“The hardest part for me has been navigating this as a dad… Grappling with the sort of personal guilt that your job put your kids in a position where they could have been harmed.”
— Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), quoted by the New York Times, on the firebombing of his home earlier this year.
“The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa,” CNN reports.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has a new book out next year that is billed as “a damning exposé” of Ivy League universities.
“Dozens of Democratic attorneys general and governors are planning to sue President Trump’s administration Tuesday over its decision to not tap emergency funds amid the government shutdown to keep food aid flowing to 42 million Americans next month,” Politico reports.
“The city set to host Donald Trump’s future presidential library is also home to the hottest election in Florida — a 13-way mayoral brawl that could test whether Democrats have any pulse left in the state,” Politico reports.
” The election has received far less attention than the mayoral contest in New York City or the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey. But it’s laced with gripping storylines: indictments, dynasties, savage one-liners, taxpayer-funded lawsuits and even a court-thwarted effort to push the election back a year — a move that would have allowed current officeholders to blow through term limits. Some rivals openly show their disdain for each other. Others accuse fellow candidates of wanting the job as a stepladder or grift.”
Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is warning his Republican colleagues that his party’s agenda on health care could cost them the majority in the next election cycle, Bloomberg reports.
Politico excerpts Ken Vogel’s new book, Devils’ Advocates.
“Manafort made his name by helping launder the reputations of blood-stained foreign figures whom he sold to Ronald Reagan’s Washington as Cold War allies. But it’s a new era in Washington, and the pitch has changed. Instead of winning over an American administration by casting his clients as anti-communist stalwarts, he’s positioning them as comrades in Trump’s war against globalist, deep-state elites.”
Playbook: “The afterlife of the White House press secretary is normally a charmed one, with all those high-pressure televised briefings giving way to something more comfortable and — dare I say — even better-paid…”
“But it doesn’t always go that way. And things are certainly looking a little shaky this morning for Karine Jean-Pierre… As you cannot have failed to notice if you’ve opened any form of social (or even legacy) media this week, KJP currently has a book to sell. And — how to put this delicately? — the book tour is not going terribly well.”
“In retrospect, this no-regrets interview with the Never Trumpers at The Bulwark at the start of last week should have been a red flag. Conservative circles shared her defense of Biden’s media performances with glee. Then another ‘no regrets’ interview, with MSNBC, went equally viral on the left — and not in a good way. Jean-Pierre’s answers to the most critical questions the Democratic Party has faced in decades seemed… incoherent, at best. This book review, by Washington Post’s Becca Rothfeld, was one of the most excoriating things your Playbook author has read in a long time.”
“And now we have KJP’s ‘Chotiner moment,’ the inevitably catastrophic New Yorker Q&A in which participants are routinely hoisted by their own petard.”
UFC star Bryce Mitchell proclaimed that President Trump is the “Antichrist” after previously heaping praise for him, Mediaite reports.
Said Mitchell: “I do not like the guy at all. The first thing for me was he didn’t release the Epstein files. They’re even acting like they didn’t exist. And, of course, they’re sending Israel and Ukraine all of our tax dollars just like the numb-nuts before him did. Putting America last, and now he’s blaming the beef farmers for the price of beef.”
He added: “Hey, I’m not biased, man. He talked a good game, he tricked me. I was fooled. I admit it.”
“The Trump administration launched another round of deadly strikes on vessel it accused of smuggling drugs, killing 14 people in four boats on Monday in its growing military campaign off the Central and South American coasts,” the New York Times reports.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “said that the strikes — three of them — took place in international waters and that there had been one survivor. They bring the overall death toll to 57 in the campaign, which began in September.”
Associated Press: “The federal agent had a daring pitch for Nicolás Maduro’s chief pilot: All he had to do was surreptitiously divert the Venezuelan president’s plane to a place where U.S. authorities could nab the strongman.”
“In exchange, the agent told the pilot in a clandestine meeting, the aviator would be made a very rich man.”
“The conversation was tense, and the pilot left noncommittal, though he provided the agent, Edwin Lopez, with his cell number — a sign he might be interested in helping the U.S. government.”
President Trump told American troops assembled in Japan that he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration, further escalating how he has talked about using the military at home and abroad, the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
“Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that flight delays could get worse as the U.S. government shutdown enters its 28th day and air traffic controllers miss their first full paycheck,” Bloomberg reports.
“More than 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 Transportation Security Administration agents now face working without pay during the shutdown.”
A new Suffolk University poll finds Andrew Cuomo has cut Zohran Mamandi’s lead in the New York City mayor’s race by 10 points, after trailing by 20 points in Suffolk’s September poll.
Mamdani leads Cuomo 44% to 34% ahead of the Nov. 4 election, with Curtis Sliwa in third place at 11%. Some 7% of voters surveyed were undecided.
“Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona,” CNN reports.
“The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom signed onto his regular Zoom call with his political brain trust last Friday as they ticked through the latest developments in the high-stakes redistricting measure headed for a vote next week,” the New York Times reports.
“They were far ahead in the polls. The opposition was mostly off the airwaves. And there was plenty of money in the bank.”
“Then, according to two participants in the call who shared details of the private discussion on condition of anonymity, his senior advisers presented the California governor with a peculiar idea: Stop fund-raising from small donors altogether in the final stretch.”
“Donald Trump’s social-media company is getting into the prediction markets business, where record betting is attracting a host of new entrants,” Bloomberg reports.
David Graham: “Imagine for a moment that it’s late on Election Day, November 3, 2026. Republicans have kept their majority in the Senate, but too many House races are still uncalled to tell who has won that chamber. Control seems like it will come down to two districts in Maricopa County, Arizona.”
“ICE agents and National Guardsmen have been deployed there since that summer, ostensibly in response to criminal immigrants, though crime has been dropping for several years. The county is almost one-third Hispanic or Latino. Voting-rights advocates say the armed presence has depressed turnout, but nonetheless, the races are close. By that evening, the Republican candidates have small leads, but thousands of mail and provisional ballots remain uncounted.”
“Donald Trump calls the press into the Oval Office and announces that the GOP has held the House—but he warns that Democrats will try to steal the election, and announces plans to send a legal team to Arizona to root out fraud. He spends the rest of the night posting threats and allegations on Truth Social. In the morning, Republican lawyers file to stop vote counting, arguing that any votes counted after Election Day are illegal under federal law.”
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.