Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a statement Wednesday that she did not ask Justice Neil Gorsuch to wear a mask, but she also did not give her reasons for participating in oral arguments remotely from her chambers, instead of on the bench, the Washington Post reports.
In a joint statement released by the court, the two said news accounts of the dispute “surprised us” and described them as “false.”
Nathaniel Rakich: “Many analyses of congressional redistricting so far have tried to sum the situation up into a single sentence. While we understand the urge, it’s increasingly the case that there is no one takeaway from the 2021-22 redistricting cycle.”
“In reality, the picture is complicated: Democrats have gained seats based on partisanship alone … but Republicans have gained when you factor in which party currently holds the seat. The House map’s long-term Republican bias has lessened somewhat … but it’s still not an even playing field. Swing seats are getting redrawn to be safer for Democrats … but light-red seats are also being redrawn to be safer for Republicans.”
“U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be ousted from power within the week, after a longtime ally compared him to Neville Chamberlain in a stunning rebuke in the House of Commons on Wednesday,” Axios reports.
Said former minister David Davis: “I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take. Yesterday he did the opposite of that.”
Davis concluded with a quote from Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain: “You have sat there too long for all the good you have done. In the name of God, go.”
Meanwhile, the BBC notes Tory MP Christian Wakeford left the Conservatives and walked across the floor to join Labour in another dramatic moment.
“The Taliban’s prime minister called on Muslim nations to be the first to officially recognize the government that seized power in Afghanistan in August,” AFP reports.
“No country has yet recognized the Taliban government, with nations watching to see how the hardline Islamists -– notorious for human rights abuses during their first stint in power between 1996 and 2001 -– will rule this time around.”
Just for members: Ask me a question over in The Cloakroom and I’ll do my best to answer them.
“In an effort to keep a newly-arrested member of the Oath Keepers militia group charged in last week’s seditious conspiracy indictment behind bars — the Justice Department in a new court filing Wednesday revealed even more details behind the group’s alleged plotting in advance of the Jan. 6 insurrection,” ABC News reports.
“Edward Vallejo is not alleged to have joined the Oath Keepers at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — he instead is accused of waiting with a so-called ‘Quick Reaction Force’ of heavily armed individuals at a hotel in Virginia just outside the city, waiting to be activated once the militia’s members in D.C. called for help.”
“Nearly 4 million children could fall into poverty this month following the end of pandemic-linked monthly child tax credit payments in December, according to a new analysis from Columbia University,” CNBC reports.
“After a woman was pushed to her death in front of a New York City subway train beneath Times Square over the weekend, Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged to reporters Tuesday that even he didn’t feel entirely safe riding the rails,” the AP reports.
Max Boot: “Biden was never going to be another FDR or LBJ, not with only 50 votes in the Senate. He was lucky to pass more than $3 trillion in spending last year, with $1.2 trillion of that coming in a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Why isn’t that good enough for his supporters?”
“But nor is he destined to become another Jimmy Carter — a one-term president who is widely, perhaps unfairly, perceived as a failure.”
“A large part of Biden’s problem is that presidents get blamed for a lot of things they have little control over — in his case, Covid-19 and inflation.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is up for re-election this year and was previously undecided on the filibuster, issued this statement: “If campaign finance and voting rights reforms are blocked again this week, I will support the proposed changes to pass them with a majority vote.”
A One America News host, who recently conducted an interview with former Donald Trump, likened him to Jesus on a recent broadcast.
Aaron Rupar: “Put bluntly, OAN is Trump cult TV. Like the Republican Party, which didn’t have a platform in 2020 and won’t have a legislative agenda to run on this year, its programming doesn’t have a coherent identity beyond Trump worship and owning the libs.”
“The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol has subpoenaed and obtained records of phone numbers associated with one of former President Donald Trump’s children, Eric Trump, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.,” CNN reports.
“It appears to be the first time the select committee has issued a subpoena that targeted a member of the Trump family, in what marks a significant escalation of the investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection.”
Buried in a New York Times story: “Ms. James already questioned another of Mr. Trump’s sons, Eric Trump, in October 2020. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against incriminating himself in response to more than 500 questions, the new court filing said.”
A new Gallup poll finds President Biden’s job approval dropped a net eight points in the last month to 40% to 56% — the worst approval of his presidency.
Washington Post: Inside Biden’s declining popularity as he struggles with multiple crises.
David Leonhardt: “Omicron appears to be in retreat, even if the official national data doesn’t yet reflect that reality. Omicron also appears to be mild in a vast majority of cases, especially for the vaccinated. This combination means that the U.S. may be only a few weeks away from the most encouraging Covid situation since early last summer, before the Delta variant emerged.”
The head of Florida’s Orange County Department of Health has been placed on administrative leave for an email he sent this month encouraging members of his staff to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
“Steve Bannon declared war on Fox News this week over the conservative cable behemoth’s lack of live coverage of Donald Trump’s unhinged Saturday evening rally in Arizona,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Bannon: “You’re not a news organization. What the Murdochs want is the—they want a Glenn Youngkin, or they want some nice guy who will sit there and give them tax cuts and deregulation.”
He later wrote on Gettr: “Fox News, which did not give one second of coverage to Donald J. Trump’s massive rally, showed no respect to anyone in the MAGA movement.”
“Election officials in a rural Georgia county are weighing plans to close all but one polling place ahead of this year’s elections, alarming local voting and civil rights groups,” CNN reports.
“But Wednesday’s vote by the Lincoln County elections board has reverberated far beyond this Georgia community of roughly 7,700 northwest of Augusta. The county is one of six in this battleground state that have disbanded or reconfigured their local election boards in the last year, thanks to recently passed bills by the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assembly.”
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.