Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch said Wednesday that the State Department is “in trouble” and that the department is being “hollowed out,” CNN reports.
Said Yovanovitch: “Vacancies at all levels go unfilled and officers are increasingly wondering whether it is safe to express concerns about policy, even behind closed doors.”
The Atlantic: “Over a 75-minute speech and question-and-answer session, Kelly laid out, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings with Trump’s words and actions regarding North Korea, illegal immigration, military discipline, Ukraine, and the news media.”
“Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, said that Vindman is blameless and simply followed the training he’d received as a soldier, migrants are ‘overwhelmingly good people’ and ‘not all rapists,’ and Trump’s decision to condition military aid to Ukraine on an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden upended longstanding U.S. policy.”
New York Times: “Prosecutors across the United States, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, said this week that they had already been wary of working on any case that might catch Mr. Trump’s attention and that the Stone episode only deepened their concern. They also said that they were worried that [Attorney General Bill] Barr might not support them in politically charged cases.”
Washington Post: “Typically, after the first two nominating contests, primaries narrow to a handful of front-runners as a campaign crystallizes between competing factions. This year, the race looks like no other Democratic primary in modern history, an increasingly muddled mix of ideologies, backgrounds and theories on what has unfolded.”
“Three contenders emerged from Tuesday’s vote here with added strength, with the top vote-getter a self-described democratic socialist and independent and the other two, both Democrats, vying to represent moderates. Two more candidates, including the party’s longtime national polling leader, leave the Granite State significantly weakened but vowing to fight on. And yet two more are self-financing billionaires — one rising in South Carolina, which votes later this month, and the other gaining ground nationally and across Super Tuesday states.”
“President Trump is testing the rule of law one week after his acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial, seeking to bend the executive branch into an instrument for his personal and political vendetta against perceived enemies,” the Washington Post reports.
“And Trump — simmering with rage, fixated on exacting revenge against those he feels betrayed him and insulated by a compliant Republican Party — is increasingly comfortable doing so to the point of feeling untouchable.”
“In the span of 48 hours this week, the president has sought to protect his friends and punish his foes, even at the risk of compromising the Justice Department’s independence and integrity — a stance that his defenders see as entirely justified.”
Associated Press: With impeachment over, critics see Trump “retribution tour.”
“At the height of the 2008 economic collapse, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the elimination of a discriminatory housing practice known as ‘redlining’ was responsible for instigating the meltdown,” the AP reports.
Said Bloomberg: “It all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone. Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said, ‘People in these neighborhoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages, tell your salesmen don’t go into those areas.’”
He continued: “And then Congress got involved — local elected officials, as well — and said, ‘Oh that’s not fair, these people should be able to get credit.’ And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like.”
“Shellshocked by two big losses, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign tried to reassure donors, surrogates and the press about his path forward Wednesday while counterattacking nearly every one of his rivals,” Politico reports.
“The attack-everyone strategy is a marked shift for a once-highflying Biden, who has tumbled from frontrunner to being in danger of becoming an also-ran.”
“Troy Price resigned his position as chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party Wednesday as the organization grapples with the fallout of a botched caucus process that has left the party and the state reeling,” the Des Moines Register reports.
Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), one of only two Democratic congressmen from South Carolina, forcefully rebuked Sen. Bernie Sanders, jolting the state’s “First in the South” presidential primary race just hours after the Vermont senator won in New Hampshire, the Charleston Post & Courier reports.
Said Cunningham: “South Carolinians don’t want socialism. We want to know how you are going to get things done and how you are going to pay for them. Bernie’s proposals to raise taxes on almost everyone is not something the Lowcountry wants and not something I’d ever support.”
Kyle Kondik: “Impossible not to think about how some Republicans dealt with Trump four years ago.”
Tom Steyer spent $19.2 million in New Hampshire on television and radio advertisements and received about 10,272 votes, the Washington Post reports.
That’s nearly $1,900 spent per vote.
“That the Democrats are crooked… that they shouldn’t have brought impeachment and my poll numbers are 10 points higher.”
— President Trump, when asked if he learned any lessons from being impeached.
Attorney General Bill Barr has accepted an invitation to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, the New York Times reports.
Politico notes the appearance will end a year-long standoff that began when the panel first demanded his testimony in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“The turnout in Tuesday night’s Democratic New Hampshire primary was the party’s highest ever and provided a hopeful sign to Democrats disappointed by low enthusiasm demonstrated in Iowa last week,” CNN reports.
“Mike Bloomberg is spending so much money on Facebook ads that he has surpassed President Trump, the reigning king of the social media realm,” NBC News reports.
“Bloomberg spent more than $1 million a day on average over the past two weeks on Facebook. That’s five times more than Trump spent during the same period — and more than three times what Trump spent per day during his victorious fall 2016 campaign.”
“He has a plan, that’s for sure. You have to recognize, the man — he really was a good mayor of a huge, huge, city, the largest city in America. I like him, I’ve always liked him. Nobody’s done more on guns and climate than he has. No one.”
— Former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), talking to Vice about Michael Bloomberg.
Ron Bownstein: “These results raise pointed questions about whether Sanders can truly build a coalition broad enough to pull away from his rivals. Given the modest size of Sanders’s New Hampshire victory, Greenberg said, ‘I don’t see it producing a surge in the states following it.'”
“Of course, no one else in the race has given any indication they can assemble a broader coalition of voters than Sanders has done. The limits constraining all of the top-tier contenders—and the prospect of Bloomberg further splintering the electorate with his unprecedented spending—is why more Democrats are beginning to contemplate what seemed unimaginable not long ago: that for the first time since 1952 they will arrive at their party convention in Milwaukee this July without anyone laying claim to a majority of delegates.”
Trending on the political dictionary: brokered convention.
Of course, who will broker a convention when there are no power brokers left?
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.