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“Senior Republicans are closing ranks behind Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) after he endured a scathing attack from former President Donald Trump for acknowledging the reality that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election,” CNN reports.
Said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020 election. And I agree with him.”
Said Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “I say to my colleague, welcome to the club.”
“Former President Donald Trump announced guest speakers today for his Saturday rally in Arizona, and most of them share a common trait: they led efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Axios reports.
“Trump has made clear to all who seek his endorsement that if they want his blessing, they need to make overturning the 2020 election as much of a priority as subverting future elections.”
“A rural sheriff near the Texas border is under criminal investigation for allegedly having his deputies illegally seize money and a truck from undocumented immigrants during traffic stops,” the Abilene Reporter News reports.
White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci was caught on a hot mic calling Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) “a moron” during his testimony before the Senate Health Committee on the omicron variant of the coronavirus, The Hill reports.
“Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that the bipartisan working group talking about changes to the Electoral Count Act is also considering a broad range of elections reforms,” Politico reports.
“The Maine Republican told reporters the group is looking at raising the bar for challenging a state’s electoral count, beyond the current requirements of one member of the House and one member of the Senate. But the lawmakers are considering updates to the Election Assistance Commission, an agency that provides guidance and grants to state and local election officials, as well as expanding the grant use for purposes such as training and voting machines.”
“In addition, Collins said the group is examining suggestions from Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for how to protect election officials from harassment.”
Ron Brownstein: “The last four times a president went into midterm elections holding unified control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, as Joe Biden and Democrats do now, voters have revoked it.”
“It happened to Donald Trump in 2018, Barack Obama in 2010, George W. Bush in 2006 and Bill Clinton in 1994: All lost control of at least one congressional chamber, crippling their ability to advance their legislative agendas. In fact, no president who went into midterms with unified control of government has successfully defended it since Jimmy Carter in 1978, when Democrats were still cushioned by the enormous margins they amassed in the backlash against Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “said he will run for another term as the chamber’s top GOP leader at the end of the year, shutting down the possibility of a shake-up in the Republican chain of command,” The Hill reports.
“The Wyoming Republican Party and Rep. Liz Cheney continue to trade barbs, this time over her comments suggesting the leaders controlling the state GOP are radicals,” the Casper Star Tribune reports.
Said Cheney: “There are people in the state party apparatus of my home state who are quite radical. And some of those same people include people who were here on Jan. 6th, include a party chair who has toyed with the idea of secession. So, there is a very radical element of the Republican Party in the same way that there is a radical element of the Democratic Party.
“This is one of those defining moments, it really is. People are going to be judged: Where were they before, and where are they after the vote? History is going to judge it. It’s that consequential.”
— President Biden, speaking to reporters on voting rights legislation.
The Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress for “substantial” funding to address the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic domestically and abroad, Roll Call reports.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told reporters during a pen and pad briefing that he expects the White House will ask lawmakers to appropriate funding for testing, vaccines and “to make sure schools have resources to keep themselves safe.”
“The fourth-ranking House Democrat, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-MA), urged the sergeant-at-arms to force lawmakers who defy the chamber’s mask mandate to cast votes from enclosures in the gallery above to limit potential spread of Covid-19,” The Hill reports.
“Clark said it’s clear that existing fines are not enough to deter certain lawmakers from repeatedly flouting rules requiring everyone to wear masks in the House chamber.”
Doug Schoen and Andrew Stein: “A perfect storm in the Democratic Party is making a once-unfathomable scenario plausible: a political comeback for Hillary Clinton in 2024.”
“Several circumstances—President Biden’s low approval rating, doubts over his capacity to run for re-election at 82, Vice President Kamala Harris’s unpopularity, and the absence of another strong Democrat to lead the ticket in 2024—have created a leadership vacuum in the party, which Mrs. Clinton viably could fill.”
“The campaign of former Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) reported paying $11,000 for ‘website design’ to the technology firm that created a personal website for him, in a move that could violate campaign-finance rules,” Forbes reports.
“More than a year after stepping down from his role in Congress to serve as Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, Ratcliffe still had access to a pile of money originally raised to support his congressional bids. He dipped into that stash to pay a company named Telegraph Creative. But Forbes found no evidence that Telegraph Creative did work on behalf of Ratcliffe’s old campaign. Instead, it seems more likely that the money went toward the cost of creating a personal website for Ratcliffe.”
Politico: “As McCormick prepares to imminently enter Pennsylvania’s Republican contest for the Senate — a race in which candidates are outdoing each other to prove their loyalty to Trump — he is already making moves to inoculate himself from the all-but-certain primary attacks that he is insufficiently MAGA.”
“McCormick has built a campaign-in-waiting with a who’s who of Trump-world operatives, and distanced himself from his former company’s China ties, while his allies have reached out to Trump-friendly media. The question is whether that will be convincing enough in a state where Trump continues to have a strong hold on the GOP grassroots.”
“You’re so misinformed, it’s extraordinary… What are you talking about?”
— Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking to Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) at a Senate hearing.
Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R), who is 80 years old, told WISN that he’s not ruling out another run for the state’s highest office.
Said Thomson: “Everything is on the table. I’m not saying it’s in the cards. But, I’m physically and mentally capable of doing anything.”
House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker says he intends to train “insider threat specialists” to monitor for security officials whose “allegiance has changed,” Politico reports.
Dr. Anthony Fauci sparred with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) during a Senate hearing after the senator attacked the doctor for appearing to disagree with scientists who said the coronavirus originated from a lab in China, NBC News reports.
Said Fauci: “What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue, is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family, and my children, with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
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— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
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— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.