“Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday that Ohio should abolish the death penalty, saying it is no longer a deterrent to violent crime,” NewsNation reports.
Said DeWine: “I no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. I believe Ohio should abolish the death penalty.”
Andrew Egger: “Donald Trump is, above all, a showman. While he’s plainly slowing with age, he has certainly not lost his ability to deliver near-daily shocks with his attacks on good government, ethics, and taste.”
“But the nature of those shocks has been changing lately. More and more, they’ve seemed calibrated to obscure a harsh truth: Not yet two years into Trump 2.0, the administration’s momentum has ground to a halt.”
“Trump administration officials concluded talks with Anthropic on Monday without lifting export controls that were imposed last week on the company’s most advanced AI models in response to jailbreaking concerns, according to three people briefed on the matter,” Wired reports.
“The administration continues to believe that there are ways to disable some of the guardrails on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, effectively allowing users to access the more powerful cybersecurity capabilities of the company’s Mythos model.”
Francis Fukuyama: “It is clear that Trump is being driven to reopen the Strait of Hormuz at virtually any cost by the domestic pressure from rising oil prices and inflation. Being unwilling to send ground forces to Iran, he has had few cards to play over the past six weeks to get further Iranian concessions. So he has chosen to back down and accept a return to the status quo ante from before he began the war on February 28.”
“The world will indeed be better off if the Strait is re-opened. Perhaps Trump’s hardcore MAGA supporters can be persuaded that he has negotiated a consummate deal and achieved a great victory. But everyone else will understand that the world’s most powerful country is being run by a feckless and ignorant president who will impose immense costs on both other countries and his own people if he thinks it will benefit himself.”
From a Wall Street Journal editorial:
“President Trump is touting his latest cease-fire deal with Iran as peace in our time, but the world is more likely to see it as a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims. To reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump is accepting Iran’s promises merely to negotiate over its nuclear program…”
“Those who say Mr. Trump had no alternative to this retreat ignore that the U.S. blockade was squeezing Iran more by the day, while Iran’s blockade was leaking. Mr. Trump simply didn’t want to endure higher oil prices for longer. This is his choice, not a strategic imperative…”
“Iran’s new leaders are likely to conclude that Mr. Trump has no desire for more conflict, and they will negotiate accordingly.”
Phillips O’Brien: “So Trump signed a deal with the Iranians but is refusing to release its terms for days. Best bet is that he knows they are a massive defeat and is trying to set a completely false narrative by flooding the airwaves with misinformation for as long as possible.”
From a New York Post editorial:
“Aside from the vast damage the war did to Iran’s military assets and the deaths of so many of the ruling cabal, this Memorandum of Understanding seems to leave things right back where they were before the bombs started dropping. That is: Tehran hasn’t actually agreed to give up its nuclear program or its support of terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas — but only to talk about it all some more.”
Just out: Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth―and What to Do About It by Samuel Moyn.
“As Americans debate President Biden’s infirmities and President Trump’s erratic behavior, we’ve neglected the bigger problem before us: a massive transfer of power and wealth to the oldest among us, and the curtailment of the prospects of the young.”
“If there is one thing Ukraine’s European allies need out of the US at the Group of Seven summit, it’s to get Volodymyr Zelenskyy time with Donald Trump and nudge the US president to pay more attention to Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Bloomberg reports.
“World leaders gathered at this week’s meeting in France see Europe and the US converging in the view that Ukraine’s position is getting stronger, according to G7 officials who asked not to be named as the discussions are private.”
“Five months after the demolition of the White House’s East Wing, President Donald Trump claimed that the project to construct a massive ballroom and a bunker in its place would cost up to $400 million and that private donors would pay for all of it,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Trump: “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”
“But a detailed project summary prepared for the White House by the contractor more than three weeks before Trump’s comments estimated the total construction cost at $600 million — with more than half coming from taxpayers.”
“President Donald Trump on Tuesday signaled that he’s open to sending details of the agreement with Iran to members of Congress, as lawmakers from both parties have raised questions,” CNBC reports.
The Atlantic: “Another mark of how much the U.S. has deviated from its aims at the conflict’s outset is the fate of the Strait of Hormuz. Its centrality to the new memorandum might suggest that Iran’s blockage of the narrow channel was a reason for the U.S. and Israel to go to war in the first place. Not so. The strait was open on the day the war started. Iran closed it, snarling global energy-supply chains, to gain exactly the leverage now being employed at the negotiating table.”
“By contrast, none of Trump’s initial goals for the conflict has been achieved.”
Bloomberg: “The biggest issue Trump focused on when he launched the conflict, Iran’s nuclear program, remains unresolved and subject to further talks. There’s doubt about what concessions Iran might make.”
“The firmest detail — a promise to reopen the strait for 60 days — is simply a return to the status quo before the war. And it’s unclear if that will remain in place under any long-term deal, or what the US might have to give to keep it.”
“NATO officials on Tuesday sought to project confidence that Europe could absorb deep American military cuts to the alliance — even as the continent lacks some of the weapons Washington is planning to withdraw and has no clear path to replacing them,” Bloomberg reports.
New York Times: “At the time of his death, Epstein was alone in his cell in spite of clear guidance to the contrary, while the guards assigned to his section of the jail neglected to conduct their rounds for hours. The jail’s security-camera system partially failed, and the video it did record showed an orange blur — the color of an inmate’s uniform — moving toward Epstein’s corridor shortly before his death. After Epstein’s body was found, evidence from his cell was not cataloged carefully, and photographs and objects gathered there seemed difficult to reconcile with aspects of his autopsy report. Two pathologists present at that autopsy had differing interpretations of the injuries to his neck.”
“There were so many people with an ostensible stake, one way or another, in Epstein’s death. Was it possible that all of this just happened?”
“Federal officials have arrested multiple people who they claim discussed plots to attack the UFC fight night event at the White House, including by using drones and a gunman,” CNN reports.
Seth Masket: “Okay, what the hell’s going on here? I haven’t heard this many gay taunts since middle school. In the 80s.”
“Well for one thing, Paxton does not have a great hand in this contest. He’s a strikingly unpopular political figure in Texas and was actually impeached for bribery and other crimes in a bipartisan vote a few years ago. Talarico, meanwhile, has proven very media-savvy and engaging. There’s also a strong national tide against Republicans right now (even popular ones!), and Paxton knows that just talking up his fealty to Trump is probably not enough to win this contest. So he’s just going personal and homophobic, in a shockingly overt manner. It makes one long for the subtlety of Trump’s ‘Kamala’s for they/them; Trump’s for you’ ad from two years ago.”
“Part of this is a relatively new trend in conservative politics, with many conservatives embracing a performative hyper-masculinity and obsessing on traditional (and in many cases imaginary) gender roles. For God’s sake, there was a UFC match on the White House lawn yesterday.”
“Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Donald Trump met on the sidelines of the G7 in Evian, France, in their first known encounter since an escalating clash over Pope Leo XIV and the war on Iran,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Monday meeting was brief and helped clear the air, according to people familiar with the Italian government’s thinking.”
“House Democrats are betting that a future Speaker Hakeem Jeffries wouldn’t struggle with the type of aisle-crossing rebellion that’s often vexed current Speaker Mike Johnson,” Semafor reports.
“That’s in part because of a House rule that’s prolonged Johnson’s problems: Any 218 House members can force a bill to the floor, bypassing leaders in the majority party. The current Congress has set a modern record for the use of this GOP leadership-defying maneuver — resulting in the passage of a Ukraine aid bill and a worker contracts bill during this month alone.”
“But Democrats don’t see much reason to fear what’s known as the discharge petition if they prevail in the midterms, and several House sources told Semafor they wouldn’t look to change it. Members of their party would have few incentives to break with Jeffries, who’d take office as the first Black speaker and lead a caucus eager to align against the Trump administration.”
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.
