“These were people who would bring up a conversation about Trump and assume that you’re agreeing with them. They don’t do that anymore. They talk about other things.”

"... you have all these guys sleeping with their employees, and nothing happens, and everybody knows what's going on."

"It's harder and harder to be the pastor of a 'purple church.'"

“I don’t think that we have a great working definition of what constitutes … a free and fair election.”

Chris Van Hollen: “This should be a unifying event. Unfortunately, the president of the United States has represented just the opposite.”

“I have my own lane, and I feel good where we are. It’s the lane about being a Christian conservative businessman who’s built a business from scratch.”

... the Navy Yard section of Washington, D.C., that has come to serve as a social fulcrum for a certain kind of D.C. conservative, maybe too young to have voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016, but now working either in his administration or for one of his allies in Congress.

“That’s my thing, that’s what I do, that is always on my menu. In these states of extremes — which are both geographical states and states of mind — that the truth of a human character is revealed and starkly revealed.”

“If those justices had been aware then of what we now face, my guess is that we would have had the opposite result. They weren’t imagining the current world.”

“Trump originally intended to visit China with the air of a swift victor, leveraging his position to increase pressure on China. Now, however, with the conflict deadlocked and the military campaign stalled, he finds himself in a difficult position.”

"My standard for interviews always involves the audience. What do people need to know about this person and their beliefs, because they have a huge influence on our politics and ultimately our lives. Tucker Carlson meets that bar and then some."

“Voters have a different theory of what is electable right now,” says @rebeccakkatz.bsky.social.

“But in China, I know what to expect. I know what the rules are. In the United States, it’s completely ambiguous. I might be taken away for voicing an opinion. In China, at least, I can control that.”

“Don’t think you failed. You’re the last Watson milking.”

He endorsed 95% of the 217-member House GOP Conference ...

“This type of astronomical spending corrodes people’s faith in our system of government, and I think people are really looking for changes to take some of this outrageous amount of spending and rein it in.”

“It was obvious during their time together in Washington that they were some of the few doers in the Senate, and it makes sense to me that he would be willing to be there for her during her reelection.”

“My strong inclination is no — he’s not going to. He’s Trump. He’s going to build a skyscraper in Miami and call it his library. I hope I’m wrong.”

“Oh my Satan! I’m a fool for books!”

“Anyone who spent a second considering this decision knows it supercharges the power of states, and anyone who’s surprised has been living in a cave.”

“This is now clearly closer than it was just a week and a half ago,” says @repbrendanboyle.bsky.social.

"D.C. is often viewed as a bubble, and I aimed to burst it."

Know what's cool? An Antarctica dateline.

"What I think is happening is the rerun of an old tension that had real political currency once — the Nazis versus the Bauhaus, the nationalists versus the cosmopolitans — at a time in which loads of this have been emptied of all their original meaning."

“The thought of painting the beautiful granite facade of the E.E.O.B. is an absolute disgrace, and an absolute insult to all those who admire and work hard to preserve historic architecture. Fifty years in the field of preservation, and I have never heard of such a stupid idea as this.”

... decorative baubles, nonchalant about form and situation, offering a perfectly flattering reflection to any aesthete or authoritarian gazing at their polished surfaces.

“They didn’t need to establish that kind of credibility or expertise to amass those audiences.”

Great job here.

“You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

"Even assuming a true and lasting end to the military conflict, it would still be several months before traffic through the Strait of Hormuz returns to its pre-war level."

“No one has leverage on the Vatican … You have to engage the Vatican with reason … After 2,000 years, they are still there, still on top. You can’t pressure them.”

“When you’re the leader, you’re an idiot until you’re not an idiot,” says @rahmemanuel.bsky.social.

“I’ve lost total faith in all the politicians. They all get in with good intentions, and then they just line their pockets. They’re on the gravy train.”

Whit Ayres: “While MAGA influencers and elites may have broken with the president on the war, MAGA Republicans are 100 percent, or maybe 90 percent, behind it.”

“History will not look back kindly on you when you had an opportunity to do what was right and you chose to do something else.”

How gas gets here.

Veteran Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin: “The price of everything has gone up, Trump promised just the opposite. He’s gonna pay a price at the polls.”

“There’s a big message here, but the message isn’t a new message. The message we’ve learned over the last 10 years is: It’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”

Stephens: Final question. If there is one thing you learned in the Marine Corps which every American should know, what is it? Auchincloss: Officers eat last.

“You’ve got this once-in-a-generation opportunity where you’ve got no power of incumbency,” @joshturek4iowa.bsky.social tells @shanegoldmacher.bsky.social.

“For them to do that on a Monday morning right after that happened in the Senate race — do you guys read the room?” @jordanwood.bsky.social tells @anniekarni.bsky.social. “They are probably sinking Joe Baldacci’s campaign.”

“I’m skeptical that the blockade will succeed in the time frame we would need for the global economy and for Trump’s prospects in the midterm elections.”

“She’s a RINO. She’s a bad Republican.”

What an interesting conversation @lulugnavarro.bsky.social had with Tucker Carlson.

“A wide-open Senate seat, potentially three — right now it looks like two, but potentially three — competitive congressional seats. Majorities in the Senate and the House pass through Iowa. And we’ve got an open governor’s race.”

I'll read this in print.

This ran 10 YEARS AGO.

“I play outside the pocket. Just always have and always will.”

Josh Turek on Zach Wahls: “Zach comes from the bluest district in the state, a Harris +38 district. He’s never even run against a Republican. This isn’t the time to be experimenting.”

"When you detach partisan identity from racial identity, you get more Black voters willing to take a chance on a Republican. That's not a realignment. It's more political free agents."