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Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) will resign from Congress in June to become president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, the Boston Globe reports.
“The announcement, expected Tuesday, is sure to send shockwaves through Rhode Island’s political establishment, setting up an off-year special election for the First Congressional District seat that most political observers believed the 61-year-old Cicilline could have held for the rest of his life.“
Dan Pfeiffer: “I have no idea why Nikki Haley is running for President. And based on her first week on the campaign trail, neither does she. When asked why she should be President, Haley answered, ‘why not me?'”
“The former South Carolina Governor turned Trump Cabinet member’s announcement speech was a Cheesecake Factory’s menu worth of cliches, focus-grouped pablum, and circular arguments. Haley is simultaneously running on a platform of representing generational change, being a trailblazer, a loyal Trump soldier, a Trump critic, and a winning candidate. Why pick one lane when you can randomly swerve across all of them? Despite what Aaron Sorkin would have you believe, it takes more than a slogan that fits on a napkin.”
The AP tracked down Emily Kohrs, the foreperson for the special grand jury looking into Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
“During a lengthy recent interview, Kohrs complied with the judge’s instructions not to discuss details related to the jury’s deliberations. She also declined to talk about unpublished portions of the panel’s final report. But her general characterizations provided unusual insight into a process that is typically cloaked in secrecy.”
“Kohrs was fascinated by an explainer on Georgia’s voting machines offered by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She also enjoyed learning about the inner workings of the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who Kohrs said was much more forthcoming than her old boss, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.”
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Rep. George Santos (R-NY) admitted in an interview with Piers Morgan that he’d been “a terrible liar.”
However, he then shifted blame to Republicans, claiming his fabrications weren’t about “tricking the people,” but were aimed toward getting “accepted by the party here locally.”
“Jimmy Carter was ensconced Monday at his home as family and friends journeyed to pay what could be their last respects. Down the road, the town he grew up in marked a somber Presidents Day reflecting on their native son’s legacy,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Tourists visited the rustic boyhood farm where the former president grew up, wandering through his boyhood bedroom and a general store as chickens clucked and mules brayed from nearby pens.”
“The shops of Plains flung their doors open for visitors who wished to celebrate the former president in his final days, even as longtime residents wondered what will become of a town whose best-known export is a former president.”
Washington Post: Jimmy Carter, the president who tried to save the planet.
Semafor: “Haley’s presidential run may be the biggest test yet of how her Confederate flag moment has worn in the intervening years as voters in both parties re-examine her record and scrutinize her campaign’s characterization of the episode.”
“The former governor mentioned the shooting in both her announcement video and her first official campaign speech. But she did not mention her decision to remove the flag.”
A letter sent by 16 Project Veritas employee’s to the nonprofit’s board said founder James O’Keefe was a “power drunk tyrant” and a “diva,” who abused, bullied, demeaned, and over-worked his employees, and who caused concerns among donors, National Review reports.
One employee even accused O’Keefe of once taking a pregnant woman’s sandwich in court.
Said another: “We have all been on the receiving end of unnecessary, seemingly intentionally humiliating, and outright cruel behavior. James knows he’s in over his head, he’s scared, he’s overworked, manic on stress and drunk on the success of the last few weeks.”
Donald Trump is widely disliked abroad, both in comparison to President Joe Biden and the Republican Party, illustrating a potential foreign relations pitfall should he win back the White House in 2024, according to Morning Consult survey data from 17 countries.
“Two top Spanish transport officials have resigned over a botched order for new commuter trains that cost nearly $275 million,” the BBC reports.
“The trains could not fit into non-standard tunnels in the northern regions of Asturias and Cantabria.”
Vladimir Putin said Russia is suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, CNN reports.
“Moscow is not withdrawing from the agreement, but is suspending its participation, Putin said in his state of the nation address.”
“Under the key nuclear arms control treaty, both the United States and Russia are permitted to conduct inspections of each other’s weapons sites, but inspections have been halted since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Eliot Cohen: “The Russians received word of the trip, we are informed—and presumably the threat, stated or implied, that they would get a violent and overwhelming response if they attempted to interfere with it.”
Financial Times: “Russia’s battlefield losses are so huge that western officials doubt it has the capacity to mount an offensive on the same scale again. Sanctions, meanwhile, have hurt Russia’s economy and have cut it off from supply chains crucial to sustaining Putin’s war machine.”
“But despite the dire state of Russia’s forces and the years-long quagmire its economy faces, Putin has shown no indication he intends to scale back his goals or seek a way out of the war, insisting Russia’s victory is ‘inevitable’ and its ‘goals will be met in full.’”
“Let’s review some of the governing principles of America. Our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie.”
— Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), responding to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) call for a “national divorce.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Western countries Tuesday of igniting and sustaining the war in Ukraine, dismissing any blame for Moscow almost a year after the Kremlin’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor that has killed tens of thousands of people,” the AP reports.
“In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast Russia — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said Russia, not Ukraine, was the one fighting for its very existence.”
CNN: Biden set for latest symbolic clash with Putin after surprise Ukraine trip.
“A newly launched nonprofit group is supporting Ron DeSantis’ national political activity — a major sign of the growing political apparatus around the Florida governor as he moves toward a 2024 presidential bid,” Politico reports.
“The nonprofit organization, called ‘And to the Republic,’ hosted three events DeSantis held Monday in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, where he spoke before law enforcement officers.”
“A leaked internal strategy document from Vladimir Putin’s executive office and obtained by Yahoo News lays out a detailed plan on how Russia plans to take full control over neighboring Belarus in the next decade under the pretext of a merger between the two countries.”
“The document outlines in granular detail a creeping annexation by political, economic and military means of an independent but illiberal European nation by Russia, which is an active state of war in its bid to conquer Ukraine through overwhelming force.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) — who just two months ago vowed to not claim a blanket public records exemption as governor — is now refusing to release her call logs and e-mails, the Boston Globe reports.
Financial Times: “Tens of thousands of American parents are mourning the deaths of their children amid an unprecedented drugs crisis, which has claimed 107,000 lives in the year to August 2022. About two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl — a drug prescribed to treat severe cancer pain — which is increasingly being cut into illegal street drugs via a well-honed supply chain built by Chinese and Mexican crime syndicates.”
“The consequences are sobering. Illicit fentanyl has displaced legally prescribed painkillers as the main cause of overdoses in the US. The skyrocketing death rate — equivalent to one American overdosing every five minutes — and the $1.5 trillion annual cost to the economy is forcing a national debate about how to solve a public health emergency that, alongside Covid-19, has helped drive US life expectancy down to a 25-year low of 76.4 years.”
Be sure to read Chris Riback’s Deep Dive on the fentanyl crisis.
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.
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