In a closed-door meeting with Iranian-American community leaders last Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration is “not going to do a military exercise inside Iran” to expedite a regime change, Axios reports.
“Pompeo also sought to distance the Trump administration from a controversial Iranian resistance group that has welcomed John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani as speakers in a private capacity.”
Washington Post: “The special counsel investigation was often cast as a clash between President Trump and Robert Mueller. But there was always a third player, for whom victory seemed assured no matter the outcome.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin set this sequence of events in motion with a Kremlin campaign to destabilize American democracy. That operation and its aftermath inflamed partisan tensions in the United States, eroded public confidence in core institutions and triggered a two-year investigation that consumed the nation’s attention and much of the Trump presidency.”
“German WhatsApp users are spreading far-right propaganda through the use of stickers and chain letters but the company is doing little to nothing to stop it, despite local laws forbidding the use of Nazi imagery,” BuzzFeed News reports.
North Korea tested a new type of tactical guided weapon, CNBC reports.
“The test of ‘a powerful warhead’ was overseen by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and marks the first public weapons test from the rogue regime since President Trump’s historic meeting with Kim in Singapore last year.”
Washington Post: “It was not immediately clear what type of weapon was fired, but the move would mark the first weapons test since President Trump’s summit with Kim in Hanoi in February and a sign of public defiance by Kim following a stalemate in the high-stakes denuclearization talks.”
Jonathan Swan: “China recently declined to issue a visa to Michael Pillsbury, an informal adviser to President Trump on China policy, in an unusual move that comes as the Trump administration steps up its scrutiny of Chinese experts attempting to travel to the U.S.”
“Pillsbury regularly discusses China with Trump, including during an Oval Office meeting about a month ago. Pillsbury told Axios he has visited China over 50 times since the 1970s and this is the first time his visa request hasn’t been approved.”
“The Trump administration is reimposing limits on the amount of money Cuban Americans can send to relatives on the island and ordering new restrictions on U.S. citizen, nonfamily travel to Cuba,” the Washington Post reports.
Former Peru President Alan García died on Wednesday after shooting himself in the head when the authorities tried to arrest him on corruption charges, the New York Times reports.
“President Trump vetoed a resolution passed by Congress to end U.S. military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen,” the AP reports.
“The veto — the second in Trump’s presidency — was expected, and Congress lacks the votes to override it. But passing the never-before-used war powers resolution was viewed as a milestone for lawmakers, who have shown a renewed willingness to assert their war-making authority after letting it atrophy for decades under presidents from both parties.”
Mike Allen: “Trump has a hold over the party and remains popular with Republican voters, so lawmakers will still side with him when it counts. But acts of defiance are becoming more frequent, and should worry the White House.”
“North Korean authorities staged a public trial and shot two female fortune tellers to death last month, forcing tens of thousands of people to watch, in what appeared to be a resumption of public executions,” Radio Free Asia reports.
“The executions of the two women took place in March in North Hamgyong’s Chongjin city, and were aimed at forcing officials to stop patronizing fortune tellers and engaging in other ‘superstitious’ behavior.”
BBC: “More details emerged later, when Foreign Minister José Valencia told Congress that Assange had been using a mobile phone not registered with the embassy, repeatedly insulted the mission’s workers – reportedly calling them US spies – and damaged the facilities by riding his skateboard and playing football, despite being told not to do so.”
“Cleaning staff, Mr Valencia said, had described ‘improper hygienic conduct’ throughout Assange’s stay, an issue that a lawyer had attributed to ‘stomach problems’. One unnamed senior Ecuadorean official told AP news agency that other issues included ‘weeks without a shower’ and a ‘dental problem born of poor hygiene.'”
“Interior Minister María Paula Romo then complained that Assange had been allowed to do things like ‘put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature.'”
Daily Beast: “His dramatic expulsion from the embassy follows a year of ratcheting tension between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts, culminating in Wikileaks publicizing a leak of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails mysteriously stolen from the inboxes of Ecuador’s president and first lady.
“It was this last move that finally set Ecuador’s government firmly against Assange, who was by then already being treated less like a political refugee than an inmate—albeit one who was free to leave at any time.”
“Only Congress can declare war. You do not have our permission to go to war with Iran.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by CBS News, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after the South American country withdrew asylum from the WikiLeaks founder,” The Guardian reports.
“Assange had been granted refuge at the embassy while on bail in the UK over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden.”
Washington Post: “Video of the arrest showed a gray-bearded Assange being pulled by British police officers down the steps of the embassy and shoved into a waiting police van. Assange appeared to be physically resisting. His hands were bound in front of him.”
Playbook: “Assange’s arrest suggests that the arm of the Russia probe is long indeed. It also could scramble traditional political fault lines in Washington. In the Obama days, it was the left that defended the WikiLeaks enterprise, but many Democrats had soured on Assange by the 2016 campaign — and then they came to despise him. Meanwhile, some on the right like Fox News host Sean Hannity and candidate Donald Trump became his biggest fans. What will they say now?”
“Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), one of Capitol Hill’s highest-ranking Republicans and staunchest border security advocates, is now using his influence to push back on the Trump administration’s policies to address the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border,” McClatchy reports.
“The move comes as Democrats are targeting McCaul’s district for the first time in his 15 years in Congress, putting him and other Texas Republicans in the new position of seeking distance from President Trump and his more controversial policies.”
“McCaul, now the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, railed against Trump’s plans to cut foreign aid to countries in Central America as ‘reckless’ and ‘ill-advised’ at a hearing Wednesday.”
Thomas Friedman: “There are two countries that I’ve been professionally, emotionally and intellectually involved with my entire journalism career — the United States and Israel. I’ve never been more worried about both, because President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are essentially the same person, and they pose the same threat to their respective nations.”
“They are both men utterly without shame, backed by parties utterly without spine, protected by big media outlets utterly without integrity. They are both funded by a Las Vegas casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. They are both making support for Israel a ‘Republican’’ cause — no longer a bipartisan one. And they each could shoot an innocent man in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue and their supporters would say the victim had it coming.”
“As a result, they are each free to cross red lines that their predecessors never dared to. Which is why I believe that four more years of Netanyahu, which is almost certain after Israel’s election on Tuesday, and six more years of Trump, which is a real possibility, will hasten the emergence of an America and an Israel where respect for civility, democracy, an independent judiciary and independent media are no longer examples for others to follow.”
The European Union has agreed to a Brexit extension until October 31 with a review of British cooperation to determine whether there should be an earlier exit on June 30, the date British Prime Minister Theresa May originally asked for.
Washington Post: “E.U. leaders are tired of emergency Brexit summits and skeptical of what she can accomplish in less than three months.”
The Guardian: “The June ‘break clause’ has been put in to appease France, as the president, Emmanuel Macron, wanted assurances that the UK would conduct European elections properly.”
Washington Post: “Confidence in the British political system in general is at a 15-year low — the first time it has fallen this far since the Iraq War, which led to a major backlash nationwide. 71 percent of respondents agreed that British parties are so divided ‘within themselves that they cannot serve the best interests of the country.’”
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing a hotly contested bid for a fourth term, tweeted on the eve of the election that the Trump administration designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization at his request,” the Los Angeles Times 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.
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