“A new book by former President Donald Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows offers a detailed account of the then-commander in chief’s infamous Bible photo-op at St. John’s Church in June 2020, during the height of the summer’s racial justice protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer,” the Religion News Service reports.
“Meadows said it was Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who came up with the idea to ‘send a message to people of faith.’”
“Both parties are ramping up fundraising for secretary of state races, which in just a couple of years have gone from obscure down-ballot contests to high-profile races that could reshape American democracy,” Axios reports.
“Democratic Senate candidates across the board are campaigning on a message to reform the filibuster as they seek to increase their party’s majority next year,” Axios reports.
“Candidates have traditionally run by telling voters what policies they’ll enact in office. Now, they’re highlighting the tool they want to use to pass such things as voting rights legislation, a minimum wage increase and abortion access safeguards.”
The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking.
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Three Fox News hosts — Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Sean Hannity — texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the Jan. 6 riot urging him to press former President Donald Trump to call off his mob of supporters clashing with police at the Capitol, NBC News reports.
Axios reported that even Donald Trump Jr. urged Meadows to have his father condemn the attack.
“The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Monday night voted unanimously to hold Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, in criminal contempt for defying a subpoena,” the Washington Post reports.
Washington Post: “Conservative lawmakers, anticipating the GOP retaking one or both congressional majorities in next year’s midterm elections, are already calling for and strategizing around a coming fiscal clash in 2023, where they insist of using the threat of federal default to place new curbs on government spending and reduce the $28 trillion national debt.”
“What they are envisioning is, at a minimum, a return to the brinkmanship seen after the last time a Democratic president confronted a new Republican majority, in 2011. It already threatens to become the dominant domestic political clash ahead of the 2024 presidential election.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that “365,348 children went missing in 2020” and criticized “the media” for lacking coverage of that statistic, Insider reports.
She added: “There enlies the problem,” appearing to intend to use the phrase, “therein lies.”
“While that number is technically correct — there were 365,348 reports of missing children entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database last year — nearly 95% of those were categorized as runaways, or children who leave home without permission and stay away for at least one night.”
“A ransomware attack has hit the Virginia state Legislature’s IT branch and state agencies are helping with the recovery,” CNN reports.
“Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), says she will not support Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as GOP leader, the second Senate hopeful to oppose McConnell as other Republicans publicly attack him to further align themselves with former president Donald Trump,” the Washington Post reports.
“The U.S. Postal Service pursued a project to build and secretly test a blockchain-based mobile phone voting system before the 2020 election, experimenting with a technology that the government’s own cybersecurity agency says can’t be trusted to securely handle ballots,” the Washington Post reports.
“The system was never deployed in a live election and was abandoned in 2019… That was after cybersecurity researchers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs conducted a test of the system during a mock election and found numerous ways that it was vulnerable to hacking.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) will take part in a meeting tomorrow to discuss how Senate Democrats may be able to alter the filibuster to advance national voting rights legislation, Punchbowl News reports.
“Voting-rights advocates want to see if Manchin would be open to a ‘carve-out’ to the Senate’s filibuster rule for voting rights legislation. The idea gained more urgency for voting rights advocates after the chamber approved a ‘one-time exception’ to its rules to approve a debt-limit increase by a simple majority vote.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) told Colorado Public Radio that Covid-19 vaccines spell “the end of the medical emergency” and he will not implement a statewide mask mandate in response to the Omicron variant.
Said Polis: “You don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to wear it. If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault. If you haven’t been vaccinated, that’s your choice. I respect that. But it’s your fault when you’re in the hospital with Covid.”
He added: “The data we have so far shows that the vaccines do hold up well against the omicron variant. Obviously, if that changes, we want to look at what other techniques we could use to reduce the spread of the virus.”
“Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd, signaled Monday that he intends to plead guilty in a separate federal civil rights case,” the Washington Post reports.
“The details of Chauvin’s plea were not immediately filed in court, and it was not clear what he would admit or what benefit he would receive for doing so. The change of plea must still be accepted by a federal judge.”
The Supreme Court refused to block Covid-19 vaccination requirement for New York health care workers who seek religious exemption, the AP reports.
“A leading Georgia legislator has introduced a bill that would eliminate absentee ballot drop boxes, a favored and highly-used tool last November that allowed voters to safely cast ballots during the coronavirus pandemic,” Reuters reports.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told ABC News that the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were “driven from the top.”
Said Christie: “All things that you see were driven from the top. The president made it very clear that he did not want to concede the election… C team players get in there and they tell the boss what he wants to hear.”
“The Dr. Oz Show” — currently in its 13th season — will come to an end in January as the daytime host runs for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Variety reports.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has a phone call with President Biden to discuss the Build Back Better legislation this afternoon, but it “sounds like he’s in absolutely no hurry to move forward,” NBC News reports.
Said Manchin: “If it’s whatever plan it will be, pre-K, child care and in-home care, then it should be 10 years, it shouldn’t just be one year here, three years here, five years there. And I think it’d be very transparent for the public to see exactly what they’d be getting for what we’re spending for 10 years.”
Playbook: “Changing these time frames would amount to a major reworking of the bill.”
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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