“I actually long for a dull day.”
— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), quoted by the Lewiston Sun-Journal.
“I actually long for a dull day.”
— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), quoted by the Lewiston Sun-Journal.
“The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a controversial bill Thursday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, legislation that could become among the most restrictive in the nation,” the Tennessean reports.
“The 99-member House took up the bill… though some members of the House Republican caucus ahead of the vote remained hesitant about moving forward with the legislation as it is currently written.”
“Most of the GOP caucus ultimately voted for the bill.”
Michael Cohen is suing the Trump Organization for “failure to meet its indemnification obligations” and not paying his legal fees, Axios reports.
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Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) announced that he will not mount a 2020 presidential bid, saying that he believes the best way for him to serve the country is in the U.S. Senate, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.
“Brown’s decision comes as something of a surprise. He recently finished his tour of the early-primary states – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – and as recently as the weekend hinted that he was going to jump in.”
“His star had been rising as a possible contender, viewed as the kind of candidate who could bring voters in Midwestern states back to the Democratic Party.”
Ron Brownstein: “In his marathon speech to a gathering of conservative activists last weekend, Donald Trump unloaded more than 16,000 words, according to the official White House transcript.”
“But amid all the meandering and asides, the belittling taunts and geysers of grievance, Trump may have synthesized the essence of his reelection strategy in just three words toward the back end of his two-hour harangue: ‘I’ll protect you.'”
“With that concise phrase, Trump revealed volumes about his view of the electorate and the coalition that he hopes will carry him to a second term. The comment underscored his determination to convince his followers of a two-stage proposition: First, that they are ‘under siege,’ as he put it, by an array of forces that he presented as either hostile to their interests or contemptuous of their values, and second, that only he can shield them from those threats.”
Joel Goldstein: “Some pundits have emphasized Vice President Joe Biden’s lack of success in prior presidential races in assessing his strength as a presidential candidate this cycle.”
“But those races occurred before Biden served two terms as vice president, and recent history teaches that service in that position often helps transform previously unsuccessful presidential candidates into presidential nominees and even presidents.”
Daily Beast: “Officials and staffers in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said they were not read in on the details of Jared Kushner’s trip to Saudi Arabia or the meetings he held with members of the country’s Royal Court last week.”
“And that’s causing concern not only in the embassy but also among members of Congress.”
A federal judge ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted in “bad faith,” broke several laws and violated the constitutional underpinning of representative democracy when he added a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the Washington Post reports.
“In finding a breach of the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires a census every 10 years to determine each state’s representation in Congress, the 126-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco went further than a similar decision on Jan. 15 by Judge Jesse Furman in New York.”
“The Supreme Court has already agreed to review Furman’s narrower decision, with arguments set for April 23, but may now need to expand its inquiry to constitutional dimensions.”
Gallup: “As many Democratic Party supporters and power brokers wait to see whether former Vice President Joe Biden will enter the 2020 presidential race, recent Gallup polling indicates that he would be a formidable candidate, given Americans’ positive image of him. Currently, 56% of Americans have a favorable opinion about Biden.”
“Although that is down slightly from the prior reading in January 2017 near the end of his vice presidency, it still ranks among the best Gallup has measured for him to date.”
“Even without seeing Robert Mueller’s report, or knowing what prosecutors with the Southern District of New York have unearthed, or what congressional investigators will find, we already have witnessed the biggest political scandal in American history,” Axios reports.
“Historians tell Axios that the only two scandals that come close to Trump-Russia are Watergate, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the early 1920s, in which oil barons bribed a corrupt aide to President Warren Harding for petroleum leases.”
“Mueller has already delivered one of the biggest counterintelligence cases in U.S. history… Watergate yielded more charges than Mueller has so far… But historians say that both Watergate and Teapot Dome were more limited because a foreign power wasn’t a central player, and a much narrower band of potential offenses was under investigation.”
“If you start to see this president use pardon power for people who are connected with this investigation, I think you’ll see Congress erupt.”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), quoted by The Hill.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday on tax and bank-fraud charges that could see the former Trump campaign chairman spend much of the rest of his life in prison,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Sentencing guidelines, which Judge Ellis isn’t required to follow, call for him to spend upward of 19 years in prison, and prosecutors said they agreed with those guidelines. Mr. Manafort’s attorneys, on the other hand, have cited other cases they view as comparable in which defendants received probation or less than one year behind bars.”
CNN: “Prosecutors say that Manafort, 69, deserves between 19 and 25 years in prison as well as millions of dollars in fines and restitution for the crimes, for which a jury convicted him after a three-week trial last summer. Manafort has shown little remorse, they say, and even lied under oath following a plea deal after the trial.”
Timothy O’Brien: “A series of hurricanes tore through Florida in 2005, and Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s business and residence in Palm Beach, was apparently very beaten up because Trump collected about $18.3 million in insurance payments from Aon PLC that year.”
“When my attorney asked Trump during a 2007 deposition if he ever plowed all of those funds back into his club, he pointed out that ‘under the insurance plan you didn’t have to’ even though ‘the hurricane really did tremendous damage.'”
“In 2016, the Associated Press scoured Palm Beach property records for damage reports, interviewed the adjuster who assessed Trump’s insurance claim, met with the man who oversaw Mar-a-Lago and spoke with several former Palm Beach officials about possible hurricane damage to the club. There was ‘little evidence’ of ‘large-scale damage,’ the AP concluded.”
“This city is waiting with bated breath for special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into the Trump operation’s ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice by the president and his allies, which is widely expected to land soon,” NBC News reports.
“But even without those findings in hand, House Democrats effectively launched the impeachment process this week.”
“The Mueller report won’t be the beginning of the end of the investigation into Trump. Instead, it will be the end of the beginning of a political and legal nightmare that promises to subsume an ever greater portion of his presidency and could, conceivably, lead to his impeachment.”
“The former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, on Wednesday declined to answer questions about the existence of a memo he wrote saying that President Trump had ordered officials to give his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a security clearance in May 2018,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Kelly also broke with Mr. Trump on key aspects of his approach to immigration and the NATO alliance, and said that his top concern about decisions made by the president was whether they were objectively right for the country when divorced from political concerns.”
Former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) said that he would not rule out a return to politics after striking a deal with federal prosecutors to have corruption charges dropped with no admission of wrongdoing if he pays restitution and back taxes, Politico reports.
Saiod Schock: “At 37 years old, I don’t think I’ll ever say never.”
“Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has recruited at least three veteran House Republican staffers and consultants to join his presidential campaign-in-waiting, bringing on seasoned and well-connected GOP operatives who know their way around the very political apparatus helping to reelect President Trump in 2020,” The Hill reports.
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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