President Biden will tout expanded U.S. manufacturing in Ohio on Friday, but U.S. Senate nominee Tim Ryan (D) won’t be joining him, Bloomberg reports.
“His absence suggests Democrats running in the most competitive congressional races regard Biden and his low public approval ratings as a drag on their chances.”
A state administrative judge ruled that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) “should be allowed to run for another term in office despite a push to remove her from the ballot,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
The decision “is a blow to Greene’s critics, who sought to block her on grounds she violated a 14th Amendment clause that bars members of Congress from serving if they tried to overthrow the government.”
“The Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, was on track Friday night to emerge as the largest party in Northern Ireland after legislative elections, a seismic political shift that could kindle hopes for Irish unity but also sow unrest in a territory where delicate power-sharing arrangements have kept the peace for two decades,” the New York Times reports.
“With much of the vote counted on Friday evening, Sinn Fein was on track to win the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a distinction that will allow it to name the first minister in the territory’s government.”
A New York City judge’s son who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 wearing a furry “caveman” costume was sentenced to eight months in prison, the AP reports.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) violated a federal conflicts-of-interest law by improperly disclosing his wife’s sale of stock in a gold mining company, Insider reports.
“Billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel won big when his longtime friend J.D. Vance succeeded in Tuesday’s Ohio Senate GOP primary, surging to victory in the final days of the race after a last-minute endorsement from former President Donald Trump and a seven-figure boost from Thiel,” CNN reports.
“But as the 2022 midterm cycle heats up, Thiel is winding down.”
Said a person familiar with his plans: “He’s done for the cycle. He’s not putting any more money into any more races or getting involved in new races.”
Federal agents searched the home of North Dakota state Sen. Ray Holmberg (R) “and seized several items in November, less than three months after he exchanged text messages with a jailed child porn and child sex abuse suspect,” the Fargo Forum reports.
“Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has emerged as a go-to fundraiser for the Democratic Party leading into the 2022 midterms,” McClatchy reports.
“Emhoff has racked up more appearances at fundraisers benefiting the Democratic National Committee than any other White House principal besides his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, and is expected to appear this summer at a number of state party political functions.”
“A top financier for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the legal charade to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election spent three days in 2019 on a now-seized superyacht owned by an influential Russian oligarch,” Forensic News reports.
A new Pew Research poll finds 61% of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.
Associated Press: “The economy now has, on average, two available jobs for every unemployed person. That’s the highest such proportion on record.”
As a point of confirmation, there are many new job listings on Political Job Hunt.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz’s (R) ties to Turkey as raising “national security concerns,” The Hill reports.
Said Pompeo: “Not only did he not engage in the American process but he engaged in the Turkish political process. That raises in my mind a lot of judgments about his priority.”
Oz’s campaign quickly denounced the remarks as akin to dual loyalty “tropes used against Catholics and Jews.”
ABC News reports Oz actually cast a ballot in Turkey’s 2018 presidential election.
“If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this summer, as a recently leaked draft opinion indicates it will, clinic shutdowns across the country could mean that California ends up being home to nearly 30% of all abortion clinics in the U.S., despite having just 12% of its population,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
According to a copy of former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s memoir, A Sacred Oath, former President Donald Trump demanded that former Gen. Stan McChrystal and former Navy Admiral William McRaven be recalled into active duty so that they could be court-martialed for criticizing the president, TPM reports.
James Carville told CNN that Republicans do not fear the potential political ramifications of overturning longstanding abortion precedent because Democrats are currently dysfunctional.
Said Carville: “They have no fear of Democrats, that’s why they do this… Roe is over two to one in approval, and Alito and them said we don’t care, we’re not fair, and we don’t care and all the Democrats are going to do is sit around and talk about veganism and pronouns. And to some extent, that is a justified opinion that they have.”
He added: “If this doesn’t motivate people, if this doesn’t get you going, then I can’t do anything to help you.”
Ron Brownstein: “Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation to the right to abortion to the authorization of same-sex marriage.”
“But now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to retrench those common standards across an array of issues. The result through the 2020s could be a dramatic erosion of common national rights and a widening gulf—a ‘great divergence’—between the liberties of Americans in blue states and those in red states.”
“The only lever Democrats have to resist these efforts is their unified control of the White House and Congress. In theory, this allows them to pass federal legislation establishing a new floor of nationwide rights on voting, abortion, LGBTQ issues, and other areas. In practice, that’s proved to be an empty promise.”
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.
