Charlotte Observer: “About 15 to 20 church members were doing yard work on the property off Albemarle Road while their children played games and their spouses cooked meals. Agents parked just outside a closed gate leading to the church parking lot and ran into the yard…”
“The agents asked no questions and showed no identification before taking one man away, whose wife and child were inside at the time… They attempted to grab others, too.”
CNN: “As eight senators in Chuck Schumer’s caucus broke ranks to side with Republicans and vote to end the government shutdown fight he had engineered, the New York Democrat was on the phone trying to make it clear it wasn’t his fault.”
“Dialing governors and influential party leaders, Schumer had a basic request: attack Republicans over rising health care costs, not Senate Democrats or him. Schumer knew he’d have to rebut accusations that he secretly guided the deal, while others would see him as not being able to control his caucus.”
New York Times: “We interviewed more than 60 attorneys who recently resigned or were fired from the Justice Department. Much of what they told us is reported here for the first time.”
“Beginning with Trump’s first day in office, the lawyers narrated the events that most alarmed them over the next 10 months. They described being asked to drop cases for political reasons, to find evidence for flimsy investigations and to take positions in court they thought had no legitimate basis. They also talked about the work they and their colleagues were told to abandon — investigations of terrorist plots, corruption and white-collar fraud.”
Gilad Edelman: “The scandal that briefly made Brendan Carr a household name this fall was an outlier several times over. For one thing, FCC chairmen rarely make news. More than that, Carr usually knows better than to draw too much attention to himself. A seasoned bureaucrat, he has a knack for pulling the strings of power in ways that escape public scrutiny…”
“The whole episode was an unusual misstep by a skilled Washington operator. The hallmark of Carr’s tenure as chair of the Federal Communications Commission has been the exploitation of bureaucratic procedure to consolidate ownership of communications infrastructure in Trump-friendly hands, while keeping those actions out of both the court of public opinion and the literal courts. To liberals, this is an obvious attempt to rig the media. To conservatives, however, it is a long-overdue unrigging. Why should the national networks devote airtime every night to liberal comedians who incessantly mock Republicans?”
“Conservatives have been complaining about media bias for decades, but Republican officials were long averse to interfering with the decisions of private companies. Then came the second Trump administration, and its willingness to wage cultural warfare in more intrusive ways. Carr’s role in that effort is not to tell networks what to air and whom to fire. It’s to get to the point where he doesn’t have to.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she still hopes to “make up” with President Trump after the two had a public falling-out this weekend over the recent release of files related to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, NOTUS reports.
Said Greene: “Well, I certainly hope that we can make up. And there’s you know, again, I can only speak for myself. I’m a Christian, and one of the most important parts of our faith is forgiveness. And that’s something I’m committed to.”
“The number of newly enrolled foreign college students in the United States dropped 17 percent this fall after the Trump administration made it more challenging to obtain student visas,” the Washington Post reports.
“The figures, based on a survey of more than 825 colleges and universities, provide one of the clearest views of the potential impact of measures President Donald Trump’s administration has taken that make it more difficult for foreign students to come to the U.S.”
President Trump is making a high-profile overture to Saudi Arabia and its polarizing de facto leader — even as some major MAGA figures say the White House is too focused on foreign affairs at the expense of domestic issues, Politico reports.
“The Trump administration is pursuing an unprecedented expansion of the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, adding left-wing groups in Europe along with Latin American drug-trafficking organizations — entities not associated with the ideological violence central to Washington’s counterterrorism stance dating back decades,” the Washington Post reports.
President Trump rejected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) concerns for her own safety on Sunday evening amid their ongoing feud over releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I don’t think her life is in danger. I don’t think — frankly, I don’t think anybody cares about her.”
A few hours later, in a post on Truth Social, the president once again labeled Greene a traitor.
An Indiana Senate Republican who President Trump called out in a Truth Social post for not backing the White House’s plan to draw new congressional maps was later targeted by a swatting, Politico reports.
The Justice Department posted pardons online bearing identical copies of President Donald Trump’s signature before quietly correcting them this week after what the agency called a “technical error,” the AP reports.
It insisted Trump, who mercilessly mocked his predecessor’s use of an autopen, had originally signed all the Nov. 7 pardons himself and blamed “technical” and staffing issues for the error.
A group of four Democratic candidates calling themselves the “Hell Cats” hope their military experience combined with a core focus on affordability will allow them to win in competitive House races, the Washington Post reports.
New polling from the Latino polling group Equis finds that President Trump has lost most of his 2024 gains with Latino voters, but Democrats haven’t won those voters back, Semafor reports.
The survey found 68% of Latino voters disapproving of how Republicans handled the “cost of living.”
A new NBC News poll finds 61% of voters said they think “extreme political rhetoric” was an important contributor to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year — including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
“More people are falling behind on paying their bills to keep on the lights and heat their homes, according to a new analysis of consumer data — a warning sign for the U.S. economy and another political headache for President Donald Trump,” the AP reports.
Playbook: “Firstly — we have just witnessed Trump U-turn under congressional pressure, a rarity indeed in 2025. Trump shifted position because he was going to lose anyway and wants to salvage the situation as best he can. That sound you could hear was the president’s extraordinary authority over his party slipping away … though now he can at least try to own the result. But it’s definitely a moment.”
“Secondly — hopes will grow among campaigners that we’ll actually see these files. Tomorrow’s result was already a near-certainty, but the assumption had always been that the bill would die in the Senate. But if the president’s position is that House Republicans should vote to release the files, then why should it be different for senators? Indeed, why not just release them himself? That debate becomes a live one today.”
“Thirdly — Trump’s about-face has big implications within the MAGA rank-and-file, where the failure to release the files back in July had caused widespread disenchantment. Supporters on social media sounded pleased and relieved last night, with Trump potentially on a path to redemption with the angriest corners of his base if he presses ahead. But where this goes next is far from clear.”
Bloomberg: “Epstein, a university dropout, was an avid reader with eclectic tastes—or at least a voracious purchaser of books, according to receipts from Amazon that were sent to his private Yahoo account. The purchases don’t reveal all. He may have given some books to others, and anyone who’s ever bought a book knows it doesn’t necessarily get read.”
“But they illuminate some of what interested him: genes, Vatican conspiracy, Woody Allen, negotiation, Trump, high modernism, middlebrow erotica and why we love the people who hurt us.”
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.
