Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) encouraged “all Republican men” to get the Covid-19 vaccine, as new polls indicate many in the group are skeptical of getting the shot, CNN reports.
Said McConnell: “I can say as a Republican man, as soon as it was my turn, I took the vaccine. I would encourage all Republican men to do that.”
He added that there is “no good argument not to get the vaccination.”
Prosecutors say that when officers arrested a Capitol riot suspect at his Dallas home, he was wearing a T-shirt with “I Was There, Washington D.C., January 6, 2021” emblazoned on it, the AP reports.
New York Times: “The Biden administration will investigate Trump-era political interference in science across the government, the first step in what White House officials described as a sweeping effort to rebuild a demoralized federal work force and prevent future abuses.”
Bloomberg: “White House officials said that the push for vaccine passports should come from the private sector and that the federal government won’t take the lead in creating a centralized document proving vaccination.”
“Vaccine passports that provide proof of immunity to the coronavirus are supported by the travel industry and other businesses that have suffered from concerns about the risk of contagion in public places. Airlines are already backing a number of tech solutions they hope would give tourists and travelers more confidence.”
Matt Yglesias: “The urgency is understandable. But from a political standpoint, Democrats would be better off focusing on parts of their agenda that have more realistic prospects of success. It’s not just that the odds are low for passing even modest gun-control legislation. It’s that the kinds of measures that are politically feasible would have little effect without policing reform, while those that would save large numbers of lives are politically toxic.”
A new Meredith College survey finds Lara Trump leading in the Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat with 27%, followed by Pat McCrory at 17%, Mark Walker at 7% and Ted Budd at 6%.
On the Democratic side, no candidate polls above 13%.
Kelly Tshibaka (R), who has led the Alaska Department of Administration since early 2019, announced plans to seek the Alaska U.S. Senate seat that has been held since 2002 by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), the Anchorage Daily News reports.
“The landscape for the 2022 elections in Alaska will be different. A voter initiative passed in November scrapped party primaries for a system in which the top four vote-getters advance to the general election. It also instituted a ranked-choice voting system for general elections.”
“Florida Republicans are considering a bill that would effectively make it a crime to give voters food or drink, including water, within 150 feet of polling places,” NBC News reports.
“State law currently prohibits campaigning within 100 feet of polling locations, but an elections bill introduced last week, H.B. 7041, expands that zone to 150 feet and includes a prohibition on giving ‘any item’ to voters or ‘interacting or attempting to interact’ with voters within that zone.”
The Frontier: “By most accounts, Sen. James Lankford is the type of politician a person like Jackson Lahmeyer would seem to support. Both have been pastors and subscribe to a deeply conservative and evangelical faith tradition. Their views against abortion, defense of the 2nd Amendment, and that conservative culture is under attack from the ‘radical left’ also align.”
“But where Lahmeyer diverges is in his belief that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election.”
Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Biden’s options have been bolstered by about 18 judges—10 appointed by Democrats, eight by Republicans—who have cleared the way for Mr. Biden to appoint a successor by taking senior status since he was sworn in as president on Jan. 20. That compares with 10 during the first two months of President Trump’s term.”
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, is joining Fox News as a paid on-air contributor, the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: “Summers who drafted economic blueprints for the past two Democratic presidents and was a top candidate to lead the Federal Reserve Board under President Barack Obama, has emerged in recent weeks as the loudest critic of President Biden’s approach to reviving the pandemic-era U.S. economy.”
“The Harvard University professor — who advised Biden for a time last summer — warns that the president’s stimulus plan may trigger the highest inflation in more than half a century and could cost Democrats the chance to make lasting investments in the economy.”
CNN: “Despite the signing of the Doha agreement last February that called for a full drawdown of US troops and personnel from Afghanistan by May 1, the Department of Defense issued nearly a billion dollars in contracts to 17 different companies related to work in Afghanistan past the withdrawal date. There are currently some 18,000 contractors in the country, of which 6,350 are American citizens.”
“With the deadline rapidly approaching and no formal decision from the White House, the future of the contracts, some of which have completion dates in 2023 and beyond, remains unclear, but the Pentagon could potentially have to pay hundreds of millions in settlements or face years of litigation if the US pulls out of the country on schedule or by the end of the year as President Joe Biden suggested is likely.
“Donald Trump will be back in office in August.”
— MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
An internal poll conducted for former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) shows him with a nearly 40-point lead over the next closest contender in the GOP Senate primary.
Newsweek: “The social network Parler was flooded with a wave of angry comments on Friday after it emerged that the ‘free speech’ platform had repeatedly collaborated with the FBI in the weeks leading up to the January 6 Capitol riot.”
Politico: “The Supreme Court on Monday announced it will hear its first abortion case with a newly fortified 6-3 conservative majority, taking up a procedural question of who has the power to defend state abortion restrictions in court.”
“The justices agreed to hear the Kentucky attorney general’s bid to intervene in a lawsuit over a state abortion ban that the governor refused to defend. However, the court refused the Kentucky attorney general’s request to consider whether a lower court decision striking down the ban should be thrown out.”
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.