“Former New York Times opinion editor James Bennet cried on the witness stand in federal court while apologizing to Sarah Palin over a 2017 story that falsely suggested her political action committee was connected to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and severely injured then-Rep. Gabby Giffords,” The Wrap reports.
Said Bennet: “I blew it, you know. I made a mistake.”
Andrew Sullivan: “In some ways, the core character of the Trump administration can be seen in two Oval Office press conferences with two young, informally-dressed foreign leaders. The first was with Volodymyr Zelensky, president of a country invaded and now partly occupied by Russia, who has courageously kept his country free from total Russian domination.”
“The second was with Nayib Bukele, a man who governs in a permanent emergency, has seized 83,000 people with no due process and put them in brutal gulags, strong-armed his Supreme Court to gain an unconstitutional second term, and is one of the worst human rights violators in Latin America.”
“So it’s obvious which one Trump and Vance prefer, isn’t it? They humiliated Zelensky while lavishing Bukele with encomiums for his collaboration in providing an extra-territorial, extra-judicial, concentration camp for whomever in America Trump wants to grab off the street, bundle into an airplane, and get Stephen Miller to call a terrorist. What’s not to like?”
Ezra Klein: “Trump intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he sends into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt — it is about his power.”
“And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend?”
Tina Nguyen: “The past decade of politics, to put it bluntly, has been batshit. The past week of politics has been batshit. Heck, the past week of everything in the world that has anything to do with political decisions — diplomacy, trade, manufacturing, having a 401k, owning a car or a computer or a phone or a T-shirt — has been batshit.”
“But if you were asked to use a word that was not a swear, and were given about five minutes to calm down, a good second choice would be ‘disintegrated.’ There’s no clear answer, however, as to why — why it seems like people are living in their own separate realities; why our leaders seem to operate via conflicting conspiracy theories and obscure philosophies; why it feels like a screaming, ephemeral electronic blob called the internet is actually running the world instead of the people supposedly in charge of it.”
E.J. Dionne: “Above all, the tariffs have made clear how all of Trump’s policies fit together: Every step he takes is aimed at concentrating the power of government in his own hands as he seeks to intimidate opponents and move aggressively to eliminate alternative sources of public influence in the legal system, the universities, and the media.”
“The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is being replaced after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to President Trump that the latest leader of the agency had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of billionaire Elon Musk,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Bessent believed that Mr. Musk had done an end run around him to get Gary Shapley installed as the interim head of the IRS, even though the tax collection agency reports to Mr. Bessent.”
“Mr. Bessent got Mr. Trump’s approval to unwind the decision.”
“The Trump administration on Friday will announce that it’s moving ahead with a new rule, previously known as ‘Schedule F,’ that will make it easier to remove federal employees it believes are undercutting President Trump’s agenda,” Axios reports.
“By stripping civil service protections from about 50,000 people — roughly 2% of the federal work force — Trump is continuing his far-reaching effort to trim the federal bureaucracy and make it more answerable to him.”
“Overseas travel to the United States has declined sharply since President Donald Trump returned to office,” the Washington Post reports.
“Industry experts say some of the reasons are plain to see: Reports of detentions and deportations, including the weeks-long lockup of European tourists, have sowed fears of bad experiences at the border. Some countries have tightened travel advisories, and Trump’s whiplash tariffs have ratcheted up international tensions.”
“The Trump administration took steps to impose levies on Chinese vessels docking at U.S. ports, threatening to shake up global shipping routes and escalate the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies,” Bloomberg reports.
Russell Berman: “Republicans are considering a tax hike on the wealthy, and Grover Norquist is beside himself.”
Said Norquist: “It’s an incredibly destructive idea economically, and very foolish politically.”
“The concept was once unthinkable in the GOP, yet many Republicans are signaling that the party might just break the first commandment of conservative politics.”
“Donald Trump is studying whether he’s able to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, his top economist said Friday, a day after the president publicly criticized the head of the central bank for not moving fast enough to slash interest rates,” Bloomberg reports.
Annie Lowrey: “By threatening the independence of the Federal Reserve, the president risks undermining many of his key goals.”
New York Times: “From the moment Donald J. Trump was re-elected to the presidency, his conservative Christian supporters have rejoiced in a second chance for their values to have power. And now, week after week, scenes like these are taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as they seize on this opportunity.”
“Routinely, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic direction, senior administration officials and allied pastors are infusing their brand of Christian worship into the workings of the White House itself, suggesting that his campaign promise to ‘bring back Christianity’ is taking tangible root.”
“The result at times is an atmosphere inside the White House of a president operating with a divine mission.”
Josh Marshall: “We can talk endlessly about whether we’re still in a democracy or whether Trump wants to be or is acting like a dictator. We can debate words such as ‘fascism’ that were unknown before a century ago. But what we are seeing right now is the definition of tyranny, a half-archaic concept the founders of the American Republic were very familiar with.”
“Trump’s rule is both lawless and arbitrary. He has taken the bundle of powers the Constitution provides him to govern and defend the Constitution and turned them to an entirely different and corrupt purpose: using them as weapons to attack the people and institutions he deems his enemies.”
At least 10 of Florida’s public universities have struck agreements with ICE authorizing campus police to question and detain undocumented immigrants, Inside Higher Ed reports.
The Trump Administration overhauled the Covid.gov website which now claims the virus was man-made in Wuhan, China and that Dr. Athony Fauci covered up its origins.
“The Democratic governor of Wisconsin’s creative use of his uniquely powerful veto can lock in a school funding increase for 400 years, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday,” the AP reports.
“The split ruling from the liberal-controlled court affirms the partial veto power of Wisconsin governors, which is the broadest of any state and has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to reshape spending bills passed by the Legislature.”
“Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts. In most states, governors can only eliminate or reduce spending amounts.”
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.