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.”
“The Arizona attorney general’s office is laying the groundwork today to take legal action in a bid to force Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ),” Punchbowl News reports.
“Arizona officials are set to formally certify Grijalva’s election win at 1 p.m. ET. The Arizona attorney general will then send a letter to Johnson demanding that he seat Grijalva.”
Actress Cheryl Hines addressed her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “brain worm” as she wrapped up an interview on The View.
Said Hines: “It ate a little bit of his brain and died, so don’t worry.”
“Katie Porter’s public-relations meltdown last week was damaging enough. What may be more humiliating is how few of her former House colleagues or Democratic leaders are rallying to her defense,” Politico reports.
“Much like her time on Capitol Hill, Porter, the frontrunner in the race for California governor, is on an island — still reeling from the fallout over a pair of viral videos that captured her on-camera outbursts with a staffer and reporter.”
Elaine Godfrey: “The age of the conventional Democrat is over. The time of the Democratic contrarian has come.”
“So says Adam Jentleson, anyway. The veteran political operative and former adviser to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently launched a think tank that asks Democratic candidates to ignore pressure from the far left, take positions outside the ‘liberal box,’ and be a lot more ‘heterodox’ in general. If this seems to you like Beltway speak for asking Democrats to sound more like Republicans, well, you would be at least partly correct. The Democratic Party used to have supermajorities in Congress because it allowed its members to hold a wide range of positions, Jentleson told me. To start winning again, the party needs to bring that back, he said. His new think tank, Searchlight Institute, plans to help.”
“With its seven-person team, a polling arm, and a $10 million budget, Searchlight promises to offer a ‘menu’ of orthodoxy-challenging ideas for Democrats to run on.”
Rachel Maddow believes that the recent indictments of Letitia James and James Comey are aiming to make Donald Trump’s enemies terrified to oppose him, The Wrap reports.
Said Maddow: “I think that the most obvious answer is probably the real one, which is that they want to make it either illegal or terrifying to oppose him. And so they’re putting heads on pikes and putting those pikes up at the gates to the city to say it’s not possible to criticize, let alone oppose, this president. If you do, look what we’re going to do to you and your family and your career and your livelihood and your reputation.”
She added: “I think that’s all it is. And I think that they don’t have anybody holding them back. And so they’re going to do it as long as they can and as much as they can.”
Brian Beutler: “Donald Trump and Stephen Miller will probably get the blood in the streets they want eventually.”
“We don’t know when or how it will unfold, or how the public will come to perceive it. But we do know that no matter how it unfolds or is perceived, it is already their fault, and everyone who cares about the future of the country should be prepared to blame them.”
“The Thanksgiving travel season could be put at risk by an extended government shutdown, Republican leaders warned Tuesday on Capitol Hill, ratcheting up warnings about flight cancellations and airport chaos amid the ongoing standoff with congressional Democrats,” Politico reports.
“Leaders in both parties are starting to look to the Thanksgiving holiday as a looming pressure point after President Donald Trump acted over the weekend to ensure active-duty military paychecks arrive on time Wednesday by shifting Pentagon funds. Many congressional leaders saw that deadline as a forcing mechanism. Now it appears ready to pass without major political consequences — raising the possibility the shutdown could drag on for weeks more.”
Politico: “On paper, Jon Ossoff has plenty of reasons to break party ranks as the government shutdown drags into a third week: The 38-year-old Georgian is the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election next year and his home state has more than 81,000 federal workers at risk for furloughs and firings.”
“In reality, Ossoff is sticking closely to his party’s strategy of trying to reframe the shutdown fight as a battle over health care — and has emerged as an object lesson in the limits of Republican efforts to focus pressure on the Democrats’ soft spots.”
“Part of that calculus is that it is much riskier to alienate your own party’s base than to break ranks in hopes of appealing to swing voters.”
“This is no longer, the Department of Justice, it’s no longer the premier prosecuting office in America. What it is now is a capo regime who goes out and executes hits when directed by the Don to do so. That’s what it is.”
— Former New Jersey Governor and U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (R), on ABC News.
Coming soon: The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations by Tom Wells.
Just like Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger secretly recorded each of his phone conversations and left a trail of evidence in his wake.
“The White House is pledging to fire more federal workers, the next salvo in President Donald Trump’s push to pressure Democrats to sign onto the GOP’s continuing resolution and end the government shutdown,” Politico 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.
