“The Biden administration is confronting a barrage of questions and criticism for the national baby formula shortage that has anxious and angry parents hopping from store to store in search of baby food,” CNN reports.
“The White House was unable to point to federal guidance last Thursday on what parents struggling to find formula should do, and recommended that families reach out to their doctors and pediatricians if they were worried about their babies’ health.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) charges that Barack Obama and Joe Biden “have weakened America and emboldened our enemies” in a new book being released in the autumn, Fox News reports.
“The United States is seeking clarification after Turkey’s president suggested Friday that he was reluctant about Sweden and Finland potentially joining the NATO defense alliance,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Turkish warning came a day after a landmark recommendation from Finland’s leaders that the country join NATO and as Swedish leaders appeared ready to follow their lead this weekend.”
Washington Post: “One federal appeals court judge in D.C. has hired only male law clerks for the past two decades. Another judge allegedly refused to speak to a staffer for weeks after a child-care emergency caused the assistant to depart work early one day. Others are said to have reduced their employees to tears by yelling or making cruel comments about the quality of their work.”
“These and other complaints appear in a confidential workplace survey conducted for the federal trial and appeals courts in the nation’s capital, an institution regarded as a steppingstone to the Supreme Court. It details instances of gender discrimination, bullying and racial insensitivity, while underscoring the stark power imbalance between judges with life tenure and the assistants who depend on them for career advancement.”
“Sweden will jettison 200 years of military non-alignment and apply to join Nato alongside its neighbor Finland, a move that would change the geopolitics of Europe and underscore the unintended consequences of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” the Financial Times reports.
“President Trump plans to partially restrict himself from using Twitter, according to a new federal securities filing from the blank check company taking his social network, Truth Social, public,” Axios reports.
From the filing: “President Trump is generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial and may not make the same post on another social media site for 6 hours. Thereafter, he is free to post on any site to which he has access. Thus, TMTG has limited time to benefit from his posts and followers may not find it compelling to use TruthSocial to read his posts that quickly.”
“In addition, he may make a post from a personal account related to political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the-vote efforts on any social media site at any time.”
“The Biden administration is preparing Monday to notify several Afghans currently waiting at a U.S. Army base in Kosovo that they’ll be denied entry to the United States,” Axios reports.
“After more than three decades in Russia, McDonald’s — an icon of U.S. lifestyle and capitalism — is selling its Russia business as it looks to leave the country completely,” the New York Times reports.
“The move is a significant departure for a brand whose growth across the world became the symbol of globalism and even the basis of a peace theory.”
Wall Street Journal: McDonald’s to exit from Russia.
New York Times: “The practice is both brazen and breathtakingly simple. To work around the prohibition on directly coordinating with super PACs, candidates are posting their instructions to them inside the red boxes on public pages that super PACs continuously monitor.”
“The boxes highlight the aspects of candidates’ biographies that they want amplified and the skeletons in their opponents’ closets that they want exposed. Then, they add instructions that can be extremely detailed: Steering advertising spending to particular cities or counties, asking for different types of advertising and even slicing who should be targeted by age, gender and ethnicity.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) was told “we were going door knocking and shooting b-roll” but her boyfriend surprised her with an engagement ring.
Politico: “After years of loyal service and genuflecting as Donald Trump’s former No. 2, Pence is capitalizing on carefully choreographed split screens with his former boss on everything from endorsements and appearances to policy and photo-ops.”
“Nearly a year after he was booed and jeered as a ‘traitor’ at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Orlando for his refusal to overturn the election results, Pence’s tightly scripted comeback ahead of a potential 2024 presidential bid is showing returns.”
Politico: “Super PACs and other organizations have already dropped more than $53 million in Democratic House primaries this year, according to OpenSecrets, with four more months of nominating contests to go. The outside spending has zoomed past the approximately $30 million spent in each of 2018 and 2020, much of it focused on safely blue seats, where different wings of the Democratic Party are battling to elect primary winners likely to go to Congress — and stay there for years.”
John Della Volpe: “The growing presence of Mr. Trump’s voice back on the national stage; the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on abortion and the likely fall of Roe v. Wade; and the opportunity for Mr. Biden to make good on a campaign commitment to address the student debt crisis have formed ideal conditions for Democratic renewal. While older voters will prioritize each party’s pledges to reduce inflation this fall, younger voters will additionally weigh the broad set of values and vision for the future held by Democrats and Republicans.”
“Young Americans are more likely to vote when they see a tangible difference between the parties and feel the consequences of election outcomes. As Generation Z and young millennials were tuning into politics more closely, millions watched Mr. Trump roll back climate policy, undermine the Affordable Care Act, deliver tax breaks for the wealthy and pave the way for white nationalist theorists to enter the public square — all moves that were antithetical to the values of reducing inequality and standing up for those without a voice. These are values that we’ve found in young Americans across most points on the ideological spectrum.”
Washington Post: “Political volatility has become commonplace in a nation as deeply and closely divided as America today. Seven of the last eight elections qualify as change elections — a shift in the balance in some important way. And, if Republicans were to capture the House and Senate in November, Biden would become the fifth consecutive president to see his party lose both chambers of Congress on his watch.”
“But other than Democratic nervousness, what is the story of this year? What is motivating voters? What forces are steering the election, other than the tides of history.”
“Analysts point to a nation weary at a time in which there seems no escape from disorder, whether it be the long bout with the coronavirus or soaring prices or rising crime rates in cities or surging crossings of undocumented immigrants at the southern border. Added to all of that is the brutal war of aggression in Ukraine launched without provocation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a conflict that is redrawing the international order.”
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos criticized the Biden administration in two tweets over the weekend for tying the corporate tax structure to rising inflation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The tweets were spurred by one from President Biden on Friday, which said: “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.”
Bezos responded by saying the two issues should be discussed separately: “Mushing them together is just misdirection.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) announced late Sunday night that he was recovering from “a minor stroke,” the second Democratic lawmaker to fall ill from the ailment this year.
CNN reports the lawmaker was admitted to George Washington University Hospital over the weekend after he had been “experiencing lightheadedness and acute neck pain” while delivering a speech in his home state.
“The fever didn’t break. And for the Biden White House, efforts at bipartisanship have finally taken a backseat,” Politico reports.
“To the frustration of many Democrats and some of his closest advisers, President Joe Biden has steadfastly spent more than a year in office insisting on trying to work across the aisle with Republicans.”
“It’s produced some notable legislative successes. But it’s also been colored by a fair dose of in-your-face GOP obstructionism. Now, more than a year later, Biden no longer believes that most Republicans will eventually drop their fealty to Donald Trump and show a willingness to engage. He himself admitted he was wrong.”
“A federal trial begins Monday for a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign who is accused of lying to the FBI as it investigated potential ties between Donald Trump and Russia in 2016,” the AP reports.
“The case against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney who represented the Clinton campaign in 2016, is the first trial arising from the ongoing investigation by special counsel John Durham and will test the strength of evidence he and his team have gathered while scrutinizing the early days of the Trump-Russia probe for potential misconduct.”
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.