“Sixty percent of public school children in the state of Arizona today are minorities. That complicates racial integration because there aren’t enough white kids to go around.”
— Arizona state Rep. David Stringer (R), quoted by the Phoenix New Times, adding that immigration is an “existential threat” to the United States.
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was not impressed by President Trump’s performance at the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Two British political operatives were in regular contact with the Russian ambassador in London while they campaigned for, and met with, Donald Trump in the United States in 2016, a review of emails and social media posts shows,” CNN reports.
“Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore were prominent figures in the 2016 campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who has known EPA Administrator Pruitt for years and hails from the same state, told Laura Ingraham on her radio show that the endless scandals surrounding Pruitt may require him to step down.
Said Inhofe: “I see these things, they upset me as much as they upset you. And I think something needs to happen to change that. One of those alternatives would be for him to leave that job.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that six months after the passage of tax reform, it’s still not really catching on with voters. Just 31% support it to 38% who are opposed, with 30% not sure one way or the other.
“The core problem for Republicans with tax reform is that voters continue to be skeptical it’s actually going to help them on a personal level. Just 30% say they think it will help their family’s finances, to 33% who think it will hurt, and 25% who don’t think it will have an impact either way.”
Also interesting: “51% think it will mostly benefit the rich to 30% for the middle class, and just 7% for the poor.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), who is mulling a presidential bid in 2020, played up his ties to former President Barack Obama in a GQ profile:
Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) told the Washington Post that President Trump’s tweet slamming him “probably made the difference” in his primary loss, noting that the results were within a few hundred votes of what it would have taken to get into a runoff.
But he added: “I don’t know if the outcome would have been different in the long run, because of the larger tide I was up against.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is among the candidates who have been discussed as President Trump gets closer to naming someone to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bloomberg reports.
“California’s 168-year run as a single entity, hugging the continent’s edge for hundreds of miles and sprawling east across mountains and desert, could come to an end next year — as a controversial plan to split the Golden State into three new jurisdictions qualified Tuesday for the Nov. 6 ballot,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“If a majority of voters who cast ballots agree, a long and contentious process would begin for three separate states to take the place of California, with one primarily centered around Los Angeles and the other two divvying up the counties to the north and south. Completion of the radical plan — far from certain, given its many hurdles at judicial, state and federal levels — would make history.”
“It would be the first division of an existing U.S. state since the creation of West Virginia in 1863.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Ohio finds Richard Cordray (D) leading Mike DeWine (R) in the governor’s race, 42% to 40%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “The closeness between Cordray and DeWine should not be surprising, since this race for governor is a re-run of the race between the two men in 2010 for the attorney general’s job that DeWine won by one percentage point. Now, Cordray and DeWine split the key independent vote and get roughly the same share of their party bases.”
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) leads Jim Renacci (R), 51% to 34%.
Sen. Corey Gardner (R-CO), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CNN the group has no plans to endorse Corey Stewart (R), the party’s U.S. Senate nominee in Virginia.
Said Gardner: “We have a big map, right now we are focused on Florida, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana. I don’t see Virginia in it.”
“We are in a strange place. I mean, it’s almost, it’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it? And it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of — purportedly, of the same party.”
— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by The Hill.
“A senior advisor to the State Department appointed just two months ago has been quietly vetting career diplomats and American employees of international institutions to determine whether they are loyal to President Trump and his political agenda,” Foreign Policy reports.
“Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name ‘Vino Vixen,’ has reviewed the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies — though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain. And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom.”
A new George Washington University Politics Poll finds Americans are overwhelmingly engaged in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections with 78% of registered voters saying they definitely will vote in the November general elections and another 15% said they probably will. Only 2% said they would definitely not vote
On a generic ballot for U.S. House, voters chose Democrats over Republicans, 45% to 38%.
Said pollster John Sides: “In two respects, the poll suggests some Democratic advantages that are less visible on the surface. Democratic voters remain more politically engaged than Republican voters on several dimensions—including their willingness to do the spadework of an election campaign. And Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House are perceived more positively than Republican incumbents. Whether that will add up to a veritable ‘wave’ remains to be seen.”
“As attorneys for Michael Cohen rush to meet Judge Kimba Wood’s Friday deadline to complete a privilege review of over 3.7 million documents seized in the April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York properties and law office, a source representing this matter has disclosed to ABC News that the law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward.”
“Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said. This development, which is believed to be imminent, will likely hit the White House, family members, staffers and counsels hard.”
Meanwhile, Cohen is telling friends that he expects to be arrested soon, CNBC reports.
Several months ago, President Trump “ordered the promotion of Rudy Giuliani’s son. But instead of getting promoted, he has lost his West Wing pass,” Axios reports.
“We’re told that chief of staff John Kelly did not follow through on the order, and Andrew has not been promoted. Kelly and others, including Office of Public Liaison director Justin Clark, won’t promote Andrew because they think he ‘subverts the chain of command’ and claim he had other issues in the workplace that they weren’t happy about.”
From the Wall Street Journal in January:
Around the same time, Mr. Trump had an idea about how to counter the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, which he got after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin: If the U.S. stopped joint military exercises with the South Koreans, it could help moderate Kim Jong Un’s behavior.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis used an approach that aides say can work: “He says, ‘Your instincts are absolutely correct,’ and then gets him [the president] to do the exact opposite of what his instincts say,” said one person close to the White House. Mr. Trump dropped the idea, although he has ordered aides to give the exercises a low profile, eliminating press releases and briefings about them.
According to reports, the Pentagon did not know Trump would promise to stop the military exercises with South Korea at his summit with Kim this week.
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.