Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that he was “horrified” by images of horse-mounted Border Patrol agents attempting to grab Haitian migrants and use their animals to push them back toward Mexico and promised a “swift” investigation, the Washington Post reports.
Said Mayorkas: “I was horrified by what I saw. I am going to let the investigation run its course, but the pictures that I observed troubled me profoundly.”
Politico: “Trump may have started the election-truther movement. But what was once the province of an aggrieved former president has spread far beyond him, infecting elections at every level with vague, unspecified claims that future races are already rigged.”
“It’s a fiction that’s poised to factor heavily in the midterm elections and in 2024 — providing Republican candidates with a rallying cry for the rank-and-file, and priming the electorate for future challenges to races the GOP may lose.”
“President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party maintained its tight grip on the nation’s parliament in three-day elections criticized by opposition parties and independent observers for ballot stuffing and tampering,” the Washington Post reports.
Financial Times: Russia’s election apathy bodes ill for the country’s future.
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Washington Post: “Inside the White House, there is a deepening sense of anger over McConnell’s refusal to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling given the potential financial calamity that would ensue.”
“White House officials also believe such a stalemate creates a distraction from other urgent economic problems already facing the country, the senior administration officials said. But there is a similarly strong unwillingness to establish a precedent that rewards policymakers for threatening to wreck America’s fiscal health.”
CNBC: Washington gridlock and a debt ceiling showdown are weighing on the market.
New York Times: “Privately, White House officials have been trying to assure activists that they plan to turn their attention in earnest to voting rights after their push on infrastructure is through at the end of the month. But that has done little to ease anxiety.”
“If any member of Congress is not concerned that this could fall apart, they need treatment.”
— Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), quoted by Politico, warning his party “will pay for it at the polls” if it fails in enacting President Biden’s agenda.
Washington Post: “He is not likely to be openly mocked, as Trump was, but the global reception is already cooler than Biden might have expected.”
“Xi Jinping’s campaign against private enterprise, it is increasingly clear, is far more ambitious than meets the eye,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The Chinese President is not just trying to rein in a few big tech and other companies and show who is boss in China.”
“He is trying to roll back China’s decadeslong evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions with party officials, and interviews with people involved in policy making, show.”
“Foreign investors cannot get enough US government debt, which analysts say could help soften the blow when the Federal Reserve starts to cut back its own bond-buying program this year,” the Financial Times reports.
“President Biden’s governing agenda is at risk of unraveling on Capitol Hill after a mounting series of delays, clashes and setbacks that have sapped momentum from an ambitious and intricate push to deliver on long-standing Democratic policy priorities,” the Washington Post reports.
“An overhaul of the nation’s voting laws has been blocked by Republicans. An effort to strike a bipartisan deal on police reforms has lost all momentum. A sweeping immigration plan to provide a path to legal residency for millions of undocumented immigrants is now all but dead.”
“And centrist Democrats on Capitol Hill appear poised to pare down a planned $3.5 trillion economic package as their liberal counterparts in the House threaten in turn to kill the bipartisan infrastructure deal that passed the Senate last month.”
Boris Johnson told Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to “get the AstraZeneca vaccine” in an awkward exchange with the unvaccinated South American leader, Sky News reports.
Bolsonaro has previously made claims Covid-19 vaccines could turn people into crocodiles.
“When CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to India earlier this month a member of his team reported symptoms consistent with Havana syndrome and had to receive medical attention,“ CNN reports.
“The incident set off alarm bells within the US government and left Burns ‘fuming’ with anger… Some officials at the CIA viewed the chilling episode as a direct message to Burns that no one is safe, including those working directly for the nation’s top spy.”
Mark Barabak writes that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a “hot commodity” right now after defeating the recall against him and would be a natural presidential candidate.
“But one thing stands in his way: Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Politico: “One alternate policy that Democrats and advocates are floating is narrowing their horizons on immigration by making a simple change to a decades-old ‘registry’ law… That law allows immigrants to apply for a green card if they arrived in the U.S. before a certain year, and that date was last altered in 1986 to let undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before 1972 apply for legal status.”
“Some Democrats say simply updating that law with a more recent year, greatly increasing the number of immigrants eligible to apply for legal status, could pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian.”
“Democrats are trying to unseat only about half as many Republican House members next year as they did in 2020, trimming their target list from 39 to 21,” Axios reports.
“The narrowing map — which reflects where Democrats see their best chance of flipping seats — is the latest datapoint showing the challenging political landscape the party faces in the crucial 2022 midterms.”
“The once-a-decade redistricting process, Donald Trump’s exit from the White House and a razor-thin House majority that requires more focus on protecting incumbents are among the factors at work.”
Punchbowl News: “Here’s the only assessment one can make right now about Democrats on Capitol Hill and at the White House: This is a party that, at the moment, is a bit adrift and doesn’t seem to know how to turn its bold ideas into legislation that can actually pass. That is a big problem when you’ve got the razor-thin margins that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have. Forget blowing up the filibuster. There are few issues that a simple majority of House and Senate Democrats agree on right now.”
“But even more worrisome for our political system and financial markets is that caught up in the Democrats’ struggle to turn their lofty goals into law is government funding and the debt limit. We are careening into a legislative crisis. The government will shut down in nine days and estimates indicate we will reach the nation’s borrowing limit in one month.”
Politico: “Internal Democratic discord has wounded President Joe Biden’s massive social spending plan, raising the prospect that the package could stall out, shrink dramatically — or even fail altogether.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has been reelected in the national election, the CBC reports.
“In the end, the final seat tally may not look very different from the composition of the House of Commons when it was dissolved in early August.”
Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, was indicted this month for allegedly funneling $25,000 from a wealthy, unnamed Russian to former President Trump’s reelection efforts, Axios reports.
“The indictment, unsealed on Monday, outlines allegations of a convoluted money trail from the unnamed Russian national through a consulting firm run by Benton and to a Trump joint fundraising committee.”
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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