This weekend in Rehoboth, a secret service officer on POTUS’s detail fell off his bike with Biden a few feet behind him. “It wasn’t me!” Biden screamed to onlookers.
Scoop: The Jan. 6 committee is planning a seventh hearing and is considering even more beyond that, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
It’s adopting universal vote by mail, sending every voter a ballot and keeping in-person vote options for those who need them. It’s the smartest, most effective way to run an election during a pandemic. Actually, it’s the smartest, most effective way to run an election, period.
#NEWS
: The GOP commissioner of Lancaster County, in southern Pennsylvania, is REFUSING TO COUNT MAIL-IN BALLOTS THAT COME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY UNTIL THERE IS A SUPREME COURT RULING.
#Election2020
As of 11:40 pm on Election Night, Maricopa County, which constitutes more than 60% of Arizona’s registered voters, has only counted roughly 38k in-person Election Day votes.
@KariLake
can definitely win this thing, folks. Buckle your seatbelts.
This summer, USPS quietly banned employees from providing witness signatures on absentee ballots. In recent weeks, postal unions pressed the agency to reverse the order, to help voters in states like Wisc., NC, and SC cast ballots. USPS wouldn't budge.
Susan Collins has been one of the only GOP senators to speak out against DeJoy's systematic gutting of the USPS. One thing she's left out: She wrote the bill 15 years ago to cripple the agency's finances. My latest for
@monthly
:
Since the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Republicans and high-profile conservatives have relentlessly attacked Biden for a plan to hire 87,000 new IRS agents.
But no such plan exists.
My latest for
@TIME
:
NEWS:
@SteveDaines
, who chairs the NRSC, endorses Trump on
@DonaldJTrumpJr
's podcast Triggered. "I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.
"The best four years i had in the U.S. senate was when President Trump was in the Oval Office," he says.
#NEWS
: The GOP commissioner of Lancaster County, in southern Pennsylvania, is REFUSING TO COUNT MAIL-IN BALLOTS THAT COME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY UNTIL THERE IS A SUPREME COURT RULING.
#Election2020
J.D. Vance has called for cutting off U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Tim Ryan has said America has a fundamental imperative to help defend Ukraine.
It's a distinction that could make a big difference in Ohio, where roughly 45k Ukrainian-Americans live and vote.
On
@DonaldJTrumpJr
’s podcast,
@gregsteube
says DeSantis’s team threatened to primary Florida MOCs if they endorsed Trump over him.
“That is not how leaders operate,” Steube says. “You don’t operate by fear. And I say, bring it on.”
DeSantis’ long history of staffing woes:
— One of the highest turnover rates in House
— No employed senior aide from his 2018 race works for him now
— Fired so many staffers as gov that some formed a support group
— Shedding staff 2 months into 2024 bid
.
@pnjaban
, Lake's lawyer, blames Hobbs, whose office tested and certified the machines ahead of the election, for the tabulator problems: "The Arizona Secretary of State is grossly incompetent and should not have been charged with this election."
Beasley has undeniably been a force on the field, but his ignorance and selfishness off the field is intolerable. He's become an embarrassing distraction—and the Bills would be wise at this point to let him go.
“We’re going to inundate them with so many mail-in ballots, their heads are going to spin.”
@KariLake
, who’s eying a Senate run, is now embracing the strategic value in VBM to turn out more Republican voters.
Half a million Republicans let ballots sit on their tables through Election Day
We’re not going to let that happen anymore.
We’re going to get out the vote and out vote the fraud.
There are roughly 1m ballots left to count in AZ. The Lake campaign says it needs roughly 35% of the remaining in-person Election Day votes to win.
The latest ballot dump from Maricopa County has her leading by more than 75%. Cheers are erupting from
@KariLake
’s war room.
THREAD: Surely a factor in Larry Hogan's decision not to run for president: sitting in the oppo research files of all his potential opponents is the fact that Maryland legislators unanimously beefed up the state's ethics laws because of his self-dealing.
NEW: Trump's allies are plotting to derail Tom Emmer's bid for House Majority Leader. Their grievances:
— Voting to certify 2020 election
— Telling 2022 House candidates to distance themselves from Trump
— Not endorsing Trump in 2024 primary
Scoop: GOP Reps. James Comer, Anna Paulina Luna, and Jim Jordan have sent Special Counsel Jack Smith a letter demanding he provide the House Oversight Committee with "all documents and communications" between the Special Counsel and DOJ relating to the Trump indictments. (1/2)
Trump’s lawyers are about to speak here at the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping, that is) moments after CNN and NBC News have declared Pennsylvania and the presidency for Joe Biden.
NEWS: Postal union leaders have proposed a plan to expedite the delivery of mail ballots; if implemented, the reform would result in absentee ballots taking less than 24 hours to get from mailboxes to local election boards, rather than 2-7 days.
This morning in NYC: PublicSq, the anti-woke marketplace working to build a parallel economy, goes public.
It’s investors—
@DonaldJTrumpJr
,
@nick_ayers
,
@RealOmeedMalik
,
@realmichaelseif
—just got to the New York Stock Exchange for the bell ringing chanting “USA! USA!”
“I’m not afraid of the media because I’ve worked in the media,”
@KariLake
tells tells me. “I don’t understand why people are afraid of the media. Half of these people—they’re not very smart."
Read more about Lake's campaign here—>
Two recent polls have
@KariLake
with an 11-point lead. Another has her ahead by two points.
Meanwhile, there are growing calls for her opponent, AZ Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, to recuse herself from overseeing an election in which she’s a candidate.
DeSantis on why it's important to shield his travel records: "With the security situation, how you do patterns of movements, if you're somebody that is targeted, which unfortunately I am... that could be something that could be helpful for ppl that may not want to do good things"
GOP lawmakers in swing states are blocking elections officials from processing absentee ballots early—ensuring a longer delay until we get the results. Are they engineering the crisis Trump wants to use to contest the election? My latest for
@monthly
:
The good news for those fighting Trump's efforts to slow the USPS and stymie the election: There’s an alternative way for voters to return absentee ballots without mailing them back: drop boxes. The bad news, Republicans are going after those now, too.
The NFL doesn’t need anymore time to figure out the right thing to do. This game cannot be played tonight.
The only thing that matters is Damar Hamlin.
#BillsMafia
Reminder: Maryland’s General Assembly unanimously changed the state’s ethics laws because Larry Hogan cancelled a planned $2.9 billion rail line in Baltimore and funneled millions of transportation dollars to projects nearby properties he owned.
Scoop:
@realannapaulina
is pregnant with her first child, expecting at the end of the summer. This would make make her only the 12th member of Congress out of more than 12,500 since Congress convened to ever give birth while in office.
Text messages between Hogan Gidley and Hope Hicks on Jan. 6.
Gidley: “Hey I know you’re seeing this. But he really should tweet something about Being NON-violent.”
Hicks: “I’m not there. I suggested it several times Monday and Tuesday and he refused.”
New: Jordan allies, in a bid to cripple Scalise's speaker candidacy, are sending around FEC docs that show Scalise has spent more than $500,000 through his congressional campaign account at DC's Capital Grille since 2011.
"That's a lot on steak and lobbyists," one says.
@Bease11
it's incredibly frustrating to watch the controversy you're creating eat up so much oxygen when this team has the potential to win a Super Bowl—and should be laser focused on bringing a championship to Buffalo. I wish you all the best. (2/2)
A point I keep hearing from AZ Dems and some Republicans: Kimberley Yee, the non-Trumpy GOP candidate for treasurer, is winning by 235k votes.
She's an incumbent, but it still means a lot of Rs and Is voted for her and not the rest of the MAGA slate.
@tedcruz
You can condemn a law that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality without being pro or
#LGBTQ
.
Like Bud Light, you should have just said nothing. Not this.
SCOOP: David Trone is running for Senate as a progressive who will safeguard abortion. Yet his company has donated tens of thousands to anti-abortion Republicans in recent years, including some state officials who moved to ban the procedure after Dobbs.
In July 2021, Trump was at a confab with Arizona's GOP candidates for governor. He mentions that
@KariLake
is there, and the crowd goes wild. Trump looks shocked.
When he walks off stage, the first thing he asks: "Who is Kari Lake?"
My profile for
@TIME
:
NEW: There are strikingly divergent campaign strategies in Arizona. Republicans are running as a single, unified ticket, hoping to capitalize on the intense enthusiasm for
@KariLake
. Dems are running more of an every-candidate-for-themselves playbook —>
Everyone, remember that the late counting of mail-in ballots—which polling indicated would lean overwhelmingly Democratic—is precisely how Trump and the GOP wanted it so they could contest and sow doubt in the election outcome.
#Election2020
“We’ll have a mug shot," says
@JHoganGidley
. "For the record, it will be the most manly, most masculine, most handsome mug shot of all time. I can say that definitely, before having even seen it."
NEW: The next Maricopa drop will be the final MAIL ballots received Sat. through Tues., according to a source familar. These are expected to be evenly split based on party affiliation; they shouldn’t change the margin much. The Election Day votes should swing heavily to Lake.
According to this New Yorker piece, Luzerne County Republican election officials are not counting ballots that come in after today—despite the Supreme Court saying they should.
In Wisconsin,
@DonaldJTrumpJr
rips state Sen. Andre Jacque for authoring a bill that would ban IVF, as President Trump pushes GOP officials and candidates to back IVF access.
Jacque is running against Trump-endorsed Tony Wied in the race to replace Mike Gallagher.
In 2015, early in his administration, Hogan cancelled the $2.9b Baltimore Red Line and rerouted those dollars to highway, road, and bridge projects, many of which were adjacent to properties owned by his real estate firm, from which he did not disinvest.
Ahead of the debate, Trump FaceTimes with
@alexbruesewitz
, a MAGA operative who recently joined his campaign staff, and a group of allied online influencers.
"Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history."
@CharlotteAlter
takes a break from maternity leave to write this week's TIME cover story. Read here:
@Bease11
Beasley, man, I've been a huge fan and would love nothing more than for you to keep crushing it with the Bills this season. You're a warrior. Also, I respect your right to make decisions about your body. But as a lifelong Bills fan and season ticker holder ... (1/2)
In his bid to become speaker, Kevin McCarthy moves to effectively gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, the independent panel that was gearing to investigate members of Congress who played a role on Jan. 6.
Another year we’re going into the bye week with a taste like this in our mouth (last year, Hail Murray). Don’t be surprised if the Bills are unstoppable after tonight.
#BillsMafia
Think about everything Buffalo has gone through over the last year:
— Racist mass shooting at Tops
— Deadly blizzard that kills nearly 40 people
— Damar Hamlin
Buffalo is a city used to heartbreak and tragedy, but the last 12 months have been on another level.
Most of the national press ignores this side of Hogan because they like the fact that he criticizes Trump.
But this part of his history would be weaponized against him in a presidential campaign—and if he gained traction, which was unlikely, more reporters would start digging.
The siblings of Kat Massey, a Buffalo victim, have spent the last week vacillating between rage, despair, and crippling guilt, obsessing over the little twists of fate that could have been the difference between life and death.
My latest story for
@TIME
:
The lawmakers also asked Smith for "all documents and communications" concerning his authority to empanel grand juries in D.C. and Florida and "all documents and communications" concerning his authority to grant immunity to witnesses.
Meanwhile, he tried to cut state funding for the Purple Line, in suburban D.C., and so badly mismanaged the project that it eventually cost MD taxpayers billions more than originally projected, to be completed four and a half years behind schedule.
Scoop: Angela Alsobrooks is getting into the MD Senate race this week, with a video launch on Tuesday and a rally on Wednesday.
She's expected to draw high-profile endorsements in the coming weeks, potentially positioning her as an early frontrunner.
Totally appropriate that
@MLB
chose to move the All-Star game to a state with universal vote by mail. The most effective way to get more people to vote.
Last week, I reported that Steube, among others in the GOP’s Florida delegation, was preparing to endorse Trump in the coming days or weeks.
This now brings the tally to five in Florida for Trump over DeSantis: Gaetz, Luna, Donalds, Mills, and Steube.
“I don’t want to keep talking about it,”
@LarryHogan
said when pressed on my latest
@monthly
piece about his advancing transportation projects near his real estate properties. I can understand why. (Read the story here: )
Hours after launching his Senate bid to challenge Joe Manchin, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice endorses Trump.
“I believe that President Trump not only can win. I believe he will win.”
BREAKING: Governor of West Virginia
@JimJusticeWV
endorses President
@realDonaldTrump
for 2024!
Says he believes he can win and will win the election!
Justice is also now running against Manchin for Senate.
Let’s go!
Two points. 1) PA’s secretary of state ordered those ballots to be segregated in late October, so Alito is making PA elections officials do something they are already doing. 2) The ruling is expected to affect roughly 4,000 ballots. Biden is currently winning by more than 27k.
No way to call Pennsylvania for now:
#SCOTUS
Justice Alito issued an order that ballots received after after 8pm on election day in Pennsylvania be set aside - state leg did not change the voting laws per the constitution- state court did. This could be huge for
@realDonaldTrump
GOP donors and MAGA stalwarts are pouring millions into Byron Brown's bid to thwart
@Indiawaltonbflo
's historic rise. Why? Many of them, it turns out, are real estate developers in Buffalo with close ties to the incumbent. My latest for
@monthly
:
Scoop:
@BenCardinforMD
to announce his retirement from the Senate in the coming days, setting up a potentially crowded and fierce primary battle to replace him in one of the bluest states in the nation.
All in all, it was hardly worth the dent in his reputation for a presidential bid that had no real chance of going anywhere. A sensible move by Hogan not to run.
Steube is among the members of the Florida GOP congressional delegation who endorsed Trump.
After he was hospitalized in a tree-trimming accident last fall, Trump was one of the first people to reach out to him and his wife. He says he never heard from DeSantis.
"While emoluments may seem like a problem unique to this president, the phenomenon of government executives benefiting financially from private holdings via their policy or spending choices extends far beyond Pennsylvania Avenue." My latest:
.
@LarryHogan
loves to criticize Trump on camera but then follow the Trumpian playbook the next day. He recently vetoed a bill to expedite the counting of mail ballots—the same move Trump allies used in 2020 to sow doubt in the election. (1/5)
#MDpolitics
“As president, I don’t have the authority to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” Biden tells reporters. “The only way we can do that is through elections for the United States Congress.”
NEW: Trump ally
@alexbruesewitz
plans to announce whether he will run for Gallagher’s seat in Green Bay the week of April 8.
Noteworthy: the URL has recently been purchased.
This is a very cogent argument, with a strong emphasis on the fact that many Democrats disapprove of Biden for not doing things he simply cannot do on his own.
frustrated progressives complain 79-year-old President Joe Biden hasn't shown enough "fight" after setbacks on abortion/climate/voting rights
in reality, their priorities have collided with structural impediments to majority rule much older than Biden
Plenty of lawmakers have built huge online followings, but
@realannapaulina
is the first social media influencer to parlay her following into a seat in Congress.
Now, the Florida freshman with a singular bio is leading a populist crusade on Capitol Hill.
“Maricopa County is known for having some of the best election practices in the country...Now a group with no expertise, improvising procedures as it goes, is sowing doubt about the result of a well-run election.” Alarming report from
@votinggeek
:
“We vote at the ballot box,"
@DonaldJTrumpJr
tells me. "But we also vote with our dollars." Inside the recent eruption of avowedly ideological businesses and the conservative efforts to build their own parallel economy:
Scoop:
@SenWarren
and
@SenBooker
sent a letter to USDA
@SecVilsack
on Monday demanding answers on how the agency's top sugar analyst helped to torpedo the Biden administration's bid to block a major sugar merger.
Trump’s interview with Ryan, a former Navy SEAL who hosts a popular veterans podcast, is scheduled to air on the three-year anniversary of the Kabul airport attack.
THREAD: Larry Hogan was able to coast in a blue state by evading the most divisive social issues, like abortion, which he called "settled law," enabling him for most of his term as governor to say he was pro-life while never taking a stance to expand or restrict abortion access.
Hogan also wasted hundreds of millions of dollars already spent to build the Red Line and gave up $900m from the Obama admin for it. He then directed the funds he freed up to road and highway projects that benefited his private real estate company.