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A new Marist poll finds 62% of Americans think the state of the union is not very strong (42%) or not strong at all (21%).
Even Democrats still divide about the course the nation is on (49% very strong/strong to 48% not very strong/not strong at all).
Washington Post: “The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 4½ percentage points over the past 11 months, one of its sharpest moves in several decades, in a bid to cool off the economy and ease rising prices.”
“Yet employers continue to hire as if the good times will never end. In January, they added 517,000 jobs — almost twice as many as in December — while the unemployment rate fell to its lowest mark since 1969…”
“This Biden boom certainly is confounding skeptics who have been predicting for months that the Fed’s anti-inflation campaign would trigger an imminent recession. But the economy’s unexpected performance also is testing the ability of policymakers to keep the recovery going.”
“President Joe Biden is ready to offer a reassuring assessment of the nation’s condition rather than roll out flashy policy proposals as he delivers his second State of the Union address seeking to overcome pessimism in the country and concerns about his own leadership,” the AP reports.
“His speech before a politically divided Congress comes Tuesday night as the nation struggles to make sense of confounding cross-currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, a wearying war in Ukraine, growing tensions with China among them — and warily sizes up Biden’s fitness for a likely reelection bid.”
New York Times: “Aides describe a process in which the president spends weeks reading drafts aloud, rejecting anything that smacks of Washington-speak.”
New York Times: “Despite the resurgence … there are bottlenecks. Legal immigration remains below pre-Trump levels. Hundreds of thousands of people await interviews with U.S. consular officials to obtain immigrant visas. Millions of asylum cases are pending, and getting work authorization for those already here can take years.”
Wall Street Journal: “Americans have spent down about 35% of the extra savings they accumulated during the pandemic as of mid-January, according to an estimate from Goldman Sachs. By the end of the year, the company forecasts that they will have exhausted roughly 65% of that money.”
“President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine could visit Brussels on Thursday to meet with European Union leaders arriving in the Belgian capital for a long-planned summit,” the New York Times reports.
“As part of such a visit, Mr. Zelensky would likely address the European Parliament on Thursday.”
“Sarah Huckabee’s State of the Union response Tuesday night will mark the payoff of an extraordinary bet that many Republicans took in 2016 — that they could hitch themselves to Donald Trump, accumulate power in the process and, ultimately, outlive the most unsavory parts of the association,” Politico reports.
“It hasn’t always worked. In competitive states and districts, several of Trump’s chosen candidates flopped in the midterms. And there’s a whole fraternity of Trump allies — people like Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon — who have found themselves embroiled in legal and political scandal.”
“But among those who did prosper, Sanders ranks among the richest. The former press secretary is now the governor of Arkansas, having leapfrogged dues-paying politicians who would have, in another era, been frontrunners for the post. And on Tuesday night, she will be bracketing Biden on behalf of the Republican Party — a massive responsibility for the most watched political address of the year.”
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) organized more than 300 interviews yesterday with House Republicans focusing on local media outlets to rebut President Biden’s State of the Union address, Politico reports.
“House GOP leaders are moving ahead with plans to pass a symbolic measure this week condemning a Chinese surveillance balloon. And it may even be bipartisan,” Politico reports.
“Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his deputies were in talks Monday with top Democrats about a bipartisan resolution to denounce the spy balloon that drifted across much of the nation last week.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ likely presidential campaign is getting a major assist this week by Republican legislators who are moving quickly in a hastily called special session to help the governor,” Politico reports.
“GOP lawmakers are taking steps to undercut or nix legal challenges against some of DeSantis’ signature programs — and are helping him resolve a year-long feud with Disney that DeSantis has used to highlight his ongoing battle against ‘woke’ corporations.”
“It’s also a reminder that DeSantis has a ready partner in the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature to give him wins that can be used on the campaign trail should he jump into the race against former President Donald Trump later this year.”
Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, had drafted a charging document against Donald Trump for “a scheme to create and use false financial statements to obtain bank financing and other business advantages”—but the charges were never officially filed against the former president, the Daily Beast reports.
China said Tuesday it will “resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” over the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon by the United States, as relations between the two countries deteriorate further, the AP reports.
“The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that spent nearly $150 million in the past two election cycles, has invited a half-dozen potential Republican presidential candidates to its annual donor retreat next month — but not Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“In a meeting with reporters on Monday, David McIntosh, president of the group, said that Republican chances of winning back the White House next year would be diminished if Mr. Trump were once again at the top of the ticket and that he hoped to introduce Republican donors to other possibilities.”
Interestingly, CBS News reports a new poll commissioned by the Club for Growth shows Trump leading the GOP field of potential candidates with 37%, followed by Ron DeSantis at 33%, Mike Pence at 7% and Nikki Haley at 5%.
“A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China’s use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency,” CNN reports.
“The Air Force intelligence report is the first indication that the US military was aware of Chinese spy balloons well before the latest incident.”
President Biden is expected to travel to Poland this month to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NBC News reports.
“The two highest-ranking Republican leaders in the U.S. House are going to war with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the new Congress takes shape,” CNBC reports.
“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise both refuse to meet with the the Chamber after the lobbying group endorsed a handful of Democrats in the last two elections, clearly making an enemy of two of the most powerful leaders in Congress.”
Peter Hamby: “Multiple GOP sources tell me that a pair of respected Republican consultants—Phil Cox, a veteran adviser to Republican governors with close connections with major donors, and Liesl Hickey, the former executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee—have been recruiting staffers for a super PAC that would support a DeSantis bid.”
“The governor has not made a decision on a campaign, but both Cox and Hickey are experienced, high-level strategists who helped steer DeSantis’s 2020 re-election bid and his attention-grabbing fights on education and Covid. They aren’t the kind of people who waste their days fighting with randos on Twitter—both were working in the trenches of Republican politics long before Trump came along—and their involvement in the possible super PAC is one of the strongest signals yet that DeSantis is moving toward a national campaign. I’m also told that Generra Peck, a Darden MBA with Virginia roots who now works for DeSantis in Tallahassee, has been making similar recruiting calls to Republican operatives about possibly working on an official campaign if DeSantis decides to take the plunge.”
“Around 180,000 people in the U.S. were paying for subscriptions to Twitter, including Twitter Blue, as of mid-January, or less than 0.2% of monthly active users,” The Information reports.
“The tiny number signals the challenge Elon Musk faces in turning the subscription product into a major source of revenue.”
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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