Former Rep. Doug Ose (R-CA) plans to run against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the event of a recall election, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Said Ose: “I’ve lived in this state all my life, and I’ve never seen it in such a state of disarray. We don’t know if our schools are open, we don’t know where to get a shot, we don’t know if our businesses are open, we don’t even know if we can go back to work.”
Bloomberg: “Trump’s net worth is down to $2.3 billion from $3 billion when he became president, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The pandemic he promised would disappear is walloping his company, and the riot that got him impeached for a second time is wounding his brand.”
“The Biden administration is restricting the information Border Patrol agents and sector chiefs can share with the media as a surge of migrants tests the agency’s capacity at the southern border,” NBC News reports.
“Border Patrol officials have been told to deny all media requests for ‘ride-alongs’ with agents along the southern border; local press officers are instructed to send all information queries, even from local media, to the press office in Washington for approval; and those responsible for cultivating data about the number of migrants in custody have been reminded not to share the information with anyone to prevent leaks.”
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Jonathan Bernstein: “Forcing senators to give marathon orations to carry out a filibuster is a bad idea, but it looks like it may be a bad idea whose time has come, with President Joe Biden endorsing the ‘talking filibuster’ in an ABC News interview. Why? Because most Democrats want to eliminate the filibuster, and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia — the most moderate Democrat in the Senate — has said that while he absolutely won’t vote to eliminate the filibuster, he’s open to going the ‘talking’ route.”
“And so that’s what’s we’re going to talk about. Because what happens with Senate procedures over the next few months is going to determine whether Democrats pass a lot of their remaining agenda or very little of it.”
Washington Post: The talking filibuster — and its limits.
“White supremacist propaganda reached alarming levels across the U.S. in 2020,” the AP reports.
A new report found “5,125 cases of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and other hateful messages spread through physical flyers, stickers, banners and posters… That’s nearly double the 2,724 instances reported in 2019.”
“Online propaganda is much harder to quantify, and it’s likely those cases reached into the millions.”
New York Times: “The incomplete border wall, already one of the costliest megaprojects in United States history, with an estimated eventual price tag of more than $15 billion, is igniting tensions again as critics urge Mr. Biden to tear down parts of the wall and Republican leaders call on him to finish it.”
“The Biden administration suspended construction on the border wall on Jan. 20, the president’s first day in office, announcing a 60-day period during which officials are determining how to proceed.”
Washington Post: “Twenty-one Republican state attorneys general on Tuesday threatened to take action against the Biden administration over its new $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus law, decrying it for imposing ‘unprecedented and unconstitutional’ limits on their states’ ability to lower taxes.”
“The attorneys general take issue with a $350 billion pot of money set aside under the stimulus, known as the American Rescue Plan, to help cash-strapped cities, counties and states pay for the costs of the pandemic. Congressional lawmakers opted to restrict states from tapping these federal dollars to finance local tax cuts.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds President Joe Biden’s approval rate at 62%.
The poll also finds 72% support the new pandemic relief law.
Playbook: “As Biden and Co. hit the road to sell the Covid relief package, it’s not going to take much work.”
Playbook: “It’s almost quaint: A group of 20 Senate Democrats and Republicans will break bread today in the hopes of sparking bipartisan progress on a range of hot-button issues.”
“But the chances of the group producing anything of substance are dim — and privately they all know it. The pull for both parties is in the opposite direction. Progressives are nudging Biden and the Democratic Party further left: They have no interest in diluting their goals in a (most likely fleeting) moment of power. The right is already eyeing a takeover of Congress in the midterms on a message of Democratic overreach.”
Philip Bump: “In other words, it is not the case that these businesses are now going to send floats to participate in left-wing marches, certainly. It is also not the case that this shift reflects a broad embrace of Democratic Party principles. Cultural debates yield a very different calculus than issues like union membership, as we pointed out last week. A business like Coca-Cola, which expressed its concerns about Georgia’s voter registration changes and gave more to Democrats than Republicans through its PAC in 2020, is probably not going to actively advocate for increased worker rights.”
“Nonetheless, there’s been a shift. Corporate actors are more open to Democratic politicians and priorities than in years past.”
Matt Yglesias: “But obviously what made Obama a much better president than Bush is that he subscribed to Democratic Party ideology, not that he could beat Bush at a multiple-choice reading comprehension test. I know some dumb Democrats and some smart Republicans. I hope that when Republican Party politicians are in office, they listen to the smart Republicans about things rather than the dumb ones. But I’d rather have a dumb Democrat win a Senate race over a smart Republican any day. Smarts just don’t matter that much.”
David Hopkins: “The cancel-culture preoccupation isn’t necessarily a mistake for Republicans—at least if their main objective is electoral success, not substantive influence. Polls have consistently shown that Biden’s COVID response efforts gain wider popular approval than any other major policy or presidential quality. Meanwhile, as Harry Enten of CNN recently pointed out, the assertion that political correctness has ‘gone too far’ receives broader agreement from the American public than the Republican Party’s positions on many other political issues.”
“Rather than trying to convince voters that legislation containing immediate four-figure cash payments for everyone in their family is actually a bad idea, it’s strategically easier to simply move the partisan battle to more favorable terrain.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has put forward expansive legislation to overhaul antitrust law, the Associated Press reports.
“It would make it harder for dominant companies to win regulators’ approval of mergers and stretch the government’s authority over competition in other ways. Klobuchar, who heads the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on competition policy, has launched a broad examination by the panel of monopoly concerns.”
Said Klobuchar: “At stake is nothing less than the future of our economy and the way of life that it supports. This is about saving capitalism and building an economy that works for all Americans.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Under pressure from civil rights activists, some of Georgia’s biggest companies and their allies at the Capitol are taking a guarded approach toward election measures that would limit weekend early voting days, curb absentee voting and add other restrictions at the ballot box.”
“The corporate titans aren’t standing in fierce opposition to the restrictive voting proposals moving through the Legislature, much like they did in 2016 when they rallied against a ‘religious liberty’ measure that critics blasted as discriminatory.”
“But they aren’t exactly staying silent either, which was the stance most corporate leaders took during the 2019 debate over abortion legislation that divided Georgia lawmakers.”
“Donald Trump is preparing to make a new round of 2022 endorsements starting as soon as this week,” Axios reports.
“The former president’s endorsements could clear the field in competitive Republican primaries. Depending on how vengeful he’s feeling, and how many challengers to same-party incumbents he backs, they also could jam the party establishment.”
Richard Blum, a wealthy investor and the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), has indicated to President Biden’s advisers “that he’s interested in being appointed to an ambassadorship, a move that would renew questions about Ms. Feinstein’s political future,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Blum is eyeing a European capital, a posting that could pave the way for the 87-year-old Ms. Feinstein to leave the Senate.”
President Joe Biden told ABC News that “he supports changing the Senate’s filibuster rule back to requiring senators talk on the floor to hold up a bill, the first time he has endorsed reforming the procedure the White House has for weeks insisted the president is opposed to eliminating.”
“Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday recommended Americans get vaccinated to help fight the Covid pandemic, engaging on the issue after months of relative silence,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I would recommend it. And I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works.”
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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