“A family friend of Mark Meadows has been charged with accepting an illegal campaign contribution during an ill-fated 2020 run to succeed the former Trump White House chief of staff in Congress,” Politico reports.
“Lynda Bennett, who lost in a 2020 Republican primary campaign to Madison Cawthorn, accepted a contribution from a family member totaling at least $25,000, according to charging paperwork filed by prosecutors.”
“With Republicans in control of the House, Senate Democrats will spend much of the next two years working to confirm as many judges as possible — and they’re facing pressure to change Senate rules to prevent Republicans from holding up President Biden’s nominees,” the Washington Post reports.
“Russ Feingold, the former Democratic senator who now leads the American Constitution Society, and other progressive judicial advocates are pressing Democrats to eliminate ‘blue slips’ — a tradition that allows senators to block judicial nominees from their home states.”
“Refusing to return a nominee’s blue slip is one of the only ways for the minority party to derail a president’s judicial picks after Democrats unilaterally scrapped the filibuster for most judicial nominees a decade ago.”
“Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been put on notice by a prosecutor, but the warning didn’t come from anyone at the Justice Department,” the AP reports.
“It was from a Georgia prosecutor who indicated she was likely to seek criminal charges soon in a two-year election subversion probe. In trying to block the release of a special grand jury’s report, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued in court last week that decisions in the case were ‘imminent’ and that the report’s publication could jeopardize the rights of ‘future defendants.'”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “has long made no secret that he thinks drug companies and health insurers are ripping off Americans. But now he’s chairman of the Senate health committee,” Axios reports.
“Sanders has signaled an early focus of the committee’s work will be drug prices, and manufacturers are bracing for some contentious hearings.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) plans to reintroduce a version of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act as early as this week and negotiations between him and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) on police reform could resume thereafter, Politico reports.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) told ABC News the bipartisan group that tried and failed to negotiate a bill last year should try again, calling their effort “the right starting point.”
New York Times: “In the three weeks since Mr. McCarthy ultimately agreed to the price of the portrait, Mr. Gaetz’s role in the melodrama has only entrenched his stature as an attention-craving political arsonist adored by the Trump wing of the G.O.P. — but also, House Republican leaders begrudgingly say, as a lawmaker with new powers.”
“Mr. Gaetz and his fellow antagonists demanded and got a deal allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote to oust the speaker, a commitment for a third of the seats on the powerful Rules Committee and an agreement that any lawmaker could force votes on changes to government spending bills. Taken together, the concessions drastically hamstring Mr. McCarthy’s ability to shape a legislative agenda.”
“Chuck Schumer, as he’s known to do, is talking a lot these days. And it’s all aimed at Kevin McCarthy,” Politico reports.
“The Senate majority leader is directing heat at the new House GOP majority on the daily, casting McCarthy’s conference in the role of villain as the 2024 election cycle kicks off. Schumer first attacked House Republicans for giving airtime to conservative hopes of replacing income taxes with a national sales tax, and now he’s directing his ire toward McCarthy’s insistence on spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.”
Said Schumer: “The plan is to get our Republican colleagues in the House to understand they’re flirting with disaster and hurting the American people. And to let the American people understand that as well.”
Politico: “The dozen confidantes he leans on most — to shape his agenda in Tallahassee, assemble an extensive fundraising operation and devise his political future — include his chief of staff, well-known lobbyists and especially his wife.”
“Now he’s leaning on this group of insiders as he plots his next move toward 2024 and a collision with former President Donald Trump.”
Wall Street Journal: “The Justice Department told top Senate Intelligence Committee lawmakers that providing nonpublic information to the panel about the classified material that ended up in the personal possession of two presidents could complicate the ongoing investigations into the incidents.”
“Members of the committee from both parties have been pressing the Biden administration to turn over the classified documents found at President Biden’s private home and former office and former President Donald Trump’s residence. Intelligence officials have so far declined to do so, citing the appointment of special counsels who are looking into the discoveries of the documents.”
“Debt ceiling negotiations are struck in limbo, as House Republicans demand severe spending cuts without saying where they’d start. Pretty soon, though, their hands will be forced,” Politico reports.
“GOP lawmakers say they’re committed to adopting a budget plan for the coming fiscal year, which would reflect where they’d slash government funding. It’s a demand they’ve said President Joe Biden and Democrats must meet before they’ll agree to raise the debt ceiling in the coming months, a potential calamity as economic indicators already point towards recession.”
“Passing a budget is guaranteed to be a painful test for the new majority. It’s one thing to call for fiscal responsibility — it’s another to be the political face of program cuts.”
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson told the BBC that Russian president Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike in an “extraordinary” phone call in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The then-prime minister said Mr Putin told him it “would only take a minute.”
Wall Street Journal: “The measures, known as the Berman amendments, date to the last years of the Cold War. They took away the president’s authority to regulate or ban imports of ‘informational materials’ from adversarial nations such as Cuba, and shielded those who produced such works — and their U.S. distributors — from penalties for violating economic sanctions.”
“The dilemma for lawmakers now: how to write legislation to prevent China’s government from influencing content on TikTok or other Chinese social-media apps, and gathering data on users, without shutting down global exchanges of content — or inviting retaliation against U.S. platforms and media.”
Wall Street Journal: “That concern suggests the window for Ukraine isn’t indefinite and it needs powerful Western weapons — main battle tanks, other armored vehicles and more air-defense systems — soon to reinforce the momentum it achieved in offensive successes around Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson last year.”
Politico: At the Pentagon, push to send F-16s to Ukraine picks up steam.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said Sunday he is considering a White House bid in 2024, citing the Granite State’s “live free or die” spirit as a model for the Republican Party, CNN reports.
Said Sununu: “I really don’t have a timeline. I’m spending a lot of time naturally trying to grow the party as Republicans, talk to independents, talk to the next generation of potential Republican voters that right now no one is really reaching out to.”
“Steve Bannon took election denialism to an unhinged level on his podcast this week, when he didn’t just indulge in the baseless claims of election fraud favored by former President Donald Trump, but went so far as to tell Kari Lake ‘you’re the frickin’ governor of Arizona,’” Mediaite reports.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told ABC News that Donald Trump “can’t win a general election” and predicted the former president will not be successful in his 2024 presidential run.
Said Christie: “I’ve said, over and over again, that he can’t win a general election. That’s not speculation. That’s based upon the polling that I was privy to pre-the 2020 election, and what we saw actually happen in the 2020 election. And it’s only gotten worse since then.”
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.