“GOP support for the Veterans Affairs nominee has cratered in the face of allegations of misconduct as White House physician, who already faced serious doubts over his lack of management experience,” Politico reports.
“At this point, it would take a miraculous comeback by Jackson to survive at least two more weeks of scrutiny and growing discomfort among Republican senators over his nomination.”
CNN: White House prepares for Jackson to withdraw.
French President Emmanuel Macron believes President Trump will pull out of the Iran nuclear deal as part of “a strategy of increasing tension,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Said Macron: “My view — I don’t know what your president will decide — is that he will get rid of this deal on his own, for domestic reasons.”
He added: “It can work in the short term but it’s very insane in the medium to long term.”
President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, plans to assert his Fifth Amendment rights in the lawsuit filed against him by adult film star Stormy Daniels, The Hill reports.
“Cohen said the FBI raids earlier this month on his residence, office and hotel room — and the ongoing criminal probe they represent — are behind the decision not to offer testimony in the California lawsuit.”
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Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told Democrats on Capitol Hill that former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon asked the embattled data firm to test messaging on Russia, NBC News reports.
Said Wylie: “I can’t explain why it was that they picked Vladimir Putin to talk about in focus groups or to do message testing or to do models on, and why that would be useful to Steve Bannon.”
Wylie also told lawmakers “that Bannon specifically tasked Cambridge Analytica with looking at ways to depress Democratic turnout with their messaging.”
Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s new personal lawyer dealing with the ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, met with special counsel Robert Mueller to reopen negotiations for a presidential interview, the Washington Post reports.
Giuliani “conveyed the ongoing resistance of Trump and his advisers to an interview with federal investigators, but did not rule out the possibility.”
“Trump remains ‘extremely opposed’ to granting Mueller an interview, according to one close adviser — setting up a potential high-stakes legal battle between the White House and the special counsel, who could ultimately seek to try to subpoena the president.”
White House physician Ronny Jackson, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, “wrecked a government vehicle after getting drunk at a Secret Service going away party,” the Washington Post reports.
“In the two-page summary of interviews conducted by the minority staff, Jackson also stands accused of a ‘pattern’ of handing out medications with no patient history, prescribing medications to himself, and contributing to a hostile work environment with ‘a constant fear of reprisal.'”
“The Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to tune out President Trump’s inflammatory anti-Muslim statements on the campaign trail and uphold his executive order banning travel from seven primarily Muslim countries,” the Boston Globe reports.
“In an oral argument in the case Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, a key swing vote, seemed largely unmoved by the argument that Trump exceeded his authority with the ban, or that it unconstitutionally discriminates against Muslims. Instead, they appeared to favor the Trump administration’s argument that the ban is a legal exercise of the chief executive’s broad powers to protect the United States.”
A new SurveyUSA poll in California finds Gavin Newsom (D) leading the pack for California governor with 21%, followed by Antonio Villaraigosa (D) at 18, John Cox (R) at 15%, Travis Allen (R) at 10% and John Chiang (D) at 9%.
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]If that order holds up, it would lead to a Democrat vs. Democrat general election race. [/alert]
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 55% of voters say they haven’t noticed an increase in their paychecks as a result of the new tax law.
The White House is preparing a “full-throated defense” of embattled Veterans Affairs nominee Ronny Jackson and will be asking the Senate to reschedule a confirmation hearing that lawmakers had postponed amid concerns about his performance as the president’s physician, the Wall Street Journal reports.
An administration official described President Trump as “bewildered” by the response to Dr. Jackson’s nomination.
Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D) says he is “very likely” to enter the Democratic primary against the man who defeated him for the same seat 12 years ago, Sheldon Whitehouse (D), WPRI reports.
“As Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, prepares to testify before Congress on Thursday amid a series of spending and ethics investigations, an internal E.P.A. document indicates that he may blame his staff for many of the decisions that have put a cloud over his tenure at the agency,” the New York Times reports.
“The document, which The New York Times has reviewed and the veracity of which the E.P.A. did not dispute, seemed to be a work in progress.”
“His testimony coincides with rising calls from both Democrats and Republicans for Mr. Pruitt to step aside. He has been criticized for spending more than $3 million on security in his first year in office, a figure that includes salary and overtime for his security detail of more than 20 people, some of whom have been dispatched to protect Mr. Pruitt on private trips to Disneyland, professional basketball games and the 2018 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.”
HUD Secretary Ben Carson “will propose to increase the amount low-income households are expected to pay for rent as well as require those receiving housing subsidies to work,” according to the administration’s legislative proposal obtained by the Washington Post.
“The move to overhaul how low-income rental subsidies are calculated would affect more than 4.5 million families relying on federal housing assistance.”
“A coalition of news organizations… asked a federal court on Tuesday to unseal materials used by special counsel Robert Mueller to obtain search warrants in his investigation of President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others indicted in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the Washington Post reports.
“The news organizations are seeking to compel disclosure of affidavits, records of seizures and the warrants themselves that Mueller filed… They argue that the material, which has been shielded under a court order, could contain newsworthy information about the shape and direction of Mueller’s investigation. It could indicate, for example, details of criminal activity suspected by Mueller and the basis for FBI searches.”
A new Nevada Independent/Mellman poll in Nevada shows Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) barely ahead of challenger Jacky Rosen (D), 40% to 39%.
Key finding: “Rosen, who had never held office before her congressional race, lagged Heller significantly in name recognition among poll respondents, with 34% saying they had never heard of her compared to only 8% unfamiliar with him.”
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Tennessee finds Phil Bredesen (D) leading Marsha Blackburn (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 46% to 43%, with 11% still undecided.
“I had 12 hours of surgery on my face, broke all the bones in my face. What did he say? Did he send me a note of sympathy? He said, words to the effect ‘hope Reid tries another accident, gets hurt again.’ How about that? He is not a nice man and that’s an understatement.”
— Former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), in an interview with NBC News, on President Trump.
Jay Rosen: “There is a risk that one third of the electorate will be isolated in an information loop of its own, where Trump becomes the major source of information about Trump, because independent sources are rejected on principle. That has already happened. An authoritarian system is up and running for a portion of the polity. Another way to say this is that before journalists log on in the morning, one third of their potential public is already gone.”
“There is a risk that journalists could do their job brilliantly, and it won’t really matter, because Trump supporters categorically reject it, Trump opponents already believed it, and the neither-nors aren’t paying close enough attention.”
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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