New York Times: “The Senate of the Philippines was thrown into chaos Wednesday as what appeared to be gunshots were fired inside the chamber after a top ally of the country’s former leader said police were coming to arrest him.”
“At about 7:30 p.m. while the Senate was in session, a live broadcast from the capital, Manila, aired the sound of explosions and gunshots. It was not clear who fired the shots.”
“It’s not just one poll. The five worst polls ever for any president on inflation, they all belong to Donald Trump and they have all occurred in the last month. What we’re talking about here is the worst numbers ever. Joe Biden isn’t in there. Jimmy Carter isn’t in there.”
— Polling analyst Harry Enten, on CNN.
“An alliance of environmental groups and immigration advocates has welcomed what looks to be the imminent closure of Alligator Alcatraz, the notorious immigration jail in the remote Florida Everglades celebrated by Donald Trump for its harsh conditions,” The Guardian reports.
A new Annenberg poll finds just 17% of Americans say the impact of AI on the United States over the next 10 years will be somewhat or very positive, compared with 42% who say it will be somewhat or very negative.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said he’s running for governor of Kentucky next year, the Daily Independent reports.
Said Comer: “I plan on running for governor in 2027. It’s not official yet; it will probably be official somewhere around December.”
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro are neck and neck ahead of Brazil’s October election, with a new poll giving the incumbent a slight edge, 42% to 41%, Bloomberg reports.
Pastor Mark Burns, a spiritual adviser to President Trump, told the New Yorker that “it doesn’t matter” the president “grabbed” women and bragged about it.
Said Burns: “Well, I think that it could be said about all of us. I mean… you have things in your closet that you pray never show up on CNN. There are things that you’ve done that you pray to God never become a New Yorker story.”
He added: “It doesn’t matter what President Trump has done in his past… It doesn’t matter in the eyes of the Lord, and apparently, it doesn’t really matter to the eyes of the American voters because they voted for him and made him President twice. Many would argue three times.”
“Wholesale prices in April posted their highest annual increase in more than three years, signaling more nettlesome inflation as pipeline costs intensify,” CNBC reports.
“President Donald Trump disembarked Air Force One in China on Wednesday for the first time in nearly a decade,” NOTUS reports.
“The Chinese rolled out a red carpet underneath the stairs of the presidential plane minutes before Trump descended and gave the waiting crowd two fist pumps.”
CNBC: Trump arrives in Beijing with CEOs ahead of Xi meetings.
A new Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics poll of the primary election for California governor finds Xavier Becerra leading the field at 19%, followed by Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer at 17% respectively.
Ten percent support Katie Porter, and 8% Matt Mahan. Twelve percent are undecided.
President Trump said he does not know the contractor that is renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after previously saying he spoke to a man he knew about it, The Hill reports.
CNN: “Jeffries and his allies have designed plans for the next two years to push Democratic-held states to set aside nonpartisan redistricting rules or gerrymander even more aggressively, with an eye toward producing a dozen or more new Democratic-held seats by November 2028, people familiar with the matter said. They’re eying seats from Oregon to New York in an effort that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more in the next two years.”
“And they’re willing to put an uncomfortable spotlight on members of their own party to do it.”
Said Jeffries: “The days of Democrats unilaterally disarming are over, particularly given how high the stakes are.”
“Behind the scenes, the House minority leader’s allies are preparing a messaging push against any Democrats who stand in the way of gerrymandering, insisting that only ‘real Democrats’ are willing to fight.”
“Monday was a typical day for President Trump. He took questions in the Oval Office. He met with members of Indiana University’s football team. And he had dinner with law-enforcement officers in the White House Rose Garden,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“After the sun went down, another familiar ritual began: late-night social-media posting. The president’s Truth Social account posted 55 messages between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m.”
Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) denied having any inappropriate relationship with staff and said an investigation by the House Ethics Committee will eventually clear him of any wrongdoing, CNN reports.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) received “a four-page ‘manifesto’ threatening the Republican’s life a day before authorities were alerted to a suspicious object that disrupted a Macon event for his bid for governor,” the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports.
“The Missouri Supreme Court enacted the state’s Republican-drawn gerrymander on Tuesday, allowing it to likely take effect for the midterms by handing the GOP victories on two major redistricting cases,” Politico reports.
“The court ruled that the state’s new map — which Republicans in the Legislature drew to break up a Kansas City-area Democratic seat and shift the delegation from 6-2 Republican to a 7-1 advantage — did not violate the state constitution’s redistricting clause. The court also ruled against Democrats in the state who filed a petition seeking to force a referendum on the map, declaring the filing of the petition does not automatically suspend the new map.”
Politico: “Ten thousand losses. That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.”
“More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda.”
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.
