New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) is set to deliver her final floor speech as a member of the U.S. House this afternoon – and her speech will include the news that she intends to resign from her congressional seat in the near future, the New Jersey Globe reports.
Sherrill plans to submit her letter of resignation next week, but the exact timing of her departure is still in flux, pending discussions with Democratic leaders both in New Jersey and in Washington.
President Trump called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) himself to try to get her to take her name off the discharge petition to force a House vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, the New York Times reports.
He’s also “playing phone tag” with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), another GOP lawmaker who backs the vote.
A new AP-NORC poll shows just 33% of adults approve of the way President Trump is managing the government, down from 42% in March.
Charlie Sykes: “Trump has boasted (not without reason) that he could shoot someone and not lose any votes. He attempted a coup and was re-elected; was convicted of felonies and was returned to power; was found liable for sexually abusing a woman and won a second term.”
“But there’s something about the Epstein Files that has spooked him. And we may be about to find out why.”
“House Democrats will take steps to force a vote on a three-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits after Republicans refused to address the issue as part of a bipartisan Senate deal to reopen the federal government,” Politico reports.
“House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) announced in a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday that leadership would pursue the extension through a procedural move known as a discharge petition.”
Axios: House Democrats plot to bypass Mike Johnson on shutdown deal.
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid the blame Wednesday for a disappointing deal ending the 43-day government shutdown at the feet of Senate Democrats as a whole — not just Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — noting there were ‘eight Democrats who coordinated’ with Republicans to end the standoff,” Politico reports.
“Top Trump administration officials were planning to meet Wednesday about an effort in the US House to force a vote on releasing Justice Department case files related to Jeffrey Epstein,” CNN reports.
“One of the sources said the planned meeting would include Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who has wanted the Justice Department to release their trove of Epstein files and has signed onto the effort in the US House to force the vote compelling their release.”
Time: “The timing could not have been any worse for Republicans—or better for Democrats, who are in the midst of their own internal row over the decision by a handful of Senate colleagues to help Republicans end the government shutdown.”
“The Epstein disclosures, led by Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on House Oversight, are obviously going to bump the intra-party fight for Democrats out of the spotlight and refocus talks on Trump’s connections to Epstein and his tawdry business of underaged girls, sex, private islands, and star-studded jets.”
“House Republicans on Wednesday released a titanic trove of 23,000 pages of documents from the estate of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein after months of delays — shortly after Democrats released emails suggesting that President Trump knew more about Mr. Epstein’s sex trafficking than he has previously acknowledged,” the New York Times reports.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Time the victim’s name blacked out in two of the emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate released by House Democrats on Wednesday is Virginia Giuffre.
Said Leavitt: “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump. The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions.”
“Have them ask my houseman about Donald almost walking through the door leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door.”
— Jeffrey Epstein, in an email released by House Democrats.
Slate: “The Democrats want the public thinking about Donald Trump’s ties to a sex trafficker. Will it work?”
“U.S. flight cancellations have fallen sharply over the last day as air traffic control absences shrank just hours before the House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill on Wednesday to end a record-setting government shutdown,” Reuters reports.
ProPublica: “Trump has granted clemency to allies, donors and culture-war figures — as well as felons who, like him, were convicted of financial wrongdoing. On Friday, he granted pardons to 77 people, including Rudy Giuliani and other allies tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, though they are mostly symbolic because federal pardons do not apply to ongoing or possible state prosecutions, which many of the grantees face. Those clemencies came on top of the commutation awarded last month to George Santos, the disgraced former New York congressman found guilty of defrauding donors and lying to the House of Representatives. Trump cut short Santos’ seven-year sentence after less than three months.”
“For those who followed the standard protocol set out by the Department of Justice, the sense is growing that the process no longer matters; they’ve watched the public database of applicants swell with thousands of pending cases, while Trump grants pardons to people who never entered the system at all.”
Recently published: American Contradiction: Revolution and Revenge from the 1950s to Now by Paul Starr.
How did Americans come to elect Barack Obama—and then Donald Trump?
President Trump appears to have snubbed Bank of America boss Brian Moynihan as he hosts a White House dinner with top Wall Street executives tonight – signaling a persistent rift between the pair over the “debanking” of the president following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the New York Post reports.
Mark Leibovich: “For a president who wants to project vigor and command at all times, Donald Trump made the worst possible spectacle of himself in the Oval Office last Thursday.”
“It came in the form of two images captured during a press event to announce cheaper weight-loss drugs. The first materialized when a participant fainted and several officials on hand rushed over. Not Trump, however, who, after turning to look at the fallen man, stood a few feet away at the Resolute Desk with his back to the action, wearing an indifferent expression. This was pointedly reflected in news photos that instantly went viral.”
“The second image, less noticed but possibly more damning, was memorialized just beforehand: As Mehmet Oz, the administration’s head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, delivered remarks, Trump appeared to be nodding off at his desk.”
Fast Company: “Something is going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene that’s making Americans furrow their brows and say, ‘What in the MAGA universe is going on?’ The thing is, the Republican representative from Georgia, known as ‘MTG,’ is a suddenly making more sense—even to her detractors.”
“In recent months, the conservative Trump devotee, from whom Americans have come to expect off-the-cuff and often crude commentary, has been undeniably good natured, coming across as astoundingly reasonable during a number of appearances on CNN, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and elsewhere.”
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.