“Jeffrey Epstein apparently served as a behind-the-scenes adviser to the former Trump official and MAGA influencer Steve Bannon during an August 2018 media campaign to defend Trump and his agenda, and to promote Bannon’s media ventures,” The Guardian reports.
“Text messages released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday detail a six-day exchange between the men from August 17 to 23, and show Epstein coaching Bannon on television appearances and political messaging.”
“The Heritage Foundation is no ordinary think tank. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, it has been the conservative movement on the march, delivering ready-made policies and battle-hardened pundits to Republican presidents. Heritage spoke proudly with ‘one voice,’ insisting that its scholars take a unified stand on key issues,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Today, that almost military discipline has collapsed, and many current and former staffers blame Kevin Roberts, who took over as the foundation’s president in 2021. They joke that the group’s operating principle is now more of a “one man” policy, with Roberts moving aggressively to align the think tank with the Make America Great Again movement. As Democrats revel in their electoral success this week, the divisions at Heritage highlight growing fractures facing President Trump’s winning 2024 coalition.”
Heritage Foundation staffers are revolting over Kevin Roberts’ defense of Tucker Carlson, with one calling it “an absolute shitshow,” CNN reports.
Miles Taylor — who wrote anonymously of “quiet resistance” to Donald Trump during his first term — is leading a group of dozens of former officials to create a website “designed to help Americans push back peacefully, lawfully, and defiantly against presidential abuses of power,” CBS News reports.
“Protesters nationwide are gathering at more that 2,500 locations today to rally against President Donald Trump in what organizers predict will be the largest one-day protest in modern American history,” USA Today reports.
For members: GOP Panic Reveals Fear of Mass Resistance
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is deploying the state’s National Guard to Austin ahead of this weekend’s planned No Kings rally in the Texas capital, as top Republicans around the country vilify the protests as Antifa-linked and led by the radical flank of the Democratic Party,” Politico reports.
“We call it the Hate America Rally that will happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types. I bet you’ll see Marxists on full display, people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.”
— Speaker Mike Johnson, quoted by Mediaite, on the “No Kings” rallies planned for this weekend.
“Once one of the most influential political groups in the South, the New Georgia Project is shutting down this week, marking a stunning fall for an organization that pushed to advance Democratic causes for more than a decade,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Elaine Godfrey: “The age of the conventional Democrat is over. The time of the Democratic contrarian has come.”
“So says Adam Jentleson, anyway. The veteran political operative and former adviser to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently launched a think tank that asks Democratic candidates to ignore pressure from the far left, take positions outside the ‘liberal box,’ and be a lot more ‘heterodox’ in general. If this seems to you like Beltway speak for asking Democrats to sound more like Republicans, well, you would be at least partly correct. The Democratic Party used to have supermajorities in Congress because it allowed its members to hold a wide range of positions, Jentleson told me. To start winning again, the party needs to bring that back, he said. His new think tank, Searchlight Institute, plans to help.”
“With its seven-person team, a polling arm, and a $10 million budget, Searchlight promises to offer a ‘menu’ of orthodoxy-challenging ideas for Democrats to run on.”
David Brooks: “For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations.”
“I am not one of those who believe that Donald Trump has already turned America into a dictatorship. Yet the crossing-over from freedom into authoritarianism may be marked not by a single dramatic event but by the slow corrosion of our ruling institutions—and that corrosion is well under way.”
“The Libre Initiative, an organization in the billionaire Koch brothers’ conservative political network, is launching a seven-figure nationwide campaign to reach Latino voters ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary,” ABC News reports.
“The campaign aims to foster a connection between Latinos and what the group described as the country’s ‘founding principles.'”
After President Trump announced plans to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland, organizers are planning an “emergency” naked bike ride in protest, KOIN reports.
“As many as 100,000 mourners are expected to attend the memorial for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk Sunday in Arizona, including President Trump, cabinet officials and right-wing pundits,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “The memorial to celebrate Mr. Kirk and galvanize a political movement in his name is the culmination of scores of recent public vigils across the country that have drawn thousands of Mr. Kirk’s supporters, as well as scattered protests.”
“But nothing so far has approached the scale of what the police and organizers are expecting in Arizona, where Mr. Kirk lived with his wife and two young children, and where his conservative organizing group, Turning Point USA, is based. The speakers list includes not just the president and vice president but also the highest-profile members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and White House staff, along with a who’s who of the Make America Great Again pantheon.”
Washington Post: Charlie Kirk memorial to be on par with a state funeral in scale, security.
New York Times: “Before his assassination, Charlie Kirk told Turning Point USA executives that he had a plan for the organization’s future in the event of his death. This week, it was put into action: On Wednesday evening, Erika Kirk was elected the new chief executive and chair of the board of Turning Point USA.”
“Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield is leaving the ice cream brand after 47 years, saying that the independence it once had to speak up on social issues has been stifled by parent company Unilever,” ABC News 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.
