“If you bring a problem up to the president, and it’s not exactly in your lane, and it’s really not in anybody else’s lane, but there’s a problem, you will inherit that problem. Because the president will listen to you, get your opinion, and he’ll say, ‘Well, go fix it.'”
— Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, quoted by Politico.
Politico: “As the Kennedy Center drama prepared to shift into a new phase, Trump realized he lacked someone there who could do his bidding. Loyalist Ric Grenell had left the post of executive director two months earlier, replaced by a longtime District of Columbia official who had been the Kennedy’s Center’s vice president of facilities. Trump barely paused to consider his options.”
“The president looked around the room, and zeroed in on the man who was 10th in the line of presidential succession, whose department had been founded in 1903 with a mandate to ‘foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping, and fishery industries.’ It now had nearly 50,000 employees working toward those aims. Not a single one of them had been hired for his or her expertise in performing arts administration. It would now be Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s job, Trump declared, to ‘fix’ the Kennedy Center. One of the country’s oldest government posts had been redefined in an instant.”
“The White House has launched another taxpayer-funded television ad before the midterms, this time featuring imagery of President Donald Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying ‘this is the final battle,'” CNN reports.
Said Trump: “We will cast out the communist, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
“The State Department is ‘assessing’ how to share passport information with state and local governments, as well as some nonprofit groups, ahead of the midterm elections,” NewsNation reports.
“According to a department spokesperson, the goal is to share the information in a way that ‘protects Americans’ data, deters fraud and supports the integrity of U.S. citizenship.'”
“President Trump plans to host Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at a private White House dinner on Sunday evening, sources familiar told Axios,” Axios reports.
“The dinner —the first one-on-one meeting between the two— is an indication of thawing relations between Anthropic and the administration, whose officials and allies have had longstanding tensions.”
One day after he rejected an Iranian proposal to end the war, President Trump told Axios in a phone interview that he expects U.S. negotiators to engage in more talks with the country this week.
“Iran said it’s awaiting a definitive U.S. response to a seven-day proposal for reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz but won’t soften its conditions, after President Donald Trump voiced his rejection,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Islamic Republic is aware of Trump’s remarks though has yet to receive anything from mediators Qatar and Pakistan, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was cited as saying by state-run broadcaster IRIB late Saturday.”
Said Araghchi: “The U.S. president has made some good remarks as well as many contradictory ones, which unfortunately we hear from him frequently.”
“Trump officials say Iran is miscalculating if it believes rising prices and the midterm elections will weaken President Donald Trump’s hand in negotiations to end the nearly seven-month conflict,” Fox News reports.
“The administration is projecting confidence that mounting economic pressure will push Tehran toward a deal, even after three hours of talks this week ended without an announced breakthrough.”
Said State Department principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott: “The president holds all of the cards here.”
“Not everyone thinks there’s an affordability crisis,” Politico reports.
”While many Americans say the cost of living is the top issue facing the U.S. more than any other, President Donald Trump’s MAGA base does not always agree, according to a new analysis of The Politico Poll. Just 28 percent of voters who self-identify as part of the MAGA movement say expenses have become less affordable since Trump took office.”
“In fact, MAGA voters are more likely to say things have gotten better rather than worse.”
“Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday,” the Washington Post reports.
”The administration has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game.”
“Since the White House formed a task force in March intended to combat fraud, top administration officials have repeatedly heralded its work, pointing to huge amounts of recovered payments and graft stopped in its tracks,” the New York Times reports.
Said Vice President JD Vance: “We found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar.”
“Yet some of the numbers Mr. Vance and his task force have promoted are overstated or lack specificity, and rely on temporary pauses in funding as well as cases and actions that long predated President Trump’s second term… The task force also appears to be relying on claims of fraud that could not be verified or leaning on allegations of fraud that are being prematurely included.”
“Two veteran FBI agents overseeing counterterrorism operations in the nation’s capital have been removed from their jobs and reassigned over the handling of an investigation involving Katie Miller, the conservative podcaster and wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller,” CNN reports.
“Michael Burgwald, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism matters at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, were ousted from their positions by bureau leadership after investigators determined that allegedly harassing phone calls Katie Miller received from unknown individuals did not warrant further investigation.”
“The major networks are set to resume their collective television coverage of President Trump on Sunday, even though the White House blocked CNN from participating in the TV pool over the weekend,” the New York Times reports.
“Throughout the past week, the quintet had suspended the TV pool in an effort to force the administration to reinstate CNN, after Mr. Trump barred its journalists from the White House grounds. The networks went so far as to refuse to air footage of portions of Mr. Trump’s summit with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.”
“But under a tentative plan that began taking shape late Friday, the other four networks would return to performing pool duties… Each time that CNN comes up in the pool rotation, the group of networks will decide whether to provide a substitute crew.”
“President Donald Trump on Saturday said he approved new fuel economy standards, reversing former President Joe Biden’s stricter policies meant to fuel electric vehicle adoption,” CNBC reports.
“It is unclear what the final fuel economy standards will be, although Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously said that they would be sharply lower than the Biden-era policies.”
“Lawmakers in both parties blasted a plan by President Donald Trump to claw back more than $800 million in congressionally approved spending across the government, saying the president had no right to defy Congress in how he directs federal funding,” the Washington Post reports.
“The White House late Friday said it was taking a legally contested move to cut funding at federal agencies for a range of programs that direct government services toward immigrants, minority groups, climate change programs and other issues. It was the latest bid by the Trump administration to assert sweeping control over the government and to trim congressional powers.”
NBC News: Lawmakers slam Trump’s “unlawful” move to cut $810 million in federal funds.
“President Trump again raged at his press coverage Saturday morning, calling on the courts to enforce bans of particular outlets from the White House,” The Wrap reports.
Said Trump: “Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House? Despite my big Election Win, almost 100% of ‘TRUMP’ coverage is negative, and has been for years!”
“President Trump said on Saturday he turned down Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal that offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks on the country’s nuclear program in exchange for U.S. concessions,” the New York Times reports.
Said Trump: “They made a proposal, but I rejected it.”
“Mr. Trump demurred when asked if he expected to restart military strikes after the November midterm elections, saying Iran wanted ‘to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.'”
Robin Wright: “In a whirlwind trip to New York this week, Mahmoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran, looked exhausted. His country has been at war with the United States and Israel for seven months. Dark, puffy bags sagged under his eyes. His tone—at the opening of the UN General Assembly, on the sidelines of negotiations with U.S. envoys, in meetings with other world leaders, and at briefings for nuclear specialists, think-tank experts, and members of the media—alternated between bitter, biting, and bewildered.”
“The scenes were often surreal. Since February 28th, when the war began, Pezeshkian has frequently run his government from an underground location, to avoid the fate of his former boss, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other politicians and military officers, all killed in air strikes.”
“This week, however, the U.S. Secret Service and the New York Police Department provided Pezeshkian protection in coordination with his own security detail of Revolutionary Guards, an Iranian military branch that has repeatedly been targeted during the war. It was the first time that the President of a country at war with the United States has been allowed to pay a visit.”
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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