Washington Post: “Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.“
“The teacher shortage in America has hit crisis levels — and school officials everywhere are scrambling to ensure that, as students return to classrooms, someone will be there to educate them.”
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In an election where Republicans are banking on the environment while Democrats are banking on differences in candidate quality, Republicans are relying on a very inexperienced group of candidates.”
“Compared to 2014, the last time Republicans flipped the Senate, the party’s non-incumbent candidates are incredibly green.”
“The quality of candidates on the Republican side is such an issue that we think the race for the Senate majority is basically a Toss-up.”
ABC News: Trump picks roil GOP’s Senate outlook.
“I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d do it 50 times in a row.”
— Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), quoted by the Associated Press, after getting trounced in a state Senate race because he testified against Donald Trump.
Nate Cohn: “The Kansas vote implies that around 65 percent of voters nationwide would reject a similar initiative to roll back abortion rights, including in more than 40 of the 50 states (a few states on each side are very close to 50-50). This is a rough estimate, based on how demographic characteristics predicted the results of recent abortion referendums. But it is an evidence-based way of arriving at a fairly obvious conclusion: If abortion rights wins 59 percent support in Kansas, it’s doing even better than that nationwide.”
“It’s a tally that’s in line with recent national surveys that showed greater support for legal abortion after the court’s decision. And the high turnout, especially among Democrats, confirms that abortion is not just some wedge issue of importance to political activists. The stakes of abortion policy have become high enough that it can drive a high midterm-like turnout on its own.”
Axios: Kansas referendum boosts Democrats’ midterm focus on abortion.
“Donald Trump’s camp has yet to say whether he’ll try to use executive privilege to disrupt the Justice Department’s grand jury investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election. But if he does, it could be a very short fight,” Politico reports.
“A series of court rulings prompted by Trump’s effort to stymie the House Jan. 6 select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol sharply rejected Trump’s bid to wield the power as a former president. In fact, the Supreme Court agreed that Trump’s effort to assert privilege would have failed even if he were the sitting president, effectively granting the committee access to Trump’s White House papers.”
“Democrats and Republicans alike are heading out to the ritzy Hamptons, New York’s summer playground for the wealthy, to fill their campaign war chests in the final months of the 2022 midterm elections, and, in some cases, to test presidential aspirations for 2024,” CNBC reports.
“With just under 100 days until the November elections, more than a dozen congressional and state lawmakers are heading to the Hamptons for fundraisers in August alone. Wall Street executives, media titans, top lawyers and other corporate leaders are hosting numerous pricy fundraising dinners at their beach town estates, according to interviews with GOP and Democratic fundraisers, donors and political consultants.”
“A day after Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taiwan, celebrating it as a bulwark of democracy, China launched three days of military exercises around the island, which its forces may use to press in closer than ever, honing their ability to impose a blockade,” the New York Times reports.
“A barrage of Chinese propaganda said the drills, which started at midday Thursday, would serve as punishment for Ms. Pelosi’s visit, and as a shock-and-awe deterrent against opponents of Beijing’s claims to the self-ruled island. But more than that, the six exercise zones that the People’s Liberation Army has marked out in seas off Taiwan — one nudging less than 10 miles off its southern coast — could give Chinese forces valuable practice, should they one day be ordered to encircle and attack the island.”
“John Eastman, the conservative lawyer whose plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election failed in spectacular fashion on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an email two weeks later arguing that pro-Trump forces should sue to keep searching for the supposed election fraud he acknowledged they had failed to find,” the New York Times reports.
“On Jan. 20, 2021, hours after President Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Eastman emailed Rudolph Giuliani, former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, proposing that they challenge the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that had been won on Jan. 5 by Democrats.”
“A growing number of Republican candidates this cycle are refusing to concede elections they indisputably lost, promoting conspiracy theories about the results and engaging in local battles over certification,” Axios reports.
“The undercurrent of election denialism pervading the 2022 midterms is bubbling to the surface as more Trump-inspired candidates are tested in primaries.”
“Donald Trump’s allies in Georgia are mounting a campaign to recall Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her investigation into the then president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and are seeking to recruit high-dollar donors to fund it,“ Yahoo News reports.
“The organizers of the campaign concede that the obstacles to a successful recall in Georgia are high, making the chances of getting a recall vote on the ballot before Willis makes her decision on whether to indict Trump and his associates remote at best.”
“But a source involved in the effort told Yahoo News that the aim is to use the recall campaign as a way to politically damage the Democratic district attorney, portraying her as a partisan actor who is ignoring soaring crime rates in Atlanta in order to target high-profile Republicans. A side benefit of that game plan, another source familiar with the campaign said, is to potentially influence a jury pool down the road should a case against Trump go to trial.”
“The Homeland Security watchdog now under scrutiny for his handling of deleted Secret Service text messages from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack previously was accused of misleading Justice Department investigators and running ‘afoul’ of ethics regulations while he was a federal agent in charge of a DOJ inspector general field office in Tucson,” the Washington Post reports.
“The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly ratified the addition of Finland and Sweden as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a move leaders of both parties portrayed as key to American security around the world following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The resolution passed 95-1, with only Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) voting against.
“The shortage of vaccines to combat a fast-growing monkeypox outbreak was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution,“ the New York Times reports.
“By the time the federal government placed its orders, the vaccine’s Denmark-based manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic, had booked other clients and was unable to do the work for months, officials said — even though the federal government had invested well over $1 billion in the vaccine’s development.”
“The Justice Department filed suit Wednesday against Peter Navarro, claiming the former adviser to Donald Trump used an unofficial email account while working in the White House and wrongfully retained presidential records,” the AP reports.
“The lawsuit in federal court in Washington claims Navarro used at least one ‘non-official’ email account — a ProtonMail account — to send and receive emails.”
“The civil cases alleges that by using the unofficial email account, Navarro failed to turn over presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration.”
Ron Brownstein: “If Democrats avoid the worst outcome in November’s midterm elections, the principal reason will likely be the GOP’s failure to reverse its decline in white-collar suburbs during the Donald Trump era.”
“That’s a clear message from yesterday’s crowded primary calendar, which showed the GOP mostly continuing to nominate Trump-style culture-war candidates around the country. And yet, the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas showed how many voters in larger population centers are recoiling from that Trumpist vision.”
Georgia U.S. Senate hopeful Herschel Walker (R) “said he would participate in an Oct. 14 debate in Savannah against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) amid pressure from his allies and criticism from Democrats who mocked him for refusing to commit to a showdown,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Said Walker to Fox News: “I want people to see the difference.”
“Republican senators and the business community are mounting a full-court press on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to sink — or substantially change — the Democrats’ economic package, arguing in private conversations that the new tax increases would hurt companies in her home state of Arizona,” CNN reports.
Politico reports Sinema “wants to nix language narrowing the so-called carried interest loophole, which would change the way some investment income is taxed. Cutting that provision would ax $14 billion of the bill’s $739 billion in projected revenue.”
“Sinema also wants an add. She’d like roughly $5 billion in drought resiliency funding added to the legislation, a key ask for Arizona given the state’s problems with water supply.”
Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) was killed in a car accident, along with two aides and the driver of the other vehicle, WSBT 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.
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