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Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended a U.S. Capitol Police officer who this week has been falsely accused by several Republicans of murdering Jan. 6 Capitol riot participant Ashli Babbitt, Politico reports.
Said McCarthy: “I think the police officer did his job.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to John Kerry saying that GOP lawmakers have an “insufficient understanding of your office’s activities, spending, and staffing,” Politico reports.
Donald Trump claimed Ron DeSantis begged him for his endorsement when he first ran for governor in 2018.
Said Trump: “He had nothing! He was dead, he was leaving the race, he came over and he begged me, begged me, for an endorsement. He was getting ready to drop out.”
He elaborated: “There were tears coming down from his eyes. He said ‘if you endorse me, I’ll win.’ So I end up doing it, and he wins. They say it was like a bomb went off. Just a bomb totally went off. From the moment I endorsed him, he went from losing by numbers that were not catchable to winning easily.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) is mulling a run for president, but he told CNN he would support Donald Trump if the former president wins the 2024 Republican nomination.
Sununu also walked back his previous comment that Trump is “fucking crazy,” dismissing it as just a “funny joke.”
David Byler: “None of this data proves that the Republican elite are wrong. Normal Republican candidates might, again, splinter the vote and allow Trump to win the nomination with a plurality of the primary votes.”
“But there are so many other possibilities. And there are numerous differences between 2016 and 2024. Trump is running a different kind of race. His competitors have learned from him — and are stronger for it. And, at least at this early point, GOP voters aren’t processing this election the same way.”
“Until top Republicans can see that, they’ll keep expecting 2016 to repeat itself — unable to see that they might be heading into a new kind of war.”
Nate Silver: “Let’s get this out of the way up front: There was a wide gap between the perception of how well polls and data-driven forecasts did in 2022 and the reality of how they did … and the reality is that they did pretty well.”
“While some polling firms badly missed the mark, in the aggregate the polls had one of their most accurate cycles in recent history. As a result, FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts had a pretty good year, too. Media proclamations of a ‘red wave’ occurred largely despite polls that showed a close race for the U.S. Senate and a close generic congressional ballot. It was the pundits who made the red wave narrative, not the data.”
The Federal Election Commission announced that that contribution cap was sizably increasing for this cycle, from $2,900 to $3,300, mainly due to inflation, Politico reports.
“Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) announced she’s hired a former Republican rival for her House seat, Josh Revak, to serve as her state director,” Politico reports.
“Such moves are rare in modern politics but not unheard of for the Alaska Democrat.”
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) walked back his comments that he would back Donald Trump if he won the Republican nomination, insisting that his position hadn’t changed: “I won’t commit to supporting him… I fully expect to support the Republican nominee — who I don’t believe will be Trump.”
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Virginia finds Gov. Glenn Youngkin with a 56% to 31% job approval rating, while President Biden is underwater at 45% to 52%.
More than 30 House Democrats have signed onto a new resolution “recognizing Israel as America’s legitimate and democratic ally and condemning antisemitism,” NBC News reports.
“The most notable among them: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a Muslim American who has been a fierce critic of Israel and the Jewish lobby and ousted by Republicans on Thursday from the Foreign Affairs Committee for what members of both parties said were antisemitic remarks.”
The Economist: “These debt-ceiling fights are American governance at its most stupid. As achievements in hypocrisy and self-defeat, they cannot be beat. When Republicans had unified control of government under Donald Trump, they freely raised the ceiling and, with it, the debt, while Democrats, for all their piety now, have also used the debt ceiling for leverage.”
“As for self-defeat: the last time a Republican House pursued such brinkmanship the president was, of course, a Democrat (Barack Obama), and the result was a jump in rates that may have added half a billion dollars to the debt.”
Gallup: “Americans’ assessment of the state of the nation remains in the pandemic-era slump seen since 2021, marked by subdued satisfaction with 30 different aspects of the country. These include the public’s reaction to several aspects of U.S. society generally, as well as to numerous specific issues facing the country.”
“Sen. Kyrsten Sinema raked in campaign cash from corporate leaders at the end of last year as she prepared for a potential high-stakes 2024 reelection bid in the battleground state of Arizona,” CNBC reports.
“Sinema, a centrist swing vote in the narrowly split Senate, switched her party affiliation from Democrat to independent in December. Real estate and private equity leaders, who have long helped to fill Sinema’s campaign coffers, contributed to a healthy cash haul for the senator in the final months of last year.”
“Antony Blinken is expected to meet Xi Jinping in Beijing, making him the first U.S. secretary of state to sit down with the Chinese leader in nearly six years and the first of President Biden’s cabinet secretaries to visit China,” the Financial Times reports.
Geoffrey Skelley: “Trump’s comeback campaign is unprecedented since the contemporary nomination system took shape in the 1970s. Yet in the broader history of presidential elections, his comeback effort is unusual — but not unheard of. Former presidents like Martin Van Buren, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt each mounted serious post-presidency campaigns to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue between 1844 and 1912. In fact, five former presidents have won at least some delegates at major-party national conventions, as the table below shows.”
“The American political system has changed enough, at a structural level, that Trump can’t expect to retread the paths that any of these men took. And why would he want to? Only one of them successfully made it back to the White House.”
“Still, the broad circumstances surrounding a trio of presidential comeback attempts offer three paths for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Like Grant in 1880, Trump could attract ample support for his party’s nomination but ultimately fall short after a majority of Republicans coalesce around an opponent. Alternatively, after seeking his party’s nomination, Trump could abandon the GOP and launch a third-party bid, as Roosevelt did in 1912. Or Trump could win his party’s nomination, as Cleveland did in 1892 — and maybe even reclaim the White House.”
“Gas stoves are coming under fresh scrutiny as a second federal agency has now stepped into the political firestorm with a proposal for new regulations for the appliances,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Energy Department proposal, published Wednesday, sets first-of-their-kind limits on energy consumption for the stoves, drawing fear from the industry that the regulation could effectively end the use of some products from the market. The proposal also sets energy usage standards for electric cook tops and new standards for both gas and electric ovens.”
“Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was kicked off the the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a party-line vote that followed a contentious debate on the House floor Thursday morning that included yelling and Omar defending herself on the verge tears,” the Washington Post reports.
“Omar, a refugee from Somalia, is one of the first Muslim women to serve in the House of Representatives and often faces death threats and other threats of violence. Her office told The Post that violent threats had increased considerably since she has been in the news again.”
Jonathan Chait: “One of the first things the Republican Party did upon gaining control of the House of Representatives was to restore committee privileges to Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose positions were stripped over a series of deranged and bigoted statements. One of its next moves is to impose the same punishment on Ilhan Omar over her past antisemitic statements.”
“The absurdity and vindictiveness of the Omar decision is thrown into the starkest relief when you consider it in conjunction with the treatment of Greene.”
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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