“A growing number of House Democrats are calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to step aside from leadership,” Axios reports.
“Schumer is highly unlikely to heed their calls, but this represents Democrats’ largest groundswell against one of their leaders since last year’s effort to push then-President Biden off the presidential ticket.”
“President Trump has been dining with Wall Street bigwigs. He has embarked on an opulent revamp of the White House at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their bills. He has expressed support for granting visas to skilled foreigners to take jobs in the United States. He approved a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, helping a foreign government and wealthy investors at a moment when the U.S. government was shut down,” the New York Times reports.
“For a president who returned to office promising to avoid foreign entanglements, make life more affordable and ensure that available jobs go to American citizens, it has been a significant departure from the expectations of his loyal base. And it is starting to open a rift with his supporters who were counting on a more aggressively populist agenda.”
Gallup: “For the second straight year, about one in five Americans say they would like to leave the U.S. and move permanently to another country if they could. This heightened desire to migrate is driven primarily by younger women.”
President Trump went after what he called “weak Republicans” for backing an effort to compel the Justice Department to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Deadline reports.
Said Trump, on Truth Social: “The Democrats are doing everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again, despite the DOJ releasing 50,000 pages of documents, in order to deflect from all of their bad policies and losses, especially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where their party is in total disarray, and has no idea what to do. Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish.”
“As it pushes back on suggestions of conflicts of interest, the financial boutique is on track for its most lucrative year ever,” Bloomberg reports.
“Employers have a warning for the Class of 2026: Next spring’s graduate-hiring market is likely to be even worse than this year’s,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Six months out from graduation season, more than half of 183 employers surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers rate the job market for the Class of 2026 as poor or fair. That is the most pessimistic outlook since the first year of the pandemic, according to the survey, which is widely seen as an early signal of graduate hiring each year.”
Derek Thompson: Are young people screwed?
“Jeffrey Epstein was not a pedophile… He was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15 year old girls… There’s a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old.”
— Megyn Kelly, on her Sirius XM show.
“Switzerland said on Friday that it had reached an agreement with the United States to lower a punishing 39 percent tariff on Swiss goods to 15 percent, a change that will help to lower the price of exporting pharmaceuticals, gold, watches and chocolate to the United States,” the New York Times reports.
“Despite a polarized, partisan political environment, most voters who consider themselves a member of a party say they have a close friend on the other side of the aisle,” according to the latest NBC News poll.
“However, Democrats in the poll were less likely to say they have a close, cross-party friendship.”
“More than 8 in 10 Republicans (82%) said they have at least one close friend who is a Democrat, while a little over 6 in 10 Democrats (64%) are close friends with a Republican — a gap of 18 percentage points.”
“Jeffrey Epstein apparently served as a behind-the-scenes adviser to the former Trump official and MAGA influencer Steve Bannon during an August 2018 media campaign to defend Trump and his agenda, and to promote Bannon’s media ventures,” The Guardian reports.
“Text messages released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday detail a six-day exchange between the men from August 17 to 23, and show Epstein coaching Bannon on television appearances and political messaging.”
“Most of the senators whose data was requested as part of the investigation that led to special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 probe have now distanced themselves from a provision included in the shutdown-ending bill, signed into law by President Donald Trump, that would let them sue the government for potentially millions of dollars for not notifying them when accessing their records,” NBC News reports.
“The largest city in Alaska is about to undertake an experiment that feels both inevitable and impossibly futuristic in an era of pervasive mistrust toward elections: allowing all voters to cast ballots from their smartphones,” the New York Times reports.
“There is no question that what we have seen over the last six months is a massive cover up effort by Donald Trump to prevent the release of the DOJ’s Epstein files.”
— Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), on CNN.
G. Elliot Morris: “As of Q3 2025, the Democrats have their first lead on the economy in over 5 years — and the largest lead over Republicans in over a decade.”
“Vice President JD Vance acknowledged Thursday that he’s thought about the likelihood of running for president to succeed Donald Trump in 2028 — and he plans to hold a heart-to-heart with his boss about it following next year’s midterm elections,” the New York Post reports.
“Republicans running in Senate primaries have a new litmus test for who the Trumpiest candidate is: Do you support nuking the filibuster?,” NOTUS reports.
“President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster — something that would require support from a majority of senators. Trump also made this push during his first term, but his efforts now have been significantly more intense.”
“President Trump privately polled top CEOs for ideas on how to make US voters’ lives more affordable – even as he predicted a deregulation-driven economic boom on par with the Reagan and Clinton eras,” the New York Post reports.
“While he stopped short of specifically mentioning an ‘affordability crisis’ as alleged by Democrats, Trump appeared to concede that parts of the American dream have become out of reach, and asked the CEOs if they had any solutions, according to one CEO in attendance.”
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.