“President Trump’s voter fraud crusade is crashing into the limits of his power ahead of November’s midterm elections,” Axios reports.
“Trump has made cracking down on alleged mass voter fraud a priority, but his election-related executive orders are stalled in court and his legislative fix is stuck in the Senate.”
Associated Press: Federal judge halts Trump’s election executive order seeking to create a federal voter list.
“Proponents of a tax on California billionaires vowed on Thursday to move forward with their November ballot measure despite mounting opposition from many of the state’s most powerful political forces,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“A labor union spent $31 million gathering signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot in an effort to offset federal healthcare funding cuts that will affect millions of California’s most vulnerable residents.”
Wall Street Journal: California’s proposed billionaire tax will appear before voters in November, teeing up a high-stakes fight among Democrats.
“When Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City last year, many on Wall Street kept quiet, waiting to see how the Democratic socialist would govern,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Now, after his protégés and allies swept primary elections this week, some of the city’s business elites are springing into action—at least, that’s what they plan on doing.”
“The Democratic Socialists of America picked up even more victories for local races, signaling that an anticapitalist and anti-Israel message was winning over voters in much of the city.”
Wall Street Journal: “Ukraine is swamping Russia’s air defenses with a growing armada of long-range drones that target refineries, port infrastructure, military industries and those air defenses themselves.”
“The escalating campaign is leading to restrictions on fuel sales in Russia, surging gasoline prices and regular images of black smoke clouds over parts of the country that thought the war in Ukraine was far away.”
Bloomberg: Zelensky orders 40-day campaign to influence Russia to end war.
“A top Justice Department official has told antitrust enforcers he prefers they stop taking cases to trial and instead seek to settle them,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Some lawyers at the department interpreted the comments from Stanley Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official, as a directive to resolve any litigation against companies and avoid future litigation.”
“For decades, people in the wealthy Gulf Arab nations watched the wars of the region unfold on their televisions. War happened to their neighbors — in Yemen, in Syria, in Gaza — but not to them,” the New York Times reports.
“That illusion was shattered by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It upended these countries’ sense of security, hobbled their energy-rich economies and pushed them to reconsider defense strategies. The American military bases on their soil — rather than shielding them from any harm — had made them the targets for thousands of Iranian missiles and drones.”
“The fighting appears to be over, at least for now, and yet many in the Gulf countries worry that the deal emerging between the United States and Iran will do little to alleviate the threat that Iran poses to them, analysts say.”
“Vice President JD Vance headlined an RNC fundraiser on Thursday night in Palo Alto, California, at the residence of influential investor and All-In Podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya, raking in $4.2 million for the Republican Party,” Axios reports.
“A city board voted Thursday to freeze rents for up to two years for about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, delivering on a key piece of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda while rattling the real estate industry,” the Washington Post reports.
“Next Tuesday, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. — missing from action for more than three months due to an unspecified medical condition — is scheduled to make his return to his official duties in Congress,” Politico reports.
“Later that same day, he’ll be returning to the campaign fundraising circuit, too.”
New York Magazine: Tom Kean Jr. suddenly reappears as if nothing happened.
“Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday that he would send to President Trump a bipartisan housing bill cleared by Congress, despite the president’s decision a day earlier to scrap a much-anticipated signing ceremony for the measure,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Johnson’s announcement came after he had a lengthy meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House.”
“A new internal poll shows a Democratic House candidate is in a dead heat with his Republican challenger in an upstate New York district President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024,” Politico reports.
“The poll, commissioned by Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien’s campaign and conducted by the left-leaning group Impact Research, found Gendebien trailing Republican Anthony Constantino by just one percentage point, 45-44, with 11 percent of voters undecided.”
“The U.S. Army is leasing land on bases across the country to companies that will build and operate critical mineral processing plants, military officials said Thursday, the latest push by the Trump administration to establish a domestic supply chain of the crucial materials,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Dan Pfeiffer: “Definitely.”
“Two incumbents losing primary challenges on the same night is a huge warning. Incumbents almost always win renomination. In fact, since 1946, more than 98% of all incumbents have won renomination… there is plenty of evidence that dissatisfaction with the Democratic establishment is a major factor in races across the country.”
“That anger is fueled by a combination of factors, including a sense that the Party has failed to stand up to Trump, that it’s captured by corporate interests, that it’s not focused enough on the working class and cost of living, and that it has been too weak in its response to the genocide in Gaza.”
Paul Krugman: “First, we fear that AI will do terrible things because the companies selling it told us it would do terrible things. Last year, for example, Anthropic CEO Darius Amodei declared in an interview with Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and drive overall unemployment as high as 20 percent within 1 to 5 years.”
“More recently Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have tried to walk back their predictions of a ‘jobs apocalypse’. But why were they so willing to promote apocalyptic visions in the first place? The answer is money. They pushed the idea that they had a technology that would quickly and utterly transform the economy partly to dazzle Wall Street and secure financing, and partly to scare businesses into rushing into AI adoption for fear of being left behind.”
“Only belatedly did they realize that declaring that your technology will wreak devastation would lead to a public backlash, and that this backlash would be a serious problem..”
“Second, many ordinary people view AI negatively because they feel that it is being forced on them.”
Derek Thompson: “Trump lost the country. The U.S. lost a half-hearted war. Israel lost an ally. The Middle East lost the illusion of security. Asia lost growth. Global trade lost a dependable artery.”
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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