Georgia U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s (R) campaign declined to tell the Atlanta Journal Constitution whether he had been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave.
Said Carlson: “Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it. Trying to figure out how to breastfeed, no word on how that went.”
“The Department of Justice said Friday that it will go back to the Supreme Court to request that it put on hold Texas’s restrictive abortion law while legal battles continue,” the Washington Post reports.
“In a different case, the Supreme Court last month allowed the law to go into effect on a divisive 5 to 4 vote.”
“A group of Georgia high school students planned a protest after a video of their classmates waving a Confederate flag on campus began circulating. But before students were able to hold their demonstration, school administrators allegedly suspended the Black organizers,” Newsweek reports.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) tweets: “Christmas presents were never late when President Trump was in charge.”
Headline from January 2021: “A month after the holidays, some people are still getting Christmas packages in the mail.”
Alex Pareene: “I am not really a bettor, but I’m pretty sure, right now, that Kyrsten Sinema is going to formally leave the Democratic Party in the near future, probably after the 2022 midterms. I also think that if Republicans win control of the Senate in those midterms, she will choose to caucus with them.”
“I suspect Sinema decided to leave the party years ago and has simply been waiting for the most dramatic moment to do so. With Democrats currently occupying the White House and having a very slim majority in the Senate, it makes sense to continue caucusing with them to maximize her power.”
Four of the Senate Democrats facing the chamber’s most competitive reelection bids — Raphael Warnock, Mark Kelly, Catherine Cortez Masto and Maggie Hassan — smoked their likely Republican opponents in the fundraising race last quarter, Politico reports.
A new Politico/Morning Consult tracking poll finds just 26% of Americans say Congress has done an excellent or good job handling the pandemic.
Why this matters: “Talking about all the big bills lawmakers have passed on the pandemic may not resonate with voters the way they hope they will.”
A Texas school district official was caught on an audio recording telling teachers if they kept books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they would have to also offer “opposing” views in order to comply with a new state law.
Ron Watkins (R), the man widely suspected of being behind QAnon’s master account, announced a challenge to Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ) in a bizarre video in which he calls the congressman “the dirtiest Democrat in the D.C. swamp.”
Said Watkins: “If we don’t follow our beliefs and the founding principles of our nation, it will crumble! This must stop now! Therefore, I have decided to double down—with God as my compass—to take this fight to the swamp of Washington, D.C.”
The Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would bar transgender students from playing on school sports teams based on their gender identity, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reports.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R), the likely GOP challenger to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) next year, released a video of him playing with nunchucks.
A British lawmaker from the Conservative Party died after being stabbed multiple times in an attack, the BBC reports.
The Guardian has the latest.
“International travelers fully vaccinated against the coronavirus who have been barred from entering the United States during the pandemic will be able to enter the country on Nov. 8, marking an end to restrictions that had walled off tourists and relatives seeking to visit their families,” the New York Times reports.
“Unvaccinated foreigners will be broadly barred from entering the United States, although the White House official said there will be limited exemptions, including for young children.”
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“Satellite images have revealed China is upgrading and reinforcing its airbases closest to Taiwan along its southeastern coast, indicating Beijing may be stepping up its plans to take the island by force,” the South China Morning Post reports.
“The images… showed work on aircraft shelters and reinforced munitions storage started early last year and continued uninterrupted during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Although it’s only October, “Christmas” was mentioned at least 106 times on Fox News programming in a 24-hour span.
Daily Beast: “For many people both inside and outside the Beltway—who are hanging on her every maneuver around President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda—Sinema is a mystery. And for people who once considered themselves her allies, friends, and confidants, the senator is now mostly a black box to them, too.”
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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.