“The planned transfer of downtown Miami land for President Trump’s future presidential library was temporarily blocked by a Florida judge on Tuesday,” Axios reports.
“Marvin Dunn, a Miami historian and activist, filed a lawsuit saying the public should have been more involved in the process that saw Miami-Dade College transfer ownership of the 2.63-acre property that has an estimated value of $67 million to the state, which donated it for Florida’s first presidential library.”
Punchbowl News: “The redistricting wars are the biggest story of the 2026 midterms as both parties race to draw as many favorable new seats as permitted under state and federal law. These power struggles between local politicians, congressional leaders, courts and the White House are playing out in a dozen states, as well as the halls of Congress.”
“The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today for a second time in a Louisiana redistricting case that could have huge implications for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and minority representation in Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus is holding a press conference on the case — Louisiana vs. Callais — this afternoon…”
“We’ll get a better sense of what the justices are thinking by their questions. Between six and 10 Democratic seats could be at risk under a broad ruling, especially in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. But it gets difficult to draw too many more GOP-favored seats than that because of demographics and parochial politics.”
“There is some good news for Democrats. Even if a ruling comes in the next few months, it would likely be too late to affect the midterms.”
“Two weeks into the government shutdown, the Trump administration has frozen or canceled nearly $28 billion that had been reserved for more than 200 projects primarily located in Democratic-led cities, congressional districts and states,” the New York Times reports.
“Each of these infrastructure projects had received federal aid, sometimes after officials spent years pleading in Washington — only to see that money halted as President Trump has looked to punish Democrats over the course of the fiscal stalemate.”
“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is making an aggressive eleventh-hour drive to install a new Illinois congressional map that would net House Democrats one additional seat,” Punchbowl News reports.
“There’s a very tight timeline to make this happen. The Illinois filing deadline is Nov. 3.”
“A north Florida judge has issued a restraining order against Rep. Cory Mills after the central Florida Republican was accused by a former girlfriend of threatening to circulate sexually explicit videos of her,” Politico reports.
“The State Department said it has revoked the visas of at least six people for their comments on the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The agency revoked visas from nationals of countries including Argentina, South Africa and Mexico… The department didn’t say if the people were in the country at the time their visas were revoked, and didn’t specify what kinds of visas they held or when the visas were revoked.”
House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Tuesday summoned Jack Smith, the former special counsel who had twice indicted Donald J. Trump, to testify about what they called his “partisan and politically motivated prosecutions,” in their latest bid to further the president’s campaign of retribution, the New York Times reports.
Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner (D) criticized Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) as business as usual in the first candidate TV ad of the state’s marquee Senate race, Axios reports.
Says an older woman in the ad: “Janet Mills again? She was a good governor, but I think it’s time for change.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will try to block President Donald Trump’s bailout of Argentina and dare Republicans to defend U.S. financial aid to a foreign government while the U.S. government remains shut down, the HuffPost reports.
“At the two-week mark, Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a long government shutdown, with both parties seeing more upside in persisting with their conflicting demands,” NBC News reports.
“As a result, neither side is willing to give an inch in the standoff, now the fifth-longest shutdown in the country’s history.”
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Gov. Janet Mills (D) entered the Maine Senate race on Tuesday morning, giving Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) a more proven potential challenger even as other Democrats are seeking the nomination.”
“We are moving the Maine Senate race from Leans Republican to Toss-up, which means we now have four Senate Toss-ups: Republican-held Maine and North Carolina and Democratic-held Georgia and Michigan.”
Floodlight News: “For decades, the Pentagon viewed climate change as a national security threat — not for environmental reasons, but because it undermined operations and readiness… Now the Trump administration is dismantling that approach. Pentagon leaders have cut climate research funding and abandoned adaptation plans.”
Said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “The Department of Defense does not do climate change crap.”
President Trump on Tuesday announced another lethal military strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela, which killed six people, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Administrators at Harvard University have informed faculty and staff that the majority of the school’s research grants canceled by the Trump administration have been restored following a federal judge’s ruling last month that the cuts were illegal,” the Boston Globe reports.
Eric Trump vouches for his father: “Make no mistake, he is heaven-bound. He’s probably too humbled to say it. I can say it as his son because I’ve seen the hand of God on him for a very long time.”
“Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway,” Politico reports.
“They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.”
“The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.”
“Israeli officials and hostage families have accused Hamas of violating the new ceasefire deal by failing to immediately return the remains of many of the former captives still in Gaza,” the New York Times reports.
“The truce agreement called for the immediate handover of all remaining bodies in Gaza, but acknowledged that some could be difficult to locate and may take more time to retrieve because of the destruction. Gaza was highly urbanized before the war, but two years of Israeli strikes have turned large parts of it into a flattened landscape of cement rubble.”
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.
