Indiana Gov. Mike Braun is making good on his promise to support Trump’s efforts to “recruit, endorse, and finance primary challengers for Indiana’s senators who refuse to support fair maps,” Politico reports.
Braun plans to endorse challengers to sitting state senators who opposed redistricting.
“The White House Office of Management and Budget is preparing to send Congress a $1.5 trillion fiscal year 2027 defense budget request that relies on $350 billion in mandatory funding outside the traditional appropriations process, aiming for about $760 billion in total weapons procurement and modernization,” Inside Defense reports.
“A slim majority of Virginia voters favors a redistricting measure to give Democrats as many as four extra seats in Congress this November, with 52 percent of likely voters saying they support redrawing state political maps and 47 percent opposed,” according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
“But the poll offers warning signs that the outcome could go either way as early voting proceeds ahead of the April 21 referendum. Republicans and opponents of the measure are more enthusiastic about casting ballots than Democrats and supporters.”
“Regime change in Cuba has long been on President Donald Trump’s to-do list. But with Tehran dominating the agenda, Havana is getting a reprieve — for now,” Politico reports.
“Given the amount of resources and attention Iran is consuming, and the hassle a face off with Russia would cause, Trump and his aides decided it was worth letting Cuba’s regime have a longer lifeline for now.”
New York Times: “Russia is sending a second tanker of crude oil to Cuba, a government official said on Thursday, after one sent by the Kremlin reached Cuban territory earlier this week, ending a de facto U.S. oil blockade on the island.”
“Iran is responding to the threat of a ground operation on its soil by stepping up defenses around its biggest oil port, while threatening to attack a wider array of targets around the Gulf and launching a mass recruitment drive reminiscent of its 1980s war with Iraq,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Tehran is also mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq. They include drives to recruit millions of Iranians, including children—a fixture of the tributes to martyrs via street signs and posters that are still a part of Iran’s daily life.”
“President Donald Trump has expressed frustration and disappointment with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and is pondering making additional changes to his Cabinet,” Politico reports.
Said an administration official: “He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people.”
“Should Trump proceed with a larger set of Cabinet changes, it could represent a major attempted reset for an administration confronting an ominous political landscape.”
Punchbowl News: “House Republicans are in open revolt. GOP lawmakers held a nearly three-hour call Thursday, during which Speaker Mike Johnson pitched them on passing the Senate’s Department of Homeland Security minus ICE and CBP funding bill. That’s the same bill that Johnson called a “joke” a week ago.”
“Johnson is now telling House Republicans they must accept this bill because the Senate doesn’t have the votes for anything else. That’s proven to be a tough sell. Another problem for House Republicans — the SAVE America Act, which they’ve passed multiple times, is going to end up in reconciliation, leaving it at the mercy of Senate parliamentary rules.”
“House Republicans now may hold off voting on the DHS funding until the reconciliation process begins. We’ll see what the White House thinks about that. This DHS bill doesn’t have the votes right now — or anywhere close.”
Peter Hamby: “The very fact that Trump decided to deliver a rare address to the nation was, on its own, an admission of his diminished political stature. He is not playing offense anymore. Almost every available piece of data shows that Americans, including core elements of Trump’s 2024 coalition and independents who turned on him even before the war, no longer believe the president will follow through on his promises. At the same time, his sudden appeal for patience and goodwill not only contradicts his entire political brand, it comes at a time when Americans can barely make it through a 26-minute Netflix show without looking at their phones. Patience? In this economy?? Good luck with that, sir.”
“No matter their ambitions or agendas, presidents are always tested by events outside their control. What continues to be so remarkable about Trump 2.0 is that most of his crises are emphatically of his own making. There’s no scapegoat for his crappy polling.”
The Atlantic: “Several people familiar with the White House’s plans told us that there are active discussions about others leaving the administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.”
“The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said that the timing is uncertain and that President Trump has not yet made up his mind. But what was once an unofficial motto of the second Trump term—’no scalps’—no longer applies.”
Mediaite: “Tiger Woods called President Donald Trump from the scene of his rollover car crash moments before he was arrested with a DUI, a new video shows.”
“Roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks, according to recent US intelligence assessments,” CNN reports.
Said one source: “They are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region.”
New York Times: “Last Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson indignantly dismissed a Senate-passed bill deal to reopen the Homeland Security Department without funding for immigration enforcement as a ‘joke.’”
“By Wednesday, he was jointly issuing a news release with the Senate leader endorsing it.”
“But early Thursday morning, he declined to bring it up in the House, punting a chance to try to reopen the department until at least mid-April and avoiding the risk that hard-right Republicans would either block it or threaten to oust him for doing so. Then, he spent much of the afternoon huddled in a heated conference call with his angry GOP colleagues, privately trying to persuade them to eventually embrace the deal, which he had decried as ‘ridiculousness’ just days before.”
“That, too, apparently failed; there were no plans for the House to quickly reconvene, and by Thursday evening, it was not clear when or even whether Mr. Johnson might bring the bill up.”
“President Trump has unapologetically wielded the power of the United States on the global stage, taking a much more belligerent approach economically and militarily to try to dictate the actions of other countries,” the New York Times reports.
“From high tariffs to the war with Iran, Mr. Trump has claimed that this aggressive behavior internationally has only upsides, and that past leaders were fools for refusing to tap into America’s power.”
“But one clear drawback of the strategy is emerging. While many countries have acceded to the president’s demands, some have found a highly effective new way to fight back. Mr. Trump’s aggression has given them the opportunity to test their control over choke points, threatening the United States and the global economy.”
Time: “Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation.”
“In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran’s muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war.”
Said one insider: “Hegseth was caught off guard. There’s no question.”
Time: “Trump became wary enough of leaks that some of his own aides were the target of subterfuge. On Feb. 27, he traveled to Mar-a-Lago. Aides assembled in a makeshift Situation Room. Trump bristled at the number of people present… it included people Trump didn’t recognize or didn’t feel he knew well enough.”
“At one point, the President snapped that the operation was off. He said he would keep deliberating. This was another head fake: Trump had already made up his mind to attack that very night. Once the room cleared, he called back a smaller, trusted circle—those he wanted beside him as the first bombs fell.”
“President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to tamp down the surging price of oil by telling investors what they’re eager to hear: The war in Iran is almost over,” CNN reports.
“But after hearing that message for weeks, with fighting ongoing and no plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, they’re increasingly tuning him out.”
CNN: “Democrats compared President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to overhaul elections to George Orwell’s 1984, in one of three lawsuits now challenging Tuesday’s executive order, which instructs the US Postal Service to determine who does and doesn’t receive a mail ballot.”
“Democratic congressional leaders and organizations, as well as two separate coalitions of voter advocacy groups, each filed lawsuits – prompting a sense of deja vu, as those Trump opponents previously brought successful legal challenges that halted parts of a March 2025 Trump executive order that sought to boost proof of citizenship requirements.”
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.