A new FEC filing finds that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) raised $12.4 million in the first 17 days of October, including $7.5 million in small donor donations.
The donations all came in the days after she voted against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
“President Trump is weighing a plan to ban entry of migrants at southern border and deny them asylum,” the Washington Post reports.
“With the president’s attention fixed on the migrant caravan moving north through Mexico, the White House is considering whether to shut the border to Central Americans and deny them the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States, asserting similar emergency powers used during the administration’s controversial travel ban in early 2017.”
New York Times: “It would also be the most drastic in a series of steps Mr. Trump has taken or threatened to take in recent days — including preparations on Thursday to send as many as 1,000 active-duty Army troops to help secure the southern border — as he works to stoke fears of what he has called an ‘onslaught’ of immigrants only days before the midterm elections.”
“The Trump administration is drastically cutting back on who on Capitol Hill gets to see intelligence reports on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” CBS News reports.
“Under the new rules, only each party’s House and Senate leaders, along with chairs and ranking members of foreign relations and intelligence committees, get direct access to the reports. It is a drastic change from previous distribution of North Korea related intelligence reports which, for the most part, gave access to the entire committees and the staffers on those committees.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
“It all goes back to the Civil War.”
— Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), quoted by the New York Times, on his state’s political divisions.
“I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”
— Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D), quoted by the HuffPost, on challenger Ron DeSantis (R).
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) vowed that she will not mount a challenge against President Trump in the next general election if she wins her midterm race next month, the New York Daily News reports.
Said Gillibrand: “I will serve my six-year term.”
“They know if there’s any chance to flip the majority, it goes through Arizona. I’m literally a firewall to make sure that Chuck Schumer and his allies are not in charge.”
— Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), quoted by Roll Call, arguing that her campaign is a firewall against a Democratic takeover of the Senate.
Caitlyn Jenner writes in the Washington Post:
Following Trump’s election as president, I saw fertile ground for change within the Republican Party on LGBTQ issues… I believed I could work within the party and the Trump administration to shift the minds of those who most needed shifting.
Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president. The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community. He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity…. This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me.
Believing that I could work with Trump and his administration to support our community was a mistake.
Multiple sources have confirmed to Daily Mail that Megyn Kelly is out at NBC “just 48 hours after the embattled host made remarks in which she defended blackface.”
“Kelly tried to deal with the scandal by delivering a tearful apology on-air and welcoming two black panelists to discuss the fraught and horrifying history of the practice, but it did no good.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) “met with members of a far-right Austrian party with historical Nazi ties during a European trip financed by a Holocaust memorial group,” the Washington Post reports.
“A day after several leading Democrats were found to have been targeted by package bombs, Republicans have identified one of their own as a victim: President Donald Trump,” Politico reports.
“As of Thursday afternoon, less than 36 hours after the first packages were discovered, White House officials and outside advisers bitterly protested the notion that Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric might have inspired whoever sent the packages.”
“The alleged main offender was a familiar one — the news media, which conservatives insisted had rushed to unfair conclusions in an effort to undermine the president less than two weeks before the midterm elections. The blame-casting came a day after Trump issued an uncharacteristic call for political unity.”
“First lady Melania Trump will not appear at any campaign events in the final days leading up to the Nov. 6 midterm elections,” ABC News reports.
“This comes as President Donald Trump plans to hold at least 10 campaign rallies leading up to Election Day as he and the Republican Party seek to keep Democrats from taking control of Congress.”
Michael Avenatti told Time that the 2020 Democratic Party nominee for president needs to be a white man.
Said Avenatti: “I think it better be a white male. When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight. Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes.”
Anthony Scaramucci made headlines Wednesday when he called President Trump “a liar” during a CNN interview, the Washington Post reports.
Today, as he continued a media blitz promoting a new book about Trump, Scaramucci sought to backpedal. No, he said, Trump is not “a liar.” He’s “an intentional liar” who uses “a methodology of mistruth” with the aim of unsettling the mainstream media and the political left.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred lawyer Michael Avenatti and a woman he represented to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, claiming they made potentially false statements to Congress related to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Defense Secretary James Mattis is expected to sign deployment orders that could send 800 or more troops to the border with Mexico to help border patrol authorities stop a caravan of migrants from Central America moving through Mexico to enter the US, CNN reports.
The Dallas Morning News endorsed Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) for U.S. Senate:
We have been at divisive political moments before, and we know those often end when leaders emerge who find ways to get along personally even when they are engaged in grand, tectonic political debates. That is one of the underappreciated stories of the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill worked together. Even when they fought it out on tough issues, they fostered an enduring friendship.
For this reason more than any other, we favor U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke for U.S. Senate. The pivotal issue before our country is public leadership, and here we believe O’Rourke’s tone aligns with what is required now. This inclusive and hopeful tone, along with O’Rourke’s approach of starting with shared principles and working toward solutions, offset any policy differences we have with him. Leadership is more than policy, and whether we are addressing the very real challenges before us now turns on our ability to find points of agreement.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who turned 85 years old in September, acknowledged the possibility his health could fail in the next few years and a Democratic Iowa governor would appoint a Democrat to succeed him in the Senate, the Des Moines Register reports.
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.