“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer just declared that Democrats will reject Republicans’ government funding proposal — a ‘clean’ short-term CR — and urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP leaders to negotiate with Democrats,” Punchbowl News reports.
Said Schumer: “The bill they proposed can’t get our votes and doesn’t meet the needs of the American people. Plain and simple.”
Oliver Darcy: “On Monday, David Ellison’s Paramount named Weinstein the new ombudsman of CBS News, charged with reviewing complaints about the news division. While Weinstein tried to sanitize his digital footprint by deleting his X account, the internet is forever and an online paper trail remains—one that is devoid of any journalism expertise, but reveals a staunch conservative and vocal Trump supporter…”
“Weinstein also made his political preferences clear ahead of the 2024 election. Speaking on a panel in October, Weinstein fiercely advocated for Trump to win reelection.”
“Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is moving to force the Senate to take a vote that would force disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files, throwing the chamber into a debate Republicans have so far largely been able to avoid,” Politico reports.
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Charlie Sykes: “If, indeed, Democrats refuse to keep Trump’s government funded, they cannot merely scratch their ideological id to relieve their frustrations. They must have a clear message and a clear goal. This means that they must (1) clearly explain what they are fighting for, (2) pick a winning issue, and (3) have an exit strategy.”
Matthew Yglesias has an idea for what that might be: “The base is itching for a fight, but Democrats need to pick a winning fight — that means focusing a government funding debate on expiring health care subsidies.”
“A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it,” the New York Times reports.
“The disclosures add new detail to an operation that was a startling departure from traditional drug interdiction efforts, escalating President Trump’s use of the military for matters typically handled by law enforcement. Legal specialists have disputed that it was lawful for the military, on President Trump’s orders, to target and kill drug smuggling suspects as if they were combatants in a war.”
“A federal appeals court ruled the nation’s top copyright official can continue serving in her post following President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her,” Politico reports.
Kenneth Rogoff: “With long-term interest rates up sharply, public debt nearing its post–World War II peak, foreign investors becoming more skittish, and politicians showing little appetite for reining in fresh borrowing, the possibility of a once-in-a-century U.S. debt crisis no longer seems far-fetched.”
“Debt and financial crisis tend to occur precisely when a country’s fiscal situation is already precarious, its interest rates are high, its political situation is paralyzed, and a shock catches policymakers on the back foot. The United States already checks the first three boxes; all that is missing is the shock.”
Poland is the closest it has been to open conflict since the Second World War, the country’s prime minister told the Polish parliament, the Times of London reports.
Said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: “I have no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war, but a line has been crossed, and it’s incomparably more dangerous than before. This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.”
Bloomberg: “Buried underneath the headlines trumpeting the lopsided electoral defeat suffered by President Javier Milei’s party this weekend was a development potentially even more troubling for investors in Argentina: the re-emergence of Axel Kicillof.”
“If Milei is a darling of Wall Street, well, then Kicillof is his nemesis. Whereas Milei is obsessed with slashing the budget deficit, tearing down regulations and taming inflation, Kicillof — now the governor of Buenos Aires province — is remembered on Wall Street as a former minister who intervened in the economy, defaulted on sovereign debt and meddled in private business decisions.”
Oliver North’s marriage to his one-time secretary Fawn Hall was a surprise to his adult children, Michael Isikoff reports.
The couple apparently renewed their acquaintance in November at the funeral of North’s wife of 56 years.
Said daughter Sarah Katz: “We were not at the wedding because we didn’t know it was happening. And mostly we hope it won’t impact our relationship with our dad because we do love him and we’re still in the process of mourning our mother.”
“I’m not entirely sure this is legal to be teaching, because according to our president there’s only two genders… and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws as well as against my religious beliefs.”
— A Texas A&M student, quoted by KBTX, objecting to LGBTQ content in a university course in a viral video that led to the removals of a dean and department head and the firing of a professor.
“Donald Trump has asked the EU to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on India and China as part of a joint effort to increase pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine,” the Financial Times reports.
Said one U.S. official: “We’re ready to go, ready to go right now, but we’re only going to do this if our European partners step up with us.”
Geoffrey Hinton: “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers. It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”
More from Hinton: “We don’t know what is going to happen, we have no idea, and people who tell you what is going to happen are just being silly. We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening, and it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad. We can make guesses, but things aren’t going to stay like they are.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) wants conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Schmitt called Buchanan a “courageous intellectual and political trailblazer,” and “one of the great patriots of our time.”
He added that Buchanan was among the first conservatives to focus on the “cultural war that liberals were waging in America.”
“Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.”
— Kamala Harris, in her new book, 107 Days.
“If they squint, lawmakers can see the outlines of a bipartisan deal that could avoid a government shutdown later this year. But bringing an agreement into focus — and enacting it into law — will be no small task,” Politico reports.
“The general parameters floated by multiple factions in the House and Senate is to couple, by the end of the year, an extension of federal health insurance subsidies that are set to expire on Jan. 1 with government funding through September 2026.”
“But no one is willing to lock in that agreement yet, and getting there could take several more months of negotiations.”
Charlie Warzel: “This time, the conspiracy theorists were right.”
Here’s a PDF of the entire book.
“There’s rich, there’s very rich, there’s incomprehensibly rich, and then there’s the day Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison is poised to have,” Axios reports.
“After Oracle offered a growth forecast that stunned investors, Ellison is poised to make more Wednesday than any human being likely has ever made in one day.”
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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