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“The shift the past few weeks has been subtle but unmistakable: John Thune sounds like a man who’s had it with President Trump,” Axios reports.
“In a departure from the past 18 months, the Senate majority leader has publicly broken with the president on a string of recent controversies.”
“It’s a sign that Trump’s sway with congressional Republicans is waning as he approaches the back half of his term.”
“Democrats didn’t take many chances in critical November battlegrounds on Tuesday,” Politico reports.
“Voters played it safe in picking establishment-backed Josh Turek to take on GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson for an open Senate seat in Iowa and putting up moderate military veteran Rebecca Bennett against Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in one of the most competitive House districts in the country.”
“The results were more mixed in bluer territory. In Los Angeles, embattled Mayor Karen Bass advanced to a runoff early Wednesday morning. But in New Jersey, progressive Adam Hamawy, a U.S. Army veteran with a complicated personal history who has been sharply critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, emerged from a 12-candidate primary to succeed progressive retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in a safe district.”
“It’s a split screen that shows Democrats are attempting to reconcile their desire for electability in tough races with the demands of a base that has shifted to the left on Israel and other key issues.”
“Republican voters in Iowa dealt a shock defeat to President Trump on Tuesday, narrowly rejecting his chosen candidate for governor in favor of another conservative contender who ran as a political outsider,” the New York Times reports.
“The primary loss for Representative Randy Feenstra, whom the president endorsed on Friday afternoon, came at a time of mixed signals of Mr. Trump’s power over the Republican Party. He has won a series of dominant primary victories over Republican opponents, but has faced rising pushback from his party in Congress.”
“Californians wrapped voting in their state’s primary elections Tuesday, but results for the messy gubernatorial and the Los Angeles mayor’s race could take a while to be finalized,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“A drawn-out count would be a fitting end to two unpredictable primaries that have featured scandals and unconventional candidates.”
New York Times: “California has been using the top-two primary system for 15 years, but it has never caused as much consternation as it did this election.”
“Democratic fears that two Republicans could sweep the governor’s race — in one of the nation’s bluest states — triggered a new effort to repeal the system this spring.”
CNN: “Many of the results from California will take a while to learn, given the state’s late poll-closing time and slow vote-counting.”
“President Trump has proposed tariffs of at least 10 percent tariffs on 60 American trading partners, its most aggressive effort yet to enact new import duties after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping tariffs,” the New York Times reports.
“Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said on Tuesday night that investigations found that the 59 countries, along with the 27-nation European Union, had failed to enact or effectively enforce laws prohibiting imports made with forced labor.”
“The newly operational Trump Presidential Library, the entity responsible for preserving records from the White House, says that it cannot find a single Twitter direct message sent by a president who tweeted more than 25,000 times during his first administration,” the Washington Post reports.
“CBS News fired veteran ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday, hours after a contentious meeting with management in response to his criticism of the newsmagazine’s new leadership,” CNN reports.
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Alabama Republicans to remove the state’s second majority-Black congressional district for the midterms, handing the party a pickup opportunity in an apparent 6-3 vote,” The Hill reports.
“The U.S. military and Iran both reported a flurry of new strikes on Tuesday, as Trump administration officials painted a murky picture of where diplomatic efforts stood to end the war,” the New York Times reports.
“U.S. Centcom reported that Iran had launched missiles and drone strikes on two regional neighbors, Kuwait and Bahrain, and on civilian mariners transiting nearby waters.”
Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who went to prison last year on federal fraud charges after being ousted from Congress, is now under scrutiny for his trading on prediction markets, CNN reports.
The prediction site Kalshi identified suspicious activity in a market about whether the former Republican lawmaker would attend the State of the Union address this year
There’s a big slate of high-stakes primaries that will help shape the 2026 midterms tonight.
California, Iowa, New Mexico and South Dakota all hold gubernatorial primaries, with several contests likely to set the terms for competitive races in November.
Iowa also features a closely watched Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, where the nominee could determine whether the party has a real shot at making the race competitive.
House control will also be on the line, with voters choosing nominees in a number of battleground districts. Among the key races: California’s 22nd and 48th districts, New Jersey’s 7th District and Montana’s 1st District.
And in Los Angeles, the mayor’s race has become one of the most closely watched local contests in the country.
Here are the poll closing times:
Leave your thoughts in the comments as the results come in.
“Rep. Thomas Kean Jr., a Republican running for re-election in a competitive swing district in New Jersey, has not been seen publicly in nearly three months as he recovers from what his aides have described only as a ‘personal medical condition,’” the New York Times reports.
“Primary Day was no different. Mr. Kean, 57, voted by mail and had no scheduled public appearances. A knock at the door of his home in Westfield, N.J., went unanswered.”
“Then, three hours before polls closed, Mr. Kean’s office released a statement attributed to the congressman that suggested it might be several more weeks before he was healthy enough to return to public life or to the campaign trail.”
New York Magazine: “The military is currently compiling lists of U.S. service members who will be offered tickets to ‘UFC Freedom Fights 250’ on June 14. The Octagon being constructed on the South Lawn will have about 4,300 seats, and Time reported that at least 1,200 will go to active military members.”
“To get tickets, service members must meet the new body-fat standards the Defense Department put into place earlier this year.”
The Trump administration is abandoning its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund after it drew broad condemnation from Republican lawmakers and threatened to sink an unrelated immigration-enforcement bill, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: “We’re not moving forward with the fund. Period.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) “issued a scathing takedown of Graham Platner as the leading Democratic candidate in Maine’s Senate race has become embroiled in a scandal over reports that he sent sexual text messages to women who were not his wife,” CNN reports.
Fetterman also likened Platner to a “Nazi sympathizer” over a now-infamous tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.
Said Fetterman: “When I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that they’re a Nazi sympathizer. Are you going to continue to defend that or dismiss that?”
New York Times: “Senate Republicans toiled on Tuesday to push forward with a bill to fund President Trump’s immigration crackdown, waiting for a clear statement from the administration that the president was abandoning the idea of a $1.8 billion fund to pay people he says have been victimized by the federal government.”
“The plan for the fund has generated an intense bipartisan backlash, and many Senate Republicans indicated last month that they would not agree to move forward with the legislation as long as it remained an issue.”
“A convicted Jan. 6 rioter who later said that he regretted his participation in the U.S. Capitol attack has been hired by the Trump administration to work inside a Pentagon office that manages highly classified military operations,” the Washington Post reports.
President Donald Trump in a social media post on Tuesday disputed that Iran has cut off communication with mediators, calling Iranian reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous,” the AP reports.
Said Trump: “The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today. Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!'”
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.
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