“I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration; what I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months.”
— Vice President Vance, quoted by Rolling Stone.
The Atlantic: “As recently as last week, the Iran war appeared to be turning slightly in America’s favor. The Houthis—the Yemen-based militia that is Iran’s most formidable remaining ally in the Middle East—were under pressure from their local rivals, and the Saudi air force was pounding them with air strikes. The president of Yemen’s internationally recognized government issued a triumphant statement declaring that the Houthis’ miscalculations ‘will open the door to their complete collapse.’ With their Houthi partners wounded, Iran’s leaders would have one more reason to back down and agree to Donald Trump’s terms.”
“Yesterday morning, those delusions drifted away like smoke as Houthi forces broke through their enemies’ defenses and seized the towns and islands around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the most important maritime choke points in the world.”
Michelle Cottle: “If Mr. Ossoff winds up in the White House, Mr. Trump will have largely himself to blame. The president didn’t just help him win his seat. He also spent years undermining the Republican Party in Georgia, sowing internecine discord, championing losing candidates and destroying conservative voters’ faith in the electoral system.”
“With impressive, if unintentional, drive, Mr. Trump has fostered the conditions that transformed Mr. Ossoff from a charmingly nerdy, vaguely awkward, low-key freshman lawmaker into a political star.”
“Al-Qaeda’s plans for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks took root in dusty, mud-walled compounds in Afghanistan that served for years as terrorist training camps,” the Washington Post reports.
“A quarter-century later — despite decades of U.S. military and counterterrorism operations aimed at eradicating those strongholds — al-Qaeda is again operating training camps in Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Western intelligence officials and a United Nations organization responsible for monitoring terror networks.”
David Graham: “A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump’s cratering approval and his party’s sinking odds in the midterm elections, but nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary. The basic challenge is not novel to this president—voters hate inflation, yet most anti-inflation measures the government can take will hurt the economy, which voters also hate.”
“But Trump’s strategy seems to be to commit to new proposals that would drive up costs.”
The Economist: “As the midterms approach, America’s two main parties are conducting opposite experiments. Republicans march in lockstep behind Donald Trump, who summoned his troops to Dallas this week to celebrate his awesomeness…”
“Democrats, by contrast, are bickering over their leaders, strategy and ideology. The party has no standard-bearer, while socialists who once flitted around its edge are trying to become its heart. On the campaign trail, Republican discipline will beat Democratic chaos. Or so Republicans hope.”
“But political parties are not armies; their members’ duty is not merely to obey. They should debate, adapt and attract talent. They should be open to new leaders and new ideas. That is especially true after the political transformation wrought by Mr Trump. By those measures the unified Republican Party looks increasingly unhealthy, whereas the disunited Democrats may be engaged in the messy work of renewal.”
CNBC: “Hotter-than-expected inflation data has turned next week’s Federal Reserve meeting into a defining test for Chairman Kevin Warsh. His choice now is whether to raise interest rates, or look like he isn’t in control of the central bank he leads.”
Wired: “August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening—and climate change continuing to heat things up—more records are likely in store well into next year.”
“President Donald Trump expressed optimism about resolving a trade fight with Canada and downplayed the prospect of quitting a continental trade pact, in a potential sign of de-escalating tensions between the two countries,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “We’re doing great. We’re going to have a great relationship with Mexico. We actually have a good one with Canada.”
“He went on to say that a deal with Canada could come ‘fairly soon,’ but provided no details on whether formal talks between the two economies had resumed.”
“On the night Republicans gathered to mourn the killing of Charlie Kirk and warn against the dangers of violent rhetoric, a crowd at the party’s irregular midterm convention in Dallas repeatedly called for a sitting Senate candidate to be shot, while the Republican senator at the podium never denounced or even noted the outbursts,” The Guardian reports.
“The outbursts came repeatedly during Ted Cruz’s Thursday night address at the American Airlines center, when he named a Democrat he accused of holding radical views.”
“After the senator mentioned the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, video footage depicts at least one audience member shouting: ‘He should be shot!’ The same cry followed when Cruz named Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and again after he named Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. Cruz did not pause or respond to the shouting, and it remains unclear whether he heard it from the stage.”
Jonathan Chait: “Donald Trump’s new promise to give a $5,000 check to every adult American citizen if Republicans win the midterm elections may be an effort to answer a variant of an age-old riddle: Can Trump devise a policy so ill-conceived that even Trump’s intelligence is insulted?”
“Candidates often make inducements part of their campaign pitch. One obvious peculiarity of this plan is that Trump’s party already controls both chambers of Congress. Why, then, should the bonus checks be contingent on voters giving Republicans another two-year majority?”
“Trump has told reporters that he could distribute the loot without congressional approval. This is untrue. (It’s a facially unconstitutional infringement of Congress’s spending authority.) If it were true, however, it would make his decision to hinge the checks on the election’s outcome even more mysterious. If the choice were his alone, the outcome would seem totally irrelevant.”
“A lightning advance by Houthi rebels threatens a crucial Red Sea shipping route. Drone attacks blamed on Iraqi militias have forced the closure of a major pipeline, and Iran is still disrupting the Strait of Hormuz,” the Associated Press reports.
“It’s a nightmare scenario for Saudi Arabia, and it has sent jitters through global markets.”
A new Cook Political Report/Univision survey of Texas Hispanic likely voters finds the Democratic candidates in the state’s Senate and gubernatorial contests leading their GOP opponents by a 2-1 margin with the key voting bloc, as President Trump’s job approval rating in the state has sunk to just 33% with a demographic group that swung hard in his direction in 2024.
“The war in Iran will likely end soon after November’s mid-term elections, President Donald Trump said Saturday, and predicted that energy prices would fall sharply once that happens,” CNBC reports.
Said Trump: “I think very soon, I think it’ll be right after the mid-terms, actually. I would say shortly, and oil will come tumbling down when that happens.”
Alexandra Petri: “If only the GOP midterm convention succeeds in its aim of electing Donald Trump president, things will get a lot better in this country. Isn’t he already president? Hush! At the Unprecedented (But Very President-ed) Republican Midterm Convention, we reject such trivial objections! ‘I know many of you are still struggling thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats,’ said Richard Hudson, the National Republican Committee chair.”
“You have your orders: Imagine that Donald Trump is on the ballot, because if he were, the economy would get a lot better than it is under whoever is president right now—I have to assume Biden? But possibly, based on sheer volume of mentions, Abdul El-Sayed? Whoever it is, the guy is doing just terribly.”
“Donald Trump has already fixed everything, but also, we need him to fix everything. He is the greatest president in our lifetime, if we can ever manage to elect him.”
“I’m cautiously optimistic. I won’t predict, you know, how many seats are going to be in either chamber come November. But, I do think there is a path for us to retain both majorities and defy history, for sure.”
— White House political adviser James Blair, quoted by NBC News.
“Deep in Arctic waters near the remote Svalbard archipelago this spring, NATO allies caught Russian subs training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints,” Reuters reports.
“The world’s most valuable energy corridors are pinching shut,” the New York Times reports.
“On Friday, Houthi militants backed by Iran expanded their control of the Red Sea, threatening a critical route for Persian Gulf crude. That left the region with few alternatives, since shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — once the world’s primary oil transit point — remains significantly constrained and far below what it was before the war.”
“And oil exports from Saudi Arabia, long the most important producer in the Middle East, plunged last month to their lowest point in at least 13 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.
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