“The Senate will move forward with a budget blueprint next week setting out a two-track approach to enacting President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda,” Politico reports.
“The announcement, made by Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) inside a closed-door Senate GOP lunch, comes after a competing framework from Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders has stalled in recent days due to internal conflicts in that chamber.”
“Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,” 404 Media reports.
“House Republicans have made some limited progress on a budget blueprint to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda,” Punchbowl News reports.
“But the GOP is still all over the place, making it exceedingly difficult for the party to coalesce around a budget plan quickly.”
“After punting on a committee markup this week, House GOP leaders and other key members huddled for several hours last night to try to reach consensus on a budget resolution. Conservative hardliners and other budget hawks have been demanding far deeper cuts than the $500 billion to $700 billion that was initially proposed by leadership.”
“A number of ideas were discussed last night, including paring back the tax cuts to make them less expensive. Republicans are considering making some of the Trump tax cuts permanent, but making others of the 2017 cuts and Trump’s new tax cut priorities shorter-term. Republicans are discussing having some of the tax cuts last for two years, or five.”
Jonathan Chait: “Sometimes a constitutional crisis sneaks up on you, shrouded in darkness, revealing itself gradually. Other times it announces itself dramatically.”
“Elon Musk, to whom Donald Trump has delegated the task of neutering the congressional spending authority laid out in Article I of the Constitution, could hardly be more obvious about his intentions if he rode into Washington on a horse trailed by Roman legions.”
President Trump said that he was open to an offer by El Salvador’s president to jail convicted criminals, including American citizens, in the Central American nation’s notorious “megaprison,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“A federal judge in Maryland has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship,” ABC News reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The cuts came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made private assurances to GOP lawmakers — and in a letter — that Elon Musk’s team had “read-only” access to Treasury’s payment systems, Politico reports.
However, as the Wall Street Journal reports: “The letter didn’t specifically say whether the employees were being given access to the underlying software that runs the payment systems or whether DOGE-affiliated workers could potentially edit computer code.”
Benjamin Wittes: “A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now.”
“Arab American leaders in Michigan are slamming President Donald Trump’s statements suggesting that Palestinians be moved to some Arab nations and for the U.S. to take control of Gaza,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
“They’re also criticizing Democratic politicians for not speaking up against Trump’s remarks and supporting policies that they said have led to this.”
“It seemed, for a moment, like Republican lawmakers might offer some resistance,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Army National Guard lieutenant colonel who survived a sexual assault in the military faced off with a defense secretary nominee accused of sexual assault. A physician who specialized in helping low-income children get vaccines grilled a health secretary pick who founded an anti-vaccine group. A Marine intelligence officer with an expertise in Eastern Europe questioned the intelligence director choice with soft views on Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
“But when push came to shove, all three — Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Todd Young (R-IN) — folded.”
“Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The DOGE representatives have been on site at the agency’s offices this week, the people said, and they are looking at the systems’ technology as well as the spending that flows through them, with a focus on pinpointing what they consider fraud or waste. DOGE representatives are also examining the agency’s organizational design and how it is staffed.”
“The Trump administration is considering deputizing state and local law enforcement to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants at traffic stops and other locations, resurrecting a program that the Obama administration terminated amid allegations that it led to racial profiling,” the Washington Post reports.
Zeynep Tufekci: “It was never going to be possible to contain the spread of this powerful emergent technology, and certainly not just by placing trade restrictions on components like graphic chips. That was a self-serving fiction, foisted on out-of-touch leaders by an industry that wanted the government to kneecap its competitors.”
“Instead of a futile effort to keep this genie bottled up, the government and the industry should be preparing our society for the sweeping changes that are soon to come.”
“Elon Musk’s surrogates at the Department of Government Efficiency may have been at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, a key Democratic senator said, raising concerns about their access to the private records of both veterans and agency employees,” the HuffPost reports.
Brian Beutler: “That brings us to the present—the Trump administration’s claim of unchecked power to honor or disregard its payment obligations, its lawless and opaque meddling with the payment system the Treasury Department uses to honor American spending commitments, and the swift erosion of the rule of law.”
“If ratings agencies were able to detect political instability by watching contentious or irresponsible legislative fights play out, you’d think they’d be able to draw some conclusions based on the fiat transformation of the U.S. system of government from a democratic republic into whatever this is.”
Joe Rogan pushed back against claims in a new book suggesting he was partially behind why an interview with Kamala Harris on his podcast never happened, Mediaite reports.
Said Rogan, on his podcast: “No one ever committed to doing it. This is really important because they keep pretending that I lied.”
He added: “This whole idea that we fucked her over, and that we fucked her over for Trump — incorrect. Just not true. But I think it’s someone trying to cover their ass for the fact that she never did, and if she did do it, it might have had a positive effect.”
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.