“Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians,” according to a Washington Post poll.
“The findings are striking given the long-standing ties between the U.S. Jewish community and Israel, suggesting the potential for a historic breach over the Gaza war.”
“President Trump is sending his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Egypt this weekend to help complete a hostage release deal, U.S. and Arab officials said Saturday, after Hamas and Israel backed his 20-point proposal to end the war but with reservations that need to be ironed out,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The high-profile delegation shows Trump’s seriousness about securing a deal, despite significant concerns about the terms among all the parties involved. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law who played a crucial role in negotiating normalization accords between several Arab countries and Israel during Trump’s first term, helped craft the current plan and will now try to close the gaps and get it implemented.”
“Between 2013 and 2019, three government shutdowns were caused by Sen. Ted Cruz’s stand against the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Chuck Schumer’s push on children of immigrants and President Trump’s demand for border wall money,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The 2025 shutdown is about something deeper: a complete breakdown in trust.”
“Democrats don’t trust that the White House will take any spending agreement and adhere to it. The White House has for months routinely ignored congressional appropriations, keeping government funds from flowing as directed by Congress.”
“President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states,” the New York Times reports.
“Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands.”
The Trump administration plans to slash refugee admissions to a record low level in the upcoming year, reserving a bulk of the limited slots for white Afrikaners from South Africa and others facing “unjust discrimination,” the New York Times reports.
“President Donald Trump believed the government shutdown would deliver Republicans a swift and decisive political victory. But with the stalemate now likely to spill into a second week, that calculation is looking increasingly shaky,” CNN reports.
Said a White House adviser: “I’m supposed to say this is killing the Democrats. But I don’t think it helps either side, to be honest with you.”
New York Times: The White House can’t decide: Is the shutdown bad or good?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican who has grown increasingly disillusioned with the GOP and President Trump, said that her own party was at least partly to blame for the government shutdown, and that it had the power to unilaterally reopen the government, the New York Times reports.
Said Greene: “If Republican Senators wanted to pass the C.R. and reopen the government they could, by using the nuclear option.”
John Oliver: “Look, at some point you’re going to have to draw a line. So I’d argue, why not draw it right here? And when they come to you with stupid, ridiculous demands, picking fights that you know you could win in court, instead of rolling over, why not stand up and use four key words they don’t tend to teach you in business school?”
“Not, ‘OK, you’re the boss.’ Not, ‘Whatever you say goes.’ But instead, the only phrase that can genuinely make a weak bully go away. And that is, ‘Fuck you. Make me.’”
John Gruber: “‘Fuck you, make me’ is, to me, the founding principle of this nation.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R) told Scripps News that he is “right now” ruling out putting any future bipartisan Senate compromise to reopen the government on the House floor.
“Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, celebrated for her narrow victory three years ago that secured Democrats’ control of the Senate, is now being cast as a traitor by members of her own party,” Politico reports.
“She is one of three senators who broke ranks this week, voting with Republicans on the spending bill and robbing Democrats of a united front. Independent Angus King and maverick Democrat John Fetterman joined her in backing the GOP funding measure to keep the government open. But Cortez Masto — a member of Senate leadership — seems to have backing in her home state.”
Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes was hancuffed by federal immigration agents while she was questioning them why they were at a local medical center, WLS reports.
“I have big plans, I want to survive.”
— President Trump, on the One American News Network, talking about the 2026 midterm election campaign.
President Trump wanted to give King Charles one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s swords during his state visit to the U.K., the New York Times reports.
The Eisenhower presidential library said it could not provide one because it is government property and illegal to give away. Now the library director has been fired.
“The top two congressional Republicans doubled down Friday that they won’t cede to Democratic demands to put in writing any agreement to begin talks on extending expiring Obamacare subsidies — something many Democrats say they need as part of a deal to end the government shutdown,” Politico reports.
Said Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “There is nothing to negotiate.”
“Several journalists resigned this week from three newspapers in Alaska after the publications’ corporate owner made significant edits to an article about Charlie Kirk’s death, appearing to yield to pressure from a Republican state lawmaker who had criticized the coverage,” the New York Times reports.
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details, Reuters reports.
The poorest countries are also the most religious. And the countries with higher GDP are more secular.
However, there’s a pretty big outlier: The United States.
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.