A new Quinnipiac University poll finds voters believe by a 52% to 38% margin that President Trump was “using the U.S. Justice Department to file unjustified criminal charges against his political opponents.”
A new Reuters-Ipsos poll found Americans said 55% to 26% that Trump was using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies. Even 29% of Republicans agreed with this.
“Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock voted with Republicans on Thursday on the government shutdown, after previously rejecting every GOP measure to re-open the government or fund parts of it,” Axios reports.
“Their dissents introduce a new challenge for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). He’s keeping his total number of defections low, but the universe of Democrats willing to defy him is expanding.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is pushing for “Russia week” on the Senate floor, where senators would take up a trio of bills targeting Moscow, including a long-stalled sanctions effort, Punchbowl News reports.
After protesters got within a few feet of President Trump at a D.C. restaurant last month, his team was so alarmed it had a tense talk with Secret Service officials about Trump’s security, Axios reports.
G. Elliot Morris: “New polls from Gallup and YouGov show Democrats pulling ahead of Republicans as the party voters trust more to handle the economy. And the raw polling data in the Virginia governor’s race shows lower-income voters flocking to the Democratic candidate for governor, Abigail Spanberger, in protest of Trump’s trade and economic policies.”
President Trump’s favorability has fallen among Hispanic adults since the beginning of the year, a new AP-NORC poll shows, “a potential warning sign from a key constituency that helped secure his victory in the 2024 election.”
The poll finds that 25% of Hispanic adults have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down from 44% just before the Trump took office for the second time.
“Republicans are barreling toward the upcoming Obamacare enrollment period without a unified plan to address the sticker shock that millions of Americans are likely to experience due to the expiration of key federal subsidies,” Politico reports.
“The lack of direction comes from the top, with President Donald Trump not providing clear guidance to his party on how he wants to deal with the expiring subsidies that could result in dramatic out-of-pocket price hikes for enrollees.”
“It’s been a helluva week. I went from being a communist on Thursday to a Nazi by Monday.”
— Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D), quoted by Drop Site.
President Trump said a private donor has contributed $130 million to cover potential military pay shortfalls during the government shutdown, calling the contributor a “patriot” and “friend,” while declining to name them, Reuters reports.
“The land is going to be next. I think we are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead.”
— President Trump, quoted by CNN.
Politico: “Unlike his highly choreographed foreign trips to Europe and the Middle East, where leaders were eager to fête the president, his weeklong trip through Asia is replete with potential pitfalls. An anticipated meeting between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea could defuse yet another economy-roiling trade war between the two nations, but the outcome — or whether the meeting will even take place — is far from certain.”
“Trump could return celebrating deals that will strengthen U.S. ties in the region — or, if talks with Xi collapse, confronting an escalating trade war likely to rattle markets, ripple through supply chains and expose how dependent the U.S. remains on China for critical minerals.”
“Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart,” the New York Times reports.
“A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 37 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in nine strikes so far were indeed running drugs.”
Playbook: “New Hampshire Democrats are circulating a memo to DNC members, arguing their case to return to the first-in-the-nation primary slot, after being demoted ahead of the 2024 cycle.”
Punchbowl News: “The White House isn’t interested at all in extending the enhanced premium Obamacare tax credits at the center of the shutdown fight… it doesn’t seem as if Trump is anywhere close to folding or beginning negotiations with Democrats”
A new Emerson College survey of California voters finds 57% of likely voters support Proposition 50, to authorize temporary changes to the state congressional maps, while 37% oppose the proposition.
Including undecided voters, the measure increases to 60% support, and 40% oppose.
“The Justice Department’s indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, is merely one part of a multipronged campaign that is helping define retribution in President Trump’s second term,” the New York Times reports.
“Over the summer, Ms. James’s office received a criminal subpoena demanding information about her yearslong civil investigation into the president. This month, a Virginia grand jury handed up charges accusing her of bank fraud and false statements to financial institutions stemming from her mortgage paperwork.”
“And in recent days, Trump-aligned media outlets have run scathing headlines about her relatives’ criminal records, amplifying the specter of wrongdoing created by the Justice Department.”
Washington Post: Trump targets enemies using mortgage records, a threat to D.C. elite.
“President Trump said late Thursday he was terminating trade negotiations with Canada, contending the country ran an advertisement featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
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.