President Trump “made seven trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this year, and the public might soon get a look at who else was there with him,” the AP reports.
“The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to hand over records related to the property’s visitors in September. The move comes in response to a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the National Security Archive and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.”
A new NBC News|SurveyMonkey National Security Poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans — 76% — are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next four years.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds 74% of Americans are concerned the United States could get involved in a full-scale war with North Korea.
Molly Ball: “The House is mad at the Senate. The Senate is mad at the House. Various factions in the House and Senate are mad at each other or mad at their leaders. Republican lawmakers have yet to turn on President Trump in any meaningful way. But they’re starting to turn on each other.”
“On Monday, the Republicans’ tortured health-care effort hit a seemingly permanent snag. But that was only the latest blow; after half a year of consolidated GOP control, not a single major piece of legislation has been enacted. With other priorities similarly stalled, legislators’ frustration is mounting.”
Politico: “At a dinner with GOP senators on Monday evening, Trump said the party would look like ‘dopes’ if they couldn’t pass the bill after passing a repeal bill in 2015.”
Said Trump: “If the Republicans have the House, Senate and the presidency and they can’t pass this health care bill they are going to look weak. How can we not do this after promising it for years?”
Playbook: “The White House is fond of saying that they just want something to sign, and they don’t care much what that is. That strategy has not really worked.”
“For a president with historically low poll numbers, Donald Trump can at least find solace in this: Hillary Clinton is doing worse.”
“Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival is viewed favorably by just 39 percent of Americans in the latest Bloomberg National Poll, two points lower than the president. It’s the second-lowest score for Clinton since the poll started tracking her in September 2009.”
“House Republicans unveiled a 2018 budget plan Tuesday that would pave the way for ambitious tax reform legislation — but only alongside a package of politically sensitive spending cuts that threaten to derail the tax rewrite before it begins,” the Washington Post reports.
“GOP infighting over spending, health care and other matters continues to cast doubt on whether the budget blueprint can survive a House vote. Failing to pass a budget could complicate leaders’ plans to move on to their next governing priority as hopes of a health-care overhaul appeared to collapse late Monday in the Senate.”
“The House Budget Committee blueprint, which is set for a Thursday committee vote, sets out special procedures that could ultimately allow Republicans to pass legislation over the objections of Senate Democrats who can normally block bills they oppose.”
“Many elected Democrats have drifted left since the party’s shattering defeat last November, turning to a brand of progressive politics that is closer to Senator Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialism than the more market-friendly liberalism that characterized the Obama era,” the New York Times reports.
“But when the nation’s governors gathered here over the weekend for their annual summer meeting, a group of pragmatic Democrats took center stage. And now one of them is taking the first steps toward seeking the presidency in 2020.”
Said Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D): “I believe the time is right to lend my voice, the voice of someone that after getting elected has been able to govern in what’s viewed as a red state. Some of the things that I’ve been able to do in Montana can also translate beyond just the state’s border.”
“It’s hard for the United States to pursue international anticorruption and ethics initiatives when we’re not even keeping our own side of the street clean. It affects our credibility. I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.”
— Outgoing government ethics chief Walter Shaub, quoted by the New York Times.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s “struggles to win support in Congress or the White House for his strategy to raise the federal debt ceiling are casting doubt on whether the political neophyte has the Washington clout to win approval of a measure that could be necessary to avoid a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt,” the Washington Post reports.
“Unlike other issues facing the Trump administration — such as passing a health-care bill and overhauling the tax code — raising the debt limit comes with a hard deadline of late September, according to Mnuchin. Failure to do so could lead the U.S. government to miss paying its obligations, causing what analysts would consider a historic, market-rattling default on U.S. government debt.”
Politico: “Republicans are divided over whether to raise the debt ceiling before the August recess, with senators preferring to act soon and members of the more conservative House reluctant to take the contentious vote before the break.”
“New York prosecutors have demanded records relating to up to $16 million in loans that a bank run by a former campaign adviser for President Trump made to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The subpoena by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to the Federal Savings Bank, a small Chicago bank run by Steve Calk, sought information on loans the bank issued in November and January to Mr. Manafort and his wife, the person said. The loans were secured by two properties in New York and a condominium in Virginia, real-estate records show.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to bring up a straight repeal of most of the Affordable Care Act as the next step now that the Senate health care bill appears to be dead.
Said McConnell: “Regretfully, it is now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful.”
The new bill will be based on the repeal bill Congress passed in 2015, which then-President Obama vetoed.
Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Mike Lee (R-UT) announced they will not support taking up a bill repealing and replacing ObamaCare, effectively blocking the legislation, The Hill reports.
The move leaves Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) without enough support to bring the bill to the floor.
Washington Post: “The two conservatives timed the release of their statements and made clear that modest tinkering around the edges of the legislation drafted by McConnell would be insufficient to meet their demands.”
New York Times: “By jumping together, Mr. Moran and Mr. Lee ensured no one would be the definitive ‘no’ vote.”
Jonathan Chait: “This doesn’t mean the bill is dead. It does mean things get very, very hard… Republican dissidents have made bold statements and backed down from them many times already in this process. But McConnell is simply running out of time to work Lee and Moran while still holding all the other votes in line that he needs.”
New York Times: “At rallies, in speeches and on Twitter, Mr. Trump repeatedly boasts of the bills he has signed — 42 as of this week. He has said no president has ‘passed more legislation,’ conceding once earlier this year that he trails Franklin D. Roosevelt, who he notes ‘had a major Depression to handle.'”
“In fact, as he approaches six months in office on Thursday, Mr. Trump is slightly behind the lawmaking pace for the past six presidents, who as a group signed an average of 43 bills during the same period. And an analysis of the bills Mr. Trump signed shows that about half were minor and inconsequential, passed by Congress with little debate. Among recent presidents, both the total number of bills he signed and the legislation’s substance make Mr. Trump about average.”
Gov. Chris Christie (R) said that Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney, saying it’s “probably against the law” to get opposition research for his father’s presidential campaign from a foreign country, the AP reports.
Said Christie: “I think, quite frankly, it’s probably against the law in addition to being inappropriate. I think the thing that bothers me the most is that we seem to have a frenzy of people jumping to conclusions.”
But Christie added that there’s no evidence the campaign obtained such research.
Daily Mail: “Donald Trump fell out with Chris Christie, a new book reveals, by screaming at him: ‘You know my number, just give it to the President, I don’t want your fucking phone.'”
“Trump became furious on election night when the New Jersey governor offered to use his own mobile phone to take a congratulatory call from Barack Obama. As a germophobe he was also horrified at the idea of having Christie’s phone next to his face.”
“Aides said that Christie’s move was the ‘ultimate mistake’ and one from which he ‘wouldn’t recover.'”
New York Times: “He ran on a promise to end politics as usual. But on Monday morning, President Trump posted a defense on Twitter of his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer promising sensitive government information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton by saying that it was simply politics as usual.”
“Mr. Trump’s newest tweet about his elder son, Donald Jr., and a controversial meeting on June 9, 2016, at Trump Tower, described the gathering as routine and something almost anyone in his current line of work would do.”
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.