A new Gallup poll finds President Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen six percentage points to 43%, the lowest of his presidency.
For the first time, a majority, 53%, now disapproves of Biden’s performance.
“To the delight of his loyal fans and dismay of his equally fierce critics, former two-term Republican Gov. Paul LePage will announce his bid to unseat Maine’s incumbent Gov. Janet Mills on Wednesday,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
Michigan state Rep. Steve Marino (R), who is accused of harassing fellow Rep. Mari Manoogian (D), “will need to be escorted by House sergeants to the House floor and his office to prevent potential violations of a personal protection order,” MLive reports.
“Marino has been asked to inform House sergeants when he comes into either the Capitol or House Office Building and remain confined to his desk, in the House Republican caucus room or on his floor of the House Office Building.”
In an attempt to improve his company’s image, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg authorized a plan to boost pro-Facebook stories on the newsfeeds of its billions of users, the New York Times reports.
“The idea was that pushing pro-Facebook news items — some of them written by the company — would improve its image in the eyes of its users… But the move was sensitive because Facebook had not previously positioned the News Feed as a place where it burnished its own reputation.”
“A volley of automatic gunfire hit a car carrying a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday, an incident a senior official called an assassination attempt and Zelenskiy said may have been a message intended for him,” Reuters reports.
The House Select Committee investigating the storming of the U.S. Capitol could authorize subpoenas for top Trump White House aides as early as this week, The Guardian reports.
“Two former GOP treasury secretaries held private discussions this month with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hoping to resolve an impasse over the debt limit that now threatens the global economy,” the Washington Post reports.
“The previously unreported talks involving the GOP economic grandees — Henry Paulson, who served as treasury secretary under President Bush; and Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary under President Trump — did not resolve the matter and the U.S. is now racing toward a massive fiscal cliff with no clear resolution at hand.”
Moody’s Analytics says “a prolonged impasse over the debt ceiling would cost the U.S. economy up to 6 million jobs, wipe out as much as $15 trillion in household wealth, and send the unemployment rate surging to roughly 9 percent from around 5 percent, the Washington Post reports.
Charlie Sykes: “Trump has already made dozens of endorsements in down-ballot races against Republican officials who refused to back his claims of election fraud, not to mention the 10 members of Congress who actually voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.”
“The result is a Trump-led purge of dissidents, but the bigger story — and the one with longer-term implications — may be the self-deportation of the sane, the decent and the principled, who simply opt to leave on their own.”
“Their political emigration is profoundly changing the face of the GOP, and it is happening at every level of politics, from local school boards to the United States Senate. Whatever the result of next year’s elections, the GOP that remains will be meaner, dumber, crazier and more beholden than ever to the defeated, twice-impeached former president.”
Nevada gubernatorial candidate Dean Heller (R) would not acknowledge in a Las Vegas Review Journal interview that Joe Biden is president.
Democratic megadonor Karla Jurvetson is no fan of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Puck reports.
“What makes it feel more personal is that Jurvetson helped raise money for Sinema’s tough campaign in 2018. But the two have since fallen out. On a brusque private call in May that included Jurvetson and the Arizona senator, the two clashed over how Democrats could move on the filibuster, I hear, with the call ending rather abruptly.”
Playbook: “The House minority leader has made clear he opposes BIF, but he’s also under increased pressure to take the next step and urge his members to oppose it. On Tuesday, one of his allies, Republican Study Committee Chair Jim Banks (R-IN), became the latest member to call on McCarthy to muscle votes in opposition. McCarthy is also getting an earful from the House Freedom Caucus, whose support he needs to become speaker someday.”
“And don’t forget about Donald Trump, who ironically called for a big infrastructure bill as president but is now demanding they oppose the one Democrats are pitching. Will Trump lean on McCarthy to do more?”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds more voters would blame Democrats than Republicans if the U.S. were to default on its debt.
Asked which party they would blame more, 33% said Democrats, 42% said both parties, and only 16% said Republicans.
Deutsche Welle: “Not only is the German election race wide open — many voters say they’re yet to decide whom they will support. Complex coalition numbers, a lackluster campaign and the Angela Merkel vacuum help explain why.”
Axios: “Treasury secretaries seen as being friendly to Wall Street — think Robert Rubin, Larry Summers or Tim Geithner — invariably exit to multimillion-dollar salaries in the financial sector. Steven Mnuchin has managed to do even better for himself.”
“Mnuchin has raised $2.5 billion so far for a private equity fund, including from Saudi Arabia, a country toward whom he was notably friendly while in office. If the fund is structured with a standard 2% management fee, that’s $50 million per year right there for Mnuchin and his colleagues, before they make a single penny from investment returns.”
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has sent a fleet of state-owned vehicles to line up for miles as a barricade along the border with Mexico, insisting the state was taking ‘unprecedented steps,’ as thousands of migrants still seek to cross into the United States,” the Washington Post reports.
Matthew Yglesias: “Back in 1992, James Carville supposedly hung a sign in Clinton campaign headquarters that said, ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ By the same token, Democrats today could improve their performance enormously if every staffer’s computer monitor had a Post-It stuck to it that said ‘the median voter is a 50-something white person who didn’t go to college and lives in an unfashionable suburb.’”
“This is important because it’s true. But I think it tends not to be front of mind when decisions are getting made. That’s because decisions about how to frame issues are most often made by young college graduates who live in big cities and consume a lot of media created by other young college graduates who live in big cities. And while Republican staffers also inhabit a similar left-of-the-party-base bubble, the staff bias is constructive, pulling toward the median voter. For Democrats, it’s the opposite.”
“The race for Wyoming’s single U.S. House district has pitted two of the biggest names in Republican politics against one another: both of the party’s living former presidents,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Former President George W. Bush’s first campaign event of the 2022 midterms will be a fundraiser to support Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who is among former President Donald Trump’s top targets to unseat. The fundraiser will be held next month in Dallas.”
USA Today: Liz Cheney v. Trump: The feud forcing Wyoming to ask hard questions.
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.