Nearly 6.3 million people tuned in to the Jimmy Kimmel broadcast last night, despite the blackouts in many cities, the AP reports.
And there was a larger audience online, with more than 15 million people watching Kimmel’s opening remarks on YouTube by Wednesday evening.
“The White House budget office is instructing federal agencies to prepare reduction-in-force plans for mass firings during a possible government shutdown, specifically targeting employees who work for programs that are not legally required to continue,” Politico reports.
“The Office of Management and Budget move to permanently reduce the government workforce if there is a shutdown… escalates the stakes of a potential shutdown next week.”
Punchbowl News has the memo.
“Top congressional Republicans and White House allies are working behind the scenes to prevent a politically charged floor vote to release the government’s Jeffrey Epstein case files next month,“ CNN reports.
“While the exact strategy to avoid a vote is not yet clear, some of the GOP lawmakers who have signed on are privately being pressured to withdraw their name from the petition, which would prevent a vote from taking place.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said that his party needed to change the way it talked about climate change if Democrats hoped to win over new voters, the New York Times reports.
Said Schatz: “You could talk about the planetary emergency and mitigation and adaptation, and you could throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you’re done talking, people think you don’t care about them.”
Instead, he said, policymakers who care about climate change need to be “recapturing momentum with regular people who are watching their utility bills spike like a hockey stick.”
President Trump is expected to sign a deal Thursday to facilitate the sale of TikTok from a Chinese-based company to a group of American investors, NBC News reports.
President Trump called on the United Nations to investigate what he deemed was “triple sabotage” after he dealt with an escalator mishap, a teleprompter glitch and audio issues during his trip to the U.N. General Assembly meeting, The Hill reports.
Said Trump, on Truth Social: “A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday — Not one, not two, but three very sinister events!”
He added: “The people that did it should be arrested!”
Vice President JD Vance said that President Trump was “joking” when he spoke about hating his enemies during a memorial for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, NewsNation reports.
Said Vance: “I think it’s interesting, if you go back and watch the full speech, what the president was trying to do, in this very humorous and very unique way, was highlight how hard it is for us to forgive our enemies.”
Anne Applebaum: “The campaign against the oil industry has been helped by the degradation of Russian air defenses, which had been moved closer to the border of Ukraine and at the moment aren’t numerous enough to cover every possible economic target across a very large country…”
“The result: Russian overall oil exports are now at their lowest point since the start of the war, and the Russians are running out of oil at home. The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces has said that more than a fifth of Russian refining capacity has been destroyed.”
“The regime has banned the export of refined oil products, because there isn’t enough for the domestic market. Gas stations are closed or badly supplied in areas across the country, including the suburbs of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Telegram accounts post videos of cars waiting in enormous lines.”
“China, the world’s largest carbon polluter, announced at the United Nations on Wednesday that it intended to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 7 percent to 10 percent over the next 10 years, the first time Beijing has made such a strong commitment to halt global warming,” the New York Times reports.
Chinese president Xi Jinping made the announcement by video, saying: “Green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time.”
In an apparent reference to the United States, Xi added: “Some countries are against it.”
Former FBI Director James Comey is expected to be indicted in the coming days, MSNBC reports.
“The full extent of the charges being prepared against Comey is unclear, but the sources believe that at least one element of the indictment — if it goes forward — will accuse him of lying to Congress during his testimony on September 30, 2020 about whether he authorized a leak of information.”
CNN: “If a federal grand jury were to approve the case by next week, it would mark one of the highest-profile indictments of a political figure during President Donald Trump’s second term in office — and against one of the longtime figures whom Trump and his political allies detest the most from what they call the ‘deep state’ of the federal government.”
Vice President JD Vance said that pregnant women should lean on their doctor for advice on whether to take Tylenol after President Trump earlier this week said pregnant women should “fight like hell not to take it” because of potential links to autism, The Hill reports.
Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) “said he doubted that the FBI would lead a thorough and objective investigation into a shooting that left three people dead near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in his district,” NOTUS reports.
Said Veasey: “I don’t trust anything that’s happening out of that agency at all. I don’t trust them at all. They’re overly political.”
Financial Times: “Austan Goolsbee backed the quarter-point reduction to US borrowing costs at last week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting. But the Chicago Fed president told the Financial Times that he could be less willing to support further cuts at forthcoming policy votes.”
“Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee in the race for mayor of New York City, said Wednesday that he has received at least seven calls from ’emissaries’ of wealthy people who have repeatedly offered him money to end his campaign,” CNBC reports.
Sliwa slammed those offers as “unethical and illegal.”
“And he warned that if he receives one more such offer, he will begin revealing names of the wealthy New Yorkers who have made them.”
“Top Republicans are warning that nominating Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race could jeopardize the party’s slim control of the House in 2026,” Axios reports.
“Paxton has won multiple statewide races. But allies of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) are citing ‘internal models’ and ‘public and private polling’ to claim Paxton would be general election poison in 2026.”
“The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday that it had selected Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon and president’s former housing secretary, as an adviser on nutrition, health and housing,” the New York Times reports.
“Washington’s hottest club has everything — Cabinet secretaries, a new stone patio, food from the White House kitchen and even a playlist curated by President Donald Trump,” the AP reports.
“But good luck getting a spot on the guest list. So far, only some of the president’s political allies, business executives and administration officials have been invited.”
“In Trump’s remake of the White House, the Rose Garden is now the Rose Garden Club, with the iconic lawn outside the Oval Office transformed into a taxpayer-supported imitation of the patio at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private Florida resort.”
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.
