Indiana Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith (R) doubled down that he “hates Islam” and wants all Muslims in Indiana to convert from the “demonic death cult” to Christianity, NewsNation reports.
Said Beckwith: “I am going to call on others to hate it, because I hate Islam. It is a death cult. Now I love Muslims, because they make great Christians when Jesus gets a hold of them, but I hate Islam. And we need to be okay with hating again.”
“Rep. Frederica Wilson has announced she would not run for reelection in November, officially ending weeks of speculation about her future in Washington,” NOTUS reports.
Said the 83-year old Democrat to the Miami Herald: “I decided to not seek reelection because it’s time. It has been the joy of my life, absolute honor to serve the people of South Florida.”
“That was Platner’s decision to serve. He was not drafted.”
— Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), talking to reporters, in response to rival Graham Platner (D) saying, Collins “voted to send me to Iraq.”
Wall Street Journal: “The slowest housing market in decades is stretching into its fourth year, and even real-estate agents who made it this far are reaching a breaking point. Most of them are independent contractors and get paid when a deal closes. With fewer sales to go around and homes taking longer to sell, more agents are ditching the industry or finding second jobs.”
“The downturn is also hitting mortgage-loan officers and the many other industries reliant on home sales, from appraisers and photographers to appliance manufacturers.”
Wall Street Journal: “The Trump administration is expected to propose a change to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that would require half of the components and materials in an automobile to come from U.S. sources in order to qualify for lower tariffs under the pact, according to people familiar with the plans.”
A new Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley Poll in California finds Xavier Becerra (D) leading the gubernatorial race with 25%, followed by Steve Hilton (R) at 21% and Tom Steyer (D) at 19%.
The survey provided the clearest indication yet that the three have separated themselves from the rest of the field.
CNBC: “Former Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday defended the Department of Justice’s handling of the release of files about notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in her opening statement to a House panel.”
Paulina Mangubat, creative director for the DNC, was interviewed on the MeidasTouch Network:
MEIDAS TOUCH: Katie Miller has been posting about you. I want to give you the opportunity right now to respond. What do you want to say to her?
MANGUBAT: I want Katie Miller to know that her husband is an ugly fuck.
Matt Bai: “No president really wants to be compared to Jimmy Carter (rest his soul), but in Donald Trump’s case, the parallels now are hard to ignore. Carter’s presidency was overtaken by a hostage crisis in Iran, where in 1979 followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized 66 Americans and held them (or most of them, anyway) for more than a year. The impasse played out as a televised drama… and became entwined in the public mind with uncontrolled inflation, interest rates, and gas prices, while Carter pleaded with Americans to turn down their thermostats and put on sweaters instead. All of it signaled that the country was spiraling and the president overmatched.”
“Almost a half century later, Trump stumbled into his own implacable hostage crisis in Iran, this one entirely of his own making. For several weeks, Iran has held the Straight or Hormuz — and, by extension, the global economy — at gunpoint.”
“Chances for permanently ending the standoff seem to fluctuate by the day, as Trump desperately seeks a way out of the conundrum. As I write this, the most likely outcome seems to be a humiliating capitulation on Trump’s part, in which Iran will loosen its grip on the oil in exchange for a bunch of vague talking points about future accomplishments.”
“I ran in ‘20, I ran in ‘22 and I ran in ’24. This feels different.”
— Iowa State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott (D). quoted by Punchbowl News on the House race in Iowa’s 3rd district.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s Virginia home was apparently swatted this week, National Review reports.
“Democrats want to move on from 2024. The Bidens won’t let them,” Politico reports.
“Former first lady Jill Biden put a glaring spotlight back on the debate that ended her husband’s political career while promoting her new memoir. Former President Joe Biden is drawing attention again to his audio interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur as he sues the Justice Department to prevent their release.”
“And his scandal-ridden son Hunter Biden, whose past Republicans repeatedly weaponized on the campaign trail, is making headlines again — this time for appearing on a podcast with flame-throwing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.”
Washington Post: “The FBI in recent weeks has interviewed current and former election officials about the 2020 election in Milwaukee, ramping up wide-ranging reviews of voting in the swing states that President Donald Trump lost that year.”
“Election officials are cautiously watching the developments in Milwaukee to see if agents try to seize ballots, as they did in January in Fulton County, Georgia. The confiscation of tens of thousands of absentee ballots from Wisconsin’s largest city would set off alarms because Milwaukee maintains its absentee ballots in a way that could allow agents to determine who voters selected — undermining the secrecy of their ballots.”
A federal judge has temporarily blocked any payouts from the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” settlement fund, the Associated Press reports.
NOTUS: “Four massive bronze horses positioned along the roads surrounding the Lincoln Memorial still shine in the sun from their first restoration in the 1970s. But their gold-toned coating is faded and patchy, and their heavy stone bases are cracked and dirty.”
“The Trump administration wants them glittering with a fresh coat of gold in time for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. So in mid-April, the National Park Service handed a $5 million contract to a gilding studio in Maryland to repair the statues and cover them with a thick layer of 23.75-karat gold leaf.”
Mediaite: “The musical lineup for President Donald Trump’s ‘Freedom 250’ concert series, marketed as the ‘Great American State Fair,’ has been remarkably hard to keep up-to-date.”
“Just one day after it was announced, two-thirds of the musical acts have dropped out — some even saying they had no idea they were performing at this event or were misled about it being ‘political’ — and the whole mess seems to have reignited a decades-old feud within one group.”
Andrew Sharp: “Pratt’s political talent is a big and still-underappreciated story here, but the story of his rise is obviously indivisible from that of the Democratic establishment’s decline. Watching this election unfold over the past several weeks, for all Pratt’s success, I’ve been equally struck by the thought that everything that makes Pratt politically viable used to be specialties of the Democratic Party. Boundless energy, good humor, good-looking and telegenic, occasionally stupid but generally likable, embracing technology, targeting opponents as corrupt and out of touch—that is where Dems lived! And that is becoming less true by the day.”
“Next to the 42 year-old Pratt in L.A., there is the 72 year-old Bass, an incumbent mayor endorsed by Kamala Harris who barely made a dent in the crime and homelessness crisis during her first term, infamously boarded a plane to Ghana during the early stages of the worst wildfires in L.A. history, and worked after the fact to obscure the city’s failures.”
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.