Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) announced that he and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) formed three screening conferences that will recommend candidates to fill federal judicial openings as well as vacant U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshal positions in their state, Fox News reports.
One problem: Hastings was impeached and removed as district judge for bribery and perjury in 1989. The vote in the Democratic-controlled House to impeached Hastings was 413 to 3.
“Iran would be ready to resume talks on the nuclear deal with the US and other western powers if they provide a ‘clear signal’ that sanctions will be lifted within a year,” the Financial Times reports.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer thanked Senate clerks after they were forced to spend more than 10 hours reading the pandemic relief bill.
He called out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who forced the procedure: “And as for our friend from Wisconsin, I hope he enjoyed his Thursday evening.”
Politico: “Eager to find a winning culture war issue, former President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders are increasingly touting themselves as champions of women in sports by pushing back against President Joe Biden’s efforts to expand transgender rights.”
“The effort — which critics call transphobic and likely to backfire — extends from the roughly 20 Republican-controlled states where legislators are advancing bills to keep transgender women from participating in interscholastic sports, to Trump himself, who told attendees this past weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida that it was ‘so important’ to ‘protect women’s sports.'”
New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D) told Capital Tonight that if just one more woman accuses Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) of sexual harassment then he should be forced to leave office.
“Just moments before the filing deadline, a 6-foot-7-inch former pro wrestler from Las Vegas unexpectedly appeared at the Texas secretary of state’s office to file for a vacant congressional seat,” Politico reports.
“That candidate, Dan Rodimer, is sending shock waves through the race to replace the late Rep. Ron Wright (R-TX) — the first competitive special election since former President Donald Trump left office and an important suburban bellwether.”
“Rodimer arrived in Austin late Wednesday afternoon, telling people he’d been encouraged to run by Cruz and members of Trump’s family.”
Employers added 379,000 jobs in February, adding fuel to renewed growth as the pandemic eases, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The unemployment rate edged down to 6.2%.
A new AP-NORC poll finds President Joe Biden is enjoying an early honeymoon, with 60% of Americans approving of his job performance thus far.
Also important: 70% of Americans back the president’s handling of the virus response, including 44% of Republicans.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) filed a lawsuit against former President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-SC) alleging that they and others are “responsible for the injury and destruction” of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Axios: “The lawsuit adds to the mounting legal exposure Trump has found himself facing since leaving office.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board hit back at criticism from former President Donald Trump, saying he is “unhappy with us recognizing reality.”
From the editorial: “Former Presidents and Vice Presidents have told us how psychologically difficult the early months of lost political power can be. We can therefore empathize if former President Trump is frustrated these days, and perhaps that explains his attack on us Thursday over his role in the GOP’s loss of the Senate.”
More: “For someone who says we don’t matter, he sure spends a lot of time reading and responding to us. Thanks for the attention.”
“The governor’s trying to sleep with me.”
— Charlotte Bennett, recalling Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) sexual harassment in a CBS News interview.
This is extraordinary: Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) office went through the social media posts of all the House Republicans who objected to the certification of now President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6.
No conclusions were made in the report, probably because the tweets speak for themselves.
“President Biden is expected to name Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, to the National Economic Council on Friday as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, according to a White House official, putting one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech’s power into the administration,” the New York Times reports.
Los Angeles Times: “The missteps and aloofness that now have California Gov. Gavin Newsom facing the threat of recall from office have been overshadowed by the sexual harassment scandal that has rapidly engulfed his counterpart in New York, Andrew Cuomo. The two men took very different paths in their descent from favorites of liberal voters to the targets of scathing parody on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but both share problems so big they are stealing oxygen from a party that doesn’t have much to spare.”
Playbook: “After Kevin McCarthy visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late January, the House minority leader released a picture of the two men smiling side by side. The image — accompanied by a statement announcing Trump had ‘committed’ to helping the GOP flip the lower chamber — suggested all was well between the House GOP and the ex-president.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Sources tell Playbook that McCarthy has been trying to persuade Trump not to seek revenge against 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president — members who could be critical to McCarthy’s bid to retake the House and become speaker.”
“Not only has Trump refused to commit, he has publicly repeated his vow to primary those incumbents.”
New York Times: “The Biden foreign policy that emerges from these early weeks is one of restraint, caution and fast-paced deliberation. Decisions come more quickly than they did in the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden, as vice president, complained about the endless meetings.”
“Early evidence suggests that his judgments come with a harder edge than they did when he was one of many voices in the Situation Room, as indicated by Mr. Biden’s decision to cut off the American weapons that allowed the Saudis to prosecute the war in Yemen. It was President Barack Obama who first turned on that weapons spigot.”
New York Times: “The average number of vaccine doses being administered across the United States per day topped two million for the first time on Wednesday… A month ago, the average was about 1.3 million.”
Gallup: U.S. optimism about pandemic reaches new high.
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.