“Economic growth has flatlined so far this year. Inflation has picked up. And consumers expect both to get worse in the months ahead,” Axios reports.
“For the moment, it adds up to Wall Street’s least-favorite ‘s-word,’ stagflation — stagnant growth mixed with elevated inflation.”
“That pattern, most vividly seen in the 1970s, is particularly painful because it means people experience pain from both lack of job opportunities and higher prices.”
“President Donald Trump wants action now, unity later, on his legislative agenda. The result is a budget with numbers that don’t match up,” Politico reports.
“Republican leaders are expected to embrace a novel strategy as they seek to push forward as soon as this coming week with their partisan package of tax cuts, border security enhancements, military spending and more. Rather than align House and Senate committees behind the same savings targets in the budget framework for that megabill, they want to set different numbers for each chamber.”
“Trump administration economic officials had mixed message for consumers Sunday: Tariffs won’t raise prices, but even if they do you’ll be fine when we cut taxes,” Axios reports.
“The administration is gambling an increasingly unhappy consumer will eat a few months of worsening conditions for the promise of something better down the road.”
“Sentiment is plunging across the board — not just consumers, but also small businesses and some big ones too.”
A New York Times reporter met Shahbaz, a scammer who used fake bank alerts to make victims panic. When confronted, he just laughed—no guilt, no remorse.
That’s how these people think: you’re not a person to them—you’re just a name, an address, and a phone number scraped from a website. That's how they find you.
Incogni deletes your exposed personal data from the web—the same data scammers buy to target victims. The less they can see about you, the safer you stay.
They can’t scam you if they can’t find you. Save 55% on your annual subscription with code POLITICALWIRE.
Note to readers: I use Incogni myself and highly recommend it.
President Trump threatened Iran with bombings and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program, Reuters reports.
Said Trump: “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing.”
He added: “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
“The White House plans to impose its own seating chart for reporters in the briefing room in coming weeks, taking over a function long managed by the reporters themselves through the White House Correspondents’ Association,” Axios reports.
“It’s the latest — but likely not the last — effort by the White House to take a heavier hand in shaping who covers President Trump. In public and private, White House officials make it clear they are determined to upend decades-old press corps traditions.”
Associated Press: “The episode showed not only Trump’s use of the power of the presidency to police dissent and punish adversaries but also his success in extracting concessions from law firms, academia, Silicon Valley and corporate boardrooms.”
“These targets were suddenly made to fear for their futures in the face of a retribution campaign that has been a defining feature of his first two months in office.”
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) told NBC News the Democratic Party’s brand “is really problematic.”
Said Bennet: “I think that it is a brand that it’s associated with New York and with California, is associated with the educated elites in this country, and not anymore with working people in this country.”
He added: “You know, the good news, for the party, I think, is that Donald Trump is pursuing the same trickle-down economics that he pursued the first time he was president… That’s really bad for America. But the Democratic Party ought to be able to come back, under those circumstances, with a pretty good argument about why we could leader better than Donald Trump.”
President Trump said he was “very angry” and “pissed off” when Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership, adding that the comments were “not going in the right location,” NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia.”
He elaborated: “That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, told NBC News it’s “not true” that he and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz never spoke prior to Signal leak.
Said Goldberg: “Well, this isn’t the matrix. Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there. You know, very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone.”
He added: “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true. I understand why he’s doing it. But you know, this has become a somewhat farcical situation. There’s no, there’s no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone. He mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go.”
Washington Post: “The order on elections is more than 2,500 words and at times densely written. It may have received less attention than warranted as it was issued amid the controversy over how sensitive military operational details were shared in a Signal chat group that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic.”
“The order is illustrative of how the president is attempting to govern, largely through dictates rather than legislation. It is rooted in Trump’s long-standing, though false, claims that the election system is rife with fraud. Its legal foundations are questionable. But like other executive orders the president has signed, it could produce chaos and change before it is fully litigated.”
Wall Street Journal: “It is one of the setbacks—both big and small—that stem from President Trump’s unorthodox approach to the presidency, which gives priority to speed over drawn-out decision-making meant to avoid missteps and collateral damage.”
“Mistakes are seen by Trump’s team as a worthwhile price to pay, people close to the president said, as they enact their top priorities, including the Elon Musk-led dismissal of federal employees, the use of wartime powers to deport migrants and steep tariffs that have rattled markets.”
Said Trump: “You only have so much time and you can’t waste the time, and you have to get it done.”
“Elon Musk, whom President Donald Trump has tapped to shrink the government, said on Thursday he would finish most of the work to cut $1 trillion in federal spending when his tenure ends in as soon as 64 days,” Reuters reports.
“Louisiana voters soundly rejected all four proposed amendments to the state constitution on Saturday, shutting the door on changes to courts, government finances, teacher pay increases, juvenile crime, and elections for judicial seats,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
“The defeat of Amendment 2, a sprawling revision of the section of the constitution that deals with state taxes and budgeting, was a loss for Gov. Jeff Landry, who had stumped across the state in support of the change. He couched it as part of his larger effort to make Louisiana’s tax system more attractive to business investment.”
“Texas and New Mexico health departments said on Friday that the number of measles cases in their states rose 20% since their last reports three days ago, as experts warn they expect the outbreak to further spread in coming weeks,” Reuters reports.
“A huge crowd of protesters gathered in Istanbul on Saturday for a mass demonstration against the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu,” Politico reports.
“Özgür Özel, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) who organized Saturday’s demonstration, said on X that there were 2.2 million people in the crowd.”
“Monday could go down as one of the most important days in the history of the French far right,” Politico reports.
“It’s the moment judges could crush Marine Le Pen’s dream of winning the presidency, one she has never been closer to realizing, according to opinion polls. Le Pen is on trial for having participated in a scheme to embezzle funds from the European Parliament, and if found guilty could be barred from running for any public office for the next five years. The next presidential election is set for 2027.”
“President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would not accept any mineral rights deal that threatened its integration with the EU but said it was too early to pass judgment on a dramatically expanded minerals deal proposed by Washington,” Reuters reports.
Wall Street Journal: “It is at NASA where Musk is making the biggest shift in an agency’s priorities to align them with his own—both financially and personally.”
“He is working to recast its programs, reallocate federal spending and install loyalists to aid his decadeslong goal of sending people to Mars.”
“He has also worked to win backing from Trump by telling the president that getting people to Mars would shine his legacy as a ‘president of firsts.’”
“The ambition could have a potentially huge impact on SpaceX, which has emerged as the dominant space technology and operations company globally and is already one of NASA’s biggest contractors.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.