Coming soon: The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman.
“Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War.”
Sean Hannity announced that President Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani, will guest host his radio show today.
Steven Lamar Foster (D), who is running for Congress in a conservative north Georgia district, “was convicted this week of drunken driving challenged the officers who stopped him to a fight and repeatedly insulted the county he was running to represent,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Said Foster, on dash-cam video obtained by the Dalton Daily Citizen-News: “Eleven years I served this county. I hate this county. I prayed to God that he would curse it. And guess what? He did. Man, I saw it hit and cursed, and I saw people laid off right and left — white people. I hate this county…”
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Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer (R) publicly accused challenger Kris Kobach (R), the state’s top elections official, of giving county election officials information about the handling of yet-uncounted ballots “inconsistent with Kansas law,” the AP reports.
First Read: “This has been getting very ugly, particularly because Kobach has built such a reputation around his warnings of frequent voter fraud. What we can’t figure out: How does this end? Is there any situation in which there’s an agreed-upon nominee without lawsuits? How does either candidate feel comfortable conceding? And can the GOP get a Republican candidate in time to have a real campaign in a governors’ race that is very much competitive?”
“The party has to figure out how to fix this feud, but the president — who’s endorsed Kobach and helped elevate his national profile — isn’t exactly in a position to step in either.”
Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Mike Braun (R), who often rails against foreign outsourcing, sells his own auto products that were similarly manufactured abroad, the AP reports.
“It has been well documented that Braun’s national auto parts distribution company, Meyer Distributing, ships and sells other companies’ goods that are made outside of the U.S. Such practice doesn’t leave him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, he argues, because as a distributor he only resells the parts and has no control over where the companies make them.”
“But the revelation about the Chinese origin of much of his own products line, which Meyer trademarked with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, draws into question some of Braun’s statements on the campaign trail.”
Omarosa Manigault Newman writes in her new book, Unhinged, that Donald Trump is a “racist” who has used the “N-word” repeatedly, the Guardian reports.
She says Trump was caught on mic uttering the taboo racial slur “multiple times” during the making of his reality TV show The Apprentice and there is a tape to prove it.
She also claims that she personally witnessed Trump use racial epithets about the White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband George Conway, who is half Filipino.
Steve West (R), who is running for the Missouri state House, has a history of making anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic comments online, including saying “Hitler was right” about who was “behind” the events taking place in Germany before World War II, the Kansas City Star reports.
Said West: “Looking back in history, unfortunately, Hitler was right about what was taking place in Germany. And who was behind it.”
Another comment: “Jewish people can be beautiful people, but there’s ideologies associated with that that I don’t agree with. Jews today are a remnant of the tribe of Judah that rejected Christ.”
Michael Gerson: “In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But President Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?”
“They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward. And they should vote Republican in Senate races with mainstream candidates (unlike, say, Corey Stewart in Virginia).”
“The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”
“Fifty Democrats running for the House say they won’t support the California lawmaker for speaker, according to an NBC News survey of candidates and their public statements.”
“At least 41 of the party’s nominees for House seats have declared they will not back Pelosi and nine incumbent Democratic lawmakers are on the record opposing her… An additional 34 Democratic nominees are neither for nor against Pelosi, who has led her party in Congress since 2003.”
Here’s the complete list.
The Guardian: “In 2012 and 2016, Bloomberg considered running as an independent; each time he concluded that he could not win and ran the risk of splitting the Democratic vote and helping the Republican candidate to win office.”
“But in 2020, sources close to the finance mogul have told the Guardian, if the now 76-year-old candidate does eventually jump into the race, he plans to run as a Democrat. But after two, and now three, election cycles in which Bloomberg has teased his interest and poured over polling data, there are still questions about his ultimate commitment to a run.”
“In previous flirtations, Bloomberg has explained that he dropped the effort to avoid splitting the Democratic vote and risking a Republican presidency.”
“Don Blankenship is taking his battle to run for the U.S. Senate to the West Virginia Supreme Court,” the Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.
“According to a petition for a writ of mandamus filed with the state’s high court Thursday, Blankenship and the Constitution Party are challenging West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner’s decision to deny Blankenship’s candidacy papers to run with the party.”
CNN: “A court filing from special counsel Robert Mueller signals that Rick Gates may be assisting the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election beyond the case against Paul Manafort. In a filing Thursday, Mueller’s team said it wanted to keep a discussion between trial attorneys and Judge T.S. Ellis regarding a question to Gates secret because the transcript of the conversation would ‘reveal details of the ongoing investigation.”
“When Gates pleaded guilty and flipped on Manafort in February, he also agreed to help the special counsel with its investigation into Russian election interference as he was needed. It’s unclear how he has aided the special counsel’s probe beyond the Manafort case, but Gates was a deputy to Manafort on the Trump campaign and worked on the transition and presidential inauguration.”
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) said “that he plans to recuse himself from the vote tally process in the face of pressure from Gov. Jeff Colyer (R) and mounting confusion over vote totals,” the Wichita Eagle reports.
“Kobach said that he would recuse himself in an interview with CNN hours after Colyer had sent a letter demanding that Kobach refrain from instructing county election officials on the counting of ballots in the primary race for governor on a day when the vote total narrowed to roughly 100 votes as multiple counties reported that vote totals were incorrect.”
“While Democrats grow optimistic about their chances of taking control of the House in November, they are increasingly anxious that the presence of their longtime and polarizing leader, Nancy Pelosi, is making it harder for many of their candidates to compete in crucial swing districts,” the Washington Post reports.
“Republicans, clinging to a 23-seat majority in the House, have made the House minority leader a central element of their attack ads and are portraying many of their opponents as inextricably tied to the liberal from San Francisco. At the same time, some Democrats are expressing alarm that she is standing in the way of the next generation of leaders.”
“The vote breakdown in Ohio’s special election this week amplified a trend that’s been building in the suburbs during the Trump era — and illustrated how the traditional Republican path to victory has been upended in key congressional districts,” Politico reports.
“Deep suburban antipathy toward President Trump has turned the old GOP electoral coalition inside-out in many areas in 2017 and 2018 — like Ohio’s 12th District, which for two decades sent former Rep. Pat Tiberi to Congress on the back of his popularity in the Columbus suburbs. His anointed successor, Republican Troy Balderson, took a different path to a small special-election lead, instead building on Trump’s rural strength while Democrat Danny O’Connor cut deeply into Tiberi’s old base.”
Boston Globe: “Hundreds of thousands of new voters could join the state’s rolls in the coming years after Gov. Charlie Baker (R) signed legislation that adopts automatic voter registration — one in a flurry of bills that became law Thursday with a few flicks of the Republican’s pen.”
“The voting measure, which registers eligible residents when they get their driver’s licenses or health insurance through the state, was one of more than 50 pieces of legislation Baker signed that touch on everything from the state’s opioid crisis and animal abuse to climate change and renewable energy.”
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) won’t say if he’ll endorse in governor’s race, or if he even likes GOP nominee Bill Schuette (R), the Detroit News reports.
Said Snyder: “I’m sticking to governing and less politics at this time.”
“A federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration started to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway,” the Washington Post reports.
Said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan: “This is pretty outrageous. That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”
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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