“Democracy is not just under attack from authoritarianism from the outside… It’s also under attack from a withering faith on the inside of its ability to deliver on these material challenges in working-class people’s lives.”
— Zohran Mamdani, in an interview with Time.
Mehdi Hasan: “I’ve been skeptical of a Stewart presidential candidacy in the past… But I am coming around to the idea.”
“US wholesale inflation accelerated in July by the most in three years, suggesting companies are passing along higher import costs related to tariffs,” Bloomberg reports.
Bloomberg: “The Russian economy is spluttering under the weight of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine just as Presidents Putin and Trump meet to talk peace.”
“Corey Lewandowski doesn’t want to clock out of his temporary government gig. So, administration officials believe, he’s avoiding clocking in,” Axios reports.
“Lewandowski, a longtime and controversial Trump adviser, is wielding outsized influence at the Department of Homeland Security as a ‘special government employee’ whose work is supposed to be temporary.”
“But administration officials tell Axios they believe Lewandowski — a constant presence with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who acts as her de facto chief of staff — has gamed the system by undercounting his work hours to avoid leaving his unpaid job when he should have.”
“A former Republican candidate for a State House seat in New Mexico was sentenced to 80 years in prison on Wednesday for orchestrating a politically motivated shooting spree against four Democratic officials,” the New York Times reports.
“The series of shootings happened in December 2022 and early January 2023, weeks after the candidate, Solomon Peña, had lost his race. When Mr. Peña, 42, was arrested in January 2023, the authorities said he had paid four men in cash to shoot at the homes of certain Democratic officials, including a county commissioner and a state senator.”
“President Donald Trump will ask Congress to pass a ‘D.C. security fund’ as part of his push to remake the capital city, a hugely controversial effort that has seen him take over the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy hundreds of National Guard troops and federal law-enforcement officers into Washington neighborhoods,” Punchbowl News reports.
“The composition of the so-called ‘security fund’ is in its infancy. And the White House will face the reality that Congress has to pass government-funding bills at the end of September, with a potential federal shutdown this fall more likely than not at this point.”
When asked about Trump’s proposal, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had a quick response: “No fucking way.”
Ashwin Ramaswami (D), who unsuccessfully ran for a state Senate seat in November, has filed a lawsuit against his Republican opponent, state Sen. Shawn (R) for making “outrageous, false, and malicious” statements, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Landmark Communications, a political consulting firm that worked on Still’s campaign, is also named in the lawsuit.
“I think FDR would recognize him… The whole campaign was about affordability.”
— Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in an interview with Time, on Zohran Mamdani.
Time: “Before 2025, basically no one knew who Mamdani was. Over the course of eight months, the democratic socialist and backbench state assemblyman went from local long shot to likely mayor of America’s biggest city. Suddenly he is a main character in national politics—the ubiquitous subject of cable news segments, a lightning rod on the left and right… To many progressives, his style of politics—principled, pocketbook-focused, and online—was an electrifying answer for a moribund party.”
“He is a very eloquent, very young man who is both less experienced than his predecessors and more gifted than almost any of his peers at connecting with the party’s voters. He is an ideologue interested in creative solutions, less radical than painted when you dig into his policy proposals and yet more sincere in his left-wing ambitions. He is a movement politician who won by being in touch with the streets, and who must now cloister himself inside as he prepares for the business of governing, not betraying the people by not failing them…”
“How the nation’s financial and cultural capital fares under his leadership would be Exhibit A in the fight for the Democrats’ future. At stake is the trust of voters thousands of miles from Midtown, for whom Mamdani would be a test case—another failed figurehead of a major Democratic city, or the leader who can get people believing in government again.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned Republicans in a speech that “God will pull the plug on us” if the United States stops supporting Israel.
Said Graham: “Israel is not the bad guy. They’re the good guy. The bad guys are the radical Islamists who would kill everybody in this room if they could. So, I haven’t lost my vision of right and wrong.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the United States is taking action to stop the war in Ukraine, in a meeting with Russian top officials ahead of Friday’s summit in Alaska with President Donald Trump,” CNN reports.
Said Putin: “The current American administration… is making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict.”
“Donald Trump’s Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800 million combined to develop, work initially aimed at overhauling antiquated human resources systems,” Reuters reports.
“The reason for the unusual move: officials at those departments, who have so far put the existing projects on hold, want other firms, including Salesforce and billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir, to have a chance to win similar projects, which could amount to a costly do-over.”
And a good point from John Gruber: “I don’t want to be a ninny about this, but why is Reuters flatly describing the Navy and Air Force as possessions of the president? Did they ever describe them as belonging to Joe Biden, or Barack Obama? I don’t think they did, and a cursory search suggests they did not, but even if they did, it was wrong then. Now is not the time for sloppy language around this.”
Washington Post: “Political leaders in Washington and Austin have assumed that the five newly drawn congressional districts — which Trump would have won by at least 10 percentage points in last year’s election — will be safe Republican seats if the Texas legislature approves them. The battle over altering the maps in Texas has escalated into a broader national fight, with Texas Democratic lawmakers leaving the state to delay a vote and governors in blue states threatening to retaliate by redrawing their own maps.”
“But the new maps in Texas, to varying degrees, depend on Republicans keeping voters like Cuellar and expanding on Trump’s historic inroads among Latinos in South Texas and across the country. Three of the five newly drawn Republican districts will have a higher percentage of Hispanic voters.”
“A growing number of blue cities and states across the country, from Washington state to Rhode Island, are looking at ways to wring more revenue from their richest taxpayers,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Lawmakers are boosting tax rates on robust annual incomes, hiking capital-gains taxes, and putting new levies on luxury vacation homes.”
“Some state legislators have proposed higher taxes in response to projected shortfalls in federal funding related to President Trump’s new tax law, which extends a broad federal tax cut to the wealthy. The law also makes deep cuts to funding for such programs as Medicaid, pressuring states to make up some or all of the shortfall.”
“First lady Melania Trump demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and threatened to sue if he does not,” the AP reports.
“Trump takes issue with two comments Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, made in an interview this month with British journalist Andrew Callaghan. He alleged that Epstein introduced the first lady to now-President Donald Trump.”
Said Biden: “Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep.”
“Even before talks begin, President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with President Donald Trump at a U.S. military base in Alaska on Friday is advancing the Russian’s goal of redrawing the global security order, as the two men revive a great-power system in which a few big countries call the shots,” the Washington Post reports.
New York Times: Why Putin thinks Russia has the upper hand.
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.
