David Graham: “Trump has arrived at the right conclusion in a terrible way. As president, Trump has access to the most powerful information-gathering network in the world, yet he takes his cues from what he watches on television.”
“This helps him see the news from the same perspective as the general public, which has enabled his political success. But it also narrows his understanding, and it makes him highly susceptible to manipulation.”
Matt Labash describes himself as “about as pro-Israel as they come. (God’s Chosen People, and all.)”
“But when even Donald Trump admits that the Gazans are getting starved, well then maybe partisans need to start acknowledging reality on the ground. And that Bibi is ignoring it, and insisting otherwise, for political advantage. These photos ain’t AI. It’s no-joke suffering, from people who can’t escape their lot. However corrupt their leaders, they have nowhere else to go. They’re just starving.”
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Tuesday the U.K. will recognize a Palestinian state in September – unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza and takes steps toward long-term peace,” the AP reports.
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“The Trump administration has terminated more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention programs in the U.S., cutting $158 million in grants that had been directed to groups in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Baltimore,” Reuters reports.
Axios: “Trump’s ‘announce first, details later’ approach to trade deals has caught some global leaders off guard and led to contradictions about the billions of dollars the administration says foreign nations have pledged.”
“These are not traditional, word-heavy trade deals with text agreed to by all negotiators.”
“Instead, news of deals comes via flashy announcements with big numbers and little specificity, leaving global investors wondering about the durability of such frameworks.”
“Roy Cooper raised $3.4 million in the first 24 hours of his Senate campaign — a record-breaking sum for the former North Carolina governor in one of the most competitive upcoming Senate races,” Politico reports.
“The fundraising haul includes more than $2.6 million raised directly to Cooper’s campaign account, with 95 percent of those donations totaling $100 or less, according to his team.”
Bloomberg: “In the first seven months of 2025, Moscow exported 4% less crude than it did in the comparable period of 2024, with an even sharper drop from the same timespan in 2023.”
“President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change,” the AP reports.
“The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would rescind a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.”
“The Trump administration has heard competing proposals that would significantly alter longstanding U.S. policy toward Myanmar, with the aim of diverting its vast supplies of rare earth minerals away from strategic rival China,” Reuters reports.
“Nothing has been decided and experts say there are huge logistical obstacles, but if the ideas are ever acted upon, Washington may need to strike a deal with the ethnic rebels controlling most of Myanmar’s rich deposits of heavy rare earths.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), “who often casts herself as the standard-bearer of MAGA politics on Capitol Hill, said a ‘genocide’ is underway in Gaza, becoming the first member of her party in Congress to use the term as she condemned the humanitarian disaster unfolding there,” the New York Times reports.
Said Greene: “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct. 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”
“Former Rep. Wiley Nickel dropped his bid for North Carolina’s open Senate seat Tuesday and endorsed Roy Cooper, all but clearing the field for the former Democratic governor,” Politico reports.
“House Republican proposals to name the Kennedy Center after President Donald Trump and its opera house after first lady Melania Trump would violate the law by which the Kennedy Center was created,” NBC News reports.
“Republicans last week passed an amendment through committee that would rename the opera house after Melania Trump, saying it was a way to recognize her support for and commitment to the arts.”
“President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its powerful owner has taken a personal turn,” NPR reports.
“In the legal filings — and on social media — Trump says he personally told media mogul Rupert Murdoch that the racy birthday greeting he had supposedly sent two decades earlier to the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had been faked and did not exist. Murdoch’s Journal reported it anyway, despite Trump’s warning.”
Gallup: “Americans’ approval of Israel’s military action in Gaza has fallen 10 percentage points since the prior measurement in September, and it is now at 32%, the lowest reading since Gallup first asked the question in November 2023.”
“Disapproval of the military action has now reached 60%.”
Wall Street Journal: “Premiums for Medicare drug plans are set to increase sharply next year, due to rising costs, regulatory changes and cutbacks to a subsidy program. The subsidy program, which sent extra federal funds to the private insurers that offer the drug benefit — known as Part D — had largely shielded seniors from rising monthly bills in 2025.”
“The Trump administration is set to cut spending on that program by about 40% in 2026.”
“A wide swath of Defense Department officials fear that new rules banning employees from participating at think tank and research events — a key way the Pentagon delivers its message and solicits feedback — will leave the military muzzled and further isolated from allies,” Politico reports.
“The move, according to more than a dozen officials and think tank leaders, hampers the department’s ability to make its case both in Washington policy circles and to allies struggling to understand how they fit into President Donald Trump’s worldview.”
“For years, outlandish theories about the U.S. government’s using airplanes to spray harmful chemicals over U.S. homes or powerful elites controlling the weather were relegated to the fringes of society,” NBC News reports.
“As the internet has provided rocket fuel for such claims, Republican lawmakers across the country are introducing, passing and enacting laws to ban ‘weather modification’ and environmental geoengineering and allude to the use of ‘chemtrails,’ a longtime theory that planes are spreading chemical agents on an unsuspecting public. As more people are exposed to dangerous flooding, the GOP lawmakers have pointed to the fringe theories as potential explanations for extreme weather, pushing them further into the political mainstream.”
Wall Street Journal: “Commerce Department officials are discussing charging patent holders 1% to 5% of their overall patent value, a shift that could dramatically increase fees.”
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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