Former President Donald Trump said that Twitter has become “very boring” since he was banned from the social media platform, Insider reports.
Said Trump: “I’m really getting a big word out because we’re doing releases. And every time I do a release it’s all over the place. It’s better than Twitter, much more elegant than Twitter. And Twitter now is very boring, a lot of people are leaving Twitter.”
“Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed two election bills Friday, one that would tighten advance mailing rules and another that sought to prevent the executive and legislative branches from altering election laws,” the Kansas City Star reports.
Said Kelly: “This…is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. It is designed to disenfranchise Kansans, making it difficult for them to participate in the democratic process, not to stop voter fraud.”
“A brief weekend pause in the Arizona Senate’s election audit that a judge ordered on Friday won’t happen because the Arizona Democratic Party declined to put up a $1 million bond that the judge requested to cover any expenses that the Senate wrongfully incurs due to the halt,” the Arizona Mirror reports.
“A U.S. health panel says it’s time to resume use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, despite a very rare risk of blood clots,” the AP reports.
“Out of nearly 8 million people vaccinated before the U.S. suspended J&J’s shot, health officials uncovered 15 cases of a highly unusual kind of blood clot, three of them fatal.”
“Federal authorities are looking into whether a 2018 trip to the Bahamas involving Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and several young women was part of an orchestrated effort to illegally influence Gaetz in the area of medical marijuana,” CNN reports.
“Prosecutors with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section are examining whether Gaetz took gifts, including travel and paid escorts, in exchange for political favors.”
Sen. Joe Manchin said President Joe Biden and Congress should focus on “conventional” infrastructure projects like roadways and bridges, in another sign of building sentiment to split up the administration’s expansive $2.25 trillion plan, Bloomberg reports.
Mark Barabak: “By the time he left office, Schwarzenegger’s disapproval level reached 70%, which is where it stood for Democrat Gray Davis just before he was kicked out of office.”
“Given that, it’s questionable whether Californians will go the celebrity-governor route again.”
“Perhaps most important, Newsom is no Gray Davis, who scratched out reelection with just 47%. Newsom, by contrast, was elected with 62% of the vote.”
“House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has been fined for violating the procedure of going through the metal detectors installed off the House floor, the first Democrat to receive such a fine,” CNN reports.
“Republican Party leaders have rejected a plea to let Orthodox Jews and others with religious obligations on Saturdays vote absentee in the GOP’s May 8 nominating convention, where the party will choose its candidates for governor and two other statewide offices,” the Washington Post reports.
“A Pentagon panel is recommending that decisions to prosecute service members for sexual assault be made by independent authorities, not commanders, in what would be a major reversal of military practice and a change long sought by Congress members,” the Associated Press reports.
Washington Post: “A Washington Post review of True Texas Project’s activities and social media shows that Cruz has continued to embrace the group, even as its nativist rhetoric and divisive tactics have alienated some other conservative elected officials.”
“Cruz’s father, a frequent campaign surrogate for his son, spoke at a meeting of the group shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, at a time when the group’s leadership was defending the pro-Trump mob on social media.”
“Political engagement by young Americans has surged to a historically high level, and that’s not good news for the Republican Party,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“A dozen years ago, after President Obama’s election, 24% of Americans younger than 30 reported themselves to be politically active, according to the poll, conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. At the time, the Obama campaign was widely credited with having energized young Americans.”
“Today, that engaged number stands at 36%, maintaining an extraordinarily high level seen during last year’s election. Young Black Americans report the most political engagement — 41%, the survey found.”
A judge ordered the Arizona Senate to “pause” its recount of Maricopa County’s general election ballots due to the lack of proper security to protect ballots, voting machines and voter information, the Arizona Republic reports.
Politico: “In a normal political world and in a normal political time, a second-generation Cuban-American former NFL player from the Rust Belt with an MBA from Stanford would be considered practically by definition a rising GOP star. But Rep. Anthony Gonzalez’s impeachment decision made him a traitor in the eyes of the man who is manifestly the unofficial leader of the party.”
“But it’s not that simple, according to more than three dozen interviews with strategists, analysts and current and former elected officials from both parties who know the region well. As battlefields go, Ohio as a whole is more red than purple, and so is the 16th District — but it’s replete as well with warning signs for Trump that his quest for retaliation might succeed only in further tearing the party apart.”
Washington Post: “The hearing featuring Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is up for the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, could be a preview of what she would face if she is eventually nominated for a potential vacancy on the Supreme Court.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “The packaging of Marjorie Taylor Greene as a successful businesswoman helped bring the political outsider into the Republican fold, as people in the 14th Congressional District brushed off criticism of Greene’s past support of QAnon and online posts that trafficked in right-wing conspiracies and advocated violence against Democrats.”
“Greene’s business record, however, is one of the least examined aspects of her life. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution review found that while the Trump acolyte touted her experience as a construction company executive running her family business, there’s little evidence of her involvement in the company’s operations.”
David Brooks: “What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swathes of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.”
“This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.”
“I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.”
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.
