House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and more than two dozen of her colleagues are supporting a resolution to “expunge” former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment – as pro-Trump Republicans push to rally voters ahead of the midterms, Fox News reports.
Trump’s Favorability Surpasses Other National Leaders
Of the most prominent national politicians, Donald Trump now has the highest personal favorability based on the national polls tracked by Real Clear Politics.
Michigan Republican Denied Spot on the Ballot
In a setback for the five Republican gubernatorial candidates who have been kicked off the ballot (including frontrunner James Craig), the state Court of Appeals unanimously denied a lawsuit from one of the contenders seeking to be reinstated, the Detroit News reports.
The case is probably headed to the state Supreme Court next.
Baby Formula Shortage Worsens
“New data suggest that the U.S. baby-formula shortage is deepening, particularly hitting states in the South and the Southwest,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Playbook: “Ironically, Biden officials had originally thought this situation would be one they could get a firm grasp on quickly. While managing the inflation and supply chain issues killing his poll numbers was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, there was initially a sense in the party that the formula shortage was one Dems could fix in a reasonable amount of time.”
“But given the latest data, that confidence seems to have been misplaced.”
When Every Vote Matters
Jay Hovey (R) defeat state Sen. Tom Whaley (R) in the Republican primary for state Senate by a single vote, AL.com reports.
U.K. Seeks to Send Rocket Systems to Ukraine
“The United Kingdom is asking the U.S. to sign off on a plan to send advanced, medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine within a few weeks, a move that follows President Joe Biden’s announcement that he’s sending similar weapons,” Politico reports.
“The U.S. must officially approve the move due to export regulations, though the Biden administration is near certain to give the green light.”
Before You Complain About the Ads…
I’ve gotten several complaints about advertisements on Political Wire in recent days, so please let me remind you that’s why I started a membership model.
There was a time when a publisher could sell advertisers access to an audience. The incentives were perfectly in line: Publishers who put out a quality publication attracted a quality audience which made sense to quality advertisers. All parties had a stake in the system.
But as publishing moved to the Internet and digital ads evolved, the incentives grew out of whack. Publishers no longer have a direct relationship with most advertisers. Instead they increasingly use ad networks. These ad networks pool an audience across thousands of different publications and websites. Advertisers tell the networks what audience they want to target and their ads are shown wherever those readers happen to be visiting.
What does this mean? Publishers no longer have direct relationships with advertisers so they try to make themselves as attractive to ad networks as they can. This often means sharing personal data about their readers and resorting to other reader unfriendly tactics to show as many ads as they can. Advertisers no longer care about individual publications since their audience may come from thousands of different sites.
To make matters worse, the Internet has a virtually unlimited inventory of ad space which drives prices down to ridiculously low prices. This often leads to ads that are in very poor taste.
The membership model is much more direct and honest. Publishers are directly accountable to their readers. That’s it.
If you’re a regular reader and not yet a member, please consider it. In addition to supporting a site you love, you’ll also get exclusive analysis, new features and no advertising.
Join today for $6 a month or $60 for the year.
JP Morgan CEO Warns of Economic ‘Hurricane’
Jamie Dimon warned investors to prepare for an economic “hurricane” as the economy struggles against an unprecedented combination of challenges, Bloomberg reports.
Said Dimon: “That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way. We don’t know if it’s a minor one or Superstorm Sandy. You better brace yourself.”
Who’s Really to Blame for Inflation?
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Elon Musk Trashes Remote Work
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that employees “should pretend to work somewhere else” if they’re not willing to return to their offices.
It’s Pride Month
Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work
The Atlantic: “Americans support recycling. We do too. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled—even though much of it wasn’t.”
“Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself.”
Sara Goddard: 6 Myths About Plastic Debunked.
Manchin Suggests Cutting Drug Prices Is Possible
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) “gave fresh hope to Democrats that he could strike a deal to secure a key slice of their agenda,” Insider reports.
Said Manchin: “Drug pricing is something we all agree on. If we do nothing else this year — I think we can do a lot more — but if we do nothing more this year, that’s the one thing that must be done.”
Profiles In Ignorance
A must-read: Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber by Andy Borowitz.
Kirkus Reviews: “Over the past 50 years, the Republican Party has continuously nominated incurious, poorly read, and laughably unprepared candidates for public office, with puppet masters in the wings to minimize the damage. Such is the all-too-convincing premise of Borowitz’s exhaustively detailed, devastatingly funny takedown of a veritable Mount Rushmore of incompetents: ‘People sometimes call our nation ‘the American experiment.’ Recently, though, we’ve been lab rats in another, perverse American experiment, seemingly designed to answer this question: Who’s the most ignorant person the United States is willing to elect?'”
“Top-notch political satire from a practiced pen.”
Anatomy of a Fake
Dan Moynihan: “This is the tale of a fake news story, widely shared by a lot of smart people who so badly wanted for it to be true that they didn’t care that it wasn’t.”
“It is also the tale of the decline of local news in America, the wave of pink slime that is replacing it, feeding destructive partisan narratives about public institutions.”
What If We Saw Photos of Gunned-Down Kids?
Susie Linfield: “Photographic images can bring us close to the experience of suffering — and, in particular, to the physical torment that violence creates — in ways that words do not. What does the destruction of a human being, of a human body — frail and vulnerable (all human bodies are frail and vulnerable) — look like? What can we know of another’s suffering? Is such knowledge forbidden — or, alternately, necessary? And if we obtain it, what then?”
Charlie Sykes: “Maybe it’s naïve to think that even the most graphic pictures would really make a difference. But they have in the past. Think about the impact of the photo of Emmitt Till lying in his open casket, a victim of racist violence; or the picture of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack. The picture of a drowned Syrian 3-year-old boy shocked the world into addressing the migrant crisis. After WWII, German citizens were forced to witness the horrors of the concentration camps and the images of the atrocities still haunt our collective conscience.”
“But showing the children may simply be too much. And it’s certainly too much to ask the families of those children.”
Job Openings Remain Near Record Highs
“Job openings remain near record highs with 11.4 million job openings, as the tight labor market continues to be a bright spot for the U.S. economy,” the Washington Post reports.
Stacey Abrams Hits Brian Kemp on Guns and Abortion
A new 30-second ad from Stacey Abrams (D) pans Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (D) support for “criminal carry” gun legislation and an income tax cut, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
More significantly, it’s the first TV ad this cycle from Abrams that targets the governor’s anti-abortion stance.
