Morning Digest: Chicago mayor: ‘If it were up to Dan Lipinski, I wouldn’t be able to marry my wife.’

Lipinski beat Newman 51-49 in 2018, but he doesn’t enjoy anything like the financial advantage he had two years ago. Lipinski held an $868,000 to $628,000 cash-on-hand lead at the end of 2019, which is considerably smaller than his $1.6 million to $237,000 edge at the close of 2017. Unlike last cycle, though, there’s another…

225,000 jobs added in January, but annual revision chopped a half-million jobs off total under Trump

The government has established several categories to gauge the unemployment rate. The one most media focus 90% of their attention on is labeled U3. This counts as unemployed those jobless people who have looked for work sometime during the past four weeks without getting hired. The rate in January was 3.6%. U6 covers both unemployment, underemployment, and discouraged…

White House plans retaliation against Vindman over impeachment testimony

Bloomberg reports that Vindman would likely be rotated to the Department of Defense, ending his time at the White House several months early, and says, “The White House intends to portray any house-cleaning as part of a downsizing of the NSC staff,” according to two sources “familiar with the matter.” There’s no word on what will happen…

Morning Digest: Competitive race to succeed longtime GOP congressman begins to take shape

Campaign Action Suffolk County Director of Health Education Nancy Hemendinger announced Wednesday that she would run despite failing to get the endorsement of the county party chairs the previous day. Hemendinger has worked in the department for 36 years, and this appears to be her first run for office. Assemblyman Mike LiPetri also said the…

Trump’s State of the Union doesn’t need a fact check, it needs a lie check

Preexisting conditions: One of Trump’s biggest, most important outright lies during the SOTU was that “We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.” It cannot be emphasized enough what a flaming lie this is. The Trump administration is backing a court case that would completely overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for people with…

Nancy Pelosi rips Trump’s State of the Union ‘manifesto of mistruths,’ literally and figuratively

Pelosi sought to shift attention from Trump’s reality TV State of the Union to his real governing priorities: his budget, which will show “the stark reality of his agenda.”  “A federal budget should be a statement of our national values, and the President has sadly shown that he does not value the good health of…

Senate Republicans have no regrets over impeachment cover-up, even as White House hides key emails

Graham used his time on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures to call on Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch to launch a major investigation of Biden, also targeting the whistleblower who launched the House’s Trump-Ukraine probe. “Jim, if you’re watching the show, I hope you are … let’s call these people in. Eventually, we’ll get to…

The Daily Kos guide to the Iowa caucuses

On top of that, the apparent Iowa frontrunners, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, are neck and neck when you average all polls, and two other candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, are also poised to take a share of the delegates. As a result, even though the press will crown a “winner,” that contender will…