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Bloomberg: “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is launching its first general election attack ad against Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) on Friday, targeting him for trading stocks while missing votes in Washington.”
“The release of the ad, shared first with Bloomberg Government, coincides with the three-month mark since Kean has voted in the House.”
New York Times: “Ms. Collins has not missed a single roll call in her Senate service, and on Thursday night, she became the first senator in history to reach 10,000 consecutive votes cast without an absence.”
“The record came as she crossed party lines to support an unsuccessful Democratic bid to send her party’s immigration bill back to committee to add a requirement that the government investigate losses and denials of Medicaid benefits.”
Bloomberg: “Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was limited to just a few ships over the past 24 hours as peace talks between the US and Iran show little sign of advancing.”
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Friday struck down a slate of immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration, writing that it had left immigrants living in the United States in “indeterminate legal limbo” because of “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making,” the New York Times reports.
Bloomberg: “James Talarico picked at the brisket with his bare hands and polished off a rack of pork ribs. Sausage links and ‘Texas Twinkies’ — stuffed jalapeño peppers wrapped in bacon — crowded the butcher paper on his overflowing tray of smoked meats…”
“In an election season expected to hinge on weighty matters such as affordability concerns and the war in Iran, a non-pocketbook issue has emerged early in the campaign: whether Talarico, the Democratic nominee, is a vegan.”
“President Donald Trump’s push to rebrand the Pentagon as the Department of War won a victory late on Thursday when Republicans on a key committee voted to make the change permanent,” Politico reports.
“The House Armed Services Committee narrowly voted along party lines to codify the renaming of the Department of Defense, which Trump kicked off last fall, during marathon deliberations on its annual defense policy bill.”
“Janeese Lewis George leads Kenyan R. McDuffie by double-digits in the Democratic primary for D.C. mayor, boosted by voters who find her more honest and think she will do a better job handling issues of affordability and public schools,” according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
“But a quarter of voters remain undecided about the race as the primary enters its final days.”
Washington Post: “Democrats focused on taking back the Senate in November are growing increasingly worried that a surging liberal candidate in Michigan’s contentious Democratic Senate primary could imperil their slim shot at being in the majority next year.”
“Polls consistently find Abdul El-Sayed, a former local health official who lost a previous gubernatorial bid, at or near the top of the three-person August primary race. He has outflanked Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow from the left, boosted by a populist agenda and endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and liberal lawmakers.”
Washington Post: “Americans are still spending money so strongly it’s steering the economy through growing inflation, but rising prices are starting to take a toll on savings accounts and summer vacation plans.”
“While gas prices have surged since the Iran war began, raising costs for groceries and transportation, tax refunds and stock market gains have been helping buffer the pain for some Americans who are still spending. Although, many Americans are reducing how much money they are saving, data shows.”
New York Times: “Senate Republican anger about President Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for people who claim to be victims of federal overreach was loud and apparent…”
“Not so for the sweeping protections from I.R.S. audits that Mr. Blanche also ordered up for Mr. Trump and his family. On that front, Republican reaction has been much more muted, and Mr. Blanche said the audit shield would stay in place. A Democratic effort to cancel the audit protection failed on a voice vote.”
“The result is that an apparently unprecedented and enormously valuable public benefit for the president has, so far, flown under the radar in Congress and passed into Mr. Trump’s hands without much protest from members of his own party.”
Wall Street Journal: “President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin the process of firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community.”
“Trump said he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, is ‘unnecessary and/or too big.'”
He added: “I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there.”
New York Times: “Seconds-long GPS outages across Europe on several occasions are the result of interference by Russian satellites.”
“Russia has unleashed what researchers are calling an unusually intense barrage of overt and covert influence operations before a parliamentary election on Sunday in Armenia, which has sought closer ties with Europe and the United States,” the New York Times reports.
“Groups linked to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence agencies have for months flooded the internet with attacks against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has publicly clashed with Moscow after a breakdown in security cooperation between the two countries, according to government and independent researchers who track Russian influence campaigns.”
“Donald Trump is setting up his latest loyalty test on Capitol Hill — and it’s not about the war in Iran, Cabinet nominees or his White House ballroom,” Politico reports.
“Instead, the president is lobbying GOP lawmakers on a plan to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning more daylight in the evening hours and an end to the twice-yearly clock-resetting ritual observed in most states.”
“Trump has fixated on this issue, believing it resonates with voters who are burdened by ‘all of the work and money’ associated with changing the clocks every six months.”
William Saletan: “On Thursday, Republican senators had a chance to kill Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for professed victims of ‘weaponization’ by the Department of Justice. They refused. A Democratic amendment to block the fund, as part of an immigration-enforcement spending bill, failed in the Senate. Subsequent attempts to limit or outlaw the fund failed as well.”
“Republicans seem to think they can walk away from this issue because Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has said he won’t implement the fund. They’re wrong. Blanche’s corrupt deal with Trump, in which he agreed to set up the fund as part of a fake “settlement” of a Trump lawsuit against the IRS, remains intact. And it’s not just the slush fund that is very much alive. The deal also continues to guarantee—and Blanche has refused to withdraw—immunity for Trump and his family against any investigations by the IRS.”
“The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts,” the Washington Post reports.
“The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.”
Mark Leibovich: “Democrats appear to have skirted a dreaded “Blue Armageddon” scenario in which their crowded field of middling-or-worse candidates cancel one another out, while the two middling-or-worse Republicans (Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco) advance to the final two. ‘Bullet dodged’ seems to be the prevailing takeaway among Democrats. If Becerra or Steyer winds up facing Hilton, they will clearly be favored to win, given the state’s heavily Democratic makeup and what looks to be an overwhelmingly Democratic-friendly electoral environment across the country.”
“Still, even if Team Blue will likely win in the end, the California governor’s race has been a fiasco for Democrats from the start—and in ways that reflect an ongoing dysfunction that has become a feature of the party in recent years. Even worse, California in 2026 could portend a larger and more destructive performance from the party in 2028.”
“For starters, Democrats won’t have Donald Trump to save them in the future, as he seems to be doing this year.”
“China is erecting walls to prevent money, technology and companies from leaving the country,” the New York Times reports.
“This week, the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced new rules requiring national security screening for Chinese companies seeking to invest overseas. The move follows regulations introduced in April that allowed the authorities to intervene when foreign companies tried to relocate supply chains out of China.”
“Taken together, the measures amount to a new blueprint for the economic fortress China is building around its technology and supply chains amid rising tensions with Europe and the United States.”
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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