Daily Archives
97 posts · Tuesday
Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 191
Blue Wave Update
“Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia pledged on Tuesday that he would serve a full Senate term if he’s reelected next month,” the Washington Sun reports.
“It’s a striking commitment given that Ossoff, who is running in a battleground state, has been floated as a 2028 presidential candidate and has proven himself to be a messaging leader for the Democratic Party.”
“Kimberly Guilfoyle was scrambling to save her job,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“As damaging revelations piled up, President Trump’s ambassador to Greece started dialing up administration officials and people close to the president, playing down Wall Street Journal reporting that suggested she was using her position for personal gain.”
“Guilfoyle had been worried about her job since late last month, when the Journal revealed she had been promoting a Greek construction firm while working closely with the company’s top lobbyist. The ambassador began calling administration officials and prominent Trump supporters, often in the early hours in Athens, to ask for their backing.”
“When the Journal published a second investigation revealing text messages that showed she had solicited $100,000 from a Trump donor in the run-up to her confirmation hearing last year, Guilfoyle reached out to White House officials to say the text messages were AI generated.”
A new 12 News/Emerson College poll in Rhode Island finds Helena Foulkes (D) leading Ken Block (I) in the governor’s race, 44% to 35%, with Aaron Guckian (R) at 10%.
“President Donald Trump said Taiwan agreed to buy 30% of the gas from a liquefied natural gas pipeline project in Alaska over the next 20 years, touting the initiative ahead of midterm elections,” Bloomberg reports.
“Trump also said Taiwan would invest an additional $4.4 billion to see the project completed. He hailed the commitments, during a campaign stop in the state Tuesday, saying it ‘guarantees the success’ of the project despite doubts about whether the pipeline will ever be constructed.”
“There was no immediate confirmation from Taiwan of Trump’s claims.”
“Congressional Democrats’ private text chains lit up with fear and anger on Monday after Department of Homeland Security agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) home in Washington, D.C,” Axios reports.
“The search came less than a month before the midterms, immediately setting off alarm bells among Democrats that ‘more October surprises‘ could be coming.”
“Ukraine’s leader said he received no advance warnings from Western partners before a Russian missile strike on Tuesday, days after Washington threatened to stop intelligence sharing in a bid to force Kyiv to abide by an energy ceasefire,” Semafor reports.
However, President Donald Trump said Tuesday: “We are sharing intel.”
“Buoyed by a string of encouraging polls, Democrats have grown more confident about the outcome of next month’s midterm elections,” MS NOW reports.
“But the 2028 map is another story.”
“In the seven states most likely to decide the next presidential race, a generic Democrat and a generic Republican are tied at 45%, with 10% of voters undecided, according to new polling from Project 270, a newly launched independent Democratic research initiative.”
“President Donald Trump on Tuesday reposted a video of a man being attacked by a tiger on his social media account, amplifying graphic footage of a person’s final moments at a British wildlife park,” the Washington Post reports.
The New Republic: Why is Trump sharing so many videos of animals maiming humans?
“For Republicans, Christmas came in July,” the New York Times reports.
“That’s when Elon Musk began funneling more than $276 million into the party’s efforts to save its majorities in Congress, my colleague Teddy Schleifer has learned.”
“It is a stonkingly large amount of money, and it includes, in sum, one of the biggest political donations in history: $158 million to Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.”
“It means that when we talk about the Republicans’ considerable outside spending advantage over Democrats in this midterm, we are talking, in large part, about Musk’s personal contributions.”
“And it means that a mercurial figure who once backed off political spending is back in the game.”
Charlie Cook: “While the party holding the White House always loses seats, there were structural or technical reasons this election shouldn’t have been particularly bad for Republicans. Since late summer, however, those guardrails have evaporated, with this election very clearly headed to a very grim place for the GOP.”
“The North Carolina State Board of Elections will send letters to roughly 1,400 people this week who it says were identified as potential noncitizens on voter rolls after they were flagged by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security database,” the Charlotte Observer reports.
Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist referred to as the “godfather of AI,” called President Trump a “corrupt, senile felon” and ripped into him over his fixation on using the term “super intelligence,” The Guardian reports.
I discussed the outlook for the midterm elections with John Ravitz and Noam Bramson on their podcast.
Popular Information searched bar records in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and found no evidence White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has ever been admitted to practice the law.
New York Magazine: Katie Zacharia says she passed the bar exam in… China?
The New Republic: WTF was Trump’s new press secretary doing in China?
Cook Political Report: “Democrats remain in an increasingly strong position to regain a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010. With President Donald Trump and Republicans’ standing deteriorating across the country — and with a strong crop of Democratic recruits running solid campaigns — even some states that Trump won by a huge margin deserve new consideration.”
“Alaska is the most notable of these shifts, moving from Toss Up to Lean Democrat, with Democrats well-positioned to flip the open governorship. And three states are moving out of the Solid Republican column into Likely Republican: Nebraska, Oklahoma and Vermont.”
“Lisa Cook on Tuesday challenged President Trump’s latest attempt to remove her from her role as a Federal Reserve governor, questioning the objectivity of a White House investigation into unproven allegations that she committed mortgage fraud,” the New York Times reports.
“Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does,” Politico reports.
“I have lost all faith in President Trump, honestly. I wish I could get those years of my life back, because what difference did it really make? He never even fulfilled his very first campaign promise, which was to lock up Hillary Clinton.”
— Former Trump supporter Jennnifer Esposito, quoted by the Arizona Republic.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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