“The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.”
“Joe Biden has yet to formally declare his presidential bid, but he’s already complicating Kamala Harris’ path to victory in a must-win state: South Carolina,” Politico reports.
“The pivotal early primary state is the linchpin of Harris’ strategy to capture the Democratic nomination, yet the former vice president’s experience, pragmatism and close association with former President Barack Obama have given him a significant advantage here — even more so than in other states, according to more than two dozen interviews with state operatives and elected leaders, as well as public and private polling.”
Iowa state Rep. Andy McKean said he’s leaving the Republican Party to become a Democrat in part because of his disapproval of President Trump, the Des Moines Register reports.
Said McKean: “With the 2020 presidential election looming on the horizon, I feel, as a Republican, that I need to be able to support the standard bearer of our party. Unfortunately, that’s something I’m unable to do.”
He added: “I think the party has veered very sharply to the right. That concerns me.”
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“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if the Senate determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role… because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by the Washington Post in 1999.
Washington Post: “Voter turnout spiked to a 100-year high in last year’s midterm congressional elections. Census Bureau data released Tuesday finds turnout rates jumped across nearly all groups, but the shift was particularly notable among young adults who typically stay home in non-presidential years.”
“The Census found that 36 percent of citizens ages 18-29 reported voting in last year’s midterm elections, jumping 16 percentage points since 2014 (when turnout was 20 percent) and easily surpassing any midterm election since the 1980s.”
HuffPost: “More than seven weeks after announcing his campaign for president in 2020, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke has visited 12 states and the District of Columbia, held 103 events in 81 cities, and answered 594 questions from voters, per his campaign.”
“But he hasn’t held a single nationally televised town hall, a medium some argue is a more effective way of reaching voters across the country. The unconventional campaign strategy ― one he initially employed during his unsuccessful bid for Senate in Texas last year ― has even left some supporters scratching their heads.”
Charlie Sykes: “I waited a few days before writing about the GOP reaction to the Mueller Report because, well, I have apparently learned nothing. Naively, I had hoped that Mitt Romney’s statement about dishonesty in the White House would jar, or at least jostle, some other consciences among his fellow Republicans.”
“In fact, all it did was to highlight (once again) how badly late-stage Trumpism has shrunken those consciences. What we got instead was the usual combination of foot-shuffling, denial, and silence.”
“Any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted, but because of the rule in the Justice Department that you can’t indict a sitting President, the whole matter of obstruction was very directly sent to the Congress.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by Time.
“A White House official said that President Trump would not comply with a Tuesday deadline set by House Democrats to release his tax returns to Congress, setting up what was expected to be an extended legal clash between two branches of government,” the New York Times reports.
“But releasing the tax returns is not exactly Mr. Trump’s choice. Mr. Neal is employing a provision of the tax code to request the returns, which he said his committee needs in order to evaluate the policy of automatic audits of presidential tax returns.”
“The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation into whether six of President Trump’s appointees have violated federal ethics rules by engaging with their former employers or clients on department-related business,” the Washington Post reports.
Fox News will host a town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, Politico reports, “making him the third Democrat to sit down with the network at length.”
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace will moderate the town hall, which is set for May 19 and will be held in Claremont, N.H.
“The Louisiana State Police on Monday revealed an extraordinary security breach at the Governor’s Mansion, saying they had arrested a man last week who trespassed into the building and damaged property before falling asleep on a couch,” the AP reports.
Aaron Blake: “In some ways, it’s a wonder it’s taken this long. The 2020 Democratic field has already lurched to the left on a number of issues the party used to avoid for fear of looking too extreme: single-payer health care, jobs guarantees, marijuana legalization, free or debt-free college and reparations for slavery. For members like Warren and Harris, supporting impeachment while other 2020 Democrats remain reluctant is a great way to get to the left of your opponents. And there’s very little downside in the primaries, given this is a 75-25 issue.”
“But while the vast majority of Democratic voters have told pollsters they favor impeachment, there hasn’t really been a national movement. Part of that was because everyone was waiting to see the Mueller report, and part of that was that there really hasn’t been a national leader for the movement.”
“Neither of those reasons applies any more.”
Nate Silver: “If there’s one thing the Democratic establishment is good at, it’s panicking. And the latest reason for panic among Democratic insiders is Bernie Sanders. According to a New York Times article from earlier this month, the prospect of a Sanders nomination is ‘spooking establishment-aligned Democrats, some of whom are worried that his nomination could lure a third-party centrist into the field.’ It is ‘also creating tensions about what, if anything, should be done to halt Mr. Sanders,’ the article says.”
“Should Democratic insiders really be worried that Sanders will be nominated and cost them an election against President Trump that they’d otherwise win? I’m here to make the case that they shouldn’t be, or at least not yet.”
Israeli Prime Mininster Benjamin Netanyahu said he will name a town in the Golan Heights after President Trump, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Eugene Robinson: “The political case for moving deliberately but fearlessly toward impeachment is even clearer: If timorous Democrats do not seize and define this moment, Trump surely will.”
“The conventional wisdom is that Republicans made a political error by impeaching Clinton. But they did win the White House in 2000 and go on to dominate Congress for most of President George W. Bush’s tenure. If impeachment was a mistake, it wasn’t a very costly one. Does it ‘play into Trump’s hands’ to speak of impeachment? I think it plays into the president’s hands to disappoint the Democratic base and come across as weak and frightened. Voters who saw the need to hold Trump accountable decided to give Democrats some power — and now expect them to use it.”
A senior Trump administration official tells CNN that White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley announced that all Trump administration officials are being ordered to boycott the White House Correspondents Association dinner this weekend.
The official adds that the order came from President Trump personally “though staffers have been trying to talk him out of it.”
Joe Biden will officially enter the presidential race on Thursday, The Hill reports.
“Biden will announce his candidacy with a video… and then will travel to Pittsburgh for a more formal event on Monday.”
The Washington Examiner reports Biden abandoned plans to kick of his campaign in Charlottesville, VA amid opposition from residents who were “unhappy about the scene a tragedy the city would prefer to forget being used as a campaign launch backdrop.”
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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