“President Donald Trump said he is weighing a move that would absorb the US Postal Service, an independent agency, into the Department of Commerce, a sweeping change that comes as his administration looks to overhaul the US federal government,” Bloomberg reports.
Said Trump: “It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money they’ve lost, and we think we can do something that will be very good, and keep it a very similar way.”
“The Associated Press sued three Trump administration officials Friday over access to presidential events, citing freedom of speech in asking a federal judge to stop the 10-day blocking of its journalists,” the AP reports.
“The AP says its case is about an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech — in this case not changing its style from the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America,’ as President Donald Trump did last month with an executive order.”
CNN: “Other countries do not recognize the new name, and the AP is a global news outlet with customers all around the world, so its stories – and influential stylebook – are still referring to the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ while also acknowledging Trump’s decree.”
“A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to pull thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development staffers off the job,” the AP reports.
“U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols removed his temporary block on the effort to remove all but a small fraction of USAID staffers from their posts and give those abroad a 30-day deadline to move back to the U.S. at government expense.”
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Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that Jeffrey Epstein’s client list was on her desk and being reviewed when she was asked her about releasing it.
Said Bondi: “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told The Breakfast Club it’s “really wild” she finds herself “rooting for Canada and Mexico” these days because of their opposition to President Donald Trump.
“We are in the middle of the biggest Constitutional crisis our nation has ever seen & every day we’re inching further from the democracy our founders created. Now is not — and cannot be — the time to stand idly by. I’m urging my colleagues to wake up and protect this institution.”
— Sen. Angus King (I-ME), on the Senate floor.
Enrique Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys and who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump, was arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, ABC News reports.
“The Trump administration has removed Caleb Vitello, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from his position,” NBC News reports.
“Vitello’s removal comes after both border czar Tom Homan and President Donald Trump have expressed anger that the number of people being deported is not higher.”
“Russia could agree to using $300 billion of sovereign assets frozen in Europe for reconstruction in Ukraine but will insist that part of the money is spent on the one-fifth of the country that Moscow’s forces control,” Reuters reports.
President Donald Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell said there will be strings attached to California wildfire aid, Politico reports.
President Trump had an exchange with Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) at the White House over his ban on transgender athletes:
TRUMP: The NCAA has complied immediately. That’s good. But I understand Maine — is the governor of Maine here?
MILLS: Yeah, I’m here.
TRUMP: Are you not gonna comply?
MILLS: I’m going to comply with state and federal law.
TRUMP: We are the federal law. You better do it because you’re not gonna get any federal funding at all…
MILLS: I’ll see you in court.
TRUMP: Good, I’ll see you in court. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life afterward because you won’t be in elected politics ever again.
“President Donald Trump is expected to sign a memorandum Friday that opens the door to levies in response to digital services taxes some countries impose on US tech giants, the latest step to expand a tariff war aimed at addressing imbalances in global trade,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Defense Department has temporarily paused a plan to carry out mass firings of civilian probationary employees until Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel can carry out a more thorough review of the impacts such firings could have on US military readiness,” CNN reports.
Joe Klein: “Trump has assembled an administration of emotionally damaged people. They embrace conspiracies, like Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel. Others tend to be deficient in the empathy zone. Elon Musk has told his biographer Walter Isaacson—the book is excellent—that he has an Asperger’s personality. That’s at the mild end of the spectrum. But, not to put too fine a point on it, he treats other people like shit. He has no ear for human sensitivity; and he surrounds himself with like-minded brutalists…”
“Donald Trump is actually worse: he is not ignorant of other people’s pain, he gets a kick out of it. Long ago, I compared him to the Emperor Caligula, who got his greatest pleasure from the suffering of his opponents.”
President Trump continued to express frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, ABC News reports.
Said Trump: “I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards. And you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it.”
As for Zelensky’s protest at being excluded from initial U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, Trump said: “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings.”
After President Trump’s false claims this week that Ukraine is led by a “dictator” who started the war with Russia, even some of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s harshest critics have rallied around him and feelings of unity have surged again, the AP reports.
Andrew Sullivan: “It is a fascinating moment, isn’t it, when Reagan’s vision of the West is finally swept into the dustbin of history by a Republican president.”
“And that is the only solid conclusion one can make after this week of astonishing incompetence and madness. We only saw Donald Trump’s foreign policy darkly in his first term — constrained, as he was, by a handful of white-knuckled Republicans in the executive branch. Now we see it face to face. It’s a vision where international law disappears, great powers divide up the planet into spheres of influence, and the strong always control the weak. It’s Trump’s vision of domestic politics as well. And of life.”
“A worker at the General Services Administration told colleagues in a Slack message Tuesday that they have resigned in protest after Elon Musk ally Thomas Shedd requested ‘admin/root access to all components of the Notify.gov system,’ which is a government system used to send mass text messages to the public that contains information the worker said is highly sensitive and would give Shedd unilateral, private access to the personal data of members of the public,” 404 Media reports.
“Notify.gov contains not just the phone numbers of everyday people but also information about whether they participate in government programs such as Medicaid, which is based on a person’s financial situation.”
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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