“Congress is on track this week to break an unflattering record: presiding over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history,” Politico reports.
“The ongoing funding lapse will hit the 35-day mark Tuesday night, eclipsing the partial shutdown that ended in early 2019 and also occurred under President Donald Trump.”
Democrats are increasingly losing faith in their party and its leaders — far outpacing Republicans who have doubts about the GOP, a new Pew Research poll finds.
Key finding: 67% of Democrats say they’re frustrated with their party, up from about half in Pew polls from 2021 and 2019.
“When President Trump announced sweeping tariffs in April, economists predicted surging inflation and raised the odds of a recession. Companies and consumers stockpiled to get ahead of price rises. Those worries now seem overblown,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Inflation, while too high, is lower than forecasts. And the economy continues to grow despite the steepest tariffs in almost a century.”
Every morning before the sun’s up, I sit down to work on Political Wire with a cup of Trade Coffee beside me.
It’s become part of the ritual — opening the laptop, scanning the news, and taking that first sip of a roast matched perfectly to my taste. Trade connects me with small roasters across the country, delivering beans that are always fresh and far better than what you’ll find at the grocery store.
If you love coffee as much as I do, use this link to get a free bag of coffee and taste the difference for yourself.
“After more than nine months of President Trump using the full force of the federal government to impose his will on the nation, elections across the country on Tuesday will offer the Democratic Party its biggest chance yet to assert its viability as a serious opposition party,” the New York Times reports.
Wall Street Journal: Election wins Tuesday won’t ease the Democratic Party’s troubles.
“A majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump is not committed to protecting freedom of speech, ensuring a fair criminal justice system or preserving free and fair elections,” according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
“Again and again since President Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has blessed his boundary-pushing policies, allowing them to take effect on an interim basis while litigation plays out in the lower courts,” the New York Times reports.
“But on Wednesday, the justices will consider for the first time whether to say “no” to Mr. Trump in a lasting way.”
“At issue is the legality of his signature economic policy: the use of emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner. The outcome of the case could significantly affect the global economy, American businesses and consumers.”
Axios: Supreme Court to decide fate of Trump’s tariffs.
New York Times: “Over nearly nine months, the lawsuit challenging President Trump’s attempt to slash foreign aid funding has ricocheted around the federal judiciary but still has not reached a final resolution. It has been reviewed by 21 judges, spawned thousands of pages of filings and lumbered forward even after the administration dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government office responsible for disbursing much of the contested funding.”
New York Times: “Redrawing congressional maps ahead of a midterm election to eke out more safe seats before any votes are cast is not part of the ordinary run-up to the midterms. At such a national scale, it is a historic break from decades of settled norms regarding when and how legislative lines are drawn.”
“Yet this midcycle redistricting effort is at the center of Mr. Trump’s strategy to win the midterms and prevent Democratic control of the House of Representatives, which would give Democrats the power to open investigations and thwart the president’s agenda. What began over the summer in Texas, with the drawing of five new Republican-favored seats at Mr. Trump’s behest, has spiraled into a nationwide redistricting arms race.”
Though George Clooney doesn’t regret his New York Times op-ed urging former president Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election, he does think it was a “mistake” having Kamala Harris step in as the democratic nominee, the Hollywood Reporter reports.
Said Clooney: “We had a chance. I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going.”
Donald Trump lashed out at Seth Meyers, saying that he watched the late-night NBC show for “the first time in years” and that Meyers’ criticism of him is “probably illegal,” the Daily Beast reports.
“President Donald Trump said Sunday he won’t be in attendance at the Supreme Court this week for a pivotal legal showdown that could gut the tariff policy at the center of his economic agenda,” Politico reports.
“Trump had flirted publicly with going to the oral arguments in the tariff case Wednesday, even though such a move by a sitting president would appear unprecedented. But as he returned to the White House from Florida on Sunday, he told reporters on Air Force One that he doesn’t plan to go.”
“Fox News fell for a series of AI-generated videos this weekend in which fake SNAP beneficiaries bitterly complain and threaten to ‘ransack’ grocery stores, then rewrote the post and acknowledged the error,” The Wrap reports.
“President Donald Trump hosted a 1920’s theme party at Mar-A-Lago on Oct. 31, as multiple federal judges ruled the administration could not stop funding food aid amid the ongoing government shutdown,” USA Today reports.
“Guests were seen mimicking ‘Roaring 20’s’ era attire, a period just before the Great Depression that historians note for its staggering income inequity.”
“Democratic senators again urged President Trump to get involved directly in talks to end the government shutdown as the impasse entered a crucial week, with the lapse set to become the longest ever while pain for American households and travelers is deepening,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Lawmakers indicated late last week that they were finally making progress on talks to reopen the government and begin discussions about how to address expiring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to leave millions of Americans with sharply higher health-insurance bills. Democrats, who have repeatedly blocked a GOP measure to reopen the government, have made talks on healthcare a condition of voting to end the shutdown.”
“Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that the Trump administration is not planning on conducting nuclear explosions at this time, after the president ordered nuclear weapons testing last week,” the Washington Post reports.
President Trump defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in American cities in a 60 Minutes interview.
Said Trump: “I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back… by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.”
When questioned about his approval of the tactics in these raids, Trump said: “Yeah, because you have to get the people out.”
A new NBC News poll finds Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot by 8 points, 50% to 42%, “the largest lead for either party on the congressional ballot in the NBC News poll since the 2018 midterms.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.