Political Wire Members get the complete experience: exclusive analysis, a 24/7 trending news, no advertising, the weekly news quiz and more.
Join today for instant access.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed the strictest anti-abortion law in the nation, giving the country a preview of a possible post-Roe future, the Oklahoman reports.
The law prohibits most abortions beginning at fertilization, with no exceptions for rape or incest unless they were reported to law enforcement.
The law also encourages private citizens to sue anyone suspected of helping a person get an abortion.
“Gov. Greg Abbott said he was not sure whether he would attend the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston this week, which will take place days after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at a Uvalde elementary school on Tuesday,” the Texas Tribune reports.
New York Times: “As both parties have navigated their respective primary seasons, Republicans have been far more likely to use messaging around guns to galvanize their base in the midterms than Democrats — who are largely in agreement on the issue of combating gun violence, but have seen one legislative effort after another collapse.”
“More than 100 television ads from Republican candidates and supportive groups have used guns as talking points or visual motifs this year. Guns are shown being fired or brandished, or are discussed but not displayed as candidates tout the Second Amendment, vow to block gun-control legislation or simply identify themselves as ‘pro-gun.’”
“Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is pushing back on a subpoena issued to him by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, contesting the constitutionality of the request and outlining a list of demands the committee must meet in order for him to even consider moving forward,” CNN reports.
“Donald Trump hasn’t said if he will run for president again, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping him from privately musing about his potential running mate if he does,” CNN reports.
“The latest person to catch his eye: Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the moderate-turned-MAGA star who has developed a strong relationship with the former President.”
“While talk about a 2024 vice presidential pick is of course premature, conversations about adding Stefanik to a future Trump ticket have gained steam in recent weeks at Mar-a-Lago and in other Republican circles.”
Politico: “Raffensperger capitalized on that chance Tuesday night, dispatching his Trump-backed challenger, GOP Rep. Jody Hice, with a comeback that took him from being ostracized by the state Republican Party to cleaning up in nearly every corner of the state. Trump has endorsed a slate of candidates for election offices who parrot his falsehoods about the 2020 election being stolen — and Raffensperger, who refused Trump’s entreaties to “find” more votes in 2020, just defeated the first one.”
“He did it by meeting skeptical voters head-on, appearing regularly on conservative media and touting his support for conservative election policies. Raffensperger spent long hours on the road to talk to basically any group that would have him — even when they wanted to relitigate the 2020 vote that Raffensperger has consistently defended as clean and fair.”
Philip Bump: Did Georgia Democrats save Brad Raffensperger?
“Shortly after the nation’s latest mass shooting, which killed at least 18 children at an elementary school in Texas, the California Senate passed a bill Tuesday to allow private citizens to file suit for at least $10,000 — a bounty-hunter provision modeled on a Texas abortion law — against makers or sellers of untraceable ghost guns or illegal assault weapons,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
David Frum: “Every other democracy makes some considerable effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, and dangerous people away from guns. For many years—and especially since the massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School almost a decade ago—the United States has put more and more guns into more and more hands: 120 guns per 100 people in this country.”
“The years of the pandemic have been the years of the greatest gun sales in U.S. history: almost 20 million guns sold in 2020; another 18.5 million sold in 2021. No surprise, those two years also witnessed a surge in gun violence: the spectacular human butchery of our recurring mass slaughters; the surge of one-on-one lethal criminality; the unceasing tragic toll of carelessness as American gun owners hurt and kill their loved ones and themselves.”
“Most of us are appalled. But not enough of us are sufficiently appalled to cast our votes to halt it.”
The National Rifle Association said its “deepest sympathies” are with the families and victims of the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school massacre, CNBC reports.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says voters’ repudiation of two Trump-backed candidates in Georgia is proof that talking about the 2020 election is a loser for voters at the ballot box, Politico reports.
Said McConnell: “The resounding message from the Republican voters in Georgia is: Quit talking about 2020. And make the fall election about the future and about the Biden administration.”
Former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) explains in The Hill:
“In the elevator, a friend – a pleasant, reasonable, moderate Republican – complained that the votes were politically motivated — forcing members in swing districts to choose between their pro-gun bases and more moderate constituents. I argued that the polling in districts like his was clear: Nearly 80 percent support for the very measures he’d just voted against, including a majority (back then, at least) of Republicans.”
“Then came the news. He admitted that despite personally supporting the measures, he had no choice but to vote against them. In a heavily polarized House, where districts were increasingly ruby red versus bright blue, any vote for any gun safety would invite a primary opponent and ignite his likely defeat. No issue, he told me, motivated his base more intensely than guns. Moderates would forgive and forget that he voted against background checks; but his base would never forgive him for voting for them.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) attended a fundraiser for his reelection campaign Tuesday night in East Texas, hours after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school over 300 miles away in Uvalde, the Texas Tribune reports.
The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas this week was the 27th school shooting this year and the 119th since 2018, Education Week reports.
The highest number of shootings, 34, occurred last year.
Dan Balz: “Think about what it means that the killings of children in their schools have become common enough to need such a list.”
Ron Brownstein: “That’s because gun control is one of many issues in which majority opinion in the nation runs into the brick wall of a Senate rule—the filibuster—that provides a veto over national policy to a minority of the states, most of them small, largely rural, preponderantly white, and dominated by Republicans…”
“The practical implications of these imbalances were dramatized by the last full-scale Senate debate over gun control. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, the Senate in 2013 voted on a measure backed by President Barack Obama to impose background checks on all gun sales.”
“Again assigning half of each state’s population to each of its senators, the 54 senators who supported the bill (plus then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who opposed it only for procedural reasons) represented 194 million Americans. The remaining senators who opposed the bill represented 118 million people. But because of the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires the backing of 60 senators to move legislation to a vote, the 118 million prevailed.”
House Sergeant at Arms William Walker, one of the top security officials on Capitol Hill, revealed that he does not believe lawmakers should be allowed to carry firearms in the U.S. Capitol Complex, in a new letter provided exclusively to CNN.
Politico: “The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday it now expects federal revenue this year to jump by a whopping $800 billion — equivalent to the Pentagon’s annual budget.”
“That translates to a 19 percent increase, the biggest one-year hike in more than 40 years, and it comes on top of an 18 percent increase last year.”
“Total receipts will amount this year to 19.6 percent of the nation’s economy, CBO says, which would be the most since 2000 when the Treasury Department was swimming in cash thrown off by the dot-com bubble.”
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts U.S. economic growth “will exceed 3% in 2022, while roaring inflation has topped and will cool each month to around 2% by some point in 2024,” CNBC reports.
“The upbeat tone of the report appeared to include an implicit prediction that the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank in charge of managing inflation, will be able to raise interest rates throughout 2022 and 2023 without tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.”
“They are disturbed, upset, troubled, but not willing to change where they are. Usually I want to be more optimistic. But, like, I don’t think it’ll change anything… I don’t see any hope today for getting 10 Republican senators to join us in further restrictions on military-style weapons.”
— Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), quoted by Politico, on the prospects for gun reform legislation.
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.