“President Trump escalated his public feud with Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of endangering Catholics by opposing U.S. military action against Iran,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The president’s latest broadside against the pope could complicate Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Rome later this week, where he is due to meet with Pope Leo in a bid to reset U.S.-Vatican relations after months of growing tensions.”
A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll finds that nearly 4 in 5 Americans say the Iran War is driving up the cost of everything.
The numbers are striking:
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New York Times: “The Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Smith College, the women’s school in Northampton, Mass., violated anti-discrimination laws by allowing transgender students to enroll.”
New York Times: “The Justice Department has demanded the identities of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., according to court records, escalating an ongoing federal investigation of the 2020 vote in Georgia’s most populous county that relies on false and debunked claims.”
“The demand targets employees of Fulton County elections as well as volunteer poll workers, who likely numbered in the thousands during the 2020 election, according to court records.”
Steve Vladeck: “My own view is that a big part of what’s wrong with the current Court is that it has become completely un-accountable—both because Congress has stopped pulling those levers and because the internal pressure on the Court to moderate created by justices like Stewart, Powell, O’Connor, and Kennedy is no longer there.”
“It’s only in the absence of both forces that Justice Alito can say, as he did in 2023, that ‘no provision of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the Supreme Court—period.’ Alito’s statement was and is literally incorrect, but it captures what has increasingly become the zeitgeist, and underscores why my own view is that restoring a culture of accountability is the best way to split the difference between preserving the Court’s independence and making it more worthy of the diffuse, public support that gives that independence real-world force.”
Marc Novicoff: “If the intent behind disenfranchising minority voters appears to be merely partisan, the gerrymander is now legal. The ruling will allow Republican state legislatures in the South to erase most if not all of the region’s few blue House districts without fear of being blocked in court.”
“And so the gerrymandering wars, already awful, are poised to get even worse. Democrats will respond to the Republican response to Callais; Republicans will respond to the response to the response; voters will lose in the process. In a few years, almost every seat in the House of Representatives could be safely occupied by a hyper-partisan incumbent, beholden only to primary voters.”
“The chamber could become something like the Electoral College: Whoever wins a state gets all of its representatives, and the winners are there just to vote for or against the president.”
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said the fragile ceasefire with Iran is still in effect, one day after Tehran attacked U.S. forces and the commercial vessels they were protecting in the Strait of Hormuz,” CNBC reports.
Bloomberg: “President Donald Trump is slated to sign a memorandum Tuesday that brings back the Presidential Fitness Test Award, part of a broader effort by the administration to revamp US public health policies.”
“Donald Trump quipped that he might leave the White House after another two terms on Monday as the soon-to-be-80-year-old president hosted business leaders at the White House, and then launched into a rant about how physically and mentally fit he still is,” The Independent reports.
Said Trump, in reference to a proposed tax provision: “When I get out of office in, let’s say, eight or nine years from now, I’ll be able to use it. I’ll be able to use it myself.”
Dan Pfeiffer: “After the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Trump went to the White House briefing room to address the press and the nation.”
“In that moment, Trump could have called for national unity or decried the disturbing rise in political violence. He could have talked about the need for everyone to ratchet down the political rhetoric. I know this is crazy, but he could have even called for changes to our gun laws.”
“He did none of those things.”
“Instead, Trump used the moment when he had the nation’s attention — and the sympathy and concern of many people who disagree with him — to push for the construction of the White House ballroom.”
A new University of Houston poll in Texas finds Ken Paxton leading Sen. John Cornyn in their U.S. Senate runoff, 48% to 45% among likely GOP voters.
“When I’m doing my stump speech and tell people that on the first day of this campaign, I made a promise not to support Chuck Schumer for leader, the room — without any explanation — just spontaneously bursts into applause.”
— Iowa U.S. Senate candidate Zach Wahls (D), quoted by Punchbowl News.
Jonathan Bernstein: “The first and probably best option is to ‘pack’ it. In other words: Add more Justices. The Constitution doesn’t specify how large the Supreme Court should be, so it’s been set by legislation, and it took a long time for Congress to settle on nine. All it would take to add another one or two or ten Justices would be Congress passing something and the president signing it. Then nominate and confirm the new Justices, and the GOP majority on the Court is gone.”
“The advantage of this is how easy it is. Yes, it would require a nuke of sorts in the Senate – as it is now, the bill could be defeated by a filibuster unless Democrats could find 60 votes, and there’s not going to be any Republican help on it. However, that’s true of most of the Democrats’ democracy agenda, from restoring the Voting Rights Act to statutory DC statehood. My guess is that as long as there are, say, at least 53 Democrats in the Senate they’ll have the simple majority needed to carve out a new exception to the filibuster.”
“The downside of court-packing is that it creates an obvious arms race: Republicans would retaliate as soon as they had the chance by doing the exact same thing.”
Michael Kern: “For more than two decades, Beijing has used a remarkably simple strategy to maintain its stranglehold on the global rare earth supply chain: whenever a Western company would get serious about building an independent processing capability, China would act to crash prices.”
“And the result is generally the same: the investment case falls apart, the funding disappears, and the company folds. China’s monopoly survives another cycle.”
Robert Pape: “When Donald Trump ordered U.S. warships to escort commercial tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, he did more than protect shipping.”
“He made a public bet – and tying his hands if it fails.”
“He is betting that Iran will not strike a ship under American protection.”
“If Trump wins the bet, the United States stabilizes the corridor. If it fails even once, Washington must escalate—or accept humiliation in full view of the world.”
“There is no third outcome.”
“The U.S. and Iran are teetering on the brink of a dangerous new phase of the war, as both turn to military force to break a standoff in the Strait of Hormuz that has paralyzed shipping and imposed costs on both sides,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The return to a more openly violent chapter will test both sides. Each has reason to try to force an end to the current paralysis in the strait. But they also face substantial risks if the skirmishing escalates out of control—for Iran, greater damage to its economy and leadership, and for President Trump, deeper involvement in a war that is unpopular at home.”
Washington Post: U.S. and Iran exchange taunts as attacks imperil fragile ceasefire.
“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced several initiatives intended to rein in the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, which he has described as exceptionally difficult to quit,” 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.