Politico
April 2026
Jeffries lays out more targets for gerrymanders in response to GOP’s renewed push
All options are on the table as we get through the 2026 election and look to the future,
Louisiana plans to delay House primaries after Supreme Court redistricting ruling
All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,
The governor has no choice but to suspend it,
Trump continues broadsides against Germany's Merz over Iran
The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat,
Trump’s ‘tortoise’ economy: GDP grows even as Iran challenges loom
That threat becomes more acute with each day the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, choking off roughly 20 percent of the global supply of oil and gas
The economy is a healthy tortoise. It is very slow. It’s very steady. And in terms of this growth rate, it takes a lot to push this economy into sustained inflation,
President Trump has always been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury,
Growth is really solid across our economy,
Mills drops out of Maine Senate race, setting up Platner to face Collins
Mills’ campaign had just over $1 million in the bank at the end of March, far less than Platner’s $2.7 million, and had stopped running TV ads earlier this month, a sign of financial troubles
While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,
After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,
We both got into this race because we knew how critical it is to defeat Susan Collins, and her decision today reflects a commitment to that project,
The VRA ruling reality check
This is all gonna be decided over several cycles,... and it will be a constant array of litigation between now and the next census in 2030.”
Brendan Carr’s fight with Disney revives GOP fissures
Ted Cruz (R-Texas), whose Commerce Committee oversees the FCC, on Wednesday left open the possibility of hauling Carr in for questioning
As NAB knows, the FCC’s action this week was based on evidence of Disney’s discriminatory DEI conduct, not any speech,
The chairman has the ability to do that,
What’s wrong with that? He sent them a letter and said, ‘Don’t miss your deadline for renewing your license and don’t discriminate on the basis of race,
We will see what the commission decides to do,
I am not making a free speech case,
Israel’s center wants Democrats back. It may not have the cards.
There would be limits to what they can accomplish in such a broad alliance, but they argue it’s the best hope for ushering in the kinder, gentler Israel the Democratic Party is asking for
I really feel bad with what this government has done through our relations with the United States, especially when it comes to the Democrats,
The larger portion of Democrats are still the kind of people I know how to talk with. And of course, that’s true on the Republican side as well,
In Israel, the overwhelming perspective portrayed by everybody, whether it’s Netanyahu or the mainstream media, is Democrats as having become just irreparably, irredeemably anti-Israel,
I have been deeply disappointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, whose conduct in recent years has done real damage to the longstanding bipartisan support for Israel in the United States and raised serious concerns among Democrats,
One of the things a new government will have to do is to push as much of this baggage down the trash compactor
It’s a difficult, delicate thing to do — what you can and can’t do from the opposition,
Our target for the Democratic Party, at least initially, isn’t going to start with the far left, it’s going to start with the moderates that we’re losing,
Netanyahu leaving would create an opportunity, but these new Israeli leaders will have to follow through with action if they really want to start changing the relationship with the Democratic Party,
The right question is not whether they repair relations with Democrats, it’s whether they repair relationships with the public in Europe and the United States,
A bolder Mikie Sherrill tests a new playbook in Trenton
I thought she handled those well, communicated with the Legislature well and the office of emergency management,
She’s polished and she’s not getting anything done because I think her team is worried about her national image,
It is Donald Trump who’s making this a big priority and New Jersey is exercising its rights as a state to fight back against the abuses of Washington, D.C.,
The list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence included these charges against the king: He has refused his assent to laws. He has obstructed the administration of justice. He has made judges dependent on his will alone. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures,
I’m a little disappointed about the way the Cabinet looks. I wish the Cabinet was a little bit more reflective of the people of the state. She has time to make some changes.”
Governor Sherrill hit the ground sprinting during her First 100 Days — moving quickly to deliver on key campaign promises to freeze utility rate hikes, massively expand new power generation, protect Gateway, and make state government more accountable to the people. With Trump sowing chaos in Washington, Governor Sherrill is charting a different path in New Jersey focused on expanding opportunity for the middle class.”
Johnson notches wins, but chaos looms
Speaker Mike Johnson's headaches continue as the House prepares for votes on GOP priorities ahead of a weeklong recess
I’ll scrub it when a nominee comes forward, and I’ll apply the Martin standard,
The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats, and some Republicans,
Thom Tillis doubles down on his latest Trump personnel ultimatum
He did so only after a three-month stalemate over the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Powell lied to Congress during a Senate hearing last year — a probe that Tillis warned was an attempt by Trump advisors to target the independence of the Federal Reserve
I think they understood if we didn’t get it done today, tomorrow, this week, that he wouldn’t be seated by the time the term expires,
I’ll scrub it when a nominee comes forward, and I’ll apply the Martin standard,
Every single member of the conference has the same option,
Then a simple majority would have been enough to discharge [Warsh] from committee,
You know Thom Tillis is no longer a senator, right? He quit.”... I’m not dead yet.”
We own the shutdown right now because we can’t get the House to vote on something that 100 senators voted on,
Republicans unlock filibuster-skirting power to pump billions of dollars to ICE
What choice do we have?”
Yeah, we’re gonna have a big family meeting in here. We’ll get everybody on the same page,
Current and former Mexican officials accused in US indictment of aiding drug trafficking
As the indictment lays bare, the Sinaloa Cartel, and other drug trafficking organizations like it, would not operate as freely or successfully without corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials on their payroll,
Corruption not only hinders progress, it distorts it. It increases costs, weakens competition, and erodes the trust upon which markets depend. It is not a problem without victims,
Any investigation in the United States against any person in Mexico must have evidence reviewed by the (Mexican) Attorney General's Office,
It is part of a perverse strategy to violate the constitutional order, specifically on national sovereignty,... We will show them that this slander doesn't have any sort of foundation."
Is she going to move to arrest Gov. Rocha and the other eight indicted politicians and attempt to extradite him to the United States? This is certainly what the United States wants,
Big Oil in the governor’s race
And when it comes to fossil fuels, Becerra’s opponents clearly smell blood in the water
That’s really his record here, building the infrastructure that allowed California to hold these guys accountable on our own turf, rather than letting it make its way through federal courts,
Think about the damage that Chevron’s business plan has wreaked on California,
People who take that money tend to be climate delayers and slow roll any action to hold corporate polluters, especially Big Oil, accountable,
We never got a response from Becerra, and clearly he wasn’t moving on it, because he didn’t,
Chevron — that’s the problem with politics — they’re not the bad guy,
I think that Xavier is an individual who lives in reality, not in a world of unrealistic expectations,
Some of us don’t have the luxury of being able to buy electric,
Caltrans has other options. It’s unfathomable that they’d ram a highway expansion through a grove of 1,000-year-old trees,
Even when refinery operations are reduced or idled, facilities remain subject to air quality regulations and permit requirements,
Xavier Becerra has never been bought by a check and his record proves it,
DOJ sues New Jersey governor over immigration enforcement mask ban
New Jersey responded thoughtfully and carefully to these profound public safety concerns, and we look forward to responding in court,
To be clear, the Federal Government will not comply with this blatantly unconstitutional law,
Trump says US considering reducing troops in Germany
The Voting Rights Act is now a ‘dead letter’ after latest Supreme Court decision
For decades the left has spent hundreds of millions of dollars seeking to divide Americans along racial lines in a cynical pursuit of partisan power masquerading as civil rights,
Simply pointing to inter-party racial polarization proves nothing,... because ‘a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact.’
Game of telephone
President DONALD TRUMP hasn’t stopped taking calls from reporters on his cell phone — sometimes several in one day — since the Iran war began
I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,
He thinks he can use these reporters to move the markets or bully Iran, and sometimes it works, at least with the markets,
There are times when he just doesn’t feel like giving the reporter the answer he knows they’re looking for,
It’s a desire to let people know where he stands and what he’s thinking,
There is a lot of trust in the president as his own best communicator, but it seems pretty clear this isn’t working,
When reporters call him, because he’s very short with them on the phone, they might not get the full picture, and then they just run with it,
I know all of you have the president’s phone number, personally, so I have no doubt that you’ll have no shortage of statements and news from this building while I’m gone,
Republicans push to redraw maps after Supreme Court deals blow to VRA
While we are not in position to have a special session at this time, I hope in light of this new decision, the court is favorable to Alabama,
Democrats nationally are trying to redistrict their way back to power, and what happened in Virginia is just the tip of the spear. There is no time to waste,
I agree that in a society built on the equal protection of law, no state should be directed to draw legislative maps on the basis of race. Given that Georgia was ordered to do so in its last round of redistricting, I fully support redrawing our state’s legislative maps in compliance with today’s decision,
Immigrants with temporary legal status could score slim win at Supreme Court
The rulings in the Haiti and Syria cases, anticipated by the end of June, are expected to have a broad impact in litigation over TPS for immigrants from other countries
The President has disparaged Haitian TPS holders specifically as undesirables from a shithole country,
State believes that there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the TPS status of Haiti.”
It’s almost like these district courts are appointing themselves junior varsity secretaries of State,
Congress and us, too, and the millions of people who live with TPS holders have some faith in government, and they believe that if there is consultation, the decisions will be better,
White House officials leading new delegation to Venezuela for energy, mining agreements
The climate coalition of the willing
And it marks a departure from years of fractious U.N. climate talks that tended to sidestep the practical, grounded realities of how to shift entire economies away from the fuels driving global warming
It’s not about whether the transition should occur, it’s more about how do we do it? So a focus on real action, and for us that’s quite an exciting proposition,
There was a real sense that people do just want to get on with things and deliver,
The fact that the two organizers have managed to pull this off, in my view, is already a huge success,
Santa Marta is not the end,
We are listening to each other. We are asking questions about our own experience. We don’t have the burden of having to negotiate a text and that somehow has lifted the weight so that we can talk genuinely about the challenges of building a transition away from fossil fuel,
Let’s celebrate that we are here, that we have more than 50 countries that represent one-third of global oil consumption, and one-third of global GDP,
In just 60 days of conflict, our bill for fossil fuel imports has increased by over €27 billion, without a single molecule of additional energy,
There’s been a paradigm shift over the last few years,
After the beginning of the conflict in the Middle East, we have been more and more popular, in a way, in designing the solution,
If you try to do this transition alone, without discussion at the regional level or about your economic integration, it’s very, very difficult,
Trump, Putin talk about each other’s wars in Wednesday phone call
I think he’d like to see a solution,
Voting rights ruling jolts CA Dems
I hope what it means for the midterms is that people will come out and vote in even stronger numbers because they’re seeing that their rights are being eroded by the very Supreme Court that’s supposed to protect them,
The AI arms race’s sneakiest tactic
The White House has sounded the alarm on a high-tech ploy that’s allowed developers in China to piggyback off American AI labs
If distillation is very effective and it’s giving Chinese companies a major performance bump, that implies that a lot of China’s frontier AI capabilities are dependent on distillation of U.S. models,
The hope certainly would be that sanctions wouldn’t be necessary, that bilateral diplomacy would be sufficient, but of course you want to have that stick in case it is needed,
If the EU insists on adopting these acts and taking measures against China, China will have to take countermeasures,
Creating a [distillation] taboo requires a mix of diplomacy, creating international forums, and it has to have some compliance costs,
Let’s assume … they get a slight bump in performance — in that case, it’s fine that we invest in some defenses on the margins,
So by shining a light, by bringing in other countries, you’re bringing a reputational risk to bear for the perpetrators,
We need to have more of a spotlight on this issue, and look forward to continuing to collaborate on maintaining American AI leadership.”
We firmly oppose and express our serious concern,
The closest [applicable criminal statute] is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and it may be that the Department of Justice is able to prosecute under that statute,
Our new partnerships in nuclear fusion and quantum computing and in A.I. and life sciences” could save “countless lives,