White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney told CBS News that the two-year budget bill — passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump — is a “very dangerous idea” and explodes the deficit.
He added he would “probably not” have voted for it as a congressman.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) “has had conversations with a few colleagues in recent days about whether he should reconsider his decision to leave Congress and not seek re-election this year,” CNN reports.
“Whether it is a serious reconsideration, or just chatter with colleagues is the subject of some disagreement. There are also conflicting accounts of whether Corker has initiated the conversations, or whether he has had them with colleagues who are pushing him to think again.”
“But several sources say the issue has come up in recent conversations Corker has had with fellow Tennessean Sen. Lamar Alexander and with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, two of Corker’s friends.”
“I think the real problem, as I’ve tried to mention, is that we are seeing now as normal things that we shouldn’t see as normal. And this degradation of the political culture is a real concern, where we’re no longer outraged when we ought to be.”
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), in an interview with NBC News.
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“Republicans started the election cycle with designs on expanding their Senate majority, but the GOP’s candidates are far behind Democrats in fundraising going into 2018,” Politico reports.
“The numbers are stark: No Republican running for a Democratic-held seat raised more than $1 million from contributors in the fourth quarter of last year, but two Democrats running for seats held by Republicans did. By contrast, of the 10 vulnerable Democrats up for reelection this year in states President Donald Trump carried in 2016, all but West Virginia’s Joe Manchin raised more than $1 million.”
A Catholic high school in Greenwich, CT told Sophomore Kate Murray that “if she does not remove a Planned Parenthood sticker from her laptop, she cannot attend the school next year,” the Greenwich Time reports.
“Murray was told by the private Catholic school’s administrators Tuesday she has a choice: If she keeps the sticker, she can leave the school now or leave at the end of the academic year, her parents said. If she removes the sticker, she can continue to attend the school.”
“The sticker states ‘I stand with Planned Parenthood’ and is one of many on Kate’s laptop.”
In response, more than 2,500 people have signed a petition saying “I Stand with Kate Murray.”
“As the Senate prepares to begin a free-wheeling debate over immigration next week, White House officials have begun floating a possible compromise idea — a pledge to maintain legal immigration at current levels, about 1.1 million people a year, for more than a decade,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“The shift shows the White House is feeling out the contours of a possible compromise as lawmakers prepare for marathon immigration debates on the Senate floor next week over how to protect from deportation — and possibly provide legal status for — the estimated 1.8 million people brought to the country illegally as children.”
White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter is telling associates that some senior White House officials strongly encouraged him to “stay and fight,” and claims he “never misrepresented anything” to Chief of Staff John Kelly, Axios reports.
“This White House has a culture problem, starting at the top. The natural instinct is to defend/deny and show scant, if any, concern for the women alleging misconduct and harm. And when the going gets tough internally, the other natural instinct is to blame everyone but yourself.”
According to the version Porter is providing associates, he told Kelly on Tuesday that a Daily Mail story was coming, and “indicated that based on the questions the reporter was asking, it would be bad.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) “has found a way around the often unflattering coverage of his role in the Trump-Russia investigation — by operating his own partisan news outlet,” Politico reports.
Resembling a local, conservative news site, The California Republican is classified on Facebook as a “media/news company” and claims to deliver “the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) slammed President Trump for his tweet questioning a lack of “due process” in abuse claims, saying that Congress could hold hearings about sexual misconduct allegations against him if he wanted due process, The Hill reports.
Said Gillibrand: “If he wants due process for the over dozen sexual assault allegations against him, let’s have Congressional hearings tomorrow. I would support that and my colleagues should too.”
Vox: Why Donald Trump suddenly cares about “due process.”
“The State Department’s civilian workforce shrunk more than 6 percent overall during the initial eight months of the Trump administration, but that figure masks significantly higher departure rates in critical areas of the country’s diplomatic apparatus,” Government Executive reports.
“In December 2016, the department employed 2,580 people under the foreign affairs occupation series, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. By September 2017—the most recent data available—that number fell to 2,273, a decrease of roughly 11.9 percent.”
“The nation’s largest TV station owner is gearing up to fight for deregulation, and it wants some of its own newsroom managers to join the effort,” the Washington Post reports.
“Sinclair Broadcast Group is asking its executives — including the news directors at its many stations — to contribute to its political action committee, a move that journalism ethics experts say is highly unusual and troubling.”
“A top official charged with overseeing the safety of U.S. railroads has resigned ‘effective immediately,’ the Department of Transportation said Saturday after Politico raised questions about whether he had been simultaneously working as a public relations consultant for a sheriff’s department in Mississippi.”
“President Trump’s approval ratings have been nudging upward and his party’s political standing is improving, but the president’s unceasing habit of making inflammatory and insensitive remarks is galvanizing opposition against him — especially from women — that could smother Republican momentum going into the midterm campaign,” the New York Times reports.
“Saturday was a case in point. In a Twitter post, Mr. Trump appeared to raise doubts about the entire #MeToo movement, a day after he had offered sympathy for a former aide accused of spousal abuse.”
Said Trump: “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”
“The president’s seeming indifference to claims of abuse infuriated Republicans, who were already confronting a surge of activism from Democratic women driven to protest, raise money and run for office because of their fervent opposition to Mr. Trump.”
President Trump “accused the Democrats of forcing his hand in blocking the release of a classified memo that rebuts Republican charges that law enforcement agencies abused their power in spying on a former Trump campaign aide,” the New York Times reports.
Trump tweeted that the memo was “very political and long” and would have to be heavily redacted to protect “sources and methods (and more).”
“He said that the Democrats knew that such a necessity would prompt him to block the memo and would open the White House to charges of a lack of transparency.”
Politico: “The Trump White House has careened from one crisis to another since January, with the furor around the publication of Michael Wolff’s best-selling tell-all Fire and Fury — which sparked a public break between Trump and his former top strategist Steve Bannon — replaced by outrage sparked by Trump’s description of African countries as ‘shitholes,’ as well as a stand-off between Trump and the FBI over the ever-present Russia investigation. In the midst of all that, the government shut down – twice.”
Axios: The West Wing reverts to early disarray.
Politico: “Donald Trump has certainly helped. But Democrats’ massive success in flipping statehouse seats in special elections this past year isn’t happening by accident. The party’s dominance — it’s flipped 35 seats, and is hoping to make it 36 next week in a Florida House race — is also the result of old-fashioned political organizing. Nuts and bolts steps like funding year-round staff on the ground in the states, designing digital fundraising platforms, training volunteers, screening résumés for campaigns around the country and, of course, collecting huge checks.”
“At the center of those efforts is the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, mostly forgotten in the 25 years since it was founded as the D.C. hub for state legislative campaigns, but now working to coordinate efforts and partners, and along the way double its spending for the cycle to $35 million in strategic investments.”
“President Trump’s legislative affairs director, Marc Short, stood just off the Senate floor as Republicans cast a party-line vote on Trump’s tax package late last year, but his moment of triumph was brief. As she walked off the floor, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins spotted Short — and she exploded,” Politico reports.
“The White House had promised Collins, a moderate, that it would seek a vote before recess on guaranteeing payments to health insurers in order to stabilize Obamacare markets, a key issue for her. But under intense opposition from pro-life groups and from House conservatives, no such vote materialized. Collins berated Short for reneging on the deal and then walked off after Short tried to explain.”
Steve Bannon is quoted in a new edition of the book Devil’s Bargain as sharply criticizing what he terms the “anti-patriarchy movement” — that is, the movement against sexual harassment and assault — saying he believes it will “undo ten thousand years of recorded history,” CNN reports.
Said Bannon: “It’s a Cromwell moment! It’s even more powerful than populism. It’s deeper. It’s primal. It’s elemental. The long black dresses and all that — this is the Puritans! It’s anti-patriarchy.”
He added: “You watch. The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society. And they couldn’t juxtapose a better villain than Trump. He is the patriarch.”
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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