“House Democrats on Friday identified 29 members who are most at risk in the 2024 elections,” Roll Call reports.
“It also includes lawmakers who had tougher-than-expected races in 2022 or who hail from battleground states — such as Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — where presidential and Senate races will dominate the airwaves.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday to raise the federal debt ceiling without conditions, warning that a default on U.S. debt would cause an “economic and financial catastrophe,” Reuters reports.
“Going forward, each and every proposed nominee I will review will be judged through one prism: Are they political partisans first or Americans first?”
— Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), writing in the Houston Chronicle.
Playbook: “It remains unclear whether an indictment would actually hurt Trump in a primary. After years of sowing doubt and disinformation about any institution that investigated or stood against him, it is possible that any charges could have something of a ‘rally around the flag’ effect with his core supporters.”
Donald Trump revealed that Richard Nixon’s “biggest regret” was giving in to GOP pressure to resign during the Watergate impeachment crisis, a move the 45th president said he wouldn’t have made, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Trump: “His daughter actually told me that his biggest regret was that he didn’t fight, he should have fought.”
“Nikki Haley is calling for changing the retirement age for Americans currently in their 20s and limiting Social Security and Medicare benefits for wealthier Americans, staking out a position on the politically controversial issue of entitlement reform that’s already been the subject of attacks from former President Donald Trump,” CNN reports.
Former FBI Director James Comey is trying out a new look.
Politico: “He’ll keep exerting his political leverage, at least until he runs and Republicans start to limit his opportunities or a retirement announcement saps his Senate sway. And the West Virginian is well aware of that limited window to maximize his current role as the GOP’s best bipartisan dealmaking partner and the Senate Energy Committee chair.”
“U.S. hiring grew solidly but cooled some in February as employers added 311,000 jobs, while unemployment rose to 3.6%,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“A hot job market has emerged as one of the biggest economic surprises among many twists since the Covid-19 pandemic hit three years ago. With the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates to tame inflation, many economists had expected job gains would cool or even turn into losses by now.”
“Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations Friday in a deal brokered by China, ending seven years of estrangement and jolting the geopolitical alignment of the Middle East,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “The two countries agreed to reactivate a lapsed security cooperation agreement — a shift that comes after years of Iranian proxies targeting Saudi Arabia with missile and drone attacks — as well as older trade, investment and cultural pacts.”
“He’s not even officially running against President Biden (yet), but Democrats are already using Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in battleground state ads urging voters to stick with Biden in 2024,” Axios reports.
“Dems are betting DeSantis’ culture-war politics are a turnoff to women and working-class voters in rural counties, and they’re lumping him with former President Trump and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in messages about battling ‘extremists.’”
“Mexico’s president said Thursday that his country does not produce or consume fentanyl, despite enormous evidence to the contrary,” the AP reports.
“President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appeared to depict the synthetic opioid epidemic largely as a U.S. problem, and said the United States should use family values to fight drug addiction.”
“He went on to recite a list of reasons why Americans might be turning to fentanyl, including single-parent families, parents who kick grown children out of their houses and people who put elderly relatives in old-age homes ‘and visit them once a year.’”
Rush Limbaugh’s house in Palm Beach sold for $155 million, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy slammed President Biden’s newly proposed budget and complained it should have been presented “more than a month ago” – but he declined to say when Republicans would present a counter-proposal, Spectrum News reports.
A new Politico survey of national Republican county chairs finds that Ron DeSantis has nudged ahead with 19% support in the “invisible primary,” compared to 17% for Donald Trump.
But it’s still wide open: Half say they’re uncommitted.
Also interesting: When asked which candidates they’re open to considering, 73% list DeSantis — but just 43% say Trump.
“When former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took his turn on stage at a Republican donor conference here late last month, he brought the crowd alive with a rousing and extended denunciation of Donald Trump,” Jonathan Martin reports.
“Demanding his party ‘stop whispering’ about their unease with Trump, Christie excoriated Trump for falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, propelling a series of lackluster candidates last year and generally presiding over the decline of the GOP over the last half decade.”
“Yet what was even more revealing about Christie’s half-hour remarks, a recording of which I obtained, was the less direct but unmistakable and certainly not whispered criticism he leveled at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
New York Times: “After two years championing some of his party’s top progressive priorities, the president lately is speaking more to the concerns of the political middle, seeking to recapture the more centrist identity that long defined him.”
“Not only is he increasingly focused on deficit reduction, Mr. Biden last week abandoned fellow Democrats by rejecting a new District of Columbia measure reducing mandatory minimum sentences for some violent offenses, rather than be tagged as soft on crime. And more and more, his administration is turning toward tougher policies to stem a near-record-high tide of illegal immigration, including possibly reviving the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the southwestern border illegally.”
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.