Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) repealed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s (R) executive order that banned statewide mask mandates one day earlier, calling her action an “an abuse of power,” Axios reports.
McGeachin, who recently announced a primary challenge to Little, issued the order yesterday while the governor was out of state.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Friday he is planning to force a vote next month on a sweeping bill to overhaul elections, setting the stage for a high-profile clash over the filibuster, The Hill reports.
Axios: “The sprawling voting reform and anti-corruption legislation is viewed as a top priority for Democrats, who are seeking to combat the wave of restrictive voting bills making their way through Republican state legislatures across the country.”
Associated Press: “Louisiana lawmakers have agreed to let candidates for office take unlimited sums directly from political action committees, in a significant change to campaign finance limits that govern donations that come largely from special interest groups.”
“Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) hasn’t taken a position on the proposal, which would take effect Aug. 1.”
“I’m very disappointed, very frustrated that politics has trumped — literally and figuratively — the good of the country.”
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), quoted by the Wall Street Journal, on the defeat of the bill to create a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection.
The U.S. Senate failed to advance the bill to create a commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The vote was 54 to 35, with just 6 Republicans — Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Rob Portman, Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse — voting in favor.
Another 11 senators were absent for the vote.
New York Times: “The debate played out in the same chamber where a throng of supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, egged on by his lies of a stolen election and efforts by Republican lawmakers to invalidate President Biden’s victory, sought to disrupt Congress’s counting of electoral votes about five months ago.”
Washington Post: “The GOP’s votes stood in sharp contrast to its prevailing rhetoric at the time, which was sharply critical of Trump.”
“The investigations will happen with or without Republicans. To ensure the investigations are fair, impartial, and focused on facts, Republicans need to be involved.”
— Sen. Bill Cassidy, explaining why he broke with most of his party to advance the bill creating a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) “has sailed into a new controversy, claiming money wired to close the sale on a St. Petersburg yacht his fiancée had agreed to buy ‘went missing,'” WFLA reports.
“According to a spokesperson for the Republican, he and his fiancée Ginger Luckey were ‘targeted by malicious actors’ during the purchase process of a St. Petersburg yacht.”
David Frum: “Where Republicans control local power, they are building a new infrastructure of minority rule. They are gerrymandering districts, raising barriers to voting, biasing election administration, and politicizing election certification. There is nothing secret about this effort; everybody can see it happening.”
“Yet the members of the threatened, narrow Democratic majorities in Congress—the people who might seem to have the strongest motives to act—seem too paralyzed to respond…”
“It’s not blithe inattention that has stalled the Democrats’ voting-rights bills. It’s self-harming overreach by party activists.”
Zeynep Tufecki: “If world leaders don’t act now, the end of the Covid pandemic may come with a horrible form of herd immunity, as more transmissible variants that are taking hold around the world kill millions.”
“There’s troubling new evidence that the B.1.617.2 variant, first identified in India, could be far more transmissible than even the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in Britain, which contributed to some of the deadliest surges around the world.”
“In countries with widespread vaccination, like the United States and Britain, we can expect that Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to decline or stay low, especially because lab tests and real world experience show that vaccines appear to defend recipients well against the severe effects of both variants.”
“For much of the rest of the world, though, this even more transmissible new variant could be catastrophic.”
“Three fundraisers recently resigned from Republican Josh Mandel’s U.S. Senate campaign, prompting questions about the strength of his fundraising operation,” the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Even though the Senate has not wrapped up business, at least 10 senators have already left town for Memorial Day weekend, according to Fox News.
Former President Trump fired back at former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) after a speech in which Ryan criticized Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Paul Ryan has been a curse to the Republican Party. He has no clue as to what needs to be done for our Country, was a weak and ineffective leader, and spends all of his time fighting Republicans as opposed to Democrats who are destroying our Country.”
“A Trump appointee serving on West Point’s advisory board has repeatedly spread a conspiracy that the Biden administration is bringing in non-White immigrants as part of a ‘grand plan’ to have them outnumber White Americans of European ancestry in the United States,” CNN reports.
“He also attacked women serving in the military in combat roles.”
“Turns out, things are much worse than we expected.”
— Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die, quoted by the New Yorker.
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Though U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents on the 2022 ballot, no elite Republican has yet entered the race as the party waits to see whether University of Georgia football great Herschel Walker will jump in.”
“On the Democratic side, Stacey Abrams is expected to mount a rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp to try to avenge her narrow defeat in 2018. But her announcement is not imminent, and until she joins the contest, the nationally watched race won’t start in earnest.”
“Facebook will resume its political donations after more than a four-month pause but will keep the ban in place for members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the election ahead of the insurrection at the Capitol,” The Hill reports.
A new Yahoo/YouGov poll reveals that 73% of Republicans believe that left-wing protestors are to blame for the January 6th attack on the Capitol because they wanted “to make Trump look bad.”
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.