President Trump hasn’t forgotten Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) decision not to endorse him and wasn’t timid in bringing it up during his visit to the state, Politico reports.
Said Trump as he posed for a photo op: “Come on governor, even though you didn’t endorse me.”
He added: “I never forget.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that she opposes the House Republican health care bill being debated in Congress, the Portland Press Herald reports.
“Though the moderate Republican previously has raised concerns about the bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, she had not previously said she was against it.”
Said Collins: “This is not a bill I could support in its current form. It really misses the mark.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ruled out opening any negotiation with North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and said for the first time that the Trump administration might be forced to take pre-emptive action “if they elevate the threat of their weapons program” to an unacceptable level, the New York Times reports.
“The secretary of state’s comments were the Trump administration’s first public hint at the options being considered, and they made clear that none involved a negotiated settlement or waiting for the North Korean government to collapse.”
Said Tillserson: “The policy of strategic patience has ended.”
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The United States has made a formal apology to Britain after the White House accused GCHQ of helping Barack Obama spy on Donald Trump in the White House, the Telegraph reports.
“Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s press secretary, repeated a claim on Thursday evening – initially made by an analyst on Fox News – that GCHQ was used by Mr Obama to spy on Trump Tower in the lead-up to last November’s election.”
“Some of the biggest losers in President Trump’s proposed budget are the rural communities that fueled his stunning White House victory,” the Boston Globe reports.
“Funding that keeps rural airports open, grants that help build rural water and sewer projects, and money for long-distance Amtrak lines that serve rural communities would all disappear under Trump’s budget blueprint released Thursday.”
“Trump also wants to kill the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps people, including seniors on fixed incomes and the working poor, to pay their heating bills. It’s a particularly prized resource in New England, with its brutal winters. Also on the chopping block: funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, which seeks to boost economic development in a region that strongly supported Trump. Into the dustbin, too, would go the US Chemical Safety Board, an agency that has open investigations in Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Kansas, and last September wrapped up a probe of a West Virginia chemical spill that left more than 300,000 people without usable water for a time.”
“In quick succession on Wednesday night, federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked President Trump’s revised travel ban. They said statements Mr. Trump had made as a presidential candidate, including his call for ‘a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ helped doom the executive order,” the New York Times reports.
“The judges said Mr. Trump’s promises to impose a “Muslim ban” were too telling and categorical to be ignored.”
“Outside the context of Mr. Trump’s two travel bans, few judicial rulings have addressed how much weight courts may put on statements from political candidates… But decisions about religious discrimination allow courts to consider government officials’ real purposes, even if their stated ones are neutral.”
“Republican leaders in Congress want more details from President Trump about his proposed border wall before appropriating significant funding for the project,” The Hill reports.
“They have questions about the design and how the administration would handle the rights of property owners whose land would be used to build the structure.”
“While he has swallowed a big budget cut, had his chosen deputy vetoed, and been dismissed as invisible in his own building, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is playing a patient game to gain influence by avoiding public conflicts with the White House,” Reuters reports.
“The former Exxon Mobil Corp CEO faces multiple challenges in his unfamiliar role as chief U.S. diplomat, including a boss in U.S. President Donald Trump who makes unpredictable policy pronouncements and does not take kindly to criticism or contradiction.”
Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey (R) was arrested after he was caught in a motel with an underage male, the Advocate reports.
“Police in Moore, Okla., are now recommending three charges: soliciting prostitution of a minor, prostitution within 1,000 feet of a church, and transporting for the purpose of prostitution. A redacted police report indicates the child’s father watched him enter a Super8 motel with Shortey and then called police, who smelled marijuana wafting from the room. When confronted by police, Shortey — married to a woman and the father of two children — said he was just hanging out with a friend. But messages on a digital device showed the politician was asking for ‘sexual stuff’ in exchange for money.”
The Trump administration “will appeal the court rulings that blocked his second attempt at restricting travel to the U.S. for people from six predominately Muslim countries,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said White House spokesman Sean Spicer: “We intend to appeal the flawed rulings. We expect action to be taken soon.”
“President Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, was paid tens of thousands of dollars by Russian companies shortly before he became a formal adviser to the then-candidate, according to documents obtained by a congressional oversight committee that revealed business interests that hadn’t been previously known,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that President Trump “stands by” his allegation that former President Obama “ordered wiretapping surveillance of Trump Tower last fall,” the Washington Post reports.
“Earlier Thursday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said their investigation into the matter so far has turned up no evidence that the U.S. government had conducted surveillance on Trump Tower in New York, either before or after the election on Nov. 8.”
Washington Post: “Defense hawks, rural conservatives and even some of Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress sharply criticized the president’s first budget proposal on Thursday, pushing back on the huge potential hike in defense spending as insufficient and decrying some other cuts to federal agencies and programs.”
“Capitol Hill Republicans, however, did not seem terribly worried about the prospect of such a budget being enacted, stating matter-of-factly that it is Congress, after all, that controls the purse strings.”
CNN: “Last year, after ending one of his many spirited on-air arguments with liberal contributor Juan Williams, Hannity pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at Williams, according to three sources with knowledge of the incident. He even turned on the laser sight, causing a red dot to bob around on Williams’ body. (Hannity was just showing off, the sources said, but the unforeseen off-camera antic clearly disturbed Williams and others on set.)”
“For the record: Hannity’s colleagues brought the Williams incident to the attention of Fox News executives, though it’s not clear whether anything came of it. The sources said it went to Bill Shine, the longtime Fox News executive who handles sensitive personnel issues at the network, who is Hannity’s longtime friend and a former producer. Shine now serves as the network’s co-president.”
“Members of Donald Trump’s cabinet are obliged to sell more than $1 billion worth of assets to prevent conflicts of interest, a process that is proving difficult and time-consuming. A Wall Street Journal review of those needed sales shows almost three-quarters of the total is held in illiquid assets such as real estate, closely held companies and stakes in private-equity funds, likely extending the time necessary to unwind the positions.”
“The process is leaving some Trump administration officials facing potential restrictions on the work they can do until the sales are completed, under rules requiring them to recuse themselves from issues that might benefit them financially. Some of the assets being sold involve investments in industries that cabinet members are now charged with overseeing.”
Ron Brownstein: “The Trump administration’s early weeks have been a delicate minuet between these contrasting perspectives, which can be simplified as nationalism and libertarianism. Trump has emphasized nationalism in his own actions, including executive orders withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, escalating efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, and restricting immigration from initially seven—now six—Muslim-majority nations. During the campaign, Ryan criticized all of those ideas. But since Trump’s victory, the speaker has defended them.”
“But as the health-care debate shows, the seams are more visible on questions related to federal spending. Trump struck the first blow in late February when he previewed his three-pronged guidance for the federal budget. Trump aligned with Ryan and other congressional Republicans by promising to increase defense spending and severely cut domestic discretionary programs… But Trump decisively departed from libertarian Republicans by reaffirming his campaign pledge to block cuts to Medicare and Social Security.”
“The legal limit on how much the United States government can borrow returns on Thursday, potentially setting up an intense political battle in Congress,” The Hill reports.
“Lawmakers will have until sometime this autumn to raise the debt ceiling before the Treasury runs out of ways to make essential payments, putting the nation at risk of its first-ever debt default.”
“The debt limit is a major test for the Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders who’ve sought major spending cuts before previous increases in the debt ceiling.”
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Democrats have a path to winning a House majority next year, but that possibility is highly dependent on variables over which they have effectively no control. That’s the takeaway from our initial ratings of 2018’s House races, a list that is heavy on Republicans who start this cycle only mildly endangered.”
“Historically, the president’s party loses ground in a midterm: That’s what happened in 36 of the 39 midterms since the Civil War. American political history is dotted with elections where the president’s party suffered big losses because of a bad economy (1930, 1938, 1958, and 2010 are all examples), unpopular wars (1950, 1966, and 2006), scandal (1974), or other factors.”
“If a wave is developing, we may be able to track it through President Trump’s approval rating (particularly if it falls into the 30s) and/or the House generic ballot. Watch to see if the latter metric, which measures national opinions on how voters intend to vote in their local House race, starts to show a significant Democratic lead approaching double digits in polling averages. Those are the kinds of numbers it’s probably going to take for Democrats to crack the GOP’s House majority, which is protected both by the power of incumbency and by favorable district lines in many key states.”
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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