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Inside the Pettiest Fight on Capitol Hill

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“Republicans and Democrats have spent the first seven months of Congress fighting over everything from reconciliation to rescissions to Jeffery Epstein. But there’s another issue they’re more quietly bickering over: room reservations,” NOTUS reports.

“Multiple Democratic lawmakers and staffers described to NOTUS a struggle to reserve rooms on Capitol Hill for committee or caucus meetings, shadow hearings and constituent gatherings. As Democrats try to mount a resistance to President Donald Trump and the Republican majority, these Democratic sources described a logistical nightmare that is a real obstacle to carrying out their work and an unfortunate side effect of being in the minority.”

How the ‘Paranoid Style’ Took Over U.S. Politics

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Julian Zelizer: “Indeed, understanding the power of conspiracy politics within the Right, is not to say there can’t be truth to the basis of their claims—including the possibility that President Trump is trying to cover up information about his relationship to Epstein.”

“But the specific ways in which the issue has been discussed within much of the MAGA world have taken the form of the paranoid style. They have insisted on a concerted and coordinated operation across different institutions and pockets of elites (ranging from the Department of Justice to prison guards, all with a clear political agenda), which fits quintessential conspiratorial tropes. They have made assumptions about why information has been held back and insinuated that because a person had contact with Epstein they inevitably participated in his sexual crimes. In this worldview, anyone who questions the conspiracy instantly becomes part of the conspiracy.”

“Trump, who has thrived by capitalizing on this political tradition at the highest levels of power, has learned that he can’t easily control it. Unless he rides that style to strengthen his standing, even he can fall victim to its influence, becoming the focus of, rather than the warrior against, the conspiracies that many of his followers believe can bring civilization to an end.”

“It is not a surprise that Trump has responded to his being attacked for a conspiracy by trying to throw public attention back on other conspiracies, including his baseless accusation that President Obama acted in treasonous ways in 2016.”


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Trump Seeks Quick Deposition of Rupert Murdoch

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Lawyers for President Donald Trump asked a judge on Monday to order Rupert Murdoch to sit for a deposition soon in Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit accusing the media mogul of defaming him in a Wall Street Journal article about a ‘bawdy’ birthday letter to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, CNBC reports.

Said the lawyers: “Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York. Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial.”

Judge Blocks Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood

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“A federal judge on Monday ruled Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the nation’s largest abortion provider fights President Donald Trump’s administration over efforts to defund the organization in his signature tax legislation,” the AP reports.

Trump Says He Never Visited Jeffrey Epstein’s Island

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President Trump said Monday that he never had “the privilege” of traveling to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s island, emphasizing he “did turn it down,” Axios reports.

Said Trump: “In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.”

ABC News reports Trump’s name is mentioned in flight logs from Epstein’s plane, though most flights were between Palm Beach, Florida and Teterboro, New Jersey.

Ghislaine Maxwell Appeals Epstein Conviction

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“Ghislaine Maxwell pressed ahead with an appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking to overturn her conviction on the grounds that she was unlawfully prosecuted for sex trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein,” Axios reports.

“The filing by Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, comes just three days after she met with a top Justice Department official tapped to re-examine the Epstein case.”

How NASA Engineered Its Own Decline

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Franklin Foer: “Last year, 95 percent of the rockets launched in the United States were launched by SpaceX. NASA was a mere passenger. Musk has crowded low Earth orbit with satellites (nearly 8,000) that are becoming indispensable to the military’s capacity to communicate and the government’s surveillance of hostile powers. Even if Trump had pushed to dislodge Musk, he couldn’t. No rival could readily replace the services his companies provide.”

“That Musk has superseded NASA is a very American parable. A generation ago, NASA was the crown jewel of the U.S. government. It was created in 1958 to demonstrate the superiority of the American way of life, and it succeeded brilliantly. In the course of landing humans on the lunar surface, NASA became the symbol of America’s competence and swagger, of how it—alone among the nations of the Earth—inhabited the future. NASA’s astronauts were 20th-century cowboys, admired in corners of the world that usually abhorred Americans. The Apollo crews traveled to the heavens on behalf of ‘all mankind,’ a phrase that appeared both in the act that created NASA and on the plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11. Even NASA’s engineers, with their skinny ties and rolled-up sleeves, became the stuff of Hollywood legend.”

“NASA was born at the height of liberalism’s faith in government, and its demise tracks the decline of that faith. As the United States lost confidence in its ability to accomplish great things, it turned to Musk as a potential savior, and ultimately surrendered to him. This isn’t an instance of crony capitalism, but a tale about well-meaning administrations, of both parties, pursuing grandiose ambitions without the vision, competence, or funding to realize them.”

The Epstein Case Is Uniting Americans

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Miami Herald: “Politics makes strange bedfellows, and the Jeffrey Epstein case has created the most unlikely bipartisan coalition in recent memory.”

“What began as a campaign promise to release Epstein’s client list has metastasized into a full-scale political crisis that is now stress-testing President Donald Trump’s relationship with his supporters and uniting both parties in a rare call for transparency.”

Trump Is Making Socialism Great Again

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David Frum: “For a younger generation of Americans, the concept of “socialism” is an empty box into which all manner of hopes and dreams may be placed. But once upon a time, some humans took very seriously the project to build an economy without private property and without such market rewards as profits. What they got instead was unwearable shoes. But memories fade; hopes and dreams endure.”

“Growing numbers of Americans feel that the economy does not work for them. Donald Trump’s stewardship has blatantly favored insiders and cronies. And so, in the 2020s, Americans find themselves debating ideas that once seemed dead and dusty, and in some cases, electing politicians who champion them. The new socialism addresses the problems that wrecked the old socialism only by denying or ignoring them. If socialism is to be beaten back, and if market economics are to uphold themselves in democratic competition, exposing the unworkability of proposed alternatives won’t be enough. It will be necessary to reform and cleanse the market economics indispensable to sustaining Americans’ standard of living.”

GOP Lawmakers at Odds Over Epstein Files

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“Division between Republican lawmakers over the Jeffrey Epstein files continued to intensify even as President Donald Trump and his administration seeks to redirect scrutiny toward the president’s political foes and the 2016 election,” CNN reports.

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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