Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed she received a “threatening” phone call from a female Republican lawmaker over her questionable support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to become Speaker.
Said Luna: “I let that female member know that I wasn’t basically going to be threatened. I am not going to be bullied.”
David Cay Johnston: “Don’t let the cynics who know little about our tax system trick you into thinking there was nothing all that new or important in the six years of Donald Trump’s taxes released Friday by the House Ways and Means Committee.”
“In fact, even if some of it was previously teased by the committee, the dump includes a cornucopia of information that affects your wallet—including powerful evidence of criminal tax evasion.”
Vox: Will Trump’s tax returns change anything?
“Elon Musk was the second person ever to amass a personal fortune of more than $200 billion, breaching that threshold in January 2021, months after Jeff Bezos,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer has now achieved a first of his own: becoming the only person in history to erase $200 billion from their net worth.”
Susan Glasser: “The nation, understandably, remains in a sour mood. It’s hardly good news that seventy-six per cent of Americans in the most recent Gallup survey think the country is on the wrong track, down from a high of eighty-seven per cent last summer.”
“But expectations are everything in politics. And the one truly good thing you can say about 2022 is this: It could have been worse. Much, much worse. Russia could have won. A Republican red wave, predicted by history and the polls, might have swept radical Trumpist election deniers into control of both houses of Congress and key state-election offices. Inflation might have kept going up. The economy could have entered a full-fledged recession.”
“No wonder, then, that Biden and his crisis-battered Administration are ending the year on a strikingly positive note.”
A year-end memo by Biden advisers Anita Dunn and Brian Deese says the U.S. “ends 2022 in a stronger position than many major global economies.”
Key takeaway: “The unemployment rate remains near record lows, many measures of household balance sheets are stronger than before the pandemic, gas prices are down more than $1.75 from the summer, and we are seeing more signs of inflation moderating.”
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham testified that when Donald Trump was watching last year’s Jan. 6 riot unfold on television, he commented that his supporters looked “very trashy,” the HuffPost reports.
Said Grisham: “I don’t know if he expected them to be wearing full suits of, like, Roman armor and that would have made them not trashy. He did feel they looked trashy — but he loved how they were fighting for him.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a United Nations General Assembly vote asking the International Court of Justice to provide an opinion on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories was “despicable,” Reuters reports.
Said Netanyahu: “The Jewish people are not occupiers on their own land nor occupiers in our eternal capital Jerusalem and no U.N. resolution can warp that historical truth.”
“As Moscow launched a fresh barrage of strikes against Ukraine on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an unusually aggressive prerecorded address, which was broadcast as Russians in the Far East began their New Year’s celebrations,” the Washington Post reports.
“This New Year’s message was notably different from previous years, a reflection of the new path the country has taken since Russia invaded Ukraine this February.”
“In the address, which was broadcast at midnight on Russian state television in line with the country’s 11 different time zones, Putin said Russia was fighting in Ukraine to protect its ‘motherland’ and called 2022 ‘a year of hard, necessary decisions’ and ‘fateful events’ that had laid the foundation of Russia’s future and independence.”
Axios: “Russian missiles struck Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities Saturday, leaving a fresh wave of destruction ahead of the new year.”
Jared Kushner ordered that the incoming Biden administration be excluded from Covid-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Insider reports.
Kushner said Biden’s team should “absolutely not” be looped in.
The January 6 Committee final report website is now live with new information including a detailed timeline of how the violence unfolded at the U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) told Politico that she warned Democratic leaders of electoral losses on Long Island before the midterms.
Said Rice: “This is a blue, blue state, and it’s the reason why we lost the majority. We lost four House seats. I said, ‘You guys, don’t understand, we’re gonna lose Long Island. And we’re gonna lose some other seats, further up.’ They said, ‘No, no, no, your seat was a Biden +13.'”
New York Times: “For years, Ms. Stefanik had crafted her brand as a model moderate millennial — ‘the future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America,’ as her mentor, Paul Ryan, would describe her in Time magazine. But as her third term unfolded, according to current or former friends and advisers, it was becoming painfully clear that she was the future of a Republican Party that no longer existed. The party was now firmly controlled by Donald J. Trump, a populist president she didn’t like or respect — a ‘whack job,’ as she once described him in a message obtained by The New York Times. Fox hosts attacked her for not supporting Mr. Trump enough. Her friends criticized her for not opposing him more forcefully. You don’t understand, she would tell them. You don’t get how hard this is. Democrats were back in charge in the House. Mr. Ryan was gone, driven into early retirement. She told friends she was thinking of joining him.”
“Instead she embarked on one of the most brazen political transformations of the Trump era. With breathtaking speed and alacrity, Ms. Stefanik remade herself into a fervent Trump apologist, adopted his over-torqued style on Twitter and embraced the conspiracy theories that animate his base, amplifying debunked allegations of dead voters casting ballots in Atlanta and unspecified ‘irregularities’ involving voting-machine software in 2020 swing states. The future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America now assails Democrats as ‘the party of Socialists, illegals, criminals, Communist Truth Ministers & media stenographers.’ In the process, she has rocketed from the backbench to the party’s No. 3 House leadership job, presiding over the conference’s overall messaging.”
Washington Post: “Before George Santos made a name for himself in politics, he had insisted on being called Anthony — one of his middle names — and often used his mother’s maiden name, Devolder, eventually incorporating a company in Florida with that name.”
Said a former friend: “He hated that we called him George. His whole family called him Anthony. He wanted to be called Anthony. He would use the name Anthony Devolder.”
Meanwhile, Gothamist finds Santos’ claim to have been mugged on his way to pay $2,250 in back rent on his Queens apartment is likely not true either.
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Politico: “Currently, five conservative members are publicly threatening to vote against McCarthy for speaker, enough to keep him from the needed 218-vote threshold in House Republicans’ slim majority.”
“Though McCarthy had raised the option as a hypothetical and not a real offer, it signaled to some there’s little he won’t agree to in his years-long quest to seize the House gavel. And some fear he risks more demands surfacing as potential detractors see room for opportunity, with some hinting they’d like members to have broader subpoena power as they look to examine matters like how Jan. 6 rioters were treated by law enforcement.”
Some moderate Republicans have discussed a long-shot backup plan if Kevin McCarthy falls short in his bid to be Speaker: tapping retiring Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) instead, Roll Call reports.
They say it “wouldn’t violate their pledge not to support another sitting House Republican.”
“Arrests and deportations of immigrants in the country illegally increased in the second year of the Biden administration, though both remained below average Trump- and Obama-era levels,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Katelyn Jetelina: “As expected, the Covid-19 situation in China is out of hand. In an interesting turn of events, China went from a ‘zero Covid’ policy to a ‘let it rip’ policy by dropping all mitigation measures without fully vaccinating the highest of risk or strengthening their healthcare system.”
“Egregiously, they stopped reporting cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, too. This looks good for them on paper, but when we rely on epidemiology 101 and anecdotal reports, which are plentiful, the situation in China is beyond grim.”
“Officials estimate between 5,000-10,000 people are dying per day. (At the U.S. peak, we lost 3,800 people per day). Epidemiologists expect death toll to rise in China in the coming months leading to 0.5-1 million cumulative deaths. A humanitarian disaster.”
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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