Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) announced that he is retiring from Congress, the Texas Tribune reports.
“The retirement sets up what will likely be one of the most competitive House races in the country. Olson narrowly won re-election last year against Sri Kulkarni (D), who is running again.”
“The House passed a sweeping two-year budget deal Thursday that increases spending for military and domestic programs and suspends the debt ceiling through mid-2021, sending the White House-backed legislation to the Senate,” the Washington Post reports.
“A large majority of Democrats voted for the legislation, while a majority of Republicans opposed it despite appeals from President Trump to support the bill.”
“The 284-149 vote was one of the last acts by the House before lawmakers leave Washington for a six-week summer recess. The Senate is expected to act on the bill next week and sent it to Trump for his signature before senators, too, abandon the Capitol for the summer.”
Ron Brownstein: “Donald Trump’s turn toward more overt racism in his ‘go back’ attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color rests on an unspoken bet: that the women who are part of his core constituencies will respond to his acrimony as enthusiastically as the men.”
“But polling throughout Trump’s presidency has indicated that his belligerent and divisive style raises more concern among women voters than men in one of his most important cohorts: the white working class. And a new set of focus groups in small-town and rural communities offers fresh evidence that the gender gap over Trump within this bloc is hardening.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Bloomberg that she would have accepted an offer from Hillary Clinton to become her running mate in 2016.
Hollywood Reporter: “The 7 1/2 hours of hearings… drew an average of just under 13 million viewers (12.98 million) on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.”
“The 13 million viewers falls short of some other recent televised hearings: Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, for instance, drew about 16 million viewers when he testified before Congress in February. Ex-FBI director James Comey’s 2017 appearance before Congress drew 19.5 million, and Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing averaged 20 million viewers.”
“Executives at Wall Street’s biggest banks have begun throwing financial support to their early favorites in the 2020 Democratic presidential field: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg,” CNBC reports.
” The donations represent just a fraction of the millions the candidates brought in during the three-month frame. Yet they provide clues about where these well-heeled donors could place their support as the campaign barrels toward the first voting contests of the season, which begin in February.”
Politico: “Top Republicans believe only a fraction of their conference will support the legislation, hammered out during weeks of negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. GOP insiders estimate that as little as one-third of the 197-member GOP conference will back the measure, although the vote tally is still fluid.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) “isn’t used to seeing her popularity under water in her home state, but that’s where the Maine Republican finds herself as she decides whether to run for a fifth term next year,” Bloomberg reports.
“Collins says she’s focused on preparing for a re-election bid but won’t decide until the early fall whether she’ll run.”
Said Collins: “The divisiveness of our country and the unceasing attacks by dark money groups in Maine have clearly had an impact.”
John Cassidy: “For the past two and a half years of Donald Trump’s Presidency, I have consoled myself with the argument that, despite all the chaos and narcissism and racial incitement and norm-shattering, the American system of government is holding itself together. When Trump attempted to introduce a ban on Muslims entering the country and sought to add a citizenship question to the census, the courts restrained him. When he railed at NATO and loyal allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel, other members of his Administration issued quiet reassurances that it was just bluster. When the American people had the chance to issue a verdict on Trump’s first two years in office, they turned the House of Representatives over to the opposition party.”
“All of this was reassuring. But, while watching what happened on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before two House committees, I struggled to contain a rising sense of dread about where the country is heading. With Republicans united behind the President, Democrats uncertain about how to proceed, and Mueller reluctant to the last to come straight out and say that the President committed impeachable offenses, it looks like Trump’s blitzkrieg tactics of demonizing anyone who challenges him, terrorizing potential dissidents on his own side, and relentlessly spouting propaganda over social media may have worked.”
A new Monmouth poll in South Carolina finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic presidential field with 39%, followed by Kamala Harris at 12%, Bernie Sanders at 10%, Elizabeth Warren at 9% and Pete Buttigieg at 5%.
They are followed by Cory Booker and Tom Steyer at 2% each, while Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O’Rourke each have 1% support. The remaining 15 candidates included in the poll earn less than 1% or were not chosen by any respondents.
Another 17% of likely voters say they are not leaning toward any candidate in this race.
Vice President Mike Pence “doesn’t appear to own a home and hasn’t saved much for retirement, yet he’s a millionaire thanks to his government pensions. A career politician with little notable experience in the private sector, Pence is entitled to at least $85,000 per year for the rest of his life,” Forbes reports.
“This is why as a former governor, you thank God every day you were never a member of the House.”
— Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), quoted by ABC News, on the Mueller hearings.
“The Justice Department announced Thursday that it plans to resume executing prisoners awaiting the death penalty, ending almost two decades in which the federal government had not imposed capital punishment on prisoners,” the Washington Post reports.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) downplayed the prospects of removing President Trump from office through impeachment, saying the only way he’s leaving office, at this point, is “by being voted out,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Schiff: “We do need to be realistic, and that is, the only way he’s leaving office, at least at this point, is by being voted out, and I think our efforts need to be made in every respect to make sure we turn out our people.”
He added: “Should we put the country through an impeachment? I haven’t been convinced yet that we should. Going through that kind of momentous and disruptive experience for the country, I think, is not something we go into lightly.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (R) called President Trump a “raging racist” at the NAACP convention in Detroit.
Said Weld: “Donald Trump is a raging racist, Okay? He’s a complete and thoroughgoing racist. And he made that choice, a choice a long time ago, when he was engaged in the housing business in New York with his father.”
He added: “The national Republican Party, has a choice. And a lot of them like to think that it’s a political choice. But it’s not a political choice. It’s a moral choice. Unless the Republican Party in Washington expressly, expressly rejects the racism of Donald Trump, they’re going to come to be universally viewed as the party of racism in America.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) writes a beautiful op-ed in the New York Times:
“Having survived civil war in my home country as a child, I cherish these values. In Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, I saw grade-school children as young as me holding assault rifles in the streets. I spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, where there was no formal schooling or even running water. But my family and I persevered, fortified by our deep solidarity with one another, the compassion of others and the hope of a better life in the United States.”
“The America we arrived in was different from the one my grandfather had hoped to find. The land of opportunity he imagined in 1992 was in fact full of challenges. People identified me in ways that were foreign to me: immigrant, black. I learned that these identities carried stigmas, and I experienced prejudice as a visibly Muslim woman.”
“But the beauty of this country is not that our democracy is perfect. It’s that embedded in our Constitution and democratic institutions are the tools to make it better. It was in the diverse community of Minneapolis — the very community that welcomed me home with open arms after Mr. Trump’s attacks against me last week — where I learned the true value of democracy. I started attending political caucuses with my grandfather, who cherished democracy as only someone who has experienced its absence could. I soon recognized that the only way to ensure that everyone in my community had a voice was by participating in the democratic process.”
First Read: “Two things can be true about former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony yesterday.”
“It was damaging to President Trump, contradicting the president’s key claims and defenses about the Russia probe. And it all but closed the door on the likelihood of Democrats impeaching the president – given the congressional math.”
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.