“A bipartisan House effort is underway to fundamentally change how sexual misconduct and other bad behavior on Capitol Hill is identified, investigated and eradicated,” Politico reports.
“But the widely-held goal of transforming the workplace culture of Congress could quickly run up against longstanding lawmaker resistance to tools necessary to police themselves, with some worried it will turn into another avenue for partisan mudslinging.”
“Former Biden administration officials are contending with a new reality: Future administrations won’t have a choice but to confront the way the Trump administration has disrupted how the government works,” NOTUS reports.
“That’s the premise of a new set of proposals published Tuesday in the law and policy journal Just Security, authored by several former Biden officials and experts at think tanks.”
“In the tiny corner of the legal world that follows such things, the March ruling crashed down like a thunderbolt,” the New York Times reports.
“It was issued by an obscure government agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board, whose purpose is to protect federal workers from unfair firings. But the decision backed President Trump’s assertion that he has broad authority to reshape the executive branch as he wants.”
“The ruling broke with decades of precedent, accepting the White House’s argument that Article II of the Constitution gives Mr. Trump the power to dismiss officials without due process. By that theory, he can essentially erase civil service protections, even for public servants — in this case, immigration judges — whose engagement with the law often puts them at odds with Mr. Trump’s political aims.”
“The congressional town hall is becoming an endangered species,” Axios reports.
“August recess once meant lawmakers returning home to face constituents — sometimes friendly, sometimes furious. After a wave of explosive confrontations last year, many lawmakers have stopped them altogether.”
“Days after the completion this month of a $14 million renovation, the shallow water in the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool had more algae in it than at any recorded point in the month of June for at least five years, according to a specialized analysis of satellite data,” the Washington Post reports.
NOTUS: Trump administration admits contractors to blame for Reflecting Pool damage.
“The number of Senate-confirmed officials who have left their roles in the Trump administration is more than double the amount of departures at this point of President Trump’s first term,” NewsNation reports.
“When major disasters strike, Americans are routinely waiting weeks — or even months — to receive presidential approval for aid. And if they live in a state that didn’t support President Donald Trump, chances are greater that aid will be denied,” the AP reports.
“Since taking office last year, Trump has approved about 65 requests for major disaster declarations and denied more than two dozen others from states, tribes or territories seeking federal financial assistance following hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, floods and fires.”
“Morale at the Social Security Administration — which is at a 59-year staffing low due to the Trump administration’s sweeping workforce cuts — is poor,” NOTUS reports.
“To fix it, SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano has twice sent staff packages of chocolate-covered pretzels. They’re from his daughter’s company, Pretzables, emblazoned with Pretzable’s branding, website and phone number, as well as a line thanking employees for their work.”
“The pretzels have not addressed the underlying morale issue.”
Jill Filipovic: “If everyone is a sexual predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs to be held accountable).”
“MAGA Republicans seem to be having their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.”
“It’s impossible to please everybody. Before I ran for governor, I had an 80 percent approval rating. As soon as I announced, I had a 43 percent approval rating Immediately, half of the people said, ‘Fuck him! I’m not going to see his movies anymore.’”
— Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), quoted by The Hill.
“If a Republican enters the Oval Office in 2025, whether it’s Donald Trump or someone else, there is a good chance that president will turn to the same electronic database to staff the White House and federal agencies,” the New York Times reports.
“Think of it as a right-wing LinkedIn. This so-called Project 2025 — part of a $22 million presidential transition operation at a scale never attempted before in conservative politics — is being led by the Heritage Foundation, a group that has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era.”
New York Times: “One vital test Mr. Biden faces is making all his new economic laws work as intended. Much of his economic legacy will depend on how effectively his administration allocates trillions of dollars in spending and tax incentives contained in the economic bills that Mr. Biden signed into law during his first two years in office.”
“Across the White House and several agencies, officials are trying to stretch dollars to meet Mr. Biden’s ambitious goals, including making high-speed internet available to everyone in the country, replacing all lead pipes that carry drinking water and building out a nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations. In those cases and many others, officials are working with far less money than the president had initially proposed, a side effect of the compromises he accepted to win bipartisan support to enact his agenda.”
CNN: “Nearly a dozen years ago when Barack Obama was president, a newly emboldened House GOP majority came to power, promising to rein in the Democratic agenda, cut spending and investigate a White House they believed had run rampant. What resulted: Years of intense feuding between the two parties and a government in gridlock as Washington careened from one potential fiscal crisis to the next.”
“Now, as Democrats are poised to hold a narrow Senate majority – and Republicans are expecting a razor-thin House majority of their own – lawmakers in both parties have a deeply pessimistic view over the next two years and are bracing for an ugly period of legislating in Washington.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Back when things were going badly, pressure began building on Biden to do something to turn his administration around. When an administration is perceived to be in trouble, often the first change presidents make is to bring on a new chief of staff. And sure enough, in late January the Washington Post reported that Chief of Staff Ron Klain’s job was in trouble. At that point, the poorly regarded U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was still fresh in people’s minds. Meanwhile, inflation was building, and the big Build Back Better spending package (the one that eventually became the climate and health bill) was repeatedly pronounced dead.”
“Biden, to his credit, did not do something. He presumably knew that the case against Klain was weak and that his administration was reasonably well-organized and well-run. So he kept Klain on. It appears to have been the right decision.”
“President Biden’s move this week to cancel student loan debt for tens of millions of borrowers and reduce future loan payments for millions more comes with a huge catch, economists warn: It does almost nothing to limit the skyrocketing cost of college and could very well fuel even faster tuition increases in the future,” the New York Times reports.
“That downside is a direct consequence of Mr. Biden’s decision to use executive action to erase some or all student debt for individuals earning $125,000 a year or less, after failing to push debt forgiveness through Congress. Experts warn that schools could easily game the new structure Mr. Biden has created for higher education financing, cranking up prices and encouraging students to load up on debt with the expectation that it will never need to be paid in full.”
Janan Ganesh: “The question is whether, over a large enough sample size, a country can survive the sending of its ablest people to the private sector. In a sense, democratic capitalism is self-eroding. In allowing for private careers of such lavish pay and privacy, it makes politics into a mug’s game. The resulting decline in laws and institutions in turn threatens the economy.”
“If the Tory circus distresses you, consider that, in Labour’s shadow team, the experience comes from someone who has spent a quarter of a century in parliament without leaving much mark (Yvette Cooper) and a failed ex-leader (Ed Miliband). Autocracies at least allow officials enough scope for graft and the indulgence of peccadillos to keep the talent coming.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Republicans are happy to put anyone in office as long as they’ll be a reliable vote. Democrats are looking more for substance from politicians. That didn’t used to be the case — as recently as the 1980s, neither party had a reputation for politicians who were more prepared or took the job more seriously. Then Republicans nominated George W. Bush for the presidency with far too limited experience. And then they nominated Trump.”
“Of course, there are Republicans in Congress — and in statehouses and other positions — who take governing seriously, and Democrats who don’t. But the parties are no longer equal in that respect.”
“One of the sad things about all of this is that partisan polarization among voters has actually made candidates less important. Theoretically, at least, that should give parties more freedom to nominate candidates based on experience and an expressed interest in public affairs. Parties still care about any small potential advantages they can get, and in a close campaign even very small factors matter. So that may sometimes argue for a know-nothing celebrity candidate. But the truth is, Republicans could really use some legislative talent in Congress — especially if they win control of it in November.”
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.