President Trump signed legislation imposing sanctions on Russia and limiting his own authority to lift them, a measure that has already escalated tension with the Russian government and produced retaliation against the American embassy there, the New York Times reports.
The bill passed both houses with near-unanimous, bipartisan majorities that would easily override any veto.
Just published: The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by Jesse Eisinger.
“Why were no bankers put in prison after the financial crisis of 2008? Why do CEOs seem to commit wrongdoing with impunity? The problem goes beyond banks deemed ‘Too Big to Fail’ to almost every large corporation in America—to pharmaceutical companies and auto manufacturers and beyond.”
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told the HuffPost that his expletive-laden remarks to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza about his colleagues were intended as “humorous and joking” comments.
Said Scaramucci: “The Lizzas and Scaramuccis have been friends for over 50 years. My dad knew his dad from construction, and we were building a personal relationship. Most of what I said was humorous and joking. Legally, it may have been on the record, but the spirit of it was off. And he knew that.”
Lizza disputed Scaramucci’s assertion that the two men are friends.
First Read: “It may not feel like news to point out that politicians and Washington operators don’t always tell the truth until overwhelming evidence forces them to come clean, but Trump and his allies have taken that dynamic to a whole new level. If the White House wants to know why the press is getting more antagonistic, stop misleading all the time. You’ll be shocked at how much better relations are when you tell the truth the first time.”
Bloomberg: “Between Russian meddling in last year’s election, Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey and the president’s public drubbing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the House Judiciary Committee has a lot it could be looking into. But its Republican chairman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, has a different priority: investigating Hillary Clinton.”
“Goodlatte has called for new scrutiny of decisions made by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department in its probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as alleged Clinton ties to foreign governments and the leaking of classified information.”
Amy McGrath (D) announced her campaign for Congress in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district with a highly-effective ad.
Jeffrey Toobin: “While the tragicomic fall of Anthony Scaramucci was playing out at the White House on Monday, the mood was business as usual at the Capitol. There, the Senate was dealing with its own kind of personnel matter, one that, in the larger scheme, probably matters more than who happens to be the White House communications director of the week. To little notice, and with no fanfare, the Senate moved toward confirming another of President Trump’s appointees to a lifetime seat on the federal Court of Appeals.”
“So while the public watches Trump churn through White House staff members, his Administration is humming along nicely in filling federal judgeships, with the enthusiastic assistance of the Republican majority in the Senate. The first and most important victory for the President came with the confirmation of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, in a seat that Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate, kept vacant for nearly the full final year of Barack Obama’s Presidency. But McConnell didn’t just protect a Supreme Court seat for the next President; he basically shut down the entire confirmation process for all of Obama’s federal-judgeship nominees for more than a year. It’s the vacancies that accumulated during this time—more than a hundred of them—that Trump’s team is now working efficiently to fill.”
Matt Taibbi: “Some see in all these maneuverings an effort to purge GOP loyalists like Spicer and Priebus. Others see a Nixonian lunge to hire thugs in a crisis. This to me is all overthinking things. There is no strategy. This White House is just a succession of spasmodic Trump failures, with a growing line of people taking the fall for each of them. You can fall with honor, or without, entertainingly or not. But if you join this White House, fall you will. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Two House Democrats who have drawn increasing notice as potential 2020 White House hopefuls after opposing their own party’s leadership are heading to Iowa,” Politico reports.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) will join Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) “as the headliners of the annual Polk County Steak Fry of the Iowa Democratic Party in September… The trips fuel speculation that Moulton and Ryan are considering White House runs.”
Playbook: “It’s very hard to see how this is not going to be a huge legislative fight in the fall. Conservatives are going to want to notch a legislative achievement alongside lifting the debt limit. Democrats are out of power in every sense, and will want a clean increase but won’t want to be seen as carrying it. The ceiling needs to be lifted by the end of September. Government funding also runs out then. And the White House has said they want to finish tax reform by the end of October.”
Washington Post: “The Senate and House are scheduled to be in session together for a total of just 12 days from now until the debt ceiling deadline, giving them little time to focus on tax cuts.”
Mike Allen: “President Trump needed the vote of just one more Republican senator to keep the repeal-and-replace process alive — and he could easily have had it.”
“Party sources tell us that during the transition, Senate Republicans heavily lobbied Trump to nominate red- state Senate Democrats to Cabinet positions, with the hope that the successors would be Republicans. But Trump went with an all-GOP Cabinet — a fateful decision that fostered this scorched-earth atmosphere, in which no Democrat is willing to help him with his legislative priorities.”
“Defense attorneys for former congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) have asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal charges against him, arguing in a court filing Tuesday that investigators acted inappropriately in the case, including by exploring Schock’s sex life and whether he was gay,” the Washington Post reports.
Said the laywers: “It is no secret that there has long been speculative gossip in the media about Mr. Schock’s sexual orientation. For no apparent reason, the government has felt itself compelled to investigate this too.”
Associated Press: “Trump’s fundraising prowess is the engine of the RNC and a lifeline for every Republican planning to rely on the party for financial help during next year’s congressional races. Leaning heavily on Trump’s appeal among small donors, the party has raised $75 million in the first six months of the year, more than double what the [DNC] had raised by the same point in President Barack Obama’s first year.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “is resisting the pleas of State Department officials to spend nearly $80 million allocated by Congress for fighting terrorist propaganda and Russian disinformation,” Politico reports.
“It is highly unusual for a Cabinet secretary to turn down money for his department. But more than five months into his tenure, Tillerson has not issued a simple request for the money earmarked for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, $60 million of which is now parked at the Pentagon.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult survey finds Democrats lead Republicans by 7 percentage points on the generic congressional ballot, 44% to 37%, with 19% still undecided.
Politico: “Conway, however, is not alone in surviving the snakepit. The quiet endurers of Trump’s tumultuous White House, by and large, are the women who serve in his administration. That fact that may seem ironic in an administration run by a man who has launched sexist attacks on everyone from morning show host Mika Brzezinski to his former campaign opponent Hillary Clinton — and who in the past has been accused by more than a dozen women of groping or kissing them against their will.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “reaffirmed the GOP’s long-standing intention to shield any tax overhaul from a likely Democratic filibuster by using the procedural protections of budget reconciliation,” Politico reports.
“In explaining his decision to reporters, the Kentucky Republican cited a Tuesday letter from 45 Democratic senators urging Republicans not to use reconciliation and vowing to oppose a tax plan that adds to the deficit or cuts the annual bill of the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.”
Jonathan Chait says the letter tricked McConnell into admitting he just wants to cut taxes for the rich.
The Associated Press reports that Gen. Jim Mattis and Gen. John Kelly “agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions.”
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.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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