A new Public Policy Polling survey in Minnesota finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in the presidential race, 52% to 42%.
The Trump campaign has suggested Minnesota might be competitive this year.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Minnesota finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump in the presidential race, 52% to 42%.
The Trump campaign has suggested Minnesota might be competitive this year.
The Sun Sentinel pleaded in an editorial for more action by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to battle the coronavirus, reminding him: “We’re dying here.”
“With each passing day, COVID-19 continues to careen out of control in Florida. Your daily upbeat message is hopelessly at odds with what Floridians are going through. You make it sound like everything is headed in the right direction. But it’s not.”
A new Lincoln Project video imagines what it’s like to wake up from a coma in 2020.
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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday postponed easing some portions of England’s coronavirus lockdown due to rising cases, the BBC reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s approach to the negotiations over another round of federal stimulus for the ailing economy has confounded allies, rivals and outside observers. He pushed hard for big-ticket tax cuts that Senate Republicans did not want, along with $1.75 billion to rebuild the F.B.I.’s headquarters in Washington and an expanded tax break for business lunches. And he has derided efforts to find middle ground with Democratic leaders on a comprehensive economic rescue package, declaring on Wednesday that ‘we really don’t care’ about several possible parts of it.”
“Lobbyists, economists and members of Congress say they are baffled by Mr. Trump’s shifting approach and apparent lack of urgency to nail down another rescue package that he can sign into law.”
Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) reached a deal announced Thursday to end a longstanding House Ethics Committee investigation by admitting to 11 rules violations, accepting a reprimand and agreeing to pay a $50,000 fine, the Arizona Republic reports.
“The White House is willing to cut a deal with Democrats that leaves out Senate Republican legislation aimed at protecting employers, hospitals and schools from coronavirus-related lawsuits,” the Washington Post reports.
“The White House wants and is pushing for the ‘liability shield’ as a top priority but would be willing to sign off on a deal that lacks the legal protections.”
Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, told an attorney in newly-unsealed documents that Bill Clinton was a guest during a trip to Epstein’s private isle in the U.S. Virgin Islands and that Epstein joked to her about Clinton being in his pocket, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Giuffre: “You know, I remember asking Jeffrey what’s Bill Clinton doing here.”
Epstein laughed off her question and said, “Well, he owes me a favor.”
“You won’t have to worry about my tweets when I’m president.”
— Joe Biden, on Twitter.
Amber Phillips: “A look at recent polling of nine governors — five Republicans and four Democrats from states that are polled frequently because they will likely be determinative in the 2020 election — shows that the governors who instituted face mask requirements, urged social distancing and reopened more slowly than other states have seen a jump in their approval ratings.”
“By contrast, the governors who eschewed public health experts’ advice and reopened quickly — as President Trump urged — have seen their approval ratings drop, by double digits in some cases.”
Susan Glasser: “So, sorry, we cannot just ignore it when the President threatens to cancel an election. This is the kind of statement that should haunt your dreams. It is wannabe-dictator talk. It is dangerous even if it is not attached to any actions. And those who think that some actions will not follow have not been paying attention.”
“My alarm stems from having covered Russia when Vladimir Putin was dismantling the fragile, flawed democratic institutions that the country had established after the fall of the Soviet Union. It stems from reading history. It stems from having watched the past four years in America, where, day by day, the unthinkable has happened and been justified, rationalized, and explained away.”
“More than 500 State Department employees are privately pleading with the Trump administration to pull back its decision to send up to 80 percent of its staff members in Washington back to work in person after an employee who works near Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s office tested positive for the coronavirus this week,” NBC News reports.
Michael Gerson: “In Trump’s approach to politics, all is flexible, all is negotiable, except the driving instinct of us vs. them. And it is not just a coincidence that the us is overwhelmingly White. Trump’s most consistent, defining goal has been the preservation of white supremacy against growing diversity. As we now see fully, he holds out the promise of a suburban, segregated promised land.”
“Those who dismiss this criticism as ‘playing the race card’ must ignore Trump’s constant employment of the racism card. Those who dismiss these concerns as ‘identity politics’ must somehow overlook the White identity politics that drives his public appeal. Trump’s approach is apostasy from the American ideal. It is the kind of thing that can lead to the breaking of nations.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) refused to answer when directly asked whether he has been given foreign information meant to damage Joe Biden, according to a transcript of a closed-door committee meeting, CNN reports.
“The information in question pertained to packets reportedly sent to GOP members of Congress, including Nunes, by Ukranian lawmaker Andrii Derkach — who has worked closely with President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.”
Politico: “Donald Trump’s suggestion that he might try to delay the election — or might not accept the result — is rapidly coming to the forefront of the presidential campaign, foreshadowing a final stretch roiled not only by the coronavirus and the economy, but by clashes over the nation’s most fundamental democratic norms.”
“Though Trump has no authority to move the election — an idea he floated Thursday — Democrats are already bracing for Republican challenges to absentee ballots and at vote counting on Election Day. They have good cause to be prepared: the president has repeatedly raised the prospect of a ‘rigged election’ and recently declined to say if he’ll accept the results.”
“Trump’s rhetoric points increasingly to the possibility that he will dispute the outcome in a year marked by primary election administration meltdowns — a prospect that is heightened by his absolute control of state and national party machinery and an attorney general who has amplified Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting fraud.”
Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of three major challenges facing the country — the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide unrest over racial inequality and relations with Russia — in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, a sign of the obstacles that his reelection bid faces just three months before Election Day.
New York Times: “Mr. McConnell and other Senate Republican leaders have made urgent pleas to the president to block Mr. Kobach by endorsing one of his opponents, Representative Roger Marshall. But Mr. Trump has so far declined to do so, and his aides said they had no plans to change course. Compounding the frustration of Capitol Hill Republicans, White House aides have refused to tell Mr. Kobach, a longtime booster of Mr. Trump, to stop using the president’s imagery in his campaign materials.”
“With a number of incumbent Senate Republicans trailing in polls, and being out-raised by their Democratic rivals, they have little margin for error as they seek to protect their 53-47 majority. And because of Mr. Trump’s broad unpopularity, and a health crisis that has devastated the economy, even a deeply conservative state like Kansas, which has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s, is no sure thing for Senate Republicans this year.”
Politico: “Across 15 possible battleground states, nearly every Democratic state party group is hitting higher quarterly fundraising totals or holding more cash on hand in their federal accounts than they did at this point during the 2016 presidential campaign, and a majority of them did both.”
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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