“President Donald Trump is notorious for selecting advisers who closely follow his command — and firing those who don’t. But Elon Musk seems to be the exception to that rule,” Politico reports.
“Musk has gotten increasingly bold in his open dissent in the past week on matters ranging from Trump’s political messaging to the president’s other advisers. And he has made a habit of getting out in front of the president, both before and after he joined the White House.”
Wall Street Journal: “Since President Trump took office, economists have dramatically slashed estimates for growth while raising them for inflation and unemployment.”
“The main reason, according to respondents to The Wall Street Journal’s quarterly survey of economists: tariffs.”
“When the Journal last surveyed economists, from Jan. 10 to 14, they were unsure about many aspects of Trump’s policies, including tariffs, immigration restrictions and tax cuts. But they had to weigh that uncertainty against an economy that had consistently outperformed expectations.”
“The shift in economists’ outlook reflects that Trump is pushing his trade policies further than almost anyone imagined three months ago.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) drew a record-breaking crowd of at least 36,000 at his rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, The Guardian reports.
Politico: Bernie Sanders is drawing big crowds. But progressives have a problem in California.
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“Two groups representing Harvard professors sued the Trump administration on Friday, saying that its threat to cut billions in federal funding for the university violates free speech and other First Amendment rights,” the New York Times reports.
“The Department of Homeland Security has administered lie detector tests to about 50 staffers in recent weeks, including FEMA’s acting administrator and roughly a dozen officials at the disaster relief agency, as part of an intensifying effort to root out what the department alleges are leaks of national security information,” CNN reports.
“President Donald Trump was unable to recall the details of the cognitive test he took as part of his physical Friday—but he assured reporters that he got all the answers right,” the Daily Beast reports.
Washington Post: “As he makes stops in red House districts in Utah, Idaho, Montana and several of the most competitive California districts over the next few days, Sanders will be meeting with potential candidates who share his vision and ideology — both independents and Democrats — as they weigh runs for office up and down the ballot in 2026. Sanders’s latest organizing effort is still taking shape, building off the energy that the independent Vermont senator has generated in rallies since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.”
“But at a moment when the Democratic Party is still trying to chart a clear direction after its 2024 losses, some moderate and establishment Democrats are watching Sanders warily. Many are trying to determine whether he will limit his recruiting efforts to safe red or blue districts and local offices — or whether he could build a machine backing independent candidates in more competitive districts, potentially setting up a collision course with the Democratic Party establishment.”
New York Times: “Friends, former aides and advisers say Ms. Harris still thinks she would have beaten Mr. Trump if she’d had more than 107 days to campaign — the implication being that former President Joe Biden should have quit the race earlier.”
“Yet some of her closest allies say she is leaning against another White House run in 2028 and, instead, toward a campaign for governor of California in 2026. Her political choice is binary, she has told people: She can run for governor or president, but not both.”
Axios: “The last ten days have thrown into doubt the role of the United States at the core of the global economic and financial system.”
“After generations in which the U.S. dollar and its government securities have been the world’s bedrock safe haven assets, global investors woke up this week to the possibility that they are not particularly safe, and not at all a haven.”
Paul Kane: “First, they threatened to block House Speaker Mike Johnson’s path to claiming the gavel in early January. Then they threatened to block a funding bill to keep federal agencies open in mid-March.”
“Then, in recent days, they threatened to block a resolution that would unlock the process to push ahead with President Donald Trump’s tax-and-border agenda.”
“Each threat from leaders of the House Freedom Caucus ended with the same result: capitulation. After caving on each round of threats, these far-right conservatives vowed that the next time would be different — if their demands were not met precisely as they sought.”
Washington Post: “Deporting 1 million immigrants in one year would ostensibly surpass previous statistics, as the highest number thus far was more than 400,000 a year when Barack Obama was president.”
“But officials aren’t revealing how they are counting the numbers, and analysts say the available statistics make that target appear unrealistic, if not impossible, given funding, staffing levels and the fact that most immigrants have the right to a court hearing before being removed from the country.”
“America’s most prestigious law firms have agreed to provide almost $1 billion worth of legal work to President Trump — and that total will likely grow,” Axios reports.
“As more firms have capitulated, Trump has been able to extract significantly bigger concessions using significantly less leverage, even from firms with which he had no personal grievance.”
Navigator Research: “After last week’s tariff announcement, Trump’s economic approval has dropped precipitously, now tied for his worst ever in Navigator tracking since 2018. His overall job approval rating has also declined.”
“The broad tariffs last week brought this feeling to a boiling point, with 58% of Americans saying Trump’s policies are contributing to high costs and 72% saying they are contributing to volatility in the stock market.”
Anne Applebaum: “The Republicans who lead Congress have refused to use the power of the legislative branch to stop him or moderate him, in this or almost any other matter. The Cabinet is composed of sycophants and loyalists who are willing to defend contradictory policies, even if doing so makes them look like fools. The courts haven’t decisively intervened yet either.”
“No one, apparently, is willing to prevent a single man from destroying the world economy, wrecking financial markets, forcing this country and other countries into recession if that’s what he feels like doing when he gets up tomorrow morning.”
“This is what arbitrary, absolute power looks like. And this is why the men who wrote the Constitution never wanted anyone to have it. In that famously hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia, windows closed for the sake of secrecy, they sweated and argued about how to limit the powers of the American executive. They arrived at the idea of dividing power between different branches of government.”
Andrew Sullivan: “Once you grasp Trump as an elected monarch, his full rebuke to the very idea of America comes into clearer view. He is precisely — almost uncannily — what this country was founded to oppose: an arbitrary, corrupt, mendacious, and utterly incompetent king.”
CNN: “The president took the unusual step this week of issuing official proclamations ordering the federal investigations of people who worked in his first administration.”
“He’s demanding free work from law firms who represented his perceived enemies, threatening to impeach judges, deporting campus protesters and so much more.”
“The underlying message, for anyone who hasn’t put all these things together, is that dissent will not be tolerated under Trump 2.0.”
For members: The Retribution Is Here
New York Times: “It’s almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of this pivot.”
Said Sasha Havlicek, the chief executive of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue: “If, in fact, we are witnessing a total ideological shift of America away from its post-World War II role as guarantor of the international order and an alignment with Putin and other authoritarian nationalists against the old allies that constituted the liberal world order, there couldn’t be anything more dramatic than that.”
David Brooks: “When I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, there were two types of people: those who cared earnestly about ideas, and those who wanted only to shock the left. The reactionary fringe has won.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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