“Senators have about a week before they’re set to vote on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies. Most of them already believe the chances for a bipartisan breakthrough by then are roughly zero,” Politico reports.
“There’s no clear momentum for any plan that would avoid a lapse in tax credits that could raise insurance premiums for 20 million Americans.”
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“Another self-proclaimed democratic socialist is jumping into a big-city mayoral race, this time in Washington, D.C.,” NOTUS reports.
“Council member Janeese Lewis George, 37, on Monday announced her candidacy with a platform highlighting affordability and housing concerns across the District, echoing campaign issues that propelled New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to victory in his race last month.”
Just published: The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets by David Shedd and Andrew Badger.
A definitive, headline-making exposé of how the Chinese Communist Party has carried out the largest-scale theft of intellectual property, technology, and data in history.
New York Times: “The economy. Venezuela. Division in the Republican Party. And, more decisions coming from Supreme Court.”
“Members of the House of Representatives are quitting Congress at a record rate, with Republican retirements and resignations outpacing Democrats by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio in the first 11 months of the year,” Axios reports.
“In previous cycles, the party with more departures tends to lose seats — if not the majority.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced his intention to call a special legislative session on congressional redistricting in the spring of 2026, the Floridian reports.
Said DeSantis: “Yeah, yeah, so we’re going to redistrict. The issue is that there is a Supreme Court decision that we are waiting on – the argument in October about Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that impacts Florida’s maps, so we’re going to do it next Spring.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a member of the House Republican leadership, said on social media that the “deep state is alive and well” and that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is getting “rolled by House Democrats.”
Semafor: “Editor Mark Guiducci and other leaders at Vanity Fair are concerned for and about their new star, Olivia Nuzzi. At first, Condé Nast wasn’t commenting on the salacious allegations her former fiancé, reporter Ryan Lizza, was making via his serialized Substack. Some at the company initially downplayed Lizza’s depictions of Nuzzi’s relationship with politician Mark Sanford as Washington inside baseball that wouldn’t make much of a dent on the West Coast, where she would be starting work.”
“But now, just weeks after Vanity Fair published an excerpt of Nuzzi’s book, it’s increasingly unlikely she’ll be a fixture on its print masthead. Lizza’s latest accusations go beyond mixing business with pleasure: He says she tried to sabotage others’ reporting on then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Seth Masket: “It’s become sort of a common lament by some on the left that there probably won’t even be elections in 2026, no less 2028, and thus American democracy is functionally over. This is not just doomerism, but uninformed doomerism; canceling elections just isn’t what modern autocrats do.”
“What Trump will try to do, rather, is make sure that the surge in Democratic voters that will likely show up won’t have much power to change things — that is, he’ll try to make elections matter less — and he’ll try to do so in a number of pernicious yet predictable ways.”
New York Times: “Speaker Mike Johnson, who flew in from Washington early Monday, called President Trump and put his phone on speaker…”
“The phone call, coupled with the convergence of political heavyweights, underscored just how much Republicans appear rattled by the Tuesday election for what would normally be a safe conservative seat in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District.”
“It is the final special election of 2025 and, as Mr. Johnson told reporters, ‘we think what will happen here will be a bellwether for the midterms next year.'”
For members: An Early Test of a Midterm Wave
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is considering running for a House seat in Texas if the Supreme Court upholds the state’s redraw of its congressional map, Punchbowl News reports.
Issa was drawn out of his San Diego-area seat in California’s mid-decade redistricting effort.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Monday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September following a bombshell Washington Post report that claimed he ordered the military to “kill everybody,” The Hill reports.
For members: Trump Leaves Hegseth on the Brink
“At least nine elected Republicans in Indiana have been the target of swatting attacks in the weeks since President Donald Trump publicly pressured state lawmakers to pass new congressional maps that would benefit Republicans,” NBC News reports.
A top consultant to Rep. Nancy Mace’s campaign for South Carolina governor announced his resignation Monday, saying the gubernatorial hopeful has “decided to turn her back on MAGA,” Politico reports.
Said Austin McCubbin: “My name has been used publicly, while going back on her word to pay me, to trade on my Team Trump status and to work on her behalf with the White House, and I am 100% breaking with her campaign out of loyalty to the President.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a Dear Colleague letter that House Democrats are introducing a discharge petition for an up-or-down vote on a three-year extension of the Obamacare credits.
Washington Post: “Republican leaders have found themselves in a familiar place: pledging to make major changes to the Affordable Care Act, citing rising health care costs and a looming deadline — but far from agreeing on how to do it.”
Reuters: “At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies.”
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.
