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.”
The city of Albuquerque has referred a $211,175.94 unpaid bill for former President Trump’s reelection campaign rally in 2019 to a debt collection agency, the Albuquerque Journal reports.
“President Joe Biden will embark on his first overseas trip in office in June, the White House is set to announce Friday, with the aim of demonstrating his administration’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance and reengagement with key allies,” the AP reports.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) recounted a “near-death” experience in the back of Rep. Steve Cohen’s (D-TN) beat-up car as they raced back from a White House meeting to the Capitol to vote.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is trying “to establish her independent bona fides as she faces a tough re-election battle in New Hampshire next year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“She has put daylight between herself and the Biden administration and signed on to high-profile bipartisan legislation while promoting the most popular aspects of Democrats’ agenda, like vaccine funds and stimulus checks. Hassan broke with the White House on its plan to end U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, saying withdrawal shouldn’t be based on arbitrary deadlines.”
“And she was one of eight Democrats to vote against an amendment raising the hourly minimum wage to $15, a level sought by President Biden that passed in the House.”
“President Joe Biden is returning to Georgia on Thursday to celebrate his first 100 days in office, marking the moment in a state where Democratic victories allowed him to pursue a far more ambitious legislative agenda,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Dahlia Lithwick: “A progressive left that often sleepwalked through the Merrick Garland blockade and had no idea how to message the judiciary in 2016 is now wide awake and furious. New progressive groups are pushing a debate about the courts that lived for years only on academic panels. Liberals who were outraged about the norm-busting hardball around Garland, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, are not in fact waiting around for an adverse abortion or guns decision.”
“They are energized about court reform right now and they aren’t waiting for radical decisions to demand change.”
“Marine Le Pen could defeat President Macron at next year’s elections if she capitalizes on contempt for him among left-wing voters, a leading think tank has suggested,” the Times of London reports.
“There is a growing consensus in the political world that a far-right victory is no longer unthinkable if the contest moves to a run-off between the pair, as it did in 2017.”
“A bipartisan group of House lawmakers endorsed raising the gasoline tax to pay for infrastructure spending, lending support to a measure that both Republican and Democratic proposals have avoided in the debate about how to cover the cost of an infrastructure package,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The group of 58 lawmakers, dubbed the Problem Solvers Caucus, proposed indexing gas and diesel taxes to inflation, highway construction costs, fuel-economy standards, or some combination of the three in a report on infrastructure released Friday.”
Michael Strain: “Hawley, Cruz and other GOP politicians will likely find that their Trumpian style appeals to their party’s base, which remains enamored of the former president. But this style likely won’t appeal far outside it. These politicians seem to think they have the numbers on their side, representing ‘the people’ against a much smaller number of “elites.” They don’t. There is no silent majority.
“And the politics they are practicing is going to be less successful after years of rising wages than it was in 2016. The unemployment rate is currently 6%, and 2021 is going to see record-setting employment growth.”
“Populism peters out as incomes grow. The sooner Republicans realize this, the better.”
Susan Glasser: “It may well be what Boehner does not say, however, that best explains Trump’s enduring hold over his party. In an interview with Time magazine, Boehner admitted something that he did not in the book itself, which is that he voted for Trump in 2020, understanding full well that the President would never accept any election result that did not have him as the winner.”
“Boehner is hardly alone in this. Trump, after all, was not supported these past few years by only his most slavish sycophants. Many of Trump’s critics within the Republican Party voted for him, too, as did those, like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have emerged, post-January 6th, as leaders of a small but vocal new Republican congressional opposition to the former President. They did not repudiate him when it would have mattered, and that, in the end, is why he is gone but not at all forgotten. The Trump Administration is over; the Trump crisis is not.”
Bloomberg: “Bodies piling up at crematoriums and burial grounds across India are sparking concerns that the death toll from a ferocious new Covid-19 wave may be much higher than official records, underplaying the scale of a resurgence that is overwhelming the country’s medical system.”
Reuters reports that hospitals in northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, were full and running out of oxygen.
First Read: “You might think it’s in part because of his hypocritical night out at the swanky French Laundry restaurant while he was telling Californians to stay inside. You might also think it’s in part because of frustration over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the related public-health restrictions and the vaccination rollout.”
“And you’d be right.”
“But if you look at the actual recall petition that appears poised to have secured enough signatures, there’s no mention of the virus at all. Instead, that petition — dated on Feb. 20, 2020 — criticizes Newsom with a laundry list of grievances, none having anything to do with the pandemic.”
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.
