Political Wire

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House Exits Are Piling Up

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We’re likely headed toward a wave election if an early warning sign is correct.

A staggering 44 House members have announced they are either retiring or running for another office. That’s more than at this point in any election cycle going back to 1974.

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Trump’s Fantasy of Control

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Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal was one of the great marketing successes of the 1980s.

Published in 1987, it transformed a middling New York real estate developer into a national brand. The book didn’t just burnish Trump’s image — it helped him raise money, attract lenders, and project the illusion of relentless success.

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Why Is Trump Bragging About Passing a Cognitive Test?

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President Trump is once again bragging that he “aced” a cognitive test — for the third straight time, no less.

Which, of course, raises a more important question: why is the president of the United States repeatedly taking a basic cognitive exam in the first place?

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Some Thoughts on the U.S. Attack on Venezuela

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President Trump announced early this morning that U.S. forces carried out what he described as a “large-scale strike against Venezuela,” resulting in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Some early takeaways:

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A Quiet Supreme Court Ruling Clips Trump’s Power

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Mostly overlooked during the Christmas lull in the news was a Supreme Court decision that handed President Trump a rare — and consequential — defeat.

In an emergency appeal pending since October, six justices ruled that Trump could not, for now, deploy National Guard troops to Chicago to assist federal authorities responding to protests over his immigration policies.

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How Election Law Is Being Rewritten Ahead of 2026

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Just for members: The latest issue of Ballot Access News.

Washington, D.C. formally adopts ranked-choice voting, Congress introduces its most ambitious national RCV bills yet, and a wave of lawsuits and Supreme Court cases could reshape ballot access, campaign finance, and voting rights nationwide.

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The Epstein Cover Up Enters a New Phase

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The Department of Justice blew past a legally imposed Friday deadline to turn over the Epstein files to Congress — and did so with a familiar mix of opacity, shifting explanations, and vanishing records.

Despite the clear requirement, not all of the Epstein material was released.

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Arguing With Voters About the Economy Never Works

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President Trump is engaged in a familiar and usually futile exercise: trying to persuade voters that the economy is better than they think it is.

That argument never works.

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Democrats Are Mistaking Momentum for a Mandate

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DNC Chair Ken Martin says he doesn’t want to undercut the party’s momentum by releasing an autopsy report that took Democrats a full year to produce.

He points to wins in November’s off-year elections and a year of strong Democratic overperformance in special elections as proof the party is on the right track.

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The Trump–Epstein Story Isn’t Going Away

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The New York Times published a deeply disturbing account of Donald Trump’s long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — one that undercuts Trump’s repeated claims that he barely knew the disgraced financier and exposes a culture in which “chasing women was a game of ego and dominance” and “female bodies were currency.”

Here are some of the most alarming revelations:

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Trump’s ‘Malaise’ Moment

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Jimmy Carter’s presidency is often remembered for a single speech.

In 1979, facing an energy crisis, Carter went on national television to talk about more than gas lines and oil prices. He warned of a deeper malaise — a country consumed by self-indulgence, fractured by cynicism, and adrift without a shared sense of purpose.

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A Speaker in Name Only

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Four politically vulnerable House Republicans just crossed their leadership — again.

They joined Democrats on a discharge petition to force a House vote in 2026 on extending expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Those subsidies expire at the end of this year, and now GOP leaders can no longer avoid a politically toxic health care fight in the middle of an election cycle.

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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.

Praise for Political Wire

“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”

— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”

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— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report

“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”

— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report

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— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia

“Political Wire is a great, great site.”

— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”

“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”

— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post

“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”

— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit

“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”

— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.