POLITICO Playbook PM: The Fed’s coronavirus rate cut fails to satisfy Trump
SHOT … WSJ: “Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates By Half Percentage Point,” by Nick Timiraos: “The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate by a half percentage point on Tuesday morning, delivering a booster shot to stem potential economic disruptions from the spreading coronavirus epidemic with its first between-meeting move since the financial crisis.
“Tuesday’s cut lowered the federal-funds rate to a range between 1% and 1.25%. The action was approved unanimously and the Fed in a statement held out the prospect for further stimulus.” WSJ
CHASER … THE DOW was down more than 500 points, as of 1:15 p.m. The latest numbers, via WSJ
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP at the National Association of Counties legislative conference, on interest rate cuts: “Do it more, do it a little bit more, you want to be competitive with other countries. … I’d like to see our Fed lead instead of being led.”
-- ON AMERICA: “I love rural America, all that red.”
-- ON TENNESSEE STORM DAMAGE: Trump said he will travel Friday to Tennessee to survey the damage caused by tornadoes that left at least 22 dead.
TREASURY SECRETARY STEVEN MNUCHIN, via ZACH WARMBRODT (@Zachary): “Mnuchin applauds Fed rate cut and downplays comparisons of coronavirus to 2008. ‘This is going to have an impact in the short term on the economy. It's very different than the financial crisis. The good news here is there will be an end in sight.’”
Good Tuesday afternoon. DARREN SAMUELSOHN is joining Business Insider as D.C. bureau chief, launching their new office in Washington. He is currently a senior White House reporter at POLITICO.
VOTING IS NOW UNDERWAY in 14 states (plus American Samoa and Democrats Abroad). POLITICO’s campaign team is tracking the day’s events and highlights here.
NYT’s SYDNEY EMBER in St. Paul, Minn.: “Sanders Campaign Was Caught Off Guard by Quick Massing of Opposition”
OK, BLOOMBERG! via Caitlin Oprysko and Marc Caputo in Miami: “‘I’m not helping Bernie Sanders. I’m trying to help myself,’ he told POLITICO as he campaigned in Florida. …
“He asserted that criticism he was siphoning votes away from Biden, the only other moderate left in the race, went both ways: ‘If you think I’m gonna siphon from him, he’s siphoning from me.’
“Bloomberg later complained more definitively that it was Biden who was ‘taking votes away from me,’ telling reporters in a news conference that ‘it goes in both directions’ and bristling at questions about whether he would drop out of the race. ‘Have you asked Joe whether he's going to drop out?’ he asked. ‘When you ask him that, then you can call me.’” POLITICO
-- NOTE: Today is Bloomberg’s first day on a ballot.
EXPECTATIONS SETTING … BUZZFEED’S @RosieGray: “Bloomberg was asked what he would consider a win tonight and what states he expects to win. ‘I don't know whether you're gonna win any. You don't have to win states you have to win delegates.’ Said he expected nobody will get a majority and this will go to the convention.”
-- @MarcACaputo: “Asked if he wants a contested convention, Bloomberg says ‘I don’t think I can win any other way.’”
TALKER -- “Did Mike Bloomberg waste $500 million running for president? We’re about to find out,” by WaPo’s Dan Zak, Jada Yuan and Ben Terris
OBAMA ALUMNI -- “Denis McDonough: I worked closely with Joe Biden, and here’s why I support him,” in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press
NATASHA BERTRAND and DANIEL LIPPMAN: “Trump loyalist installed in intelligence post on National Security Council”: “A White House lawyer and former counsel to the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes has been named senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, the latest instance of President Donald Trump elevating a trusted loyalist to control the intelligence community.
“Michael Ellis, a deputy to White House lawyer John Eisenberg, started in the role on Monday, according to a senior administration official and a former national security official. … Ellis also featured in the Ukraine scandal.” POLITICO
BOLTON NEWS … CNN’s MANU RAJU: “Democrats weigh holding Trump officials in contempt and are torn over Bolton subpoena” … BRIAN STELTER: “John Bolton's book has been delayed until May due to White House review”
HEADS UP -- “U.N. agency: Iran nearly triples stockpile of enriched uranium,” by AP’s Kiyoko Metzler and David Rising in Vienna: “Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium over the last three months in violation of its deal with world powers and is refusing to answer questions about three possible undeclared nuclear sites, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Tuesday.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency made the statement in a confidential report distributed to member countries that was seen by The Associated Press. The agency said of Feb. 19, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile amounted to 1,020.9 kilograms (1.1 tons), compared to 372.3 kilograms noted in its last report on Nov. 3, 2019.” AP
CLICKER -- “How We Got to Super Tuesday: 6 Campaigns in Photos,” by NYT’s Tanner Curtis and Isabella Grullón Paz
WHAT TO WATCH TONIGHT -- “The Overlooked Voters Who Could Decide the 2020 Race,” by NYT’s Jennifer Medina and Manny Fernandez in Los Angeles: “Long overlooked by the political establishment and dismissed as a sleeping giant of a demographic that didn’t vote as reliably as it could, millions of Latinos are expected to go to the polls on Tuesday in key states like Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and, most significantly, in Texas and California. One analysis estimates that roughly one-third of the 643 delegates up for grabs in those two states will be determined by Latino voters.
“Latinos are expected to make up the largest nonwhite ethnic voting bloc in 2020. … Polls have consistently shown that Latino voters in Texas and California list health care, economic inequality and immigration as their top issues. But the upcoming primaries are likely to show the splits and contradictions among the group. Interviews with dozens of Latino voters in El Paso and Los Angeles in recent days show that though Mr. Sanders has built up a loyal base among Latinos, particularly younger and working-class voters, there are many lifelong Democrats who are still searching for a moderate alternative.” NYT
-- KIM ZETTER: “Los Angeles County’s risky voting experiment”: “Los Angeles County spent nine years working on a government-designed and -owned voting system with the goal of setting a new standard for security, reliability and transparency. Instead, millions of county voters on Super Tuesday will cast ballots on a system in which numerous security flaws were found. This has prompted some election integrity experts to call for barring the system from elections until they’re fully resolved.
“The issues include multiple digital and physical vulnerabilities, some of them identified in a recent assessment by California’s secretary of state and others identified by outside computer security experts. Those security gaps, if left unfixed, could provide a gateway for a rogue election staffer or someone else with physical access to alter software on the voting machines or their back-end computer systems, possibly changing votes or otherwise disrupting the presidential race.” POLITICO
AFTERNOON READ -- “The worst prognosticator of 2016 makes a 2020 comeback,” by Alex Thompson: “Plouffe calmed worried liberals — whom he sometimes jokingly called ‘bedwetters’ — throughout the fall of that year with his repeated assurances that Hillary Clinton had a ‘100 percent chance’ to win. … Plouffe’s cocksure predictions have haunted him ever since. Most recently, they spurred him to write a book about 2020, which comes out Tuesday. Along with a successful election-year podcast and a lead hand in a $75 million digital effort on the left, Plouffe has dived back into the political fray. …
“The product is ‘A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump’ … It focuses on small things individuals can do that could be significant in the aggregate. … Plouffe warns that he thinks Trump will be much stronger this time around with all the advantages of incumbency, an almost singular focus on reelection and a campaign team that will likely be less chaotic than the one that replaced its top leadership three months before the election in 2016. Trump also won’t be outspent like he was last time.” POLITICO … $16.69 on Amazon
KHASHOGGI UPDATE -- “Lawmakers want the DNI to make public the intelligence community’s assessment of who’s responsible for killing Jamal Khashoggi,” by WaPo’s Ellen Nakashima: “The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Democratic vice chairman sent a letter Monday to the acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, urging him to reconsider his agency’s decision not to declassify information related to the brutal October 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident at the time of his death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.” WaPo
SCOTUS WATCH -- “An Abortion Clinic’s Fate Before a Transformed Supreme Court,” by NYT’s Adam Liptak in Shreveport, La.: “Kathaleen Pittman, the director of the Hope Medical Group for Women, remembers when there were 11 abortion clinics in Louisiana. Now there are only three, hers among them. Soon, depending on how the Supreme Court rules in a case to be argued on Wednesday, there may be just one, in New Orleans, more than 300 miles away. …
“Two justices appointed by President Trump have joined the court since the last time it heard a major abortion case, and the arguments on Wednesday will illuminate the impact of that rightward shift. And the decision in the case, June Medical Services v. Russo, No. 18-1323, expected by June, will provide the first concrete evidence of how a transformed court regards the breadth and future of the constitutional right to abortion.” NYT
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- “Trump wants to lift the ban on transporting liquefied natural gas on trains. Opponents say it’s a risk,” by WaPo’s Will Englund: “A proposed Transportation Department rule allowing liquefied natural gas, or LNG, shipments and imposing no additional safety regulations has drawn widespread criticism … President Trump has set a deadline of May 10 to put the rule into effect, nearly eight months before results are expected from a Federal Railroad Administration study of the safety of the tank cars that would be used.” WaPo
TRANSITIONS -- Liza Acevedo is now a director in SKDKnickerbocker’s D.C. public affairs department. She previously was deputy national press secretary for Julián Castro’s campaign. … Jim Czaban is now a partner in Loeb & Loeb’s FDA regulatory and compliance department. He previously was partner and chair of DLA Piper’s FDA group.
Gloss