Wisconsin state Assembly Rep. Jonathan Brostoff (D) has not cut his hair since last February, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“And he’ll keep growing the bushy black mane until he gets a bill passed that would improve life for the deaf community and the sign language interpreters they need.”
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer “has signed a contract to serve as a special correspondent for syndicated newsmagazine show Extra,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
He “is beginning with a special series that focuses on the personal lives and views of D.C. insiders, including” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday, Kellyanne Conway on Thursday, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday.
“A Democratic group seeking to persuade former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke to run for president will launch mobilization efforts on college campuses nationwide to coincide with what they believe will be his entry into the race by month’s end,” Reuters reports.
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New York Times: “The four-building, 19-acre ‘working center for citizenship,’ set to be built in a public park on the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden, even a sledding hill.”
“But the center, which will cost an estimated $500 million, will also differ from the complexes built by Barack Obama’s predecessors in another way: It won’t actually be a presidential library.”
“In a break with precedent, there will be no research library on site, and none of Mr. Obama’s official presidential records. Instead, the Obama Foundation will pay to digitize the roughly 30 million pages of unclassified paper records from the administration so they can be made available online.”
“Economists at ratings agency S&P Global raised the probability of a U.S. recession in 2019 to 20–25% on Wednesday, in large part because of the flattening U.S. Treasury yield curve,” Axios reports.
First Read: “Here’s something to chew on: Bernie Sanders has been far from a leading figure on the biggest issues of the day as it relates to Donald Trump’s presidency.”
“Think about it: the Russia investigation, the border wall, family separations, ethics investigations, Supreme Court nominations, the shutdown. On all of those issues, he’s been either a minor voice or a non-figure. Instead, Sanders – like he did in 2016 – is playing a longer game.”
“It’s an interesting gamble: Do Democratic primary voters and general-election voters want transformative change? Or do they just want to replace Trump?”
“Bernie’s betting on the former over the latter.”
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President Trump was asked by reporters about his administration’s push to decriminalize homosexuality around the world:
Q: Mr. President, on your push to decriminalize homosexuality, are you doing that? And why?
TRUMP: Say it?
Q: Your push to decriminalize homosexuality around the world.
TRUMP: I don’t know which report you’re talking about. We have many reports. Anybody else?
Reuters: “Kim will likely travel to Vietnam by train. It could take at least two and a half days to travel the thousands of kilometers through China… That means he would have to set off later this week in time for his planned Feb. 25 arrival.”
A new PRRI poll finds that 45% of Democrats would be unhappy if their child married a Republican.
In contrast, 35% of Republicans would be unhappy if their child married a Democrat.
Four decades removed from his time as a student at Auburn University, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) told the Tennessean he now regrets participating in “Old South” parties with his fraternity.
Said Lee: “I never intentionally acted in an insensitive way, but with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that participating in that was insensitive and I’ve come to regret it.”
Daily Beast: “Upon orientation, the interns signed their very own non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), with the envoy of the counsel’s office warning them that a breach of the NDA—blabbing to the media, for instance—could result in legal, and thus financial, consequences for them. Interns were also told that they would not receive their own copies, these sources said.”
“This was all a standard facet of the Trump intern orientation process, billed as an ‘ethics training’—underscored by implicit legal threats from President Trump’s in-house lawyers.”
“To veterans of other administrations, the act of compelling interns to sign these types of NDAs would seem odd, if not downright unenforceable or legally dubious. To this White House, it’s standard operating procedure.”
“President Obama’s political organization is merging with Eric Holder’s National Redistricting Action Fund, giving it control of the vaunted list of supporters, donors and volunteers that Obama and his team built over more than a decade,” The Hill reports.
“The efforts ahead of the decennial reapportionment and redistricting process that begins next year, and that will have a major effect on the apportionment of electoral college votes and congressional districts.”
“Senate investigators want to question a Moscow-based American businessman with longstanding ties to President Donald Trump after witnesses told them he could shed light on the President’s commercial and personal activities in Russia dating back to the 1990s,” multiple sources have told CNN.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is probing allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, has been keen to speak with David Geovanis for several months.”
First Read: “With Bernie Sanders in the 2020 race, Biden’s decision to run or to pass could be the last big question remaining when it comes to the composition of the Dem field — outside of Beto O’Rourke (who looks more and more like he’s running).”
“If Biden’s in, it potentially changes the math in places like South Carolina and the South (given his standing with African-American voters), and it narrows that pragmatic lane that Amy Klobuchar has been hugging lately.”
“But if Biden’s out, it opens up both South Carolina and the South, as well as that pragmatic lane.”
“Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson is set to decide Thursday whether to stiffen — or revoke — the release bond of Republican trickster Roger Stone for posting an Instagram photo of the judge next to an apparent rifle scope’s crosshair,” CNBC reports.
“The abruptly scheduled hearing in Washington federal court, set for 2:30 p.m. ET, doesn’t bode well for Stone, a longtime friend and advisor of President Trump.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told NBC News he would not run for U.S. Senate from Kansas.
Said Pompeo: “It’s ruled out. I’m here. I’m loving it… I’m going to be the Secretary of State as long as President Trump gives me the opportunity to serve as America’s senior diplomat.”
Molly Ball: “The field is likely to be the largest in either party’s history, there’s no front runner in sight, and the stakes could hardly be higher. It’s not just that many Democrats argue Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy. The party’s very identity is up for grabs, as a vast and historically diverse crop of candidates brings big new ideas to a demanding, divided base.”
“As much as they would like to move away from white male dominance, some rank-and-file Democrats worry that doing so would hurt the party’s chances against Trump. They fear that a woman or nonwhite candidate would be damaged by Trump’s sexism and race-baiting. And to the party faithful, winning is everything.”
“More than anything—more than policy or charisma or age or race or gender—Democratic voters say they care about whether a candidate can beat Donald Trump.”
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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