A new Annenberg poll finds public confidence in the trustworthiness of U.S. health and science agencies has dropped across the board since the inauguration of President Trump, driven by sharp declines among Democrats.
Most Americans lack confidence that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is providing the public with trustworthy information on matters concerning public health. Just 39% have confidence RFK Jr. is providing trustworthy public health information.
Here’s a must-read: The Game Changer: How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats How to Fight by Jon Ralston.
“How did the son of a laundress for local brothels end up one of America’s most powerful politicians and the Senate’s most bare-knuckled Democrat?”
Former President Barack Obama slammed ABC for pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the airwaves.
Said Obama: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.”
He added: “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”
“The Supreme Court said on Thursday that it will hear arguments in a critical case that challenges much of President Trump’s trade agenda on Nov. 5,” Axios reports.
“The high court will determine whether the White House can unilaterally impose tariffs on a significant share of foreign goods, the linchpin of the president’s economic agenda.”
“The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow the president to remove Lisa Cook as a Federal Reserve governor, setting up a key test of presidential power with potentially huge economic consequences,” the New York Times reports.
“A Texas man has been arrested and charged with making anti-Muslim death threats against Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor and the front-runner in recent polls,” Bloomberg reports.
“President Donald Trump said he doesn’t know the U.K. ambassador to Washington who was fired by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week over his relationship with pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, despite meeting him in the Oval Office four months ago,” Bloomberg reports.
Punchbowl News: “The battle over government funding has turned into this: Each side claims they’re being completely reasonable while blaming their opponents for the looming showdown.”
“Yet with less than two weeks to go before the funding deadline, Republican and Democratic leaders are growing further apart rather than closer. Both sides seem content to stand pat, even if that leads to a government shutdown on Oct. 1 and a broader political crisis.”
“Let’s be clear: A shutdown with President Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans in charge of Congress could spiral into a prolonged political stalemate. Democrats are dug in on health care-related demands, and they won’t move unless Republicans negotiate. The Republican leadership is telling its rank-and-file that they won’t negotiate on a seven-week CR. Any deal will be that much harder to reach once a shutdown takes hold.”
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “It will be very tempting to use the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races as predictors for next year’s midterms.”
“Sometimes these races do provide a preview of the following year, but there are enough instances where they do not that we would urge caution against overinterpreting the results.”
“One key factor is that the political situation could just be different in the midterm year than it is in the gubernatorial year, something we arguably saw as recently as 2021 and 2022, the most recent comparable cycle.”
“Another confounding factor is that New Jersey and Virginia are both more Democratic than the nation at the federal level, which was not consistently the case until recently.”
A new Wason Center poll in Virginia finds Abigail Spanberger (D) leading Winsome Earle Sears (R) in the governor’s race by 12 points, 52% to 40% among likely voters.
Another 8% remain undecided or don’t know.
“Democrats are gearing up to reject a GOP stopgap funding bill and potentially spark a government shutdown. What happens then, no one seems to know,” Politico reports.
“Two weeks ahead of the key deadline, party leaders are staking out a rhetorical hard line demanding that their Republican counterparts come to the negotiating table to discuss concessions on health care and other issues.”
Matthew Segal: “When companies or institutions cave to Trump despite the law being on their side, they are not misunderstanding the law; they are making an educated guess that the U.S. is heading in a direction where, in practice, the law won’t matter.”
“Silly Jimmy Kimmel. He should have just called for all homeless people to be killed and he’d still have a job.”
— Mehdi Hasan, on Bluesky.
“Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.'”
— FCC chair Brendan Carr, quoted by Deadline back in 2019.
Gallup: “A record-low 35% of Americans are satisfied with the quality of education that K-12 students receive in the U.S. today, marking an eight-percentage-point decline since last year.”
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.
