“Republican hardliner Kris Kobach’s inner circle is hinting that he has President Trump’s support for either a Senate run or Cabinet position,” McClatchy reports.
“They’re wrong.”
“White House officials have grown frustrated enough with the narrative being pushed by the Kobach camp that a senior administration official took the rare step of trying to squash the speculation.”
“The House on Tuesday passed a resolution to overturn President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border, as majority Democrats painted an apocalyptic portrait of a lawless chief executive out to gut the Constitution,” the Washington Post reports.
“The 245-182 tally was mostly along party lines, with 13 Republicans defecting to side with Democrats on a vote that effectively became a test of GOP loyalty to Trump. Despite their frequent complaints of executive overreach during the Obama administration, most Republicans fell in line with Trump’s decision to try to circumvent Congress to get billions of dollars for his border wall.”
CNN’s Town Hall featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered 1.4 million total viewers for the network, finishing third in its 8:00 p.m. timeslot behind Fox News and MSNBC Monday night, The Hill reports.
“The Sanders event fared better from a ratings perspective than previous Town Halls the network has offered up in primetime in recent weeks, but was well behind a January event featuring Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) who drew nearly two million viewers.”
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Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) is all but daring Roy Moore (R) for a rematch in the Alabama Senate race, Politico reports.
“Moore, who was defeated in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations, said this year that he believes the election was ‘stolen’ from him by Democrats and a disinformation program on social media.”
Said Jones: “If he really believes that and if the Republican Party really believes that then they all ought to just step aside, have a press conference with him and let’s just do it again.”
“One day before Michael Cohen appears before the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a conservative firebrand from Florida and a White House ally, accused President Trump’s former lawyer of straying from his marriage and suggested that his wife would leave him once he goes to prison,” the Daily Beast reports.
Tweeted Gaetz: “Hey Michael Cohen – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
Gaetz later insisted to Alex Ward that he was not witness tampering: “I’m witness testing. We still are allowed to test the veracity and character of witnesses, I think.”
“Democratic Party chairs in the four early presidential states are working to convince the 2020 presidential candidates to avoid waging social media disinformation warfare against each other,” Politico reports.
“The effort began this week with a letter to state party chairs across the country broadly laying out the issue with an ultimate goal of establishing what amounts to a non-aggression pact, according to state party operatives in four states who have received or have direct knowledge of the letter.”
The Atlantic: “Bernie Sanders has called for tuition-free college. Julián Castro has signaled support for it as well. Elizabeth Warren has pushed, for years, for ‘debt-free’ college. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand have signed on to legislation that could make college debt-free. Even Amy Klobuchar, who notably shirked ‘free college for all’ during a CNN town hall in February, signed on to a metered free-college proposal last year.”
“All together, the field seems to have converged on a consensus: A free-college proposal—or an answer about why they don’t have one—is something of a prerequisite for Democratic candidates hoping to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election.”
“An employee of the Missouri attorney general’s office occasionally drove Josh Hawley to campaign-related events in a state-owned car, an arrangement that raises new questions about Hawley’s use of taxpayer-funded resources in the run up to his successful bid for U.S. Senate,” McClatchy reports.
“Hawley’s use of a state-owned car stands in contrast to how Missouri’s other statewide elected officials say they utilize such vehicles.”
Politico: “In recent weeks, several prominent figures close to Trump have insisted that they’ll survive Mueller’s probe unscathed. Trump himself maintains that Justice Department officials have told his lawyers he is not a target of the special counsel’s investigation. … But Mueller is far from the only threat to the president, his family and aides.”
“Lawyers for Trump and several other senior officials told Politico that they are as much in the dark about Mueller’s next moves as everyone else trying to decipher whether the special counsel really is close to wrapping up his probe.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he has yet to determine whether President Trump’s emergency declaration to build border barriers is legal, The Hill reports.
Said McConnell: “I haven’t reached a total conclusion.”
Citing his health, Mark Harris (R) said that he won’t run in a new election for North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, the Charlotte Observer reports.
Washington Post: “Harris was ahead by 905 votes in North Carolina’s 9th District after the midterm election last year, but evidence emerged that a Harris campaign operative had improperly collected absentee ballots. State election officials last week voted unanimously to throw out the November results of the race between Harris and Dan McCready (D).”
Alex Ward: “A tentative deal between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be finalized over the next two days at their summit in Vietnam has emerged — and while it may still change, the current agreement looks like a huge win for Kim. For the US? Not so much.”
“Under the current iteration of the agreement, described to me by three people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues, the US would agree to lift some sanctions on North Korea and improve ties between the two countries in exchange for a commitment from Kim Jong Un to close down a key nuclear facility.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden has made job offers to operatives in New Hampshire, a source directly familiar tells National Journal.
The HuffPost reports Biden has also made job offers in South Carolina.
This is pretty interesting: In 2000, Pete Buttigieg, while still a high school student in Indiana, won the Profile in Courage Essay Award from the John F. Kennedy Library.
His topic: Bernie Sanders.
Politico: “The appeals court judges also found no flaw in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller in the wake of the recusal of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The court said that because the attorney general can repeal the regulations used to appoint Mueller at any time, he remains under the control of a Cabinet official.”
Playbook: “The House will vote this afternoon to overturn President Trump’s emergency declaration. Somewhere around 10 to 12 House Republicans will buck Trump on this.”
“This is one of the huge intellectual dishonesties of the Trump era. Republicans spent years saying Barack Obama acted inappropriately when using executive authority to do what Congress couldn’t do. Now Republicans are completely permissive of Trump doing the exact same thing. Early in the Trump presidency, they said he could use executive authority to undo what Democrats had done. Now, they don’t care. It’s open season.”
“The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the group’s operations against the United States are not cost-free,” the Washington Post reports.
“The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told The Root that she supports the decriminalization of sex work nationwide.
Said Harris: “I do not believe that anyone that hurts another human being or profits off of their exploitation should be…free of criminal prosecution. But when you’re talking about consenting adults? Yes, I think you have to really consider that we can’t criminalize consensual behavior as long as no one is being harmed.”
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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