Holiday Stalemate Over Increase In Payroll Taxes Tests Obama, Republican Lawmakers

“President-elect Donald Trump has tapped multiple people for overlapping foreign affairs posts. Get ready for turf battles and confusion over who’s in charge,” Politico reports. “The positions include special envoys whose exact responsibilities are unusually vague and that echo roles traditionally played by ambassadors, assistant secretaries of State and National Security Council staffers.”

Elaine Godfrey: “The normal rules of public disgrace may no longer apply to Donald Trump. But at least some expectation of good behavior remains, it seems, for a politician in Trump’s orbit…” “A man who reportedly dreams of being Florida governor is now facing the blunt reality of his own political irrelevance.”

(WASHINGTON) — The House Ethics Committee on Monday accused Matt Gaetz of “regularly” paying for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl, and purchasing and using illicit drugs as a member of Congress, as lawmakers released the conclusions of a nearly four-year investigation that helped sink his nomination for attorney general. The 37-page report by the bipartisan panel includes explicit details of sex-filled parties and vacations that Gaetz, now 42, took part in from 2017 to 2020 while representing Florida’s western panhandle. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Congressional investigators concluded that Gaetz violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office, though not federal sex trafficking laws.

New York Times: “Heading into the 2024 election, the conservative group Turning Point Action made a risky and expensive bet as it tried to fix Republicans’ early-voting problem: It zeroed in on infrequent voters who seemed to lean to the right.” “Calling its effort ‘Chase the Vote,’ the group focused heavily on Arizona, where it is based and says it spent tens of millions of dollars to help elect Donald Trump.

(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — First it was Canada, then the Panama Canal. Now, Donald Trump again wants Greenland. The President-elect is renewing unsuccessful calls he made during his first term for the U. S. to buy Greenland from Denmark, adding to the list of allied countries with which he’s picking fights even before taking office on Jan.

Ron Brownstein: “This time, Trump’s fate will be much more in his own hands. If he can deliver greater economic stability for working families, while avoiding too many firefights on militant MAGA priorities, strategists in both parties agree that he will be in a strong position to consolidate the gains he’s made among traditionally Democratic constituencies, such as Black, Latino, and younger white men.” “But if an unbound Trump veers in directions that too many voters don’t want to follow—including vaccine skepticism, politicizing the criminal-justice system against his opponents, and the separation of undocumented parents from their U.