Political Wire (original) (raw)

“The Senate Armed Services Committee voted this week to formally change the Pentagon’s name to the Department of War, moving a significant step closer to solidifying President Donald Trump’s rebrand of the Defense Department as permanent,” Politico reports.

Helen Lewis: “How much grace should we extend to people who screw up—like, really screw up? After many years as an addict and a general failson, Hunter Biden’s history includes felony gun convictions, tax evasion, smoking crack, and smoking Parmesan cheese that he thought was crack. But in the past few weeks, the son of the former president has launched a new career as—a sober counselor? A life coach?”

“Since reviving his dormant X account on May 19, the younger Biden has fully embraced a persona he soft-launched last year, when the Gen Z influencer Andrew Callaghan interviewed him about his past drug addiction. His strategy is not to deny his past transgressions, but to flagellate himself so thoroughly for them that no one else can land a hit.”

NBC News: “Jacob Reses, the chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance, will leave the administration at the end of the summer.”

Risking little of their own money, President Trump and his sons have added at least 2.3billiontothefamilyfortunefromtheirmaincryptoventures,whiletheinvestorsthey’vewooedhavetakena2.3 billion to the family fortune from their main crypto ventures, while the investors they’ve wooed have taken a 2.3billiontothefamilyfortunefromtheirmaincryptoventures,whiletheinvestorsthey’vewooedhavetakena2.3 billion hit, a Reuters examination found.

Sarah Fitzpatrick: “Behind the scenes, Justice Department and other Trump-administration officials have quietly assured allies that plans for some form of payout remain on track.”

“I spoke with eight people familiar with the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund—including current and former Justice Department officials, current and former members of Congress, a defense attorney, and political operatives close to the administration. All said that Justice Department officials and people close to the White House have indicated that the payout idea has not actually been scrapped.”

“Rather, they say, officials are exploring whether elements of the fund can be reactivated while also examining alternative arrangements to make sure loyalists get compensated.”

Michael Scherer: “The Trump administration broke an agreement to fund the bipartisan semiquincentennial celebrations, saying they will not ‘light taxpayer money on fire.'”

New York Times: “Speaking to a conservative radio host on Monday, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles made an unusually pointed prediction that cast doubt on the results of California’s primary races, even as votes were still being counted.”

Said prosecutor Bill Essayli: “We will be charging some people. It will be election fraud charges in the next — I hate to put timelines on things — one or two months I believe. We need some of these results to be certified so we can prove some of the allegations.”

“The declaration, issued by an outspoken loyalist to President Trump, was a vivid example of the Justice Department’s approach to voting under the Trump administration. The agency is seeking to assert more control over elections and challenge how states conduct them, a shift that could have significant consequences in the midterm elections this year, when control of Congress hangs in the balance.”

Sen. Eric Schmidtt (R-MO) made quite a catch in the congressional baseball game last night.

New York Times: “Buried in the fine print of Obamacare regulations, the Trump administration is floating a novel idea for those who can’t afford to shell out tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical costs.”

“Why not borrow the money from your health insurance company?”

“In the dense 1,121-page final rule issued last month about how the Affordable Care Act market will operate next year, the administration suggested that insurers consider offering loans to cash-strapped customers.”

New York Times: “In the U.S. military, commanders do not typically speak publicly about future operations to avoid tipping off an adversary or jeopardizing the mission’s success and, possibly, American lives.”

“But that has not dissuaded America’s commander in chief from proclaiming when and how the United States will next attack Iran.”

“Vice President JD Vance will make his first appearance on The View next week,” Deadline reports.

“His guest spot comes as the show is the subject of an FCC investigation, led by President Donald Trump’s appointed chairman Brendan Carr, over the agency’s equal time rule.”

Missy Ryan: “Allies no longer believe Trumpism was an aberration and are unlikely just to pick up where Biden left off. Beijing and Moscow are asserting themselves in the belief that America is on the decline. Democrats broadly agree that Trump’s foreign policy—the disregard for allies, the solicitude toward autocracies, the muddiness of the Iran war—has been atrocious.”

“But there are wide differences in opinion over what positions the party should adopt heading into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election—and the divisions don’t play out in the ways one might expect. Some of the new Democratic proposals carry more than a whiff of Trumpism. Others call for a complete reset, especially on aid to Israel. Underlying everything is the widespread recognition that the establishment order, personified by Biden and his predecessors, left many Americans behind.”

Politico: “A group of senior House Republicans gathered at the Pentagon on Thursday morning to discuss the military funding portion of another party-line reconciliation bill with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to four people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.”

“It’s a sign conversations around ‘Reconciliation 3.0’ are heating up after President Donald Trump signed the GOP-only immigration enforcement funding measure earlier this week.”

New York Times: “The House on Thursday rejected a three-week extension of one of the government’s most powerful surveillance authorities for collecting information on foreign threats overseas, further raising the prospect that the law will expire on Saturday.”

“In a 218-to-198 vote, Democrats and Republicans both opposed even temporarily renewing a statute that underpins the government’s cornerstone electronic spying program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It left the law, now set to expire after midnight on Friday, facing its gravest threat in years, with the Senate also at an impasse over extending it.”

“They’re dying to make a deal. They want to make a deal so badly. We dropped $250 million of bombs on them last night. They’re really in submission. They just don’t know it yet.”

— President Trump, on Fox & Friends.

Idres Kahloon: “Who broke Britain? Someone—or something—must have. The past 18 years, enough time for a whole lost generation to be born and brought up, have yielded nothing but stagnation and mass disillusionment. In 2007, before the global financial crisis, Britain was at its postimperial zenith. Median household income had just surpassed that of Germany. A pound was worth more than $2, and London was arguably displacing New York as the center of international banking.”

“But since then, Britain has been left behind. The country’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi, America’s poorest state—and that slight lead is only achieved thanks to London. Outside the capital, in places where tourists do not visit, living standards fall well below Mississippi’s.”

“I don’t want to reopen the old wounds either. I mean, the debate was one chapter of 35 chapters… And could you imagine if I left that out? How I’d be criticized? Of course I had to include it. But do I want to relive it again and again and again? No. And I think the Democrats are going to do great in the midterms, and we’ll go on and move past this time in history.”

— Jill Biden, quoted by Time, on the Democratic backlash to her memoir.

Pew Research is trying to move beyond the old left-right shorthand that has defined American politics for decades.

Instead of sorting voters into the familiar buckets of Democrats, Republicans and independents, Pew’s new political typology divides Americans into nine groups — including “Loyal Liberals,” “Left Out Left”, “Faith First Conservatives,” “Unconventional Right,” and the “Tuned-Out Middle.”

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