“President Joe Biden is assembling a national security team with an unusually ambitious agenda to negotiate new arms control treaties, scale back the nuclear arsenal, and review decades of military doctrine,” Politico reports.
“But veterans of the last administration fear this newly empowered group of progressives may be naive about what can be achieved without undermining U.S. security, and are already warning them to prepare for a shock when they read the latest intelligence.”
Most House Republicans were silent on Wednesday after CNN’s KFile reported that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, CNN reports.
Washington Post: Biden’s first full week in office has showcased an almost jarring departure from his predecessor’s chaotic style, providing the first window into a tenure whose mission is not only to remake the White House in Biden’s image but to return the presidency itself to what he sees as its rightful path.”
“The result so far is a 9-to-5 presidency — a tightly scripted burst of activity that was charted over the past few months, as Biden seeks to avoid heated conflict and stick to his plan of lowering the political temperature to a level that many Americans can tune out.”
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Playbook: “The McCarthy-Trump relationship has been quite the soap opera lately, as we and a million other reporters have written. First, McCarthy said Trump was to blame for Jan. 6. Then Trump called McCarthy a ‘pussy.’ Then McCarthy backtracked to say Trump didn’t ‘provoke’ the riot.”
“Today, McCarthy will try to smooth things over, a process he started a few days ago. In Florida to raise money, the GOP leader plans to drop by Trump’s resort to inquire about the president’s political plans, we’re told. Unlike Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who reportedly doesn’t want to speak to the ex-president ever again, McCarthy believes it’s in his interest to be on Trump’s good side. Banishing him could cause problems for House Republicans and imperil McCarthy’s dream of becoming speaker one day. Trump is popular with the base and — as far as McCarthy is concerned — still the leader of the Republican Party. We can’t help but wonder if he’ll bring red and pink Starbursts.”
“Trump world is ecstatic about the visit, viewing the huddle as proof of a comeback in the making.”
Politico: “The Biden administration on Thursday is expected to announce it’s throwing open the doors to the law’s enrollment site, HealthCare.gov, making it easier for the uninsured to get coverage during the pandemic. It is also expected to restore Obamacare marketing funds that the Trump administration had gutted, and it will soon begin the process of reversing the previous administration’s changes to Medicaid.”
“A top official at the National Republican Congressional Committee abruptly decided to resign earlier this month after House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and nearly 150 GOP lawmakers voted against certifying the Electoral College results, CNN has learned, in the latest sign of the civil war brewing inside the Republican Party as it seeks to rebuild in the post-Trump era.”
“A Republican group is raising and spending huge amounts of money defending Sen. Josh Hawley after he was ostracized for early January’s attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Axios reports.
“The Senate Conservatives Fund is plugging Hawley’s ideological bona fides and backfilling lost corporate cash with needed political and financial support, helping inoculate him as he weighs reelection or a possible presidential campaign in 2024.”
“After months of sounding the alarm on what she claimed was a stolen presidential election, Kelli Ward is facing questions about her own reelection Saturday as Arizona Republican Party chair,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“Sergio Arellano, the southern Arizona businessman who narrowly lost to Ward in a run-off, has asked state party officials for an audit of the election results.”
“Amanda Gorman, the young poet who grabbed the national spotlight at President Joe Biden’s inauguration with her inspirational and powerful reading, will recite more of her work at Super Bowl LV,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday implored Republicans to stop publicly attacking each other amid GOP infighting over the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riots, which has created simmering tensions inside the conference,” Politico reports.
“During a private conference call, McCarthy told members that they should be spending more time countering the Biden agenda than chastising each other, adding he would no longer have any tolerance for such behavior… McCarthy also reminded House Republicans that they will have an opportunity to air their grievances during a closed-door meeting in the Capitol next week, where a conservative-led push to oust Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) over her vote to impeach President Donald Trump is expected to come to a head.”
NBC News: “Trump is not planning to appear in person to defend himself against the charge that he incited the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, effectively ending any speculation of a possible cameo by the former president.”
Cook Political Report: “Unreleased survey research—both quantitative polls and qualitative focus groups—since the January 6th attack on the Capitol suggests that between 25 and 30 percent of Trump voters now have very mixed feelings about having backed him. They are less likely to believe that the election was stolen, and they were alarmed by the attack in Washington. They care more about the coronavirus pandemic and the direction of the economy.”
“Georgia voters would be required to make copies of their photo ID and mail them to election officials twice before being allowed to cast an absentee ballot,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
At least five federal judges with lifetime appointments who have announced plans to retire or semi-retire since last Wednesday, the day Donald Trump left the White House, the HuffPost reports.
That’s after eight judges had already announced their plans to step down since Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
“Moscow police launched a series of raids Wednesday on apartments and offices of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s family and associates, arresting his brother,” the AP reports.
“The searched locations included Navalny’s apartment, where police detained his brother, Oleg, and a rented apartment where Navalny’s wife, Yulia, has been living.”
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Many speculated that Republican lawmakers might be ready to move past Donald Trump once he lost his re-election bid.
But the early indicators suggest otherwise:
Whatever “private” rumblings there might be about Trump among GOP lawmakers, their public actions speak loudly.
Most Republicans lawmakers — and thus the GOP voters in their districts back home — have no interest in distancing themselves from Trump.
“When President Biden swore in a batch of recruits for his new administration in a teleconferenced ceremony late last week, it looked like the country’s biggest Zoom call. In fact, Mr. Biden was installing roughly 1,000 high-level officials in about a quarter of all of the available political appointee jobs in the federal government,” the New York Times reports.
“At the same time, a far less visible transition was taking place: the quiet dismissal of holdovers from the Trump administration, who have been asked to clean out their offices immediately, whatever the eventual legal consequences.”
“If there has been a single defining feature of the first week of the Biden administration, it has been the blistering pace at which the new president has put his mark on what President Donald J. Trump dismissed as the hostile ‘Deep State’ and tried so hard to dismantle.”
“Former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III is launching a new political action committee aimed at bolstering grassroots organizing efforts in Massachusetts and overlooked states around the country,” the Boston Globe reports.
“The initiative, called Groundwork Project, will try to leverage the former congressman’s substantial network of donors and allies to support community activists and ‘hyperlocal’ organizing efforts to help Democrats expand their base, win elections, and deliver on progressive policy priorities… Asked whether his still-unresolved future plans include thoughts about running for office again, Kennedy did not mince words: ‘No plans whatsoever.’”
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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