If it’s FRIDAY… Ukraine President Zelenskyy travels to Japan to attend G-7 meeting… NBC’s Dasha Burns reports that Ron DeSantis is set to officially announce 2024 bid next week, as Disney scraps plan for new campus amid feud with governor… Pro-Trump Super PAC ad hits DeSantis over past support for national sales tax… And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., suffered more complications with shingles than previously disclosed, NBC’s Frank Thorp confirms.
But FIRST... Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t alone in learning that a legislative supermajority can be both a political blessing and a curse.
The blessing: Your party gets to rack up legislative wins without any help from the opposition, bolstering your resume and potential legacy while pleasing the activists who helped you win.
The curse: There are no guardrails and there’s no need for moderation, which means a legislative agenda can go too far and be unpopular with public.
See Florida’s six-week abortion ban, as well as the abortion ban North Carolina’s legislative supermajority passed (over the Democratic governor’s veto). They accomplish big goals for the GOP’s base, but they could backfire with the broader electorate next fall.
(We’ve seen the Democratic Party forced to defend liberal policies coming from their supermajorities, too, but less so in swing states recently.)
Now compare that to the divided government that President Biden is now facing, which presents its own curse and opportunities.
The curse: A political opposition that is using the threat of default to extract policy concessions.
The potential opportunity: Striking a deal with the opposition that — while may be disappointing to each party’s base — does defuse the political tensions, at least for the time being.
It’s one of the strange things about our politics: Political parties and leaders strive to win elections — often at all costs — only to sometimes be burdened by the legislative results of those victories.
While the parties and leaders that lose elections sometimes get the opportunity to find common ground.
At least until the next election comes along.
Data Download: The number of the day is … 210.
That’s how many House Democrats have signed on to a discharge petition that would allow House members to bring a bill to raise the debt ceiling to a vote without authorization from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, NBC News’ Kyle Stewart and Ali Vitali report.
That means three House Democrats have not signed on to the petition, leaving signatories eight members short of the number needed — 218, or a majority of the House — to bring legislation to the floor without McCarthy. The three House Democrats who have not signed on yet are Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii, and Mary Peltola of Alaska.
Even if House Democrats secured 218 signatures on the petition, they would still need to wait an additional seven legislative days before it could be offered on the floor, according to Stewart and Vitali. There are only four legislative days left before June 1, the date when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. will default on its debt.
Other numbers to know
$1 billion: The value of a project Disney was planning in Florida but canceled on Thursday due to “changing business conditions” in the state, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is feuding with the company.
16: The number of days since the U.S. claimed it killed a “senior Al Qaeda leader” in Syria, a claim that several U.S. defense officials say they are no longer confident is true, the Washington Post reports, amid concerns the strike may have killed an innocent man.
5: The number of plaintiffs suing Montana over the state’s new TikTok ban, the New York Times reports.
3: The number of articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden that Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Thursday.
$3 billion: How much the Pentagon overvalued weapons it was sending to Ukraine in an accounting error, now unlocking money that the Biden administration can use to send more weapons without asking Congress for additional funds.
57.9%: The portion of third and fourth-year medical students polled who said they were unlikely or very unlikely to apply to a residency program in a state with abortion restrictions.
3.2 million acres: How much land has burned in Canada so far this year due to wildfires, the Washington Post reports.
Headline of the day
Eyes on 2024: Haley breaks from Trump on Jan. 6
Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley has walked a long and windy road when it comes to her one-time boss, former President Donald Trump. But this time, she’s again publicly breaking with him on a central issue to his candidacy — the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“It was not a beautiful day, it was a terrible day, and we don’t ever want that to happen again,” Haley said at an Iowa town hall Wednesday, per NBC News’ Ali Vitali.
“I don’t know enough about each individual [rioter] but that’s my rule: If you break the law, you pay the price.”
The comments harken back to Haley’s initial reaction to the 2021 attack, when she declared to the Republican National Committee two days after the attack that Trump’s “actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history,” and then told Politico that Trump “went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Months later, Haley had a different emphasis, praising Trump’s “strong legacy from his administration” in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, adding “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
So while Haley isn’t taking on Trump directly in her most recent town hall comments, it’s one of the more direct contrasts she’s made to the GOP frontrunner on the trail so far.
In other campaign news…
Dems start hitting Cameron: A new Democratic Governors Association-backed group is up with a new TV ad linking Kentucky Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the party’s newly minted gubernatorial nominee, to former GOP Gov. Matt Bevin by criticizing him for not appointing a special prosecutor to look at Bevin’s controversial pardons (Cameron did ask the FBI to investigate).
Texas two-step: Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn sharpened his criticism of Trump into his most direct yet, telling Texas reporters that Republicans “need to come up with an alternative” because “President Trump’s time has passed him by” and the GOP needs “a candidate who can actually win.”
Strange bedfellows: Trump’s top operative in South Carolina will be Austin McCubbin, the Post and Courier reports first, who previously managed Republican Rep. Nancy Mace’s re-election when she defeated a Trump-backed candidate in the primary.
DeSantis’ announcement nears: NBC News’ Dasha Burns reports that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won’t just be filing federal paperwork to run for president next week, but also plans to formally announce his bid. And the New York Times reports DeSantis has been telling donors that out of the three “credible” candidates for president (Trump, himself and President Biden), only he and Biden can win.
E-I-E-I-O: The new spot from the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. is a riff on the children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” except about how “Ron DeSalesTax” backed a national sales tax in Congress (the proposal would have slashed other taxes, including the federal income tax, in exchange).
Raising eyebrows: Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin released a campaign-style video preaching a broad, nationalized message about his vision for America, NBC News’ Ryan Nobles reports, even though he’s tried to downplay questions about whether he’s interested in running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Getting in the gamecock: The New York Times previews South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott’s presidential bid and his message, reporting his campaign is reserving $6 million for an initial TV and radio buy in early nominating states.
Similar bedfellows: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is tapping former Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who previously mounted his own longshot presidential bids in 2004 and 2008, as his campaign manager. And CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reports on the Wall Street executive who’s funded Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine group.
Sinema spending: Replace Sinema, a Democratic-aligned group that has advocated against Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s re-election, filed an FEC complaint questioning her campaign spending on “luxury hotels, chauffeurs, private jets, fancy dinners, and wine.” The senator’s spokesman called the accusations “desperate political attacks” in a statement to 3TV and CBS5.
ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world:
The Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped a ruling about the scope of immunity for internet companies who are sued for the content found on their platforms.
Two House members introduced a bill that would block pay for members of Congress if the U.S. government shuts down or defaults on its debt.
