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“President Trump and Iran over the weekend offered conflicting timelines for the signing of a potential peace agreement, casting doubt on whether a deal might be signed on Sunday or in the coming days,” the New York Times reports.
Washington Post: U.S. and Iran to close deal within a day, Trump says, but Tehran yet to confirm.
“President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, both resist the idea that ostensibly weaker powers fought them to a stalemate, with the two leaders leaning on negotiations to win the capitulation that they failed to secure in battle,” the New York Times reports.
“Iran and Ukraine have pushed back robustly against this ‘might makes right’ mentality, with top officials adopting an even more defiant tone in recent days.”
“President Trump endorsed Representative Mike Collins on Sunday in the Republican Senate primary runoff in Georgia, choosing a loyalist and immigration hard-liner over a former football coach who had angled for his support,” the New York Times reports.
“By backing Mr. Collins over Derek Dooley, a former football coach at the University of Tennessee, Mr. Trump gives the congressman a major lift as he seeks to win the nomination to take on Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in one of the nation’s most competitive midterm battlegrounds.”
New York Times: “One V.I.P. guest at the fight will be celebrating, too: David Ellison, the technology heir and Paramount Skydance chief executive who on Friday received a gift of sorts from the Trump administration.”
“After months of meticulous courtship of the president and his senior aides, Paramount got word on Friday that the Justice Department would not challenge its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, eliminating one of the last major obstacles for the deal to close.”
“Upon completion, the merger will elevate Mr. Ellison, 43, into a rarefied level of media moguldom. He will be in charge of two Hollywood film studios; a pair of streaming services, including HBO Max; and two major television news platforms, CBS News and CNN.”
New York Times: “As President Trump turns 80 on Sunday, he is so intent on projecting an image of relentless energy that he has installed a massive, mixed martial arts octagon on the South Lawn to mark the occasion. After watching the fight, Mr. Trump will depart Washington in the middle of the night and cross an ocean for a diplomatic summit in France. It is a schedule that seems devised to ward off questions about age and stamina as he begins his ninth decade.”
“But even for a president known for imposing his own reality on every situation, Mr. Trump is facing scrutiny over his age that has grown more intense with each passing year.”
Aaron Blake: Trump’s UFC 80th birthday bash looks to rescue his tarnished macho image.
David Smith: As Donald Trump turns 80, he faces a foe he can never defeat: Father Time. That’s a problem for us all.
Wall Street Journal: “With the endorsements, Mamdani is risking backlash from Hispanic voters and dozens of elected officials whom Espaillat and Velázquez helped cultivate and mentor. But if the mayor’s candidates prevail, he wins a growing list of allies inside the New York delegation to Washington. Mamdani is also backing former city comptroller and ally Brad Lander, who is challenging Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in the Tenth Congressional District race, in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, that has largely been dominated by Israel and its war in Gaza.”
“Victories in these races would let Mamdani flex his political strength with other federal and state New York lawmakers, said political analyst Michael Lange.”
“Democrats are planning to investigate President Donald Trump’s family businesses and subpoena acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify about Jeffrey Epstein if they win control of the House in November,” NOTUS reports.
Ron Brownstein: “The subtraction risk for Republicans is the prospect that President Donald Trump’s slipping approval rating among his 2024 voters will cause meaningful components of the coalition that elected him to sit out November’s midterms.”
“Polls suggest that’s a greater danger for the GOP than the possibility that Democrats will add a big cache of new votes — either by turning out many people who did not participate in 2024, or by convincing a significant share of 2024 Trump supporters to vote blue.”
New York Times: “Four Black Democrats running for Congress in the same South Florida district met last week for a highly unusual discussion. Should three of them drop out and rally around a consensus Black candidate in the Democratic primary against Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz?”
“Ms. Wasserman Schultz, who is white, had announced a few weeks earlier that she would run in the safely Democratic 20th Congressional District in Broward County, after Republican state lawmakers redrew Florida’s congressional map and eliminated her seat.”
“But the 20th District is historically Black and has elected a Black representative for decades. The Black Democrats running felt affronted by Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s decision to enter the race, especially with a spate of Republican gerrymanders across the South this spring almost certain to reduce Black representation in the House.”
“The last time the leaders of the world’s richest countries gathered in Évian-les-Bains, France, in June 2003, the United States had just invaded Iraq over the strident objections of France and Germany. President George W. Bush got chilly handshakes, but he and the other leaders worked to maintain the veneer of like-minded countries uniting to confront the perils of an unruly world,” the New York Times reports.
“Twenty-three years later, as leaders gather in the same town amid another American war in the Middle East, the veneer has been stripped away.”
“When President Trump arrives on Monday afternoon in Évian, an Alpine spa town on the southern shore of Lake Geneva, he will be greeted by European leaders who no longer view the United States as a partner on key issues such as climate change and security. In some cases, they view the United States as a threat, after Mr. Trump’s destabilizing attacks on Iran that have roiled the world economy, his deepening disdain for NATO, and his threats to take over Greenland.”
Financial Times: Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump test their bruised bromance at G7 summit.
“Congress’s most important job is deciding how federal money is spent. It hasn’t passed annual funding bills on time since 1997,” the Washington Post reports.
“And the normal act of budget-making has become all but impossible, with partisan gridlock and President Donald Trump’s push for Republicans to go it alone, opening new cracks in an already-battered system.”
“The breakdown in bipartisan budgeting every year threatens public programs that millions of Americans rely on and further endangers the government’s long-term fiscal health.”
Politico: “The newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool seems unable to escape an old scourge: algae blooming in the shallow water.”
“Thin layers of algae floated on the World War II Memorial side of the pool Friday morning, even after workers were seen cleaning out algae from the bottom of the pool Wednesday.”
Wall Street Journal: “The event portends an unprecedented fusion of the presidency and extreme combat sports, intended to bypass traditional norms and reconnect the president with a base that feels alienated by Washington.”
“In recent weeks, the verdant space better known for the Easter Egg Roll and receptions for world leaders has been transformed into an arena for a violent spectacle that has electrified mixed-martial-arts fans, outraged critics and intensified the collision of sports and politics.”
“A federal judge in Massachusetts has ordered the Trump administration to restore all signs that were changed or removed at national parks across the country as part of President Donald Trump’s controversial directive last year,” CNN reports.
In a scathing 63-page ruling, Judge Angel Kelley wrote: “Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths.”
President Trump said on Truth Social that a deal to end the war with Iran will be signed on Sunday, with the Strait of Hormuz opening up immediately after.
Said Trump: “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL.”
The Economist: “These are unsettling times, even for the rich. Many of those wealthy enough to move abroad for low taxes or their physical or political security are less sure these days about settling in Dubai or Hong Kong, even America or Britain. Dry your eyes, however, for plenty of governments remain eager to take in foreigners with money and skills. And a growing industry of trusted advisers stands ready to help the rich relocate.”
“For these consiglieri, business is booming. Last year more than 140,000 millionaires migrated, the most on record, reckons New World Wealth, a research firm; this year it expects the figure to rise to 165,000.”
Washington Post: “As Democrats wrestle with the past behavior of their Senate candidate in Maine, one name keeps coming up: Donald Trump.”
“The president lowered the bar, some liberal voters and lawmakers argue, when he won the highest office in the land despite facing allegations of misconduct from multiple women and being caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitals. The stakes, they say, are too high to obsess over a candidate’s past when flipping control of the Senate to Democrats would give the country a needed check on the president.”
Bloomberg: “The new fund was expected to offer a faster and easier path to government payouts for people alleging unfair treatment by the Biden administration or other perceived political enemies of Trump. Long before it was announced, though, US officials were fielding such claims — and in some instances approving million-dollar awards of taxpayer money — under a decades-old process set up by Congress.”
“Untethered to the fund proposal and the bipartisan political firestorm and legal battles that followed, claims brought under the existing legal pathways are moving ahead.”
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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