“Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) says omicron is just the latest deep state plot to distract America,” New York Daily News reports.
“The former White House physician claimed the worrisome variant is a hoax that Democrats will use to impose new Covid-19 mail-in ballot rules.”
Said Jackson: “Here comes the MEV — the Midterm Election Variant! They NEED a reason to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots Democrats will do anything to CHEAT during an election — but we’re not going to let them!”
The Atlantic: “Amid all the attention paid to the legal drama surrounding both Mississippi’s and Texas’s contested abortion laws, one striking detail seems to have escaped much notice: Neither state makes an exception for rape or incest.”
“This is a major departure, a sign of how extreme America’s abortion politics have become. For decades, exceptions to abortion bans for rape and incest were a rare source of consensus…”
“The reason is power. Many anti-abortion activists never believed that a rape or incest exception could be squared with their deeply held belief that a fetus is a person. Today the anti-abortion movement is ready to ask for what it wants, and the GOP—and its allies on the Supreme Court—is willing to give it to them. What the movement wants, now as in the past, is the recognition of fetal personhood. And historically, recognizing personhood has often meant criminalizing the behavior of pregnant women, even when those women are victims of crimes themselves.”
“The Supreme Court has turned away an emergency appeal from employees at the largest hospital system in Massachusetts who object to the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds,” the AP reports.
“Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) clashed in what both described as a tense phone call on Monday after video surfaced of the far-right lawmaker making Islamophobic remarks about her colleague,” The Hill reports.
Said Omar: “Today, I graciously accepted a call from Rep. Lauren Boebert in the hope of receiving a direct apology for falsely claiming she met me in an elevator, suggesting I was a terrorist, and for a history of anti-Muslim hate. Instead of apologizing for her Islamophobic comments and fabricated lies, Rep. Boebert refused to publicly acknowledge her hurtful and dangerous comments. She instead doubled down on her rhetoric and I decided to end the unproductive call.”
Said Boebert: “She kept asking for a public apology. So I told Ilhan Omar that she should make a public apology to the American people for her anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-police rhetoric.”
Politico says the controversy between the two lawmakers “escalated to a full boil.”
“Most federal workers who failed to meet the Nov. 22 deadline to get vaccinated against the coronavirus will not risk being suspended or losing their jobs until next year,” USA Today reports.
“Democrats are growing anxious about when – and even whether – Stacey Abrams will enter the 2022 race for Georgia governor as the party sets its sights on capturing a statewide office that narrowly eluded them less than four years ago,” The Hill reports.
“Party operatives almost universally believe that Abrams will end up running. But her continued silence on her plans has some worried that a late entrance into the race could hamper the party’s hopes of victory next year.”
“CNN host Chris Cuomo used his sources in the media world to seek information on women who accused his brother Andrew Cuomo, then the governor of New York, of sexual harassment, according to documents released Monday by the New York Attorney General’s Office,” CNBC reports.
“While Chris Cuomo has previously acknowledged advising his brother and his team on the response to the scandals, the records show that his role in helping the then-governor was much larger and more intimate than previously known.”
“Washington and Wall Street were optimistic Monday that Congress can pass a bill to fund the government and avert a partial shutdown before a Friday deadline,” CNBC reports.
Coming soon: The Vote Collectors: The True Story of the Scamsters, Politicians, and Preachers behind the Nation’s Greatest Electoral Fraud by Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner.
A must-read.
“I’m sparing no effort and removing all roadblocks to keep the American people safe.”
— President Biden, quoted by Politico, on possible preparation to fight the Omicron variant.
“President Biden said Monday that his administration was not recommending further restrictions on businesses or in-person gatherings to combat the coronavirus pandemic amid concerns about the new omicron variant,” The Hill reports.
The World Health Organization said Monday in a new risk assessment that it believes the Covid-19 Omicron variant poses a “very high” risk to the globe because it may be more transmissible than other strains of the virus, Axios reports.
Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D) will run for governor of New York next year, Newsday reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Suozzi, who has most recently focused on federal negotiations over raising a cap on state and local tax deductions, has positioned himself as a vocal centrist who is quick to lash what he casts as the excesses of his party’s left wing.”
“His decision to run for governor, which he is expected to announce at an 11 a.m. news conference, will intensify and complicate the battle for moderate voters in one of the nation’s marquee Democratic primary contests next year.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she spoke with GOP leader Kevin McCarthy after the congresswoman threatened to torpedo McCarthy’s ambition to be elected Speaker of the House.
Said Greene: “We spent time talking about solving problems not only in the conference, but for our country. I like what he has planned ahead.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) tweets: “Here is real strength, when Kevin McCarthy has to call a freshman begging for permission to stay in power. What has Kevin promised?“
“Federal health officials are bracing for the first cases of the new Omicron coronavirus variant to be detected in the US and say there are likely far more cases worldwide than is currently known,” CNN reports.
Jonathan Bernstein: “Normal political parties are dominated by the electoral incentive. Politicians want to win and then retain office; campaign professionals want to win to improve their reputations and, perhaps, to reap financial rewards; governing professionals want to win so that they can govern; activists and donors want to win so that they can influence policy, and in some cases because they, too, want jobs when their party is in office. With almost all individual incentives running that way, the party collectively comes to place a high priority on winning.”
“But party-aligned media do not necessarily share that incentive. Being out of office is good for business because negative partisanship means more viewers and more clicks when there’s an opposite-party president to dislike. Normally, party-aligned media aren’t important enough within a party for their commercial interests to overwhelm the party’s political ones, so its members tend to follow the lead of politicians and campaign professionals, both because access to them is important and because party actors generally adopt the goal of winning elections.”
“However, as we’ve seen lately with the Republican Party, the more central party-aligned media become within the overall party, the less important winning becomes.”
Washington Post: “A year after local and state election officials came under immense pressure from Trump to subvert the results of the 2020 White House race, he and his supporters are pushing an ambitious plan to place Trump loyalists in key positions across the administration of U.S. elections.”
“The effort goes far beyond the former president’s public broadsides against well-known Republican state officials who certified President Biden’s victory, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Citing the need to make elections more secure, Trump allies are also seeking to replace officials across the nation, including volunteer poll watchers, paid precinct judges, elected county clerks and state attorneys general, as well as rally speeches, social media posts and campaign appearances by those seeking the positions.”
Kansas state Rep. Aaron Coleman (D) was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence Saturday morning, his second arrest in less than a month, the Kansas City Star reports.
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.
