In “Trump Claims He’d Give His $230 Million Justice Department Grift to Charity. Yeah, Right.The president, who has a history of reneging on charitable pledges, ran his own family foundation into the ground,” Inae Oh and Dan Friedman write at Mother Jones: “On Tuesday, shortly after the New York Times reported that President Donald Trump is demanding $230 million from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reimburse him for legal costs related to earlier federal investigations against him, the president claimed he would donate any such funds to charity. “I’m not looking for money,” he told reporters. “I’d give it to charity or something. I would give it to charity, any money.”…Does Trump grasp the impropriety at play? His bid to appear magnanimous suggests that he knows it doesn’t look good for a president to shake down the Justice Department for taxpayer money, particularly amid a shutdown, and especially as his administration slashes Medicaid and food stamps…His effort to put a generous spin on this blatant grift—there is no compelling evidence that the DOJ’s investigations were launched improperly—belies Trump’s long, sordid history of stiffing contractors, and, even more notoriously, the court-ordered dissolution of his namesake charitable arm over a “shocking pattern of illegality.” Read more here.

From “The Headless Party: Inside the Democrats’ Search for Identity in the Age of Trump” by Jolynda Wang at ThePolitic: “The Democratic Party finds itself in a leadership vacuum. The 2024 presidential election was a devastating loss that brought Donald Trump back to the White House, Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court solidly conservative. Having no clear frontrunner for 2028 and no unified message for the midterms, the question of who might fill the void looms large for Democrats…“We need a leader. But even more than that, we need a vision for the future that transcends the politics of Donald J. Trump,” said Holly Page, the former executive vice president of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). “Start talking about ideas that nobody else is talking about yet and change the playing field.” She emphasizes that there is no “black and white answer to leadership” in the Democratic Party…“What we need more than anything else is not just a central figure, but a strong communicator who will challenge the left and the dominant ideology embraced by the party right now,” said Page…Under the current administration, [UC Law Professor Joan] Williams said that “Democrats have a tremendous amount of ammunition to be talking about how the economy isn’t great.”…“That should be an opening for Democrats to center economic issues,” she said. “Democrats have to position themselves to be able to be seen as an attractive alternative, which they haven’t managed to do consistently yet.” More here.

Lauren Egan writes in “How Maine Became a Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party” at The Bulwark: “BY THE TIME GRAHAM PLATNER walked onstage at the Governor Hill Mansion this past Monday, the room had hit capacity…The grand colonial revival house was built in 1901 for Maine’s forty-fifth governor; nowadays, it’s used as an event venue. But on this night, it was an incubator of energy, political chatter, and a humidity not customary for the usual early-fall chill in this part of the country. Platner wore a henley, rolled up just enough to show off one of his many forearm tattoos. His dirty-blond hair was damp from having ducked outside in the rain to speak to the dozens of people who didn’t make it in the door…“I’m Graham Platner and I’m from Sullivan,” he cheekily said to a crowd of a couple hundred people. The introduction was unnecessary. They’d seen his viral social media clips and his launch video for U.S. Senate. And whether out of curiosity, inspiration, or something in between, they’d decided on that random Monday evening to come see this oyster farmer, harbormaster, and Marine veteran…“I just want to make it very clear that I do not view myself as a politician,” Platner said, kicking off his stump speech. “I certainly didn’t live a life in preparation for this. And I really thought that, frankly, just living in Sullivan, living the simple, fulfilling life that my wife and I have been able to build, that that was going to be it.”…AS MUCH AS ANY RACE in the country, this primary for the Senate seat in Maine has come to resemble the crossroads—and opportunities—for the Democratic party. At stake is one of the few seats that Democrats believe they can flip: Susan Collins’s. But there are huge divides over how the party thinks it can achieve that…“Graham Platner, in a lot of ways, is like a political consultant’s idea of what a guy from Maine looks like,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic consultant, told me. “The fact of the matter is, Janet Mills is popular. Janet Mills has gotten stuff done and she’s gotten elected statewide. If the stakes are as high as everyone keeps saying they are, why on earth would we cast her aside?”…As a two-term governor, Mills doesn’t just have name recognition and deep political connections. She has a lot of credit from earlier this year when she stood up to President Donald Trump at the White House, particularly at a time when other Democratic leaders and institutions were acquiescing to his demands.” More here.

“Just 38 percent of respondents said they approve of the president’s handling of the economy, while 57 percent disapproved and 5 percent did not provide an opinion,” Max Rego reports in “Trump approval on economy hits new low: Quinnipiac poll” at The Hill. “Trump’s previous low on the economy was a 39 percent approval rating, a mark he hit four times — including last month— since the start of his first term in 2017…The respondents were split along partisan lines: 88 percent of Republicans and just 2 percent of Democrats approved of the president’s handling of the economy. Only 30 percent of independents backed Trump on the issue…The survey, conducted Oct. 16-20 via phone, consisted of 1,327 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points…Since returning to office in January, the president has imposed sweeping tariffs on trading partners around the world, impacting a variety of industries…The tariffs, intended to boost domestic manufacturing, have heavily impacted American businesses and consumers. A Goldman Sachs analysis from earlier this month said that American consumers and businesses will shoulder 55 percent and 22 percent of the tariff costs this year, respectively. The report also projected that U.S. firms will pass on their costs to consumers in the coming months.”