“Disney is under siege from all sides,” NBC News reports.
“Within 48 hours of its decision to pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely, the parent company of ABC has once again found itself at the center of a bitter political battle. The company now faces protests outside its studios, celebrities threatening to break ties and political pressure from Republicans and Democrats.”
“The 2028 presidential primaries are already unfolding on YouTube,” Politico reports.
“Amid the rapid decline of cable news, potential candidates and other elected officials are locked in a digital arms race to draw subscribers, boost their reach and build what amounts to their own broadcast networks.”
“Taken together, it signals the arrival of a fast-changing attention economy that has scrambled what effective political communication looks like. The 2028 cycle has the potential to be the first post-cable TV election, heralding the dawn of a post-literate era in which technology fully displaces reading and consumption of news from traditional outlets.”
We discussed these trends on Trial Balloon this week.
Rolling Stone: “It was clear Donald Trump and his allies would ramp up their crackdown against any and all opposition in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — and this week, the president’s second administration unleashed its most authoritarian blitz yet…”
“This ugly, authoritarian week didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump just last month mused about how Americans want a “dictator,” and the administration now appears to be using Kirk’s shocking murder as an excuse to escalate Trump’s ongoing campaign for total power.”
“The ramp-up began on Monday, as Vice President J.D. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast from the White House and huddled with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy White House chief of staff and the man responsible for leading his mass vengeance campaign.”
For members: A Week That Changed Everything
A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll asked voters their opinions on six major topics of the day, yielding overall disapproval by double-digit margins in all of them.
“The Trump administration flexed its new authority over U.S. Steel, blocking the company’s plan to shut down production at an Illinois plant this fall,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Two weeks ago, U.S. Steel notified workers in Granite City, Ill., that plant operations would cease in November. The company, owned by Tokyo-based Nippon Steel, said it would continue paying the mill’s nearly 800 employees, even without them doing regular production work.”
“Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick got wind of the plan and called U.S. Steel Chief Executive Dave Burritt… Lutnick told Burritt the administration wouldn’t allow operations to cease, and the president would invoke his so-called golden share authority over plant operations.”
“In the 1970s, Hamburger Helper became a staple on American dinner tables as families, strained by inflation and soaring beef prices, looked to turn a pound of ground beef into an entire meal,” the New York Times reports.
“These days, those same pressures are why the flavored pasta mix is coming to the rescue again.”
“While most food companies are seeing declines in consumer demand for their products, sales of Hamburger Helper are up 14.5 percent in the year through August.”
“Paul Atkins is laying the groundwork for a major regulatory overhaul that could tilt the balance of power between public companies and their shareholders in favor of corporate America,” Politico reports.
“In his first year as Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Atkins is acting quickly to pull back on how much information Wall Street giants, gadflies and the public at large may get about a company’s financial health as well as their ability to take those companies to court.”
Wall Street Journal: “On the eve of Kirk’s funeral, this official version of events—presented by Utah’s governor and county attorney and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—has been met with a tsunami of disbelief by swaths of the public.”
“Without any basis in fact, Kirk’s killing has variously been attributed to Israel, the MAGA movement—of which Kirk was a part—transgender militants or the far-right Groypers. Robinson either acted alone, as the government has so far asserted, or as part of an organized cell, as the unfounded theories go.”
Aaron Blake: “How do the right and left compare when it comes to 1) perpetrating violence and 2) their support for it?”
“The data, save for a few polls cherry-picked by the right, doesn’t generally back up Trump’s claims that this is a bigger problem on the left. In fact, it usually shows the opposite.”
“Wall Street thinks interest rates are poised to come down faster than the Federal Reserve does—a wager that is already boosting the economy and markets by making it cheaper for Americans to borrow,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The U.S. attorney investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the former F.B.I. director James Comey said he had resigned on Friday, hours after President Trump called for his ouster,” the New York Times reports.
“Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey.”
However, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had withdrawn Siebert’s nomination: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
“President Trump said Friday that news reporters who cover his administration negatively have broken the law, a significant broadening of his attacks on journalists and their First Amendment right to critique the government,” the New York Times reports.
“A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting reporters were lawbreakers.”
“President Donald Trump on Friday rolled out a version of his administration’s long-promised gold card, a $1 million fast-track for wealthy foreigners to live and work in the United States,” Politico reports.
“The Trump administration unveiled a new crackdown Friday on journalists at the Pentagon, saying it will require them to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Donald Trump said he wants the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia removed, after investigators reportedly failed to find sufficient evidence to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with mortgage fraud,” Politico reports.
“The president pointed to endorsements from Virginia Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine to justify the firing.”
Said Trump: “Yeah, I want him out. When I saw that he got approved by those two men, I said ‘pull it.’ Because he can’t be any good.”
“President Trump plans to introduce a new $100,000 application fee for H-1B worker visas, in an effort to reduce their use as part of his broader immigration crackdown,” Reuters reports.
“The H-1B program has become critical for technology and staffing companies who rely on foreign workers to fill a variety of technical roles.”
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked vaccine advisers voted Friday to nix positive recommendations for Covid shots for all Americans, and instead advised “individual decision-making,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
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.