“Sen. Ted Cruz, whose superpower is always doing the wrong thing, appears to have gone sightseeing in Athens the day after a devastating natural disaster hit his home state, killing more than 100 people, including more than two dozen girls and staff members from a summer camp,” Vanity Fair reports.
“In addition to being in deeply poor taste, the revelation suggests that the lawmaker did not actually attempt to get back to Texas ‘as fast as humanly possible,’ as his office claimed.”
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, setting off a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government,” CNN reports.
“Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Trump–Russia probe, including allegedly making false statements to Congress,” Fox News reports.
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“President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is starting to ripple across the U.S. economy,” Politico reports.
“From small farms in California, to meat packing facilities in Nebraska to corporate giants like Disney, businesses are scrambling to replace workers after recent administration actions have taken immigrants, both legal and illegal, out of the labor force, including several hundred thousand people who had been given temporary work permits under President Joe Biden.”
“Elon Musk’s AI platform Grok faced backlash Tuesday for repeated use of an antisemitic phrase and other offensive posts in its replies on X,” Axios reports.
“Musk has recently expressed frustration with Grok’s way of answering questions and suggested in June that he would retrain the AI platform. It’s unclear how well that’s going.”
The Atlantic: Elon Musk’ Grok is calling for a new holocaust.
“A bill targeting Russia with substantial new sanctions is gaining momentum in the Senate, with a key GOP senator signaling Tuesday that President Donald Trump is now on board,” Politico reports.
Said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): “We’re moving… Trump told me it’s time to move so we’re going to move.”
Sam Stein: “Is Donald Trump a stronger and more skilled politician than he was eight years ago—or are the guardrails that once hindered him just weaker?”
“That question has come up often over the last six months as Trump has enjoyed a series of successes that eluded him during his first term in office. Clearly, he has used the power of the presidency in ways neither he nor any prior president has before. He hasn’t just changed the shape and direction of the executive branch and moved his agenda through Congress, but reshaped entire sectors of American society—from academia, to entertainment, to the law itself.”
“Yet what has stood out along the way is not how far Trump has pushed the envelope but how little resistance he’s encountered.”
“The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday. The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs,” the New York Times reports.
“The order, which lifted a lower court’s ruling that had blocked mass layoffs, was unsigned and did not include a vote count, which is typical in such emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a public dissent.”
“The case represents a key test of the extent of President Trump’s power to reorganize the government without input from Congress.”
Washington Post: “Two of the liberal justices — Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — appeared to have joined the conservatives in allowing the administration to plan reorganizations and reductions in the workforce.”
Jonathan Last: “While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.”
“This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.”
“The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.”
“President Donald Trump said he aims to root out political corruption in New York City but he begged off making an endorsement in the mayor’s race on July 8,” USA Today reports.
Said Trump: “I’m not getting involved.”
Patrick Ruffini: “An insurgent outsider surges to the front of the pack to defeat, among others, the scion of a political dynasty. In doing so, he takes positions considered unthinkable to many in the party’s traditional voting base. He is considered so anathema that many in his own party vow never to support him, organizing desperate bid after desperate bid to organize a viable third party challenge in November.”
“The situation might describe the current predicament facing New York City with the nomination of Zohran Mamdani (of ‘globalize the intifada,’ ‘seize the means of production’, defund the police, abolish prison notoriety), but readers will recognize it as a not-too-thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 and the failed efforts to stop him after the primaries.”
“The anti-Zohran forces of today bear a lot of resemblance to the Never Trump movement of 2016, and without a decisive attempt to unify behind a single candidate, are likely to suffer the same fate.”
Vanity Fair: “Cuomo and Adams: You drop out of the mayor’s race… No you drop out of the mayor’s race.”
“President Trump revived the idea of taking over Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, saying the capital city should be run ‘flawlessly,'” Axios reports.
Said Trump: “We could run D.C. We’d get the best person to run it.”
“At a rally in Pittsburgh in May, Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) received the most powerful co-sign in Republican politics: an endorsement from President Donald Trump in the upcoming gubernatorial race,” ABC News reports.
“But after months of speculation, Meuser has recently told associates he will not enter the race to challenge Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D).”
New York Times: “The effort by Joe Biden’s inner circle to limit access to him helps explain why it took him more than three weeks to drop his re-election bid after his disastrous debate performance.”
President Donald Trump raged at the media during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, ominously claiming that the media “ought to make a lot of changes” and adding that “changes are going to be made,” Mediaite reports.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
— President Trump, quoted by the New York Times.
“Chinese state media warned the Trump administration Tuesday against striking deals that sideline China, after the president announced that Asian countries would face higher tariffs starting Aug. 1, unless other arrangements are agreed on before then,” NBC News reports.
From the People’s Daily: “If such situations arise, China will not accept them and will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
President Trump said “no extensions will be granted” to his Aug. 1 tariff deadline in a Tuesday social media post, the latest bit of uncertainty over when his tariffs will go into effect, Politico reports.
Said Trump, on Truth Social: “There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 – No extensions will be granted.”
Bloomberg: “U.S. equities swung between small gains and losses in midday trading Tuesday, with traders’ initial hope for further negotiations on tariffs dashed as President Donald Trump said he would not offer any extensions to a new August 1 deadline.”
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.
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