Vice President JD Vance told NBC News that it’s right to negotiate with Vladimir Putin because “if you go back to World War II, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.”
Playbook: “Which was certainly news to WWII historians, given the total capitulation of the Germans and the Japanese.”
This year’s most far-reaching immigration case is likely to decide if immigration agents in Los Angeles are free to stop, question and arrest Latinos they suspect are here illegally, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) continued to pull huge crowds in Wisconsin and Chicago this weekend for his “Fight Oligarchy” tour, the Chicago Sun Times reports.
Sanders said the nation is now “of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class.”
He added: “What the media doesn’t talk about very often, and what you almost never hear in the halls of Congress, is the reality that today you are living in a nation where a handful of incredibly wealthy people, multi multi billions, have enormous powers and control over our economy, over our media, over our political system. And we are gathered here today to say, that is going to change.”
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“Ken Martin is in the fight of his life,” the AP reports.
“The low-profile political operative from Minnesota, just six months on the job as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is charged with leading his party’s formal resistance to President Donald Trump and fixing the Democratic brand.”
Said Martin: “I think the greatest divide right now in our party, frankly, is not ideological. The greatest divide is those people who are standing up and fighting and those who are sitting on the sidelines.”
Politico: Democrats brace for battle over 2028 primary calendar to “explode.”
Playbook: “The silence from Putin is still deafening, 10 days on from his tête-à-tête with Trump in Alaska. Trump had initially hoped a follow-up summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could happen within hours, then within days … Then last Friday he gave Putin a(nother) couple of weeks. But there have been no positive noises from the Kremlin.”
Putin’s top envoy Sergey Lavrov told NBC News there were no plans to meet with Zelensky.
New York Times: Trump relies on personal diplomacy with Putin. The result is a strategic muddle.
President Trump explicitly suggested last night that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could be next in line for “justice” after watching Christie criticize him on ABC News.
New York Times: Trump threatens to investigate Christie over “Bridgegate.”
Ankush Khardori: “Donald Trump’s second term in office has been marked by a series of unprecedented and highly controversial law enforcement decisions — everything from mass pardons to an immigration crackdown that has pushed, if not blown right through, the most basic constitutional constraints. Recent public polling suggests that a growing number of Americans are rattled by what they have seen and are increasingly concerned about the future of the country’s law enforcement apparatus and legal system. The news on Friday that the FBI raided the home of John Bolton, a former Trump official turned critic, is not likely to help matters.”
“Now those concerns are going global.”
“Senior officials in some of America’s closest European allies are quietly fretting about the law enforcement priorities of the Trump administration and even the conduct of the Justice Department, according to four European diplomats who are stationed in Washington and who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive trans-Atlantic diplomatic and law enforcement matters.”
National Guard members in Washington are now carrying weapons and “detentions may occur leading to arrests,” potentially deepening the military’s involvement in President Trump’s federal takeover of D.C. police, the Washington Post reports.
Guard members will carry their service-issued weapons, which may include M4 carbine rifles and M17 pistols.
CBS News: “The step is an escalation in Mr. Trump’s intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members are stationed in the city, with the arrival last week of hundreds from several Republican-led states.”
A posthumous and “unsparing” memoir by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, Virginia Giuffre, will be published this autumn, Politico reports.
Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice is scheduled for release on October 21.
“As Republicans look to flip House seats through redistricting in Texas and other red states, they have a pickup opportunity in what was once deep blue North Jersey, without having to redraw any lines,” Politico reports.
“In the state’s heavily Hispanic 9th Congressional District, the Democrat who was widely thought to be a shoo-in won by just five points last year, and President Donald Trump narrowly won the district after losing it the last two cycles. Yet, even amid talk of New Jersey becoming a purple state, just two Republican candidates have stepped forward to run in the district.”
“By contrast, in the one Republican-held seat Democrats have a realistic opportunity to pick up, in Central Jersey’s 7th District, Democrats are practically falling over each other to challenge two-term Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.”
“Democrats on Sunday pushed back against President Trump’s characterization of blue-state cities as crime-ridden and lawless, which the White House has used to justify calling up National Guard troops and sending federal law enforcement agents to Washington streets,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump said on Friday that he was considering using the same playbook in other major American cities, and that Chicago could be next. The administration has not indicated when the National Guard could be sent to Chicago, New York or any of the other cities the president has mentioned.”
“Officials in a large North Texas county decided this week to cut more than 100 Election Day polling sites and reduce the number of early voting locations, amid growing concern about GOP efforts to limit voting access ahead of next year’s midterm elections,” ProPublica reports.
“The 3-2 vote on Tuesday by commissioners in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, came one day after President Donald Trump vowed to end the use of mail-in ballots.”
President Trump lashed out at Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) — accusing him of taking a “nasty and provocative tone” in a letter inviting Trump to a public safety walk in Baltimore.
Said Trump: “As President, I would much prefer that he clean up this Crime disaster before I go there for a ‘walk.’ Wes Moore’s record on Crime is a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing.”
Jonathan Martin: “When the Democratic National Committee convenes for its summer meeting in Minneapolis Monday, it’ll begin discussing one of the most contentious, divisive and delicate matters consuming a party out of power: the calendar.”
“Chuckle as you may, the process can be (deeply) political, and little gets Democratic insiders stirred up quite like where and when to begin their presidential nominating contest. The debate is suffused with matters of race, region, class and, perhaps most significantly, the vanity of the would-be kingmakers in the states vying to kick off the 2028 primary.”
“Years after she was publicly accused in civil lawsuits and the press of helping Jeffrey Epstein groom and sexually abuse minors, Ghislaine Maxwell was an honored guest at the prestigious Clinton Global Initiative conference in September 2013,” CNN reports.
A new Economist/YouGov poll finds Americans have strong feelings about Donald Trump — and, increasingly, most of them are negative.
The poll found 47% said they strongly disapprove of the second-term president, compared to 23% who say they strongly approve.
“When President Trump gets in on a new online moneymaking idea, his followers often pile in—but two out of the last three times, they went on to lose bigly,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Now the first family is trying again and the idea, at least, is intriguing. Unfortunately for fans, the Trump venture into a ‘crypto treasury’ stock is also set up so the president and his family cash in first.”
“The president’s ventures have so far been a disaster for investors who were slightly late to buy into them.”
“The labor market has moved front and center for the Federal Reserve, highlighting its fragility and risk to the economy,” the Wall Street Journal reports
“The good news is that unemployment remains low, and employers haven’t been all that interested in laying people off. The bad news is that companies haven’t been all that interested in hiring, either.”
“This precarious situation means even a relatively small increase in layoffs could lead the economy to start shedding jobs—a process that can be difficult to reverse once it starts.”
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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