🤫 GOP goes for kill

Plus: Senate blows off disclosure | Monday, April 11, 2022

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Southern Company   Axios Sneak Peek By the Axios Politics team · Apr 11, 2022 Welcome back to Sneak. 🚨Breaking: GOP senators on the Intelligence Committee seek more intelligence sharing with Ukraine, including in Crimea, Axios' Hans Nichols scooped tonight. Smart Brevity™ count: 1,174 words ... 4.5 minutes. Edited by Glen Johnson.     1 big thing: GOP goes for kill Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios   House Republicans are so confident of snagging easy seats en route to regaining the majority this November, their big-spending outside super PAC is now targeting congressional districts President Biden won by as much as 16 points, Axios' Andrew Solender has learned. Driving the news: The Consumer Price Index report being issued at 8:30am ET tomorrow is expected to show annual inflation surging to 8.4% in March — the highest rate since December 1981. With Biden's approval numbers already languishing in the negatives, Republicans are going all-in. They've already seized a lead in generic congressional ballot polling. Why it matters: In targeting seats the president won in 2020 by an average of 8 points, the Congressional Leadership Fund is putting Democrats on notice it plans to play offense in previously safe Democratic districts. The group's offensive play comes after its Democratic counterpart, the House Majority PAC, reserved advertising time in 51 media markets as it prepares to defend districts in many once-safe Democratic regions. The GOP group, which is aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, is sitting on a mountain of cash and reported $93.5 million on hand as of the end of March. A CLF endorsement is both a signal it plans to spend serious dollars in a race and a sign to other donors McCarthy's team likes what it sees in the candidates. Details: All but one of the seven new "trailblazer" endorsements are in districts that Biden won by 7 points or more. Democrats themselves re-drew some of the targeted districts with an eye to shoring up their party's incumbents. The CLF endorsees: Mayra Flores, a respiratory care practitioner, in Texas' 34th District (Biden +16) Tanya Wheeless, an attorney, in Arizona's 4th District (Biden +10) Marc Molinaro, a county executive, in New York's 19th District (Biden +10) Colin Schmitt, a state assemblymember, in New York's 18th District (Biden +8) April Becker, an attorney, in Nevada's 3rd District (Biden +7) Cassy Garcia, a former staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the state's 28th District (Biden +7) Jim Bognet, a businessperson, in Pennsylvania's 8th District (Trump +3) Keep reading.     2. Senate blows off disclosure reports Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios   U.S. Senate officials are flouting a federal law requiring the public disclosure of senators' official expenses, according to records reviewed by Axios' Lachlan Markay. Why it matters: The lack of Senate expense disclosure has brought a key government transparency measure to a standstill, depriving the public of information about their representatives to which they're legally entitled. The disclosure details spending on staff salaries and other office expenses. For one senator in particular, the lack of reporting is particularly relevant politically. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won his seat in a 2021 special election and faces a re-election contest this year. Georgians should already have access to over a year of his office's expense data. Currently, they have just a few months' worth. A Warnock spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The background: A law passed in 2009 requires the secretary of the Senate to publish semiannual reports detailing each Senate office's itemized expenses. The move from paper expense reports to an online database was hailed at the time as a belated but important transparency measure. Since then, reports have been published every six months on the secretary's website, consistently within the legally mandated 60-day window following the semiannual reporting periods. They end in March and September. What's happening: The secretary of the Senate hasn't posted one of those disbursement reports in nearly a year. The last came in March 2021. For the first time since the reports went online, two semiannual disclosure periods have passed without any online reports on Senate disbursements. Spokespeople for the secretary of the Senate did not respond to multiple inquiries from Axios. Keep reading.     3. Charted: France's missing center Data: French Constitutional Council; Chart: Baidi Wang/Axios The presidential election in France yesterday didn't just cement a second-round rematch between Emmanuel Macron and far-right rival Marine Le Pen. It sealed the total collapse of the center-left and center-right parties that had governed France for decades, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. Why it matters: When the centrist, pro-European Macron comfortably defeated Le Pen in 2017, it was hailed as a victory for liberal elites that could stem the tide of populism sweeping across the West. Instead of a revival, Macron's establishment counterparts have today been vanquished in favor of an empowered far-right and far-left. The big picture: Either the center-right Republicans or center-left Socialists held the French presidency from 1981 until 2017 — when Macron burst onto the scene. He sought to modernize French politics under the banner of a new party — La République En Marche! — that would be both economically and socially liberal, in the traditional sense of the word. Domestic discontent and pressure from the surging far-right forced Macron to adopt some more conservative positions during his presidency. Nonetheless, he's remained staunchly pro-European. By the numbers: Macron came in first in Sunday's election. He had 27.84% of the vote, followed by Le Pen (23.15%), far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (21.95%), and insurgent far-right candidate Éric Zemmour (7.07%). Republican Valérie Pécresse, who at one point was touted as a legitimate contender for the second round, won just 4.78%. Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, finished with a stunning 1.75% — 10 years after Socialist President François Hollande came in first with 28.63% in the first round of the 2012 election. Keep reading.     A message from Southern Company Building the future of energy     Southern Company leads the way in offering clean and resilient energy solutions for our customers and communities. We achieved our interim net zero energy goal ten years early. Today, we continue our work toward a net zero future. Learn more.     4. Worthy of your time President Biden greets Steve Dettelbach, his nominee for director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, after he introduced him during a "ghost guns" event in the Rose Garden. Photo: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images   ✈️ Rep. Kai Kahele (D-Hawaii), who's weighing retiring from the House after just one term and running for governor, has not cast any votes in person since January. Instead, he's voted by proxy while continuing to work part-time as an airline pilot, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, Andrew and Axios' Sarah Mucha report in tonight's Sneak roundup. ⚖️ Former Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa) hit a major roadblock in her campaign to challenge Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), when a local judge overturned a state panel ruling that validated three pivotal signatures on her petition for access to the Democratic primary ballot. She plans to appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. 🛂 Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), one of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents, prodded the president on immigration, telling WMUR-TV "the administration really needs to step up here, develop a plan and get more resources to the southern border." 🗳️ Former Trump attorney John Eastman, a central figure in the Jan. 6 committee's probe of efforts to overturn the election in the lead-up to the Capitol riot, was part of a group that met with Wisconsin Republican lawmakers last month to press them to nullify the 2020 results, according to ABC News. 🇻🇦 Former Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) presented his credentials to Pope Francis as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, after he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in January, according to Vatican News.     5. Pic du jour Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images   Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, right, listens to India's national anthem as an honor cordon welcomed the country's defense minister, Rajnath Singh, to the Pentagon. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also hosted his diplomatic and national security counterparts at the State Department for the fourth US-India 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue.     A message from Southern Company Building the future of energy     Southern Company leads the way in offering clean and resilient energy solutions for our customers and communities. We achieved our interim net zero energy goal ten years early. Today, we continue our work toward a net zero future. Learn more.   📬 Thanks for reading tonight! 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