China’s leading diplomat will travel to Russia on Monday for security talks, the latest sign of deepening ties between Beijing and Moscow, the Financial Times reports.
Putin said last week that the ties between the two countries had reached “the best level in history.”
“China accused the U.S. of promoting theories that the coronavirus escaped from a high-security lab in Wuhan, as a fresh report about sick workers at the facility prompted Beijing to reaffirm denials,” Bloomberg reports.
A new Siena College poll finds a plurality of New York voters — 49 percent — say Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) should not resign from office.
But a majority of voters — 53 percent — say they prefer voting for someone else rather than re-electing him in 2022.
First Read: “As for Biden’s non-Covid-related agenda, two of the president’s self-imposed deadlines are coming up.”
“One of those includes reaching a deal on police reform by the anniversary of George Floyd’s death (which is tomorrow), and making ‘progress’ with Senate Republicans on infrastructure by Memorial Day.”
“And so unless something radically changes today and this week, Congress is going to blow past both deadlines.”
“Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs (R) announced her resignation after Republicans in the Senate declined to confirm her appointment by Gov. Greg Abbott (R),” the Houston Chronicle reports.
“While Republicans have not publicly expressed any lack of faith in Hughs, Democrats point to her office’s assertion that Texas had a ‘smooth and secure’ election in 2020.”
Associated Press: “For months, O’Rourke has kept his options open. A top aide to the former Texas congressman and presidential candidate said O’Rouke has not ruled out challenging Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022 but has taken no formal steps toward a campaign, like calling donors or recruiting staff.”
“A comeback in Texas could be complicated by liberal positions he took while seeking the presidency, but likely no other Democrat would enter the governor’s race with the same ability to quickly raise the massive campaign funds needed to compete in the state.”
“President Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, is suing former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the U.S. government for $1.8 million to compensate for legal fees incurred during the 2019 House impeachment probe,” the Washington Post reports.
“The suit, filed Monday in federal court in the District of Columbia, alleges that Pompeo reneged on his promise that the State Department would cover the fees after Sondland delivered bombshell testimony accusing Trump and his aides of pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate then presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid.”
“An obscure security unit tasked with protecting the Commerce Department’s officials and facilities has evolved into something more akin to a counterintelligence operation that collected information on hundreds of people inside and outside the department,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Investigations and Threat Management Service covertly searched employees’ offices at night, ran broad keyword searches of their emails trying to surface signs of foreign influence and scoured Americans’ social media for critical comments about the census.”
At least four Republican lawmakers who sought to undercut or overturn the 2020 presidential election are launching campaigns to become the top election official in key states that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024, Politico reports.
Washington Post: “Current and former advisers say Biden’s typical day reveals a creature of habit with well-worn routines and favorite treats, from orange Gatorade to chocolate chip cookies; a tactile politician eager to escape the Washington bubble who meets privately with people who write him letters; and the patriarch of a sprawling Irish-Catholic clan who abruptly interrupts high-level meetings to take calls from family members.”
“It marks a sharp contrast with former president Donald Trump, whose days often ran both early and late with tweets that were frequently angry or inflammatory, and whose time was often consumed by rambling rallies, spontaneous calls to TV hosts and random, unscripted activities. Depending on the viewpoint, Biden has restored routine and order to the White House — or removed the freewheeling passion.”
“As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home — a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago,” the Washington Post reports.
“The shift across the government, whose details are still being finalized, comes after the risk-averse federal bureaucracy had fallen behind private companies when it came to embracing telework — a posture driven by a perception that employees would slack off unless they were tethered to their office cubicles.”
“Samoa swore in its first female Prime Minister in a makeshift ceremony in a tent Monday after she was locked out of Parliament amid a power struggle with the country’s longstanding leader,” CNN reports.
An unnamed senior official on the National Security Council gave an extraordinary first-hand account of a suspected directed energy attack near the White House last November to the New Yorker.
Said the official: “It came on very suddenly… In a matter of about seven minutes, I went from feeling completely fine to thinking, ‘Oh, something’s not right,’ to being very, very worried and actually thinking I was going to die.”
Detroit News: “Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) issued an apology Sunday after a photo emerged showing her at a restaurant with 12 other people gathered around tables pushed together in violation of her health department’s current epidemic order.”
During Jane Timken’s tenure as Ohio’s GOP chair, Donald Trump won the one-time bellwether state by a whopping 8 percentage points. She put 150,000 miles on her car driving to the state’s 88 counties as a surrogate for the president. And she raised a total of $5 million for his two campaigns,” Politico reports.
“But that sterling record of MAGA support might not be enough to guarantee the former president’s support in her bid for the GOP Senate nomination. Timken’s sin? In her capacity as state party chair, she failed to immediately condemn home-state Republican congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, for voting to impeach Trump in response to the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6.”
New York Times: “Arkansas represents the full spectrum of today’s GOP. There are Trump devotees fully behind his false claims of a stolen election and his brand of grievance-oriented politics. That faction is now led by the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders … More ideological, and less Trump-centric, conservatives include Senator Tom Cotton.”
“And then there are pre-Trump Republicans, like Gov. Asa Hutchinson, hoping against hope the moment will pass and they can return the party to its Reaganite roots. Finally, some Republicans are so appalled by Trumpism, they have left or are considering leaving the party. Perhaps most significant, each of these factions are bunched together in a state powered by a handful of corporations that are increasingly uneasy with the culture-war politics that define Trump Republicanism.”
Washington Post: “Several Democratic members have privately expressed their concerns to leadership about security back home as threats have risen.”
“Some of these Democrats said they have paid out of their own pocket to increase security at their district offices or install security systems in their homes out of an abundance of caution.
“Members’ concerns have been validated by the U.S. Capitol Police, who report that threats against lawmakers have increased by 107 percent in just the first five months of the year compared with last year.”
Politico: “President Joe Biden’s party is gearing up to sprint through Washington’s sweltering season, trying to squeeze through a long list of top legislative priorities in barely two months. With Biden’s sprawling infrastructure plan stuck in bipartisan talks, a voting rights bill mired in the Senate and the fate of police reform hanging in the air, Democrats acknowledge that time is not necessarily on their side.”
“That’s on top of Congress’ regular to-do list, which includes averting a showdown over both the federal budget and the debt limit by September. To get those goals passed, both parties will need to be in lockstep — the kind of cooperation that’s been in short supply in the Capitol since the Jan. 6 insurrection, with tensions still high on both sides.”
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.