“Republicans want to channel momentum from the GOP’s victory on taxes into a push to overhaul the nation’s welfare programs, though some of President Donald Trump’s advisers prefer a less controversial infrastructure plan at the top of his agenda,” Bloomberg reports.
“A KFile review of more than 40 hours of Frank Wuco’s radio appearances shows he regularly promoted unfounded conspiracy theories that have been spread by members of the far right over the years. Among the conspiracy theories Wuco pushed were claims that former President Barack Obama’s memoir was ghost written by former anti-Vietnam War radical Bill Ayers, claims that former CIA director John Brennan converted to Islam and claims Attorney General Eric Holder had been a member of the Black Panthers.”
“Thousands of Russian trolls targeted national events during the 2016 U.S. presidential election to infiltrate the online conversations of millions of Americans,” according to a new analysis of a database of recovered troll tweets by NBC News.
“The records show how digital communications tools invented by U.S. companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, were instead exploited by the Kremlin-backed agents to promote autocracy and fear.”
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McKay Coppins: “After months of quietly laying the groundwork for his own retirement, the 83-year-old Utah senator has signaled to Republican allies in recent weeks that he’s having second thoughts about leaving office when his term ends next year. Interviews with 10 people familiar with the situation—some of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly—suggest that President Trump’s efforts to convince Hatch to seek reelection have influenced the senator’s thinking.”
“This perceived about-face by the seven-term senator has enraged loyalists to Mitt Romney, who had been planning to run for Hatch’s seat (at the senator’s urging no, less). Meanwhile, many Utah Republicans have grown impatient and aggravated with Hatch as he repeatedly postpones announcing his reelection decision.”
President Trump “plans to sign the tax bill on Jan. 3 to ensure automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs don’t take effect,” Bloomberg reports.
“The White House informed House GOP members of the timetable, following the likely decision by House Republicans to leave the so-called PAYGO provision out of a year-end spending deal to avoid a government shut down before Friday.”
“On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton,” multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News.
“Hillary Clinton has denied playing any role in the decision by the State Department to approve the sale, and the State Department official who approved it has said Clinton did not intervene in the matter. That hasn’t stopped some Republicans, including President Trump, from calling the arrangement corrupt — and urging that Clinton be investigated.”
Foreign Policy: “The White House turned over records this fall to special counsel Robert Mueller revealing that in the very first days of the Trump presidency, Don McGahn researched federal law dealing both with lying to federal investigators and with violations of the Logan Act, a centuries-old federal law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, according to three people with direct knowledge of the confidential government documents.”
“The records reflected concerns that McGahn, the White House counsel, had that Michael Flynn, then the president’s national security advisor, had possibly violated either one or both laws at the time, according to two of the sources. The disclosure that these records exist and that they are in the possession of the special counsel could bolster any potential obstruction of justice case against President Trump.”
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“Speaker Paul Ryan and his top lieutenants plan to bring a short-term government funding bill to the House floor on Thursday despite internal resistance — in the hopes of averting a shutdown and then leaving town for the holidays,” Politico reports.
“GOP leaders are betting that their conference doesn’t want to trample on their tax victory by shuttering federal agencies. They plan to call up the bill, along with a separate $81 billion disaster package for hurricane relief. If the House passes the funding patch Thursday, the Senate will move on it as quickly as possible.”
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, “hasn’t presided over a hearing since early September. The Mississippi Republican has not given a speech on the Senate floor all year, and he’s introduced only two bills during that time, both of them minor,” Politico reports.
“The 80-year-old’s feeble performance has fueled expectations — among senators and aides who’ve witnessed his physical and mental decline firsthand — that Cochran will step down from the Appropriations chairmanship early next year, or resign from the Senate altogether.”
Said one GOP senator: “The understanding is that he will leave after Jan. 1, That’s what most of us believe will happen.”
As Nate Cohn notes, here are the generic congressional ballot results from polls conducted in this month using live interviewers (as opposed to an automated voice):
Patrick Murray: “Bookmark that photo of Republican lawmakers gathering at the White House today to celebrate their first major legislative victory of the Trump era. If history is any guide, many of them may be on their way out this time next year.”
“Importantly, fully half of the American public believes that their own federal taxes will increase because of this new tax reform package. Only 14% expect that their taxes will go down. In reality, many more than 1-in-7 taxpayers will see at least a nominal decrease. This reality is what GOP lawmakers are banking on when they face the voters next year.”
“But politics – and voters’ decision-making process – isn’t always based on reality. It is, however, always based on perception. And based on historical perception metrics, the short-term future doesn’t look quite so bright for the bill’s proponents.”
Politico: “In the last three months of 2017, Trump has quietly racked up a series of policy victories that Republicans have eyed for years, securing the passage not only of the tax overhaul, but also reversing the contours of Obama-era foreign policy and confirming a spate of judges to the federal bench.”
“Over the past week, even Republicans themselves have appeared surprised at their own successes… Republican leaders, whose relationship with Trump has been strained since he took office by both temperamental and ideological differences, heaped praise on him at a White House ceremony on Wednesday marking the passage of the tax legislation.”
“Puerto Rico’s governor is warning that the sweeping tax plan passed by congressional Republicans on Wednesday could deliver a ‘crippling blow’ to the island’s already-fragile economy, still reeling from the effects of major hurricanes,” the Washington Post reports.
“The tax bill passed overwhelmingly in the House on Wednesday includes a new 12.5 percent tax on profits derived from intellectual property held by foreign companies — a move designed to compel those companies to move back to the United States. Puerto Rico is considered part of the United States in all realms except taxes — meaning that island residents don’t pay federal income taxes but do pay into Social Security. Companies based on the island are treated as if they were located in other Caribbean tax havens not under an American flag.”
Alabama’s secretary of state announced that his office had received 4,967 provisional ballots and that “no additional ballots are eligible to be received,” the Washington Examiner reports.
That figure is “well below the number needed to trigger a recount, let alone overcome the 20,715-vote lead of Doug Jones.”
Washington Post: “Republicans in Congress celebrated the passage of the biggest rewrite of the U.S. tax code in decades Wednesday, with President Trump calling it a ‘Christmas gift for hard-working Americans.’ Workers will see the first glimpse of a tax cut in February at the earliest, but it won’t be until 2019 — when people file their taxes for next year — that most will know whether they will pay more or less to the federal government.”
“A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans,” Politico reports.
“A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee’s high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven’t informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House’s general counsel.”
“The Republican tax-overhaul bill may have only ended the individual mandate aspect of Obamacare, but that won’t stop President Trump from gloating to his base that he ‘repealed’ his predecessor’s signature legislation,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Trump: “When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed. Obamacare has been repealed in this bill.”
“Contrary to his claim, however, the Affordable Care Act is still largely intact—from its Medicaid expansion to the insurance exchanges it set up to regulations on insurance companies, including those mandating coverage for pre-existing conditions.”
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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