Wall Street Journal: “Russia has violated the New START treaty cutting long-range nuclear arms by refusing to allow on-site inspections and rebuffing Washington’s requests to meet to discuss its compliance concerns, the U.S. State Department said in a report sent to Congress on Tuesday.”
“The lack of inspections has also made it harder to verify the number of warheads Russia has deployed under the accord.”
Newly released video obtained by CBS News provides the first look at Donald Trump’s deposition last summer in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud investigation.
“Wearing a dark blue suit, red tie and American flag lapel pin, sitting in front of a camera in a downtown Manhattan conference room, Trump answered ‘yes’ when asked by James if he was familiar with the rules for giving a deposition. But as the questioning about his finances began in earnest, the former president—and now candidate for that same office—invoked the Fifth Amendment and continued to do so for nearly four hours.”
“Trump did so more than 400 times during the course of the full interview, according to according to a New York Attorney General court filing.”
The fourth resident of The Villages in Florida admitted to voting twice in the 2020 election, WKMG reports.
“Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine partly to assert Russia’s regional dominance once and for all,” Bloomberg reports.
“Nearly a year on, the Russian president has achieved the opposite — and not just in Kyiv.”
Jonathan Last: “I don’t know that Trump would run a third-party campaign if he lost the Republican nomination. But I do know that if Trump were to lose the Republican nominating contest, he could bring in a lot of money by running a third-party campaign.”
“And if the question is: ‘Trump could make a lot of money by doing X; will he do X?'”
“Well, then the answer is usually: Yes.“
“The FBI searched the Penn Biden Center offices in mid-November, according to two sources familiar with the investigation, after lawyers for President Biden had found about 10 documents marked classified there on Nov. 2,” CBS News reports.
“It is not clear whether FBI personnel found any additional classified or presidential material during the mid-November sweep.”
“I am for Donald Trump because I know what I’m going to get. We need somebody that on Day 1 can get this country back on track, that can secure our border and bring order out of chaos, somebody the Russians and the Chinese fear, somebody that can take the fight to the terrorists.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), endorsing Donald Trump for president during a Fox News interview.
“Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service as other taxpayers, even after accounting for the differences in the types of returns each group is most likely to file, a team of economists has concluded in one of the most detailed studies yet on race and the nation’s tax system,” the New York Times reports.
“The findings do not suggest bias from individual tax enforcement agents, who do not know the race of the people they are auditing. They also do not suggest any valid reason for the I.R.S. to target Black Americans at such high rates; there is no evidence that group engages in more tax evasion than others.”
“Instead, the findings document discrimination in the computer algorithms the agency uses to determine who is selected for an audit.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told the New York Times that Rep. George Santos’ move to step down from committee “was not permanent and said it was made in part because House Republican leaders are trying to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, although it is not clear they have the votes to do so.”
Related for members: Kevin McCarthy Forced to Beg for Votes Once Again
The Economist: “Peru is suffering an explosion of conflict on the streets of the kind experienced in Chile in 2019, in Colombia in 2021 and in Ecuador last year. Peru’s has been especially violent, seditious and dangerous. It also has a racial edge: the country’s indigenous population has long been disadvantaged and has been at the forefront of the protests.”
“At stake is whether democracy can survive. The society has become so polarised that some Peruvians talk of an impending civil war, far-fetched though that seems.”
“Russia spent almost 50 years building its energy market in Europe. President Vladimir Putin destroyed it in under 50 weeks,” Bloomberg reports.
“Finding a replacement will be almost impossible. While Russia has found alternative markets for its crude oil, mostly in India, switching sales of refined products and — perhaps even more so — natural gas will take years and come at huge cost. That’s if it’s even possible to create markets as the world turns away from fossil fuels.”
Tara Palmeri: “With all their new oversight power, House Republicans are ready to commence the season for Democratic public humiliation. After months of lip-licking, we know the obvious frontline target: Joe Biden, via his son Hunter, and Anthony Fauci, whose oversight of the government’s Covid response has become a sad Rorschach test for our modern politics. Alas, on Wednesday Oversight Chair James Comer will launch his mission to expose ‘rampant waste of taxpayer dollars in Covid Relief systems.'”
“This is surely an opportunity for Republicans to scrutinize how Democratic governors—particularly those with putative White House aspirations, like J.B. Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, and Gretchen Whitmer—spent relief money, especially during the most frantic weeks of the pandemic when state governors were under immense pressure to put protective funds to work. The tenor of the investigations will coalesce around fiscal responsibility, of course, regarding the American Rescue Plan.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is asking the Secret Service for “all documents and communications related to visitor information” related to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana residence, Politico reports.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected trip to Russia may defy the impression of a widening gap between Beijing and Moscow in the face of the Ukraine War, and is set to further deepen bilateral economic and trade ties,” the South China Morning Post reports.
“But they do not think the expected trip will signal changes in China’s stance on the conflict.”
“France has signaled openness to sending fighter jets to Ukraine as western countries weigh the next steps in military assistance to help Kyiv resist Russian attacks,” the Financial Times reports.
Said President Emmanuel Macron: “By definition, nothing is excluded.”
“Extremists raised more than $6.2 million on crowdfunding websites from 2016 to 2022,” USA Today reports.
“Researchers tracked campaigns across 10 different crowdfunding sites. Most were housed on GiveSendGo, a ‘Christian crowdfunding’ website founded in 2014. GiveSendGo campaigns accounted for $5.4 million of the total fundraising tallied by the group.”
Embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) told House Republicans in a closed meeting today that he would recuse himself from sitting on committees, Punchbowl News reports.
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.