“Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden have never seen eye-to-eye, but they have agreed to an awkward, hastily arranged meeting in Los Angeles on Thursday for their own different motives,” Reuters reports.
“Biden reached out to Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, in a last-ditch attempt to save a hemispheric summit, while Bolsonaro will use a meeting with the world’s most powerful man to boost his image as he heads into a tough re-election campaign.”
“Top Democratic leaders in Washington and across the country fear that Donald Trump might be running for president again by the time Attorney General Merrick Garland decides whether to prosecute him and others in his orbit for the January 6 insurrection — and that any action by the Biden Justice Department could be cast by Republicans as little more than a political vendetta,” CNN reports.
“Two dozen leading Democrats in Washington and across the country tell CNN that Garland may have missed his moment to bring criminal charges against top Trump administration officials before it would get caught up in the 2024 presidential campaign jockeying set to begin later this year, after the midterm elections.”
“A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week registered as a foreign agent of a former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, belatedly detailing work she performed for the politician between 2018 and 2020,” the Washington Post reports.
Washington Post: “Last night, Audrey Trujillo (R) became the latest 2020 election denier to win her party’s nomination to oversee a state’s elections.”
“The New Mexico Republican is part of a wave of candidates beholden to conspiracy theories about election hacking and fraud who are seeking to lead elections in more than a dozen states — including in many states that were decisive in President Biden’s victory.”
A high-ranking GOP staffer talks to Thomas Edsall:
“They are different in that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the ‘squad’ seem to me to be more ‘idealist.’ They actually do want to legislate/accomplish the very far left social ideas they propose. They are willing to cause Pelosi headaches, but they have shown they are not going to go so far as to jeopardize the government (operations) and safety net that so many families depend on from a working government.”
On the other hand: “I hate to use a loaded word here but I can’t think of another one, the ‘MAGA Caucus’ members operate more like bullies — legislative bullies. If they have the opportunity they will gladly hold bills/government funding hostage for the sake of populism and social media. They would take pride in ‘shooting the hostage’ as that would be very popular with their tribal base and their social media.”
“House Republicans’ campaign arm is laying down its first round of fall TV ad reservations, a $52.3 million investment that sketches out a path back to the majority in 2023,” Politico reports.
“The bulk of the buy, which is spread across more than two dozen media markets, is targeting Democratic-held seats — a signal that a favorable political environment has created a plethora of pickup opportunities for the GOP.”
“A federal judge Tuesday ordered John Eastman — the attorney who developed former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch strategy to overturn the election — to disclose a batch of 159 sensitive documents to the Jan. 6 select committee, including another email that the judge said presented evidence of a likely crime,” Politico reports.
Politico: “Two weeks after Donald Trump was humiliated in Georgia’s primaries, a lower-profile collection of Republicans on Tuesday were putting a finer point on the limitations of Trump’s influence over the GOP.”
“It’s still enormous, of course. But five of the 35 House Republicans who voted to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol appeared on ballots on Tuesday. And all of them appear to have survived to fight another day.”
“The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is scheduled to hold its inaugural hearing on Thursday and according to the running order obtained by the Guardian, the panel will track the activities of the far-right Proud Boys group before and during the insurrection,” The Guardian reports.
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll reveals a mixed reaction to reports that President Biden is preparing to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for Americans who make less than $150,000 a year (or for married couples making less than $300,000):
A new Emerson College poll in Missouri finds Eric Greitens (R) with 26% support in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, followed by Eric Schmitt (R) at 20%, Vicky Hartzler (R) at 16% and Billy Long (R) at 8%.
“Moderna released results on Wednesday on an updated coronavirus vaccine targeting the Omicron variant, calling it ‘our lead candidate’ to serve as a booster shot in the fall,” the New York Times reports.
“The firm’s researchers tested a booster dose combining the original vaccine with one targeted specifically against Omicron, the variant that became dominant last winter. They found that the combination produced 1.75 times as much neutralizing antibodies against Omicron as the existing Moderna vaccine did alone.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds President Biden’s approval rate at 39% to 58%, the lowest recorded during his presidency.
Key takeaway: “Biden’s popularity, or lack thereof, mirrors Donald Trump’s standing in June 2020, when the nation was grappling with the twin crises of the pandemic and the response to the murder of George Floyd.”
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) and billionaire developer Rick Caruso are headed to a November runoff in the nationally watched race to become Los Angeles’ next mayor, the AP reports.
New York Times: “No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen… While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.”
“Their decision to move on opened a vacuum around the president that was filled by conspiracy theorists like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who relayed to Mr. Trump farcically false stories of dead voters, stuffed ballot boxes, corrupted voting machines and foreign plots. Concluding that the president would not listen even to family members urging him to accept the results, Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump that he would not be involved if Mr. Giuliani were in charge, according to people he confided in, effectively ceding the field to those who would try to overturn the election.”
“Senate Democrats acknowledge bipartisan gun safety talks will fall far short of what they want. They’re desperate for a deal anyway — and seem willing to take whatever the GOP will give them,” Politico reports.
“Whatever the negotiations among a handful of members in both parties amount to, this much is already assured: There will be no assault weapons ban and no universal background checks. Expanded background checks are a long shot, as is raising the age needed to buy firearms to 21.”
“And while Democrats surely want those policies to become law, they are not dictating what the bare minimum on gun safety should be.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she believes Congress can still reach an agreement on gun reform measures but downplayed the scope of any legislation that might come out of the ongoing bipartisan talks.
“San Francisco voters overwhelmingly voted to remove District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office on Tuesday, favoring a recall effort that argued his progressive reforms were too lenient and made the city less safe,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Axios: “Boudin’s recall may spell trouble for progressive prosecutors across the country who are increasingly facing scrutiny from voters amid rising crime rates.”
Susan Glasser has a great profile of Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, much of which comes from reporting from her forthcoming book with Peter Baker: The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 -2021.
“A sixty-year-old onetime real-estate developer from North Carolina who had spent the previous seven years in Congress, he was beefy and tall, with a winning smile and an easygoing manner. But his affable demeanor disguised a ruthless ambition, and, once he quit Congress and took over Trump’s perpetually fractious team, his new colleagues found him to be a cutthroat infighter determined to consolidate power.”
This is telling: “A former Republican leadership aide once told the journalists Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman that Meadows was the most dishonest person he had ever met at the Capitol, ‘convicted criminals included.’”
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.