DNC Hires Staff in Six Battleground States

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“It’s the DNC’s first round of staff hires in battleground states, drawing an early outline of the 2020 electoral map: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, four of the closest states that Trump won in 2016, as well as Arizona — which has slowly been moving to the left in recent years and voted for Trump by a narrow 3.5 percentage points in 2016 — and Ohio, a traditional swing state that some Democrats argue should be considered a second-tier priority in 2020,” Politico reports.

FEC Clarifies U.S. Election Law for Trump

“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election. This is not a novel concept.“

— Ellen Weintraub, the head of the Federal Election Commission, “released a statement on Thursday evening reiterating, emphatically, that foreign assistance is illegal in U.S. elections,” Politico reports.

Democrats Don’t Have a Power Agenda

“The Democratic Party has lots of policy ideas. But policymaking is downstream from power. The kinds of policies that get crafted, considered, and passed, reflect the balance of power in society. And for all the clarity and rigor Democrats bring to the policy debate, they don’t have a clear theory of power — who they think holds it, and what, if anything, they want to do about it.”

Ezra Klein