The New York Times asked Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) whether President Biden should seek re-election:
MALONEY: Off the record, he’s not running again.
NEW YORK TIMES: Not off the record. On the record.
MALONEY: On the record? No, he should not run again.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) guest hosted Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight on Friday night, The Week reports.
“A third candidate for public office has come to forward to say a sheriff on Florida’s Space Coast offered help in getting a job in exchange for leaving a race and backing his favored candidate,” the AP reports.
“Two high-ranking House members are asking for a national security damage assessment of the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter sent to the Director of National Intelligence on Saturday,” Axios reports.
Philip Klein: “Whatever anybody thinks about the FBI’s actions at Mar-a-Lago, can we all agree that Donald Trump’s claim — that there was a ‘standing order’ that said whatever he brought to his Florida residence was automatically declassified — is patently absurd?”
“Consider all the times that Trump was at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency and worked out of there. Are we to believe that each and every document he brought with him there, no matter how sensitive, was immediately declassified and thus widely available for people to see?”
“If this ridiculous policy were actually even true, it would raise a different set of serious questions about Trump’s recklessness in handling sensitive documents.”
“At least one lawyer for former President Donald Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government,” the New York Times reports.
“The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.”
“The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material.”
Racist campaign tactics are unfortunately not new to Political Wire readers, but I was nonetheless shocked to see them in my own congressional district this week.
Freshman Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is facing several challengers in a Democratic primary later this month. The best funded of them, Vedat Gashi (D), is mailing a series of flyers attacking Bowman.
But what struck me — and many others — was the photo the Gashi campaign used of Bowman with what appears to be a noticeably darker skin tone. The photo from the campaign flyer is on the left; the original is on the right. The picture used for the Gashi flyer is so darkened that Bowman’s features are barely perceptible.
It’s now been used on multiple campaign flyers.
Academic research shows that when voters are learning about a non-white candidate, darkening their skin complexion impacts how voters perceive that candidate — and not for the better.
Gashi’s campaign told City & State New York that the photo was not altered, but it clearly was.
It’s tough to defeat an incumbent like Bowman — especially when he’s been endorsed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). But there are plenty of policy differences that could have made this a competitive race.
Resorting to racist tactics is truly despicable.
New Republic: “The Bakersfield Republican has everything it takes to rise to the top in today’s GOP: zero interest in policy, relentless thirst for power, and slavish loyalty to Trump. If this man becomes speaker of the House—look out, America.”
Politico: “Some Republicans are leaving open the possibility that Trump acted inappropriately. In an interview, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), an Intelligence Committee member, said it was important for the panel to glean additional information and acknowledged that mishandling of sensitive classified information would be a serious violation.”
Said Stewart: “I mean, if he had actual Special Access Programs — do you know how extraordinarily sensitive that is? That’s very, very sensitive. If that were actually at his residence, that would be a problem. But we just don’t know that. So let’s find out.”
Said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): “When you get to compartmentalized classified spaces, it gets more serious.”
“The seizure of classified U.S. government documents from Donald Trump’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago retreat spotlights the ongoing national security concerns presented by the former president, and the home he dubbed the Winter White House,” Reuters reports.
“Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat who single-handedly thwarted her party’s longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors, received nearly $1 million over the past year from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists whose taxes would have increased under the plan,” the AP reports.
“For years, Democrats have promised to raise taxes on such investors, who pay a significantly lower rate on their earnings than ordinary workers. But just as they closed in on that goal last week, Sinema forced a series of changes to her party’s $740 billion election-year spending package, eliminating a proposed ‘carried interest’ tax increase on private equity earnings while securing a $35 billion exemption that will spare much of the industry from a separate tax increase other huge corporations now have to pay.”
Wired: “Broadly speaking, the US intelligence and defense communities would possess four different categories of files that might be considered “nuclear documents”: nuclear weapon science and design; other countries’ nuclear plans, including the nuclear systems and command of allied nations (UK, France) and adversaries (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran), as well as countries whose nuclear programs exist in a more gray zone (Israel, India, Pakistan); details on the United States’ own nuclear weapons and deployments; and details on US nuclear command & control procedures, known in Pentagon parlance as NC2.”
“Each category of these documents would carry with it some unique classification peculiarities. And all of them exist at the so-called Above Top Secret level, because a simple Top Secret clearance on its own isn’t enough to access the files.”
Michael Wolff: “In traditional politics, a politician under this sort of siege would see among his supporters and even in his inner circle a certain winnowing of options. The outlook, everyone would understand, was grim. At best, you could only look to limit the damage. In most instances, the FBI showing up at your door would, alas, mean end of story.”
“But what has confused liberals for the whole of the Trump era is that almost every mortal legal arrow they have shot at him has had the opposite of its intended effect. They haven’t even hobbled him. They have only ever enlarged the Trump story, creating new options for him, more dedicated supporters, and an ever-grander battlefield.”
NBC News describes “how a flurry of last-minute, behind-the-scenes deal making this summer handed Biden and the Democrats their most significant legislative accomplishment since seizing all the levers of power in Washington in January 2021.”
“Former President Donald Trump said that everyone takes work home sometimes, as he sought to develop a new line to explain why top secret government documents were stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida,” Insider reports.
Said Trump: “As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different.”
Trump further claimed that he had a “standing order” to declassify documents “the moment” they left the Oval Office.
“Sheriff’s deputies decided to let neighbors of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) settle a dispute between themselves and the congresswoman’s husband after he reportedly threatened them and destroyed their mailbox,” the Denver Post reports.
“But 911 calls from the incident, obtained by The Denver Post, show just how upset and nervous the neighbors were over their run-in with Boebert’s husband, Jayson Boebert.”
Said one neighbor: “I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns. He just got chest to chest, face to face, looking to fight.”
“House Republicans on Friday abandoned a plan to prime a constitutional challenge against Democrats’ $740 billion tax, climate and health care bill,” Axios reports.
“The plan was to have enough Republicans proxy vote to deny Democrats a physical quorum and open the door for a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the bill – and the validity of proxy voting.”
“The plan fell about 20 members short and members at the Capitol were told they could vote in-person.”
“He promised a new social safety net. He pledged to develop a robust plan to fight global warming. He vowed to reduce the gap between rich and poor by making the wealthy ‘pay their fair share,’” the New York Times reports.
“And along the way, Joseph Biden often said as he battled Donald Trump for the White House in 2020, he would prove that democracy still works in America.”
“With final House passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, President Biden is poised to deliver the latest in a series of legislative victories that will ripple across the country for decades — lowering the cost of prescription drugs, extending subsidies to help people pay for health insurance, reducing the deficit and investing more than $370 billion into climate and energy programs.”
☑️ SmartCharge New York pays you for charging your electric vehicle at off-peak times. Use this link and you'll get $25 to join.
☑️ Scott's Cheap Flights is the best way to take more vacations. Save up to 90% on airline tickets!
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.