“Senate Republicans are pressing ahead on confirming Brett Kavanaugh before the midterm elections even after National Archives said that it can’t meet the GOP’s request for records until the end of October, days before the midterm elections,” Politico reports.
Said a source close to GOP Senate leaders: “I can’t envision a scenario where that vote is delayed… There’s no chance in hell Mitch McConnell holds this vote after the election.”
“The online fundraising platform ActBlue this week surged past the $1 billion mark in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes in this election cycle. The fundraising milestone, shared first with USA Today, offers a sign that the liberal activism fueled by President Trump’s election isn’t slowing down.”
“The group predicts donations will top $1.5 billion by year’s end, double the amount the fundraising clearinghouse processed in the 2016 election cycle.”
Lawfare has an update of its seven theories of the Russia investigation, dropping two that are no longer plausible given what we now know.
“It is possible to look at this behavior, in general, as evidence that suggests that the underlying facts of L’Affaire Russe must be very bad—that is, that we must be at the more menacing end of the spectrum (perhaps Theory #6 or #7), not the more innocent end. Who, after all, triggers a major probe into obstruction of justice in order to impede an investigation that’s going nowhere anyway?”
“On the other hand, it’s also possible to look at the obstruction investigation as simply a matter that Trump blundered into and to see his interactions with law enforcement more as a feature of his personality than his actual vulnerability from L’Affaire Russe.”
“The bottom line is that the spectrum of possibility has narrowed but remains broad.”
The National Archives said “it won’t be able to produce the full cache of documents requested by Senate Republicans on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh until the end of October, casting doubt on whether he can be confirmed by the midterm elections this fall,” the Washington Post reports.
“Gary Stern, the Archives’ general counsel, told Senate Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley (R-IA) in a letter that the records he has requested could total more than 900,000 pages. Grassley, backed by other Senate Republicans, asked for all documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House as an associate White House counsel.”
Roll Call: “That could force Grassley and Senate Republicans to either slow down the confirmation process or curtail the amount of records they seek from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House.”
A federal judge has ordered Andrew Miller, an associate of former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, to testify before special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury, The Hill reports.
“Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested an interview with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who helped set up the now infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting,” NBC News reports.
Agalarov’s lawyer “did not elaborate on whether Mueller is also interested in speaking to Agalarov’s father, Aras Agalarov, a billionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Robert Kuttner: “Even states that are heavily Republican have plenty of Democratic voters, not to mention independents and swing voters. So there is no such thing as a ‘red’ state. It’s better and more accurate (and conducive to better understanding) to use terms like ‘Republican-leaning or ‘heavily Democratic.'”
“The current color-coding only dates to the 2000 election. Before 2000, networks did use color-coded maps, but varied them and were more likely to use red for Democrat, blue for Republican. In 2000, Tim Russert began coding Democrats as blue, supposedly to avoid any taint that Democrats were Reds.”
“Whatever the origin of the practice, it’s dumb, sloppy shorthand, with real negative effects. If the mainstream press wants to avoid being a target for Donald Trump’s ‘enemy of the people’ slurs, it can start by cleaning up its own act.”
Elijah Cone: “It doesn’t matter what Facebook intended to be. Facebook has become a media outlet—and, through the manipulative efforts of conservative activists, a grossly irresponsible, right-wing media outlet. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.”
“Facebook’s efforts to appease right-wing critics have distorted the outlet’s political influence in many obvious ways. In response to the hearings on bias in Congress, Facebook hired conservative lobbyist Jon Kyl to lead a review. A six month study by Media Matters found that right-leaning pages continue to rack up more interactions on their posts than left-leaning or politically neutral pages, and conservative memes are by far the highest performing political content on the platform.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in New York’s 24th congressional district shows challenger Dana Balter (D) with a narrow lead over incumbent Rep. John Katko (R-NY), 47% to 43%.
The Cook Political Report had the race at Likely Republican.
Greg Sargent: “What Giuliani really fears is that Trump will lie about conduct that Mueller is examining for potential obstruction of justice. Giuliani had previously expanded on this fear, insisting that Trump genuinely doesn’t believe he actually pressed Comey to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn — which could lead Trump to deny to Mueller that it ever happened — and that Mueller might conclude otherwise, subjecting Trump to charges of lying to investigators.”
“But whether Trump believes he said this or not, Giuliani plainly fears that Mueller will believe the testimony of other witnesses to Trump’s conduct over that of Trump himself.”
“Two leading senators are asserting that President Trump has not focused on the clear threat the Kremlin poses in the 2018 elections, with one Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contending that Russian hackers may have already targeted most — if not all — sitting US senators,” CNN reports.
“Ratcheting up the push for a more robust US response to Russian interference in the midterms and 2020 elections, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) are now slated to get a committee vote this month on a bipartisan bill is aimed at shoring up the nation’s election system. But the two senators said their plan has run into hurdles for months — and say the Russian threat is real headed into the midterms.”
Said Lankford: “While the President has been inconsistent in his tweets, and some of the messaging that he’s put on it, he’s the only one in the government that hasn’t been paying attention to this.”
Ivanka Trump told Axios that the news of family separations at the border “was a low point” during her time in the White House.
Said Trump: “That was a low point for me as well. I felt very strongly about that and I am very vehemently against family separation and the separation of parents and children so I would agree with that sentiment. Immigration is incredibly complex as a topic. Illegal immigration is incredibly complicated.”
“After months of campaigning and more than $50 million in spending, Tennessee voters head to the polls Thursday decide who will be the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial nominees,” the Tennessean reports.
“Also on the ballot are primaries for the U.S. Senate, Congress, the state legislature and a host of local contests across the Volunteer State.”
Politico: Why is Tennessee’s primary on a Thursday?
Walter Shapiro: “While delving into Trump’s psyche is a risky maneuver that should only be attempted while wearing a HAZMAT suit, a plausible case can be made that the president is subconsciously rooting for a Democratic Congress in 2019. In fact, given Trump’s contempt for political norms, there is a glimmer of a chance that he might be deliberately trying to wreck the GOP’s chances.”
“The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, a place whose outlook rarely overlaps with mine, made a related case on Tuesday in an offering entitled ‘Trump’s Lose-the-House Strategy.’ Focusing on the threatened government shutdown, the Journal blames the baleful influence of Steve Bannon and his obsession with wedge issues like immigration that motivate the Trump base.
“But suggesting that the president is still under the sway of Bannon and his ultra-nationalist views is a way of letting Trump himself off the hook. It is akin to 19th-century Russian peasants saying after the Cossacks pillaged their village, ‘If the tsar only knew.'”
A new WBUR poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) maintaining his lead over primary challenger Ayanna Pressley (D), 48% to 35%.
Politico: “The Pressley-Capuano matchup has drawn attention in the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory in June over longtime incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY), thanks in part to Ocasio-Cortez’s primary-night tweet endorsing Pressley. The primary is on September 4, the day after Labor Day.”
Playbook: “What Hill Republicans don’t seem to understand is that Trump believes an immigration showdown before the election would be good for him. His thinking, according to people who speak with him, is that he won an election that was centered on immigration policy, so it’s a good issue to have front and center this fall. Furthermore, Trump is being pushed by aides who believe that he’ll never have bigger numbers on the Hill than he does now, so he should push for the policies he wants immediately.”
Axios: “The administration is allowing the sale of health insurance plans that undermine some of the main rules of the Affordable Care Act. And today, it will freeze federal fuel efficiency standards, undermining Obama’s goal of making them progressively tougher.”
“This is being done through rulemaking, which gets the attention of health care and environmental reporters, yet flies under the radar of the cable news networks. These moves have huge, long-term consequences — and they show how easily Trump can achieve his policy goals while the TV cameras are focused on the outrage of the day.”
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.