“Former aides to Joe Biden reacted with rage Wednesday to an excerpt from Kamala Harris’ upcoming book in which she said the ex-president was ‘reckless’ to run again and accused Biden’s team of sabotaging her during her vice presidency,” Axios reports.
“The Biden and Harris camps publicly have claimed they were united through the four years of Biden’s presidency, but now Harris is trying to distance herself from him — after not doing so during her short run for president.“
“President Donald Trump’s expansion of executive power, including his unprecedented push to send troops into U.S. cities to combat crime and his attempt to seize control of aspects of the economy, has left Americans uneasy,” a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
“The findings suggest that a substantial majority of the public favors limits on presidential power and does not approve of Trump’s efforts to shatter longstanding norms.”
Wall Street Journal: “Thursday’s report showed consumer prices rose 2.9% in the 12 months through August—speeding up from 2.7% in July, and matching the expectations of economists.”
“The rate is above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Even so, traders are confident the Fed will cut interest rates next week in response to a weakening labor market.”
New York Times: “The new owner of CBS News is weighing giving Weiss the job of editor in chief or co-president of the network, as part of a broader deal to buy The Free Press.”
Politico: “On Tuesday, former Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone with former President Joe Biden to warn him about the forthcoming excerpt from her new memoir…”
“That didn’t prevent former Biden aides from going on the attack a day later in the first public breach between the party’s last two standard bearers.”
Playbook: “The anger is colossal today, visceral. And understandably so. Charlie Kirk was loved and admired by millions of people — he built a movement, from the ground up. You may have embraced his worldview or you may have vehemently disagreed with everything he said, but his approach was to persuade, to use charm and charisma and provocation and the power of argument to convince people of the righteousness of his cause.”
“And he had courage, taking his arguments out into the country, out to wherever his fans and his critics were. As so many people have already said — including his fiercest critics — this has to be the right approach. This is what we want from our politics. Yet this is also what put him in harm’s way. So where does our politics go from here?”
“It’s hard to be optimistic this morning about the road ahead. The sight of Congress erupting into another angry shouting match last night — in what should have been a solemn moment of reflection — was the most depressing, and revealing, reaction of all.“
“Even before the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an influential right-wing activist, there were signs of a looming political crisis. Rising polarization and the coarsening of public discourse left little room for shared understanding. Acts of violence, targeting figures on the left and the right, had begun piling up,” the New York Times reports.
“But the killing of Mr. Kirk on a Utah college campus on Wednesday — shortly after he began speaking to a young crowd on a sunny afternoon — raises the possibility that the country has entered an even more perilous phase.”
Politico: America searches for a way back from the edge.
“For millions of conservative Christians, Charlie Kirk was the ultimate disciple. He symbolized the hope of the new Christian right, breaking down the borders between right-wing politics and evangelical faith to transform the next generation of America,” the New York Times reports.
“Now, he is considered a martyr.”
“As shock over Mr. Kirk’s assassination on Wednesday spread, the meaning for many of his followers was immediate and nearly universal. Evangelical pastors, activists and young conservatives felt his death personally, because of his influence on their lives and because they saw him dying while fulfilling a greater purpose.”
“MSNBC Senior Political Analyst Matthew Dowd is no longer with the network following on-air comments suggesting Charlie Kirk’s ‘awful words’ led to his being shot,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Dowd: “You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”
“Hopes for the fast capture of the person who fatally shot the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah evaporated on Wednesday when Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, announced that the authorities had released a man he had described as a central subject of a multiagency manhunt,” the New York Times reports.
British prime minister Keir Starmer “has sensationally sacked Peter Mandelson as US ambassador over the growing scandal of his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein,” The Independent reports.
Punchbowl News: “Much of the behavior that we see from national political leaders themselves would be deemed unacceptable for grade-school children.”
“Many – if not most – members and senators see the other party as their mortal enemies out to destroy the country, not just good-hearted yet wrong-thinking political rivals. That mindset makes each day an existential struggle between good and evil rather than a contest between competing political ideas or policies…”
“The rise of social media has fed into growing extremism on both sides of the aisle. Passing legislation or making bipartisan deals is seen as far less valuable than someone who can pound their opponents on TikTok or X. In fact, bipartisanship is a sign you’ve been compromised and fallen prey to the other side’s malevolent machinations.”
Jonathan Last: “We often forget the philosophical underpinnings of criminal law. Rightly understood, we view crimes as being committed not against individuals, but against society itself. Thus, when someone is murdered, the offense is not against the victim and his family, but against everyone. All of us. It is an offense against nature, heaven, and man.”
“Assassination goes a step further. In addition to all of the above, assassination is, like terrorism, an attack on our body politic. An attack on how we choose to live together. On our system of government. Which in America’s case, means an attack not just against all of us, but against liberal democracy itself.”
“So the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not just a human tragedy for his family. It is not just an affront to society. It is an attack on our civic compact. It should be confronted as such, with no qualifications or equivocations.”
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President Trump said that rhetoric from the “radical left” contributed to the shooting death of his close ally Charlie Kirk, and he promised to find those responsible for political violence, as well as the “organizations that fund it and support it,” the New York Times reports.
In a video address from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said that liberal criticism of conservatives was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Associated Press: “Traditional news organizations were cautious in their midafternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot, instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before, and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.”
“In practical terms, though, it mattered little. Gory video of the shooting was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed. Millions of people watched.”
Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) very first words to reporters after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed were: “Democrats own what happened today.”
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.