A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds 60% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, the most since 1995.
“More also say their state should make it easier, rather than harder, for women to have access to abortion, with a plurality favoring no change in the status quo.”
“Billionaire activist Tom Steyer’s campaign rolled out a seven-figure television ad campaign promoting his nascent campaign, the largest single television ad buy in the Democratic presidential primary,” Politico reports.
“Joe Biden intended to stay above the fray. He wasn’t going to punch down at opponents, or embark on any apology tours for past votes or statements. Creating a sense of inevitability was the goal,” Politico reports.
“That strategy is now out the window.”
The Hill: Biden campaign looks to correct early stumbles.
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BuzzFeed News “has obtained an explosive audio recording of the Metropol meeting in which a close aide of Europe’s most powerful far-right leader — Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini — and the other five men can be heard negotiating the terms of a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini’s Lega party.”
“The recording reveals the elaborate lengths the two sides were willing to go to conceal the fact that the true beneficiary of the deal would be Salvini’s party — a breach of Italian electoral law, which bans political parties from accepting large foreign donations — despite the comfort with which he and Europe’s other far-right leaders publicly parade their pro-Kremlin political sympathies.”
Florida Politics: “Responding to a May 29 FEC inquiry as to why he was still spending 13-year-old campaign contributions, a representative for Foley indicated the West Palm Beach Republican kept his campaign account active because he is plotting another run for office and he ‘anticipates making a final decision sometime following the reapportionment resulting from the upcoming decennial census.’”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched an attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, saying the outspoken progressive is “living proof” that U.S. immigration laws are “dangerous,” The Hill reports.
Said Carlson: “No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and expect to survive. The Romans were the last to try that with predictable results. So be grateful for Ilhan Omar, annoying as she is. She’s a living fire alarm, a warning to the rest of us.”
“The Justice Department is seeking to discourage Robert Mueller’s deputies from testifying before Congress, potentially jeopardizing an agreement for two of the former prosecutors to answer lawmakers’ questions in private next week,” the New York Times reports.
“It is unclear what effect the Justice Department’s intervention will have on the men’s eventual appearances, but it raises the prospect that a deal lawmakers thought they had struck last month for testimony from Mr. Mueller, the former special counsel, and the two prosecutors could still unravel.”
“Tensions over the future of the GOP’s grassroots fundraising are reaching a breaking point, with the national party turning to strong-arm tactics to get Republicans behind its new, Donald Trump-endorsed platform for small donors,” Politico reports.
“The RNC is threatening to withhold support from party candidates who refuse to use WinRed, the party’s newly established online fundraising tool. And the RNC, along with the party’s Senate and gubernatorial campaign arms, are threatening legal action against a rival donation vehicle.”
“Greg Murphy won Tuesday’s runoff for the Republican nomination in North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District in a race that exposed a gender rift among U.S. House Republicans and attracted attention from some of the biggest names in Republican politics,” the Raleigh News and Observer reports.
“Murphy will be the favorite to represent the GOP-leaning district in Eastern North Carolina.”
New York Times: “It was supposed to be an exclusive party at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s members-only club in Palm Beach, Fla. But other than the two dozen or so women flown in to provide the entertainment, the only guests were Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.”
“The year was 1992 and the event was a ‘calendar girl’ competition, something that George Houraney, a Florida-based businessman who ran American Dream Enterprise, had organized at Mr. Trump’s request.”
Recalled Houraney: “I arranged to have some contestants fly in. At the very first party, I said, ‘Who’s coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.’ It was him and Epstein.”
Vanity Fair: How Trump kept tabs on Jeffrey Epstein.
“The poor treatment of migrant children at the hands of U.S. border agents in recent months extends beyond Texas to include allegations of sexual assault and retaliation for protests,” according to dozens of accounts by children held in Arizona collected by government case managers and obtained by NBC News.
“President Trump and Senate Republicans are moving quickly to back up beleaguered Labor Secretary Alex Acosta,” Politico reports.
“But pressure is rising from other corners of the White House, with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney privately urging the president to dismiss him… Mulvaney also may be seizing on an opportunity to try to depose a frequent antagonist who has frustrated some conservatives in the White House and business leaders on the outside.”
“President Trump’s golf resort in Doral, Florida, is scheduled to host a golf tournament Saturday put on by a Miami-area strip club, which will allow golfers to pay for a dancer to serve as their ‘caddy girl’ while they play at the president’s club,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Trump name and family crest are displayed prominently in the strip club’s advertising materials, which offer golfers the ‘caddy girl of your choice.'”
“House Democrats are seeking to hear from two senior deputies to former special counsel Robert Mueller in closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill next week, the latest attempt to learn more about the Russia investigation in the face of Mr. Mueller’s vow to only discuss the facts laid out in his report,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Two former prosecutors on the special counsel’s team, James Quarles and Aaron Zebley, have been in negotiations to testify behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee on the same day that Mr. Mueller would appear in an open hearing before that panel and the House Intelligence Committee”
“President Trump has summoned Republican lawmakers, political strategists and social media stars to the White House on Thursday to discuss the ‘opportunities and challenges’ of the Web — but his upcoming summit, critics say, could end up empowering online provocateurs who have adopted controversial political tactics entering the 2020 election campaign,” the Washington Post reports.
“The high-profile gathering follows months of attacks from Trump claiming that Facebook, Google and Twitter — all services the president taps to talk to supporters — secretly censor right-leaning users, websites and other content online, a charge of political bias that each of the tech giants strongly deny.”
“A federal judge in New York on Tuesday denied a bid from the Justice Department to replace the team of lawyers on the census citizenship question case, writing that its request to do so was ‘patently deficient,'” the Washington Post reports.
“The department had earlier this week announced its intention to swap out the legal team on the case — without saying exactly why. A person familiar with the matter said the decision was driven in part by frustration among at least some of the career lawyers who had been assigned to the case about how it was being handled, though the department wanted to replace those in both career and political positions.”
Business Insider: “The New York Federal Reserve’s probability model, which predicts the probability of a US recession in the next 12 months, delivered a reading of 32.9% for June.”
“That’s could mean tough times ahead, considering the measure has breached the 30% threshold before every recession since 1960. It sat at a precarious 28% in May.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declined to answer a reporter’s question about an assertion by Attorney General William Barr, saying he had lied to Congress and that she would no longer address “anything more that he has to say,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Pelosi: “I don’t even want to address him. He has lied to Congress as the attorney general of the United States. He’s lied under oath. I’m not speaking to anything more that he has to say.”
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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