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“The Mississippi House has approved the creation of a new court system in which judges and prosecutors would be appointed by state officials — who all happen to be white — for the capital of Jackson, which has the second-highest percentage of Black residents among U.S. cities,” CNBC reports.
“Local residents elect judges and prosecutors in every other county court system in the state.”
Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) “says the state should stop accepting the nearly $1.8 billion of federal K-12 education dollars that help provide support for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities,” the AP reports.
Said Sexton: “Basically, we’ll be able to educate the kids how Tennessee sees fit.”
“Look – a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me just say this: It’s your dream, but I’m gonna have my veto pen make it a nightmare.”
— President Biden, quoted by CNN.
“President Joe Biden brought his State of the Union populist economic messaging to Wisconsin on Wednesday, firing back at Republicans and highlighting US manufacturing in a preview of an expected 2024 argument in the battleground state,” CNN reports.
“Biden made clear that he was willing to continue the fight as he hit the road, reigniting the social safety net argument with Republicans that sparked one of the most memorable moments in Tuesday’s speech.”
Rolling Stone: “The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.”
“In the last six decades, no president has spoken as many words – by actual or average count – in an address to Congress than President Joe Biden,” USA Today reports.
“In his second State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Biden set a new record for words spoken, 9,191, eclipsing President Bill Clinton’s 1995 address by a single word.”
“In average number of words, Biden also has the most.”
“It’s not every day that foreign observers are needed to monitor an election in Germany, one of the west’s richest and most stable democracies. But then again, Berlin is no ordinary city,” the Financial Times reports.
“Fourteen officials from the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights body, will arrive in the capital this week to observe Sunday’s rerun of its 2021 election, an event so chaotic its results were nullified: Berliners had to queue for hours at polling stations, which ran out of voting papers and ballot boxes.”
NBC News: “This is also the story, unknown to many Americans, of how Bush — a devoutly religious man who campaigned for president on a platform of ‘compassionate conservatism,’ but whose legacy was stained by the carnage of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan quagmire — conceived of and launched a juggernaut aid program that is widely credited with saving sub-Saharan Africa from cataclysm.”
New York Times: “There were no economic pivots in President Biden’s first State of the Union address to a Republican House. He did not pare back his push to raise taxes on high earners or to spend big on new government programs. He offered no olive branches to conservatives who have accused him of running the country into crisis with government borrowing.”
“It was a shift from Mr. Biden’s two most recent Democratic predecessors in the White House, who tacked toward a more conciliatory and limited-government approach to economic policy after losing at least one chamber of Congress. But on Tuesday night, Mr. Biden barreled ahead.”
Former Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster (R) is considering challenging Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) in 2024, The Dispatch reports.
“The news comes roughly two weeks after former two-term Gov. Ricketts—appointed by his successor Jim Pillen to fill former Sen. Ben Sasse’s seat—was sworn into office January 23.”
“Over the last few years, a new variant of H5N1 has spread widely through wild and domestic bird populations around the world. It has taken an unusually heavy toll on wild birds and repeatedly spilled over into mammals, such as foxes, raccoons and bears, that might feed on infected birds,” the New York Times reports.
“But a recent mink farm outbreak was a new and troubling development, scientists said.”
Gallup: “Reflecting on their personal financial situations, 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off.”
“Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.”
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“More than 200 employees of NBC represented by the NewsGuild of New York plan to walk off the job for 24 hours on Thursday to signal frustration with the company’s decision to lay off seven union-covered journalists last month,” the Washington Post reports.
With the election less than three weeks away, three out of five voters disapprove of the job Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) has done in her first term and 71% think the city is on the wrong track, according to a Sun-Times/WBEZ/Telemundo Chicago/NBC5 poll of Chicago voters.
“Donald Trump’s one-time lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arrived Wednesday at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to meet with prosecutors investigating the former president’s role in alleged hush payments to a porn actress before the 2016 election,” ABC News reports.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “is warning state agency and public university leaders this week that the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — policies that support groups who have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against — is illegal in hiring,” the Texas Tribune reports.
Susan Glasser: “The suspense of the evening was not rooted in what Biden would say but how he would say it—and how it would be received. Would the far-right Republican extremists who had held up their own party’s leadership through fifteen long ballots at the start of the year, rather than sign off on McCarthy as Speaker, once again act up?”
“The answer, of course, was yes. As if to prove the point, even McCarthy’s audible shushing could not get a few House Republican hecklers to shut up. And if their goal was to rattle the eighty-year-old President, embattled and down in the polls and facing questions even from within his own party about whether he should run again, it’s safe to say that it didn’t work.”
“Biden, it seemed, had carefully prepared for their antics. Had he scripted their reaction, he could not have asked for a better foil than Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former QAnon promoter who flirts with white supremacy.”
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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