A new Trafalgar Group poll in Pennsylvania shows Mehmet Oz (R) leading the Republican U.S. Senate primary with 26%, followed by Kathy Barnette (R) at 23% and Dave McCormick (R) at 22%.
Earlier for members: A Wildcard In Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate Race
Rolling Stone: “Just a month after he invited Cawthorn to speak at a North Carolina rally, Trump has grown increasingly annoyed and disappointed with his MAGA apprentice. The twice-impeached former president has described some of what he’s heard about Cawthorn’s latest woes — and the online sexual imagery associated with it — as ‘gross.’”
One source “said that lately Trump had voiced bewilderment and disgusted confusion about what he’d been told of the flood of leaks and footage, asking at one point in recent days if one of the allegations was that Cawthorn was ‘fucking his cousin?’”
Said another: “President Trump is completely weirded out by the allegations.”
“It’s very clear that the Democratic Party hasn’t had a coherent story to tell about the Republican Party and what’s happened to it.”
— White House adviser Anita Dunn, quoted by CNN.
“The sound of Sunday Bloody Sunday blasted out of a subway station in central Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday as Bono and The Edge took to a makeshift stage in a makeshift bomb shelter and performed a surprise 40-minute concert to a backdrop of air-raid sirens and war,” the Irish Times reports.
“A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade,” The Guardian reports.
“When the Supreme Court heard arguments in December over the fate of the constitutional right to abortion, it was already clear that other rights, notably including same-sex marriage, could be at risk if the court overruled Roe v. Wade,” the New York Times reports.
“The logic of that legal earthquake, Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted, would produce a jurisprudential tsunami that could sweep away other precedents, too.”
“The logic of the opinion left plenty of room for debate. It said a right to abortion cannot be found in the Constitution or inferred from its provisions. The same could be said, using the draft opinion’s general reasoning, for contraception, gay intimacy and same-sex marriage, rights established by three Supreme Court decisions that were discussed at some length in the argument in December.”
Vandals set a fire inside the Madison headquarters of the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Family Action late Saturday or early Sunday, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
President Biden is preparing a major speech Tuesday to address inflation, and will contrast his plans to lower costs for American families with those offered by congressional Republicans, Axios reports.
As of last week, when the draft Supreme Court opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade first leaked, five justices were still on board with the gist of what Justice Samuel Alito had drafted back in February, the Washington Post reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts has backed an incremental approach to banning abortions, but also to keep in place key tenets of Supreme Court precedent on abortion rights.
Heather Cox Richardson: “If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But Mothers’ Day—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced American women that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage.”
“Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change modern society.”
“If a dog catches a car, it doesn’t know what to do. We do.”
— Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, quoted by the New York Times.
“Democrats rang alarm bells on Sunday about the likelihood that Republicans would try to restrict abortion nationwide, two days after an interview was published in which Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said a ban was ‘possible’ if his party gained control in Washington,” the New York Times reports.
“On the Sunday talk shows and in other public statements, Democratic senators said Republicans would not stop at letting the states decide the issue, but would most likely push for federal restrictions. That made it paramount, they said, that the Democratic Party maintain control of the Senate as it tries to codify abortion rights into federal law.”
“Sen. Joe Manchin says he’s still interested in passing major pieces of President Joe Biden’s agenda — but sources close to the West Virginia senator say Democrats may be making a big mistake by waiting for him to lay out precisely what he’d support,” NBC News reports.
“Manchin has expressed interest in passing a bill through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process that would raise taxes, reduce the deficit, cut prescription drug costs, and fund energy and climate measures, even though some Democrats fear the West Virginia centrist is running out the clock.”
Politico: “Senate Democrats have overhauled their child care proposal in hopes of winning over the likes of Sen. Joe Manchin and securing its inclusion in a future reconciliation package.”
U.S., G7 and European Union agreed to impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia ahead of its symbolic Victory Day holiday on May 9, including additional export controls and a commitment to phase out Russian oil, Axios reports.
The Biden administration is accelerating plans to reopen the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, part of an increasingly bold and risky approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, Axios reports.
New York Times: “It could take years for Russian assets seized by the United States to be permanently confiscated and sold to benefit the Ukrainian people. The Biden administration wants to speed up the process.”
Politico: “Online providers and groups are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of people requesting abortion pills or seeking information on consultations for the drugs since the draft opinion ending Roe v. Wade was first reported on Monday.”
“In the top Senate battlegrounds, Democrats are buying up television time and sounding off at every opportunity about Republican plans to curtail abortion rights. They have seized on the moment — and consider it a possible turning point,” Politico reports.
“Many Republicans, though, are shrugging. Among those in the most competitive contests, reaction to the news that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has been muted, marked by statements in support of overturning Roe and great caution to avoid placing abortion at the center of their campaigns.”
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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— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
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— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
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— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
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— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.