“President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards,” Reuters reports.
“Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine.”
Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) former staff told Wired they were assigned to create “burner” accounts on social media which were used to bolster Mace’s reputation online.
Said one ex-staffer: “We were congressional staff, and there were actual things we could be doing to help the constituents.”
“The White House plans to send a small package of spending cuts to Congress next week,” Politico reports.
“The planned transmission of the ‘rescissions’ bill, confirmed by two Republicans granted anonymity to describe the plans, comes after a long internal battle over how to formalize the cuts that have been made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.”
“The guy’s an asshole. And he’s intentionally an asshole.”
— Chuck Todd, talking to Chris Cillizza about Donald Trump.
Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) admitted to angry constituents that he hadn’t read President Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation package before voting for it, Rolling Stone reports.
“Flood could barely get through a sentence without facing boos and heckling from the audience. At one point, when asked about a provision in the GOP’s massive reconciliation package that would restrict the judiciary’s ability to hold government officials in contempt, Flood said he did not agree with the provision, before admitting that the ‘provision was unknown to me when I voted for that.'”
“The confession prompted a loud round of jeering from attendees.”
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has expanded upon his historic Senate floor speech from last month into an upcoming book, the AP reports.
David Frum: “Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.”
“It’s shocking to me, when I think about when I joined the show, I had more rights as a woman than I have now.”
— Showrunner Yahlin Chang, quoted by The Wrap, on the Handmaid’s Tale.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Hamas Gaza chief, Mohammad Sinwar, one of its most wanted and the younger brother of the deceased group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, had been eliminated,” Reuters reports.
“House Republicans rejected a push by some allies of President Donald Trump to include tax hikes on the rich in sweeping legislation they passed last week — a decision that could carry repercussions into next year’s elections,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Senate could make further changes, but Republicans in the upper chamber are expected to prove even less likely to back higher taxes on the top income bracket.”
“The issue may help define the upcoming battle over the GOP’s key legislative achievement ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.”
“Russia’s successes on the front lines in Ukraine are a big reason why Vladimir Putin isn’t yet ready to sign up to President Trump’s peace efforts. Some of his neighbors fear the success of the war machine now driving its economy means he never will,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“President Donald Trump’s pick to investigate waste, fraud and abuse at the Labor Department, Anthony D’Esposito, is a former Republican congressman who lost his New York seat after he was accused of putting his mistress and fiancée’s daughter on his payroll,” the Washington Post reports.
“The inspector general nominee for Health and Human Services, Thomas March Bell, previously resigned from a government job over an allegation of mishandling taxpayers’ money and has pursued cases against abortion clinics as a GOP attorney.”
“And Trump’s choice for Veterans Affairs watchdog, Cheryl Mason, said in a Senate questionnaire that she had continued to be a senior adviser to Secretary Douglas Collins after she was nominated to become the inspector general monitoring his agency.”
“Two Secret Service officers have been suspended after being filmed fighting outside former President Barack Obama’s home last week,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Video and audio files posted to X on Tuesday document the two female federal officers punching and shoving each other.”
“A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake,” NBC News reports.
The CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s most powerful creators of artificial intelligence, said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, Axios reports.
Elon Musk called Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and asked him to tap Vivek Ramaswamy for the open Senate seat that belonged to Vice President JD Vance as the billionaire was “growing tired” of Ramaswamy, Politico reports.
He said he found Ramaswamy “annoying.”
But DeWine “wasn’t about to solve Musk’s problem for him by handing Ramaswamy what could amount to a lifetime appointment to the Senate.”
Wall Street Journal: “With international sanctions freezing money flows, North Korea has grown creative in its quest for cash. North Korean hackers have stolen more than $6 billion in cryptocurrency.”
“With laptop farming, they have flipped the gig economy on its head and found ingenious ways to trick companies into handing over paychecks.”
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.