“Ron DeSantis is building a campaign against Joe Biden — and he’s going to make the president pay for it,” Politico reports.
“The governor made it clear Thursday that he wants to use $3.5 billion from Biden’s American Rescue Plan to help fund nearly every high-profile piece of his budget, setting up a scenario where the Biden administration could pay for policies DeSantis will use to campaign on during his reelection bid.”
“Boris Johnson is facing a major Conservative rebellion over Covid-19 restrictions next week, as a ‘sulphurous’ mood sweeps through Tory ranks over the UK prime minister’s leadership,” the Financial Times reports.
The Times of London notes Johnson’s party has “slumped to their worst poll rating in 11 months as the prime minister battles on several fronts.”
“Efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal have been hauled back from the brink of collapse as Tehran revised its stance after pressure from Russia and China and clear warnings that the EU and the US were preparing to walk away,” The Guardian reports.
Meanwhile, the US military commander for the Middle East told the Financial Times he has a “very robust range of military options” to deter Iran.
China has warned countries who have announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics that they “will pay the price for their mistaken acts,” the BBC reports.
Wall Street Journal: “U.S. job openings continue to far outpace the number of available workers, with nearly five million more open positions than people seeking work. There are more than 11 million job openings in the U.S.”
“That compares with 6.9 million people who are unemployed but say they want to work.
Punchbowl News: “They’re just not ready. Here’s a simple yet inexorable problem Democrats have yet to overcome — there’s no bill yet! We haven’t seen the full legislative text of the Build Back Better Act from Senate Democrats in the three weeks since the House approved its version of the bill. Next week, Senate Democrats and Republicans will take elements of the package to the parliamentarian to battle over immigration and other contentious priorities.”
“Once they’re done with that, Schumer still needs to get agreement within his caucus. For example, if the immigration provisions approved by the House are rejected by the parliamentarian, do they try to rework the language to get it back into the package? How long will that take? How many votes will they lose without immigration in the bill? And remember — once the Senate passes its bill, the House has another crack at it. And that will take some time.”
The Hill: Democrats don’t think Manchin wants Biden agenda vote by Christmas.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that Sirhan Sirhan did not assassinate his father, and called on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to release Sirhan from prison.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has been fighting with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), is now taking aim at Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) over his recent comment that the House Freedom Caucus is filled with “grifters” and “performance artists.”
Greene said Crenshaw’s comments “tells more about the guy shooting with blanks.”
“Plenty of House Republicans have softened their stance on remote voting during the pandemic. Not their leader, who’s digging in all the way to the Supreme Court,” Politico reports.
“The high court will decide as soon as Friday whether to take up the lawsuit that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and fellow House Republicans brought against a measure allowing proxy voting in the chamber. They’re fighting against the odds on multiple fronts: Not only did a federal appeals court previously dismiss the case, but more than half of McCarthy’s own conference took their name off the anti-proxy-voting lawsuit after initially signing on.”
“Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu were the closest of political allies during the four years they overlapped in office, at least in public. Not anymore,” Axios reports.
“The final straw for Trump was when Netanyahu congratulated President-elect Biden for his election victory while Trump was still disputing the result.”
Said Trump: “I haven’t spoken to him since. Fuck him.”
Jill Biden dismissed concerns about President Biden’s mental fitness, telling CBS News they are “ridiculous.”
“A British High Court ruled Friday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act,” the Washington Post reports.
“The House on Thursday passed a sweeping package of constraints on presidential power, which Democrats framed as a response to Donald Trump’s norm-busting presidency and Republicans unanimously opposed for the same reason,” the New York Times reports.
“By a nearly party-line vote of 220 to 208, the House approved the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would impose new curbs on executive power. Proponents of tighter government ethics have long sought many of the measures, and Republican have supported them, but they have been recast as partisan issues because of their association with Mr. Trump.”
Reuters: “The bill will now head to the Senate, where it is not expected to surpass the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to move forward.”
“William Hartmann, one of two Republican election officials from Michigan who initially refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wayne County, where Joe Biden had trounced Donald Trump, died on Nov. 30 at a hospital near Detroit,” the New York Times reports.
“About two weeks before Mr. Hartmann’s death, which was confirmed by the Michigan Republican Party, his sister, Elizabeth Hartmann, wrote on Facebook that he was ‘in ICU with Covid pneumonia and currently on a ventilator.’”
“Mr. Hartmann had been outspoken in his opposition to Covid vaccines.”
“Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant pulled ahead of a ballot measure to recall her in Thursday’s vote count, earning 50.3% of the total counted votes,” the Seattle Times reports.
“Sawant has gained ground two days in a row, overcoming a 53% lead held by the recall effort on Tuesday.”
“With cases of the Omicron variant doubling every three days and the government doing an about-face on restrictions it had long resisted, Britain is bracing for a new coronavirus surge, unsure if it will be a relatively minor event or a return to the dark days of earlier pandemic waves,” the New York Times reports.
“Early evidence in Britain backs up tentative findings elsewhere, notably in South Africa, where the heavily mutated new variant is already widespread: It appears to be the most contagious form of the virus yet, a previous case of Covid-19 provides little immunity to it, and vaccines seem less effective against it. But it also seems to cause less severe illness than earlier variants.”
Coming soon: Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff.
Recent revelations like the release of more Nixon tapes — and the identity of “Deep Throat” himself — means that the full story has never been told from start to finish.
Robert Shapiro: “While many people are uncomfortable communicating bad news, Democrats have a problem these days talking about good news, especially on the economy.”
“Based on the data, President Biden and the Democratic Congress are set to preside over the strongest two-year performance on growth, jobs, and income in decades—so long as the current cycle of inflation eases, and the Omicron variant does not trigger another round of shutdowns. The future paths of inflation and the pandemic are large and important unknowns—but if they break right, everything else points to a Biden boom through 2022.”
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.