“For two days, Kari Lake traversed this state with a clear message. She falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. She baselessly insisted that votes were rigged against her in her run for Arizona governor last year. And she warned without evidence that future races will be compromised,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Lake: “If you lose, lose with dignity. You shake the other person’s hand and walk away. I didn’t lose, so I’m not doing that.”
Associated Press: “Black voters said they are tired of the countless hurdles that disproportionately try to keep them from being heard at the ballot box. Voters said their experiences with the GOP have been as voices to silence, not to win over.”
“Few have navigated the turbulent politics of the Trump era like Nikki Haley,” the AP reports.
“In early 2016, the then-South Carolina governor said she was “embarrassed” by candidate Donald Trump and decried his reluctance to condemn white supremacists. Nine months later, she agreed to join his Cabinet, serving as a key validator as Trump sought to win over skeptical world leaders and voters at home.”
“And shortly after Trump left the White House, Haley, whose resume by then included an ambassadorship to the United Nations, vowed not to step in the way if he ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Yet on Wednesday, she is poised to become the first major Republican candidate to enter the race against him.”
Playbook: “Folks in the White House are still giddy after an underwhelming week for their main sparring partners, House Republicans — between Biden landing punches on potential entitlement cuts during the State of the Union and GOP largely whiffing in their first oversight hearings.”
“Be on the lookout this week for Biden and aides to keep hammering Republicans over their past remarks about cutting or modifying Medicare and Social Security. Biden is heading to Maryland on Wednesday for an economic speech where he’s sure to replay the hits from last week.”
Insider: “As a congressional candidate, DeSantis repeatedly expressed support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed overhaul to entitlement programs by privatizing aspects of Medicare and Social Security, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck uncovered earlier this week.”
“Congressman DeSantis went even further than that position. As Josh Barro wrote, DeSantis supported the even more drastic Republican Study Committee’s budget proposal that aimed to balance the federal budget in four years, instead of Ryan’s decade. To achieve such cuts, as the Committee for the Responsible Budget detailed back then, required changing Medicare to a partially private system by 2019 and raising the retirement age to 70. It would have also increased the full retirement age for Social Security to 70 as well.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “is said to be looking at a late May or early June entrance if he runs,” the New York Times reports.
“The U.S. Air Force general overseeing North American airspace said on Sunday after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects that he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to U.S. intelligence experts,” Reuters reports.
Politico: “Defense officials on Sunday night declined to identify what the three objects shot down over the weekend might be, raising questions over the threat the objects could have represented to civilians across North America, what the purpose of the objects was, and why there has been a rash of detections and responses with fighter planes and guided missiles.”
Axios: “A record 18.8 million workers are predicted to no-show Monday, the day after the Super Bowl. And some schools in Philadelphia, anticipating a long night (and perhaps a rough morning) for Eagles-loving households, are delaying Monday classes.”
The US military shot down another high-altitude object over Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon, CNN reports.
It’s the fourth in less than two weeks to be downed over North American airspace.
New York Times: “The Pentagon used an F-16 fighter jet that shot the object with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile. This object was unidentified, as was an object shot down over the Yukon Territory in Canada on Saturday and another shot down over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska on Friday.”
Dan Pfeiffer: “The upside of these interviews is that they offer a massive audience. The Super Bowl is usually the most-watched event of the year. Last year, 99 million people tuned into the Super Bowl. To put that number in perspective, 27 million people watched the State of the Union last week.”
“The downside? The interviews are a weird mix of news and sports. Some tough questions about the issues of the day. Some serious questions about the sport of football, like the dangers of concussions or underrepresentation of Black coaches. And then some lighter questions about who the President thinks will win the game or their favorite Super Bowl snacks.”
“While the audience is large, they aren’t necessarily interested in news, and they mill about at Super Bowl parties eating wings and portions of seven-foot sub sandwiches.”
New York Times: “For months, Mr. DeSantis has pursued a strategy of conflict avoidance with his top rival in the shadow 2024 Republican presidential primary, delaying what is likely to be a hostile and divisive clash that forces the party’s voters to pick sides.”
“But now he faces the pressing question of how long this approach can work. Mr. Trump, who has spent weeks trying to goad Mr. DeSantis into a fight with rude nicknames like ‘Ron DeSanctimonious,’ is stepping up his social media-fueled assault, even as polls and interviews show that Mr. DeSantis has become the leading alternative to the former president for many voters and donors.”
“Mr. DeSantis must also decide just how forcefully to counterattack once he engages with Mr. Trump, and whether he has left himself enough room to effectively parry the former president’s taunts and smears without offending his loyal supporters.”
Dan Balz: “Only two states, Virginia and Pennsylvania, have legislatures where each party controls one chamber, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 47 others, one party controls both chambers. (Nebraska has a unicameral legislature.)”
New York Times: “He is about to go on tour to hawk a new book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, due out later this month and billed by its publisher as ‘a progressive takedown of the über-capitalist status quo.’ Tickets for an upcoming book event at a concert venue in Washington are selling for up to $95 on Ticketmaster — a company that last month was accused of anti-competitive behavior by some of Mr. Sanders’s Senate colleagues. His Republican critics are having a field day with that.”
“The United States believes the unidentified objects shot down by American fighter jets over Canada and Alaska were balloons, though smaller than the China balloon downed over the Atlantic Ocean last weekend, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday,” the AP reports.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro said he intends to return to Brazil “in the following weeks,” the AP reports.
“The far-right politician has been in the U.S. since arriving in Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 31, the eve of the inauguration of his leftist rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as Brazil’s current president.”
Washington Post: “The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner’s firm structured those funds in such a way that it did not have to disclose the source, according to previously unreported details of Securities and Exchange Commission forms reviewed by The Washington Post.”
“His business used a commonly employed strategy that allows many equity firms to avoid transparency about funding sources.”
Politico: “GOP lawmakers see a major flaw in their states’ near-total abortion bans: Some local prosecutors won’t enforce them.”
“Republicans in Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Texas — frustrated by progressive district attorneys who have publicly pledged not to bring charges under their state’s abortion laws — have introduced bills that would allow state officials to either bypass the local prosecutors or kick them out of office if their abortion-related enforcement is deemed too lenient.”
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.