“Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, the focus of a House Ethics Committee report that may soon become public, is planning to inflict fresh pain on some of his old colleagues,” Politico reports.
“Gaetz this week floated a plan that would force the disclosure of House members who were the subject of sexual harassment settlements paid with public funds. The effort is inching toward reality, with GOP lawmakers passing around a resolution that would execute the effort.”
“The White House is expected to announce soon that President Joe Biden will visit the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis next month for what would likely be the final international trip of his presidency,” the AP reports.
“Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republican leaders were struggling Thursday to devise a fallback plan to keep the government open, after billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump rallied conservatives to sink their bipartisan funding deal,” NBC News reports.
“With less than 36 hours to go before a deadline that would shut down vast swaths of the federal government and furlough workers, they have no plan, or even a concept of a plan, for what’s next.”
Playbook: “If Johnson puts up a clean CR with a straightforward debt limit increase attached, would Democrats really vote against it after spending 14 years tsk-tsking Republicans for playing politics with a possible federal default?”
“Of course, there’s another party involved here, and most Republicans are typically lukewarm at best at the notion of hiking the debt limit, let alone eliminating it. A handful of hard-liners, in fact, are advocating for not doing anything at all and just allowing the federal government to shut down for a month until Trump is inaugurated.”
“If you’re just catching up: the Republican Party, taking orders from the world’s richest man, is on course to shut down the government over the holidays, stopping paychecks for our troops and nutrition benefits for low-income families just in time for Christmas.”
— Hillary Clinton, on X.
“President Joe Biden is choosing to stay out of the public spotlight in what could emerge one of the final domestic crises of his presidency, as the White House and Democrats in Washington are portraying a looming government shutdown as a problem for Republicans to resolve on their own,” CNN reports.
Donald Trump slammed “very unpopular” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) who he said “is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory — all for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself.”
He added: “Republican obstructionists have to be done away with.”
A few minutes later he threatened Roy with a Republican primary challenge.
“Prosecutors charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ closest confidant in a conspiracy, bribery and money laundering case Thursday,” Politico reports.
“Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg released an indictment alleging Ingrid Lewis-Martin — Adams’ long-serving, formidable chief adviser who abruptly resigned on Sunday — gave special treatment to a pair of real estate developers when their construction project ran into a bureaucratic hurdle.”
Wall Street Journal: “During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.”
“By the 2024 campaign, Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) suggested Democrats will not be a party to raising the debt limit as part of a spending bill.
Said Jeffries: “GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check. Hard pass.”
Politico: “Jeffries’ statement — pointedly not posted on Elon Musk’s X — comes as Republicans are floating the idea for a new stopgap measure to fund the government that would include disaster aid and raising the debt ceiling.”
“And behind closed doors, leaders projected unity and urged the caucus to hold the line.”
Jamelle Bouie: “The Democratic Party lacks the energy of a determined opposition — it is adrift, listless in the wake of defeat. Too many elected Democrats seem ready to concede that Trump is some kind of avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people.”
“They’ve accepted his proposed nominees as legitimate and entertained surrender under the guise of political reconciliation.”
“A majority of Americans oppose Donald Trump’s plans to use the U.S. military to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to instruct the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and to pardon rioters charged with breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” according to a nationwide Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
“Even larger majorities of Americans oppose Trump’s plans to jail reporters for writing stories he doesn’t like and having police use force against anti-Trump protests.”
President-elect Donald Trump had dinner Wednesday with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and the two were joined by billionaire Elon Musk, the Washington Post reports.
“A lot of the Republicans are pushing for him to become speaker of the House, which might be a demotion for him because he’s basically the fourth branch of the government.”
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), talking to Axios about Elon Musk.
Donald Trump told ABC News there won’t be a spending bill “unless the debt ceiling is done with.”
Said Trump: “If we don’t get it, then we’re going to have a shutdown, but it’ll be a Biden shutdown, because shutdowns only inure to the person who’s president.”
Charlie Cook: “The 2026 midterm-election prospects for the two major political parties in the House and Senate are as different as night and day. The Republican majority in the House today is as precarious as either party has seen in that chamber in at least a century.”
“Conversely, the GOP’s majority in the Senate is about as solid as can be, regardless of what President-elect Trump’s standing will be in November 2026.”
Paul Krugman: “We’ll have to see how much damage this does, but it’s already clear that assuming the worst happens — and it’s hard to see how it won’t — this will be the dumbest shutdown ever. I’d say that the incoming Musk administration (so far Musk, not Trump, appears to be calling the shots) is trying to hold itself up for ransom, but it doesn’t even rise to that level. This isn’t like 1995, when Newt Gingrich shut down the government in an attempt to extract cuts in Medicare and Medicaid — a move that seemed (and was) a foolish act of petulance, but at least had a ghost of motivation.”
“No, Musk is demanding — apparently successfully — that Republicans in Congress renege on a deal they had already agreed to, a continuing resolution that would keep the federal government going for the next few months. Why? Because, Musk says, of the outrageous provisions in that CR.”
“Except none of the items Musk is complaining about are actually in the bill.”
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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