DeSantis Ends DeSaster, Elites v Non Elites, and Biden Good News on Economy, but bad news - No Labels
USA Today - "real action" is third parties
WAPO: Ron DeSantis ends presidential campaign, endorses Trump
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said in a video message he posted Sunday afternoon on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. “They watched his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance, and they see Democrats using lawfare to this day to attack him.”
Axios: Trump-Haley brawl in New Hampshire gets personal
New Hampshire's GOP presidential primary is taking a nasty turn in the final hours before Tuesday's voting.
Former President Trump is accusing Nikki Haley of not being "smart enough" to be president, and once again tapping into race-based attacks — while Haley, 52, says Trump, 77, may be in mental "decline," and incapable of being president into his 80s.
The New York Times:
Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, a Democrat running a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, said on Saturday that he would consider running on the ticket of No Labels, a centrist group exploring an independent bid, if it appeared the general election would be a rematch between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump.
'People are criticizing them because they believe whomever they offer on their ticket will hurt Joe Biden,' Mr. Phillips said after a town-hall event at a senior center in Nashua, N.H. 'That's false. If they put someone at the top of the ticket who could actually drive votes from Donald Trump, every Democrat in the United States of America should be celebrating it. They haven't made that determination. ' Mr. Phillips has a long relationship with Ms. Jacobson and No Labels from his tenure in the group's congressional Problem Solvers Caucus, an organization that promotes policies with bipartisan support.
The real action is in November’s general election when third-party contenders who can’t win can still influence who loses. We’re all watching the wrong race.
WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel: The Them-vs.-Us Election Not all rich people are ‘elite’—and that helps explain America’s cultural divide.
More striking is the elite view on bedrock American principles, central to the biggest political fights of today. Nearly 50% of elites believe the U.S. provides “too much individual freedom”—compared with nearly 60% of voters who believe there is too much “government control.” Seventy-seven percent of elites support “strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity” to fight climate change, vs. 28% of everyone else.
In conversation after conversation here, I detected resignation and helplessness among business executives when it came to their counterparts in government. There’s a desperate desire to see the world’s political leaders appeal more to moderates instead of capitalizing on extremes, but there’s also recognition that the political market doesn’t easily reward the people in the middle.
Thomas Jefferson Institute’s Steve Haner: Democrats Preserve Electric Car Mandate, But Promise Review of Virginia Net Zero Laws
For the third year in a row, Democrats in the Virginia Senate have shot down an effort to divorce Virginia’s auto dealers from California’s impending mandates on electric vehicle sales. But before the predetermined vote went down, the new chair of the committee made a surprise announcement that he and his colleagues are open to revisiting Virginia’s legal rush to end fossil fuels.
Richmond Times Dispatch : 'Intelligence failure' preceded Huguenot graduation shooting, school security official says
The 29-page Sands Anderson report said Jackson, who had been on Homebound instruction, participated in the graduation ceremony without the school principal’s authorization and despite the fact that several RPS staff members knew of concerns about his safety.
For example, on June 8, 2022, Jackson’s mother, Tameeka Jackson-Smith, had emailed a school counselor and the school’s principal and copied RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras that “we are still homeless from our home being shot up by students at Huguenot.”
The Sands Anderson report says Jackson-Smith emailed her son’s school counselor, Monique Harris, on Feb. 2, 2023, saying her son was placed in class to take a test “with people who literally tried to kill him.”
Richmond Times Dispatch: Legislation introduced to fund arena for Wizards, Capitals as transportation questions loom
(Senator) Surovell sponsored the bill because Youngkin has agreed to help address Metro’s funding problem, “which is a critical piece of Northern Virginia and the overall Virginia economy,” he said, and because the project represents a long-term investment for the entire state.
He has ideas on how to improve the bill but declined to share them, saying it would be premature.
Good News for Joe Biden - Consumers haven't felt this good about the economy since 2021: 'December was no fluke'
