“Salt Lake County Council member Dave Alvord (R) says fetuses are not part of a mother’s body because the umbilical cord and placenta do not connect directly to the woman,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Said Alvord, in a tweet response to Vice President Kamala Harris: “The baby is not part of the body of a woman. The umbilical cord and placenta do not directly connect to the woman. The baby floats inside the woman. It is not about the woman’s body, it’s to kill then remove the baby’s body.”
Politico: “Democrats recently inched ahead of Republicans on the generic ballot, a leading indicator of midterm performance. Kansas demonstrated the salience of Roe v. Wade. And on Tuesday night, a Minnesota special election became the second consecutive contest to suggest Democratic candidates may be better positioned to compete in November than once expected.”
Josh Kraushaar: “The results suggest Republicans are still well on track to win the House majority in 2022, but not by the historic margins that once looked possible. They also indicate that Republicans can’t rely on a big red wave to sweep in their flawed Senate nominees in battleground states.”
“I would be shocked if they were nonconsequential classified records. There’s a reason why those boxes were taken.”
— John W. Carlin, who led the National Archives for a decade during the Clinton and Bush administrations, telling the Daily Beast that the Justice Department was right to become “much more aggressive” with Donald Trump.
Ruy Teixeira: “Democrats are having a great deal of trouble holding on to Hispanic voters. In 2020, running against Donald Trump for a second time, in the midst of a COVID/economic crisis and after the George Floyd summer of “racial reckoning”, Democrat Joe Biden actually did quite a bit worse among Hispanic voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.”
“According to authoritative estimates from Democratic big data firm Catalist, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters slipped by a remarkable 16 points (two party vote) between the two elections. That doesn’t mean the Democrats lost the Hispanic vote. Far from it—they still got a solid majority of that group’s vote. But the size of their majority was whittled down considerably and appears to be falling further.”
“The seriousness of this problem tends to be underestimated in Democratic circles for a couple of reasons: (1) they don’t realize how big the shift has been; and (2) they don’t realize how thoroughly it undermines the most influential Democratic theory of the case for building their coalition.”
This is really something to watch: The anchor for Real America’s Voice argues that the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago was to prevent Donald Trump from exposing satanic pedophile rings.
All the clearly uncomfortable co-anchor can do is say, “Right… Right… That’s right.”
“Former President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than 440 times Wednesday in refusing to answer questions at a deposition by lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is investigating the Trump Organization’s business practices,” NBC News reports.
“Trump answered just one question — his name — and then cited the Fifth on every other question he was asked during the deposition.”
Trump flashback: “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the 5th Amendment??”
New York Times: “Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes. Now as the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray has executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home, Mr. Trump is accusing the nation’s justice system of being exactly what he tried to turn it into: a political weapon for a president, just not for him.”
“There is, in fact, no evidence that President Biden has had any role in the investigation. Mr. Biden has not publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Trump the way Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Nor has anyone knowledgeably contradicted the White House statement that it was not even informed about the search at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, much less involved in ordering it. But Mr. Trump has a long history of accusing adversaries of doing what he himself does or would do in the same situation.”
New York Times: “With her death, the 322nd of the year, the number of homicides in Philadelphia was on track toward becoming the highest in police records, passing the bleak milestone set just last year. So far in 2022, more than 1,400 people in the city have been shot, hundreds of them fatally, a higher toll than in the much larger cities of New York or Los Angeles.”
“Alarms have sounded about gun violence across the country over the past two years, but Philadelphia is one of the few major American cities where it truly is as bad as it has ever been.”
A Florida man paid $1,800 to fly a banner reading “ha ha ha ha ha ha” over Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after an FBI raid of the property.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “did not show up to his scheduled appearance on Wednesday at the Fulton County courthouse,” WGCL reports.
“Graham was subpoenaed to testify to a special grand jury that’s investigating whether Trump and others broke any laws when they tried to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in 2020.”
“Former President Donald Trump has retained Drew Findling as his attorney to represent him in the ongoing criminal investigation by the Fulton County special purpose grand jury examining what happened in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Findling is a highly regarded criminal defense attorney who has represented numerous notable clients.”
“Wholesale prices fell in July for the first time in two years as a plunge in energy prices slowed the pace of inflation,” CNBC reports.
“The producer price index, which gauges the prices received for final demand products, fell 0.5% from June, the first month-over-month decrease since April 2020, the month after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting an increase of 0.2%.”
Donald Trump is fighting a number of battles all at the same time: the Mar-a-Lago raid, trouble with the Trump Organization, Fulton County, tossed-out NDAs, his tax returns, and the January 6 panel, the Daily Beast reports.
“A wave of concern and even paranoia is gripping parts of Trump world as federal investigators tighten their grip on the former president and his inner circle,” Politico reports.
“In the wake of news that the FBI agents executed a court-authorized search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump’s allies and aides have begun buzzing about a host of potential explanations and worries. Among those being bandied about is that the search was a pretext to fish for other incriminating evidence, that the FBI doctored evidence to support its search warrant — and then planted some incriminating materials and recording devices at Mar-a-Lago for good measure — and even that the timing of the search was meant to be a historical echo of the day President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974.”
Said former Trump aide Monica Crowley: “There are no coincidences when it comes to the Deep State. They could have done this raid a couple of days before or tomorrow, but they chose Aug. 8 for a reason.”
Philip Klein: “There was a time when having one’s home searched by federal law enforcement would trigger talk about the end of somebody’s political career. But it is a testament to what a bizarre moment in American history we are in that it may very well mark the informal launch of a presidential candidacy.”
David Leonhardt: “Joe Manchin has spent much of the past year as the villain of liberal America, receiving the kind of criticism that’s usually reserved for Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell or a conservative Supreme Court justice.”
“Activists aggressively protested against Manchin, some in kayaks outside his houseboat in Washington, others surrounding his car and chanting a vulgarity at him. One Democratic House member called him “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant,” while others called him untrustworthy. Bernie Sanders accused Manchin of “intentionally sabotaging the president’s agenda” and suggested that Manchin’s wealthy donors were the reason. Other critics called him a shill for the energy industry, noting that he personally owns a coal company.”
“And then Manchin made it possible for the Senate to pass the most aggressive climate bill in American history.”
“In January 2020, Glenn Youngkin, now the Republican governor of Virginia, got some welcome news. A complex corporate transaction had gone through at the Carlyle Group, the powerful private equity company that Youngkin led as co-chief executive. Under the deal, approved by the Carlyle board and code-named ‘Project Phoenix,’ he began receiving $8.5 million worth of Carlyle stock, tax-free, according to court documents,” NBC News reports.
“The Project Phoenix payout came on top of $54 million in compensation Youngkin had received from Carlyle during the previous two years, regulatory records show. Youngkin retired from Carlyle on Sept. 30, 2020; he won the governor’s election in November 2021.”
“Now, that transaction is under attack by a Carlyle shareholder in Delaware Chancery Court. The suit, filed last week by the city of Pittsburgh Comprehensive Municipal Pension Trust Fund, says the $344 million deal harmed Carlyle’s stockholders, who received nothing in return when they funded the payday.”
“China has withdrawn a promise not to send troops or administrators to Taiwan if it takes control of the island, an official document showed on Wednesday, signalling a decision by President Xi Jinping to grant less autonomy than previously offered,” Reuters reports.
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.