“A second House Republican blocked passage of a disaster aid bill on Tuesday, increasing the odds that lawmakers will have to wait until the chamber reconvenes from recess next week to send the measure to President Trump,” The Hill reports.
“Conservative Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) objected to an attempt by Democrats to clear a $19.1 billion disaster aid package by unanimous consent during a pro forma session.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “The 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was the eighth consecutive presidential race in which the national popular vote margin was smaller than 10 percentage points. That is, in every presidential election from 1988 to 2016, the difference between the vote shares of the Democratic and Republican nominees was in the single digits. That’s the longest stretch of such elections since the Civil War, surpassing a run of seven straight single-digit margins from 1876 to 1900.”
“In the recent string of close elections, there have been two in which the nominee who won the national popular vote didn’t win the Electoral College — 2000 and 2016. Before 2000, the last time a candidate had won the popular vote but not the Electoral College was in 1888.”
“Now, some might not consider a large single-digit margin — such as Barack Obama’s 7-point win in 2008 — to be ‘close.’ But it’s worth noting that out of 21 presidential elections from 1904 to 1984 — or the time between these two competitive periods — only nine had margins in the single digits. The other 12 were double-digit blowouts.”
Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL), who launched his U.S. Senate campaign in February, told The Hill he’s spoken to GOP sources close to Roy Moore who said the controversial former Alabama judge will announce his candidacy for the Senate in the coming days.
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Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) tore into Attorney General William Barr in a 25-tweet thread for his handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation.
Said Amash: “Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation.”
Washington Post: “Amash’s tweets came just hours before he was scheduled to hold his first town hall meeting in his Michigan district since declaring on May 18 that Trump had ‘engaged in impeachable conduct’ and becoming a pariah among his GOP colleagues.”
“President Trump told U.S. troops stationed in Japan he plans to order traditional steam powered catapults aboard American warships instead of newer electromagnetic systems that he said may not work as well during wartime,” Bloomberg reports
Said Trump: “We’re spending all that money on electric and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions. So I think I’m going to put an order — when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam.”
Bloomberg Law: “Upon arriving at the West Wing in January, Mulvaney instituted a formalized system for settling regulatory policy and timeline disputes between White House assistants and Acosta’s top aides, said people with direct knowledge of the process. Conflicts are elevated to Mulvaney for a final decision.”
“Acosta and his staff have been losing these decisions so often that they’ve stopped bothering to appeal.”
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) “has acknowledged taking a photo with a dead combatant during his time as a Marine as he defended a Navy SEAL charged with multiple war crimes, including killing a teenage fighter,” the AP reports.
A new Monmouth poll finds that 62% of Americans feel that U.S. consumers will bear the brunt of paying for new tariffs on Chinese goods, while just 23% say that Chinese producers will bear more of these costs.
Likewise, 62% believe it is very likely that American companies which sell goods or use materials made in China will simply pass those costs onto domestic consumers.
ABC News: “While details of the president’s event have yet to be finalized, the White House is facing pushback over the security, logistical and financial strains a presidential event would add on a day where additional security protocols already are in place for the hundreds of thousands expected to flock to the Mall to picnic and watch fireworks.”
“In addition to a presidential address, the administration has ordered that the location of the fireworks display be moved. A source familiar with planning said there have also been talks about adding additional military elements to the regular Fourth of July parade, while the president’s orders for a separate, grand military parade remain on perpetual delay.”
Daily Beast: “For the past two years, it has prolifically churned out glowing coverage of the Trump administration and its achievements. OAN’s top executives have beseeched the president on Twitter to forget about Fox and to signal-boost them instead.”
“Fox News is still the president’s favorite media behemoth. But OAN’s team has been catching his eye. This year, Trump has tuned in more often than ever to OAN, two sources close to him say. There’s been a conspicuous uptick in his public promotion of OAN’s segments, including on his personal Twitter account. And, it appears, he’s even pitching the network to those roaming the halls at Mar-a-Lago.”
“It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be. Either way, I honestly don’t care anymore.”
— HUD regional administrator Lynne Patton, quoted by the HuffPost, after sending a political tweet from her government account.
“The last remaining abortion clinic in Missouri says it expects to be shut down this week, effectively ending legal abortion in the state,” CBS News reports.
“In a statement to be released later Tuesday, Planned Parenthood said Missouri’s health department is ‘refusing to renew’ its annual license to provide abortion in the state. If the license is not renewed by May 31, Missouri would become the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided.”
Stuart Stevens, chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, tweeted that President Trump won in 2016 for two reasons: African American turnout decreased for first time in 20 years and the third party vote increased.
Said Stevens: “That’s how he won with 46.1% vs Romney’s 47.2%. Seems logical he will try to recreate the same environment.”
Politico: “Among some of these officials, that libertarian demand for medical freedom has displaced the traditional GOP view that it’s a civic responsibility to immunize your kids to prevent the spread of disease. As more politicians take an anti-mandate stand, some end up adopting bogus theories about the supposed harms of vaccination — threatening to roll back one of public health’s great achievements.”
“In Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin said vaccine mandates were un-American. In Oregon, the state party used vaccine mandates to bash Democrats as violating parental rights. And in the California Senate, all 10 Republicans last Wednesday opposed a measure aimed at stopping bogus medical exemptions from vaccination.”
Agence France-Presse: “President Alexander Van der Bellen said he was ‘deeply worried’ over the assaults. The attack overnight Sunday was the third since the show by Italian-German photographer Luigi Toscano was installed in early May.”
“Faces were cut out of around 80 portraits… Over the past two weeks, others have been daubed with swastikas or slashed with knives.”
“The Supreme Court sidestepped major abortion cases, letting stand a lower-court ruling that Indiana cannot ban abortions for the purpose of sex, race or disability selection but allowing the state to regulate the disposal of fetal remains,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The court’s unsigned opinion appeared the product of a delicate compromise, and it stressed the justices weren’t ready—for now—to consider whether either law violates the Constitution.”
Washington Post: “The court said a part of the law dealing with disposal of the ‘remains’ of an abortion could go into effect. But it did not take up a part of the law stricken by lower courts that prohibited abortions because tests revealed an abnormality. The court indicated it would wait for other courts to weigh in before taking up that issue.”
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told CNBC that his state adopted a stricter abortion law this year that reflects the values that people in the state “feel dearly about.”
He added: “These are issues of life that we shouldn’t just measure by economic impact and how Hollywood is going to respond to it.”
Eugene Robinson: “President George W. Bush once said that to get a message across, you had to repeat it over and over, ‘to kind of catapult the propaganda.’ President Trump must have been paying attention.”
“I predict this will be a summer of nonstop, shameless propaganda from Trump and his minions. It will be clumsy, ridiculous and pathetic — but don’t ignore it. Call it out. Laugh at it. Recognize it for what it is: a sign not of strength but of fear.”
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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