“Tom Steyer swooped in with millions of dollars to tout Gavin Newsom’s congressional redistricting measure. Top Democrats involved with the campaign wish he would stay away,” Politico reports.
“The billionaire investor’s eleventh-hour intervention ahead of the Nov. 4 special election, without coordinating with the California governor’s campaign team, has landed with a thud among proponents of Proposition 50.”
“President Donald Trump said his administration had struck an agreement to bring down the price of beef for consumers during an event in the Oval Office on Thursday,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “We are working on beef, and I think we have a deal on beef that’s going to bring the price down. That would be the one product that we would say is a little bit higher than we want it, maybe higher than we want it, and that’s going to be coming down pretty soon too. We did something, we worked our magic.”
“Voting-technology provider Smartmatic was charged Thursday with conspiring to bribe foreign officials and money laundering over a decade-old effort to win business in the Philippines,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
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Jonathan Bernstein: “It may seem to partisan Democrats who follow politics closely that ‘everybody’ knows what they know about the Republican Party, but that’s not how it works. Most people don’t follow politics very closely. And most people, especially those who are not dedicated partisans, tend to heavily discount accusations hurled by one party at the other…”
“Discounting accusations is normally functional; it just doesn’t work when it comes to Trump, since plain cold facts about him and his presidency sound as if they were wildly overstated accusations. He really is a convicted felon. He really was found to have committed sexual assault. He really does lie far more often than other politicians. He really did attempt to overturn an election. He really has broken his oath of office countless times — and during his current term, both Democratic and Republican judges have found that he has broken the law time after time after time.”
“And it’s not just that people discount what they know. Those who pay less attention to politics miss all sorts of stories that seem major to those who follow the news closely.”
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is deploying the state’s National Guard to Austin ahead of this weekend’s planned No Kings rally in the Texas capital, as top Republicans around the country vilify the protests as Antifa-linked and led by the radical flank of the Democratic Party,” Politico reports.
“Former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton was charged Thursday in a federal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information,” the AP reports.
“The 18-count indictment sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who after leaving Trump’s first government emerged as a prominent and vocal critic of the president.”
President Trump commented to reporters: “I did not know that… He’s a bad person. He’s a bad guy. Too bad. That’s the way it goes.”
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued the Trump administration Thursday to block steep new fees in the H-1B visa program, in its first legal action against the administration this term,” the Washington Post reports.
“The chamber’s lawsuit alleges that Trump’s new $100,000 visa fees for the H-1B program, widely used by Silicon Valley, violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Nick Miroff: “Every city targeted by Trump so far seems to resist in its own way. Protesters in proudly weird Portland, Oregon, have been mocking Trump’s ‘war zone’ claims by dancing in animal costumes and riding bikes buck naked.”
He continues: “In Chicago, city officials and neighborhood activist groups have been more disciplined, coordinating closely on efforts to slow ICE’s ‘Operation Midway Blitz.’ Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are fighting the National Guard deployment in court, and Johnson has declared city property off-limits to ICE, though it’s unclear how he’ll be able to enforce the ban. When Noem tried to use the bathroom inside the Broadview municipal building earlier this month, staffers wouldn’t even open the door.”
“President Donald Trump’s tariffs will cost global businesses upward of $1.2 trillion in 2025, with most of the cost being passed onto consumers,” CNBC reports.
Analysis from S&P Global “says that just one-third will be borne by companies, with the rest falling on the shoulders of consumers, under conservative estimates.”
“The military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs is stepping down,” the New York Times reports.
“The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.”
“It was unclear why Admiral Holsey is leaving now, less than a year into his tenure, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career.”
“Billionaires are donating heavily in the waning days of the New York City mayor’s race to stop Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani,” USA Today reports.
“Long before Republicans and Democrats reached the stalemate that has shut down the government, President Trump made it clear that he was willing to ignore Congress’s constitutional power to allocate federal spending,” the New York Times reports.
“So as the shutdown enters its third week with no resolution in sight, it has become increasingly evident to lawmakers in both parties that one serious obstacle to striking a spending deal to reopen the government is the possibility — maybe even certainty — that Mr. Trump will simply turn around and ignore it, as he has repeatedly ignored Congress’s will on spending this year.”
“When presidential contenders or congressional hopefuls flame out and abandon their campaigns, they often prepare to fight another day or simply fade away,” NOTUS reports.
“But a few of these old campaigns experience a different fate, morphing into deadbeat zombie operations — technically still alive and functioning, but unable to pay their numerous bills to various creditors.”
“New filings with the Federal Election Commission show just how much some politicos owe for old campaigns, including those of a current Trump administration official and an an MSNBC television host.”
“The Democrat Party’s main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”
— White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, on Fox News.
The Federalist obtained a voicemail from then Sen. Joe Biden to Justice Clarence Thomas’ answering machine praising him as a “person of character” just after his confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“Three B-52 bombers took off from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on Wednesday and flew for hours near the coast of Venezuela, according to flight tracking data, in what appears to be a major show of force by President Donald Trump,” ABC News reports.
“Senate Democrats on Thursday turned an annual Pentagon funding bill into the collateral damage of a fierce shutdown battle, blocking the legislation as they pressed for an agreement that includes their domestic priorities,” Politico reports.
“The defense funding bill — including a military pay raise — fell far short of the 60 votes needed to advance. All but three Democrats opposed the move by Republicans to open debate on the bill. It failed in a 50-44 vote, as many Democrats argued the Senate should instead focus on a deal to end the shutdown.”
Time: “While Democrats in races across the country are bracing for Mamdani to come up in opponents’ attack ads and fundraising ploys, it’s unclear how much of it will resonate outside of the Big Apple. Conversations with players in both parties reveal that Republicans’ drive to lash Mamdani’s brand of politics to Democratic contenders thus far has been a mixed bag.”
“Some Republicans quietly concede that Mamdani is tough to cast as the architect of Democrats’ national strategy. The sharp 33-year-old state legislator may be in the center of the media universe, but no one looks at New York Mayors as the deciding force inside the Democratic Party…”
“Another rub: even New Yorkers don’t know who Mamdani is, let alone most voters beyond the boroughs. In a Quinnipiac poll released last week, 19% of likely New York City voters said they hadn’t heard enough about him to even have an opinion of him. Nationally, he’s even less known.”
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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