Vice President JD Vance had some choice words for Kamala Harris saying she had no “substance” and that each time he listened to her he felt “dumber in the process,” The Wrap reports.
Said Vance: “The problem is not that Kamala’s campaign was too short. It was too long. When people actually listened to what she had to say, per polling, it went down and down and down. A 150-day campaign, three additional senators, and Donald Trump would have won by an even bigger landslide.”
“Conservative broadcaster Sinclair is putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! back on the air… even though ABC and owner Disney haven’t accepted its request for an ombudsman and other changes,” ArsTechnica reports.
“The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers,” the AP reports.
“Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) tried to convince a Florida judge Friday that he never planned to circulate ‘salacious’ videos of his ex-girlfriend or harm any of her future lovers, suggesting at one point he knew it would be politically damaging to take any such action,” Politico reports.
“Mills spoke in court as he tried to fend off a request for a restraining order from Lindsay Langston, the 2024 Miss United States and a Republican state committee woman, who is accusing Mills of causing her extreme emotional distress.”
“President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to uphold his planned rollback of automatic birthright citizenship, setting up a high-stakes showdown as he seeks to topple what for more than a century has been widely understood to be a constitutional right,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to freeze more than $4 billion in foreign aid for now, a victory for the president’s push to exert greater control over federal spending,” the Washington Post reports.
“The justices lifted a preliminary injunction from a federal judge who found the president had usurped Congress’s power of the purse by refusing to spend billions it had budgeted for food, medicine and development around the world.”
New York Times: “In its brief order, the court’s conservative majority said the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs appeared ‘to outweigh the potential harm’ faced by foreign aid recipients.”
“Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts has been arrested by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement for allegedly being in the United States illegally,” the Des Moines Register reports.
“Nexstar Media Group joined Sinclair Broadcast Group in bringing Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show back to its local TV stations on Friday night, ending a dayslong TV blackout for dozens of cities across the U.S.,” the AP reports.
“The move means ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will return to local TV on Nexstar’s ABC affiliates in 28 cities, along with the 38 stations where Sinclair agreed to restore the show.”
“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his staff are closely coordinating their government shutdown strategy with outside liberal groups,” Axios reports.
“The same groups slammed Schumer earlier this year for caving on government funding. This time, the Democratic leader is playing to his base.”
“The fate of many of President Trump’s tariffs hangs in the balance at the Supreme Court, but he is rapidly building out a backup plan,” the New York Times reports.
“The Supreme Court is set to begin considering whether the tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on countries including Switzerland and India earlier this year are unconstitutional. But the Trump administration has been erecting another system of tariffs that is impervious to the legal challenge.”
Timothy Snyder: “My historian colleagues might correct me, but I do not think anyone at least in recent history has done what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about to do: put all of the American generals and admirals from around the world into a single room (next week, in Virginia) just to say something to them.”
“There is no practical reason to do this: he has easier and more secure ways to communicate with the commanders. And there are obvious risks: the entire armed forces of the United States, spread around the world, will be without its leaders. Given that the government could well shut down the next day, the separation of commanders from their command might be indefinite.”
“And if Hegseth has his way, those generals and admirals will all be in one site, announced in advance, which means that the entirety of the American command structure will be more vulnerable, physically, than in any conceivable military scenario, including nuclear war. There is no scenario other than this one in which they would all be in the same place at the same time.”
Senate Republicans will hold a second vote on a short term funding resolution on Tuesday — just hours before the deadline for shutting down the government, Politico reports.
“If I were a Democrat and Russ Vought was in charge of OMB, I would have nightmares about what Russ could do that you couldn’t undo when government reopens. Russ has waited for this moment his whole life.”
— Erick Erickson, quoted by the Boston Globe.
A new Quinnipiac poll finds only 30% of voters have a favorable view of Democrats, the lowest favorability rating for the Democratic party since the asking voters this question beginning in 2008.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals to travel on short notice from around the world to hear him make a short speech on military standards and the “warrior ethos,” the Washington Post reports.
Sinclair, one of two large local TV owners that dropped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the late-night comedian’s remarks on the Trump administration’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, said on Friday that it would resume showing the program, the New York Times reports.
“Even though we are still being preempted in 60 American cities, on Tuesday, we had our second-highest rated show in almost 23 years on the air. Our monologue from Tuesday night has more than 21 million views just on YouTube alone. And I want to say, we couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. We got the Trump bump, and we appreciate it.”
— Jimmy Kimmel, on his show last night.
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.
