“The Trump administration says Americans should prepare between now and Election Day for a wave of new arrests and prosecutions over alleged non-citizen voter fraud,” Axios reports.
“The Trump administration is deploying hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys to pursue President Trump’s long-running fixation — and test a broader Republican claim that tougher enforcement will uncover far more illegal voting.”
“In the weeks leading up to his resignation last year, the first architect on the White House ballroom clashed with President Donald Trump over design features that the architect believed violated building safety codes,” the Washington Post reports.
”James McCrery withdrew from the project last October after warning repeatedly that Trump was insisting on a preliminary design that did not provide adequate emergency exit routes or fire-containment measures.”
”Trump brushed off McCrery’s concerns, they said, and the president countered that no building codes apply to White House construction.”
Said Trump: “I am the code.”
“There are 41 days until Election Day, and Republicans are throwing everything and the kitchen sink at their sinking political fortunes,” Punchbowl News reports.
”Over the past few weeks, the electoral climate for President Donald Trump and Republican leaders has worsened dramatically, according to lawmakers, aides and political advisers who see daily polling.”
”Gas prices are sky-high. Diesel sets a new record almost daily. Trump said at the United Nations Tuesday that the Iran war won’t end until ‘after the midterm elections.’ That’s a frightening prospect for GOP lawmakers who are now publicly calling for an end to the seven-month conflict.”
”Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate candidate in Iowa, is demanding the House return to session to enact a ban on diesel exports. This won’t happen, but it shows a suddenly vulnerable Republican desperately scrambling for a message.”
“A majority of Americans say the rule of law in the U.S. is weaker now than a decade ago, when Donald Trump was first elected president,” Axios reports.
“As President Donald Trump fights to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, administration officials are circulating a list of government sites that could have Trump’s name affixed to them in some way,” MS NOW reports.
“One landmark that has emerged in the discussions among administration officials has raised eyebrows: Ford’s Theatre, the playhouse where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.”
“Donald Trump doesn’t want to stay in the White House past 2028, Ari Emanuel says — he’s too excited about JD Vance and Marco Rubio coming in instead,” the Hollywood Reporter reports.
Said Emanuel: “I spoke to him three weeks ago. And in that conversation… He thought JD and Marco Rubio would be a formidable group.”
A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds Democrats leading Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, 53% to 41%.
The same poll finds President Trump’s approval at 39%, while 53% disapprove.
“In a midterm election largely shaped by struggles with affordability, Republicans are hanging many of their hopes on President Trump’s signature domestic policy law, the sprawling package of spending increases and tax breaks dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the New York Times reports.
“But to partially offset its largess, which totals more than $3 trillion, the law also cut social services, including Medicaid, health care subsidies and food assistance, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. How voters view the law depends largely on which side of the federal ledger they find themselves — recipients of tax cuts or beneficiaries of programs that have been cut.”
“Facing rising gas prices, an Iran war with no end in sight and increasingly dire midterm polling, Senate Republicans are facing a crucial choice this week: fight or flight,” Politico reports.
”Some GOP lawmakers are caught between their desire to use the rest of the scant pre-election legislative calendar to improve their standing with voters and the likelihood there probably isn’t much they can do anyway.”
“Reporters try to hold President Trump and his administration accountable,” NPR reports.
“Now three major U.S. news outlets are asking a federal judge — a Trump appointee at that — to hold the president in check for what they say is an egregious violation of their First Amendment rights simply because he doesn’t like how they cover him.”
“Trump has already signalled that he knows the judge may well rule against him.”
“Republican officials, who opened the midterm season with high hopes they would keep the Senate, are growing increasingly anxious about a state that voted for Donald Trump three times and has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly two decades,” the Washington Post reports.
”They’re privately conceding the party appears set to lose North Carolina’s Senate seat unless Trump’s poor approval ratings — and the high prices that caused them — improve dramatically in the coming weeks.”
“The fight over Missouri’s congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time late Tuesday, after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Donald Trump,” the Associated Press reports.
“The new map was drawn to help Republicans gain a U.S. House seat in the pivotal midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The Supreme Court has twice blocked efforts to use it in November.”
New York Times: Dispute over Missouri’s congressional map again returns to Supreme Court.
New York Times: “For Mr. Trump, it was a major retreat. He first raised the possibility of buying Greenland during his first term, and never let go of the idea. Even before he was inaugurated, he was making a national security case for making the territory part of the United States, acutely aware that, if he could get it, it would be an acquisition on the scale of President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.”
“And few issues did more to galvanize European allies against the Trump administration, especially once they feared that he might make a military move against a NATO ally. There is no evidence he ever seriously considered that step. But that did nothing to alleviate the fears.”
“Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — who lost his primary to an opponent endorsed by President Donald Trump — joined the call from one of his Republican Senate colleagues to investigate Donald Trump Jr. and his business interests, relationships with foreign officials and oligarchs, and acceptance of lucrative gifts,” Mediaite reports.
“Former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it’s ‘scary’ how little mainstream news outlets carry President Donald Trump’s speeches amid his ban on several news networks,” Mediaite reports.
Said Leavitt: “For the president of the United States to address the nation, and for networks to make the editorial decisions themselves that they will not cover it for their audience, that’s scary stuff.”
“For weeks, President Trump has repeated the same message in a bid to drive his supporters to the polls in November: Pretend I’m on the ballot,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“But in New York on Tuesday, the president offered a different assessment.”
Said Trump: “The Republican Party is running—and I’ll be helping them. But I am not running… It doesn’t even enter my mind.”
“As Donald Trump took an aggressive stance on the global stage at the United Nations on Tuesday, several Senate Republicans were breaking from the president back in Washington,” Bloomberg reports.
“The GOP backlash, which has been simmering below the surface throughout Trump’s second term as lawmakers privately grumbled he hasn’t focused enough on affordability issues, burst into public view as a rapid succession of Republicans challenged Trump on everything from the Iran war to the president’s ‘lavish’ summit this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
Washington Sun: Survival over loyalty: why Republicans are breaking with Trump.
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that he had asked President Trump for a ‘winter package’ of new military equipment and believes the U.S. will pursue a deal to halt attacks on energy infrastructure,” the Wall Street Journal 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.
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