“As I look back on what happened in South Carolina one year ago, it’s amazing how much can change in a day, never mind a whole year. My hope is that a year from now, Americans are able to look back and marvel at how much has changed — in their lives and in our economy — for the better.”
— President Joe Biden, writing on Medium, one year after winning the South Carolina Democratic primary.
“The Biden administration is preparing to impose sanctions on Russia over the poisoning and jailing of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny this week,” CNN reports.
“The rollout of the sanctions will happen in coordination with the European Union, the officials said. The measures and the exact timing will be fleshed out by US and EU officials in the coming days.”
Politico: Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) urges Biden admin to release intelligence on Russian bounties.
Wired: “When Twitter banned Donald Trump and a slew of other far-right users in January, many of them became digital refugees, migrating to sites like Parler and Gab to find a home that wouldn’t moderate their hate speech and disinformation. Days later, Parler was hacked, and then it was dropped by Amazon web hosting, knocking the site offline.”
“Now Gab, which inherited some of Parler’s displaced users, has been badly hacked too. An enormous trove of its contents has been stolen—including what appears to be passwords and private communications.”
Politico: “The result, in the emerging version of the RSC under Rep. Jim Banks’ leadership, is a group that intends to remain true to its ideological roots but with an ever so Trumpian flare. They will keep one eye trained on social and fiscal policies that have long been hallmarks of the conservative movement — akin to those Pence fought for during his 2005-2007 tenure as RSC chair — and the other on a new set of cultural topics that Republicans have only just begun to tackle under Trump.”
Said Rep. Banks: “What I want to do with the RSC for the next couple of years is really make the Trump legacy and the Trump platform the platform of the Republican Party and the conservative movement of the future. And RSC is perfectly positioned to effectively do that.”
Former President Donald Trump spent almost no time addressing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that the House passed this weekend, NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “The Democrats now say we have to pass their $1.9 trillion boondoggle to open schools, but a very small part of it has to do with that. You know where it’s going — it’s going to bailout badly-run Democrat cities, so much of it.”
“That’s it. In almost 90 minutes of remarks, Trump devoted just two sentences of criticism to Biden’s first legislative priority as president. And it says a lot about the state of GOP opposition to the Covid relief bill, which remains popular in polls: While House Republicans uniformly voted against it on Saturday, it hasn’t been an animating issue for Republicans.”
President Biden released a video in support of workers in Alabama — an apparent message of support for a union organization effort happening at Amazon.
“Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of corruption and influence peddling,” Politico reports.
“Sarkozy, who served as president from 2007 to 2012, was accused of having offered a judge a plum job in exchange for confidential information related to another trial he was facing.”
Associated Press: “This is the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted of corruption.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “plans to introduce legislation on Monday that would tax the net worth of the wealthiest people in America, a proposal aimed at persuading President Biden and other Democrats to fund sweeping new federal spending programs by taxing the richest Americans,” the New York Times reports.
“Ms. Warren’s wealth tax would apply a 2 percent tax to individual net worth — including the value of stocks, houses, boats and anything else a person owns, after subtracting out any debts — above $50 million. It would add an additional 1 percent surcharge for net worth above $1 billion.”
“As Congress begins debate this week on sweeping voting and ethics legislation, Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing: If signed into law, it would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections law in at least a generation,” the AP reports.
“House Resolution 1, Democrats’ 791-page bill, would touch virtually every aspect of the electoral process — striking down hurdles to voting erected in the name of election security, curbing partisan gerrymandering and curtailing the influence of big money in politics.”
“A new centrist political party is gaining steam, but records show it’s being largely financed by a single man: a former Philip Morris executive who helped steer the company through the tobacco wars of the 1990s,” Axios reports.
“The Serve America Movement is running candidates in a handful of states, banking on the appeal of a non-ideological party. The outsized financial influence of donor Charles W. Wall underscores the challenge of overcoming extreme partisan rancor with a process-focused political movement.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Once upon a time, out-parties used to wait to harshly criticize the new president, not necessarily out of respect for democratic norms, but because they didn’t want to immediately put themselves on the other side of the majority (or at least the plurality) of the electorate, which after all had just chosen the new president.”
“Democrats in 2001 and 2017 didn’t have that reason to withhold judgment, given the splits between the Electoral College and the popular vote in those elections. Republicans in 1993, 2009 (to a lesser extent) and 2021 have either convinced themselves that their electoral losses weren’t real or decided that they’re only interested in appealing to their own strongest supporters anyway. Or both. That certainly didn’t appear to hurt Republicans early in the Clinton and Obama presidencies; I guess we’ll see whether the same pattern holds this time.”
Hyatt Hotels called symbols of hate “abhorrent” after the design of a stage at the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference at one of its hotels drew comparisons to a Norse rune used by Nazis during the Second World War, The Guardian reports.
The ceiling of the conference room featured a lighting display in the same shape as the stage.
“President Joe Biden is planning a virtual meeting Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues,” the AP reports.
Asked in a Fox News interview if he regretted how he handled the Capitol riots, Donald Trump blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi for poor security and then boasted about the size of the crowd that was there to support him.
Said Trump: “The press doesn’t like to talk about it, but the real number was much, much bigger… It was tremendous numbers of people, not the Capitol, I’m talking about the rally itself, and it was a lovefest, it was a beautiful thing.”
New York Times: “Even as Americans watched live images of rioters wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags breach the Capitol — egged on only minutes earlier by a president who falsely denounced a rigged election and exhorted his followers to fight for justice — history was being rewritten in real time.”
“Within hours, a narrative built on rumors and partisan conjecture had reached the Twitter megaphones of pro-Trump politicians. By day’s end, Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin had shared it with millions of Fox News viewers, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had stood on the ransacked House floor and claimed that many rioters ‘were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.’”
Washington Post: “Kinzinger, who has already started a leadership PAC to directly support GOP candidates who have gone up against Trump, is expected to appear at fundraising events for the super PAC Americans Keeping Country First.”
“Founders of the group, which include Kinzinger advisers, are also launching a sister nonprofit to ‘build a grass roots army,’ according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Unlike traditional PACs, both organizations can accept unlimited contributions. Nonprofit groups are not required to disclose the identity of their contributors.”
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.