Planned Parenthood’s political arm is targeting eight states — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that have competitive Senate and governor’s races in its largest-ever midterm election campaign, CNN reports.
“The offensive is set to cost $20 million, an initial mark that the organization’s officials say is all but certain to be exceeded.”
“For the first time in anyone’s memory, nearly all 170 state legislative races in North Carolina will feature both a Republican and Democratic candidate,” the Raleigh News and Observer reports.
“Candidate filing ended at noon Wednesday, leaving just one uncontested race for state House or state Senate after a heavy recruiting push from both the NC Democratic Party and the NC Republican Party.”
Jonathan Chait: “It would presumably be extremely difficult for the president to implant a loyalist into the position. Republicans have only 51 senators. Any two could join with Democrats to block an unacceptable successor, and there are a number of potential Republican senators — John McCain, Jeff Flake, Susan Collins, and Bob Corker, among others — who would be inclined to do so if Trump nominates the kind of AG he obviously craves.”
“But Trump might be able to fire Sessions and appoint a temporary replacement. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act allows the president to install, for 210 days, any official who has been confirmed by the Senate for any position. One name that has been floated for such a maneuver is Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt, who might have the requisite combination of personal corruption and ideological fanaticism to carry out Trump’s bidding.”
“An appointment of a Pruitt, or some other Senate-confirmed Trump loyalist, would only last for 210 days. But that might be long enough for a sufficiently craven attorney general to fire independent staff at the Department of Justice and the FBI and quash the Mueller probe.”
First Read: “Given that chaos, Democrats believe they’ve discovered the kind of candidates that could be appealing to voters, especially those in red and purple areas, one year-plus into Trump’s presidency: candidates who project stability.”
“Think of Ralph Northam (military background, doctor, lieutenant governor) who won Virginia’s gubernatorial contest last November. Or think of Doug Jones (a former prosecutor who promised he could ‘work with Republicans better than Roy Moore can work with anyone’) in December’s Alabama contest. Or think of Conor Lamb (military background, former prosecutor) who’s running in this month’s special congressional election in a Pennsylvania district Trump won by 20 points in 2016.”
“It’s chaos vs. stability. It’s reality-show background vs. military/prosecutor backgrounds. And it’s excitement vs., well, a little boring.”
Matt Bai: “A year into Trump’s presidency, Republican activists in the rest of the country seem to have rallied around his politics of grievance, while in Washington, conservative thinkers who once ran the country huddle together in exile. Now it’s Kristol and his contemporaries who find themselves on the frontier side of the border.”
“I asked Kristol if he could still call himself a Republican, and whether he would if Trump was reelected in 2020.”
“The answer to the first question, he said, was yes. The answer to the second was no.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said that he would not stick around and be President Trump’s “whipping boy” if he was in the position of his former colleague, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Birmingham News reports.
Said Shelby: “Absolutely not. I wouldn’t stay at all unless the president wanted me to stay… I wouldn’t be anybody’s whipping boy, I wouldn’t be belittled because the president is saying he doesn’t have any confidence in me.”
The Washington Post reports that in 2001 Melania Trump was granted “a green card in the elite EB-1 program, which was designed for renowned academic researchers, multinational business executives or those in other fields, such as Olympic athletes and Oscar-winning actors, who demonstrated ‘sustained national and international acclaim.'”
Said former Rep. Bruce Morrison (D-CT), who wrote the Immigration Act of 1990 defining EB-1: “We called it the Einstein visa.”
“In all, of the more than one million green cards issued in 2001, just 3,376 — or a fraction of one percent — were issued to immigrants with ‘extraordinary ability,’ according to government statistics.”
“Take away a deadline, and Congress will simply lose its focus on any issue — even the heated debate around immigration,” the Washington Post reports.
“This was supposed to be the week when Congress would force itself to resolve the dispute over the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order, which President Trump announced in September he would revoke on March 5, giving Congress a six-month window to resolve the issue.”
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds 54% of Americans have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, as compared to just 42% who have an unfavorable view.
“The White House is planning to make a major announcement today about whether it will impose new limits on steel and aluminum imports… following months of speculation about whether President Trump would follow through on trade threats and impose tariffs that could roil global markets,” the Washington Post reports.
Jonathan Swan: “But the news comes as a big surprise to many administration officials, signaling a truly remarkable breakdown in process — and the event may not happen. The confusion last night among senior officials on the trade announcement — a decision of global consequence — is like nothing I’ve seen in the Kelly era.”
James Hohmann: “Whatever your view of Second Amendment jurisprudence, Trump’s flippant comments showed a startling indifference for foundational rights that are enumerated in the Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendments. The legal concept of due process is as old as the Magna Carta.”
“It doesn’t seem like an exaggeration to say that some Republican members of Congress would have called for Barack Obama’s impeachment if he had ever called for taking people’s guns away without due process. It’s certainly a more extreme statement than Obama’s 2008 claim that people in rural areas weren’t voting for him because they ‘cling’ to guns and religion. Even a decade later, Obama hasn’t lived that down. Republicans routinely cite it in their stump speeches.”
“But only one Republican member of Congress appears to have sent out a press release objecting to Trump’s comments.”
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, outgoing White House communications director Hope Hicks refused to answer whether a “litany of 50” people, including “the entire Trump family,” had ever asked Hicks to lie, CBS News reports.
The list of names included Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Cohen and others. Hicks was also asked whether she heard President Trump ask others to lie for him.
Hicks gave a “blanket” response by declining to answer in each instance.
Boston Globe: “Republicans, once ethically squeamish about blending Trump’s business and political operations in Washington, are now seizing on the cachet of the president’s upscale brands to help raise money and thwart Democrats in the 2018 midterms.”
“Former president Bill Clinton famously allowed fat-cat political contributors to stay overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House during the 1990s, generating intense controversy. But raffling off access to the luxury properties of a sitting president appears to be something new.”
Mike Allen: “After a crazy 24 hours, sources close to President Trump say he is in a bad place — mad as hell about the internal chaos and the sense that things are unraveling.”
“Hope Hicks leaving is obviously a huge blow to him. Every time he reads about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his head explodes. The staff is just trying to ride out the storm.”
“Everywhere you look inside this White House, top officials are fighting, fomenting, feuding or fleeing, insiders say in conversations with us.”
Dan Balz: “The upheaval is without precedent in a modern White House, and there is no assurance that it is over. In just a year, the upper-level team that came in with the president has been shredded.”
“Jared Kushner showed up for work at the White House on Wednesday and acted like everything was normal. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser attended the daily senior staff meeting, where he launched into a discussion about Trump’s 2020 reelection bid,” Politico reports.
“Kushner’s recent focus on the 2020 election has led some in the White House to wonder whether he’ll eventually transition out of the West Wing to become an adviser to his father-in-law’s reelection bid. Trump’s newly announced campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is a close ally of Kushner’s and the two men speak on the phone regularly.”
Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia has developed nuclear weapons that can avoid any missile defense systems, the Washington Post reports.
“He also warned that Moscow would consider any nuclear attack, of any size, on it or its allies an attack on Russia that would lead to an immediate response — adopting Cold War-style overtones that appeared to ramp up Russia’s posturing against the West and its allies.”
“The speech, broadcast on Russian television, comes less than three weeks before a March 18 presidential election that is expected to hand Putin his fourth term.”
“Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Wednesday requested that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson turn over all documents and communications pertaining to allegations by a high-ranking civil servant that she was the target of reprisals after sounding the alarm on agency spending,” Politico reports.
Playbook: “Tension between White House chief of staff John Kelly’s office and Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is escalating over his ongoing access and influence over Trump. Sources close to the White House say Kelly’s team believes Lewandowski does more harm than good at this point and needs to be cut off.”
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.