“The new editor of Vanity Fair has enraged his staff by considering putting Melania Trump on the magazine’s cover—which then sparked a MAGA backlash to the backlash,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said a mid-level editor to the Daily Mail: “I will walk out the motherfucking door, and half my staff will follow me. We are not going to normalize this despot and his wife; we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to stand for what’s right.”
President Donald Trump called for Harvard University to pay a sweeping $500 million settlement to restore its federal funding, CNN reports.
Said Trump, to Education Secretary Linda McMahon: “We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard. Don’t negotiate, Linda.”
He added: “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate.”
President Trump weighed in on the controversial rebranding of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, writing that: “Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll) and manage the company better than ever before,” CNBC reports.
“A federal judge has forcefully rejected a highly unusual lawsuit the Trump administration filed against 15 other judges whom the Justice Department accused of hindering the president’s mass deportation agenda,” Politico reports.
“In tossing out the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen — a Trump appointee — lamented what he described as the White House’s months-long ‘smear’ of the federal judiciary.”
“In some places it is two dollars. It broke two dollars in a couple locations in the South.”
— President Trump, talking to reporters about gas prices.
A new Gallup poll finds 40% of Americans approving of President Donald Trump’s overall job performance.
“The rumor mill is hitting overdrive that Sen. Alex Padilla is contemplating a bid for California governor — and it’s not just idle talk,” Politico reports.
“A prominent political entity in Sacramento is currently in the field polling the 2026 governor’s race with Padilla’s name included as a potential candidate.”
“The US has said it is prepared to provide intelligence assets and battlefield oversight to any western security plan for postwar Ukraine and take part in a European-led air defense shield for the country,” the Financial Times reports.
“President Donald Trump told European leaders last week America would be part of ‘co-ordination’ of security guarantees for postwar Ukraine, something Kyiv has demanded to deter a future attack from Russia after any peace deal.”
“A polarizing resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel was voted down Tuesday by members of the Democratic National Committee, who opted instead to approve a more modest measure that called for a ceasefire to the conflict in Gaza,” NOTUS reports.
Valentina Gomez, a Republican running for Congress in Texas, shared a video of her burning the Koran with a flamethrower as part of her effort to “end Islam,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Gomez: “Your daughters will be raped and your sons beheaded, unless we stop Islam once and for all. America is a Christian nation, so those terrorist Muslims can fuck off to any of the 57 Muslim nations. There is only one true God, and that is the God of Israel.”
“Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook will sue over President Trump’s attempt to fire her from the central bank,” Axios reports.
“Senior Trump adviser Dan Scavino is taking over as director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office — an influential role charged with staffing the administration,” Axios reports.
“Scavino is Trump’s longest-serving aide, having worked for the president since 2015, when Trump rode down an escalator in New York’s Trump Tower and announced his first White House bid.”
Paul Krugman: “Yesterday Donald Trump said that he had fired Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors… Cook has said that she will not resign.”
“So at this point the immediate onus is on Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman. He has the right — I would say the obligation — to say, ‘Show me the legal basis for this action.’ If Trump’s officials can’t provide that basis, he should declare that as far as he is concerned, Cook is still a Fed governor.”
“If Powell caves, or the Supreme Court acts supine again and validates Trump’s illegal declaration, the implications will be profound and disastrous. The United States will be well on its way to becoming Turkey, where an authoritarian ruler imposed his crackpot economics on the central bank, sending inflation soaring to 80 percent.”
Playbook: “The dilemma for the Fed is immediate… Do they treat her as fired or not?”
Ty Cobb, one of President Trump’s first-term White House attorneys, was asked by NPR what he thought about when he heard the FBI had searched John Bolton’s home last Friday.
Said Cobb: “Well, I went down and locked my door.”
Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital fund invested in Polymarket, the world’s largest predictions market, and he’ll join the firm’s advisory board, Axios reports.
The likely motivation: “Americans aren’t allowed to use Polymarket, which claims to have hosted over $6 billion in predictions so far this year, but that may soon change.”
New York Times: “There were some gay appointees during the first Trump administration, but it wasn’t like now. Mr. Trump initially arrived in Washington as a true outsider; he had to draw from the disparate parts of the old GOP he had vanquished in order to staff his government. This time around, he has his own establishment.”
“And it turns out that the MAGA establishment has a lot more openly gay men than the Republican establishment that came before it.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump’s buffoonery makes him very possible to defeat… but if enough people surrender to him, he could wind up fully destroying the republic, incompetence and all. And the history of autocracy is full of those who regretted failing to stand up and fight when they still could.”
Related for members: What Democrats Could Learn from Vladimir Putin
“I would say also that his personal attacks on me are just evidence of a guy who’s still living in fifth grade. He’s the kind of bully that throws invectives at people – because he knows that what he’s saying is actually commentary on himself.”
— Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), quoted by The Guardian, responding to President Trump’s insults about his fitness.
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.