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As I write this, a federal judge is considering whether Amtrak should be allowed to seize Washington DC’s Union Station, which is something like a combined urban mall and rail hub. In court, Amtrak has argued that it’s entitled to take Union Station and claims its expertise in transportation management makes it better equipped to operate the station. The US Constitution protects the rights of property owners in all sorts of ways, but it doesn’t protect property owners against eminent domain — the phrase for having your property taken for public use in exchange for fair compensation.

Political media is buzzing with the news that former UN ambassador Nikki Haley will have the backing of the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity Action in the 2024 presidential primary. AFP Action says it will launch a multi-million dollar ad buy for Haley in early primary states and is prepared to deploy all of its grassroots resources to help Haley defeat former president Donald Trump.Who told them to light their money on fire? Haley is the only GOP primary candidate who has gained significant ground in the polls since launching her campaign, but the reality is that Trump still leads her by at least twenty points in New Hampshire and by about thirty in Iowa and Haley’s home state of South Carolina.

George Santos’s remaining time in Congress appears to be as fleeting as a candle — or, more accurate, a balloon — in the wind. As the congressman faces threats of explosion from within the Capital, a giant balloon of the swamp’s infamous fabulist is flopping around the National Mall.   The fifteen-foot inflatable of the disgraced New York congressman is currently caught in the city’s chilly fall gusts, falling flat on its face like Santos may soon do himself. The spectacle was commissioned by MoveOn Political Action, a progressive advocacy group which hopes to encourage Congress to expel Santos.   https://twitter.com/metzgov/status/1729530134359642540?

President Joe Biden presided over an event at the White House on Monday in which he announced the creation of a Council on Supply Chain Resilience and promised actions to “strengthen supply chains, lower costs for families and help Americans get the goods they need.” This news might bring a sigh of relief to many — finally, the Biden administration is taking inflation seriously! But the White House first led with a “Bidenomics” victory lap that felt more like a slap in the face than a swelling pocketbook. Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg gave opening remarks in which he chastised the media for “saying that Christmas was going to be canceled” due to supply chain disruptions in the winter of 2021.

It's not often that the New York Times has a prophetic vision. In 2021, the paper ran a fawning profile of Calla Walsh, a high-schooler leading an "army of sixteen-year-olds" against Massachusetts's Democratic establishment. Now all grown up, Walsh has become a general to a fierce group of agitators. Walsh, now a committed communist, was arrested on Monday morning at a defense contractor facility in New Hampshire along with two other women. The three were arraigned on Tuesday on charges of riot, sabotage, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.   The women, along with a larger group of pro-Palestine protesters, had surrounded the Elbit Systems facility, which is allegedly involved in Israel's military campaign.

Why apologize when you can just wait and hope people forget what you did wrong? As we enter the season of goodwill and gratitude, that’s the question posed by disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who this year is thankful for the complicity of his allies as he attempts to stage a comeback.While New York City mayor Eric Adams chokes on a different kind of Turkey, Politico writes that Cuomo has “begun in recent days to gauge the viability of a potential mayoral bid.”Cuomo resigned as governor in ignominy back in August 2021 after an investigation by New York attorney general Leticia James claimed that he had sexually harassed as many as eleven women.

How should we assess the value of a US president? In the case of John F. Kennedy, who died sixty years ago, the box denoting youthful vigor clearly gets a checkmark. Kennedy was just forty-six at the time of his assassination, which makes him younger than Hunter Biden is now. The box denoting the “vision thing” gets checked as well, if only because Kennedy saw the potential for beating the Soviets in the race to put a man on the moon, famously declaring, “We choose to do this, not because [it is] easy, but because it is hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” Also to be considered is the collective trauma of the events of November 22, 1963.

Right before President Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping met in San Francisco this week, the US State Department and the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment each released a statement on “enhancing cooperation to address climate change.”  “[T]he United States and China reaffirm their commitment to work jointly and together with other countries to address the climate crisis,” the Sunnylands Statement says. Addressing “energy transition,” the statement declares that both countries support pursuing efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and accelerate renewable energy deployment as a substitute for fossil fuels.

Once again a mostly peaceful protest has inexplicably ended up in violence — this time outside of the Democratic National Convention headquarters in Washington, DC. Ironically, this latest batch of protesters were calling for a ceasefire in Israel as they initiated their own violence on the streets of the nation’s capital.   A pro-Palestine protest was held Wednesday night outside the DNC headquarters as Democratic lawmakers gathered in the building for a fundraiser. During the melée, Capitol Police evacuated the top House Democrats from the building, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Representative Pete Aguilar.  The night began with a candlelight vigil down the street from the DNC before turning violent.

Fight Club is so back — and this time it’s in the halls of Congress. First rule of congressional fight club: throw down in front of the media. Representative Tim Burchett exploded onto the national scene when he joined with seven House Republicans and every House Democrat in throwing Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of his leadership position. Now, he’s claiming that McCarthy sucker-punched him in the kidneys. Representative Matt Gaetz in turn lodged an ethics complaint against McCarthy for “assaulting” Burchett.  McCarthy claims Burchett is making it up and that any contact was unintentional and merely the result of tight hallways.

Kim Kardashian was once cozy with the Trump White House. Together, the former president and the celebrity entrepreneur spearheaded criminal justice reform, providing the Kardashian with the political experience she desired and giving Trump one of the PR stunts he lives for. But the snuggling ended when Trump found out that Kim wasn’t all in with Team Trump, as she expressed her support for Joe Biden, hitting Trump where it hurts him most — loyalty. Jonathan Karl takes us behind the scenes of this spat in his new book Tired of Winning. According to the ABC News personality, when Kim called Trump for help with a clemency case, Trump hung up on her. According to an excerpt obtained by Axios, at the end of the Trump presidency, Kim attempted to get Trump to commute more sentences.

Immediately after longtime West Virginia senator Joe Manchin bowed to political reality and called it quits on his re-election, Republicans celebrated that it virtually guarantees their party an elusive win next year.  In fact, some were already proclaiming that the state’s First Pup, Babydog, and her owner, Governor Jim Justice, are cruising to victory next November.  But that’s not necessarily the case — it’s not next November that Justice should be concerned with, but rather next year’s GOP primary. Justice, who finally secured Donald Trump’s valuable endorsement, faces Congressman Alex Mooney and a field that may now swell given the GOP’s virtual certainty to pick up the seat.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where you might think that today would be focused on the off-year election (many lessons on that below) or the debate last night (a few takeaways to be sure), but the breaking news has overtaken all of this: Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator and former governor, has announced that he will retire rather than run for re-election. Manchin has been at the focal point of one fight after another in the Senate during his tenure, wavering back and forth between working with Democrats and Republicans depending on the issue. His announcement means Republicans are assured of picking up his seat. But there is also a strong indication to it that he does not consider himself done with politics yet.

Republicans no doubt woke up Wednesday morning incredibly disappointed by last night’s election results. Democratic governor Andy Beshear won re-election in Kentucky, the GOP lost control of the Virginia House of Delegates, and Ohio voters opted to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Political consultants and commentators quickly lashed out at the party’s perceived failure: Republicans either talked too much or not enough about abortion and the GOP will never win again with Trump at the top of the ticket or Trump is vital to its success, depending on who you ask.Abortion obviously mattered Tuesday night; the Ohio referendum results made that clear.

Bristow, Virginia Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin responded to recent accusations from Democrats that he is attempting to buy votes by sending out tax rebates ahead of the 2023 statewide elections. “Had [Democrats] not delayed the budget for seven months, then the tax checks would have gone out a long time ago,” Youngkin told The Spectator during a press gaggle at Piney Branch Elementary School. The governor dropped by multiple polling locations on Tuesday to speak to election volunteers and voters. NBC News reported last week that “the state of Virginia is sending out tax rebate checks to qualified residents, just days before the state’s 2023 General Assembly elections.

We’re almost exactly one year out from what increasingly looks like another Trump v. Biden showdown. Former president Donald Trump leads his second-place opponent by more than forty percentage points nationally, and has a thirty-point advantage in Iowa. President Joe Biden avoided a primary challenge from RFK Jr., who is now running as an Independent, and no one thinks Representative Dean Phillips’s campaign is serious, especially considering his refusal to acknowledge the objective reality that he’s even running against Biden. Although Phillips doesn’t seem to be the guy for the job, more Democrats are waking up to the idea that Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win a second term. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.