“The House passed a two-week stopgap spending bill one day before a deadline to avoid a government shutdown,” The Hill reports.
“House Republicans managed to pass the legislation on their own in the 235-193 vote, despite often coming short of securing a majority of the majority on measures to keep the government open in recent years.”
The Senate also approved the bill which heads to President Trump for his signature.
For members: Why a Shutdown Still Seems Very Likely
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Weekly Standard that the committee will never support Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R), who has been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls.
Said Gardner: “Roy Moore will never have the support of the senatorial committee. We will never endorse him. We won’t support him. I won’t let that happen. Nothing will change. I stand by my previous statement.”
Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) “seat wasn’t supposed to be up again until 2020. But his resignation Thursday amid allegations of sexual misconduct creates a 2018 special election in Minnesota. And Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority, are now on the hunt for a top-tier candidate in a politically competitive state where President Trump lost by less than two percentage points last year,” NBC News reports.
“The unexpected opportunity could be a ‘total game-changer in terms of control of the Senate,’ said Republican strategist Alex Conant, a Minnesota native who worked in communications roles for the RNC and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential campaign. ‘If we field a strong candidate.'”
Daily Beast: Here’s why Democrats forced Al Franken to do the right thing—and why they may come to regret it.
President Trump “plans to keep pushing his legislative agenda in 2018 by releasing his long-promised infrastructure plan in early January,” Bloomberg reports.
“Infrastructure advocates question whether a Republican-led Congress will be able to pass a spending plan with enough federal funding if it’s already approved a tax measure that official estimates say would bloat the budget deficit. Some say the administration missed its best opportunity to deliver a meaningful public works initiative by not incorporating it into the tax bill, which is nearing approval.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds 70% of Americans believe the U.S. Congress should investigate allegations of sexual harassment against President Trump, while 25% say he should not be investigated.
Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN) has been fired for misconduct by Morgan Stanley after facing a human resources investigation into allegations of misconduct, the HufffPost reports.
“In two interviews… the woman alleged that Ford engaged in harassment, intimidation, and forcibly grabbed her one evening in Manhattan, leading her to seek aid from a building security guard. The incident took place several years ago when Ford and the woman were supposed to be meeting for professional reasons.”
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate “in the coming weeks,” citing the “irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office.”
He said he gave the “false impression” that he had admitted to sexual harassment, which he denies.
Said Franken: “I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a Senator, nothing, has brought dishonor on this institution.”
Ron Brownstein: “There is a more straightforward reason why not a single Democrat backed the legislation: The GOP not only entirely excluded Democrats from the process of drafting the bills, but the party punished Democratic constituencies—from residents of high-tax states to graduate students—in the bills’ substance. The tax plans represent a political closed circle: bills written solely by Republicans and passed solely by Republican votes that shower their greatest benefits on Republican constituencies. Meanwhile, the biggest losers in the plans are the constituencies of the Democrats who universally opposed them. It’s not just redistribution: The tax bills are also grounded in retribution.”
“In that way, the tax debate offers the clearest measure of how powerfully the Republican Party in the Trump era is folding inward. Neither Trump nor GOP congressional leaders are even pretending to represent the entire country—or to consider perspectives beyond those of their core coalition.”
Julian Zelizer: “With Nixon, the three-pronged strategy did not work. In the end, the revelations became so damning that the court of public opinion turned against him and Congress prepared to move forward with impeachment. President Trump might actually be able to pull off what Nixon failed to accomplish. He has a number of advantages that Nixon lacked—from a Congress controlled by fiercely partisan Republicans whose political calculations have led them to stand by their president regardless of almost anything that he does, to a conservative media that perpetually broadcasts his points of view.”
“Those who believe that a damaging investigation will inevitably produce negative political results for President Trump should not be deluded. The questions on the table will be: What can Robert Mueller and his team do to counteract Trump’s counteroffensive? Can they withstand the kind of attacks that they will continue to face, which will only become worse as the president becomes more frightened, and will the final report that his team produces be so damaging that it has the capacity to break through the partisan firewall that has insulated this president? Will the Republican Congress ever take a more proactive stance, or might there be a Democratic Congress after 2018 to pick up the slack? Can Mueller carve a legal path, accepted by the courts, that opens the president to criminal prosecution?”
The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as its capital, Reuters reports.
A new CBS News poll finds 53% of Americans disapprove of the Republican tax plan being considered by Congress – including four in 10 who disapprove strongly, and only one in five Americans expect their own taxes to go down.
“Few Americans think the plan will lead to lower taxes for them personally, and this is true of Republicans as well, despite their strong support of the plan. One-third of Republicans think their taxes will be lowered; most Democrats expect their own taxes will go up. By almost a 2 to 1 margin, independents are more likely to think they’ll go up rather than down.”
“North Korea says a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula has become a matter of when, not if, as it continued to lash out at a massive joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea involving hundreds of advanced warplanes,” the AP reports.
“In comments attributed to an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman, North Korea also claimed high-ranked U.S. officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have further confirmed American intent for war with a series of ‘bellicose remarks.'”
“Republican activists and lawmakers are engaged in a multi-front attack on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of possible connections between associates of President Trump and Russian agents, trying to stop or curtail the investigation as it moves further into Trump’s inner circle,” the Washington Post reports.
“For months, the president and his allies have been seizing on any whiff of possible impropriety by Mueller’s team or the FBI to argue that the Russia probe is stacked against Trump — potentially building the political support needed to dismiss the special counsel.”
“Several law enforcement officials said they are concerned that the constant drumbeat of conservative criticism seems designed to erode Mueller’s credibility, making it more politically palatable to remove, restrict or simply ignore his recommendations as his investigation progresses.”
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) “is expected to appoint his lieutenant governor and close ally, Tina Smith, to Al Franken’s seat if the Democratic senator resigns on Thursday,” Politico reports.
“But that appointment would be just the start of a huge upheaval in Minnesota.”
“Part of the reason Smith could be heading to the Senate, the sources said, is because she has indicated no interest in running for Congress in the past and would not run for the remainder of Franken’s term, which expires in 2020, in a 2018 special election. That would clear the way for a wide-open Democratic primary next year if Franken steps down.”
United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley said that it was an “open question” whether American athletes would be able to attend the Olympics in South Korea in February given the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the New York Times reports.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), “a member of House GOP leadership and the head of a working group of House Republicans on the debt limit, said lawmakers were considering increasing the debt ceiling as part of the bill funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year, known as an omnibus,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“GOP leaders are likely to seek to raise the debt limit enough to last at least through next November’s midterm elections, lawmakers and aides said. They will have to act, likely by March, to avoid a default.”
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.