A new Fox News poll finds that just 36% of voters say they would vote to re-elect President Trump if the 2020 election were today, compared to 55% who would vote for someone else.
In contrast, 52% said they’d vote to re-elect Barack Obama eight years ago, while just 31% said they’d vote for someone else.
President Trump told the Washington Examiner that he has “absolutely” considered proposals that would split up the 9th Circuit, where judges have blocked two of his executive actions.
Said Trump: “There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous.”
He added: “Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit. And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that’s like, semi-automatic.”
A North Carolina prosecutor said he will not bring voter-fraud charges against a woman who said she cast an illegal vote for Donald Trump last year to fulfill her mother’s dying wish, the Charlotte Observer reports.
Rick Hasen: “You can bet that if this were an African-American woman voting for Clinton, the DA would have prosecuted or been called ‘soft’ on voter fraud.”
Roy Moore (R) announced he is resigning from his position as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to run in the special election for U.S. Senate, the Birmingham News reports.
Said Moore: “My position has always been God first, family then country. I share the vision of President Donald Trump to make America great again. We can make America great again, we’ve got to make America good again.”
Moore said he has submitted his papers to resign from the state supreme court, a position he was suspended from for the remainder of his term.
“The president has no intention. The president has released plenty of information, and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information.”
— Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, quoted by the Washington Post, on whether President Trump will release his tax returns.
“The White House has told lawmakers that it will continue paying Affordable Care Act cost-sharing subsidies, removing the biggest remaining hurdle in the negotiations to avoid a government shutdown,” Politico reports.
The Hill: “The move marks something of a shift for President Trump, who had threatened earlier this month to withhold the subsidies — known as cost-sharing reductions — as a way move Democrats to negotiate on a healthcare overhaul. But the issue had threatened to derail the ongoing talks on government funding legislation that Congress must act on this week.”
“The White House is considering withdrawing from NAFTA in the coming days, though President Donald Trump has not yet decided how to proceed,” CNN reports.
Politico: “A draft order has been submitted for the final stages of review and could be unveiled late this week or early next week, the officials said. The effort, which still could change in the coming days as more officials weigh in, would indicate the administration’s intent to withdraw from the sweeping pact by triggering the timeline set forth in the deal.”
“There is now discussion on the Hill and in the White House about a health care vote this Friday. The House whip team is busy counting moderate votes and gauging support within the caucus, and there should be a clearer picture of where things stand tonight,” Axios reports.
“Both the White House and GOP House leadership are cautious about setting artificial deadlines. That’s what they did last time and it backfired. They believe a vote this week is possible, though they’re unwilling to say likely.”
President Trump “proposed sharp reductions in both individual and corporate income tax rates, reducing the number of individual income tax brackets to three — 10%, 25% and 35% — and easing the tax burden on most Americans, including the rich,” the New York Times reports.
“The Trump administration would double the standard deduction, essentially eliminating taxes on the first $24,000 of a couple’s earnings. It also called for the elimination of most itemized tax deductions but would leave in place the popular deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. The estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, which Mr. Trump has railed against for years, would be repealed under his plan.”
Washington Post: “The proposal is an outline – key details are left unfinished – but it presents an initial offer to begin negotiations with lawmakers, as White House officials believe reworking the tax code is one of their biggest priorities to boost economic growth.”
Ben Smith: “As the Trump administration scrambles to list the accomplishments of Donald Trump’s first hundred days, an awkward fact is becoming clear: To the extent that they have much to brag about, it’s because they’ve turned important roles and projects over to the swamp-dwelling Washington insiders Trump campaigned against.”
“Trump’s clearest major accomplishment is also the purest example of this trend: The appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was a masterpiece of insider politics, steered by the longtime master of Washington conservative judicial politics Leonard Leo and guided through the Senate by the most Washington of Washington strategists, Ron Bonjean.”
“The nomination process was as slick as virtually everything else Trump touched was messy: Well-researched and coordinated, with an array of conservative groups feeding and sparring with the media and with Democrats. It was characterized by aggression and spin, but not overt lying or massive bumbles. And while it was hardly a rogue operation — Bonjean is close to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer — it was like an alternate universe from the chaos reporters are accustomed to coming out of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Associated Press: “Trump’s trademark talk is full of rambling, aside-filled bursts of simple but definitive words, laden with self-congratulatory bravado and claims that have fact-checkers working overtime, all dispatched from mind to lips in such record time it seemingly bypasses any internal filter.”
“It has been a source of curiosity for language scholars and laymen alike, sparked anew by a recent Associated Press interview with Trump that has brought newfound opportunity for parsing a brand of presidential oratory not previously recorded.”
Said historian Kristen Kobes Du Mez: “This kind of pushes the limits of linguistic analysis.”
Playbook: “Yes, President Donald Trump is releasing his outlines for tax reform today. But let’s be honest: what he is releasing today will not bear much resemblance to anything that might pass in the coming year.”
“We were up on Capitol Hill and worked our White House sources yesterday, and they all see this not as a line in the sand or as a serious proposal, but as an opportunity to get the conversation started. No, Congress won’t be able to lower corporate and passthrough tax rates to 15 percent. The professionals in the White House realize this — and also realize that they’re beginning to irk Capitol Hill committees by releasing this. Without some corresponding way of paying for such low rates, these rates would blow a massive hole in the deficit. But it reflects a White House itching for action. (That explains their push for a health care vote this week.) And insiders say unlike health care reform, Trump is more personally invested in making sure something happens on tax reform.”
“GOP House members came out of a conference meeting Wednesday morning still optimistic about a health care vote next week, provided the deal-making amendment gets fixed to subject Congress to the same Affordable Care Act regulation waivers as everyone else,” Axios reports.
“It’s still unclear whether there are still enough moderate holdouts to block the bill.”
For members: A Nightmare Scenario for Moderate Republicans
An influential super PAC with ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is set to spend another $3.5 million to support Karen Handel’s (R) campaign against Jon Ossoff (D) in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“The super PAC was the first major outside group to weigh in on the race, which is seen as an early test of Donald Trump’s popularity and a dry run for the 2018 midterm elections. It spent more than $3 million ahead of the April 18 special election with a wave of ads that mocked footage of Ossoff dressed as Han Solo in college and cast him as a stooge of Nancy Pelosi.”
First Read: “The GOP plan to pass any tax cut through Congress is to use reconciliation to prevent a Democratic filibuster against the legislation, so that it will need just 51 Senate votes instead of 60. But that means, with a 52-48 majority, there’s little margin for error. And by the way, using reconciliation presents its own challenges — due to the rule that it can’t increase deficits beyond a 10-year budget window. That’s why the Bush tax cuts expired after 10 years.”
However, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “Even a temporary tax cut in the corporate tax rate as short as three years might cost the government revenue beyond 10 years and run afoul of those reconciliation rules. Lower rates mean that businesses will use fewer tax credits… As a result, they will carry those credits forward and reduce revenues in future years.”
Politico: “The indelible takeaway from those first 100 days is that Trump’s assault on political norms has continued. In fact, he has violated Washington norms so casually and constantly that his norm-breaking is becoming normalized. That shattering of protocol and expectations may turn out to be more consequential than any of his massive policy promises or modest policy achievements to date.”
Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “The tax reform push is shaping up as the purest slice of the Trump agenda yet, an effort, mostly independent of Congress, to distill the president’s ideas into a bold legislative concept. As such, it appears disjointed and haphazard, not to mention mixed up with the stop-and-start health care push and the lingering need to keep the government’s lights on. Wedged together are major corporate tax cuts, individual tax cuts, expanded deductions and even Ivanka Trump’s favored child-care tax credit.”
“The so-called ‘pay-fors,’ ideas including the border-adjustment tax, look like they’ll be left out. The package looks unlikely to comply with congressional budget rules, making the tricky politics even more complicated. As for deficit hawks, they’ll be left out or called out as this proceeds. But this is the big Trump play; that he and his team can sell reforms whose only ideology is President Trump himself.”
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.