“People have got to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy. You can’t call the other side fascists and enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues to act.”
— Speaker Mike Johnson, on Fox News.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told ABC News that he would not seek reelection, the second Lone Star State Republican this week to retire.
McCaul said he’s “looking for a new challenge.”
President Trump entered the White House in January promising both the “largest deportation program in American history” and a “golden age” for American businesses, the New York Times reports.
“But in recent weeks, the tension between those two promises has spilled out into the open, leading Mr. Trump to reverse or contradict some of his most significant anti-immigration policies when they threatened to disrupt the economy.”
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“Sen. John Fetterman has a warning for his party: learn from the politically charged whirlwind that put Donald Trump back in the White House and secured Republicans control of both chambers of Congress or risk staying in the minority,” CNN reports.
Said Fetterman: “They have forgotten one of the reasons why we lost in 2024.”
He added: “Some people think now we have to double down on those things or we must become more progressive or more extreme. That’s absolutely not true. The seven or eight states that are going to determine who’s going to be our next president, you know, we have to win in those states, and I understand what that takes.”
Before he was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson sent friends messages showing that he was closely following news about the killing, the New York Times reports.
After Robinson joked that the gunman was his look-alike, another user suggested that the group could turn Robinson in and get the $100,000 reward that the F.B.I. was offering.
Said Robinson in Response: “Only if I get a cut.”
Six sources familiar with the investigation into the Charlie Kirk assassination told Axios that investigators believe suspect Tyler Robinson had a romantic relationship with his roommate.
Investigators initially wanted the information about the roommate’s gender identity kept quiet because that person is being “extremely cooperative” with authorities.
The roommate was “aghast” at the slaying when speaking to investigators and shared electronic messages sent by Robinson.
A memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the right-wing commentator who was assassinated on Wednesday, will be held on September 21 at State Farm Stadium, home of the Arizona Cardinals NFL team.
Karen Tumulty: “At no time in living memory has this country’s democratic system appeared more fragile. A question now is whether the values upon which that system was built are capable of repairing it.”
Peter Baker: “Mr. Trump has long made clear that coming together is not the mission of his presidency. In an era of deep polarization in American society, he rarely talks about healing. While other presidents have typically tried to lower the temperature in moments of national crisis, Mr. Trump turns up the flames.”
“He does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all the people. He acts as president of red America and the people who agree with him, while those who do not are portrayed as enemies and traitors deserving payback.”
“One is a close U.S. ally. The other is an adversary. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin both have consistently disregarded President Trump’s wishes, often without major consequences,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“His perceived passivity highlights a revealing paradox about Trump. Frequently claiming to have ended half a dozen wars, he portrays himself as an unmatched peacemaker. Yet in the two conflicts he has most often vowed to stop—Gaza and the Ukraine war—he has often been reluctant to exert U.S. leverage with Israel and Russia.”
“A federal judge on Saturday denounced the Trump administration for what she said appeared to be a deliberate scheme to ignore court-ordered protections for a group of deported immigrants who feared persecution in their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia,” the New York Times reports.
“But Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia appeared reluctant to order the return of the five migrants to the United States, instead asking the government to submit a sworn statement detailing its efforts to prevent the deportations of the people to their home countries.”
CNN: Judge says Trump administration is making “an end run around” federal court orders in deportation case.
“Hunter Biden is asking a federal judge to order the arrest of former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne for ignoring court orders in a libel suit Biden filed against the conspiracy theorist and conservative political activist,” Politico reports.
President Trump told NBC News he hopes the nation will heal following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Said Trump: “I’d like to see it the nation heal. But we’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did.”
He added: “We’ll see what happens. They don’t like what’s been happening. We’ve been winning very big.”
“People are scared to death in this building.”
— A member of Congress, quoted by NBC News, in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination.
The Trump administration is requesting $58 million to increase security for the executive and judicial branches in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk, Punchbowl News reports.
The request, which the administration is sending to Capitol Hill ahead of the Sept. 30 funding deadline, is directed to the United States Marshals Service. It would also go toward protecting Supreme Court justices.
“President Trump on Saturday set conditions for imposing new sanctions on Russia, saying he would do so only if all NATO member nations did the same and also stopped buying Russian oil and imposed steep tariffs on China,” the New York Times reports.
“They were the latest in a series of new conditions that Mr. Trump had announced before he would agree on punitive action against Russia, which has accelerated its aggression against Ukraine despite a summit that Mr. Trump held with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a month ago in Alaska. None of the steps Mr. Trump had said were required to begin an end to the war — including a negotiation between Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — have taken place, or appear imminent.”
CNN: Trump issues an ultimatum for NATO countries on Russia sanctions.
“If he wins his fall election, Zohran Mamdani would order New York’s police department to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu in the event that the Israeli prime minister ever traveled there, the city’s leading mayoral candidate said in a recent interview,” The Guardian reports.
“President Trump and his top advisers are escalating their attacks on their opponents in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, placing the blame for political violence on Democrats alone and signaling a broad crackdown on critics and left-leaning institutions,” the New York Times reports.
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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