Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested on Sunday that children brought to the country illegally by their parents “have a choice” in the matter, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Noem: “Well, the kids do have a choice. If they have parents, they make a choice to keep their families together, if they want to or not.”
New York Times: “The longstanding animus between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Musk encapsulates a key tension at the heart of Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. It pits those like Mr. Bannon, who want Mr. Trump to carry out a more fully populist agenda, against ultrawealthy interests, epitomized by Mr. Musk, who occupy key positions in the president’s orbit.”
“Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement, but Mr. Bannon’s vocal disdain for Mr. Musk has been noticed by the president. In mid-February, the president told Mr. Bannon that he wanted him to lay off the attacks on Mr. Musk and for the two men to sit down privately.”
“That meeting has not happened yet, and it is not clear when or if it will.”
“President Trump believes it’s worth risking pain to achieve his medium-term goal of rewiring the U.S. economy. He is attempting a form of economic shock therapy, while accepting there could be collateral damage,” Axios reports.
“That willingness to shrug off risks of inflation or recession is now rattling financial markets and confidence — and has itself emerged as the biggest near-term economic risk.”
“The administration has embraced that the economic disruption it envisions could be painful.”
“That adds to the risk that if the economy starts to falter — and it hasn’t so far, at least according to the high-level data — no cavalry will be coming from Washington to contain the damage.”
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White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told ABC News that Canadian authorities are covering up major fentanyl operations.
Said Hassett: “I can tell you that in the situation room I’ve seen photographs of fentanyl labs in Canada that the law enforcement folks were leaving alone. Canada’s got a big drug problem.”
“Elon Musk’s sweeping makeover of the federal government in recent weeks is reverberating across the private sector, where companies have started expressing fear and uncertainty about disruptions these changes might inflict on their businesses,” the Washington Post reports.
“As the year’s first earnings season kicks off, dozens of companies in health care, technology, real estate and defense — industries that might have expected rising profits from President Donald Trump’s business-friendly campaign posture — are warning investors in their quarterly reports and conference calls that the effects of rapid change in Washington are unpredictable and could hurt their bottom lines.”
“Democratic lawmakers on Sunday expressed disappointment at their party’s uncoordinated response to President Trump’s address to Congress last week,” the New York Times reports.
“The criticisms… come as congressional Democrats debate how much to obstruct Mr. Trump’s agenda. With government funding set to expire after midnight Friday, Democrats must decide whether they will vote for legislation to avert a shutdown or refuse to do so while Mr. Trump is defunding and dismantling Congressionally approved federal programs.”
“Elite law firms formed a proud part of the opposition to the first Trump administration. This time around, the industry is fearful of taking on a president who hasn’t shied away from punishing his enemies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order directing agencies to strip security clearances, government contracts and federal-building access from a top law firm with Democratic ties, Perkins Coie. It followed a similar, but more narrowly tailored, order late last month against attorneys at Covington & Burling representing former special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation and federal prosecutions of Trump.”
“The White House moves have sent a chill through the world of Big Law, at a time when litigation has emerged as one of the few checks on the president.”
“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, brushing off worries about a recession.
New York Times: “These Democrats are flocking to sports radio shows and podcasts as their party tries to correct for what it widely takes as an article of faith: that President Trump won back power with help from young men who found themselves drawn to him through what was once an apolitical sphere of the media.”
“As their party reels from the impact of Mr. Trump’s policies and struggles to craft a new strategy and message, Democrats have found that yakking about sports is perhaps the easiest way to reach skeptical or disengaged audiences who might not otherwise want to spend time listening to a politician.”
President Trump said that corporate CEOs have “plenty of clarity” on U.S. tariff policy, despite all the on-off-on changes of recent weeks, Axios reports.
Said Trump: “They have plenty of clarity, they just use that, that’s like almost a soundbite, they always say that, ‘we want clarity.'”
“Tim Walz thinks he and Kamala Harris played it too safe last year,” Politico reports.
“He thinks they should have held more town halls. He thinks they didn’t have time to get their feet under them. And he thinks Democrats should have taken more risks and gone to more places.”
Playbook: “They were too cautious, campaigning as if they were on track to win when in reality they never really were.”
Elissa Slotkin prepared to rebut Donald Trump’s joint session speech by listening to “a lot of” Eminem.
Robert Kaplan: “President Donald Trump may be an imperialist or a mercantilist, or even a deal-maker extraordinaire as he prefers to think of himself. In any case, in his second term he appears to be in the business of exerting American power abroad, from Greenland to Gaza.”
“But no modern empire has ever successfully projected power globally without a competent and motivated bureaucracy. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote that the more complex a society becomes, the more it needs institutions to run it. And this is especially true of an empire, which the United States has been in functional terms since 1945.”
“Somebody slap me and wake me the fuck up because I’m ready to get on with it.”
— Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), quoted by Politico, reacting to President Trump’s address to Congress last week.
Playbook: “In the earliest weeks of Trump’s second term, Democrats have careened from strategy to strategy to respond to him, often ineffectually. But one unifying thread as they try to invigorate their connection to the American voter has been a reach for profanity.”
“Cursing is, of course, not new in politics. Among operatives and principals, it’s a familiar way to broker instant bonhomie… But the breadth of swearing is unmistakable, newly fashionable among members of a party in the wilderness who are looking for shortcuts to authenticity to channel voters’ rage.”
Wall Street Journal: “The contest is turning into a political knife fight defined by how far and fast McConnell’s former supporters can distance themselves from him. Even with the primary more than a year away, they are all angling for Trump’s backing, seen as critical in the race, while faulting each other as phonies and hypocrites.”
Wall Street Journal: “The impact of the halt—which U.S. officials described as a temporary pause designed to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate with Russia—will be limited at first, but is likely to grow over time as Ukraine’s stocks of U.S. ammunition run down, and weapons systems cannot be repaired or replaced, officials and analysts said.”
“The main immediate impact will be felt from the cutoff of intelligence, which will constrain Ukraine’s ability to accurately target long-range strikes to knock out Russian troops and equipment before they reach the battlefield. On Friday, Maxar Technologies said that the U.S. has cut off Ukrainian access to the satellite images that the company supplies through an American government program—imagery used by Ukrainian forces to plan and mount operations, particularly using explosive drones.”
“A lack of fresh arms deliveries will take longer to have an impact but the effect would be broader.”
“President Donald Trump is confident that the country’s economy has a bright future — but he isn’t ruling out a 2025 recession just yet,” Politico reports.
Said Trump: “I hate to predict things like that.”
He added: “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”
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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