issued post-election pardons to a handful of witnesses the Jan. 6 committee has expressed interest in obtaining information about: Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Bernard Kerik and George Papadopoulos.

3) Outside pressure

Members of the Jan. 6 committee say they have one cudgel that wouldn’t require them to go to court at all: fear of the unknown. An untold number of witnesses have come forward to provide voluntary testimony — and their cooperation could spook some ex-Trump hands to work with investigators, rather than let others speak for them.

“At a certain point, these people might begin to wonder what kind of information we already have,” Raskin said. “Nobody should be telling himself that they’re going to sweep the facts under the rug.”

“We have a number of individuals who have reached out to us who are coming in without subpoenas coming in to talk to us,” said Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). She added that the committee had already met with some witnesses “in some cases.”

The committee has even gleaned useful information from a public tip line, including “valuable leads and additional people,” Luria said.

4) Joe Biden

Perhaps the most important weapon in the Jan. 6 Committee’s arsenal is the current president. Only Biden — the chief executive — can invoke executive privilege to prevent the disclosure of a predecessor’s secrets. And the White House has signaled that Biden is strongly considering waiving the privilege when it comes to material sought by the Jan. 6 panel.

That might also apply to the testimony of former White House aides, some of whom would conceivably have been considered part of Trump’s inner circle.

5) Inherent Contempt

Perhaps the least likely option in the committee’s toolbox is inherent contempt: Congress’ unilateral authority to fine or even jail recalcitrant witnesses.

Though there’s little dispute Congress has this authority, it has languished in disuse for a century. And in recent congressional probes — despite howls from some Democratic factions to dust it off — House Counsel Doug Letter has made clear this option simply would not be feasible, both practically and politically.

Schiff has noted that attempting to wield inherent contempt might still wind up before federal courts, bogging down the process for months and undermining the decision to deploy it in the first place.

But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from musing about the possibility. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, asked Tuesday about the prospect of inherent contempt, said the process “is on the table and will remain on the table.”

Raskin confirmed the committee hasn’t ruled it out.

“There is a growing appetite for using Congress’ own contempt powers,” he said.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.