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“Republicans are alarmed that Donald Trump’s support among women is deteriorating in the polls and that his efforts to stop the bleeding don’t appear to be working,” The Hill reports.
“While Republicans are no strangers to the gender gap between the parties in presidential elections, they now face a “chasm” between male and female voters.”
Semafor: “Crime is one of the biggest national debates that we have the least timely data on. Official crime statistics from the FBI are notoriously slow, while outside efforts to track trends are often incomplete.”
“A new project, the Real Time Crime Index, that launched today is looking to change the policy conversation by gathering representative data from over 300 state and local agencies and updating them on a six-week lag. It finds murder down 15.7% this year, continuing a post-pandemic trend.”
“Donald Trump is entering a not guilty plea following a superseding indictment last week related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, the former president said in a court filing Tuesday,” NBC News reports.
“He also waived the right to be present at his arraignment, where he will be charged with the same four counts from last year’s original indictment.”
“The battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania may be pivotal in the race for the White House, but winning those blue wall states alone do not guarantee a campaign victory without something else: Omaha’s blue dot,” CNN reports.
“Yard signs with blue circles have begun appearing on lawns across town here, a hopeful symbol for Democrats in a sea of Nebraska red, with one of the state’s lone electoral votes likely critical for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the closing two months of the campaign.”
See for yourself on the interactive map.
“Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses,” ProPublica reports.
“Donald Trump spent the weekend struggling to solidify his position on abortion. The timing for Democrats couldn’t have been better,” Politico reports.
“The Harris campaign on Tuesday launched a 50-stop ‘Reproductive Freedom’ bus tour that kicked off in Trump’s adopted home state of Florida. It came just days after the former president said he planned to vote ‘no’ on a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state Constitution — but also muddled the issue when he said ‘you need more time’ than Florida’s current laws making most abortion illegal after six weeks into a pregnancy.”
“Hackers apparently breached the social media accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump on Tuesday, distributing what the former president’s son said were two fake posts touting a family cryptocurrency venture,” Politico reports.
Daily Beast: Trump family panics after crypto hacker screwup.
Playbook: “They may have receded somewhat in the public eye, but Trump’s various criminal trials are still chugging forward, with the potential to upend the news cycle in the coming months before the election.”
Goldman Sachs economists “gamed out the potential economic implications of a Republican or Democratic victory in the November elections, cautioning that US GDP faces a hit in the case of a win for Donald Trump,” Bloomberg reports.
From the reports: “We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse.”
Jonathan Martin: “The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly. GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did.”
“Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party.”
“Harris is less a doctrinaire progressive than she is up for grabs on policy, but any liberal course she takes would be constrained by a GOP-held Senate. No, that’s not a sure thing, but it’s the safest electoral bet in this turbulent election.”
Playbook: “The size of a loss matters. There’s concern that Trump if he loses in November, he will stoke election lies that cast doubt on his defeat. That’s why in these Republicans’ minds, the best-case scenario is Harris winning big.”
New CNN polls find Kamala Harris holds an advantage over Donald Trump among likely voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump has the edge in Arizona.
The two split likely voters almost evenly in Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Key takeaway: “Across each of them, an average of 15% of likely voters say they have not yet firmly decided their choice, suggesting a sizable share of voters could shift their views on the race as attention to the campaign rises and campaign activity, especially in these states, hits a fever pitch in the final nine weeks before Election Day.”
“Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has submitted his resignation, the country’s parliamentary speaker announced Wednesday, marking the latest major change in Kyiv’s leadership amid the largest government shake-up since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022,” the Washington Post reports.
New York Times: “Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister, has offered to resign as have at least six others, according to the speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament.”
“While the upheaval in the Zelensky government was not expected to mean major policy changes at home or abroad, some critics worried that the changes could further concentrate power in the president’s office, depending on who is named to fill vacated posts. The shake-up comes at a precarious moment for Ukraine in the war, with heavy assaults by Russian ground troops near the transit hub of Pokrovsk and a stepped-up campaign of airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities.”
A new Gonzales Research poll in Maryland finds Angela Alsobrooks (D) has pulled ahead of Larry Hogan (R) in Maryland’s competitive Senate race, 46% to 41%.
“The new poll shows Hogan’s challenge in winning over enough voters during the next two months. While 50% of those surveyed said they hold a favorable opinion of him, only 41% said they would vote for him.”
“Judge Tanya Chutkan wasted no time last month when the biggest case of her career — the indictment of former President Donald Trump on election interference charges — was handed back to her,” the New York Times reports.
“After watching from the sidelines for nearly eight months as Mr. Trump’s lawyers fought their way up to the Supreme Court with what turned out to be a largely successful argument that he had broad immunity from prosecution on charges arising from his official acts as president, Judge Chutkan moved quickly to get pretrial proceedings moving again.”
“A fundraising event for defendants of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol scheduled to take place at former President Trump’s golf club in New Jersey this week has been postponed indefinitely,” The Hill reports.
“Trial began Tuesday in Florida for four activists accused of illegally acting as Russian agents to help the Kremlin sow political discord and interfere in U.S. elections,” the AP reports.
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R) celebrated Germany’s hard-right election win on Sunday… with the anthem of Adolf Hitler, the Arizona Republic reports.
Posted Rogers, on X: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”
“The words — Germany, Germany above all — were written as a call for unity in the 1800s and later adopted as part of the country’s national anthem. But they became the Nazis’ rallying cry, as they claimed their superiority, and were removed from the anthem after World War II.”
“President Joe Biden may try to forgive student debt again as early as next month, in a sweeping redo effort that could impact tens of millions of Americans,” CNBC reports.
“The Biden administration’s attempt to deliver the aid could come roughly 14 months after the Supreme Court blocked it from carrying out its first student loan forgiveness plan. Just hours after the justices announced their ruling in June 2023, Biden vowed to find a new way to reduce or eliminate people’s education debt.”
“Despite the Republican-led legal challenges that have so far stymied the president from implementing wide-scale student loan relief, his administration has still managed to cancel more of the debt than any other before it.”
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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