After polling Twitter users, Elon Musk on Tuesday night said he will resign as head of the social media platform.
Said Musk: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
“Crematoriums across China are straining to deal with an influx of bodies as the country battles a wave of Covid cases that authorities have said is impossible to track,” AFP reports.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) “has launched a new digital ad stoking speculation of a potential 2024 presidential bid,” FWIW reports.
“On December 18th, Sununu’s campaign committee, Friends of Chris Sununu, launched a new video ad on Facebook and Instagram targeting voters in the early nominating states of Iowa and South Carolina.”
“Federal authorities are set to whisk Sam Bankman-Fried to the US on Wednesday to face a range of criminal charges related to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange,” Bloomberg reports.
In the first months of his presidency, Joe Biden vented his frustration about Vice President Kamala Harris, telling a friend that she was “a work in progress,” Politico reports.
“The new details of the tensions between the vice president and the president are among the many revelations in the book due out on Jan. 17 that traces the highs and lows of Biden’s first two years.”
Said author Chris Whipple: “I think Biden’s presidency is the most consequential of my lifetime. His legislative record is comparable to LBJ’s and he’s been underestimated every step of the way. But it’s also been a tale of two presidencies –- the first year and the second year.”
“Nick Luna, a former White House aide to President Donald Trump, told the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol that he witnessed Trump ‘tearing’ documents,” CBS News reports, according to audio of his testimony.
“The audio files also reveal that Luna testified that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had instructed him to not enter the room ahead of a meeting with state Republican legislators who wanted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Said Luna: “There was one instance where it would normally be my job to go in and make sure that the president is comfortable in wherever the situation is. And I remember, specifically, this instance Meadows had said, ‘Do not, don’t come in, don’t come into the room today.’”
“The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled,” CNN reports.
“Though the committee declined to identify the people, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did.”
“Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson, other sources tell CNN. The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services.”
“The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to publicly release the tax returns of former President Donald J. Trump, the culmination of a yearslong battle during which he defied modern tradition by keeping his finances confidential during his campaign and while in office,” the New York Times reports.
Axios: “It’s not immediately clear how quickly the House committee may release the returns, which will provide details on some of his tax payments, financial obligations and donations to charity.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit the Capitol Wednesday, Punchbowl News reports.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged lawmakers in a letter Tuesday to come to Washington for “a very special focus on Democracy Wednesday night.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) dropped a 25-tweet thread in support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) to become House speaker while lashing out at her “friends” in the House GOP conference.
Said Greene: “It’s time for my friends in the Never Kevin Caucus to stop lying to the base just because they don’t like Kevin McCarthy. They do not have a plan and there is no consensus candidate.”
She added: “Sabotaging the country for personal reasons is not brave or righteous, it’s selfish and foolish.”
North Dakota Lt. Gov. Brent Sanford announced that he will resign from his position on Jan. 2 after serving six years as Gov. Doug Burgum’s right-hand man, the Fargo Forum reports.
Tammy Miller, the governor’s chief operating officer, will take over the role.
“The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has begun extensively cooperating with the Justice Department’s special counsel charged with overseeing investigations into former President Donald Trump,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Jack Smith, who Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed as special counsel last month, sent the select committee a letter Dec. 5 requesting all of the panel’s materials from the 18-month probe.”
“Starting last week, the select committee began sending Smith’s team documents and transcripts. Much of the production from the Jan. 6 committee is in relation to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and John Eastman, the Trump lawyer at the center of the ‘fake elector’ scheme.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “wants to continue wielding his political influence in school board races across the state after his campaign helped two dozen conservative candidates win during this year’s midterm elections,” Politico reports.
“The Republican governor this week said he intends to flip more local seats from liberal to conservative-leaning education officials, taking aim at boards in areas such as Broward and Hillsborough counties that have pushed back against Republican policies.”
“The Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday it has seized more than 379 million potentially fatal doses of illegal fentanyl this year, as Mexican drug-trafficking organizations continue to flood the United States with the cheap synthetic opioid responsible for record numbers of U.S. overdose deaths,” the Washington Post reports.
“A Russian court has ordered the seizure of a luxury hotel complex owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, one of the few oligarchs to have criticised President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, in a sign of the pressure facing the country’s tycoons since the invasion,” the Financial Times reports.
“Deripaska has been under US sanctions since 2018 over his links to the Kremlin. But the metals tycoon is the most prominent of the small number of Russian business leaders who have spoken out since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.”
The $1.7 trillion government funding bill released Tuesday includes extra money for the Justice Department to prosecute Jan. 6 cases, NBC News reports.
Virginia’s 4th congressional district is holding its Democratic “firehouse primary” to replace the late Rep. Donald McEachin (D-VA), the New York Times reports.
The winner will be considered the overwhelming favorite in the February 21, 2023 special election as Joe Biden carried the district 67% to 31% in 2020.
Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Though polls close at 7 p.m., it could take a while to determine the winner. Vote counting won’t begin until Wednesday morning. And there are multiple lawsuits in the works alleging unfairness over the party’s decision to hold the primary on a Tuesday and with limited polling sites.”
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.
