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“The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack for transcripts of interviews it is conducting, which have included discussions with associates of former President Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“The move, coming as Attorney General Merrick Garland appears to be ramping up the pace of his painstaking investigation into the Capitol riot, is the clearest sign yet of a wide-ranging inquiry at the Justice Department.”
Walter Shapiro: “Democrats are ensnared in the campaign consultant trap. The president’s party is animated by the belief that some political phrasemaker will invent the magic five or six words that will transform the 2022 election.”
“Sorry, politics doesn’t work like that anymore, if it ever did…”
“We have long exaggerated the power of campaign consultants in both parties to cloud the minds of voters. In high-profile races, most TV ads cancel each other out. And it’s hard to think of any slogan in any off-year election in this century that made a difference.”
“Ex-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a state lawmaker he plans to run for New York’s newly drawn 10th Congressional District — the seat that entrenched Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is vacating to fight it out with former longtime ally Rep. Carolyn Maloney in the rejiggered 12th,” the New York Post reports.
“The American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.”
— President Biden, in remarks given in Buffalo.
“The Supreme Court has boosted high-dollar donors’ abilities to personally enrich candidates — including ones like the wealthy individuals pouring millions into their own campaigns this year — if they prevail on Election Day,” Axios reports.
“The court’s ruling Monday is one more decision bypassing post-Watergate and other campaign finance restrictions.”
Politico: “Congress’ nearly $40 billion package of help for the war-torn nation is taking heat from a growing number of conservative lawmakers, candidates, activists and even former President Donald Trump. Their case against spending on Ukraine’s battle against Russia is all about redirecting taxpayer money to domestic problems — but it’s alarming fellow Republicans who see it as a flawed argument and part of a disturbing trend toward isolationism.”
“That tension is putting the sprawling aid package, which is set to clear the Senate later this week, at the center of the ongoing battle to define the modern GOP. Much of the party, from the rank and file all the way up to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is forcefully rejecting the MAGA wing’s opposition to the aid as misguided.”
“Yet the nationalist camp, determined to create a questionable either-or choice between foreign assistance and help for Americans in need, is growing ever larger and louder.”
“Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell emphasized his resolve to get inflation down, saying Tuesday he will back interest rate increases until prices start falling back toward a healthy level,” CNBC reports.
“A Michigan Court of Claims judge has granted a preliminary injunction to Planned Parenthood of Michigan that would stall the enforcement of Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the landmark 1973 Roe decision enshrining abortion as a constitutional right,” the Detroit News reports.
Detroit Free Press: “A Michigan law from 1931 includes two key components: one makes any abortion a felony unless it is done to protect the life of the pregnant person. The second also criminalizes selling or advertising medications that could induce an abortion.”
“Under Tuesday’s ruling, the state could not enforce the 1931 law should Roe v. Wade be struck down.”
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), who has been in the hospital recovering from a stroke since Friday, will get a pacemaker, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign “said doctors reversed Fetterman’s stroke in time to prevent any cognitive damage and that he is expected to make a full recovery.”
Ryan Kelley (R), who is running for governor in Michigan, says he won’t attend a debate because of the venue’s policy requiring conference attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Photos obtained by NBC News show Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Barnette (R) marching toward the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6 alongside member of the Proud Boys who were later arrested and indicted for breaking into the building and attacking officers.
“A half-dozen mainstream Republican Senate candidates are drawing on the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory once confined to the far-right fringes of U.S. politics to court voters this campaign season, promoting the baseless notion that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in America,” the AP reports.
“In some cases, the comments have gone largely overlooked given the hard-line immigration rhetoric that has become commonplace among conservatives during the Trump era. But a weekend mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, that may have been inspired by the racist theory is drawing new attention to the GOP’s growing embrace of white nationalist creed.”
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who is running for U.S. Senate, wants to “expunge” the House’s vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Mullin: “The Democrats’ weaponization of impeachment against President Trump cannot go unanswered in the history books.”
Such a resolution faces no chance of even receiving a vote in the Democratic-led House.
Jonathan Chait: “Inflation has become the Biden administration’s biggest political problem. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has complained the most vocally about inflation and is also doing the most to block the administration’s agenda. Given all the above, it might seem Manchin has been a helpful force.”
“The reality, however, is that Manchin has done a lot to complain about inflation and very little to fight it. Indeed, he has accomplished very little at all.”
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced a run for a fourth term in a typically low-key message on social media, the New York Times reports.
Said Scott: “My priority won’t be campaigning. I will continue to focus on doing the job you hired me to do and leading our state.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urged Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch and the network’s top executives in a letter to “immediately cease the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts” in the wake of a deadly racist rampage in Buffalo, the New York Times reports.
The Hill: White House says it won’t criticize by name those spreading “replacement theory.”
Robert Destro, a senior State Department official during in the Trump administration, met with ‘Stop the Steal’ activists on Jan. 6 at the State Department, the Washington Post reports.
Little is known about the origins of the meeting, but it came as Donald Trump’s allies were pressing theories that election machines had been hacked by foreign powers and were angling for the president to employ the vast powers of the national security establishment to seize machines or even rerun the election.
Nicholas Weaver: “So the stock market and the bond market are a positive-sum game. There are more winners than losers. Cryptocurrency starts with zero-sum. So it starts with a world where there can be no more winning than losing. We have systems like this. It’s called the horse track. It’s called the casino. Cryptocurrency investing is really provably gambling in an economic sense. And then there’s designs where those power bills have to get paid somewhere. So instead of zero-sum, it becomes deeply negative-sum.”
“Effectively, then, the economic analogies are gambling and a Ponzi scheme. Because the profits that are given to the early investors are literally taken from the later investors. This is why I call the space overall, a ‘self-assembled’ Ponzi scheme. There’s been no intent to make a Ponzi scheme. But due to its nature, that is the only thing it can be.”
John Gruber: “There just isn’t any there there other than burning an unconscionable amount of electricity.”
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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