Senate Majority Leader John Thune is sending senators home until June, unable to chart a path forward on their reconciliation bill, Punchbowl News reports.
Senate Republicans are furious about the Trump administration’s plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who believe they were targeted by the government. Senators want to put restrictions on the fund as part of the reconciliation bill, which funds ICE and CBP.
Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is dropping his independent bid for Michigan governor, with less than six months until the election, WXYZ reports.
“President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Thursday giving the government the power to evaluate artificial intelligence models before they are publicly released… It marks a shift for an administration that promoted a hands-off approach to the powerful technology,” New York Times reports.
“The order will give the Office of the National Cyber Director, which sits within the White House and oversees cybersecurity coordination in the government, and other agencies two months to develop a process for evaluating the models, the people said. The goal is for the government to identify any security vulnerabilities revealed by A.I. models and to patch problems in its systems to help protect banks, utilities and other sensitive industries from cyberattacks.”
Politico: “A bipartisan House effort is afoot to kill the $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund created by the Justice Department that could pay allies of President Donald Trump, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the effort ahead of a formal announcement.”
The White House put out a one-pager about the fund which says the “weaponization fund” will have “no partisan restriction” and that senators “whose records were secretly subpoenaed” could also apply.
CNN obtained a copy of a report into why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election conducted at the request of Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.
Here are the takeaways.
The Washington Post reports the DNC officially released the report once it had leaked to CNN.
Wall Street Journal: “The men were crossed off a list of thousands of names kept by an Israeli task force created for one job—to kill or capture all who planned or joined in the Oct. 7 attack, said current and former Israeli officials. Hundreds have been struck from the list, in one of the most personal and highly technical targeting campaigns in the history of warfare. The campaign continues amid the demands of the war with Iran and a cease-fire agreement in Gaza.”
“No participant is deemed too insignificant—down to the man who drove a tractor through a border fence that day. Nearly two years after he breached the border, the tractor driver was identified, located and blown up in an airstrike as he walked a narrow urban street in Gaza, according to footage released by Israel’s military.”
Time: “Platner’s story feels a lot like a pat movie plot: With Democratic voters yearning for outsiders to shake up the system, along comes a rough-hewn, gravelly voiced Marine Corps veteran from Sullivan, Maine—pop. 1,300—as their new national star. He barnstorms the state with a -pugilistic brand of economic populism, building a following so quickly that he forces his central-casting opponent, the two-term Democratic governor, Janet Mills, out of the race before voters can cast a ballot. Even in this antiestablishment, unabashedly ageist political moment, Platner’s rise has been remarkable…After decades of nominating buttoned-up technocrats with glittering résumés, many Democrats want candidates with flaws, faded ink, and redemption arcs that resemble their own. Platner’s past, in other words, may actually be his path.”
“The election this fall may come down to which version of Platner voters think is real: the man with the tattoo and Reddit posts, or the one who channeled his frustrations into a vision for change… He doesn’t want to join the Senate to be part of a system. He wants to rip that system apart and build a better one. But that, he acknowledges, requires a leap of faith for voters to believe that he won’t betray their values and has truly transformed.”
New York Times: “Senior Iranian officials maintain that all key matters are run by the 56-year-old heir. Decision making, however, extends beyond one man, experts say, guided by a small, elite band of mostly current or former senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”
“It is not the Guards as an organization that is exerting control, they say, but a hardened “band of brothers,” whose seminal experience was the brutal, eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that began in 1980.”
“We lost 13 people. In other wars, you lost hundreds of thousands of people. I get a kick when I look at somebody on television and they say, ‘he’s lost 13 people.'”
— President Trump, on Fox News.
“Oil prices jumped Thursday on a report that Iran’s supreme leader will not allow the country’s enriched uranium to be shipped abroad, a position that will likely complicate peace talks with the U.S.,” CNBC reports.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took questions from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI):
REED: How many taxpayers’ returns were leaked by the IRS in the 2020 breach?
BLANCHE: Excuse me?
REED: 405,427. One of them was Donald Trump, correct?
BLANCHE: Donald Trump and his family.
REED: And Donald Trump was president at the time. So it was his IRS that allowed this breach of privacy.
Just 31% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 64% say they disapprove, according to the latest American Research Group survey.
If Rep. Tom Barrett’s (R-MI) mileage reimbursements are accurate, the Michigan Republican drove enough campaign-related miles to circle the Earth once with about 7,000 miles left to spare, the Detroit Metro Times reports.
A new Emerson College poll in New York’s 10th congressional district shows Brad Lander (D) crushing Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) in their Democratic primary, 57% to 23%.
Said pollster Spencer Kimball: “While all age groups break for Lander, his most significant support comes from voters under 40, who break for Lander over Goldman, 73% to 15%.”
“JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon criticized plans by New York’s left-leaning mayor Zohran Mamdani to slap more taxes on the rich, arguing the move risks doing further damage to the city’s status as a business hub,” Bloomberg reports.
Bloomberg: “After hosting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the span of a week, Xi Jinping may already be eyeing the next big move on his diplomatic calendar: a visit to North Korea.”
“Such a trip, which Yonhap News reported Thursday could take place as soon as next week or early June, would be his first journey abroad this year and his first to Pyongyang in seven years.”
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.
