Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and July 2025 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this.

 

July

July 31

New York Times, News Analysis: Anger Over Starvation in Gaza Leaves Israel Increasingly Isolated, Steven Erlanger, July 31, 2025. Global outrage at the Netanyahu government’s actions has grown since the war began, and the suffering of children in the enclave has accelerated the disdain.

Some of Israel’s most important Western allies, under political pressure from voters appalled by mounting evidence of starvation in Gaza, now say that they will recognize a Palestinian state. President Trump, himself convinced that Gazans are starving, has sent his Mideast envoy to Israel for the first time in months to look at the chaotic food distribution system.

More scholars are debating whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Opinion polls in the United States and elsewhere show an increasingly negative view of Israel. And there is no clear plan to bring the war against Hamas to an end.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has responded angrily to the growing skepticism. He has said that the reports of starvation are exaggerated, that Hamas must be destroyed, that critics are often antisemites and that Western recognition of a Palestinian state is a reward to Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed more than 1,000 people.

“The usual Israeli view is that this crisis is another temporary problem,” said Natan Sachs, an analyst of Israeli politics. “But that’s a misreading of the world, because it’s accelerating a global turn against Israel that has dramatic effects, especially among young people.”

As anger grows over widespread hunger in Gaza, Israel risks becoming an international outcast. The deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023 remains a vivid, salient event for many Israelis. But for others around the world, the devastation and hunger in Gaza have become more visible and urgent.

New York Times, This Is What Basic Food Costs in Gaza Now, if You Can Find It, Adam Rasgon and Ashley Wu, July 31, 2025. Obtaining humanitarian aid can be difficult and dangerous, and though some essentials are available at markets, they are prohibitively expensive for many Gazans.

Deadly chaos and violence have engulfed aid distribution in Gaza since Israel reconstituted the system in May as part of what it said was an effort to keep aid out of the hands of Hamas.

The mayhem — and the limited amount of aid entering the enclave in the first place — has led many Palestinians to give up trying to get humanitarian aid, even though starvation is mounting.

One of the few alternatives has been to buy food from markets in Gaza, which are stocked with a combination of aid materials — some of which may have been looted — commercial goods, and small amounts of locally grown produce. But the prices of many basic goods have skyrocketed.

“Have I ever seen this anywhere else to this extent?” Arif Husain, the chief economist at the U.N. World Food Program, said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Absolutely not.”

 

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Deals With Biggest Trade Partners Remain Elusive as Tariff Deadline Looms, Staff Reports, July 31, 2025.

Tariffs deadline: A day before his deadline for countries to agree to trade deals with the United States or face tariffs of up to 50 percent, President Trump said on Thursday that it would be “very hard” to make a trade deal with Canada, the United States’ second-largest trading partner, after it said it may recognize Palestine as a state. Despite a flurry of announcements this week, there’s also still no agreement with the country’s biggest trading partner, Mexico.

Brazil conflict: Mr. Trump applied 50 percent tariffs to products from Brazil and imposed sanctions on the Supreme Court justice overseeing the criminal case against former President Jair Bolsonaro, escalating the diplomatic crisis between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations. Read more ›

Trade announcements: The United States announced a trade deal with South Korea that would lower its tariff to 15 percent from 25 percent, mirroring the deal struck with Japan last week. Mr. Trump said South Korea would invest $350 billion in the United States. Hours earlier, Mr. Trump said imports from India would be subject to a 25 percent tariff as of Friday if a deal is not reached.

Trump and Russia’s former president, an attack dog on Putin’s periphery, trade barbs. In a midnight social media post, President Trump called Dmitri A. Medvedev a “failed former President of Russia” who had better “watch his words.” Less than three hours later — morning by then in Moscow — Mr. Medvedev responded. He said Mr. Trump should picture the apocalyptic television series “The Walking Dead” and referred to the Soviet Union’s system for launching a last-ditch, automatic nuclear strike. “Russia is right about everything and will continue to go its own way,” said Mr. Medvedev’s post on the Telegram messaging app.

The exchanges have been striking not only for the verbal brinkmanship on display between the world’s nuclear superpowers, but also for the mismatched stature of the figures involved. While Mr. Trump commands the world’s most powerful military, Mr. Medvedev is widely seen as a social-media attack dog relegated to the periphery of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle. The viciousness of the overnight exchange highlighted the volatility and opacity of a geopolitical relationship in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin set policy largely on their own. And it put on display the combustible mix that can occur when the Kremlin’s longstanding willingness to use nuclear threats meets Mr. Trump’s penchant for late-night diatribes on the internet. Hanging in the balance is the future of Ukraine, three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion.

New York Times, How Louisiana Built Trump’s Busiest Deportation Hub, Brent McDonald, Campbell Robertson, Zach Levitt and Albert Sun, Videos by Singeli Agnew and Ben Laffin, July 31, 2025 (print ed.). ICE wants to make immigration enforcement as efficient as FedEx or Amazon. Louisiana was poised for this moment. 

New York Times, ‘Not a Damned Penny.’ Texas Flood Survivors Look for Help, Edgar Sandoval, July 31, 2025. Texas state legislators will be in Kerrville on Thursday for a hearing on the July 4 floods. They may get an earful.

As soon as the raging waters receded on July 4 in Central Texas, Mike Richards led a group of volunteers to his property along the Guadalupe River to search for survivors. Instead, they found corpses, 10 of them, including a man that appeared to have bled to death as he waited for help.

Mr. Richards, 67, has been waiting for help ever since, from federal, state or local officials who could aid in the search, pitch in money for those who need it or help clear land that, he said, “still looks like a bomb went off.”

“Not a damned penny came through this gate from my taxpaying dollars,” he said on Tuesday as he looked at the twisted trees and piles of debris that still litter his property and beyond. “And I don’t understand why.”

Mr. Richards is one of many residents planning to confront members of a Texas legislative committee on Thursday at a flood hearing in Kerr County, which suffered the brunt of the 136 known deaths in the Texas Hill Country. Kerr County’s 100 dead included at least 27 counselors and campers from devastated Camp Mystic, most of them from two cabins near the river.

From the early days of the tragedy, officials in Kerr County have faced questions about the weak local government response and lack of alarms systems along the river. They have been at a loss to explain why they failed to secure grant funding for a flood warning system in recent years.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Media Can’t Handle the Absence of Truth, Paul Krugman, right, July 31, 2025. And their diffidence empowers pathological liars. 

On Tuesday I talked to Greg Sargent of the New Republic; transcript here. I highly recommend subscribing to Greg’s podcast!

It was a good if depressing discussion, in part about Trump’s trade “deals” but also about how they are being (mis)reported. The question is how something like the agreement with the European Union, in which the U.S. imposed taxes on its own population while Europe made meaningless promises on investment and energy purchases, leads to headlines like this:

Long ago, the economist Joan Robinson arguably pre-butted Trump’s argument for protectionism because, he claims, other nations are treating us unfairly: "The popular view that free trade is all very well so long as all nations are free-traders, but that when other nations erect tariffs we must erect tariffs too, is countered by the argument that it would be just as sensible to drop rocks into our harbours because other nations have rocky coasts."

But it’s even worse when a president mines our harbors based on the false claim that other nations have rocky coasts — and the media declare that he’s winning.

I’ve talked about the media’s problem with calling a lie a lie for many years — in fact, since my first year writing for the Times. Back then, faced with George W. Bush’s lies about taxes and Social Security, I suggested that if a candidate said the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views differ on shape of planet.” Yet media organizations still haven’t figured out how to deal with it. I told Greg,

[T]o say that the president of the U.S. is making drastic policy changes in order to cure a problem that only exists in his imagination, that’s a very difficult … that sounds unbalanced. That sounds like you’re shilling for the Democrats, when it’s in fact just reporting the flat truth.

And so I think the media organizations have still not figured out how to deal with that. The fact of the matter is that Trump’s whole trade war is based upon a deluded version of how the world economy works. But aside from the fact that the Trump administration may try to punish your organization if you report that, it also just runs very counter to the “people want to sound objective.” And unfortunately, again, it’s the old Stephen Colbert line, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” If you report what’s really happening, it sounds liberal.

Anyway, no, Trump isn’t winning his trade war — except, possibly, in the media, which have apparently decided that shooting yourself in the foot and not facing retaliation is a victory.

Emptywheel, Analysis: BREAKING: Right Wingers Believe Jim Comey Threw the 2016 Election to Trump and Jim Jordan Must Go to Jail, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), July 31, 2025. If you believe it's a crime for a political ally to gin up FBI noise about a foreign hack during an election -- the most that John Durham's purported Clinton Plan substantiates (and he falls far short of substantiating that) -- then you believe Jim Jordan should go to prison.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Constitutional Cope in the Time of Texas Hold'em, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), July 31, 2025. There are really better ways to fight fascism than focusing on what magical ponies we'll ride if we "win." But if you're going to do that, consider what would need to happen to actually reverse the tide.

There’s a coping mechanism I often see that involves stating we will get justice against the perpetrators of fascism once we “win.” It goes something like, “when we win we’ll hold all of these ICE goons accountable.”

July 30 

 

New York Times, Middle East Crisis: U.K. Will Recognize a Palestinian State in September, Barring Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire, Mark Landler, July 30, 2025 (print ed.) Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his government would act unless there was a truce, citing the “intolerable” humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"Our goal remains a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state," he said. "So today, as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the U.K. will recognize the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution. We see starving babies, children too weak to stand. Images that will stay with us for a lifetime. The suffering must end.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, announced on Tuesday that Britain would recognize the state of Palestine in September if Israel does not agree to a cease-fire with Hamas, pouring pressure on the Israeli government to halt a war that has put Gaza on the brink of famine.

Mr. Starmer’s announcement, which came after an emergency meeting of his cabinet, is a sharp, if not wholly unexpected, shift in his position, reflecting the intense political pressure his government has faced as the public and lawmakers in his own Labour Party recoil from images of starving children in Gaza.

Mr. Starmer cast Palestinian recognition as part of a broader European effort to end the almost two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas. He reiterated that Hamas must release its remaining hostages, sign up to a cease-fire and accept that it will have no role in governing Gaza.

But Mr. Starmer’s move was aimed squarely at Israel, and it dramatized how swiftly sentiment about the war has changed among Western countries. Britain followed France, which announced last week that it would recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

“The situation is simply intolerable,” Mr. Starmer said on Tuesday. “I am particularly concerned that the very idea of a two-state solution is reducing and feels further away today than it has for many years.”

In addition to a cease-fire, Mr. Starmer said the Israeli government must agree not to annex the occupied West Bank and commit to a peace process that would result in a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Politico, European countries to borrow billions from EU to rearm Ukraine, Gregorio Sorgi, July 30, 2025 (print ed.). Governments can decide to ask for cheap loans from the EU before Tuesday’s deadline.

Ukraine’s top allies in Europe are set to ask for tens of billions of euros in European Union loans to jointly buy weapons for the war-battered country, as well as to boost their own defenses.

Ahead of Tuesday's deadline to apply for the new €150 billion Security Assistance Facility for Europe loans-for-weapons scheme, several EU countries told POLITICO they are considering using that money to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The loan scheme was proposed by the Commission in March as part of its broader ReArm Europe program and aims to boost Europe's defense industry and reduce the bloc's decades-old military dependence on the United States.

Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, Finland, Hungary, and Lithuania have formally expressed an interest in requesting the loans, the EU’s defense spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters on Tuesday.

Others including Czech Republic, Latvia, Bulgaria and Greece indicated they will do so before the deadline on Tuesday at midnight.

By jointly buying weapons through the scheme, countries can secure a lower price than they would obtain by going it alone and then deliver the armaments to Ukraine.

France is also likely to apply for the loans, while Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands are expected to decline, according to people familiar with those governments' plans.

However, even countries not taking loans are still able to cut the cost of arms deliveries by taking part in joint procurements.

European countries are facing growing pressure to increase their own weapons stocks and to boost military aid to Ukraine after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled unwillingness to continue funding Kyiv's war effort. 

 

At the Justice Department, Emil Bove III played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against President Trump and other conservatives.

New York Times, Senate, Rejecting Whistle-Blower Alarms, Confirms Bove to Appeals Court, Devlin Barrett, July 30, 2025 (print ed.). The Trump loyalist was narrowly approved as Republicans brushed aside concerns about his conduct as a senior Justice Department official.

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove III, a Trump loyalist whose short tenure in the top ranks of the Justice Department prompted whistle-blower complaints and a storm of criticism from agency veterans, to a powerful federal appeals court judgeship.

Mr. Bove had spurred outcries at the department by directing or overseeing the firing of dozens of employees and ordering the dismissal of bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. According to one whistle-blower who went public, Mr. Bove also told government lawyers that they might ignore court orders in pursuit of President Trump’s immigration policy goals.

Mr. Bove has denied being anyone’s enforcer or henchman, but his nomination to a lifetime appointment one rung below the Supreme Court provoked an intense battle in the Senate. His approval to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, came by a tiny margin, 50 to 49, with all Democrats and two Republicans, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, opposing him.

Still, the confirmation of Mr. Bove provided at least a tacit Senate endorsement of the president’s efforts to bend the justice system to his will. Most Republicans shrugged off concerns that Mr. Bove, 44 and a defense lawyer for Mr. Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial last year, had undermined the traditional independence of the Justice Department or aided in Mr. Trump’s standoffs with the courts.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called Mr. Bove’s confirmation “a dark, dark day.”

Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, complained that he had tried repeatedly to share the whistle-blowers’ accusations with G.O.P. lawmakers but that “no one wanted to even listen.”

Republicans dismissed such claims as disingenuous posturing. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Democrats had sought to manipulate the confirmation calendar to scuttle the president’s pick.

“Even if you accept most of the claims as true, there is still no scandal,” Mr. Grassley said.

The day before Mr. Bove’s confirmation hearing in June, Erez Reuveni, a former immigration lawyer at the department, came forward to assert that Mr. Bove had told subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill the president’s aggressive deportation promises.

In recent days, two more would-be whistle-blowers signaled they had additional derogatory information about Mr. Bove, according to lawmakers and advocates. One of those individuals suggested that Mr. Bove was untruthful in at least one of his answers about his efforts to dismiss the Adams case, while another has offered information to the Justice Department inspector general that would seem to support some of Mr. Reuveni’s claims.

Though his time as a senior Justice Department official was relatively brief, Mr. Bove played an outsize role in the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to take control of the agency it argues has been “weaponized” against Mr. Trump and other conservatives.

Because his position at the department did not require Senate confirmation, Mr. Bove was among the first Trump appointees to arrive at the department, overseeing a succession of major policy and personnel moves, starting with a memo threatening to prosecute state and city officials who refused to carry out immigration enforcement.

But the most defining episode of his tenure was the battle he waged against the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he once worked, over the administration’s insistence on dropping bribery charges against Mr. Adams — who had personally appealed to the White House for a legal reprieve.

Mr. Bove pressured top prosecutors in the office to drop the case. He claimed that the charges had been brought by an overzealous U.S. attorney appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and he argued that the case would hinder Mr. Adams’s capacity to cooperate with the White House on immigration enforcement.

The Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s command. Other career prosecutors in the public integrity section resigned rather than accede to his demands.

Mr. Bove’s current boss, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who also served with him on Mr. Trump’s legal team, accused Mr. Bove’s critics of spreading slander and misinformation.

“Emil is the most capable and principled lawyer I have ever known,” Mr. Blanche wrote in an opinion article for Fox News. “His legal acumen is extraordinary, and his moral clarity is above reproach.”

Emptywheel, Analysis: With Emil Bove's Confirmation, Trump Hones His Criminal Protection Racket, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), July 30, 2025. Emil Bove's confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit hones Trump's criminal protection racket in a bunch of ways, both by rewarding those who engage in abuse for him and by punishing those who don't.

After a 50-49 vote confirming him (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against, with all Democrats), Emil Bove will be installed in New Jersey’s Third Circuit seat. He will remain there until retirement, death, impeachment, or criminal prosecution — or, quite possibly, promotion to SCOTUS — removes him.

It pains me to catalog the ways in which Bove’s confirmation serves and advances Trump’s crimina

 

New York Times, Trump Administration Freezes $108 Million in Funds to Duke University, Chris Cameron, Michael C. Bender and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, July 30, 2025 (print ed.) The university was accused of racial discrimination in its health care system, the latest high-profile school targeted and stripped of federal funding.

The Trump administration has frozen $108 million in federal funds for Duke University’s medical school and health care system, according to two administration officials, after the government accused the university of “systemic racial discrimination.”

Duke University is the latest high-profile school, from Columbia University to Harvard, that the Trump administration has targeted and stripped of a large amount of federal funding, based on vague accusations that the university abets antisemitism or supports diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The move comes amid a wider pressure campaign from the Trump administration to shift the ideological tilt of American higher education.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, the health secretary, and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, sent a letter to Duke administrators on Monday expressing concerns about “racial preferences in hiring, student admissions, governance, patient care, and other operations” in the university’s health care system.

In the letter, the officials accused Duke of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race and nationality in programs receiving federal funding. Mr. Kennedy and Ms. McMahon called on Duke Health, the university’s health care system, to review all policies “for the illegal use of race preferences” and to create a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that would work with the federal government.

The $108 million cut could be permanent, if the government concludes the university violated the Civil Rights Act, according to the two administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Duke University did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

The university is weighing layoffs amid a budget crunch. It’s considering about $350 million in cuts, amounting to roughly 10 percent of its budget. In a video message last month, Duke’s president, Vincent E. Price, said the university was trying to sort out proposals from the federal government “that have quite dire implications for the university.”

He added there was “sadly, no scenario in which Duke can or will avoid incurring substantial losses of funding due to these policy changes.”

The university has imposed a hiring freeze and developed buyout plans, but Dr. Price said that Duke would “likely” resort to layoffs.

New York Times, Opinion: Trump Is Discovering the Downside of a Justice Department With No Credibility, Daniel Richman (a former federal prosecutor), July 30, 2025 (print ed.). Readers will surely have varying views about whether the Jeffrey Epstein matter should be dominating political discourse. But the Trump administration’s attempt to tamp down the controversy by reviewing its files, interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell and otherwise attempting to show it has nothing to hide brings into sharp relief the damage it has done to the Justice Department and its credibility.

From the start, President Trump appears to have put personal loyalty above all in the leaders he chose for the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And he seems to have succeeded in that regard.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel — all have shown a North Korean level of fealty to their leader. Ignoring norms of Justice Department independence from the White House, they have jumped to follow his orders. They’ve announced investigations he demanded, seemingly regardless of whether there was support for doing so. They have moved to dismiss the cases that suited his political or personal purposes, regardless of the public interest.

What is truly extraordinary, at least in recent times, has been their readiness to fire or otherwise push out agents and prosecutors, apparently for sins as minor as associating with Mr. Trump’s critics and taking assignments to prosecute Jan. 6 defendants.

Numerous federal judges have raised concerns, to put it mildly, about the Trump administration’s readiness to put political expediency and presidential will above professionalism and adherence to the rule of law.

Justice Department lawyers in every administration often find themselves fighting uphill battles in court to advance the president’s political agenda. But even when they don’t have the law squarely on their side, they generally start with a personal and institutional credibility without which their work would be much harder.

If a Trump Justice Department lawyer appears before a court and either doesn’t know an answer because the political bosses have withheld it, or, worse, is not fully candid or even lies, she becomes just another lawyer, and a sleazy one at that. The government’s case suffers accordingly, as it should.

The credibility crisis is not just inside the courtroom. Having supposedly scoured its files on Jeffrey Epstein, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department have told the public that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” for good and sufficient reasons. No one is fooled by the lack of any official’s name on the written statement. It comes from Ms. Bondi’s Justice Department and Mr. Patel’s F.B.I. — organizations whose lawyers and agents have seen colleagues pushed out for the mere suspicion of insufficient loyalty.

How can these institutions show that they are not simply protecting the president?

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Fossil Fool, Paul Krugman, right, July 30, 2025. How Europe took Trump for a ride.

Like many U.S. institutions, the European Union has abysmally failed the Trump test. The EU is an economic superpower and could have retaliated effectively against Trump’s illegal tariffs — illegal under both U.S. and international law. Instead, Europe did nothing and even made some apparent concessions.

But notice my wording: apparent concessions. The optics of the Trump-EU deal were humiliating, and optics matter. If you examine the substance, however, it starts to look as if Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool.

The EU made two sort-of pledges to Trump. First, that it would invest $600 billion in the United States. Second, that it would buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy, mainly oil and gas, over the next three years. The first promise was empty, while the second was nonsense.

About those investments: European governments aren’t like China, which can tell companies where to put their money. And the European Commission, which made the trade deal, isn’t even a government — it can negotiate tariffs but otherwise has little power. On Sunday Politico spoke with Commission officials, who effectively confirmed that the investment pledge was meaningless:

[S]peaking Monday, two senior European Commission officials clarified that money would come exclusively from private European companies, with public investment contributing nothing.

“It is not something that the EU as a public authority can guarantee. It is something which is based on the intentions of the private companies,” said one of the senior Commission officials. The Commission has not said it will introduce any incentives to ensure the private sector meets that $600 billion target, nor given a precise timeframe for the investment.

So what the EU actually promised on investment was nothing, Nichts, rien.

The pledge to increase U.S. energy exports was a lot more specific and gave a timeframe. But it’s not going to happen.

 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago (NBC). 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump’s explosive new claim about Epstein at odds with past statements, Judd Legum, right, July 30, 2025. On Tuesday, President Trump offered a detailed new explanation for his rift with child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said that he had a falling out with Epstein because he "stole" a 16-year-old girl, Virginia Giuffre, from Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa. Giuffre, who committed suicide this April, was one of Epstein's most prominent victims.

This is the key exchange:

Q: Mr. President, Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously, but just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?…

TRUMP: Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken, and it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad, but that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were. Yeah.

Q: Yes, they were young women? What did they do? Like, what were their jobs?

TRUMP: In the spa.

Q: In the spa?

TRUMP: Yeah, people that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago, and people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, "Listen, we don't want you taking our people."

Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want them taking people, and he was fine, and then not too long after that, he did it again, and I said, out of here.

Q: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?

TRUMP: I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.

Giuffre was sexually trafficked and abused by Epstein over a two-year period from 2000 to 2002. During that period, she frequently traveled with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It was Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, who was also convicted of sex trafficking, who personally recruited Giuffre. In 2002, after attending a massage school in Thailand, Giuffre escaped.

So if it was Epstein's poaching of Giuffre that prompted the end of Trump's relationship with Epstein (or someone else “not too long after that”), the rift would have occurred around 2000.

This timeline is inconsistent with previous public statements made by Trump and his representatives.

The contradictory accounts raise a number of important questions: What occurred at the Mar-a-Lago spa, and what did Trump know about it? What actions did Trump actually take after learning Epstein had "stolen" underage girls from his club? Why has Trump offered several inconsistent accounts of his relationship with Epstein? What information might Maxwell, who Trump may pardon, have about all of these topics?

New York Times, Midtown Manhattan Becomes America’s Stage for Acts of Violence, Andrew Keh, July 30, 2025. A small part of the nation’s largest city has drawn people bent on killing to draw attention to their causes. The man who shot four people at a Park Avenue office tower was the latest.

Midtown Manhattan contains multitudes. It is a thrumming center of global commerce, proudly avoided by many locals. It is the mecca of American tourism, a maze of world-famous landmarks routinely swarmed by visitors.

And now, for some, it may be earning an unsettling new distinction: a spot-lit setting for brazen acts of premeditated violence.

On Monday afternoon, a gunman who had driven from Nevada parked his car outside a Park Avenue office tower and took the lives of four people inside. Officials said he was targeting the headquarters of the National Football League, apparently aggrieved by the organization’s handling of brain injuries in the sport.

It was a stunning spasm of violence in a city where mass public shootings are exceedingly rare and in a neighborhood that is statistically safer than most others. Yet it was also the latest in a string of incidents in which a person had ventured to the district, the geographical heart of New York, with deadly intent.

The shooting carried unmistakable echoes, for instance, of last December, when a prominent health care executive was murdered on West 54th Street outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.

Others might have recalled an attack two years before that, when a teenager from Maine traveled to Times Square on New Year’s Eve and tried to kill police officers with a machete. Or the men who in 2022 headed into New York City through Penn Station with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, an extended magazine and a plan for a synagogue massacre.

Some residents have grown concerned that a neighborhood whose fortunes have seesawed — most recently struggling to overcome the commercial erosion of the Covid-19 pandemic — could have a new identity as a target for anyone carrying a deadly grievance against some symbol of power.

“It does worry me,” said Daniel A. Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Corporation and the 34th Street Partnership, a pair of business improvement districts in Midtown. “There are so many well-publicized executives out there in this area. New York is where these people are.”

The roughly two and a quarter square miles that make up Midtown have nearly ubiquitous surveillance video coverage — and proximity to the headquarters of many news organizations. People seeking to make a public statement against high-profile individuals or corporations are magnetically drawn there.

“These guys get it in their head that these people are responsible for their problems,” Mr. Biederman said.

 

New York Times, Trump’s Tax Bill Expands Farm Subsidies. Not All Farmers Will Benefit, Linda Qiu and Mark Felix, July 30, 2025. A $60 billion boost to farm subsidies will be a lifeline to some. But the way the funding will be distributed could worsen disparities between farms in an industry already struggling with consolidation. 

In the high plains of western Texas, 600 or so farms in Gaines County are projected to receive an additional $258 million in government payments over the next decade under President Trump’s marquee domestic policy law — the largest increase in the country.

By contrast, along the coast of California, 1,000 farms in Monterey County will collectively receive just $390,000 in additional payments, according to one analysis.

The difference comes down to what the farms grow, and illustrates the stark disparity in who stands to benefit from the president’s sweeping tax and domestic policy bill. Under the new law, more than $60 billion in additional funding will be funneled toward agricultural subsidy programs, with large farms, particularly those in the South, poised to reap the most benefits. 

New York Times, How Conservative Christians Cracked a 70-Year-Old Law, Elizabeth Dias and David A. Fahrenthold, July 30, 2025. The I.R.S. recently said that churches could endorse candidates from the pulpit, a shift from a longstanding interpretation of American nonprofit law.

In the Blue Room of the White House, once the cameras recording the Easter prayer service cut off, the conversation at President Trump’s dinner table turned to one of the biggest political goals for conservative Christian activists — eliminating a law that banned churches, and other tax-exempt charitable groups, from endorsing political candidates.

Seated across from Mr. Trump that April night, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, told the president about how his church faced an I.R.S. inquiry over its tax-exempt status under the Biden administration, after hosting a rally with political figures.

Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, who runs a large ministry with his father’s name, chimed in that his groups had faced similar I.R.S. inquiries during President Barack Obama’s tenure.

At Mr. Trump’s request, Mr. Jeffress’s church sent the White House Faith Office a seven-page letter outlining what it called “wrongful weaponization” of the law and the “unlawful targeting of our church.” The letter, obtained by The New York Times, included recommended actions, and a mention of a Texas lawsuit, which offered a vehicle to declare that the law was wrong.

Three months later, conservative Christians scored a major victory.

Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service reinterpreted the ban, known as the Johnson Amendment, saying for the first time that churches could endorse candidates from the pulpit. The change, which came via a legal settlement, functionally nullifies a core tenet of the law, giving Christian conservatives their most significant victory involving church political organizing in 70 years. Their ultimate goal is still to totally eliminate the law, through Congress or the Supreme Court, removing all its limits on their political activities.

“Now churches are free,” said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which has been working to challenge the law for years. “The leash is gone.”

The I.R.S.’s new approach is the latest in a string of triumphs for conservative Christian groups, which are leveraging their alliance with Mr. Trump to redraw boundaries between church and state.

For now, the implications of this latest victory are unclear. On paper, the new I.R.S. policy appears narrow. It grants more freedom only to houses of worship, which the agency already seemed disinclined to police.

The ban on endorsements by churches and other tax-exempt groups dates to 1954, when it was inserted into a tax bill by Lyndon B. Johnson, then a senator, bypassing any debate on the matter. His motives were hardly lofty: Mr. Johnson was reacting to efforts by nonprofits that were supporting his rival in a primary.

British officials said they expected the all-day agenda to include discussion of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the grinding war in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump announced on Sunday that Europe had agreed to tariffs of 15 percent on automobiles and most other E.U. goods, after meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U.’s executive branch. The tariffs are higher than the 10 percent duty on most British goods that Britain, which is not in the European Union, agreed to in a deal that Mr. Starmer and Mr. Trump struck in May.

The 27-nation bloc also agreed to buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy and invest $600 billion in the United States, Mr. Trump said.

Trade is among the topics that Mr. Trump and Mr. Starmer are expected to discuss when they meet first at Mr. Trump’s Turnberry golf club on the west coast of Scotland and then travel to the other side of the country for dinner at the president’s other club, in Aberdeen.

July 29 

 

Associated Press, UN conference backs two-state solution, calls on Israel to commit to a Palestinian state, Edith M. Lederer and Farnoush Amiri, July 29, 2025. High-level representatives at a U.N. conference on Tuesday urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state and gave “unwavering support” to a two-state solution, signaling widespread international determination to end one of the world’s longest conflicts.

The “New York Declaration” sets out a phased plan to end the nearly eight-decade conflict and the ongoing war in Gaza. The plan would culminate with an independent, demilitarized Palestine living side by side peacefully with Israel, and their eventual integration into the wider Mideast region.The meeting is taking place amid the latest reports that starvation and famine are taking place in Gaza, and growing global outrage at Palestinians not getting food due to Israeli policies and practices – which Israel denies. Planned for two days, the meeting was extended into Wednesday because representatives of about 50 countries have not spoken.

Israel rejects the notion of two states

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a two-state solution and has rejected the meeting on both nationalistic and security grounds. Israel’s close ally, the United States, is also boycotting, calling the meeting “unproductive and ill-timed.”

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon late Tuesday sharply criticized the some 125 countries participating in the conference, saying “there are those in the world who fight terrorists and extremist forces and then there are those who turn a blind eye to them or resort to appeasement.”

The conference, which was postponed from June and downgraded from world leaders to ministers, for the first time established eight high-level working groups to examine and make proposals on wide-ranging topics related to a two-state solution.

The declaration’s plan says conference co-chairs France and Saudi Arabia, the European Union and Arab League, and 15 countries that led the working groups agreed “to take collective action to end the war in Gaza.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan urged the rest of the 193 U.N. member nations “to support this document” before the start of the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly in mid-September.

The declaration condemns “the attacks committed by Hamas against civilians” in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It marks a first condemnation by Arab nations of Hamas, whose attacks killed about 1,200, mainly Israeli civilians, and whose militants took about 250 people hostage. Some 50 are still being held.

The declaration condemns Israel’s attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and its “siege and starvation, which have produced a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and protection crisis.” Israel’s offensive against Hamas has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.Plan would give Palestinian Authority governing power

The conference plan envisions the Palestinian Authority governing and controlling all Palestinian territory, with a transitional administrative committee immediately established under its umbrella after a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority,” the declaration says.

It also supports deployment of “a temporary international stabilization mission” operating under U.N. auspices to protect Palestinian civilians, support the transfer of security to the Palestinian Authority and provide security guarantees for Palestine and Israel — “including monitoring of the ceasefire and of a future peace agreement.”

The declaration urges countries to recognize the state of Palestine, calling this “an essential and indispensable component of the achievement of the two-state solution.” Without naming Israel but clearly referring to it, the document says “illegal unilateral actions are posing an existential threat to the realization of the independent state of Palestine.”

 

 

New York Times, Trump Gives Russia Less Than Two Weeks to End Its War in Ukraine, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, July 29, 2025 (print ed.). President Trump said he had decided to shorten a 50-day deadline he had given Russia to end the conflict or face punishing new sanctions.

President Trump said on Monday that he was “disappointed” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia (shown together in a file photo above) over the war in Ukraine, and said he would give Moscow 10 to 12 days to end the conflict or face a new round of sanctions.

Mr. Trump had warned the Kremlin earlier this month that the United States would impose “very severe tariffs” if Russia did not agree to a peace deal within 50 days, but on Monday he said he would bring that deadline forward.

“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today — there’s no reason in waiting,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Scotland during a meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. “We just don’t see any progress being made.”

If the Kremlin does not comply, “it would be sanctions and maybe tariffs, secondary tariffs,” he said, adding that he did not want to do that to the Russian people. Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to punish Russia over its escalating attacks in Ukraine but so far has not followed through.

An imposition of new tariffs would be a shift for the White House, which excluded Russia from the round it imposed on a host of countries in April. And the threat of secondary tariffs — on any country that trades with Russia — could threaten economic partners, notably China and India, that import Russian oil and gas.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

When Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, he said he could bring peace to Ukraine immediately, but the war has continued with Russian forces on the offensive in eastern and northern Ukraine. Initially, Mr. Trump appeared to side with Mr. Putin, repeatedly criticizing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and suspending supplies of U.S. weapons to Kyiv.

But in April, Ukraine signed a deal with the United States to share its mineral reserves. And in recent weeks, as Russian missiles rained down on Ukrainian cities, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course, partly in response to urging by allies in Europe and from NATO. He promised to renew the supply of weapons to Ukraine and toughened his language toward Mr. Putin.

Ukrainian officials were quick to thank Mr. Trump for shortening the deadline. Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Mr. Zelensky, said in a post on social media that Mr. Trump’s comments showed he was committed to “peace through strength.”

For its part, Russia had largely shrugged off Mr. Trump’s previous 50-day deadline, noting that past time frames set by Mr. Trump or his team had expired with little consequence. Mr. Putin has been determined to press what he sees as a growing battlefield advantage in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Russia launched more than three years ago.Editors’ PicksPumping Iron Is Their Secret to Aging WellIn the Berkshires, Installing Art, Bearing the ConsequencesCan Sitting on My Fire Escape Result in Fines to My Landlord?

The Russian leader has made it clear that he views it as out of the question to halt the fighting without extensive concessions by Ukraine, people close to the Kremlin have told The New York Times.

But Mr. Trump’s new deadline underscored his growing frustration with Mr. Putin’s resistance to compromise, even as the Kremlin has continued to shower the American president with compliments. Last week, Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, praised the Trump administration for its “reasonable approach” to Ukraine and its “readiness for dialogue.”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: I Coulda Made a Better Deal, Paul Krugman, right, July 29, 2025. What, exactly, did Trump get from Europe?

Trump has now announced a trade “deal” with the European Union that looks a lot like the “deal” he made with Japan. I use scare quotes because there is little sign of a quid pro quo. The United States is imposing a 15 percent tariff that is lower than previously threatened, but still vastly higher than we had before Trump. Overall U.S. tariffs seem likely to settle roughly at the level that prevailed after the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

In return we got a vague promise of higher European investment in the United States. When Japan made a similar promise last week, administration officials asserted that this would mean hundreds of billions flowing into rebuilding U.S. industry. Japanese officials, however, say that the money will consist almost entirely of loans and loan guarantees. This strongly suggests that Japan will, if it does anything at all, simply be sticking Trump’s name on money flows that would have happened anyway. There’s every reason to suspect that the same will be true of whatever the EU does.

And like the Japan deal, this deal seems to place lower tariffs on cars made in Europe, which have very little U.S. content, than on cars made in Canada, which contain many American parts. Add in the punishing tariffs on steel and aluminum, and Trump’s trade policy seems, if anything, to be tilting the playing field against U.S. manufacturing.

When I point out that Trump’s idea of trade deals seems counterproductive even in terms of his claimed goal of boosting manufacturing, I get some pushback from readers along these lines: “Oh, yeah? If you’re such an expert on trade negotiations, tell me what deal you think you could have made.”

OK, I can answer that. If I had been in charge of negotiating with the European Union, I would have been able to get a deal with the following components:

• Very low tariffs on U.S. exports of manufactured goods to Europe, on the order of 1 percent
• Near balance in bilateral trade, with U.S. exports to Europe close to 90 percent of our imports from Europe
• U.S. companies allowed to operate freely in Europe, earning hundreds of billions a year in profits
• European corporations investing more than $150 billion a year — real investment, not loans — in the United States

Why do I believe that I could have negotiated a deal like that? Because that’s what U.S.-EU international transactions actually looked like in 2024. So that’s what we could have gotten by doing nothing.

 

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Why Trump is floating a pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, Judd Legum, right, July 29, 2025.

Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five criminal counts in a 2021 jury trial. In a 2022 sentencing memorandum, prosecutors said the evidence presented at trial showed that Maxwell "played an instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls." Specifically, as "part of a disturbing agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell identified, groomed, and abused multiple victims, while she enjoyed a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege." Prosecutors described Maxwell's crimes, which occurred over more than a decade, as "monstrous."

A federal judge sentenced Maxwell to 20 years behind bars, highlighting her "direct and repeated participation in a horrific scheme.”

Notably, President Trump, who is under scrutiny for his relationship with Epstein, has absolutely nothing negative to say about Maxwell. Last week, Trump dispatched Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who previously served as Trump's personal attorney, to interview Maxwell.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out pardoning Maxwell. On Friday, when asked if he was considering pardoning Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation, Trump first said, "I don’t want to talk about that." Asked again, Trump noted that he was "allowed to do it." Later, Trump said that he "can't talk about pardons" because of Blanche's ongoing interviews with Maxwell. On Saturday, after landing in Scotland, Trump told reporters it was "no time to be talking about pardons." On Monday, again asked if he would pardon Maxwell, Trump said he was "allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody has approached me with it."

Trump's comments are striking in light of Maxwell's appalling crimes. Nevertheless, Trump has a personal interest in leading Maxwell to believe that a pardon is a possibility, regardless of whether he ever intends to grant her one.Maxwell's crimes

Maxwell trafficked numerous underage girls to be sexually abused and raped by Epstein. According to the sentencing memorandum, Maxwell targeted "vulnerable girls, typically from single-mother households and difficult financial circumstances." Prosecutors focused on six girls to prove their case against Maxwell, but the total number of victims is much higher.

Maxwell also abused the girls herself. According to the sentencing memorandum, Maxwell sexually assaulted girls as young as 14, both as part of the grooming process and alongside Epstein. Maxwell eventually created a network where underage victims were rewarded with cash to introduce her to new girls.

As these girls were abused over more than a decade, Maxwell enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. She hopscotched between Epstein's luxury residences, "including his mansion on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, his villa in Palm Beach, his ranch in New Mexico, his apartment in Paris, and his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands." Epstein also bought Maxwell her own townhouse in New York City and "transferred a total of approximately $23 million to Maxwell during the timeframe of the conspiracy."

When the government's specific allegations first became public after Maxwell was charged in 2020, Trump offered an unusual response. "I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach," Trump said. "But I wish her well, whatever it is." Asked in a subsequent interview if it was appropriate to offer well wishes to a woman credibly accused of sexually trafficking underage girls, Trump was unmoved. "I do wish her well. I’m not looking for anything bad for her," Trump said. "Her boyfriend died. He died in jail."Maxwell's Trump card

Trump's well-documented relationship with Epstein has become a major political problem. The Trump administration reneged on its promise to release the Epstein files. Subsequently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wrote a raunchy birthday message to Epstein in 2003. The message was, according to the report, "several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman." In the drawing, "[a] pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair." The text reportedly includes the line "Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?" It concludes, "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret."

Trump recognized that the message was extremely damaging and declared it a fake. He then sued the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion.

The person who could speak with the most authority about the birthday book and the authenticity of the Trump letter is Maxwell. She created the book and solicited the messages from Epstein's friends. Maxwell knows whether the Trump letter, as described by the Wall Street Journal, is authentic. She may also have knowledge of other deleterious information about Trump.

Maxwell, who is 63, is also not scheduled to be released from prison until 2040. Although she has appealed her conviction to the Supreme Court, her best chance of gaining her freedom is for Trump to issue a pardon. By dangling the prospect of a pardon, Trump incentivizes Maxwell to do anything and everything to gain Trump's favor. Maxwell's attorney, David Markus, is already pushing for a Trump pardon. "We haven’t spoken to the president or anyone about a pardon just yet," Markus said on Saturday. "She would welcome any relief."

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Maxwell "to appear for a closed-door deposition" in Florida on August 11. Maxwell is still deciding whether to comply with the subpoena, fight it in court, or plead the Fifth. But if she does end up talking to the committee, Trump has incentivized Maxwell not to share any information that might be damaging to him.

According to prosecutors, Maxwell has shown a willingness to lie. She was initially charged with two counts of perjury as part of the case against her. (Those counts were dropped from the initial trial, and prosecutors opted not to pursue them in another proceeding to avoid re-traumatizing the victims.) In the sentencing memo, prosecutors allege that Maxwell demonstrated a "significant pattern of dishonest conduct" and "facts shift when it serves [Maxwell's] interests."

Will Trump actually pardon Maxwell? No one knows. But Trump very clearly wants Maxwell to think that she might receive a pardon.

New York Times, Midtown Manhattan Shooting: Gunman Fatally Shoots Officer and 3 Others in Midtown Manhattan Office Tower, Ed Shanahan, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Maria Cramer, July 29, 2025. The gunman, armed with an assault rifle, walked into the lobby and killed a police officer and two others. He killed another person on the 33rd floor before turning his gun on himself.Police officers stand guard at an intersection.

A gunman armed with an assault-style rifle walked into a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper on Monday evening and began firing, killing a New York City police officer, fatally shooting three other people and critically wounding a fifth before killing himself, officials said.

Three of the four people killed were shot in the building’s lobby as the gunman sprayed the area with bullets, Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said at a news conference. The fourth was killed on an upper floor after the gunman took the elevator there, Ms. Tisch said. He then shot himself in the chest, she said.

Tenants of the building where the shooting occurred, 345 Park Avenue, went into lockdown mode as fear and anxiety coursed through their offices at what should have been close to the end of another sweltering summer day.

Darin Laing, who works in the building, said he had walked out with a colleague at about 6:30 p.m. to grab dinner nearby before heading back to work. Within seconds, he heard about 20 gunshots in rapid succession.

“My co-worker was like, ‘Did you hear that, did you hear that?’” he said, adding that he had spun around to see what looked like smoke coming from inside the building.

Then he heard screams and saw men and women in business attire bursting through the doors, swarming the block and sprinting in every direction, crying out as they ran.

The slain officer, who was in uniform and working at the building in a security role, was identified as Didarul Islam, 36. An immigrant from Bangladesh, he had been with the department for three and a half years, Mayor Eric Adams said at the news conference. Officer Islam and his wife had two children and were expecting their third, Ms. Tisch said.

“He made the ultimate sacrifice, shot in cold blood wearing a uniform that stood for the promise he made to this city,” she said. The names of the other victims were not immediately released because their families had not yet been notified, Ms. Tisch said.

The shooting occurred less than eight months and only a 15-minute walk from the site of another high-profile Midtown attack: the murder of a health insurance executive who, the authorities say, was killed by a man angry over what he felt were the health care system’s inequities.

July 28

 

Naeema Abu al-Foul with her 2-year-old son Yazan, in Gaza City on July 19. Their family could not find enough food to feed him, and hospitals have told them that they cannot provide inpatient care (Photo by.Saher Alghorra for The New York Times).

New York Times, No Meals, Fainting Nurses, Dwindling Baby Formula: Starvation Haunts Gaza Hospitals, Patrick Kingsley, Bilal Shbair and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, July 28, 2025 (print ed.). After Israeli restrictions on aid, hunger has risen across Gaza. Doctors and nurses, struggling to find food themselves, lack the resources to stem the surge.

In several of the hospitals still functioning in Gaza, nurses are fainting from hunger and dehydration. Managers often cannot provide meals for patients or medical staff. Doctors are running low on formula for newborn babies, in some cases giving them water alone.

And at least three major hospitals lack the nutritional fluids needed to properly treat malnourished children and adults.

Those scenes were described in interviews starting Friday with seven doctors — four from Gaza, and three volunteers from Australia, Britain and the United States. All of them worked this past week in four of the territory’s main hospitals.

After months of warnings, international agencies, experts and doctors say starvation is now sweeping across Gaza amid restrictions on aid imposed by Israel for months. At least 56 Palestinians died this month of starvation in the territory, nearly half of the total such deaths since the war began 22 months ago, according to data released on Saturday by the Gaza Health Ministry.

As starvation rises, medical institutions and staff, already struggling to treat war wounds and illness, are now grappling with rising cases of malnourishment.

Weak and dizzy, medics are passing out in the wards, where colleagues revive them with saline and glucose drips. Persistently short of basic tools such as antibiotics and painkillers, doctors are also running out of the special intravenous drips used to feed depleted patients.

In all four hospitals, the doctors described how they are increasingly unable to save malnourished babies and are instead forced to simply manage their decline. The babies are too weak to be flooded with nutrients, which could overload their system and cause them to suffer “refeeding syndrome,” which could kill them.

In some cases, the fluids that the doctors can safely give to the babies are not enough to prevent them from dying.

“I have seen ones that are imminently about to pass away,” said Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, an American surgeon who has been volunteering since early July at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. The babies were brought to the hospital “starving and malnourished,” Dr. Sleemi said in a phone interview on Friday, “and they haven’t been able to get them back from the brink.”

 

A young mother, in a dark dress and pink head scarf, feeds a bottle to her malnourished child. Hanin Barghouth with her 3-month-old daughter, Salam, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza this week. At birth, her doctor said, Salam weighed roughly 6.6 pounds, and three months later, she weighs only 8.8 pounds — at least three pounds underweight (Photo by Bilal Shbair for The New York Times.)

New York Times, Middle East Crisis: ‘Revenge Is Not a Policy’: Israelis Voice Dissent Against the War in Gaza, Isabel Kershner, July 28, 2025. After a long silence, prominent Israelis and activists are increasingly raising alarms about potential war crimes being carried out by the government.

Abhorrence of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has resonated for months in capitals and in university campuses abroad. Now, a growing number of Israelis are speaking out against what they describe as atrocities carried out in their name in the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli protesters are holding aloft portraits of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. Academics and authors, politicians and retired military leaders are accusing the Israeli government of indiscriminate killing and war crimes.

In the early months of the war, the vast majority of Israelis considered the offensive a just and necessary response to the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, even if they were skeptical that the government’s long-term goal of eliminating Hamas was attainable, opinion polls showed.

Despite that, a majority of Israelis have long wanted a deal that would end the war in exchange of the release of all the hostages still held in Gaza and relieve soldiers exhausted by months of deadly conflict, according to the polls.

But in recent months, a small but increasingly vocal minority has made anguished calls to end the war on moral grounds, even if many Israelis aren’t even aware such protests are even happening. Many of the protesters may have supported Israel’s right to self-defense after the Hamas attack, but many now say it has gone way too far and contravenes their values.

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: President Cites Hunger in Gaza as He Meets With Starmer, Michael D. Shear and Luke Broadwater, July 28, 2025. President Trump said that children in Gaza “look very hungry,” indicating disagreement with Israel over the conditions there. Mr. Trump also called on Russia to end the war in Ukraine in less than two weeks, as he opened talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain.

Here’s the latest.

President Trump said on Monday that children in Gaza “look very hungry” and that “we have to get the kids fed,” indicating disagreement with Israeli officials who have denied that anyone is starving there, as he opened a day of talks in Scotland with Britain’s prime minister.

Mr. Trump also indicated frustration with President Vladimir V. Putin and said he had decided to shorten a 50-day deadline he had given Russia on July 14 to end the war in Ukraine. He said that the new deadline would be 10 or 12 days from Monday.

Mr. Trump’s comments on two conflicts that have ground on despite his campaign pledges to bring them to a swift end came as he hosted Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, left, at the two golf courses he owns in Scotland. The leaders were expected to discuss the wars as well as tariffs, a day after Mr. Trump reached a deal with the European Union designed to avoid a costly economic war with America’s biggest trading bloc.

Mr. Trump said he did not “particularly” agree with a recent assertion by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that there was no starvation in Gaza. But he complained that no one had thanked him for supplying aid to the embattled enclave and falsely accused other nations of having given no money to help prevent the humanitarian crisis there.

Just days ago, the Trump administration said it had approved $30 million in funding for a fledgling aid distribution system in Gaza backed by Israel and run mostly by American contractors, which has seen deadly violence erupt near its distribution sites.

But humanitarian groups around the world say the amount of food needs to increase substantially after months in which the Israeli government imposed a near total blockade of food and medicine into Gaza. Mr. Trump on Monday claimed that “no other nation gave money.” In fact, as of January, the European Union had spent about $605 million on aid to Gaza since 2023, according to the European Commission.

The two leaders were meeting at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Turnberry and were expected to travel later on Monday to the other side of Scotland for dinner at the president’s other club, in Aberdeen. There, they are expected to resume efforts to resolve a dispute about U.S. tariffs on British steel and aluminum, which remain at 25 percent. In June, Britain and the United States signed an agreement to resolve other trade issues, with both sides saying the deal would benefit both countries.

 

The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump Waging War Against Blue States and Cities, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 28, 2025. So much for "states’ rights."

A federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois on Friday threw out the government’s lawsuit claiming federal law preempts local laws limiting cooperation with Trump’s mass deportation effort. (The latter are improperly labeled “sanctuary city laws.” Localities are not claiming federal law is inapplicable, but rather, as discussed below, are declining to provide shock troops for Trump’s police state.) It was the latest round, and latest MAGA defeat, in Donald Trump’s war against states that resist his cruel, lawless, and dangerous agenda.

Trump’s war against blue states is central to his dictatorial ambitions. To achieve unlimited control, he must subjugate independent sources of power and information—from TV network news operations to universities to civil servants to Congress itself. Ironically (for a party that once fetishized states’ rights), Trump’s MAGA GOP consistently seeks to obliterate federalism and force states—generally blue ones—to do his bidding. 

The scope of Trump’s onslaught against blue states is stunning. His vendetta against them played out in his determination to override California’s emissions regulations. His war continued with the big, ugly bill, which prevents states from filling the $1T hole in federal Medicaid spending by raising their own funds. (The bill originally contained another provision to prevent states from regulating AI, an infringement on state authority that Democrats narrowly defeated.) Most recently, Trump’s homelessness diktat threatens to yank funding from cities and states that do not follow his command to criminalize homelessness.

Moreover, Trump’s assault on federalism is a critical aspect of his militarized mass deportation operation. (Under the executive decree that he first directed against California, Trump deployed Marines—who have since withdrawn because they had nothing to do—and nationalized the California National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes.)

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Lindsay Jenkins for the Northern District of Illinois slapped down Trump’s effort to force Illinois and local jurisdictions to facilitate Trump’s vicious mass deportation plan. The Trump regime sued Illinois, Cook County, the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the City of Chicago, and individual officials including Gov. JB Pritzker, claiming that federal law preempts state and local policies that prohibit state and local government officials from “complying with detainers [administrative warrants], communicating with immigration agents before releasing noncitizens, providing immigration agents access to noncitizens in custody, and giving immigration agents information (such as contact information and release dates) about noncitizens.” In its bogus legal action, the Trump regime misapplied federal immigration law permitting local cooperation with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to argue that states and localities are obligated to do the feds’ bidding.

The scope of Trump’s onslaught against blue states is stunning. His vendetta against them played out in his determination to override California’s emissions regulations. His war continued with the big, ugly bill, which prevents states from filling the $1T hole in federal Medicaid spending by raising their own funds. (The bill originally contained another provision to prevent states from regulating AI, an infringement on state authority that Democrats narrowly defeated.) Most recently, Trump’s homelessness diktat threatens to yank funding from cities and states that do not follow his command to criminalize homelessness.

Moreover, Trump’s assault on federalism is a critical aspect of his militarized mass deportation operation. (Under the executive decree that he first directed against California, Trump deployed Marines—who have since withdrawn because they had nothing to do—and nationalized the California National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes.) On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Lindsay Jenkins for the Northern District of Illinois slapped down Trump’s effort to force Illinois and local jurisdictions to facilitate Trump’s vicious mass deportation plan. The Trump regime sued Illinois, Cook County, the Cook County Board of Commissioners, the City of Chicago, and individual officials including Gov. JB Pritzker, claiming that federal law preempts state and local policies that prohibit state and local government officials from “complying with detainers [administrative warrants], communicating with immigration agents before releasing noncitizens, providing immigration agents access to noncitizens in custody, and giving immigration agents information (such as contact information and release dates) about noncitizens.” In its bogus legal action, the Trump regime misapplied federal immigration law permitting local cooperation with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to argue that states and localities are obligated to do the feds’ bidding.  

 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago (NBC). 

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Fumes and Fumbles, Bill Kristol, right, July 28, 2025.  On the Epstein scandal, his stonewall is turning to rubble. The Stonewall Will Not Hold.

Good news from the Washington Post this morning: A long feature article with the headline, “Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines.” I like the postmodern touch of having a headline about Trump fuming about headlines. But I like even more the fact that, as the Post reports, Trump is “increasingly frustrated” and is expressing “exasperation” at his administration’s handling of the Epstein matter.

It’s good to start the day with a cup of coffee and a report of Trump being unhappy. Maybe the arc of the moral universe really does bend to justice? Isn’t justice served by the unhappiness of the unjust?

But let me put these metaphysical matters aside, and make a more mundane and practical point: People tend not to make good decisions when fuming and frustrated and exasperated. They tend to make mistakes.

And Trump and his minions are making mistakes.

It’s pretty clear that once the Trump administration decided on a strategy of stonewalling and coverup, presumably motivated by a determination not to let the world see whatever the Epstein files contain about Trump, they should have stuck to it. They would have had a rough few weeks. But by simply repeating over and over again the mantra of the July 6 statement that after reviewing the files, “it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” they would most likely have ridden out the storm without too much damage.

It’s pretty simple: If you’re going to stonewall, stonewall. Especially if you don’t face the threat of a special counsel or investigation by congressional committees because you’ve succeeded in staffing your administration with shameless loyalists and the party you dominate holds majorities in both houses of Congress. But Trump lacked the discipline to do what most likely would have been to his advantage.

And so the administration scrambled to distract its own supporters by releasing other files, such as those about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and announcing other investigations of Obama administration figures. But that just raised the question: Why not release the Epstein files as well and investigate what’s hidden there?

Other attempts to quell the furor by providing more information have only, as the Post put it, “spurred more questions.” The one piece of information released with the July 6 statement, billed as the “full raw” video from outside Epstein’s prison cell, had a three-minute gap. Trump’s subsequent order to the Justice Department to petition courts in Florida and New York to release grand jury transcripts was a kind of acknowledgment that in fact more information could be provided and might be informative for the public.

And Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s trip to Florida to meet privately with Ghislaine Maxwell not only brought a renewed focus to Maxwell’s horrific role in the crimes she and Epstein committed, but also left questions unanswered and matters unsettled and unresolved. In fact after his meeting, Blanche, left, even seemed to promise that there would be new disclosures: “The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time.”

The key to a successful stonewall is not to have any gaps. (Otherwise they’d call it a “picket fence” strategy.) The key to a successful coverup is to bring down the curtain and ignore grumbling from the audience. The Trump administration has instead suggested there will be more information revealed, that there will be further acts to the drama. In such circumstances, people look forward—partly out of a desire for justice, partly out of simple curiosity—to finding out what’s going to happen next.

The awful nature of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes, Trump’s proximity to them, the fact that the victims haven’t gotten justice and co-conspirators haven’t been held to account, along with Bondi’s and others’ promises to bring the truth to light—all of this may have doomed even a well-executed coverup. We don’t know.

What we do know is that we’re in a situation where unnerved Republican members of Congress are heading back to their districts, Democrats are energized (as my colleague Lauren Egan details in her newsletter last night), reporters are getting leaks from dissatisfied sources, and the joint issue of Epstein’s crimes and Trump’s coverup is alive and well.

Can Trump stitch the coverup back together? Perhaps. That depends on what he does. But it also depends on what the rest of us do.

 

 

Steady with Dan Rather, Political Commentary: Calling Out The Con Man-in-Chief, Dan Rather, right, Steady founder, author and former CBS News evening anchor and managing editor, The need to stop normalizing Trump’s corruption.

Donald Trump is currently on what can only be described as a boondoggle: a European vacation and sales trip at his own golf resort, paid for by us, American taxpayers.

He is in Scotland for a “working visit,” according to the White House. Other than a few meetings with European leaders, who are traveling to Trump rather than vice versa, he is playing golf and shilling for his new course, named for his Scottish-born mother. That’s right: His mother was an immigrant. You can’t pay for the kind of press coverage he’ll get at the ribbon cutting for the Mary Anne MacLeod Golf Course.

This junket is just the latest example of Trump’s enriching himself at taxpayer expense. The cost of a foreign trip, even one only five days long, is in the tens of millions. Plus, the hundreds of people who travel with him — his entourage, the Secret Service, and the White House press corps — will all be staying and paying for rooms at his pricey luxury resort.

With all the noise produced by the sitting president to distract us from his side hustles and dishonesty, it is important to keep calling out the duplicity. So much of the media has become inured to it and therefore doesn’t report on his growing list of abuses. In 2018, a similar trip to Scotland kicked up such a fuss that it prompted Congress to investigate.

“The grift in the [first] Trump administration was the greatest in American history, and it is orders of magnitude worse in the second administration. He’s misdirecting policy and taxpayer assets to serve his personal interest, rather than those of the American people,” according to Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen.

The golfing trip to Scotland is just a more expensive example of something Trump does most weekends. The website DidTrumpGolfToday.com tracks, you guessed it, how often the president hits the links. So far this term, he has played one of his courses in Florida or New Jersey 45 times, a 37% increase from his first term. The website estimates the cost of these trips is at least $63 million.

A compliant Congress, an indifferent press corps, and a generous number of “yes” men and women have emboldened the president, making the Trump 2.0 con game considerably worse than the first time around. There are so many examples to choose from. Here are some of the most egregious.

The Qatari “Gift”

Remember that $400 million “gift” from Qatar to Trump in the form of a 747 jumbo jet? Trump’s vanity project and the not-so-soon-to-be Air Force One is currently sitting in a hangar in San Antonio awaiting extensive renovations that could cost as much as $1 billion.

This blatant attempt by the Qataris to curry favor with Trump is obvious to just about everyone, but no one, it seems, is doing anything to stop it. Congress just rubber-stamped the “transfer” of $934 million from an over-budget, behind-schedule U.S. nuclear program to a heretofore unreported “unnamed classified project.” According to The New York Times, that money will be used to completely overhaul the decades-old jet, including security and military upgrades, as well as a Trump-approved facelift, complete with gold adornments.

The renovations could take up to two years, meaning it would function as Air Force One for as little as a year. Then the plane reverts to private citizen Trump and his hypothetical presidential library. Meanwhile Donald Trump Jr. is cutting deals with Qatar to break ground on new Trump resorts in the country.Humanitarian Inaction

Trump’s notable disregard for people in crisis was on full display at press availabilities in Scotland. Trump was asked about the starving children in Gaza, calling the situation “terrible.” No kidding. He then complained he wasn’t sufficiently thanked for sending a small aid package.

Later, when pressed about Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that no one is starving in Gaza, Trump said, “I don’t know. I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”

He stopped short of offering more aid but promised that the next time he spoke with Netanyahu, he would insist Israel do more. “I want him to make sure they get the food.”

At the same time, Trump slashed funding for UNICEF, the United Nations agency that provides humanitarian aid for at-risk children around the world. The U.S. funding, which accounts for 20% of UNICEF’s budget, is far less than the cost of turning a Qatari jet into Air Force One.

The “Deal” with the European Union

On Monday the administration announced it had finally reached a deal with the European Union on tariffs, trumpeting it as a big win for the United States.Tariffs on most goods from the E.U., our biggest trading partner, will jump from 1.2% to 15%, driving prices up. We will shoulder most of that cost, while the money generated will go to the U.S. Treasury. It is, plain and simple, a new tax on U.S. consumers.

Justin Wolfers, an economist and professor at the University of Michigan, pointed out the irony of the situation on X. “American President raises taxes on Americans across a wide range of goods; European Union President announces tax cuts for Europeans.”

Because the E.U. exports more to the U.S. than it imports, Trump sought to punish the 27-nation alliance and level the trade imbalance by imposing the higher tariff. He claims it will expand U.S. manufacturing and force foreign producers to contribute to the American economy. But that is widely considered to be an unlikely outcome.

The biggest E.U. exports are pharmaceuticals, industrial machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, cars, and car parts. It would take years and billions of dollars to build the factories and infrastructure to supplant the European producers. Meanwhile, French cheese and Italian wine will cost a lot more.

Epstein’s Partner in Crime

It seems Trump can’t get out from under the Jeffrey Epstein story, and therefore neither can we. Over the weekend, Todd Blanche, Trump’s assistant attorney general — and former personal defense lawyer — met with Ghislaine Maxwell, who procured underage girls for Epstein.

Maxwell is currently in the fifth year of a 20-year sentence for sexual exploitation and abuse of children. The two-day interview is part of Trump’s effort to quell displeasure among the MAGA faithful by gathering and releasing any credible evidence about others who were involved with Epstein.

While the interview may have been meant to tamp down the chatter, it is having the opposite effect. Trump could pardon Maxwell in exchange for testimony. While that testimony would be suspicious at best — she is a known perjurer — Maxwell would have all the credibility of Al Capone.

Trump claims the idea of a pardon hasn’t come up. “Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it,” Trump said in Scotland on Monday.

Trump lies to the American people with such frequency it is difficult to keep up. And so do the people who speak for him. “It’s frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently said with a straight face. “This White House holds ourselves to the highest of ethical standards.”

Trump has made hundreds of millions of dollars selling everything from meme coins and cryptocurrency to bibles and sneakers, not to mention pardons and access. While he is profiteering from the presidency, he is cheapening the office, while much of the country — including most of the press — sits back and watches it happen.

It is imperative to keep reminding ourselves, and others, of the many transactions and transgressions from a president who has doubled his net worth in less than a year, to an estimated $7 billion and counting.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: How Axios rebranded conservative ideology as objectivity, Judd Legum, right, July 28, 2025. The biggest lie in media is the one that it tells about itself.

Journalists at many mainstream media publications insist that their coverage is objective and unbiased. This isn't true.

Two of the biggest purveyors of this lie are Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, the co-founders of Axios. The Axios audience "Bill of Rights" promises that "all employees are asked to refrain from taking/advocating for public positions on political topics." The document also pledges that Axios will "never have an opinion section." Axios seeks to garner trust by positioning itself as neutral on all political topics.

VandeHei has promoted this view repeatedly in his public commentary. In a December 2024 speech, VandeHei advocated for a "clinical" approach to journalism, one that is detached from any ideology. In a May 2024 CNN interview, VandeHei said that the best way for reporters to restore trust is to keep their opinions to themselves and "stop popping off in ways that make people distrust the work that you do."

John Harris, who started Politico with Allen and VandHei, wrote that the pair "cleave to a scientific ideal of journalistic detachment, the way a surgeon cannot tolerate even the slightest bacteria on his instruments."

So, how did Allen and VandeHei cover the first six months of Trump's presidency? "President Trump, in terms of raw accomplishments, crushed his first six months in historic ways," the pair wrote in a piece published last Wednesday. Allen and VandeHei listed Trump's "wins": "Massive tax cuts. Record-low border crossings. Surging tariff revenue. Stunning air strikes in Iran. Modest inflation." They describe the last six months as "the very best chapter of his presidency."

But Allen and VandeHei are puzzled that, despite all this success, Trump's approval ratings are very low. They offer this explanation: Americans "seem tired of all the winning." Ultimately, they blame Trump's unpopularity on the fickleness of voters who can't figure out what they want. "[V]oters demand change," Allen and VandeHei argue, "then flinch when it arrives too fast or too hard."

Notably, in the piece, Allen and VandeHei cite conversations with "Trump advisers," "a longtime Trump aide," and "Trump aides" concerning Trump's record over the first six months. There is no mention of views expressed by Trump's critics or even anyone not working for Trump.

VandeHei and Allen have repeatedly written columns presenting Trump's second-term economic agenda as beneficial — "Washington's open for business" and "America's 'uncorked' economy."

Whether capitalistic innovation should be "unrestrained" or whether government has grown "too big" are core political debates in the United States. Some people, like VandeHei and Allen, believe America should be deregulated to allow maximum flexibility for the wealthy to deploy their capital. (This core right-wing belief ignores the reality that rapid deregulation has created numerous economic crises over the course of American history.) Others believe that in a time of extreme economic inequality, a more robust government role is necessary to achieve other priorities, including poverty alleviation, environmental protection, public health, and safety.

VandeHei and Allen have beliefs, but claim to be objective because they consider their right-wing beliefs, particularly on economic issues, to constitute fundamental truths. People with differing conceptions about the role of the free market and the regulatory state, on the other hand, are dismissed as biased or misguided.

Pretending that expressions of right-wing economic ideology are “clinical reporting” is quite lucrative. In 2018, one of Axios' launch partners was Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire David Koch, who spends hundreds of millions of dollars promoting Republican candidates and causes. While at Politico, Allen was accused of including paid ads in his newsletters for the Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest corporate lobby, without proper disclosure. The Chamber of Commerce ads, according to Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple, were indistinguishable from content written by Allen promoting the Chamber of Commerce. There were similar issues with content and advertising about Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and the National Retail Federation.

In other words, corporate America, which shares Allen and VandeHei's views on government and regulation, spends millions supporting their work through advertising. Allen and VandeHei's work, on the other hand, is often indistinguishable from corporate advertising and PR.

This approach has made Allen and VandeHei very rich. In 2022, they sold Axios to Cox Enterprises for $525 million. The deal was made as Cox Enterprises appeared to be exiting the media business. But the Cox family, which privately owns the company, has a "long history" of supporting conservative political causes.

 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 27, 2025 [U.S. 'Manifest Destiny' to Expand], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 28, 2025. On July 23 the X account of the Department of Homeland Security posted an image of an 1872 oil painting by John Gast, titled American Progress (shown above).

Gast represented the American East on the right side of the painting with light skies, a rising sun, and the bustling port of New York City, full of ships. He painted the American West in darkness, through which bison and Indigenous Americans flee the people in the middle of the painting: white hunters, farmers, settlers, and stagecoach riders. Over the scene floats a giant, blonde Lady Liberty, evidently moving west, carrying a schoolbook and a telegraph wire being laced on poles along a train track behind her.

Over the reproduced image, the Department of Homeland Security account wrote: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”

From the time Gast painted it, American Progress has been interpreted as a representation of the concept of manifest destiny: the mid-nineteenth-century notion that God had destined the people of the United States of America to spread democracy to the rest of at least the North American continent, and possibly South America as well. A number of people who saw the Homeland Security post saw it as the Trump administration’s embrace of that ideology.

Magazine editor John O’Sullivan coined the term “manifest destiny” in the July 1845 issue of Democratic Review, a magazine dedicated to defining what it meant to live in a democratic republic. O’Sullivan’s concept of manifest destiny was different from the constant expansionism of Euro-Americans before his time, in part because he was defending a specific partisan policy: Congress’s annexation of Texas in March 1845 and the apparent determination of Democratic president James K. Polk to seize more territory from Mexico. The Democrats’ political opponents, the Whigs, opposed the land grab, and Democrats justified their position on the grounds that they were simply honoring God’s plan.

The spread of democracy—and, with it, American greatness—was both the right and the duty of Americans, they claimed, overriding the despotisms of monarchs. Along with that democratic system would travel an economic system that developed resources for private owners, the Protestant religion, and a cultural system that privileged white people. Such a system was best for everyone, even those people whose land, lives, and culture would be absorbed by the movement. Democrats constructed a strong sense of U.S. nationalism around this idea and its corollary: the extension of human enslavement.

Manifest destiny both reflected and fed the era’s greed and racism. But there was a key political element in it that adherents to today’s right-wing political movement appear to reject. At the heart of manifest destiny, beneath the language of “civilizing” other peoples and the embrace of human enslavement, was the concept that the lands the U.S. acquired would become states equal to the older states in the Union and that the people in the lands the U.S. absorbed would eventually become Americans equal to those who had been in the United States for a generation or more.

“New territory is spread out for us to subdue and fertilize,” Daniel S. Dickinson of New York told the Senate; “new races are presented for us to civilize, educate and absorb; new triumphs for us to achieve for the cause of freedom.”

In the 1840s—indeed until the last few years—Americans accepted that the United States was based on an idea. Even in that era of crabbed racism that excluded Black Americans and women and circumscribed others, lawmakers embraced the idea that the U.S. could expand to include new people. In the immigration boom of the 1840s and 1850s, that was no small thing.

Rather than advancing the concept of manifest destiny—as deeply problematic as that would be—the Trump administration’s reposting of American Progress seems designed instead to harness American traditional symbols in order to advance the idea of “blood and soil” citizenship popularized in 1930s Germany.

“Blood and soil” ideology claimed true Germans were defined by race within a specific land. Nazi propagandist Richard Walther Darré reflected those ideas when he celebrated agricultural life and what he claimed were rural values. Elevating those who had lived in Germany for generations, he suggested that German blood was mystically connected to German soil. “[T]he German soul with its warmth is rooted in its agriculture and in a real sense always grew out of it,” Darré wrote. To maintain that soul, he wrote, Germany needed to preserve racial purity and reject foreign blood. To that end, it needed to protect pure marriages and encourage the right people to have lots of children: the main job of a wife was to produce children. Unless the country took drastic measures, he wrote, the German “race” might become extinct.

The details of the “blood and soil” ideology might not be clear to MAGA today, but its adherents definitely get the concept: at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, white nationalists shouted, “Blood and soil.”

Those ideas are now advanced by MAGA leadership. On July 5, 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance told an audience at the Claremont Institute he rejected the idea that being an American simply meant agreeing with the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence. He complained not only that such a definition would include too many people, but also that it would exclude those who disagreed with it, even if their ancestors had fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. 

New York Times, Trump and the E.U. Have a Blueprint for a Giant Trade Deal. Is it Good for Europe? Jeanna Smialek, July 28, 2025. President Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, clearly agreed on one thing as they announced the outlines of a trade deal between their two massive economies. It would be huge.

Ms. von der Leyen had emphasized the potential scale during negotiations, and she reiterated it after the two sides announced an agreement Sunday, calling it “the biggest trade deal ever.”

Mr. Trump picked up that talking point and ran with it. “This is the biggest of them all,” he said.

For a president who often fixates on superlatives, the new pact offered an attractive talking point. The United States and the 27-nation bloc have the largest economic relationship in the world by many measures, trading nearly $2 trillion in goods and services per year. But while that may have helped Ms. von der Leyen to get an agreement over the finish line — despite Mr. Trump’s longstanding skepticism toward Europe — a giant deal is not necessarily a good deal for Europe.

Many European companies will be worse off. About 70 percent of European products will now face a 15 percent tariff when they enter the United States, according to senior European Commission officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of the package before it is finalized. That would be a major increase in charges. Since consumers often pay for higher tariffs, American shoppers are likely to shoulder at least some of that additional cost.

It’s also likely that American companies stand to benefit from other parts of the agreement — including the European Union’s promise to spend more on U.S. energy products and defense equipment.

But much is uncertain, and reactions in Europe were sharply divided. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and some business groups offered statements of cautious support, voicing hope that the agreement would prevent an escalation in pain and uncertainty.

Others were more critical. François Bayrou, France’s prime minister, said on social media that it was a “dark day” for Europe.

“My initial assessment: Not satisfactory,” Bernd Lange, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, wrote on social media. “This is a lopsided deal.”

American tariffs on European Union goods were previously in the low single-digits on average. And just a few weeks ago, the bloc hoped to negotiate a 10 percent across-the-board rate.

Given that, a 15 percent tariff on goods from the European Union marks a notable step up.

Still, the rate would be in line with what other American trading partners, including Japan, have agreed. It is also much lower than the 30 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump had threatened to impose on the bloc starting on Aug. 1.

“When you prepare for a hurricane, somehow the storm feels like a relief. That is how the deal currently feels,” said Carsten Brzeski, the global head of macroeconomics for ING Research.

Mr. Brzeski added that the outlined agreement could be seen as “damage control.”

One sector that will welcome the deal is the car industry. The 15 percent rate is higher than the 2.5 percent that was in place before 2025. But it would significantly lower the tariff that European carmakers, including Volkswagen and BMW, have faced since Mr. Trump imposed a 25 percent levy on foreign-made cars and car parts in April. European companies, which sent vehicles worth 38.5 billion euros ($45 billion) to the United States last year, have been suffering from the uncertainty caused by Mr. Trump’s tariffs and threats.

Both sides hailed the agreement as the biggest ever. But it will come at a cost to the European Union, and many details have yet to be nailed down.

New York Times, News analysis: Europe Accepts a Trump Trade Deal With Other Worries in Mind, Jim Tankersley, July 28, 2025. The framework agreement will likely not do much for economic growth on either side. But it avoids new fissures on other foreign policy issues, particularly the war in Ukraine.

Survive and advance. That phrase, favored by sports teams in big tournaments, sums up Europe’s approach to the trade negotiations it just wrapped with the Trump administration.

For Europe, surviving in the first year of President Trump’s second term means reaching an agreement on a trade deal that almost certainly won’t help the continental economy — but isn’t as bad as it could have been.

Advancing means keeping Mr. Trump engaged in the foreign policy issues that have preoccupied many European leaders more this summer than their own domestic economic struggles. Those issues include the fate of the Iranian nuclear program, the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and, most important, Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russia’s invasion.

“It’s not only about the trade: It’s about security, it’s about Ukraine, it’s about current geopolitical volatility,” Maros Sefcovic, the European Union trade commissioner, said at a briefing in Brussels on Monday. He said that he could not go into the details of everything that was discussed in the room with Mr. Trump on Sunday, “but I can assure it was not just about the trade.”

The trade deal is centered on a tariff of 15 percent on most goods imposed by the United States on imports from the European Union. It reflects a sort of risk aversion from leaders like Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission; Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany; and Emmanuel Macron, the president of France.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President to Host Starmer at His Golf Courses in Scotland, Michael D. Shear, July 28, 2025. The leaders were expected to discuss a dispute over U.S. tariffs on British metals, as well as the crisis in Gaza. President Trump is fresh off a win after reaching a preliminary trade deal with the European Union.

President Trump will host Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain at his two golf courses in Scotland on Monday, the day after announcing a deal with the European Union designed to avoid a costly economic war with America’s biggest trading bloc.

British officials said they expected the all-day agenda to include discussion of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the grinding war in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump announced on Sunday that Europe had agreed to tariffs of 15 percent on automobiles and most other E.U. goods, after meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U.’s executive branch. The tariffs are higher than the 10 percent duty on most British goods that Britain, which is not in the European Union, agreed to in a deal that Mr. Starmer and Mr. Trump struck in May.

The 27-nation bloc also agreed to buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy and invest $600 billion in the United States, Mr. Trump said.

Trade is among the topics that Mr. Trump and Mr. Starmer are expected to discuss when they meet first at Mr. Trump’s Turnberry golf club on the west coast of Scotland and then travel to the other side of the country for dinner at the president’s other club, in Aberdeen.

The two leaders are expected to resume efforts to resolve a dispute about U.S. tariffs on British steel and aluminum, which remain at 25 percent. In June, Britain and the United States signed an agreement to resolve other trade issues, with both sides saying the deal would benefit both countries.

Mr. Trump, previewing his discussions with Mr. Starmer to reporters on Sunday, said he expected a lot of discussion on Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

In recent days, Mr. Starmer has ratcheted up his criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, though he has stopped short of joining President Emmanuel Macron of France, who announced last week that France would formally recognize a Palestinian state. In a statement on Friday, Mr. Starmer said, “The appalling scenes in Gaza are unrelenting,” adding that the denial of humanitarian aid and “Israel’s disproportionate military escalation in Gaza are all indefensible.”

New York Times, Florida’s New Attorney General, a DeSantis Appointee, Is Making Waves, Patricia Mazzei, July 28, 2025. James Uthmeier has followed an aggressive playbook similar to that of Gov. Ron DeSantis, for whom he used to work behind the scenes as chief of staff.

As chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, James Uthmeier worked behind the scenes to cement the Republican governor’s national reputation as a culture warrior. Mr. DeSantis rewarded him this year by appointing him attorney general.

It was Mr. Uthmeier who announced last month that the state was opening its own immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades. He made international headlines by referring to the swampy, remote location as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The detention center’s first weeks have been chaotic, and something of a mystery. But it has amounted to a political coup for Mr. Uthmeier. President Trump visited before it opened and praised the attorney general.

“You do a very good job,” Mr. Trump told him during a visit to the center early this month. Then, referring to Mr. Uthmeier, Mr. Trump remarked to others in attendance, “He’s even a good-looking guy. The guy’s got a future.”

The moment offered Mr. Uthmeier hope that Mr. Trump might consider endorsing him when he runs for a full term as attorney general next year, despite Mr. Uthmeier’s close ties to Mr. DeSantis, who ran against Mr. Trump in last year’s presidential primary. And it raised the profile of Mr. Uthmeier, a 37-year-old lawyer who has never been on a ballot, just as the term-limited Mr. DeSantis’s power wanes.

Florida Republicans have speculated that primary races in next year’s midterms could pit a slate of Trump-backed candidates against a slate backed by Mr. DeSantis. 

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: This Is Not a Drill: Infiltrate Your Local Dems Before It’s Too Late, Thom Hartmann, right, July 28, 2025. This is the overlooked role that launched a revolution — and it’s still wide open for progressives...

What if, lacking an organized resistance to fascism like we have had in previous eras (the civil rights movement, SDS, BLM, the Wobbly’s) the Democratic Party itself could play the role of producing radical, positive transformation across America?

Sound crazy? It’s actually happened twice.

The first time was in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt’ New Deal literally flipped our politics and the American economy upside down, turning us from a raw, harsh capitalist system to a democratic socialist system with Social Security, legalized unions, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, workplace safety rules, massive infrastructure construction, and millions of Americans being employed directly by the government to end poverty.

It happened again in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, producing Medicare, Medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting rights act, food stamps, low income housing, National Public Radio, a transformation of our educational system for the better, USAID, Job Corps, VISTA, Head Start, a major Social Security expansion, The National Endowment for the Arts, and what was essentially free college.

Sunday, I was on Ali Velshi’s show on MSNBC a conversation about protest movements. I pointed out that back in the 60s, when I was in SDS, there were a number of groups that were quite active, particularly on college campuses, but today most of them have been gutted or banned.

Black Lives Matter has disintegrated, the movement against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has led to universities rolling over and capitulating, and the #MeToo and abortion rights movements are essentially leaderless.

Which leaves the Democratic Party, as I mentioned on Ali’s show. Billionaires and racists turned the Republican Party into a neofascist protest party over the past decade; progressives and those of us who want to preserve democracy in America need to similarly says control of and radicalize the Democratic Party in the tradition of FDR and LBJ.

There is a vital lesson progressives must learn, which is how the far right took control of the Republican Party over a decade ago and forced the entire Conservative establishment to lurch so far to the Right that they’ve even dumped people like Liz Cheney and George W. Bush.

If progressives hope to have any shot at influencing today’s Democratic Party and kicking out the corporate sellout Democrats and replacing them with real-deal progressives, then we need to get to work right now to do exactly what the Tea Party did a decade and a half ago to take power.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Limits of Sprawl, Paul Krugman, right, July 28, 2025. Atlanta’s slowdown telling us something?

Today I want to mostly take a break from politics — but only mostly, because these days everything is political. Instead, I’m going to talk about versions of urbanization, inspired by a Wall Street Journal article about Atlanta.

As the Journal says, metropolitan Atlanta has experienced rapid population growth ever since the introduction of air conditioning. Why? Ingeneral, every metropolitan area has some kind of core competence that powers its economy — finance in New York, technology in the Bay Area, and so on.

Figuring out what Atlanta does for a living is a bit tricky: What do Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, and Delta have in common? But my guess is that it’s largely about logistics, with Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — the world’s busiest — playing a key role.

But Atlanta’s growth has been slowing recently, and last year, for the first time since these data started being collected, net domestic migration went negative. It’s a small decline, but startling for a city that was for decades a magnet for Americans leaving both small towns and coastal cities.

Why is Atlanta’s boom petering out? The Journal, and many other discussions, focus on two problems: Affordability and traffic. Both problems are clearly visible in the data. And I’d argue that they’re closely related. What we’re seeing in Atlanta, I’d suggest, are the limits of sprawl.

New York Times, Thailand and Cambodia Agree to Halt Fighting That Has Killed Dozens, Edward Wong and Sui-Lee Wee, July 28, 2025. U.S.-backed talks to end the border war, in which militaries have killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands, began on Monday in Malaysia.

Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a cease-fire starting at midnight on Monday, the leaders of both countries said, after the deadliest conflict between their two countries in more than a decade killed at least 36 people and prompted hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee the area.

Thailand’s acting prime minister, Phumtham Wechayachai, and Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Manet, shook hands with each other after holding talks in person for the first time since the fighting broke out five days ago along the countries’ disputed border. Since last Thursday, both countries have pounded each other with attacks, which at times included airstrikes and rockets fired.

July 27 

New York Times, Israel Says It Has Paused Some Military Activity in Gaza as Anger Grows Over Hunger, Aaron Boxerman, July 27, 2025. Operations in three parts of the enclave were temporarily halted on Sunday to allow more aid to enter the territory, the Israeli military said. It was unclear if the decision would relieve the hunger crisis in Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had paused military activity in parts of Gaza on Sunday to allow in international aid amid global outrage over the severe hunger faced by Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

The decision was a sharp reversal by Israel and followed growing international pressure over the dire conditions in Gaza, where nearly one in three people has not been eating for days on end, according to the United Nations World Food Program.

Aid agencies and many countries, including some of Israel’s traditional allies, say Israel is responsible for the desperate situation after first blocking and then restricting aid deliveries to Gaza for months.

Six Palestinians died of malnutrition-related causes over the past day, including two children, adding to a toll of more than 50 deaths in the past month, according to the Gaza health ministry. Doctors, nurses and medics tasked with caring for Gazans are themselves increasingly struggling to eat, and baby formula is in short supply.

Israel has blamed the United Nations and its partners, accusing them of failing to bring hundreds of truckloads of aid through Gaza’s border crossings. The United Nations says that while some aid is allowed in, Israel has thrown up a maze of bureaucratic obstacles and frequently rejects requests to coordinate deliveries, in addition to other challenges.

Israeli officials had also argued for months that Hamas was diverting humanitarian aid. But Israeli military officials later said that they had no proof that Hamas was systematically stealing U.N. relief supplies. 

New York Times, Preliminary Trade Deal Reached With E.U. After Months of Tense Talks, Ana Swanson, Jeanna Smialek and Melissa Eddy, July 27, 2025. The deal sets a 15 percent tariff on European goods imported to the U.S.

The European Union and the United States agreed on Sunday to a broad-brush trade deal that sets a 15 percent tariff on most goods, including cars, President Trump announced, at least temporarily bringing an end to months of tense negotiations with a bloc that is the United States’ single biggest source of imports.

Mr. Trump said that the European Union had agreed to purchase $750 billion of American energy and to increase its investment in the United States by more than $600 billion above current levels. He also said that the European Union would buy military equipment and that no tariffs would be imposed on some goods.

The president implied that the 50 percent tariff he had imposed on steel and aluminum globally would remain as is, saying it’s a “worldwide thing that stays the way it is.” Other details of the agreement were not immediately available.

The agreement will “rebalance, but enable trade on both sides,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said as she sat next to Mr. Trump as the leaders made the announcement.

“We made it,” Mr. Trump said.

Though the agreement appears to be a preliminary one that leaves many questions to be resolved, it could bring a measure of calm to one of the world’s most important economic relationships and allay fears of an escalating trade war. The European Union last year accounted for nearly $610 billion of the $3.3 trillion in goods imported by the United States.

The tariff rate is higher than the 10 percent tax that Europeans had been angling for, and that Mr. Trump applied to British goods. But 15 percent mirrors the main tariff rate of the U.S.-Japanese trade agreement that was announced last Tuesday, and is lower than the 19 and 20 percent rates imposed on several Southeast Asian countries.

The deal followed weeks of unpredictable talks. A month ago, the Europeans believed they were close to a deal, only to have Mr. Trump send them a letter on July 11 threatening a rate of 30 percent unless an agreement was reached by Aug. 1.

Even after that announcement, Ms. von Der Leyen stressed the importance of continuing talks and trying to reach a negotiated deal. But the European Union also continued working to put the finishing touches on a plan to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, one that could be enacted quickly if needed.

They finalized that raft of potential countermeasures last week.

The goal was to create leverage. And, if talks broke down, some of the 27 E.U. member states thought that having a plan to hit back was essential.

Bringing down the tariff on European auto exports was a sticking point for the Europeans, especially Germany, the largest E.U. economy. European automakers, which sent cars worth 38.5 billion euros ($45 billion) to the United States last year, have been suffering under the 27.5 percent tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump in April.

Pharmaceutical tariffs were another major issue in negotiations. The Trump administration threatened last month that it could raise tariffs on pharmaceuticals — Europe’s largest export to the United States — to 200 percent. Such a high tax would have been crushing for the industry. The governments did not immediately clarify what would happen to tariffs on pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Trump said on Sunday, ahead of his meeting with Ms. von der Leyen, that pharmaceuticals “are very special” and need to be made in the United States, even as he acknowledged that the United States would probably still import “a lot” of medicines from Europe.

 

Front Page of The National, Scotland's Largest-Circulation Newspaper, July 25, 2025.

Everybody Is Entitled To My Own Opinion, Commentary: Prfeznit...Gets the Scottish Welcome He Deserves, Jeff Tiedrich, right, July 27, 2025. Wouldn’t you love to see the worthless scribblers of America’s corporate-controlled media be this brutally honest for five whole seconds? 

 

There’s no denying it: Scotland hates America’s Mad King. Here’s just one of the many protest signs that greeted Donny.

 

That’s so adorable. the elderly golfer is pretending to be working.

 

The Real Michael Cohen, Commentary: Meidas Touch Network, South Park Just Nuked the Presidency, Michael Cohen, right, July 27, 2025. South Park didn’t just drag Trump; it detonated him. And Paramount let it happen. Was this political theater, corporate rebellion, or something darker?

 I’m about to let you in on a little secret; one I don’t often admit, especially not in the buttoned-up, scandal-stained circles I tend to frequent. I’ve been a fan of South Park since day one. That’s right. Through indictments, congressional hearings, prison time, and trials, I’ve never missed a season. I’ve laughed at the absurdity, cringed at the offensiveness, and marveled at just how close to the jugular Trey Parker and Matt Stone are willing to go; every damn time.

And oh Lord, Season 27 just nuked the playing field.

So here’s a riddle soaked in satire, corporate greed, and political dysfunction: What do you get when two irreverent animators cash in a $1.5 billion deal with a media conglomerate that’s begging for federal approval on a mega-merger; then promptly air the most blistering takedown of a sitting U.S. president since, well, ever?

You get South Park: Season 27, Episode 1. And oh shit, it’s not just offensive. It’s nuclear.

Picture this: President Trump, belly-up in bed with Satan; literally, whining about memes and the Epstein list, arguing with Justin Trudeau, and flashing his manhood they made so minuscule Satan can’t even see it. Welcome back, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. You’ve outdone yourselves. And maybe; just maybe, you’ve also outmaneuvered an entire media empire, a compliant FCC, and one very irate president.

The episode, titled “Sermon on the 'Mount,” aired July 23rd, the day after Parker and Stone sealed their billion and a half dollar streaming pact with Paramount Global. That’s not timing; that’s choreography. That’s the kind of high-level, Bond villain-esque sequencing that screams, “We knew exactly what we were doing.”

So here's the dystopian twist: This wasn’t just a South Park gag at Trump’s expense. It might’ve been a strategic, albeit expensive, surgical strike.

Let’s connect the dots. Paramount wants to merge with Skydance Media; an $8 billion move that requires FCC approval. But that commission, conveniently, now reports to President Trump. This is the same man whose name has reportedly shown up multiple times in the Epstein files, according to AG Pam Bondi; a name now intertwined with a cartoon devil in a scene so disturbing it probably sent MAGA heads spinning like Linda Blair.

But here’s where it gets really sticky. Paramount recently paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes segment. Then, just days later, it cancels Stephen Colbert; the network’s most successful late-night voice, and one of Trump’s most outspoken critics. CBS called it a “financial decision.” Right. And I’m the Easter Bunny.

So, we have to ask: Was this all to grease the wheels of the Skydance deal? Was Trump’s $16 million payout the cost of political compliance? And was Colbert; a proven ratings king, sacrificed to keep the FCC off Paramount’s back? Or was it to make room, surgically, for Parker and Stone to detonate their golden grenade?

Let’s not forget: Parker and Stone were reportedly fuming over contract delays. They wanted this premiere out earlier. Instead, it dropped the day after Paramount handed them a Brinks truck, and just in time for the corporate heads to pretend innocence while their prized creatives threw a verbal Molotov at the most powerful man in the world.

And what did Trump do? As expected; he fumed. On Truth Social, he celebrated Colbert’s firing, called Kimmel talentless, and praised Greg Gutfeld; seriously Gutfeld, as the king of late night. No mention of South Park, though. Curious, right? Maybe because he knew if he reacted, it’d validate the sting. Or maybe he’s biding his time. One thing is certain: silence isn’t peace. It’s pressure building behind the dam. And Trump never forgets.

Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren called the Colbert cancellation “bribery.” Adam Schiff called for answers. And Jon Stewart; the last man standing on Paramount’s comedy front, accused CBS of cowardice. Hell, even Jimmy Fallon took a swing. The late-night community is circling the wagons. And the message is clear: this doesn’t smell right.

But the real question we should be asking is this ; did Paramount intentionally greenlight the most grotesque, scorched-earth Trump takedown in television history as a flex? As a final “F-U” before merging with a new, potentially Trump-favored media overlord? Was South Park used as a weaponized asset; not just for laughs, but as cathartic vengeance?

Think about it: Trump’s former enemies at CBS suddenly start making nice with him. Then, behind the curtain, their most unfiltered creators are given carte blanche to burn him in effigy; with Satan as his bedmate. Was this revenge wrapped in plausible deniability? The kind that says, “Hey, we gave him $16 million. We canceled Colbert. What more does he want?”

Maybe Paramount figured the $1.5 billion was a worthwhile price tag to hand Parker and Stone the keys to the kingdom; as long as they waited to detonate the payload after the paperwork was signed. It’s the media equivalent of kissing the ring, then slashing and burning the throne.

South Park has never been subtle. But this? This wasn’t satire. This was strategy. A billion dollar roast served with sulfur, sarcasm, and Satan.

So I ask again; was this simply comedy? Or was it corporate warfare, waged with cartoon carnage? Because if it’s the latter, Matt and Trey didn’t just win the cultural war; they weaponized it. And if I’m Trump, and I know him well, he’s not laughing.

But then again, when Satan turns you down in bed on national television; who would be?

 

Wendy Williams, Conservatives Are Destroying Our Future, How are you not creeped out by this pervert? #PedoTrump is a disgusting sexual predator. Release the #EpsteinFiles and expose him.

New York Times, ICE Took Half Their Work Force. What Do They Do Now? Eli Saslow, July 27, 2025. Glenn Valley Foods tried to verify every hire through a federal system. After a raid, the company is wondering how it can keep going.

They gathered in a conference room for the weekly management meeting, even though there was hardly anyone left to manage. Chad Hartmann, the president of Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, pushed a few empty chairs to the side of the room and then passed around a sheet totaling the latest production numbers. “Take a deep breath and brace yourselves,” he said.

For more than a decade, Glenn Valley’s production reports had told a story of steady ascendance — new hires, new manufacturing lines, new sales records for one of the fastest-growing meatpacking companies in the Midwest. But, in a matter of weeks, production had plummeted by almost 70 percent. Most of the work force was gone. Half of the maintenance crew was in the process of being deported, the director of human resources had stopped coming to work, and more than 50 employees were being held at a detention facility in rural Nebraska.

Hartmann, 52, folded the printed sheet into tiny squares and waited out the silence.

“So, this gives you a pretty good sense of the work we have ahead of us,” he said.

“It’s a wipeout,” said Gary Rohwer, the owner. “We’re building back up from ground zero.”ImageChad Hartmann, in a white shirt, sits in front of a laptop on a desk in an office.Chad Hartmann, the president of Glenn Valley Foods, in his office.

It had been almost three weeks since dozens of federal agents arrived at the factory’s door with a battering ram and a warrant for 107 workers who they said were undocumented immigrants using false identification — part of a wave of workplace raids carried out by the Trump administration this summer. The president’s advisers had set a target of 3,000 arrests per day, shifting the focus of enforcement away from the border and into the heart of the American economy. Trump had vowed to pursue “blood-thirsty criminals” during his campaign, but he had also promised the “largest mass deportation in history,” which meant agents were rounding up hundreds of immigrants from restaurant kitchens, avocado groves, construction sites and meat processing facilities, where most of the work force was foreign-born.

Rohwer, 84, had always used a federal online system called E-Verify to check whether his employees were eligible to work, and Glenn Valley Foods itself had not been accused of any violations. Rohwer was a registered Republican in a conservative state, but he’d voted for a Democrat for the first time in the 2024 election, in part because of Trump’s treatment of immigrants. Rohwer couldn’t square the government’s accusations of “criminal dishonesty” with the employees he’d known for decades as “salt-of-the-earth, incredible people who helped build this company,” he said. Most of them had no criminal history, aside from a handful of traffic violations. Many were working mothers, and now they were calling the office from detention and asking for legal advice. Their children, U.S. citizens, were struggling at home and in some cases subsisting on donations of the company’s frozen steak.

“I’m still furious about what happened to our people, but we have to keep the machines running,” Rohwer said. “We need more people trained and ready to go.”

“Trained by who?” another manager asked. “We lost every supervisor out there. If you ran a machine or checked temperatures or did anything important, you’re gone.”

“Then we pick up our hiring,” Rohwer said.A sign that says “Reserved Parking: Employee of the Month” hanging on a chain-link fence in front of an empty parking space.A month after federal agents raided Glenn Valley Foods, the parking spot reserved for the employee of the month sat empty.

He looked out into the lobby and saw three women filling out applications. Glenn Valley paid well, with an average hourly wage of almost $20 and regular bonuses, but the work was repetitive and demanding. Employees who came mostly from Mexico and Central America stood on a manufacturing line for as much as 10 hours a day, six days a week, and processed hundreds of pounds of meat through dangerous machinery in a cold factory.

Ever since videos of the raid spread across social media, Rohwer had answered dozens of calls from strangers who accused him of “stealing American jobs.” But Nebraska was experiencing a work shortage, with only 66 qualified workers for every 100 positions. Almost every one of the company’s new applicants was also a Hispanic immigrant.

“There are some jobs Americans don’t want to do,” Rohwer tried explaining to one caller. “We’re caught up in a broken system.”

The Homeland Security Department had accused many of the company’s former employees of working under stolen IDs, which E-Verify didn’t always catch if the ID number itself was valid. Rohwer had met with officials after the raid to ask for a better system, and they told him to keep using E-Verify. One agent gave the company a hotline number to call for hiring questions. Hartmann tried it once and waited on hold for 57 minutes before giving up.

“They said the only thing we can do is verify, verify, verify,” Rohwer said.

“But we’re already doing that,” Hartmann said. “How do we avoid ending up in the same situation?” 

 

New York Times, News Analysis: What Will It Cost to Renovate the ‘Free’ Air Force One? Don’t Ask, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, July 27, 2025. To hide the cost of renovating the plane Qatar donated to President Trump, the Air Force appears to have tucked it inside an over-budget, behind-schedule nuclear modernization program.

President Trump makes no secret of his displeasure over the cost of renovating the Federal Reserve headquarters — around $2.5 billion, or even higher by the president’s accounting.

But getting the White House to discuss another of Washington’s expensive renovation projects, the cost of refurbishing a “free” Air Force One from Qatar, is quite another matter.

Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump’s pet project are inventive.

Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.

In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a “transfer” to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.)

Qatar’s defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

Mr. Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.

Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Mr. Trump’s government dealings and business ties with the Qataris, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But the president himself said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.

“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” the president said in May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems and engine capabilities to take the president quickly to safety as one of the older Air Force Ones did on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that U.S. officials suspect may be embedded in the walls

Then, of course, it has to be stuffed with the luxuries — and gold trim — with which the 47th president surrounds himself, whether he is in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet’s upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a flying sick bay in a medical emergency.

So it’s no surprise that one of Washington’s biggest guessing games these days is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly-behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year. It was those delays that led Mr. Trump to look for a gift.

Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington’s long-running effort to rebuild America’s aging, leaky, ground-launched nuclear missile system.

The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities and communications built to withstand both nuclear and cyber attack. By the time Mr. Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81 percent, to $140 billion and climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America’s nuclear deterrent.

 

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, shown as an author and pundit in a promotional file photo.

New York Times, A Clash Over a Promotion Puts Hegseth at Odds With His Generals, Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, July 27, 2025 (print ed.). Suspicions about leaks and a mistrust of senior military officers have defined much of the defense secretary’s first six months on the job.

In the spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided not to promote a senior Army officer who had led troops over five tours in Afghanistan and Iraq because Mr. Hegseth suspected, without evidence, that the officer had leaked sensitive information to the news media, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

When Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims II was cleared of the allegations, Mr. Hegseth briefly agreed to promote him, only to change course again early this month, the officials said. This time, Mr. Hegseth maintained that the senior officer was too close to Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whom President Trump has accused of disloyalty.

Mr. Hegseth’s sudden reversal prompted a rare intervention from Gen. Dan Caine, left, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He urged Mr. Hegseth to reconsider, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Mr. Hegseth met with General Sims one final time but refused to budge. General Sims is expected to retire in the coming months after 34 years in the military, officials said. Through a spokesman, General Sims and General Caine declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Hegseth’s role. 

Lincoln Square Media, News Analysis: Letting It All Burn, Jennifer Schulze, July 27, 2025. The Trump Administration has used its first six months to shortchange America’s emergency response efforts in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. 

The United States is on fire. A massive heat dome hovers over three-quarters of the country, broiling 100 million people with“100 degree days.” Over a million acres from Alaska to Florida are on fire. As I write, of the 473 wildfires burning, 63 have consumed 1,000 acres or more.

The Cram Fire in southeastern Oregon is on the verge of mega-fire status. It has already destroyed close to 100,000 acres. In Northern Arizona — the Dragon Bravo Fire that turned the historic Grand Canyon Lodge on the park’s north rim into a pile of rubble — has been raging for over two weeks.

Just a few weeks ago, we saw how Donald Trump’s intentionally hobbled FEMA fell terribly short in flood-ravaged Texas. The usually robust federal relief agency showed up late, with far fewer people to help — just 100 compared to the initial 1,000 the former President Biden’s FEMA sent to help after Hurricane Helene. CNN reports that the response was so bad that “some FEMA teams, which are involved in large area searches, water rescues and finding human remains, didn’t arrive in Texas and begin field work until a week after the flood.” That failure apparently caused FEMA’s top search and rescue leader to quit in disgust.

Not surprisingly, the Trump Administration is now also falling short fighting the growing number of wildfires scorching the country. Thousands of seasoned experts and key support personnel are gone leaving fire crews stretched dangerously thin. That includes so-called “red card” employees trained to assist in fire emergencies and wildland fire meterologists who provide critical weather information. There are even reports that front line firefighters are going without meals or being diverted to do non-fire jobs like clean toilets and mow lawns.

New York Times, White House Memo: Competing Conspiracy Theories Consume Trump’s Washington, Peter Baker, July 27, 2025 (print ed.). President Trump is trying to divert attention from the Epstein conspiracy theory with new-and-improved one about Barack Obama and treason.

OK, so President Trump’s name is in the Jeffrey Epstein files. But who put it there? Could it possibly have been Barack Obama from his prison cell? Or a tranquilized Hillary Clinton? Oh wait, maybe it was etched onto the documents by Joe Biden’s magical autopen.

Or wait, is that mixing up different scandals? It’s so hard to keep up with the latest wild notions circulating in the capital and beyond. Washington is awash in conspiracy theories these days, a cascade of suspicion and intrigue promoted or denied in the Oval Office, ricocheting around Capitol Hill and cable news and propelled at warp speed across social media.

No commander in chief in his lifetime has been as consumed by conspiracy theories as President Trump and now they seem to be consuming him. They have been the rocket fuel for his political career since the days when he spread the lie that Mr. Obama was secretly born overseas and therefore not eligible to be president. More than a decade later, Mr. Trump is coming full circle by trying to divert attention from the Epstein conspiracy theory with a new-and-improved one about Mr. Obama supposedly committing treason.

The harmonic convergence of competing conspiracies has overshadowed critical policy issues facing America’s leaders at the moment, whether it’s new tariffs that could dramatically reshape the global economy or the collapse of cease-fire talks meant to end the war in Gaza. The Epstein matter so spooked Speaker Mike Johnson that he abruptly recessed the House for the summer rather than confront it. The allegations lodged against Mr. Obama so outraged the former president that he emerged from political hibernation to express his indignation at even having to address them.

 

WVTM-TV, Child Sex Trafficking Ring Alleged In Rural Alabama, Staff Report, July 27, 2025. The following individuals have been charged in connection with the case:

William (Chase) McElroy faces charges of sex abuse, rape, human trafficking, sodomy and kidnapping. Dalton Terrell is charged with rape, sodomy, human trafficking and kidnapping. Andres Trejo is charged with human trafficking. Timothy St. John faces charges of rape, sodomy, kidnapping, bestiality and animal abuse. Rebecca Brewer is charged with human trafficking. Ricky Terrell is charged with rape. Sara Terrell faces charges of sexual torture or abuse and sexual abuse of a child younger than 12.

New York Times, Seven Charged in Child Abuse Ring Run From an Alabama Bunker, Officials Say, Mark Walker, July 27, 2025 (print ed.). A sheriff called it the worst child abuse case he’d seen in his 33-year career. Victims as young as 3 are now in state care and getting medical, emotional and psychological support.

In a rural stretch of Bibb County in central Alabama, past pine forests and gravel roads, deputies uncovered what a sheriff called the most disturbing child abuse case he’s seen in his 33 years of working in law enforcement.

Inside a concrete bunker near a home, at least 10 children were harmed as part of what the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office described as a criminal operation involving sex trafficking, torture and the theft of innocence.

Most of the victims were between 3 and 10 years old; one was 15, officials said.

“I know God’s forgiveness is boundless, but if there was a limit to it, I think we’ve reached it,” Sheriff Jody Wade said, describing the acts as beyond comprehension and the kind that fracture faith in human nature.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Sheriff Wade said seven people, including family members and parents, were charged in connection with the trafficking operation in Brent, Ala., a city of 2,600 people about an hour south of Birmingham, where children were harmed in the bunker’s underground structure.

The charges include human trafficking, rape, sodomy and sexual torture, Sheriff Wade said. Two women and five men were charged.

“I’m afraid there’s going to be more victims and many more suspects,” he said.ImageA stained, bare mattress, a folding chair and a dirty electric fan are inside a concrete room illuminated by a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.Officials say the children were tied to furniture inside the bunker and were sometimes drugged to be made more compliant.

 

Joseph Czuba entering the courtroom for his arraignment in the killing of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, in Joliet, Ill., in 2023 (Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast via Associated Press).

New York Times, Illinois Man Convicted in Killing of Palestinian American Boy Dies in Custody, Chris Hippensteel, July 27, 2025 (print ed.). Joseph Czuba, who was convicted of killing 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi in 2023, died two months after a judge sentenced him to 53 years in prison. He was 73.

He was convicted on murder and hate crime charges in theattack, which authorities said was motivated by anti-Muslim hate. It was not clear exactly when, where or how Mr. Czuba died.

The killing took place in October 2023, days after Hamas attacked Israel. According to the authorities, Mr. Czuba stabbed 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi and his mother, Hanan Shaheen in their home, killing Wadee and severely wounding Ms. Shaheen, who escaped to a bathroom and called 911. The judge who sentenced Mr. Czuba on May 2, Amy Bertani-Tomczak, called the attack “brutal and heinous.”

In Ms. Shaheen’s testimony before the jury that convicted Mr. Czuba, she said she had rented a pair of bedrooms from him in Plainfield Township, Ill., a Chicago suburb, for two years with no major issues. But after the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Czuba — who lived in the same building — began making hateful remarks about Muslims and asked Ms. Shaheen and her son to move out of the property, Ms. Shaheen said.

As he listened to coverage of the war unfolding in the Middle East, prosecutors said, Mr. Czuba became increasingly erratic and paranoid. That fear drove him to force his way into his tenants’ rooms, they said, and attack Ms. Shaheen, then 32, stabbing her more than a dozen times before she managed to escape.

Investigators said that Mr. Czuba then directed his rage toward Wadee, a kindergartner at the time who loved soccer and Legos. Ms. Shaheen told a 911 dispatcher that she could hear her son screaming from the bathroom, until the screams fell silent, according a 911 call played during the trial. Wadee was later pronounced dead at the hospital. He had been stabbed more than two dozen times.

 

Estes Carter Thompson III secretly filmed young girls by directing them to specific lavatories on American Airlines flights where he had set up “a secret recording studio” using his cellphone, prosecutors said. (Photo via Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority and Associated Press).

New York Times, Flight Attendant Who Filmed Girls in Lavatory Is Sentenced to More Than 18 Years, Alexandra E. Petri, July 23, 2025. The former flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, of Charlotte, N.C., secretly filmed girls using the restroom on American Airlines flights in 2023, prosecutors said. 

A former American Airlines flight attendant who used his cellphone to secretly record girls as they used the lavatory on flights was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 and a half years in prison, federal prosecutors said.

From January 2023 to September 2023, the flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, of Charlotte, N.C., secretly filmed girls using the restroom on American Airlines flights, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts said in a sentencing memo. He would direct them to specific lavatories where he had set up “a secret recording studio,” using his cellphone, the memo said.

“He robbed five young girls of their innocence and belief in the goodness of the world and the people they would encounter in it, instead leaving them with fear, mistrust, insecurity and sadness,” Leah B. Foley, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, wrote in the sentencing memo.

Drop Site News, Investigation: The Professors Who Supported the Student Deportation Frenzy, Jacqueline Sweet, July 27, 2025. In March 2024, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus (DJHC) emerged on Instagram and X as another node in a network of organizations decrying pro-Palestine faculty and students at Columbia University.

The group slowly grew to focus on what it called other “participating schools”—such as CUNY, which it called a “hotbed of antisemitism.” Like its fellow Zionist doxxing outfits Betar and Canary Mission, its preferred solution was student deportation. On Election Day, DJHC posted a clip of Trump promising to deport “jihad-sympathizers and America-hating radicals,” and wrote “We have the receipts!” It announced on social media that it had names of students, once tagging Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Throughout November and into December, the DJHC account continued celebrating the prospect of student deportations. And on December 5, a couple months before such deportations began in earnest, Jeffrey Lax—chair of the business department at Kingsborough College at the City University of New York (CUNY)—joined the advisory board of DJHC. S.A.F.E. Campus, an organization that Lax had founded in 2023, was already serving as DJHC’s fiscal sponsor, which allowed the newer group to receive tax-exempt donations.

Lax is one of a small but active cohort of professors on American campuses vocally supporting groups pushing student deportations, even as the detention of students on visas and green cards has stoked anxieties in many university communities. A longtime pro-Israel activist at CUNY and a frequent contributor to right-wing media, Lax has initiated repeated lawsuits against colleagues, his union, and the university for alleged discrimination from pro-Palestine members of the campus community. Now, Lax appears to be reprising this role in groups like DJHC, continuing to champion the administration’s targeting of noncitizen student activists.

Last week, when CUNY’s Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez was interrogated by House Republicans over alleged antisemitism at the university system, lawmakers referenced many of the same incidents Lax’s groups had focused on over the last year. Lax himself was in attendance. “ I am so proud to have been involved in the process that led to this day,” he wrote on X.

On the DHJC board of advisors, Lax is joined by prominent pro-Israel agitator and former Columbia business professor Shai Davidai, who has long been trying to penalize pro-Palestine voices at the university, and who has also participated in a Columbia alumni WhatsApp group where members aimed to identify student protesters and call for their expulsion, firing, or deportation. And Lax and Davidai are only the most prominent of a handful of campus affiliates backing such groups. Drop Site News’ reporting reveals that current and former instructors at least four schools across the northeastern U.S. have publicly supported Betar, DJHC, and Canary Mission. A few of their names appeared on the GoFundMe page for Betar’s fundraising push last fall and winter.

The presence of professors with ties to the right-wing groups have made students and faculty more fearful about participating in activism—especially as these groups have claimed to have a direct impact on Trump’s deportation decisions. Betar has claimed credit for providing student names from its blacklist to the highest levels of the Trump administration; former Betar director Ross Glick reportedly met with aides to Republican Senator Ted Cruz, to present Betar’s student list; he would discuss the targets with Cruz himself later in February, and later credit those meetings, and meetings with other Republican lawmakers, for the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil. When Columbia graduate student Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested in April, DJHC wrote “Thank you, @SecRubio, for getting rid of another Jew hater,” and linked to Canary Mission’s profile of Mahdawi.

In May, a federal judge, in ruling to release a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, student from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, wrote that the student’s arrest seemed to have been “almost exclusively triggered” by a Betar tweet. Similarly, an internal Homeland Security memo prepared days before ICE detained Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk cited nothing more than the language Canary Mission used about her. (Öztürk was released from detention in May.)

“For a college professor to be collaborating with the government to intimidate, detain, or deport students for something they may have said is a shocking violation,” a CUNY faculty member, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation, told Drop Site News.

Universities are generally tasked with protecting their employees’ right to personal political opinions and donations—a norm that pro-Palestine students and professors have often called upon in seeking to protect themselves from both university discipline and state targeting. At the same time, Betar, Canary Mission, and DJHC have raised questions about when speech crosses the line into targeted harassment, and what responsibilities faculty and staff have to their students when said students are being actively selected for deportation and detention.

“It should be obvious and uncontroversial that academic freedom, which protects scholars’ right to teach and publish and engage in political speech, does not protect targeted harassment of individuals,” Joseph Howley, an associate professor of classics at Columbia who has been repeatedly targeted by Canary Mission and DJHC, told Drop Site News. “What’s difficult is that in the last two years we’ve seen once again attempts to claim—absurdly—that political speech on behalf of Palestine is threatening to individuals, while targeted harassment that actively endangers individuals is defended as protected.”

July 26

 

Displaced Palestinians waited in front of a charity kitchen in western Gaza City on Wednesday. These kitchens are funded by Arab and Western countries and aid groups

New York Times, No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say, Natan Odenheimer, July 26, 2025. Israel has long restricted or completely blocked aid to Gaza on the argument that Hamas steals it to use as a weapon of control over the population.

For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.

But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, thebiggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.

In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.

Now, with hunger at crisis levels in the territory, Israel is coming under increased international pressure over its conduct of the war in Gaza and the humanitarian suffering it has brought. Doctors in the territory say that an increasing number of their patients are suffering from — and dying of — starvation.

More than 100 aid agencies and rights groups warned this past week of “mass starvation” and implored Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The European Union and at least 28 governments, including Israeli allies like Britain, France and Canada, issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s “drip-feeding of aid” to Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents.

Israel has largely brushed off the criticism.

David Mencer, a government spokesman, said this week that there was “no famine caused by Israel.” Instead, he blamed Hamas and poor coordination by the United Nations for any food shortages.

Israel moved in May toward replacing the U.N.-led aid system that had been in place for most of the 21-month Gaza war, opting instead to back a private, American-run operation guarded by armed U.S. contractors in areas controlled by Israeli military forces. Some aid still comes into Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations.

 

The Scottish people are welcoming Trump. He’s letting us taxpayers pay to fly him to one of his seedy golf motels in that country, so, of course, the nation’s largest newspaper felt it necessary to tell Scots that the American president was about to grace their land with a visit. The front page speaks for itself on July 25, 2025:

The Hartmann Report, The Best of the Rest of the News Weekly Summary: CBS is installing a monitor to look out for “leftwing bias.” You know, like facts? Thom Hartmann, right, July 26, 2025. ICE is flagrantly violating the Constitution — and, thus, the law — all over the country, and apparently agents are getting a $30,000 bonus if they drag enough immigrants into their concentration camps.

Most recently, a phone-video recorded by an 18-year-old American citizen who was traveling with an undocumented friend shows ICE officers brutally attacking the car full of teenagers. They bragged that, “You’ve got no rights here!” while making fun of their captives and discussing with each other whether they’d hit the threshold to get the $30,000. You can watch the video here.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is unambiguous: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Increasingly, it appears that Trump is creating his own secret police force, with a network of beyond-the-law concentration camps (they’ve started deportation flights from “Alligator Auschwitz” without any apparent legal sanction), much as Hitler did in the early 1930s and Putin did about a decade ago. Some Democratic politicians are starting to wake up, but the party as a whole is way behind in reacting to the threat this represents.

• Get ready for Social Security cuts: If you’re on Social Security and Medicare, get ready: Republicans just screwed you in a huge way with their Big Ugly Bill, and starting in a mere 7 years you’ll see an average $18,000/year cut in Social Security for the average married, retired couple and an 11% reduction in Medicare payments to providers. If enough Americans learn about this and are outraged by it, it’s barely possible enough Democrats could win election in 2026 and/or 2028 to correct the situation, but already — because Trump and Musk cut over 7,000 employees from the Social Security Administration — seniors aging into the system (10,000 a day) are finding painful, frustrating delays in filing for benefits. Republicans have been trying to repeal the New Deal and Great Society ever since both were passed, calling them “socialism” and are outraged because morbidly rich people are expected to pay their taxes to help fund them. Instead, the GOP workaround has been to let the average billionaire pay less than 3% in income taxes while putting the bill for their tax avoidance on the nation’s debt tab that will be paid by our children and grandchildren. Fiscal conservatism was always a joke; it’s amazing they can continue to use the phrase without falling down laughing at the suckers who keep electing them to office.
• CBS is installing a monitor to look out for “leftwing bias.” You know, like facts? Reality has a well-known leftwing bias because much of the rightwing ideology out there is based, simply, in lies. Trickle-down economics benefits working class people. Immigrants are more likely to be criminals. Women love getting abortions, particularly late term. Unions steal from their workers to make “union bosses” rich. Global warming is a hoax. The fossil fuel and chemical industry aren’t poisoning us and our environment. Green energy is more expensive than gas, oil, or coal. People on Medicaid and food stamps are lazy. Unemployment insurance discourages work. Raising the minimum wage increases unemployment. People only value a college education if they go into debt to get it. Healthcare for all Americans is too complicated for any government to create and administer. America was created as a Christian nation. Every single one of those statements is a demonstrable lie, but when they pop up on CBS News going forward don’t expect any push-back. As part of Skydance’s deal with Trump and the FCC, they not only gave the president a personal $16 million bribe (and apparently also offered a similar amount in free advertising) but also agreed to install in the CBS operations a “monitor” to catch and kill any semblance of “leftwing bias.” This is the sort of thing that routinely happens when nations lose their democracy, and is a flashing red sign that we’re in the actual process of losing ours.
• EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is destroying the agency and it’s getting no coverage at all in the media. Last week, Zeldin announced he was shutting down entirely the branch of EPA that does scientific research on environmental dangers and toxins in our air, water, and food. Now he’s sucking up to the fossil fuel industry again by reversing a rule from 2009 that prevents gasoline from leaking into our atmosphere. And claiming that he’s “driving a dagger” through the heart of what he calls the “climate change religion.” Can you imagine being Zeldin, taking money and power from the fossil fuel industry to screw your own children and future generations? How do men like him sleep at night?
• Trump’s racist goons are trying to erase the history of slavery in America. Calling the true stories of slavery here “a corrosive ideology” that makes white people feel bad, Trump’s folks at the Department of Interior — which manages our national parks and monuments — are removing books and displays detailing that history. They say it’s to “end DEI” but it’s really just Lost Cause mythology reinvented. From George Washington’s Mount Vernon home to the gift shops of Smithsonian museums to the displays in national parks, the Great Whitewash is underway just as aggressively as the Lost Causers were installing statues of Confederate generals all across America in the first three decades of the 20th century. Next, Trump has said in the past, will come a reclamation and re-installation of those monuments to the brutality of slavery. The Confederate states, as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, had completely ended democracy in the South by as early as 1850 and then reached out to declare war on the rest of us. Seven hundred thousand Americans died to protect our democracy, but this time they think they can end our democracy and turn us into the Old South without a shot fired. Will they succeed?
• Does the Constitution allow cops to conceal their identities? Reps Summer Lee and Robert Garcia are of the opinion that it doesn’t, and trying to do something about ICE’s new norm of masking their agents, hiding their agency affiliation, and not seeking warrants before depriving people of their liberty. They wrote, in a blistering letter to Homeland Secretary and notorious puppy killer Kristi “Botox” Noem: “Federal agencies have an obligation to uphold the Constitution in carrying out their duties. For every person within the United States, the Fourth Amendment guarantees protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment guarantees a right to due process under the law. In direct violation of these principles, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allowed its agents—primarily from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—to conceal their identities and use unmarked vehicles while conducting immigration enforcement activities. This causes a dangerous erosion of public trust, due process, and transparency in law enforcement. It also makes it nearly impossible for individuals to determine whether they are being detained by legitimate law enforcement agents or unlawfully abducted. … On June 8, 2025, in Philadelphia’s Mayfair neighborhood, a man wearing a tactical vest labeled “Security Enforcement Agent” and a mock badge, and armed with a handgun, entered an auto repair shop, restrained a female employee with zip ties, and stole about $1,000. Prosecutors later identified this as directly exploiting the ambiguity of masked ICE-style operations. In Houston, just weeks ago, a 37-year-old man blocked another driver using his vehicle, claimed to be an ICE agent, flashed a badge, and forcibly took $1,800 along with the victim’s Guatemalan ID. Similarly, in Florida this April, a woman wore an “ICE” t-shirt, flashed a sheriff’s business card, and used a handheld radio to kidnap her ex-boyfriend’s wife, threatening her until she managed to escape. And in Anaheim, California, two teenagers in a blue SUV impersonating ICE agents approached Hispanic victims, presented fake badges, and robbed them—just one example of a wider series of such crimes targeting immigrant communities.” This ICE practice is not only unconstitutional and illegal, it’s causing real risk to every brown-skinned person in America. Will Republicans in Congress do anything about it? Maybe, if enough of us call them at 202-224-3121 and raise hell.

 

Donald Trump at his Scotland golf course on June 24, 2016 (Photo by Andrew Learmonth via Twitter).

New York Times, Trump’s Trip to Scotland Echoes an Earlier Visit, When He Applauded Brexit, Mark Landler, July 26, 2025. Before his 2016 election, President Trump correctly predicted that the forces animating Brexit would go beyond the United Kingdom. But now most Britons say Brexit was a mistake.

On a sunny June morning nine years ago, Donald J. Trump arrived at his golf resort in Scotland, the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union. At that time, he took credit for predicting Brexit and said it foretold victory in the insurgent presidential campaign he was mounting back home.

On Friday, a second-term President Trump returned to that resort, Trump Turnberry, with a good part of what he said in 2016 now a reality.

He had correctly claimed that the political forces that drove Brexit went beyond a single country. Five months after that visit, Mr. Trump captured the White House, having played to anxieties about immigration in ways that echoed the “Vote Leave” campaign.

Yet in Britain, history has diverged from Mr. Trump’s vision in important respects. Polls show that close to 60 percent of Britons now believe Brexit was a mistake. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made mending relations with the European Union one of the priorities of his Labour government.

The populist wave that Mr. Trump predicted would wash across Europe has ebbed and flowed, leaving a fragmented political landscape with a handful of populist leaders whose fortunes are mixed. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy is on the rise, but Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is struggling.

“Populism is still a relatively limited phenomenon,” said Kim Darroch, who was Britain’s ambassador to the United States during Mr. Trump’s first term. “Brexit happened, but it’s very hard to argue, even by its most ardent proponents, that it has been anything other than a comprehensive disaster.”

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: We head into August with three things being true, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 26, 2025. Yes, as he declines and struggles he is becoming ever more unhinged, untethered, illiberal, and dangerous.

1 - Trump Is Diminished, His Powers Are Ebbing - His poll numbers continue to drop; his agenda is wildly unpopular; the Epstein affair is degrading his already degraded enterprise; House Rs rebelled this week and voted to release the Epstein files; he has not negotiated a single trade agreement in over 100 days, and foreign governments are just not bending the knee; the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine grind on, defying that his promises that his STRENGTH would bring PEACE; Democrats continue to overperform in elections, lead in the generic ballot and enthuisasm, and our candidates in NJ and VA are kicking ass; he has no obvious path to reverse his decline as inflation is rising (yes, prices are not bending the knee) and his agenda of sabotage, plunder and betrayal brings further harm - not improvement - to the country. His agenda - his awful, terrible agenda - and the harms it brings will not be able to spun, TikToked or wished away, and will continue to push he and his party further and further away from the American people.

2 - We Are Descending Further Into Authoritarianism, And Trump Continues To Do Enormous Harm To The Country - It’s pretty clear that in his desperation and decline Trump is doing whatever it takes to save his ass, and the corrupt Supreme Court and quisling Congress are doing everything they can to help him. As I discussed with Katie Phang yesterday Trump’s weaponizing of the Department of Justice and FBI took a very dark and dangerous turn this week; their lawless attempt to forge ideological control over universities and the media grew far more ambitious and malevolent; his attempt to get Fed Chair Powell to yield to his STRENGHT continued unabated; the horrors of ICE keep escalating; Kennedy’s war on our public health has become an extrardinary threat to the country; he keeps throwing Putin bones; he appeared to have endorsed full on genocide in GAZA yesterday.

3 - His Tariffs and The Coming Budget Debate Are Big, Big Problems For Him - As I spelled in my new video and analysis this week as bad as things are for Trump they are likely to get much worse. He has promised to double or triple his current 10% global tariff this Friday. And even if chickens out (again), and only raises it to 15% as he is hinting, this will be a 50% (!!!!!) increase in a tariff rate that is already raising prices here, slowing the global and US economies, and continuing to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the working and middle classes.

As I discussed with economist Rob Shapiro this week, that Trump is considering raising his tariffs rather than ending them altogether given the harms they’ve brought to the country and his own political standing, is, in my view, another sign of his madness, desperation and decline. Look at the data here. 33% of voters approve of his handling of inflation and prices, the most important issue for voters today.

 

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, left, President Trump and a collage of headlines from the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal'sJuly 17 scoop revealing that Trump had provided his friend Jeffrey Epstein with highly suggestive greeting illustrated with a nude drawing for a compilation of birthday well-wishes in 2003 (Lincoln Square Media graphic).

Lincoln Square Media, Pro-democracy Commentary: Rupert Murdoch May Want to Stay Away from Open Windows, Stuart Stevens, below right, July 26, 2025. The Wall Street Journal's Epstein scoops signal that Murdoch believes Trump has outlived his usefulness. But the media mogul should probably watch his back.

The drama unfolding in Rupert Murdoch’s world is a perfect metaphor for the self-defeating evil of appeasement. It’s like Murdoch is starring in a one-man adaptation of Cabaret. Want to know how Germany in the 1930s came to be? Welcome to the Murdoch Cabaret.

Rupert Murdoch became America’s most dangerous immigrant by building a palace of lies called Fox News. Like a narco cartel kingpin looking for reputation-enhancing legit money laundering opportunities, he bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007. Like the Prussian aristocrats who backed Hitler, Murdoch thought he could have it both ways.

Over at Fox News, he made billions by hiring liars to lie. They lied to help elect Trump, and once in office, they lied about COVID and contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands. They lied about who won the 2020 election and helped launch a deadly insurrection.

The Wall Street Journal last endorsed a presidential candidate in 1928 when it enthusiastically backed Herbert Hoover. While that bad bet seems to have dissuaded them from any further endorsements, they spent decades casting themselves as the intellectual conscience of American conservatism. As it turned out, the concept of an American conservative intellectual conscience was the cold fusion energy source of politics, an idea that had powerful appeal if only it hadn’t proven to be total nonsense.

Murdoch has never pretended to like Donald Trump, clearly seeing himself as a real billionaire whose five wives were all a cut above the tabloid trash of the three Mrs. Trumps. Could Donald Trump ever land an ex-wife of Keith Richards or one of the Trump wives being romantically linked to Tony Blair, as was Wendi Deng (the third Mrs. Murdoch)?

But like Franz von Pappen, the Prussian aristocrat who ushered Hitler into power, Murdoch saw Donald Trump as useful — a buffoonish character whose greatest threat was cringing embarrassment, like the drunken uncle who tells dirty jokes at Thanksgiving. How could one of Jeffrey Epstein’s running buddies ever threaten the Murdoch Empire?

It all worked until it didn’t. Lying about the 2020 election cost Fox $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit from Dominion Voting System, which, as it turned out, was not actually part of an international Space Lasar conspiracy. Smartmatic Voting Machine company is demanding $2.7 billion in an ongoing defamation suit. In a culture where shame seems to have atrophied like a homo sapien tail, no longer useful to humans, the revelation that the biggest stars at Fox were themselves embarrassed by the corporate pressure to deny what every grade school child knew as true was a sweet moment of schadenfreude.

Now the monster that Murdoch’s Fox helped create has turned on Murdoch’s reputation-laundering prize, The Wall Street Journal. To their credit, there remain at the Journal serious journalists working for a major publication, an increasingly rare sighting in the American wild. Given that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were the most public of best friends for over a decade, it is another searing indictment of the phony values of Bible thumping MAGA that a creep-to-creep congratulatory birthday letter would be explosive.

What, the photographs and video of the two sexual predators ogling young women and partying with “models” from the beauty factories of former Soviet states wasn’t enough? The President of the United States offering his sympathy to Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted child trafficker, from a White House podium, that was just a polite social gesture? We are talking about a man who has commented in public how much he’d like to date his own daughter and mused in hopeful optimism on national television that his just-born daughter would have the legs and breasts of her former Miss Hawaiian Tropic mother.Articles‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’: The Pickett’s Charge of TrumpismStuart Stevens · Jul 6‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’: The Pickett’s Charge of Trumpism

Rupert Murdoch had the ability to kill Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the crib. With one phone call, he could have directed Fox News to put a nice, soft pillow over the Trump campaign’s head until it stopped breathing. What was he thinking? Again, 1930s Germany says it all. He didn’t take seriously the chances of a man who wears more make-up than the drag queens of Mike Johnson’s dreams. Perhaps he even was foolish enough to believe that the Republican Party that had invested so much in proclaiming that Character Was King would never accept a man who had given a joint telephone interview to Howard Stern with his then girlfriend Melania Knaus while both were in bed talking about their great sex. I was that fool.

Expecting wisdom and prudence from an Australian tabloid baron whose breakthrough contribution to journalism was introducing semi-nude young women on page three of The Daily Sun is a quaint notion, like Donald Trump believing Vladimir Putin was sincere. Promoting the presidential hopes of that fat guy from Queens must have been amusing to Rupert Murdoch, a harmless and profitable pursuit, an exotic animal dealer smuggling in boa constrictors. Until you wake up one night and your profit center has wrapped itself around your throat.

Today, Rupert Murdoch faces the $10 billion Trump lawsuit on top of the $2.7 billion Smartmatic suit. There is much glee in the anti-Trump air that Murdoch has finally had enough and is moving to control “the fiend,” as Mary Shelly called Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. I’m eager to buy a ticket on that joyful ride.

But I must wonder if we are falling into the same pit of 2016 assumptions about this America we love. It’s insane to think that Donald Trump would send his masked men of ICE to arrest and deport an immigrant named Rupert Murdoch. Right? To live in that country would require believing that some day the United States government would fund a paramilitary force of masked men with a budget larger than the total military budget of all but two countries. That’s crazy, no?

In Russia, a Rupert Murdoch making a move against the leader would know to stay away from any open windows. How about in today’s America? Donald Trump has always benefited from the assumption that at some point he would be limited by the established rules of society and modulate his behavior.

Well, how’s that going?

Good luck, Mr. Murdoch. Give ‘em hell. But I’d stay away from those windows.

 

White House Chronicle, Commentary: PBS Has a Future by Leaving the Past Behind, Llewellyn King, above, July 26, 2025. Over the years, I have often been critical of the Public Broadcasting Service. That in spite of the fact that for 28 years, I have produced and hosted a program, “White House Chronicle,” which is carried by many PBS stations.

It is an independent program for which I find all the funding and decide its direction, content and staffing.

My argument with PBS — brought to mind by the administration’s canceling of $1.1 billion in funding for it and National Public Radio — is that it is too cautious, that it is consciously or by default lagging rather than leading.

Television needs creativity, change and excitement. Old programs, carefully curated travel, and cooking shows don’t really don’t cut it. News and public affairs shows are not enough. Cable does them 24/7.

My co-host on “White House Chronicle,” Adam Clayton Powell III, a savant of public broadcasting, having held executive positions at NPR and PBS, assures that they aren’t going away, although some stations will fail.

I believe PBS has often been too careful because of the money, which has been dribbled out by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Some conservatives have been after PBS since its launch.

It is reasonable to look to the British Broadcasting Corp. when discussing PBS because the BBC is the source of so much of the programming that is carried by PBS — although not all the British programming is from the BBC. Two of the most successful imports were from the UK — “Upstairs, Downstairs,” which aired in the 1970s, and, more recently, “Downton Abbey” — were developed by British commercial television, not by the BBC.

Even so, the BBC is a force that has played a major role in shaping state broadcasters in many countries. At its best, it is formidable in news, in drama and in creativity. It is also said to be left-of-center and woke. Both of these are things PBS is accused of, but I have never found bias in the news products. What I have found is a kind of genteel poverty.

I once asked the head of a major PBS station why they didn’t do more original American drama. “It would cost too much,” was the response in a flash. Yet, there are local theater companies aplenty who would love to craft something for PBS if they were invited.

Sometimes the idea is more important than the money. Get that right, and PBS will have something it can sell around the world. It should be an on-ramp for talent.

Maybe, stirred by its newly induced poverty, PBS can lead the television world into a new business paradigm.

First, of course, take advertising and don’t be coy about it, as “Masterpiece Theater” is about Viking cruises. Take the advertising.

Second, see what is happening across the television firmament, where more TV is now viewed on YouTube than on TV sets. This happens at a time of the viewer’s choosing. PBS needs to jump on this and create a pay-per-view paradigm so that when it has a big show, as it did with Ken Burns’ “Civil War” years ago, it can prosper, as well as selling the show around the globe.

PBS is a confederation of stations, each one independent but tethered to PBS in Washington, which provides what is known as the hard feed. These are programs pre-approved for central distribution by PBS. Independent producers aren’t acknowledged on this, nor do they get listed as being PBS programs.

I remember how I had heard that WHUT, Howard University’s television station, was open to new programs. So I took a pilot over to WHUT. One young woman said “yes” and a program was born.

PBS needs to open its doors to new talent, new shows and uses of new technologies. Leading the pack in broadcasting innovation would be the best revenge. New money will follow.

NPR is a different story. Its product is successful. It needs to be open to new funding, including much better acknowledged corporate funding. If Google or some other cash-laden entity wants to underwrite a day of broadcasting, let it. Don’t give it the editor’s chair, just a seat in accounting. 

Lance’s Substack, Special Report, The Nightmare Scenario-- Trump's Demand For Treason Charges Against Obama Is A Possible Trigger For Civil War, Lance F Rosen, right, July 26, 2025. Beginning in 2018, my wife Martha Rosen and I began discussing the very real prospect that Donald Trump would refuse to leave office and relinquish power if he lost the 2020 elections. Over a two year period we researched and documented what forces he might bring to bear in order to achieve that end, and the various scenarios for how he'd go about it.

There were others who had similar concerns, but they were largely focused on election security. We were on a different track, which was that of preempting a Trump-led insurrection. His open endorsement of the Charlottesville Nazi rally in the Summer of 2017 was a gamechanging event which was indictative of his plans, as were his pardons for corrupt law enforcement and convicted war criminals in our military. He was building a private army.

That work culminated in a 12 part 45 page special report which we released in installments on Facebook in the Summer of, 2020, which we both printed in hard copy and electronic form, then published and distributed to political leaders, civil rights organizations, and public figures with ties to our national security apparatus.

The title Was "Trump's Really Fine People....Nazis, Secessionists, Separatists, Militias, And Boogaloos--- Russia's Fifth Column To Disrupt The Elections." Here is a short quote from the introduction:

["Our biggest problem is the abject fear our people and leadership have of going into the very “dark places” of Trump’s mind to consider what he is actually capable of doing in order to keep power. ....

...What is not being stated emphatically enough is the possibility that Trump will try to disrupt the election or seek to cancel it by unleashing an armed rebellion against the United States. He might try destroying the government if he loses by calling forth his hard core, heavily armed support base on the extreme right. This could explode as a violent resistance to an incoming Biden/Harris government. The same forces which have been identified by state and local law enforcement and US intelligence over recent years as the single most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States, meaning domestic terrorism, are the hardcore underground of militias, Neo-Nazis, separatists, Confederacy sympathizing rebels, Boogaloo Bois and Proud Boys, and Armageddonists. This network of domestic terrorists is and has been protected and enabled by corrupt elements of US law enforcement, from the DHS down to the county sheriffs, government agents, and people who have been infiltrated into the US Military for combat training and networking. If there were an armed rebellion, these are the forces that would be in the forefront leading it.

...Our greatest vulnerability to this threat is the degree to which Americans are still in a state of denial regarding the lengths to which Trump and his followers will go to wreck the election. We are not adequately prepared for this."]

This report, released in its completed form in August of 2020, accurately forewarned of the events leading up to what we now refer to as Jaunary 6th, six months in advance. It was not just us giving voice to a bad feeling we had. We spotlighted the individuals, political and terrorist networks, and the motivations of those behind it. We wrote about the little known role of Vladimir Putin in steering the US white supremacist movement in both the US and Europe that served as his asymmetic election interference operation, one which in its scale superceded what was done through Russian cyber crimes and disinformation. That was our view at the time and still is.

Our track record of analysis on strategic matters related to the Trump-Putin partnership are our "credentials." Martha and I lived in this political world for more than four decades, therefore it would be a mistake to blow off our assessments on this as either a "nothingburger" or hysteria.

We are first going to state incontrovertible facts. Then we will make some assertions based upon those facts. And we will address the many thoughts which people will have in reaction.

Our purpose is to take preemptive action to disrupt Trump's scenario, not to "go on the record" with a horrible scary prediction so that when these events do unfold we are vindicated and made to look like geniuses. People can either work with us on this or not. But no one should think for a minute that I even want to be writing about this, because I don't.

Part 1- When They Say They Are Arresting President Obama For Treason, They Are Deadly Serious. A Fact Sheet.

1. Tulsi Gabbard, right, has made a criminal investigation referral to Attorney General Bondi and the DOJ to have former President Obama prosecuted for "treasonous conspiracy" in regards to the investigation of Russia's 2016 election interference on behalf of Trump's candidacy. These accusations are backed by "evidence" which is based upon willful lies, distortions, and Russian disinformation.

2. The penalty for treason ranges from between 5 years imprisonment to death. Trump has already gone on the record stating that he favors the death penalty for treason in threats previously made against his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley. Just to add an exclamation point, one of his first actions after being sworn in was to have General Milley's physical security stripped.

3. Trump has a history of fomenting stochastic terrorism, ie; inciting violence against his enemies which he can plausibly deny after the fact. Two years ago he "doxxed" the Obama family by posting their address on his platform "Truth Social," resulting in an armed individual, who was a January 6th defendant, carrying weapons in his van and being intercepted outside Obama's home by the Secret Service before a deadly incident could ensue.

When a search warrant was served and carried out at Mar-a-Lago before he was indicted on the stolen documents, Trump's attacks on the FBI incited one of his supporters to attempt mass murder of FBI agents in Cincinnati by storming their offices. The assailant was shot and killed....

Letters From  An American, Historical Commentary: July 25, 2025 [Law Enforcement Abuses, Now and Then], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 26, 2025. “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”

At 9:00 on the morning of May 2, 2025, a Florida Highway Patrol officer pulled over a van with 18-year-old U.S. citizen Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio and two undocumented men in it. Laynez-Ambrosio’s mother was driving the men to their landscaping job. The patrol officer called U.S. Border Patrol agents. Laynez-Ambrosio recorded what happened next. The Guardian’s Clare Considine reported the story today.

The video shows a female officer asking if anyone in the van is in the U.S. illegally. One man said he was undocumented. “OK, let’s go,” Laynez-Ambrosio heard one of the officers say. An officer popped the door of the van open and grabbed the man by the neck in a chokehold. In the video, several officers pull the man from the van and tell him to “put your f*cking head down.” While Laynez-Ambrosio can be heard telling his friend in Spanish not to resist, the officers drop the man to the ground with a stun gun.

“You’re funny, bro,” one officer says to another, apparently the one who used the stun gun. The officers laugh.

Another says, “They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”

Later the officers say: “Goddamn! Woo! Nice!” adding: “Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.”

Diamond Walker and Valentina Palm of the Palm Beach Post added that an officer explained the stun gun: “He was being a d***. “That’s the one we tased.”

The officers arrested Laynez-Ambrosio, a U.S. citizen, and held him for six hours in a cell at a Customs and Border Patrol station, then charged him with obstruction without violence. He was sentenced to 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course.

Eighty-four years ago today, on July 25, 1941, Emmet Till (shown above with his mother) was born in Chicago, Illinois.

In August 1955, when he was fourteen years old, Till went to visit relatives in a small Mississippi town. After the wife of a white man named Roy Bryant accused the Black boy of flirting with her, Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, kidnapped Till, brutally beat him, mutilated him, shot him in the back of the head, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River.

In September 1955 an all-white jury took just over an hour to find Bryant and Milam not guilty. A member of the jury said, “We wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t stopped to drink pop.”

Immune from further prosecution, Bryant and Milam told their story to Look magazine for $4,000. They said they had kidnapped and beaten Till to frighten him, but when he refused to beg for mercy, they drove him to the river. Milam asked, “You still as good as I am?” and when Till answered, “Yeah,” they shot him, tied a 75-pound cotton gin fan around his neck with barbed wire, and threw him in.

“What else could we do?” Milam said. “He was hopeless. I’m no bully. I never hurt a n*gger in my life. I like n*ggers, in their place. I know how to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*ggers are gonna stay in their place.”

After Till’s body had been recovered from the Tallahatchie, the county sheriff directed that the body be buried quickly, but Till’s mother insisted that her son’s body be returned to Chicago.

There, she insisted on an open-casket funeral.

“Let the world see what I have seen,” she said.

New York Times, A Kennedy Toils in Mississippi, Tracing His Grandfather’s Path, Robert Draper, July 26, 2025. Joe Kennedy III, the grandson of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, says there is work to do in red states. He also has a few things to say about his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Joe Kennedy III, right, the former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, gazed out his window at endless fields of cotton and soybeans as he drove across the Mississippi Delta one sweltering afternoon last month. He was a long way from home, but in a sense returning to it.

“People living here have been receiving boil-water notices for two years now,” he said, using an expletive. “We should be banging the drums on this every day.”

Mr. Kennedy, 44, was retracing the steps of his grandfather, Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general and candidate for president, who toured the Delta in 1967 and encountered the kind of hunger and poverty more often associated with the developing world. “Those images Bobby took away of children with bloated stomachs and open sores had a huge impact on him,” said Evan Thomas, a biographer of both the elder Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy nodded to the history. “I know a bit about my grandfather’s visit to the Delta back in the ’60s, and how it changed and outraged him to see this in the richest country in the world,” he said. “I’m proud that my family has spent a lot of their years in office advocating for these people.”

Mr. Kennedy is on a mission to continue the legacy of an American political family that has in recent years lost some of its liberal luster. It angers him that his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, is a key figure in an administration that is overturning core values of his family.

The health secretary has defended work requirements for Medicaid recipients, “which do not work,” the younger Mr. Kennedy said. “The only thing they succeed at is kicking people off Medicaid who need it.”ImageSenator Robert F. Kennedy visiting Greenville, Miss., in 1967.Credit...Associated Press

On the elder Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to ban food dyes, his nephew dismissively replied, “It’s not the dyes that are making people obese.”

Still, he shares with his uncle the belief that Democrats are increasingly captive to an urban elite. “I think the Democratic Party has lost touch with this reality,” he said, staring out at the Delta landscape.

Mr. Kennedy’s response is not to run for president as his grandfather did and his uncle might, or at least not yet.

Instead he has formed the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that seeks to develop a network of grass roots resistance in four deep-red states — Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia — that have received little attention from left-leaning organizations. Without any meaningful opposition, Mr. Kennedy said, those states have become havens for right-wing initiatives, ranging from the evisceration of the Clean Air Act in West Virginia to legislation in Mississippi that banned abortions after 15 weeks and led to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“The only way to change the power structures in those states is to organize people,” Mr. Kennedy said. “That’s not a short fix. But what else can you do?”

The slow grind of organization-building in hostile territory that Mr. Kennedy envisions has been done before, mostly by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, which was formed in 2004, operates in 35 states and has an annual operating budget of more than $186 million. In contrast, the Groundwork Project operates on a relatively modest $2.8 million a year, much of it disbursed as $25,000 annual grants to about 40 local groups that have fought uphill battles in areas like environmental justice and reproductive rights.

But the famous name helps. During a three-day trip to Mississippi to observe the efforts that Groundwork Project is helping to underwrite, locals sometimes referred to its founder in awed tones as “a Kennedy.” During one gathering of local officials, at a diner in Yazoo City, Mr. Kennedy addressed the subject of health care by invoking his lineage, saying, “My family has focused on this for a long time.”

In the next breath, Mr. Kennedy pointedly brought up another relative: “My uncle is now part of an administration that is cutting Medicaid.”

Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy of the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, speculated about the political subtext of Mr. Kennedy’s criticisms of his uncle.

“It’s all but certain that Bobby Jr. is going to run for president as a Republican in 2028,” Mr. Kessler said. “Maybe part of what the younger Kennedy is doing is reclaiming the family legacy as a way to remind people, ‘This is who we really are.’”

July 25

 

Displaced Palestinians waited in front of a charity kitchen in western Gaza City on Wednesday. These kitchens are funded by Arab and Western countries and aid groups

New York Times, Gazans Are Dying of Starvation, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner and Abu Bakr Bashir, Visuals by Saher Alghorra, July 25, 2025 (print ed.). After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are facing what aid groups say is impending famine.

Atef Abu Khater, 17, who was healthy before Gaza was gripped by war, lies in intensive care in a hospital in the north of the Palestinian enclave, suffering from severe malnutrition.

“He is not responding to the treatment,” said his father, A’eed Abu Khater, 48, who has been sheltering in a tent in Gaza City with his wife and five children. “I feel helpless,” he added in a phone call, his voice strained with grief. “We lost our income in the war. Food is unaffordable. There is nothing.”

Gaza’s hospitals have struggled since early in the war to cope with the influx of Palestinians injured and maimed by Israeli airstrikes and, more recently, by shootings meant to disperse desperate crowds as they surge toward food convoys or head to aid distribution sites.

Now, according to doctors in the territory, an increasing number of their patients are suffering — and dying — from starvation.

“There is no one in Gaza now outside the scope of famine, not even myself,” said Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, who leads the pediatric ward at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “I am speaking to you as a health official, but I, too, am searching for flour to feed my family.”ImagePeople step through debris, some carrying large white sacks, in front of a high mound of debris.Palestinians in Gaza carrying bags of aid on Sunday.ImageSeveral men stand around two women, one of them holding a body in a shroud with what appear to be blood stains.Grieving on Sunday for people who were killed while on their way to receive aid in Gaza City.

The World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, said this week that the hunger crisis in Gaza had reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row.”

Dr. al-Farra said the number of children dying of malnutrition had risen sharply in recent days. He described harrowing scenes of people too exhausted to walk. Many of the children he sees have no pre-existing medical conditions, he said, giving the example of Siwar Barbaq, who was born healthy and now, at 11 months old, should weigh about 20 pounds but is under nine pounds.

After 21 months of devastating conflict set off by the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the lack of available food and water is taking a heavy toll on Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The Gaza ministry of health has reported more than 40 hunger-related deaths this month, including 16 children, and 111 since the beginning of the war, 81 of them children. The data could not be independently verified.

Throughout the war, U.N. agencies and independent aid groups have accused Israel of allowing far too little food into Gaza, warning of impending famine for its more than two million people. For much of that time, Israel has said that enough food was reaching Gaza, blaming diversions by Hamas and mismanagement by aid groups for problems.

• Seymour Hersh via Substack, A Future Gaza Without Gazans, Israel’s religious right unveils its fantasy plan for the zone after ethnic cleansing, Seymour Hersh, right, July 24, 2025. On Tuesday a formal plan for the future of Gaza—as seen by the religious right—was presented to a diverse group of Israeli legislators, rabbis, grieving family members of IDF soldiers lost in combat or in Hamas captivity, and security officials from Gaza.

Meidas Touch Network, Today in Politics, Ron Filipkowski, right, July 25, 2025. Fox reported that Ghislaine Maxwell is seeking a pardon from Trump after her second meeting with Dep. AG Todd Blanche today. Her attorney David Markus: “We are going to take it one day at a time. Things are happening so quickly. We haven’t spoken to the president about a pardon just yet.

But the president said this morning that he has the power to do so and we hope he exercises that power.”

… This is what Trump said this morning when he was asked if he would consider a pardon or commutation for Maxwell: “I’m allowed to do it.”

… ABC’s Katherine Faulders: “Ghislaine Maxwell answered questions for about 9 hours over two days after being granted a limited form of immunity.”

… Trump became annoyed that he kept getting Epstein questions as he was leaving the WH to fly to Scotland: “They should focus on Larry Summers , Bill Clinton, and lots of closer friends of Jeffrey Epstein. I had nothing to do with the guy.”

… Q - What are you hoping Todd Blanche gets out of the meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell? Trump: “People should really focus on how well the country is doing or the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup.”

… Q - How do you think the Supreme Court's ruling that benefited you on presidential immunity would apply to Obama? Trump: “He has done criminal acts, no question about it. But he has immunity and it probably helps him a lot. He owes me big. Obama owes me big.”

… Q - Do you maintain that you did not write a letter for Jeffrey Epstein's birthday? Trump: “Somebody could've written a letter and used my name.”

… Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) was asked by CNN’s Manu Raju whether he is hearing from constituents about the Epstein files: “It's the No. 1 phone call that we get by far. It's probably 500 to 1.”

… Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), who just announced his candidacy for governor: “You’d have to have your head in the sand to say that this is going to go away.”

… NYT also published a photo where Trump signed a copy of his 1997 book Trump: The Art of the Comeback to Epstein, writing, “To Jeff — You are the greatest!”

… Trump posted: “Democrats have gone absolutely CRAZY, and are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM. As things are revealed and, I hope will take place quickly, you will see that it is yet another Democrat CON JOB. Hopefully, the Grand Jury Files will put an end to this HOAX. Everyone should see what is there, but people who are innocent should not be hurt.”

… The grand jury transcripts will not be released, as he knows. The Epstein fiasco was instigated by his own supporters, not Democrats. When he’s talking about protecting “innocent people” he’s referring to his previous statement that he only wants AG Pam Bondi to release materials that she deems “credible” -- which means nothing with his name on it.

… But Aaron Rupar reports that Fox remains laser-focused on Tulsi Gabbard’s Obama hoax: “Total mentions on Fox Business yesterday: Obama-101. Epstein-5.”

… Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) on MSNBC: "Maxwell is a bad person who has hurt young girls and young women. She should not be trusted. She's already lied multiple times under oath. I am sick that folks in the MAGA world are somehow giving her some kind of grace. She's a monster!”

… Garcia also talked about how Democrats should handle the situation: “We should not be scared of what's in those files. We don't care who you are, how powerful you are, if you're in politics, what party you are, the amount of money you have — if you've committed these horrific crimes, it should be out to the American public."

… VP JD Vance continues to duck and dodge around Trump’s Epstein problems: “It's bogus for the WSJ to publish a hit piece without showing us the letter. I have no idea if the book exists - WSJ won't show it to us. I have no idea if the letter exists - WSJ won't show it to us. What I find absurd is the idea that Trump was writing poems to Epstein, and I find it equally absurd that a major American paper would attack the president without revealing the basis for the attack.”

… Vance: “We all know what's going to happen. They're going to dribble little details out for days or weeks in an effort to assassinate the president's character. They won't show us this book or allow us to refute it until they've wrung every bit of fake news out of the story. And everyone will just move on from the fact that the WSJ is acting like a Democrat SuperPAC. It's disgraceful, and it's why the president sued.”

… Neera Tanden, right, responded to Vance: “Does Trump not remember drawing a nude picture to a pedophile? Did he do that so much he needs a physical evidence reminder? If someone asked me if I did that I could say no without looking at the document. Trump couldn't because he did it.”

… Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) suggested Vance is secretly stabbing Trump in the back on Epstein: “Vance hung out with the owner of the WSJ on the eve of this story being published. What did they talk about? This is an insane response. What does he know? And what did he put in motion against his boss?”

… NYT: “This spring, the FBI and DOJ made an all-out push involving hundreds of employees to scour the Jeffrey Epstein files with a single goal in mind — find something, anything, that could be released to the public to satisfy the mounting clamor from the angry legions of Trump’s supporters. During the inquiry, DOJ officials diverted hundreds of FBI employees and fed prosecutors from their regular duties to go through the documents at least 4 times — including once to flag any references to Trump and other prominent figures.”

… House Oversight Ranking Member Robert Garcia to Meidas: “There were Republicans on this committee who had said they wanted to release the files. So we knew that. We also knew they weren’t expecting us to bring this up at the subcommittee meeting. We also knew their attendance likely wasn’t going to be as strong as ours. Summer Lee made the motion and they were stunned. They were essentially forced to take that vote right then. And 3 of them broke with the remaining Republicans and joined the 5 Dems - so we got that subpoena of the Epstein files.”

… Garcia: “It’s very important that a 30-day deadline is set for turning over the documents. Here’s why that’s especially important: If Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition to the Oversight Committee goes forward on August 11, we can’t just take what she says at face value. We have to verify it.”

… Trump posted: “After many years Australia has agreed to accept American Beef! Now, we are going to sell so much to Australia because this is undeniable and irrefutable Proof that U.S. Beef is the Safest and Best in the entire World. The other Countries that refuse our magnificent Beef are ON NOTICE. All of our Nation’s Ranchers, who are some of the hardest working and most wonderful people, are smiling today, which means I am smiling too.”

… We will not sell any beef in Australia. Also, the cost of beef is at an all-time high in the US right now. Exporting domestic beef decreases available supply and will raise prices even more if Big Ag decides they can make more money selling it abroad. Big Ag First, but not Americans First.

… Australian Aaron Smith posted on X: “American beef in Australia is like sending instant coffee to Italy.”

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: White House to Release $5.5 Billion in Frozen Education Funds, Staff Reports, July 25, 2025. Where Things Stand

Education funding: Under bipartisan pressure from lawmakers, Trump administration officials announced they would release $5.5 billion in education funding to states, money that had been frozen weeks before the new school year. The money will help train and recruit teachers, support children learning English and fund arts and music education. Read more ›

Ghislaine Maxwell: Justice Department officials interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, again on Friday. President Trump did not rule out a pardon, telling reporters he hadn’t “thought about” clemency for her but that he was “allowed to do it.” The interview is part of the department’s effort to quell criticism that it is concealing details of Mr. Epstein’s crimes and ties to prominent figures, including Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump also denied reports that he was briefed on his name being in the Epstein files, saying, “No, I was never, never briefed.” Read more ›

Scotland trip: Mr. Trump is in Scotland for a five-day visit, where he will celebrate the opening of a golf course and meet with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. Read more ›

In other news:

The Trump administration has agreed to temporarily pause a plan to restrict unauthorized immigrants’ access to federal health and safety net programs, including the early education program Head Start, after Democratic attorneys general in 21 states sued on Monday over the effort. In an agreement filed Friday in federal court in Rhode Island, lawyers for the administration said the pause would apply in those 21 states and last until Sept. 3 as the litigation plays out.

A federal judge in Illinois dismissed a lawsuit on Friday in which the Justice Department argued that state and local officials were violating the Constitution by enforcing so-called sanctuary measures that limit cooperation with immigration agents.

The lawsuit, filed in the early days of Mr. Trump’s term, was one of several brought by the Justice Department challenging immigration policies in Democratic-led jurisdictions. On Thursday, the Trump administration filed a similar lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.

The Illinois lawsuit named as defendants the governor, Chicago’s mayor and police superintendent, and Cook County’s board president and sheriff. In dismissing the case, Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins wrote that the Justice Department had failed to show that the state and local governments were violating federal law.

“Because the Tenth Amendment protects defendants’ sanctuary policies, those policies cannot be found to discriminate against or regulate the federal government,” said Judge Jenkins, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The lawsuit is part of a broader push by the new president and his allies against Democratic-led places that have labeled themselves as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants. Republicans say sanctuary policies make the country more dangerous and usurp federal authority. The Justice Department has said that it could prosecute state and city officials who refuse to help the administration carry out its immigration agenda.

Mr. Johnson was among four big-city mayors who testified about those policies in Congress in March, where he insisted that Chicago’s ordinance did not violate federal law despite hours of questioning from skeptical Republicans.

“You’re putting the interests of illegal immigrants above the interest of taxpayers in Chicago,” Representative Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican whose district does not include Chicago, said to Mr. Johnson during that hearing.

The state, city and county policies being challenged differ in their details, but all of them broadly limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities unless a criminal warrant is presented. The measures restrict what information state and local officials can share with their federal counterparts, and do not allow for an inmate to be held solely on an immigration “detainer” or civil warrant.A

Judge demands answers about deal to return MS-13 gang leaders to El Salvador.Image

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to tell her more about a deal struck between the Trump administration and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to imprison immigrants deported from the United States in a Salvadoran maximum-security facility in exchange for the return of top leaders of the MS-13 gang who are in U.S. custody.

The order by the judge, Joan M. Azrack, came as she was considering a request by federal prosecutors on Long Island to dismiss sprawling narco-terrorism charges against Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, who is alleged to be one of those leaders, in preparation for sending him back to El Salvador.

New York Times, News analysis: New Reports on Russian Interference Don’t Show What Trump Says They Do, Charlie Savage, July 25, 2025. The administration’s claims are overblown, but newly declassified information provides some messy details about a January 2017 intelligence assessment of Moscow’s election interference.

The Trump administration in recent weeks has released a series of reports intended to undermine the conclusion reached by intelligence agencies before President Trump’s first term that Russia had favored his candidacy in 2016 and sought to improve his chances of winning.

That assessment, an unclassified version of which was made public in January 2017, has long infuriated Mr. Trump. In disclosing the reports, he and his team are proclaiming that President Barack Obama and his team torqued the intelligence analysis process to deliberately discredit Mr. Trump’s election.

The administration has coupled that case with overheated and attention-grabbing claims. Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Obama of treason, and his top officials have made criminal referrals about national security officials under Mr. Obama — all as the administration is trying to distract supporters who are angry about its broken promise to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Still, even if the administration’s use of the reports is wildly overstated, some of the information has not been made public before. It provides some messy details about how the intelligence community assessment was hurriedly produced during Mr. Obama’s final months in office.ImageDonald Trump and Barack Obama sit in the Oval Office. Mr. Trump is wearing a dark suit with a red tie and Mr. Obama is wearing a dark suit with a light blue tie.President Trump has accused former President Barack Obama of treason and shared a fake video of Mr. Obama being led off to prison.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

The assessment said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a multifaceted information operation targeting the U.S. presidential election, including by hacking and releasing Democratic emails and by seeding social media with messages promoting Mr. Trump and denigrating his rival, Hillary Clinton.

The assessment also attributed three motivations to Mr. Putin. Two have not been seriously challenged: He wanted to undermine public faith in democracy and to damage Mrs. Clinton, who until election night was widely seen as the next U.S. president. But Mr. Trump and his allies have long chafed at the third asserted goal — that Russia also hoped to help him win.

Their case seeking to undermine the assessment has focused on the unusually rushed and tightly controlled process to complete the document, in which senior leaders like John O. Brennan, left, the C.I.A. director, and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, played a more direct role than is typical.

And their criticism has focused on two main elements. One is the role played by the so-called Steele dossier. The dossier, a compendium of later-discredited claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by a former British spy, was part of a Democratic-funded political opposition research effort.

The other is how the intelligence agencies used information from a well-placed U.S. mole in the Kremlin, whom the C.I.A. later spirited out of Russia.The DossierImageJohn Brennan at a hearing on Capitol Hill. He’s wearing a dark suit with a red tie.

The government had already warned the public before the 2016 election that Russia was behind the hacking and dumping of Democratic emails. In early December 2016, after Mr. Trump’s surprise victory, Mr. Obama directed the intelligence community to produce a comprehensive analysis of Russia’s election meddling, drawing on all available sources of information. The terms of that mandate appear to have led the top officials overseeing the process to include material that might otherwise have been excluded.

The Steele dossier is an example. It had been known that the F.B.I. thought the dossier should be used because the standard was to draw on all available sources, while C.I.A. analysts objected because the sourcing for the claims was then unknown. Ultimately, agency leaders negotiated a compromise and put a summary of it in an annex appended to the assessment.

Mr. Brennan has publicly said the Steele dossier material was not incorporated or used in the assessment itself because of the C.I.A.’s concerns. In 2017, he told Congress that the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the intelligence community assessment that was done.”

The newly disclosed material complicates that narrative. For one, it showed that Mr. Brennan internally defended appending a summary of the dossier to the assessment after C.I.A. analysts resisted the compromise, too.

For another, the material has revealed that the classified version of the assessment alerted readers to the existence of the annex. It did so in a fourth bullet point under the judgment that Mr. Putin aspired to help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.

“For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an F.B.I. Source on Russian Influence Efforts,” the bullet point said.

Mr. Trump’s allies have argued that this sentence means the information from the Steele dossier was incorporated into the assessment itself.‘Counting On’ImageVoters cast their ballots at the polls.In early December 2016, after Mr. Trump’s surprise victory, Mr. Obama directed the intelligence community to produce a comprehensive analysis of Russia’s election meddling, drawing on all available sources of information.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Mr. Obama’s mandate to take account of all available information also led the C.I.A. to draw upon some raw intelligence that it might otherwise not have seen fit to publish, or disseminate for analysts to use.

The newly disclosed material shows that after Mr. Obama’s direction, Mr. Brennan ordered a “full review,” including the publication of any relevant intelligence that had been collected before the election but not disseminated.

The C.I.A. then published 15 additional reports containing raw intelligence it had previously gathered. Three became support for the assessment’s judgment that Mr. Putin’s motives included wanting to bolster Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election.

C.I.A. officials had previously held back each of those three, according to a newly declassified 2020 report by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, because of tradecraft concerns about the information within them. It said the assessment did not flag those worries.

The most important of them was something the U.S. mole in the Kremlin had said: that Mr. Putin made public the hacked Democratic emails after deciding that Mr. Trump, “whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.”

The 2020 House committee report said the statement had originally not been disseminated because analysts were not sure what the mole had meant or who specifically the mole had heard that from. The report criticized the assessment for interpreting that phrase to mean Mr. Putin hoped Mr. Trump would win, without flagging that its reading was disputed.

Separately, a review of the procedures and analytic tradecraft that went into the assessment, commissioned by John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s current C.I.A. director, argued that the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. should not have put the judgment that Mr. Putin was trying to help Mr. Trump at “high confidence” when only one source explicitly and directly backed that finding.

But the review did not challenge the judgment itself as the best reading of the available evidence, instead praising the National Security Agency’s view that it merited “moderate confidence.” And the review acknowledged that analysts might infer support for the judgment from other evidence, including the public behavior of senior Russian officials and state-controlled media — and logic.

“Most analysts judged that denigrating Clinton equaled supporting Trump; they reasoned that in a two-person race the trade-off was zero-sum,” it said. “This logic train was plausible and sensible, but was an inference rather than fact sourced to multiple reporting streams.”

Contrary Findings

The reports released by the Trump team are limited to evaluating the use of intelligence that was available in December 2016, and do not address subsequent developments. That includes Mr. Putin’s statement at a news conference with Mr. Trump in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018, in which he said through a translator that he had indeed wanted Mr. Trump to win the election “because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”

Others who have had access to the previously classified information and files from that period have reached different conclusions.

John Durham, a special counsel appointed in Mr. Trump’s first term who hunted for a basis to fault the actions of law enforcement and intelligence officials early in that investigation, already scrutinized the drafting of the 2017 intelligence assessment and did not criticize anything about it in his final report.

And in a five-volume 2020 report, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee — led by then-Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is now Mr. Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser — reached its own conclusion that Russia’s motivations had included aspiring to improve Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.

Indeed, citing one aspect of the interference — the social media operation by a Russian entity known as the IRA — the Senate report suggested that the 2017 intelligence assessment’s judgment was, if anything, understated.

“However, where the intelligence community assessed that the Russian government ‘aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him,’ the committee found that IRA social media activity was overtly and almost invariably supportive of then-candidate Trump, and to the detriment of Secretary Clinton’s campaign,” the Senate report said.Overstated ClaimsImageJohn Ratcliffe at a hearing on Capitol Hill. He’s wearing a blue suit with a red tie.John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said he has made a criminal referral about John O. Brennan, who served as C.I.A. director under former President Barack Obama.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The finely tuned distinctions and marginal questions raised by the newly available information in the documents sharply contrasts with the overstated and sometimes sensationalized claims Trump administration officials keep making about them.

This month, when Mr. Ratcliffe rolled out his review, he also blamed the assessment for establishing a narrative that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia, leading to the inquiry led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.

“They stamped it as Russian collusion and then classified it so nobody could see it,” Mr. Ratcliffe told The New York Post. “This led to Mueller. It put the seal of approval of the intelligence community that Russia was helping Trump and that the Steele dossier was the scandal of our lifetime.”

In reality, the Mueller investigation grew out of an F.B.I. investigation that began in July 2016, five months before the assessment, and its basis was a lead from the Australian government, not the Steele dossier.

Mr. Ratcliffe also made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan that accuses him of lying to Congress, leading the Justice Department to open an investigation.

Last week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, released an 11-page timeline and some underlying documents that misleadingly conflated different types of hacking. In a Fox News appearance, she cited the newly declassified existence of 2016 intelligence reports assessing that Moscow was not trying to hack into vote-tallying machines as somehow undermining the fact that Russia hacked and released Democratic emails to affect the election.

Ms. Gabbard also said that the materials used for her timeline were proof of a “treasonous conspiracy” by Mr. Obama and his national security team, and that she, too, was making a criminal referral.

Mr. Trump reacted gleefully, reposting materials on social media based on her timeline and remarks, including a fake video of Mr. Obama being led off to prison. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said, “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly.”

The next day, it came to light that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Mr. Trump in May that his own name appeared in the Epstein files. Hours later, Ms. Bondi announced the creation of a “strike force” to assess the information provided by Ms. Gabbard.

Emptywheel, Commentary: Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe Reveal Putin “Was Counting on” a Trump Win, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), July 25, 2025. It’s funny, reading the two rehashes of the 2017 ICA that John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard released in the last weeks.

There are parallels and common judgments between them (probably in part because the CIA one was limited to “CIA materials provided to congressional oversight investigations”). Both say the confidence level for the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the election was too high. Both say John Brennan big-footed the process in a problematic way. Both complain about the short timeline. Both complain that “the highest classified version of the ICA had been shared with more than 200 US officials;” neither acknowledge that that was neither anticipated nor, presumably, the fault of Obama appointees, who were long-gone by the time Trump’s appointees disseminated it that broadly (and in fact other documents Tulsi released suggest that ICA drafters intentionally planned a less-classified version to be disseminated at that level, to avoid the problem Trump’s appointees complain about). Both complain about how the Steele dossier was added as an appendix, though (as I’ll show in a follow-up) they’re inconsistent about how they claim it was.

But there are differences. the document from Ratcliffe — who released the first of the SRV documents contemporaneously with the HPSCI report that obsessed about them — doesn’t appear to mention them at all.

The two reports treat three pieces of intelligence on which the “aspired” judgment was based differently (the CIA one may not treat one of the HPSCI complaints at all). As I’ll note in my main post on the HPSCI report, CIA treats one document that HPSCI considers problematic as reliable but compartmented in a way that made inclusion problematic.

Perhaps the most interesting detail you get from reading both in tandem pertains to one phrase in a document about which “a senior CIA operations officer observed, ‘We don’t know what was meant by that’ and ‘five people read it five ways,'” basically, about whether that phrase hade been read the correct way. As of a few weeks ago, in Ratcliffe’s report, the CIA was still trying to protect this intelligence, but not Tulsi. She declassified most of four pages of discussion about the phrase, with information about the access — the source was well-established, had authoritative access to something but second-hand access to this information, but for some reason the CIA was not able to clarify what the source meant by the phrase. The HPSCI Report complains that the ICA didn’t note that this person had an “anti-Trump bias” (emphasis original).

And Tulsi declassified what the intelligence said (even though she hadn’t in the less classified version of the ICA she had released a day earlier).

Putin had made this decision [to leak DNC emails in July] after he had come to believe that the Democratic nominee had better odds of winning the U.S. presidential election, and that [Trump], whose victory Putin was counting on, most likely would not be able to pull off a convincing victory.

The HPSCI memo goes on to complain that Brennan included this. It invents a number of other readings this could have meant, besides that Putin wanted to help Trump win. Maybe Putin expected Trump to win, in July 20216 when no one else did? Maybe Putin counted on a Trump win at the RNC? They even tried to undermine the intelligence by claiming that all the things Putin did to tamper in the election could have served the other goals he also had.

None of the confirmed activities — leaks, public statements, social media messaging, and traditional propaganda — corroborate the ICA interpretation of the fragment, because these activities were all consistent with Putin’s objectives to undermine faith in US democracy, without regard for candidate Trump’s fate.

Putin approved the DNC leak because he was counting on Trump to win, the fragment said, and HPSCI Republicans want to believe that maybe Putin just wanted to undermine faith in democracy.

Well, anyway, as I said, Ratcliffe didn’t declassify any of that. He did send analysts back to review the underlying intelligence, and here’s what they said.

The DA Review examined the underlying raw intelligence and confirmed that the clause was accurately represented in the serialized report, and that the ICA authors’ interpretation of its meaning was most consistent with the raw intelligence.

And Ratcliffe also backs the quality of the source behind this claim.

The DA Review does not dispute the quality and credibility of the highly classified CIA serialized report that the ICA authors relied on to drive the “aspired” judgment.

So between them, Tulsi and Ratcliffe provided us something genuinely new. According to a reliable but ambiguous intelligence fragment, CIA got intelligence that said Putin approved the DNC leak “because he was counting on” Trump’s victory.

MSNBC, The White House lashes out at ‘South Park,’ signaling Trump’s weakness, Steve Benen, July 25, 2025. Trump fumes over ‘South Park’ roasting him, depicting him in bed with Satan. The more the president and his White House team are rattled by satire, comedians and cartoons, the more they appear weak and pathetic.

A couple of weeks ago, at the latest White House Cabinet meeting, a reporter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi a question about the Jeffrey Epstein case, and Donald Trump was incredulous. “People still talking about this guy, this creep?” the president interjected. “That is unbelievable.”

To hear Trump tell it, with all that’s going on in the world, asking about the Epstein scandal was an example of media professionals taking an interest in meaningless trivia. These are serious times, which means serious people should focus on matters of national and global significance.

You know, like “South Park.” Variety reported:

Donald Trump‘s White House has responded to Wednesday night’s explosive ‘South Park’ Season 27 premiere, which portrayed the president begging for sex from Satan and featured a Deepfake-assisted PSA where Trump goes fully nude.

In a written statement, a White House spokesperson said, among other things, that the show’s creators are lacking in “authentic or original content.”

“This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention,” the statement continued, dismissing the program as a “fourth-rate show.”

Oh. So, two weeks after Trump dismissed the Epstein scandal as trivia, the White House turned its attention to ... a Comedy Central cartoon.

In fact, as it turns out, the president and his team have become enthusiastic comedy critics lately. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, and the Republican has also taken aim at a variety of other late-night hosts and comedians, including Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers.

New York Times, Gabbard’s Attacks on Obama Put the Attorney General in a Tough Spot, Glenn Thrush and Julian E. Barnes, July 25, 2025 (print ed.). The director of national intelligence gave the Justice Department little warning before she demanded an investigation.

President Trump made clear this week that Tulsi Gabbard was back in his good graces.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump excoriated Ms. Gabbard, right, one of his top intelligence officials, over a video she filmed during a trip to Asia that he saw as self-promotional, and she was left out of some meetings in the lead-up to the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to two people with knowledge of what happened.

But on Tuesday, at a White House event with congressional Republicans that Ms. Gabbard attended, he declared: “She’s, like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now.”

What changed? Last week, Ms. Gabbard launched a diversionary attack that relieved pressure on Mr. Trump from the never-ending Epstein file crisis, releasing documents, she claimed, that proved Obama administration officials engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy.”

Yet Ms. Gabbard’s effort to repair her standing with the president has placed the already embattled Attorney General Pam Bondi in a nearly untenable position.

Ms. Bondi, left, was given little warning the director of national intelligence was about to demand she investigate one of Mr. Trump’s most longstanding grievances: claims without evidence that the Obama administration overstated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election in order to undermine him.

Ms. Bondi, fresh off a nasty fight with a top F.B.I. official over who was responsible for the political mess around the Epstein case, felt blindsided and annoyed, according to several people familiar with her thinking. They said that in reality, however, Ms. Gabbard was acting as little more than a proxy for a president demanding action on his vengeance agenda.

Ms. Bondi’s staff scrambled for a solution that would satisfy Mr. Trump while not committing the department to a tit-for-tat Obama investigation with unpredictable legal and political consequences.

Ms. Gabbard, standing at the White House briefing room lectern on Wednesday, made a series of provocative claims and pointedly said the onus was now on the Justice Department.

Several hours later, Ms. Bondi’s deputies posted an ambiguous, four-paragraph statement on the department’s website that announced the formation of what they described as a “strike force” to look into the Gabbard accusations. In a rare direct engagement with the Trump administration, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama dismissed the attacks as a “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

Further details of the group’s operations, timetable and composition were not forthcoming. Officials close to the situation said the details were being hammered out. A similar effort set up to address “weaponization” of the Biden-era Justice Department has yet to yield much.

Representatives of Ms. Gabbard and Ms. Bondi deny there is any friction, insisting they are in lock step.

“Director Gabbard and Attorney General Bondi have been in frequent contact and are working together to hold those responsible for manufacturing the Russia hoax accountable,” said Olivia Coleman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Gabbard.

The attorney general described Ms. Gabbard as “a friend” and said in a statement that she was “grateful for her partnership.”

It is not guaranteed that the move will satisfy Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly demanded the Justice Department investigate and prosecute political enemies and those responsible for bringing state and federal charges against him.

Mr. Trump has recently told advisers that he fully supports Ms. Bondi and values her loyalty, though he has complained that senior department officials, including Ms. Bondi, were not moving fast enough to investigate those he has labeled criminals, including Mr. Obama, according to multiple people in the president’s orbit.

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Trump was “incredibly happy” with both Ms. Bondi and Ms. Gabbard, but signaled the White House was eager to see the Justice Department use the information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

 

New York Times, How a Frantic Scouring of the Epstein Files Consumed the Justice Dept., Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer, July 25, 2025 (print ed.). There was a single goal in mind: find something — anything — that could be released to the public to satisfy President Trump’s supporters.

Justice Department officials diverted hundreds of F.B.I. employees and federal prosecutors from their regular duties to go through the Jeffrey Epstein files at least four times — including once to flag any references to President Trump and other prominent figures.Credit...Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

This spring, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department made an all-out push involving hundreds of employees to scour the Jeffrey Epstein files with a single goal in mind — find something, anything, that could be released to the public to satisfy the mounting clamor from the angry legions of President Trump’s supporters.

But after devoting countless hours to the project, working at times around the clock searching databases, hard drives, network drives, cabinets, desks and closets, the bureau and the department finally acknowledged this month that they had little to show for their efforts. They came to realize, for instance, that there was no specific “client list,” which previous investigators had known years ago.

Those conclusions, announced in a memo earlier this month and then repeated this week in a statement by a Justice Department official, capped a frenetic scramble to sort more than 100,000 pages of materials related to Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in prison six years ago awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. During the inquiry, Justice Department officials diverted hundreds of F.B.I. employees and federal prosecutors from their regular duties to go through the documents at least four times — including once to flag any references to Mr. Trump and other prominent figures.

The bureau’s own expert document reviewers raised concerns at one point that the investigation was not only being rushed, but could also violate laws and internal protocols put in place to protect against sensitive information about witnesses, child victims and grand jury material from being released.

Details of the review were based on accounts by three former F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation. The New York Times also obtained a summary of the process as described by one senior bureau official to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The expansive and ultimately fruitless effort to scrutinize the files reflects the obsession within the Trump administration and Mr. Trump’s political base with Mr. Epstein — a fixation that several top administration officials helped fuel themselves before they entered government. The review appeared to be nearing an end in mid-April, shortly before Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed Mr. Trump that he was mentioned in the files.

Still, by reaching the same conclusion that other inquiries had come to — namely, that Mr. Epstein killed himself in 2019 and that no evidence existed to charge other people with trafficking young women — the document review has created deep fissures among the president’s followers, who have found themselves not knowing who or what to believe about a story that they have been fed for years.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said the administration had only itself to blame.

“It’s clear that President Trump and Attorney General Bondi are directly responsible for the confusion and mistrust around the Epstein cover-up,” he said in a statement, describing the senior bureau official’s account as “highly credible.”

On Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, drove the most recent stake into the heart of the Epstein conspiracy theory, reiterating the findings of the department memo this month indicating that the F.B.I.’s review had not turned up any additional culprits.

“This Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead,” Mr. Blanche wrote on social media. “The joint statement by @TheJusticeDept and @FBI of July 6 remains as accurate today as it was when it was written.”ImageTodd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, released a statement on Tuesday that reinforced the conclusion that the F.B.I.’s review had not surfaced new evidence in the Epstein case.Credit...Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

Mr. Blanche’s message was a tacit concession that the review by the bureau — one that diverted resources from other critical missions — had largely been a waste of time. It also risked further enraging Mr. Trump’s supporters and right-wing influencers, many of whom remain convinced that other powerful men were in league with Mr. Epstein.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesman for the F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Almost as soon as Mr. Trump returned to the White House, digging into the Epstein files emerged as one of his administration’s top priorities. But there were early signs that recriminations and missteps would consume the effort.

Just days after Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, was confirmed by the Senate and Dan Bongino was installed as his deputy, the two men found themselves immersed in the review while also facing criticism from Ms. Bondi herself.

On Feb. 27, one week after Mr. Patel assumed his post, Ms. Bondi wrote him a letter accusing the F.B.I.’s field office in New York of withholding thousands of pages of documents related to the Epstein case. While the basis of her claim remains unclear, she also ordered Mr. Patel “to conduct an immediate investigation into why my order to the F.B.I. was not followed,” giving the director two weeks to come up with an answer.

The day after the letter was delivered, James E. Dennehy, the top agent in the New York office was forced to leave his job for reasons that were never made clear.

Then, in early March, the F.B.I.’s Record/Information Dissemination Section in Winchester, Va., was ordered to process more than 100,000 pages in the Epstein files for public disclosure. But the files were littered with data that was not supposed to become public, such as personal identifying information, grand jury material, information protected under the Pen Register Act and the National Security Act and information prohibited from disclosure under the Child Victims’ and Child Witnesses’ Act, the senior bureau official told the Judiciary Committee.

The records section initially decided to treat the files like a Freedom of Information Act request, which would typically be handled in a cautious and deliberate manner. But the furor raging among Mr. Trump’s supporters appeared to ratchet up the pressure to review and release the Epstein materials quickly.

On Friday, March 14, for instance, the F.B.I. heightened its efforts by bringing in hundreds of people from the New York field office to assist those in the records section to sift through documents over the weekend. But even with the increased work force, the team was able to clear only about 900 documents for release by that Tuesday, according to the account by the senior bureau official that was provided to Congress.

When Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel received that initial batch, they were displeased, the senior bureau official said. They ordered F.B.I. personnel to work mandatory round-the-clock shifts to get through more of the materials.

 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: “Free Ghislaine” Advocate Claims People Connected to White House Contacted Her Before Reaching Out to Maxwell, J.D. Wolf, July 25, 2025. Jessica Reed Kraus says people "intimately connected to the White House" reached out to her for advice.

As fallout from the Epstein files scandal deepens, new revelations are raising fresh questions about the Trump administration’s judgment. Pro-Trump influencer and Substack writer Jessica Reed Kraus — a self-described “Free Ghislaine” advocate — claimed this week on Instagram that sources “intimately connected to the White House” reached out to her for strategic advice about interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted child sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

According to Kraus, who has previously been granted press access at the White House, the Trump team sought her opinion on whether engaging with Maxwell, shown above in a file photo with Donald Trump, could help politically. This outreach reportedly followed widespread outrage over the administration’s announcement that it would not be releasing the full Epstein files, disclosing any client names, or making additional arrests.

Many in Trump's base saw that move as a betrayal of his campaign promises and were further incensed when Trump began publicly lashing out at his own supporters, calling some of them "bad people" and former allies.

On her Instagram Story, Kraus wrote: “The president, deep in crisis after catastrophically fumbling the Epstein files, prompted separate calls from sources intimately connected to the White House. They reached out asking for advice on Maxwell. Thanks to the viral bashing weeks earlier, I was on their radar as an ‘expert’ on Epstein’s defamed co-conspirator.”

 

 2019 Story Back in the News

Maria Farmer at Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in Ohio in 1996, in a photo provided by her representative.

 

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005 (Joe Schildhorn / Patrick McMullan, via Getty Images)

New York Times, The Sisters Who First Tried to Take Down Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Baker, Aug. 26, 2019, Updated July 2, 2020. Nine years before any police investigation, Maria and Annie Farmer reported the troubling behavior of Jeffrey Epstein and his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell. No one would act.

As more women have come forward in recent days to describe assaults at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Maria Farmer finds herself distraught, wondering what might have happened if someone had taken her seriously.

Twenty-four years ago, Ms. Farmer was an artist who had entered the unorthodox life Mr. Epstein lived behind the doors of his luxury estates. Mr. Epstein had offered to help her painting career, but it all came to an abrupt end one night in the summer of 1996, when she says Mr. Epstein and his companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, began violently groping her.

She learned later that her 16-year-old sister, Annie Farmer, had been subjected to a troubling topless massage at Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico.

[Several of Mr. Epstein’s accusers spoke at a hearing. “Justice has never been served in this case,” one said.]

Ms. Farmer contacted the New York Police Department, and said she then went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offering to share what she knew about Mr. Epstein and the parade of young women being brought to Mr. Epstein’s houses. Though the bureau has never acknowledged such a contact, Ms. Farmer said the F.B.I. must have had a record of it, because agents came back to her — years later — with questions. She also went to leaders in the New York art world that Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell frequented, and the sisters tried to tell their story to a national magazine.

In each case, their reports went nowhere.

Finally, facing what she said were threats as a result of the sisters’ claims, Ms. Farmer abandoned her New York art career and stopped painting altogether.

“I did not want another young lady to go through what Annie went through,” Maria Farmer said in a recent interview. “I could handle what happened to me. I could not handle what happened to her.”

Mr. Epstein would continue to lure vulnerable girls into his predatory circle for another nine years before investigators began diving deep into his world. After being arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein died earlier this month in what the authorities said was an apparent suicide.

Other women have come forward in recent years with even more serious claims of rape and child abuse against Mr. Epstein, but the Farmer sisters’ reports — made 23 years ago — are the earliest known allegations about Mr. Epstein’s troubling physical contact with girls and young women. In their detailed accounts, told here for the first time, they offer a glimpse of how Mr. Epstein managed to avoid significant scrutiny for years, even as concerns about his conduct began to pile up.Editors’ PicksIs the Bread in Europe Better for You?Can You Do the Nicki Minaj?Tracee Ellis Ross on the Joy and Loneliness of Solo Travel

Ms. Farmer said that she feels guilty about having brought her sister into Mr. Epstein’s orbit. She mourns the victims who came after her, she said, her voice cracking each time she mentioned the name of one of them. She has spent years trying to live in seclusion.The First MeetingImageJeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005.Credit...Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Images

Ms. Farmer moved to New York in 1993, eager to pursue her passion for art, and enrolled at the New York Academy of Art.

She already had a specialty, exploring figures of nudes and adolescents, and had a chance to train under one of her idols, the painter and sculptor Eric Fischl. One of her paintings was done in a voyeuristic style, showing a man in the frame of a doorway looking at a woman on a sofa — a painting she said was inspired by Edgar Degas’s famous piece “Interior,” which is sometimes known as “The Rape.”

At a gallery show for her graduation, Ms. Farmer said, the dean of the academy, Eileen Guggenheim, introduced her to Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, and told her to sell them the painting with the man in the doorway at a discount. (Ms. Guggenheim said she did not recall such an interaction.)

Afterward, Ms. Farmer said, Mr. Epstein called her to offer her a job acquiring art on his behalf, and later managing the entrance to a townhouse he was renovating.

There, at the age of 25, she was introduced to Mr. Epstein’s odd life, with girls and young women coming through for what she recalled Ms. Maxwell describing as modeling auditions for the lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret. The house at times bustled in anticipation of potential visits from Bill Clinton, although she never actually saw him there.

She said she met Donald J. Trump one day in Mr. Epstein’s office, recalling Mr. Trump eyeing her before Mr. Epstein informed him that “she’s not for you.” Ms. Farmer’s mother, Janice Swain, recalled her daughter detailing the interaction with Mr. Trump around the time it occurred.

Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump have acknowledged knowing Mr. Epstein, with Mr. Clinton denying knowledge of anything improper and Mr. Trump saying he was “not a fan” of Mr. Epstein.

Ms. Maxwell was charming and friendly, Ms. Farmer said, and as Mr. Epstein’s companion, she offered young women a level of assurance that they were safe in his presence. But she also seemed to play an important role in bringing young women in, Ms. Farmer said, recalling that Ms. Maxwell would leave the house saying, “I’ve got to go get girls for Jeffrey.”

Ms. Maxwell would refer to the girls she was looking for as “nubiles,” Ms. Farmer said. “They had a driver, and he would be driving along, and Ghislaine would say, ‘Get that girl,’” she said. “And they’d stop, and she’d run out and get the girl and talk to her.”

Lawyers for Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein did not respond to requests for comment for this article.The Younger SisterImageAnnie Farmer had troubling encounters with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell when she was 16.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

One of the girls in whom the couple took an interest was Ms. Farmer’s younger sister Annie, left. Annie Farmer had troubling encounters with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell when she was 16. (Tamir Kalifa photo for The New York Times).

Ms. Farmer had mentioned to them that her sister was looking to go to college. Mr. Epstein offered to help, and brought Annie, then 16 years old and living in Arizona, to visit New York.

Annie Farmer said she recalled Mr. Epstein as kind and casual, wearing sweatpants, pouring champagne and talking about her college plans. During the trip, they all went to see a movie. As the film progressed, Mr. Epstein began rubbing Annie’s hand, and then her lower leg, she said.

“It was one of those things that just gave me a weird feeling but wasn’t that weird + probably normal,” Ms. Farmer wrote in a diary entry dated Jan. 25, 1996. “The one thing that kind of weirded me out about it was he let go of my hand when he was talking to Maria.”

Mr. Epstein offered to send Annie Farmer on a trip to Thailand, and invited her to his New Mexico ranch for a weekend. Under the impression that the gathering would include a number of students chaperoned by Ms. Maxwell, Annie’s mother, Ms. Swain, said she allowed Annie to go. But when she arrived in New Mexico, Annie said, it was just her and Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.

There were more uncomfortable interactions that weekend, she said. She recalled Ms. Maxwell persuading her to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage and then giving pointers as she performed it. They went to another movie, where Mr. Epstein continued another round of his petting touches, she said.

Then, when she woke up in the house one morning, she recalled him coming into the room, saying he wanted to cuddle, and getting into bed next to her.

Ms. Farmer also recalled Ms. Maxwell repeatedly asking whether she wanted a massage. Eventually relenting, Ms. Farmer followed directions by taking off her clothes and bra and getting under a sheet on a massage table. Ms. Maxwell performed the massage, at one point having Ms. Farmer lie on her back as Ms. Maxwell pulled down the sheet to massage her chest.

“I don’t think there was any reason for her to be touching me that way,” Ms. Farmer said.

Mr. Epstein did not participate, but Ms. Farmer said she could sense that he was in the area and possibly watching.The First ReportsImageA painting by Maria Farmer that she says she was asked to sell to Mr. Epstein.

At the time, Maria Farmer was unaware of the interactions her younger sister had in New Mexico. She went to Ohio around that time to focus on her paintings, utilizing Mr. Epstein’s large estate there. The residence was inside a complex developed by Les Wexner, the chief executive of L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret.

Later in the summer, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell paid a visit. One night, she recalled getting an unusual request: Mr. Epstein needed his feet massaged.

The foot massage was brief and awkward, Ms. Farmer recalled, as Mr. Epstein groaned with what seemed like exaggerated pleasure, followed by a yelp of pain. Then he invited her to sit on the bed, where he was watching a PBS program about math.

Ms. Maxwell joined them on the bed, Ms. Farmer said, and the night took a sudden turn: Both Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell began groping Ms. Farmer over her clothes, rubbing her body, commenting on her features, and twisting her nipples to the point of bruising. She said they did so in unison, mirroring each other’s movements. Fearing that she was about to be raped, Ms. Farmer eventually fled the room and barricaded herself in another part of the house.

She soon discovered that three nude photographs she had kept in a storage box were missing. The photos were of Annie and a third Farmer sister, who was 12, modeling for Maria’s figurative paintings.

Ms. Farmer said she began phoning people in a panic, looking for help. One of the people she reached was her art mentor, Mr. Fischl. In an interview, he recalled Ms. Farmer describing a physical encounter in the bedroom, fear for her sister and outrage about the missing photographs.

“I just kept telling Maria, ‘You’ve got to get out of there. You’ve got to get out of there,’” Mr. Fischl said.

Maria’s father, Frank Farmer, also recalled getting a call. He did not know the specifics of what transpired, but said his daughter was upset enough that he drove to the estate in Ohio from Kentucky to get her.

After speaking with Annie and learning that Annie had had her own troubles with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, Maria Farmer said, she returned to New York. She recalled getting a phone call from Ms. Maxwell, saying she planned to burn all of Ms. Farmer’s art and that her career was over. Frightened, Ms. Farmer said she went to a local police precinct to report what had happened to her in Ohio, and about the art.

Officers at the New York Police Department precinct took a report on the purported threat and on the art theft allegation, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. But they referred her to other agencies, including the F.B.I., concerning the assault allegation because Ohio was outside their jurisdiction, Ms. Farmer said.

Ms. Farmer said she called the F.B.I. and spoke for about half an hour with the agent who answered the phone. The agent did not say what would happen with her report, she said. She asked if she should phone other law enforcement officials in individual states, like Ohio and New Mexico, and was told that was “up to you,” she said. She recalled contacting at least one other jurisdiction — she did not remember which — and making no progress.

An F.B.I. spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the agency had a report of such a call from Ms. Farmer in its files.

In recent days, the art collector Stuart Pivar said he recalled running into Ms. Farmer at a flea market around that time, and hearing her discuss serious concerns about Mr. Epstein that she said she had reported to law enforcement.

Ms. Farmer said she also raised her concerns about Mr. Epstein with leaders in the art community, including Ms. Guggenheim, the dean at the art school who had first put her in touch with Mr. Epstein. But she said Ms. Guggenheim did not seem to take the issue seriously. Ms. Guggenheim said in an interview that the details she was aware of at the time did not rise to a level that would require intervention.

The two Farmer sisters made another run at telling their story in 2003 to Vicky Ward, a reporter for Vanity Fair, which had commissioned an article about Mr. Epstein’s complicated finances that would also mention his proclivity for young girls. The article was published with no mention of the Farmers, and they felt they were left badly exposed.

Ms. Ward wrote on her personal blog in 2011 that the article went in a different direction because of “not knowing quite whom to believe.” The editor, Graydon Carter, said in an email that Ms. Ward’s sourcing on the Farmers’ account did not meet the magazine’s legal standards. But Ms. Ward indicated on Twitter recently that she believed that Mr. Carter had succumbed to pressure from Mr. Epstein. John Connolly, a former contributing editor at Vanity Fair, said he recalled Mr. Carter talking about the efforts Mr. Epstein had made to influence the article.

When word got out that the sisters had given a detailed interview to the magazine, the angry phone calls to her resumed, Ms. Farmer said.

“Better be careful and watch your back,” she said Ms. Maxwell told her. “She said, ‘I know you go to the West Side Highway all the time. While you’re out there, just be really careful because there are a lot of ways to die there.’”The AftermathImageMaria Farmer recently moved to a new home in the South, where she has begun painting again.Credit...Andrea Morales for The New York Times

Ms. Farmer said the threats led her to abandon her life in the New York art scene, where Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell still held considerable sway. While Annie has moved forward with life, obtaining a Ph.D. and working as a psychotherapist, Ms. Farmer struggled to move past the year she spent with Mr. Epstein. She felt sickened by her own paintings, which she realized Mr. Epstein had apparently appreciated not for their artistic value, but for their depiction of nude forms of girls.

Unable to forget the comments Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell had made about her breasts, Ms. Farmer said she underwent breast reduction surgery.

It was not until 2006, when F.B.I. agents knocked on her door in North Carolina, that Ms. Farmer found renewed hope that Mr. Epstein would be held accountable. New allegations about Mr. Epstein had surfaced the previous year, when a report by a teenager in Florida spurred an extensive investigation that uncovered a wide range of young girls who had been recruited to visit Mr. Epstein’s lavish home in Palm Beach.

Heavily redacted records released by the F.B.I. appear to show handwritten notes from November 2006 interviews with Maria Farmer and Annie Farmer, outlining key details of their stories, including Maria’s visit to the New York police and her referral to the F.B.I.

But though the investigation progressed, a widely criticized plea deal eventually quashed any federal prosecution. To the sisters, the 2008 plea agreement, which allowed Mr. Epstein to plead guilty merely to much less serious state charges, was deeply demoralizing.  

 

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

Meidas Touch Networkt, Musk Fires Back at Trump Over Epstein Files, ‘Subsidies’ and SpaceX, J.D. Wolf, July 25, 2025. Musk endorses plan to identify Epstein client list from videos Pam Bondi already has. 

Elon Musk escalated his criticism of Donald Trump on Wednesday, responding to the former president’s comments on both the Epstein scandal and claims about government subsidies. After Trump dismissed renewed scrutiny of the Epstein case as a “Democrat CON JOB,” Musk amplified a post urging the release of Epstein-related video evidence to identify abusers.

Musk replied with a simple “Exactly,” endorsing this plan for public accountability using the videos Pam Bondi already has possession of: “Why not review the 10,000 hours of video. Each video will contain a victim and perpetrator. Identify all the perpetrators and make a list. Release the list.”

The feud didn’t end there. After Trump posted that he would not “destroy Elon’s companies” and claimed he wants Musk to “THRIVE,” Musk responded sarcastically with “Phew.”

Letters From An American, Historical Commentary: July 24, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 25, 2025. The Epstein list made it into last night’s premiere of the twenty-seventh season of the television series South Park when Satan, in bed with Trump, commented, “It’s weird that whenever it comes up, you just tell everyone to relax.”

The episode hit the president’s lawsuit against the parent company of CBS News, Paramount Global, which paid Trump $16 million to settle his complaint that it had edited an interview with then–Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris misleadingly. Paramount also said it would not renew comedian Stephen Colbert’s contract just days after the deal was announced. Paramount and Skydance Media are in the midst of an $8 billion merger, and they needed the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to complete the deal. Today, Skydance Media promised to eliminate Paramount’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and to root out the “bias” at CBS News in order to win the administration's support for the merger. This afternoon, the FCC approved the deal.

Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts notes that on Monday, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed a $1.5 billion, five-year deal with Paramount for global streaming rights to the show. This new episode skewered Paramount’s cozying up to Trump.

Clymer points out that the South Park writers go on to portray Trump exactly as they once did Saddam Hussein, not only putting him in bed with Satan as they did Saddam, but also giving Trump the ‘“[s]ame mannerisms. Same voice inflections. Same love affair with Satan. Same dictatorial chaos. In fact, Satan references this by telling Trump he reminds him of a guy he used to date.” Clymer notes that the writers of one of the country’s hottest shows are “communicating that they think Trump is a bullsh*t, two-bit dictator.”

The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone reported today that in a decade of reporting on Congress, he has never seen such a level of panic among Republican lawmakers. In the past, he notes, Trump could weather crises because Republicans closed ranks around him. The Epstein issue, though, has driven a wedge through the Republicans themselves, some of whom are turning against Trump just as the House of Representatives is headed back home. There, Republican members will hear directly from constituents who are angry over the administration’s about-face on releasing more information about Epstein and his associates.

Trump boasted to the House Republicans on Tuesday that his poll numbers are the best he’s ever had, but in fact a Gallup poll out today shows his approval rating at its lowest in his second term: just 37% of American adults approve of his performance in office. Journalist Bill Grueskin notes that this puts Trump six points below where Biden was after the final U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The biggest shift has been among Independents. Only 29% of them say they approve of his job performance, down from 46% at the beginning of his term.

Gallup reports that 60% of American adults disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration, with only 38% approving. That is unlikely to change as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), newly flush with funding from the budget reconciliation bill, ramps up both immigration sweeps and detention. Neither is popular with Americans as they hear stories of overcrowding at ICE facilities and inhumane and unsanitary conditions.

On Tuesday, Nicole Acevedo of NBC News reported that detainees at the detention center in the Florida Everglades spoke of “torturous conditions in cage-like units full of mosquitoes,” with lights on at all times, lack of food and medical treatment, and unsanitary conditions. On June 20, she reported, the U.S. was holding more than 56,000 people in detention centers, the highest number in U.S. history. Nearly 72% of those held had no criminal history.

Just two days after the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue branch, Ken Pagurek, resigned out of frustration with the administration’s work to destroy the agency, and the same day FEMA acting director David Richardson would not commit to the agency’s continued existence, Colleen DeGuzman of the Texas Tribune reported that the U.S. Department of Defense had awarded a $1.26 billion contract to build the largest detention facility in the U.S. at Fort Bliss, an army base in El Paso, Texas. The facility will be designed to hold 5,000 people in tents, and it is expected to open in September 2027. DeGuzman notes that the company that was awarded the contract, Acquisition Logistics, appears not to have experience running detention centers.

On Friday, July 18, the government of El Salvador repatriated more than 250 Venezuelan men who had been held at the notorious CECOT prison after being sent there by the Trump administration. The administration maintained it was not responsible for the men after they left U.S. territory, a claim the government of El Salvador repeatedly refuted. But with the repatriation of the men in exchange for the release of ten U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents held as political prisoners in Venezuela, the State Department claimed the exchange was “thanks to President Trump’s leadership and commitment to the American people.”

The former CECOT prisoners are telling the story of their four-month incarceration, detailing human rights abuses: beatings, being shot with pellets, deprivation of due process, torture.

Today Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel filed an administrative claim against Homeland Security for wrongful detention when it sent him to the terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador. The filing is the first step in a lawsuit. “I want to clear my name,” he told Jazmine Ulloa of the New York Times. “I am not a bad person.”

 

The Bulwark Triad Commentary: How Hulk Hogan Made 'Real America,' Jonathan V. Last, above, July 25, 2025. It’s the Hulkster's world now and we’re just living in it. Hulk Hogan taught us that that the world is made up of sharps and marks. And whatever the sharps do to the marks, the marks deserve it. There is no code; no truth; no honor; no shame. There is only the constant, grinding, unquenchable imperative to get over with the audience. Whatever it takes.

1. Hulkamaniacs

Hulk Hogan, né Terry Bollea, passed away Thursday at the age of 71. He was a quintessentially American figure who appeared and reappeared in popular culture (and the news) continually over forty years.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Hogan is responsible for what America is today. But not much of one. Hogan, like his friends Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, was both a symptom and a cause of what we have become.

We’re going long today on a guy who is famous for getting oiled up and rolling around half-naked in front of a crowd. This guy:

I understand how ridiculous this conversation may seem.

But also: You cannot understand the world we live in, right now, unless you understand Hulk Hogan.

So let’s hang and bang. Let’s head to the mountains. Let’s take this ride together, brother.

We start with Hogan’s long and varied presence in American culture.

In 1980, he was known to only a small number of aficionados in the pro-wrestling subculture. A few years later action figures and lunch boxes with his face on them were in every toy store in the country. By 1985 he was a character in a children’s cartoon that ran Saturday mornings on CBS.

In 1990, Hogan became embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit after he applied a sleeper hold to comedian Richard Belzer during a taping of Belzer’s talk show. It was something of a scandal.

He was a star in forgettable action movies during the 1990s, and then a reality-TV pioneer in the early 2000s with the VH1 series about him and his family, Hogan Knows Best.

In 2012, Hogan was caught up in the era of the celebrity sex tape, which drew him into contact with Peter Thiel. Hogan teamed up with Thiel (in secret) to launch a lawsuit designed to bankrupt the media company Gawker. He was successful.

Last year, Hogan was on stage at the Republican National Convention, endorsing his longtime friend, Trump.

The point here is that Hogan’s longevity and ubiquity combined to make him a piece of our national furniture.

Consider the difference between Hogan and, say, Tom Cruise.

Cruise has also been famous for forty years—but almost always in the same context. He’s a movie star. He makes movies. He sits within a specific slot in society’s consciousness.

But Hogan? He’s always just . . . been there. Sometimes as a wrestler. Sometimes as an actor. Or a person talked about on newscasts. Or involved in lawsuits. Or at political rallies. His name is, in itself, a kind of shorthand: “The guy was the size of Hulk Hogan.” Or: “That dude was Hulking up.”¹

When fame tips over into long-running ubiquity, an alchemical transformation occurs. The star goes from being a remote, aspirational figure to an avatar. Which is what happened to Hogan. He became a totem for Real America. 

New York Times, Columbia and Penn Made Trump Deals. More Universities Could Be Next, Alan Blinder, July 25, 2025 (print ed.). Trump officials hope deals with two Ivy League schools create a template that others, including Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cornell and Northwestern, will follow.

White House officials have reached deals with two Ivy League universities and are now armed with a proven strategy to pressure other schools to rewrite their policies and reorient campus politics.

First, they strip away hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding, based on vague accusations that a university abets antisemitism or unlawfully supports transgender rights. Then they make demands, wearing down school administrators until making concessions to the White House appears to be the only way forward.

The strategy worked twice in the last month, with Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. That leaves at least five more embattled schools — Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern and Princeton — with decisions to make about whether to fight or to bargain.

The White House has touted the deals with Columbia and Penn as victories. But they also offer frameworks for wary college administrators as they consider which sacrifices are worth making to try to placate a president bent on bringing elite institutions to heel. Now Columbia has shown that a fragile peace can be purchased.

Under the deal announced Wednesday night, Columbia will pay $221 million and stand by an array of previous pledges, like limits on protests and greater internal oversight of certain academic programs. But it secured a provision saying that no part of the agreement “shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech.”

Penn did not agree to pay anything, but promised, among other terms, that its athletics policies would align with the Trump administration’s beliefs about participation by transgender people.

“Two hundred million dollars is not a lot of money when you have billions at stake, and any corporate person will tell you that,” said Donna E. Shalala, who was health secretary under President Bill Clinton and has led four schools, including the University of Miami and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Basically, they’re cutting their losses and ensuring their future — for at least a short period of time.”

Assessments like Dr. Shalala’s are deeply unnerving to many people in academia. Professors have spent months warning about how history shows that aspiring autocrats seek to tame and bully universities. They worry that settlements like the ones signed by Columbia and Penn will encourage the White House to conjure reasons to make more demands, and give administrators on campuses across the country cover to make agreements that could poison American higher education.

“Universities, as they make concessions, do not stop the demand for future concessions,” said David A. Bateman, the president of Cornell’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “They just open the door for more.”

Trump administration officials are openly eager to use Columbia as an example of how to satisfy the craving among some conservatives to remake higher education, a sector they regard as a cradle of liberal indoctrination.

July 24 

New York Times, Guest Essay: I Covered the Epstein Case for Decades. These Are the 9 Questions We Actually Need Answered, Barry Levine, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. Levine, right (Michael Goldman photo), is the author of “The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.” He began reporting on Mr. Epstein in the mid-2000s.

President Trump and members of his administration teased us with the prospect of making public Jeffrey Epstein’s F.B.I. files. Instead, we got zilch.

Mr. Trump then ordered the Department of Justice to seek the release of some grand jury testimony — a request that a federal judge in Florida denied on Wednesday. But even that information, though it might have filled in some gaps in the Epstein story, would have been only a sliver of what’s in the F.B.I. files — which include a mind-boggling “300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” according to the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.

The American people — and above all, the victims of Mr. Epstein’s crimes — deserve answers to outstanding questions about how he operated, with whose help and in whose service. With the exception of redactions required to protect the innocent and materials that must be withheld while under court seal, the complete F.B.I. files should be released.

Here are nine unanswered questions about the Epstein case — ones that a curious, non-conspiracy-minded citizen might have — that the files might help answer:

No. 1: How did Mr. Epstein make his money, and how did he finance his sex trafficking over two decades?

At the time of Mr. Epstein’s death in 2019, his estate was worth an estimated $600 million. He worked briefly on Wall Street and built his wealth with the help of several billionaires, including the L Brands founder Leslie Wexner and the Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, for whom Mr. Epstein provided consulting, tax advice and other financial services. But it’s still not clear how Mr. Epstein amassed such a large fortune — or how he was able to fund such a complex trafficking scheme.

(Neither Mr. Wexner nor Mr. Black has been accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement in connection with Mr. Epstein’s crimes, and both men have said that they did not know about his criminal behavior.)

In addition to trafficking underage victims within the United States, Mr. Epstein imported young women and children from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan, according to an investigation conducted by the office of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This trafficking was presumably expensive. Treasury Department files reviewed by Mr. Wyden’s staff members detail, among other things, 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion associated with just one of Mr. Epstein’s bank accounts.

We need to follow the money. The F.B.I. files may reveal more about the funding and other financial mechanics of Mr. Epstein’s operation.

No. 2: Did Mr. Epstein have any ties to spy agencies?

Proof, Investigative Commentary: How the Sadistic Sex Games Trump and Epstein Played During a Seventeen-Year Friendship — As Told By Epstein Himself — Reveal the Epstein Secrets Trump Is Hiding, Seth Abramson, left, July 24, 2025. WARNING: This report includes disturbing accounts of sexual misconduct from an eyewitness—namely, dead pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump’s best friend for over a decade.

In 2017, at a time when Donald Trump was the most powerful man on Earth, famous for seeking the destruction of anyone who disparaged him and capable of smiting any American he trained his legions of supporters on, a Florida billionaire living a life of luxury beyond measure — one he had every interest in maintaining — sat down with a New York Times bestselling author to tell the shocking truth about the then-president.

That Florida billionaire was Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, as he explained across 100+ hours of bracingly frank conversation with the New York Times bestselling author, Michael Wolff, had been Donald Trump’s “closest friend” for well over a decade — spanning the late 1980s, all of the 1990s, and almost half the 2000s — and he had evidence to prove it, in the form of not only anecdotes and easily corroborated secrets but photographs and hard data. While today, in 2025, the statement that President Trump was best friends with a convicted pedophile, serial sexual predator, and notorious child sex trafficker is uncontroversial, having been the subject of thousands of major-media news reports in the current decade, back in 2017 the assertion was fairly new outside the high society of southern Florida’s Palm Beach.

Epstein spoke to Wolff knowing that he would have to stand by everything he said — possibly in a court of law. The premise of a future lawsuit, or something even worse, was a considerable risk for Epstein, given that he’d previously served a jail sentence of over a year for his past misconduct—if, infamously, a cushier and shorter jail sentence than was appropriate. That sentence came courtesy of a prosecutor, Alex Acosta, who Donald Trump would later reward for his prosecutorial malfeasance with a promotion to United States Secretary of Labor (the federal department that, among much else, oversees some of the offenses Epstein was guilty of but deliberately never charged with).

Also top of mind for Epstein would have been the fact that the man he was speaking to Wolff about, Donald Trump, was and remains one of the most litigious persons in recorded human history, having been involved in a staggering 4,095 lawsuits prior to his ascension to the U.S. presidency in January 2017 and many more since then (the latest Lawfare Litigation Tracker displays almost 400 lawsuits, focusing exclusively on those of a more recent vintage). This despite the fact that Trump has made one of the cornerstones of his political persona a supposed aversion to “frivolous” lawsuits, and at least in his second presidential term has ignored judicial outcomes he dislikes about 33% of the time, according to a recent Washington Post analysis.

Epstein also would’ve been concerned that his former longtime friend would jail him.

More than any American president in the nation’s history, Donald Trump routinely makes credible threats to prosecute, imprison, and even executive his personal rivals.

His history of such unprecedented public threats currently sits in the triple digits, and includes some of the most harrowing statements ever made by a sitting president—including an expression of desire that his own former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, be executed, and that former president Barack Obama be charged with Treason—a federal crime intended to be punished by state-sponsored homicide and, like President Trump’s threat to General Milley, “supported” by baseless claims.

In this context, how concerned should a mere private citizen have been in 2017 about angering the sitting President of the United States? Very concerned, it would seem.

So while no one would deem the now-deceased Epstein an honorable or honest man—he was, as noted, a historically rapacious pedophile and child sex trafficker for much of his adult life, and the entirety of his seventeen-year friendship with Donald Trump—he was a famously calculating man who put self-interest above all other considerations.

So if Epstein were going to speak to an author whose forthcoming book, Fire and Fury, all concerned knew was a likely future national bestseller, one to be placed on sale at every bookstore and even airport—whether the new book were to take the form of an exposé on Trump, as Wolff intended, or, as there’s evidence Epstein anticipated, be a biography of his life that would become a bestseller simply because so much of that life was entwined with the sitting president’s—he was going to have to make sure he told only the truth over his 100+ hours of revelations to Wolff.

So how did Epstein do? Well, as already observed, he did ultimately speak to Wolff for over 100 hours, on topics large and small. Donald Trump was just one of those topics, seemingly confirming that Epstein didn’t speak to Wolff simply to harass Trump and indeed believed he was telling his life story for national consumption—a story which, while it would have to include discussion of his own past misdeeds (as he had gone to jail for some of them), would more generally need to spare few details about his seedy life in order to justify any prospective reader’s purchase of it.

But what Epstein revealed about Donald Trump was, nevertheless, astonishing.

In fact, what he told Wolff about Trump would include some of the most damaging things ever said about the then-and-now sitting U.S. president outside a courtroom.

So did that sitting President of the United States, the most litigious American of his long lifetime, sue Jeffrey Epstein, following the publication of Fire and Fury, for what he’d said to Wolff?

No, he did not.

But surely, then, President Trump sued Wolff post-publication, for all that he wrote?

No, he did not.

He tried in vain to block publication of the book ex ante, but when that effort failed, took no further action against Wolff or any of his sources—as doing so would have forced him to sit for hours of depositions about the book’s horrifyingly seedy content.

After all, truth is an absolute defense to a Libel or Defamation claim, as Trump knows.

So what did Trump do about one of the biggest betrayals he had ever experienced— which betrayal became clear to the public in October 2024, when Wolff revealed that Epstein had been one of his sources (even as the source of the betrayal would have been clear to Trump years earlier, not long after the publication of Fire and Fury in January 2018, as Wolff could only have had certain information from certain people)?

That remains something of a mystery.

What we know is that Trump’s stated ambition, as president, is to jail his leading rivals—especially those he feels have betrayed him.

And we know that by July 2019, just 18 months after the publication of a damaging book about Trump that was significantly sourced from Jeffrey Epstein, employees of Donald Trump at the Department of Justice had arrested Epstein on several felony indictments for incidents that had occurred almost two decades earlier and had been known to the United States government for over a decade. The federal investigation that led to these tardy indictments would have begun just a matter of months after President Trump came to the realization that his former best friend had betrayed him.

Perhaps all this was mere coincidence.

Perhaps President Trump’s February 2017 nomination of Acosta, right, who had looked the other way on nearly all Epstein’s crimes in the first instance — a nomination that came two years into the 2015-launched Epstein-Wolff Dialogues — wasn’t some eldritch plot to slowly bring the Epstein Scandal back to public consciousness but was instead just what it looked like: an attempt by Trump to reward Acosta for effectively covering up a sprawling Child Sex Trafficking ring his longtime Florida pal had been at the head of.

Perhaps Donald Trump would later falsely imply that the investigation, prosecution, imprisonment and death of Jeffrey Epstein had happened in the Biden administration rather than his own not because he wanted Americans to forget he had been running the U.S. government when a man who hypothetically could destroy him was himself destroyed, but because he wanted to give his former Democratic Party rival credit for something he did not do… the first time in his life Trump would ever have done so.

What we do know is that when the Trump administration brought extremely tardy indictments against Trump’s former best friend for crimes a Trump administration official had previously helped cover up in the 2000s, those indictments focused only on the period from 2002 to 2005 — a four-year timespan during which the Trump-Epstein friendship ended (and even when it was still active during that span, in 2002 and 2003, it was apparently waning due to the two friends’ divergent professional obligations).

What’s interesting about the 2019 indictments against Epstein—the ones that arrived the year after his major betrayal of Trump went public, and were the result of a Trump administration criminal investigation that began the same year his betrayal of Trump went public—is that by focusing on the span from 2002 to 2005, they avoided entirely the roughly decade-long period during which Trump and Epstein were confirmably best friends: from 1989 through 1999. It was during this latter period, the one that was studiously ignored by the Trump administration’s 2019 prosecution of Epstein, that the two men had regularly partied together per countless photographs, videos, contemporaneous accounts, and (most tellingly) their own statements from the time.

And as we’ll see in this report, the partying Trump and Epstein did during this period was consistently, unmistakably, and harrowingly problematic as a matter of U.S. law.

With this in mind, it no longer seems as coincidental that 1989 through 1999 was also the period during which the majority of the thirty-plus Sexual Assault and Rape (and in a few instances, Sexual Harassment) allegations against Donald Trump hailed from, and that the years 2002 and 2003 (the only years both in the window of the 2019 Epstein indictments and during the course of the 17-year Trump-Epstein friendship) saw just one of the dozens of serious allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump.1989 to 1999

1989: Ivana Trump

Early 1990s: Kristin Anderson

• 1993: Stacey Williams
• Mid-1990s: E. Jean Carroll
• Mid-1990s: Lisa Boyne
• 1992: Faith Daniels
• 1992: Jill Harth
• 1992: Multiple NFL cheerleaders (link)
• 1994: Katie Johnson
• 1997: Five (5) former Miss Teen USA contestants
• 1997: Amy Dorris
• 1997: Cathy Heller
• 1997: Temple Taggart McDowell
• 1998: Karena Virginia

Other allegations hailing from both before and after the 1989 to 1999 time period discussed above include the following.Before

1970s: Jessica Leeds

After

• 2000: Bridget Sullivan
• Early 2000s: Karen Johnson
• 2001: Tasha Dixon
• 2003: Melinda McGillivray
• 2005: Jennifer Murphy
• 2005: Natasha Stoynoff
• 2006: Rachel Crooks
• 2006: Jessica Drake
• 2006: Ninni Laaksonen
• 2007: Summer Zervos
• 2011: Alexia Palmer
• 2013: Cassandra Searles

All of the above incidents, and many more, are discussed at length in the 2024 book Proof of Cruelty: Donald Trump’s Decades of Violence, in the New York Times bestselling Proof Series. That book can be found here. An excerpt from its 405-page text is below. ABOVE: An excerpt from the 2024 Proof Series book Proof of Cruelty.

Of course, of far more importance to the 2019 indictment against Jeffrey Epstein than what Trump was doing before or after the time period it focused on was what Epstein was doing from 1989 onward. The available evidence suggests that Epstein’s massive, transnational Child Sex Trafficking operation saw its heyday during the period from 1989 to 1999 as well: that is, the very period the 2019 indictment opted not to focus on.

So it must be reiterated that when Donald Trump’s employees brought a criminal case against Epstein in 2019 — at a time the sitting president needed to discredit and, if possible, silence his longtime friend — that case only involved events between 2002 and 2005, the period in the 17-year Trump-Epstein friendship when the two men had their least contact. (Indeed, one of the few instances of contact known and recorded from that 48-month window — a 2003 bawdy, creepy Birthday Note sent by Trump to Epstein — is now the subject of the sitting president’s extremely disconcerting public wrath as well as a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal).

Perhaps, as this is just the introduction to a damning report about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, none of this yet seems concerning. It may also not seem concerning to some readers that the federal criminal prosecution Trump’s employees launched the very next year after Epstein’s, against Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell — who no one has ever suggested was an eyewitness to sex crimes by President Trump — opined of the correct timespan for Epstein’s criminal conduct; its fact-pattern begins in 1994.

The most immediate result of all this is that the limited grand jury documents Trump now says he wants his personal lawyer (Pam Bondi) to secure from the courts (albeit only if they’re “pertinent,” which his personal lawyer will be the sole judge of) not only are almost certain to include nothing about him — as they’re documents his own administration determined the content of in the first instance — but involve a carefully selected timespan when the sitting president was mostly not in contact with Epstein at all.

They are also the documents most likely to, to the extent they do or could reveal anything at all about any Epstein associates, harm well-known Democrats like Larry Summers (pictured below with Epstein in 2004), former president Bill Clinton (whose Clinton Foundation-related connection to Epstein in the “early 2000s” fits like a glove over the timespan Trump employees chose for their 2019 indictment of Epstein), late New Mexico governor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson (who was alleged to have abused the now-dead-by-suicide Virginia Giuffre sometime between 2000 and 2002), and former Maine Democratic senator George Mitchell (who faces the same allegations from the same timespan and now-deceased alleged victim).

Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Epstein’s Birthday Book Included Letters From Bill Clinton, Leon Black, Khadeeja Safdarand Joe Palazzolo, July 24, 2025. Former president, Wall Street billionaire were listed along with Donald Trump as ‘friends’ in the 2003 book’s table of contents, which named around five dozen contributors.

New York Times, News Analysis: Targeting Obama, Trump’s Retribution Campaign Takes Another Turn, Michael S. Schmidt, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). After focusing his second-term ire on other individuals and institutions, President Trump is again seeking prosecution of his most prominent rivals — this time with aides more inclined to carry out his wishes.

President Trump on Tuesday resurfaced his grievances against former President Barack Obama and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution. When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to “lock up” or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.

Displaying a willingness to weaponize the federal government in ways that were as novel as they were audacious, he took on a wide variety of individuals and institutions — from law firms and universities to journalists and federal bureaucrats — that he felt had crossed him, failed to fall in line or embodied ideological values that he rejected.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump reverted to earlier form, resurfacing — in a remarkably unfiltered and aggressive rant — his grievances against Mr. Obama (shown above during his White House years), prominent figures in past administrations and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution dating back to the 2016 election.

Seeking to change the topic at a time when he is under bipartisan political pressure over his unwillingness to do more to release investigative files into Jeffrey Epstein, he said the time had come for his opponents to face criminal charges.

“I let her off the hook, and I’m very happy I did, but it’s time to start after what they did to me,” Mr. Trump said of Hillary Clinton, adding: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly.”

“He’s guilty,” he added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

But if his enemies list was familiar, his capacity to pursue retribution appears to be expanding.

Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on those who crossed him.

Many of them were investigated, and two of them were the subjects of highly unusual and invasive audits, but none of them were ever charged.

The difference now is that Mr. Trump, much more so than during his first term, is surrounded by aides and cabinet members who often appear willing to follow through on his angriest and most authoritarian impulses.

The Justice Department, whose top ranks are populated by loyalists, including two of his own lawyers, has shown a willingness to carry out Mr. Trump’s personal agenda. The department has dismissed prosecutors involved not just in the criminal cases brought against him two years ago by a special counsel but also those who pursued Jan. 6 rioters. The department also dropped a prosecution against New York City’s mayor after he agreed to help Mr. Trump on immigration issues. And the administration also targeted first-term officials who became public critics of Mr. Trump, like Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs.

But now the efforts to target top officials from previous administrations appears to be gaining momentum.

The intelligence community under Mr. Trump is engaged in a campaign seeking to show that Mr. Obama and his aides wrongly sought to tie Mr. Trump to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor — and that some of Mr. Obama’s officials and perhaps Mr. Obama himself should be held criminally liable.

John Ratcliffe, left, the C.I.A. director, conducted a review that was deeply critical of the Obama administration and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan. Mr. Ratcliffe wrote on social media that the review had shown that the process was corrupt, and then he made a criminal referral to the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, issued another report last week including documents that she asserted showed that there was a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 by the Obama administration to harm Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Ms. Gabbard released more material: a 2017 House Intelligence Committee report that took issue with elements of the Obama administration’s assessment. Those House findings were at odds with a bipartisan series of Senate reports that later affirmed the work of the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies.

The Trump administration reports have so far provided little or no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Obama or his aides, but on Sunday, Mr. Trump posted a fake video of Mr. Obama being apprehended by F.B.I. agents in the Oval Office.

It is not yet clear whether even a compliant Justice Department will be willing to open criminal investigations into Mr. Obama or other prominent Democrats and Trump critics, or be able to find grounds to do so. Even if prosecutors lodged charges, prosecutions could be difficult. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Trump, presumably enjoys immunity from prosecution for any official acts while in office, based on the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential immunity ruling last year.

But Mr. Trump often seems intent on using the federal government to subject his foes to the same kinds of scrutiny he has undergone.

Infuriated by what he has sought to characterize as “witch hunt” investigations and legal proceedings against him that started with the investigation into the 2016 election and morphed into the obstruction of justice investigation into him, he has levied crippling executive orders against law firms that had even fleeting connections to those episodes. That process has pressured many of the firms into committing nearly a billion dollars in pro bono legal work to causes he favors. 

New York Times, In Epstein, Democrats Find Unlikely Weapon Against Republicans, Michael Gold, July 24, 2025. A conspiracy theory many of them once dismissed has given Democrats a potent tool for exploiting G.O.P. divisions, even if it has little to do with what many regard as their best line of attack against Republicans.

In his last news conference before House members left Washington for a five-week summer break, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, attacked Republicans for their signature tax cut legislation, accusing them of taking food and health care from poorer Americans to bolster the wealthy.

Then, he ceded the lectern to Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, who made a jarring pivot to a different topic.

“Instead of standing up for kids, for families, instead of standing on the side of transparency and accountability, Republicans are running away — all to avoid the release of the Epstein client list, all to cover up for pedophiles,” Ms. Clark said on Wednesday.

Shut out of power in Washington, Democrats have been searching all year for ways to throw a wrench in the works of Congress and gain the upper hand against a Republican majority that routinely bulldozes over them. They have focused relentlessly on making the economic case against President Trump’s agenda, bashing Republicans for backing policies they argue will hurt ordinary Americans.

But the deep G.O.P. fissure over the Trump administration’s refusal to release files on Jeffrey Epstein despite promises to do so has shaken that focus, giving Democrats an opening they have eagerly seized to gum up the works at the Capitol and stoke public anger about how Republicans are governing.

Over the past two weeks, Democrats have effectively paralyzed the House floor by insisting at every turn on forcing votes Republicans do not want to cast on whether to insist on the release of files related to Mr. Epstein, the financier who died by suicide while in federal custody on sex-trafficking charges.

Faced with a choice between alienating MAGA constituents, who are clamoring for the release of the files, or angering President Trump, who has urged them to move on, Republicans in control of the House have decided to do neither. The dilemma prompted Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday to send lawmakers home early for the summer, even as several rank-and-file Republicans continued to urge a vote calling on the Trump administration to release the material.

“The ghost of the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein is haunting our Republican colleagues,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. He suggested that Democrats would hammer at the issue during Congress’s August break, calling it the “Epstein recess.” He added: “This issue is going to grow and grow and grow the longer House Republicans dodge.”

Democrats’ new line of attack has seemed at times as an unlikely as it has been successful. They have spent much of the past decade accusing Republicans of irresponsibly propagating misinformation and trafficking in conspiracy theories that distracted the American public from more pressing concerns.

New York Times, Gabbard Releases New Documents Targeting Obama Administration, as Justice Dept. Forms Task Force, Julian E. Barnes and Glenn Thrush, July 23, 2025 (print ed.) The director of national intelligence intensified attacks on assessments about Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

The Justice Department announced on Wednesday the formation of a task force to look into unsubstantiated allegations by President Trump that President Barack Obama and his aides ordered an investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia to destroy Mr. Trump.

The announcement, which came in an ambiguous, bare-bones statement on the department’s website, was a continuation of Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution. It also represented yet another Trump pivot away from the political morass of the Jeffrey Epstein files in targeting Mr. Obama, whose presidency set off a wave of reactionary anger that helped propel Mr. Trump from a punchline to political dominance.

The move came hours after Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, ramped up her attacks on Mr. Obama, releasing a document that she said undermined the conclusion of his intelligence agencies that Russia favored the election of Mr. Trump in 2016.

Ms. Gabbard said that after Mr. Trump’s first election, Mr. Obama ordered an intelligence analysis that was subject to “unusual directives” from him. She criticized that assessment as using unclear or unknown sources.

Under questions from reporters, she said Obama administration officials had led to a “yearslong coup and treasonous conspiracy” against Mr. Trump.

Asked if she thought Mr. Obama was implicated in criminal behavior, Ms. Gabbard said she had referred documents to the F.B.I.

“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment,” she said. “There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.”

The documents Ms. Gabbard has produced, both Wednesday and last week, show that Obama administration officials wanted to complete a review before they left office and put pressure on the intelligence agencies to work quickly, but there is no evidence of criminal behavior.

 

New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators, Adam Liptak, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). The court’s order was the latest in a series of emergency rulings on the scope of the president’s power over independent agencies.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Trump to fire the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a five-member group that monitors the safety of items like toys, cribs and electronics.

The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The order is not the last word in the case, which is pending in an appeals court and may return to the justices.

In a series of rulings since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court has almost without exception given him broad leeway to exercise control over the executive branch, including by firing officials despite a federal law limiting his authority to do so.

The Supreme Court has been chipping away at a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics by making it hard to fire them. In response to an emergency application in late May, the Supreme Court let Mr. Trump remove, for now, the leaders of two other agencies: Cathy A. Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne A. Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board.

The majority wrote that Mr. Trump could remove officials who exercised power on his behalf “because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president.”

As for the product safety board, Mr. Trump notified the three commissioners in early May that he was removing them. Although a federal law allows them to be terminated only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance,” the president gave no reasons for the firings.

He has said that congressional limits on his ability to remove leaders of independent agencies are an unconstitutional check on the president’s power to control the executive branch.

The commissioners — Mary T. Boyle, Richard L. Trumka Jr. and Alexander Hoehn-Saric — said they had been targeted for votes they had cast to stop the import of poorly made lithium-ion batteries and for objecting to staffing cuts.

The three officials were forbidden from entering their offices unescorted and from using the agency’s computer system.

About a month later, Judge Matthew J. Maddox of the Federal District Court in Maryland reinstated them, and they resumed their work.

Judge Maddox, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the 1935 Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, barred the firings.

New York Times, Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump, Sharon Otterman, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). The White House had canceled more than $400 million in research funding to the university, saying it had failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.

Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached on Wednesday to restore the university’s federal research funding, according to a statement from the university.

In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring, and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March.

The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in the release. “The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”

The deal is a significant milestone in the Trump administration’s quest to bring elite universities to heel. Columbia is the first university to reach a negotiated settlement over antisemitism claims. Harvard, which has sued the administration over funding cuts, is also negotiating for restoration of its federal money. The expectation is that the Columbia settlement will provide a template for future deals.

The federal government is agreeing to restore grants terminated by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, and allow money to start flowing again to grants that had been frozen but were not canceled. Columbia can also compete on equal footing for new grants. The university will pay the $200 million in three installments over three years.

The loss of funding for scientific research had become an urgent matter for Columbia, imperiling decades of work and bringing Columbia to the “tipping point” of preserving its research excellence, the university said.

But making a deal with the White House brings its own risks for Columbia, challenging the limits of the private university’s independence and lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s strategy of weaponizing research funding to accomplish an unrelated aim of reining in campus unrest.

The federal government announced on March 7 that it was canceling $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, an extraordinary step that made the university the first to be punished by the Trump administration with a freeze on research funding for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. Other schools, including Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern, soon followed.

As weeks passed, it became evident that the damage to Columbia’s research enterprise went further than the original $400 million cut. The National Institutes of Health, the government’s key medical research funder, froze nearly all research funding flowing to Columbia, including for reimbursement of research grants that were still active.

The Times of Israel, Columbia University suspends and expels dozens of students over anti-Israel unrest, Luke Tress, July 23, 2024. Penalties come as the university faces heavy US government pressure to rein in campus antisemitism, with the loss of research funding.

Columbia University said Tuesday that it sanctioned students for a library takeover in May as well as a protest encampment in the spring of 2024.

A statement from the Ivy League school in New York City said the sanctions include expulsions, probation, degree revocations and suspensions ranging from one to three years. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of anti-Israel student groups, said nearly 80 students were suspended or expelled.

The university said it does not comment on individual cases and does not announce the number of students who are being punished.

The penalties come as the university has faced heavy government pressure to rein in campus antisemitism. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, Columbia has seen frequent anti-Israel and in some cases antisemitic protests. An anti-Israel student encampment on the campus in 2024 sparked a nationwide movement and ended with police storming a building that had been forcibly taken over by protesters.

The school was thrust back into the spotlight this year when immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian protest leader at the university. The Trump administration also canceled $400 million in grants and contracts with the school earlier this year due to campus antisemitism. Columbia has entered negotiations with the administration to recover the funding.

Critics of the administration, such as New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, have accused Trump of exploiting the problem of antisemitism to attack perceived opponents in higher education.

In recent months, the school has taken steps to address the issue. It issued similar sanctions in March against students who were involved in the 2024 building takeover.

New York Times, Macrons Sue Candace Owens, Right-Wing Podcaster, Claiming Defamation,Ephrat Livni, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). The suit seeks damages after the podcaster claimed Brigitte Macron is a man. The French president and his wife said the statement caused “pain to us and our families.”

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Macron, filed a defamation suit on Wednesday against an American right-wing podcaster who falsely claimed Ms. Macron is a man.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Superior Court against the podcaster, Candace Owens, argues that Ms. Owens used false claims about the Macrons to “promote her independent platform, gain notoriety and make money.”

In a filing running more than 200 pages, the Macrons are suing for 22 counts of defamation and related claims, and are seeking actual and punitive damages (the amount was not specified), as well as legal costs.

The battle began in March 2024, when, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Owens “told the world” she would stake her “entire professional reputation” on the accusation that Ms. Macron, “is, in fact, a man.” Ms. Owens made the claim on her podcast, then carried by The Daily Wire, and repeated it in a post on X.

Ms. Owens and The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, severed ties that month over her antisemitic rhetoric, and she repeated the claim about Ms. Macron on her independent podcast and other platforms.

Ms. Owens “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim,” the filing says, and “rather than engage with President and Mrs. Macron’s attempts to set the record straight, Owens mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base.”

“Because Ms. Owens systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods in response to each of our attorneys’ repeated requests for a retraction, we ultimately concluded that referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue for remedy,” the Macrons said in a statement from their lawyer.

The suit also names Ms. Owens’s media company and the company that runs her website, which are both registered in Delaware. 

New York Times, Intel Expects Work Force to Shrink by 25,000, Don Clark, July 24, 2025. The Silicon Valley chip company, which has been struggling, quantified the job cuts it is making as it seeks to turn its business around.

Intel, the ailing semiconductor giant, said on Thursday that it expected its work force to shrink by more than 25,000 employees this year as the company continues searching for a turnaround.

The chip maker, which reported 108,900 employees at the end of last year, said it now expects layoffs, attrition and other actions to reduce its head count to 75,000 by the end of 2025. Intel also disclosed it will no longer move forward with plans to build factories in Germany and Poland, further slow the pace of new factory construction in Ohio and consolidate operations in Costa Rica to larger sites in Vietnam and Malaysia.

Intel had signaled the need to cut costs in April. On Thursday, the company said it had cut its work force since then by about 15 percent, which indicates around 15,000 people were affected. The latest cuts follow a reduction of more than 15,000 jobs last year.

Intel quantified the cuts while releasing financial results for its second quarter, posting a $2.9 billion net loss that included restructuring charges from the latest belt-tightening. Revenue was roughly flat at $12.9 billion, which was higher than analysts predicted.

The Silicon Valley company projected another loss in the current quarter and revenues of $12.6 billion to $13.6 billion, indicating a $13.1 billion midpoint that compares with analysts’ average prediction of $12.6 billion for the period ending in September.

 

Politico, FCC greenlights Skydance/Paramount deal after CBS concessions, John Hendel, July 24, 2025. Skydance had agreed to address Trump administration concerns about alleged bias at CBS.The CBS logo at the entrance to its headquarters.

An $8 billion merger between Skydance Media and Paramount Global received regulatory approval Thursday from the Federal Communications Commission in a deal that has raised alarm about free speech and government intrusion into the media.

Chair Brendan Carr said in announcing the approval that Skydance had agreed to address Trump administration concerns about what it sees as media bias at the CBS network.

Skydance committed to adopt measures to “root out” media bias that had undermined trust in the news media, Carr said.

“I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network,” Carr said. “In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to ensure that the new company’s programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum.”

The merger has been the source of a political fight over the last several months due to concerns around CBS, particularly over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview last fall with former Vice President Kamala Harris as she was running for president.

Trump sued CBS, settling the case for $16 million earlier this month. Carr has a separate open investigation into the editing of the program.

Skydance’s concessions, unveiled in regulatory filings Wednesday, include the creation of an ombudsman, in place for at least two years, to field complaints about CBS News programming and a review of CBS programming to ensure “a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum” are in place. Skydance also committed that the new company would scrap diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Carr put the deal to a vote among the agency’s commissioners rather than allow bureau staff to decide it on delegated authority. It was approved 2-1, with his fellow Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty voting in favor and Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez dissenting.

“I cannot support this order approving this transaction in light of the payout and other troubling concessions Paramount made to settle a baseless lawsuit,” Gomez wrote in her dissent. “After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted. Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.”

Politico, Arizona woman sentenced to eight years in prison for hosting ‘laptop farm’ for North Korean remote workers, Maggie Miller, July 24, 2025. The sentence is one of the largest handed down to a U.S. national for their role in the North Korean government-linked scheme.

A woman in Arizona was sentenced Thursday to more than eight years in prison for hosting a so-called laptop farm that enabled North Korean cyber operatives to pose as remote IT workers at more than 300 U.S. companies.

The sentence is one of the largest handed down to a U.S. national for their role in the scheme, which has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for the North Korean regime.

Christina Chapman was sentenced in the U.S. District Court after pleading guilty earlier this year in Washington, D.C., to charges including wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering. Chapman was also ordered to turn over around $284,000 in funds earned by these North Koreans and pay an additional fine of more than $175,000.

Chapman was involved in an operation that, according to the Justice Department, made in total more than $17 million for the North Korean regime between 2020 and 2023. Chapman oversaw at least 90 laptops at her home sent by unsuspecting U.S. firms that were duped into hiring North Koreans as remote employees.

These North Korean nationals used stolen identities of real U.S. citizens in carrying out the scheme.

While the companies impacted by Chapman’s actions have not been named, those that inadvertently hired North Koreans included a car-maker, Silicon Valley tech company, a U.S. media group and an aerospace group, among other Fortune 500 companies.

“The call is coming from inside the house,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in a statement Thursday. “If this happened to these big banks, to these Fortune 500, brand-name, quintessential American companies, it can or is happening at your company. Corporations failing to verify virtual employees pose a security risk for all.”

The sentencing of Chapman came a month after the Justice Department announced the seizure of hundreds of accounts, websites and laptops linked to the widespread North Korean IT workers scheme. Chapman is not the only U.S. citizen to host laptop farms to support the effort, and the DOJ found that individuals in China and the United Arab Emirates were also involved in supporting these schemes

New York Times, Intel Expects Work Force to Shrink by 25,000, Don Clark, July 24, 2025. The Silicon Valley chip company, which has been struggling, quantified the job cuts it is making as it seeks to turn its business around.

Intel, the ailing semiconductor giant, said on Thursday that it expected its work force to shrink by more than 25,000 employees this year as the company continues searching for a turnaround.

The chip maker, which reported 108,900 employees at the end of last year, said it now expects layoffs, attrition and other actions to reduce its head count to 75,000 by the end of 2025. Intel also disclosed it will no longer move forward with plans to build factories in Germany and Poland, further slow the pace of new factory construction in Ohio and consolidate operations in Costa Rica to larger sites in Vietnam and Malaysia.

Intel had signaled the need to cut costs in April. On Thursday, the company said it had cut its work force since then by about 15 percent, which indicates around 15,000 people were affected. The latest cuts follow a reduction of more than 15,000 jobs last year.

Intel quantified the cuts while releasing financial results for its second quarter, posting a $2.9 billion net loss that included restructuring charges from the latest belt-tightening. Revenue was roughly flat at $12.9 billion, which was higher than analysts predicted.

The Silicon Valley company projected another loss in the current quarter and revenues of $12.6 billion to $13.6 billion, indicating a $13.1 billion midpoint that compares with analysts’ average prediction of $12.6 billion for the period ending in September.

Politico, Judges’ orders ‘need to be respected,’ Elena Kagan says amid Trump’s escalating conflict with the courts, Josh Gerstein, July 24, 2025. Speaking at a legal conference, the Obama-appointed justice was the latest member of the Supreme Court to decry threats to judicial independence.

As the Trump administration’s clash with the judiciary intensifies, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan issued a message on Thursday: Stop threatening judges, and always obey court orders.

But Kagan spoke in vague terms and did not say who her warning was aimed at. She did not directly mention President Donald Trump, even as some lower-court judges have already found that the administration has defied their commands.

“That’s just just not the way our system works, not the way rule of law in this country works,” Kagan said at a judicial conference here. “That’s true for the Supreme Court, and it’s also true for every district court. Unless and until an appellate court or the Supreme Court says otherwise, judicial orders are judicial orders and need to be respected.”

Kagan cautioned the hundreds of judges in the audience not to respond to verbal attacks by lashing out in their decisions, but by carrying out their duties as they normally do.

“The response to perceived lawlessness of any kind is law, and the way an independent judiciary should counter assaults on an independent judiciary is to act in the sorts of ways that judges are required to act,” Kagan said.

Politico, Supreme Court blocks North Dakota redistricting ruling that would gut key part of Voting Rights Act, July 24, 2025. Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, would have rejected the appeal.

The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a lower-court ruling in a redistricting dispute in North Dakota that would gut a landmark federal civil rights law for millions of people.

The justices indicated in an unsigned order that they are likely to take up a federal appeals court ruling that would eliminate the most common path people and civil rights groups use to sue under a key provision of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act.

The case could be argued as early as 2026 and decided by next summer.

Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, would have rejected the appeal.

The court also has a separate redistricting case over a second majority Black congressional district in Louisiana. The justices heard arguments in March, but took the rare step of calling for a new round of arguments in their term that begins in October. They have yet to spell out what issues they want discussed.

In the North Dakota case, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, with reservations 60 miles apart, argued that the state’s 2021 legislative map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates.

The case went to trial in 2023, and a federal judge later ordered the use of a map of the area, including the reservations that led to the election last year of three Native Americans, all Democrats, to the Republican-supermajority Legislature.

But in a 2-1 ruling issued in May, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that only the Justice Department can bring such lawsuits under the law’s Section 2.

The 8th Circuit also had ruled in an Arkansas case in 2023 that private individuals can’t sue under the same provision.

More than 90 percent of Section 2 cases have been brought through private enforcement, UCLA law professor Richard Hasen wrote on the Election Law blog.

The 8th Circuit rulings conflict with decades of decisions by appellate courts that have affirmed the rights of private individuals to sue under Section 2.

The Supreme Court often will step in when appeals courts around the country come to different decisions on the same legal issue.

July 23 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago (NBC). 

Lincoln Square Media, Investigation: Trump and the Elite Modeling Scandal: How Power Seduced and Silenced Teenage Dreams, Brian Daitzman, July 23, 2025. The untold story of Trump’s presence among predators exploiting underage girls at the world’s biggest modeling contest — and the culture that enabled it.

On a breezy evening in September 1991, the Spirit of New York yacht glided toward the Statue of Liberty. Teenage girls, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights in the company of much older men, including real estate mogul Donald Trump, according to a report by The Guardian. It marked the start of a week-long contest that revealed troubling questions about how power and privilege preyed on vulnerability in the modeling world.The Contest: Glamour and High Stakes

At 45, Trump was more than a guest; he sponsored and judged Elite Model Management’s Look of the Year contest in 1991 and 1992, hosting events at his Plaza Hotel and aboard the yacht. The contest, founded by model agent John Casablancas, promised a $150,000 contract and the chance at stardom to girls as young as 14, The Guardian reported. Although officially open to contestants up to age 24, most were under 19 and away from home for the first time.

Footage from the event shows Trump greeting contestants backstage, mingling in dressing rooms, and watching swimwear rounds alongside other male judges. Stacy Wilkes, then 16, recalled judges — including Trump — telling her to lose weight as she stood in a swimsuit and visiting dressing rooms where the girls changed, according to The Guardian.

Two yacht parties in September 1991 and 1992 became defining moments of discomfort and coercion. Shawna Lee, age 14 in 1992, was pressured to descend stairs and “dance” before Trump and Casablancas despite her objections, The Guardian reported. Another 15-year-old contestant said she was warned that refusing would jeopardize her standing in the competition. Witnesses described underage drinking and inappropriate touching during these events. Trump denies any knowledge of or participation in such behavior and stated he was unaware of misconduct by others. 

 

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Attorney General Alerted Trump He Was Named in Epstein Files, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, July 23, 2025. It was not clear in what context Trump’s name was raised in the files.

Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in the spring that his name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange.

The disclosure came as part of a broader briefing on the re-examination of the case by F.B.I. agents and prosecutors. It was made by Ms. Bondi during a meeting that also included the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and covered a variety of topics. Ms. Bondi frequently meets with Mr. Trump to brief him on various matters, officials said.

Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche informed the president that his name, as well as those of other high-profile figures, came up in their re-examination of documents connected to the case that had not previously been made public. Mr. Trump, a friend of the disgraced financier, has already appeared in documents related to the investigation. Appearing at the White House in February, Ms. Bondi distributed a series of binders about the Epstein files with the phone numbers of the president’s former wife and his daughter in them.

“As part of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,” Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche wrote in a statement in response to questions about the briefing. “Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.”

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, would not address questions about the briefing, but called any suggestion that Mr. Trump was engaged in wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein “fake news” and said Mr. Trump ejected Mr. Epstein from his club, Mar-a-Lago, for “being a creep.”

Department officials have regularly informed some White House officials about developments in the inquiry. Such communications are permissible under the law.

The conversation was reported earlier by The Wall St. Journal.

One person close to Mr. Trump, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said that White House officials were not concerned about the latest disclosures given that Mr. Trump’s name appeared in the first round of information that Ms. Bondi released.

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Judge Denies Request to Unseal Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts in Florida, Staff Reports, July 23, 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi, right, had been instructed by President Trump to seek the release of grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation earlier this month.

• Epstein ruling: A federal judge in Florida has denied a Justice Department request to release grand jury transcripts from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The quick denial blocked efforts by the Trump administration to blunt criticism of its handling of files related to Mr. Epstein, a sex offender who was once a friend of Mr. Trump. Read more ›
• New Obama attacks: President Trump’s top intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, released new documents intended to target the Obama administration over the 2016 election, a day after Mr. Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason. Read more ›
• A.I. plan: The Trump administration plans to open the door for companies to develop artificial intelligence technology unfettered from oversight and safeguards, but added that the technology needed to be free of “ideological bias. Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks on the plan on Wednesday afternoon. Read more ›

New York Times, A judge denies the Justice Department’s request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts in Florida, Zach Montague, July 23, 2025. A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied a request from the Trump administration to release grand jury transcripts from an investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, stymying efforts by President Trump to dispel a storm of criticism from many of his supporters.

The quick denial came in response to a request by the government last week asking the court to unseal those documents and to transfer the case to New York, where Mr. Epstein was indicted after a grand jury investigation in 2019. In its request, the Justice Department cited “extensive public interest” and “transparency to the American public.”

Mr. Trump and his subordinates, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, have come under enormous pressure to release further details about Mr. Epstein. Ms. Bondi had promised to do so but reversed course after a joint memo issued by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department on July 6 indicated that no more disclosures about Mr. Epstein’s conviction would be forthcoming.

The memo concluded that after an exhaustive review of evidence in the cases against Mr. Epstein, the government had uncovered no new evidence “that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.”

Judge Robin L. Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied.” The government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, she wrote, adding that district courts are generally prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances.

She ordered that a new case be created “in the public interest” that provided access to the government’s requests and the denial order, as the Epstein grand jury docket is still sealed. But she ordered closed the case where the government filed its request, which started with the investigation into Mr. Epstein in Florida in 2005.

Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: Trump Awakes to Nightmare as Epstein Scandal Explodes, Ben Meiselas, July 23, 2025. Trump SUFFERS in Morning as AWFUL NEWS.

Donald Trump woke up to a nightmare on Wednesday, and I don’t mean one of his usual rant-filled 3 a.m. bathroom tweet storms. I mean real-world consequences. The economy is cracking, the Epstein scandal is blowing wide open, and even Trump’s most loyal lackeys are stumbling all over themselves trying to cover for him.

Let me walk you through it.

Let’s start with the Epstein files. Congress just fled town for recess—because apparently doing your job is optional when it might expose the guy you worship. And who’s Trump sending to handle damage control? Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche—his attorney general and deputy AG, aka his former criminal defense attorney. They’re meeting directly with Ghislaine Maxwel (shown above with Trump)l. That’s right, the convicted sex trafficker is now somehow central to Trump’s cover-up strategy.

And Ghislaine? Through a statement by her brother, she says she fears for her life. Meanwhile, Epstein’s old lawyer Alan Dershowitz is out here begging for a full pardon for her. The not-so-subtle message from Trump’s regime: cooperate, and you might walk. Don’t—and, well, you’ve seen what happens to people who cross Trump.

As all this unfolds, Trump is flooding inboxes with unhinged emails. I subscribe to them so you don’t have to—and let me tell you, these things read like a stalker with a marketing budget. “Missed call from President Trump,” one says. “Ben, I just tried to call you.” Click the link? Surprise—it’s a donation page. Another one says, “Ben, did I do something wrong?” Like, is this a campaign or an emotionally unstable ex?

Now let’s talk about the economic collapse Trump’s trying to gaslight us about. Homebuilders are slashing prices. Recruiting firms are going bankrupt. Subprime auto loan delinquencies are at a 15-year high. Nearly 60% of college grads this year still can’t find jobs. The cost of cocoa, and therefore chocolate, is exploding. Inflation is hitting everyday items like ground beef and coffee. And tariffs? They’re just taxes we pay at the checkout counter, no matter how much Trump wants to pretend otherwise.

And what’s Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Benson doing? Lying on national television, pretending companies are “eating” the tariffs instead of passing them to consumers. This is economic denialism mixed with straight-up fraud.

Even MAGA Republicans are caught in the chaos. James Comer gave a trainwreck of an interview about the Epstein cover-up and then claimed Trump isn’t even distancing himself from Epstein. That’s... supposed to be a defense? Josh Hawley is out here warning about exploding health insurance costs—after he voted to make it happen. And Randy Fine? He went on Fox News to proudly call for the mass deportation of immigrants—criminals or not.

This is the real face of Trumpism: cruelty, corruption, and economic collapse wrapped in gaslighting emails and banana republic tactics. But here’s the good news: the truth is getting harder and harder for them to bury, no matter how many recesses they run off to or how many sociopathic fundraising emails they send.

We’re going to keep exposing it all. Keep spreading the word, stay loud, and stay in the fight.

The Bulwark, The Triad (Political Opinion): Liberalism and the Surrender Trap, Jonathan V. Last (JVL), July 23, 2025. Don’t let Trump do to the Fed what he did to the FBI.

1. Resigned. Mohamed A. El-Erian is a respected figure in economics. He is neither a partisan nor a Trump supporter. Yesterday he argued that Jerome Powell should resign from the Fed in order to save the Fed.

His suggestion isn’t crazy.

But it is a form of misunderstanding that is marbled throughout all of institutional liberalism. And it is dangerous.Today we’re going to talk about about how institutional liberalism has a Zero-Day Exploit, a hack built into its source code that Donald Trump has discovered.

I call it the Surrender Trap.

Yesterday began with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, above, calling for the executive branch to conduct a full review ofthe entire Federal Reserve. This represented an escalation from President Trump’s social media crusade against the Fed chairman. Previously Trump said he wanted to fire Powell because the chairman had not cut interest rates. Then he concocted an excuse that Powell should be fired for corruption related to renovations to the Federal Reserve offices.

This was the SecTreas—one of the “grownups” in the administration—proposing a wholesale takeover of the Federal Reserve by the president.

In light of this escalation, El-Erian wrote:

This morning, US government criticism of both Federal Reserve Chair Powell and the institution itself has broadened to include "mission creep" and the effectiveness of other officials. The developments of the last few days reinforce my view: If Chair Powell's objective is to safeguard the Fed's operational autonomy (which I deem vital), then he should resign. I recognize this isn't the consensus view, which favors him staying until the end of his tenure in May. Nor is it a first best, which is simply not attainable. Yet, it's better than what is playing out now –growing and broadening threats to Fed independence – and will undoubtedly increase should he remain in office. As to market reaction, most of the frequently mentioned candidates to replace Chair Powell would be able to calm any potential market jitters.

In sum, El-Erian argues:

• We must preserve Fed independence.• We know that Trump will continue to attack Fed independence as long as Powell remains chairman.• So Powell must give Trump what he wants willingly.• Because if Powell holds out, then Trump will take what he wants by force.• The act of taking the Fed by force would hurt the Fed more than Powell’s volitional surrender.• Therefore Powell should leave while we hope that Trump names a grownup to replace him.• Hopefully it will be someone responsible and normal. Like Scott Bessent. 🫠

This is the same logic that led Christopher Wray to voluntarily resign as FBI director.

Trump wanted Wray gone. Either Wray was going to resign or be fired. Wray believed that by resigning, he could protect the institution of the FBI; sparing it a bitter fight and all the attendant damage.

Wray miscalculated. As we talked about a couple weeks ago, the FBI has been perverted almost completely. It is now an organization ruled by struggle sessions and loyalty tests. The institutional damage done to it is probably total. The bureau will not become a healthy organization again unless it undergoes a rigorous program of de-Trumpification at some point in the future.

All of which is exactly what would have happened had Wray forced Trump to fire him.

The difference is that had Wray stood his ground, Trump would have paid some small price. And the public would have understood that the FBI had been maimed from the beginning.

Instead, Wray gave Trump what he wanted for free while liberal institutions pretended that authoritarianism was not on the march.Whose interests did that serve? Not the FBI’s. I promise you that.

 

Lincoln Square Media, Commentary: Trump Is on the List, Rick Wilson, July 23, 2025 (8:01 mins.). The Trumpian coverup is making the Watergate break-in look like a masterclass in espionage.

Rick's got a message for MAGA: Your boy is in the Epstein files, and this coverup is falling harder than a soufflé in an earthquake. The Wall Street Journal dropped another dime on The Donald today, with a story that Trump's crack team tried to bury the scandal by unleashing a thousand FBI agents on the documents.

That came after the WSJ’s first story last week about Trump’s alleged birthday letter to Epstein, referencing the “beautiful secret” they shared.

“Their coverup is completely fucked,” Rick says. “They have no way to unspin, to unring this bell, to unwind this, to fix this.”

 

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, It's Time For The "Just Locker Room Talk" And Sanewashing To End - Trump Is Pushing The Country To The Brink, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 23, 2025. Trump’s madness, depravity and decline have become impossible to ignore.

For years we’ve heard all sorts of rationales that soften what we see with our own eyes every day -- was just “locker room talk”; he was just joking; all you guys have Trump derangement syndrome; he didn’t really mean it; oh those swollen ankles no biggie; he misspoke; no one has been hunted down or attacked like him; it was a peaceful protest; Putin wants peace; we aren’t cutting Medicaid; the tax cuts will pay for themselves; the tariffs won’t be paid for by American consumers, we’ve defeated inflation…..the list goes on and on.

Trump has from the day he came down that elevator ten years ago lived in a fictional world of fantasy and untruth of his own invention. His weaving of these fictions and the battle he has waged to make and keep them true has been his central project. But there is an objective reality out there, and Trump’s fictional world has occassionally crashed hard into it -- they got blown out in the elections in 2018, lost 2020 and the red wave never came in 2022; hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily and the economy crashed in 2020 due his negligence; he is a 34 times felon; he did sexually assualt E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. There are limits to his powers of invention and spell-casting. The Apprentice was eventually cancelled.

I don’t think we’ve ever really settled on how to describe what I am trying to get at here. Crazy like a fox, or crazy like a loon? Both? His clownish charm and superhuman capacity to remain in these fictional worlds he invents and cajole others to join him there have overwhelmed the legacy media’s he said/she said storytelling construct.

He has in many ways hacked the media, and our broader information ecosystem. The show must always go on, and it does, every day; a show full of imaginary wins, of an adoring public, of adversaries bending the knee; a show of POWER, STRENGHT, VIRILITY, SUCCESS, VICTORY; a show of spectacle and outrage, of the new and bizarre, of cruelty and venality. The show must always go on.

The problem for Trump now is that folks just aren’t into the show and it’s ratings are tanking; people are coming to understand that his agenda really is one of sabotage, plunder and betrayal and he has no plans to make America great; and the rancid reality of what he is doing, not the story he has invented and sold to us, has begun to catch up to him, and unfortunately for all of us too.

Asked about the brutal polling we’ve seen here is what Trump said this week:

I have the best numbers I’ve ever had. You know, it’s amazing, I watch people on television, “Well, what about Donald Trump’s polling numbers?” Yeah, they’re the best numbers I’ve ever had.

And with this made-up hoax that they’re talking about, my numbers have gone up four and five points. They want to do anything to get us off the subject of making America great again, and we’re not gonna put up with it.

Here’s my new summary of the Economist/YouGov weekly tracking poll.

So is Trump lying? Confused? No longer aware of what is happening around him? The place where his fantasies and inventions are in the process of crashing hardest into reality is on his economic agenda and the tariffs. Here’s an article from the Boston Globe today that I’m quoted in, “Trump says he’s ‘solved the inflation problem.’ The economic data tell a different story”:

At least three times this month, President Trump has boasted about a past survey of him and dozens of economists, in which he bucked conventional wisdom and predicted his second-term policies would produce a booming US economy by this point, with no inflation.“They called all of the great intellects and the great economists and all of the great everything,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday.

“It was 71 [economists] and only two got it right, me and another gentleman [who] happens to be very smart. Sixty-nine people got it wrong, and the [Federal Reserve] got it wrong, more wrong than anybody.”

There are two problems with Trump’s assertion. First, the White House has been unable to identify the survey he keeps referencing. And second, economic growth has slowed this year, and inflation has begun rising as the impact of Trump’s high tariffs starts kicking in.

Next Friday Trump has promised to double and triple the tariffs on most goods imported to the United States. Every economist will tell you it will bring extraordinary global choas; will slow the economy of every country in the world; and will dramatically raise prices here and spike inflation. While economists and global leaders warn about the coming storm, as we learned above Trump does not seem worried about these tariffs for HE DOES NOT BELIEVE THEY INCREASE PRICES and thus he proceeds.

A trade deal struck with Japan yesterday is being sold to us as big boon when it actually increase the tariffs on all goods imported from Japan by 50%, from 10% now to 15%. The price of all those low-cost Toyota cars you see on our roads are going to increase now by thousands of dollars. Here’s one commentator on what this all means for us, and how just fucking insane it all is:

Here’s how Paul Krugman described the deal this morning: There are three main things you should take away from this deal:

1. It will increase, not reduce, the U.S. trade deficit

2. It will accelerate America’s descent into crony capitalism

3. U.S. consumers are still facing a major price shock

In a new article in the Washington Monthly, Trump’s Budget Could Break The Economy, our good friend and economist Dr. Rob Shapiro writes: President Donald Trump is charting a course that may end in the economy’s third meltdown in less than 20 years. Whatever he and his economic courtiers think they’re doing, the waves of unprecedented budget deficits now under his One Big Beautiful Bill Act and his tariff war could trigger a grave economic crisis that will recall the Financial Crisis and the pandemic.

 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Hellscapes of Their Minds, Paul Krugman, right, July 23, 2025. ICE says it’s going to “flood” New York. Good luck with that.

On Monday Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s border czar, declared that New York City isn’t cooperating sufficiently with ICE’s efforts to round up immigrants, so ICE is going to “flood the zone” with agents. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how this could end very, very badly.

Suppose, for example, that masked, armed ICE agents were to descend in large numbers on a thronged street like Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, seizing people they imagine might be dangerous illegals. How would the agents make that judgment? According to Homan, they’d do it in part based on “physical appearance” — although he’s tried, unconvincingly, to walk that back.

But if that’s how ICE agents see things, basically everyone on Roosevelt Avenue will look to them like a criminal alien. So the risk of angry, possibly violent confrontations — in particular of ICE agents running amok because they perceive themselves as being under threat — will be high.

And what if there are, as I expect there would be, large demonstrations against ICE’s actions? How many people will end up being tear-gassed?

Why run the risk of all these consequences? The constant refrain from Trump administration officials is that big cities with large immigrant populations are drowning in a wave of immigrant crime. So Queens, where almost half the population is foreign born and around 10 percent are undocumented, must be a terrifying urban hellscape. It must be one of those places where, as Trump puts it,

you can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread you get shot you get mugged you get raped you get whatever

Or here’s how the Republican National Committee puts it:

But Queens is nothing like that. Last year there were 56 murders in the borough, which has more than 2 million residents. That’s down from 312 murders in 1990, when the borough had a lot fewer immigrants. Queens’s murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants is also well below the national average. And I have a lot of friends in Queens. Although New York does have rats (and always did) I haven’t seen any feces, and my friends aren’t afraid to walk across the street.

New York City as a whole has a very low rate of violent deaths by national standards, partly because of its low murder rate, but also because many of its residents take public transit, which is much safer than driving:

Actually, if you’re worried about a public safety crisis in the United States, you should worry both about guns and about the rising number of vehicle fatalities, which are much higher in America than in other rich countries.

 

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: Oligarchs, Outlaws & the End of Journalism: Reagan’s Real Legacy in Trump’s GOP, Thom Hartmann, right, July 23, 2025. The CBS merger isn’t a business deal — it’s a pay-to-play scheme fueling America’s slide into oligarchy…

The CBS merger deal illustrates everything that’s wrong with post-Reagan Revolution America. It’s not just another corporate merger: it’s a road sign on our accelerating march toward oligarchy, propaganda, and the collapse of honest media.

We’ve watched one of the most important legacy broadcast platforms in America pay a $16 million bribe to our convicted felon president, reportedly offer him another $16 million worth of free air time, and try to sell its entire operation to a billionaire with a God complex. It’s the worst of the Reagan revolution coming home to roost, on our screens, in our homes, and in our civic life.

Start with the $16 million payoff: Trump sued CBS and its parent company Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, laughably arguing that CBS’s editing of the interview constituted unlawful election tampering. The lawsuit was instantly and widely regarded as frivolous, but instead of fighting it, CBS quietly settled for an astonishing $16 million. No trial. No discovery. Just a big, fat check.

This isn’t journalism: it’s tribute. It’s what oligarchs have done for centuries when they want to please the king.

This should shock the conscience of any functioning democracy, and has the rest of the world wondering about the health of ours. But in the GOP’s America — where billionaires are gods and corporations are people — this is just Wednesday.

Antitrust laws that were once enforced to keep our economy and our media diverse and competitive are now all but ignored.

It wasn’t always this way, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. Before Reagan took office, the federal government blocked mergers that would’ve concentrated too much economic or political power.

In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that said giant companies couldn’t dominate markets simply because they had the financial muscle to buy up their smaller competitors or drive them out of business by dropping prices long enough to run them into bankruptcy. It was later augmented by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914) and the Celler-Kefauver Act (1950).

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control 5 percent of the shoe market.But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to basically stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and media.

In the decades since Reagan and the GOP stabbed small businesses in the back, things have deteriorated badly. In 1983, there were about 50 companies that owned 90% of American media, controlling roughly 90% of what Americans see, hear, and read. As of today, it’s six: Comcast, Disney, News Corp, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount (for now). That’s not a free press, it’s an oligopoly.

And now Larry Ellison, the tenth-richest man in the world with a net worth north of $150 billion, and his son are stepping in to consolidate even more control. Ellison already uses his wealth to push far-right political causes; he was the single largest funder of a rightwing PAC. Now he’ll have one of the largest megaphones in America.

This is what oligarchy looks like, courtesy of the Reagan Revolution and, most recently, the corrupt Citizens United decision by five bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.

An oligarch buys a media empire. A corrupt president extorts that empire for cash and air time. The journalists there who once held power to account get fired. And now Stephen Colbert — whose nightly monologue is one of the few mainstream platforms consistently skewering Trump and the GOP — is on the chopping block. So is the legendary “60 Minutes” team, neutered to avoid offending Ellison’s political pals. All to grease the wheels for a merger and keep Trump happy.

Meanwhile, the average American gets nothing. No trustworthy journalism. No independent voices. No real debate. Just more billionaire-driven narratives, more Trump hagiography, and more of the toxic sludge that passes for news in post-Reagan America.

We’ve seen this movie before. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán used state subsidies and friendly oligarchs to seize control of that nation’s media. In Russia, Putin arrested or exiled journalists while his billionaire cronies bought up every independent outlet.

Trump’s already following the blueprint to do the same here through Project 2025: purge career civil servants, seize control of the FCC, and turn the media into a mouthpiece for the regime. With CBS in the hands of Ellison and already making cash payments to Trump, we’re more than halfway there.

Make no mistake: this isn’t about entertainment or even profits. It’s about power. When the press becomes the property of the morbidly rich and they wield it to defend their interests, as Jefferson and Adams warned, democracy becomes their plaything.

Trump is running a campaign of vengeance, vengeance against the media in particular, and CBS is handing him a gun. And the kicker? Shari Redstone — the morbidly rich heiress billionaire who’s cashing out of CBS and Paramount — is walking away with billions while the public walks away with nothing.What’s happening to CBS is not just one network’s moral collapse; it’s a symptom of our national disease. The disease Reagan diagnosed as “government is the problem” when he actually meant: “democracy is the problem.”

Since 1981, Republicans have systematically deregulated, defunded, and dismantled every guardrail of democratic capitalism they could get their hands on. The result is an America where billionaires like Ellison can buy the truth, where the press kowtows to the criminal-in-chief, and where the public interest has no advocate left.

We are reaping what Reagan sowed. In 1996, the Telecommunications Act — passed with bipartisan support but cheer-led by Reaganites — blew open the floodgates of media consolidation. In the years that followed, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) gobbled up over 1,200 radio stations. Sinclair Broadcasting used loopholes to flood local news with right-wing propaganda.

And now, legacy TV networks are selling themselves to political oligarchs while laundering bribes to Trump through legal settlements and airtime giveaways.All of this is happening in plain sight. It’s not even subtle anymore. Trump brags about “retribution,” and CBS offers him a microphone. He lies about the election, and they hand him airtime. He threatens journalists, and their bosses fire them.

And where are the regulators? The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission under Biden had taken steps to revive antitrust enforcement, but Trump has ended all those efforts and put a bootlicker in charge of the FCC.

And Congress? Half of them are on the take, funded by the very oligarchs who benefit from this media rot. According to OpenSecrets.org, media and internet companies spent over $600 million lobbying Congress in 2024 alone.

What we’re witnessing is the logical endpoint of a 44-year experiment in trickle-down libertarianism called the Reagan Revolution. The billionaires got their tax cuts. The corporations got their deregulation. The politicians got their payoffs. And the people got lies, propaganda, and impoverishment.It doesn’t have to be this way. We could enforce antitrust laws. We could reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. We could limit media ownership and break up monopolies like Comcast and Sinclair. We could tax the billionaires who are using their wealth to warp our democracy and rebuild public-interest journalism from the ground up.

But first, we have to stop pretending this is normal. 

• New York Times, Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit, Benjamin Mullin, Michael M. Grynbaum, Lauren Hirsch and David Enrich, July 2, 2025. President Trump had sued over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale.

It’s not normal to pay a criminal ex-president $16 million to go away and then invite him back on air; this sort of thing doesn’t happen in any other developed country in the world.

It’s not normal to fire comedians and journalists for telling the truth. It’s not normal for one politician to cow the nation’s news organizations. And it’s sure as hell not normal for the Fourth Estate to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the neofascist MAGA movement.

This isn’t just a CBS problem. It’s not even just a media problem. It’s a democracy problem. If Congress lets the Ellisons and Trumps and Redstones buy and sell the truth, it’ll be years before we get it back, if ever.

The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Pass it along.

If you value independent journalism and fearless analysis, join us. Subscribe for free, or pitch in to help keep the lights on.

Seymour Hersh via Substack, A Future Gaza Without Gazans, Israel’s religious right unveils its fantasy plan for the zone after ethnic cleansing, Seymour Hersh, right, July 24, 2025. On Tuesday a formal plan for the future of Gaza—as seen by the religious right—was presented to a diverse group of Israeli legislators, rabbis, grieving family members of IDF soldiers lost in combat or in Hamas captivity, and security officials from Gaza.

The plan—in English its title is “The Riviera in Gaza—From Vision to Reality”—is a blueprint for a future in Gaza without the Palestinians who now are living and dying there. The meeting was held in the unpretentious second floor Negev Hall in the Knesset in Jerusalem.

At least two journalists from online news organizations that cover the religious right in Israel were invited to attend and publish what they wished. The meeting was headlined by two of Israel’s most outspoken and controversial advocates for the settlement of Israeli citizens in Gaza: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler who has a long history of violent anti-Arab agitation and at least eight convictions for violent anti-Arab activities.

Smotrich told the conference that Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the new Israeli military chief of staff, assured him in a recent conversation that the northern border of Gaza should be annexed “for security purposes.” Early in his career Zamir served as the military aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is considered by many on the religious right to be an opportunist, although an increasingly welcome one...

 

New York Times, State Dept. Opens Investigation Into Harvard’s Use of International Visas, Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder, July 23, 2025. The Trump administration has continued to pressure the university despite continuing talks to settle a monthslong dispute over the federal government’s role in higher education.

The Trump administration has opened a new investigation into Harvard University’s compliance with a government-run visa program for international students and professors, targeting the elite college with another aggressive action even as the two sides negotiate a possible settlement to their acrimonious dispute.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified Dr. Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, of the investigation in a letter on Wednesday, according to a copy of the correspondence reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Rubio did not refer to any specific allegation of wrongdoing and instead said the inquiry was necessary “to assist the department in meeting its policy objectives.”

The investigation targets the university’s participation in the Exchange Visitor Program, which is designed to promote cultural and educational programs with visas for a variety of applicants, including students and professors as well as researchers, interns and au pairs.

Mr. Rubio’s letter gave Harvard a one-week deadline to produce a lengthy list of university records related to the student visa program. He said the department plans to interview university staff associated with the program and also may want to speak with visa holders.

A Harvard spokesman did not immediately comment. In a statement, Mr. Rubio said the investigation was aimed at verifying that the visa program does not “compromise the national security interests of the United States.”

“The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law and provide safe environments for all students,” Mr. Rubio said.

Mr. Rubio sent his letter two days after some of the Trump administration’s tactics against Harvard received a skeptical reception from a federal judge in Boston. During a crucial hearing in one of the university’s lawsuits against the administration, Judge Allison D. Burroughs’s questions suggested she had serious doubts about the legality of the government’s effort to condition Harvard’s federal research funding on its acceptance of demands from Washington.

 

New York Times, E.P.A. Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change, Lisa Friedman, Updated July 23, 2025. According to two people familiar with the draft, it would eliminate the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten human life by dangerously warming the planet.

The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration known as the “endangerment finding,” which scientifically established that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endanger human lives.

That finding is the foundation of the federal government’s only tool to limit the climate pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industries that is dangerously heating the planet.

The E.P.A. proposal, which is expected to be made public within days, also calls for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. Those regulations, which were based on the endangerment finding, were a fundamental part of the Biden administration’s efforts to move the country away from gasoline-powered vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The E.P.A. intends to argue that imposing climate regulations on automakers poses the real harm to human health because it would lead to higher prices and reduced consumer choice, according to the two people familiar with the administration’s plan. They asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to discuss the draft proposal.

The draft proposal could still undergo changes. But if it is approved by the White House and formally released, the public would have an opportunity to weigh in before it is made final, likely later this year.

New York Times, China Flexes Muscles at U.N. Cultural Agency, Just as Trump Walks Away, Mara Hvistendahl, July 23, 2025. Washington had been a buffer against China’s efforts to use UNESCO to influence education, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.

Any traveler who has picked up an international guidebook knows the UNESCO designation as shorthand for a must-see cultural destination that’s worthy of a detour.

But the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has also become the target of an intense Chinese influence campaign in recent years as Beijing has sought to increase its reach over educational curriculums, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.

President Trump’s decision Tuesday to withdraw the United States from the group removes a powerful check on China’s effort, in the latest example of how the White House retreat from international institutions offers an opening for China to advance its soft power.

The United States was once the largest UNESCO backer, accounting for nearly 25 cents of every dollar. But Washington has had an on-again-off-again relationship with it for years, especially since Mr. Trump first took office in 2017, and China has stepped up to take its place. A Chinese official is now UNESCO’s deputy director general, a post that diplomats said is often awarded in exchange for political or monetary favors.

UNESCO has lent support to major priorities for China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, including the global infrastructure program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing has also lobbied heavily for World Heritage designations and is jockeying to surpass Italy as the country with the most culturally significant sites. Some of those sites are in oppressed regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, where many local residents view them as an attempt to appropriate and control their culture and history.

And while UNESCO wields tremendous clout over what counts as history, it is also the U.N. agency in charge of setting artificial intelligence guidelines. UNESCO has an agreement with iFlytek, a major Chinese A.I. company, to cooperate on higher education in Asia and Africa, according to Chinese state media. (UNESCO said it has partnerships with many artificial intelligence companies worldwide.)

New York Times, Russia-Ukraine War: Deferring to Trump, Senate Pulls Back on New Russia Sanctions, Robert Jimison, July 23, 2025. Republican leaders said they were ready to vote as soon as this month on punishing penalties against Moscow but have paused after President Trump threatened to act unilaterally within weeks.

President Trump’s threat to penalize Russia if it fails to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine has halted a bipartisan push in the Senate to impose harsh new sanctions on countries that do business with Moscow, effectively freezing an effort by Congress to apply overwhelming pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin.

The pause comes as Russia’s summer offensive against Ukraine is gaining ground and is the latest instance of the Republican-led Congress deferring to Mr. Trump even on matters on which lawmakers in both parties hold strong views.

The legislation, cosponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, has the backing of 83 other senators, reflecting a rare bit of consensus in a polarized Congress around targeting Moscow with exceedingly strong penalties. It would slap sanctions of a minimum of 500 percent on imports from Russia or from any country that buys Russian uranium or oil products.

But after initially saying the bill could come to a vote this month, Republican leaders have stepped back to allow Mr. Trump to pursue unilateral action. Their retreat came after the president said this month that he would impose tariffs of 100 percent on Russia and its trading partners if Mr. Putin did not agree to a cease-fire in 50 days — a threat that some analysts and experts doubt Mr. Trump will act on.

“The president, I think, has decided to move sort of unilaterally on that front,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said in an interview on Fox News, adding that Mr. Trump “understands what it’s going to take to get the Russians to the table.

July 22

 New York Times, White House Leads Push to Block Watchdog’s Inquiries Into Spending Cuts, Tony Romm, July 22, 2025. A federal watchdog has opened dozens of investigations to determine if President Trump and his top aides have illegally withheld billions of dollars in congressionally approved funds.

Republicans are seeking to undermine the Government Accountability Office as it investigates, and considers suing, over the Trump administration’s withholding federal funds.

Now, Republican lawmakers are working alongside the White House to stymie those inquiries and the officials conducting them, in amove that could help Mr. Trump seize more control over the nation’s budget.

The attacks target the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The legislative office primarily produces detailed reports on ways that Washington can save money, sometimes rankling administrations that are not so keen about its allegations of waste.

But oversight officials have recently found themselves in a direct and highly unusual confrontation with the White House over the power of the purse. The watchdog chiefly enforces a 1970s law that prohibits the president from defying congressional instructions on spending. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has sought to test that law, working swiftly to disband entire agencies and programs without lawmakers’ approval.

The G.A.O. has twice determined in recent months that Mr. Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, a move known as impoundment. The office has 46 open investigations into other allegations that Mr. Trump illegally withheld funds, the agency confirmed this week.

The inquiries concern the White House’s handling of foreign aid, such as money for Ukraine, along with climate investments, including funds for wind energy and clean school buses, according to internal documents from June viewed by The New York Times. The administration’s treatment of public-health and education grants, such as those for the National Institutes of Health and the child-care program known as Head Start, are also being investigated, the documents show.

Russell T. Vought, right, the White House budget director (who previously led the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" presidential transition plan for a new Trump Administration,), has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the administration seeks to manage taxpayer dollars more effectively. He and his deputies have also initiated a series of attacks on the G.A.O., deriding it as partisan and publicly refusing to comply with some of its investigations. 

 

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as "Alligator Auschwitz."

New York Times, Trump’s Student Arrests, and the Lawsuit Fighting Them, Tread New Ground, Zach Montague, July 22, 2025. The Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views under a little-used foreign policy provision have no obvious legal parallel.

The four veteran immigration agents who recently took the stand in federal court had at least two things in common. All were career law enforcement officials. And none could remember ever being asked to make arrests like the ones they carried out earlier this year.

The men said they acted on orders handed down from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office in March to detain several noncitizen students, including a doctoral student from Tufts University whose arrest was captured on video and garnered significant attention. Mr. Rubio had abruptly revoked their legal status, which cleared them for detention by immigration agents, citing a rarely used law.

The agents’ testimony — given as part of a trial that concluded in Boston on Monday over the Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views — underscored a major theme of President Trump’s return to the White House. The administration’s tactics have no obvious parallel as Mr. Trump pushes the bounds of executive power and defies legal limits to carry out his agenda.

Challenges to his policies are also, by necessity, treading new ground.

The academic associations that sued over the highly publicized wave of arrests in March have said the government targeted those international students in violation of the First Amendment. In court over the past two weeks, lawyers for the associations argued that the Trump administration stretched Mr. Rubio’s narrow power to revoke visas and green cards in order to stifle the speech of the most vulnerable activists and chill political activity on campuses more broadly.

The government dismissed the notion in its closing arguments on Monday, saying the idea of a coordinated policy targeting noncitizen activists is “the product of the imagination and creative conjuring.”

The Supreme Court has already held that noncitizens in the United States have the same First Amendment rights as citizens in several contexts. Still, constitutional scholars and legal experts have warned that it is precisely because the Trump administration’s actions are so novel that the lawsuit carries some inherent risk, as courts have not previously addressed all the potentially thorny legal questions at hand.

The suit fundamentally pits a clear authority, granted to the secretary of state by Congress, against the protections granted to noncitizens under the First Amendment, in a way that has not been tested before. And should it eventually reach the Supreme Court, the court’s conservative majority may be particularly unconstrained by legal history in deciding whether to allow the Trump administration to continue.

“It is risky because obviously the courts might decide the government can deport people because of what they say, and that would be just an incredible setback — a terrifying setback, I would say — for freedom of speech,” said Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He added that “one reason we haven’t had this test before is because governments did not do this before in the modern era of free speech law.”

In their testimony last week, the four current and former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents recalled gearing up to arrest individuals including Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, and Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts doctoral student, after being notified the students’ green card or visa had been revoked.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: U.S. Pulls Out of UNESCO Again, Staff Reports, July 22, 2025. Where Things Stand:

• UNESCO withdrawal: The United States said Tuesday that it would withdraw from UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, the latest move by the Trump administration to cut ties with international institutions. The U.S. previously pulled out during Mr. Trump’s first term, citing what it called the organization’s “anti-Israel bias,” but rejoined under the Biden administration.
• Marcos visit: President Trump will host President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at the White House for lunch on Tuesday, as Mr. Marcos tries to leverage his country’s close relationship with the United States to secure a more favorable trade deal. Mr. Trump has set a 20 percent tariff on goods from the Philippines, effective Aug. 1 unless a deal is reached before then. Read more ›
• Epstein resolution: Speaker Mike Johnson, right, on Monday backed off his demand for the release of government files on the accused sex trafficker and one-time Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein, saying the House would not vote this summer on a measure calling for more disclosure. Read more ›

House Republicans’ agenda for the week has been derailed as their party continues to wrestle with the fallout from the Trump administration’s decision not to release portions of the files related to an investigation of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans had planned to schedule votes this week on an immigration measure, a permitting bill and the rollback of Biden-era regulations. But a key panel that would move those bills to the floor has been paralyzed as Democrats vowed to force a vote on an Epstein-related measure.

As a result, the House cannot take up any substantive legislation until the matter is resolved. Republican leaders have suggested they would not try to move those bills until after a planned five-week recess, avoiding a controversial vote on Epstein that might put Republicans in a tough spot with their base or that could embarrass the White House.

Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, said on Tuesday that he was reaching out to lawyers representing Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite convicted for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein over a decade to sexually exploit and abuse underage girls, to see if she would answer questions about the case. President Trump has faced criticism from his supporters over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files in recent days. Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, wrote on social media that if “Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.”

  

New York Times, White House Bans Wall Street Journal From Press Pool on Trump’s Scotland Trip, Katie Robertson, July 22, 2025 (print ed.). The president sued the publication last week, accusing it of defamation for an article about his ties to the disgraced former financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The White House said on Monday that it had barred Wall Street Journal reporters from the traveling press pool for President Trump’s coming trip to Scotland, attacking the publication again for its reporting on ties between the president and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On Thursday, The Journal published an article saying that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Epstein a lewd birthday note in 2003. It included a drawing of a nude woman, The Journal reported, and ended with Mr. Trump writing, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Mr. Trump said that the drawing and letter were fake and put intense pressure on The Journal not to publish the article. The day after its publication, he sued The Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones; its parent company, News Corp; Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp; Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls News Corp; and two Journal reporters.

“Thirteen diverse outlets will participate in the press pool to cover the President’s trip to Scotland,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Monday. “Due to The Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the 13 outlets on board.”

A Wall Street Journal spokeswoman declined to comment. Last week, Dow Jones defended its reporting in a statement: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association denounced the barring of The Journal from the press pool, saying in a statement on Monday, “This attempt by the White House to punish a media outlet whose coverage it does not like is deeply troubling, and it defies the First Amendment.”

The press pool is a group of journalists from various outlets who travel with the president and act as the eyes and ears of the broader White House press corps. The Trump administration has exerted considerable pressure on the press pool, including taking over the role of deciding which publications could participate in the pool from the Correspondents’ Association.

The White House had previously barred The Associated Press from the press pool because it did not abide by Mr. Trump’s name change of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Politico Magazine, Trump’s WSJ Lawsuit Raises a New Constitutional Question, Ankush Khardor, July 22, 2025. The president is wielding lawsuits as both sword and shield.

The president can sue you, but you can’t sue him.

It seems like an absurd thing to say but that’s effectively the reality of our legal system today, one that has become increasingly alarming during Donald Trump’s second term. It’s a dynamic that has been thrust into the center of national politics amid Trump’s lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over the paper’s reporting on his relationship to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Supreme Court has been steadily building up an extraordinary level of immunity for presidents, on both civil and criminal fronts. And Trump has benefited from — and exploited — the law like no other president in American history.

Last year, in the case concerning his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump became the first president in U.S. history to receive criminal immunity from prosecution — based on a previously nonexistent doctrine that has no credible basis in the Constitution’s text or the Framers’ expectations. The decision paved the way for Trump’s reelection.

On the civil side, Trump has frequently invoked presidential immunity established in decades-old Supreme Court precedent to force civil plaintiffs with serious legal claims against him to endure years of litigation just to get him into the courthouse. Only a few ultimately succeeded, including the plaintiffs seeking to hold him liable for his conduct surrounding the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as E. Jean Carroll, who managed to secure roughly $90 million in two cases regarding allegations he sexually assaulted her; she is now facing yet another effort by Trump to toss the case out on the theory — you guessed it — that he is immune from claims that he defamed her.

Yet somehow, Trump is free to sue the Journal over an unflattering story — this despite the fact that it concerns a subject that the Trump administration first placed into the public spotlight and which has attracted the public’s attention like virtually no other issue during Trump’s second term.

It does not make much sense that the president is too busy to defend against lawsuits but can go around filing his own. It means that Trump can use the law as both sword and shield, however he sees fit. But this fundamental incongruity in the law isn’t likely to change any time soon, especially under the current Supreme Court.

“In all these cases where the president can claim immunity from suit or a prosecution, yet is affirmatively going to court while he’s president — it really is asymmetry in the extreme,” Ted Boutrous, a well-regarded free speech and media lawyer, told me. Boutrous happens to be experiencing this dynamic firsthand in the form of his work defending Mary Trump, the president’s niece and critic, in a New York state court lawsuit filed by Trump concerning her role as a source for The New York Times.

Trump’s case against the Journal, however, appears to mark the first time in American history that a sitting U.S. president has sued a media organization, despite the fact that on its face, the case is “extraordinarily weak” and “somewhat nonsensical,” as Boutrous put it. In fact, there’s a chance Trump ends up regretting he ever filed this lawsuit in the first place.

This episode is not surprising. Trump has a long history of threatening or actually suing media outlets, and his record is at best highly mixed.

He has lost cases filed by his campaign against The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post. He literally lost another case last Friday when a judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against the journalist Bob Woodward after Trump claimed that he had some sort of copyright interest in Woodward’s own recordings of interviews with Trump. (You read that correctly.)

Trump has recently managed to secure large settlements from ABC and CBS’ parent company Paramount Global, but they are exceptions. ABC legitimately bungled its reporting in a serious way while the CBS settlement appears to reflect an effort to facilitate the merger between Paramount and Skydance.

Trump’s lawsuit against the Journal may provide some short-term political relief because it provides a rallying point for his supporters, but if history is any guide and the Journal holds firm, Trump will probably lose the case. That is what typically happens when Trump’s lawsuits against the media are not settled and proceed to a final judicial resolution with a credible judge. (Some potential bad news for Trump: The judge that has been assigned the case is not a Trump appointee like Aileen Cannon but a Barack Obama appointee.)

The weakness of Trump’s case is clear. To take just one example, the complaint alleges that the Journal’s story contains the following false statements, with the bold and italics drawn from the complaint itself:Watch: The Conversation

Ben Jacobs on what Deja Foxx's loss means for Democrats | The Conversation

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

If you read the language closely, you will notice that all of it could be true even if Trump himself did not author the letter, as he claims. The language quoted in the complaint appears to reflect careful reporting on the part of the Journal’s reporters, good lawyering by the paper’s attorneys or both. (POLITICO hasn’t independently verified the letter.)

On top of that, if the case is not dismissed or settled, it would proceed to discovery, in which the Journal’s lawyers would almost certainly get the chance to depose Trump both about the alleged letter and drawing as well as his broader relationship with Epstein — the latter of which would be relevant in assessing the credibility of Trump’s denial of his authorship. The Journal would also presumably seek all of Trump’s records or correspondence with Epstein — which again are relevant to the credibility of Trump’s denial and any potential motive to mislead the public about the letter.

Depending on how this all unfolds, the case could ultimately generate even more damaging revelations for Trump. Court proceedings are presumptively public, so anything that the Journal puts in court papers about the deposition or discovery more generally would be available to the whole country.

One cynical possibility: Trump knows all this and will never let the case get to discovery but was compelled to follow through on his threat to sue, so as not to lose face with his base. We have seen him do something similar in the past.

 

New York Times, FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Chief Resigns, Citing Agency ‘Chaos’, Colleagues Said, Lisa Friedman, July 22, 2025. Ken Pagurek had told colleagues the Trump administration was causing ‘chaos’ inside FEMA and creating dangerous delays in disaster response.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s urban search and rescue unit has resigned, telling colleagues he was frustrated by bureaucratic hurdles the Trump administration imposed that delayed the agency’s response to deadly flooding in Texas, according to three people familiar with his reasoning.

Ken Pagurek, who worked with FEMA’s search and rescue branch for more than a decade and served as chief for the past year, told associates that his concerns had been mounting since the start of hurricane season and that the administration’s changes to the agency were causing “chaos.”

He said he worried that a new policy that requires purchases of more than $100,000 be personally approved by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, could hurt disaster response efforts that require speed and agility.

Experts have said that responses during a disaster can quickly total billions of dollars, and that requiring personal approvals for expenses of $100,000 and above could easily create bottlenecks.

“This decision was not made lightly, and after much reflection and prayer, it is the right path for me at this time,” Mr. Pagurek wrote in a resignation letter. His departure was first reported by CNN.

 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: From Truth Social to bitcoin empire: Trump’s $2 billion pivot, Judd Legum, right, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, July 22, 2025  Follow the money: Trump’s latest crypto maneuver explained. 

Since President Trump's election in November, the price of bitcoin has skyrocketed. On Election Day 2024, one bitcoin traded below $75,000. Last week, bitcoin reached an all-time high of over $123,000. (On Monday, it hovered around $118,000.)

This is not an accident. Trump has systematically used the power of the presidency to promote bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

On Monday, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), a publicly traded company majority-owned by Trump, announced that it had acquired $2 billion in bitcoin. Trump is turning a failing media company into a bitcoin holding company. TMTG, the parent company of Truth Social, lost over $185 million on just $3.6 million in revenue in 2024.

TMTG is mimicking a strategy pioneered by Microstrategy. The company, now known as Strategy, officially sells software and other technology services, but it is really in the business of buying bitcoin. (Strategy and similar bitcoin-focused companies are valued far above their actual bitcoin holdings, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.)

If the price of bitcoin continues to rise, the move could pay off handsomely for TMTG and Trump. The difference is that TMTG does not just have to hope bitcoin prices rise. Trump has the authority to take actions that will drive the price of bitcoin higher. If recent history is any guide, that is exactly what Trump will do.

On January 23, shortly after taking office, Trump signed a pro-crypto executive order, Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology, signaling strong support for the crypto industry. Trump's executive order repealed a 2022 executive order by former President Joe Biden, which included a variety of provisions to "protect consumers, investors, and businesses" from financial risks. Trump's executive order underscored that "individual citizens and private-sector entities" had a right to use "open public blockchain networks without persecution." Under Biden, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had investigated and charged crypto trading platforms and others for marketing unregulated securities to Americans. It also established the "President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets," chaired by David Sacks, a venture capitalist and crypto investor who joined the White House as a special advisor. In other words, the world was on notice that more good news for the crypto industry was forthcoming.

It came on March 6, when Trump signed an executive order establishing a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile." The federal government was getting into the business of acquiring and holding bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets. It is unclear how the American public benefits from the creation of such a stockpile. But the announcement was a boon to bitcoin investors. Their assets now had the imprimatur of the world's largest economy.

On April 9, the Senate confirmed Paul Atkins, Trump's pick to chair the SEC. Atkins was a member of the SEC during the George W. Bush administration. After leaving that position, he became CEO of a consulting firm where he advised numerous clients in the crypto industry. He also served as co-chair of the Token Alliance, a crypto industry lobbying group. After taking office, Atkins announced he would "accommodate the crypto industry" and establish a "rational regulatory framework." He bemoaned that the crypto industry "has been stifled for the last several years" due to the enforcement of securities laws. He quickly dropped several SEC lawsuits against major players in the crypto industry, including a long-running lawsuit against the crypto payment network Ripple.

Most recently, on July 18, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, the first major piece of legislation to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. The new law, largely written by crypto lobbyists, sets standards for stablecoins — cryptocurrency tokens pegged to the value of a government currency, such as the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin is not a stablecoin, but stablecoins are used to facilitate many crypto transactions. The GENIUS Act, by legitimizing stablecoins, sets the stage for wider adoption of crypto overall, including bitcoin. Trump also has a large financial interest in a crypto company, World Liberty Financial, which recently launched its own stablecoin, known as USD1. Major banks may follow suit.

This could all just be the beginning. Trump is considering a host of other moves to further boost bitcoin's value, including allowing 401(k) retirement plans to invest in bitcoin, eliminating or reducing capital gains taxes on crypto, directing the Federal Reserve to hold Bitcoin as part of its foreign currency reserves, and shifting most regulation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from the SEC to the more permissive Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies, which are highly volatile and have little practical utility, poses a risk for the American economy. When FTX collapsed, the broader impacts were limited because FTX had relatively few connections to the broader economic system.

Trump appears less concerned with those risks than simply pumping up the value of bitcoin. And now he has another vehicle to profit from his future pro-bitcoin policy moves.

CNN, Exclusive: Newly discovered photos and video shed fresh light on Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, July 22, 2025. Jeffrey Epstein is seen at Donald Trump and Marla Maples wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York in December 1993.

Newly uncovered archived video footage and photos reveal fresh details about Donald Trump’s past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Photos from 1993 confirm for the first time that Epstein attended Trump’s 1993 wedding to Marla Maples. Epstein’s attendance at the ceremony at the Plaza Hotel was not widely known until now.

In addition, footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York shows Trump and Epstein laughing and chatting together ahead of the runway event. CNN’s KFile uncovered the raw footage during a review of archival video of Trump at events in the 1990s and 2000s. Trump and Epstein appeared together in at least one video among the limited archival footage reviewed.

 

Meidas Touch Network, Political Opinion: Trump Sends In His Fixer to Silence Maxwell Before the Truth Gets Out, Lev Parnas, July 22, 2025. Trump isn’t just trying to silence Ghislaine Maxwell (shown together above in a file photo)—he’s trying to bury the truth, protect the elites, and erase the voices of the victims. This is the cover-up of the century.

As I woke up this morning and saw the breaking news that Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche announced—on behalf of Trump’s Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi—that he will be meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell in the coming days, I knew what was coming.Subscribed You’re going to see a flood of headlines. You’re going to hear official statements. And you’re going to get a lot of spin today.

But almost none of these pundits know Todd Blanche like I do.

I want to take you back and remind you: Todd Blanche was originally Paul Manafort’s attorney. Later, he was supposed to be on my legal team. But when I made the decision to stop protecting Trump’s criminal operation and started telling the truth, Blanche quickly became my adversary. He stayed on to represent my co-defendant, Igor Fruman, and worked against me at every turn.

At that time, I was fighting to reveal the truth about Trump’s shadow diplomacy in Ukraine. But instead of standing for justice, Todd Blanche did everything in his power to keep that truth buried. He made contradictory statements to the press. He tried to seal documents I was preparing for Congress. He tried to silence me.

And now? Blanche is back. This time, his job is to do the same thing to Ghislaine Maxwell.

Let’s not pretend this is about justice. Let’s not pretend this is a neutral fact-finding mission.

Trump is sending in his most loyal fixer—Todd Blanche—to a prison cell to “negotiate” with Maxwell before she can speak freely. The goal is not to seek the truth. The goal is to contain it.

Here’s the timeline:

Maxwell delayed her appeal to the Supreme Court until after Trump was inaugurated. Trump’s DOJ delayed their response until Monday, and that same day, Maxwell’s attorney, David Markus, released a public statement insinuating that Trump was reneging on a prior deal.

Then the Wall Street Journal dropped a story exposing a handwritten letter Donald Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday—once again tying him directly to Epstein in a way Trump’s team has desperately tried to deny.

The next day, Wednesday, Pam Bondi fired prosecutor Maurene Comey—one of the only people qualified to evaluate any cooperation Maxwell might offer.

Friday, Todd Blanche filed a motion—under the guise of transparency—to unseal select grand jury transcripts. But this was a smokescreen. These are transcripts DOJ already vetted and redacted to protect Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump’s DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, pushed out a bogus national security story to distract the base. And yesterday, Speaker Johnson gave up the House majority for a full week to give Trump cover.

And now—today—Todd Blanche announces he’s going in to talk to Maxwell.

Blanche claims this is the first time anyone from the DOJ has reached out to her. But don’t be fooled. This is not about investigating Epstein. It’s not about justice for the victims. It’s about controlling the narrative before it controls them.

Blanche will try to cut a deal. Offer leniency, maybe even early release. And in return, he’ll want a story. One that implicates someone like Bill Clinton and clears Trump. He’s not going to Maxwell for facts—he’s going for leverage.

And I know that playbook, because I lived it.

Back then, it was Bill Barr pulling the strings. Rudy Giuliani. Todd Blanche. They told me to stay quiet. Told me if I said nothing, I’d walk free.

But I didn’t stay quiet. I chose to speak out. I chose to risk everything to tell the truth.

And what I’m watching unfold right now with Maxwell… it looks exactly the same.

They don’t want to hear the truth. They want to shut her up.

Just like they tried to do with me.

Because they don’t want justice. They want control.

And let me be absolutely clear—because there’s no gray area here.

I am in no way defending Ghislaine Maxwell or advocating for her to receive any leniency. On the contrary, I believe Maxwell may be even worse than Epstein himself. She used trust, charm, and access to lure vulnerable girls into a predatory system. She enabled it. She helped build it. She was a key part of a disgusting, criminal pedophile trafficking ring that destroyed lives. She deserves every day of her sentence—and then some.

But if we truly want justice—if we actually want to get to the bottom of this—I believe we need all the facts. And that means hearing the truth from every player involved, no matter how repulsive. What I won’t stand for is a government that manipulates that truth, rewrites history, and buries the parts that implicate their allies. That’s what this is really about. And that’s why I’m speaking up.

And that brings me to something else we need to talk about—because if Donald Trump is going this far to control what Ghislaine Maxwell says, then we need to ask: who else is he covering up for?

Who else was involved? Who else is buried in those sealed files? Who was at those parties? Who was flown on those planes? Who does Trump think is worth protecting—worth rewriting history for? Because it’s not just about shielding himself anymore. It’s about shielding an entire network of powerful people who have evaded justice for decades. And the more pressure builds, the more desperate this cover-up becomes.

And we need to be clear—this isn’t just about political games or curiosity. This is about justice for the victims. For the young girls and boys. For the women who were trafficked, silenced, and discarded by the rich and powerful like they were nothing. Many of them never got to tell their story. Many of them still live with the trauma. And many never survived to see justice. We speak for them now. We are their voice. We are their megaphone. And that’s exactly why Trump and his cronies are trying to shut it all down—because this isn’t about protecting the country. It’s about protecting the elite. The predators. The insiders. But this is where we draw the line. We will not let them bury the truth. We will not let them rewrite history. If we stay silent now, we fail them. And I refuse to be part of that silence.

There are a lot of pundits and commentators who will give you their hot takes. But if you want the truth—if you want to hear it from someone who’s been inside that machine, who knows these players personally and understands the facts they’re trying to bury—then I need you to do something:

Share this letter with three or four people. Help this movement grow.

Subscribe. Be informed—truly informed—with real-time updates from someone who was on the inside.

NZZ (Switzerland), 'You have no right to be here,' A Swiss woman's harrowing tale of arrest and detention at the US border, Staff and Wires Report, July 22, 2025.

A Swiss teacher attempting to enter the U.S. with an ESTA authorization was detained at New York's airport and later transferred to a controversial detention facility in New Jersey. She was accused of intending to work despite her tourist visa, which she denied. The detention conditions were harsh, with poor hygiene and no privacy. The case highlights the rigid enforcement of U.S. immigration policies since the beginning of Trump's second term. A lawyer says Switzerland should take a stronger stand against the inhumane treatment of its citizens, warning that similar incidents could happen to other travelers.

«Number 18, are you ready for deportation?» These words marked the end of what a Swiss woman described in an interview as «a traumatic and dehumanizing nightmare.»

The woman, who works as a teacher and is studying for her master's degree in education in Switzerland, wanted to enter the U.S. as a tourist with a valid electronic travel authorization (ESTA) to celebrate her birthday in New York. Instead, she was handcuffed and shackled at John F. Kennedy Airport, interrogated for hours, and finally taken to a notorious prison in New Jersey.

The experience left her «emotionally distraught and physically harmed,» says the teacher, who will be referred to as Lara* in this story. Lara's experience is a result of U.S. President Donald Trump's new border policy.«Follow this gentleman»

Lara arrived in New York on April 9 at 4 p.m. local time. The border guard asked the usual routine questions about how long she would be staying in the U.S. and where she planned to stay. But instead of letting her proceed into the city, he said, «Follow this gentleman.»

Lara spent six hours in a room with other travelers who had also been «flagged,» the term for those selected by border officials for further questioning. Lara is 38 years old. She studied in the U.S. for several years on a student visa. She also worked there with the appropriate authorization and paid taxes. She has only been living in Switzerland again since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She visits her longtime friends in New York several times a year and obtains her travel authorization via ESTA.

The officials wanted to know why she travels to the U.S. so often. Because she loves New York and many of her friends live there, Lara replied. Then the officers demanded access to Lara's smartphone. «I had to give them access to all my social media accounts and my online banking account,» she says. «Then they disappeared for about an hour with my cellphone.»«You're lying»

Because Lara not only works at a school in Switzerland, but also gives online language courses and counts Americans among her customers, the border officials were convinced that she wanted to work during her stay in the U.S.

The fact that Lara was carrying souvenirs, such as German books and Swiss chocolate, had her laptop and had arranged to meet some of her online students for coffee in New York reinforced the border officials' suspicions. When Lara insisted that she did not want to work during her vacation, the officials always responded with the same statement: «You're lying.»

«Then they threatened me: Either I officially say in the interrogation that I came to New York to work, or they will send me to prison,» Lara says, adding that the situation intimidated her. «But I still said: That's not right. If you treat me like this, I will need a lawyer, and I must be given the opportunity to contact the Swiss Embassy. Their response was: You have no right to be here. You are not an American citizen.»

At around 10 p.m., she was allowed to call an American friend of her parents with whom she is so close that she calls her «aunt.» The aunt informed Lara's friends in New York and her family in Switzerland what was happening. At 11:30 p.m., Lara received official notification that she would not be allowed to enter the United States.

However, instead of being put back on the next flight to Switzerland, Lara was placed on a chair anchored to the floor and secured to it with a leg restraint. She waited like this for two hours, not knowing what would happen next. Then she was taken to a small room and subjected to a full-body search. In addition to the ankle restraint she was put in handcuffs and a chain was put around her waist. «That was the first time I cried,» Lara says.«Don't even try»

Lara is one of two Swiss citizens who, according to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), have been denied entry to the U.S. this year. There are no comparative figures from previous years because the FDFA never collected them.

Germany's Foreign Office told the NZZ that there had been a «small double-digit number of cases» of German citizens being turned away or arrested. Three Germans affected have already reported in various media outlets about dehumanizing detention conditions and arbitrary, violent behavior by border officials.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been several reports from people arriving from European countries – including Germany, France and the U.K. – who were turned away at the U.S. border despite having valid entry documents via ESTA or even a green card. In some cases, they were held in so-called «detention centers» for weeks.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indirectly confirmed that since the beginning of the year, travelers from Europe and other Western countries have also been subject to increased intensive checks. «Under the leadership of the Trump Administration, we have seen a sharp decline in illegal immigration. This reduction has allowed our law enforcement personnel to get back to doing law enforcement work, like conducting thorough vetting and interviews,» the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

The spokesperson did not specify exactly how increased deployment in one area would lead to more free capacity in another. Perhaps the agency attributes a deterrent effect to Trump. «Lawful travelers have nothing to fear from these measures,» the statement continued. «However, those intending to enter the U.S. with fraudulent purposes or malicious intent are offered the following advice: Don’t even try.»

Become a paid subscriber and get exclusive access to Q&A and Story Time with Lev, where I break down what’s really happening—before it hits the headlines.

Politico, Beto O'Rourke calls on Democrats to play hardball on redistricting, Danny Nguyen, July 22, 2025. "Why the fuck are we responding and reacting to the other side instead of taking offense on these things?" the former Texas gubernatorial candidate said.

Beto O'Rourke wants Democrats to play hardball on redistricting, Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas added himself to a shortlist of Democrats pressuring California to carve out extra congressional districts for their party ahead of the midterms.

The remarks, made at an event hosted by the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress on Tuesday, came a day after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started a special session to redistrict his state years earlier than it normally would, which could thwart Democrats’ attempt to recapture power in Congress in 2026. It’s part of an effort led by President Donald Trump to hold the slim Republican majority, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to redistrict his state in a way that’d offset gains in Texas.

“Not only do I think he should do this, I don’t think he should wait for Texas,” said O’Rourke, who is considering running for a Texas Senate seat in 2026. “Why the fuck are we responding and reacting to the other side instead of taking offense on these things?”

“Democrats care more about being right than being in power,” he added. “We have to change that. We have to be ruthlessly focused on winning power.”

The former Texas gubernatorial candidate said Democrats could “squeeze out” congressional seats in “Illinois or New York or anything that Democrats hold unitary power.”

It’s unclear how feasible Newsom’s efforts are because his state ceded redistricting power to an independent commission to avoid gerrymandering. In Texas, the Republican-controlled state legislature draws districts, which offers the party a clear path to carve out extra seats without Democratic interference.

O’Rourke, who now runs a voter registration organization called Power to the People, thinks Democrats can leverage voter outreach to make any Republican gains in Texas their own.

“If, God forbid, new districts are drawn, they will be drawn at the expense of existing Republican-majority districts. They will have to bleed out some Republican voters to make these other districts more competitive for Republicans,” he said. “We’re already out there … registering eligible, likely Democrats who are not currently on the rolls.”

New York Times, Judges Ask Justice Dept. to Submit Epstein Case Transcripts With Proposed Redactions, Benjamin Weiser, July 22, 2025. Federal judges responded to a request from the attorney general to release grand jury transcripts from cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Two federal judges in Manhattan said in similar court orders on Tuesday that they would try to “expeditiously” resolve motions by Attorney General Pam Bondi seeking to unseal grand jury transcripts from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

But both judges ordered the government to file legal arguments setting out the “special circumstances” that would justify disclosing the materials, which are shielded by grand jury secrecy.

The judges ordered the government to submit two complete sets of grand jury transcripts from the cases, one without redactions and one with them made in the form that the government proposed to make public.

The government should also cite any other grand jury materials, like exhibits that were shown to the grand jury, the judges’ orders said.

The orders come in response to motions Ms. Bondi filed on Friday as President Trump has sought to quell criticism from many of his supporters who want more information on what the government knows about Mr. Epstein’s activities and any prominent figures who were in his circle.

The judges handling Ms. Bondi’s motions are Richard M. Berman, who oversaw Mr. Epstein’s case before he was found dead in his cell in 2019, a death that was ruled a suicide; and Paul A. Engelmayer, who was recently assigned to the case of Ms. Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. (The original judge in Ms. Maxwell’s case, Alison J. Nathan, was later appointed to the Second Circuit appeals court in Manhattan.)

Judge Berman set Aug. 5 as a deadline for any letter to be submitted setting out a position on the proposed disclosure on behalf of Mr. Epstein. Judge Engelmayer set a similar deadline for Ms. Maxwell to inform the court of her position on the proposed release of records.

New York Times, G.M. Profit Shrinks on Billion-Dollar Tariff Hit, Jack Ewing, July 22, 2025. General Motors was the second auto company this week, after Stellantis, to show the toll that President Trump’s trade policies are taking on the industry.

General Motors said on Tuesday that its profit in the second quarter fell by more than a third, after President Trump’s tariffs cost the company more than $1 billion.

G.M. was the second automaker in as many days to show the toll that the Trump administration’s trade policies are taking on the industry. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, said on Monday that it lost 2.3 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in the first half of the year because of tariffs and other Republican policies.

G.M.’s profit for the quarter was $1.9 billion, the company said, down from $2.9 billion in the same quarter last year. Sales fell 2 percent, to $47 billion.

Mary Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, said in a letter to shareholders that the company is investing $4 billion to increase production in the United States of pickups and sport utility vehicles that would be less susceptible to tariffs. 

New York Times, Johnson Retreats on Demand for Epstein Disclosures, Saying Trump Needs ‘Space,’ Annie Karni, July 22, 2025 (print ed.). Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he would not hold a House vote this summer on whether the Justice Department should release files related to the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, retreating from his demand last week that the material must come out.

Reacting to intense pressure from the angry MAGA base, Mr. Johnson, right, had on Tuesday showed a rare glimpse of daylight between himself and Mr. Trump, who was imploring his supporters to move on from the matter.

“We should put everything out there and let the people decide,” Mr. Johnson had said on “The Benny Show” when asked about the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Epstein. “I agree with the sentiment that we need to — we need to put it out there.”

The Rules Committee, a powerful panel controlled by the speaker, had even approved a measure that would bring to the floor a resolution calling for the disclosures, though Republicans gave no timetable for voting on it.

Less than a week later, the speaker reverted to his more familiar posture of deferring to the president.

“We need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol on Monday when asked about holding a House vote on releasing the investigative files.

“If further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we’ll look at that,” Mr. Johnson said. But he added that there would be no vote on the Epstein files before the House departs on Thursday for a six-week summer break, saying, “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, because we agree with the president.”

Mr. Johnson was able to obtain his gavel and has been able to keep it because of his unshakable loyalty to Mr. Trump. His initial call for the release of the Epstein files when Mr. Trump was asking for the opposite underscored how the case had created an unusual and deep split between the president and his supporters.

But the speaker’s reversal suggests that Mr. Trump’s efforts to quell the unrest in his political base over the matter may be succeeding.Editors’ PicksOverlooked No More: Polina Gelman: Fearless ‘Night Witch’ Who Haunted Nazi TroopsThis Dinosaur Probably Tweeted More Than It RoaredWho Wins When Neighbors Fight?

Mr. Johnson implied that his concerns about transparency had been alleviated, for now, by Mr. Trump’s move to authorize Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Mr. Epstein. That is a far cry from the breadth of information the president’s supporters have demanded, yet it appeared to be enough to persuade the speaker.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Why the Epstein Coverup Matters, William Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, July 22, 2025. In free societies, government coverups are difficult. In authoritarian ones, they’re routine.

Jeffrey Epstein damage control continues at the Justice Department, with Pam Bondi announcing this morning that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is seeking a prosecutorial interview with Epsitein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. “The Department of Justice does not shy away from uncomfortable truths, nor from the responsibility to pursue justice wherever the facts may lead,” Blanche said in the statement Bondi posted.

Which is pretty funny when you think about it: They didn’t even try to talk to Maxwell before initially declaring the Epstein matter closed? Happy Tuesday.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Will the Coverup Succeed? William Kristol, July 22, 2025. Wow. It turns out the Donald Trump administration is able to assemble, organize, and release large groups of government files.

In the last few days, the administration has made public—with considerable hooplah—batches of documents on the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2012, and on some of the intelligence community’s work on 2016 Russian election interference. There’s been a veritable blizzard of government files and revelations raining down on us.

There’s one exception to this torrent of transparency, one set of files that have been resolutely kept under lock and key: Those covering the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.How could that be?

After all, the Epstein files are precisely those which Pam Bondi early in her tenure promised most vociferously to release, and which she said were literally on her desk. According to Sen. Dick Durbin’s very helpful letter detailing information his office received, information that hasn’t been challenged, Bondi put about 1,000 FBI personnel to work going through those files back in March. That work proceeded at a frenetic pace—but seems to have abruptly stopped at the end of that month. Durbin, in his letter, explains that his office was told that “personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”

So records were frantically reviewed and mentions of Trump were flagged—and then for three months all was quiet on the Epstein front. Presumably the attorney general, the FBI director, and their boss Donald Trump were deliberating on how to proceed. And then two weeks ago, on July 7, we received no files at all, but instead an unsigned memorandum from the Justice Department and the FBI telling us there was nothing to see here.

Since then we have learned of one document, though not thanks to the administration—a 2003 birthday note from Trump to Epstein which was made available to the Wall Street Journal. While a lot of attention has been paid to the artwork on the note, it’s worth recalling the text that Trump dictated of an imaginary conversation between him and Epstein.

Here’s an excerpt:

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that.Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

In his invented dialogue, Trump seems to suggest—to relish the fact that—this might have been something they had “in common,” something that was “clear” to Epstein the last time the two got together.

The birthday note suggests at the very least Trump’s contemporaneous awareness or knowledge of Epstein’s criminal behavior—as does his comment to a reporter less than a year before that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

”My sense is that Trump understood how damning the birthday wishes were, which is why he tried to suppress it. Having failed in that, Trump claimed it was a fraud and filed a lawsuit against the Journal. He also ordered Bondi to seek to go to court to have “pertinent” grand jury interviews released, a diversion which will buy some time—since one has to go to court for permission to do that—and which covers only a tiny portion of the material the government has.

Who knows what other material is in those files? Who knows what happened when the investigators started flagging Trump’s name? How much is there in these files along the lines of the already public 2020 court filing in which a witness testifies that when, in the 1990s, she was a 14-year old being raped by Epstein, he introduced her to Trump? And that Epstein “elbowed Trump playfully,” asking him: “This is a good one, right?” According to the witness’s testimony, “Trump smiled and nodded in agreement. They both chuckled.”

Trump wouldn’t want more material like that to be made public. Thus the coverup.

Will the coverup succeed? It’s hard to say.

On the other hand, coverups are hard, and Trump, Bondi, and Patel may not be up to the task. And they have lots of patriotic subordinates who may balk at going along. One presumably already has.

On the other hand, in the past, coverups failed and possible coverups unraveled because there was a special counsel, with the weight of the Justice Department and the federal government behind him, seeking to uncover the truth.

There are no special counsels here. The White House has weighed in against one. There are no honorable figures at the most senior positions in the Justice Department or elsewhere resisting the coverup either. Trump controls the federal government and all its apparatus of criminal investigation and law enforcement in a way his predecessors didn’t. So it’s possible Trump could get away with it.

As a general rule, coverups are difficult in free societies with democratic governments. They are routine for authoritarian governments. The Epstein coverup will be an indicator of how far we are down the road to authoritarianism. The success of such a coverup would take us much further down that road.

On the other hand, the failure of the attempted coverup would show resistance to a government based on lies on behalf of the strongman. And the failure of the coverup, either in terms of the material coming out or Trump paying a significant political price for the coverup, would in turn encourage further resistance to authoritarianism.

So the Epstein matter isn’t a diversion from the broader fight against Trump and his authoritarian efforts. The Epstein coverup has turned out to be an unexpectedly crucial battle in that struggle, and a test of our resolve in that fight.

 

Texas Immigrant To Russia Derek Huffman with his wife DeAnna and three daughters.

Daily Beast, Anti-Woke Dad Who Fled With Family to Russia Sent to War Zone, Josh Fiallo, Updated July 20, 2025. FAFO. Derek Huffman, 46, joined the military with hopes of becoming a Russian citizen. His wife said he was duped into a combat role.

Derek Huffman, 45, of Texas, records a video during training after joining the Russian military. An American father who moved to Russia to avoid LGBTQ+ “indoctrination” for his kids is being sent to the front line in Ukraine, despite being assured he would serve in a non-combat role.

Derek Huffman, 46, feels he is being “thrown to the wolves” after being told that his job in the military would be as a correspondent or as a welder, his wife, DeAnna, said in a recorded plea for prayers, which has since been removed from her YouTube page.

Huffman has no prior military experience, DeAnna said, adding that his limited training was conducted in Russian. She suggested the language barrier has made her husband particularly unprepared for the horrors of combat. views “Unfortunately, when you’re taught in a different language, and you don’t understand the language, how are you really getting taught?” she pondered. “You’re not. So, unfortunately, he feels like he’s being thrown to the wolves right now, and he’s kind of having to lean on faith, and that’s what we’re all doing.”

Huffman joined the military in the hope of gaining Russian citizenship for his family through an expedited process. He also felt such service would allow him to “earn” the respect of his new countrymen, which is something he once said migrants in the United States refuse to do.

“The point of this act for me is to earn a place here in Russia,” he told Russian state media last month. “If I risk myself for our new country, no one will say that I am not a part of it. Unlike migrants in America who come there just like that, do not assimilate, and at the same time want free handouts.”Undocumented migrants cannot join the U.S. military during peacetime. A program launched by former President George W. Bush allowed such immigrants to seek citizenship by serving in the military, but that pathway was shuttered during President Donald Trump’s first term.

DeAnna, 42, suggested her husband had been misled during the military recruiting process. She added that, after a month of service, her family had yet to receive any pay.

“When he signed up and had all of that done, he was told he would not be training for two weeks and going straight to the front lines,” she said. “But it seems as though he is getting one more week of training, closer to the front lines, and then they are going to put him on the front lines.”

Huffman moved his family to a village outside Moscow in spring. It was launched by American blogger Tim Kirby—who has lived in Russia for two decades—in 2023 to attract Americans seeking to escape the “liberal gender norm.” That project has been a flop, with United24Media reporting that only two families, including the Huffmans, have moved in.

Huffman, a native Texan, brought his wife, three daughters, and their family Husky, “Baby,” with him to Russia. The couple also have three sons from prior marriages who opted to remain in the United States.

Huffman’s admiration for Russia runs deep. The Russian state-operated news agency RIA Novosti reported last month that the couple honeymooned in Moscow.“The city charmed us with its rich history, vibrant culture, and welcoming atmosphere,” DeAnna told the outlet. “Before that, we figured out whether moving to Russia would fit our family’s needs and values. However, it wasn’t until we saw Moscow in person that we truly felt a connection.”

DeAnna said that she was not surprised that her husband wanted to volunteer for the Russian military, even as it is in its third year of a bloody war with Ukraine. Ukrainian officials estimated this week that more than 1 million Russian soldiers have died in the conflict, which continues to rage on despite President Trump’s demands for peace.

”It didn’t come as a surprise to me,” she said of his joining the military. “He always spoke so highly of the country, its president, and its people, and he has a strong passion for doing the right thing.”

 

The Bulwark Triad, Political Opinion: This Is the Most Exquisite Leopard Face-Eating You Will Ever See, Jonathan V. Last (JVL),A MAGA man moves to Russia. Hijinx ensue.

1. Bad JVL

Today starts out funny and full of schadenfreude, but then it goes to a super dark place. I have questions about the nature of evil and the human condition and I want to recruit you all into a conversation to help me sort through them. Buckle up.

 

Meet Derek Huffman, above. He’s a good man. Salt of the earth. All he wanted was to be left alone by the LGBTQs. He lived in Arizona until 2022,when the woke drove him to Texas.

But the radical leftists were everywhere, even in the Lone Star State. So Derek moved his wife and three children to Russia.

No, really. In Texas his daughter was at school one day and a classmate told her what a lesbian was. And that was the final straw. “The pivotal moment for us was when we learned that my daughter Sophia had heard about lesbians from a classmate,” he told RT. “Even though she didn’t fully grasp the concept, it was enough for us to realize that we needed a change.”

I know what you’re thinking.

It’s not like it was a teacher telling his kid about lesbians. Kids hear all sorts of stuff on the playground. This fact has been a running joke in American culture for close to a century. A basic part of parenthood is navigating the reality that you do not fully control the flow of information to your children. If you don’t want your kid to know that lesbians exist in the world, perhaps there is an intermediate step before moving to an authoritarian police state? Maybe try homeschooling?

But no. Huffman went on a fact-finding trip to Moscow and liked what he saw: “The city was cleaner, safer, and more organized than we had anticipated. Most importantly, we found a place where our values were honored, and we felt at home.”

Sometimes it is hard for me to understand people. For instance, I read that and I think, okay: Maybe no children in Moscow would dare say the word “lesbian” on the playground. But Russia does have other values.

It runs rape, torture, and murder rooms in civilian areas it captures.

It carried out a program of organized child abduction in which it kidnapped 20,000 Ukrainian kids.

The Russian government routinely has internal opponents — and even annoying internal allies — assassinated.

How stupid do you have to be to not understand that these “values” are more important that Target selling rainbow merch during Pride Month?

Then again, maybe Derek Huffman did understand the difference — and he prefers Russian values. Because after emigrating he volunteered to join the Russian military and aid their invasion of Ukraine:

“The point of this act for me is to earn a place here in Russia,” he said. “If I risk myself for our new country, no one will say that I am not a part of it. Unlike migrants in America who come there just like that, do not assimilate, and at the same time want free handouts.”¹

In a video he sent to his wife, he said: "I believe in the Russian cause. . . . I won’t sit here and act like I’m the know-it-all on the whole situation, but I know enough to know that Russia is just in their cause and they’re doing the right thing."

I’m not sure how to read that as anything but an affirmative endorsement of the rape and torture of civilians and the kidnapping of children. This asshat wasn’t just happy to live under a regime that carried out war crimes; he volunteered to help do the war criming himself.²

2. The Idiocy of Evil

Well, sort of. Because you see Derek thought he was joining the Russian military to be a welder. Or maybe a war correspondent. But definitely not to do any, you know, actual fighting.

He did not sign up for any of that. Think of it as double-exxxtreme LARPing.³

Oopsie.

That rascally Vladimir Putin went and shipped Derek to the front lines of the war. And boy, Derek’s wife is super sad now:

Derek Huffman, 46, feels he is being “thrown to the wolves” after being told that his job in the military would be as a correspondent or as a welder, his wife, DeAnna, said in a recorded plea for prayers, which has since been removed from her YouTube page.

Huffman has no prior military experience, DeAnna said, adding that his limited training was conducted in Russian. She suggested the language barrier has made her husband particularly unprepared for the horrors of combat.

“Unfortunately, when you’re taught in a different language, and you don’t understand the language, how are you really getting taught?” she pondered. “You’re not. So, unfortunately, he feels like he’s being thrown to the wolves right now, and he’s kind of having to lean on faith, and that’s what we’re all doing.” . . .

DeAnna, 42, suggested her husband had been misled during the military recruiting process. She added that, after a month of service, her family had yet to receive any pay.

“When he signed up and had all of that done, he was told he would not be training for two weeks and going straight to the front lines,” she said. “But it seems as though he is getting one more week of training, closer to the front lines, and then they are going to put him on the front lines.”

Euromaidan has more:

Russian recruiters made specific promises. First, Derek would work as a war correspondent. Then as a mechanic in a repair battalion, using his welding skills. No combat role.

Here’s what actually happened: Derek joined a unit of foreigners getting rushed training in Russian before deployment to Ukraine’s front lines.

DeAnna . . . added that the family is “hoping that he can be utilized for his skills and not be used just as a fighter.”

The deployment also created financial strain for the family. Derek and his unit members were reportedly required to “donate” 10,000 rubles for their own supplies, consuming a substantial portion of his paycheck. DeAnna reported receiving no pay or bonus after one month of Derek’s service.

Can the family reverse this? DeAnna is petitioning unnamed public figures and asking for prayers to get Derek reassigned to a non-combat role.⁴

I’m laughing about the Huffmans only because the reality is so horrific. Their three girls didn’t ask for this. My heart breaks for them. Packing your kids off to an authoritarian state is one of the most abusive acts I’ve ever seen a parent commit. The girls’ lives have been ruined by these idiot monsters.⁵

And they are monsters. I’ve sat through a bunch of the Huffman family videos and they come across as dim, sad, aspiring influencers. The kind of people who aren’t evil so much as stupid. Put Derek next to, say, the Catholic Nazi kid whom Tim and I talked about yesterday and the man looks like a prince. Stupid, sure. Yet essentially well-meaning.

But evil is as evil does. Derek and his wife chose to move to Russia. They chose to ally themselves with a murderous regime. He chose to join an army that has been raping and murdering its way across Ukraine.

They chose to make their children vulnerable to the worst kinds of predation because . . . they didn’t want them to hear the word “lesbian”?

Here is what I want you to discuss today: How should we respond when idiocy crosses over into evil?

Evil is relatively easy to deal with. We know it when we see it and we have an accepted moral framework for confronting it.

The banality of evil is trickier, but we understand it. We understand the phenomenon of Eichmann in Jerusalem and Hitler’s Willing Executioners. We have more or less figured out the framework for dealing with evil that arises from indifference, or ambition, or lemming-like mob behavior.

But evil that arises from sheer stupidity? What are we supposed to do with people who are so catastrophically stupid that their cognitive limitations lead them to commit serious evils? How should we think about this? How should we respond to it? How should we manage those people in a liberal society?

I want to hear your thoughts. Please be your best selves. And remember that at the heart of this darkly funny — or rather: “funny” — situation is the suffering of innocents. Not just the Huffman children, but the Ukrainians whom Derek Huffman is making war against.

I confess that I have no idea what the answers to any of those questions are. Maybe you do.

New York Times, Trump Releases Thousands of Martin Luther King Jr. Files, Rick Rojas and Glenn Thrush, Updated July 22, 2025.  Historians said they saw little of note in the assassination records that President Trump disclosed despite opposition from most of Dr. King’s family.

More than 6,000 documents related to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., totaling nearly a quarter-million pages, were posted to the website of the National Archives late Monday afternoon, in what the administration hailed as a triumph of transparency.

But several noted King historians said they had found little in the way of new revelations about the death of the civil rights leader in the documents, and noted that the trove does not include F.B.I. wiretap recordings of Dr. King and other materials that remain under court seal until 2027.

The release on Monday, with no prior notice, came at a time when Mr. Trump and White House officials have sought to divert attention from right-wing backlash demanding the release of files related to the death of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump administration officials said the King assassination documents include notes on the leads pursued by investigators, interviews with people who knew his killer, James Earl Ray, and previously unreleased details of interactions with foreign intelligence services during the manhunt for Mr. Ray.

A lone audio file released on Monday includes part of a law enforcement interview with Jerry Ray, one of James Earl Ray’s siblings. In a statement, officials said the published documents had “never been digitized and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades.”

Many of the pages have been rendered almost illegible by time and the digitizing process. There were random and wide-ranging accounts of the investigation and manhunt, including hundreds of news clippings, tips from the public, accounts of Mr. Ray’s forays into dance classes and locksmith school, and his fondness for aliases drawn from James Bond novels.

David Garrow, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning King biography as well as a book about the F.B.I.’s spying campaign on him, said his initial review led him to conclude that there was little of public interest in the files, much of which had already been disclosed. “I saw nothing that struck me as new,” he said.

In 2019, Mr. Garrow published an article that recounted claims he had found in F.B.I. documents released in relation to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those claims include accounts of Dr. King witnessing an alleged rape in 1964 in a Washington hotel room where he had been staying.

It is unclear from the documents, which does not appear to be included in the current tranche, who is making those claims. Mr. Garrow was criticized by some historians for elevating incendiary assertions that were part of an F.B.I. smear campaign, without corroborating evidence.

The F.B.I. wiretaps and other surveillance were part of an effort to uncover damaging material on Dr. King, which the agency hoped to leverage in its campaign to derail the civil rights movement. Tapes and transcripts from that surveillance are part of what remains under seal, though summaries and other related material had been released previously. A federal judge last month denied a Justice Department request to unseal the surveillance records two years early.

Dr. King had a well-documented history of extramarital relationships. Still, some experts and Dr. King’s family have expressed doubts about the veracity of some of the contents of those previously released documents, particularly when it comes to the more provocative claims about aspects of Dr. King’s romantic and sexual life.

Those details, they said, could be more reflective of official efforts to undermine the civil rights leader’s reputation than of reality.

“You’ve got to read this carefully and don’t take it at face value,” said Larry J. Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who was reviewing the new documents on Monday with his own team of researchers.

“I’m skeptical of anything I read from F.B.I. files about M.L.K.,” he said, adding that he suspected that agents inflated or manufactured material to please J. Edgar Hoover, the agency’s longtime director. “He wanted dirt on M.LK. and his movements and his associates.”

Dr. King’s surviving children, Martin III and Bernice, argued in a statement on Monday that their father had been “relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign.” The children beseeched researchers and the general public to view all of the material from the government’s files in the context of their father’s contributions to American society.

“We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint and respect for our family’s continuing grief,” they said. Trump administration officials have been in contact with Dr. King’s family, but it remains unclear if his relatives were given the right to request redactions of the newly released material.

In a news release announcing the document upload, the administration quoted Alveda King, Dr. King’s niece and a high-profile supporter of Mr. Trump, who praised the government for providing transparency. “The declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve,” she said.

As a candidate last year, Mr. Trump vowed to release files related to President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, and the 1968 murders of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. King. The Kennedy documents, released in March, contained little new information about the assassination itself.

Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: What If We Don’t Bounce Back From Trump? Historian Michael Brenes live with Sam Osterhout,  July22, 2025. Michael Brenes published a remarkable piece in the New Republic a couple of weeks ago, called What If the Political Pendulum Doesn’t Swing Back?

The basic idea (and I’m oversimplifying — you really should read the article), is that American politics in the 20th century featured a pendulum effect that was so pronounced and predictable that Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., was able to predict the end of liberal rule in the second half of the 1940s and the end of conservative rule in 1963.

He predicted these events in 1936.

But, as Michael Brenes argues, this pendulum is broken. The Democrats didn’t mount a full-scale pendulum swing leftward after Reagan. Clinton was elected, sure, but his policies were closer to Nixon’s than to FDR’s. Obama created some strong social policy, including, but not limited to the ACA. But when push came to shove, Democratic presidencies have begun to look more and more like traditional Republican presidencies.Subscribed

Or, at minimum, the lines have been blurred.

Of course, Trump has taken the broken pendulum and run with it, destroying the administrative state, razing our global standing, and brazenly funneling wealth from the bottom to the top. He’s also creating a de facto private domestic military and openly exchanging favors for bribes.

The constant barrage of horrors in our flaming hot news cycle, pushed out through social media’s algo, has the effect of making us all forget that this very moment — the present — was constructed by the past. And the future will be constructed by our actions today.

Trump is breaking the world in the present. In the future, either we’ll fix it … or we won’t.

In this conversation, Michael Brenes talks about how we got here and where we’re going. There’s more hope here than you might imagine, but it’s gonna take work, and America will clearly never be the same.

We wanted to talk about his new book, The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, but we didn’t get to it.

But good news! We’re doing this again at the same time next week: Monday, July 28 at 12 p.m. ET, Sam Osterhout will be speaking again with Michael Brenes about how our obsession with battling China is a distraction that will leave us poorer, sicker, and less safe. You don’t want to miss it.

July 21

The Hartmann Report, Death Rattle of a Cult: Trump, Epstein, and the Long Knives of the Right, Thom Hartmann, right, July 21, 2025. With Fox sharpening the blade and MAGA losing its grip, America teeters on the edge of a political Jonestown...

Elon Musk is probably chuckling as Trump flails; today’s firestorm around the Epstein documents arguably started when he tweeted that Trump was in the files. Which has led to some significant changes in the Trump/media/politics/deep-state landscape that it’s important to review. They include questions about the future of Trump, his cult followers, a possible power struggle between Trump and Murdoch, and JD Vance’s Presidential ambitions.

To begin: if you want everything around the Epstein furor to make sense, all you have to understand is that Donald Trump has been leading a cult.

Like Jim Jones did. Like Charles Manson did. Like Rajneesh did here in Oregon. Unlike Manson, but more like Rajneesh and Jim Jones, however, Trump’s cult is fairly large and preexisted his appearance on the scene. And that’s part of his problem.

It’s large enough to have in it three kinds of people.

The first kind of person is the “true believer.” They make up most of the Trump cult members, what we call MAGA. They’re usually pretty much willing to overlook anything Dear Leader does, much like the devoted followers of Rajaneesh and Jim Jones.

And then there are the “facilitators.” These are cynical people who don’t believe the cult leader’s BS, but go along with it — and even promote it — because it works to their benefit. They are typically parasitic. They usually make their money from the members of the cult, or get power from them (votes in this case), and often use their position in the cult to gain other benefits like sexual favors or fame.

In this case the facilitators are the Republican politicians who are begging money from their followers and voters, and then vote to screw those followers on behalf of the cult leader — Trump — and his billionaire friends. The morbidly rich keep the cult facilitators in line by funding their elections and, in the case of Republican Supreme Court justices, their lavish lifestyles.

When you understand that it’s a cult and that some of the people who seem high-up in it are true believers and not facilitators, suddenly Marjorie Taylor Greene’s behavior makes sense when she seems to attack Trump: she’s a true believer. She’s completely bought into the conspiracy nuttery that brought him to office twice.

You also begin to understand why Chuck Grassley, left, ran that Senate judiciary committee the way he did to push through Emil Bove over the objections of the Democrats and literally hundreds of former lawyers, judges, and Department of Justice officials: Grassley is a cynical facilitator.

And you understand why the Republican Congressman from Kentucky, Thomas Massey, has joined with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna to demand release of the Epstein documents and essentially turned on Trump.

Massey represents the third kind of person in a cult, who only shows up typically toward the early stages of the collapse of the cult, and then presents a real danger to the cult leader.

This third category are “the true believers who have suddenly seen a crack in reality,” the false reality that the cult leader has created around them. You could call them “former true believers.” Once they saw the light through that crack — saw the real world — they realized that they were being lied to.

When a cult is on the verge of collapse, these kinds of people become more and more numerous as more and more people begin to wake up from the cult leader’s trance.

At that point, they turn on the cult leader the way a spurned lover turns on the previous object of their affection. They become angry and vengeful. They demand answers. They want to know how they got sucked in and why: “Who did this to me? And to whose benefit?”

This is how Donald Trump’s world is disintegrating right now, and the danger is that, like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and Rajaneesh, he may destroy a lot of lives when he goes down.

He may not kill them like Jim Jones did — although he already arguably killed a half-million of his cult followers with the malicious, incompetent way he handled Covid — but he will destroy many of the people and institutions around him. This is what narcissists do when they begin to psychologically collapse.

As I noted two weeks ago, my late friend Armin Lehmann was there when he gave Hitler the information that the war was lost. He stood outside Hitler’s door when he shot himself. He wrote a book about it, and told me that Hitler wanted Germany destroyed by the Allies because the German people, he believed, had “let him down.”

Donald Trump is almost certainly going to hit this state of mind (he’s already close), and many of his “true believer” followers are in the midst of their own personal narcissistic collapses right now.

And that is what makes this a very dangerous moment for America.

Suing Rupert Murdoch, left, for example, was an extraordinarily reckless and dangerous thing for Trump to do. News Corp. isn’t going to roll over and pay Trump a bribe, in all probability, because he needs them more than they need him.

Murdoch, after all, is the guy who created the cult that Trump has come to dominate: they’re called “Fox News viewers.” He created it long before Donald Trump came along: he and Roger Ailes simply let Donald Trump into it back in 2015 because he was good for ratings and thus increased profits.

So, once Murdoch decided that Donald Trump could benefit his cult and make money for his television network (and even lower his taxes), he let Donald believe that he was the leader of the cult. And for many people in that Fox “News” Viewer cult, Trump actually did become the leader.

But the real guy who controls the cult is Rupert Murdoch. It’s not Donald Trump. Trump is just today’s figurehead. 

The institution lives on, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Murdoch family is not going to let the cult that they’ve built with Fox “News,” the cult that has made them billions of dollars and given them the power to influence governments on three continents, dissolve.

They’ll jettison Donald Trump long before they’ll let go of that kind of power.

Murdoch now has to make a tough decision. He’s already gotten most of what he needed from Trump — a massive tax break for himself and his family, and deregulation of the broadcast and internet space — so he only needs Trump now because Donald makes for good television.

But “good television” can work two ways for a public official, for or against them. If Trump has sufficiently pissed off Murdoch, or he thinks that Trump’s beginning to harm the GOP and thus the cult that the Murdoch family and their well-paid talent largely control, he could give Trump the old heave-ho.

So if Trump gets thrown out of the Fox “News” Viewer cult — essentially gets fired as the cult leader — the cult will continue. It would simply lose a very small percentage of its hard-core true believers who’d completely surrendered their personalities to Trump, and even those folks are probably retrievable.

The problem for Murdoch and other facilitators of the Fox “News” Viewer cult that Trump now leads is who will fill the vacuum that’ll be created when Trump is gone, whether it’s from natural causes or an impeachment or 25th Amendment action that Murdoch and Fox could provoke. Who will continue to defend the interests of the morbidly rich and the monopolistic parts of corporate America and become the next leader of the GOP?

JD Vance is unlikely to be able to fill Trump’s shoes, which has to be giving Murdoch heartburn. Vance has virtually no hold at all on the Fox “News” Viewer cult that Trump today dominates.

He is not beloved by the cult; if anything they think of him as weak and effeminate. He uses eyeliner. He married a brown-skinned woman and has brown-skin children. His wife refuses to adopt Christianity. “He must be weak,” is the consensus across much of the white racist base that constitutes the MAGA-sphere.

Nonetheless, Vance himself apparently thinks he can take over for Donald. He’s deluding himself, of course, but he appears to believe it. Just look at how he just publicly demanded that Donald Trump’s “artwork” be released by the Wall Street Journal or the FBI.

He knows a release of more damaging evidence of Trump’s long-term relationship with Epstein — and thus, in the minds of the cult followers, participation in the deep state conspiracy that exploits children while it runs the world — could inflict incredible damage on Trump, and even make Vance president.

What man who believes destiny and God want him to become president wouldn’t jump at something like that? 

Vance understood the cult even before he cynically pretended he was part of it when he saw Trump was prevailing: like most other Republican politicians and the billionaires who fund them, he’s an exploiter, a cult “facilitator.” It’s extremely unlikely, however, that he’ll ever become the leader of the Fox Viewer cult.

  

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. It is a maximum-security "mega-prison" located in Tecoluca, El Salvador. File photos above and below. Capacity: It is one of the largest high-security prisons in the world, initially designed to hold 20,000 detainees, but with a reported capacity later doubled to 40,000 inmates. 

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Andry Is Free. Trump’s Barbarous Immigration Regime Is Just Getting Started, Tim Miller, Keeping Rage Alive.

Andry is alive. And for now he is freed from a horrid detention center in El Salvador. Thank God.

This morning his mother is awaiting his arrival, supposedly today or tomorrow. They spoke by phone on Sunday for the first time in more than four months, according to his attorney. I cannot imagine her relief.

For 125 days Andry and hundreds of other men were held in a torture prison where they got a “beating for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner.” They had been kidnapped by our government and left in that hellhole to rot with no due process, no access to legal counsel, no phone call home. They were completely stripped of their humanity. In many cases their only crime was existing in Stephen Miller’s America while being Venezuelan. For some, their sin was having the wrong tattoo.

On Friday, these men were released, at long last, in what was described by the participating governments as a “prisoner exchange” between El Salvador and Venezuela. In reality this was a hostage swap between the United States and the Nicolás Maduro regime. A hostage swap in which the Americans were the villains, using a tactic previously deployed by despots like Putin, who imprisoned an American athlete for minor cannabis crimes in order to extract concessions from the earnest West.

It’s remarkable that our administration’s actions were so depraved that they somehow made Maduro, right, seem like the good guy. We gave him a domestic public relations victory, so he can crow about the humanitarian aid he brought to Venezuelans who had been tortured by the capitalist American devil.

That is Marco Rubio’s legacy in this story. He became the despot enabler he claimed to hate. First by wrongfully imprisoning and permitting the abuse of people who, like his ancestors, had fled communism and come to America in the hope of finding freedom. And then by using them as pawns in a trade for Americans who had themselves been tortured in Venezuela. In the process, he handed a massive geopolitical win to the communist dictator whom he has said in the past should be toppled by military coup.

As for the pawns in this game of caudillo chess, we can at least have the comfort of knowing they survived. My sense is that there is cautious optimism among the families of the Venezuelans and their legal teams that these men will be treated better back in Venezuela than they may otherwise have been so that Maduro can look good and cash in on this political gift from the Americans.

Hopefully that turns out to be true. Because watching them deplane in Venezuela, knowing what our government had done to them, it was hard not to be overcome with emotion.

This video of a man named Ysqueibel, for one, took my breath away.

But as Andry’s lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski told us in our livestream following the hostage release Friday night: “If I had to sum up how I feel right now, I feel relief he won’t be sleeping in a torture prison tonight, but I have outrage at the situation.”

That sentiment resonated with me in a deep way. After spending months thinking about Andry, wondering about his well-being, worrying about how they must be treating him in that hell, I wanted to just feel joy that he could go home and be with his mother and friends.

But I couldn’t. What I felt, instead, was rage over how fucking outrageous it was that he was in this situation in the first place. It seems like the Germans should have invented a word in the ‘40s that sums up the feeling when a person survives fascist barbarity, but my search for such a term that describes that cyclone of emotion came up empty.

Honest opinions. Sharp analysis. No partisan point-scoring. That’s the Bulwark promise. To get the best of what we offer, become a Bulwark+ member. Join us.Subscribed

At some level, I think it’s important for both reactions to live together. The relief is real. God willing, Andry and the rest will be able to move on with their lives, find purpose and meaning and love and not be consumed by this nightmare to which we subjected them. At least they will be able to be with their loved ones and not worry at every moment that they might not survive the day.

But the rage is important as well. The administration that subjected these men to this crime against humanity is plotting more such atrocities. Congress gave them a $45 billion slush fund for domestic detention. The Supreme Court has greenlit deportations to war-torn countries with little to no due process.

The CECOT experiment might have failed (for now) thanks in part to the legal and political pushback this administration received.

But the fight against this barbarous immigration regime is only just beginning.

If the fight for Andry resonated with you, please support the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Their work is ongoing.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 20, 2025 [Trump's Popularity], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 21, 2025. On Friday, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that “polls show Trump’s position plummeting.” On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6% with 53.5% disapproving.

Those numbers break down by policy like this: Gallup polls show that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policy with 62% opposed. A new poll out from CBS News/ YouGov today shows that support for Trump’s deportations has dropped ten points from the start of his term, from 59% to 49%. Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose the administration’s use of detention facilities. The numbers in a CNN/SSRS poll released today are even more negative for the administration: 59% of Americans oppose deporting undocumented immigrants without a criminal record while only 23% support such deportations, and 57% are opposed to building new detention facilities while only 26% support such a plan.

American approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unlikely to rise as news spreads that last Monday, the government gave ICE unprecedented access to the records of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid, allegedly to enable ICE to find undocumented immigrants. Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that enables ICE to access Medicaid recipients’ name, ethnicity and race, birthdate, home address, and social security number.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, although they may use it in an emergency to cover lifesaving services in a hospital emergency room. The release of personal information from Medicaid lists is unprecedented. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned: “The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American…. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”

Trump’s tariffs are not popular. An Associated Press–NORC poll on Thursday found that 49% of Americans thought Trump’s policies have made them worse off while only 27% think his policies have helped.

And then there are the Epstein files.

A YouGov poll from Tuesday showed that 79% of Americans think the government should release all the documents it has about the Epstein case while only 4% think it should not. Those numbers included 85% of Democrats, but also 76% of Independents and 75% of Republicans. And that was BEFORE the publication of the Wall Street Journal article detailing the lewd and suggestive birthday letter Trump apparently contributed to Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album.

As Morris notes, Trump is underwater on all the issues of his presidency, but he is most dramatically underwater over Epstein.

You don’t need polls to see that Trump, at least, is panicking. He is throwing red meat to his base in what appears to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative. After his July 12 threat to strip comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship (she was born in New York, and he does not have that power), he has kept up a stream of social media posts that seem designed to distract his wavering followers from the news around them.

On Wednesday, Trump announced on social media: “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them—You’ll see. It’s just better!”

But Coca-Cola had apparently not gotten the memo. It uses cane sugar in a number of foreign markets but has used high-fructose corn syrup in U.S. products since 1985. On its website, it wrote: “We appreciate President Trump's enthusiasm for our iconic Coca‑Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca‑Cola product range will be shared soon.”

Social media users posted memes of Coke bottles emblazoned with the words “Trump is on the List” and, in small letters below, “Now with cane sugar.”

On Thursday, after observers had noted both the president’s swollen ankles and what appeared to be makeup covering up something on his hand, the White House announced that Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that his physician described as a “benign” and common condition in which veins don’t move blood back to the heart efficiently.

Trump has never offered any information about his health, and his doctors have presented accounts of his physical exams that are hard to believe, making observers receive this announcement at this moment with skepticism. “Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released,” one social media meme read.

Today, Trump posted on social media: “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”

Hours later, he posted that his post “has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way.” Then he threatened to block the deal to move the Commanders back to Washington, D.C., from a Maryland suburb unless they “change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins.’”

At the turn of the last century, those worried that industrialization was destroying masculinity encouraged sports to give men an arena for manly combat. Sports teams dominated by Euro-Americans often took names that invoked Indigenous Americans because those names seemed to them to harness the idea of “savagery” in the safe space of a playing field. By the end of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had come to recognize the racism inherent in those names, and colleges started to retire Native American team names and mascots. In 2020 the Washington football team retired its former name, becoming the Commanders two years later. At about the same time, the Cleveland baseball team became the Cleveland Guardians in honor of the four pairs of art deco statues installed on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge in 1932.

Trump’s attempt to control the narrative didn’t work. “The thing about the Redskins and Indians is that Donald Trump is on the Epstein list,” one social media user wrote. The post was representative of reactions to Trump’s post.

Today marked the end of the first six months of Trump’s second term, and he marked it with a flurry of social media posts praising his performance as “6 months of winning,” and attacking those he sees as his opponents. He again went after the Wall Street Journal, which ran the story about Epstein’s birthday album. He complained the paper had run a “typically untruthful story” when it said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had had to explain to Trump that firing Fed chair Jerome Powell would be bad for markets. Trump took exception to the idea he did not understand the interplay of the Fed and markets, despite his repeated threats against Powell.

Trump also posted an image of intelligence agents and politicians in prison garb as if in mug shots, and reposted both an image of what appears to be lawmakers in handcuffs and an AI-generated video showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and then being held in a jail cell.

Meidas Touch posted: “The crazy thing about Donald Trump posting an AI video of Obama getting arrested is that Trump once had someone organize a party for him and invite a bunch of ‘young women’ and it turned out Jeffrey Epstein was his only other guest.” Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein broke the story of that party in Saturday’s New York Times.

 

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

New York Times, News Analysis: How Trump Deflected MAGA’s Wrath Over Epstein, at Least for Now, Erica L. Green, July 21, 2025. By tapping into other grievances, President Trump managed to turn one of the most fractious moments for his base into a unifying one.

In the week after the Justice Department walked back its promise to release the full collection of files about the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, it seemed there was nothing President Trump could do to quell the fury of some of his supporters.

He tried to coax them as he defended his attorney general against their wrath, asking “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” He said he did not understand their interest in the case, downplaying it as “boring.” He even castigated them as “weaklings” and disavowed them as “PAST supporters.” Still, the backlash kept building.

But when The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing a decades-old letter with a lewd drawing that Mr. Trump allegedly sent Mr. Epstein for his birthday, Mr. Trump got a respite from the revolt, as some of his core supporters rushed to his defense.

Mr. Trump turned one of the most fractious moments for his base into one of the most unifying by tapping into other MAGA grievances: the deep mistrust of mainstream media, the disdain for Rupert Murdoch and the belief that the president had been unfairly persecuted by his political foes.

Almost immediately, many of those who had been critical of the administration’s handling of the Epstein case cheered the president on as he vehemently denied the claims, sued The Journal and ordered his attorney general to seek the release of more information.

Mr. Trump’s allies in the hard-right, “Make America Great Again” movement — known as MAGA — said that the discontent that had divided the base had dissipated, but had not been eliminated, at least for now.

Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser to Mr. Trump and influential leader of the MAGA base, said that the dynamics were shifting in part because the reporting in the story seemed “phony,” and because the paper decided not to show Mr. Trump a copy of the letter.

“The Murdochs’ bizarre assault on the president galvanized his base because of both content and process,” Mr. Bannon said. “Now we are united as Trump goes on offense — against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state.” 

 

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Squirrel!, Andrew Egger, Donald Trump seems to have realized that just commanding people to stop paying attention to the Jeffrey Epstein story is not having the desired effect.

So he’s moving on to Plan B: Ginning up a bunch of new red-meat stories to try to redirect the attention of his Epstein-riled fans. Check him out up there, spinning the big prize wheel: So I heard y’all like . . . sports teams with racist names!

“My statement on the Washington Redskins has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday afternoon. “I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.”

A few hours later, he spun the wheel again. “HOW DID SAMANTHA POWER MAKE ALL OF THAT MONEY???” he wrote over an AI-generated meme depicting mugshots of Barack Obama, James Comey, Susan Rice, Samatha Power, Valerie Jarrett, James Clapper, Ben Rhodes, and John Brennan in prison jumpsuits.

Then he posted a meme seemingly depicting a gaggle of congressmen in handcuffs in front of the Capitol building. “Until this happens,” it read, “nothing will change.”

Shortly after that, he got more specific. “Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff is in BIG TROUBLE! He falsified Loan Documents,” he posted. “Now Shifty should pay the price of prison for a real crime, not one made up by the corrupt accusers!”¹

All of this is thuddingly stupid stuff. Threatening to blow up a private company’s business plans unless it agrees to get more racist is the sort of galaxy-brain Trump antic nobody else could even dream up. “Let’s prosecute all my enemies” is far less creative—Trump has been making versions of this threat for a while—but he knows that’s no matter. The bloodlust of his base is boundless; they never get tired of this shit. They’ll strap a few siren emojis onto their quote tweet and gleefully hit post.

But the fact that all this redirection is so blatant doesn’t mean it’s insignificant. In fact, it tells us a lot about Trump’s current mental state (clearly concerned about the Epstein saga) and how ludicrous our system of governance is with him sitting on top of it. Much of Trump’s present-day policymaking involves large swaths of the state and federal bureaucracies being deployed to meet Trump’s political needs of the moment. It’s unserious behavior, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have serious consequences. As long as Trump is president, he’ll have this unfortunate superpower: If he doesn’t like what everyone is talking about, all he needs to do is something insane, and pretty soon they’ll be talking about something else.

New York Times, Republicans and Democrats Call for More Information on Epstein Case, Michael Gold, July 21, 2025 (print ed.). Members of Congress from both parties said they wanted to see more files released, while President Trump has encouraged his base to move on.

Days after the Justice Department asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury testimony related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Republicans and Democrats suggested on Sunday that the move was insufficient and called for the release of more information.

“I think it’s a good start,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said in an interview on CNN. But he still wanted to see as many files as possible released, he added later.

President Trump has been contending with fierce criticism from some of his supporters over his administration’s handling of materials related to the sex trafficking investigations of Mr. Epstein and his connections to rich and powerful figures on the left and right. Mr. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in federal prison awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Mr. Trump and many of his allies vowed to release a trove of files in the case, including a so-called “client list” that many involved in the case insist never existed. But the release of some documents earlier this year offered no new revelations. And the Justice Department said this month that it had closed the case and would not release more documents, concluding that there was no client list.

One of Mr. Epstein’s former lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that the grand jury testimony was unlikely to contain the information that has most interested Mr. Trump’s supporters. 

Bulwark Media, Political Opinion: Tim and JVL Watch Mehdi Hasan Humiliate 20 Far-Right Clowns, Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last, July 21, 2025. Tim and JVL react to Mehdi Hasan's appearance on Jubilee, where he takes on 20 far-right conservatives in a brutal, revealing debate.

From open fascist admissions to jaw-dropping constitutional takes, Tim and JVL break down what this says about the next generation of conservatives.

 

Palestinians mourning their relatives at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, July 20, 2025, after Israeli forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip (Saher Alghorra photo for the New York Times).

New York Times, Israeli Troops Kill Dozens Near Border Crossing, Gaza Health Officials Say, Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman, July 21, 2025 (print ed.). The attack occurred after the Israeli military had told Palestinians to leave an area where many have sought refuge and warned that it may expand operations.

Israeli forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians on Sunday in the northern Gaza Strip, after crowds gathered near a crossing from Israel into the territory where aid trucks often enter the enclave, according to the Gaza health ministry and hospital workers.

Palestinian health officials said the attack took place near the Zikim crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. More than 60 people were killed, according to the health ministry and Mohammad Abu Selmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

A field hospital operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society in northern Gaza was flooded with gunshot victims, including two killed and more than 100 wounded, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Red Crescent.

The Israeli military said it had fired “warning shots” after thousands of Gazans had gathered in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers had opened fire to “remove an immediate threat posed to them,” it added. The also said that the number of reported casualties “does not align” with its initial review of the attack.

The deadly shooting followed an Israeli military order to Palestinians to evacuate parts of the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, one of the few areas in the territory that has not seen major Israeli ground operations during its military campaign against Hamas.

Chaos has gripped aid distribution sites in Gaza amid widespread hunger in the territory. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly opened fire near huge crowds of desperate Palestinians heading to sites run by American contractors for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private and controversial Israeli-backed group, according to witnesses and the Israeli military.

At least 32 people were killed on Saturday after Israeli soldiers began shooting near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in southern Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.

New York Times, News Analysis: 2 Deadly Shootings in 2 Days Highlight Dangers of Aid Distribution in Gaza, Patrick Kingsley, July 21, 2025. On Saturday, Israeli soldiers shot Palestinians near an Israel-backed food site. On Sunday, they fired at people gathering near a U.N. convoy. Both incidents were symptoms of broader problems.

Over the weekend, two deadly incidents on consecutive days highlighted how the two main ways of distributing food to the hungry in Gaza — one backed by Israel, the other involving the United Nations — both come with profound risk for Palestinian civilians.

In an incident on Saturday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians moving chaotically toward food distribution sites run by Israel-backed private contractors in Israeli-controlled areas. In another incident on Sunday, Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians rushing to seize aid from a convoy of food trucks sent by the United Nations toward areas controlled by Hamas.

Supporters of the Israel-backed system used the episode on Sunday to highlight the failures of the U.N.-led system. Those favoring the U.N. system said the killings on Saturday illustrated the failures of Israel’s approach.

Israel says it is necessary to put food distribution sites in areas beyond Hamas’s control in order to make it harder for both fighters from the militant group and civilian looters to steal supplies. Critics of that approach say it forces hungry civilians to cross Israeli military lines, putting them at greater risk.

Three broader dynamics highlight the problems associated with both approaches.

New York Times, Japan’s Long-Dominant Party Suffers Election Defeat as Voters Swing Right, Martin Fackler, Hisako Ueno and Kiuko Notoya, July 21, 2025 (print ed.). The loss on Sunday left the Liberal Democrats a minority party in both houses of Parliament, while two new nationalist parties surged.

Japan’s long-governing Liberal Democratic Party suffered a defeat in parliamentary elections on Sunday that saw new right-wing populist groups make gains, heralding what could be a tectonic shift in what has been one of the world’s most stable democracies.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to stay on after his Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner lost 19 of their 66 seats that were up for re-election, depriving them of control of the less powerful Upper House. But he is facing calls to step down after the setback left the Liberal Democrats, who have led Japan for all but five of the last 70 years, a minority party in both chambers of the Diet, the country’s Parliament.

Mr. Ishiba, left, and his party failed to convince enough voters that they could resolve a host of challenges that included rising prices of staples like rice, tariff talks with the United States and the growing burden that supporting Japan’s aging population has placed on working-age people.

The election results exposed a growing generational fissure that is altering the nation’s politics. While two-thirds of the 124 seats up for grabs on Sunday went to opposition parties, the biggest gains were made not by the traditional liberal opposition, but by a gaggle of new parties that drew younger voters with stridently nationalist messages. Among them was Sanseito, a populist party led by a politician inspired by President Trump.

“With the L.D.P. in decline, Japan’s political landscape is diversifying,” said Romeo Marcantuoni, a Ph.D. candidate at Waseda University in Tokyo who has written about Sanseito. “For the first time, we’re seeing far-right populism similar to what we’ve seen in Europe.”

Before all the votes had even been counted, powerful members of the governing party were calling on Mr. Ishiba to step down, to take responsibility for what exit polls suggested would be a poor showing. Taro Aso, a former deputy prime minister, said he “couldn’t accept” Mr. Ishiba staying on as prime minister, TV Asahi reported.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political Economy Opinion: Enshittification and the Bitterness of Billionaire Bros, Paul Krugman, right, July 21, 2025. Hell hath no fury like a tech god scorned.

One of the many weird, ugly developments in these weird, ugly times has been the MAGAfication of a number of Silicon Valley billionaires. In a fully functional democracy, the views of a handful of people with anti-democratic ideas wouldn’t matter. But we live in a corrupted democracy in which wealth buys power, so when people who accumulated vast fortunes largely thanks to U.S. scientific preeminence begin backing a deeply anti-scientific movement, it matters quite a lot.

Silicon Valley used to be generally pro-Democratic. So did the Biden administration mishandle its relationship by starting to impose some regulation on the industry?

I don’t think so. The actual regulations imposed during the Biden years wouldn’t have significantly reduced industry profits and were weaker than those in Europe. But the industry was right to see them as a harbinger of more regulation to come, because the public, which used to have a highly favorable view of tech and its leaders, had lost faith.

The thing is, the tech bros haven’t just turned right. Many of them are filled with rage — that special kind of rage exhibited by men who enjoy vast privilege and can’t abide any suggestion that their privilege is unjustified.

I’ve written about this before, but am revisiting the subject for a couple of reasons. One is that I discovered some new data, which I’ll show shortly. Another is that I realized that we’ve seen a version of this movie before.

Do people still remember “Obama rage”? Circa 2010 Wall Street titans — who had become accustomed to being seen, to use Tom Wolfe’s phrase, as Masters of the Universe — erupted in anger over what they insisted was a lack of respect from the Obama administration. Obama had bailed them out, on very generous terms, but he had the temerity to suggest that the industry bore some responsibility for the financial crisis that made bailouts necessary.

Were the Masters of the Universe really that angry over Obama calling them “fat cats”? Or was their outrage performative, aimed at heading off tighter financial regulation? Yes.

Wall Street had good reason to fear increased regulation — in fact, it did face tighter regulation after the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. And the climate of public opinion had turned decisively against finance. Every year Gallup asks for public evaluations of a number of industries. 

 

Portrait of Jeffrey Epstein (left) and Donald Trump as they pose together at the Mar-a-Lago estate, Palm Beach, Florida, 1997. (Photo by Davidoff Studios/Getty Images)

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Does Trump's alleged letter to Epstein "sound like" Trump? An investigation, Judd Legum, July 21, 2025. We wanted to share with you this piece, which first appeared in Musk Watch.

Already, our report has become national and international news, covered on CNBC, NBC News, Fortune, Quartz, The Independent, and many other outlets. This is why we started Musk Watch. To create transparency and accountability that otherwise would not exist.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report about President Trump's relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Journal, the materials collected as part of the Department of Justice's investigation into Epstein included a 2003 birthday message from Trump to Epstein.

Trump's alleged message consists of "several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker." The drawing, which the Journal describes as "bawdy," includes "[a] pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair." Inside the figure of the woman was the following text:

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Trump told the Journal that the letter is "fake" and quickly sued the paper, its owner Rupert Murdoch, and the two reporters who wrote the story for $10 billion. On Truth Social, Trump insisted that the letter is "not the way I talk."

Meanwhile, numerous allies of the president have echoed this claim, arguing that the letter is inauthentic because its language does not sound like Trump. "Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?" Vice President JD Vance asked rhetorically on X. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the letter published by the Journal is "not at all how he speaks or writes." Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said it is obvious the letter is inauthentic because it doesn't match his father's "very specific way of speaking."

To evaluate these claims, Popular Information examined the most distinctive aspects of the letter and assessed whether they are consistent with Trump's history.

Would Trump use the word "enigma"?

The most distinctive single word in the letter is "enigma." Is it plausible that Trump, known for using simple language, would use that word?

Trump's defenders do not believe so. "I find it to be an enigma that Donald Trump would use the word enigma," billionaire Bill Ackman, a prominent Trump supporter, wrote on X. Sean Davis, the CEO of the right-wing publication The Federalist, posted that he asked Grok, the chatbot created by xAI, to "search every record of Trump speaking or writing" for the word "enigma" and determined "there is no record of him ever saying or speaking the word." (Trump Jr. also reposted Davis' claim.)

Davis' confident assertion is false and demonstrates the hazards of relying exclusively on AI tools for research. In 2015, Trump used the word "enigma" twice to describe Ben Carson, one of his Republican primary opponents. "Now, Carson’s an enigma to me," Trump said. "Carson’s an enigma."

Trump also used the word "enigma" twice in his 2004 book, Trump: How to Get Rich. "Dan Rather is an enigma to me," Trump wrote on page 166. He uses enigma again on page 55, writing that entrepreneurial skills are "one of those grey areas that remain an enigma even to those with finely-honed business instincts."

Trump also used the term in his 1990 book, Trump: Surviving at the Top. "Any discussion of Mike’s affairs eventually leads to the subject of Don King," Trump wrote about Mike Tyson on page 200. "Don, like Mike, is something of an enigma."

So, while enigma is not a commonly used word, it is one that Trump has deployed in a variety of contexts for many years.

Would Trump have called Epstein his "pal"?

The word "pal," which appears at the end of the letter to Epstein, is somewhat old-fashioned and less commonly used than the more straightforward term "friend." Trump, however, has used "pal" over the years to describe his close associates.

In a 2018 roundtable on tax reform, Trump talked about his friendship with Steve Witkoff, who is currently Trump's special envoy to the Middle East. "He's become a very wealthy, successful man," Trump said. "And he's my pal." During a 2011 speech to the Nevada Republican Party, Trump referred to developer Phil Ruffin as "my pal."

Would Trump have been familiar with Maurice Sendak?

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the letter is the opening line: "There must be more to life than having everything." This is a direct quote from Higglety Pigglety Pop!, a classic 1967 book by children's author Maurice Sendak. It comes off like an inside joke between the two men.

Sendak and Trump have a history. In 1993, Sendak published We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. The book, which stirred controversy due to its exploration of weighty topics such as the AIDS crisis, garnered extensive coverage in the national media, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Palm Beach Post, the local paper for Mar-a-Lago. It also featured a direct attack on Trump, with one illustration featuring homeless children against the backdrop of Trump Tower. The children exclaim, "Tricked. Trumped. Dumped!"

A September 5, 1993, story in the New York Times highlights Sendak's criticism of Trump. The reporter, Degen Pener, said he reached out to Trump for comment. (Trump did not respond.)

New York Times, Conviction of Man in Killing of Etan Patz Is Overturned, Hurubie Meko and Jonah E. Bromwich, July 21, 2025. Pedro Hernandez, a former bodega stock clerk, had confessed years after the 1979 crime to luring Etan Patz, 6, into a basement in SoHo. The case shook New York City.

A federal appeals court on Monday overturned the conviction of a man in the killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979, a crime that alarmed parents across the country and changed the experience of childhood for generations.

The man, Pedro Hernandez, had been convicted of murder in 2017 after he confessed to luring Etan into a basement as the child walked to his school bus stop alone in SoHo and attacking him.

The court on Monday ordered Mr. Hernandez’s release unless the state gave him a new trial within a “reasonable period,” a timeline to be determined by a federal judge.

But it will be up to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, whether to pursue a new trial in a case originally brought by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

New York Times, Judge Challenges Trump Administration in Hearing on Harvard Funding, Alan Blinder, July 21, 2025. In a courtroom in Boston on Monday, a lawyer for Harvard called the Trump administration’s case against the school “cooked up.”

A federal judge appeared deeply skeptical on Monday of the Trump administration’s efforts to strip Harvard University of billions of dollars in research funding, suggesting the school might prevail in its legal battle against the government.

Judge Allison D. Burroughs did not issue a ruling during a crucial hearing, which lasted more than two hours in her courtroom in Boston. But she did seem receptive to Harvard’s arguments, as both the school and the government sought to have the case decided in their favor without a trial.

The judge unleashed a barrage of pointed questions at the lone Justice Department lawyer. She demanded to know, for instance, how the administration could reasonably tie withdrawal of medical research funding to concerns about the civil rights of Jewish people.

And she appeared bothered by the administration’s hurried approach to attacking Harvard’s research funding, suggesting there were potentially “staggering” constitutional consequences if the government could punish a university without due process.

Monday’s hearing came two months after Harvard sued the Trump administration. In the lawsuit, Harvard accused the government of threatening the school’s First Amendment rights when it conditioned federal funding on the university bowing to a set of Trump administration demands. Beyond free speech concerns, a central question in the case is whether the Trump administration ignored rules and procedures when it blocked the funds.

The administration framed its tactics as a righteous response to antisemitism. But Harvard and its allies saw the roster of federal demands as intrusions untethered from trying to eradicate discrimination.

The demands included a review of the school for “viewpoint diversity” and the establishment of outside scrutiny of “those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” The government also sought dilution of the faculty’s influence over the university and the establishment of “merit based” hiring and admissions policies.

Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer at the hearing, asserted on Monday that the administration had the power to decide where it spent taxpayer money.

New York Times, Minnesota Lawmaker to Resign After Conviction, Ending Democratic Majority, Mitch Smith, July 21, 2025. The resignation of State Senator Nicole Mitchell will leave the State Senate with even numbers of Democrats and Republicans. A special election will break the tie.

For more than a year, State Senator Nicole Mitchell operated on the periphery of the Minnesota Legislature as she awaited trial on felony charges.

Her fellow Democrats, who hold a one-seat majority, continued to rely on her vote, but no longer included her in caucus meetings or committees. All the while, Republicans were trying to expel her from the chamber.

On Monday, just days after a jury convicted her of burglary, Ms. Mitchell said she would soon step down. That decision could tip the balance of power in the State Capitol, leaving the Senate with an even number of Democrats and Republicans until a special election can be held to fill her seat.

By stepping down, Ms. Mitchell, is likely to avoid the possibility of being removed from office. The decision also gives her party a chance to replace her and regain a majority if they win a special election. Ms. Mitchell carried her district in the suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul by a nearly 18-point margin in 2022.

Ms. Mitchell was arrested in April 2024 and accused of breaking into her stepmother’s home. She maintained her innocence after her arrest, and for more than a year resisted calls by Republicans for her to resign or be expelled.

July 20

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 19, 2025 [Moon Landing Thrills], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 20, 2025. On July 20, 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from Lunar Module Eagle to the surface of the Moon.

One hundred and twenty-five million Americans—63% percent of the population—were watching on live television as Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon.

Televisions showed Armstrong (shown at left in a posed 1969 photo) stepping out of the lunar module onto the Moon just before 11:00 p.m. Eastern time.

My siblings and I were among those watching. Our parents had taken us across the harbor to our aunt and uncle’s house, where there was a TV. I remember being groggy from being rousted out of bed and unimpressed by the fuzzy little black-and-white screen the adults werecrowded around and kept trying to get us to look at. At six, I had no idea that it was an unusual thing for people to walk on the Moon and was much more impressed that my aunt had a big fishing net with colorful glass weights in it hanging as a decoration near her fieldstone fireplace.

My older sister says that unlike me, she was indeed impressed that night…but not with the Moon landing. Our older cousin Jeff was playing an album by The Doors, and she says she remembers being blown away both by their music, which she was hearing for the first time, and by the weighty realization that we had the coolest cousin in the world.

Clearly, it was a night to remember, even if we didn’t quite understand why. And at a time in which our elected leaders are deliberately breaking our government and institutions, it seems worthwhile to look back at a time when the U.S. government put its power behind enabling the American people to achieve something epic, leading a scientific triumph for people around the world.

 

So here, thanks to my wonderful team, is the story of Apollo 11. I hope you enjoy it. And, if you are old enough to remember the Moon landing, I’d love to read your recollections in the comments. Let’s make a record of what that moment looked like. 

New York Times, An Accuser’s Story Suggests How Trump Might Appear in the Epstein Files, Mike Baker and Michael S. Schmidt, July 20, 2025.  A former Jeffrey Epstein employee said that she told the F.B.I. in 1996 and 2006 about what she considered a troubling encounter with Donald J. Trump.

It was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein.

At the time, she said, she had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ms. Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister — then a teenager — had endured at Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. And she described facing threats from Mr. Epstein.

Ms. Farmer said that when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the F.B.I., she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including Donald J. Trump, then still two decades from being elected president. She repeated that message, she said, when the F.B.I. interviewed her again about Mr. Epstein in 2006.

Her account is among the clearest indications yet of how Mr. Trump might have come to be named in the unreleased investigative files in the Epstein case, a matter that has generated another political uproar in recent weeks.

In interviews this week about what she told the authorities, Ms. Farmer said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Mr. Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including Mr. Trump and President Bill Clinton.

Investigations like the ones that targeted Mr. Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, evidence, recollections and relationships, little of which ends up being used in court records or as the basis for criminal prosecution. Mr. Epstein’s voluminous investigative file contains many records that have not been made public, but that became the focus of claims, long stoked by Mr. Trump’s allies, that authorities might have covered up the involvement of other rich and powerful men.

Now, after his attorney general and F.B.I. director abruptly abandoned their earlier promises to reveal everything about the Epstein files and said, in effect, that there was nothing to see, Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein are under renewed scrutiny, leading to questions about what so-far-undisclosed appearances he might have in the investigative record.

The story of Ms. Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Mr. Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Mr. Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.

And it underscores the complexities of opening up to scrutiny all the leads that investigators pursued, the evidence they gathered and the interviews they conducted, little of which ever went before a judge or jury.

Law enforcement agencies have not accused Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein, and he has never been identified as a target of any associated investigation. Mr. Trump last week called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Mr. Epstein to be publicly released, and has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has something to hide. Even if that testimony is released, it is unlikely to shed much light on the relationship between the two men, which did not figure prominently in Mr. Epstein’s criminal cases.

Ms. Farmer said she has long wondered how law enforcement agencies handled her complaints in 1996 and 2006.

And she said she has been wondering in particular whether federal authorities did anything with her concerns about Mr. Trump. She said that she raised his name both times, not only because he seemed so close to Mr. Epstein but because of an encounter, which she has previously described publicly, that she said she had with Mr. Trump in Mr. Epstein’s New York office.

  

New York Times, After a Chaotic Start, a U.S. Attorney’s Time May Be Running Out, Jonah E. Bromwich and Tracey Tully, July 20, 2025. Alina Habba, above, President Trump’s choice to run the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, has pursued investigations against Democrats. Her tenure has damaged morale inside the office..

A brash media personality and former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, Ms. Habba is among the most high-profile of the new U.S. attorneys appointed by a president who has taken closer control of the Justice Department than any other in the past half century. She has made frequent media appearances and drawn attention for a series of notable investigations into Democratic political figures.

Her tenure has also shattered morale inside the U.S. attorney’s office and left many prosecutors looking for a way out, according to 16 close observers of the office who were interviewed for this article and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Ms. Habba boasted, upon taking office, of her direct line to the White House, according to people with knowledge of her remarks, even as she has insisted that she is “not political.” Prosecutors have chafed at her availability to defense lawyers. She disbanded the office’s Civil Rights Division and killed the office’s longest-running prosecution just days before it was scheduled to go to trial. Three framed pictures of herself now hang in a conference room named for a legendary New Jersey crime fighter, Frederick B. Lacey.

Ms. Habba’s press office declined to comment.

Ms. Habba’s close connections to Washington may have also benefited her office. She has won permission for 20 new hires, a rarity in U.S. attorney’s offices across the United States, and she reminded her staff members in a meeting last week about her efforts to recoup back pay they were owed. But her time appears to be running out.

New Jersey’s two Democratic senators have said she is unfit to serve after degrading the office with politically motivated prosecutions, making her confirmation in the Senate unlikely after Mr. Trump nominated her last month to the position permanently. The state’s district court judges, who have the power to extend Ms. Habba’s tenure, which would otherwise end Tuesday, are expected to meet early this week to discuss their options, according to three people with knowledge of the judges’ plans.

In the staff meeting last week, according to people familiar with her remarks, Ms. Habba acknowledged that she was unlikely to be appointed by the judges and offered an emotional, pre-emptive farewell.

New York Times, A Push for More Organ Transplants Is Putting Donors at Risk, Brian M. Rosenthal and Julie Tate, July 20, 2025. People across the United States have endured rushed or premature attempts to remove their organs. Some were gasping, crying or showing other signs of life.

Last spring at a small Alabama hospital, a team of transplant surgeons prepared to cut into Misty Hawkins. The clock was ticking. Her organs wouldn’t be usable for much longer.

Days earlier, she had been a vibrant 42-year-old with a playful sense of humor and a love for the Thunder Beach Motorcycle Rally. But after Ms. Hawkins choked while eating and fell into a coma, her mother decided to take her off life support and donate her organs. She was removed from a ventilator and, after 103 minutes, declared dead.

A surgeon made an incision in her chest and sawed through her breastbone.

That’s when the doctors discovered her heart was beating. She appeared to be breathing. They were slicing into Ms. Hawkins while she was alive.

Across the United States, an intricate system of hospitals, doctors and nonprofit donation coordinators carries out tens of thousands of lifesaving transplants each year. At every step, it relies on carefully calibrated protocols to protect both donors and recipients.

But in recent years, as the system has pushed to increase transplants, a growing number of patients have endured premature or bungled attempts to retrieve their organs. Though Ms. Hawkins’s case is an extreme example of what can go wrong, a New York Times examination revealed a pattern of rushed decision-making that has prioritized the need for more organs over the safety of potential donors.

In New Mexico, a woman was subjected to days of preparation for donation, even after her family said that she seemed to be regaining consciousness, which she eventually did. In Florida, a man cried and bit on his breathing tube but was still withdrawn from life support. In West Virginia, doctors were appalled when coordinators asked a paralyzed man coming off sedatives in an operating room for consent to remove his organs.

Stories like these have emerged as the transplant system has increasingly turned to a type of organ removal called donation after circulatory death. It accounted for a third of all donations last year: about 20,000 organs, triple the number from five years earlier.

Most donated organs in the United States come from people who are brain-dead — an irreversible state — and are kept on machines only to maintain their organs.

Circulatory death donation is different. These patients are on life support, often in a coma. Their prognoses are more of a medical judgment call.

July 19

Proof, Investigative Commentary:The Top Ten Most Incriminating Elements of the Newly Released 2003 Trump-Epstein Communication—Which Clearly Reads As Being About Pedophilia, Seth Abramson, left, July 18, 2025. This is the closest thing to a smoking gun with respect to Trump and Child Rape that America has ever seen—which explains why Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths (even for him) to lie about it. 

Update on Friday, July 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM EDT: Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal. This seemingly confirms that he sees the “Birthday Note” discussed in detail below—the only part of this Wall Street Journal report that’s at all new—as a tangible threat to his presidency.

I’m a former federal criminal investigator—in the mid-1990s I worked in that capacity in the federal criminal justice system in Washington, D.C.—and a former criminal defense attorney who worked for many years, in several jurisdictions, to represent thousands of criminal defendants in cases and jury trials ranging up to First-Degree Murder. This report doesn’t constitute legal advice, as while I’m still an attorney in good standing with my state and federal bars, I’m retired from practice. But it does represent an instance of me using my professional skills to expertly analyze a major public event. That major public event is without question the biggest scandal of the second Trump administration, and possibly the biggest scandal of President Donald Trump’s entire ten-year political career.

How is it possible that The Epstein Scandal could be the biggest-ever Trump scandal, given that the man was impeached twice, convicted of thirty-four felonies in New York, adjudicated by a federal judge to be a rapist, charged with state and federal offenses related to a violent insurrection in multiple state and federal jurisdictions, and near-daily is caught (i) offering or accepting bribes, (ii) seeking illegal foreign election interference, (iii) issuing an executive order that flagrantly violates the U.S. Constitution in the view of federal prosecutors and judges, or (iv) manipulating the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government in clandestine, corrupt, and decidedly seedy ways that even President Richard Nixon (of Watergate infamy) would never have imagined? (Sometimes the manipulations aren’t even clandestine at all.)

Well, it’s simple, really.

As a longtime Trump biographer and presidential historian who has written several national-bestselling books about Trump, I can summarize what makes the Epstein Scandal different in just five bullet-points:

This scandal involves Child Rape, one of the worst crimes known to mankind;

this scandal has dogged Trump for the entirety of his political career, and unlike every other scandal he has ever faced, it’s never receded to any significant degree;

this scandal is the first that has the president’s own political base even angrier at him than his critics are;

this scandal is the first that the president himself appears to have no idea how to combat, leading to a host of first-ever blunders (such as viciously savaging his own political base) that bespeak a POTUS unnerved by the potential consequences of what he’s now facing; and

unlike prior political scandals that struggled to break through to the average American because they centered (at least in the public’s imagination) on just a single phone-call transcript (the Trump-Ukraine Scandal) or primarily the actions of Trump agents being indirectly orchestrated by him (the Trump-Russia Scandal), or that could only be properly recounted in FBI interviews no one wanted to read in their entirety (the January 6 Scandal), this scandal involves Trump directly interacting with disgusting figures, comprises a mountain of physical evidence that almost every American has seen and finds is undeniable (notably, hundreds of photographs and video clips of Trump happily cavorting with child sex traffickers) and involves sex—a national obsession in America.

This last point is particularly crucial, as the Epstein Scandal has now come to a head precisely because of two pieces of physical evidence nearly all Americans are now well aware of: (i) the missing “Phase 2” binder from the Epstein Files that Trump personal lawyer Pam Bondi (still working as Trump’s personal lawyer, just now under the title of “Attorney General”) explicitly promised to supply to all Americans and said would include an Epstein “client list,” and (ii) a “birthday note” that Trump sent to Epstein in 2003 (hereafter referred to, in this Proof report, as simply the “Birthday Note”). MAGA media's Epstein conspiracy theory enters a dangerous new phase | CNN Business

Had Trump’s lawyer Bondi not pulled the stunt—on behalf of her client—of inviting to the White House all of the most irresponsible MAGA influencers (even some with potential ties to events that occurred in D.C. on January 6, 2021) to give them a binder of Epstein evidence that said “Phase 1” on the cover, thereafter sending them out to the White House Press Corps to crow about how “Phase 1” was just the beginning of Trump and Bondi’s promised revelations about Epstein, America would not have been waiting for “Phase 2,” or be so richly able to imagine what that binder would look like in the hands of not just far-right trolls but actual journalists and experts.

Just so, had the Wall Street Journal not just published a detailed report on the birthday note Trump sent in 2003, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, to his longtime best friend—a pedophile who had been raping kids for years and years—Americans would not be able to imagine exactly what sort of evidence was still being hidden from them when Bondi suddenly declared that there would be no “Phase 2” Epstein releases or indeed any further releases about Epstein or his associates at all. (Yes, that’s right, the Birthday Note that’s the subject of this report appears to be part of the evidence that Trump and Bondi have been hiding from America, as everything taken from Epstein’s home is part of the Epstein Files now in government custody, and the bound book of birthday wishes for Epstein the Birthday Note is from was taken from Epstein’s home.)

All of the foregoing also explains why Trump has been virtually out of his mind—not figuratively but literally, as his public conduct in the last week has been conspicuously deranged—trying to (a) keep the Wall Street Journal from publishing even this one piece of evidence that he and his lawyer have been hiding from Americans, and (b) trying to use brute rhetorical force to get his fans to “shut the fuck up” (his words) on Epstein.

Right now, Donald Trump and not just one but two of his personal lawyers (new FBI director Kash Patel is also his personal lawyer, and also still working as Mr. Trump’s lawyer while ostensibly holding a title at a government agency) are trying to hide the full contents of the federal investigative file on Epstein, not just Phase 2 but almost certainly what would comprise Phase 3, Phase 4, and Phase 5 releases at a minimum.

So the fact that the Wall Street Journal just released the very first tranche of data from what would have been Phase 2—a minuscule drop in the bucket of Epstein data in terms of its word-count, if not its significance—and just this one release sent the entire Trump administration into a tailspin, followed immediately by a downward spiral, is as telling as anything else.

In other words, the Birthday Note Incident suggests—not just by way of its contents but how Trump and his legal team are responding to it—that the Trump-Epstein evidence the White House is currently hiding from America (and particularly the president’s “MAGA” base, which has been eerily obsessed with Child Rape for years via its “QAnon” sub-cult) is significantly worse than anyone could have imagined.

Why? Because just the Birthday Note is one of the worst things this former federal criminal investigator, criminal defense attorney, Trump biographer, and presidential historian has ever seen—and I say this as someone who published a full-length book on every known instance of Trump being violent to women, kids, or helpless persons.

What 2024’s Proof of Cruelty couldn’t have imagined, however—despite it being a book that describes Mr. Trump engaging in dozens of Assaults, Sexual Assaults, and even Rapes—is that the perpetrator of these many crimes and alleged crimes would be so brazen about them, indeed so gleeful about their commission, that he’d risk implicitly acknowledging some of the worst of them in a note to a major co-conspirator. That level of criminal sociopathy is, I can say from professional experience, quite rare; most criminals do all they can to hide their conduct, indeed not just their criminal conduct but any antisocial or otherwise unsavory conduct that surrounds it. Trump appears to have done the opposite: recklessly tossing out bread crumbs about his malfeasance without any apparent worry that the long arm of the law would ever come for him.

Clearly, judging from Trump’s own actions this week, that perspective has changed.

If Proof of Cruelty revealed that, according to multiple witnesses—including one who gave his name to the press—Trump regularly threw sex parties for underage models at the Plaza Hotel in the 1980s and early 1990s, parties during which he was well-known to be having sex with the attending models, apparently what Trump believes will soon be coming out about him and Child Rape is much worse than even that.

And it would appear, now, that the proverbial tip of the iceberg is the Birthday Note.

 

White House Chronicle, Political Notebook: Requiem for American Justice, Llewellyn King, July 19, 2025. I have loads of my words to eat, a feast of kingly proportions.

I don’t know when I started, but it must have been back when I was traveling on the speaking circuit. It doesn’t matter.

This tale of getting it wrong starts in London, where I was asked to address a conference on investing in America. Most of the questions weren’t — as I imagined they would be — about investment and returns on it, or taxes, or the exportability of profits. Instead, the questions were about the U.S. legal system; how litigious we are and what that is like.

My response was that our courts are fair, there is less day-to-day litigation than you might think, and the courts can serve you as well as those who dispute your actions. I said, “Don’t be afraid of litigation. It could be your friend.”

Next stop: New Delhi. The question was how can we get more U.S. investment? My answer: Fix your courts. They are famous for how slow they are to reach a decision. Americans are used to predictable legal speed.

In Moscow, during the halcyon Mikhail Gorbachev days, I was asked about how to get U.S. companies to invest in Russia. My answer: Make sure the courts work fairly and, above all, are clear of politics.

In Ireland, I debated Martin McGuinness, the late IRA leader. It went well, despite my English accent. My contribution was to tell McGuinness that if there ever is a united Ireland, make sure the constitution doesn’t hide anything under the mat (I was thinking of slavery in America) and make sure the court system looks to that constitution, not to politics.

Why am I eating on my words? Why am I shoveling them down my throat by the (Imperial) bushel?

The front page of The Washington Post for July 18 tells the story: Three pieces there add up to up a requiem for American justice.

• Exhibit 1, this headline: “In deadly raid DOJ eyes 1-day sentence.”
• Exhibit 2: “Thousands here legally have 60 days to leave.”
• Exhibit 3: “Brazil judge in Trump’s sights.”

Two of these shameful reports show that neither the judicial process nor the laws of the United States are sacrosanct anymore.

The third shows that the Trump administration not only doesn’t respect our own judicial processes, but also those of other countries.

The perversion of justice isn’t a domestic matter anymore.

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Legal Commentary:Pro=ed states are already suppressing your votes, Marc Elias, right, July 19, 2025. Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order may be facing roadblocks in the courts, but that’s certainly not stopping Republicans from implementing it in the states.

Across the country, GOP lawmakers are attacking voting rights by enacting strict voter ID laws, making it harder to vote by mail and imposing onerous proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration.

North Dakota eliminated its grace period for mail ballots specifically to align with the executive order. Missouri’s top election official says he wants to “make sure we’re compliant” with the order and is pushing for new legislation to tighten ID rules. And in Texas and Louisiana, Republican officials have praised Trump’s anti-voting order for helping them crack down on the non-existent problem of noncitizen voting.

Be warned: all of this is part of a broader scheme to suppress Democratic votes and keep the Republican majority in 2026.

Trump wakes up every day focused on the midterm elections. Congressional majorities allow him to enact new laws that cut taxes on his friends and punish the working class. A Republican Senate allows him to confirm outlandish characters like Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi while stacking the federal judiciary with the likes of Emile Bove. Most importantly, he knows that if Democrats gain control, it means real oversight of his corrupt administration.

That’s why he’s desperate for Republicans in the states to do his anti-voter bidding — and why other members of his administration are following suit.

Under the leadership of puppy killer Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security upgraded its Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, allowing state officials to access private information about voters, including citizenship — a key goal of Trump’s order. Republican election officials are already using the data to purge voter rolls. The Department of Justice also asked at least nine states for access to their voter rolls — a story Democracy Docket has been tracking closely.

Of course, actual reports of noncitizen voting are virtually unheard of and these efforts are intended to cause confusion and block eligible citizens from voting.

If you were concerned that we were missing an MVP in election conspiracy corner, don’t you worry. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says he’s been having regular meetings with Trump to fan the flames of 2020 election denialism and make plans for 2026.

We also learned this week that a GOP operative acting on behalf of White House adviser Stephen Miller has been contacting local election offices in Colorado. The operative has been asking to inspect election machines and gain access to voter rolls.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 18, 2025 [There is a lot about sexual assault in tonight’s letter], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 19, 2025. Now we know why President Donald J. Trump earlier this week began saying nonsensically that Democrats he dislikes wrote the Epstein files.

Apparently, Trump was trying to get out in front of the story Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo broke last night in the Wall Street Journal, reporting that Trump contributed what the newspaper called a “bawdy” letter to a leather-bound album compiled by Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

The journalists say the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”

The lines of text represent an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein:

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.

“Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

“Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

“Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

“Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

“Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

“Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

“Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Florida police began investigating Epstein in 2005 after allegations that he had sexually abused a minor. They identified five victims and 17 witnesses, but ultimately the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alex Acosta, negotiated a plea deal with Epstein in 2008, by which Epstein pleaded guilty only to state charges, including soliciting a minor, and avoided federal charges. Trump appointed Acosta to be the secretary of labor in his first administration; Acosta resigned in 2019 after new reporting by the Miami Herald accused Epstein of abusing about 80 girls and women and showed how Acosta had shut down an FBI investigation into Epstein’s actions.

In July 2019, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey S. Berman charged Epstein with sex trafficking of minors as young as 14. The indictment charged Epstein with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage girls who engaged in sex acts for money at Epstein’s properties in New York and Florida. Arrested in New Jersey in July, Epstein died in his Manhattan prison cell in August.

In 2020, Epstein’s associate Maxwell was indicted on charges of assisting, facilitating, and contributing to Epstein’s abuse of minor girls, not only in New York and Florida, but also at his residences in New Mexico and London, “helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.” Epstein also owned a private 72-acre island off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, rumored to be another site of sex trafficking. In 2021 a jury found Maxwell guilty on five of six counts, including sex trafficking of a minor and transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

When the FBI raided Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan in 2019, they seized piles of evidence, including stacks of compact disks bearing the labels “Young [Name] + [Name],” suggesting he had kept video evidence of men sexually assaulting underage girls.

Within hours of the discovery of Epstein’s body in his prison cell in 2019, Trump was retweeting a conspiracy theory alleging that former president Bill Clinton was involved in his death. Trump and his loyalists pushed the idea that Epstein was trafficking girls to powerful Democratic politicians and Hollywood actors, an accusation that dovetailed with the QAnon conspiracy theory claiming that Trump was secretly leading the fight against such a cabal. Trump fed the idea that if reelected, he would release the information he claimed was being withheld as part of a coverup.

In fact, the politician most closely associated with Epstein was Trump himself. In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

And yet Trump supporters overlooked Trump’s long friendship with Epstein until billionaire Elon Musk resurrected the story that Trump might be implicated in the records of the Epstein investigation. On June 5, in the midst of a fight with Trump, Musk posted on social media: “Time to drop the really big bomb: [Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

On July 7, the Department of Justice announced that Epstein did not maintain a “client list,” that he died by suicide, and that it would not be releasing any more information about the investigation into his activities, although it released a video from outside Epstein’s prison cell the night he died to show that no one had entered the cell, claiming it was “raw” footage. MAGA exploded, and Trump’s attempt to downplay the Epstein files made things worse. Then he turned on his supporters, calling them “stupid” and “foolish” and saying he didn’t want their support while also insisting that Democrats had written the files.

And then Dhruv Mehrotra of Wired reported that two minutes and fifty-three seconds were missing from the “raw” video.

On Wednesday night, far-right influencer Nick Fuentes responded to Trump: “F*ck you. You suck. You are fat, you are a joke, you are stupid, you are not funny, you are not as smart as you think you are.” “[W]e are going to look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in American history,” he added. “And the liberals were right. The MAGA supporters were had. They were.”

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has been working for the past three years to trace Epstein’s finances, and yesterday, Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times reported his staff’s discovery that four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in financial transactions, but only after Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. Wyden renewed the demand for more financial information about Epstein he had called upon the administration to release in March.

Yesterday, Trump announced on social media: “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”

But the grand jury testimony was a small part of the information from the investigation, and as legal analyst Barb McQuade notes, this demand was “a meaningless trick” anyway, because courts prohibit public disclosure of such information. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance clarifies in Civil Discourse that while it is possible in rare circumstances to publish grand jury testimony, the process will be slow and difficult.

Bondi promptly assured Trump she was ready to do as he asked, but Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted that the actual document asked the court to unseal the transcripts “subject to appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information,” a provision that has the potential to protect Trump if his name was discussed.

The story of the birthday message has thrown gasoline on this fire. The Wall Street Journal reporters said that when they contacted Trump about the story, he denied writing the letter or drawing the picture and threatened to sue them. Then, hours later, Trump told reporters that Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had made up the story, although neither was in office when the FBI investigated Epstein. Trump was. Oliver Darcy of Status News reported that Trump personally called the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal to try to stop her from publishing the story.

After the story dropped, Trump posted that the letter was “FAKE.” “These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DJT”

Reporters had a field day today rebutting his claim with accounts of all the times Trump auctioned off his doodles for charities, with photos of the sketches. “The drawings, many of which appear to be done with a thick, black-marker and prominently feature his signature,” wrote Tyler Pager of the New York Times, “are not dissimilar to how The Journal describes the birthday note he sent Mr. Epstein.”

In a letter to FBI director Kash Patel today, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that his office had received information that Attorney General Pam Bondi pressured the FBI to put 1,000 personnel to work in 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein records. Durbin said his office had received information that the personnel were instructed “to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”

Patel pushed the idea that the Epstein files were being covered up during the Biden administration, only to change his tune once he took charge of the FBI. Durbin asked him to answer a series of questions about the information the FBI holds and how the administration is handling that information, like, for example, how the “raw” footage was modified.

This afternoon, with a complaint that misrepresents the Wall Street Journal story and reads like a Trump press release, Trump sued for defamation Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., its parent company News Corp, owner Rupert Murdoch, chief executive Robert Thomson, and the two reporters who broke the story, asking for $10 billion in damages. A Dow Jones spokesperson responded: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The Epstein story is about more than the sex trafficking of girls. It is also about rich and privileged people evading accountability for breaking the law. MAGA likely jumped on the story for both of these reasons when they thought a coverup was protecting Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites.

But the story is also about a group of elite people who think they are better than the rest of us and have the right to dominate anyone that is not part of their group, particularly people of color, Black Americans, and women, no matter what the law says.

Journalist Fareed Zakaria called out that worldview today in a Washington Post story noting that for all their performative cruelty, Trump’s ICE raids have led to far fewer deportations than took place under Obama, and barely more than under Biden. ICE does not coordinate with local law enforcement, follow rules, or work with legal processing—all of which are necessary for an efficient process. The plan appears to be simply to create a spectacle that demonstrates power and dominance.

The latest step from the Justice Department in the case of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Louisville, Kentucky, woman killed during a botched police raid in 2020, reinforces that message. In 2024 a federal jury convicted former police officer Brett Hankison of depriving Taylor of her civil rights when he fired several shots into her home through a covered window and glass door. While his bullets were not the ones that killed Taylor, a jury decided that his blind firing constituted excessive force.

On Wednesday, assistant attorney general for the civil rights unit in the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump loyalist, asked a federal judge to sentence Hankison to a single day in jail, time he has already served.

Civil rights lawyer and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Sherrilyn Ifill wrote: “They mean to be as insulting to Black people, as dismissive of our lives, as [resistant] to our status as full citizens in this country as they can be.”

New York Times, Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein, Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein, July 19, 2025. For nearly 15 years, the two men socialized together in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., before a falling out that preceded Mr. Epstein’s first arrest.

In the swirl of money and sun-tanned women that was their Palm Beach-and-Manhattan set, Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spent nearly 15 years mingling side-by-side as public friends.

There were lavish dinners with boldface names at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side and raucous parties with cheerleaders and models at Mr. Trump’s private club and residence at Mar-a-Lago. In between, there were trips back and forth from Florida to New York on one of Mr. Epstein’s private jets.

But behind the tabloid glamour, questions have lingered about what Mr. Trump’s long association with Mr. Epstein says about his judgment and character, especially as his allies have stoked sinister claims about Mr. Epstein’s connections to Democrats. After their relationship ruptured, the disgraced financier ended up behind bars not just once, but two times, after being accused of engaging in sex with teenage girls.

One of the young women who later said Mr. Epstein groomed and abused her was recruited into his world while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Another accuser recalled being eyed by Mr. Trump during a brief encounter in Mr. Epstein’s office, and claimed that Mr. Epstein had told Mr. Trump at the time that “she’s not for you.”

Another woman has said that Mr. Trump groped her when Mr. Epstein brought her to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet him. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Trump gave Mr. Epstein a note for his 50th birthday in 2003 that included a sketch of a naked woman and a cryptic reference to a “secret” the two men shared. Mr. Trump has denied writing the message and filed a libel lawsuit on Friday challenging the story. The New York Times has not verified the Journal report.

Mr. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case, and has said he had “no idea” that Mr. Epstein was abusing young women. In response to a request for comment about the president’s history with Mr. Epstein, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Trump had barred Mr. Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club “for being a creep.”

“These stories are tired and pathetic attempts to distract from all the success of President Trump’s administration,” she said in a statement.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein largely went separate ways after a falling-out around 2004, taking drastically different paths — one toward jail and suicide, the other toward further celebrity and the White House.

New York Times, Trump Sues Wall Street Journal for Article on Note to Epstein, Katie Robertson, July 19, 2025 (print ed.). The lawsuit argues that The Journal falsely claimed President Trump “authored, drew and signed” a lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.

President Trump on Friday accused Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal of defaming him in an article about a lewd birthday greeting that the publication said Mr. Trump had sent to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein decades ago.

In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the article “falsely claimed that he authored, drew and signed” the note to Mr. Epstein.

The complaint claimed that “given the timing” of the article, “the overwhelming financial and reputational harm suffered by President Trump will continue to multiply.” It asked for awarded damages “not to be less than $10 billion.”

The suit named as defendants The Journal’s parent company, News Corp; Mr. Murdoch, News Corp’s founder and former chairman; Robert Thomson, News Corp’s chief executive; Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal; and two Journal reporters.

The Journal published the article about the note on Thursday under the headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” The article described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump in a 2003 birthday album compiled for Mr. Epstein. The letter, which The Journal said it had reviewed, had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump’s signature below her waist, alluding to pubic hair, the article said.

“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” The Journal said the note read.

Mr. Trump denied to The Journal that he had written the letter and said it was “a fake thing” and threatened legal action.

He repeated his intention to sue in posts on his social media site, Truth Social. “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Mr. Trump wrote on Friday morning. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”

A Dow Jones spokesperson said in a statement, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

Lance's Substack, A Strategic Analysis: Will Trump's Growing Mental/Physical Incapacity Trigger The "El Cid Option?" Lance F Rosen, right, July 19, 2025. The openly fascist oligarchs who engineered Trump's second presidency now have a dilemma on their hands, and very little in the way of a consensus solution to a gallactically huge problem of their own making.

Which is that the physical infirmity of Trump is now a publicly acknowledged fact, and that's according to his own spokespeople.

Trump has been lying about his physical condition for at least 60 years. This of course is no shocker because there is little that he doesn't lie about. We are dealing with a narcissist "macho man" who has crafted a fake media/TV personna as a superstar, a fountain of Alpha-Maleness spewing Testosterone everywhere and projecting the image of the world's most virile sex machine in modern times.

The truth is much closer to the verified story of his fake bone spur diagnosis with which his daddy Fred helped him evade the draft, his first "Big Lie" about his health. His macho bravado is a thin cover for his physical cowardice and perverse vanity, as befits a narcissistic bully and abuser who fears nothing more than getting his pretty face and hair messed up in a humiliating beatdown.

Krassensteins via Substack, Protecting Democracy: Tulsi’s Tall Obama Tale, Krassenstein Twins, right, July 19, 2025. Tulsi Gabbard just lobbed another fantasy grenade, insisting that President Obama ordered the intelligence community to “create and manufacture intelligence.”

Spoiler alert: that never happened. Below is the real timeline, stripped of spin, dripping with receipts, and it roves she is, to borrow her own earthy style, full of sh-t.

 

Shown above is a file  photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin along with file photos of U.S. assassination victims Melissa Hortman of Minnesota, the top Democrat in her state's House of Representatives, and her husband, Mark. A politically motivated gunman also seriously wounded State Senator John A. Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in separate attacks at their homes in suburban Minneapolis on Saturday, June 14, 2025. The gunman also fired at police officers before fleeing.

New York Times, Vance Boelter’s Life Before the Minnesota Shootings, n BarryErnesto Londoño and Ruth Graham, July 19, 2025. Periods of religious zealotry and an unsettled professional career were intertwined for years before he was accused of murder.

The sudden change in the teenager was dramatic and unsettling, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Those who knew him could only wonder: What’s come over Vance Boelter?

One moment he was an affable college freshman, pursuing a family passion by trying out for the baseball team. The next, he was giving up the game and shedding his belongings — even his cherished baseball bat — as if to put away childish things.

Suddenly, he was telling dorm mates they were going to hell, denouncing a guest speaker on campus as “Satan’s worker” and announcing he was now “all in for Jesus.” It was a lifelong commitment he would just as suddenly violate 40 years later, prosecutors say, with an act of political assassination that would stun the nation and send his home state of Minnesota into communal mourning.

Throughout his life, Mr. Boelter’s Christian belief in the sanctity of life seemed unwavering. He told a church congregation in 2021 that all the world’s wealth was “not worth the value of the person on your left, or the person on your right, or the person you see going home today.”

But his worldview darkened as his fortunes declined. He moved from state to state, job to job. He went from overseeing large food-service operations to collecting bodies for funeral homes, struggling at the same time to pair his spiritual and business interests while his wife home-schooled their five children. He began following a far-right website that trafficked in conspiracy theories about stolen elections and evil Democrats. He became distant.

In the first dark hours of June 14, prosecutors say, the pious Mr. Boelter, 57, set out to commit a crime that would break a commandment. He drove off in a black S.U.V. outfitted to resemble a police cruiser with several firearms and the names and addresses of intended targets. Less than two hours later, a Democratic legislator and her husband were dead, and another Democratic lawmaker and his wife had been critically wounded.

• New York Times, Minnesota Lawmaker and Her Husband Remembered for Their Shared Legacy, Jeff Ernst and Jack Healy, June 29, 2025 (print ed.). Melissa Hortman was eulogized by Gov. Tim Walz as a compassionate leader in a service that former President Biden and former Vice President Harris also attended.

 

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration's firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic). 

New York Times, Floods in Texas: More Than 100 People Are Still Missing in Texas, 2 Weeks After the Floods, Orlando Mayorquín and Pooja Salhotra, July 19, 2025. The number of people unaccounted for dropped this week but was stubbornly high as some searchers were losing hope of finding them.

In the days after the deadly July 4 floods in Central Texas, Megan Newton spent hours sitting outside her parents’ home in Marble Falls, looking overhead to spot medical choppers among the Black Hawk helicopters searching for the missing.

“I was just waiting for someone to call and say, ‘We found him,’” Ms. Newton, 41, said, “that ‘we’ve got him and he’s good.’”

Since then, her hope has waned for her father, Michael Phillips, 66, the chief of the volunteer fire department in Marble Falls, about 80 miles north of San Antonio. Yet his name remains among more than 100 people still missing statewide after floodwaters roared through summer camps, riverside homes, campgrounds and R.V. parks, claiming at least 135 lives.

As days have turned into weeks, the number of missing, still stubbornly high, may be the flood’s biggest lingering question. The total in Kerr County, the epicenter of the disaster, dropped this week to 97 from 173, and then stalled, raising still more questions. At least four others are missing or unidentified from Travis County, just east of Kerr. And one person — Mr. Phillips — is missing from Burnet County, and still others across the region might be out there.

“Even though we are reporting 97 people missing,” in Kerr County, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas told reporters on Monday, “there’s no certainty that all 97 of those people were swept away by the storm.”

The fluctuation of the numbers has only contributed to the puzzlement, as bodies are recovered and it becomes clear that some counts are incorrect. Mr. Abbott has said that in the days following the floods, local and state officials were better able to identify people from out of town who had come to the Hill Country to stay at camps and hotels.

New York Times, A Kite Surfer, Navy SEAL and Makeup Artist: Freed in a U.S.-Venezuela Swap, Julie Turkewitz, July 19, 2025. Over 260 people were released from prisons in El Salvador and Venezuela. Now they face the challenge of coming home.

A kite surfer on a South American adventure. A Navy SEAL whose family said he had traveled south for romance. A gay makeup artist who fled north for a better life. A man who sold bicycle parts for meager wages in Venezuela, before leaving for the United States.

All of these men were part of a large-scale prisoner swap conducted Friday between the United States and Venezuela’s governments.

The deal exchanged 10 Americans and U.S. permanent residents seized by the Venezuelan government for 252 Venezuelan immigrants the United States had deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

The men came from very different backgrounds. The American kite surfer, Lucas Hunter, 37, worked in finance in London and had gone on vacation in Colombia, where his family says he was nabbed by the Venezuelan authorities near the Colombia-Venezuela border. The Navy SEAL, Wilbert Castañeda, 37, spent his adult life in the U.S. military and had gone to Venezuela to see a romantic partner, according to his brother.

The Venezuelans, according to many of their families, had traveled to the United States for far different reasons. Many had trekked from South America through a dangerous jungle called the Darién Gap, seeking to escape an economic crisis and a repressive government.

The makeup artist, Andry Hernández Romero, fled persecution for his political opinions and sexual orientation, according to his lawyers. The seller of bicycle parts, Alirio Belloso, 30, left because he could not afford school supplies for his 8-year-old daughter or medicine for his diabetic mother, according to his wife.

But the Venezuelan and American men ended up in what some analysts and family members have described as unexpectedly similar circumstances. Over the last year they were detained and accused of trying to destabilize the country they had entered. Then they were incarcerated without due process or contact with their families.

In both cases, the leaders who detained the men — Presidents Trump and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela — said they were trying to protect their countries from foreign invaders. Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to carry out mass deportations, has invoked a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to detain and deport many of the Venezuelan men. Mr. Maduro, meanwhile, wants the United States to lift oil sanctions, and security analysts say he believed seizing Americans could help him persuade Washington to do that.

Human rights groups have accused both governments of forcible disappearance, in part because they have both refused to release the names of all of the detainees. The United Nations defines the practice, which has a long and dark history in Latin America, as a detention by state agents followed by a refusal “to give information on the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.”

July 18 

 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago (NBC). 

New York Times, Jeffrey Epstein Fallout: Trump Tells Bondi to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony, Glenn Thrush, Updated July 18, 2025. The attorney general plans to ask a court to release the papers. But even if the request succeeds, it would fall far short of critics’ demands to release all investigative materials.

President Trump announced Thursday night that he was authorizing Attorney General Pam Bondi, right, to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Ms. Bondi said she would make that request in federal court on Friday.

Mr. Trump, under intense pressure from his right-wing base after a Justice Department review found no evidence to support conspiracy theories about the sex trafficking case, ordered Ms. Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” in a social media post.

The president cited “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein” for his directive, which falls far short of demands from some congressional Republicans to make public all investigative files collected by the department and the F.B.I., not just testimony presented in federal court.

Ms. Bondi, a Trump loyalist accused by far-right influencers of abetting a cover-up, responded immediately with a post on social media that undercut the memo the department and F.B.I. drafted this month declaring Mr. Epstein’s 2019 jailhouse death a suicide and the case closed.

“President Trump — we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” she wrote, quickly reversing course at his command. But it was not clear that she would succeed, because the secrecy of grand jury transcripts is highly protected.

Mr. Trump’s request came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting it said Mr. Trump sent Mr. Epstein in 2003, including a sexually suggestive drawing, an expression of friendship and a reference to secrets they shared.

The president vehemently denied the report, which The New York Times has not verified. He warned Rupert Murdoch, the founder of News Corp., the paper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.

An angry Mr. Trump, referring to himself in the third person in a long Truth Social post, claimed that Mr. Murdoch had agreed to “take care of” the article but apparently lacked the authority to overrule the decisions of the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker. He accused The Journal of publishing a “false, malicious and defamatory” report.

“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” he added.

In 2019, Mr. Epstein was found dead by hanging in his cell at a Manhattan federal prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Two years later, a federal jury convicted his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell of five counts, including the most serious charge, sexually trafficking a minor.

Mr. Trump’s stated desire to address the “ridiculous” publicity around the case may not be enough to convince the judge to release the transcripts. Grand jury transcripts are, under federal guidelines, kept secret to protect crime victims and witnesses. They are typically released only under narrowly defined circumstances.

Even if the transcripts are made public, which might involve months of legal wrangling, the evidence represents a fraction of material collected in the investigation. Over the past several months, dozens of F.B.I. agents and prosecutors with the Justice Department’s national security division were diverted from other assignments to review thousands of documents and a vast trove of video evidence, including footage from video cameras in the prison.

At a cabinet meeting last week, Ms Bondi defended her decision not to release most of the material to the public, saying that most of the video evidence was child sexual abuse material.

But that has done little to quell calls for transparency among some Trump supporters and members of Congress from both parties, who are exploring legislative options to pressure the department and the F.B.I. to release more files and videos.

House Republicans, under pressure from Democrats and their own angry constituents, agreed on Thursday night to lay the groundwork for a potential vote calling on the Justice Department to release material from the investigation. The measure is nonbinding and has not been scheduled for a vote, but it reflected a widening gulf between Mr. Trump and Congress on the issue. 

 

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) Resistance Dateline: Epstein case: a look back, Wayne Madsen, left, July 16-18, 2025. With the corporate media acting as if the Jeffrey Epstein scandal just broke, we are running our article from January 9, 2018, almost a full year into the first Trump presidency and the year before Epstein died in the custody of Trump's Justice Department.

Our 2018 article provides some context into Trump's catatonic frenzy over the so-called Epstein files. Here's why:

 

January 9-11, 2018 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Welcome to Waterbury: the city that holds secrets that could bring down Trump

By Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig

A woman who was allegedly sodomized and raped at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1994 is alive and trying to maintain obscurity from alt-right operatives who have identified her and her current residence.

WMR and the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project (JIP) are revealing here for the first time the story of “Maria,” who was identified as such in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by another underage victim of the pair, Katie Johnson (aka, Jane Doe). The product of a month-long investigation that took us to the site of the girl’s kidnapping in Waterbury, Connecticut, this information comes from confidential sources in multiple states. They have been pursuing the “Maria” story since the name and 1994 incident was first referenced in Johnson’s law suits. Johnson dropped the suit after she became the victim of physical threats by individuals who claimed to be Trump supporters, according to her account in court records.

The original tip came to WMR, which can report exclusively that a Waterbury girl, “Maria,” was the 12-year old alleged to have been a child rape victim of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The crimes allegedly occurred at a midtown Manhattan mansion then owned by Epstein’s friend Les Wexner, a billionaire retailing mogul. Maria was kidnapped on March 20, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury. The girl's kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan, according to our information.

The Waterbury Police Department has refused to provide us with a copy of the original police report on the abduction. It defers to Linda Wihbey, the city’s Corporation Counsel. On December 12, 2017, Wihbey made her views known in a phone call with Andrew Kreig of JIP, as this reporter listened. She said that she was ready to “welcome us to Waterbury” until she decided that our investigation was “hostile” to her and Waterbury’s interests, which suffered greatly some 17 years ago over a high-profile pedophilia incident involving the city’s Republican mayor. Waterbury’s stance emerged from our request for the 1993 police report on Maria’s abduction, including any relevant witness statements provided to the police.....

 

Meidas Touch Network, Exclusive: Trump-Supporting PAC Actively Fundraising for Him Off Epstein Files Release, J.D. Wolf, July 18, 2025. The fundraiser promises to expose "the dark secrets" even as Trump attacks his base

Even as Donald Trump now attacks and rejects his base who are demanding the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, calling them “bad people,” “weaklings,” “stupid Republicans,” and former followers, his campaign is actively fundraising off releasing the files by getting a cut from an active WinRed campaign.

An active WinRed fundraising campaign from Hellfire PAC and Wesley Hunt, archived here, features Trump alongside a bold headline: “PRESIDENT TRUMP IS ABOUT TO EXPOSE EVERYTHING…”

 

July 17 

Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump, Heeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo, July 17, 2025. The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing.’

New York Times, Senate Approves Trump’s Bid to Cancel Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds, Catie Edmondson, July 17, 2025. The bill to claw back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending passed over the objections of Republicans who said it abdicated the legislative branch’s power of the purse.

The Senate early on Thursday morning approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, as Republicans bowed to President Trump in an unusual surrender of congressional spending power.

The 51-to-48 vote came over the objections of two Republicans, who argued that their party was ceding Congress’s constitutional control over federal funding. The Republicans who opposed the measure were Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bulk of the funds targeted — about $8 billion — was for foreign assistance programs. The remaining $1.1 billion was for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. The House is expected to give final approval to the package later this week, sending it to Mr. Trump for his signature.

The debate on the measure laid bare a simmering fight over Congress’s power of the purse. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, the White House has moved aggressively and at times unilaterally, primarily through the Department of Government Efficiency, to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending, a power the Constitution gives to the legislative branch.

Top White House officials, led by Russell T. Vought, the budget office director, have sought to rein in the size of the federal government, including by freezing funds appropriated by Congress. It is part of a wider campaign to claim far-reaching powers over federal spending for the president.

This time, the administration went through a formal process by submitting what is known as a rescissions bill. Those measures are rare and seldom succeed, given how tightly Congress has historically guarded its power over federal spending. The last such package to be enacted was in 1999, under President Bill Clinton.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.

G.O.P. leaders said the vote was a symbolic victory that underscored the Republican-held Congress’s willingness to cut federal spending they viewed as inappropriate and wasteful.

But the process left even some Republicans who ultimately voted for the bill uncomfortable. A number of senators said the administration had not provided details about what specific programs would affected.

“If we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds — that advisers to the president decide they are going to cut anyway,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring, said, “then there will be a reckoning for that.”

And even as G.O.P. senators agreed to cancel funding at the White House’s request, 10 them signed a rare public letter to Mr. Vought demanding that he reverse a decision to withhold roughly $7 billion in congressionally approved funding to their states meant to bolster educational programs including after-school and summer programs.

“The decision to withhold this funding is contrary to President Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states,” the Republicans wrote.

To win the votes of Republican senators who initially objected, G.O.P. leaders agreed to strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. The White House signaled it would not contest the change.

They also shielded some funding for some specific programs, including aid to Jordan and Egypt; Food for Peace, a program that provides food assistance to other countries; and some global health programs.

Another holdout, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who had previously indicated that he would oppose the request because of the cuts to public broadcasting, decided to support the package. He said he had been assured by top Trump administration officials that they would steer unspent funds “to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption” for next year.

Ahead of the vote, the head of a network of Native radio and television stations privately appealed to Mr. Rounds to oppose the package, saying the deal he had made was unworkable.

“There is currently no clear path for redirecting these funds to tribal broadcasters without significant legislative and administrative changes,” Loris Taylor, the president of Native Public Media, wrote.

The vote incensed Democrats, who argued that Republicans were ceding Congress’s constitutional powers in the name of cutting a minuscule amount of spending, just weeks after passing their marquee tax bill that would add $4 trillion to federal deficits.

They warned that it could have dire consequences for future bipartisan negotiations to fund the government. Lawmakers are currently working to negotiate spending levels ahead of a Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

“We have never, never before seen bipartisan investments slashed through a partisan rescissions package,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. “Do not start now. Not when we are working, at this very moment, in a bipartisan way to pass our spending bills. Bipartisanship doesn’t end with any one line being crossed; it erodes. It breaks down bit by bit, until one day there is nothing left.”

The vote codified a number of executive actions the administration advanced earlier this year to gut foreign aid programs, many first undertaken by DOGE.

New York Times, News Analysis: Even After Bondi Gains Trump’s Backing, Her Survival Remains an Open Question, Glenn Thrush, July 17, 2025. The sustained backlash has exposed the hazards of the attorney general’s focus on courting President Trump, with the assumption that he maintains the total backing of his base.

Chelsea captured the FIFA Club World Cup last weekend and President Trump, who attended the game, managed to obtain one of the gilded Tiffany trophies to display in the Oval Office.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, who had been invited to the presidential box at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, took home what was, for her, an equally valuable prize: a photograph of Mr. Trump offering her a magnanimous smile and the thumbs-up sign.

The snapshot provided visual proof that Ms. Bondi has, for now, prevailed in her fight with Dan Bongino, a top F.B.I. official who blamed her for bungling the endgame of the investigation into the financier Jeffrey Epstein. Some Trump advisers share that view, but Mr. Bongino badly overplayed his hand and Ms. Bondi parlayed close relationships in the White House into a Truth Social post by Mr. Trump commanding her critics to shut up.

“LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” he wrote in all caps.

Yet Ms. Bondi’s long-term victory, and perhaps her survival, is anything but assured. Her decision this month to issue a memo affirming that Mr. Epstein’s jailhouse death in 2019 was a suicide precipitated an intense, unexpected right-wing backlash against Mr. Trump with no precedent, no obvious off-ramp and no mercy shown to an attorney general seen by some Trump die-hards as a symbol of second term littered with broken promises.

“I’m going to be here for as long as the president wants me here, and I believe he’s made that crystal clear,” Ms. Bondi told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday.

“It’s four years — well, three and a half now, right?” added Ms. Bondi. “We’ve got six months in, and it feels like six years.”

The Epstein saga has exposed the hazards of Ms. Bondi’s focus on courting her mercurial political patron, an inside-game strategy rooted in the assumption, now an open question, that Mr. Trump will maintain the total backing of his political base. Mr. Bongino and his boss, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, have also been fierce Trump defenders.

But unlike Ms. Bondi, they cultivated independent bases of support by positioning themselves as outsiders, even if it meant appealing to the conspiracy theorists now turning on the Justice Department and F.B.I.

 

New York Times, 900 former Justice Dept. lawyers urge the Senate not to confirm Emil Bove as a federal appeals judge, Tim Balk, July 16, 2025. More than 900 former Justice Department lawyers have signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing “deep concern” about the nomination of Emil Bove III, above, a senior Justice Department official, to serve as a federal appeals judge.

In the letter, dated Wednesday, the former department lawyers suggested that Mr. Bove had disgraced the department during his half-year tenure there, and that his confirmation would be “intolerable.”

Mr. Bove has been the face of some of the most controversial moves by the Justice Department in President Trump’s second term, and he has been accused by a whistle-blower of openly considering defying the courts, an allegation he has denied.

The Senate panel was scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to advance Mr. Bove’s nomination to the full Senate. Mr. Trump has nominated Mr. Bove to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

The letter also mentioned Mr. Bove’s decision to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York (the interim Manhattan U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s directive), and his role in firing prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who is now the top deputy to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, was accused in the whistle-blower complaint last month of having told subordinates that he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Mr. Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign.

When Mr. Bove testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 25, he denied having suggested the department might defy court orders, telling lawmakers, “I am not anybody’s henchman, I am not an enforcer.”

The allegation was made by Erez Reuveni, a fired department lawyer, in a complaint filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department’s inspector general a day before Mr. Bove’s testimony to the panel.

The letter from former Justice Department lawyers noted that Mr. Reuveni had been in the department for about 15 years and had defended Trump administration policies. It described his whistle-blower complaint as credible, saying that it was “supported by contemporaneous communications between department attorneys.”

The former lawyers said that few actions would cause greater damage to the rule of law than a senior official in the executive branch flouting the authority of the judiciary. They argued that Mr. Bove’s leadership had undermined the work of the Justice Department.

“Mr. Bove’s trampling over institutional norms in this case, and in others, sent shock waves through the ranks — cratering morale, triggering mass departures, and eroding the effectiveness of DOJ’s vital work,” the letter said.

The letter was signed by 915 lawyers, according to Justice Connection, a group of former department employees, which organized it. Justice Connection formed this year in response to the Trump administration. Reuters previously reported the existence of the letter.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Gates McGavick, said in a statement that Mr. Bove was “a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again.”

Mr. McGavick added, “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”

The letter on Wednesday was addressed to Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s top Democrat.

 

Donald Trump during award ceremony for FIFA Club World Cup 2025 on July 15, 2025.

NDTV (United Kingdom), Did Donald Trump Really Keep Original FIFA Club World Cup Trophy, And Chelsea Receive Replica? Edited by Srishti Singh Sisodia, July 15, 2025. United States President Donald Trump said that FIFA President Gianni Infantino gave him the original Club World Cup trophy during a White House visit in March, saying he could keep it "forever."

Trump said that FIFA made a copy and gave it to Chelsea after they won the competition 3-0 against Paris Saint-Germain at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The trophy was unveiled by Infantino for the first time in an event at the Oval Office in March. And since then, the trophy has stayed there.

Also Read | Why Was Donald Trump Booed At FIFA Club World Cup Final? Video Goes Viral

"I said, When are you going to pick up the trophy? [They said] 'We're never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We're making a new one,'" Trump said in an interview with official Club World Cup broadcaster Dazn on Sunday. "And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting, but it is in the Oval [Office] right now."

Chelsea players were surprised by Trump's extended presence during the trophy ceremony. Cole Palmer, who scored twice in the game, said, "I knew he was going to be here, but I didn't know he was going to be on the stand when we lifted the trophy. I was a bit confused."

Trump's relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino appears to be close, with FIFA recently opening a new office in Trump Tower, New York City. Trump jokingly mentioned he could issue an executive order to change the name of "soccer" to "football" in the United States.

The incident has sparked controversy, with many questioning Trump's actions and the close ties between him and FIFA. Trump's presence at the final attracted attention, with fans booing him when he appeared on stadium screens alongside First Lady Melania Trump when they arrived for the match.

 

 

Fired federal prosecutor Maureen Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, a Trump target, and (in a separate file photo), Ghislaine Maxwell, a Trump friend whom Maureen Comey successfully helped convict sex trafficking charges for Maxwell's years-long efforts to groom underage and other young women to gratify her partner Jeffrey Epstein and his high-powered friends.

New York Times, Manhattan Prosecutor Who Handled Epstein Cases Is Fired, Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum, Michael S. Schmidt, Santul Nerkar and Maggie Haberman, July 17, 2025 (print ed.). Maurene Comey, who is the daughter of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maurene Comey, a Manhattan federal prosecutor who worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was abruptly fired on Wednesday by the Trump administration, according to six people with knowledge of the matter.

Though the reason for Ms. Comey’s firing was not immediately clear, her dismissal immediately raised questions, given her involvement in the Epstein-related cases that have roiled the White House in recent days.

Ms. Comey was informed of her firing in a letter that cited Article II of the Constitution, which describes the powers of the president, according to two of the people.

Ms Comey is also the daughter of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, an adversary of President Trump who has recently been under scrutiny by federal law enforcement authorities.

A spokesman for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on Ms. Comey’s firing. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including about whether it had asked the Justice Department to fire Ms. Comey. Ms. Comey could not immediately be reached for comment.

For more than a week, Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, have been seeking to quell outrage from many of the president’s supporters over the administration’s reluctance to release files related to Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking case.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 16, 2025 [Trump Fears Epstein Case Revelations], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 17, 2025. After years of covering Donald J. Trump, I am used to seeing stories that would have sunk any other president simply fade away as he hammers on to some new unprecedented action that dominates the news. So I am surprised by what appears to be the staying power of the recent Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

That Trump is panicked by the threat of the release of material concerning convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein seems very clear. After the backlash against the Department of Justice’s decision not to release any more information and to reiterate that Epstein died by suicide, Trump tried first to downplay Epstein’s importance and convince people to move on. When that blew up, he posted a long screed on social media last Saturday saying the files were written by Democrats and other supposed enemies of his.

This morning, Trump posted another long message on social media blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for creating the story of the Epstein files. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote, and then he turned on his own supporters for demanding the administration release the files. “[M]y PAST supporters have bought into this ’bullsh*t,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Tellingly, Trump compared “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” to “the Russia, Russia, Russia Scam itself, a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide Crooked Hillary Clinton’s big loss in the 2016 Presidential Election.” But of course, the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 election were not a hoax: they were well established both by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—a Republican—and by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ever since his campaign’s ties to Russia first came to light, Trump has hammered on the idea that the investigation was a hoax, not just to distance himself from potentially illegal behavior but also because if he could get his followers to reject the truth and accept his lies about what had happened, they would be psychologically committed to him. Although thirty-four people and three companies were indicted or pleaded guilty in the attack on the 2016 election or its cover-up, Trump loyalists believed Trump was a victim of a “deep state” run by Democrats.

Trump had successfully marketed his own narrative over the truth, and his supporters would continue to believe him rather than those calling him out. From then on, whenever in danger of being called out, he harked back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “the Russian hoax” to rally supporters to him.

Once again, he is reaching back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” to reinforce his ability to control the narrative. But this time it does not appear to be working.

As Jay Kuo outlined in The Status Kuo today, Trump owes his 2024 victory to QAnon followers, who believe a cabal of Democratic lawmakers, rich elites, and Hollywood film stars are sex trafficking—and even eating—children. PRRI, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that researches religion, culture, and politics, estimated that in 2024, about 19% of Americans believed in QAnon. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten noted yesterday that QAnon supporters preferred Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 61 points.

More broadly, Enten noted that Trump’s political career has depended on conspiracy theorists, from his 2016 support from those who believed Trump’s “birther” charges that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, to his 2024 primary support from those who believed President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election legitimately.

Those supporters followed Trump because they believed he was leading a secret charge against those child sex traffickers. Now that his administration says it will not release any more information about Epstein’s files, they appear to feel betrayed.

Trump seems to be in full panic mode over the idea that information from the Epstein investigation might come to light. He and Epstein were friends, frequently photographed together in the years of Epstein’s operation. After turning on his former supporters on social media, Trump continued his attacks in an Oval Office meeting today, reiterating his claims that the Epstein files were written by Democrats.

But then he continued to attack his own supporters, saying that “stupid Republicans,” “foolish Republicans,” and “stupid people” had fallen for the Democrats’ Epstein hoax and were demanding the release of the files.

Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s sidekick in the White House before the two fell out, has been hammering on the issue to his 222 million followers on his social media platform X. “He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote.

Trump’s political success has stemmed in large part from his projection of dominance, and perhaps part of supporters’ willingness to cut ties to him comes from his recent behavior, which projects confusion. On Saturday, at the FIFA Club World Cup trophy ceremony, Trump seemed to miss the signal that he should leave the stage as the winning team celebrated, and had to be maneuvered behind the players.

Yesterday he fell asleep on stage at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. At the same event, Trump told what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “an especially odd imaginary tale,” claiming that his uncle, a MIT professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Trump recounted a conversation with his uncle about Kaczynski, but in fact Kaczynski didn’t go to MIT, and Trump’s uncle John died more than a decade before Kaczynski became famous, so Trump and his uncle could not have identified him as the Unabomber. Today, Trump called chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell a “terrible Fed chair” and added: “I was surprised he was appointed.”

Trump was the president who appointed him.

Finally, today Trump’s Department of Justice fired longtime employee Maurene Comey, who had prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. To bring things full circle, Maurene Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the Republican former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom Trump fired for refusing to drop the FBI investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

New York Times, Faith Leaders Can Now Endorse. Will That Swing the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race? Maya King, July 17, 2025. The I.R.S. has cleared faith leaders to endorse political candidates to their congregations. New York clergy are wrestling with the choice to use their newfound influence.

Four days after his remarkable showing in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani appeared at the Harlem headquarters of a group headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. He acknowledged the leaders and biblical scriptures that fueled his campaign.

“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning,” Mr. Mamdani said, a reference to Psalm 30:5, a scripture that is especially popular in Black churches. “And it has been night for far too long in this city.”

Mr. Mamdani did not come to the gathering on June 28, for the National Action Network, explicitly seeking an endorsement from the faith leaders in the crowd. But under a new rule change from the I.R.S., he and his opponents in the mayoral race may be able to secure one without tax repercussions.ImageZohran Mamdani speaks into a microphone, his right hand outstretched as the Rev. Al Sharpton, seated behind, watches him.Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee seeking to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City, regularly campaigned at mosques.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times

The I.R.S. said in a court filing last week that houses of worship could endorse political candidates to their congregations without losing their tax-exempt status. The move was initially seen as the agency’s formal termination of a longstanding but spottily enforced rule against campaigning from the pulpit.

But in New York, the ruling could also open up a new front in the city’s heated mayoral race, offering candidates the chance to formally consolidate support from not only faith leaders but their congregations.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Economic and Political Commentary: The Road to MechaHitler, Paul Krugman, right, July 17, 2025. Reality still has a well-known liberal bias.

Yesterday I wrote about the politicization of monetary policy, and I could have written more, what with Trump telling House Republicans that he was ready to fire Jerome Powell to distract from the Epstein story because he believes that interest rates are much too high.

But I need a break, so let’s talk about something very different — namely, is AI fundamentally a communist technology?

That’s not a question I would have thought to ask, but apparently the claim is widespread among right-wing tech bros. JD Vance more or less endorsed this view at a speech he recently gave at a Bitcoin event:

One of the ways you hear this stated is that crypto is fundamentally a conservative or right-leaning technology and artificial intelligence is fundamentally a left-leaning or a communist technology. Now, I think that overstates things a little bit in both directions, but there's a fundamental element of truth to it.

And now I understand why Elon Musk’s recent modifications to Grok caused his chatbot to begin spewing antisemitic propaganda and eventually declare itself “MechaHitler.” And although I don’t claim any expertise in the technology, I think I understand why he’s having such a hard time fixing the problem.

A word about crypto. As I explained in Sunday’s primer, crypto is basically a giant grift. But there has always been an element of right-wing ideology. As I’ve written in the past, arguments for Bitcoin in particular are a combination of technobabble and libertarian derp.

But AI as communist? For what it’s worth, I’m not fully sold on AI’s potential. As far as I can tell, large language models — which we are, misleadingly, calling artificial intelligence — are still, essentially, a souped-up version of autocorrect. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs, some of them highly paid, that could also be described as souped-up autocorrect, so AI may have large economic impacts.

But how does that make AI communist?

You have to start with the fact that U.S. conservatives now routinely describe anyone holding views to their left as a Marxist or communist. This goes along with the general principle that every accusation from that side of the political spectrum is really a confession. Democrats have indeed moved a bit to the left on economic issues in recent years. But they’re hardly extremists. They’re basically a lot like a European Social Democratic party.

Republicans, however, are extremists. The whole party has raced to the right into what amounts to full-on fascism.

If that last statement has you reaching for the smelling salts, ask yourself, what more evidence do you need? Do we have to wait until a Republican administration creates a masked secret police force that snatches people off the streets and starts building concentration camps? Wait, that has already happened.

So in modern Republican rhetoric, anything to the left of MAGA ideology is communist extremism. And here’s the thing: The answers you get from AI generally don’t adhere to the right-wing party line.

Drop Site News via Substack, “Humiliation and Helplessness”: Sectarian Violence Continues Unabated in Syria as Israel Strikes in Damascus, Murtaza Hussain, July 17, 2025. Over 500 fighters and civilians were killed during four days of fighting between the Syrian government, Israel, Druze militias, and Bedouin tribes in Sweida, Syria.

July 16   

 

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President Says Epstein Critics Are Being Used by Democrats, Staff Reports, July 16, 2025.

Epstein investigation: President Trump took aim at supporters who have criticized his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. In a blistering social media post, he called the outcry over the Justice Department’s decision not to release additional files on Mr. Epstein, right, a Democrat-led “scam.” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Republican critic of Mr. Trump, is trying to force a House vote on whether the administration should release the files.

Federal Reserve chair: Mr. Trump confirmed that he asked House Republicans about firing Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman he has targeted with withering criticism. He said he had no intention of firing Mr. Powell immediately but said he would not rule out doing so. Read more ›

Spending bill: The Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that would claw back $9 billion already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Read more ›

Disaster Relief: A coalition of 20 states sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its decision to shut down a multibillion-dollar grant program aimed at protecting communities from floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, accuses the Federal Emergency Management Agency of unlawfully terminating the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, without approval from Congress. The filing came two days after heavy rains inundated parts of New York and New Jersey and nearly two weeks after catastrophic floods hit Central Texas. 

New York Times, The Chaotic Early Days Inside Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center, Patricia Mazzei and Hamed Aleaziz, July 16, 2025. Several immigrant detainees described high tension and anxiety at the remote, hastily constructed facility over a lack of information, recreation and access to medication.

The men at the new immigrant deterniont center in the Florida Everglades have no pencils, books or television. The lights stay on through the night. When it rains, which is nearly every day during summer, the tents housing detainees spring leaks and bugs crawl in.

In phone interviews, several detainees described infrequent showers, meals that amounted to little more than snacks, other detainees falling ill with flulike symptoms and sleep deprivation. They described unrest over a lack of information, recreation and access to medication.

“It’s a tinderbox,” said Rick Herrera, one of the detainees, who called a reporter repeatedly over five days, offering a rare window into the chaotic early weeks of what experts say is the nation’s only state-run facility for federal immigration detainees.

Florida raced to open the center — officially naming it “Alligator Alcatraz” to play up its remote, swampy location — on July 3, eager to help President Trump’s immigration crackdown by providing more detention capacity. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said on Sunday that other states want to follow Florida’s lead.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, has positioned his state as particularly aggressive on immigration enforcement, deputizing state and local law enforcement to act as a “force multiplier” for federal authorities.

But opening the detention center in the Everglades was a move with little precedent that relied on emergency state powers. Until recently, the federal government has been responsible for housing immigration detainees, and it has largely detained people who recently entered the country illegally, or who have criminal convictions or outstanding deportation orders. But immigration enforcement has changed substantially under Mr. Trump, sweeping up people who were not the focus before.

The Everglades facility serves as part of the local-federal immigration cooperation process known as 287(g). Under that system, local officials can arrest and detain migrants on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is unclear, however, if and when detainees at the Everglades center would be transferred to ICE custody before being deported.

Most detainees at the center do not have criminal convictions, according to a government official with knowledge of the data who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it. At least some were transfers from local jails who had been taken into custody after getting pulled over for traffic violations; others had been transferred there from ICE custody.

Another government official who requested anonymity for the same reason said that in all, 60 percent of the center’s detainees either have criminal convictions or criminal charges pending against them.

 

New York Times, H.H.S. finalizes thousands of layoffs after the Supreme Court’s decision, Christina Jewett and Benjamin Mueller, July 16, 2025 (print ed.). The Department of Health and Human Services finalized the layoffs of thousands of employees after a Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with mass firings across the government.

Employees received notice of their termination late Monday, marking a turning point in the reshaping of the nation’s health care work force. Those let go included people who coordinated travel for overseas drug facility inspectors, communications staff members, public records officials and employees who oversaw contracts related to medical research.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, announced 10,000 layoffs late in March, cutting workers across the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal health agencies. Some workers who received the initial layoff notices on April 1 found out only when their badge to enter a building did not work.

Still, many of them remained on the federal payroll until Monday at 5 p.m., when a message went out citing last week’s Supreme Court decision that allowed Trump officials to significantly slash the size of the federal payroll even as court challenges to the administration’s plans play out.

“Thank you for your service to the American people,” the email said.

While many of the workers were described by the Trump administration as redundant or duplicative, critics have compared the cuts to leaving only doctors — and no support staff — to operate a hospital.

The result is a hobbled work force, said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a former Biden administration health official.

“What I have seen is some of the very best people, people who have alternatives, who have choices, have decided they just don’t want to stay in this limbo land,” Dr. Jha said. He added that those who survive the layoffs may look elsewhere, because “they don’t want to be in an organization that’s under such upheaval.”

In March, Mr. Kennedy announced a “dramatic restructuring” of the federal health work force, with a total of 20,000 jobs pared from the health department through a February round of layoffs, early retirements and buyouts. The plan also called for paring the department’s 28 divisions to 15.

Though Mr. Kennedy cited the department’s $1.8 trillion budget at the time, experts on federal spending said less than 1 percent of that funding went to payroll, with the vast majority of the money covering medications, and hospital and nursing home bills for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

A federal lawsuit filed in Rhode Island by 19 states and the District of Columbia challenged the firings and reorganization, saying they had detrimental effects on states where crucial services were abruptly halted, including specialized testing for sexually transmitted diseases and management of help lines that assist people who want to quit smoking. An H.H.S. spokesman said workers cited in that ongoing lawsuit were not given notices on Monday.

This month, a judge in the Rhode Island case ruled that the cuts and reordering of services approved by Congress were most likely unlawful.

Firings at the National Institutes of Health included officials responsible for releasing public records, raising concerns within the agency about its commitment to transparency, said an N.I.H. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the layoffs.

They also included officials who worked on agency contracts related to medical research materials and studies. Many of those workers had been asked to work while on administrative leave in recent months, the official said, suggesting that the agency had struggled to make do without them. At the F.D.A., similar callbacks went out to staff members who coordinate travel for foreign inspections, though some were let go on Monday.

 

New York Times, Dismissals at Justice Dept. Would Bypass Civil Service and Whistle-Blower Laws, Devlin Barrett, July 16, 2025 (print ed.). In court filings and dismissal letters, the Justice Department’s political leadership claims sweeping authority to fire career law enforcement officials without cause.

The Justice Department is accelerating its efforts to undo decades of civil service protections intended to insulate the work of law enforcement officials from political interference, according to current and former officials, ramping up a wave of firings in recent days.

A new batch of more than 20 career employees at the department and its component agencies were fired on Friday, including the attorney general’s own ethics adviser, Joseph W. Tirrell. Others who were dismissed included a handful of senior officials at the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as prosecutors and support staff who once worked for Jack Smith when he was a special counsel prosecuting Donald J. Trump.

On the surface, the various groups have little in common. Justice Department veterans, however, see an overarching pattern: a quickening effort by the Trump administration to ignore and eventually demolish longstanding civil service legal precedents meant to keep politics out of law enforcement work, and to give more leeway to the president’s loyalists.

The latest round of dismissals appears to have picked up steam after the Supreme Court last week allowed, for the time being, the administration to go forward with mass layoffs of federal workers. The decision gave the president more legal leeway to fire people en masse, at least for now.

Posting on a networking site on Monday, Mr. Tirrell asserted that he had been fired without cause and shared his termination notice from Attorney General Pam Bondi. The letter misspelled his name and did not offer a specific reason for his dismissal, saying only that the Constitution authorized it.

Employment law experts say such letters are at odds with decades of case law, as well as the decisions of an obscure part of the federal government called the Merit Service Protection Board. Taken together, both have stood for the principle that career civil servants can be fired only for cause.

In recent cases, however, the Trump administration has pushed the idea that such protections no longer exist for federal workers, including at the Justice Department.

In a filing last week, Justice Department lawyers said it would not turn over any internal communications related to the firing in March of Elizabeth G. Oyer, the pardon attorney, because the questions “are purely legal and do not require factual development.”

Ms. Oyer filed suit after being dismissed, claiming wrongful termination. She described herself as a whistle-blower who was punished for refusing to go along with an effort by the Trump administration to restore the gun rights of the actor Mel Gibson, who has been a prominent supporter of the president.Editors’ PicksCould You Have Landed a Job at Vogue in the ’90s?How Are the Summer Interns Making It Work?Catherine, Princess of Wales, Dresses for a New (Life) Stage

After Ms. Oyer’s firing, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, issued a statement declaring her account of the events “false.” In the court filing last week, however, Justice Department lawyers declared that the facts of the firing were “not in dispute.”

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Epstein, Musk, Putin, Rising Inflation, Ongoing Tariff Fiasco, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 16, 2025. The World Just Isn't Bending The Knee To Trump. 

I wake today having those two thoughts in my head at the same time that we often talk about here: 1) Trump and his corrupt enablers at the Supreme Court keep breaking things that will be difficult if not impossible to repair and we must continue to act with great urgency; and 2) The “Trump as revered strongman” project is struggling way more than they anticipated, and the American people, leaders around the world and reality itself are just not bending the knee as he -- delusionally, pathetically, illiberally -- expected.

So there is a weakness, a struggle, a nagging sense that this thing ain’t working at the core of Trumpism right now that we need to continue to exploit.

I spend a lot of time trying to game out what happens with Trumpism through the end of this year. And it is hard to see where it goes.

The public has rejected his immigration escalation, and as I wrote to you yesterday it is on its face a ridiculous and unsustainable project. Despite his bluster the economy isn’t roaring as they imagined, and the public is really unhappy with rising prices and his betrayal of his core campaign promise to make things better. His reckless gutting of the US government helped create the tragedy in Texas last week. No one bought whatever the f—k the Iran bombing was. He has not brought peace to Gaza, the Middle East, Ukraine. His trade policy -- 90 deals in 90 days - is already one of the great policy fiascos in American history.

In what has become an enormous problem for Trump Elon, right, keeps attacking and undermining him in ways that is being seen and felt in MAGA world. They keep losing in the lower courts, daily, consequentially. The big, ugly bill is historically unpopular, is already doing material harm to the country and Republicans are already trying to find ways to undo parts of it to lessen the political fallout.

And then came Epstein, and Trump now looks and sounds unsteady, weak and just incredibly full of shit; and it risksbringing back what is without question the ugliest part of Trump - his decades of abuse of women, his infidelities, his sex with porn stars, his grabbing them by the …….All of it.

Watch this video clip from yesterday. It’s incoherent gibberish. Russia, Russia, Russia. The pressure is getting to him. 

Later that afternoon while in Pennsylvania Trump went on one of the most incoherent and batshit crazy rants of all time:

Wired Magazine published an incredible story last night that the “raw” video footage of Jeffrey Epstein in his cell at the time of his death assembled by the Justice Department under Trump in his first term and released by the Justice Department in his second had 3 minutes edited out. Yes, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, charged and died while Trump was President in 2019. From Wired (paywall, sorry):

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “full raw” surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.

WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.

Late yesterday Speaker Mike Johnson, right, broke from Trump and called for the Epstein files to be released. Ruh-roh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

New York Times, News Analysis: Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor, but Doesn’t Say Why, Adam Liptak, July 16, 2025. In a series of terse, unsigned orders, the court has often been giving the green light to President Trump’s agenda without a murmur of explanation.

In clearing the way for President Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale.

On Monday, for instance, in letting Mr. Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling.

What the order did not include was any explanation of why the court had ruled as it did. It was an exercise of power, not reason.

The silence was even more striking in the face of a 19-page dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

The question of whether the nation’s highest court owes the public an explanation for its actions has grown along with the rise of the “emergency docket,” which uses truncated procedures to produce terse provisional orders meant to remain in effect only while the courts consider the lawfulness of the challenged actions. In practice, the orders often effectively resolve the case.

The court has allowed the administration to fire tens of thousands of government workers, discharge transgender troops, end protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from war-torn countries and fundamentally shift power from Congress to the president — often with scant or no explanation of how it arrived at those results.

In the last 10 weeks alone, the court has granted emergency relief to the Trump administration without explanation seven times, according to a tally by Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of a book about the court’s emergency work called “The Shadow Docket.” (In that time, the court issued roughly the same number of emergency orders in which the majority gave at least a bit of explanation.)

Monday’s ruling, Professor Vladeck wrote this week in his newsletter, was the latest “completely unexplained” ruling “that is going to have massive real-world effects long before the justices ever confront whether what the government is doing is actually lawful.”

All of this is in stark contrast with cases on the court’s merits docket, which unfold over about a year and include two rounds of briefs, oral arguments, painstaking deliberations and the exchange of draft opinions. The end result is often a comprehensive set of opinions that can be as long as a short novel.

The court usually rules on emergency applications in a matter of weeks.

Critics call the emergency docket “the shadow docket,” and its use was on the rise even before it was turbocharged with the arrival of Mr. Trump’s second administration. Justice Elena Kagan used that term in 2021 in criticizing the court’s work.

The majority had just issued a midnight ruling that left in place a Texas law effectively overturning Roe v. Wade in the state — as the court would do nationwide the next year. In dissent, Justice Kagan wrote that “the majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this court’s shadow-docket decision making — which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent and impossible to defend.”

A month later, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. returned fire in a speech at Notre Dame defending the court’s approach to emergency applications.

New York Times, Senate Advances Trump Clawback of Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds, Catie Edmondson, Updated July 16, 2025. The vote to take up legislation to rescind $9 billion in congressionally approved funds suggested that Republicans would bow to the president’s wishes in the simmering fight over spending powers.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to take up legislation to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, signaling that the Republican-led Congress is poised to acquiesce to President Trump in a simmering battle with the White House over spending powers.

The 51-to-50 vote came after Republican leaders agreed to a handful of concessions to win the votes of holdouts who were uneasy with the proposed rescissions. G.O.P. leaders said on Tuesday they would strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, a move that the White House signaled it would not contest.

Even then, some Republican senators refused to support a move that they said would relinquish their constitutional power over federal spending, forcing their leaders to summon Vice President JD Vance to the Capitol to break a tie and ram the legislation through a pair of procedural votes.

“We’re lawmakers; we should be legislating,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday night announcing her opposition to the package. “What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round.’ I don’t accept that.”

She was joined by two other Republicans in siding with Democrats in opposition to advancing the measure: Senators Susan Collins of Maine, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Senate Republicans are hoping to approve the package as early as Wednesday. That would send it back to the House, which passed the bill last month but would still need to give it final approval by Friday for the cuts to be enacted.

The push to rescind $9 billion in federal funding is part of a broader fight playing out between the White House and Congress as top Trump administration officials, led by Russell T. Vought, right, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, are moving aggressively and unilaterally to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending, a power the Constitution gives to the legislative branch.

In this case, the administration went through a formal process by submitting what is known as a rescissions bill, requesting that Congress go along with its efforts to cancel funds. Such measures are rare and rarely succeed, given how tightly Congress has historically guarded its power over federal spending; the last time one did was more than 25 years ago under President Bill Clinton.

But Republicans have shown extraordinary deference to Mr. Trump since he took office in January, and the bill’s momentum reflects their willingness to bow to his wishes even when it comes to programs that have historically drawn broad support. The measure would codify moves the administration has in some cases already taken unilaterally to slash federal spending and rein in the size of the government.

The bulk of the funds targeted — about $8 billion — is for foreign assistance programs. The remaining $1.1 billion is for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS.

 

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) Resistance Dateline: Epstein case: a look back, Wayne Madsen, left, July 16-17, 2025. With the corporate media acting as if the Jeffrey Epstein scandal just broke, we are running our article from January 9, 2018, almost a full year into the first Trump presidency and the year before Epstein died in the custody of Trump's Justice Department.

Our 2018 article provides some context into Trump's catatonic frenzy over the so-called Epstein files. Here's why:

 

January 9-11, 2018 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Welcome to Waterbury: the city that holds secrets that could bring down Trump

By Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig

A woman who was allegedly sodomized and raped at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1994 is alive and trying to maintain obscurity from alt-right operatives who have identified her and her current residence.

WMR and the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project (JIP) are revealing here for the first time the story of “Maria,” who was identified as such in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by another underage victim of the pair, Katie Johnson (aka, Jane Doe). The product of a month-long investigation that took us to the site of the girl’s kidnapping in Waterbury, Connecticut, this information comes from confidential sources in multiple states. They have been pursuing the “Maria” story since the name and 1994 incident was first referenced in Johnson’s law suits. Johnson dropped the suit after she became the victim of physical threats by individuals who claimed to be Trump supporters, according to her account in court records.

The original tip came to WMR, which can report exclusively that a Waterbury girl, “Maria,” was the 12-year old alleged to have been a child rape victim of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The crimes allegedly occurred at a midtown Manhattan mansion then owned by Epstein’s friend Les Wexner, a billionaire retailing mogul. Maria was kidnapped on March 20, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury. The girl's kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan, according to our information.

The Waterbury Police Department has refused to provide us with a copy of the original police report on the abduction. It defers to Linda Wihbey, the city’s Corporation Counsel. On December 12, 2017, Wihbey made her views known in a phone call with Andrew Kreig of JIP, as this reporter listened. She said that she was ready to “welcome us to Waterbury” until she decided that our investigation was “hostile” to her and Waterbury’s interests, which suffered greatly some 17 years ago over a high-profile pedophilia incident involving the city’s Republican mayor. Waterbury’s stance emerged from our request for the 1993 police report on Maria’s abduction, including any relevant witness statements provided to the police.....

 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago (NBC). 

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Legal Commentary: Trump’s growing Epstein crisis, Marc Elias, right, July 16, 2025. This much is clear: Donald Trump is in a full-scale panic. What started Saturday night with a long, rambling social media post has now turned into a full-blown crisis for him, his administration and the GOP. His effort to silence calls for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein Files has only served to broadenand amplify the voices insisting on transparency.

Since then, he has tried various strategies to contain the damage: deny the files exist, suggest Epstein is irrelevant and even claim the files are forgeries. But within the last 24 hours, things have quickly escalated as Trump has gone into a full meltdown.

As of this morning, Trump is attacking his own base, lashing out at Republicans, and complaining about Democrats. His latest rant, posted only hours ago on Truth Social, attacks Republicans and — what he now calls — his “PAST supporters” who have abandoned him over the newly branded “the Epstein Hoax:”

“...these scams and hoaxes are all Democrats are good at - It’s all they have - they’re no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates… all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jefferey Epstein Hoax.”

Trump’s efforts to talk his way out of this dilemma have backfired. His rambling style of speaking — moving from one incomplete sentence to an entirely different unrelated topic — often serves him well by distracting from the issue at hand. In this circumstance, however, it seems evasive and calculated, rather than carefree and free-flowing.

Trump’s message has increasingly boiled down to two points:

Epstein is a minor figure that people should not care about. The Epstein Files are forgeries written by his political enemies, aimed at smearing him.

On the first point, as he stood on an airport tarmac, Trump’s dismissal of his supporters’ interest in Epstein was awkward and, well, weird: “He's dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life.” On the second, Trump claimed that “these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden” administration.

This last point is the key and the one he seems most settled on today.

It seems increasingly clear that Trump believes he is named in the files in some unflattering way and that their release is likely or inevitable. To hedge against that, he is trying to decrease the pressure on their release — by downgrading Epstein as a figure and shaming his own supporters who continue to promote their importance while at the same time discrediting the content of the files altogether as the product of Democrats.

Trump’s biggest problem? His claim that the files are the product of his political enemies is easily disproven.

First, there is the timing — Epstein was prosecuted, and thus the bulk of the files were created and collected under Trump’s first administration — not Obama’s and certainly not Biden’s.

Second, scores of career prosecutors and FBI agents have no doubt been involved in the collection and compilation of the files. They will know the truth and can easily dispute any claim of fabrication.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, can no doubt corroborate and expand on the contents of the files if she is ever called to testify publicly on the matter.

There are also increasing signs that Trump’s efforts to save himself are exposing his movement and his party to claims of lying, cover-up and hypocrisy. While many on the right — like Fox News — are toning down their coverage of the issue, others are not.

The biggest losers in this entire mess are Congressional Republicans. They are on record as being in on the Epstein conspiracy for years. Previously, they promised they would fight for the files to be released. Their voters — who they will face in 2026 — believe the files exist and must be made public.

Yet, the GOP voted yesterday in near unison to keep the Epstein Files a secret. And their so-called leader, Speaker Mike Johnson, has been transformed from a spineless coward into someone who simply spews gibberish: “I’m for transparency. We’re intellectually consistent in this… It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

Nothing Johnson said is true:

He is blocking transparency. The GOP is completely inconsistent on the release of the files. There is nothing delicate about this, other than potential embarrassment for Trump. Johnson and his conference are literally preventing the files from being released to let the “people decide.”

In contrast to Trump and the Republicans, Democrats are increasingly willing to raise the subject of the Epstein Files and seek their release. This is not just an 80/20 issue for Democrats (actually 79/4 according to a recent poll), but it also works effectively to galvanize the Party and send the other into disarray.

The fight over Epstein is energizing the Democratic coalition and it has been embraced across all factions of the Party. Meanwhile, it deeply splits Republicans in a way that harms their electoral prospects while sidelining Trump as someone who can fix these divisions — since he is the cause of them.

None of this is to say this issue will endure until 2026 — or even until next month. However, unless and until Trump can answer some basic questions, he will struggle to change this narrative. While he remains on defense, other Republicans, who are on the ballot next year, will suffer.

Faced with this reality, Trump will almost certainly seek to divert attention away from the Epstein Files to some other topic. The most obvious move is for him to escalate the weaponization of the DOJ against his political opponents, including appointing a new special prosecutor.

Will that work? It depends on two factors. First, does his base — which has been committed to this Epstein narrative for years — pivot with him or see it as another clumsy effort to distract from the current scandal? Second, does the legacy media treat that weaponization as a legitimate use of government power or an abuse in furtherance of a cover-up?

This is where things stand as of today. More later this week. 

 

The Bulwark, The Triad: Political Opinion: How to Talk to Your MAGA Friends About Jeffrey Epstein, Jonathan V. Last, above, July 16, 2025. Plus: Masked ICE lawyers. And the Chinese Tesla-killer. 

1. The List

Some of the Trump supporters in your life may have questions about the Jeffrey Epstein situation. You want to be there for them; to provide support in these trying times. Here’s how.

#1 Validate their concerns: This is a conspiracy theory you can believe in.

The other day I made the case for the Epstein coverup based purely on statements made by Trump administration figures who were in positions to know the real story.

But there are other reasons to believe. Starting with this: Why were Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell the only people charged?

In big, sprawling criminal cases—especially one involving money—there’s always a list of alleged co-conspirators. Take Bernie Madoff.

Madoff claimed that he was solely responsible for running his $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme. But that wasn’t credible. The sheer logistics involved in shoveling around so much money required the participation of others. And boy, howdy, you should look at the list of alleged co-conspirators from his case.

Some of these co-conspirators were never prosecuted. Some were the subjects of civil actions. Some agreed to forfeiture without admitting guilt. Some committed suicide. Some struck plea deals with prosecutors. Some went to jail. At least seven people aside from Madoff himself were convicted of crimes.

These were people like Madoff’s corporate controller, who signed the company’s checks, and staff supervisors who filled out documents for Madoff. Running a financial conspiracy requires a lot of paperwork and investigators usually go after everyone who ever put ink on anything having to do the business.

Yet Epstein and Maxwell ran a sex trafficking ring on a private island backed by money from a highly dubious career in “banking” without anyone else signing documents, anywhere?

C’mon, man.

#2 There are good people in MAGA working to find the truth. You aren’t a traitor for asking questions.

Dan Bongino is the deputy director of the FBI. Last Friday he was so distraught by Pam Bondi’s coverup that he took the day off from work.

Benny Johnson is all over this story.

MAGA-loving pod bros think it all stinks to high heaven.

On Thursday, Tucker will be interviewing “America’s most honest historian,” Darryl Cooper, about the real history of the Epstein case.

Point is: Questioning the “official” story doesn’t make you a soy-boi socialist.

#3 If you can’t believe in the Epstein case, then you have to give up all your other conspiracies, too. MAGA has a list of conspiracies that have been formed against it:

• QAnon
• Russia Russia Russia Hoax
• The stolen 2020 election
• The Biden crime family
• Epstein as a story created by Democrats
• And yet . . . where are the arrests?

If the 2020 election was stolen, then why hasn’t Trump’s FBI rolled up the people who did the stealing? Where is the investigation of the Biden crime family? Why aren’t the people who created the Russia hoax in jail? Where are the frazzledrip videos?

Hell: If Barrack Hussein Obama created the Jeffrey Epstein documents, as Trump now says, then why isn’t the FBI going after him right now?

In short: If you’re willing to accept that the Epstein files are all a hoax, then you have to admit that it was all bullshit and that none of the conspiracies you believed were true.

Which is tantamount to admitting that the establishment was right about everything.

 

The Bulwark, Morning Shots Political Opinion: Political Opinion: Sorry Trump, You Can’t Wish the Epstein Story Away, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, July 16, 2025. 

JD Vance has been mostly out of the news lately, only popping up here and there to offer a fixed-grin endorsement of Trump’s foreign policy moves he secretly hates, like the pivot toward offering more support to Ukraine.

Today, though, he’ll be heading to northeastern Pennsylvania to perform one of his chief roles: that of Trump’s Rust Belt whisperer. Politico notes he’s going to pitch the benefits of Trump’s new Big Beautiful Bill, which Democrats plan to make a centerpiece of their attacks ahead of next year’s midterms.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Epstein Case: A Guide for the Perplexed, William Kristol, right, July 16, 2025. The president of the United States is perplexed.

“He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. . . . I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. . . . I don’t understand why it keeps going,” Donald Trump told reporters late yesterday afternoon.

At Morning Shots, we exist to serve—so let me take a shot at briefly explaining to our perplexed president why the Epstein case is interesting.

Trump dismisses the Epstein case as old news: “He’s dead for a long time.”Well, Jeffrey Epstein hasn’t been dead for that long a time. He died less than six years ago, during the first Trump administration, in a federal prison, and not of natural causes.The cause of death was officially determined to be suicide.

But Trump himself had his doubts. In 2020, he told reporter Jonathan Swan (then at Axios) that Epstein “was either killed or committed suicide in jail. . . . And people are still trying to figure out: How did it happen? Was it suicide? Was he killed?”

That’s an interesting question.

The Trump administration claimed to have resolved the question in its terse statement ten days ago, which supported its finding of suicide. It even released what it described as the “full raw” surveillance video from the only working camera near Epstein’s cell.

But as Wired reported yesterday, “Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut” from that video, raising “new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.”In other words, the tape was doctored.

That’s kind of interesting, too.

Trump is dismissive of Epstein’s importance: “He was never a big factor in terms of life.”

Well, I’m not so sure about that. Jeffrey Epstein ran a massive criminal conspiracy for many years that the federal government says victimized more than 1,000 girls. This enterprise involved very prominent figures, ranging from American billionaires to British royals. How he got away with that for so long, who helped him, who else participated in his crimes, how he was able to get the sweetheart deal he got from the George W. Bush Justice Department—all of those are interesting questions.

Furthermore, among Epstein’s friends was one Donald J. Trump, who subsequently became president of the United States. Trump said of Epstein in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Especially in light of that last remark, but also in light of the fact that Trump and Epstein certainly seem to have enjoyed each other’s company, it’s worth asking just what President Trump knew of Epstein’s criminal activities, and how close his own active social life intersected with Epstein’s.

All of that is kind of interesting.

President Trump is claiming that the Epstein case files “were made up by” James Comey, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. These are the same files that were supposedly meticulously reviewed this year by his own Justice Department and FBI, and whose authenticity they found no reason to question. One would certainly want to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi or FBI Director Kash Patel whether they agree with this novel assertion by the president. Is there evidence for such a fraud? And of course, if fraud on the scale alleged by the president happened, then Congress surely needs to hold hearings to look into it.

These are just a few of the reasons why the Jeffrey Epstein case “would be of interest to anybody” and “why it keeps going.”

Indeed, the case is of interest to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. He’s a Trump loyalist who said just this week of President Trump that “There is no doubt that he was miraculously saved by God in order to lead our great nation again.” But Johnson said yesterday that he is dissatisfied with what the administration has done, and wants it “to put everything out there.”

Meidas Touch Podcast, Ghislaine DROPS BOMBSHELL as Trump BURIES IT ALL, Ben Meiselas, July 16, 2025. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest move after Trump continues the cover up of his dark past.July 15

 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary, House Republicans Block Release of Epstein Files, Troy Matthews, July 15, 2025. Democrats pushed an amendment to make the files available to the public but were rejected

House Republicans on the Rules Committee voted to block the public release of the Jeffery Epstein files Monday evening. The vote was on an amendment filed by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to the GENIUS Act, which would have required that the Department of Justice make all files related to Epstein's case available on a publicly accessible website within 30 days.

The vote was 5-7, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) joining with all Democrats to vote for the amendment. "The public's been asking for it," Norman said. "I think there are files. All of a sudden not to have files is a little strange, We'll see how it plays out...I think the president will do the right thing."

"I want to know what the hell is in these files," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). "This is about trust. Republicans said, 'Trust us. Vote for us and we will release these files.' Well here we are, they're backtracking."

The vote comes amidst a right-wing revolt against the Trump administration following the fallout from a DOJ memo that stated the infamous Epstein "client list" does not exist and that Epstein committed suicide in jail, despite Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi telling reporters in February that the list was sitting on her desk.

On Monday it was reported by the Daily Mail that Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell is willing to testify to Congress about her knowledge of the case, but no one in the Republican majority has called her to testify, which seems strange for a party that campaigned on making the Epstein list public for so long.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges and is to date the only person charged in the Epstein pedophilia ring. 

July 14

New York Times, News Analysis: Republicans in Congress Shift to Backing Ukraine, Matching Trump’s Reversal, Robert Jimison, July 16, 2025 (print ed.). After years pressing to end U.S. aid to Ukraine, many Republicans have abandoned that position now that President Trump is supporting the country against Russian aggression.

Less than two years ago, House Republicans were so livid about the idea of continuing to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression that they deposed their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in part to protest what they said was a “secret side deal” he had made to do so.

Months later, Speaker Mike Johnson risked his own job to push through a funding package for Ukraine, with the majority of his members voting “no.”

But now, more than three years into the war, many Republicans in Congress who have railed consistently against sending more money and weapons to Ukraine and clamored to end American involvement in the war are rushing to shift their stance, following the lead of President Trump.

It is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump, whose “America First” foreign policy approach has upended decades of Republican orthodoxy favoring muscular U.S. intervention in conflicts around the world, holds an iron grip on his party. And now that the president, who once disdained American aid to Ukraine, has pivoted and announced a new plan to speed weapons to the war-torn country, some Republicans are contorting themselves to stay aligned with him.

That has involved relative silence from some previously vocal opponents of supporting Ukraine and striking public reversals from some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, many of whom spent considerable time on Capitol Hill arguing against a policy they once called reckless but now argue is brilliant diplomacy from a master strategist.

Representative Derrick Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, last spring savaged the Biden administration for failing to have a plan for further aid to Ukraine, proclaiming, “We must stop entering into endless wars.” On Monday, he endorsed Mr. Trump’s announcement of more help. 

New York Times, As Iran Deports a Million Afghans, ‘Where Do We Even Go?’  Elian Peltier, Farnaz Fassihi and Yaqoob Akbary, Visuals by Jim Huylebroek, July 16, 2025. Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.

At the sand-swept border between Iran and Afghanistan, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day — shocked and fearful Afghans who have been expelled from Iran with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.

More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on undocumented refugees, according to the United Nations’ Refugees agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crisis of the past decade.

Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.

 

 

 

New York Times, Trump Official Accused PEPFAR of Funding Abortions in Russia. It Wasn’t True, Apoorva Mandavilli,  July 16, 2025 (print ed.). PEPFAR, the AIDS relief program, hasn’t operated in Russia since 2012 and does not fund abortions.

On June 25, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a Senate committee that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, had spent $9.3 million “to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis.”

His statements had immediate consequences for the committee’s vote and had the potential to create long-term damage to PEPFAR, a program that has long had bipartisan support and has been estimated to have saved 26 million lives since President George W. Bush started it in 2003.

Mr. Vought was at the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend a package of cuts proposed by the Trump administration to this year’s spending on global health programs and public broadcasting. If the Senate votes to approve the package, global health programs will lose $900 million, including $400 million from PEPFAR for the current fiscal year. PEPFAR and other programs also face huge cuts, even terminations, for the coming fiscal year. The full Senate is expected to vote on the “rescissions bill” by Thursday.

At the hearing, Mr. Vought listed funding of abortions in Russia as evidence of PEPFAR’s waste of government funds. The example prompted Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a longtime supporter of PEPFAR, to say he would vote in favor of rescinding funds from the program.

“You know why I’m going to vote for it? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important, but it’s not beyond scrutiny,” Mr. Graham said. “There is a consequence to this crap.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ethiopia and Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

PEPFAR has not operated in Russia since 2012, when President Vladimir Putin kicked the United States Agency for International Development out of the country. U.S. law prohibits the use of any federal funds to pay for abortions. Funding abortions through PEPFAR would imply not just waste, but serious crimes or negligence, or both.

“If they have reason to believe that’s true, they should put the information forward,” said Dr. Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR under Mr. Bush, adding that he was “shocked” by the allegation.

Other former PEPFAR leaders and staff members were incensed.

“It’s so irresponsible and so demeaning for them to think that they could get away with a strategy that includes open, overt, aggressive, accelerated lying,” said Dr. Eric Goosby, who led PEPFAR under President Barack Obama.

“I’m so distraught over having things thrown at the wall to see if they stick,” he added.

Jirair Ratevosian, PEPFAR’s chief of staff under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he was puzzled by the statement because it was so easy to disprove.

“Their cavalier departure from the truth is just as egregious as the unfounded claims they make about PEPFAR,” he said.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday that the Trump administration can proceed with dismantling the Education Department by firing thousands of workers.

The order is a significant victory for the administration and could ease President Trump’s efforts to sharply curtail the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools.

It also represents an expansion of presidential power, allowing Mr. Trump to functionally eliminate a government department created by Congress, without legislators’ input.

 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 15, 2025 [Supreme Court Enables Presidential Override of Congress], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 16, 2025. Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court’s order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while the issue is in the courts.

The majority thus throws the weight of the Supreme Court behind the ability of the Trump administration to get rid of departments established by Congress—a power the Supreme Court denied when President Richard M. Nixon tried it in 1973.

This is a major expansion of presidential power, permitting the president to disregard laws Congress has passed, despite the Constitution’s clear assignment of lawmaking power to Congress alone.

President Donald J. Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education because he claims it pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” Running for office, he promised to “return” education to the states. In fact, the Education Department has never set curriculum; it disburses funds for high-poverty schools and educating students with disabilities. It’s also in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding.

Trump’s secretary of education, professional wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, supports Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. In March the department announced it would lay off 1,378 employees—about half the department. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued to stop the layoffs, and Massachusetts federal judge Myong Joun ordered the department to reinstate the fired workers. The Supreme Court has now put that order on hold, permitting the layoffs to go forward.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan concurred in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, noting that Trump has claimed power to destroy the congressionally established department “by executive fiat” and chastising the right-wing majority for enabling him. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” they say.

“The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”

Another Trump power grab is before Congress today as the Senate considers what are called “rescissions.” These are a request from the White House for Congress to approve $9.4 billion in cuts it has made in spending that Congress approved. By law, the president cannot decide not to spend money Congress has appropriated, although officials in the Trump administration did so as soon as they took office. Passing this rescission package would put Congress’s stamp of approval on those cuts, even though they change what Congress originally agreed to.

Those cuts include ending federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps to fund National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and local stations. The Trump administration says NPR and PBS “fuel…partisanship and left-wing propaganda.”

Congress must approve the request by Friday, or the monies will be spent as the laws originally established. The House has already passed the package, but senators are unhappy that the White House has not actually specified what will be cut. Senators will be talking to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought—a key architect of Project 2025—today in a closed-door session in hopes of getting more information.

In June, Vought told CNN that this package is just “the first of many rescissions bills” and that if Congress won’t pass them, the administration will hold back funds under what’s called “impoundment,” although Congress explicitly outlawed that process in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

“We still are lacking the level of detail that is needed to make the right decisions,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said. “It’s extremely unusual for any senator to not be able to get that kind of detailed information.”

Andrew Goudsward of Reuters reported yesterday that nearly two thirds of the lawyers in the unit of the Department of Justice whose job was to defend Trump administration policies have quit. "Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system," one lawyer who left the unit told Goudsward. "How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?"

As the Supreme Court strengthens the office of the presidency without explaining the constitutional basis for its decisions, who is actually running the government is a very real question.

A week ago, Jason Zengerle of the New York Times suggested that the real power in the Oval Office is deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is driving the administration’s focus on attacking immigrants. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem defers to Miller, a Trump advisor told Zengerle. Attorney General Pam Bondi is focused on appearing on the Fox News Channel and so has essentially given Miller control over the Department of Justice. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is “producing a reality TV show every day” and doesn’t care about policy.

On the same day Zengerle was writing about domestic policy decisions, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic was making a similar observation about international policy. He notes that Trump has only a fleeting interest in foreign policy, abandoning issues he thinks are losing ones for others to handle. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth keeps talking about “lethality” and trans people but doesn’t seem to know policy at all. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who is also the national security advisor—appears to have little power in the White House.

Apparently, Nichols writes, American defense policy is in the hands of Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who made the decision to withhold weapons from Ukraine and who ordered a review of the U.S. defense pact with the United Kingdom and Australia in an attempt to put pressure on Australia to spend more on defense.

“In this administration,” Nichols writes, “the principals are either incompetent or detached from most of the policy making, and so decisions are being made at lower levels without much guidance from above.” This is a common system in authoritarian regimes, Nichols notes, “where the top levels of government tackle the one or two big things the leader wants done and everything else tumbles down to other functionaries, who can then drive certain issues according to their own preferences (which seems to be what Colby is doing), or who will do just enough to stay under the boss’s radar and out of trouble (which seems to be what most other Trump appointees are doing). In such a system, no one is really in charge except Trump—which means that on most days, and regarding many issues, no one is in charge.”

New York Times, Spurned U.S. Attorney Clings to Job by Being Appointed His Own Assistant, Santul Nerkar and Jonah E. Bromwich, July 16, 2025. District judges recently denied John Sarcone, who was interim U.S. attorney, the permanent position. The Justice Department then gave him a special appointment so he could continue in the role.

President Trump’s embattled interim U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y., is back leading the office under an unusual new title, just days after a panel of judges refused to appoint him to lead the office permanently.

According to a letter from the Justice Department’s human resources division, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, John A. Sarcone III has been named “special attorney to the attorney general.” The appointment, the letter says, gives him the powers of a U.S. attorney, and is “indefinite.”

The move means that Mr. Sarcone is the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, according to a spokesman for the office, as well as its first assistant. It is unclear how Mr. Sarcone could occupy two positions at once.

The title of special attorney has historically been granted to officials with a particular expertise to lead difficult or complex prosecutions, such as that of Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist. It does not appear to have ever been bestowed upon a leader of a U.S. attorney’s office.

For now, the appointment appears to allow Mr. Sarcone, who has scrapped publicly with journalists and the police, to effectively ignore Monday’s decision by the panel of judges to spurn him.

Mr. Sarcone declined to comment.

Though Mr. Sarcone’s situation is unusual, it reflects a presidential administration that has shattered legal norms and continues to appoint lawyers with little prosecutorial experience to run U.S. attorney’s offices.

New York Times, Abrego Garcia Lawyers Question Evidence From Key Witness in Criminal Case, Alan Feuer,  July 16, 2025. The exchanges unfolded at a hearing in Federal District Court in Nashville intended to determine whether Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia should be freed from criminal custody as he awaits trial.

Lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March, poked holes on Wednesday in some of the evidence supporting the charges that were used to bring him back to face trial in the United States.

The efforts by the lawyers were largely focused on chipping away at the accounts of a group of witnesses who have come forward in recent weeks to accuse Mr. Abrego Garcia of having taken part in a nearly decadelong conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.

Appearing in court Wednesday, the lawyers also questioned the federal agent who led the inquiry into Mr. Abrego Garcia, getting him to acknowledge on the stand that while he had personally spoken with the government’s star witness in the case, he had never looked at three previous — and less incriminating — interviews conducted by other investigators.

All of this took place at a hearing in Federal District Court in Nashville intended to determine whether Mr. Abrego Garcia should be freed from criminal custody as he awaits trial. While a federal magistrate judge has already determined that he should go free, finding that he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, the district judge overseeing the case, Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., was asked by the government to revisit that decision.

Judge Crenshaw said he planned to make his own decision next week; how he rules will greatly affect Mr. Abrego Garcia’s future.

In a remarkable admission, the Justice Department said last week that it intends to push forward with prosecuting Mr. Abrego Garcia only if the judge keeps him locked up as he awaits trial. If Mr. Abrego Garcia is released, department lawyers have suggested that the charges will likely be dropped and he will be turned over to immigration officials for immediate deportation.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Economic and Politial Commentary: Hawks, Doves and Lapdogs, Paul Krugman, right, July 16, 2025. The next Fed chair will be an obedient partisan.

Yesterday’s CPI report looked fairly tame on the surface, but if you look at the details it showed clear signs that Trump’s tariffs are starting to drive up prices. And private surveys suggest that there’s a lot more inflation in the pipeline. For example, look at S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing, which shows the percentage of firms reporting higher prices. A higher number almost always points to higher official inflation ahead, and right now it’s definitely telling us that tariffs are about to hit hard:

Why aren’t we seeing the full effects of the tariffs in official statistics? For the record, I don’t believe Trump officials are cooking the books — yet.

That’s not to say that they won’t at some point, and there’s a good chance that they will. But so far what we’re probably seeing is a combination of ordinary lags and the temporary effects of the TACO (Trump always chickens out) narrative. Buyers get pissed off at sellers when prices rise, so sellers who don’t want to lose market share have an incentive to hold prices down despite higher costs if they think the Trump tariffs will come back down in a few weeks.

I, however, am a TACO skeptic. I think Trump really is a Tariff Man who will keep us at Smoot-Hawley-level tariffs indefinitely, and businesses will eventually realize that and raise prices accordingly.

And then what? Clearly, we shouldn’t expect Trump to admit that his tariffs are raising prices, or even to admit that prices are rising. What we can expect is that he will keep putting pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates. I don’t think he’ll manage to push Jerome Powell out before next May, but as I wrote last week, whoever he picks after that will do his bidding.

Bloomberg has an interesting article about Kevin Warsh, one likely choice — although a newer article suggests that Kevin Hassett, whom nobody suspects of having any independent principles, may be in first place. The article expresses puzzlement over Warsh’s support for rate cuts now, despite above-target inflation, when he was a big advocate of higher rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. How did such a monetary hawk suddenly become a monetary dove? But one of the people the article quotes hits the nail on the head:

“He was the one for years complaining about inflation when it didn’t exist, and has kind of changed his tune,” said Stephen Myrow, who runs Beacon Policy Advisers and crossed paths with Warsh while working in the Bush administration.

“People will like that he has the resume and can play the part, but he clearly doesn’t have any core convictions,” Myrow said.

Indeed. Back in 2010 I went through one of Warsh’s hard-money speeches, and found it completely incoherent.

If Warsh does get the nod, many on Wall Street will probably be reassured, believing that he’s a serious person. But he isn’t and never was. The Fed will soon be as politicized as everything else in the federal government.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, July 16, 2025. The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year.

This April, Baltimore saw five homicides. That is the fewest of any month since 1970, when the city began tracking monthly homicide numbers. In the first six months of the year, homicides were down 22% compared to 2024, and non-fatal shootings were down 19%. This is the latest in a string of historic declines in violent crime. In 2024, homicides dropped 23% from 2023 numbers, and non-fatal shootings dropped 34%. In 2023, the city also saw record-breaking decreases.

What has made Baltimore — which President Trump and other conservatives deride as a “filthy” Democrat-controlled “slum” — so successful in making its streets safer?

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who was first elected in 2020, has brought the city’s homicide rate down by treating violent crime as a public health crisis. That means treating violent crime as a symptom of multiple factors, including racism, poverty, and past violence. Addressing violent crime as a public health issue involves going beyond arresting people after violence is committed and taking proactive and preventative measures.

“What Baltimore did that's so impactful is really invested in a whole ecosystem of community–oriented interventions,” The Vera Institute for Justice's Daniela Gilbert told Popular Information. Under Scott, Baltimore has fought violent crime not only through policing but through a network of programs that provide support for housing, career development, and education.

In today's political environment, these approaches are frequently derided as "woke" and "naive." But the dramatic decline in violent crime in Baltimore over the last few years suggests that there is a better word to describe its holistic strategy: effective.Targeting the root causes of gun violence

 

July 15

 

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Supreme Court Clears Way for Dismantling of Education Department, Abbie VanSickle, July 15, 2025 (print ed.). The Supreme Court agrees that the firing of thousands of Education Dept. workers can proceed, 

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday that the Trump administration can proceed with dismantling the Education Department by firing thousands of workers.

The order is a significant victory for the administration and could ease President Trump’s efforts to sharply curtail the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools.

It also represents an expansion of presidential power, allowing Mr. Trump to functionally eliminate a government department created by Congress, without legislators’ input.

It comes after a decision by the justices last week that cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with cutting thousands of jobs across a number of federal agencies, including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury.

The order by the court was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as is typical in such emergency applications. No vote count was given, which is usual for emergency orders, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined by the court’s other two liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The order is technically temporary, applying while appeals proceed through the courts. In practice, thousands of fired workers whom a Boston judge had ordered be reinstated are now again subject to removal from their jobs.

The Trump administration has announced plans to fire more than 1,300 workers, a move that would effectively gut the department, which manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order on March 20 instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start shutting down the agency. Trump administration officials cited low test scores by students as the reason to dismantle the department.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said during the ceremony where he signed the executive order.

The move immediately set up a legal fight over the future of the department because it was created by an act of Congress, and legislators had not given approval to eliminate it.

Shortly after, two school districts, the American Federation of Teachers and 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed a legal challenge in federal court in Massachusetts. The challengers asked a judge to block the executive order and to unwind a round of layoffs that gutted the department’s work force by about half.

Lawyers for the challengers argued that the administration’s plans would interfere with the department’s ability to carry out functions required by law.

On May 22, Judge Myong J. Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the fired employees while the lawsuit was pending. Judge Joun, who was nominated to the bench by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he agreed that only Congress could eliminate the department and that the administration’s actions amounted to an illegal shutdown of the agency.

On June 4, a panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld Judge Joun’s ruling. Two days later, the Trump administration filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene and lift the trial judge’s order. In the filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Judge Joun had “thwarted the executive branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education.”

In response, lawyers for the challengers argued that the agency’s leaders had “set out to destroy the agency by executive fiat” and without the support of Congress.

In court filings, the challengers asserted that the trial judge had properly determined that the government was likely to lose its argument that it had not eliminated the department. Judge Joun properly recognized that just because “a skeleton crew remains” at the Education Department, that did not mean the Trump administration was “faithfully carrying out Congress’s mission” in what was effectively “tearing the department down to the plywood,” they argued.

The Trump administration replied in court filings that the department had “determined that it can carry out its statutorily mandated functions with a pared-down staff and that many discretionary functions are better left to the states.”

 

New York Times, 24 states sue Trump over $6.8 billion withheld from education, Sarah Mervosh, July 14, 2025. About 1.4 million children nationwide attend after-school programs that rely on federal support. 

A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over $6.8 billion in education funding that the administration has withheld a few weeks before the start of the school year.

The withheld money includes about 14 percent of all federal funding for elementary and secondary education across the country. It helps pay for free or low-cost after-school programs that give students a place to go while their parents work. It also covers training to improve the effectiveness of teachers and help for children learning English.

Attorneys general from 22 states signed onto the lawsuit, along with the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. All are Democrats.

The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of holding back the money illegally. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says that a president cannot unilaterally refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Rhode Island to order the release of the money, which was supposed to be sent to states on July 1.

The Department of Education notified state education agencies on June 30 that it was holding the money back while it conducted a review. The Trump administration has sought to slash federal spending and align the budget with the president’s political priorities.

A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget said that an initial review found instances of federal education money being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda.” Among the examples he cited was a seminar on “queer resistance in the arts.”

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the lawsuit.

The White House has not said when the money might be released. It has proposed eliminating dedicated funding for the programs in its 2026 budget, ending some of the programs outright and collapsing others into a smaller pot of education funding for states.

President Trump and his team have said they believe the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional, and have argued that the president should have a greater say over spending in many areas of government.

Mr. Trump has said he also wants to eliminate the Department of Education, arguing that education should be more fully controlled by the states, though only Congress can abolish a cabinet-level agency.

The withholding of $6.8 billion for education has been sharply criticized by a growing chorus of Democrats, as well as by some Republicans.

Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents suburban areas north of New York City, urged President Trump to release $1.3 billion of the money to be used for after-school and other programs that keep children occupied outside of school hours, including in the summer.

He argued in a statement that the programs fulfill the Trump administration’s goal of giving power over education to the states, because state education agencies manage the money and choose which organizations receive it.

Nationwide, the withheld federal money funds after-school and other services for an estimated 1.4 million children, or nearly 20 percent of all students who participate in after-school programs, according to the Afterschool Alliance, an advocacy group. Most of the students in the programs come from lower-income households, and through after-school, they typically receive academic help, enrichment and a free snack or meal.

“Work doesn’t end at 3 o’clock,” said Christy Gleason, executive director of the Save the Children Action Network, which runs after-school programs at 41 schools, mainly in rural areas.

In many rural areas, the federally funded after-school programs are the only option. Cutting them would leave working parents there with few alternatives for child care, she said.

The withheld money includes $2.1 billion to help train, mentor and retain effective teachers, with a focus on low-income school districts. It also includes $1.4 billion in flexible funding for schools to spend on art, music, mental health services, physical education and technology. Smaller amounts go toward helping children learning English; adult literacy and education; and support for children of migrant farmworkers.

In Monterey County, Calif., about one in eight students qualify for the federal program for children of migrant farmworkers, said Deneen Guss, the county superintendent, who works with 24 local school districts.

New York Times, Trump Administration: Federal Workers’ ‘Emotional Roller Coaster’: Fired, Rehired, Fired Again, July 15, 2025. Former government employees are finding that perhaps the only thing harder than getting laid off from the federal government is staying that way.

Getting fired once was painful. Getting rehired and then fired a second time was excruciating. But federal workers are learning that waiting for the government to make it official may be worst of all.

When President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency began slashing jobs in February, the mass layoffs were supposed to cut through America’s hulking bureaucracy and streamline government functions. For workers caught up in those firings, and the legal wrangling that ensued, the process has been anything but efficient.

In interviews, workers described reaching a stage where they were ready to move on, only to be frustrated by administrative morass. They are finding that the only thing harder than getting fired is staying that way, and navigating a Kafkaesque web of bureaucratic snafus that has left some of them in a surreal employment limbo.

Obtaining the termination paperwork necessary to apply for employment benefits in some states has taken months, some said. Calls and emails to former bosses and human resources officials went unanswered, or were redirected in what seemed like an endless loop. Lapses in health care coverage were a major source of stress.

Sometimes, the people whose job it was to deal with terminated employees had been fired, too.

“Honestly, I need this to be over,” said Erin Czajkowski, who was fired from her job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in February, rehired in March and then fired again in May. “Every time I get an email, my anxiety spikes and I get mad.”

Ms. Czajkowski, from Carmel, Ind., said she spent weeks seeking answers from former supervisors about her employment status and how to interpret various court orders stemming from legal challenges to the firings. The government would not send her formal separation documents until June 30.

At one point, Ms. Czajkowski, 43, said her former supervisor called her to ask the status of her employment. The supervisor told Ms. Czajkowski that her name was not on any list.

New York Times, Democrats Must ‘Toughen Up’ Against Trump, Obama Tells Donors, Reid J. Epstein, July 15, 2025 (print ed.). Frustrated that prominent Democrats have not fought harder, former President Barack Obama said in a speech that his party’s leaders needed to step up.

Former President Barack Obama has a stern critique for members of his party: Too many have been cowed into silence.

In private remarks to party donors on Friday night, Mr. Obama, shown at left on a magazine cover, scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.

“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Mr. Obama said at a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey.

“What I have been surprised by is the degree to which I’ve seen people who, when I was president, or progressives, liberals, stood for all kinds of stuff, who seem like they’re kind of cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from just asserting what they believe, or at least what they said they believe,” he added.

Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats have been largely arguing among themselves about how to confront a hostile Trump administration. Mr. Obama’s remarks were circulated by his office on Monday.

He expressed particular disdain for law firms that he said had been willing to “set aside the law” in response to Mr. Trump’s actions “not because, by the way, that they’re going to be thrown in jail, but because they might lose a few clients and might not be able to finish that kitchen rehab at their Hampton house. I’m not impressed.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Columbia University, his alma mater, which is on the verge of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to settle with the Trump administration over accusations it permitted antisemitism on campus, or name any of the prominent Democratic law firms that have made deals with Mr. Trump’s White House.

But the former president’s comments were interpreted by people in the room as a critique of the party’s elites for having gone quiet when they were sorely needed to step up, according to a person who attended.

The excerpts provided by Mr. Obama’s office contained no evidence of physician-heal-thyself reflectiveness. Mr. Obama, after all, has scarcely been at the tip of the Democratic spear in resisting Mr. Trump. He has issued few public statements opposing Trump administration actions and has yet to appear this year at a rally, town hall or other public event staged by opponents of Mr. Trump.Last month, Mr. Obama appeared in a conversation in Connecticut with the celebrity historian Heather Cox Richardson during which he said the country was “dangerously close” to sliding into autocracy.

On Friday, not only did Mr. Obama scold Democrats who have failed to speak out against Mr. Trump and his administration, he also appeared to mock the level of sacrifice or risk-taking that doing so required. He invoked the nine-foot-by-nine-foot prison cell in which Nelson Mandela spent 27 years, saying, “Nobody’s asking for that kind of courage.”

Mr. Obama warned that the country was in danger of backsliding on the steady social progress it has made since World War II — a period “in which everything kept getting better, more or less,” he said.Editors’ PicksParents and Graduate Students Have New Loan Limits. Who Will Fill the Gap?8 Moves to Make Everyday Tasks Easier‘I Noticed a Building Handyman Washing Down the Sidewalk’

Mr. Obama has spent much of his post-presidential life producing movies, documentaries and podcasts while building a beachfront compound in Hawaii and playing golf on Martha’s Vineyard.

New York Times, He Helped Big Companies Dodge Taxes. Now He’s Writing the Rules, Jesse Drucker, July 15, 2025 (print ed.). Ken Kies, a longtime tax lobbyist who worked for some of the world’s largest businesses, is now running the Treasury Department’s office that will administer Trump’s tax law.

In January 2022, the Internal Revenue Service was cracking down on a tax dodge from the agency’s “dirty dozen” list of abusive shelters. To fight back, promoters of the scheme turned to the lobbyist Ken Kies.

In a conference call with lawyers and financial advisers, Mr. Kies outlined plans to fight the I.R.S., including by capitalizing on his close relationship with a top agency official, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.

Now Mr. Kies has become the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official. The former veteran lobbyist, who has worked for some of America’s biggest companies, was confirmed by the Senate last month to serve as Treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy.

It is not uncommon in President Trump’s Washington for lobbyists or other interested parties to get high-level positions at agencies where they once sought access on behalf of corporate clients. But Mr. Kies is not just any lobbyist. For decades, he has played an instrumental role in enabling some of the most lucrative and most important tax avoidance strategies used by multinational companies and the wealthiest Americans.

When the Clinton administration sought to stem the tide of companies shifting trillions of dollars of profits into offshore havens, Mr. Kies led the effort on behalf of a coalition of businesses to kill the regulation. In the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Kies successfully pushed for legislation to make such offshore tax dodges even easier to execute. During the Obama administration, he fended off another attempted crackdown on those strategies.

In 2017, as part of a sweeping package of tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Kies lobbied for a new tax break that provides a 20 percent deduction to certain businesses, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans. And most recently, he advised the Trump Organization on a dispute with the I.R.S.

His clients have included companies like General Electric, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Pfizer, Bank of America, Aetna, Anheuser Busch, Time Warner and Caterpillar as well as hedge funds like Millennium Management and Elliott Management, private equity firms like General Atlantic, foreign giants like Deutsche Bank and numerous insurance companies.  

New York Times, Contempt Plan for Trump Aides Has Been Paused by Appeals Court for Months, Alan Feuer, July 15, 2025. The three-judge panel has allowed the case to languish in a kind of legal limbo, catching the eye of some legal experts.

In April, a federal appeals court in Washington took what seemed to be a fairly normal step: It temporarily put on hold a trial judge’s plan to begin contempt proceedings against the Trump administration to determine whether officials had violated his order stopping flights of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.

The move by the appeals court, known as an administrative stay, was supposed to have been an incremental measure intended to buy it time as it considered a more substantial type of stay — one designed to pause the case as the court dug into the merits of the contempt proposal laid out by the trial judge, James E. Boasberg.

But three months later, the three-judge panel that put the stay in place has done nothing at all to push the case forward, allowing it to languish in a kind of legal limbo. And the panel’s lack of action has caught the eye of some legal experts — if only because as it has sat on the case, new evidence has emerged that the Trump administration may have disobeyed Judge Boasberg’s order.

“It’s very unusual,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor. “An appeals court may need hours or days to figure out an administrative stay, but it doesn’t need weeks and certainly not months.”

The pause imposed by the three judges, who sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, emerged from the first and one of the most contentious cases involving President Trump’s use of a powerful wartime statute, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport Venezuelans accused of being members of a street gang to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

On March 15, the Trump administration sent the first set of flights carrying immigrants to El Salvador, prompting an emergency hearing in front of Judge Boasberg. At the hearing, the judge told the Justice Department that any planes headed to El Salvador under the powers of the act needed to be stopped at once and that any planes already in the air should turn around.

That never happened, however, leaving nearly 140 Venezuelans accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua in the custody of Salvadoran jailers.

For more than a month, Judge Boasberg used every means at his disposal to figure out whether Trump officials had willfully flouted his instructions, but was met with repeated obfuscations from the government. Ultimately, on April 16, he gave the White House a choice: It could provide the deported men with the due process they were denied when they were flown out of the country or it could face a searching contempt investigation that might, he cautioned, escalate into criminal charges being filed.

Two days later, the appellate panel voted 2 to 1 to stop that process in its tracks. Both of the judges who approved the stay — Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao — were appointed by Mr. Trump.

For the next 10 days, the Justice Department and lawyers for the Venezuelan men traded court papers on the question of whether the stay should remain in place. But after that, the appellate case was completely dormant for nearly two months.

The panel did not ask for more briefing or schedule a hearing for debate. In fact, it gave no indication of its intentions whatsoever.

Then, on June 25, the lawyers for the Venezuelans notified the appeals court of a significant development. A former Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, had filed a whistle-blower complaint, accusing a senior department official of telling his subordinates that he would be willing to ignore Judge Boasberg’s orders in the deportation case.

“The planes needed to take off no matter what,” Mr. Reuveni quoted the official, Emil Bove III, as saying at a meeting before the hearing in front of the judge.

Mr. Bove then suggested that the department would need to consider ignoring court orders, using an expletive for emphasis, according to Mr. Reuveni’s account. “Mr. Reuveni perceived that others in the room looked stunned, and he observed awkward, nervous glances among people in the room. Silence overtook the room.”

The Justice Department quickly fired back on June 26, telling the appellate judges in a letter that Mr. Reuveni’s complaint should be “disregarded, if not stricken entirely” from the record of the case, because it contained unproven accusations.

“The material that plaintiffs filed — a letter on behalf of a former federal employee, styled as a whistle-blower complaint — does not even qualify as ‘evidence,’ let alone ‘authority,’” the Justice Department wrote. “It is a set of allegations, leaked to the press for political reasons and in violation of ethical duties, that the government forcefully denies.”

After that letter was filed, the appellate case descended again into radio silence.

The same three-judge panel also imposed an administrative stay on a separate order Judge Boasberg issued in the case, directing the administration to “facilitate” giving the deported Venezuelan men due process. That stay was issued on June 10, but the panel has not signaled what it might do next.

While lengthy administrative stays are not unheard-of, the Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett criticized the practice in a concurring opinion issued in March 2024 in a case about a Texas immigration law.

Justice Barrett said administrative stays could be problematic because they can be issued quickly and without delving into the merits of a case. If left to linger, she suggested, they could be used as a way to freeze a case in place without discussing any of its underlying facts.

“An administrative stay should last no longer than necessary to make an intelligent decision on the motion for a stay pending appeal,” she wrote.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

The Bulwark, Opinion: Eternal Sunshine of the Crackpot Mind, Andrew Egger, July 15, 2025. During the heyday of the 2008 campaign and the early years of the administration, staff for Barack Obama got a remarkable lesson in the unsquashability of the conspiracy-addled mind.

VAs the “birther” theory that Obama had actually been born in Kenya was taking root—first on email listservs, then around the broader internet—those staffers initially hoped to treat it as beneath notice. But the theory soon spread broadly enough that they felt obliged to respond—only to watch in amazement as the various proofs they offered, from his Hawaii birth certificate to state records to contemporaneous newspaper announcements, failed to squash the conspiracy. Instead, the conspiracists took each proof in turn as further evidence of a still-grander coverup.

“This lingered out there over the course of years,” Ben LaBolt, Obama’s spokesman during the campaign and in the White House, told The Bulwark. “Not only did we have to produce the actual birth certificates but once it was produced, they were like, ‘That’s not the actual birth certificate. It’s not the long form one!’”

The lesson, LaBolt and others learned, was deeply sobering: It’s damn near impossible to convince a conspiracy theorist that they’re living in lunacy. The only real remedy is to try and change the subject or to shrink down the conspiracy to a less politically damaging size.

“It is just incredibly hard to produce documentation that will dissuade people because they are primed for disbelief,” said LaBolt. “If you satisfy the vast majority of rational people then you need to take that as a win.”

This week, one of the most infamous proponents of the birther conspiracy theory—an individual who LaBolt and company never did manage to satisfy—is having some conspiracy-theory problems of his own. And it’s not clear that Donald Trump will be content with satisfying “the vast majority of rational people” in his response.

There are two ways you can look at Team Trump’s on-a-dime pivot on the Jeffrey Epstein matter. One possibility is that the government is sitting on information that really does make Trump himself look bad. This is not exactly implausible: Trump palled around with Epstein for years and was perhaps the last guy on earth defending Ghislaine Maxwell.

The other possibility is simply that, after years of cultivating the Epstein-conspiracy beast for political gain, the White House has suddenly realized to its horror that it is incapable now of cooking up a meal that can satisfy the monster’s hunger.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Speaking of nice, if you’re still considering the 30-day free trial of Bulwark+, go ahead and try it before time runs out. Join us!Subscribed

When Trump promised on the campaign trail to release the Epstein files, hardcore Epstein truthers, who overlap substantially with other Trump-focused conspiracy movements, didn’t take him merely to be saying he’d open up the books so everyone could kick the tires and satisfy their curiosity. They took him to be endorsing their maximalist reading of the case—that the government was sitting on a massive trove of smoking-gun evidence that would lead to the downfall of a vast cabal of satanist pedophile Democrats and other diabolical elites.

That the White House had underestimated their thirst for this outcome was obvious when Attorney General Pam Bondi, to much fanfare, released binders of “Epstein files” to a clutch of goofball MAGA influencers. It was slop for the piggies; there was nothing new in the files. When the hardcore conspiracists discovered this, they weren’t thrilled. Okay, but when do we get the televised execution of Oprah?

In his lizard-brain way, Trump gets the conspiratorial mind better than most; he senses that conspiracies cannot really be debunked, they can only be redirected. This might be why, in his personal attempt to end the story with a Truth Social post over the weekend, he tried to supplant the Epstein conspiracy with a brand-new, even grander conspiracy: that “Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration” had created the Epstein files to hurt him and that “now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.” It echoes, in a way, his response to Obama releasing his birth certificate, in which he took credit for the disclosure and suggested it might not be real—and then, a year later, declared he’d make a $5 million donation to charity if Obama produced his college application and passport records.

It’s a transparent attempt to keep the conspiracy growing. But it’s also pretty weak tea compared to the conspiracy the Epstein maximalists already think they’re onto. Trump, so good over the years at whipping his people into greater and greater delusional frenzies, may be learning it’s much harder to command his base not to care about this one.

The Hartmann Report, The Authoritarian Test: From Rosie to Retes, Who’s Next? Thom Hartmann, July 15,2025. Each escalation — from ICE kidnappings to threats against critics — is a measure of how much authoritarianism we’ll tolerate before we push back.

Trump’s threat to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship is a “test.”Kids do it all the time. Throw a tantrum in the store demanding cookies and if the parents don’t remove them from the store right away, every visit will see the tantrums escalate.

Testing the boundaries. When the test succeeds, the boundaries get moved and a new boundary gets tested, on and on until finally the child’s behavior is so egregious he’s stopped. Or he always gets away with everything and grows up to be Donald Trump.

We learn this early.We’ve seen a series of these tests coming from the Trump administration, following the very specific and consistently repeated pattern that history tells us played out in the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğon, el Sisi, and pretty much every other person who took over a democracy and then, step-by-step turned it into a dictatorship.

Trump started testing racism as a political weapon when he came down the elevator at Trump Tower and spoke about “Mexican murderers and rapists” in front of what media reports said was a crowd he’d hired for $50/person from a company that provides extras to movie and TV production companies.

While his initial goal was reportedly to get NBC to renew Apprentice and pay him more than Gwen Stefani, his racism test work out shockingly well; suddenly he was a serious contender for the party that had inherited the KKK vote when Democrats abandoned the South with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the 1960s.

Another test was whether the exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies that he and his family had used to hustle real estate could work in politics. He quickly discovered that GOP base voters — after decades of having uncritically (slavishly, even) swallowed lies about trickle-down economics, “evil union bosses,” and the “importance of small government” — were more than happy to embrace or ignore, as the occasion demanded, his prevarications.

From there, Trump tested exactly how gullible his most fervent supporters — and the media that fed them a daily diet of very profitable outrage and hate — would buy into a lie so audacious, so in defiance of both the law and common sense, so outside the bounds of normal patriotism, that they could be whipped into a murderous frenzy and kill three police officers while trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America.The nation and our press reacted as if he’d failed that test, but when he was able to cow enough senators to avoid being convicted in his impeachment trial, he knew he’d won.Now he’s again testing how far he can go.George Retes is a 25-year-old Hispanic natural-born American citizen and disabled Army veteran working as a security guard at a legal marijuana operation in California. When it was raided by ICE, he got in his car and tried to drive away to avoid getting in the middle of what he saw as trouble.Masked agents chased him down, smashed the window of his car and pepper-sprayed him in the face, dragged him out of his car, and disappeared him.Testing.Will Democrats make a stink? Will the media make it more than a one-day story? Will any Republicans break rank and stand against his excesses? Was it even mentioned on any of the Sunday shows? How far can he go next time?So far, Trump thinks he’s winning these tests. The outrages are coming so fast and furious that it’s becoming impossible to keep track of them, just like in Germany in 1933 and Chile in 1973.Retes wasn’t the only US citizen who’s been arrested or detained by ICE; they’ve gone after a mayor, a member of Congress, and even assaulted a United States senator. A 71-year-old grandmother was assaulted and handcuffed by masked agents. Axios documents others; as the CNN headline on the story about other US citizens being snatched notes: “‘We are not safe in America today:’ These American citizens say they were detained by ICE.”Testing.After years of hysteria on the billionaire-owned sewer of Fox “News” about our nation’s first Black president deploying “FEMA Camps” to detain white conservatives, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas, ranting that FEMA Camps set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and...confiscating guns.” He murdered those innocent concert-goers, he said, to “wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves,” saying, “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”Now those detention facilities conservatives feared has come into being, as Republicans in Congress just funded concentration camps like “Alligator Auschwitz” in multiple states across America. Visiting congress members claim inmates are packed over 30 to a cage, with Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz reporting her horror when she was shown that, “They get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth, where they poop, in the same unit.”Testing.

New York Times, Kennedy Claims Doctors Profit Off Vaccines. In Fact, Many Lose Money on Them, Teddy Rosenbluth, July 15, 2025.  Experts said the health secretary’s remarks send a dangerous message: Don’t trust your physician.

Dr. Stacey Bartell wanted to offer vaccines to her patients. But at her small family medicine practice in a Detroit suburb, she could not find a way to make the finances work.

Stocking enough vaccines for her patients would cost thousands of dollars upfront, with no guarantee the sum would be recouped. She employed just one nurse practitioner, and would have to hire additional staff to manage the inventory and stay on top of insurance billing. And the special refrigerators required to store vaccines would cost another $1,000.

She knew how much vaccines mattered to her patients’ health. But it was money her practice, which was already operating on thin margins, couldn’t afford to spend.

“We just haven’t been able to shore it up here,” Dr. Bartell said. Instead she has to send her patients to pharmacies and the county health department for their shots — a concession that “hurts my heart,” she said.

So a few weeks ago, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, claimed in an interview with Tucker Carlson that vaccine profits created “perverse incentives” for pediatricians to push immunizations, Dr. Bartell was confused.

Doctors widely consider vaccines to be a money pit. Research shows that most pediatricians either break even or lose money on shots. One 2017 study found that nearly a quarter of family medicine providers and 12 percent of pediatricians stopped purchasing vaccines because of prohibitive costs.

To many experts, suggesting otherwise not only ignored that data, but also sent a dangerous message: that patients should doubt their doctor’s motives in recommending vaccines.

“This idea that we vaccinate kids to make money honestly is misleading and dangerous,” said Dr. David Higgins, a pediatrician and preventive medicine expert at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.“We actually overcome obstacles to be able to provide them,” he added.What Do You Want to Know About Vaccines?July 14, 2025

Mr. Kennedy has long argued that pediatricians benefit financially from vaccines, which he has claimed generate “foot traffic” that boosts business and leads to “huge bonuses” from insurance companies if doctors keep immunization rates high.

In the interview with Mr. Carlson, Mr. Kennedy said research had shown “that 50 percent of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines.” (The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions about the source of that statistic, and none of the experts interviewed for this article were familiar with it.)

 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary, House Republicans Block Release of Epstein Files, Troy Matthews, July 15, 2025. Democrats pushed an amendment to make the files available to the public but were rejected

House Republicans on the Rules Committee voted to block the public release of the Jeffery Epstein files Monday evening. The vote was on an amendment filed by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to the GENIUS Act, which would have required that the Department of Justice make all files related to Epstein's case available on a publicly accessible website within 30 days.

The vote was 5-7, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) joining with all Democrats to vote for the amendment. "The public's been asking for it," Norman said. "I think there are files. All of a sudden not to have files is a little strange, We'll see how it plays out...I think the president will do the right thing."

"I want to know what the hell is in these files," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). "This is about trust. Republicans said, 'Trust us. Vote forus and we will release these files.' Well here we are, they're backtracking."

The vote comes amidst a right-wing revolt against the Trump administration following the fallout from a DOJ memo that stated the infamous Epstein "client list" does not exist and that Epstein committed suicide in jail, despite Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi telling reporters in February that the list was sitting on her desk.

On Monday it was reported by the Daily Mail that Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell is willing to testify to Congress about her knowledge of the case, but no one in the Republican majority has called her to testify, which seems strange for a party that campaigned on making the Epstein list public for so long.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges and is to date the only person charged in the Epstein pedophilia ring. 

Lance's Substack, Who's Your Daddy Ghislaine? Lance F Rosen, right, July 15, 2025. The So-called "Missing" Epstein Files Are Sitting Inside A Tallahassee Jail Cell Serving 20 Years.

Ghislaine Maxwell was far more than just Jeffrey Epstein's former lover and then "pimp." She was his door-opener and liaison to the dark underbelly of the intelligence world, inhabited by double and triple agents, arms traffickers, organized crime kingpins, money launderers, human traffickers, political leaders, sex cults, royalty and titled nobility, and billionaires, some of whose family's wealth came from the rackets beginning in the Prohibition era.

The circles in which she traveled were wired into the intelligence agencies of Israel, the UK, Canada, USSR/Russia among others, and were on occasion "used" by US agencies. Those involved were in many cases highly secretive and made only rare public appearances, not typical celebrities.

This billionaires network had a name which was "MEGA," (aka "The Study Group") and it was co-founded by Jeffrey Epstein's first corporate client Les Wexner, (Victoria's Secret, Bath And Body Works) and the Bronfman family, led by Charles (Seagrams Whiskey) who was Robert Maxwell's business partner, his older brother Edgar Sr., as well as his nephew Edgar Jr. Also members were financiers Michael Steinhardt, Ron Lauder, and the deceased CEO of CIA front company United Fruit, Max Fisher.

Virtually everyone in Ghislaine Maxwell's orbit was either an agent, or asset of those four intelligence agencies, as well as corrupt elements of the US Department Of Justice and CIA. Her actual sponsors were not on Jeffrey Epstein's "list," rather he was on theirs. We will compile a dossier which names the people who worked with Ghislaine to create the monster Epstein became.

<Ghislaine is far more important in this longterm operation than was Epstein because of who she is, not withstanding his financial clout. She is the daughter of Robert Maxwell. If you've no idea who he was, stay with me and you'll find out.>

She is in every respect her father's daughter, and therefore higher ranking in the international establishment than was the global espionage project known as Jeffrey Epstein whom she picked up and used as a deployble asset.

Part 1-- A Global "Honeytrap"

Their shared mission was to set up a hi-tech "honeytrap" to gather Kompromat on behalf of Israel primarily, in addition to rival intelligence agencies and operatives who were on HER client list, which she inherited from her infamous father. The target of these operations were leading figures in the political, national security, business, industrial and finanicial command structure of the United States, as well as those of the nations with which the US is strategically aligned.

Truth be told, we do not yet know if there are still actual files to be released, and if so, in what form they exist. However we strongly suspect there is something there being sat upon based upon the wild three-ring circus sideshow now underway over whether to release them, or to keep them buried. Trump's hysteria and pathetic effort to change the subject are the proverbial smoke which indicates there is a fire burning somewhere.

I'm not certain we are looking for it in the right place. Whether Attorney General Pamela Bondi was "blowing smoke" when she claimed they were sitting on her desk, whether they implicate Trump or not, or if they might resolve the mystery of Epstein's strange death in jail, each of the possible answers are still just unproven theories until something solid emerges.

What is known, and in my view of far more value, is not Epstein's client list per se which is already fairly well established. Rather, that there was a treasure trove of electronic surveillance data and other evidence seized by the government when they raided Epstein's island and New York residences. As was the case in his previous trial, most of it was not made public because of Florida state laws protecting victims identities. Assuming that such video and other forensic evidence was never destroyed, that would be the "golden goose" because it was the raisón d'etre for the operation, not just for purposes of feeding Epstein's sick personal viewing habits.

We do know that Bondi was Attorney General of Florida from the 2011-2019 period during which the Feds loop closed around Epstein's operations. It would be disingenuous at the very least to suggest she didn't know who were the invited guests at Epstein's island during that entire period, or what was going on there for that matter.

Remember that Ghislaine and many others disassociated from him after his first conviction. (Trump had earlier in 2004, when he supposedly broke with him over a real estate deal gone bad) This first trial appeared to be a corrupt proceeding, resulting in a "sweetheart deal" engineered in 2008 by a Bush 43 appointed US Attorney in South Florida named Alex Acosta. (Later appointed Trump's Secretary Of Labor in 2017.) Acosta let Epstein "plead down" to only State charges in Florida to only serve 18 months in county jail with supposedly supervised release, without any federal conviction. According to a Washington Times piece by insider John Schindler, a former NSA counterterrorism expert and Professor at the US Naval War College, Acosta was told to lay off of Epstein because "he belonged to intelligence." This is a commonly accepted view among serious investigators, not a fringe theory.

It was the Miami Herald exposes of that corrupt plea bargain agreement by reporter Julie K. Brown, who pursued the testimony of the victims and brought new evidence to light, which led to the Federal investigation of Epstein being reopened. However there are reasons to think that there were behind the scenes decisions bearing on US national security which led to the Feds renewed investigations, which we will discuss later on.

Bondi also may have gotten orders from higher ups to leave him be, but she had to have at least kept tabs on him to insure that she didn't get blindsided by his scandals which might later hurt her own political ambitions.

However it might be jumping to conclusions to assume that the main or only reason for a possible cover-up of the presumed files is to protect Trump. Had the full story on Epstein ever come out, it had the potential to blow up a global network of several very powerful oligarchs and highly sensitive intelligence operations, a part of which Trump is a leading actor, but who is also known to be a controlled asset of higher forces.

It could also potentially shatter the strategic "special relationships" which the US had forged with Israel and the UK for most of the last 60 years. Frankly speaking, it still could. The MEGA group which groomed Epstein and made him wealthy spied on the US for the Mossad. (with the help of Maxwell's "PROMIS" software program sold to the US and other governments, which we will document.)

It could also sink the House of Windsor and the institution of the British Monarchy itself, whose King Charles presides as head of state over 15 separate realms and 53 countries in the British Commonwealth system. If ever proven that Buckingham Palace, meaning Queen Elizabeth herself, knowingly obstructed investigations of Prince Andrew's crimes, this would result in irreparable damage to the British throne, possibly enough to lead to their downfall.

Part 2- The Strategic Context, Why All This Now?

I feel it necessary to remind some folks that many people are desperately seeking a pathway for getting rid of the regime and are hoping that this scandal could bring Trump down, or at least seriously divide Trump's base. Hopefully that is not our "Plan A," though if it does help us it should count as serendipity. In other words, don't fire up the popcorn yet, and keep building the opposition mobilization to a higher level.

My view is that the latest episode in this affair is not just about Trump. It is about unearthing a longstanding espionage network and the shadowy world they inhabit, in addition to the continuing cover up for the horrific crimes committed against the victims by those who enabled it and participated. It is not coincidental that this wild political explosion occurs at the same time that Netanyahu's Israeli regime has gone rogue and is actively carrying out ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and now the West Bank, and purposefully trying to expand the Arab-Israeli conflict in the region, including pulling the US into their plan for regime change in Iran. There are factions in the US establishment that are hitting the brakes on this, and any new revelations in regard to Israeli spying against the US would serve that purpose.

The current renewed interest was sparked by the ugly breakup between the fascist "Bros" Elon Musk and Trump over the budget which has been thoroughly covered. One obvious question is, how would Musk know that Trump is in the purported files? For our purposes I think we should assume that Musk's access to pretty much any and all US Government data through his DOGE hacker group has enabled him to gather all sorts of information, both classified and not.

Part 3-- Ghislaine Knows Everything And Everyone, Thanks To Her Father Opening Doors--

Ian Robert Maxwell was a very complicated and powerful individual, in the sense that he was driven to build a personal empire over which he ruthlessly presided, free of scruples, ethics, or moral principles. He was a Czech-Jewish Holocaust survivor and expat soldier in the British Army, decorated for bravery personally by Field Marshal Montgomery during the war. He was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, and at the war's end emigrated to England to become a British subject. Maxwell promptly anglicized his name, succeeded in building a business conglomerate in both publishing (Pergamon Press) and finance, was elected to Parliament, and was a deployable asset of the British establishment's foreign intelligence services MI-6.

However his strongest loyalties were not to the British but to the state of Israel for whom he operated covertly as a Mossad agent. He recruited a global network of operators and financiers like himself whose allegiances to each other and their personal causes transcended the national interests of those nations in which they resided. Maxwell denied being Mossad, even going so far as to sue news services and writers who claimed he was. That all went out the window when two former Israeli Prime Ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Chaim Herzog, and six former Israeli intelligence chiefs either appeared or eulogized him at his funeral in Jerusalem.

Maxwell was many things, including a thief who stole 560 million dollars from his employees pension funds as was discovered after his death. But above all he was a spy and a mobster with his cover being a tabloid publisher and owner of Pergamon Press. He operated independently and provided his "services" to any agency or entity which served to expand his personal wealth and power, and as well he meddled in the affairs of governments on behalf of the strategic interests of Israel. He also worked covertly with Soviet Intelligence despite being an MI-6 asset. He was embeded in the operations of so many different agencies that to even characterize him as a "double or triple" agent has no relevance.

"Well, what's so wrong about that" you ask? For someone who is Jewish as I am, or an evangelical Christian that supports Israel, Maxwell seemingly comes off as a hero based upon this summary of his life so far. After all, one might reason, with everything that the Jews suffered under Hitler and throughout a milennia of anti-semitic pogroms, wasn't Maxwell justified in doing whatever work was needed to defend Israel, whether illegal, unethical, or not? Remember the term "Never Again?" Isn't that what he was about, helping the British and the Americans to defend Israel?

Well no, not exactly. As a matter of fact, Maxwell brought great harm to Israel overall, betrayed the British, and facilitated the theft of US nuclear and other government secrets which were passed to both the Israelis and likely the Russians. When he died in mysterious circumstances due to a boating "accident" in 1991, everyone previously involved with him hoped he took his secrets with him to his watery grave.

Next.....Part 4-- Spymaster Robert Maxwell Always Kept His "PROMIS"--

MeidasTouch Network, How Musk Monetized Government While Killing What Actually Works, Merici Vinton, former DOGE worker, July 15, 2025. Elon Musk might be out of the Oval Office and Trump’s good graces, but he’s trying to sneak back into politics by starting a new political party. What’s clear following Musk’s brief reign over the federal government via DOGE is that he never cared about making things work for people. I know this because I was there. We shouldn’t expect any different, and nothing better, from his so-called America Party.

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DOGE was a shiny new object for the wealthiest man in the world. Elon Musk bought, then exploited an opportunity to bring his friends and fellow internet trolls into the halls of the most powerful government in the world so they could feel and flex their own power. His project was never about making the lives of the American people better or easier, it was always about his own brand and self-interest. I’d expect the same from any future political endeavor.

As “Buddy in Chief” Musk used his position to meet with world leaders—not to advocate for American interests, but to open doors for his businesses. Americans were promised innovation and cutting billions in waste, goals that were blatantly undercut and unmet.

In his time in our nation’s capitol, he did deals to ensure his companies were protected from oversight, as spotted by the Economic Policy Institute:

Tesla faced a Department of Labor probe into racial and sexual harassment—until the agency responsible was dismantled.

Neuralink was under investigation by the USDA’s inspector general, likely over botched animal experiments—until the watchdogs were fired

Starlink was being examined for potential unauthorized access by Russia—until USAID itself was gutted

Merici Vinton is a public sector technologist and former Senior Advisor to the IRS Commissioner. She was a chief architect of Direct File and previously served with the U.S. Digital Service, now known as DOGE. She currently is a Future of Tax Fellow at the Economic Security Project, Exec Fellow in Applied Tech Policy at UC Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.

July 14  

New York Times, Plan to Indefinitely Displace Palestinians Threatens to Derail Gaza Truce, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, July 14, 2025. An Israeli proposal to force much of Gaza’s population into a small enclave is now overshadowing negotiations over a truce.

Israel’s defense ministry has promoted a plan to force much of Gaza’s population into a small and largely devastated zone in the territory’s south, a proposal that threatens to derail the latest efforts to forge a truce between Israel and Hamas.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have briefed journalists and foreign counterparts on a loose plan to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into an area controlled by Israel’s military close to the Gaza-Egypt border. Legal experts have warned that the plan would violate international law because the civilians would be barred indefinitely from returning to their homes in other parts of Gaza, a restriction that would constitute a form of ethnic cleansing.By Samuel Granados

While the Israeli government has yet to formally announce or comment on the plan, the idea of a new encampment in southern Gaza was first proposed last week by Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister. He discussed it at a briefing with Israeli correspondents who focus on military affairs, and The New York Times reviewed readouts of the briefing written by its attendees. Several attendees also wrote articles that attracted widespread attention among both Israelis and Palestinians.

A spokesman for Mr. Katz declined to comment on the reports, as did the office of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Now, Hamas has cited Mr. Katz’s proposal as one of the latest obstacles to a new truce. During a cease-fire, in exchange for releasing roughly 25 hostages, Hamas wants Israeli troops to withdraw from much of Gaza. The new Israeli plan makes such an outcome far less likely, since it would ensure that Israeli troops remained in charge of a large area over which Hamas seeks to reestablish control.

Husam Badran, a senior member of Hamas, described the establishment of the encampment as a “deliberately obstructive demand” that would complicate the fraught negotiations.

“This would be an isolated city that resembles a ghetto,” Mr. Badran said on Monday in a text message. “This is utterly unacceptable, and no Palestinian would agree to this.”

Hopes for an imminent truce rose last week after Mr. Netanyahu went to Washington for meetings with President Trump that many expected would result in an Israeli compromise. Instead, Mr. Netanyahu — who has previously slow-walked negotiations for personal and political reasons — returned to Israel without a breakthrough.

The negotiations remain stuck on issues including the permanence of any truce: Israel wants to be able to return to war, while Hamas wants guarantees that any cease-fire would evolve into a full cessation of hostilities. Israel also wants Hamas to commit to disarmament, an idea that the militant group has rejected. There are also disagreements over how aid will be delivered during a truce.

According to some of the readouts of the briefing by Mr. Katz, the defense minister described the proposed new encampment as a “humanitarian city” that would, at first, house at least 600,000 Palestinians. Mr. Katz said it would later hold the entire population of Gaza, or roughly 2 million people, according to the readouts and reports. Israeli critics likened it to a modern-day “concentration camp” because its residents would not be allowed to leave the area’s northern perimeter in order to return home.

The Hartmann Report, America on the Brink: Trump’s Roadmap to Recession, Fascism, and World War IIII, Thom Hartmann, right, July 14, 2025. We must call this what it is: a full-scale assault on our economy, our democracy, and the peaceful world order that’s prevented a third world war for nearly 80 years…

The headlines this week are wild: Trump is threatening nutso tariffs against America’s traditional trading partners (although none for Russia, of course), demanding that our allies proclaim their willingness to go to war with China, and — along with his billionaire buddies — looting our government while immiserating small business and the American middle class.

As a result, America stands today at an extraordinarily dangerous crossroads economically, politically, and geopolitically. We’re talking a second Republican Great Depression, fascism, and the very real possibility of a third world war.

As the Trump administration abandons manufacturing and building out America’s infrastructure in favor of financial speculation and deregulation, we’re hollowing out the very foundations of real wealth. Simultaneously, the GOP is doubling down on policies that have repeatedly crashed our economy, stripped support from working families, and handed more money and political power to the morbidly rich.

Now, with economic stagnation looming and international tensions escalating, Trump’s erratic and belligerent approach threatens not just recession but war. If Democrats and people who love America and democracy don’t find their voice — and fast — we may be sleepwalking not only into a massive economic disaster, but into a global conflict that could define the rest of this century or even bring about the end of western civilization.

There are a few basic principles that undergird this argument. I’ll walk through them here, building the case brick by brick, and ending with the most important task before us.

First, let’s get back to basics. There are only two primary ways to grow a nation’s wealth: by extracting resources from the earth or by manufacturing goods, adding value to those resources. Everything else — lawns getting mowed, nails getting done, stocks getting traded — may move money around or improve quality of life, but don’t grow the actual wealth of a nation.

For example, I wash your car and you mow my lawn. We exchange $20 bills. It’s nice, it’s neighborly, but it didn’t grow our nation’s economy at all.

Now, suppose you go into the ground and mine and refine iron ore, and I use some of it to make an ax. You’ve turned rocks into raw material. I’ve turned that into a tool that can build homes, cut timber, or create more tools.

That is real wealth creation. That ax becomes part of the wealth of our country; that’s what Adam Smith meant in The Wealth of Nations when he pointed out that economies grow when labor transforms nature into value, as I explained in detail on the Hartmann Report.

A third, indirect way to grow national wealth is through government investment in the infrastructure that supports those two main drivers. Roads, bridges, rail, and ports move goods. Broadband and schools cultivate talent. Green energy projects power the nation. Free college, healthcare, paid sick leave, and maternity leave make for a healthier, more well-educated, and thus more productive workforce. Strong regulation prevents scammers, monopolists, and fraudsters from distorting or hijacking markets.

Without these supports — especially when the bulk of national income is being siphoned off by the morbidly rich — productivity slows, innovation stalls, and economies become brittle. History is replete with examples of this type of collapse from ancient Rome to Europe stumbling into World Wars I and II.

The Democratic Party has largely understood this since the industrial revolution, as did the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railroad and funded over 70 free “Land Grant” colleges like MSU across the nation.

From FDR through Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Democratic presidents have consistently invested in the physical and human infrastructure that powers wealth creation. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the GI Bill, the WPA and CCC, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act all fit this pattern.

Even Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, got it, although he was his party’s modern exception. He built the Interstate Highway System and warned Americans against the possibility that the military-industrial complex could corrupt Congress. His vision was of a balanced, productive America, not one dominated by war profiteers and Wall Street gamblers.

But the Republican Party since the 1920s (with the exception of Eisenhower) has marched in the opposite direction. From Coolidge and Hoover to Reagan and Trump, they’ve pushed a different story: that government is the problem and taxes are theft. Reagan kicked off the insanity with his massive tax cuts and neoliberal rhetoric. He didn’t just demonize government; in 1983, he legalized stock buybacks, something previously considered felony criminal stock manipulation. This move transformed American corporations from engines of productivity into tools for enriching shareholders and executives.

This launched a massive shift in our economy. Financialization began to replace manufacturing as the central engine of growth. Instead of making things, our largest corporations became obsessed with gaming markets, flipping debt, and enriching insiders. Wall Street and monopolies (also allowed by changes Reagan made in our law) overtook and then devastated Main Street, and the real wealth of the nation thus started to stagnate.

At the same time, Republicans attacked the very institutions that supported productivity. They gutted unions, fought to privatize Social Security and Medicare with their “Advantage” scam, deregulated the banking and energy sectors, and worked tirelessly to cripple the regulatory state. When Obama created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to prevent another financial crisis, for example, Republicans moved swiftly to kneecap it. Under Trump, they’ve largely succeeded.

Now Trump is back, and he’s doubling down on Reaganomics with a vengeance. He’s illegally refusing to release funds from Biden’s infrastructure and manufacturing initiatives. He’s gutting environmental and workplace protections. And he’s promoting speculative financial schemes like Bitcoin, an unregulated, easily manipulated asset class that benefits insiders like his children and wealthy friends.

Ten of the last eleven recessions occurred under Republican presidents. That’s not a coincidence. 

New York Times, Ukraine war: Updates: President Tells Russia It Has 50 Days to Make Peace With Ukraine 2025, Steven Erlanger, July 14, 2025. President Trump said the United States would impose “very severe tariffs​” on Russia if there was no peace deal with Ukraine in 50 days.

He said there would be “secondary tariffs” at about 100 percent. Mr. Trump’s remarks came as he met with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, at the White House; Mr. Rutte has been coordinating European efforts to send Ukraine more weapons to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. Under the arrangement, NATO would buy American weapons and pass them on to Kyiv. Read more ›

Lev Remembers, Breaking: Trump Gives Putin 50 Days to Strike—While Ukraine Burns, Lev Parnas, right July 14, 2025. This morning, while the media circled around Donald Trump’s latest so-called “breaking news,” Ukrainians awoke to the sound of sirens and explosions once again tearing through the early dawn sky. As the world waits for Trump’s press conference—debating whether he’ll send weapons, impose sanctions, or threaten tariffs—Russia is acting.

Let me tell you what actually happened today.

Russia launched 136 air threats overnight—Shahed drones, S-300 and S-400 missiles—targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across Ukraine. The Air Force of Ukraine shot down 61 drones, and another 47 were jammed or lost from radar. But the rest made impact.

Six civilians were killed—three in Sumy and two in the village of Bokove, Donetsk. At least 30 others were wounded, including a 77-year-old woman in Zaporizhzhia. Social infrastructure, homes, and entire communities were once again under siege.

As I told you before, this war is being played on two levels. One is physical—missiles, blood, destruction. The other is political—the stage-managed optics of diplomacy, the dangling carrots of announcements, and the strategic delay that buys time not for peace, but for Putin.

While Trump strings the media along with half-baked press teases, the real decisions were made weeks ago. The delegation from Trump’s circle, led by Steve Witkoff and others in close coordination with Kremlin intermediaries, already laid the groundwork. The goal: delay, bleed Ukraine out, keep the public confused, and offer just enough performative support to justify the narrative.

And now you’re watching it all play out.

Today, Trump’s envoy, retired General Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv. Sources on the ground confirmed meetings with top Ukrainian officials—discussing sanctions, military planning, battlefield strategy. It sounds productive on the surface. But my sources also told me something else: now that Kellogg is in Kyiv, the skies may go quiet—for a little while. Because like I’ve said before, it’s coordinated. There’s choreography to this war. And while the optics unfold, the real assault continues elsewhere.

Putin has already massed over 50,000 troops near the Sumy region. I’m being told to expect a massive offensive—possibly within days. Kharkiv is on high alert. Ukraine is bracing for another escalation, while Trump responds not with weapons or real-time support, but with tariffs. That’s right—tariffs.

You can’t make this up. While missiles rain down and civilians are pulled from rubble, Trump is planning to “punish” Russia by threatening 100% tariffs—but not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. He’s giving Putin 50 more days.

Let me be crystal clear: this is not a new strategy. This is stalling. This is delay-by-design.

And when Trump finally got around to his big announcement, here’s what he said: the U.S. would sell weapons to NATO—who can then choose to send them to Ukraine. That’s the deal. He made sure to emphasize that the U.S. isn’t giving anything to Ukraine. And forget the Senate’s bipartisan recommendation of 500% tariffs—Trump downgraded it to 100%. And even that won’t take effect for nearly two months.

So what does that mean in real terms?

 

New York Times, News Analysis: Trump’s Willingness to Arm Ukraine Puts Him Closer to Biden Approach, David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, July 14, 2025. President Trump is expected this week to formalize a new plan to sell American weapons to European allies, who would pass them onto Kyiv.

Nearly six months after his inauguration, when President Trump pledged he would measure his success by “the wars we end” and “the wars we never get into,” he is adopting an approach toward Russia that on the surface looks much like his predecessor’s: arming the Ukrainians to fight off an invasion.

Mr. Trump came to this point in a circular fashion, and if these past few months are any indication, there is reason to doubt he will stick with it.

A first test may come on Monday and Tuesday, when Mr. Trump meets at the White House with the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, and is expected to formally announce new plans to route American arms to Kyiv through European allies. He also appears to be moving to embrace new sanctions European leaders are pushing to put more pressure on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The president is a late and very reluctant convert to the approach of trying to confront and isolate Mr. Putin.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Trump vowed a quick resolution of the war because he said he alone had the stature to deal with the Russian leader. Once he took office, he blamed the Ukrainians themselves for Russia’s invasion of their own country. Then he clashed with President Volodymyr Zelensky in an extraordinary Oval Office display, telling him, “You don’t have the cards.” He gave Russia a pass on tariffs and praised Mr. Putin for his strength, and provided assurance that Ukraine would never join NATO.

Much of that is seemingly reversed, at least for now.

The president said last week he was “very strongly” considering backing a bipartisan Senate bill that would impose a new sanctions bill that would allow — but not require — Mr. Trump to impose 500 percent tariffs on any country purchasing Russian oil or gas.

Mr. Trump also lifted a brief U.S. pause on delivering weapons to Ukraine. A plan hatched at the NATO summit in June to arm the Ukrainians by selling American weapons to the Europeans, who in turn would pass them on to Ukraine’s beleaguered forces, is beginning to take shape. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the president said he planned to provide more Patriot missiles to Ukraine, stressing that the weaponry would be paid for, and that the nation was in “desperate need” of it.

New York Times, American Allies Want to Redraw the World’s Trade Map, Minus the U.S., Jeanna Smialek, July 14, 2025 (print ed.). Facing growing chaos, the European Union and numerous other countries are seeking to forge a global trading nexus that is less vulnerable to American tariffs.

Trade chaos is forcing America’s allies closer together, and further from the United States. And as that happens, the European Union is trying to position itself at the center of a new global trade map.

The 27-nation bloc learned this weekend that America will subject it to 30 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive branch, responded with a pledge to keep negotiating, and to retaliate if necessary.

But that was not the entire strategy. Europe, like many of the United States’ trading partners, is also looking for more reliable friends.

“Meanwhile, we continue to deepen our global partnerships, firmly anchored in the principles of rules-based international trade,” Ms. von der Leyen said.

She will make good on that starting Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen is scheduled to give a speech alongside Indonesia’s president. Just as Mr. Trump threatens to put hefty tariffs on the Asian nation, the European Union is working to relax trade barriers.

It is a split screen that is becoming typical. On one side, the United States sows uncertainty as it blows up weeks of painstaking negotiations and escalates tariff threats. On the other, the European Union and other American trading partners are forging closer ties, laying the groundwork for a global trading system that revolves less and less around an increasingly fickle United States.

“Free and fair trade drives prosperity, creates jobs and strengthens supply chains,” António Costa, the president of the European Council, wrote on social media on Saturday. The council brings together the heads of state and government from across the bloc. “We will continue to build strong trade partnerships worldwide.”

It will be hard to move away from the United States because it is the world’s largest economy, home to a bustling consumer market and cutting-edge technologies and services.

But many American trading partners feel that they are left with little choice but to diversify. And while trade relationships are difficult to alter, they are also difficult to change back once they have been totally reorganized. 

• New York Times, Trump Didn’t Always Tout Tariffs. Now He Sees Them as a Way to Flex Power 

The Contrarian, Stopping Trump isn’t Enough; It’s time to hold lawbreakers accountable, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 14, 2025. It is one thing to stop Donald Trump’s lawlessness (e.g., ending deportation to CECOT), but it is far more difficult to hold accountable the officials responsible for harm inflicted on their victims.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and permanent resident, has been freed from his unjust and illegal detention. On Wednesday, he filed a claim for injunctive relief, asking the court to prevent deportation on a new charge against him concerning his immigration paperwork.

This sort of after-the-fact, concocted claim (akin to the human smuggling charge manufactured to distract from the government’s humiliating retreat in returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador) sure looks like an attempt to continue Khalil’s persecution at the hand of the Trump gang. This sort of picayune charge is “rarely, if ever” brought against permanent residents, his complaint states—unless, of course, someone is the object of the MAGA administration’s ongoing “pattern of antagonism.”Khalil’s chances of success appear strong. However, preventing future harm does not make up for the wrongs already perpetrated.

Khalil told the Associated Press, “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”If the result of MAGA functionaries’ unconstitutional conduct is merely a court order for them to stop persecuting a particular individual, they have little to no disincentive to stop, and will continue systematically violating constitutional rights (especially after the Supreme Court’s ruling limiting nationwide injunctions).

Khalil’s legal team has a solution. On Thursday, his lawyers announced that Khalil has “filed a claim detailing the harm he has suffered as a result of his politically motivated arrest and detention…The claim is a precursor to a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, which he will bring under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 federal statute that allows individuals to sue the U.S. government for damages for civil law violations.”

Khalil is seeking $20M in damages, “which he would use to help others similarly targeted by the Trump administration and Columbia University.” As an alternative to financial damages, he would accept “an official apology and abandonment of the administration’s unconstitutional policy.”It alleges, “The administration carried out its illegal plan to arrest, detain, and deport Mr. Khalil in a manner calculated to terrorize him and his family.” He continues to suffer “severe emotional distress, economic hardship, damage to his reputation, and significant impairment of his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights” as a result of the arrest and 104 days of detention.

This is the first complaint for money damages in response to the Trump administration’s plot to snatch legal residents off the street, lock them up, and deport them based on the content of their speech. Khalil’s civil action is at least one way to assign blame to Trump's lackeys for their ongoing reign of terror against migrants.

While individuals such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s Grand Inquisitor Stephen Miller won’t be a dime out of pocket, at least a judgment awarding significant damages will enforce a modicum of accountability on a regime that runs roughshod over the Constitution, statutes, and even adverse court orders.

In another forum, a finding of criminal contempt against government lawyers for blowing past U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s order to turn around the plane taking Abrego Garcia and others to El Salvador may provide another means to combat rank disobedience to judicial orders. Republicans demonstrated their trepidation about contempt actions when they tried (unsuccessfully) in the reconciliation negotiations to prevent such proceedings.

On that score, the Senate must decide whether Emil Bove’s alleged directions to Justice Department employees to flout the courts disqualify him for a seat on the 3rd Circuit. In addition to filing a professional ethics complaint against him, denying him a judicial seat could thwart his ambition and create a disincentive for other government lawyers to follow his lead.

In Bove’s case, a whistleblower, bolstered by documentary evidence, alleges Bove played a key role in defying Judge Boasberg’s order.

 

 

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 13, 2025 [Extraordinary rift in MAGA world], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 13, 2025. The conflict began last Monday when the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo saying that it had conducted a thorough review of all the evidence the department had collected about convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, who died in his prison cell in 2019 awaiting trial on additional sex-trafficking charges.

The memo said that the department’s “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’” and that there was “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” It said the DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which operates within the DOJ, had determined “that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

The memo also said FBI investigators had concluded that Epstein died by suicide, releasing footage from a camera from the unit in which Epstein was being held at the time of his death.

For years now, Trump and his loyalists have claimed Epstein was murdered to protect the rich and powerful men who were preying on children. This theory dovetailed with the QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump was combating a secret ring of cannibalistic child molesters who included Democratic politicians, government officials, film stars, and businessmen. MAGA influencers, including Kash Patel, left, and Dan Bongino, pushed the Epstein theories, and MAGA followers believed them, hoping to bring down Democratic politicians like the Clintons.

Once in power, they vowed, they would release the client list and provide the truth about Epstein’s death. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi, right, told the Fox News Channel that the client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” Patel is now director of the FBI—in part because MAGA senators like Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) believed he would release more information on Epstein and child sex trafficking rings—and Bongino is the FBI’s deputy director. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called for Americans to vote for Trump in 2024 because “Americans deserve to know why Epstein didn’t kill himself.”

The announcement that the DOJ would not provide further information and that Epstein had died by suicide set off a firestorm among MAGA. Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec wrote: “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided.”

On Tuesday, when a reporter asked about Epstein during a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting, Trump responded: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”

Trump’s attempt to turn attention away from the story only drew attention to it. While MAGA focused on the idea that the people on an Epstein client list would be Democrats, in fact the person most closely associated with Epstein in popular culture was Trump himself. The two men were photographed and filmed together a number of times. In 2002, according to New York magazine, Trump said: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy…. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

On June 5, after a falling-out with Trump, billionaire Elon Musk posted on social media: “Time to drop the really big bomb: [Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

He followed that post up with another saying: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” He later deleted the posts and said they had gone too far.

After Trump tried to downplay the story last week, it gained momentum. MAGA influencers began to call for Bondi to be fired, and Bongino began to talk of resigning from the FBI over Bondi’s memo and handling of the issue.

Then, at 5:21 Saturday evening, Eastern Daylight Time, Trump posted a long, incoherent screed on social media. In it, he defended Attorney General Pam Bondi—who is, of course, doing his bidding concerning the files—and tried to bring MAGA together again, warning that “selfish people” were trying to hurt his “PERFECT administration” by focusing on Epstein.

In apparent contradiction to the story Bondi had told, he suggested the Epstein files existed, but then nonsensically said they were “written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it? They haven’t even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files,” he wrote.“No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some people. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY,” Trump wrote.

“The Left is imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein. LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB—SHE’S GREAT! The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024—That’s what she is looking into as AG, and much more.

“One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

For the first time ever, Trump got ratioed on his own platform, meaning that there were more comments on his post than likes or shares, showing disapproval of his message. According to Jordan King of Newsweek, by 10:45 this morning (Eastern Time) it had more than 36,000 replies but only 11,000 reposts and 32,000 likes.

Trump sounds panicked, not only over the Epstein issue itself, but also because he cannot control the narrative his followers are embracing. After stoking the fire of his followers’ anger against what they seemed to see as powerful men getting away with crimes against children, he is now being burned by it. His reflex is to return to his greatest hits, accusing Democrats of writing the Epstein files and then, as he always, always, always does, snapping back to the Russia scandal and calling it a hoax.

Over the weekend, attendees at a conference held by the right-wing Turning Point USA booed the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case. MAGA influencers kept up the drumbeat; Matt Walsh called the administration’s about-face on releasing information “obvious bullsh*t.” Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported that even the Fox News Channel warned this morning that “[t]here has to be some explanation” and that questions about the way the administration is handling the Epstein files were “very valid.”Musk, who controls the X social media platform preferred by the right wing, is amplifying the story. After Trump’s Saturday post, Musk wrote to his 222 million followers: “Seriously. He said ‘Epstein’ half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein. Just release the files as promised.”

Trump appears to be planning to regain control of the narrative by persecuting his political opponents.

But it is not clear that will silence MAGA voters who backed Trump in part because they thought he would lead the fight against an elite group of pedophiles controlling the country. As Trump’s policies on the economy, immigration, tax cuts, firing of government employees, and gutting of disaster relief have soured Americans on his administration, loyalists stayed behind him. Now he has turned against their chief cause, giving them an off-ramp from a presidency that seems increasingly off the rails.

Mike Flynn, who served as Trump’s first national security advisor until forced to resign for lying about his contact with Russian operatives, posted on social media: “[President Trump] please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR is not going away. If the administration doesn’t address the massive number of unanswered questions about Epstein, especially the ABUSE OF CHILDREN BY ELITES (it is very clear that abuse occurred), then moving forward on so many other monumental challenges our nation is facing becomes much harder.”Flynn concluded: “We cannot allow pedophiles to get away. I don’t personally care who they are or what elite or powerful position they hold. They must be exposed and held accountable!!!” 

Washington Post, The CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald, Tom Jackman, July 14, 2025.  Newly released documents confirm that an agent in Miami oversaw a Cuban student group that interacted with Oswald in the months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

 

Opinion: Put a double prison guard on Ghislaine Maxwell (shown above). She knows more than anyone about Epstein and Trump, and he knows it, Lucian K. Truscott IV, July 14, 2025.

Trump’s insane, disjointed, neuron-destroying blather proves that there is only one question in Trump’s mind right now: how much is going to end up coming out about his relationship with his close friend, child-rapist-in-chief Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein was a member of Trump’s private club, Mar a Lago, and some of their major partying went on in Palm Beach, where Epstein also had a home on the beach.

It seems to have occurred to almost no one that the most threatening source of material on Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has to be Ghislaine Maxwell, the so-called socialite and daughter of British media-mogul Robert Maxwell. She had a 25-year relationship with the convicted sex offender. Maxwell was said to have had a romantic relationship with Epstein for several years after they met in the early 1990s.

Maxwell was described by Epstein’s household employees in a lawsuit deposition as “the lady of the house” and Epstein’s “main girlfriend,” who had the power to hire and fire Epstein’s employees. During the time she worked for Epstein, Maxwell was rumored to procure underage girls for him, whom he sexually abused.

On July 2, 2019, in response to a lawsuit from the media, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the release of documents and evidence from the defamation lawsuit filed in 2015 by Virginia Giuffre. By 2019, it was well known that Giuffre, when she was 17, had been trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell and had sex with Prince Andrew. They had even appeared together in a photo that was heavily publicized, so anything touching Giuffre was hot news. Four days later, on July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy. He was jailed in the Manhattan Correctional Center pending arraignment and trial.

On the 17th of July, Maxwell requested a hearing in federal court to appeal the ruling to release the Giuffre lawsuit records

.On August 9, 2019, the first batch of records from the Giuffre defamation lawsuit against Maxwell was released. The very next day, on August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell.

On July 2, 2020, Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire at the estate of Scott G. Borgerson, a former hedge fund owner and fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, who turned out to be her husband. Maxwell was charged with six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of minors, enticement of children for the purposes of sex, and perjury.

In 2021, Maxwell was tried and convicted of five charges of transporting a minor for the purpose of sex and conspiracy. In June of 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years. She lost an appeal of her conviction in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and is serving her sentence in the Florida Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida.Ghislaine Maxwell knows a lot. She was named in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew.

She was named in multiple lawsuits against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein as having procured teenage girls for sex for Epstein and others. In one lawsuit, filed in 2019, Maxwell was charged by “Priscilla Doe” for recruiting her for sex with Epstein. Maxwell was described as giving the teenage girl “step by step” instructions for how to sexually service Epstein.

If there is one person on this earth who has inside information about Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump and what they got up to together, it is Ghislaine Maxwell.

Epstein told journalist and biographer Michael Wolff that he and Trump “hunted women together” during the time of their 15-year friendship, and that the two men were each other’s closest friends. Maxwell was there for all of it.

Every time Trump hears Epstein’s name he freaks out. What’s going to happen if all the cable shows, especially those on Fox News, dump the name of Ghislaine Maxwell into the news cycle? Stay tuned for a dark wind blowing from Tallahassee."

 

Paul Krugman's Substack, Making Immigration Great Again, Economic Commentary, Paul Krugman, right, July 14, 2025. Trump has reminded America that immigrants are people.

The picture above isn’t a scene from a dystopian movie about an imaginary future U.S. civil war. It’s a photo from last week of heavily armed federal agents conducting an immigration raid in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park.

Fortunately, this show of force ended up being more a show of farce. Area residents, warned of the impending raid, cleared out, leaving the agents to spend an hour or so stomping around an empty park, shouting “Resistance is useless!” OK, I made up that last part.

But ICE keeps bringing heavily armed men along while rounding up people they think look like illegal immigrants. That’s not hyperbole: Tom Homans, Trump’s border czar, claims that ICE has the right to detain and question people based on their “physical appearance.” It seems all too likely that at some point one of these raids will turn into a massacre.

As far as I can tell, however, until recently many political analysts assumed that high-profile roundups of suspected illegal immigrants were a politically savvy move, playing to one of Donald Trump’s perceived strengths.

But it’s beginning to look as if there’s more basic decency in the American body politic than is dreamed of in many pundits’ political philosophy.Gallup made a splash, at least among us wonks, with new polling on immigration showing that approval of immigration in general is now at a record high:

And as G. Elliott Morris points out, the detailed polling suggests overwhelming disapproval of Trump’s immigration policies. Notably, voters are twice as likely to support giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship than they are to support deporting them. By the way, in 2023 Congress seemed likely to enact bipartisan legislation that would have opened such a path. But Trump killed it.

What’s going on? Why were cynical, seemingly savvy takes on the politics of immigration so wrong?

Part of the answer is that there is almost always a “thermostatic backlash” against the policies pursued by a party that has recently gained power. Pundits who imagined that Trump’s war on immigrants would become more, not less popular once it began were assuming that he could defy all historical precedent.

But, like Morris, I think there’s more going on here than just the thermostat.

First, it’s important to understand that the call for mass deportations and/or imprisonment was based on a lie — the claim that America is facing a huge immigrant crime wave. “They’re not a city of immigrants, they’re a city of criminals,” declared Kristi Noem about Los Angeles last month. Last week city officials reported that LA is on track to have the fewest homicides in 60 years.

It's true that many Americans have remained willing to believe that big cities like LA and NYC are scary urban hellscapes, even though they’re quite safe these days.An aside: There was a period in the 1970s and 1980s when New York, in particular, actually was the kind of scary place people like Trump and Noem claim it still is. As it happens, that sort-of hellscape period coincided with an era when New York had fewer immigrants than at any time before or since:

In any case, however, it seems to me that the lie is beginning to unravel as it becomes clear that ICE is having a really hard time finding violent immigrants to arrest.

According to the Miami Herald, only around a third of the people being held in “Alligator Alcatraz” — a cute name, but it’s a concentration camp, pure and simple — have any kind of criminal conviction.

Why aren’t they rounding up more undocumented criminals? Because that would be hard work, and anyway there aren’t that many of them. Morris did a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggesting that there may in total be only around 78,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal records, and 14,000 convicted of violent crimes. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is demanding that ICE arrest 3,000 people a day. Do the math, and you see why they’re grabbing farm workers and chasing day laborers in Home Depot parking lots.

So Americans may be turning on Trump’s immigration policies in part because they’re starting to realize that they’ve been lied to. But an even more important factor may be that more native-born Americans are beginning to see what our immigrants are really like, rather than thinking of them as scary figures lurking in the shadows.

It’s a familiar point that views of immigration tend to be most negative in places with very few immigrants and most positive in places where there are already many foreign-born residents. You can get fancy about why that’s true, but I would simply say that if you live in a place like New York, where you’re constantly interacting with immigrants, they start to seem like … people.

And the Trumpies — for whom, as Adam Serwer famously observed, the cruelty is the point — are inadvertently humanizing immigrants for Americans who don’t have that kind of daily experience. The nightmarish ordeal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has probably done more to highlight the humanity of immigrants, documented or not, than any number of charts and tables. And while some Americans are instinctively cruel, most are, I believe, instinctively decent.

Will the public backlash against Trump’s immigration policies force ICE to stand down? Probably not, although the courts may at least slow the mass arrests. Business may also have a say, as labor shortages disrupt agriculture, construction and more.In any case, however, harsh anti-immigrant policies are looking like a political loser, not a winner.

New York Times, Bitcoin Soars Past $120,000 as House Takes Up Crypto Bills, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced and Danielle Kaye, July 14, 2025. The cryptocurrency has extended its rally as lawmakers consider legislation that would bring digital tokens further into the mainstream.

Bitcoin’s march to new heights is going strong: It is trading above $122,000 on Monday, having more than doubled year on year. (Among other things, that’s made Satoshi Nakamoto, the token’s pseudonymous creator, one of the wealthiest people on the planet.)

The steep rise of Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency around, is further testament to the industry’s good fortunes in the Trump era. That could continue as the House — where leading Republicans have nicknamed this week “crypto week” — is set to take up legislation aimed at making America a haven for digital currency.

What the House is considering:

The GENIUS Act, which seeks to regulate so-called stablecoins and which the Senate has already passed;

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which is meant to outline a clear system for regulating cryptocurrencies, including by defining the roles of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the S.E.C. in overseeing digital tokens;

And the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would forbid the Fed to create its own digital currency.

Republicans say that their efforts are aimed at nurturing a fast-growing industry, one that faced strict scrutiny under the Biden administration. “We are taking historic steps to ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in innovation,” Representative French Hill of Arkansas, the chair of the House financial services committee, said in a statement.

Such an endorsement is powering the run of Bitcoin, as well as of other digital currencies like ether, XRP and Solana, as mainstream investors and institutions rush to get a piece of the action. Bloomberg notes that U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds had more than $2.7 billion in inflows last week, one of their best periods of performance since they debuted last year.ImageA line chart shows the performance of Bitcoin since U.S. Election Day, in November. 

New York Times, Floods in Texas: FEMA Approved Removal of Many Camp Mystic Buildings From Flood Zones, Mike Baker, Updated July 14, 2025. Camp Mystic owners successfully appealed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to redesignate some buildings that had been considered part of a flood-hazard zone.

In the years before floodwaters killed more than two dozen people at Camp Mystic in Texas, regulators approved a series of appeals that removed many of the camp’s buildings from official federal flood zones, records show.

Flood maps developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2011 had placed much of the camp within a 100-year flood zone, an area considered to be at high risk of flooding. Camp Mystic successfully challenged those designations, which would limit renovation projects and require flood insurance, citing elevation calculations of a series of buildings that allowed them to be exempted from the federal restrictions.

Sarah Pralle, an associate professor at Syracuse University who has researched federal flood mapping, said she found the exemptions granted to Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp on the Guadalupe River near Hunt, to be “perplexing.” Some of the buildings were still very close to expected flood elevations, she said.

“I think it’s extremely troubling that it’s a camp for children,” Ms. Pralle said. “You’d think you want to be extra cautious — that you’d go beyond the minimum of what’s required for flood protection.”

It was unclear from the federal records precisely which buildings were removed from the flood maps, and the camp’s more detailed application for removal, which was first reported by The Associated Press, was not available. FEMA’s official flood maps show that some of the camp’s cabins were within a “floodway,” a particularly hazardous area where dangerous floodwaters would be expected to flow. Other cabins were within a broader zone that would also be expected to flood once every 100 years. Those maps have not been modified to incorporate Camp Mystic’s written appeals.

Some of the buildings included in Camp Mystic’s appeals were listed as having an elevation more than 10 feet higher than the 100-year flood level, a measure of the probability of a major flood occurring. But others were much closer: In a 2013 document about removing buildings from the flood zone, six of the 15 buildings identified were described as being within three feet of the 100-year elevation.

Around the world, climate change has led to more frequent and powerful weather events, extreme floods are occurring with increasing frequency.

A model produced by First Street, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing, found that the original FEMA maps at Camp Mystic did not fully capture the risk. The federal flood maps did not account for events of heavy precipitation or the changing nature of storms as a result of climate change, said Jeremy Porter, who leads the company’s climate implications research.

Mr. Porter said the First Street model, which relies in part on high-resolution elevation data, found that more Camp Mystic buildings were in the 100-year flood zone than what was even in the original FEMA model. He said that preparing for the likelihood of flood risk was a better strategy than changing flood maps. “The more prudent thing to do is to adapt,” he said.Editors’ PicksYou Saved and Saved for Retirement. Now You Need a Plan to Cash Out.The Kids Are All Right (Just Not at a Brewery)How to Watch Hitchcock: 5 Steps to Unlock the Master of Suspense

Last week, after rains during the early morning hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River swelled by some 30 feet in just a few hours, and several Camp Mystic buildings were inundated. Campers were roused from their beds, and some had to wade through floodwaters to reach safer buildings. At least 27 people there were caught in the waters and died, adding to a statewide death toll that currently stands at 129.

Camp Mystic has not responded to questions about its flood assessments. In a statement, FEMA said that the flood maps “are not predictions of where it will flood” and cautioned people not to assume that properties located outside a FEMA flood zone would be safe from flooding.

 New York Times, Biden Says He Made the Clemency Decisions That Were Recorded With Autopen, Charlie Savage and Tyler Pager, July 14, 2025 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump and his allies have begun investigations to support their claims that Joseph R. Biden Jr. was incapacitated and his staff conspired to take presidential actions in his name.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is escalating his battle against Republican claims that he might not have been in control of high-profile clemency decisions issued under his name at the end of his term and, more generally, that his cognitive state impaired his functioning in office.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans “liars” for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization.

“I made every decision,” Mr. Biden said in a phone interview on Thursday, asserting that he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because “we’re talking about a whole lot of people.”

The interview was Mr. Biden’s first about the parallel investigations begun by the Trump White House, the Justice Department and Congress into a series of clemency decisions made by Mr. Biden in his final weeks in office and his mental acuity during his term.

Republicans in Congress have demanded sworn interviews with former Biden aides, prompting them to hire their own lawyers. Some lawyers are said to have warned their clients not to talk publicly and about the dangers of testifying because the Justice Department under Mr. Trump might be eager to bring perjury charges over any inconsistency, no matter how minor.BIDEN INTERVIEWRead excerpts from The Times’s interview with former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on clemency decisions.

Mr. Biden’s former White House doctor, who has said his medical evaluations showed he was fit to serve, invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions from lawmakers last week. His lawyers cited the pending Justice Department inquiry and the risk of being ensnared in ambiguous circumstances. But Mr. Biden, as a former president, has greater constitutional defenses against being subpoenaed by Congress.

The full picture of what Mr. Biden did on pardon and clemency decisions, and how much he directed those decisions and the actions of his staff, including the use of the autopen, may come down to tens of thousands of Biden White House emails that the National Archives has turned over as part of the investigation by the Trump White House and the Justice Department. Those emails contain keywords like “clemency,” “pardon” and “commutation” from November 2024 through Jan. 20, 2025, according to people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

The Times has reviewed several dozen of those emails, which discussed each of the major grants of clemency that were recorded by an autopen near the end of Mr. Biden’s term. But The Times has not seen the full extent of the emails, so it is impossible to capture the totality of information they contain or what else they might show about Mr. Biden’s involvement in the pardon and clemency decisions.  

New York Times, Ex-Secret Service Director Denies She Failed to Send Agents to Protect Trump, Eileen Sullivan, July 14, 2025 (print ed.). For the first time since she resigned in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump a year ago, Kimberly A. Cheatle, the former Secret Service director, pushed back publicly on Sunday against congressional criticism that she had denied additional security requests for a campaign event that day in Butler, Pa.

“For the Butler rally, I actually did direct additional assets to be provided, particularly in the form of agency countersnipers,” Ms. Cheatle, right, said in a statement. One of those was the sniper who shot and killed Mr. Trump’s would-be assassin. But that came after the man, Thomas Crooks, successfully evaded a search to find him, climbed onto a roof of a nearby building and fired eight shots at Mr. Trump while he was speaking. One of the bullets grazed Mr. Trump before he was moved to safety by his security detail.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a final report early Sunday on the Senate panel’s finding that “stunning failures” by the Secret Service led to the near assassination of Mr. Trump. Several other investigations into the security failures came to the same conclusion last year.

The report revealed little new information about the failures that led to a 20-year-old gunman’s ability to fire shots from a roof of a building with a direct line of sight to where Mr. Trump was speaking at a fairground.

Ms. Cheatle disputed the report’s claim that she lied during congressional testimony about having denied additional security measures for the July 13, 2024, rally.

“Any assertion that I provided misleading testimony is patently false and does a disservice to those men and women on the front lines who have been unfairly disciplined for a team, rather than an individual, failure,” Ms. Cheatle said.

Security plans in the lead-up to the campaign rally a year ago were a joint responsibility between Mr. Trump’s personal Secret Service detail and the agency’s Pittsburgh field office. But agents from the Pittsburgh office bore the brunt of the criticism and repercussions. Senior leaders on Mr. Trump’s detail assigned a young, inexperienced agent to take on a critical planning role for the event. She was handed the most severe penalty, a 42-day unpaid suspension, which she, like the others disciplined, can appeal. The Secret Service announced the disciplinary measures on Thursday.

Mr. Paul and other lawmakers spent months pushing the Secret Service to hold people accountable. He said it was not until he issued a subpoena recently to the agency’s director, Sean M. Curran, that the Secret Service disclosed the number of agents punished and descriptions of the penalties. Mr. Curran was the head of Mr. Trump’s security detail at the time of the rally.

“Following the events of July 13, the Secret Service took a serious look at our operations and implemented substantive reforms to address the failures that occurred that day,” Mr. Curran said in a statement on Sunday.

Mr. Paul said the punishments were not stiff enough.

It was in the days leading up to the rally that the Secret Service arranged for a countersniper team to be part of the range of security measures. Senior leadership at the F.B.I., including the director at the time, Christopher A. Wray, relayed details of an Iranian assassination plot against Mr. Trump. This intelligence prompted the Secret Service to send the countersniper team to Butler. Had the snipers not been at Butler, it is possible that more people, including Mr. Trump, could have been killed.

Mr. Paul said it was a “miracle” that Mr. Trump survived. If the bullet had been a fraction of an inch closer to Mr. Trump’s face, it could have killed him. The Secret Service has said the Butler rally was its greatest failure in modern history.

 

New York Times, 2 Dead and State Trooper Is Wounded in Kentucky Shootings, Officials Say, Alexandra E. Petri and Johnny Diaz, July 14, 2025 (print ed.). The episodes, which left the shooter dead, started with a traffic stop near an airport and ended at a church in Lexington, Ky., where four people were shot, the authorities said.

Two women were killed and three other people, including a state trooper, were wounded after a pair of shootings that ended at a church in Kentucky on Sunday, the authorities said.

Chief Lawrence Weathers of the Lexington Police Department said preliminary information showed that the shooter may have had an unspecified connection to people at the church, the Richmond Road Baptist Church, in Lexington, Ky.

“Days like today are extremely difficult,” the chief said at a news conference on Sunday. He added, “Sometimes things happen, you just don’t have a reason why.”

Officials said two women, one 72 years old and the other 32, were fatally shot on the church grounds. Two men were also shot. One of them was in critical condition and the other was in stable condition, the chief said.

The shooter was fatally shot by officers of the Lexington Police Department at the church, the chief said. Three officers opened fire, he said, adding that the shooter was pronounced dead at the

Miami New Times, A Reminder That Marco Rubio's Brother-in-Law Was a Prolific Cocaine Trafficker, Naomi Feinstein, July 14, 2025 While Trump deports immigrants for old drug charges, Rubio's brother-in-law was the frontman of a drug trafficking operation. Almost 40 years ago, a Cuban immigrant was arrested and convicted of distributing $15 million worth of cocaine as part of a major drug ring operating out of South Florida. The man stored kilos of cocaine in a spare bedroom inside his West Kendall home to later smuggle around the United States in cigarette cases.

During Miami's Cocaine Cowboy era of the 1970s and '80s, Orlando Cicilia was a major player in an international drug ring, using an exotic animal business as cover. Mario Tabraue, who would later allow spotted leopards to roam free inside his Coconut Grove estate, was the boss of the operation, but Cicilia was the frontman. In 1989, Cicilia was sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was released early in 2000.

Decades-old drug offenses, often much less serious than Cicilia's charges, have come back to haunt immigrants living in South Florida as President Donald Trump unleashes his hard-line immigration agenda. Juan Erles González, a 56-year-old Cuban immigrant who served 18 months in prison for conspiracy to possess with intent of distributing cocaine nearly two decades ago, now faces deportation.

Last month, 75-year-old Isidro Pérez died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Custody after immigration officers picked him up at a community center and charged him with "inadmissibility pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act." In the 1980s, he was convicted of marijuana possession and sentenced to 18 months in prison. While the Trump administration is busy deporting immigrants with previous petty drug offenses, a member of the president's cabinet, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has a brother-in-law who served over a decade in prison on federal drug charges after emigrating to the U.S. from Cuba. His name? Orlando Cicilia.

When Rubio was 16, Cicilia, who is married to Rubio's older sister Barbara, was arrested on federal drug charges for dealing cocaine. After Cicilia immigrated to Miami in 1972 when he was 15, he met Barbara in high school, and the pair started dating. Barbara ended up staying in Miami with Cicilia when Rubio's father got a bartending gig in Las Vegas in 1979.

The Rubio family decided to move back to Miami two years later and temporarily lived at Cicilia's home in West Kendall. The family, including 14-year-old Rubio, lived at the house around June 1985 until July 4. At that point, his brother-in-law played a significant role in the $75 million drug operation, right out of his home. One of Cecilia's drug runners later testified at trial that he cut and stored massive amounts of cocaine in his spare bedroom between March 1985 and January 1986.

Rubio wrote in his memoir, An American Son, that he would visit the home every week to help care for their seven Samoyed dogs, all while his brother-in-law ran this prolific drug operation out of the house. He maintained that he and his family were not aware of Cicilia's drug dealing at the time, although two law enforcement officials previously told New Times that they find that hard to believe.

July 13

 

The Real Michael Cohen, Rosie O’Donnell and the Death of Citizenship, Michael Cohen, right, July 13, 2025. This isn’t about Rosie. It’s a litmus test of how far Trump can push the Constitution; and how many MAGA Americans are dumb enough to let him try

I’m writing this not just as someone who once stood too close to the sun, but as a man who’s been burned by its fire, singed by its radiation, and still smells of smoke.

Because what we’re witnessing right now isn’t just another unhinged social media tantrum by President Trump; it’s a calculated test. A litmus of lunacy. A dry run for dictatorship.

This time, the target is Rosie O’Donnell, left. Next time, it could be you.

Let me be crystal clear: Trump’s threat to revoke the citizenship of Rosie; an American-born citizen, comedian, and longtime thorn in Trump’s side, isn’t just some off-the-cuff late-night post.

No. It’s the probing of a system. A poke at the Constitution to see if it flinches.

It’s not about Rosie. It never really was. It’s about finding the weak seams in American democracy and prying them open until the entire foundation splits apart.

I spent years by this man’s side. I know how he thinks. This wasn’t said in jest or hyperbole. It was a balloon floated into the ether to see who salutes, who shrugs, and who screams. And the silence, my Substack friends; the fuckin silence* from too many so-called patriots, is deafening.

Because if Trump can get the courts, or even a whisper of legal standing, to strip Rosie of her citizenship because she “is not in the best interests of our Great Country,” what’s to stop him from doing it to you for tweeting the wrong meme? For disagreeing with a policy. For not liking how you look.

Let’s pull back for a second and get grounded in the facts, because facts do still matter; at least to some of us. Rosie O’Donnell was born in the United States. She has, under the Fourteenth Amendment, an unshakable constitutional right to her citizenship. Period. Full stop. The Supreme Court said as much in 1967.

Yet Trump, now once again sitting behind the Resolute Desk is tossing around the idea like it’s just another item on the Mar-a-Lago lunch menu; “Grab me a Diet Coke, and while you’re at it, strip Rosie of her constitutional rights.”

And you think this ends with Rosie? Really? C’mon, you’re not that naive.This isn’t a temper tantrum. It’s a blueprint. Trump wants to rewrite the rulebook, not just with pen but with a nuclear bomb. He’s testing what the public will accept, what the courts might allow, and which judges he can bully into compliance. If he can target someone as high-profile, as loud, as well-connected as Rosie; and get away with it, then no one’s safe. Not the journalists. Not the protestors. Not the immigrants. Not even you, Mr. MAGA hat wearing sycophant, if you dare turn on your king.

We have to stop treating every Trumpian outrage as some new and bizarre anomaly. These are not outbursts; they are strategy. This is how autocrats work. You float the radical idea. Watch the response. Gauge the legal boundaries. And then if no one stops you; boom, you codify it into policy. 

You want to make a difference? Then make it. Right now. Because if we don’t fight for truth—no one will.

And if we fight together? They’ll never drown us out. Let’s be impossible to ignore.

New York Times, Tariffs on Brazil Could Leave Coffee Drinkers With a Headache, Emmett Lindner, Julie Creswell and Kevin Draper, July 13, 2025. Trump’s pledge to place a 50 percent tariff on all imports from the South American nation will drive up the prices of coffee — and orange juice.

Getting a daily caffeine fix could become more expensive.

President Trump’s plan to impose a 50 percent tariff on all imports from Brazil starting next month would drive up the price of coffee, whether it’s served in cafes or brewed in the kitchen.

Such a tariff would put more pressure on the coffee industry as prices have peaked globally this year. Droughts in Brazil and Vietnam, two of the biggest coffee exporters to the United States, have resulted in smaller harvests in recent seasons, driving up prices.

Consumers are already paying more at the grocery store. At the end of May, the average price of one pound of ground roast coffee in the U.S. was $7.93, up from $5.99 at the same time last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mr. Trump’s pledge to place tariffs on Brazil’s imports is partly in retaliation for what he considers a “witch hunt” against his political ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, left, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.

More than 99 percent of the coffee Americans consume is imported from South America, Africa and Asia. Last year, the United States imported 1.6 million metric tons of both unroasted and roasted coffee, according to the Agriculture Department.

Brazil accounted last year for more than 8.1 million bags, each with 60 kilograms of coffee, that came into the United States. Any sudden shift would be a “lose-lose situation,” said Guilherme Morya, a coffee analyst for Rabobank based in São Paulo.

 

New York Times, Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response, Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow, Coral Davenport and Megan Mineiro, July 13, 2025. As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.

In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say.

Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather.

Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that research the ways a warming planet is changing weather, among other things. That work is essential to more accurately predicting life-threatening hazards. Among the shuttered labs would be one in Miami that sends teams of “hurricane hunters” to fly into storms to collect critical data. The proposed budget would also make major cuts to a federal program that uses river gauges to predict floods.

The president is also envisioning a dramatically scaled-down Federal Emergency Management Agency that would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA to hundreds of communities around the country, which were to be used to help these areas protect against hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. About 10 percent of the agency’s staff members have left since January, including senior leaders with decades of experience, and another 20 percent are expected to be gone by the end of this year.

The White House and agency leaders say they are making much-needed changes to bloated bureaucracies that no longer serve the American public well.

 

New York Times, News Analysis: From Science to Diversity, Trump Hits the Reverse Button on Decades of Change, Peter Baker, July 13, 2025. President Trump has moved aggressively to reopen long-settled issues and to dismantle long-established institutions as he tries to return to what he considers better times.

Fluoride was introduced into drinking water starting in 1945. The flu vaccine was first made available to the general public a year later. Fuel efficiency standards for cars were adopted in 1975.

Such innovations long ago became stitched into the fabric of American life, largely accepted by most Americans who came to rely on them or gave them little thought. That is, until President Trump and his team came along and began methodically rolling back widespread practices and dismantling long-established institutions.

It should come as no surprise that Mr. Trump would try to undo much of what President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did over the past four years. What is so striking in Mr. Trump’s second term is how much he is trying to undo changes that happened years and even decades before that. At times, it seems as if he is trying to repeal much of the 20th century.

On matters big and small, Mr. Trump has hit the rewind button. At the broadest level, he has endeavored to reverse the globalization and internationalism that have defined U.S. leadership around the globe since World War II, under presidents of both parties. But even at a more prosaic level, it has become evident that Mr. Trump, 79, the oldest president ever inaugurated, simply prefers things the way he remembers them from his youth, or even before that.

He has made clear that he wants to return to an era when “Cats” was the big hit on Broadway, not “Hamilton”; when military facilities were named after Confederate generals, not gay rights leaders; when coal was king and there were no windmills; when straws were plastic, not paper; when toilets flushed more powerfully; when there weren’t so many immigrants; when police officers weren’t discouraged from being rough on suspects; when diversity was not a goal in hiring or college admissions or much of anything else.ImageWind turbines in the open ocean.Vineyard Wind Farm in the Atlantic Ocean. Mr. Trump promises to end wind farms.Credit...Randi Baird for The New York Times

Just last month, Mr. Trump suggested going back to calling the Pentagon chief the “secretary of war,” a title retired in 1947, rather than secretary of defense, a term he dismissed as “politically correct.” Just this month, he again talked about reopening Alcatraz, the famed island prison in San Francisco Bay that was closed in 1963. Just last weekend, he said the Washington Commanders football team should not have dropped the name Redskins, which it did in 2020 amid heightened awareness of racial sensitivities.

Mr. Trump suggests that he is on a mission to halt what he considers the degradation of America by “radical left lunatics” and return the country to better times. “We’ve seen some of our political system attempting to overthrow the timeless American principles and other pillars of our liberty, and replace them with some of the most noxious ideas in human history, ideas that have been proven false,” he said earlier this month.

Mr. Trump’s shift into reverse gear reflects the broader sentiments of many Americans eager for a change in course. The United States has cycled from progressive to conservative eras throughout its history. The liberal period ushered in by Franklin D. Roosevelt eventually led to a swing back to the right under Ronald Reagan, which led to a move toward the center under Bill Clinton.

But Mr. Trump has supercharged the current swing. The influential writer William F. Buckley Jr. once defined a conservative as someone standing athwart history and yelling, “Stop!” Mr. Trump seems to be standing athwart history yelling, “Go back!”

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Kernville, Texas, on Saturday, July 5, 2025. Ms. Noem did not renew a contract to staff call center workers until Thursday (New York Times photo by Jordan Vonderhaar).

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 12 [FEMA Failings As Mandate], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 13, 2025. On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Joselow of the New York Times.

But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%.In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said: “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel notes that one reason Noem has been cutting so ferociously at FEMA is because she has run through the money Congress allocated for HHS with her single-minded focus on immigration.

In May, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called out Noem’s expenditure of $200 million on an ad campaign pushing Trump’s agenda and $21 million to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay only to have many of them transferred back out. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Noem: “You are spending like you don’t have a budget…. You're on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you've been given, or to invent money. And this obsession with spending at the border…has left the country unprotected elsewhere.

Noem responded to Blumenthal that she was fulfilling a mandate. She told him: “The American people overwhelmingly in the last election said, ‘We want a secure border, we want to make sure no longer are the scales of justice tipped in the favor of criminals….’”

A recent video posted to Facebook Reels by the Department of Homeland Security makes it clear Noem’s justification was cover for a violent Christian nationalist vision in which ICE and the Border Patrol are enforcing God’s commandments. A dark film invokes Isaiah 6:8, the Bible verse in which God asks, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answers, “Here am I! Send me.” The exchange is widely interpreted to show volunteers willing to do God’s work.

A poll released Friday makes it clear that the American people do not support such a vision and did not, in fact, expect a Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record and have lived in the U.S. for years. A Gallup poll released yesterday shows that the administration’s draconian policies toward immigrants have created a backlash. A record 79% of adults say immigration is good for the country, with only 17% seeing it as bad. That change has been driven primarily by a shift in Republicans, 64% of whom now agree that immigrants are good for the country, up from their low of under 40%. The percentage of American adults who say immigration should be reduced has dropped to 30%, down from 55% in 2024.

Lincoln Square Media, Political Commentary: Big, Beautiful, and Predictably Cruel, Kristoffer Ealy, July 13, 2025. It's not just bad policy — it’s social vandalism dressed in patriotic language.

I tried to warn people.

I said it in the classroom. I said it on social media. I said it in passing conversations with politically engaged friends who were optimistic in ways I couldn’t relate to. I told them this “Big Beautiful Bill” — or more accurately, this big, dangerous piece of legislation — was always going to pass. I’ve seen the playbook before, and it never changes.

But I was told I was being negative. That I didn’t understand how “divided” the Republican caucus was. That Susan Collins had “concerns”. That Lisa Murkowski didn’t like the price tag. That Ron Johnson said he wasn’t voting for it. I’ve been doing this long enough to know what that means: nothing.

Because at its core, this isn’t about traditional legislative strategy. It’s about MAGA, and MAGA doesn’t legislate — it performs. And while there may be gradations of MAGA, the movement as a whole is not rooted in compromise or conscience. It is a machine of obedience, built around the authority of one man. There are no “better angels” to appeal to — not necessarily because the individuals are all evil, but because the structure demands total alignment. It’s not governance. It’s choreography.Subscribed

And that’s why those of us who have seen this movie before knew how it would end before the opening credits. MAGA does the same thing every time: a controversial bill is introduced; a handful of Republicans express performative concern; Trump sets a deadline; cable news covers the “will-they-won’t-they”; and just before the 11th hour, they all fall in line.

Rinse. Repeat.

We’ve seen this pattern with the 2017 tax cuts. With the 2017 attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act. With the debt ceiling brinkmanship of 2023. It’s not new. In fact, it’s so predictable it feels like a political version of Scooby-Doo. At least in Scooby-Doo, they try to throw in a twist about who’s wearing the monster mask. MAGA, on the other hand, doesn’t bother. The villain enters in full costume, tells you what they’re about to do, and then does it while the audience debates whether or not to take them seriously.

For people just tuning in, this may all seem shocking — like walking into Back to the Future Part III without watching the first two. But for those of us who’ve been paying attention, it’s painfully familiar. And unfortunately, this time, the stakes are far too real.

President Trump has now signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law. It is not just bad policy — it’s social vandalism dressed in patriotic language. It includes over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, with projections that over 11 million people could lose coverage over the next decade. It slashes funding for food assistance, undermines public education, expands military spending by billions, and hands permanent tax breaks to the wealthy. It does this while adding an estimated $2.7 trillion to the national deficit, all under the banner of fiscal responsibility.

And yet, despite all that, Democrats shouldn’t waste time lamenting its passage. It was always going to pass the moment we lost control of all three branches. The real question is what we do next.

I’ve always said the Democratic Party functions best when it’s grounded in strategy and purpose. That’s what gave us Obama in 2008 and 2012. That’s what brought Joe Biden to victory in 2020. But in 2024, when panic took over strategy, we lost focus. The result wasn’t just electoral defeat. It was a vacuum that allowed the worst impulses of the right to move unchecked.

So no — this moment is not about grief. It’s about clarity.

There will be harm. That’s unavoidable. But our job now is to mitigate that harm, call it out in real time, and prepare a disciplined offensive for 2026. As bleak as things may feel, there are still strategic opportunities. The House is in play. The Senate map is difficult, but not impossible. And more importantly, the GOP has now fully branded itself to this bill. They own every line item, every cut, every tax giveaway, every act of cruelty disguised as reform.

The bill passed. That’s a fact. But the story isn’t over.

The next chapter is ours to write.

Kristoffer Ealy is a political science professor who teaches at California State University Fullerton, Ventura College, Los Angeles Harbor College, and Oxnard College. He is the author of the upcoming book "Political Illiteracy: Learning the Wrong Lessons." 

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: The Trump 'Epstein Files' MAGA Problem -- And Threat, Marc Elias, right, July 13, 2025. When we look back on the whirlwind that is Donald Trump’s presidency,  we may very well pinpoint this weekend as the moment his second term spun out of control.

The weekend Trump lost control of the narrative — and parts of his political base. It seems clear that the result will be a harsh attack on his political opponents and the rule of law.

The proximate cause of this unraveling is the administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files. The backstory of Jeffrey Epstein is as well-known as it is sordid: A wealthy financier who engaged in horrific acts of sex trafficking involving underage girls. After he was caught, he reportedly committed suicide in prison.

For years, the right-wing — fed by Trump and his orbit — insisted Epstein was, in fact, murdered in prison to protect his rich and powerful friends. For reasons that have never been clear to me, MAGA conspiracists assumed the beneficiaries of such a cover-up were Democrats.

Trump himself had some relationship with Epstein, as did several others in his circle. Yet, when he took office, his hand-picked Attorney General and FBI Director promised to release records and “client lists” that would expose those who had exploited the underage victims.

Over the last several weeks, the Trump administration has badly mishandled the matter — creating even more suspicion and unrest among his base, even as they attempt to declare that there is no truth to the conspiracy theories and no incriminating client list. Until recently, this controversy had mostly been confined to social media and the far-right.

Not anymore.The first indication that this was breaking through to a broader audience came on Tuesday, when Trump deflected a question about Epstein aimed at Pam Bondi:

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”

By the end of the week, reports emerged that the number two official at the FBI, Dan Bongino, might resign over the matter.

Even then, I largely dismissed the story. Having lived through the absurd conspiracy theories aimed at my clients — and at times, myself — I have little patience for entertaining them.

I thought the real story here was the leopard eating the administration’s face: the conspiracists who were lied to are now turning on those who deceived them, recasting Trump’s circle as the new deep state. Amusing, but not exactly insightful.

Then came Saturday.

At 5:21 p.m., Trump posted a very long screed on Truth Social about Epstein, something that certainly isn’t unusual, but this was different. His post was unhinged, but not in the way we are accustomed to him being unhinged. Usually, Trump is leading the parade of misfits, conspiracists and true believers. Here, he seemed to be trying to halt the parade — telling everyone to pack up and go home.

Most importantly, Trump seemed to pivot from insisting that there are no Epstein files to acknowledging their fabled existence. His new story? The files are forgeries “written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.” This is not a small difference and raises a host of questions about how, exactly, these fake files were created and why Pam Bondi and Kash Patel have not previously mentioned them.Instead of focusing on Epstein, he directed the FBI to investigate “Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, [and] The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020.”

While this may sound familiar, in this context it offers new reasons to be concerned. Trump needs action on something to divert attention from Epstein and reunify the MAGA conspiracists. Unsurprisingly, he has landed on going after his political opponents.

So where does this leave us? It’s hard to say, but here are my tentative conclusions:

1. There are Epstein files, and they are embarrassing for Trump or those close to him.
2. He is worried they will eventually be released and thus wants to discredit them in advance.
3. He is going to increase prosecutions of his political opponents to rally his base.

An hour after Trump’s social media post, Steve Bannon took to the stage at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit to “deconstruct” Trump’s plan. Bannon, who has proven a strong barometer of Trump’s appeal to the MAGA faithful, boiled down Trump’s message to this: The president will soon have Pam Bondi appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and charge his political opponents.

According to Bannon, that investigation will cover, among other things, the activities of Democrats in the 2016 and 2020 elections. He hinted that it may even be used to prosecute those who held the Jan. 6 insurrectionists accountable.Trump rarely loses control over his own conspiracies and the actions of his followers, which makes the situation particularly dangerous and unpredictable. Like other strongmen, when facing internal dissent, Trump’s instinct is to manufacture an excuse to crackdown on opposition.

He is already doing that with respect to migrants but has unexpectedly run into logistical challenges and a shift in public opinion against the overt cruelty. It is now clear that he will amplify the vilification of his traditional enemies on familiar ground.

This is what happened in the lead-up to Jan. 6. It’s how we ended up with the John Durham special counsel investigation. We must all be alert — and ready — for it to happen again.

New York Times, Justice Department Drops Case Against Plastic Surgeon Over Fake Covid-19 Cards, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, July 13, 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had ordered the dismissal of charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of selling bogus vaccination cards for $50 each.

The Justice Department has dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon who was accused in 2023 of selling fake Covid-19 vaccine cards for $50 apiece, Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, said in a social media post.

The decision to dismiss charges against the surgeon, Dr. Michael Kirk Moore Jr., was the latest move by President Trump’s administration to push back against measures taking during the pandemic regarded by many of his allies as government overreach.

“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” she wrote on Saturday night. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”

In the motion to dismiss the case on Saturday, Felice John Viti, the acting U.S. attorney in Utah, wrote that dropping the case was “in the interests of justice.”

Lawyers for Dr. Moore did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Trial proceedings had begun this month in Salt Lake City.

Opposition to the case had attracted considerable interest among conservatives, many of whom viewed it as an example of what they said was former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s use of the judiciary to target figures on the right.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, a longtime vaccine skeptic, said in April on social media that Dr. Moore deserved a “medal for his courage.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said last week that she was asking the Justice Department to drop the charges against Dr. Moore, calling him “a hero, not a criminal.”

Ms. Bondi’s decision was consistent with measures taken by the administration to shake up the Covid vaccine system, often in the face of opposition from medical experts.

In May, Mr. Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend the Covid vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The C.D.C. later changed its recommendation for healthy children, requiring consultations with providers, but dropped it for pregnant women.Editors’ PicksA Tiny Chef Inspires an Outsize Outpouring‘I Intend to Keep My Baby’How Much of Our Math Series Did You Retain? Try This Quiz.

Documents released in recent weeks showed that the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official had rejected broad uses of two Covid vaccines, citing unknown risks or injuries despite assurances of safety from dozens of staff experts.

And Mr. Trump in January ordered the reinstatement of many service members who had been dismissed for refusing the Covid vaccine.

When it filed the charges in 2023, the U.S. attorney’s office in Utah said that Dr. Moore, a board-certified surgeon in the Salt Lake City area, had sold hundreds of cards falsely claiming to be proof of vaccination in exchange for cash payments or donations to an unspecified charity. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and two other charges.

Prosecutors said that under the scheme, Dr. Moore and others then destroyed the government-issued vaccines, noting that many child patients were given saline shots instead of vaccine doses at their parents’ request.

Dr. Moore and others sold enough of the falsified vaccine cards to equal 1,937 doses of the vaccine, according to charging documents, which say that the scheme lasted from May 2021 to September 2022, it said.

New York Times, What to Know About the Secret Service, a Year After It Failed to Protect Trump, Eileen Sullivan, July 13, 2025. The agency withstood criticism and a reckoning after a lone assassin grazed Donald J. Trump on the campaign trail. Today, recruiting is up.

One year has passed since a lone gunman fired shots at Donald J. Trump during a campaign rally in a quiet Pittsburgh suburb. The bullet could have been lethal if a fraction of an inch closer. It grazed his ear. A rally attendee was killed, and two others were injured.

The attempted assassination on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa., shocked the world. And it washed away a 43-year stretch since a former or current president was wounded in an attempt on his life.

The Secret Service came under withering criticism, and the episode was perceived to be one of the worst failures in the history of the agency. The House and the Senate formed panels to review what went wrong. And the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service’s parent agency, ordered up an independent assessment.

“The Secret Service must be the world’s leading governmental protective organization,” the assessment said. “The events at Butler on July 13 demonstrate that, currently, it is not.”

In addition, the agency spent months looking internally. As findings trickled out, it became clear that the Secret Service had systemic problems that went back years. Among those were deep challenges with recruiting and holding onto experienced agents — burnout was a constant problem. There were also basic human blunders: poor communications about planning, especially for outdoor events. Fatigue from long hours and thin staffing during a grueling campaign season. Complacency from the long streak of seeming success.

• New York Times, The Quiet Unraveling of the Man Who Almost Killed Trump, Steve Eder and Tawnell D. Hobbs, Updated June 9, 2025. Thomas Crooks was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. He stockpiled explosive materials for months before his attack on Donald Trump, as his mental health eroded.

July 12  

 

Democracy Docket, Political Advocacy:It’s the states, stupid, Marc Elias, right, July 12, 2025. A defining feature of Donald Trump is that he demands attention. From outrage to stupidity to outright cruelty, he forces us to look at him the way a disaster prevents us from averting our eyes.

Much has been written about the attention economy and how Trump makes us more polarized, less informed and, frankly, dumber. But there is another byproduct of focusing on Trump that is far more dangerous to democracy. It allows other Republicans, particularly at the state level, to operate under the radar — with little attention paid to how they are tilting the playing field in their favor for next year’s elections.

Across the country, the GOP has built an election operation focused on gerrymandering, voter suppression and election denialism. Fueled by dark money and false conspiracy theories, it is the Republican Party’s top priority.

This is no accident. Trump knows that the greatest threat to his power is losing the majority next year. By slowly eroding voting rights, Republicans are gunning to secure a victory the only way they know how.

We can’t let them get away with it.

Let’s start with North Carolina. At this point, Republicans in the state see voter suppression as their side hustle — while outright election subversion is their main hustle. After trying to steal a Supreme Court seat with a failed effort to disenfranchise 65,000 voters, they’re back at it and raring to go.

Last month, state Republicans introduced a sweeping elections bill aimed at restricting voting. Among other steps, the measure would bar state and local election officials from promoting voting. It would also require members of the military and citizens voting from abroad — the latest targets of the GOP voter suppression campaign — to provide a photo ID. North Carolina Republicans know that without these efforts, Democrats are more likely to win.

 

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and CIA Director John Ratcliffe speak before a Cabinet meeting featuring “Gulf of America” hats for everyone on April 30, 2025, in the Cabinet Room (White House Photo by Molly Riley).

Lincoln Square Media via Substack, Political Opinion: Your Silence Isn't Strategy. It's Surrender, Rick Wilson, right, July 12, 2025. Stop deluding yourself that you're the adult in the room. If you stay, you're complicit in Trump's crimes.

There are two kinds of Trump appointees.

At the senior level, we have the ambitious, the telegenic, and the master sycophants. This column is most certainly not for J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, or any of the other Fox alumni staining the government with their incompetence and malice.

It’s not for the committed cultists and Trumphadi ideologies like Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and Karoline Leavitt. They’re part of the inner cult, the Worshipful Company of the Golden Kneepad.

It’s not for the MAGA Schedule Cs trolling on government accounts or the misfit lawyers with degrees from state schools who got here by pretending they spotted election fraud or the sons of donors in tailored suits, but rather for the quietly horrified agency staffers who grimace at the orders but execute them anyway.

This is for the ones who reassure themselves that they’re “the adults in the room,” that they’re protecting the country from even worse outcomes by staying in a job that’s now indistinguishable from a moral meat grinder. This is for the law enforcement types in DHS, ICE, the FBI who feel themselves being tugged closer and closer to a new role as a domestic Federal brute squad. This is for the officers in the military being pushed to use their troops against American citizens.

You know what’s happening. You see it every day, and unlike the rest of us, you’re not guessing. You’re not reading tea leaves or decoding threads on X or poring through court filings; you’re in the room. You’re reading, and sometimes writing, the memos, hearing the plans, watching the dismantling of decency and law and human dignity in real time.

And still, you stay. Silent. Complicit.

You don’t get to play the stunned victim later. Not this time.

The first Trump administration was a test, and most of you failed it. You watched children get caged, whistleblowers silenced, loyalty oaths administered, the law weaponized and warped, and you did what? You gritted your teeth, grabbed another bourbon from the bottle in the lower left drawer of your desk, and told yourself you were "staying to prevent worse things." And then, when it was over, you tried to launder your reputations through deliberate amnesia, or running to think tanks, private equity, or writing some self-serving memoir no one read.

Then, you squirmed and bleated on January 6th, and when Trump’s fraud verdict hit, and when the Trump classified file theft was discovered and somehow, dragged yourself back into his orbit, accepting the discount price he got for your soul.

Well, here we are again. The crimes are bigger. The action is more openly fascist. The human damage is more severe. The surveillance state is spreading. The lies are thicker and more pungent. The enemies list is growing at home, and the list of allies abroad is shrinking as Trump joins the Dictator Club.

The abuse of power isn’t in the breach, but the observance.

And still, you stay.

Let’s not pretend this is about patriotism or protecting institutions. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking your silence is a form of strategy. It’s fear. Economic insecurity. You’re terrified of losing the paycheck, the status, the trajectory.

So let me offer the hard truth: The only moral position left is resignation. Loud, public, defiant resignation. The kind that leaves a mark.

New York Times, Tariffs or Deals? Trump Seems Content With Punishing Levies, Ana Swanson, July 12, 2025. The president’s supporters portray him as a top dealmaker. But, at least for now, far more trading partners have gotten stiff tariffs than trade deals.

Even after President Trump announced sweeping global tariffs in April, some investors and supporters comforted themselves by arguing that the president’s goal was still to open global markets, not close them off.

The belief, promoted by Mr. Trump himself, was that he was using his tariffs as a lever to crack open foreign markets and the administration would soon deliver dozens of deals that would increase U.S. exports and help American businesses flourish abroad.

Three months later, that optimism is being replaced by doubts that Mr. Trump’s goal was ever to strike the kind of trade deals that would open up markets. When Mr. Trump paused his global tariffs for 90 days in April, he said the delay would give his administration time to reach trade deals with countries across the world. In the intervening months, Mr. Trump boasted about how countries were lining up to talk to the United States and at one point claimed he had reached 200 deals.

But the administration has only announced two preliminary deals, with Britain and Vietnam, and the status of the Vietnam deal is now in question. While handshake agreements with the European Union, India, Taiwan and other governments could soon be pending, they are likely to be limited pacts that leave much left to be negotiated. Even when deals have been announced, the administration has left double-digit tariffs in place, with the promise of more levies on foreign products on the way.

This week, Mr. Trump sent out nearly two dozen letters notifying countries of the high tariff rates they will be charged as of Aug. 1 if they don’t sign trade deals. That included nations that were in active negotiations with the United States, like Indonesia, Canada, South Korea and Malaysia.

With less than a month before the Aug. 1 tariffs kick in, the Trump administration may have the capacity to deal with only a fraction of those countries. Some governments that have sought out meetings with U.S. officials have not been able to schedule them.

Mr. Trump has seemed unbothered by not having more deals to announce. Instead, he has extolled the volume of tariffs he is heaping on America’s trading partners, claiming that they are more than justified and are bringing in huge sums of money to the United States.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.

“Everybody has to pay and the incentive is that they have the right to deal in the United States. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to pay,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

He acknowledged that his government doesn’t have the capacity to do trade deals with every nation, but also seemed to suggest that the letters he was sending amounted to trade deals.  

New York Times, Strategies: The Danger of a Market Melt-Up, Jeff Sommer, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.

Market meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored.

Yet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has rebounded. It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market.

In fact, stocks have become expensive again. While the potential for a serious market downturn hasn’t vanished, I think it’s also time to begin thinking about another problem: the danger of a market melt-up.

By many measures, we’re already in perilously overvalued territory. On a historical basis, share prices are high in relation to corporate earnings, assets and the size of the overall economy.

I don’t want to go too far with this. The U.S. stock market isn’t nearly as expensive as it was at the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000. But it is increasingly pricey — surprisingly so, when you consider the repeated blows to market sentiment dealt by the Trump administration.

Tariffs re-emerged as a major issue over the past week. The administration issued an array of announcements: Tariffs will increase, be delayed, not be delayed, be imposed on copper, be negotiated lower, be made permanent, and on and on. Who really knows? The stock market has been absorbing this information, stumbling from time to time but then regaining its footing. While the economic impact of the tariffs has barely been felt yet, the stock market remains much higher than it was at the beginning of the year.How High?

One sign that the “market is a little out over its skis,” as Bespoke Investment Group put it in a note to clients this past week, is that shares of companies that are making no profit have been rising faster than those that are deeply profitable. Bespoke, an independent financial research firm, said, “For stocks that are losing money, generally speaking, the bigger the losses the better the returns.”

Companies with marvelous narratives about future returns are capturing investors’ imaginations. For example, a leading stock in the Russell 3000 index, with a gain of more than 500 percent this year, was Aeva Technologies. It makes sensors for robots, autonomous vehicles and drones — all hot items these days. Yet the company is losing a ton of money.

No matter. In the current market, the sky is the limit. Referring to the astonishing stock performance of money-losing companies, Bespoke said: “This is, to put it mildly, an unsustainable dynamic. Valuations can only do so much to support markets before the trend reverses. Of course, there are other sources of market return other than multiple expansion of no-earnings companies, but this dynamic is still emblematic of a market that is starting to get carried away with itself.”

 New York Times, The Surprising Scientists Hit by Trump’s D.E.I. Cuts, Kate Zernike, Updated July 12, 2025. The N.I.H. has terminated hundreds of diversity grants awarded to young researchers, many of whom come from the very places that supported Trump.

Lucas Dillard describes himself as sort of a JD Vance, scientist version.

Raised by a single mother in rural Appalachia, he was about to enlist in the Navy when he received a Pell grant that allowed him to go to North Carolina State University.

A work-study requirement delivered a stroke of fortune: a job in a lab with a structural biologist who let him conduct his own research. Those projects got him into a post-baccalaureate program at the National Institutes of Health, where he published papers that helped him get into a Ph.D. program in molecular biophysics at Johns Hopkins.

And last year, his work at Hopkins won a prestigious N.I.H. fellowship that pays the country’s most promising doctoral students to continue their scientific research.

Mr. Dillard’s grant was one of thousands the N.I.H. canceled as it rushed to comply with President Trump’s executive order banning federally funded diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The order accused the programs of using race- and sex-based preferences that it said were “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” and “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement.”

But Mr. Trump’s push to end D.E.I. has been a blunt instrument, eliminating highly competitive grant programs that defined diversity well beyond race and gender. Those who have lost grants include not only Black and Latino scientists, but also many like Mr. Dillard, who are white and from rural areas, which are solidly Trump country. The administration has denounced universities as hotbeds of liberal elitism, inhospitable to viewpoint diversity. The canceled diversity grant programs were intended to make science less elite, by developing a pipeline from poorer areas of the country that tend to be more conservative.

“I think it’s very different in their minds, who is getting the D.E.I. stuff,” Mr. Dillard said. “People on the right, they don’t realize they’re limiting the opportunity of their own kids by supporting this.” 

  

New York Times, Rubio’s Cuts at State Department Demote Longtime U.S. Values, Michael Crowley, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists he is streamlining a bloated department, but critics warn the cost to America’s standing and influence could be high.

The Trump administration began firing more than 1,000 State Department employees on Friday, as it moves to downsize the federal government’s diplomatic arm in what critics say is a risky retreat from America’s global engagement.

The layoffs are part of a reorganization plan devised by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, who says his department is too costly, cumbersome and ideological. Continuing President Trump’s drive to slash a federal work force he inherently distrusts, the job cuts will drain the department of expertise and batter the morale of those who remain, critics say.

But the plan also has global implications, veteran diplomats say. It refocuses American diplomacy around Mr. Trump’s narrow and transactional sense of the national interest while downgrading priorities such as human rights, democracy and refugees. In doing so, critics argue, it undermines a moral purpose that, however imperfectly and inconsistently applied, has been a source of pride for generations of Americans and has distinguished the United States from more coldblooded global competitors such as Russia and China.

Democrats and diplomats also warned on Friday that Mr. Rubio’s plan to cut the department’s U.S.-based work force by about 17 percent, including through about 1,400 layoffs announced on Friday, would leave the department short handed — especially after the recent elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose relatively few surviving programs will be transferred to the State Department.

“As the U.S. retreats, our adversaries — like the People’s Republic of China — are expanding their diplomatic reach, making Americans less safe and less prosperous,” said a statement signed by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

“If this administration is serious about putting ‘America first,’ it must invest in our diplomatic corps and national security experts — not erode the institutions that protect our interests, promote U.S. values and keep Americans abroad safe,” the statement added.

Trump officials and their Republican allies call that hyperbole. Insisting that his goal is a department that can move at information-age speed, Mr. Rubio says he is not making cuts for their own sake but “streamlining,” as a human resources notice to department employees put it on Friday. Mr. Rubio likes to cite the story of a memo that reached his desk only after 40 different offices had signed off on it.

And senior State Department officials insist that, unlike deep cuts forced elsewhere by a chain saw-wielding Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Rubio’s were the product of consultation with longtime department employees. Some seasoned diplomats say that input was not extensive, however, and that Mr. Rubio’s plan does not reflect the work force’s thinking.

And while Trump officials argue that the State Department’s budget has grown “bloated” in recent years, from about $10 billion 20 years ago to $17.6 billion today, that is an increase of just 6 percent when adjusted for inflation. 

New York Times, Investigation: How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power, Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman and Natan Odenheimer, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). Secret meetings, altered records, ignored intelligence: the inside story of the prime minister’s political calculations since Oct. 7.

Six months into the war in the Gaza Strip, Benjamin Netanyahu, right, was preparing to bring it to a halt. Negotiations were underway for an extended cease-fire with Hamas, and he was ready to agree to a compromise. 

Ending the war would then have raised the chances of a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most powerful country. For months, the Saudi leadership had secretly signaled its willingness to accelerate peace talks with Israel — as long as the war in Gaza stopped. The normalization of ties between the Saudi and Israeli governments, an achievement that had eluded every Israeli leader since the state’s founding in 1948, would have secured Israel’s status in the region as well as Netanyahu’s long-term legacy.

But for Netanyahu, a truce also came with personal risk. As prime minister, he led a fragile coalition that depended on the support of far-right ministers who wanted to occupy Gaza, not withdraw from it. They sought a long war that would ultimately enable Israel to re-establish Jewish settlements in Gaza.

If a cease-fire came too soon, these ministers might decide to collapse the ruling coalition. That would prompt early elections that polls showed Netanyahu would lose. Out of office, Netanyahu was vulnerable. Since 2020, he had been standing trial for corruption; the charges, which he denied, mostly related to granting favors to businessmen in exchange for gifts and favorable media coverage. Shorn of power, Netanyahu would lose the ability to force out the attorney general who oversaw his prosecution — as indeed his government would later attempt to do.

A political resurrection

The 12-day war with Iran in June has been widely understood as a moment of glory for Netanyahu, one that marks the culmination of a hard-fought comeback from the lowest point in his long political career, when he oversaw, in October 2023, the deadliest military failure in Israel’s history.

But in the aftermath of this apparent triumph, a more fateful reckoning awaits Netanyahu over the war in Gaza. The conflict has flattened much of the territory, killing at least 55,000 people, including Hamas combatants but also many civilians, nearly 10,000 of them children under the age of 11.

Even if negotiations finally bring Israel’s strikes to a halt in the coming days, it is already the longest high-intensity war in Israel’s history — longer than the wars surrounding its establishment in 1948, longer than the Yom Kippur War that defended its borders in 1973 and far longer, of course, than the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967 that brought Gaza and the West Bank under its control.

As the war has dragged on, the global sympathy that Israel earned in the aftermath of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust has instead transformed into growing ignominy on the international stage. The International Court of Justice is weighing claims that Israel has committed a genocide. In America, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s failure to end the war split the Democratic Party and helped spur the upheaval that returned President Trump to power. And in Israel, prolonged war has heightened bitter disagreements about the nation’s priorities, the nature of its democracy and Netanyahu’s legitimacy as a leader.

Why, after nearly two years, has the war yet to reach a definitive conclusion? Why did Israel frequently turn away chances for de-escalation, instead expanding its military ambitions to Lebanon, to Syria and now to Iran? Why has the war dragged on, even as the leadership of Hamas was decapitated and more Israelis called for a cease-fire?

For many Israelis, the war’s protraction is mainly the fault of Hamas, which has refused to surrender despite Palestinians’ suffering unfathomable losses. Most Israelis also see the war’s expansion to Lebanon and Iran as an essential act of self-defense against allies of Hamas that also seek Israel’s destruction.

But many increasingly believe that Israel could have struck an earlier deal to end the war, and they charge Netanyahu — who wields ultimate authority over Israel’s military strategy — with preventing that deal from being reached.

 New York Times, Behind Trump’s Decision to Tax Brazil to Save Bolsonaro, Jack Nicas and Ana Ionova, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). Right-wing Brazilians wanted sanctions against the judge prosecuting Brazil’s former president. President Trump opted for something far bigger — tariffs. Since March, the son of the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been roaming the halls of the White House.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, is a sitting Brazilian congressman, but his latest job has been to convince U.S. officials that a dangerous Brazilian Supreme Court justice wants to throw him and his father into prison, simply for fighting against what they claim was a stolen election.

And in multiple visits to Washington over the past several months, he has found a sympathetic audience.

“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent — Something I know much about!” President Trump posted online Monday. “It happened to me, times 10.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro said he had been pushing senior White House officials to place sanctions on the Brazilian judge overseeing his father’s prosecution.

Then, on Wednesday, Mr. Trump opted for something far more damaging: a 50 percent tariff on all Brazilian imports starting Aug. 1, retaliation for what he called a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro, right.

The shift from imposing sanctions on a single judge to threatening an entire nation of 200 million with harsh tariffs was Mr. Trump’s decision alone, according to two people familiar with the meeting at which the president discussed his decision and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

The move showed Mr. Trump’s new willingness to use tariffs to settle political scores, regardless of questions of legality, because of their sheer power to cause economic destruction and impose intense political pressure. “I love it,” Steve Bannon said in an interview on Thursday. Mr. Bannon had long called on Mr. Trump to take action against the Brazilian Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, but he said that even he hadn’t thought of tariffs.

Now, he said, Brazil’s road out of the sudden crisis is simple: “If you drop the trial and drop the charges, the tariffs go away.”  

New York Times, Judge Orders Los Angeles Police to Stop Shooting Projectiles at Journalists, Laurel Rosenhall, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). A federal judge on Friday ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to stop using foam projectiles, tear gas and flash-bang devices against journalists covering protests after reporters and photographers were struck during demonstrations last month.

The temporary restraining order by Judge Hernán D. Vera of U.S. District Court also prohibits police officers from blocking journalists from closed areas, obstructing them from gathering information and detaining them for violating curfews or failing to disperse.

The case stems from injuries that journalists experienced while covering street demonstrations against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement. A lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles Press Club and Status Coup, an investigative reporting site, documented 35 instances in which Los Angeles police officers had used projectiles, tear gas or other forms of force against journalists or blocked them from public areas.

The press organizations are likely to succeed in arguing that the journalists’ First Amendment rights were violated and that they would suffer harm in covering future protests in Los Angeles, the judge wrote in granting the temporary order, which lasts 14 days.

“Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete,” Judge Vera wrote.

He set a hearing for later this month to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction and ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to disseminate the restrictions in his order to its officers within 72 hours.

Adam Rose, the press rights chair for the Los Angeles Press Club, said the ruling was important because it showed the critical role journalists play in informing the public. It also shows that the Los Angeles police have not been following state laws that are meant to protect reporters covering protests, he said.

“The press should be able to do their job without fear of being injured by police, without fear of their rights being chilled in other ways,” Mr. Rose said.

 

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and U.S. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi (Photo from X/Twitter).

Meidas Touch Network, GOP Senator Pushes Back on Trump’s Epstein Dismissal, J.D. Wolf, July 12, 2025. Musk replies with “🔥” emoji.

Wednesday night, Elon Musk weighed in again on the renewed debate over Jeffrey Epstein’s associates — this time replying to two separate posts that highlight apparent Republican splits over the issue.

With over 222 million followers, Musk can boost topics not just by tweeting, but through retweets and replies as well.

Musk responded with a “🤨” emoji to a meme criticizing the GOP’s fading interest in the Epstein case. The meme featured an image of Forrest Gump and the caption: “And just like that, the party that was obsessed with Epstein's list, didn't want to talk about it anymore.”Marsha Blackburn with Pam Bondi

At least one GOP Senator still wanted to talk about it. Senator Marsha Blackburn pushed back on Donald Trump’s recent dismissal of the topic. Her tweet earned an endorsement from Musk.Blackburn emphasized her years-long efforts to expose Epstein’s business network and called for continued access to financial records to help law enforcement. Musk replied to her post with a single “🔥” emoji.The MAGA base is upset that Trump is dismissing the Epstein client investigation and will be making no arrests against those who committed sexual crimes against children.

Zev Brenner's Network via Substack, Epstein’s Lawyer Speaks Out: "He Did NOT Kill Himself," Zev Brenner, July 11, 2025. Jeffrey Epstein's former lawyer, David Schoen—who also defended Donald Trump—breaks his silence in a revealing interview, expressing deep skepticism over Epstein’s official cause of death.

Schoen shares intimate details from his final conversations with Epstein, describes Epstein’s state of mind days before his death, and highlights troubling inconsistencies in the official investigation. Was Epstein really suicidal, or was there something more sinister at play?

From questionable autopsy findings by renowned medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden to Epstein’s mysterious connections with powerful figures like Trump and Ehud Barak—this exclusive conversation raises critical questions that challenge the official narrative.

Fallout Over Handling of Epstein Case Erupts Into the Open, Glenn Thrush, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). An irate attorney general is said to have confronted the deputy director of the F.B.I. at a tense White House meeting earlier in the week.

The bitter blame game over the handling of the investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein erupted in public on Friday between Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, and the senior leadership of the F.B.I., particularly the bureau’s deputy director, Dan Bongino.

Ms. Bondi and her allies believe that Mr. Bongino, who parlayed a he-man image and promotion of conspiracies into a top law enforcement job, planted stories in the conservative news media blaming Ms. Bondi for the backlash after an announcement earlier this week that the Epstein case would be closed, according to officials close to the situation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss conversations intended to be private.

It escalated into an angry face-to-face confrontation at the White House on Wednesday, when an irate Ms. Bondi accused Mr. Bongino of leaking information to the news media in the presence of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and one of her deputies, Taylor Budowich. Mr. Bongino denied it, they said.

Mr. Bongino, during another confrontation within the past week, told Ms. Bondi she had overhyped the likelihood that a review of the case undertaken by the Justice Department and F.B.I. this year would reveal a list of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking clients, and possibly raise questions about his 2019 death by hanging in custody, which was ruled a suicide.

But, to an extent, Ms. Bondi has been trying to put out a political fire that Mr. Bongino himself helped to ignite: Mr. Bongino, who oversaw the deployment of agents to scour video and documents in the case, pushed the idea of a vast cover-up in the Epstein case as the host of a popular and lucrative podcast.

On Friday, a high-profile Bongino booster — the far-right influencer and conspiracist Laura Loomer — claimed, in two dramatic social media posts, that the bureau’s deputy director had taken Friday off to collect his thoughts, and was “now seriously thinking about RESIGNING” over Ms. Bondi’s actions in the Epstein case.

A person close to Mr. Bongino did not dispute her characterization, describing him as very angry and considering a range of options, including quitting.

It would not be the first time Mr. Bongino, who has struggled to retain credibility with the right-wing base while overseeing the bureau’s day-to-day-operations, has suggested the pressures of the job were getting to him: “People ask all the time, ‘Do you like it?’ No. I don’t,” he told Fox News last month.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had no comment.

Senior Justice Department officials insisted that both Mr. Bongino and Mr. Patel had worked closely with her top advisers to review the evidence in the case and had jointly decided on closing the investigation, and are as responsible for the backlash as she is.Editors’ PicksThe Brooklyn Allergist’s Office That Was Once Home to a SpyMy In-Laws Are Hoarders. Should I Secretly Call the Authorities?Should You Be ‘Fibermaxxing’?

Todd Blanche, Ms. Bondi’s top deputy, posted a statement on social media early Friday to hammer home that point, in response to articles and social media posts suggesting that F.B.I. leadership was not entirely on board with the decision to move on.

“I worked closely with @FBIDirectorKash and @FBIDDBongino on the joint FBI and DOJ memo regarding the Epstein Files,” wrote Mr. Blanche, who led President Trump’s criminal defense team before being tapped for his current post.  

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Why Were Trump’s Agents Casing a Puerto Rican Museum in Chicago? Adrian Carrasquillo, July 12, 2025. )LET’S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. You know that. I know that. But it is wholly unclear if Trump’s masked forces in tactical gear do.

It was utterly confounding to Chicagoans this week when it appeared that Homeland Security agents were skulking outside the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture ahead of its annual Barrio Arts Fest this weekend. The museum is in a neighborhood, Humboldt Park, that is half Latino and predominantly Puerto Rican.

DHS denies that its agents’ visit had anything to do with the upcoming events, but that doesn’t pass the smell test: Museum staffers told ABC 7 Chicago that they heard agents talking about the festival. (Worth noting: In addition to the museum’s Barrio Arts Festival, locals told me there is also an upcoming Colombian festival across the street next weekend.)“

There’s footage of them looking around, asking how to come in and out, and occupying the parking lot,” said Federico A. de Jesús, a former Obama administration official who is now a consultant. He spoke with The Bulwark after a Wednesday press conference at the museum that featured more than a dozen local, state, and federal officials, including Rep. Delia Ramirez, state senator Omar Aquino, and Cook County Commissioner Jessica Vazquez

The press conference was intended to show that what DHS is doing is a waste of money—and that the community stands together: Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Colombians side by side, and won’t be intimidated.

July 11  

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Kernville, Texas, on Saturday, July 5, 2025. Ms. Noem did not renew a contract to staff call center workers until Thursday (New York Times photo by Jordan Vonderhaar).

New York Times, Investigation, FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show, Maxine Joselow, July 11, 2025. Two days after deadly Texas floods, the agency struggled to answer calls from survivors because of call center contracts that weren’t extended.

Two days after catastrophic floods roared through Central Texas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to its disaster assistance line, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The lack of responsiveness happened because the agency had fired hundreds of contractors at call centers, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters.

 

The agency laid off the contractors on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not extended, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The details on the unanswered calls on July 6, which have not been previously reported, come as FEMA faces intense scrutiny over its response to the floods in Texas that have killed more than 120 people. The agency, which President Trump has called for eliminating, has been slow to activate certain teams that coordinate response and search-and-rescue efforts.

Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security who declined to be identified wrote in an email, “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

After floods, hurricanes and other disasters, survivors can call FEMA to apply for different types of financial assistance. People who have lost their homes, for instance, can apply for a one-time payment of $750 that can help cover their immediate needs, such as food or other supplies.

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

That evening, however, Ms. Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.Editors’ Picks‘I Intend to Keep My Baby’Is Pilates Political?Should You Be ‘Fibermaxxing’?

Some FEMA officials grew frustrated by the lapse in contracts and that it was taking days for Ms. Noem to act, according to the person briefed on the matter and the documents. “We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS Secretary,” a FEMA official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues.

Representatives for two of the companies with call center contracts, General Dynamics Information Technology and Maximus, redirected requests for comment to FEMA. Representatives for the other two firms, ITCON and TTEC, did not respond to requests for comment.

“Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.

“Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You’ve lost everything, you’re trying to find out what’s insured and what’s not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs,” Mr. Schlegelmilch said. “One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork.”

It was not immediately clear how FEMA’s responsiveness to calls after the Texas floods compared to its performance after past disasters. FEMA does not publicly release that data on a regular basis.

The agency did publish similar data on Oct. 29, 2024, days after Hurricane Helene barreled across the South and nearly three weeks after Hurricane Milton hit Florida. That information showed that the agency did not answer nearly half of incoming calls over the course of a week, E & E News reported.

Democratic lawmakers raised concern on Friday that Ms. Noem’s insistence on approving expenses over $100,000 had also delayed FEMA’s deployment of search-and-rescue teams to Texas. In a letter to David Richardson, FEMA’s acting administrator, the Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wrote that Ms. Noem did not authorize the deployment of those teams until July 7, three days after the flooding began. 

The Real Michael Cohen via Substack, Opinion: Noem Lied- People Died, Michael Cohen, right, July 11, 2025. As floodwaters rose and people screamed for help, warnings sat unsent; buried in red tape. Kristi Noem’s deadly requirements prove incompetence can kill just like a disaster.

On the night of July 4, while families across America fired off fireworks, the summer joy for 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic; children, some as young as eight, turned into horror. As the Guadalupe River surged nearly 30 feet in less than an hour, those girls didn’t just die in a flood; they died waiting for someone in power to push a button. To press “send” on a warning that just never came.

Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, Hadley Hanna, Eloise Peck, Lila Bonner, Mary Grace Baker; these weren’t storm casualties. They were abandoned. And the one person ultimately responsible for that failure, the one with the most powerful emergency response agency in her hands, did nothing. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, failed to act; and children died because of it. Over 120 dead and more than 160 missing. Let that sink in for a minute.

This was not a freak event. This was not an unforeseeable act of God. It was a predictable emergency that met a predictable wall of inaction. Kerr County had an emergency alert system; CodeRED. It’s been in place for years, capable of sending text and voice alerts to phones and landlines. When water was already sweeping into homes and blocking roads, a firefighter pleaded over the radio for an alert to go out to residents in Hunt. The answer from dispatch: “Stand by; we have to get that approved with our supervisor.”

Nearly 90 minutes passed before that alert was finally issued.

Children at Camp Mystic and local residents were already gone by then.

Let’s be clear: the National Weather Service did its job. There were two dozen warnings issued. One of them screamed, in all caps, that this was a “PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION” and instructed residents to “SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW.” But unless you were glued to a radar map, or happened to be one of the lucky few who received a generic phone alert, you heard nothing. No sirens. No texts. No calls.

And Kristi Noem? She stood before cameras and lied. She claimed there was no warning system in place. But there was. And it was functional. It just wasn’t used. Because no one with the authority; or the guts, stepped up to use it.

This is what happens when you put someone unqualified in charge of national disaster response. Noem is not a crisis manager. She is not a seasoned leader. She is a politician playing pretend with the lives of real people. FEMA is her jurisdiction. She is responsible for readiness, coordination, and action in the face of disaster. But instead of pressing forward and leading, she hid behind the same smokescreen of "reviewing protocols" and "focusing on recovery efforts."

Noem didn’t fail because the job is hard. She failed because she didn’t do the job. Putting it plainly, she is unqualified.

Let’s talk about Camp Mystic as this continues to make my blood boil. A century-old camp, loved by generations, obliterated in a matter of hours. Children slept in cabins built too close to the water; cabins that should’ve been evacuated the moment the river started rising. Instead, they woke up to chaos. Helicopters rescued some. Others died trying to reach higher ground or in their cabins. One mother was swept into a tree held up by a piece of wood. Her son recorded the rising floodwaters with trembling hands. His sisters were airlifted out with cousins from nearby cabins.

One girl, clinging to her sister, vanished under the current.

And Kristi Noem still can’t admit what happened on her watch.

This wasn’t just a communication breakdown; it was a failure of command. A failure to heed clear warnings. A failure to empower those on the ground to act without delay. This was not the result of one bad night; it’s the outcome of a system that puts political loyalty above public safety. A system where the person in charge would rather lie than lead.

This tragedy should be a turning point. It must be if not to, at least, honor those who perished.

We need an immediate federal investigation into FEMA’s regional coordination. We need a full audit of the emergency communication logs. We need real accountability from every official who allowed 90 critical minutes to pass while children and local residents drowned in the dark.

And we need Kristi Noem to step down.

This isn’t politics. This is life and death. This is about families who now have to bury their daughters and family members because a bureaucrat required her permission to do the right thing.

It didn’t have to end this way. Some of these people could have been saved. But we let them down. All of them.

We have the technology. We have the systems. What we don’t have; what we so desperately need, is the leadership.

Kristi Noem knew or should have known.

Now the question is: Do we care enough to make sure this never happens again?

 

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration's firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic). 

New York Times, Texas County Flagged Need for Flood Alarm Months Before Tragedy, Christopher Flavelle, J. David Goodman and Andrea Fuller, July 11, 2025 (print ed.). Kerr County repeatedly failed to secure a warning system, even as local officials remained aware of the risks and as billions of dollars were available for similar projects.

The warning last fall was, in retrospect, achingly prescient.

“It is likely” that Kerr County “will experience a flood event in the next year,” city and county officials concluded in a report for the Federal Emergency Management Agency released last October. Such floods, they added, could pose a particular danger to people in “substandard structures” and result in “increased damage, injuries, or loss of life.”

One solution, county officials noted, would be a flood warning system that could alert residents to rising waters. They estimated the cost of such a system at less than $1 million, and noted that FEMA had grant programs that could pay for it.

But by the time floodwaters raged down the Guadalupe River last Friday morning, killing at least 121, including at least 36 children, no such alarm system had been installed in Kerr County. A week later, amid trees shorn of their bark from the force of the water, recovery crews were still cutting through towering piles of debris, in search of the missing.

The October warning, part of a 220-page “hazard mitigation” report that addressed a range of threats and that counties are required to send periodically to FEMA, followed years of failed attempts by local officials to secure funding for such a system, according to records and interviews with local officials. 

 

Tweety and Dick Eastland, photographed on May 19, 2011. Photograph by Sarah Wilson

Texas Monthly, What Dick and Tweety Eastland Meant for Camp Mystic, Mimi Schwartz, July 7, 2025. The duo offered a place where parents knew their daughters would be enriched and happy. During the tragic floods, Dick Eastland died trying to save them.

It’s easy, in reading the news accounts of the horrific drownings of so many young campers in the Hill Country floods, to miss what Camp Mystic has meant to generations of a certain kind of Texas woman, and what the loss of it will mean going forward.

But maybe you had to see the place to really understand what the Stacy family, which has run the camp since 1939 (it was created thirteen years before that) had in mind early on. I’ve often thought that a lot of the Texas landscape is an acquired taste, but the area around Hunt, due west of Kerrville, has always been easy to love. The emerald-green Guadalupe is shaded by tall cypress trees, and the calls of wild birds compete with the rushing of small waterfalls. There are red-tailed hawks and white-tailed deer, wild turkeys and bobcats. No matter your faith, watching the early-morning mist come off the Guadalupe or wading in its cool, clear waters could guarantee some kind of peace and tranquility, at least momentarily.

Agnes Stacy, who was the first head of Camp Mystic, wanted her campers to understand and appreciate that world and their place in it. (She named the place for the morning mists from the Guadalupe.) Stacy was the kind of quintessential independent—i.e., headstrong—Texas woman who sees what needs to be done and sets about doing it. Wide-eyed and dimpled, she was, of course, gorgeous too. Stacy came from a wealthy family and had befriended Anne Morgan, J.P.’s daughter, but was never one to see any kind of lifetime guarantees from wealth and privilege. (She helped rehabilitate shell-shocked children in France after World War I.) Stacy fostered a passion for the natural world, but she also encouraged in her female campers—who were then, as they are now, mostly daughters or granddaughters of the well-to-do—“loyalty, open-mindedness, and tolerance of individual differences.” The “give and take of camp life,” she hoped, would “offset overindulgence at home.”

Various directors followed in her wake, and over time the camp became more religious and more attentive to the emotional needs of girls who had firsthand experience with the modern world: divorce, alcoholism, abuse, and the kind of neglect that can pervade even the most well-resourced families. Campers could leave their screens behind for stargazing. Competition was for canoe racing, not for having the latest of everything. Mystic was, above all, a place where time could be stopped, where a girl could have the same summer idyll as her mother and grandmother.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted in calling out the worst Supreme Court in modern times, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 11, 2025. KBJ won’t allow accept its pretense of impartiality.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, above, has been the most clear-eyed, candid critic (on or off the Supreme Court) of the damage the majority of MAGA justices have inflicted on the court’s institutional credibility, the rule of law, and the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Americans.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been the most clear-eyed, candid critic (on or off the Supreme Court) of the damage the majority of MAGA justices have inflicted on the court’s institutional credibility, the rule of law, and the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Americans.

Her dissent on Tuesday to an order lifting the stay on a massive, unilateral reorganization of government hacks away at the procedural subterfuge that the majority (including two “liberals”) erects. It is typical of her no-nonsense critique of the court majority’s lawlessness:

What is at issue here is whether Executive Order No. 14210 effects a massive restructuring of the Federal Government (the likes of which have historically required Congress’s approval), on the one hand, or minor workforce reductions consistent with existing law, on the other. One needs facts to answer that critical question, and the District Court not only issued such preliminary findings based on actual evidence, it is also the tribunal best positioned to make that determination, at least initially. Put differently, from its lofty perch far from the facts or the evidence, this Court lacks the capacity to fully evaluate, much less responsibly override, reasoned lower court fact finding about what this challenged executive action actually entails. I respectfully dissent because, in addition to the Government’s failure to show the exigency or irreparable harm that is required for emergency relief, this Court could not possibly know in this posture whether the Government is likely to succeed on the merits with respect to such a fact-dependent dispute.

Jackson writes that the court ignores “55 pages of evidence-based lower court reasoning.” What is worse, she reiterates, is that “because the Court provides no explanation for its likelihood-of-success conclusion,” the reasons for throwing aside the district court’s fact-findings are “anyone’s guess.” This is not jurisprudence; it’s blocking and tackling for a dictatorial executive.

The victims of the Supreme Court’s cavalier attitude are never forgotten in her stinging dissents. This was no exception.

New York Times, Purge of Foreign Workers Arrives at Amazon’s Warehouses, Miriam Jordan and Karen Weise, July 11, 2025. The tech giant has quietly shed warehouse employees whose work authorizations were revoked after the Trump administration ended a Biden-era immigration program.

Frantzdy Jerome, a Haitian immigrant in central Ohio, received shout-out after shout-out for his work at an Amazon warehouse he joined last year.

In March, his manager commended him in a message for his “reliability, hard work and dedication to our team.”

“Thank you for your flexibility and picking up the extra shifts,” read another message, on June 7.

Two weeks later, Mr. Jerome, 35, lost his job. His work authorization was revoked in late June after the Trump administration ended a Biden-era program that allowed him to live and work legally in the United States. Hundreds of others at the same Amazon building in West Jefferson, which employs more than 3,700 people, also lost their jobs.

They are among thousands of foreign workers across the country who have been swept up in a quiet purge, pushed out of jobs in places where their labor was in high demand and at times won high praise. While raids to nab undocumented workers in fields and Home Depot parking lots have grabbed attention, the job dismissals at the Amazon warehouse are part of the Trump administration’s effort to thin the ranks of immigrants who had legal authorization to work.

“This is not unique to Amazon,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian community leader in nearby Springfield. He is aware of more than 100 Haitians with work authorizations who are now out of work in the area, he said, with the terminations reducing work forces in warehouses, auto-parts plants and stores.

Such dismissals are happening at many of Amazon’s more than 1,000 facilities around the country, including in Massachusetts and the warehouse in Staten Island that fills orders for millions of New Yorkers. At one fulfillment center in Florida, hundreds were let go, a person familiar with the site said.

The timing of the dismissals is tricky for Amazon, just before its Prime Day deals, an event that now stretches over four days in July. The deals typically drive a spike in customer orders — and overtime demands — rivaled only by the holiday shopping season.

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: The Kool-Aid Presidency: How Donald Trump Created America’s Jonestown, Thom Hartman, right, July 11, 2025. He didn’t need a jungle. With lies, fear, and blind loyalty, Trump built his Jonestown in the heart of our republic — and millions are still drinking…

Former FBI agent Michael Fienberg has gone public, pointing out that the agency, under the leadership of Bongino and Patel, is purging itself of people who are not members of the Trump cult (my phrase, not his).

Similar cult-like behavior is on vivid display with the White House press secretary, the head of DHS, and the head of the Department of Justice — among numerous other administration officials and elected Republicans — regularly spouting lies and half-truths that target women, immigrants, and Democrats.Marjorie Taylor Greene is implying that the children who died in the Texas floods were the victims of a nefarious plot — presumably by Democrats or Jews who operate space lasers — to modify the weather, completely ignoring the fact that Republican-aligned fossil fuel billionaires have been engaged in a half-century-long scheme to sabotage our atmosphere with their carbon dioxide emissions in exchange for trillions of dollars in profits.

Some of which, no doubt, have been shared with Greene or her campaign.Multiple administration officials, elected Republicans, and rightwing media cult leaders on platforms like Fox “News” have been amplifying the racist, antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” that wealthy Jews are paying to “replace” white people in America with Blacks, Mexicans, and other people of color. This has led to ICE becoming the largest police force in America, with a budget larger than that of the entire Russian military, soon to be sweeping a neighborhood near you in their never-ending hunt for brown-skinned people.

Donald Trump didn’t need to lure his followers into a remote jungle, like Jim Jones did in Guyana. He didn’t need to physically isolate them from the rest of the world. Instead, Trump built his Jonestown right here at home, within the boundaries of our republic, brick by brick. He did it using over 30,000 documented lies, fear, rage, and the intoxicating promise of belonging.Today, tens of millions of Americans are trapped inside Trump’s reality-warping cult. And just as Jones’ followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid believing it was salvation, Trump’s followers have swallowed his Big Lies and are now willing to sacrifice our Constitution, our democracy, and our future on the altar of one man’s insatiable ego.

This is an old story in new packaging.

Jim Jones wasn’t always a madman. In the beginning, he offered something people desperately wanted: community, belonging, equality. He drew in the lonely, the marginalized, the disillusioned. He offered them meaning, dignity, and the hope of a better world. But slowly, he twisted that hope into a tool of control, weaponizing his followers’ trust for his own wealth, power, and self-aggrandizement.

Donald Trump followed a similar cult leader’s path.He didn’t invent the grievances he exploited. For decades, America’s middle class was gutted by Reaganomics and neoliberal trade policies. Jobs were shipped overseas. Unions were crushed. Wages stagnated while billionaires like Trump amassed obscene wealth.

Trump didn’t cause that pain, but he channeled it. He told working-class Americans that he alone could restore their lost greatness. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, he bellowed: “I alone can fix it.”

That wasn’t a campaign promise. It was a cult leader’s declaration. Like Jones, Trump positioned himself not as a servant of the people, but as their savior, the one indispensable man without whom all hope would be lost.All cults, whether religious or political, thrive on division and a sense of victimhood. Jim Jones taught his followers that outsiders were out to destroy them, that they were surrounded by enemies, traitors, and saboteurs. He warned that the CIA, the media, and shadowy conspirators would annihilate Jonestown unless his people followed him without question.

Trump operates from the same playbook.

His enemies list is long: immigrants, Black voters, Muslims, women, Democrats, journalists, scientists, the “deep state,” election officials, even members of his own party who dare to tell the truth. He has spent years feeding his followers a steady diet of paranoia, victimhood, and grievance, convincing them that the only thing standing between them and ruin is him.

And just as Jones’ followers were taught to see dissent as treason, Trump’s followers are conditioned to see any criticism of him as an attack on themselves. They’ve surrendered their own personal identities to him and his cult. When he tells them that an election they lost was stolen, they believe it; not because the evidence says so, but because Trump says so. And in a cult, the cult leader’s word is truth.Jones kept his followers in a physical jungle, cut off from the outside world. Trump does the same psychologically with the help of billionaire-backed media. His repeated attacks on the press as “the enemy of the people” are no accident: they are a deliberate strategy to isolate his followers in an information silo, where only his voice matters.

Fox “News,” Truth Social, MAGA podcasts, and a network of social media influencers form the walls of this new Jonestown. Alternative facts replace real ones. And when reality intrudes — when courts reject Trump’s lawsuits, when audits confirm his losses — his followers simply double down. “That’s just what the enemy wants us to believe.”

It’s classic cult behavior. And it’s why millions remain convinced that Trump won in 2020, that the Covid vaccine was a hoax or a plot, that January 6th was “legitimate political discourse.”

Like Jones, Trump has taught his followers to see the world not as it is, but as he tells them it is.

When Jones’ utopia began to crumble — when defections and investigations threatened his power and a Congressional delegation arrived to expose his lies and manipulations — he led his followers into mass suicide. Over 900 men, women, and children perished, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid to prove their loyalty.Trump, faced with the reality of defeat in 2020, incited his followers to violence rather than admit loss.

January 6th was America’s political Jonestown: a desperate, delusional last stand to keep their messiah in power. Trump didn’t just sit back as the Capitol was attacked. He watched with satisfaction, refusing to act for hours, while the very heart of our democracy was desecrated in his name.

And to this day, he defends that insurrection, calling those convicted of violent crimes “hostages,” giving pardons, and encouraging more violence if he’s indicted or loses again. Jones destroyed his followers; Trump is willing to destroy our nation.

I wrote about this back in the summer of 2023 in an article titled, “Will America Face “Narcissistic Collapse” as Trump Descends into Legal Hell?” Narcissistic collapse is what happens when psychopathic narcissists face defeat and humiliation and strike out against the world around them.

Think Hitler in his bunker when my old friend Armin Lehmann, then a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, handed him the news that the war was lost. He wrote a book about his experience, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days, which we discussed extensively when he was first writing it and during the three years Armin and I traveled the world together, lecturing mostly across Europe and the Far East.

Hitler, in those final weeks — Armin told me and the historical record verifies — actually welcomed the destruction of Germany by American and Soviet bombs and tanks.

He hadn’t failed: his narcissism and the cult he had created and surrounded himself with wouldn’t let him confront that.

Instead, in his mind, the German people had failed, his generals had failed, his soldiers had failed. They had failed Germany, but, more importantly they had failed him and his cult — and he wanted them punished for failing him.

When he was finally pushed into full-blown narcissistic collapse — those final days that Armin spent with him — he succumbed to the fate of many severe narcissists who experience a failure so undeniable that it provokes full-blown narcissistic collapse: he killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself.

In the final stages of narcissistic collapse, long before suicide becomes an option, first comes the blaming and the attempts to punish others.

We see this now with Trump blaming the media, the courts, and the Democrats he now openly brags that he “hates” and encourages his cult followers to hate as well.Historians and political scientists have long warned us about men like Trump.

Old Goats via Substack, Opinion: America Is Now a Police State, Jonathan Alter, right,July 11, 2025. The Medicaid cuts are terrible; the ICE expansions are even worse. 

If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if you have $75 billion over four years in new funding for ICE, you — Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Tom Homan — will use it to fund a huge domestic army to round up four million people in the next three years, put them in “detention centers” and deport them.

If these cruel men planned to go after criminals, as they claimed, they would have needed only a fraction of the money that Republican lawmakers just gave them. And ending the genuine shortfall in the Department of Homeland Security budget doesn’t require this kind of dough.

So with virtually unlimited funds, they’ll make up for lost time. We’re already witnessing swarms of masked agents grabbing people off the street. Within weeks, it’ll get a lot worse. The grandma who has been here for 30 years paying taxes; the Dreamer college student who has been thoroughly American since he was a toddler; the small business owner who gets a traffic ticket — 3,000 of them a day will be ripped from their families, sent to a prison and shipped to a country where they don’t know anyone.

Count on it. The iron law of government budgeting is use-it-or-lose-it. Only bureaucratic fools have money left over at the end of the fiscal year. ICE will spend billions on meeting Chief Homan’s arbitrary and inhumane quotas — the same kind of arrest quotas that drive police states all over the world, as Ronan Farrow has explained.

And the thousands of new Border Patrol agents? They already bring to mind those old ads about the Maytag Repairman — waiting in vain for something to happen. With border crossings plummeting, it’s only a matter of time before they’re shifted north for an even heavier presence in blue urban America.

Before long, many of us won’t even notice the roundups, just as white Californians in 1942 didn’t pay much heed when their Japanese-American neighbors were whisked away to detention camps in the desert. Japanese Americans arriving at an assembly center near Stockton, California. Their possessions are piled outside awaiting inspection before being transferred to the barracks (1942). THEN: Japanese Americans arriving at an assembly center near Stockton, California. Their possessions are outside awaiting inspection before being transferred to the barracks (1942). National Archives and Records Administration

That was an inexcusable act, but the conditions in those camps, while spare and dehumanizing, were not as bad as in the “Alligator Alcatraz” that Trump is gloating over. These will be jails — not camps — built to be as close to the abusive Salvadoran model as the president can make them. And the scale of his migrant gulag is much larger. All told, about 120,000 Japanese were interned. The capacity of the new detention centers is planned to be roughly 120,000 per day.

With most detainees only weeks or months from deportation, that means millions of new migrants cycling through. Many will have done nothing worse than Trump’s German immigrant grandparents (and my Jewish grandmother) did a century ago, namely, overstaying their visas. Of course, if they happen to be employed at a golf course or hotel (exempted by Trump for obvious personal reasons), they wouldn’t be in jail in the first place. Here’s where we’re headed: If migrants work on farms or in slaughterhouses (lots of both in red states), or a kitchen (hospitality), they’re OK or maybe even headed for amnesty, as Trump—to the dismay of MAGA—hinted last week. But if they cut grass, clean houses, or work in other occupations unprotected by the Dear Leader, off to jail you go. an aerial view of detainees in the yard at Alligator Alcatraz NOW: In an aerial view from a helicopter, detainees are seen at Krome Detention Center—also known as "Alligator Alcatraz"—on July 4, 2025, in Miami-Dade County, Florida. (A/P)

Look, I’m appalled by almost everything in the Big Ugly Bill. (The exceptions are the slight expansion of the Child Tax Credit and “Trump Accounts” — baby bonds that are a good idea and can be made bigger over time.) The cuts to the social safety net are much worse than the ones I covered at the beginning of the Reagan Administration. Thousands of people will delay going to the doctor when they’re sick and will die earlier than they would otherwise. And the “Big Ugly” is an IED set to explode inside state budgets.

But we have more reasons for hope on Medicaid than we do on mass deportation. Several Republicans know that these provisions hurt their voters, and they claim they will try to restore at least some of the money. Even if they’re lying about that (a good bet), the nasty enrollment obstacles can be at least partially overcome. Non-profits will develop apps to cut through the burdensome paperwork that Trumpsters assume will dissuade many poorer Americans from applying for benefits, and volunteers can go door-to-door to make sure people know how to use them (a good way to feel useful in the Trump era). And if Democrats take the House in 2026, which is likely, they can use the appropriation process to make sure that at least some of the “Trumpcare” cuts scheduled for 2027 are not carried out.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 10, 2025 [Texas, Tariff Turmoils], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 11, 2025. Just a week ago, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the nearly 1,000-page budget reconciliation bill President Donald Trump demanded, and at the signing ceremony for the bill the next day, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced Republicans were “laying a key cornerstone of America’s new golden age.”

But the past week has shown a nation—and an administration—in turmoil.

On July 4, the day Trump signed the bill, flash floods devastated central Texas, leaving more than 100 people dead and about 160 still missing. Local officials immediately blamed cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) for the disaster, but reviews showed that NWS meteorologists had predicted the storm accurately and had sent out three increasingly urgent warnings at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m., and 6:06 a.m.

But four hours passed before the police department in the City of Kerrville issued a warning. It wasn’t until 7:32 that the city urged people along the Guadalupe River to move to higher ground immediately. The missing link between the NWS and public safety personnel appears to have been the weather service employee in charge of coordinating between them. He took an unplanned early retirement under pressure from the “Department of Government Efficiency” and has not been replaced.

Then, as Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams of CNN reported, search and rescue teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could not respond to the disaster because Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department is in charge of FEMA, had recently tried to cut spending by requiring her personal sign-off on any expenditure over $100,000. That order meant FEMA couldn’t put crews in place ahead of the storm, or respond immediately. Noem didn’t sign off on the deployment of FEMA teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding started.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, told Cohen and Williams that Noem did not authorize FEMA deployment because DHS used other search and rescue teams. “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,” McLaughlin told CNN in a statement. “The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

“DHS is rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and is reprioritizing appropriated dollars. Secretary Noem is delivering accountability to the U.S. taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades at the expense of American citizens,” McLaughlin said. Noem has called for the elimination of FEMA.

Meanwhile, FEMA’s acting director, David Richardson, has been nowhere to be found, making no public appearances, statements, or postings on social media since the disaster, and not visiting the site. Former FEMA officials told Thomas Frank of Politico that Richardson’s absence suggests Noem is controlling the FEMA response. Trump appointed Richardson after his team fired his first appointee, Cameron Hamilton, for telling Congress he did not think FEMA should be scrapped.

The day after he took office in May, Richardson, who has no experience with emergency management, told staff: “Don’t get in my way…because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president’s intent…. I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,” he said.

Even as rescuers were still at work today in Texas, DHS cancelled a $3 million grant that had been awarded in New York to make sure the NWS can communicate effectively with local officials.

Tariffs are back in the news as Trump’s postponement for his high tariff has ended. They are as chaotic and as problematic as ever.

On April 2, Trump announced tariffs on countries around the world. He said that, beginning on April 9, he would impose a baseline tariff of 10%—a significant increase from the 2.5% rate then in effect—and additional tariffs of up to 50% on countries using a bizarre formula apparently cooked up by his trade advisor, Peter Navarro.

Immediately the stock market lost more than $5 trillion. So rather than let the tariffs go into effect on April 9, Trump pushed the start of the tariffs off until Wednesday, July 9 (yesterday), vowing to negotiate trade deals with individual countries rapidly: 90 deals in 90 days, Navarro said. But only two deals have been forthcoming—one with the United Kingdom and one with Vietnam—meaning that on July 9 the high tariffs of April 2 would take effect.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump announced on social media the real date for the start of the tariffs would be August 1. Somewhat bizarrely, he told reporters he had not changed the date the tariffs would go into effect, although on Monday he signed an executive order changing the date of the start of the levies from July 9 to August 1.

Throughout the week, Trump has been sending letters to world leaders informing them that he intended to impose high tariffs on their countries unless they negotiated with him. At a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting, as Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR noted, he tried to rebrand his letters as deals. “A letter means a deal,” he told reporters. “We can't meet with 200 countries. We have a few trusted people that know what they're doing, that are doing a good job, but you can't do it. You have to do it in a more general way. But it's a very good way. It's a better way. It's a more powerful way.”

On Tuesday, Trump also announced a 50% tariff on copper. Copper is vital to the defense industry, batteries, electric wires, plumbing, and so on, and the U.S. imports more than half of what it uses. Trump claims to want to see the U.S. produce the copper it needs, but getting the industry to that point will take years. He also announced a 35% tariff on goods from Canada.

Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press notes that the 10% tariffs are apparently here to stay because the administration needs that money to cover some of the hole the new tax cuts from the budget reconciliation bill will blast in the deficit.

While Trump continues to insist—incorrectly—that foreign countries pay tariffs, his former vice president Mike Pence reiterated the truth today. On Bloomberg “Surveillance,” he said of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s boast that tariffs will bring in $300 billion this year: “Well, tariffs are a tax, and American importers and businesses and, ultimately, consumers pay almost all of that. And so literally a week after we managed to extend the Trump-Pence tax cuts and prevent a $2,000 tax increase on working families, the administration is right now boasting of the fact that the average American household is going to see about $3,000 increase in the cost of goods.”

Last month, Trump nominated Department of Justice prosecutor Emil Bove to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the Virgin Islands. Bove is a Trump loyalist who defended Trump in his criminal indictments and participated in firing officials who investigated Trump and the January 6 rioters. He was also a central player in the dropping of corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams and the rendition of Venezuelan migrants to the CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador.

On June 24, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer, filed an official whistleblower complaint about abuses in the department. Reuveni was fired after telling a court that the administration had made an error when it rendered Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT despite a court order not to do so. In the whistleblower complaint, Reuveni alleged that the leaders at the Department of Justice and the White House had deliberately defied court orders and “engaged in unlawful activity, abused their authority, created substantial and specific threat to health and safety.”

Reuveni alleged that Bove insisted the planes carrying the men to El Salvador must take off and that he said DOJ “would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*ck you’ and ignore any such court order.” Reuveni then laid out the events of the March days in which the men were deported, along with the determination of the Department of Justice to violate the orders of the court.

Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month he had “no recollection” of saying “f*ck you” to the court and said he had never advised the Department of Justice to violate a court order. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media that Reuveni was a “leaker asserting false claims.”

Today, Senate Democrats released a trove of documents Reuveni had provided the committee, backing up his complaint. Texts and emails confirm that Department of Justice lawyers misled Judge James Boasberg, one telling him that he did not know when the Trump administration intended to deport the men when, as one of Reuveni’s colleagues said, “I can’t believe he said he doesn’t know. He knows there are plans for AEA removals within the next 24 hours.”

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Thursday that Bove “belongs nowhere near the federal bench.” “This is about more than a random f-bomb,” he said. “This is a declaration of defiance of our courts at the highest level of our government by a man who now seeks a lifetime appointment to one of the highest courts in our land.”

Today a federal judge appointed by Republican George W. Bush granted class action status to a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order attacking birthright citizenship. With that status in place, U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante barred the administration from denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Judge Laplante paused his ruling for a week to give the administration time to appeal.

Trump himself lost his appeal of a New York jury’s verdict that he must pay writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming her. Trump now has 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court to take the case.

Tonight the White House posted on X an image of “SUPERMAN TRUMP”—a much younger Trump dressed as the famous superhero, fists clenched, against a gauzy background—with the caption “TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY.” 

Meidas Touch Network, Democratic Leadership Demand Apology From Rep. Randy Fine After Islamophobic Post, Troy Matthews, July 12, 2025. Fine doubled down, writing "boo hoo" and calling Democrats the "Hamas Caucus."

Democratic leadership in the U.S. House has issued a statement demanding an apology from MAGA Congressman Randy Fine (R-FL) after he posted hateful, Islamophobic comments on X Wednesday.

Fine was responding to a post from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who condemned the official visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

"This is Benjamin Netanyahu's third visit to DC this year," Omar wrote. "War criminals should not be welcomed by any president or Congress. He should held accountable for his crimes, not platformed. Beyond shameful." Netanyahu is wanted on charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court over his execution of the Gaza war.

Fine responded by posting, "I'm sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists. The only shame is that you serve in Congress."

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted a statement on X shortly after calling Fine's attack "bigoted and disgusting," and demanding an apology from the congressman. Jeffries also referenced the recent assassination of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman in her home in condemning Fine's potential incitement to violence.

"This is an incredibly difficult time for our nation," the Democratic statement reads, "and Members of Congress should be solving problems for the American people, not inciting violence."

Fine then doubled down, calling Democrats the "Hamas Caucus," and writing "Boo hoo. I guess they weren't listening when I said the Hebrew Hammer was coming."

It is unclear whether Dems plan to seek a censure resolution against Fine for his comments, however a vote to censure is unlikely to pass in Mike Johnson's MAGA-controlled House of Representatives. Johnson has not yet commented.

New York Times, How the $1,000 ‘Trump Accounts’ for Newborns Will Work, Ann Carrns, July 11, 2025. The payments, part of the new domestic policy law, are for U.S. citizens born this year through 2028. The idea is that the money in the accounts will have many years to grow.

American babies born this year through 2028 are eligible to receive $1,000 from the government for a new type of account that is aimed at helping families get their children off to a strong economic start.

The so-called Trump accounts, created as part of the tax and spending plan signed into law by President Trump, are structured as a sort of hybrid individual retirement account, financial experts said. The unique twist comes in the form of seed money from the federal government. About 3.6 million babies are born in the United States annually, potentially putting the tab at several billion dollars for each year that the seed money is provided.

The accounts had initially included requirements that encouraged spending the funds before the children reached age 30. But their structure underwent significant changes during negotiations in the Senate.

“It has shifted more to a retirement product,” said Madeline Brown, a senior policy associate with the Urban Institute who studies financial security. That’s somewhat puzzling, she added, since several types of retirement accounts are already available. “It’s hard for me to tell what the goal of this program is,” she said.

Nevertheless, for eligible newborns, the one-time contribution can be a boon, financial experts say. “Who’s going to say no to $1,000?” said Cheryl Costa, a financial adviser in Framingham, Mass.

Policy and tax analysts said that they had been wading through the law’s text and that many details about the accounts, like how they would be opened and funded, awaited clarification from the Treasury Department.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service did not respond to emails seeking comment.

“My sense is there is still work to be done to get it up and running,” said Alex Muresianu, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a think tank that generally favors lower taxes.When will the accounts become available?

They are expected to become available next July.

Tom O’Saben, director of tax content and government relations at the National Association of Tax Professionals, said details of how the accounts will be opened and funded remain to be seen. “It isn’t clear,” he said.Who is eligible for the one-time government deposits?

The government will make a one-time contribution of $1,000 to each account for babies who are U.S. citizens born during 2025 through 2028 (aligning them with Mr. Trump’s current term in the White House) and have been assigned Social Security numbers. There are no income criteria.Editors’ PicksTest Your Math KnowledgeAnnika Sorenstam Loved Being in the HuntThe L.P.G.A. Is Getting a New Commissioner. He’s Got Some Work to Do.Are there limits on contributions?

Parents, family members and employers can contribute additional funds to the accounts, up to $5,000 a year. There’s no tax deduction for contributions made before a child turns 18, but funds provided by employers — up to $2,500 a year — won’t count as taxable income.

Ms. Brown at the Urban Institute noted that lower-income Americans might not have the ability to contribute extra money to the accounts while more affluent families could more easily afford to max out contributions. “I don’t see a way that this reduces wealth disparities,” she said.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) confronted Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in the U.S. Capitol on June 16, the night after Lee posted on X multiple times in the aftermath of the murders of two Minnesota lawmakers. 

Polico, Mike Lee Can’t Stop Throwing Social Media Grenades. His Church Isn’t Happy, Samuel Benson, July 11, 2025. The Utah senator’s online persona has further damaged his already frayed relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.An illustration featuring Mike Lee, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City

It was Father’s Day morning, but Mike Lee was still hard at work on social media.

Just before 11 o’clock, Lee posted an image of Vance Boelter, the man charged with murdering a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband a day earlier. “This is what happens,” Lee captioned it, “when Marxists don’t get their way.” Ten minutes later, he posted again. “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” he wrote, suggesting that Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz was to blame for the grisly murders.

Lee’s posts generated near-instant national backlash. His mentions filled with people calling on him to resign. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat, cornered Lee at the U.S. Capitol the next night and gave him an earful. So did Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, another Minnesotan. A top aide in Smith’s office wrote a letter to Lee’s staffers rebuking them for “making jokes” to “compound people’s grief.”

It wasn’t just Washington that was buzzing over Lee’s response to the tragedy. It also set off a debate in Salt Lake City. At the global headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a discussion over how to respond — if at all — began in earnest, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Several of the church’s senior leaders saw the posts and were concerned. Lee is a prominent Latter-day Saint, arguably the best-known elected Church member in the nation. His insensitive words were reflecting poorly on the faith at large. One church official estimated the backlash from Lee’s posts would have severe repercussions for the church’s public image, the first person said.

As extreme as the situation was, the issue at the center of the firestorm was nothing new. For two-and-a-half years, Lee has been sliding deeper and deeper into a hyper-online echo chamber. Posts pepper his timeline during nearly every waking hour, and some at night.

While staffers run his official accounts, Lee himself is the primary author behind the @BasedMikeLee account, according to two former advisers granted anonymity to speak openly, where he feeds conspiracy theories and attacks against the political left. It has become one of the more prolific pages on X, the site formerly known as Twitter: Last year, he posted about 36 times a day, a Salt Lake Tribune investigation found; in the first four months of this year, he was posting 100 times a day, or once every 15 minutes.Tina Smith speaks with Mike Lee in front of a doorway.

Along the way, Lee has become a cult hero in some corners of the online political right. Last year, Lee’s account had just over 200,000 followers; now, it’s surpassed 600,000. He finds a wide range of uses for his online megaphone: criticizing “leftists,” disparaging fellow Republicans, theologizing, philosophizing, conspiracizing. On occasion, he uses the account as a tool to communicate to constituents, as he did last month while trying to save face when his public lands proposal faced wide backlash. But more often, the account is something entirely different: In 2023, his posts threatening the Japanese prime minister were so outlandish that his account was flagged and temporarily suspended for “impersonation.”

Those who know Lee suggest the account isn’t a new persona, but rather the senator in his natural state. “I think it’s definitely the same Mike Lee that I know,” said Ryan McCoy, a longtime friend and adviser. One of the two former advisers suggested it is “Mike Lee unfiltered.”

But for Lee’s church, that bellicose online alter ego poses a problem. Even as some Christian denominations have delved into Christian nationalism or partisan politics during the Trump era, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly referred to as the Mormon Church) has consistently called on members to do the opposite: to be “peacemakers” in the civic square.

Lee, both as a keyboard warrior and flesh-and-bones legislator, is consistently getting in the way. For the first time in recent memory, the church has a high-ranking member in Washington not just failing to cooperate on some of its key priorities, but sometimes actively impeding them.

While larger, more established faiths may not pay much heed to the antics of a single member, Latter-day Saints have a different challenge: They make up just two percent of the national population, and nearly half of Americans say they don’t know a single church member. The actions and reputation of the church’s faithful in public spaces — Congress, perhaps, being the most influential — plays a significant role in the public’s perception of the church itself.

Emil Bove, President Donald Trump's nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, is sworn in before testifying during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on June 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. A whistleblower alleged that Bove, President Trump's former personal lawyer, told Justice Department staff to defy court orders and continue to carry out Trump’s deportation plans. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Just Security, Whistleblower Documents Implicate Emil Bove in Criminal Contempt Order by Chief Judge Boasberg, Tom Joscelyn and RyanGoodman, July 11, 2025. 

A whistleblower’s documents provided to Congress implicate Emil Bove in the administration’s violation of a court order that prohibited the transfer of more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. Bove is President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on his nomination on July 17.

In April, Chief Judge James Boasberg held there is probable cause that administration officials engaged in criminal contempt by having “willfully disobeyed a binding judicial decree.” Bove is identified in the whistleblower’s documents as having played a central role in the conduct of concern. The documents also provide evidence that Bove has seriously misled Congress about his conduct.

The whistleblower is Erez Reuveni, who was a career Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney for nearly 15 years until he was dismissed in April of this year. The documents he has produced to the Senate Judiciary Committee, including emails and text messages, concern the Trump administration’s controversial decision to transfer Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador on Mar. 15 under the purported authority of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The cache of documents, which was first reported by Politico, is important for the following four reasons.

First, newly released text messages confirm Reuveni’s previous allegation that Bove told others in the DOJ that the administration should consider telling the courts “fuck you” should judges seek to enjoin the deportations. Newly released text messages between Reuveni and his colleagues, including his direct supervisor, August Flentje, show them apparently referencing Bove’s suggestion.

Second, an email released by Reuveni directly implicates Bove in the administration’s decision to defy the court order demanding that the AEA deportees be returned to U.S. soil.

Third, the documents also implicate Bove in the violation of due process rights of the migrants deported under the purported authority of the AEA.

Fourth, the new documents raise serious concerns about the veracity of Bove’s testimony during his Senate confirmation hearing.New Evidence of Bove’s Role in Wilfully Defying a Court Order

On Saturday, Mar. 15, President Donald Trump released a public proclamation purporting to invoke the 1798 AEA as the basis for removing from the United States alleged members of a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua. According to the White House, the administration flew 137 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador that day under the purported authority of the AEA.

Over twelve hours before those flights departed the United States, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, had sued the Trump administration challenging the removal of their Venezuelan clients. Chief Judge Boasberg, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) that evening barring the administration from removing anyone under the AEA.

Boasberg was crystal clear that his Mar. 15 ruling meant that the Trump administration must return the Venezuelans to U.S. soil, even if the planes carrying the deportees landed in El Salvador. Boasberg explained in no uncertain terms that the individuals should not be deplaned or disembark even if they reached El Salvador:

[Y]ou shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States. However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not [dis]embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately (Tr. 43).

I would assume that means that they are either not on the planes or that they will not be removed from the planes and will be brought back once the planes land in El Salvador. Is that fair? (Tr. 5; see also Tr. 44)

In a newly released Mar. 16th email from Yaakov Roth, the acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, to Reuveni and other DOJ officials, Roth wrote:

I have been told by ODAG that the principal associate deputy attorney general advised DHS last night that the deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior to the court’s minute order was permissible under the law and the court’s order.

The principal associate deputy attorney general was Bove. As Politico explained, it is “that interpretation of his orders” that Boasberg rejected and found probable cause to initiate contempt proceedings.

The email would presumably implicate Bove in the “contumacious conduct” as identified by Chief Judge Boasberg.

Indeed, as Boasberg’s verbal order made clear, the court’s ruling was precisely the opposite of what Bove advised the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as stated in Roth’s email. That is, “deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior [to] the court’s minute order was” not “permissible under the law and the court’s order.” The court specifically stated that the deportees were not to disembark or be removed from the planes.

Reuveni’s contemporaneous emails make it clear that the DOJ attorneys well understood Boasberg’s order – and that Bove’s advice plainly contradicted their understanding.

In an email sent at 6:44 p.m. on Mar. 15, Reuveni inquired as to the location of the people deported under the AEA and whether they had disembarked:

Reuveni followed up two minutes later, stating that the class certified by the court included “all noncitizens in US custody subject to the AEA,” and asking for details “ASAP” concerning “removals not yet effectuated, including those involving folks in the air.”

National Review, Bench Memos: Whistleblower Erez Reuveni vs. Emil Bove: Assessing the Claims, Ed Whelan, July 11, 2025. Two-and-a-half weeks ago, lawyers for Department of Justice whistleblower Erez Reuveni presented his charges against Third Circuit nominee and other senior DOJ officials in a 27-page letter. I summarized Reuveni’s charges and expressed my doubts about Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s claim that the charges “are utterly false.”

There have been some significant developments since then: (1) Bove’s testimony at his June 25 confirmation hearing, (2) Bove’s responses to post-hearing written questions, and, just yesterday, (3) the public release of a batch of text messages, emails, and phone records that Reuveni has submitted in support of his charges; (4) a New York Times interview with Reuveni; and (5) this tweet by Attorney General Pam Bondi in direct response to the NYT reporter’s tweet of the interview:

We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower — he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote. As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.

In this post, I’m going to do my best to sort through the issues as concisely as I can. I encourage readers who are not familiar with this matter to read through the links above.

1. On March 14, DOJ lawyers met to discuss the Trump administration’s plan to use one or more airplanes to deport individuals subject to President Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation. Reuveni charges that Emil Bove stated at the March 14 meeting that if a courtwere to order that the planes should not take off, “DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f*** you’ and ignore any such court order.”

Let’s consider the evidence that supports the charge. Reuveni’s charge is specific and detailed. By his account, there were a dozen or so other DOJ attorneys at the meeting. If his charge were false, it would have been easy for DOJ leadership to provide sworn declarations or other statements by those attorneys that Bove made no such statement.

The supplemental batch of materials submitted by Reuveni has evidence that seems to support his charge. Specifically, when Judge Boasberg on the evening of March 15 ordered that planes not take off or that they be returned to the United States, Reuveni texted his supervisor August Flentje (who he says was also present at the March 14 meeting) “guess its find out time on the ‘f*** you.’” Flentje texted back: “Yup. It was good working with you.”

Bove himself doesn’t actually deny making the ‘f*** you’ statement. He testified merely that he has “no recollection of saying anything of that kind,” and in his written responses he likewise stated only that he does “not recall making the statement alleged.”

The only person who seems to deny that Bove made the statement is Deputy AG Blanche. As we’ve seen, Blanche claimed in a tweet that he “was at the meeting described in the [June 24 NYT] article and at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.” Blanche is obviously implying that he was present for the entire meeting, for how else could he attest that Bove did not make the statement?

Reuveni’s whistleblower letter does not identify Blanche as one of the participants in the meeting, and my initial suspicion that Blanche didn’t actually attend the meeting appears to have been correct. Bove himself wouldn’t attest that Blanche attended the meeting. When directly asked “Was Mr. Blanche at that [March 14] meeting?,” Bove curiously responded only that “Mr. Blanche has stated publicly that he was at the meeting.” (He gave the same answer to three written questions.) And Reuveni in his recent NYT interview recalls that Blanche “briefly entered the conference room during the March 14 meeting, but only to speak privately with Mr. Bove” and “then left and did not participate in the meeting.” (I’m quoting NYT’s paraphrase.)

2. Reuveni charges that Emil Bove advised DHS that planes that left U.S. airspace after Judge Boasberg orally ordered the planes to return but before his written order was docketed were not subject to Boasberg’s order and that the deportees could therefore be removed from the planes in El Salvador.

Reuveni has provided an email from acting Civil Division head Yaakov Roth that states: “I have been told by ODAG [Office of the Deputy Attorney General] that the principal associate attorney general [Bove] advised DHS last night that the deplaning of the flights that had departed US airspace prior [to] the court’s minute order was permissible under law and the court’s order.”

Bove conceded in his testimony that he “participated” in this decision but declined to “get into the contents of legal advice.” He refused to answer written questions on the matter.

In what I take to be a defense of Bove’s advice to DHS, Attorney General Bondi states in her tweet that “there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order” and that “no one was ever asked to defy a court order.”

There seems to me to be a lot of confusion here. On a minor point that cuts in her favor, Bondi is, I think, confusing the D.C. Circuit (which denied DOJ’s motion for a stay) with the Supreme Court (where DOJ indeed was successful). [Addendum: Someone tells me that Bondi might be referring to a separate contempt proceeding.]

Much more importantly, it’s well established that the subsequent invalidation (or vacatur) of an order doesn’t excuse a party from complying with the order while it is in effect. So as of the evening of March 15, there was, contra Bondi, a “court order to defy.” One relevant question is whether Bove’s advice to DHS amounted to bad-faith defiance. I’d be interested in the legal authority for the proposition that you don’t have to comply with an oral order from a judge. [Addendum: Someone whose judgment I trust tells me that there is considerable case law supporting the proposition that oral orders aren’t enforceable. That question may well be distinct from the ethical obligations that a lawyer—especially a DOJ lawyer—has.]Kickstart Your Day with The Morning Jolt

3. Like Deputy AG Blanche, AG Bondi tries to discredit Reuveni as a “disgruntled employee,” “a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote.”

This attack strikes me as ridiculous. The Trump administration promoted Reuveni into his position of acting deputy director of DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation. The evidence is compelling that he became “disgruntled” by the very conduct that he is complaining of. I don’t see how Bondi can purport to “support legitimate whistleblowers” when she brazenly labels Reuveni as “a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame.”

It’s not as if Reuveni is suddenly surfacing a claim about some long-ago event that only he was witness to. It’s hardly surprising that it took him and his lawyers two months from the time of his termination to compile his whistleblower charges. Nor is there anything discrediting about his ensuring that the Judiciary Committee is aware of his charges before it acts on Bove’s nomination.

Indeed, if Reuveni’s charges are accurate, he is performing an important public service.

A regular contributor to National Review’s blog Bench Memos, Ed Whelan has closely covered every Supreme Court confirmation since 2005. 

Tina Brown's Substack, Opinion: Why MAGA Is Right About Jeffrey Epstein, Tina Brown, July 11, 2025. It’s rare that I agree with the MAGA conspiracy theory loonies, but, in the case of the Epstein files, they deserve an answer about why the full folder has not been released. I have never fully believed that Epstein committed suicide and my skepticism grows the more the mysteries accumulate.

Flashback to 2010. During my time as editor of The Daily Beast—thanks to the pioneer reporting of Conchita Sarnoff—we were the first news outlet to break the story of the 2008 sweetheart deal Epstein made with a U.S. Attorney in Florida. Multiple charges of child sexual trafficking were reduced to only state charges and he served only 13 months in a work-release program that allowed him to spend as much as 12 hours a day outside jail.

Sarnoff, a Cuban-American anti-human trafficking activist, stumbled on the Epstein story when interviewing a Mexican child trafficker in the Palm Beach stockade who told her that underaged girls were brought q™åto Palm Beach to service rich older men.

Dimly remembering an item about the arrest of a New York high-roller named Epstein, who once asked her for a date, Sarnoff dug through the Palm Beach police files and was stunned to learn that the department had identified as many as three dozen underage girls who had been trafficked for sex by Jeffrey Epstein, the youngest imported from the Balkans at age fourteen. So, how did this serial predator (the DOJ report says Epstein harmed over one thousand victims) get off with a slap on the wrist—only two counts of solicitation of a minor for prostitution? Spurred by the suspicions of a Palm Beach society lady who lived close to Epstein, Sarnoff brought the story to me and we launched a six-part Daily Beast investigation about the rank perversion of justice enabled by Epstein’s money, connections, and political donations. She revealed how Epstein's crack team of all-star lawyers discredited the young victims, many of whom had been abused previously or came from rough backgrounds. (“The younger, the better,” Epstein instructed a local teenager who was paid to bring girls to his home.)

The Beast stories landed with less impact than they would have seven years later, in the #MeToo reckoning. Epstein was not a big name at the time. He was a Manhattan finance and café society figure, whom I had met several times at the opening receptions of the Clinton Global Initiative, to which he shoveled funding to burnish his philanthropic bona fides. He struck me as a cold-eyed operator, busy working the room.

After we ran Sarnoff’s first piece in July 2010, Epstein called me personally to tell me that “she was a well-known nut case and to cease and desist.” When I barreled ahead anyway, I had a creepy encounter with Epstein a few weeks later. I returned from lunch and was startled to find him sitting in a chair in my glass-walled office in Manhattan’s IAC building. It seems he had managed to blow through front desk security and arrive unannounced.

He was morose and menacing, his snake eyes narrowed. “Just stop,” he said heavily as I stared at him from the doorway. “There will be consequences if you don’t.” I asked him to leave and suggested he talk to our lawyer. “You heard me,” he said in a deadly tone. “Stop.” We did not stop. But there were no more legal flurries from Epstein. It seems he had rightly computed that the story would fade if he didn’t fan it.

If MAGA is obsessed with powerful pedophiles hidden in the Epstein files, Dems hope there is a smoking gun about Trump. Yes, in his man-about-town days, Trump partied with Epstein in New York and Palm Beach, where Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago. According to his younger brother, Mark Epstein, Jeffrey—ever the grifter—was constantly asking Trump to “comp” his mother at the Trump casino in Atlantic City.

But teenage girls have never been Trump’s thing. The web of depravity around Epstein has always been hard to unravel because his high-powered network was a mix of those seduced by rides on his private plane (aka the Lolita Express), those looking for murky strategies for evading taxes, those who thought he could cut them into dubious deals or lead them to financial whales, and the serious offenders: big-shot sexual predators to whom he trafficked a ceaseless stream of underage girls. That’s why his Little Black Book is filled with almost every boldfaced name in Page Six.

But I’m with MAGA that there are still too many unanswered questions about Epstein’s death. After he was finally arrested a second time on July 6, 2019, emerging from his private plane at Teterboro Airport after a trip to Paris, an active FBI agent told Sarnoff, who relayed it to me at the time, “Epstein will never make it to trial. There are towels on the inside.” Five weeks later, he was dead, hanging from a knotted noose of towels inside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

The multiple coincidences surrounding his end —two security guards posted in sight of his cell falling into a convenient doze, or distracted by online furniture shopping; Epstein’s cellmate, usually a must for a suicide-risk prisoner, being transferred to another facility and not replaced, the confusion around the deleted or compromised surveillance tapes outside the cell—all point to suspicious circumstances, but were finally ruled to be happenstance by the DOJ in 2023.

 

Conchita Sarnoff (whose book is shown above along with a photo of Epstein) reminded me that there have been five fatalities, counting Epstein’s death, all associated with his case and the sad, sordid world that swirled around him.

May 30, 2017Leigh ‘Skye’ Patrick, who was 16 when she was sexually abused by Epstein and was one of the first victims to file charges against him in 2008, was found dead at age 29 of an accidental drug overdose in a West Palm Beach motel.

August 10, 2019Jeffrey Epstein was discovered hanged in his cell at the MCC.

February 19, 2022Jean-Luc Brunel, a close Epstein partner in sleaze whose modeling agency MC2 was a major funnel of trafficked underage girls to Epstein and his circle, apparently hanged himself with knotted bedsheets in his cell while awaiting trial at La Santé prison in Paris for alleged rape of a minor and sexual assault.

May 23, 2023Carolyn Andriano, a 36-year-old mother of five, was found unresponsive on the floor of a West Palm Beach hotel room. Andriano was abused by Epstein starting at the age of 14, servicing him at his Palm Beach mansion more than 100 times. Her testimony was key to the conviction of Epstein procuress Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.

April 25, 2025Virginia Giuffre, a 41-year-old mother of three, committed suicide at her family ranch in Neergabby, Australia. Giuffre attained global recognition by winning an unprecedented multimillion-dollar settlement from Queen Elizabeth’s son Prince Andrew, whom she says she was trafficked to at the age of 17 by Epstein and Maxwell for a payment of $15,000. But Giuffre, who became the standard-bearer of other Epstein victims, was unraveling at the end, and in the middle of a divorce from an allegedly physically abusive husband, who won a restraining order against her that banned her from seeing her children for six months. According to her brother, the pain of that loss finally crushed her, but her father, Sky Roberts, said, “Somebody got to her. She was strong. She had too much to live for.”

Of all the broken people left in Epstein’s wake, Giuffre remains the haunted face of Epstein’s unpunished degradations. It is she, not MAGA, who most deserves the full story and the names of all those who enabled him, whether it’s in the unredacted version of Pam Bondi’s files or a DOJ locked safe. See less

The Bulwark, Opinion: The Case for Epstein Trutherism, Jonathan V. Last, July 8, 2025. Maybe there really is a conspiracy and the Trump administration is covering it up.

I am, as a rule, skeptical of conspiracy theories. And we should stipulate that maybe it’s true, as the unsigned Department of Justice memo states, that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’” for Jeffrey Epstein.

But if you want to believe, there’s a pretty good case to be made that the Epstein client list could be real.

This case centers around the contemporaneous statements of government officials who would have had access to such a list, if it existed.

The big one, of course, is Pam Bondi. 

CNN, David Gergen, political insider who advised four presidents of both parties, dies at 83, Brian Stelter and Jamie Gangel, July 11, 2025. David Gergen, who served as a presidential adviser to four presidents of both parties and educated generations of Americans about leadership and civic engagement, has died. He was 83.

Gergen was the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and a longtime political analyst for CNN. His son, Christopher Gergen, confirmed the death occurred Thursday and said the cause was Lewy body dementia, a brain disease that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson’s.

Gergen was a legendary figure in Washington and beyond who brought insider knowledge and used his media platforms to promote responsible leadership. A CNN spokesperson said he was “always happy to share his wisdom and his spotlight with others.”

“A political scholar who served four presidents of both parties, an adoring father and dedicated husband, a senior statesman in every sense of the word, and a tireless educator. But above all else, David was a relentlessly kind and warm person,” the spokesperson said, adding that “our staff, contributors, and audiences are better informed because of his towering influence.”

He began his political career in the Nixon White House and later wrote that “before he self-destructed, Nixon was among the best of modern presidents.” He served as communications director on two occasions, first to Gerald Ford and then to Ronald Reagan. Ten years later, after a stint running US News & World Report and his first contract with CNN, he returned to the White House as a counselor to Bill Clinton.

July 10

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Blocks Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Nationwide, Zach Montague and Pat Grossmith, July 10, 2025. Where Things Stand:

• Birthright citizenship: A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a contentious executive order ending birthright citizenship after certifying a challenge by the A.C.L.U. as a class action, effectively the only way he could impose such a far-reaching limit after a Supreme Court ruling last month. The Trump administration has fought to end the longstanding guarantee that virtually everyone born in the United States is a citizen. Read more ›
• Whistle-blower: In an interview with The New York Times, a former Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, accused the Trump administration of “thumbing its nose at the courts,” saying his former colleagues were being forced to choose between the president’s agenda and their ethical obligations as lawyers. Read more ›
• Iran nuclear program: Israel has concluded that some of Iran’s underground stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium survived last month’s American and Israeli attacks and may be accessible to the country’s nuclear engineers, according to a senior Israeli official. Read more ›

 

 

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. It is a maximum-security "mega-prison" located in Tecoluca, El Salvador. File photos above and below. Capacity: It is one of the largest high-security prisons in the world, initially designed to hold 20,000 detainees, but with a reported capacity later doubled to 40,000 inmates. 

New York Times, News Analysis: How El Salvador Is Reaping Rewards From America’s Deportation Agenda, Annie Correal and Pranav Baskar, July 10, 2025. In exchange for jailing more than 200 deportees, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, right, has become a favorite of the Trump administration.For the U.S. government, sending deportees accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador fits with President Trump’s promise to aggressively deport undocumented migrants and to crack down on crime.

For El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, the rewards appear to have included, among other things, a White House visit and stamp of approval, despite widespread concerns over Mr. Bukele’s crackdown on civil liberties.

While the exact terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaders around the world may be watching, experts and immigration lawyers say, especially as the Trump administration searches for countries willing to take expelled migrants of other nationalities.

• ABC News, Migrants who were sent to CECOT are the responsibility of US, El Salvador tells UN, Armando Garcia and Laura Romero, July 7, 2025. The claims appears to contradict what U.S. officials have been saying. 

Trump Fuels Fear, Rage and Hope in California’s Central Valley, Elisabeth Bumiller, July 10, 2025. The fertile valley feeds the world. President Trump has thrown farmers and farmworkers there into turmoil, but recently offered them a glimmer of hope.

The farmers in California’s Central Valley like to say they feed the world, and it is not hyperbole.

The valley stretches for 450 fertile miles from Bakersfield in the south to Redding in the north, yields an estimated 40 percent of the fruit, vegetables and tree nuts grown in the United States, and exports half of that bounty overseas. California agriculture overall is a $60 billion annual business.

It is also one that President Trump has thrown into turmoil. Only in recent weeks has he offered vague glimmers of hope.

When agents from the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned up last month at farms and packing houses in Ventura County, well south of the Central Valley, there was panic in the valley’s fields, where an estimated 80 percent of farmworkers are undocumented. Farmers here, most of whom voted for Mr. Trump and had expected him to protect them, were in a rage.

“I would love to just call a general strike,” said one fuming grower, Vernon, who stood among his acres of plum trees near the town of Kingsburg on a recent sweltering morning. “Let’s just quit feeding America for one week!” Vernon asked that only his first name be used because of the undocumented workers he employs.

There have been no raids so far this month in the Central Valley, but Manuel Cunha Jr., the president of the Nisei Farmers League, which represents 500 farmers and more than 75,000 farmworkers, mostly in the region, is on edge. “If we get one Border Patrol raid, we’re screwed,” he said in an interview in his Fresno office. “Because no one is going to go to work in any field or packing house.” 

New York Times, Texas Camp’s Cabins Stood in an ‘Extremely Hazardous’ Floodway, Mike Baker, Malika Khurana, Harry Stevens and Marco Hernandez, July 9-10, 2025 (interactive).An analysis of Camp Mystic shows that several buildings were in known hazard zones. A $5 million expansion in 2019 did nothing to alleviate the problem.

• New York Times, As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself, July 10, 2025. Flash floods hit during the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Should We Politicize the Texas Flood? Absolutely, Paul Krugman, right, July 10, 2025. When it comes to disasters, accountability delayed is accountability denied

July 10

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Blocks Birthright Citizenship Executive Order Nationwide, Zach Montague and Pat Grossmith, July 10, 2025. Where Things Stand:

• Birthright citizenship: A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a contentious executive order ending birthright citizenship after certifying a challenge by the A.C.L.U. as a class action, effectively the only way he could impose such a far-reaching limit after a Supreme Court ruling last month. The Trump administration has fought to end the longstanding guarantee that virtually everyone born in the United States is a citizen. Read more ›
• Whistle-blower: In an interview with The New York Times, a former Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, accused the Trump administration of “thumbing its nose at the courts,” saying his former colleagues were being forced to choose between the president’s agenda and their ethical obligations as lawyers. Read more ›
• Iran nuclear program: Israel has concluded that some of Iran’s underground stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium survived last month’s American and Israeli attacks and may be accessible to the country’s nuclear engineers, according to a senior Israeli official. Read more ›

 

 

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. It is a maximum-security "mega-prison" located in Tecoluca, El Salvador. File photos above and below. Capacity: It is one of the largest high-security prisons in the world, initially designed to hold 20,000 detainees, but with a reported capacity later doubled to 40,000 inmates. 

New York Times, News Analysis: How El Salvador Is Reaping Rewards From America’s Deportation Agenda, Annie Correal and Pranav Baskar, July 10, 2025. In exchange for jailing more than 200 deportees, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, right, has become a favorite of the Trump administration.For the U.S. government, sending deportees accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador fits with President Trump’s promise to aggressively deport undocumented migrants and to crack down on crime.

For El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, the rewards appear to have included, among other things, a White House visit and stamp of approval, despite widespread concerns over Mr. Bukele’s crackdown on civil liberties.

While the exact terms of the agreement have not been made public, leaders around the world may be watching, experts and immigration lawyers say, especially as the Trump administration searches for countries willing to take expelled migrants of other nationalities.

• ABC News, Migrants who were sent to CECOT are the responsibility of US, El Salvador tells UN, Armando Garcia and Laura Romero, July 7, 2025. The claims appears to contradict what U.S. officials have been saying.

 

Trump Fuels Fear, Rage and Hope in California’s Central Valley, Elisabeth Bumiller, July 10, 2025. The fertile valley feeds the world. President Trump has thrown farmers and farmworkers there into turmoil, but recently offered them a glimmer of hope.

The farmers in California’s Central Valley like to say they feed the world, and it is not hyperbole.

The valley stretches for 450 fertile miles from Bakersfield in the south to Redding in the north, yields an estimated 40 percent of the fruit, vegetables and tree nuts grown in the United States, and exports half of that bounty overseas. California agriculture overall is a $60 billion annual business.

It is also one that President Trump has thrown into turmoil. Only in recent weeks has he offered vague glimmers of hope.

When agents from the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned up last month at farms and packing houses in Ventura County, well south of the Central Valley, there was panic in the valley’s fields, where an estimated 80 percent of farmworkers are undocumented. Farmers here, most of whom voted for Mr. Trump and had expected him to protect them, were in a rage.

“I would love to just call a general strike,” said one fuming grower, Vernon, who stood among his acres of plum trees near the town of Kingsburg on a recent sweltering morning. “Let’s just quit feeding America for one week!” Vernon asked that only his first name be used because of the undocumented workers he employs.

There have been no raids so far this month in the Central Valley, but Manuel Cunha Jr., the president of the Nisei Farmers League, which represents 500 farmers and more than 75,000 farmworkers, mostly in the region, is on edge. “If we get one Border Patrol raid, we’re screwed,” he said in an interview in his Fresno office. “Because no one is going to go to work in any field or packing house.” 

New York Times, Texas Camp’s Cabins Stood in an ‘Extremely Hazardous’ Floodway, Mike Baker, Malika Khurana, Harry Stevens and Marco Hernandez, July 9-10, 2025 (interactive).An analysis of Camp Mystic shows that several buildings were in known hazard zones. A $5 million expansion in 2019 did nothing to alleviate the problem.

• New York Times, As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself, July 10, 2025. Flash floods hit during the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Should We Politicize the Texas Flood? Absolutely, Paul Krugman, right, July 10, 2025. When it comes to disasters, accountability delayed is accountability denied

  Whenever natural disaster — like the flash flood that just killed large numbers of people, many of them children, in Texas — strikes, we can count on a quick response from officials, both federal and state, who arguably could or should have done something to avert or minimize the disaster. Namely, there will be self-righteous denunciations of anyone trying to assign responsibility: “Now is not the time to politicize this tragedy.”

  In fact, now is exactly the time to put officials on the spot and ask how much responsibility they bear for the horror. Because the reality of America today is that if we don’t make an issue of how this happened within the next few days, nothing will be learned and nothing will change.

  OK, you could make a case for putting off hard questions if you believed two things. First, you would have to believe that the relevant officials are well-intentioned and open-minded, that they will make a good faith effort to learn from the disaster. Second, you would have to believe that the news media will stay on the story, as opposed to quickly dropping it in favor of more pressing topics like Zohran Mandami’s college application.

  And you might believe these two things if you’ve spent the past 40 years in suspended animation.

  The reality is that the people now on the spot are right-wing hard-liners, who are the opposite of open-minded. Their mindset was perfectly captured by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who denounced efforts to politicize the disaster, then suggested that the problem may be that we have too many federal bureaucrats.

  It also more or less goes without saying that there’s massive hypocrisy involved. Trump officials are reacting with rage to any suggestion that their policies may have contributed to the Texas disaster, but Trump was quick to make completely false attacks on the Biden administration’s responses to natural disasters on its watch.

  So let me offer some suggestions about the lesson we should be learning from the Texas tragedy.

  The specifics are still coming into focus. We know that thanks to payroll cuts, the National Weather Service was short-staffed. Its forecasting was fine, but the official in charge of “warning coordination” — basically, getting the message from the forecasts to the relevant local officials — had taken the DOGE buyout and hadn’t been replaced.

  We also know that local officials had been told repeatedly over the years that the affected area needed a better warning system, including sirens, but refused to raise taxes to pay for it and were denied a grant from the state.

  We’ll probably learn more about failures to prepare for floods in a river plain that was known to present major risks, and perhaps about the failures in officials’ real-time response. We may never know how many lives might have been saved if Elon Musk hadn’t taken his chainsaw to the National Weather Service or if local officials had been more responsible. But we don’t need specific numbers to understand that this kind of tragedy is only to be expected after politicians have spent decades denigrating government and degrading its effectiveness.

  There was a crucial turning point in both attitudes toward government and the resources devoted to public goods — basically, goods we can’t expect the private sector to provide, like, say, weather prediction and flood protection — in 1980. That was when Ronald Reagan, who insisted that government is always the problem, never the solution, took office, and this attitude has been pervasive in U.S. politics ever since.

  Overall government spending continued to rise despite political hostility, because federal civilian spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the combination of an aging population with rising health care costs made these programs ever more expensive. But other forms of government spending were cut back sharply under Reagan, and much of our government was understaffed and underfunded, in effect held together with paper clips and rubber bands, even before Elon Musk came along with his chainsaw.

  Anyone who has worked in American government or has friends there knows how much of a shoestring operation it has become. Here’s one measure, nondefense discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP, which bumped up briefly after the 2008 financial crisis and Covid, but has remained low and gradually declining otherwise: Source: Congressional Budget Office

  In a way, Musk’s disastrous attempt to eliminate government waste proved that the government is in fact underfunded. He assumed that the budget was full of fat that could be cut away without doing any harm but immediately found himself cutting deep into muscle. As the Washington Post reported,

  Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.

  So what is a thinly stretched government, asked to do too much with too little, going to do? It’s going to make more mistakes than it would if it had adequate resources. Mistakes will always happen, of course, and it may be impossible to prove that any given mistake was the result of reduced spending and staffing. But there will be more and bigger mistakes than would have happened if anti-government ideology hadn’t taken its toll.

  Actually, the relationship between under-resourced government and natural disasters is a lot like the relationship between climate change and such disasters. You can’t prove that climate change “caused” any particular disaster — extreme weather and hundred-year floods have always happened. At most you can say that a warming planet made that disaster more likely. But climate change is raising the risks of disaster — a fact acknowledged by the insurance industry, whatever politicians may say.

  Which brings us back to why we absolutely should politicize the tragedy in Texas. It illustrates the kind of disaster that will happen with increasing frequency if we keep depriving government of the resources and respect it needs to do its job.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 9 [Due Process Amendment Anniversary, Impact], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 10, 2025. On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement.

In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had prohibited slavery on the basis of race, but it did not prevent the establishment of a system in which Black Americans continued to be unequal. Backed by President Andrew Johnson, who had taken over the presidency after actor John Wilkes Booth murdered President Abraham Lincoln, white southern Democrats had done their best to push their Black neighbors back into subservience. So long as southern states had abolished enslavement, repudiated Confederate debts, and nullified the ordinances of secession, Johnson was happy to readmit them to full standing in the Union, still led by the very men who had organized the Confederacy and made war on the United States.

Northern Republican lawmakers refused. There was no way they were going to rebuild southern society on the same blueprint as existed before the Civil War, especially since the upcoming 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole persons for the first time in the nation’s history, giving southern states more power in Congress and the Electoral College after the war than they had had before it. Having just fought a war to destroy the South’s ideology, they were not going to let it regrow in peacetime.

Congress rejected Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction.

But then congressmen had to come up with their own. After months of hearings and debate, they proposed amending the Constitution to settle the outstanding questions of the war. Chief among these was how to protect the rights of Black Americans in states where they could neither vote nor testify in court or sit on a jury to protect their own interests.

Congress’s solution was the Fourteenth Amendment.

It took on the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision declaring that Black men "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens.”

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The amendment also addressed the Dred Scott decision in another profound way. In 1857, southerners and Democrats who were adamantly opposed to federal power controlled the Supreme Court. They backed states’ rights. So the Dred Scott decision did more than read Black Americans out of our history: it dramatically circumscribed Congress’s power.

The Dred Scott decision declared that democracy was created at the state level, by those people in a state who were allowed to vote. In 1857 this meant white men, almost exclusively. If those people voted to do something widely unpopular—like adopting human enslavement, for example—they had the right to do so. People like Abraham Lincoln pointed out that such domination by states would eventually mean that an unpopular minority could take over the national government, forcing their ideas on everyone else, but defenders of states’ rights stood firm.

And so the Fourteenth Amendment gave the federal government the power to protect individuals even if their state legislatures had passed discriminatory laws. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” it said. And then it went on to say that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

The principles behind the Fourteenth Amendment were behind the 1870 creation of the Department of Justice, whose first job was to bring down the Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South.

Those same principles took on profound national significance in the post–World War II era, when the Supreme Court began to use the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment aggressively to apply the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states. The civil rights decisions of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools, come from this doctrine. Under it, the federal government took up the mantle of protecting the rights of individual Americans in the states from the whims of state legislatures.

Opponents of these new civil rights protections quickly began to object that such decisions were “legislating from the bench,” rather than permitting state legislatures to make their own laws. They began to call for “originalism,” the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted only as the Framers had intended when they wrote it, an argument that focused on the creation of law at the state level. Famously, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork, an originalist who had called for the rollback of the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions, for a seat on that court.

Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”Kennedy’s comments foreshadowed the world advanced by today’s MAGA Republicans. In 2022 the Supreme Court, stacked as it is with right-wing justices, overturned the federal protection of abortion rights provided in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and sent the question of abortion back to the states, many of which promptly banned the procedure.

When the court overturned the federal protection of abortion rights, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that federal protections for access to birth control and same-sex marriage should also be reexamined. In 2024, President Donald Trump suggested he would be open to letting states decide whether to restrict access to birth control, walking his statement back after a ferocious backlash.

Justice Samuel Alito has joined Thomas in attacking the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that provides federal protection for same-sex marriage, claiming that right, too, ought to be left up to voters in the states, even as Republican-dominated states are passing laws to limit who can vote.

Not only have today’s Republicans launched an attack on the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that the federal government protect Americans against discrimination in the states, President Donald Trump has launched an assault on the birthright citizenship that is the centerpiece of the amendment.

That section of the amendment— the first section— acknowledges that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens,” who enjoy the same rights, and that no state can take those rights away without due process of law.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism, Judd Legum and Noel Sims, July 10, 2025. Last week, Florida officials opened a hastily-built immigration detention center in the state’s Everglades.

The facility has quickly become an avatar for the Trump administration's ruthless immigration policies, with Republicans dubbing it "Alligator Alcatraz." The "joke" is that the human beings held there might get eaten by alligators. Only one week after the first group of detainees arrived, people are reporting inhumane conditions inside the facility.

Detainees have reported a lack of running water, scarce food, and giant bugs. A Cuban artist who goes by Leamsy La Figura told CBS Miami in an interview that he did not take a bath for four days due to a lack of water. La Figura also said that “they only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots.” According to La Figura, mosquitoes at the facility were “as big as elephants” and the lights stayed on at all times.

One detainee said he had not taken his medication for three days. Another told CBS Miami that facility staff were “not respecting our human rights” and that detainees were treated like “rats in an experiment.” That detainee said many people held at the facility have residency documents and do not “understand why we’re here.”

Family members of the detainees told the Miami Herald that at one point the toilets in the facility did not flush due to a water issue. One detainee told his wife that one night it was too cold inside the tent to sleep, but the next day the air conditioning seemed to stop working and it became extremely hot.

Immigration attorneys have said that they are not allowed inside the facility to meet with their clients or able to have confidential phone calls with them.

As a result of the Trump administration’s plan to dramatically increase deportations, many immigrants who are being arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do not have any criminal record. A CBS analysis through June 23 found that “nearly half” of the people being held in ICE detention did not have a criminal record. (La Figura, however, was “charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and battery.”)

The Florida detention center, which will cost an estimated $450 million annually to operate, was converted from a rarely-used airport in only eight days. The facility consists of cells enclosed with chain-link fences with large tents over them.

In addition to the inhumane conditions inside the facility, experts have warned that the facility may not withstand severe storms or a hurricane, both of which are common in the area. While Florida officials say the structure is “rated for winds of 110 miles an hour,” or a Category 2 hurricane, an expert told the Washington Post that the 110-mile-an-hour standard was outdated and not acceptable. Last week, before the facility was opened, there were reports of flooding after a heavy storm.

State and federal officials both denied the reports of inhumane conditions at the Everglades detention center. But President Trump praised the poor conditions before the facility was opened.

After visiting the detention center, Trump celebrated the facility. “I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,” he said. “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is really deportation.” Trump said he wanted to replicate the facility across the country, stating, “We’d like to see them in many states.”

Before his visit, Trump also joked about detainees being eaten by alligators if they tried to escape the facility. “We’re gonna teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line, run like this,” Trump said while making a zigzag with his hand.

The Florida Republican Party is profiting off the facility, selling merchandise branded with the words “Alligator Alcatraz.” The merchandise includes $27 hats and $30 t-shirts that feature a fake image of a detention center with alligators and snakes in front of it.

Global News

New York Times, Rubio Visits Asia as Trump Raises Trade-War Tensions, Edward Wong, Updated July 10, 2025. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks about countering China as it expands its global influence. But President Trump’s tariff threats have created friction with U.S. partners.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Malaysia on Thursday for a gathering of top diplomats from Asian nations, as many of them were grappling with new tariff threats from President Trump.

Mr. Rubio attended a meeting with counterparts from countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations soon after landing in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. “We’ve been engaged for a very long time, and we have strong partnerships,” Mr. Rubio said in his opening remarks. “We have no intention of abandonment.”

He also met with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Thursday evening. The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate a settlement to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Russia has been resistant.

Mr. Rubio is scheduled to have a variety of other diplomatic talks on Friday before flying back to Washington. Top diplomats from China, Japan and South Korea are also holding meetings in the city this week.

The State Department is framing Mr. Rubio’s whirlwind trip as an effort to reinforce alliances and partnerships that the United States has across Asia and to counter China by building up those ties.

“In his first trip to Asia as secretary of state, Secretary Rubio is focused on reaffirming the United States commitment to advancing a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific region,” said Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, using a stock phrase that U.S. officials employ to try to underscore China’s aggressive maritime and territorial moves in the region.

 

New York Times, Putin, Undeterred by Trump’s Words, Escalates His War Against Ukraine, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, July 10, 2025 (print ed.). The Russian leader is convinced that Moscow’s battlefield superiority is growing, and that Ukraine’s defenses may collapse in the coming months, according to people close to the Kremlin.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is brushing aside President Trump’s professed disappointment in him and is pushing ahead in Ukraine with renewed intensity, having already priced in the possibility of new U.S. pressure, analysts and people close to the Kremlin said.

The Russian leader is convinced that Russia’s battlefield superiority is growing, and that Ukraine’s defenses may collapse in the coming months, according to two people close to the Kremlin, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive diplomacy. Given Russia’s ongoing offensive, they say, Mr. Putin views it as out of the question to halt the fighting now without extensive concessions by Ukraine.

“He will not sacrifice his goals in Ukraine for the sake of improving relations with Trump,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said.

Mr. Putin’s recalcitrance highlights a stark reversal from some expectations earlier this year, when Mr. Trump came into office and aggressively pursued a rapprochement with Moscow, having pledged on the campaign trail to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Mr. Trump’s friendly approach to the Kremlin and an Oval Office shouting match with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine seemed to offer a rare opening for Mr. Putin.ImageMr. Putin, in suit and tie, appears through the open door of a car.In a photo released by state media, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tours a military hardware exhibition in Moscow on Sunday.Credit...Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik, via Reuters

Mr. Trump’s clear sympathy for the Russian leader, many Russians hoped, could yield sanctions relief, Western investment, arms-control deals and a favorable geopolitical realignment in Europe. All Mr. Putin needed to do, it seemed, was accept a Ukraine cease-fire that would have allowed Russia to keep the territory it had already captured.

But Mr. Putin wanted more. As Russia has gained on the battlefield, and Ukraine has struggled with a dearth of men to defend its front lines, Mr. Putin’s military ambitions have only increased.

As Mr. Trump makes his frustration with Mr. Putin known, it has become clearer that Mr. Putin is prepared to risk his relationship with the U.S. president in service of what has emerged as his overarching goal after 40 months of full-scale war — achieving Ukraine’s capitulation to his demands.

Mr. Putin’s determination to keep up Russia’s onslaught, coupled with escalating bombardments, led up to Mr. Trump’s most recent outburst of frustration with Mr. Putin, on Tuesday. Despite six phone calls between the two leaders since February and two rounds of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Russia has only escalated.“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” 

New York Times, China Surveys Seabeds Where Naval Rivals May One Day Clash, Chris Buckley, Graphics by Agnes Chang, July 10, 2025. Research ships are studying the seas for science and resources, but the data they gather could also be useful in a conflict with Taiwan or the U.S.

China has entered a new era of ocean exploration. Its top leader, Xi Jinping, has pushed to make China a maritime power — with a world-class navy, the largest deep-sea fishing fleet, and an interest in extracting minerals from the seabed. He wants China’s research abilities to match those ambitions.

China’s scientific research ships are ranging farther and probing deeper, gathering information that could expand understanding of marine life and the impact of climate change. But their findings could also serve China’s naval interests, including how it might deploy its submarines in the Pacific or try to track stealthier American ones.

Over time, the growing research fleet could give Beijing a powerful advantage in maritime competition with the United States.

New York Times, U.K. and France Agree to First-Ever Nuclear Weapons Pact to Fend Off Threat to Europe, Michael D. Shear and Lizzie Dearden, July 10, 2025. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France are set to confirm a strengthened defense relationship at a summit today.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France announced on Thursday the details of a new defense relationship, including a first-ever pledge to have their nuclear arsenals work together in the event of serious danger to allies in Europe.

The announcement came as the two leaders concluded a three-day state visit with a trip to a British military base, Northwood, as they seek to underscore their support for defending Ukraine against Russian aggression.

The agreement between the two countries — which the leaders referred to as “the Northwood Declaration” — means that any attack from an adversary will result in a “response from our two nations,” Mr. Starmer said.

The British prime minister and Mr. Macron, who last held a similar summit before President Trump’s return to power in January, also announced a migration agreement that could reduce the number of people attempting to cross the English Channel in small, crowded boats launched from the beaches of northern France.

Both topics are at the core of what the two leaders say is an improved diplomatic relationship between the neighbors that was frayed when British citizens voted, by a narrow majority, to leave the European Union in 2016.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in France and the United Kingdom? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

In a speech to the British Parliament on Tuesday, Mr. Macron said the two countries “have to work together in order to defend an efficient multilateralism and to protect the international order.”

Europe has long been reliant on the United States for nuclear protection, as many nations are members of NATO. But Mr. Trump is increasingly talking about the need for Europe to defend itself against potential adversaries. Britain and France are the only two nuclear powers in Europe.

The pledges of defense cooperation come as Ukraine continues to fight Russia more than three years after President Vladimir V. Putin ordered an invasion of his neighbor.

In other news: 

New York Times, Rubio Visits Asia as Trump Raises Trade-War Tensions, Edward Wong, Updated July 10, 2025. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks about countering China as it expands its global influence. But President Trump’s tariff threats have created friction with U.S. partners.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Malaysia on Thursday for a gathering of top diplomats from Asian nations, as many of them were grappling with new tariff threats from President Trump.

Mr. Rubio attended a meeting with counterparts from countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations soon after landing in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. “We’ve been engaged for a very long time, and we have strong partnerships,” Mr. Rubio said in his opening remarks. “We have no intention of abandonment.”

He also met with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Thursday evening. The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate a settlement to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Russia has been resistant.

Mr. Rubio is scheduled to have a variety of other diplomatic talks on Friday before flying back to Washington. Top diplomats from China, Japan and South Korea are also holding meetings in the city this week.

The State Department is framing Mr. Rubio’s whirlwind trip as an effort to reinforce alliances and partnerships that the United States has across Asia and to counter China by building up those ties.

“In his first trip to Asia as secretary of state, Secretary Rubio is focused on reaffirming the United States commitment to advancing a free, open and secure Indo-Pacific region,” said Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, using a stock phrase that U.S. officials employ to try to underscore China’s aggressive maritime and territorial moves in the region.

New York Times, No, Chemtrails Are Not Real or Causing Floods, E.P.A. Says, Maxine Joselow, July 10, 2025. The agency took the unusual step of creating websites debunking the conspiracy theory that chemicals are being sprayed in the sky to control the weather or do other things.

No, chemtrails are not real, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday, in a notable instance of the Trump administration debunking a conspiracy theory that gained traction amid catastrophic flooding in Central Texas.

For decades, scientists have sought to shut down the chemtrails conspiracy theory, which asserts that the federal government is spraying harmful chemicals into the sky to control the weather, population or food supply. On Thursday, their efforts got a major boost from an unexpected source: two new E.P.A. websites that seek to “provide clear, science-based information” on chemtrail claims as well as on geoengineering, or efforts to intentionally alter Earth’s climate.

The websites generally endorse the scientific consensus, according to scientists who reviewed them. For example, they note that chemtrails are “often inaccurately” conflated with contrails, or condensation trails, which are the long, thin clouds left by airplanes as water vapor in jet-engine exhaust condenses and freezes. “I tasked my team at E.P.A. to compile a list of everything we know about contrails and geoengineering for the purpose of releasing it to you now publicly,” the E.P.A. administrator, Lee Zeldin, said in a video posted on social media.

“Instead of simply dismissing these questions and concerns as baseless conspiracies, we’re meeting them head on,” Mr. Zeldin said. “We did the legwork, looked at the science, consulted agency experts and pulled in relevant outside information to put these online resources together.”

Neither Mr. Zeldin nor the sites mentioned the baseless assertions that chemtrails or geoengineering had caused the extreme rainfall that led to the recent Texas flash floods that have killed at least 111 people and left at least 173 missing. Representatives for the E.P.A. did not respond to a request for comment about whether Thursday’s move was prompted by the floods.

Some Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers have used their platforms to amplify the chemtrails conspiracy theory. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, has suggested without evidence that the Defense Department’s research arm is spraying Americans with harmful chemicals that have been added to jet fuel.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it,” Mr. Kennedy said in a television interview in May. “Find out who’s doing it and holding them accountable.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has for years spread the baseless claim that the government controls the weather. She said on Saturday that she planned to introduce a bill that “prohibits the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense.”

New York Times, Justice Dept. Whistle-Blower Warns of Trump Administration’s Assault on the Law, Devlin Barrett, July 10, 2025. In an interview with The New York Times, a former Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, said officials pressed subordinates to mislead judges, and dared the courts to stop it.

A former Justice Department lawyer accused the Trump administration of “thumbing its nose at the courts,” saying his former colleagues were being forced to choose between the president’s agenda and their ethical obligations as attorneys.

In an interview with The New York Times, the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, who filed a detailed whistle-blower claim to the Senate last month, shared his growing sense of alarm as he defended the administration’s aggressive deportation agenda. He said he was willing to testify to Congress or in court about what he described as an intentional effort by the administration to ignore judges and the due process rights of hundreds of migrants.

Mr. Reuveni, speaking publicly for the first time about his experiences, was fired in April after he appeared in court to defend the administration’s mistaken deportation of a man in Maryland, accused of refusing a superior’s directive.

He pointed to the planes of immigrants rapidly flown to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador on March 15, warning that it offered a distressing example of the administration’s disregard for facts and the law. The flights that took off that day also included the Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was initially detained at the prison, known as CECOT.

“If they can do this sort of thing to Abrego Garcia, to 238 people that nobody knows, and send them to CECOT forever with no due process, they can do that to anyone,” said Mr. Reuveni. “It should be deeply, deeply worrisome to anyone who cares about their safety and their liberty, that the government can, without showing evidence to anyone of anything, spirit you away on a plane to wherever, forever.”

He filed his complaint shortly before Emil Bove III, a senior department official, appeared before lawmakers over his nomination to become a federal appeals court judge. Although the administration’s approach has been broadly clear, Mr. Bove and his boss have denied the thrust of Mr. Reuveni’s account. But text messages, phone records and emails viewed by The Times appear to bolster the whistle-blower’s version of events, offering a behind-the-scenes recounting of private meetings and conversations that show Justice Department leaders pressing to take audacious legal risks.

• New York Times, Texas Camp’s Cabins Stood in an ‘Extremely Hazardous’ Floodway, July 10, 2025. An analysis ofCamp Mystic shows that several buildings were in known hazard zones. A $5 million expansion in 2019 did nothing to alleviate the problem.
• New York Times, As Texas Flood Raged, Camp Mystic Was Left to Fend for Itself, July 10, 2025. Flash floods hit during the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.
• New York Times, China Surveys Seabeds Where Naval Rivals May One Day Clash, July 10, 2025. Research ships are studying the seas for science and resources, but the data they gather could also be useful in a conflict with Taiwan or the U.S.
• New York Times, How El Salvador Is Reaping Rewards From America’s Deportation Agenda, July 10, 2025. In exchange for jailing more than 200 deportees, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has become a favorite of the Trump administration.
• New York Times, U.K. and France Agree to First-Ever Nuclear Weapons Pact to Fend Off Threat to Europe, July 10, 2025. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France are set to confirm a strengthened defense relationship at a summit today.

 

New York Times, With Taxes and Tariffs in Place, Trump Takes Reins of U.S. Economy, Tony Romm and Colby Smith, July 10, 2025 (print ed.). President Trump, shown above in a file photo, has achieved much of his agenda, leaving the fate of the economy squarely in his hands.

His expensive tax cuts have been signed into law. His steep global tariffs are taking clearer shape. And his twin campaigns to deregulate government and deport immigrants are well underway.

With the major components of his agenda now coming into focus, President Trump has already left an indelible mark on the U.S. economy. The triumphs and turbulence that may soon arise will squarely belong to him.

Not even six months into his second term, Mr. Trump has forged ahead with the grand and potentially disruptive economic experiment that he first previewed during the 2024 campaign. His actions in recent weeks have staked the future of the nation’s finances — and its centuries-old trading relationships — on a belief that many economists’ most dire warnings are wrong.

Last week, the president enacted a sprawling set of tax cuts that he believes to be the ingredients for rapid economic growth, even as fiscal experts warned that the law may injure the poor while putting the U.S. government on a risky new fiscal path.

Then, on Monday, Mr. Trump began to issue his latest round of tariff threats, insisting that “we’re done” negotiating as economists warned about a potential surge in consumer prices that could arise from taxing imports.

The White House also proceeded with its aggressive and legally contested plans to eliminate scores of federal regulations and deport millions of migrants. The immigration crackdown, in particular, could come to the detriment of many sectors, like agriculture, that rely heavily on foreign labor, experts believe.

So far, the U.S. economy has remained resilient in the face of these seismic changes, while Mr. Trump has ascribed the faintest hint of negative news to his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in May.

But the president has now achieved broad swaths of what he set out to do, making him responsible for the highs or lows on the horizon. The coming months will serve as a gauge of whether he is merely enjoying a calm before a damaging storm — or is correct in asserting that his agenda is not as perilous as many economists have feared. C

• Trade war: President Trump said he planned to impose tariffs of 50 percent on imports from Brazil, as he and U.S. diplomats also accused the Brazilian authorities of unfairly charging his political ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, right, with attempting a coup. Read more ›
• Trans athletes: The Trump administration escalated its fight against California’s policies letting transgender athletes compete in girls’ sports by filing a lawsuit. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, previously called the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports “deeply unfair,” comments that Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed in announcing the suit. Read more ›
• Biden’s doctor: Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician to Joseph R. Biden Jr. while he was president, refused to answer questions for a Republican-led congressional inquiry into whether Mr. Biden’s team concealed mental deficiencies that left him unable to perform presidential duties. Dr. O’Connor cited physician-patient privilege and his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Read more ›

President Trump said that he had ordered U.S. officials to open a trade investigation into Brazil for “continued attacks on the Digital Trade activities of American Companies.” He appeared to be referring to complaints from many on the right that Brazil’s Supreme Court has censored conservative voices online.

The Brazilian Supreme Court justice overseeing the case against former President Jair Bolsonaro has also ordered tech companies to take down hundreds of accounts that he said threatened Brazil’s democracy. Mr. Trump’s media company has sued the judge, and Elon Musk at one point refused to comply with his orders, leading to X being temporarily suspended in Brazil. 

New York Times, Trump Didn’t Always Tout Tariffs. Now He Sees Them as a Way to Flex Power, Maggie Haberman, July 10, 2025 (print ed.). Instead of treating tariffs as part of a broader trade policy, President Trump views them as a valuable weapon he can wield on the world stage.

President Trump’s allies often describe him as a 40-year devotee of tariffs who, stymied by his first-term advisers, is finally able to put his long-held economic theory into practice.

But while Mr. Trump spoke about tariffs off and on before becoming a presidential candidate, he usually described his broader grievance about trade in terms of other countries or companies “ripping off” the United States. It is since Mr. Trump became a candidate in 2015 that he has talked about tariffs in earnest, describing them as a tool that he could easily deploy to rebalance the country’s economic footing.

“We are going to have 10 percent to 20 percent tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years, we are going to charge them 10 percent to 20 percent to come in and take advantage of our country because that is what they have been doing,” Mr. Trump said in August 2024, one of many comments he made in that race emphasizing he would impose sweeping tariffs if he won, far beyond those in his first term.

Mr. Trump’s latest retreat this week from his own self-imposed tariff deadlines underscores the challenge he has faced in treating tariffs as a quick-fix — a tool that he asserts will bring in lots of money for the country while swiftly resetting trade relationships.

A review of Mr. Trump’s comments about tariffs over the decades shows he has often been fairly vague on the topic, and only more recently came to describe them as the centerpiece of his approach to trade.

Far more frequent and durable has been Mr. Trump’s repeated refrain that other countries are turning the United States into “suckers.” His references to tariffs often came as part of his description of a feeling of national injury that became common as the country’s manufacturing base began eroding. That attentiveness to trade as an issue, even absent a cohesive policy plan, helped Mr. Trump win in 2016.

This year, administration officials say they have brought in roughly $100 billion in tariffs so far. But after pledging that the president would get “90 deals in 90 days,” the White House has secured only a handful of trade agreement frameworks with other countries.

Instead of treating tariffs as one tool that is part of a broader trade strategy, Mr. Trump often describes them as an end unto themselves. While business experts and corporate leaders say the tariffs will raise costs on their products and for consumers who rely on imports, the president has largely dismissed those concerns. And he has relied on his own belief that markets and long-term concerns will eventually level out, even as economic experts have wondered what the end game is.

“What does winning look like? What is the definition of victory?” said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “He seems to view the definition of victory as eliminating other countries ‘unfair trade practices,’ which in his mind translates one-for-one into reducing our bilateral deficits with every single trading partner.”

Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served in the Obama and Biden administrations, said, “He hasn’t really been willing to make that many real deals.”

The deals Mr. Trump has been interested in so far, Mr. Setser said, appear to be that “you accept my tariffs at the level I set them, and you give me additional concessions” because “otherwise I will raise them further.”

That has left countries with concerns that no matter what they agree to, Mr. Trump will again raise the cost for them.What has been dizzying for other foreign nations is clear to Mr. Trump, however. Tariffs are a weapon he has at his disposal, and he sees them as a way to rebalance global influence.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Trump's Dictator Protection Program, Paul Krugman, right, July 9, 2025 (PM). Using tariffs to fight democracy. 

I usually don’t do evening posts. One a day at breakfast is, I think, enough or more than enough. But Trump’s latest letter, imposing a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, marks a new departure, and I think merits a special bulletin. After all, it’s both evil and megalomaniacal.

Here’s the first page:

Notice that Trump barely even pretends that there’s an economic justification for this action. This is all about punishing Brazil for putting Jair Bolsonaro on trial.

Bolsonaro, as most readers probably know, is Brazil’s previous president, who lost the last election — but tried to stay in power through a coup overturning that election. Of course that sounds familiar.

Now, this wouldn’t be the first time America has used tariff policy for a political purpose. On the contrary, the international trading system we set up after World War II was in part motivated by the belief of U.S. officials that trade, in addition to being economically beneficial, was a force for peace and would strengthen democracy around the world. They were probably right, and in any case it was a noble goal.

Now Trump is trying to use tariffs to help another wannabe dictator. If you still thought America was one of the world’s good guys, this should tell you whose side we’re on these days.

Why do I say that it’s megalomaniacal? Brazil has more than 200 million people. Here’s where its exports go:

 July 9

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 8, 2025 [Impact of MAGA Cuts, Policies Becomes Apparent], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 9, 2025. One hundred and eleven people are dead and more than 160 are still missing in Texas after Friday’s tragic flood.

​​“‘[W]ho’s to blame?’” Texas governor Greg Abbott, shown above in a file photo, repeated back to a reporter. “That’s the word choice of losers.” “Every football team makes mistakes,” he continued, referring to Texas’s popular sport. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. Thechampionship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, ma’am, we’ve got this.’”

Abbott’s defensive answer reveals the dilemma MAGA Republicans find themselves in after the cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service that came before the Texas disaster. Scott Calvert, John West, Jim Carlton, and Joe Barrett of the Wall Street Journal reported that after a deadly flood in 1987, officials in Kerr County applied for a grant to install a flood warning system, but their application was denied. They considered installing one paid for by the county but decided against it. Then county commissioner Tom Moser told the reporters: “It was probably just, I hate to say the word, priorities. Trying not to raise taxes.”

Since 1980, Republican politicians have won voters by promising to cut taxes they claimed funded wasteful programs for women and racial and ethnic minorities. Cutting government programs would save money, they said, enabling hardworking Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money. But leaders recognized that Republican voters actually depended on government programs, so they continued to fund them even as they passed tax cuts that moved more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Now, in Trump’s second term, MAGA Republicans are turning Republican rhetoric into reality, forcing Americans to grapple with what those cuts really mean for their lives.

Today the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to fire large numbers of employees at 19 different federal agencies and to reorganize them while litigation against those firings moves forward, although it required the administration to act in ways “consistent with applicable law.” A lower court had blocked the firings during litigation. Ann E. Marimow of the Washington Post notes that this court has repeatedly sided with President Donald Trump as he slashes the federal government. The court said it is not expressing a view on the legality of the cuts at this time.

The administration's cuts were in the news today as Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has just 86 people deployed in Texas today although Trump declared a disaster on Sunday. At a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting today, Trump said it wasn’t the right time to talk about his plans to phase out FEMA.

The administration is getting pushback in a number of other places as well, including from medical organizations. Yesterday the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American College of Physicians, and four other groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the changes Kennedy has made to the vaccine advisory panel, to the availability of covid vaccines, and to vaccine recommendations. The lawsuit calls those changes "unlawful” and “unilateral” and says they violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

Just who is in charge of the administration remains unclear. In the New York Times yesterday, Jason Zengerle pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the “final word” on White House policy. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem defers to him. Attorney General Pam Bondi “is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice” to him. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is concentrating on “producing a reality TV show every day,” a Trump advisor told Zengerle.

So Miller, with his knack for flattering his boss, wields power.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he stopped the shipment of weapons to Ukraine last week. Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that Hegseth’s lack of a chief of staff or trusted advisors means he has no one to urge him to coordinate with other government partners. Trump has ordered Hegseth to restart some of the shipments. When a reporter asked the president today who had authorized the pause, Trump answered: “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

At today’s press opportunity, Trump was erratic, at one point veering off into a discussion of whether he should put gold leaf on the moldings in the room’s corners.

The administration has so few successes to celebrate that, as Jarrett Renshaw of Reuters reported today, it is claiming credit for investments that were actually made under former president Joe Biden. A government website touting the “Trump effect” claims more than $2.6 trillion in U.S. investments, but Renshaw found that more than $1.3 trillion of those investments originated under Biden or were routine spending. One company has warned that its pledge of investments worth $50 billion is threatened by Trump’s policies.

When asked why the administration had taken credit for projects that happened under Biden, White House officials said “the final investment decisions were announced under [Trump’s] watch and prove his economic policies are triggering U.S. investment.” Renshaw noted that “[i]t was not clear in many cases what role, if any, Trump or his policies played in getting the deals across the line.”

Instead of embracing proven economic policies, the administration appears to be turning to ideologically based ideas that seem far fetched. Today, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins rejected the idea that the government would find a way to protect undocumented agricultural workers. “There will be no amnesty,” she said. “The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which again with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”

The administration is now facing a rebellion from MAGA supporters who expected that, once in power, a Trump administration would release information about those men implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal as people for whom Epstein provided underage girls. MAGA loyalists maintained the “deep state” was hiding the list to protect unnamed Democratic politicians, and MAGA leaders fed the conspiracy theory to stoke anger at the Democrats.

Once in power, though, Trump officials have failed to produce a list of Epstein’s clients. MAGA loyalists have now turned their anger on those officials, especially Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in February that the Epstein list “is sitting on my desk right now” and who now maintains that no such list exists.

Perhaps to distract their supporters from the issue, the Fox News Channel today announced that the FBI is launching criminal investigations of former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey over their investigation of ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

 

New York Times, Supreme Court Clears Way for Mass Firings at Federal Agencies, Abbie VanSickle, July 9, 2025 (print ed.). The justices announced they were not ruling on the legality of the specific downsizing plans but they allowed the Trump administration to proceed for now with its restructuring efforts.

The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday. The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury.

The order, which lifted a lower court’s ruling that had blocked mass layoffs, was unsigned and did not include a vote count. That is typical in such emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a public dissent.

The case represents a key test of the extent of President Trump’s power to reorganize the government without input from Congress. The justices’ order is technically only temporary, guiding how the administration can proceed while the challenge to Mr. Trump’s plans continues. But in practice, it means he is free to pursue his restructuring plans, even if judges later determine that they exceed presidential power.

In a two-paragraph order, the justices wrote that they had concluded that “the government is likely to succeed on its argument” that President Trump’s executive order announcing plans to downsize the government was legal. The justices added that they not expressed a view on the legality of specific layoffs or reorganizations by the Trump administration.

 Krassensteins via Substack, “I’m Gonna Bomb the S--- Out of Moscow”: Trump, Krassenstein Brothers, July 9,2025. According to leaked audio, at a closed-door fundraiser, Trump regaled donors with the tale of a face-to-face showdown he claims he had with Vladimir Putin:

“With Putin, I said ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m gonna bomb the sh-t out of Moscow.’ … He said, ‘No way.’ And I said, ‘Way.’”

Trump bragged that the Russian president “believed me ten percent,” adding, “Ten percent is all you need.”

Trump told the room he delivered the same blunt warning to China’s Xi Jinping:

“If you go into Taiwan, I’m gonna bomb the s–-t out of Beijing.”

Again, he pegged Xi’s belief at “ten percent,” insisting that sliver of doubt was enough to keep China in check.@krassenstein7/9 Leaked audio of Trump threatening to bomb China and Russia. #leaked #breakingnews #chinaThe $25 Million Lunch

Trump also described pressuring a deep-pocketed supporter: “He wants to have lunch with me over a million dollars … I’m not having lunch. You got to make it 25 million.”

The billionaire, Trump said, coughed up the cash.

These recordings peel back the curtain on how Trump sells his “tough guy” image and fund-raises off it—bragging about nuclear-level threats, promising mass deportations, and strong-arming megadonors, all while claiming such bravado keeps America safe. 

New York Post, Dozens of federal officers swarm Los Angeles' MacArthur park in immigrant neighborhood, Dozens of federal officers swarm Los Angeles' MacArthur park in immigrant neighborhood, July 7, 2025.

Various footage shows swarms of federal officers roaming a Los Angeles park. LA Mayor Karen Bass posted footage on social media, with part of the caption reading, "This is footage from today in MacArthur Park. Minutes before, there were more than 20 kids playing — then, the MILITARY comes through." The officers remained in the park of a heavily immigrant-populated area for about an hour before clearing out, according to The Associated Press.

 

Democracy Docket, Three GOP Secretaries of State Spoke at a Conference of Election Deniers. They Won’t Tell Us What They Said, Matt Cohen, right, July 9, 2025. We are still 16 months awayfrom the midterm elections, and Republicans are already spending millions of dollars to make voting more difficult. Their court filings explain — in clear terms — that their motivation in these cases is to disenfranchise Democrats.

“You know you’re hardcore on voter integrity when, on July 5th, you’re at the Ahern Hotel all day doing voter integrity,” Steve Bannon said on his podcast last week when he introduced his guest, the prominent anti-voting activist Matt Meck.

Meck joined Bannon to plug a day-long election integrity conference in Las Vegas over the holiday weekend that featured a cavalcade of notable election deniers and conspiracy theorists: Arizona state Sen. Mark Finchem; Peter Ticktin, lawyer for convicted election denier Tina Peters; Jan. 6 rioter Treniss Evans; former GOP congressman Curt Weldon, and, of course, Bannon, who gave the keynote address.

The conference, which Meck dubbed “Election Singularity: Proactive Prevention by We The People,” also featured a virtual conversation with three Republican secretaries of state: Chuck Gray of Wyoming, Denny Hoskins of Missouri, and Kris Warner of West Virginia. Meck told Bannon the secretaries would talk about their midterm preparations in light of Trump’s anti-voting executive order — hinting that there may be more election-related orders to come.

The event wasn’t recorded or livestreamed anywhere — the only way to hear what was discussed was to be in Vegas on Fourth of July weekend and pay the $20 entry fee.

Secretaries of state are the top election officials in their respective states, elected to administer fair and free elections — and ensure that the voting process is protected from all sorts of threats, from cybersecurity attacks to disinformation campaigns. For three secretaries of state to speak at an election integrity conference organized by conspiracy theorists and election deniers, without their remarks being available for their constituents to watch or hear is a huge problem.

What did they talk about in regard to their plans for the upcoming midterm elections?

Numerous parts of Trump’s anti-voting executive order are currently blocked by the courts. Do they plan to implement the order anyway? What do they see as the biggest voting issues in their respective states, and how do they plan to address them? Numerous studies and reports consistently show that instances of voter fraud are extremely rare, yet the speakers at the conference peddle in disproven conspiracy theories that claim otherwise. Do they agree?

New York Times, At Least 173 People Are Still Missing After Texas Floods, Jack Healy and Campbell Robertson, July 9, 2025. Officials said the search for remains would continue until all the victims have been accounted for. In the hardest-hit county, no survivors have been found since Friday.

Search crews spread through the Texas Hill County on Wednesday morning with a grim mission, seeking signs of the scores of people missing from devastating floods that struck the region nearly a week ago, killing at least 111.

Gov. Greg Abbott revealed late Tuesday that at least 173 people remained missing — the first time state officials have identified just how widespread the human toll might eventually be. Those unaccounted for include 161 people in Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding occurred and where searchers have not found any survivors since Friday. 

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: President to Target More Countries With Trade Announcements, Staff Reports, July 9, 2025.

• Trade war: President Trump said he would make more announcements about trade on Wednesday involving at least seven countries. Mr. Trump began issuing his latest tariff threats this week, insisting that “we’re done” negotiating, as economists warned about a potential surge in prices for American consumers.
• Mass layoffs: Thousands of federal workers are in limbo as they wait for their employers to decide whether they get to keep their jobs. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed, for now, with its effort to shrink the federal work force. Read more ›
• Federal Reserve: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is among several contenders to be the next Fed chair even as he leads the search process, has shown a new willingness recently to deliver broadsides against the policies of the central bank. Read more ›

Paul Krugman via Substack, Build Baby Build, Paul Krugman, right, July 9, 2025. Three tales of urban America. 

I thought I might use the breaks in my schedule to highlight several recent stories bearing on an issue dear to my heart — the future of American cities.

As some readers may know, one of the main themes of my academic career was helping to revive economists’ interest in economic geography. I focused on the tension between the forces of agglomeration, which cause people and businesses to clump together, and the centrifugal forces that push them apart. I did my main work on this subject in the early 1990s. However, the topic gained a lot of extra real-world relevance a few years later: It became increasingly clear that the logic of a knowledge-based economy was favoring highly educated large metropolitan areas on the coasts, while leaving much of the heartland economically stranded.

Which is not to say that everything is going well in the big coastal metropolises. I live in New York, where some things have gone very right — crime is way down and, as I’ll explain later, the congestion charge intended to reduce traffic delays appears to be a smashing success. But there’s a real crisis of affordability. Recently the West Side Rag, my ultra-local news source, ran an article titled “The Upper West Side: A Neighborhood for Independent Minds.” Lots of interesting history, but frankly my first reaction was “Yeah, independent minds who can afford to pay $1600 a square foot for housing.”

I hope that NYC will finally, finally, allow enough housing construction to bring costs down. But meanwhile there have been some dramatic, encouraging developments in California.

A victory against California’s NIMBYs

California, even more than New York, has been hurt by extreme land use restrictions preventing housing construction. Often it seems that the state has gone beyond NIMBY to BANANA — build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.

But last week Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, signed two bills that will substantially weaken CEQA — the California Environmental Quality Act — well-intentioned legislation that turned into a monster, a tool for blocking development and a major cause of California’s high rate of homelessness. It remains to be seen how effective Newsom’s moves will be in unlocking new construction: NIMBYs have historically been extremely creative in finding ways to block new housing. But what Newsom has achieved seemed politically impossible not long ago.

One side note: We often think of restrictive zoning that makes housing unaffordable as a left-right issue, and it’s true that obstacles to building tend to be much higher in blue states than in red states. But I was curious to see what Project 2025 had to say on the subject — and what it espouses is full-on NIMBYism:

Congress should prioritize any and all legislative support for the single-family home. Homeownership forms the backbone of the American Dream. The purchase of a home is the largest investment most Americans will make in their lifetimes, and homeownership remains the most accessible way to build generational wealth for millions of Americans. For these reasons, American homeowners and citizens know best what is in the interest of their neighborhoods and communities. Localities rather than the federal government must have the final say in zoning laws and regulations, and a conservative Administration should oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.

Odd, isn’t it? The people at The Heritage Foundation want to remove limits on, say, pollution but defend the right of communities to block affordable housing. Also, they’re all for freedom: Americans should have the right to choose how they want to live. Unless, however, they want to live in apartment buildings.

Austin underpowered

Back in May the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting report on how the move of technology companies and workers to Austin, Texas, which got a lot of hype a few years ago, has stalled and even gone into reverse.

Tech workers moved to Austin looking for relief from sky-high Silicon Valley housing costs. But once there many seem to have discovered that Austin lacked critical mass. The tech “scene” with its opportunities for networking was disappointing. And the labor market wasn’t thick enough. Isabelle Bousquette, the reporter on the story, noted in a podcast that

A lot of companies that moved to Austin have since done layoffs, which is true for companies across the board in tech. But when you've been laid off, workers are finding that San Francisco or New York is a better place to look for a new job.

One thing that also came up in the Austin reporting was that it’s hard to get around; traffic is bad, and there’s little public transit. Which brings me to my third item: New York’s highly successful congestion tax.

Decongestion

In some ways, traffic congestion is less of a problem in New York than almost anywhere else, thanks to the miracle of the subway system. But congestion remains costly, and anyone who chooses to drive into lower Manhattan imposes large negative externalities on everyone else. So anyone who learned Econ 101 knows that there is a compelling case for a congestion charge on vehicles entering the high-traffic zone. Yet it took many years of advocacy before New York finally took the plunge.

And guess what? Econ 101 was right. The congestion charge has been a huge success, with greatly reduced traffic delays — so much so that even the drivers paying the charge are almost surely better off. Mass transit ridership is up, and the revenue from the congestion charge will pay for significant transit improvements.

Right now, maybe the moral is that between California’s anti-NIMBY reforms and NYC’s congestion charge, we’re seeing some real policy improvements in our coastal cities. At the same time, the frustrations experienced in Austin are a reminder of why agglomeration adds value.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: "A gigantic public experiment that no one has asked for," Judd Legum, right, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, July 9, 2025. AI is a disruptive force in education. Generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini can be easily used by students to cheat. These tools can produce papers in seconds that previously took students days or weeks to complete. A report by OpenAI found that the most common use for ChatGPT by college students was "starting papers."

But even when AI is not used by students unethically, its impact on learning is uncertain. It is impossible to know the long-term impact of these very new tools on students. But some early studies of AI use show a negative impact on critical thinking and cognition.

Nevertheless, the companies behind popular AI tools are making an aggressive push to make their products a fundamental part of K-12 and higher education.

 

Donald Trump shown in a file photo with socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, a socialite who was convicted and sentenced to prison for crimes related to her longtime grooming and sex trafficking of girls and young women for sex with her former lover Jeffrey Epstein, a neighbor and frequent companion of Trump.

The Meidas Touch Podcast, Trump COVER UP of DARK PAST quickly BACKFIRES in PUBLIC, Ben Meiselas, July 9, 2025. Meidas Touch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump getting utterly crushed by the public, including his own MAGA supporters, for trying to cover up his horrible past connections and conduct.

 

 

Joan Mellen, Temple University professor and author of 24 books on history, cinema, Japan, and the assassination of JFK (Credit: joanmellen.com)

JFK Facts, RIP Joan Mellen: Biographer, Historian, Film Critic, and JFK Scholar, Jefferson Morley, July 9, 2025. Her books on Jim Garrison, Lyndon Johnson, George de Mohrenschildt, and the Cuban Revolution are a unique contribution to the history of the Kennedy era.  

I just heard that my friend Joan Mellen had passed. Dan Alcorn posted the sad news on the Assassination Archives and Research Center website.

A professor at Temple University and author of 20(!) books, Joan was a film critic, novelist, feminist, sports fan, and scholar of JFK’s assassination. Her books (including an analysis of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of a conspiracy to kill JFK, shown at left) were fluent and well-informed.

Beware if she disagreed with you on a JFK issue. I received more than one tongue-lashing from Joan for one of my opinions that she found half-baked, under-informed, and generally unworthy of further discussion.

But she had the soul of a teacher. In 2004, she was awarded one of Temple University’s coveted “Great Teacher” awards for outstanding achievement. When she wasn’t dressing me down, she could be quite sweet with her salty sense of humor.

Alcorn wrote:

Joan was a force in the research community. She could be harshly critical of work she did not like, but also warmly kind to those she favored. She was good to have on hand as I found at a conference when an overly zealous attendee rushed towards us. Joan blocked him with her cane and yelled at him demanding “What is wrong with you?” Joan questioned my work on Nazi influence in contemporary America, until the direction of events made the subject unavoidable.

July 8

Fox News, ICE Raid LA: Federal agents surround MacArthur Park, Staff Report, July 7, 2025. A federal immigration raid was underway in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park on Monday morning 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 7, 2025 [Armed, Masked Federal Forces Raid LA's MacArthur Park], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 8, 2025. At about 10:30 this morning local time, heavily armed masked agents in trucks, armored vehicles, a helicopter, on foot, and on horseback, accompanied by a gun mounted on a truck raided the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. Journalist Mel Buer reported that agents from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the National Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brought what he called a “massive federal presence.”

Fox News Channel personnel were embedded with the raiders and broadcast throughout the operation, suggesting that it was designed for the media as a show of force to intimidate opponents. CBP brought its own press team, and its people were also taking photos of bystanders. After Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass arrived and spoke with Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, the agents left. It is not clear that there was a specific target for the raid, or that anyone was arrested.

Later, Bovino told Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

Immigrants rights groups sued Bovino last week to block what they call an “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids.

Steve Beynon of Military dot com reports that about 70 National Guard troops have been deployed to the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades as the administration “leans harder on the military to enforce its nationwide immigration crackdown.” Unlike the National Guard troops Trump federalized in Los Angeles, these troops are operating as state troops under Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Another 8,500 active-duty and National Guard troops are stationed along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

The Trump administration is also sending 200 Marines to Florida to aid ICE, part of a push to increase deportations by using active-duty troops.

The U.S. Marine Corps has launched a pilot program to station ICE agents at Camp Pendleton in California, Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, and Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Sarah Rumpf-Whitten of Fox News writes that the plan is to strengthen security at those bases, although University of Tampa defense professor Abby Hall Blanco pointed out: "It gives kind of an odd impression that the Marine Corps is not handling its own security sufficiently. Having known quite a few Marines in my time, I can't imagine that they would find that to be a particularly flattering interpretation.”

As Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol pointed out in Talking Points Memo, it appears that officials in the Trump administration are using immigration as a way to establish a police state. Indeed, they are using the concept that presidents have control of foreign affairs as a way to work around the laws in place to prevent a dictatorship.

 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, above left, protests the unannounced federal military-immigration deployment in the city's MacArthur Park on July while children were playing and other customary activities continued, including a homeless man (top right) resting with no apparent concern as the show-of-force deployment proceeded around him.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary Resistance Dateline: Trump's Gestapo on the move after the Fourth of July weekend,Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books, prolific commentator and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, July 7-8, 2025. All rested up after marking America's Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump's Gestapo agents wasted no time in rounding up more people throughout the United States:

• Three Border Patrol vehicles and many Border Patrol officers outside of Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego.
• Possible Proud Boys bounty hunters staging at the gas station at Lincoln and Euclid in Anaheim, California. ICE agents are domiciled in 9 floors at Fairfield Hotel across from Disneyland in Anaheim.
• Several federal law enforcement officers, some on horseback and others in armored vehicles and supplemented by 90 members of the federalized California National Guard, descended on MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass interceded with the federal agents and demanded that they leave the park. The famous park was largely empty save for a group of children at a day camp. Bass stated, "What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation." MacArthur Park is surrounded by neighborhoods where Mexicans, Central Americans, and other immigrants live and run small businesses.
• Health care outreach personnel who tend to the needs of homeless residents in MacArthur Park told the mayor that federal agents pointed guns at them and told them and their homeless clients to leave the park. One homeless man decided to sleep in, ignoring the threats from Trump's and Tom Homan's thugs. ICE refused to disclose how many people were detained during the Siege of MacArthur Park. ICE agents were also seen moving from the park toward Korea Town.
• US Border Patrol El Centro sector chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News: "I don't work for Karen Bass . . . Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles."

Ten law enforcement agencies used radio code names during the siege of MacArthur Park. The code names are all soda brand names: ATF: A&W; Customs and Border Control: Canada Dry; Drug Enforcement Administration: Dr. Pepper; FBI: Coke; Federal Protective Service: Fanta; Homeland Security Investigations (HSI): Hank; ICE/Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO): Inca; US Marshals Service: 7-Up; Internal Revenue Service: Sprite; Los Angeles Sheriff's Department: RC; Los Angeles Police Department: Pepsi.

 

The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases We Can Do Without, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 8, 2025. DHS is a human rights monstrosity.

The Department of Homeland Security sounds so innocuous. Who could be opposed to affording America “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” as Merriam-Webster defines “security”? Surely we do not want to deprive Americans of “measures taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or escape,” and/or deny them “the state of being able to reliably afford or access what is needed to meet one's basic needs,” (two other definitions of “security.”)

But in its current incarnation, the Department of Homeland Security is providing precisely none of those things. It is provoking fear and anxiety among immigrants (legal or undocumented) and even native-born citizens. It has ceased to focus on protecting Americans from criminals or espionage (more than 93 percent of whom have never been convicted of any violent offense, while 65 percent have no convictions whatsoever).

Instead, masked, unidentified shock troops have been regularly attacking hard-working immigrants or just those they assume are immigrants, mistakenly seizing citizens, and shipping them off to foreign hellholes or unsafe domestic camps. Depriving suspected undocumented migrants of dignity, due process, and humane treatment, conducting violent intrusions into workplaces, schools, and courtrooms, and creating labor and food scarcity as workers disappear, DHS has become a menace to public safety.

The Los Angeles Times reports: Masked, unidentified agents have been “systematically” cornering brown-skinned people in a show of force across Southern California, tackling those who attempt to leave, arresting them without probable cause and then placing them in “dungeon-like” conditions without access to lawyers, a federal lawsuit alleges.

The report continues:

The lawsuit filed Wednesday by immigrant rights groups against the Trump administration describes the region as “under siege” by agents, some dressed in military-style clothing and carrying out “indiscriminate immigration raids flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners.” It seeks to block the administration’s “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids in the L.A. area.

And if things have not been horrifying enough, DHS is about to morph into an even more monstrous operation that will bring America that much closer to a police state. Under the morally repugnant reconciliation bill, taxpayers will be spending “$170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions.” That includes $45B (a 265% increase in ICE’s detention budget) and “$29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned on Bluesky:

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion—making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA, & others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

The Florida migrant detention center, recently the subject of coverage that inanely adopts Donald Trump’s deplorable, alliterative nickname, stands as a human rights abomination. “The hastily constructed detention camp in the Everglades that began processing immigrant detainees late this week has already flooded once, may not meet hurricane codes and is not officially approved or funded by the federal government,” the Washington Post reports. “Experts say detainees and staff will face far morecommon hazards than the swampland terrors gleefully envisioned by state and national Republicans to discourage escapes.”

The detention camp is “reminiscent of some of our country’s darkest chapters,” the ACLU of Florida explains. “Expanding the mass detention machine — especially in remote, dangerous, and unsanitary conditions — puts lives at risk and diverts public dollars from the services our communities truly need.” If we tolerate, or worse, make jokes about these conditions, we are inviting DHS to set up throughout the U.S. similar facilities that international human rights organizations would deplore in other countries.

In addition to that stain on America, DHS is complicit in torture, according to the amended complaint of wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He alleges that “he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.” He attests: 

 

Members of the "Mara 18" and "MS-13" gangs are seen in custody at a maximum security prison in Izalco, Sonsonate, El Salvador, on Sept. 4, 2020 (AFP Photo by Yuri Cortez via Getty Images). 

Upon arrival at CECOT, the detainees were greeted by a prison official who stated, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.” Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip, issued prison clothing, and subjected to physical abuse, including being kicked in the legs with boots and struck on his head and arms to make him change clothes faster. His head was shaved with a zero razor, and he was frog-marched to a cell, being struck with wooden batons along the way. By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body...

Plaintiff Abrego Garcia repeatedly observed prisoners in nearby cells who he understood to be gang members violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel. Screams from nearby cells would similarly ring out throughout the night without any response from prison guards or personnel. During his first two weeks at CECOT, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia suffered a significant deterioration in his physical condition and lost approximately 31 pounds…No decent American could fail to be horrified and deeply ashamed that our government, under the auspices of the Orwellian name, “Department of Homeland Security,” is complicit in these human rights atrocities.

Donald Trump, DHS officials, and every Republican lawmaker who condones, empowers, funds, and whitewashes DHS’s despicable operations are complicit in a mammoth, militarized machine that has systematized suffering, fear, and terror. The operation potentially dwarfs previous American human rights abuses, including the internment of Japanese during WWII and political prisoners during the Red Scare. We should not merely discard the phrase “Homeland Security,” we should abolish the department in its current form, assign many of its operations (e.g., customs control, naturalization processes) to other departments, and replace it with a disciplined and law-abiding border security operation that focuses on real threats to the U.S. Until we do that, America—no longer that shining city on the hill—joins the ranks of abusive, lawless, and cruel tin-pot autocracies that deserve the civilized world’s scorn.

 

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Republicans’ 2026 strategy, Marc Elias, right, July 8, 2025. We are still 16 months away from the midterm elections, and Republicans are already spending millions of dollars to make voting more difficult. Their court filings explain — in clear terms — that their motivation in these cases is to disenfranchise Democrats.

Unfortunately, the legacy media is burying the lede and offering sanitized versions of these attacks on voting rights. Let me be clear: If we don’t start taking the GOP’s voter suppression claims literally and seriously, we won’t have free and fair elections in 2026.

Just take a look at Arizona, where the Republican Party recently sued to block certain U.S. citizens from voting in state elections. Their reason was straightforward — the voters at issue almost certainly skew Democratic in their voting patterns. Here is what they told the court:

“Among only overseas UOCAVA voters registered in Maricopa County, which include registrants who have never resided in Arizona, only 18.2% are registered Republicans, 51.3% are registered Democrats, 26.5% have no political party affiliation, and 4% are associated with other recognized political parties.”

If this claim sounds familiar, it is. This is similar to the claim the Republican Party and Jefferson Griffin, the candidate for the North Carolina Supreme Court, brought in their effort to disenfranchise more than 65,000 voters. A victory for the GOP in that case would have flipped the result of the election.

The Republican National Committee has likewise been supporting litigation around the country to disqualify mail-in ballots that are cast by the voter before Election Day but, due to mail delays, are received in the days following. The RNC is not shy about telling the court why:

“Mail-in ballots from Democratic voters also tend to arrive late, in part because ‘Democratic get-out-the-vote drives—which habitually occur shortly before Election Day—may delay maximum Democratic voting across the board, and produce a ‘blue shift’ in late mail ballots.’”

As the RNC put it succinctly: “Counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day doesn’t just dilute the valid ballots — it specifically and disproportionately harms Republican candidates and voters.”

Similarly, in a federal case challenging Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to take over federal election administration, the RNC submitted an affidavit from a senior party official to defend the law:

“Post-election mail-in ballot deadlines also specifically harm Republican candidates and voters [because] Democratic voters tend to mail their ballots later on average than Republican voters, which results in late-arriving ballots favoring Democratic candidates.”

The RNC’s perceived advantage (or disadvantage) is not limited to cases involving mail-in ballots. The RNC also sought to defend a Wyoming proof-of-citizenship law on the grounds that: “The RNC wants Republican voters to vote, Republican candidates to win, and Republican resources to be used effectively to achieve its mission.”

Despite the GOP’s own insistence that they are trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, too many in the legacy media — and some self-appointed experts — continue to paint a different picture. They believe that Republican efforts are more symbolic than real and have little impact on voters.

 

New York Times, Opinion: Everyone Hates This Bill. Dan Osborn Could Make Republicans Pay for It, Michelle Goldberg, right, July 8, 2025. It’s hard to think of a major piece of legislation more hated by more people than the monstrous bill Republicans passed last week.

It is, of course, almost universally reviled by Democrats, but there’s also opposition to it in every part of the Republican coalition. Susan Collins, perhaps the most moderate Republican senator, and Rand Paul, one of the most conservative, both voted against it. Elon Musk called it “insane” and threatened to form a new political party over it. Senator Lisa Murkowski tried to distance herself from it immediately after casting the craven vote that put it over the top.

In a June Quinnipiac poll, only 29 percent of respondents, including a relatively anemic 67 percent of Republicans, approved of the bill, which makes deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps while adding trillions to the national debt. 

Had Dan Osborn won his independent Senate campaign in Nebraska last year, it’s possible the bill would never have passed.

Now, as he starts a new independent run for the Senate, he thinks some Republicans have buyer’s remorse. “They were sold a bill of goods that if you work hard in this country, your government is going to be there, to have a level playing field for you to get ahead,” Osborn, who is announcing his candidacy on Tuesday, told me. “But now we’re seeing tax cuts for the billionaires at the expense of workers, people that are struggling to get by.”

A big question — and not just in Nebraska — is whether the pain caused by this bill will be enough to shake partisan loyalties. Democrats are favored to win the House next year, but the party faces a brutal Senate map. It’s defending seats in purple states like Georgia and Michigan and can’t flip the chamber without upsets in some states that are bright red.

Paul Krugman via Substack, The Tariff Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves, Paul Krugman, right, July 8, 2025. News flash: Trump is still Trump.

Yes, tariffs. Many investors seem to have deluded themselves into believing that Trump was done disrupting world trade, and some economists, myself included, were hoping that we wouldn’t keep having to write about stupid, feckless trade policy. But here we go again.

By now we were supposed to have scores of trade deals signed. Instead, yesterday Trump began posting letters on Truth Social (diplomacy!) telling a variety of countries that they would face high tariffs on Aug. 1. The first two letters were to South Korea and Japan, both told that Trump would put a 25 percent tariff on all their exports. Some countries are facing even higher tariffs. Overall, the tariff rates announced so far look very close to the widely ridiculed Liberation Day tariffs announced on April 2.

Honestly, I’ve written so much about tariffs that it’s hard to find new things to say. But let me offer a few notes on where we seem to be now.

These tariffs are really, really high

One way to look at the newly announced tariffs is in the light of history. The infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 pushed the average tariff rate to about 20 percent. So far every country that has received a letter will be facing rates higher than that.

Another way to look at it to ask how much we would expect these tariffs to reduce trade. The key number is the elasticity of substitution in world trade — the percent fall in imports caused by a one percent rise in import prices. The median estimate from many studies is 3.8, which implies that in the long run 25 percent tariffs will reduce trans-Pacific trade by almost 60 percent. That’s a lot.

There were never going to be genuine trade deals

These tariffs are going to hurt South Korea and Japan, although they’ll hurt U.S. consumers even more. So why didn’t Korean and Japanese negotiators make big enough concessions to satisfy Trump?

Because there was nothing for them to concede. South Korea has had a free trade agreement with the United States since 2012, so most U.S. exports to Korea face zero tariffs. Japan, like other wealthy nations, has very low tariffs on most goods. Neither country, then, was in a position to offer big tariff reductions, because their tariffs were already minimal.

Here's part of Trump’s letter to South Korea, alleging that the country’s “Tariff, and Non Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers” are responsible for the bilateral trade imbalance:

Notice that Trump offered no specifics — because there aren’t any. How were the South Koreans supposed to end unfair trade practices that exist only in Trump’s imagination?

Here’s an analogy that occurred to me: Imagine that you have a belligerent neighbor who threatens to take revenge unless you stop dumping trash on his lawn. You reply, truthfully, that you aren’t dumping trash on his lawn. His response is to accuse you of being intransigent and slash your car’s tires.

The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off, in part because of my last observation: Attempts to mollify Trump always end up emboldening him to demand more.    

New York Times, Israel-Hamas War: Trump and Netanyahu Meet Amid Gaza Cease-Fire Negotiations, Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman, July 8, 2025 (print ed). The two confronted an array of high-stakes Middle East issues. But first they took a victory lap, including the Israeli leader telling President Trump he had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confronted several high-stakes issues when they met for dinner on Monday night, including the long-term future of Gaza and the prospect of Israel normalizing relations with its Persian Gulf neighbors.

But first, they indulged in some self-congratulation.

The two celebrated the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Mr. Netanyahu, right, used the occasion to further ingratiate himself to the American president by telling Mr. Trump he had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“He’s forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the region after another,” Mr. Netanyahu said, lavishing praise on Mr. Trump, who has long made known his desire for a Nobel Prize.

Mr. Trump, for his part, compared his decision to authorize airstrikes on Iran to President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II.

“That stopped a lot of fighting, and this stopped a lot of fighting,” he said.

The men spoke to reporters while seated at a long table in the Blue Room, surrounded by top White House aides. The Israeli prime minister plans to stay in Washington through Thursday and has meetings planned with Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary.

He has an array of daunting issues before him during his trip. Mr. Trump has expressed urgency to secure an Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage release deal, the subject of talks underway in Qatar.

The discussion agenda also included the recent U.S. airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran, a surgical effort amid a broader Israeli war on the country, as part of a broader conversation about reducing instability in the region, according to two people with knowledge of the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the private meeting publicly. 

New York Times, 5 Israeli Soldiers Killed in Gaza, Military Says, Livia Albeck-Ripka, July 8, 2025. Officials said the troops were killed during combat in northern Gaza, but offered few other details. 

New York Times, How Insularity Defined the Last Stages of Biden’s Career, Tyler Pager (White House correspondent and one of the authors of “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America,” from which this article is adapted), July 8, 2025. 

The effort by Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inner circle to limit access to him helps explain why it took him more than three weeks to drop his re-election bid after his disastrous debate performance. 

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s aides did not want him to speak with me.

For months, as I worked on a book about the 2024 presidential election, I made multiple requests for an interview with Mr. Biden. One of my co-authors had sat down with President-elect Donald J. Trump, and we felt it was critical to talk to Mr. Biden. But the former president’s aides said he was working on a memoir, and that would conflict with my book.

Yet when I reached Mr. Biden on his cellphone in late March, he answered and agreed to talk. He broke his silence on his successor to criticize the early weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. “I don’t see anything he’s done that’s been productive,” the former president said.

When I asked if he had any regrets about dropping out of the presidential race, Mr. Biden said, in a detached tone, “No, not now. I don’t spend a lot of time on regrets.” Then he hung up because he was boarding an Amtrak train.

My brief conversation with Mr. Biden prompted a cascade of concern among his top aides. One screamed at me for calling the former president directly. Others texted furiously, trying to figure out how I had obtained Mr. Biden’s phone number.

Mr. Biden had seemed open to continuing the conversation, but my subsequent calls went straight to voice mail. His automated greeting simply said, “Joe.”

Two days later, that greeting was replaced by a message from Verizon Wireless: “The number you dialed has been changed, disconnected or is no longer in service.”

The swift reaction to my call reflects the insularity that became a defining feature of the final stages of Mr. Biden’s political career. And in no instance was the protectiveness of his staff, and his failure to connect with outside voices, more pronounced than in the period after his disastrous debate performance 13 months ago. At the most perilous moment of his presidency, with his prospects for re-election teetering amid growing concerns about his age and mental acuity, Mr. Biden was all but impossible for anyone outside his tight inner circle to reach.

Instead of confronting the president with the bad news, his aides limited access to him, making it difficult for even some of his longtime friends and allies in Congress to reach him, including Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and a close ally.

Mr. Biden’s aides never had him meet with his campaign’s pollsters. Instead, they often presented overly optimistic outlooks of the political landscape, alarming members of the campaign staff, who looked for ways to bypass his longtime advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon to get information to the president. For the most part, they failed to reach him.

This account of Mr. Biden’s tight inner circle is based on a new book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” which I wrote with Josh Dawsey of The Wall Street Journal and Isaac Arnsdorf of The Washington Post. Taken together, details from that period help explain why it took Mr. Biden so long — 24 days — to come to the conclusion that his candidacy was finished.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Biden declined to comment.‘Do you realize how bad it is?’ImageDonald Trump and Joe Biden debate with the CNN logos behind them.After Mr. Biden melted down on national television during a presidential debate with Donald J. Trump in June 2024, some Democrats feared he was certain to lose the race.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Democrats were in a panic.

Nearly two weeks after Mr. Biden had melted down on national television during a debate with Mr. Trump, some members of his party feared he was certain to lose the presidential race — and that he might take them down with him.

Representative Pete Aguilar of California, a top House Democrat, called one of the only people who had the president’s ear.

“Do you realize how bad it is?” Mr. Aguilar asked Mr. Ricchetti early last July. “Has anyone told the president how bad it is?”

Mr. Ricchetti was sanguine. They knew some people felt that way, he said.

Mr. Aguilar shot back, “Steve, has anyone walked into the Oval and told him we could lose everything?”

Mr. Ricchetti said no, insisting that many members of Congress still supported the president. Mr. Aguilar said that was simply not true. The men proceeded to argue, shouting at times, for nearly an hour as the congressman tried to convey the desperation in the party.

Mr. Biden was aware of the concern among Democrats — it was impossible to ignore — but his aides continued to provide him with a warped version of reality.

 

Meidas Touch Network, Musk Brings Tweets To A Gunfight, Michael Cohen, Michael Cohen, July 8, 2025. Musk may have money and ambition, but Trump controls the levers of real power: Congress, the military, media, and mob. This isn’t a rivalry. It’s a reckoning.

Let me be perfectly blunt: this isn’t a clash of titans. This isn’t Godzilla versus King Kong. This is Mike Tyson in his prime walking into a daycare and challenging a toddler with finger paints to a bare-knuckle brawl. Elon Musk: visionary? Maybe. Genius? Possibly. But political warrior going head-to-head with Trump, the sitting President of the United States, commander of the world’s most powerful military, and a man who rewrote the rules of power? Please. Not a chance.

It’s not even close.

People love to romanticize billionaires. Wealth, after all, looks like power—until you come face-to-face with real power. And real power isn't having a rocket company, a car company, or even a social media platform. Real power is having the nuclear codes, the IRS, the DOJ, SCOTUS, the FBI, the FCC, the FTC, and ICE on speed dial. Real power is owning the game board while everyone else is fighting over tokens. And right now, Trump owns the whole freakin’ board.

So Elon, thinking himself some hybrid of George Washington and Iron Man, launches the “American Party” with a tweet, some fanfare, and—let’s be honest—a mountain of ego. He thinks he’s giving America back its freedom. What he’s really doing is handing Trump a political bat and saying, “Here, take a swing.”

And Trump doesn’t swing lightly. He goes right for the head!

The first volley came fast and hard. Trump called Elon “a train wreck”—which is ironic, because this was the same man who had once sung Elon’s praises like he was the second coming of Edison. Trump had gifted Musk a seat of immense influence: head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); a glorified wrecking ball that gutted federal agencies, especially the ones poking around Elon’s empire. In return, Elon pumped money into Trump’s campaign like he was buying another AI startup.

That transactional bromance? Gone. Replaced with snarling tweets, Truth Social tirades, and outright threats.

Now let’s talk strategy. Musk’s move to form a third party isn’t brave. It’s suicidal. Trump doesn’t see it as a political disagreement; he sees it as betrayal. And Trump doesn’t forgive betrayal. He scorches it, salts the earth, and tweets the ashes. Third parties don’t survive in American politics. They fracture coalitions, drain money, and confuse voters—exactly what Trump and the GOP love. The chaos gives them air cover to consolidate more power. Meanwhile, Elon’s standing on a soapbox shouting about liberty, as if that word means anything when the IRS can audit your personal finances back to your Bar Mitzvah.

And let’s be clear: Elon has no base. His fans are Redditors and fanboys who meme more than they vote. Trump’s base? They do vote. Religiously. In red hats. In truck caravans. In states that decide elections. This isn’t a Silicon Valley popularity contest. It’s trench warfare, and Trump has the army, the tanks, and the air cover.

Musk? All he has are tweets.

Take this spending bill—Elon’s supposed line in the sand. The one that "broke" the bromance. Trump slashed the EV tax credit like a samurai with a grudge. He said he warned Elon. Elon now claims he didn’t know. Please. Trump announced that move at every rally, right after promising vengeance on Democrats and a national return to steak dinners and gasoline. If Elon wasn’t paying attention, tough shit… that’s on him.

And now, Trump’s allies are circling like vultures. Investors pulling back. CEOs warning Tesla’s board. Shareholders calling for Elon to “focus.” Translation? “Stop poking the bear who controls the financial ecosystem we rely on to stay rich.” Elon’s personal fortune is at risk. But his companies? They’re really vulnerable. Regulatory reviews, government contracts, labor investigations—Trump knows how to turn the screws until the head is stripped bare.

This is not just a disagreement. This is war. And Musk, for all his wealth and ambition, just declared it without an army, without a shield, and without an exit plan. Trust me, he’s going to learn, the hard way, that America is not a startup you can disrupt with a flashy rebrand and a mission statement.

This isn’t about ideology. It’s about dominance.

Trump is playing empire. Musk is playing rebellion. One has nukes. The other has hashtags.

And here’s the real kicker: Elon’s not entirely wrong. Yes, America does need a political revolution. The system is broken. Corrupted. Bought. But the solution isn’t a billionaire playing messiah. Especially not when that billionaire helped build the monster he’s now trying to slay.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: How the GOP Brought Trump Back from the Dead, Sam Stein, Jim Swift, and Benjamin Parker, July 8, 2025. A new book reveals his surprise that his supposed opponents defended him at a low point in his post-presidency.

Is Donald Trump a stronger and more skilled politician than he was eight years ago—or are the guardrails that once hindered him just weaker?

That question has come up often over the last six months as Trump has enjoyed a series of successes that eluded him during his first term in office. Clearly, he has used the power of the presidency in ways neither he nor any prior president has before. He hasn’t just changed the shape and direction of the executive branch and moved his agenda through Congress, but reshaped entire sectors of American society—from academia, to entertainment, to the law itself.

Yet what has stood out along the way is not how far Trump has pushed the envelope but how little resistance he’s encountered. In yesterday’s newsletter, Bill delved into the crevices of Trump’s mind to imagine the glee he must feel about how frictionless it has all been. Trump hasn’t had to put up much of a fight. He seems totally aware of—and perhaps even liberated by—how subservient everyone around him has been, especially his fellow Republicans.

That subservience wasn’t nearly as prevalent during Trump’s first term. Nor did it sprout up after November 5, 2024. Rather, it took root in between the two Trump administrations, as documented in 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, a new book out today by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf.

The book is a richly reported look at the three distinct storylines that made up the last election: Joe Biden’s fall, Kamala Harris’s scramble, and Trump’s resurrection. The last of the three may have seemed like the most covered. But there are vignettes in 2024 that are new, and they serve as powerful reminders of just how quickly, fully, and unilaterally the Republican party chose to acquiesce to Trump during a period many took to be his political nadir.

The old style of politics is never coming back. Help build something new and better with us—join the Bulwark community today:Subscribed

Perhaps the most telling and startling moment recounted in the book happened the day after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, during a meeting between then–RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and RNC members. While with these lawmakers who had just witnessed the violent mob’s attempt to take over the Capitol, she put Trump on speakerphone “letting him hear them shout, ‘We love you!’”

Expressing affection for the man who had inspired the attack on the Capitol and threatened the peaceful transfer of power may seem like an act of ignoble groveling. (And it was.) But such acts would come to define Trump’s period in exile. Two years later, Trump was indicted in the hush-money case in New York. After stewing on the plane ride home to Mar-a-Lago, he woke up the next day to an “outpouring of support from Republicans.” The Trump campaign, the authors report, quickly fielded polls showing that his support in the Republican primary was topping 50 percent and growing.

The more Trump came under fire, the firmer his support would grow among Republicans. The authors report that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) briefly reconsidered his decision not to run for president as his home state governor, Ron DeSantis, stumbled. But then he saw the results of voter research he commissioned:

In one focus group, when Trump supporters were shown the facts about his shortcomings on building a border wall, one woman explained that Trump must have done that on purpose, in order to funnel the migrants through gaps where they could be apprehended more readily. Scott decided to stay out of the race.

As for DeSantis’s camp, they found it maddening that Trump’s political standing kept getting stronger as his personal standing weakened. Unable to reach Republican voters as Trump’s indictments dominated the news, campaign aides “began to joke that maybe DeSantis should try getting arrested.”

By the time of the first GOP primary debate, several key figures assumed the contest was finished. Every candidate was asked if they’d vote for Trump if he was convicted in a court of law. All but two, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, put up their hands. Christie, who eight years earlier was one of the first Republican politicians to endorse Trump, would go on to tell the authors that he was stunned by “the fact that these folks would absolutely prostitute themselves that way.” He would add: “That’s the day the primary ended.”

It was a conclusion McDaniel reached, too. She privately told her team that night, “This is over.”

It’s hard not to wonder how Trump must have felt in these moments. He was not even on the debate stage that night, but nearly all his “opponents” seemed eager to take his side. Years earlier, he was on the precipice of being impeached for the second time, and he got a rousing attaboy from RNC members. The man gets indicted for hiding a hush-money payment to a porn star, and his numbers go up!

Yes, Trump has benefited from the perception that he’s the subject of political prosecution—few play the victim card as aggressively or as skillfully. And yes, he has cultivated immense loyalty among his base over the years—often by putting loyalists in positions of power. But as we marvel at the political powers Trump now possesses, it’s worth noting how infrequently he has been challenged from within his own party, not because they agree with everything he does, but because they simply don’t seem interested in trying. At times, even Trump himself couldn’t quite believe how easy he had it.

“I was a little surprised,” he told the 2024 authors of the fact other Republicans rallied to his defense after the hush money indictment. “I was impressed because they were campaigning against me.”

   

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: U.S. Resume Weapons Deliveries To Ukraine: Bill Kristol, right, and Andrew Egger, July 8, 2025. Just days after the Pentagon canceled a weapons shipment to Ukraine, President Trump has ordered more weapons to be sent over. “They have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump said, referring to the Ukrainians. “They’re getting hit very hardnow.”

The shipment that was canceled last week included missile interceptors that the Ukrainians need to defend their cities and that they can’t get from anywhere else. The new shipment Trump ordered will reportedly be those interceptors, though not as many as initially planned.

Trump made the right call here. But as Gen. Mark Hertling pointed out a few days ago, part of the problem with the initial cancellation was that it was made without any coordinated policy process, apparently on the whim of the Secretary of Defense. Having one whim cancel out another is no way to run a superpower.

Kyiv Independent, Ukraine's ambassador to the US to be dismissed, source says, Chris York, July 8, 2025. Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S. has been informed by President Volodymyr Zelensky that she is to be dismissed, a source in the President's Office confirmed to the Kyiv Independent on July 8.

Oksana Markarova, right, has held the post since April 2021, and played a central role in coordinating U.S. military and financial support during the early phases of Russia's full-scale invasion.

But her future in the role was thrown into doubt earlier this week when it was revealed that Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed a potential change during a recent phone call, a source in the President's Office told the Kyiv Independent on July 7.

According to the source, the topic of replacing her was raised by Kyiv, suggesting the move could be "useful for both sides." The source added that there are multiple "strong candidates" in the running.

The source added that there are multiple "strong candidates" in the running. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko are among the candidates, Bloomberg previously reported.

The possible reshuffle comes at a moment of renewed tension between Kyiv and Washington. The U.S. Defense Department recently paused shipments of critical weapons systems, including Patriot missiles and precision-guided munitions, sparking concern in Kyiv.

The discussion about Ukraine's representation in Washington also coincides with longstanding speculation about a broader government reshuffle.‘Neither side wasted time’ — Ukraine’s economy minister on minerals deal negotiations with Trump’s ‘business-oriented’ administration.

New York Times, The Wild Russian Plot to Burn a London Restaurant and Kidnap Its Owner, Lizzie Dearden, July 8, 2025. Court proceedings revealed how a criminal gang in Britain were directed to target Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a dissident Russian who owns Hide, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Mayfair.

When Hide opened in London’s exclusive Mayfair district in 2018, the restaurant made headlines for its twisting bespoke timber staircase, its lavish wine menu and its rapidly won Michelin star.

Last year, it drew attention for another reason.

A group of small-time criminals in Britain were directed by Russian operatives to kidnap Hide’s Russian owner, Yevgeny Chichvarkin — a vocal critic of President Vladimir V. Putin — and to burn the restaurant and a linked wine shop to the ground.

The men were arrested before they carried out those orders, but not before they had completed a separate mission: setting fire to a Ukrainian-owned warehouse in East London in March 2024.

Thousands of messages discovered by the police after the group’s arrest, and made public during a monthlong trial at the Old Bailey courthouse in London, provide extraordinary insight into the workings of Russian operatives paying criminal gangs to conduct espionage and sabotage operations in Europe.

Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “This case is clear example of an organization linked to the Russian state using ‘proxies’ to carry out very serious criminal activity in this country on their behalf.”

On Tuesday, a jury found three men guilty of arson over the warehouse fire, and convicted a fourth man of failing to tell the police about the plans for Mr. Chichvarkin and his businesses. The two ringleaders of the group, Dylan Earl, right, and Jake Reeves, had already admitted their roles in the extraordinary plot.

The British cell started with Mr. Earl, a 21-year-old drug dealer based in the Midlands city of Leicester, who had become enamored with the Kremlin’s cause and offered to build a network of “hundreds of soldiers” to carry out its orders.

Investigators believe he contacted Russian intelligence operatives on the Telegram app through a channel associated with the Wagner Group paramilitary organization. The British government and security services assess that the group has been under the control of Russian state agencies and intelligence services since a failed 2023 coup.  

New York Times, Trump’s frustration with Putin preceded his resumption of U.S. weapon deliveries to Ukraine, July 8, 2025. President Trump on Tuesday unleashed weeks of frustration with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over what he described as “meaningless” gestures toward peace, a day after Mr. Trump said the United States would resume sending munitions to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s multiyear invasion.

The remarks from Mr. Trump were his harshest toward Mr. Putin since he was first elected president in 2016, and came as an abrupt change in public posture toward the Russian leader after months of failing to forge peace in a conflict he once boasted he could resolve in a day.

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting at the White House. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

The president’s disenchantment with his Russian counterpart, along with more positive recent interactions he has had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, appeared to have driven his decision to resume sending some air defense interceptors and precision-guided bombs and missiles to Ukraine after their delivery had been halted last month.

At the time, administration officials said that the pause was necessary to assess whether the Pentagon’s weapons stockpiles were dwindling too low. Officials have not said who directed the pause.

It is unclear how quickly the initial tranche of paused weapons, which was held up in Poland, will arrive in Ukraine. But the decision to release the munitions was cheered in Ukraine, which suffered a major Russian air attack on Kyiv and other cities late last week, shortly after a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin.

 New York Times, At Least 161 Still Missing in a Single Texas County, Governor Says, Rick Rojas, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Jesus Jiménez, July 8, 2025. No survivors have been found since Friday in Kerr County, where the worst flooding occurred. The statewide death toll rose to 111, with at least 173 unaccounted for statewide.

At least 173 people remained missing on the fifth day after devastating floods swept through the Texas Hill Country, Gov. Greg Abbott said on Tuesday. Those unaccounted for include 161 in Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding occurred and where local officials said no one has been rescued since Friday.

The number of missing cited by the governor — the first time an official had identified the scale of the recovery operation still ahead — suggested the death toll of 111 could more than double as rescue teams sift through debris in search of bodies.

“The primary job right now continues to be locating everybody who was affected by this flood,” Mr. Abbott said at an afternoon news conference, later adding: “We will not stop until we identify, recover every single body.”

The death toll included at least 30 children, making the floods among the deadliest U.S. disasters for children in several decades. The young victims include many from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls, where 27 campers and staff members were killed. The bodies of five campers and a 19-year-old counselor remained unrecovered as of Tuesday evening.

Here’s what else to know:

• Criticism grows: Republican officials continued to deflect responsibility for the disaster amid growing questions about the role of federal forecaster vacancies and a lack of state and local spending on flood control and warning systems. Read more ›-
• Governor deflects: Asked about responsibility following a helicopter tour of the devastation, Mr. Abbott called that the “word choice of losers” and compared disaster response to football: “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame,” he said, while champions respond, “We got this.” Read more ›
• The victims: At least 87 of those killed in the floods were in Kerr County, with seven dead in Travis County, eight in Kendall County, five in Burnet County, three in Williamson County and one in Tom Green County. The include a beloved teacher, child and adult campers, camp directors and a counselor. Read more ›
• How to help: Here’s some guidance from officials and aid groups.

 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism, Prime Day is a scam, Judd Legum, right, July 8, 2025. Amazon Prime Day is a four-day sale promoted by the mega-retailer as a rare opportunity to secure "deep discounts" on a variety of consumer items.

In reality, Amazon deploys deceptive tactics to exaggerate its markdowns and create a false sense of urgency. Featured items are often available at similar or lower prices at other times.

Nevertheless, major media outlets produce a massive number of "articles" promoting Amazon Prime Day, as if it is a genuine news event. This isn't an accident. Amazon provides financial incentive for news organizations to produce this content. 

New York Times, Liberal Fund-Raising Drive Seeks $250 Million to Aid Pushback Against Trump, Theodore Schleifer, July 8, 2025. Donors hope to raise huge sums of money to help those fighting what they see as a drift toward authoritarianism, but without attracting unwanted White House attention.

Some of the country’s largest liberal foundations are quietly working to raise at least $250 million to help civil groups push back against President Trump and what they see as his steady drift toward authoritarianism, according to people briefed on the matter.

The effort is in its early days, working to secure initial commitments. But the scale of the collaborative undertaking has turned heads in the tightly networked world of philanthropy. It comes as donors are licking their wounds and many efforts to raise capital for liberal work are struggling.

If successful, it would be among the most financially ambitious initiatives to oppose Mr. Trump’s attacks on institutions. Some see it as a glimmer of hope in a community of progressive donors who have despaired over the new administration’s actions.

Recipients of the money raised would be nonpartisan nonprofits, not Democratic candidates or committees. The ultimate beneficiaries could include groups or individuals that file lawsuits against the government, provide security and safety for activists, or underwrite news media organizations or nonprofits seen as essential to the functions of democracy, the people said.

The effort, described by eight people briefed on it, is shrouded in secrecy. Some donors and nonprofit executives who are aware of it have taken to referring to the participants as “The Huddle,” according to a person who has heard the term used.

The philanthropic executives and donors involved are keeping a close grip on the details of their plans and the identities of the participants, out of fear that leaks could imperil their work and encourage retribution by Mr. Trump.

That gets at a bigger contradiction of political philanthropy in the Trump era: Benefactors want to organize themselves and spread the word about their intentions adequately to raise huge sums of money, but not to the point that their efforts receive unwanted attention from Mr. Trump.

At the center of the $250 million initiative as it has taken shape in recent months is Deepak Bhargava, the president of a foundation that in December was renamed Freedom Together. Mr. Bhargava has kept a busy schedule of conferences and private meetings, working to line up other donors and to band together as many as a dozen other foundations, according to the people briefed on the matter.

So far, Mr. Bhargava is working closely with John Palfrey, the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies, to raise money, according to the people briefed on the efforts. Mr. Palfrey has emerged as an outspoken leader of the philanthropic sector in the second Trump term, warning against intimidation and defending the sector’s freedom to give without fear of retaliation.I

July 7

 

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as "Alligator Auschwitz."

MSNBC Daily, How ICE's massive cash infusion is poised to transform America, Hayes Brown, July 7, 2025. With a cash infusion of around $150 billion toward immigration enforcement and border security in last week's budget bill, congressional Republicans handed the Trump administration the resources needed to carry out its mass deportation policy.

The intended result is as aggressive as it is likely transformative: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is slated to become the largest law enforcement agency in the country as dozens of new detention centers spring up to hold hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting expulsion.

In the six months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, there has been a surge in ICE raids, detentions and removals. The majority of targets in this increase are not the hardened criminals that MAGA supporters and administration officials claim. Shifts in policy have already stripped hundreds of thousands of immigrants of their legal protections to remain in the country.

But the wide-ranging sweeps ICE has launched in churches, at farms and in Home Deport parking lots still haven't resulted in enough arrests to satisfy White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has spent weeks insisting that more dedicated resources are needed to meet his goal of 3,000 arrests per day.

But Republicans gave Miller exactly the tools he wants when they passed their budget reconciliation bill last Thursday.

 

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. It is a maximum-security "mega-prison" located in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Capacity: It is one of the largest high-security prisons in the world, initially designed to hold 20,000 detainees, but with a reported capacity later doubled to 40,000 inmates.

ABC News, Migrants who were sent to CECOT are the responsibility of US, El Salvador tells UN, Armando Garcia and Laura Romero, July 7, 2025. The claims appears to contradict what U.S. officials have been saying.

Over 200 migrants who were sent to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison under accusations that they were members of a violent criminal gang are the responsibility of the United States, the government of El Salvador told a United Nations working group.

El Salvador's claims, outlined in a report submitted Monday in court, appear to contradict what President Donald Trump and administration officials have been saying for months: that they are unable to return any of the migrants sent to CECOT because they're under El Salvador's authority.

"In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters," El Salvador officials said in their report to the U.N.MORE: Appeals court delays order on due process for El Salvador deportees

El Salvador's comments were made in a report submitted in a court filing by the United Nations Office of The High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group, which was investigating the "disappearances" of four Venezuelan men who were thought to have been sent to the country in March.

To date, the Trump administration has not released a list of those sent to El Salvador.

"The Salvadoran State emphatically states that its authorities have not arrested, detained, or transferred the persons referred to in the communications of the Working Group, " the El Salvador officials said in the report. "The actions of the State of El Salvador have been limited to the implementation of a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another State, through which it has facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure for the custody of persons detained within the scope of the justice system and law enforcement of that other State."

The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act -- an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process -- to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States.

 

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration's firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic). 

New York Times, Updates: Search for Texas Flood Victims Enters Fourth Day, Edgar Sandoval, Amy Graff, Jill Cowan and Yan Zhuang, July 7, 2025. The death toll from a devastating flood in Central Texas topped 100 on Monday evening, as the chance of finding more survivors faded on the fourth day of searching. The death toll includes at least 27 campers and staff members from a single summer camp, where 11 people were still missing.

• See also:  North Carolina Faces Widespread Flooding After Chantal Dumps Heavy Rain

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas acknowledged on Monday that flood-warning sirens might have saved lives if they had been along the river. He added that they needed to be in place by next summer. Kerr County officials considered installing them, but balked at the price tag.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said there would be a “careful examination of what happened” to prevent the same loss of life in the future. The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, requested an inquiry into whether cuts at the National Weather Service contributed to the death toll.

Also on Monday, the mayor of Kerrville, Joe Herring Jr., warned residents to expect a “rough week” as chances fell of finding anyone still alive. He said rescue crews would push forward with their searches, slashing through debris and downed trees even as they braced for the possibility of more flash flooding.

The deluge in Central Texas has become one of the deadliest floods in the United States in the past 100 years. Here’s what else to know:

Rescue efforts: Hundreds of people have been searching for survivors, some of whom have been found clinging to trees and floating on furniture. Read more ›

Forecast: Flash flooding is a threat in Texas’ Hill Country on Monday night. Two to three inches of rain could fall per hour as slow-moving storms pass through, the National Weather Service said. The Weather Prediction Center has cautioned that “any storms that move across this extremely vulnerable region will rapidly cause flash flooding.”

The victims: At least 84 of those killed in the floods, including 28 children, were in Kerr County, northwest of San Antonio. Seven people were killed in Travis County, six in Kendall County, four in Burnet County, two in Williamson County and one in Tom Green County, the authorities said. Read more ›

One family’s toll: Five members of a Texas family who were camping along the Guadalupe River are among the missing. A sixth survived after being dragged downriver for more than 15 miles. Read more ›

How to help: Here’s guidance from officials and groups seeking aid. Read more ›

Here’s the latest.

• Rescuers braced for the possibility of more downpours and flash flooding on Monday as the search for people swept away in the catastrophic flooding in Central Texas grew increasingly desperate.
• The deluge, which began Friday and killed at least 81 people, has become one of the deadliest floods in the United States in the past 100 years. Emergency services, volunteers and family members have been hoping against hope to find signs of life, navigating fields of debris with helicopters, drones, boats and horses. They are looking for at least 41 people who are still missing, including 10 girls from a riverside summer camp.
• Harrowing stories have emerged across the Hill Country, including accounts of rescues and reunions, as well as those that ended in tragedy. In Kerr County, the hardest-hit area, Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp, confirmed on Monday that at least 27 campers and counselors had died, calling the floods an “unimaginable tragedy.” Among those killed were campers as young as 8, a camp counselor and the camp’s director.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 6, 2025 [U.S. Weather Warning Cutbacks], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 7, 2025. At least 80 people are dead and more than 40 are still missing in Central Texas after almost a foot (30 centimeters) of rain caused flash floods overnight on Friday. Most of the deaths were in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet (8 meters) in 45 minutes, engulfing a Christian girls’ camp.

Even as rescuers search for survivors, the disaster has highlighted the dangers of MAGA governance. The steps that left people in the path of the floods on Friday are unclear, but observers are already pointing to the administration's cuts to government as well as the lack of systems that could have provided earlier warnings to those in the path of the floods.

Immediately after the catastrophe became apparent, Texas officials began to blame cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS)—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—for causing inaccurate forecasts. The “Department of Government Efficiency” cut about 600 staffers from the NWS. After the cuts, the understaffed agency warned that “severe shortages” of meteorologists would hurt weather forecasting.

All five living former directors of the NWS warned in May that the cuts “[leave] the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit…just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes…. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

But former NWS officials maintain the forecasts were as accurate as possible and noted the storm escalated abruptly. They told Christopher Flavelle of the New York Times that the problem appeared to be that NWS had lost the staffers who would typically communicate with local authorities to spread the word of dangerous conditions. Molly Taft at Wired confirmed that NWS published flash flood warnings but safety officials didn’t send out public warnings until hours later.

Meanwhile, Kerr County’s most senior elected official, Judge Rob Kelly, focused on local officials, telling Flavelle that the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive and “[t]axpayers won’t pay for it.”

Officials will continue to examine the crisis in Texas but, coming as it did after so many deep cuts to government, it has opened up questions about the public cost of those cuts. Project 2025 called for breaking up and downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, claiming its six main offices—including the National Weather Service—“form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” by which it meant the fossil fuel industry.

CNN’s Andrew Freedman, Emma Tucker, and Mary Gilbert note that several NWS offices across the country are so understaffed they can no longer operate around the clock, and many are no longer able to launch the weather balloons that provide critical data. The journalists also note that the Trump administration's 2026 budget calls for eliminating “all of NOAA’s weather and climate research labs along with institutes jointly run with universities around the country.”Brad Plummer of the New York Times noted that the budget reconciliation bill passed by Republicans last week and signed into law on Friday boosts fossil fuels and destroys government efforts to address climate change, even as scientists warn of the acute dangers we face from extreme heat, wildfires, storms, and floods like those in Texas. Scott Dance of the Washington Post added yesterday that the administration has slashed grants for studying climate change and has limited or even ended access to information about climate science, taking down websites and burying reports.

When a reporter asked Trump, “Are you investigating whether some of the cuts to the federal government left key vacancies at the national weather service or the emergency coordination?” he responded: “They didn’t. I’ll tell you, if you look at that water situation that all is and that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn't blame Biden for it either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe and it’s just so horrible to watch.”The tragedy in Texas is the most visible illustration of the MAGA attempt to destroy the modern U.S. government, but it is not the only one. 

 

New York Times, North Carolina Faces Widespread Flooding After Chantal Dumps Heavy Rain, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Eduardo Medina, July 7, 2025.The storm flooded roads, downed trees and stranded residents across the central part of the state. It is headed northeast toward Washington, D.C., and Maryland.

Officials in central North Carolina were working to rescue stranded people and clear roads on Monday morning after Tropical Depression Chantal dumped up to 10 inches of rain in parts of the state, bringing significant flooding that inundated homes, closed highways, trapped drivers and pushed rivers up to near historic levels.

The storm, which made landfall as a tropical storm early Sunday in South Carolina and then moved inland as a tropical depression, was headed northeast toward Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, Flood watches were announced for Washington and parts of Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.

The worst effects of the storm have so far been felt in central North Carolina, where tens of thousands of people were without power and at least two tornadoes were confirmed, the authorities said. The storm downed trees and power lines and swamped roads. As of early Monday, no fatalities or injuries had been reported.

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: President Announces New Tariffs of 25% on Goods From Japan and S. Korea, Shawn McCreesh, July 7, 2025. 

• Trade war: President Trump said on Monday that he would subject imports from Japan and South Korea to new 25 percent tariffs that would take effect on Aug. 1, putting economic pressure on two U.S. allies as a deadline for making trade deals elapses this week. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump would sign an order later Monday extending a pause on his steepest tariffs until Aug. 1. Mr. Trump also threatened to impose higher tariffs on countries that align with BRICS nations after the group appeared to criticize U.S. trade and foreign policies.
• Immigration: Migrants from Honduras and Nicaragua will lose their protection from deportation and access to work permits in about two months after a decision by the Trump administration on Monday. Migrants from those countries are the latest to lose their protections: The Trump administration has already moved to end the Temporary Protected Status program for several countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Read more ›
• Mideast crisis: Mr. Trump will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday evening at the White House, where they are expected to discuss the cease-fire with Iran and the war in Gaza. Read more ›

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was pressed on why top members of the Trump administration — including Attorney General Pam Bondi — have promised the president’s supporters forthcoming information on Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.

She can’t really answer why Bondi in late February hyped a supposed binder containing a client list. The administration gets visibly nervous about this subject whenever it crops up, as it did today after the Justice Department dismissed conspiracy theories — espoused by the president’s top supporters — having to do with Epstein’s death and crimes.

The fallout between Trump and Elon Musk reached its nadir when Musk suggested that the president was more connected to Epstein’s crimes than the public knows, and that’s why more information hasn’t come out. Musk has been posting about this subject again in the last 24 hours.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Real Men Burn Stuff, Paul Krugman, July7, 2025. The manosphere and the war on renewable energy.

Most critiques of the One Big Beautiful Bill have focused on the way it explodes the budget deficit while imposing immense hardship on lower-income Americans. Yet energy policy is also an important component of the OBBB, which basically tries to roll back the rise of solar and wind power — sources that have accounted for more than half the worldwide increase in electricity generation since 2015.

Why would the G.O.P. want to demolish a key pillar of economic success in its biggest source of electoral votes?

Honestly, I think this is a case where the usual logic of money-driven policy is trumped (Trumped?) by irrational, psychological — you might even say psychosexual — issues.

If you think about it, this makes sense — not intellectually but emotionally. Don’t concern about the environment and advocacy of “clean energy” sound kind of, well, feminine? Real men burn stuff and don’t worry if the process is dirty.

And manosphere-type attitudes are clearly widespread in MAGA. One of the main arguments Trump officials and supporters have made for tariffs is that they will bring back “manly” jobs in manufacturing. (They won’t, but that’s another story.) The same notion underlies the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.

But here’s the thing: MAGA and the manosphere may hate clean energy, but they won’t be able to stop the rise of renewables. All they can do, possibly, is stop the rise of renewables in the United States. Other nations, China in particular, are making huge investments in wind and solar power, because they understand what Trump and his allies refuse to acknowledge — that this is the only way forward.So while MAGA’s attempt to strangle clean energy will increase the risks of global climate catastrophe, it will also increase the risks of U.S. economic stagnation, forcing our nation to remain wedded to obsolete energy technologies while other countries march into the future.

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: Trading Partners on Edge as Tariff Deadline Nears, Staff Reports, July 7, 2025. Where Things Stand.

• Trade war: President Trump is set to rekindle economic pressure on U.S. trading partners, as a deadline for making trade deals elapses this week. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that some agreements could be reached before that, and suggested that the deadline could be extended to Aug. 1 for countries seeking deals. Mr. Trump also threatened to impose an additional tariff on countries that align with BRICS nations after the group appeared to criticize U.S. trade and foreign policies.
• Mideast crisis: President Trump will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday evening at the White House, where they are expected to discuss the cease-fire with Iran and the war in Gaza. Read more ›
• Trump and Musk: President Trump said Elon Musk, his former close ally, was “off the rails” after Mr. Musk said he was creating a new political party. The effort is the latest rupture in the relationship between the president and the world’s richest man, a bond that crumbled as Mr. Trump muscled his sprawling domestic policy bill through Congress.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalis: Making Measels Safe For All Judd Legum, right, July 7, 2025. Before the measles vaccine became widely available in the 1960s, nearly everyone in the United States contracted measles by the time they were 15. Each year, millions of children were infected, tens of thousands were hospitalized, and hundreds died.

It is extremely contagious. 92% of unvaccinated people exposed to measles end up contracting the disease.

Nevertheless, in 2000, the World Health Organization declared that measles had been eradicated in the United States. This was due to the historic success of a vaccination program, which stopped the spread of the disease.

Today, measles is back.

In 2000, there were only 86 cases of measles recorded in the United States. Halfway through 2025, there have already been 1,274 recorded measles cases. There have been 155 hospitalizations and three deaths, including two unvaccinated children. It is the first time people have died from a measles infection in the United States in a decade.

The spread of measles is directly related to vaccine hesitancy. The epicenter of the current outbreak is Gaines County, where the Mennonite community has low vaccination rates. There is no religious prohibition against vaccines, but "has historically avoided interacting with the health care system and has a long tradition of using home remedies and supplements." In some school districts in the county, less than half of the Kindergarten population was vaccinated. Texas allows parents to opt out of the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, for "reasons of conscience."

Low vaccination rates have allowed the measles outbreak to spread to neighboring New Mexico, which has nearly 100 recorded cases. Kentucky reported its first outbreak on June 27. Across Kentucky, MMR vaccination rates have declined to 86.9%. Only July 1, Wyoming reported its first case of measles in 15 years.Outbreaks have also occurred in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah.

Deadly vaccine misinformation

MMR vaccination rates have plummeted due to the spread of misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. One of the most influential sources of misinformation, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, serves in the Trump administration as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has used his high-profile position to misinform millions of people about measles and the MMR vaccine.

Before joining the Trump administration, Kennedy sued the state of New York for requiring the MMR vaccine, arguing that it was dangerous and unnecessary.In an appearance on Fox News on March 11, 2025, Kennedy suggested that contracting measles was preferable to getting vaccinated. Kennedy told Sean Hannity that "when you and I were kids, everybody got measles and measles… gave you… lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn't do that." Kennedy falsely claimed the MMR "vaccine wanes about 4.5% per year. So that means older people are essentially unvaccinated." In reality, although the concentration of measles antibodies can decrease over time, the MMR vaccine provides lifetime immunity for nearly everyone, which is why so few vaccinated people contract measles. (The 4.5% per year figure is not supported by scientific evidence.)

Kennedy also falsely suggested that the vaccine was just as dangerous as measles. "There are adverse events from the vaccine," Kennedy said. "It does cause deaths every year. It causes -- it causes all the illnesses that -- measles itself cause[s] encephalitis and blindness, et cetera, and so on."

The claim that the MMR vaccine causes death each year is false. According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, there are "no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people." In rare instances, the MMR vaccine has caused death in immunocompromised people, which is why the vaccine is not recommended for that population.

 

One First, a weekly newsletter that aims to make the U.S. Supreme Court more accessible to all, TikTok and the Dispensing Power, , Steve Vladeck (right, Georgetown Law Center professor), July 7, 2025. Attorney General Bondi's TikTok-related letters rest on a view of presidential power that has no support in even the most capacious understandings of the "unitary executive" theory.

Amidst all of the other news from last week, we finally received, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, copies of 21 letters that Attorney General Bond, left, sent to U.S. tech companies earlier this year.

Bondi’s letters apparently helped to induce those companies to decide to continue supporting the TikTok app—despite a federal statute expressly forbidding them from doing so after January 19, a statute that the Supreme Court had upheld against a First Amendment challenge on January 17. (The statute’s full name is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act; I’m going to call it the “TikTok statute” for ease of reference.)

From a legal reasoning perspective, Bondi’s letters are bollocks.

In addition to claiming that the companies’ behavior does not violate the statute (which it unambiguously does), Bondi asserts that she has the legal authority to irrevocably release all potential claims that might arise out of the companies’ ongoing violations of the act (and purports to release those claims)—a power to license unlawful activity on a case-by-case basis, if you will, which was known in pre-revolutionary England as the “dispensing” power.

I wrote back in January about how the TikTok executive order President Trump signed on his first day of office committed whoever the Attorney General would be to take that first position about the meaning of the statute (which should’ve been reason enough for any principled lawyer to refuse nomination to the office, and for the Senate to refuse to confirm any nominee). But it’s the second claim—that the President, through the Attorney General, has a dispensing power—that is even more extreme; that is not even required by the executive order; and that, if it becomes a precedent, would turn the separation of powers (if not the rule of law itself) entirely on its head.

The Attorney General’s Law-Free TikTok Letters

Although it may seem like a distant memory at this point, it was only on January 17—less than six months ago—that the Supreme Court, after hyper-expedited merits review, upheld the TikTok statute against a First Amendment challenge. On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order that promised not to enforce the statute for 75 days (a period that could be renewed).

But it was only after Attorney General Bondi sent letters to various U.S. tech companies some time later that full access to TikTok was restored—letters that, at least at the time, were not made public (or even leaked).

Given that timing, the natural question that arose was what, exactly, Bondi had promised to the tech companies to get them to turn the switch back on?Late last week, in response to FOIA requests, 21 of those letters were made public. The letters are worth reading in their entirety (in some cases, multiple letters to the same company sent at different times were included). But to summarize the highlights, across those letters, the Attorney General of the United States memorialized some variation of the following three conclusions:

1. Companies that continue to support the TikTok app are not, in fact, violating the TikTok statute;

2. The TikTok statute is “properly read” to not “infringe upon . . . core Presidential national security and foreign affairs powers”; and

3. The Department of Justice is “irrevocably relinquishing any claims the United States might have had” against the recipients of the letters for both previous and ongoing violations of the act.

Each of these three arguments is ludicrous.

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, This July 4, kings were back in fashion, Marc Elias, July 7, 2025. Publishing the Declaration of Independence was an act of radical defiance. If you look beyond the niceties of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Declaration is a harsh indictment of mistreatment under a dictatorship.

The authors wrote: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

The colonists who declared independence were not only angry at the King. They also chafed at a British Parliament that aided and facilitated the King’s tyranny. And, in the penultimate paragraph of the Declaration itself, they condemned the British public that remained indifferent:

“We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Every time I read this section of our first founding document, I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition, 180 years later, that “history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

As we celebrated Independence Day on July 4, our Congress’ own submission and appalling silence was hanging in the air. Trump and his Republican enablers marked the historic day by signing a bill that will take basic health care away from the neediest Americans to give tax breaks to the wealthiest.

This is a bill that will hit red areas harder than blue. Few Republican members of Congress wanted it to pass. Yet nearly all of them lined up to vote for it.

Fittingly, the bill signing ended with Rep. Mike Johnson handing his speaker’s gavel to Trump. “I want you to have that,” the speaker said. I would say it reminded me of British Gen. Cornwallis’ sword being presented to George Washington to end the war in 1781 — but there’s a key difference. Johnson never actually fought to keep his power.

The pathetic bit of theater playing out at the White House may have been a distraction for what was going on down the street. Justice Department lawyers were rushing to deport eight migrants to South Sudan. It is not clear why the Trump administration picked South Sudan — or the men to send there — since none were from the war-torn country.

One cannot help but conclude that the timing was no coincidence. Seven o’clock on the East Coast — just in time to celebrate Independence Day and prepare for fireworks. It’s sickening.

Finally, we learned something new about the latest capitulation by legacy media. When Paramount announced its $16 million payment to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit, it assured us there were no other financial sweeteners. Now it seems that was a bit of semantics.

According to news reports, once the Paramount merger is completed, the new company will run millions of dollars’ worth of Trump-approved public service announcements. Trump described it as an additional $16 million —“or maybe more than that in advertising”— making the value of the entire deal “$32 to maybe $35 million.”

Between all of the capitulations since he took office, Trump has collected hundreds of millions in pro bono legal services from Big Law and millions in free propaganda commercials from legacy media. I am confident this is not what Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, “those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

On Thursday night, Donald Trump spoke at a rally where he described unscrupulous bankers lending money as “Shylocks.” One might think this would earn him universal condemnation for using an anti-Jewish slur. Instead, too many on the right dismissed his use of an antisemitic term. That was to be expected.

What I did not expect was the tepid response from legacy media and many in the center and on the left. Let’s be clear: The character Shylock has, since Shakespeare’s creation, been antisemitic. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock’s Jewishness is not merely part of his character — it is the purpose of his character. He is literally introduced into the play as “the Jew.”

Calling someone a “Shylock” is antisemitic, period. When so-called responsible media fail to call it what it plainly is — and when those who police other forms of racism fail to speak out — it only reinforces the games antisemites play to deny Jews their humanity.

  

From left: American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000. Getty Images.

New York Times, Trump Administration Acknowledges Lack of Evidence From Epstein Documents, Devlin Barrett and Matthew Goldstein, July 7, 2025. After Attorney General Pam Bondi promised big revelations for months, the Justice Department noted a lack of evidence for conspiracy theories, including a “client list” and a jailhouse murder.

For months, Attorney General Pam Bondi, left, promised the release of documents on the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that could reveal damaging details, drumming up anticipation over the files, long a source of speculation and conspiracy theories.

But on Monday, a memo by the Justice Department undercut her own statements, pouring cold water on baseless claims. It amounted to a catalog of conclusions that affirmed those reached years earlier by investigators, including that Mr. Epstein killed himself while in a Manhattan cell awaiting trial.

“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list,’” the memo said. “There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

“No further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo continued, adding that the work of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. on the records had been thorough.

In the six years since his death in 2019, the case of Mr. Epstein has become a public obsession for a segment of Trump supporters, some of whom have accused two of his most senior advisers, Ms. Bondi and the F.B.I. director Kash Patel, of slow-walking the review and release of the case file.

A release of related documents in February, which Ms. Bondi had similarly hyped, fell flat, drawing widespread derision as much of the information was already in the public domain.

While many had been awaiting what Ms. Bondi declared would be “Phase 2” of the release of the so-called Epstein files, the new memo sought to end any such expectations. It included an hourslong video, whose existence was previously disclosed, of the hallway outside Mr. Epstein’s jail cell.  

Emptywheel, Justice System Commentary:Pam Bondi Admits She Must Fire Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, Marcy Wheeler, July 7, 2025. Even before Trump was inaugurated, I had great fun boosting expectations that Trump would release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

I didn’t do so because I believed there would be a massive Epstein release (partly because some of the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein are not true and partly because what is true is that Trump is among the powerful men who are implicated). I didn’t do so because I believed any files would ever come out.

I did so because beliefs about Epstein are non-falsifiable. I did so because even if there were no damning materials tying Trump to Epstein, the President would still never be able to satisfy the expectations of his mob.

I did so because the promise (from Kash Patel, long before he was confirmed, and then from Pam Bondi, left) and expectation that Trump would release the files was an expectation that Trump’s supporters should expect to have fulfilled — after all he ordered DOJ to do just that, with the JFK, RFK, and MLK files.

But there’s no chance their expectations can ever been fulfilled. It was a way, I knew, where Trump was going to disappoint some of his most rabid fans.

Trump promised to release the secret files the continued secrecy of which have fueled decades of conspiracy theories, so why wouldn’t he release files about pedophilia, the legitimate concern that has fueled the Trump-supporting QAnoners?

I fueled such expectations on Xitter because if the demand to see the Epstein files ever took hold, Bondi would be stuck.

Then Bondi made things worse when she told Fox News that Epstein’s client file was on her desk for review. She made things worse when she orchestrated the re-release of the already-released files to a select group of right wing propagandists, all packaged up to look special, a spectacle that stoked divisions among MAGAts but also raised concerns that she was covering stuff up. She made things still worse when — responding to James Comer’s role in making things worse, when he claimed the Epstein files had been disappeared — she said there were tens of thousands of videos involving Epstein.

Kash Patel, left, who promised to release the files, and Dan Bongino, who begged his readers never to let go of this scandal? They fed the fever too with their years of spreading conspiracy theories about the Epstein files. And when FBI’s conspiracy theorists in chief tried to reverse course a month ago, it only further fueled suspicions.

Then Elon joined the fun, accusing Trump of being in the Epstein files as part of his tantrum against Trump (but then deleting that file). As someone who was also close to Ghislaine Maxwell, Elon might know!

Dan Goldman joined in, expressing, “grave concern about what appears to be a concerted effort by you to delay and even prevent the release of the Jeffrey Epstein Files,” and asking whether Trump’s identity was being redacted from any of the files. Robert Garcia and Stephen Lynch joined in, writing Pam Bondi a letter, asking Bondi to formally answer whether the Epstein files are being withheld — as Elon Musk alleged — because Trump is in them, and further asking (among other questions) whether Trump had a role in the delay of their release.

Bondi’s stonewalling, after both she and Kash promised everything would come quickly, was becoming the story.

So yesterday, DOJ and FBI released (or rather, made available to Axios without yet, apparently, releasing it via normal channels) a two-page unsigned notice (which may be on letterhead created for the purpose).

It included two main, credible conclusions:

Much of the material that FBI has depicts victims and any release of that material would retraumatize the victims. FBI concluded (and Trump’s flunkies agree) that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. DOJ released two files (one unaltered, one enhanced, both with titles that do not even mention Epstein) showing that no one entered his cell the night he killed himself.

But there’s also a short, broader conclusion that is less sound.

This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. [my emphasis]

Emphasis on credible?

Of course there’s a client list; one version of it was already released. There are also the names or descriptions shared by victims of the men who abused them. And while there may be no evidence in the FBI files that Epstein did blackmail Trump or anyone else, he had blackmail material on them. There’s certainly credible reason to believe that information is one of the reasons he was allowed to persist so long; it was useful for other powerful people, possibly even spooks in one or another country. That FBI didn’t uncover evidence confirming that others were involved in trafficking young people is dramatically different from saying that there’s no damning information implicating Epstein’s Johns.

But let’s assume for the moment that these conclusions are impeccable (and as I said, the decision not to release videos showing victims and the conclusion about the suicide are sound), that means that the people who’ve been claiming to have inside knowledge who promised to release the files — starting with FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Direct Dan Bongino — are braying conspiracy theorists who cannot be trusted in any position of authority.

If it’s true that all this was a conspiracy theory, Kash and Bongino, right, must leave the FBI, because they’ve just confessed they will endorse any kind of conspiracy theory to spin up Trump’s rubes. Pam Bondi must call for their resignations immediately, and while she’s at it, she should leave herself, because her original stunt release created the very expectations that she’s now trying to squelch.

They all promised to fulfill conspiracy theories and are now claiming they were lying about their certainty there was some there there.

Honestly, they’d be doing themselves a favor by doing so. But that won’t happen, and because these conspiracy theories are non-falsifiable, this attempt to make the entire promised reveal go away will simply fuel further conspiracy theories. Indeed, it already is.

 

Elon Musk, left, and Donald Trump shown in separate file photos via Instagram and YouTube.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Musk Amplifies Meme Asking Why Epstein Clients Aren’t in PrisonTrump hasn’t released the names or arrested anyone, J.D. Wolf, July 7, 2025. Elon Musk amplified renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein case on Sunday morning by retweeting a meme featuring convicted sex trafficker and Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell. The image asked: “Why is she the only one going to prison? Where’s all the men that had sex with those under age girls?”

The post, which Musk did not comment on directly, suggests skepticism about the lack of prosecutions tied to Epstein’s network and reignited criticism of how the justice system has handled the case.Trump : BondiTrump Chickens Out of Musk, Epstein Files Press QuestionsRead More

The retweet comes weeks after Musk deleted a post claiming Donald Trump was named in the Epstein files and accusing him of blocking their release. Musk later walked deleted the tweet.Elon Musk’s deleted tweets

The Department of Justice now claims Epstein did not keep a “client list,” had not engaged in a blackmail operation, and died by suicide—findings that contradict years of speculation and internet rumor.

 

Occupy Democrats via Facebook, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy brutally confronts White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt after the administration claims that there is no Jeffrey Epstein client list — despite previously stating that there was, July 7, 2025. When she tried to slither out of it, Doocy, shown above left, brought the receipts.

"Okay. So. The FBI looks at the circumstances surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein," said Doocy during a press briefing. "According to the report, this systematic review revealed no incriminating client list. So what happened to the Epstein client list that the Attorney General said she had on her desk?"

"Well, I think if you go back and look at what the Attorney General said in that interview which was on your network, on Fox News—" began Leavitt.

"I've got the quote," interjected Doocy.

"Go ahead," said Leavitt.

"John Roberts said 'DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients will that really happen?' and she said 'It's sitting on my desk right now to review,'" said Doocy.

"Yes, she was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, that's what the Attorney General was referring to and I'll let her speak for that but again when it comes to the FBI and the Department of Justice, they are more than committed to ensuring that bad people are put behind bars," said Leavitt.

"They have an operation going on right now called Summer Heat which has our murder rate trending in the lowest direction in United States history," she continued, trying desperately to change the subject. "Their emphasis on violent crime and locking up violent criminals has led to the arrest of 14,000 violent criminals. That's a 62% increase from the same time period last year so this Attorney General and the FBI Director are committed to putting bad people behind bars where they belong."

"They promised an exhaustive review, that's what the did. For any further details I would refer you to the Department of Justice," Leavitt concluded.

Simply put, her response doesn't hold water. Attorney General Pam Bondi clearly stated that the Epstein client list was on her desk, not that there were documents related to Epstein on her desk.

There are two possible explanations here. The first is that there never was a client list. This explanation wouldn't necessarily rule out the possibility that Epstein had blackmail material on powerful people and was connected to intelligence agencies, it would just mean that he didn't keep a little black book on his schemes. If this is the case, it means that Bondi pretended that there was a list to pander to the segment of the MAGA base that believes in it.

The second explanation is that there is a list and the Trump administration is covering it up because it implicates Trump or people close to him. Given that Trump is an adjudicated rapist who was close friends with Epstein, this seems quite possible.

In fact, Elon Musk previously stated that Trump "is in the Epstein files" and claimed that that's "the real reason they have not been made public."

In the wake of the new DOJ report, which also stated that Epstein wasn't murdered as many suspect, Musk posted an image of "The Official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter,” set to “0000.”

“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again …,” the billionaire wrote.

No matter how you slice it, something just isn't adding up here. The fact that even MAGA world is waking up to that fact should have Trump sweating.

The Contrarian, Political Opinion: What now? It is time…,, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 7, 2025. The worst piece of legislation since the Slave Fugitive Act passed 175 years ago rips a gash in the social safety net, delivers the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in memory, and supercharges a violent, reckless, and cruel deportation machine—one which approves of “spending tens of billions of dollars to expand the unconstitutional kidnapping, trafficking, and confinement of people who’ve committed no crime,” as Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren put it.

It strangles our soft power in the world (hollowing out foreign aid, demolishing the State Department); guts investment in science and green energy; and consigns millions—many of them children—to a life bereft of decent nutrition and medical care. It piles unsustainable, stupefying debt on future generations. In total, the American people will have less access to healthcare, nutrition, education, and economic opportunity.

This MAGA assault on working and middle-class Americans will reverberate for years, if not decades. As dire as that reality is, however, the monstrous legislation also could provide the unity and solidarity Democrats will need to regain power, remove the source of so many Americans’ suffering, and reform our democracy. So, what is next?

It is time to stop berating House and Senate Democrats for not “doing enough.” They did everything humanly possible to oppose the bill, pressure and shame Republicans, educate the public, and unify their ranks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and their colleagues (not to mention their indefatigable staffers) challenged and knocked out one measure after another in the so-called Byrd Bath process. They delayed and debated so the full horror of the bill could be covered for days and debated in the light of day, for all Americans to behold. In the House, discipline in the ranks and truly eloquent rhetoric from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a record-setting 8+ hours of debate on Thursday underscored Democrats’ devotion to ordinary Americans.

Democrats lost this bill because they lost too many seats in 2024. Math is math.

It is time to focus instead on the MAGA culprits. Democrats have a knack for infighting and back-biting. But the mammoth horror inflicted on the United States and the moral and political imperative to reverse it should push to the side less important chatter—for example, focusing on the practicality of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promises as the New York City Democratic nominee. (He’s running for mayor of New York, making him reflective of, well, New York City.)

Progressives and moderates in the party need to lower the temperature in intercine debates and conduct substantive discussions on the best means of attaining common goals. Moderates have been too cautious in response to demands for change, while the far left have been too dismissive of concerns about immigration and crime.

Unlike the MAGA cult, Democrats must tolerate a range of views to build a governing coalition. The urgent need to unify behind the common goal of dislodging a neo-fascist party from power must take precedence over every internal squabble. Frankly, if safe blue districts want super-progressive representatives, the rest of the party should not care. If moderate Democrats have the best shot to win back swing seats, they should prevail in primaries.

It is time to tie every Republican incumbent on the ballot to the monstrous human results of the bill. Alaskan Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Rep. Nick Begich III, for example, will be responsible for every hospital closed in Alaska, every family thrown off of Medicaid or SNAP, every person priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, every scientific researcher or green energy worker thrown out of work, and every family who cannot afford to heat their home or keep their electricity on that result from the hideous bill. (And that is merely within the borders of their state.) They are responsible for the worst excesses of ICE, which has been given tens of billions to terrorize immigrants.

New York Times, Trial Over Free Speech on Campus, and Trump’s Student Crackdown, Begins, Zach Montague, July 7, 2025. The case challenges the Trump administration’s targeting of noncitizen student activists for arrest and deportation on First Amendment grounds.

A federal judge in Boston on Monday will hear opening statements in a trial expected to cut to the heart of several of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics, including President Trump, Israel and free speech on college campuses.

The case, filed by a pair of academic associations in March, has become the foremost challenge to the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views. It contends that the government’s targeting of prominent noncitizen academics who have criticized Israel — such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi of Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts — has already partially succeeded in chilling political speech across the country, and should be categorically stopped on First Amendment grounds.

All of those academics, who are either legal permanent residents or in the United States on student visas, have successfully fought for and obtained their release even as their immigration cases continue to wend through the courts.

But lawyers for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who are representing the associations, will argue at trial this week that the arrests were part of an official policy that could just as easily be turned on other groups that clash with the Trump administration.

While the Supreme Court has affirmed in at least one major case that foreign nationals living in the United States are generally entitled to First Amendment rights, constitutional law experts have cautioned that there are few obvious legal parallels in American history.

In its filings, the government has argued that pro-Palestinian demonstrations are an expression of support for Hamas, which the American government considers a terrorist organization. It has relied on Cold War-era precedents in which the Supreme Court upheld the government’s power to deny entry to people over their past membership in the Communist Party.

Deciding whether the Trump administration overstepped will now fall to Judge William G. Young of Federal District Court in Massachusetts. A lifelong believer in the power of trials to clear up thorny legal questions, Judge Young has scheduled a nine-day bench trial — a trial without a jury — to explore whether the arrests and planned deportations fall within the president’s authority or amount to a grave abuse of power.

In June, Judge Young blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to cancel science grants that funded research into diversity-related topics like health disparities in Black and L.G.B.T.Q. communities. He rejected the cuts as racial discrimination unlike anything he had seen from the government in his 40 years on the federal bench.

In this case, through witnesses and evidence, lawyers from the Knight Institute will work to establish that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security collaborated to surveil social media and other writings for content that could be used as justification for revoking visas and green cards in order to launch deportations.

“It is totally antithetical to the First Amendment to allow the government to use immigration law as a cudgel in this way,” said Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute who will appear in court on Monday. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t lock you up because it doesn’t like what you have to say.”

As much as the issues that will arise at trial seem inextricably linked to the fraught politics of the present, both sides acknowledge that they are deeply rooted in American history.

July 6

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration's firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic).

New York Times, Live Updates: Desperate Search for Missing in Texas Floods as Death Toll Reaches 80, Yan Zhuang, Edgar Sandoval, Rick Rojas and Jack Healy, July 6, 2025. Nearly a dozen girls from a summer camp along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country are among those unaccounted for. Forecasters warned of more rain and possible flash flooding in hard-hit areas on Sunday.

Forecasters on Sunday afternoon said more flash flooding was possible in areas of Central Texas where hundreds of emergency responders, desperate family members and volunteers raced to rescue survivors of the catastrophic deluge that killed at least 80 people, including 28 children.

At least 41 people were still missing, officials said on Sunday, while 28 of those found dead had not yet been identified. Officials said that a fuller picture of the devastation was slowly emerging.

In Kerr County, waterways were gorged by thunderstorms in the predawn darkness of July 4, and tore through the Christian girls’ summer camp, trapping families inside trailer homes and sweeping people into the currents.

The authorities said that there was “no cap” to the broader tally of the missing, and officials said the search was now a race against time, even as they refused to give up hope.

  

New York Times, As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas, Christopher Flavelle, July 6, 2025 (print ed.). Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.

Texas officials have blamed the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But the staffing shortages present a more complicated picture.Credit...Carter Johnston for The New York TimesChristopher Flavelle

By Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.

Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.

The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.

The shortages are among the factors likely to be scrutinized as the death toll climbs from the floods. Separate questions have emerged about the preparedness of local communities, including Kerr County’s apparent lack of a local flood warning system. The county, roughly 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, is where many of the deaths occurred.

In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.

 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: We Make NO APOLOGIES For Being 1st to Connect NWS Cuts & Texas Tragedy, Ron Filipkowski, right, Meidas Touch Managing Editor, July 6,2025. We make NO APOLOGIES for being the first media outlet to report that local Texas officials were pointing fingers at the National Weather Service for a faulty forecast and noting that dozens of experts and scientists have been warning for months that Trump’s draconian cuts to NOAA and the NWS were going to lead to serious problems and greater loss of life during the summer storm season.

As readers of my daily Bulletins know well, I have included quotes from these experts from multiple media outlets in the column many, many times over the past several months.

Was NWS at fault in some way in Texas? Was it just the Texas officials trying to pass the buck? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe both. But we were not going to allow yet another natural disaster on Trump’s watch with huge loss of life to get swept under the rug again, while he dismantles FEMA and the agencies tasked with warning and informing the public are decimated, without serious questions being asked.

 

We also were not going to let Trump and the MAGA propaganda machine to set the narrative on this as they have done so many times in the past over many years with little to no response by Democrats.

This also comes after we endured 4 years of Trump and Republicans blaming Biden using lies and disinformation after every single natural disaster, train derailment, war overseas between other countries, on an on. They blamed Biden for everything despite zero evidence and used a firehose of lies, fake videos, and coordinated disinformation.

We did our best to fight it, but honestly we didn’t have much help from the Biden admin pushing back because too often their strategy was to just ignore it. But you can’t ignore it because it is like a cancer that just spreads and gets worse if you do.

We got criticism even from some Democrats along with the typical vicious personal attacks and threats from MAGA. I started to see my DMs fill up with the usual blue-checked right-wing chuds after the story was published with threats and venom. I’ve gotten so many over the years opposing not just Trump but the entire MAGA movement that I don’t even hardly notice or care anymore.

They can’t scare or intimidate us. But we also got some comments from a few Dems scolding us for “politicizing a tragedy.”

Well, we are not interested in being polite or giving the benefit of the doubt to Trump and his minions like Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Russ Vought (left, a top Trump White House budget advisor and former leader of the Heritage Foundation's comprehensive "Project 2025" to slash federal spending and cut taxes for the rich in a new Trump administration), Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, right, Karoline Leavitt, et al.

We question everything because they lie to us about everything and try to cover up what they are doing across government. If that means we sometimes get accused of “politicizing” tragedies by some on our own side, so be it. If we can endure daily threats from MAGA, we can handle criticism from some squeamish old guard Dems and legacy media about our aggressive and relentless methods.

Now the NYT and other media organizations have joined in with stories documenting how cuts in NWS and other federal agencies may have made this tragedy much, much worse. We were alone out there for most of the day yesterday with our story and got a lot of criticism, but we stood by it because this is a new day and we are determined to make the Democratic Party tougher, more fearless, with thicker skin, and to go on offense against the Trump admin rather than constantly playing defense.

 

Whistleblower, author, podcaster and former Donald Trump supporter Lev Parnas, accompanied by his wife (File photo).

Lev Remembers via Facebook, Opinion: A Sunday Message from Lev Parnas, Lev Parnas, author of Shadow Diplomacy, right, July, 6, 2025. Turning Fear Into Power. 

I want to begin today with something simple, but deeply felt: I See You, I Hear You, and I am With You

These past few weeks — these past six months — have been more than chaotic. They’ve been historic. They’ve been terrifying. Every day, it feels like we wake up to a new attack on our rights, our democracy, and the truth itself.

Let me start by saying this clearly:

• You have every right to be scared.
• You have every reason to be worried.
• Because what we are facing is real. It’s dangerous. And it’s not coming — it’s already here.

Over the past six months, we’ve watched Donald Trump and his enablers in Congress — some of the “finest” elected officials money and fear can buy — dismantle protections we once thought untouchable. From defying court orders to weaponizing the DOJ against immigrants and dissenters, to pardoning extremists and cracking down on media, it’s been one move after another designed to erase accountability and consolidate power.

• We’ve seen him openly deport Americans.
• We’ve seen ICE raids increase.
• We’ve seen him lift sanctions on Putin while Ukraine burns.
• We’ve seen him push a “beautiful” immigration bill that’s anything but.
• We’ve seen him threaten governors, judges, and whistleblowers.
• And now — he’s pushing the most dangerous piece yet:
• What he calls “election reform.”

But let’s be clear — it’s not reform. It’s a plan to rig the system permanently.

That’s why I say this to you from the heart: Now is the time to turn our fear into power.

Because even in the chaos — I promise you — there are cracks forming. I told you they would come. And they’re here.

Inside the Republican Party. Inside MAGA itself. Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Tillis, Thomas Massie — they’re speaking up. They’re breaking ranks. They’re calling him out.

And today, Elon Musk just drove a dagger into the MAGA narrative. Just yesterday, he announced the formation of a third party — the American Party — which he himself is going to fund. This is the worst thing Donald Trump could have imagined. My sources are telling me that Trump’s retaliation will be ferocious. So stay tuned.

Donald Trump knows it. That’s why he’s lashing out harder than ever. He’s threatening to primary them. He’s threatening to deport Elon Musk. He’s threatening democracy itself. That’s why he’s desperate to silence voices like mine. Like yours.

• But I’ll tell you this right now: I’m not going anywhere.
• Not while we still have breath.
• Not while this movement is still alive.
• I get threats every day. They try to shut me up. But I keep going. Because of you.
• I have no big corporate sponsors.
• No bodyguards.
• No party machine behind me.
• I have YOU.

And together, we’ve made Lev Remembers the number one political Substack two weeks running. We are louder than their lies — and we are just getting started. But I need you to take the next step with me.

New York Times, Can Democrats Find Their Way on Immigration? Lisa Lerer, Jazmine Ulloa and Reid J. Epstein, July 6, 2025. The party’s leftward shift in the Biden administration arguably laid the groundwork for President Trump’s aggressive approach. Deciding the next move won’t be easy.

The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch.

Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still.

Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction.

Last year, 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that they supported a decrease in immigration, nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so. The embrace of a more punitive approach to illegal immigration includes not only white voters but also working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats had long courted with liberal border policies.

“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico. “This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.”How the Democrats reached this point, and their continued struggles on immigration, is a decades-long story of political failures, missteps, misreadings and misplaced bets — and some shrewd Republican moves.

“We got led astray by the 2016 and the 2020 elections, and we just never moved back,” said Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who introduced an immigration and border security plan in May. “We looked feckless, we weren’t decisive, we weren’t listening to voters, and the voters decided that we weren’t in the right when it comes to what was happening with the border.”

What the party does to change its approach — and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration — may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power.

But while there is party-wide agreement that Democrats have a problem on immigration and border security, there is no consensus on how to fix it.

Some are pushing for a course correction they see as overdue. A soon-to-be-released proposal from the Center for American Progress, the party’s leading policy shop, embraces restrictive ideas long championed by conservatives, including making it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum.

Neera Tanden, left, the center’s chief executive, said the plan acknowledged a reality that Democrats had long resisted: They must embrace new immigration restrictions in order to have the credibility with voters to fight the far more expansive plans of the Trump administration.

“I’m happy to argue with Stephen Miller or anyone else about why they are wrong,” she said. “But the way we’re going to be able to do that is to also honestly assess that the border has been too insecure, that it allowed too many people to come through and that we need to fix that.”

Many on the left vehemently disagree, insisting that more conservative policies will only aid what they see as an insidious and ambitious effort by the Trump administration to demonize and deport Black and brown immigrants who have been in the country for years, remaking the fabric of a nation that once took pride in its diversity.

“Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame,” said Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. “This has nothing to do with law and order. This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia. Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some.”

Complicating Democrats’ efforts to chart a new path is the fact that the party’s debate is unfolding in the midst of what it sees as a national crisis. The Trump administration is pursuing the harshest crackdown on immigrants since World War II. Raids and patrols by masked officers, detentions at courthouses and workplaces, the promises to arrest and deport millions, and the deployment of National Guard troops against protesters all have undocumented immigrants and even some naturalized citizens running scared and lying low. 

New York Times, Nearly Half of America’s Murderers Get Away With It, German Lopez, July 6, 2025. Most crimes go unsolved, emboldening criminals and potentially leading to more violence.

Someone murdered Raymel Atkins in Louisville, Ky., in 2023. More than a year later, his mother and sister don’t know who did it; the police have not made an arrest in the case. The same is true for Tiffanie Floyd, killed in 2021. And Michael David, killed in 2017. And Cory Crowe, killed in 2014.

In fact, the Louisville police do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases. I spoke to family members of a dozen victims. They all conveyed a similar sentiment: that the police had abandoned them and theirs. “The police don’t really care,” said Deondra Kimble, David’s aunt. “They’ve proven it to me.”

Louisville’s police department acknowledges serious problems; it says it is about 300 officers below full staffing. The department is trying to address those issues, said Jennifer Keeney, a spokeswoman. She shared a message for the family members of murder victims: “We understand they are grieving, frustrated and in pain. We want them to know it’s frustrating for us, too, and that we do care.”

Louisville is representative of a national issue. In the United States, people often get away with murder. The clearance rate — the share of cases that result in an arrest or are otherwise solved — was 58 percent in 2023, the latest year for which F.B.I. data is available. And that figure is inflated because it includes murders from previous years that police solved in 2023.

In other words, a murderer’s chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip. For other crimes, clearance rates are even lower. Only 8 percent of car thefts result in an arrest.

New York Times, China and Russia Keep Their Distance From Iran During Crisis, Edward Wong, July 6, 2025. Some U.S. officials talked about an “axis” of authoritarian nations, but the American and Israeli war with Iran has exposed the limits of that idea.

When Russia enlisted the aid of China, North Korea and Iran in its war against Ukraine, some American and British officials began talking about a new “axis.”

It appeared that the four countries were united by anger, authoritarianism and animus against the United States and its allies.

But Iran’s sales of drones and ballistic missiles to Russia for its war and oil shipped to China did not pay off when it mattered, raising doubts about unity among the nations.

None of the other three states rushed to aid Iran during its war with Israel or when U.S. forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites. China and Russia, by far the two most powerful countries among the four, issued pro forma denunciations of the American actions but did not lift a finger to materially help Iran.

New York Times, Social Security Email Says Policy Bill Eliminates Tax on Benefits. Does It? Tara Siegel Bernard, July 6, 2025. The Social Security Administration circulated an imprecise email about the provisions in the new law. Here’s what it actually does.

In a celebratory email sent to Americans across the country, the Social Security Administration praised the Trump administration’s sprawling budget and tax bill and said it eliminated federal income taxes on most retirees’ benefits.

But that’s not exactly what it does.

Many retirees quickly took notice, with several writing to me and colleagues to question some of the agency’s statements, while pointing out what felt to them like unusually partisan language.

The agency’s embrace of the legislation, which was signed into law by President Trump on Friday, was also at odds with the effect it is expected to have on the program’s financial health. The law is projected to further weaken Social Security’s revenues at a time it is already facing a financing shortfall.

Eliminating taxes on Social Security, along with taxes on tips and overtime, was one of Mr. Trump’s often-repeated campaign promises.

The email, which went out on Thursday, said the new law “includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries,” and, “additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older.”

But the enhanced deduction will help reduce households’ tax bills on their overall income, including Social Security income. “The S.S.A. statement implies there is a direct tax cut on Social Security benefits,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, “which there is not.”

Instead, older single filers will get the extra $6,000 deduction ($12,000 for couples), as long as their income falls under a certain ceiling (below $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for married joint filers). Above those income levels, the deduction begins to decrease, and it goes away once single taxpayers’ income reaches $175,000 ($250,000 for couples).

Nor will the extra deduction benefit all Social Security recipients. Retirees who are 62 through 64 are ineligible.

And since the income of more than half of Social Security recipients is too low to be taxed anyway, lower income people won’t be helped much. The new break is expected to benefit middle- and upper-middle-class households, tax policy experts said. (Recipients who earn less than $63,300 owe an average of 1 percent of their Social Security benefits in taxes, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

“It is discouraging to see such misrepresentation by the administration and the Social Security Administration,” said Martha Shedden, president of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts, a group that offers guidance to consumers and financial professionals on making Social Security decisions.

Status, Peeling Back The Onion; 'GMA3' Shakeup; Trump Dishes on '60 Minutes' Settlement, Oliver Darcy, Ben Collins explains how The Onion is thriving by saying what others won’t—and why human-created satire matters in a media landscape increasingly saturated by noise and A.I. slop.

Not long ago, Ben Collins was one of NBC News’ most recognizable reporters, covering disinformation and the broader information wars with rare bluntness. Then, in an unexpected move announced last year, he walked away from television to take over as chief executive of The Onion, which he positions as one of the few places in American media still allowed to call out absurdity without flinching.

In our Q&A, Collins explained how The Onion has quietly built a thriving subscriber base by reviving its print edition, leaning into human-written satire, and refusing to soften its voice to appease advertisers or politicians. He also reflected on the limits of corporate news, the impact A.I. is having on journalism, and where his attempt to purchase Alex Jones' Infowars stands today.

Below is our conversation, lightly edited for style.

You went from covering disinformation at NBC News to becoming chief executive of The Onion last year after Global Tetrahedron bought it from G/O Media. How did that career pivot happen and what made you want to run a satire publication?

Oliver! Hello! Good to email with you. The last time I physically saw you, we were talking about trying to de-cable news ourselves, to shed all of the bullshit trappings that come with doing corporate journalism. By the end, every sentence I said on TV ambled down a very narrow avenue that would attempt to provide information while not pissing off certain politicians (really only the far-right ones, specifically Elon Musk), our bosses (afraid of said politicians), and sometimes even advertisers.

(In one of my final acts at NBC News, I was once gently scolded by my very nice boss for calling Panera’s cocainic lemonade “suicide juice.” Deepest apologies to the Panini People.)

So, yes, corporate news is certainly a mind prison and I don’t miss it. The industry worked to basically conceal the truth and hand over power to fascists, who refuse to play word games and live in a sort of injustice antigravity. They’re too busy murdering people with legislation to even look up what the word “semantics” is, let alone care about them.

The Onion is allowed to say the unsaid sentence that most Americans are thinking but haven’t yet verbalized. We employ arguably the best 15 sentence writers in the country to make that happen.

July 5

White House Chronicle, Commentary: This Year's July 4, Llewellyn King, above, longtime journalist and public affairs show host, July 5, 2025.  I think for many, myself among them, it was a somber July 4.

There are dark clouds crossing America’s sun. There are things aplenty going on that seem at odds with the American ideal, and the America we have known.

To me, the most egregious excess of the present is the way masked agents of the state grab men, women and children and deport them without due process, without observance of the cornerstone of law: habeas corpus. None are given a chance to show their legality, call family or, if they have one, a lawyer.

This war against the defenseless is wanton and cruel.

The advocates of this activity, this snatch-and-deport policy, say, and have said it to me, “What do these people not understand about ‘illegal’?”

I say to these advocates, “What don’t you understand about want, need, fear, family, marriage, children and hope?”

The repression many fled from has reentered their luckless lives: terror at the hands of masked enforcers.

I have always advocated for controlled immigration. But the fact that it has been poorly managed shouldn’t be corrected post facto, often years after the offense of seeking a better life and without the consideration of contributions to society.

Elsewhere over this holiday, the media is under attack, the universities are being coerced, and the courts are diminished.

America has always had blots on its history, but it has also stood for justice, for the rule of law, for freedom of the press, freedom of speech. Violations of these values have dimmed the Fourth.

Nonetheless, happy birthday, America. You deserve better: It is guaranteed in the Constitution, one of the all-time great documents of history, a straight-line descendant of the Magna Carta of 1215.

That was when the noblemen of England told King John, “Cut it out!” 

New York Times, Editorial Board: The Trump’s Politicized F.B.I. Has Made Americans Less Safe, Editorial Board, July 5, 2025. Only 11 days after President Trump was inaugurated for a second term, his administration began a purge of the F.B.I. that now threatens some of the bureau’s most important missions.

His appointees ousted eight of its most experienced managers, including the division heads overseeing national security, cybersecurity and criminal investigations. Several had worked on prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters or had assisted in the various investigations of Mr. Trump, and Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, said they could not be trusted to carry out the president’s agenda.

That was just the beginning. Over the past five months, many F.B.I. agents, including other top managers and national security experts, have been fired, pressured to leave or transferred to lesser roles. Hundreds have resigned on their own, unwilling to follow the demands of the Trump administration. Their absence has left a vacuum in divisions that are supposed to protect the public. These losses have “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I.,” Adam Goldman of The Times wrote.

Mr. Trump’s playbook for the F.B.I. is plain to see. He is turning it into an enforcement agency for MAGA’s priorities. He is chasing out agents who might refuse to play along and installing loyalists in their place. He is seeking to remove the threat of investigation for his friends and allies. And he is trying to instill fear in his critics and political opponents. Among his many efforts to weaken American democracy and amass more power for himself, his politicization of the F.B.I. is one of the most blatant.

These developments should unsettle all Americans, regardless of party. As one former Justice Department official told NBC News, the decimation of the bureau’s senior ranks has left it “completely unprepared to respond to a crisis, including the fallout from the current conflict in the Middle East.” Mr. Trump’s politicization of the F.B.I. has left it less able to combat terrorism, foreign espionage, biosecurity threats, organized crime, online scams, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and more.

The F.B.I. has a flawed history, of course. J. Edgar Hoover abused his power as the bureau’s director for decades, and Richard Nixon used it to conduct surveillance of political opponents. Yet after the Watergate scandal forced Mr. Nixon’s resignation, the F.B.I., like the rest of the Justice Department, reformed itself to become more independent from the president.

Every president since the 1970s has at times chafed against that independence, wishing that the Justice Department would be more loyal to the White House’s political interests. But those presidents, from Gerald Ford through Joe Biden, largely respected the bureau’s autonomy. As a result, Americans — from the political left, center and right — tended to trust the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump has taken a radically different approach. He has made clear that he considers the F.B.I.’s first priority to be loyalty. Consider the Signal scandal from this spring, when senior officials disclosed sensitive information in a group chat. In any other administration, the F.B.I. probably would have investigated. Under Mr. Trump, the bureau looked the other way.

To carry out this agenda, he chose as its director Kash Patel, whose main qualification is his unquestioning fealty to Mr. Trump. In 2022, Mr. Patel published a children’s book, The Plot Against the King, in which a wizard named Kash saves the day by exposing a conspiracy against King Donald. The next year, Mr. Patel published a book titled Government Gangsters.

His mission at the F.B.I. is to politicize it. He is dismantling key operations and reshaping the bureau into an instrument of Mr. Trump’s political will. Mr. Trump spent years baselessly accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of being weaponized against him; now he is turning federal law enforcement into the very thing he claimed it was: a political enforcer. Under Mr. Patel, the bureau has assigned agents to pursue long-running MAGA grievances. One example: Mr. Patel had his agents dig through documents searching for evidence to support one of Mr. Trump’s and the online right’s favorite conspiracy theories, that China somehow helped manipulate the results of the 2020 election.

Among the people whom Mr. Patel has scapegoated are the agents he now oversees, which damages the bureau’s morale and its effectiveness. Before taking office, he called the bureau “an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He has described its employees as “political jackals” who tried to “suffocate the truth” in order to rig the 2020 election for Mr. Biden. Mr. Patel has promoted theories that the F.B.I. paid Twitter to censor conservatives and that it used confidential informants to stir up the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. There is no evidence to support any of this.

For his deputy director, Mr. Patel hired Dan Bongino, left, a longtime right-wing podcaster. Mr. Bongino has called the bureau “the single most corrupt law enforcement institution” in America and a “full-blown leftist political action committee.” Together they began singling out agents who had worked on prosecutions of the Jan. 6 rioters or the federal indictment of Mr. Trump for improperly removing documents from the White House. Many of these agents were fired, pushed to resign or transferred.

Several of the bureau’s most experienced managers have been driven out simply because they angered members of Mr. Trump’s coalition. Bureau leaders ordered the transfer of Spencer Evans, who ran the F.B.I.’s field office in Las Vegas, after Mr. Trump’s supporters accused him of denying religious exemptions for the Covid vaccine within the bureau. Michael Feinberg, a longtime counterintelligence agent who served as a deputy in the Norfolk, Va., field office, resigned after being threatened with demotion simply because he was a friend of a counterintelligence agent who had sent a text message disparaging Mr. Trump.

The resulting loss of expertise and experience is chilling. The bureau today has fewer people with the skills to prevent crime, political corruption and foreign espionage.

Under Mr. Patel, the F.B.I. has also reassigned agents from valuable work to showy efforts that bolster Mr. Trump’s political interests. This pattern is clearest with immigration. We acknowledge that an increased focus on border security and deportations is a legitimate change for Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. He won election last year partly because of public dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden’s loose border policies, which contributed to the most rapid surge of immigration in American history, much of it illegal.

Presidents rightly have the authority to shape the bureau’s priorities. But the approach of the Trump F.B.I. is nonetheless alarming because of its extremity. The administration is pulling agents away from areas that present true risks to the country and assigning them instead to search for undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record. The effort is part of a governmentwide effort to meet Mr. Trump’s arbitrary quota of 3,000 arrests a day. “They have cannibalized field offices to create these immigration squads,” one former agent told us in an interview. “They’re taking highly trained agents, many with advanced degrees and military experience, and using them for perimeter security on ICE roundups. And that means fewer people working to prevent foreign influence or public corruption.”

The Trump administration has gone so far as to brag about its decision to deprioritize corporate corruption and white-collar crime. The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Matthew Galeotti, has said that a crackdown on corporate crime burdens U.S. businesses. This shift is another example of Mr. Trump’s effort to protect people he considers his allies — namely, corporate executives. He has been particularly aggressive about reducing investigations into cryptocurrency scams while he has ignored decades of White House precedent by using his office for the profit of his businesses, especially in crypto.

Understandably, the combination seems to be undermining bureau morale. More than 650 bureau employees recently filed for early retirement. 

 

 

New York Times, Live Updates: Live Updates: Search for Campers Swept Away in Texas Flood Grows More Dire, Edgar Sandoval and Ruth Graham, July 5, 2025. At least 51 people were killed by flooding in Central Texas, including at least 15 children. Some two dozen girls from a camp on the Guadalupe River remained unaccounted for.

Rescuers swarmed stretches of the swollen Guadalupe River in Central Texas on Saturday in a desperate search for more than two dozen missing campers and others swept downstream by intense flooding. At least 35 people are dead, including 14 children, officials said. It’s unclear how many remain missing.

• The death toll, which is expected to rise, included three in Travis County, where Austin is, according to a county spokeswoman. Most others were in Kerr County, northwest of San Antonio, where more than 850 people were evacuated by rescuers. Officials there said 27 girls from a nearly 100-year-old Christian summer camp remain missing.Here’s what we’re covering:
• Unseen warnings: The deadly flooding surprised many residents, and Texas officials said that some National Weather Service alerts had underestimated the risks. Rob Kelly, Kerr County’s top official, said the county did not have a flood warning system. Read more ›
• Missing campers: Distraught parents posted photos of their missing children online, while others went to reunification centers waiting for news. The missing girls attended Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp whose facilities include a recreation hall that was constructed in the 1920s from local cypress trees. Read more ›
• Beauty and danger: Kerr County is in a part of Texas known as the Hill Country, where many residents have been lured by natural splendor and a rustic vibe. But the region has also become known as “Flash Flood Alley.” Read more ›
• Global warming: Heavy downpours like the one that caused the Guadalupe River to flood have become more frequent and intense in Texas and in other parts of the world as the burning of fossil fuels has heated the planet. Read more ›

New York Times, States Brace for Added Burdens of Trump’s Tax and Spending Law, David W. Chen and Pooja Salhotra, Updated July 5, 2025. With the president’s domestic policy law signed, states will have to administer many of the cuts and decide how much they can spend to keep their citizens insured and fed.

The ink is not even dry on the far-reaching domestic policy law that President Trump signed on Friday, and already state governments are bracing for impact as Washington shifts much of the burden for health care, food assistance and other programs onto them.

Gov. JB Pritzker, Democrat of Illinois, below left, and legislative leaders might hold a special session to deal with the new law, even though the recently passed state budget already includes $100 million to cover shortfalls in federal funding.

Another Democrat, Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona, has warned that even her state’s $1.6 billion emergency fund will be insufficient to weather what’s coming, because “even if we cut every single thing in the state, we don’t have the money to backfill all these cuts.”

Even before the bill’s final passage, state capitals were contending with a slowing economy and federal spending cuts implemented by the Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk. Now they will be expected to administer complex new work requirements for Medicaid and food aid; rework some state health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act; and decide how much they can do to keep their citizens insured and fed once they start losing federal assistance.

“What’s happening in Washington, D.C., is undermining everything we’ve been working on,” said Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, a Democrat.

State budgets have been generally strong in recent years as a result of billions in Covid-19 relief money, economic growth and a record-breaking stock market that has generated more taxes than anticipated. A robust jobs report on Thursday looked rosier that expected, in large part because gains in state and local government employment last month obscured stagnant job growth in the private sector.

Many states, both red and blue, have also enthusiastically cut taxes for residents and businesses. In the face of deep federal cuts, some states will probably be inclined to pause those reductions rather than reverse them, said Jared Walczak, the vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax policy group that generally favors lower taxes.

But in recent weeks, states have been balancing budgets that are fraught with uncertainties. Most state governments’ fiscal years began on Tuesday, but governors and legislators have had to keep an eye on specific provisions in the federal bill that could have outsize effects, such as a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals to offset the impact of Medicaid cuts (which was ultimately included) and the sale of millions of acres of public lands (which was not).

Now that the fine print in the president’s package is coming into focus, Carl Davis, the research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning research group, said that states would have three main options for dealing with the new law.

“They can scale back their investments in health and food assistance that are directly affected by the federal legislation,” he said. “They could shuffle money around to preserve health insurance — ‘Hey, we don’t want 600,000 North Carolinians to lose health insurance, but we’re going to take money away from education to do it.’”

“Or,” he said, “we can see tax increases.”

Some states will use “a mix of all three,” Mr. Davis added.

Mr. Trump’s law includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid by 2034, scaling back the program that pays for the health care of roughly 78 million adults and children. It also sharply curtails federal spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides monthly food assistance payments to about 42 million families.

A new requirement that Medicaid enrollees prove they are employed every six months also leaves states with the difficult task of building out software systems to track eligibility by the end of 2026. Experts said states could face software glitches that may cause delays in enrollment or leave eligible children and parents without health care. 

Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: History Will Ask: Where Were You? Michael Cohen, July 5, 2025. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was signed while Americans celebrated. Now the damage begins; and if Democrats and truth-tellers don’t act fast, we lose everything.

Well, here we are: July 5th, the day after the fireworks, the BBQs, and the patriotic Instagram posts.

But behind all the red, white, and blue fanfare lurked a darker truth. Because while Americans were busy lighting sparklers and waving flags, President Trump, in true Trumpian fashion, signed the Big Beautiful Bill—a title only someone allergic to detail and allergic to facts could conjure up with a straight face.

Now let me be clear: Trump, once again, managed to pull off what the pundit class—those suit-clad, coiffed-hair, teleprompter-reading, soundbite slingers on cable news—said was impossible. Trump rammed through legislation that fundamentally reshapes American life. And while his supporters were busy chanting “USA” in red hats manufactured in China, most had zero idea of the bomb that just dropped on their own freedoms and future.

That, by the way, is by design.The Big Beautiful Bill is a Trojan horse: wrapped in populist language, paraded around as a gift to the American people, but filled with policies meant to enrich the few, silence the dissenters, and strip away the last threads of a functioning democracy. And now that it’s law, the question isn’t whether it’s bad.

The question is: How bad?

And more importantly: What the hell are we going to do about it?Let’s talk about what’s in this so-called masterpiece.

Corporate tax giveaways so generous they’d make Reagan blush. Environmental deregulation that makes climate denial not just acceptable but codified. Protections rolled back for immigrants, LGBTQ+ communities, women, and workers. Surveillance expansions masked as “security upgrades.”

The fine print reads like an authoritarian wish list—and no one was paying attention because it’s a thousand pages long, no one read it, and, most importantly, the spectacle always distracts from the substance.

But here’s the real kicker: this didn’t happen in the dead of night. It wasn’t hidden in secret rooms. It happened in broad daylight. And do you know why? Because the media—the mainstream media—was too busy obsessing over favorability poll numbers and palace intrigue. Too busy playing both sides to preserve their ad dollars and access. Too cowardly to call a spade a damn spade.CNN?

Still wondering if Trump’s shift in tone means he’s “presidential” again. MSNBC? Chasing ratings with endless panels of talking heads who recycle the same shallow points. Fox News? Please; it’s just state propaganda with better lighting.And so it falls on us—the independents, the truth-tellers, the ones without billionaire backers or corporate filters—to sound the alarm.

That means MeidasTouch Network, that means Lincoln Square, and yes, that means me. We’ve got to scream louder, dig deeper, and stand firmer than ever before. Because if we don’t, then buckle the fuck up, because we are headed for four more years of chaos. We’re headed for a permanent erosion of the America we claim to celebrate every Fourth of July.

Now, to my Democratic friends: stop playing nice. Stop trying to reason with a party that no longer believes in democracy. Stop waiting for the perfect message or the ideal moment. The moment is now, and the message is simple: fight like hell. And stop thinking voters will just “figure it out.” Because guess what? They won’t. Not if their news diet consists of corporate-fed garbage or algorithm-driven outrage porn.

Start using the same tools Trump and his allies abuse every day: social media, viral videos, grassroots coalitions—but use them for truth. For justice. For protecting what remains of this fragile republic.

Because what Trump and his administration understand—and what Democrats too often forget—is that perception is reality in American politics.

They don’t care if what he signs hurts their own voters. They just care that it looks like a “win” on TV. And sadly, too many people fall for the show over the substance.

But we can’t afford to sit this out. The Big Beautiful Bill might be law, but laws can be repealed. Damage can be undone. If we act now.

So don’t just tweet your outrage. Organize. Don’t just wait for midterms. Mobilize. And don’t, for one second, think someone else is going to save this country for you.

They’re not. It’s on us—the independents, the pissed-off patriots, the ones who know that loving America means holding her accountable, not blindly cheering her decline.

This isn’t just another political fight. This is the fight for politics itself—for truth, for democracy, for the soul of a nation that’s already teetering on the edge.

So enjoy your leftovers from yesterday’s cookout. But then get up. Speak out. And show up.

Because the fireworks may be over, but the real fire—the one in the belly of every American who refuses to let this country go quietly into autocracy—has only just been lit.Let’s make it burn so bright that even the cowardly media can’t ignore it.

A guest post by Michael Cohen, Principal of Crisis-X #1 and #8 NYT Bestseller Author, Host of The Mea Culpa Podcast, Co-Host of The Political Beatdown, Former Personal Attorney To President Donald J. Trump and Discharged Felon.

MSNBC Daily, Opinion: The GOP megabill fulfills JD Vance’s incredibly depressing vision of patriotism, Paul Waldman, July 5, 2025. The megabill President Donald Trump just signed is remarkably unpopular. Even Fox News admits that according to polls, “Americans are far from thrilled with the measure.”

On Monday, Vice President JD Vance took to social media to put some steel in GOP spines. “The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits,” he wrote. The bill “fixes this problem....Everything else — the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Vance has a point, sort of: The legislation will enormously increase the resources the government will devote to rounding up and incarcerating immigrants, providing tens of billions of dollars for nothing less than a redefinition of American identity.

Those provisions are at least as important as the tax giveaways to the wealthy or the brutal cuts to Medicaid, which will take health insurance from as many as 16 million people. Vance has done as much as anyone in the administration to create the philosophical justification for this rejection of not just centuries of history, but America’s very ideals.

New York Times, News Analysis: The Cost of Victory: Israel Overpowered Its Foes, but Deepened Its Isolation, Michael D. Shear, July 5, 2025. It is more secure from threats than at any time since its founding. But the war in Gaza, and attacks on Iran and Lebanon, have undercut Israel’s standing among the world’s democracies.

It’s Israel’s Middle East now.

After three-quarters of a century fighting hostile neighbors, the tiny Jewish country, about the size of New Jersey, has all but vanquished its enemies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen and now even Iran itself, the one backing them all.

The exercise of raw power has allowed Israel, for the first time since its creation in 1948, a future mostly free from immediate threats. The risk of a nuclear Iran is diminished, or perhaps gone. Israel has stable, if uneasy, relations with Persian Gulf Arab states. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, below right, has cemented his partnership with President Trump.

The new reality in Israel, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former top aide to Mr. Netanyahu, is that places once under constant threat from Lebanon, Syria or Gaza “will be more secure than Manhattan.”

But at what cost?

Mr. Netanyahu’s relentless and unapologetic military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people and took 250 people hostage has cemented the view of Israel as a pariah, its leadership accused of genocide and war crimes, and disdained by some world leaders. In opinion polls globally, most people have a negative view of Israel.

In Gaza, the war against Hamas has taken a devastating toll, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving more than a million homeless and hungry. Much of the enclave has been reduced to rubble. Poverty and hopelessness are rampant.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have also been killed and officials believe about 20 living hostages are still imprisoned in Hamas tunnels after 631 days.

New York Times, Israel-Hamas War: Hamas Says It Is Ready to Negotiate Truce Proposal, Adam Rasgon and Ephrat Livni, July 4, 2025. It was not immediately clear whether the group was demanding any significant changes to the plan for a 60-day truce, hostage-for-prisoner swaps and talks on a permanent end to the Gaza war.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Friday that it had responded positively to a new proposal for a 60-day Gaza cease-fire with Israel and was ready to immediately enter negotiations on implementing it.

It was not immediately clear whether Hamas was demanding any significant changes to the proposal and whether any gaps could be easily bridged or create new hurdles to an agreement. The two sides have come close before to such agreements, only to see them unravel at the last minute over the details.

President Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had agreed to the conditions for a temporary truce, and he called on Hamas to do the same.

“The movement submitted the response” to mediators, Hamas said in a statement late Friday night, adding it was “characterized as being positive.”

The proposal calls for hostage-for-prisoner swaps and negotiations leading to a permanent end to the nearly two-year-old war in Gaza.

Mr. Trump said earlier this week that he had been pressuring Israel and Hamas to make a deal ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to Washington on Monday.

 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, second from the left above and behind Justice Sonia Sotomajor and Chief Justice John Roberts, has emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda (Pool photo by Chip Somodevilla).

New York Times, Supreme Court: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes Herself Heard, Prompting a Rebuke, Adam Liptak, July 5, 2025. In solo dissents this term, the justice accused the conservative majority of lawless bias. On the term’s last day, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fired back.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.

Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”

Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.

Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing.

“She’s breaking the fourth wall, speaking beyond the court,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. “She is alarmed at what the court is doing and is sounding that in a different register, one that is less concerned with the appearance ofcollegiality and more concerned with how the court appears to the public.”

Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, left, wrote the principal dissent for the court’s three-member liberal wing, including Justices Jackson and Elena Kagan.

Justice Jackson added her own dissent, speaking only for herself. She said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

That prompted an extended response from Justice Barrett, right, the next most junior justice and the author of the majority opinion. It did not stint on condescension.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees.

“The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain,” Justice Barrett went on, referring to Justice Sotomayor’s opinion. “Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”

Lance's Substack, "The New Republic" Reports On Dissidents Within Military Seeking Protection From Being Given Unlawful Orders, Lance F Rosen, right, July 5, 2025. New Veteran's Group Organizing Support For American "Refusniks." 

This coverage from “TNR” is important and timely, given that Trump and Stephen Miller will be deploying vast new resources into their Nazi-style mass deportation program under their just passed unconstitutional and morally depraved budget. In response there will be strong and visible growing opposition to the regime, and there should be little doubt that the 1807 Insurrection Act is sitting on Trump's desk just waiting to be signed.

The article profiling this new group linked here reminds us that in 2020 Trump wanted to invoke martial law and to have protesters shot in the legs.

Soldiers are making known anonymously that they are torn between the necessity of following orders versus honoring their oaths to be loyal to our constitution, two alternatives becoming more mutually exclusive by the day as Trump and Miller move toward dictatorship. They are also angry at having been made into an auxiliary arm of the ICE Stormtroopers being deployed in a nationwide mercenary terror operation run from the top by Stephen Miller along with his flunkies Kristi Noem and Tom Homan. (Note, Marines units were deployed to Florida this week for no apparent reason other than to show that they intend to use muscle everywhere, whether there are so-called violent protests or not.)

The organization covered by "TNR," named "About Face," which is organizing pressure to mitigate this administration's obscene misuse of the military, is hopefully only the tip of the iceberg. The veteran spokesperson speaking for them under the pseudonym "Kim" is one of many patriotic Americans who are reacting with horror at the continuing LA deployment of the National Guard and Marines, and clearly see the writing on the wall for even worse abuses. The people involved in fighting against this are taking real risks, including that of being reinstated to active duty for purposes of a court martial, jail, and losing their pensions. Their message is very simple. It is about "the right to refuse."

People often ask which groups are worthy of their support. Most of the time they are asking about political groups which are aligned with the Democratic Party. This however transcends partisan politics, and is rather a fundamental issue of human rights, both those of the many people exercising their First Amendment freedoms to protest, as well as the active duty soldiers who are confronted with the likely prospect of being given orders to shoot them down in a large scale version of Kent State. Therefore these groups need backup. They want protection, to not be forced into a Hobbesian choice between mutiny or massacres.

We have reached the point where for many people reality is reaching them on a personal level, and they will either resist or hunker down. This is true of everyone facing similar dilemmas, such as nursing home administrators who will be forced to throw 80 year-old Medicaid recipients out on the street "to look for jobs" when they couldn't possibly even care for themselves, much less work.

When murderous policies affecting "others," which are seemingly abstract, reach large numbers of people personally who never expected to be a target for annihilation, deprivation or persecution themselves, or being compelled to do things which violate their consciences, that is a prescription for social explosions, civil conflict, and revolutions.

For example the last President who used violence and threats against American veterans was Herbert Hoover, when in 1932 he deployed General MacArthur to misuse the military by shooting, beating and gassing the "Bonus Marchers" to disperse them from their encampment in a "Hooverville" away from the federal buildings in Washington DC. They were characterized by the adminstration as communist radicals who were plotting revolution, when all they wanted was the bonuses that had already been legislated to go into effect in 1945 to be moved up to help them get through "hard times."

Hoover's Great Depression, combined with this kind of stupidity, greatly radicalized and divided Americans back then, which if not for President Franklin Roosevelt's leadership could have led to a Hitler-Style fascist turn in the US as it did in Germany. Our future Presidents learned a great lesson from that travesty, which was to never neglect or abuse our soldiers, active or retired, which is why we even had a Veteran's Administration and a G.I. Bill.

Most of us foresaw this scenario from the moment Trump was declared the winner in November. We have been hoping that the legislative and judicial branches, combined with the so-called "fourth estate," the media, would hold Trump in check. Now we have learned the hard way that they won't, especially in the aftermath of the recent SCOTUS atrocities and the passing of Trump's mass-murder budget.

That leaves the military as possibly our last guardrail, which is why I will be paying special attention to coverage of groups like this and their stories. You should too.

New York Times, Sean Combs’s Trial: Combs’s Racketeering Acquittal Was a Rare Misfire for a Powerful Law, Benjamin Weiser and Hurubie Meko, July 5, 2025. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been an effective cudgel in a variety of criminal cases. Some defense lawyers say prosecutors use it unfairly.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is a law well-known enough to inspire T-shirts.

“A Freako Is Not a RICO” was the slogan emblazoned on shirts worn by supporters of the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, right, outside the Manhattan courthouse where jurors on Wednesday rejected the government’s arguments that his ritualized drug-fueled sex marathons, or “freak-offs,” were part of an organized lawbreaking operation.

But former prosecutors and other lawyers who have followed Mr. Combs’s case said his acquittal on a federal RICO conspiracy charge, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison, was an aberration and unlikely to discourage the authorities from continuing to rely on the 1970 statute.

The law is best known for helping dismantle criminal syndicates, like the Mafia, but has been employed against an ever-expanding variety of criminal groups, including violent street gangs and narcotics traffickers.

Since the #MeToo movement, RICO has been used to prosecute high-profile men for sexual abuse. In 2019, Keith Raniere, the leader of the Nxivm sex cult, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court on charges of conspiring in a racketeering enterprise that victimized women through sex trafficking. Two years later, R. Kelly, the R&B artist, was convicted in the same court on charges that he participated in a decades-long racketeering scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex.

In addition to the racketeering conspiracy charge, Mr. Combs was acquitted on two counts of sex trafficking, which also carried potential life sentences. He was convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution; each carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Elizabeth Geddes, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who was part of the team that won Mr. Kelly’s conviction, said she did not think the Combs verdict would dissuade the government from deploying the statute.

“I think that it will be treated with the sort of one-offness — my technical term — that it is worth,” she said.

Federal and state prosecutors call RICO an essential tool against many kinds of malfeasance.

The Telegraph, (United Kingdom), Weinstein victim lawyer: Don’t let Diddy case fool you. MeToo is alive and well, Susan Coen, July 2, 2025. Gloria Allred, right, says MeToo movement should not be judged by criminal cases as lawsuits are settled behind closed doors.

The Sean “Diddy” Combs verdict does not mean MeToo is dying as most sexual assault cases are settled privately, America’s most prominent female lawyer has said.

The music mogul was this week acquitted on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering after two of his ex-girlfriends, including the R&B singer Cassie Ventura, testified he coerced them into having sex with male escorts.

Combs, 55, was convicted on two lesser charges of transportation for prostitution.

But Gloria Allred, who is representing several of Combs’s alleged victims, including two who have filed civil lawsuits, said the outcome is symptomatic of a waning MeToo movement.

“Nobody should judge the MeToo movement based on what happens in a criminal case,” Ms Allred, who also represented a number of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers said.

“Criminal cases are rare, and most of the civil lawsuits that we do and the confidential settlements never result in a criminal case.”Gloria Allred with her client Teala Davies who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse by Jeffrey EpsteinGloria Allred (right) with her client Teala Davies who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein Credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP

Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, she added: “There are many, many more civil lawsuits than there are criminal cases. In addition to that, we do many more confidential settlements without a lawsuit than even civil lawsuits, so it’s [MeToo] alive and well.”

Around 70 lawsuits have been filed against Combs, including two by Ms Allred’s clients: Joi Dickerson-Neal, who alleges the star drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1991, and Thalia Graves, who claims she was drugged and raped by Combs 10 years later.

Combs has denied all the allegations against him.

During her famed career spanning more than 50 years Ms Allred has represented alleged victims of the rich and powerful, including Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, R Kelly and Mohamed Al-Fayed.

 

Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, was photographed earlier that year distributing "Hands Off Cuba" flyers in New Orleans. This photograph was used in the Kennedy assassination investigation to smear Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who may have been acting in cooperation with authorities at the time as part of complex Cold War intrigues not necessarily making him part of an assassination plot. A newly released CIA document indicates an agent ran an operation that came into contact with Oswald before he was accused of assassinating Kennedy (Corbis photo from WDSU-T via Getty Images and the National Archives).

 

Deceased CIA case officer George Joannides, above left, a liaison with Lee Harvey Oswald and who later worked to deceive a House Committee investigating JFK's death, receives a special citation in 1981 from the agency (CIA photo).

Axios, CIA admits shadowy officer monitored Oswald before JFK assassination, new records reveal, Marc Caputo, July 2, 2025. For the first time since President Kennedy's assassination nearly 62 years ago, the CIA has tacitly admitted that an officer specializing in psychological warfare ran an operation that came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the Dallas killing.

Why it matters: The disclosure Thursday — nestled in a batch of 40 documents concerning officer George Joannides — indicates the CIA lied for decades about his role in the Kennedy case before and after the assassination, according to experts on JFK's slaying.

The linchpin document: A Jan. 17, 1963, CIA memo showing Joannides was directed to have an alias and fake driver's license bearing the name "Howard Gebler." Until Thursday, the agency had denied that Joannides was known as "Howard," the case officer name for the CIA contact who worked with activists from an anti-communist group opposed to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro called the Cuban Student Directorate. For decades, the agency also falsely said it had nothing to do with the student group, which was instrumental in having Oswald's pro-Castro stances published soon after the shooting.

The bottom line: "The cover story for Joannides is officially dead," said Jefferson Morley, an author and expert on the assassination. "This is a big deal. The CIA is changing its tune on Lee Harvey Oswald."

The information comes to light as part of President Trump's order that the government meet its obligations to disclose all documents under the JFK Records Act of 1992. Little was known of Joannides' involvement in the case until disclosures in 1998 under the records act. New disclosures of previously hidden records keep adding slices of information to the story.

Zoom in: Joannides was the deputy chief of the CIA's Miami branch, overseeing "all aspects of political action and psychological warfare." That included covertly funding and directing the Cuban student group, commonly referred to as DRE for its Spanish-language initials.

On Aug. 9, 1963, more than three months before Nov. 22 assassination, four DRE operatives got into a scuffle with Oswald in New Orleans when he was passing out pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" pamphlets. The subsequent court hearing was covered by local news media. On Aug. 21 , 1963, Oswald debated DRE activists on local TV, providing more media attention to him as a communist.

After the assassination, DRE's newsletter identified Oswald as a pro-Castro communist, and the Miami Herald and Washington Post covered the story. A year before Oswald became known as pro-Castro, the Pentagon formulated a plan called Operation Northwoods to stage a false-flag attack in the United States, blame Cuba and then attack it.

Zoom out: The new documents don't shed any additional light on Kennedy's shooting or settle the controversy over whether Oswald acted alone. Nor is there any evidence showing why the CIA covered up Joannides' ties to DRE.

All the records disclosed so far show how the CIA lied about financing or being involved with DRE. That includes the agency's interactions with the Warren Commission (1964), the Church Committee (1975), the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977-78) and the Assassination Review Board (until 1998).

The intrigue: Joannides didn't just have knowledge of Oswald before the assassination — afterward he played a central role in deceiving the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

At the time, the CIA appointed Joannides to be its liaison with the committee. But he and the agency hid the fact that he was involved with DRE and therefore the Kennedy case, slow-walked the CIA's production of records, and lied.

The committee's chief counsel, Robert Blakey, left, testified in 2014 that he asked Joannides about "Howard" and DRE, and that "Joannides assured me that they could find no record of any such officer assigned to DRE, but that he would keep looking," Blakey said. A former committee investigator, Dan Hardway, testified before a House Oversight committee last month that Joannides was running a "covert operation" to undermine the congressional probe into the assassination. Two years after stonewalling the committee, Joannides was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal by the CIA in 1981. He died in 1990.

What they're saying: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican overseeing the House committee examining the newly released JFK documents, said Joannides was "1,000 percent" involved in a CIA coverup.

Morley (an author, journalist and the JFK Facts podcast host shown at right) and some others who've written extensively about Kennedy's assassination believe rogue CIA agents might have been involved in the killing, but Morley's not ready to say Joannides was one of them. Others, such as author Gerald Posner, believe Oswald was the lone gunman. But all are in agreement that the CIA acted in bad faith after Kennedy was killed.

"It's vintage CIA. They never provide transparency. They don't tell the truth. They obscure. They obfuscate. And when the documents come out, they look bad," Posner said. A CIA spokesperson told Axios the agency "has fully complied and provided all documents — without redactions — related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy to NARA consistent with President Trump's direction in an unprecedented act of transparency by the agency."

What's next: Morley and Luna say CIA Director John Ratcliffe, right, and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard deserve credit for demanding more transparency. So expect more records.

New York Times, U.S. Turns Eight Migrants Over to South Sudan, Ending Weeks of Legal Limbo, Mattathias Schwartz and Hamed Aleaziz, July 5, 2025. Courts blocked the handover after lawyers raised concerns of torture. Then the Supreme Court intervened to allow the Trump administration’s plan to move forward.

A flight carrying eight men who had been held for weeks on a U.S. military base in Djibouti landed in South Sudan just before midnight Friday, officials said, bringing an end to a six-week legal battle that was resolved by an emergency intervention by the Supreme Court.

The U.S. military plane took off around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman. A picture shared by Homeland Security showed the men apparently aboard the airplane, handcuffed and shackled at their ankles, surrounded by uniformed personnel.

It remains unclear whether South Sudan’s government in Juba has detained the men, or what their ultimate fate might be. The 13-year-old country is on the brink of a civil war; the State Department has warned against travel there because of the risk of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.” In court on Friday, a Justice Department lawyer read from a diplomatic note that said South Sudan would give the men immigration status to allow them to remain there at least temporarily.

The eight men had been shackled for weeks inside an air-conditioned shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. Before coming to the United States, the men came from Vietnam, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan, a violence-plagued country. All had been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, though many had either finished or were about to finish serving their sentences.

At issue in the lengthy legal battle was how much due process the government needs to provide to migrants before deporting them to so-called “third countries,” places other than where they are from, and where they might be at risk of torture. Federal law places limits on deportations to places where migrants’ “life or freedom would be threatened.” The principle that migrants should not be deported to places where they would be at risk of torture or persecution is enshrined in international law.

July 4

New York Times, Trump Claims Sweeping Power to Nullify Laws, Letters on TikTok Ban Show, Charlie Savage, July 4, 2025 (print ed.). In purporting to license otherwise illegal conduct by tech firms, President Trump set a precedent expanding executive power, legal experts warned.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told tech companies that they could lawfully violate a statute barring American companies from supporting TikTok based on a sweeping claim that President Trump has the constitutional power to set aside laws, newly disclosed documents show.

In letters to companies like Apple and Google, Ms. Bondi wrote that Mr. Trump had decided that shutting down TikTok would interfere with his “constitutional duties,” so the law banning the social media app must give way to his “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.”

The letters, which became public on Thursday via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, portrayed Mr. Trump as having nullified the legal effects of a statute that Congress passed by large bipartisan majorities in 2024 and that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld.PRESIDENTIAL POWERRead the attorney general’s letters to tech companies about the TikTok ban.

Shortly after being sworn in, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban and has since repeatedly extended it. That step has been overshadowed by numerous other moves he has made to push at the boundaries of executive power in the opening months of his second administration.

But some legal experts consider Mr. Trump’s action — and in particular his order’s claim, which Ms. Bondi endorsed in her letters, that he has the power to enable companies to lawfully violate the statute — to be his starkest power grab. It appears to set a significant new precedent about the potential reach of presidential authority, they said.

 

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President to Sign Sweeping Domestic Policy Bill Into Law, Staff Reports, July 4, 2025. President Trump is set to sign the policy bill on Friday afternoon in a ceremony at the White House.

Victory lap: President Trump spoke extensively about his policy bill during an appearance in Des Moines on Thursday as he began a campaign to build public support for the legislation that he muscled through Congress. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he would sign it into law in a ceremony Friday afternoon. Here’s how the measure could affect you.

Tariffs: Mr. Trump said that he would begin sending letters on Friday notifying countries of new tariffs the United States would impose on their products. The president signaled that he was set to resume a series of steep tariffs that he initially imposed in April on dozens of countries, before pausing them for 90 days to negotiate individual deals. Most of those deals have yet to materialize. 

Immigration: The Supreme Court granted a request from the Trump administration to allow it to send eight deportees to South Sudan. The men, who are from several countries, have been held at a U.S. military base in Djibouti for more than a month as their cases were litigated. Neither the United States nor South Sudan have said what will happen to the men upon their arrival.  

 

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as "Alligator Auschwitz."

Thinking about... by Timothy Snyder via Substack, Concentration Camp Labor Cannot Become Normal, Timothy Snyder, July 4, 2025. With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States.

Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor.

We know this and have no excuse not to act.

What happens next in the U.S.?

Workers who are presented as "undocumented" will be taken to the camps. Perhaps they will work in the camps themselves, as slaves to government projects.

But more likely they will be offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits. In the simplest version, and perhaps the most likely, detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working. Their stay in the concentration camp will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful. Trump has already said that this is the idea, calling it "owner responsibility."

We should remember what drew I.G Farben into Auschwitz: profit. But there are of course precedents for extreme exploitation in American history, including but not limited to the history of chattel slavery. And slavery is not entirely illegal in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment allows slavery if only as punishment for a crime. The people described as "undocumented" or "denaturalized" (and other categories sure to be invented soon) are portrayed as criminals.

If the Trump regime tries to enslave such people on a large scale, there will be a court case. But waiting for the Supreme Court to do the right thing is, to put it gently, no substitute for action. It would be good if there were explicit legislation banning slave labor in all circumstances. But such a law is unlikely without a movement behind it.

The government is putting before us the temptation to cooperate in fascist dehumanization on a grand scale. But that does not mean we must do so. This is an area where actions by individuals, by civil society, by the professions, and by companies can be decisive.

The first action is simple. CEOs should now, this summer, this month, next week, sign a pledge not to use labor from concentration camps. It could be as simple as that: "On behalf of my firm I promise not to use labor from concentration camps nor to cooperate with any firm that does."

I can hear the first objection: "it's too soon." If this is not done now, some Americans companies will start using slave labor from concentration camps, and then others will claim that they must do so as well so as not to lose competitiveness or shareholder value or something. The appropriate euphemisms will be found, and all will soon seem normal. But everything will have changed. We will all be implicated. And we will all be more vulnerable.

The second objection: "it's politics." Yes, it is. The creation of a network of concentration camps is indeed politics. It is a politics, among other things, designed to draw businesses into a fascist order by normalizing dehumanization. It is a politics that creates incentives for ever wider groups of people to be excluded from legal protection, on the logic that this needed for economic growth. If there is no learning from the past, if there is no statement of principle, then cheap labor will corrupt companies and their shareholders, and indeed their consumers.Subscribed

While the CEOs should act first and with explicit clarity, we are all implicated. Americans who shop, which means most of us, should avoid companies that employ labor from camps. Americans who invest should not invest in companies that use labor from concentration camps. And, like CEOs, they can take public action. They can sign a pledge not to invest in companies that use concentration camp labor.

Like any initiative, this one could go further. There are concentration camps in other countries as well, and we should also not be buying from companies that profit from them. There is forced labor now in existing American prisons, and that is wrong. But right now we are confronting a major change in how our country will work. If we can respond, we can build on a victory here to create more freedom for more people.

These policies should be named for what they are. And they should be protested for what they are. But aside from the naming and theprotesting, we must exercise our awareness of how people and companies are drawn by profit and silence into the normalization of horror.

Just signing a petition might seem like a disproportionately small reaction to huge funding for American concentration camps. But it is the small choices now that open the broad, bright terrain of action later. If we miss these opportunities, that terrain closes and darkens.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary, Resistance Dateline: Few outside the U.S. doubt rumors of detainees being tossed into the ocean from military transport planes, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books and former Navy intelligence officer, July 1-2, 2025. 

Few people outside of the United States doubt rumors running rampant on social media that deported U.S. immigrants are being tossed into the ocean by military transport planes.

The reason for this rumor spreading like a wildfire is that few Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, and others put it past a regime to carry out such crimes against humanity.

They see the U.S. government and Florida's banana republic dictator Ron DeSantis setting up in a mere matter of days a concentration camp for immigration detainees in the middle of the Everglades as a grotesque human rights abuse. The camp, located 36 miles south of Miami, was previously administered as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport at 54575 E. Tamiami Trail in Ochopee by Miami-Dade and Collier counties, has been nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" and, more fittingly, "Alligator Auschwitz."

Just like the infamous Nazi death camps, Alligator Auschwitz is steeped in bureaucracy.

Auschwitz and other camps were under the ultimate administrative control of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) led by Heinrich Himmler. Auschwitz's political department was staffed by Gestapo or the Kripo (criminal police) officers.

The political department admitted detainees; subjected them to harsh interrogations (these were conducted by the camp's Vernehmungsabteilung element); determined those who were to be executed either by mass extermination in Zyklon B gas chambers, firing squad at the camp's "Death Wall," or injected with phenol into the heart by medical orderlies; and operated the crematoria.

Personnel of the Schutzstaffel (SS), namely, the feared SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death's Head Units), performed guard duties along with older members of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Those who released Zyklon B gas into the gas chambers, billed by the Nazis as "disinfectant showers," were members of the SS disinfection detail or SS-Desinfektionskommando.

Located at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complex was the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS, formally the Hygiene Institut der Waffen SS-und Polizei, Auschwitz. This is where prisoners were subjected to horrifying medical experiments, including subjecting men, women, and children to infectious diseases, psychotropic drugs, and other abuses that often led to death.

Alligator Auschwitz, a 39-square mile site sitting alongside an 11,000-foot runway in the middle of the Everglades, involves as many bureaucratic levels as did the actual Auschwitz.

DeSantis and Donald Trump, who visited the Everglades concentration camp on July 1, obviously believe that by creating a bureaucratic labyrinth to oversee what is essentially a concentration camp, no one state or federal agency can ultimately be held fully responsible for the deaths and injuries that will eventually occur at the facility.

Alligator Auschwitz's build-out and management has been handled by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM). It has tapped money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, funds pulled directly by DHS from FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program that have been budgeted to house those left homeless by hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

 

Everyone's Entitled To My Own Opinion, Republicans are screwing their own base — along with the rest of us, Jeff Tiedrich, right, July 2, 2025. Senate Republicans put on their usual dog-and-pony kabuki. They did that thing where they rend their garments, throw their arms up in despair, and wail ‘how can I in good conscience vote for this terrible bill? so conflicted! so conflicted!’ 

Hey, you know who else laughed it up while doing war crimes? These jolly madcaps below: Those are guards and office workers at the actual Auschwitz Nazi-run death camp, kicking back during some downtime.

 

The Contrarian, Opinion: Where we go from here? Norman Eisen, right, July 4, 2025. The passage of this bill is the latest in a series of devastating harms that Trump and his MAGA minions have wrought.

He launched his administration by pardoning over 1,200 insurrectionists including those who violently assaulted police – and by targeting the prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated and convicted them. He has trampled the rule of law hundreds of times since. He has embarked on a reign of terror against migrants in our country, including those who are here lawfully. He has assaulted all the pillars of a free society: the press (most recently with his collusive $16 million settlement with Paramount for utterly benign activity by 60 Minutes), universities (this week forcing the University of Virginia and Penn State to knuckle under), law firms, unions, and many more.

And yet, in a note of hope as we head into this Fourth of July weekend, there has also been tremendous pushback that exemplifies the American spirit of independence–and that sets up the coming reckoning for Trump and his MAGA minions at the polls.

I've written here about the four Ps of democracy pushback: court proceedings, events in and at the polls, public protest and political leadership. Funded in no small part by your paid contributions here at The Contrarian, we were in court the first minute of Trump’s attack on the rule of law, securing court orders protecting law enforcement from his onslaught. Since that first day, we and the coalition we are proud to be a part of have kept on winning, with courts stopping his illegal acts almost 200 times–and counting–thanks to your help.Subscribed

That has included repeated successes on the immigration front, (with another win protecting asylum rights just this week led by our friends at the ACLU), as well as for those who have stood up and fought back in each of the areas of Trump’s assault: media organizations including the Associated Press, universities led by Harvard, labor unions such as AFGE and AFSCME, law firms including Perkins, Wilmer, Jenner and Sussman, and on and on. The pushback has been so overwhelming that even Trump's MAGA majority on the Roberts Court hasn't been able to stop it, touching only a fraction of the cases.

What's more, Trump is at historic lows in opinion polling, has been facing landslide adverse voting in elections so far in 2025, and the American people have been mobilizing in the largest public protests we've seen in generations. As for political leadership, what we've seen in opposition to the big ugly bill in both the House and the Senate– culminating in Jeffries’ record-breaking speech– is a far cry from where the opposition was in those two bodies in January of this year.

Come elections in November 2025 and November 2026, we will look back on the big ugly bill as part of the springboard that gave rise to a new American consensus. That is when millions of Americans will next sit in judgment of Trump and his MAGA enablers in Congress and at the Roberts Court and the death and destruction that they wrought over the past days.

Looking at all that gives me optimism as I head into this holiday of hope. If the Americans who declared independence on July 4, 1776, inspired by the American idea, could overcome the odds against them, I am confident that we can do the same. 

 

Michael Cohen via Substack, Red, White, Bruised... But Still Ours, Michael Cohen, right, July 4, 2025. Amid fireworks and fear, America grapples with authoritarian drift; but our history reminds us: we've faced worse, fought back harder, and come out stronger.

Today is the Fourth of July; America’s birthday. Fireworks crackle overhead, flags flap on front porches, and kids run around in red-white-and-blue t-shirts bought last-minute from Target.

On the surface, it’s all very normal. Very patriotic.

But beneath the sparklers and barbecue smoke lies a cold, hard truth: this year, Independence Day feels different. It feels heavier. Not because we’ve stopped loving this country, but because, for the first time in generations, many of us are unsure if the country still loves us back.

 

New York Times, Russia Hits Ukraine With Large Air Barrage Hours After Trump-Putin Call, Andrew E. Kramer, July 4, 2025. It was the latest in a series of almost weekly large-scale missile and drone attacks. President Trump said he “didn’t make any progress” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia (shown above right in a file photo).

Russia attacked Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Friday with the largest number of drones and missiles launched in a single barrage so far in the war, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, just hours after a phone call between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The assault left Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, wrapped in smoke from fires early Friday, though the authorities reported little damage and it was not immediately clear what had burned. Officials said residential buildings had been damaged in five neighborhoods.

Russia has been ramping up drone attacks in recent months with record numbers launched almost weekly. As they did on Friday, the attacks typically combine exploding drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and decoys intended to confuse or overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin spoke by phone shortly before the air-raid alerts went off in Kyiv. After the call, Mr. Trump told reporters, “I didn’t make any progress with him at all.” There was no clear link between the timing of the air assault and the call, which was at least the sixth between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin this year.

After the strikes on Friday, Mr. Trump spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, according to a post by Mr. Zelensky on social media. The two discussed Russian airstrikes and the battlefields in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram. “We discussed opportunities regarding air defense and agreed to work on strengthening the protection of our skies,” Mr. Zelensky said. 

Lance's Substack, Putin Blitzes Kyiv, Right On Schedule, Lance F. Rosen,.A Few Angry Thoughts On The Occasion; Trump Opens US To Global Strategic Humiliation On July 4th.

On Wednesday Donald Trump had an extended phone conversation with his friend, mentor, and operator Vladimir Putin. According to reports they discussed Ukraine and Iran.

I'm not privy to any inside details of their discussion, but I would be remiss to not highlight that Russia commenced the biggest missile and drone attack of the war thus far on Kyiv immediately after the call. Was this Putin teaching his pupil a tough lesson, or something else?

Imagine Trump on the phone trying to bully the guy whose "fan-boy" he has been for more than 25 years, and Putin on the other end smirking, thinking about what he has on "Krasnov" in his files.Maybe this is Putin's way of celebrating July 4th.

Or, could be that escalating the population bombing of Kyiv is his retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory which did significant damage in June. It also comes days after the NATO summit where European leaders obscenely stroked Trump's ego (or something else) after the Iran bombing operation.

However, let us not ignore the timing and the strategic context in the large. Trump's fascist budget, the "Big Barbarous Blitzkrieg" passed. One of it's mass-casualty provisions is that it effectively dismantles the Ukraine defense allocation, and serves as a message from Trump to Putin that he meant what he said during the campaign last year when asked about his future involvement in Ukraine's defense, by saying "he can do whatever the Hell he wants." It was such a betrayal that Republican House Member Brian Fitzpatrick, (R-PA) who has a large Ukrainian-American constituency in Bucks County outside of Philadelphia, was one of only a few to buck Trump and vote no.

Some media figures bought hook, line, and sinker into the narrative weeks ago that Trump was trying to "get tough" with his longtime handler in the Kremlin, as if that were a real thing instead of his usual performative bravado and Testosterone squirting.

Some of my readers might remember that, and which of these writers actually said this. I sincerely hope that you aren't paying for subscriptions for those writers. They are incompetent boobs.

 

 U.S. Supreme Court Building (Amazon Images)

New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump Deport Eight Migrants to South Sudan, Adam Liptak and Mattathias Schwartz, July 4, 2025 (print ed.). The court’s order followed a broader one last month allowing removals to countries with which migrants have no connections.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the government to deport eight men who have spent more than a month held under guard on an American military base on Djibouti to South Sudan, granting a request from the Trump administration.

An administration official said it would promptly send the men, who hail from countries around the world, to the war-torn nation. Neither the United States nor South Sudan has said what will happen to the men on their arrival.

This was the second time the court has ruled in the case. Last month, in a broader ruling that was unsigned and offered no reasoning, the court paused a trial judge’s order that had barred the administration from deporting migrants to countries other than their own unless they had a chance to argue that they would face torture.

Lawyers for the eight men rushed back to the trial judge, who blocked their removal again. The administration then asked the justices to clarify that last month’s order properly applied to the men, too.

Thursday’s Supreme Court order, which was unsigned but included two pages of reasoning, said that it did.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the ruling could have grave consequences.

“What the government wants to do, concretely,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death.”

In May, the government loaded eight men onto a plane said to be headed to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country where only one held citizenship.

After Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston intervened, their flight landed instead in the East African nation of Djibouti.Editors’ PicksDana Carvey Calls His Biden Impression a ‘Delicate Thing’Why Men Shouldn’t Ignore Their Pelvic FloorsHow A.I. Made Me More Human, Not Less

The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained at Camp Lemonnier, a military base, ever since. They spend almost all their time inside a modular, air-conditioned container that the military usually uses as a conference room, according to court filings. Under constant guard, they wear shackles around their ankles, except when showering, using the bathroom or meeting remotely with their lawyers, a member of their legal team has said.

Before coming to the United States, they hailed from Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, welcomed Thursday’s ruling. “These sickos will be in South Sudan by Independence Day,” she said.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants, said the ruling comes “at the expense of the lives of eight men who are now subject to immediate removal to a war-torn country to which they have no ties.”

One First, Justice Kagan's D.V.D. Concurrence, Steve Vladeck, right, July 4, 2025. Thursday's denouement in the third-country removals case was not surprising. But the split between Justice Kagan and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson highlights a deeper (and July 4-appropriate) debate. Welcome back to “One First,” an (increasingly frequent) newsletter that aims to make the U.S. Supreme Court more accessible to all of us.

I wanted to put out a quick issue today, rather than wait for Monday, to briefly cover and reflect upon Thursday afternoon’s order by the Supreme Court in the third-country removals case (with the unhelpful caption of DHS v. D.V.D. — so named because the anonymous plaintiffs are proceeding pseudonymously) — in which the Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to complete its effort to remove eight specific migrants to South Sudan.

Specifically, it seems worth flagging three things: What the majority actually did yesterday (and why it matters); the significance of Justice Sotomayor’s incredibly stern dissent (which was joined by Justice Jackson); and the surprising and revealing concurring opinion filed by Justice Kagan — the first time in her 15 years on the Court in which she’s filed an opinion concurring in a grant of emergency relief.

To jump to the punchline, although I’m not at all surprised by the outcome, the divide between the three Democratic appointees reflects, in profound ways, a deeper debate that I think a lot of us are having as we’re faced with mounting evidence of lawlessness by the executive: To what extent should responses to that lawlessness rigidly adhere to the legal proprieties — to meet lawlessness with the most unassailable legal responses — versus an approach in which every ambiguity is resolved against what the current administration is doing? Put another way, is the goal to deprive the administration of even the fig leaf of any legal support for what it’s doing, or is to highlight why the government should never receive the benefit of the doubt — even when other administrations probably would?

Of course, everyone is going to answer this question differently. But it’s especially interesting to see those differences playing out publicly between the three Democratic appointees. And as I suggest below, although I think there is more to commend Justice Kagan’s concurrence than what you’d gather from others’ reactions to Thursday’s ruling, I find the Sotomayor/Jackson worldview increasingly persuasive — and, persuasive or not, increasingly worth saying out loud.

 

A satellite image of the Isfahan nuclear research center in Iran shows visible damage to structures and nearby tunnel entrances from recent US airstrikes. / Satellite image (c) 2025 Maxar Technologies.

Seymour Hersh via Substack, WAS IT OBLITERATION?, Seymour Hersh, right, July 4, 2025. The US attack on Iran may not have wiped out its nuclear ambitions but it did set them back years.

CNN and MSNBC, basing their reporting on an alleged Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, have consistently reported that the Air Force raids in Iran on June 22 did not accomplish their primary goal: total destruction of Iran’s nuclear-weapons capacity. US newspapers also joined in, but it was the two nominally liberal cable channels, with their dislike—make that contempt—for President Donald Trump, that drove the early coverage.

There was no DIA analysis per se. All US units that engage in combat must file an “after-action report” to the DIA after a military engagement. In this case, the report would have come from the US Central Command, located at MacDill Air Force base in Tampa, Florida. CENTCOM is responsible for all US military operations in the Middle East, Egypt, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. 

One US official involved in the process told me that “the first thing out of the box is you have to tell your boss what happened.” It was that initial report of the bombing attack that was forwarded to DIA headquarters along the Potomac River in Washington and copied or summarized by someone not authorized to do so and sent to the various media outlets.

The view of many who were involved in the planning and execution of the mission is that the report was summarized and leaked “for political purposes”—to cast immediate doubt on the success of the mission. The early reports went so far as to suggest that Iran’s nuclear program has survived incapacitation by the attack.

Seven US B-2 “Spirit” bombers, each carrying two deep-penetration “bunker-busters” weighing 30,000 pounds, had flown without challenge from their base in Missouri to the primary target: Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, concealed deep inside a mountain twenty miles north of the city of Qom.

The planning for the attack began with the knowledge that the main target—the working area of the nuclear program—was buried at least 260 feet below the rocky surface at Fordo. The gas centrifuges spinning there were repeatedly enriching uranium, in what is known as a cascade, not to weapons-grade level—uranium-235 isotopes enriched to 90 percent—but to 60 percent.

Further processing to create weapons grade uranium, if Iran chose to do so, could be done in a matter of weeks, or less. The Air Force planning group had also been informed before the bombing raid, most likely by the Israelis, who have a vast spy network in Iran, that more than 450 pounds of the enriched gas stored at Fordo had been shipped to safety at another vital Iranian nuclear site at Isfahan, 215 miles south of Tehran.

Isfahan was the only known facility in Iran capable of converting the Fordo gas into a highly enriched metal—a critical early stage of building the bomb. Isfahan also was a separate target of the US attack on Fordo, and was pulverized by Tomahawk missiles fired by a U.S. submarine operating in the Gulf of Aden, off Yemen.

As a journalist who for decades has covered the nascent nuclear crisis in the Middle East, it seemed clear to me and to informed friends I have in Washington and Israel that if Fordo somehow survived its bunker-buster attack, as was initially suggested, and continued to enrich more uranium, Isfahan would not. No enrichment, no Iranian bomb.

I’ve been frustrated and angry at cable news coverage for years, and that includes Fox News, too, and decided to try and find the real story.

There remains no evidence that Iran was on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. But as the world has known for decades, Israel maintains a significant nuclear arsenal that it officially claims does not exist.

This is a story not about the bigger picture, which is muddled, but about a successful US mission that was the subject of a lot of sloppy reporting because of a reviled president. It would have been a breakthrough had anyone in the mainstream press spoken or written about the double standard that benefits Israel and its nuclear umbrella, but in America that remains a taboo.

New York Times, Trump Administration: How Republicans Re-engineered the Tax Code, Andrew Duehren, July 4, 2025. The product of years of Republican effort, the American tax code now blends traditional supply-side economics with President Trump’s populist 2024 campaign promises.

When Republicans last set out to change taxation in America, they spent years combing through the details of the internal revenue code. They traveled the country, held hearings and drafted early versions of a bill, eventually passed in 2017, that they hoped would transform a sclerotic tax system with long-held conservative principles.

This time around, as Republicans prepared for another opportunity to change how taxes in the world’s largest economy are collected, their core ideas came not from a Washington think tank or corporate accountant. Instead, in President Trump’s telling, a waitress at his hotel in Las Vegas complained to him about having to pay taxes on her tips while he dined there during the 2024 campaign.

Soon, the seemingly offhand remark became a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s successful campaign back into office. Republicans on Capitol Hill embraced the idea, too, and Congress this week voted to create a new tax exemption for tipped income for the next few years. At an event at the White House last month promoting the legislation, Mr. Trump credited the waitress with helping him win Nevada, where many people work for tips.

“A legend was made,” Mr. Trump said. “We won Nevada by so much. Republicans don’t win Nevada. We won Nevada. So I want to thank that young, beautiful waitress. Thank you very much.”

The tips provision, while ultimately only a sliver of the sprawling package that lawmakers passed this week, marked an important evolution in how the Republican Party, long dedicated to lowering taxes, has approached that goal. Rather than the type of systematic re-examination of the tax code that took place in 2017, the new Republican bill introduces a series of novel, populist and temporary cuts that Mr. Trump cooked up during the 2024 campaign to try to win the support of key constituencies.

At the same time, even as Mr. Trump’s return to office pointed the party’s tax agenda in a more populist direction, the new bill is in many ways the apotheosis of a traditionally conservative, supply-side philosophy. Once Mr. Trump signs the legislation, which he is expected to do on Friday, many of the tax cuts made in 2017 will be the law of the land for the foreseeable future, rather than just temporary features.

Overall, the tax code now blends this classical Republican vision of a more corporate-friendly and simpler tax code with Mr. Trump’s improvisational notions for popular, easy-to-brand tax cuts. Those two strands have combined, in a sometimes contradictory way, to create a tax system that is expected to bring in far less government revenue than many experts believe is necessary, all while generating little additional economic growth and still returning the largest savings to the rich.

New York Times, How Will Trump’s Big Bill Affect Your Wallet? Ashley Wu, Christine Zhang, Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard, July 3-4, 2025 (interactive).

Congressional Republicans just passed President Trump’s sprawling domestic policy bill that extends and expands tax cuts, while slashing Medicaid, food benefits and clean energy initiatives to pay for them — but only partly. The bill favors the wealthy, and low-income Americans stand to lose the most.

What could the bill mean for your pocketbook? Answer these questions to learn more about the individual impacts of the wide-ranging legislation. 

New York Times, Frantic Search for the Missing After At Least 13 Killed in Texas Flood, Aimee Ortiz, Edgar Sandoval and Ruth Graham, July 4, 2025. The authorities confirmed that 20 girls were still missing as a result of the flooding along the Guadalupe River, but the full scope of the disaster was not clear.

At least 13 people were killed and frantic searches were underway for the missing — many of them children — after heavy rain in Central Texas set off deadly flooding along the Guadalupe River on Friday, authorities said.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters at an afternoon news conference that at least 20 girls from a summer camp along the river in Hunt, Texas, were missing after catastrophic flooding overnight.

Lisa Walter, a spokeswoman for Kerr County, northwest of San Antonio, said the number of fatalities confirmed Friday would grow. She declined to disclose further details until the victims’ relatives could be notified.

“Keep in mind, this event is only hours old,” she said. “It is still a very active, ever-changing situation.”

The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office encouraged residents “to shelter in place and not attempt travel. Those near creeks, streams and the Guadalupe River should immediately move to higher ground.”

The scope of the disaster was not immediately clear, but Texans on Friday were bracing for the worst. Camp Mystic, which has multiple campsites along the river, said it was working with search and rescue teams but was struggling to get more help to campers since the nearby highway had washed away.

New York Times, How Trump’s China Tariffs Are Jeopardizing America’s Fireworks Extravaganzas, Alan Rappeport, Updated July 4, 2025. Fears over the fate of the fireworks industry have spurred an aggressive lobbying campaign.

President Trump may soon have to decide between his love of tariffs and his affection for fireworks.

The Trump administration’s trade policies have set off a frenzy of lobbying for exemptions, with industries across the economy raising alarm about how tariffs would crush their companies, raise prices for consumers and lead to shortages of products.

But as the July 4 holiday approached, the pyrotechnics sector, which is heavily reliant on imports from China, had been increasingly loud about its concerns. The higher prices are already straining the mom-and-pop fireworks shops that dot roadsides across rural America, and the budgets of cities and towns that put on splashy displays could soon be further stretched.

But the bigger fear is 2026, as industry representatives warn that many of the festivities that are in the works to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday could be diminished or even go dark.

July 3

New York Times, Trump Administration Updates: House Passes Sweeping Bill to Fulfill President’s Domestic Agenda, Michael Gold, Robert Jimison and Megan Mineiro, July 3, 2025 (. Republicans voting “no”: Fitzpatrick and Massie; The measure extending tax cuts and slashing the social safety net goes to President Trump for his signature, but the debate over it exposed deep rifts in his party.

The House on Thursday narrowly passed a sweeping bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net programs, capping Republicans’ chaotic monthslong slog to overcome deep rifts within their party and deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda.

The final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly along party lines and came after Speaker Mike Johnson, right, spent a frenzied day and night toiling to quell resistance in his own ranks that threatened until the very end to derail the president’s signature measure. With all but two Republicans in favor and Democrats uniformly opposed, the action cleared the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature, meeting the July 4 deadline he had demanded.

The legislation extends tax cuts enacted in 2017 that had been scheduled to expire at the end of the year, while adding new ones Mr. Trump promised during this campaign, on some tips and overtime pay, at a total cost of $4.5 trillion. It also increases funding for defense and border security and cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, with more reductions to food assistance for the poor and other government aid. And it phases out clean-energy tax credits passed under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that Mr. Trump and conservative Republicans have long decried.

Also included is a $5 trillion increase in the debt limit, a measure that Republicans are typically unwilling to support but that was necessary to avert a federal default later this year.

The bill’s final passage was a major victory for congressional Republicans and Mr. Trump, who is expected to swiftly sign what he has frequently referred to as his “big, beautiful bill.” G.O.P. lawmakers who had feuded bitterly over the legislation ultimately united almost unanimously behind it, fearing the political consequences of allowing a tax increase and of crossing a president who demands unflagging loyalty and was pressuring them to fall into line.

“If you’re for a secure border, safer communities and a strong military, this bill is for you,” Mr. Johnson said, extolling the bill ahead of the final vote. “If you’re for common sense fiscal responsibility and reducing the deficit, this bill is for you. If you’re for fairer and lower taxes, bigger paychecks, affordable gas and groceries and restoring dignity to hard work, this is the bill for you.”

But it also was a major political gamble for the party that will leave vulnerable lawmakers open to sharp attacks ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Polls show that the bill is deeply unpopular, and Democrats have roundly denounced it as a move to slash critical government programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They have repeatedly accused Republicans of being so much in Mr. Trump’s thrall that they embraced a bill that would harm their own constituents.

In an impassioned closing speech on the House floor that stretched for more than 8 and a half hours, breaking the chamber’s record and delaying a final vote well into the afternoon, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, assailed the measure as a “disgusting abomination” that would hurt Americans.

In what amounted to a last gasp of Democratic opposition to the bill, Mr. Jeffries spent much of his time reading testimonials from Americans who said they relied on Medicaid, SNAP nutrition assistance and other government help and worried that cuts would upend their lives. He made a point of highlighting that several of the letters came from people who live in Republican congressional districts that are among the Democrats’ top targets for next year’s midterm elections.

“This bill is an all-out assault on the health care of the people of the United States of America, hardworking American taxpayers,” Mr. Jeffries said. “These are the people we should be standing up to work hard to lift up. But instead, they’re victims of this legislation.”

In the messy, monthslong process of pushing through a bill that deeply divided their party, Republicans in both the House and Senate made it clear that they, too, were deeply uncomfortable with parts of it, vocally criticizing its flaws before most of them ultimately banded together to pass it.

As if to underscore the political risks of the bill — and the intense pressure Republicans faced from Mr. Trump to embrace it — Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced during Senate debate on it that he would not seek re-election next year, going on to savage the bill as a disaster for Medicaid that would betray the president’s promises to protect the program. The announcement from Mr. Tillis, whom Mr. Trump had threatened with a primary after he expressed opposition to the bill, was a harsh reminder for Republicans of the consequences of crossing the president on the measure.

Because of the slim Republican majorities in both chambers, ideological rifts within the party were frequently magnified as Mr. Johnson and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, tried to muscle the legislation through. In the end, the House and Senate each passed their versions of the legislation by only one vote, and only after protracted negotiations, several seemingly insurmountable setbacks and parliamentary gymnastics.  

 

New York Times, Jeffries Breaks Record in Hourslong Speech Opposing Trump’s Policy Bill, Michael Gold and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, July 3, 2025. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, above, the Democratic leader, on Thursday broke the record for longest House floor speech, in an eight hour and 45-minute talkathon opposing Republicans’ signature legislation carrying out President Trump’s domestic agenda.

Beginning his remarks before dawn, Mr. Jeffries said that he was “planning to take my sweet time” with his speech. Shortly before 1:30 p.m., he broke the record set by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California in 2021, when he spoke for more than eight hours to delay a vote on a $2 trillion Democratic bill to strengthen the social safety net and fight climate change.

Thursday’s speech was not a filibuster, the Senate tactic that allows a member to speechify for unlimited time, delaying action indefinitely. But Mr. Jeffries was making use of his prerogative as a leader to stretch his allotted 60 seconds of speaking time for far longer, in a House tradition known as a “magic minute.” In doing so, he was attempting to seize a pivotal moment for Democrats — who have toiled to find a cohesive strategy, message and messenger for countering Mr. Trump — to make a forceful case against the president and his agenda.

The speech was the final Democratic delay standing in the way of passing the G.O.P. bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net programs, which Mr. Trump has said he wants to sign by July 4.

But it was, in the end, a portrait of ineffectiveness. Because it was clear throughout that the often soaring oratory was only postponing a bracing reality: Republicans were poised to pass the bill and achieve their latest in a string of victories over Democrats, whose standing with voters has never been lower under the leadership of Mr. Jeffries and his counterparts.

Mocking the name Republicans have bestowed on the bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — Mr. Jeffries said, “Republicans are trying to jam this one, big, ugly bill down the throats of the American people,” and urged lawmakers to vote against it. The speech mainly focused on the ramifications of spending cuts to social safety programs, laying out stories of vulnerable Americans who might be hurt by its reductions to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance.

“Leadership requires courage, conviction, compassion — and yet what we have seen from this administration and co-conspirators on the Republican side of the aisle is cruelty, chaos and corruption,” he said, adding that the bill was “an extraordinary assault on the health care of the American people.”

Mr. Jeffries, who spoke deliberately and frequently referred to a large binder of notes, addressed a mostly empty House chamber, though some Democratic colleagues clustered behind him and applauded at key points in a show of encouragement.

His speech drew heavily on the traditions of the Black church, with a deliberate cadence that echoed the rhythm of a Sunday sermon and borrowed from Scripture. The responses from his colleagues, including shouts of “Take your time!” and “Tell them, Mr. Leader!,” reinforced his role not just as a political figure but as a messenger speaking to something that Democrats see as a higher cause.

It was a sharp rebuke that, for many Black Americans, served as a reminder that politics and faith have always been intertwined tools in the struggle for justice, dignity and accountability.

As the hours ticked by, Mr. Jeffries touched on myriad topics beyond the legislation being debated, including the cuts to government programs exacted by Mr. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, his immigration crackdown, and even the Declaration of Independence — whose principles he charged the president with violating. There were also moments of levity. Mr. Jeffries recalled saving his first paycheck as a teenager to buy new sneakers so he could “look fresh, like Run D.M.C.,” took a moment to tell his mother he loved her and playfully called out colleagues by name as he referred to their states and alma maters.

New York Times, Investigation: Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback, Russ Buettner (who reviewed 2,000 documents filed in a legal action against Donald J. Trump for a more complete understanding of his financial state than was previously known), July 3, 2025 (print ed.). Contrary to the president’s assertions, records filed in a fraud case against him suggest that his riches were not the product of a steady and strong empire. (See details below.)

Trump’s Education Department announced today it is withholding $6.8 billion in funding for K–12 schools that, by law, was supposed to be disbursed starting today. By law, the executive branch must disburse appropriations Congress has passed, but Trump and his officers have simply ignored the law, saying they believe it is unconstitutional. The Constitution provides that Congress alone has the power to write laws and charges the president with taking “Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

 

Yesterday, Trump announced new Trump fragrances, perfumes and colognes for which he has licensed the use of his name. They retail for hundreds of dollars per 3.3 ounce bottle. Today, Zach Everson of Forbes reported that Trump Media & Technology Group is testing an international rollout of its streaming platform. The chief executive officer of Trump Media, former Republican congress member Devin Nunes, said in a statement: “International viewers who want to get the other side of the story will soon have an easy opportunity to do so.”

Everson points out that Trump has slashed Voice of America, the largest international broadcaster in the U.S., raising questions about whether Trump’s business interests played a role in his decisions about the congressionally funded U.S. news source.

But it was at a press conference in Ochopee, Florida, today that Trump showed just how profoundly the immunity conferred on him a year ago is undermining democracy.

Trump continues to say he will arrest and deport U.S. citizens to third countries. On April 14, a microphone picked up Trump’s comment to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador that “homegrowns are next” after the undocumented immigrants Bukele was imprisoning for Trump. Today, Trump told reporters that “bad criminals” have migrated to the U.S., “but we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. People that whacked people over the head with a baseball bat from behind when they're not looking and kill them, people that knife you when you're walking down the street. They're not new to our country. They're old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too. You want to know the truth? So maybe that’ll be the next job that we'll work on together.”

He is also continuing to push the idea of attacking his political opponents. Today, Trump called for an investigation into Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary under President Joe Biden. He also threatened to arrest the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, if he doesn’t work with ICE agents to arrest migrants, although local and state governments have no legal obligation to work with federal immigration enforcement. Trump claimed—incorrectly—that Mamdani is a communist, and said that “a lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.” In fact, Mamdani is a naturalized citizen.

Today Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that a former FBI agent, Jared Wise, who was charged with telling the January 6, 2021, rioters storming the Capitol to kill police officers, is working with the task force in the Justice Department set up as a way for President Trump to seek retribution against his political enemies.

Once a new system of detention facilities and ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.

In answer to the question “How many more facilities like this do you feel that the country needs in order to enact your agenda of mass deportations?” Trump said today: “Well, I think we'd like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know Ron's doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time.”

Once that system is in place, it will not matter if Trump is able to do the work of the presidency.

Today, a reporter from the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the new detention facility in the Everglades: “Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, weeks, months?”

Trump answered: “In Florida? I'm going to spend a lot. Look, this is my home state. I love it, I love your government, I love all the people around. These are all friends of mine. They know very well. I mean, I'm not surprised that they do so well. They're great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in the state. I'll spend a lot of time here. I want to, you know, for four years, I've got to be in Washington, and I'm okay with it because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it—it's like a diamond, it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. It wasn't maintained properly, I will tell you that. But even when it wasn't, it was still the Oval Office, so it meant a lot. But I'll spend as much time as I can here. You know, my vacation is generally here, because it's convenient. I live in Palm Beach. It's my home. And I have a very nice little place, nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun, and I'm a big contributor to Florida, you know, pay a lot of tax, and a lot of people moved from New York, and I don't know what New York is going to do. A lot of people moved to Florida from New York, and it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was taxes. The taxes are so high in New York, they're leaving. I don't know what New York's going to do about that, because some of the biggest, wealthiest people, and some of the people that pay the most taxes of any people anywhere in the world, for that matter, they're moving to Florida and other places. So we're going to have to help some of these states out, I think. But thank you very much. I'll be here as much as I can. Very nice question.”   

New York Times, Justice Dept. Weighs Seeking Criminal Charges as It Presses States for Election Data, Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasaniti, July 3, 2025 (print ed.). Such a path could drastically raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, bringing the department and the threat of criminalization into the election system.

Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said.

Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before.

Federal voting laws place some mandates on how elections are conducted and ballots counted. But that work has historically been managed by state and local officials, with limited involvement or oversight from Washington.

In recent days, senior officials have directed Justice Department lawyers to examine the ways in which a hypothetical failure by state or local officials to follow security standards for electronic voting could be charged as a crime, appearing to assume a kind of criminally negligent mismanagement of election systems. Already, the department has started to contact election officials across the country, asking for information on voting in the state.

July 2 

Semafor, Republican megabill faces tallest hurdle yet, Mike Johnson, Eleanor Mueller and Shelby Talcott, July 2, 2025. It’s a make-or-break day for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, as their teams look to muscle the party’s mammoth tax-and-spending bill through the House as-is.

This is their last hurdle and also, potentially, their tallest: The version the Senate passed Tuesday irked both conservatives and moderates by trimming less in spending and more from Medicaid, respectively.

With votes expected as soon as this afternoon, leaders are also watching closely to see if the weather delays members’ flights.

Trump has already begun working the phones, according to an administration official, as have others in the White House, like Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought. Those on the front lines are projecting optimism: House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith — who’s huddled with Vice President JD Vance to strategize, according to a person familiar — told reporters the Senate “struck a very good balance.”

 

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), left, with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), heading to the Senate chamber around 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning on July 1, 2025 (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross). 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 1 [Trump's Budget Bill], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 2, 2025. Just after noon today, the Senate passed its version of the budget reconciliation bill. All Democrats and Independents voted no. Three Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—joined the Democrats in voting no. That left the bill at 50–50. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the deciding vote, pushing the measure through the Senate and sending it back to the House to vote on the changes made by the Senate.

From the reporters’ gallery above the floor, CNN’s Sarah Ferris heard Senator Angus King (I-ME) yell to his Republican colleagues: “Shame on you guys. That was the most disgusting vote I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The measure cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations and offsets those cuts in part by slashing Medicaid and food security programs for low-income Americans.

But there is at least one aspect of American life on which the bill is lavishing money. While the measure slashes public welfare programs, it pours $170.7 billion into immigration enforcement. The American Immigration Council broke out the numbers today: The Senate bill provides $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times what Trump spent on the wall in his first term. It provides $45 billion for detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an increase of 265% in ICE’s annual detention budget. It provides $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, a threefold increase in ICE’s annual budget.

When Trump talks about undocumented migrants as being dangerous criminals, he appears to have bought into the fantasy that the U.S. is a hellscape. In fact, about 8% of arrested migrants have been convicted of violent crimes. The administration defines anyone who breaks immigration law—which is a misdemeanor, not a felony—as a criminal. One of the reasons for the push to get the bill passed before July 4 is that the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the bill’s additional funding to operate.

While the Senate considered the budget reconciliation bill today, President Donald J. Trump visited the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants. The facility will cost $450 million a year, which will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Florida attorney general who came up with the plan gave it the name “Alligator Alcatraz,” a cutesy name for tents filled with cages for undocumented immigrants.

Standing in front of the cages with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem laughing, Trump told reporters: “Biden wanted me in here…. It didn’t work out that way, but he wanted me in here, that son of a bitch.”

This is nonsense, but it reveals Trump’s conviction that he is always a victim, his determination to destroy the rule of law that threatened to hold him accountable for his actions, and his own drive to imprison and destroy his political opponents.

It was exactly a year ago today, on July 1, 2024, that the United States Supreme Court decided Donald J. Trump v. United States. The court’s majority overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts, right, said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

The Supreme Court had delayed issuing its decision in that case until the last possible moment, guaranteeing that Trump would not face trial in the two federal criminal cases pending against him, one charging him with willfully retaining national defense information by taking classified information with him when he left office, and the other for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

A year later, today provided a snapshot of what happens to a democracy when a president feels he can disregard the law.

U.S. Senate During Budget Bill Passage July 1, 2022 (Photo via C-SPAN).  

The Contrarian, Opinion: The bottom line: The bill is cruel, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 2, 2025. Republicans don’t care about hurting people.

Senate Republicans certainly lack spine. They are deathly afraid to cross Donald Trump, to put their cushy jobs at risk by provoking a primary challenge, to fall out of favor with the maliciously dishonest right-wing media, and/or to be ostracized from their close circle of sycophants, donors, and staff. But their greatest moral failure is arguably not lack ofcourage but rather lack of empathy. They simply do not care about the pain they are inflicting on others.

Senate and House Republicans know what this bill does. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and others can repeat the lie that no one will lose coverage, but it does not make it so. Seventeen million people will lose health care (including 11 million Medicaid beneficiaries). Millions will lose food assistance. The debt will grow by over $3 trillion. It is hard to find anyone outside the MAGA cult who thinks this will benefit America. Republicans respond by lying about the bill even when confronted with the misery their handiwork will cause.

“The facts matter. The people matter. The Senate’s Medicaid approach breaks promises and will kick people off of Medicaid who truly need it,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said on the floor, finally freed to speak honestly after announcing he would not seek reelection. His fellow Republicans shrugged. They heard the same litany of horrors from constituents, hospitals, doctors, state officials, and even right-wing think tanks.

• Republicans still cannot imagine if they or a loved one:
• Could not get food because their application for food stamps was snarled in red tape designed to kick people off benefits to which they were entitled;
• Could not get preventive care, addiction treatment, nursing home care, or prescription drugs because they have been kicked off Medicaid and priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges;
• Could not get to a rural hospital in an emergency after the local one closed;
• Could not find a cancer trial after cuts to the National Institutes of Health;
• Could not get care from Veterans Affairs.

Republicans refuse to admit that they are hurting ordinary, hard-working Americans trying to provide for themselves and their families. To do otherwise would be a confession of their inhumanity. Instead, using well-worn authoritarian techniques (e.g., demonization, dehumanization, and marginalization), MAGA politicians convince themselves that those who rely on vital benefits are unfit and undeserving. Republicans dub them “rats” or “vermin” or “murderers.” 

 

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as "Alligator Auschwitz."

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary, Resistance Dateline: Few outside the U.S. doubt rumors of detainees being tossed into the ocean from military transport planes, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books and former Navy intelligence officer, July 1-2, 2025. 

Few people outside of the United States doubt rumors running rampant on social media that deported U.S. immigrants are being tossed into the ocean by military transport planes.

The reason for this rumor spreading like a wildfire is that few Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, and others put it past a regime to carry out such crimes against humanity.

They see the U.S. government and Florida's banana republic dictator Ron DeSantis setting up in a mere matter of days a concentration camp for immigration detainees in the middle of the Everglades as a grotesque human rights abuse. The camp, located 36 miles south of Miami, was previously administered as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport at 54575 E. Tamiami Trail in Ochopee by Miami-Dade and Collier counties, has been nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" and, more fittingly, "Alligator Auschwitz."

Just like the infamous Nazi death camps, Alligator Auschwitz is steeped in bureaucracy.

Auschwitz and other camps were under the ultimate administrative control of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) led by Heinrich Himmler. Auschwitz's political department was staffed by Gestapo or the Kripo (criminal police) officers.

The political department admitted detainees; subjected them to harsh interrogations (these were conducted by the camp's Vernehmungsabteilung element); determined those who were to be executed either by mass extermination in Zyklon B gas chambers, firing squad at the camp's "Death Wall," or injected with phenol into the heart by medical orderlies; and operated the crematoria.

Personnel of the Schutzstaffel (SS), namely, the feared SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death's Head Units), performed guard duties along with older members of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Those who released Zyklon B gas into the gas chambers, billed by the Nazis as "disinfectant showers," were members of the SS disinfection detail or SS-Desinfektionskommando.

Located at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complex was the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS, formally the Hygiene Institut der Waffen SS-und Polizei, Auschwitz. This is where prisoners were subjected to horrifying medical experiments, including subjecting men, women, and children to infectious diseases, psychotropic drugs, and other abuses that often led to death.

Alligator Auschwitz, a 39-square mile site sitting alongside an 11,000-foot runway in the middle of the Everglades, involves as many bureaucratic levels as did the actual Auschwitz.

DeSantis and Donald Trump, who visited the Everglades concentration camp on July 1, obviously believe that by creating a bureaucratic labyrinth to oversee what is essentially a concentration camp, no one state or federal agency can ultimately be held fully responsible for the deaths and injuries that will eventually occur at the facility.

Alligator Auschwitz's build-out and management has been handled by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM). It has tapped money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, funds pulled directly by DHS from FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program that have been budgeted to house those left homeless by hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

 

Everyone's Entitled To My Own Opinion, Republicans are screwing their own base — along with the rest of us, Jeff Tiedrich, right, July 2, 2025. Senate Republicans put on their usual dog-and-pony kabuki. They did that thing where they rend their garments, throw their arms up in despair, and wail ‘how can I in good conscience vote for this terrible bill? so conflicted! so conflicted!’ 

Hey, you know who else laughed it up while doing war crimes? These jolly madcaps below: Those are guards and office workers at the actual Auschwitz Nazi-run death camp, kicking back during some downtime.

 

 

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: The House Needs To Hear A Roar Of Disapproval From The American People Today, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 2, 2025. Let's Get To Work Everyone!Paid Subscribers Gather Tonight at 7pm ET, DNC "Organizing Summer" Meeting at 8pm ET.

Huge uncertainly about what happens to the big, ugly bill now that it goes to the House. Weather delays may keep the House from voting until tomorrow. Lots of grumbling as this bill simply is not what the House thought they were going to get. Here’s Punchbowl News this morning:

We spoke to several people on the House GOP whip team Tuesday night who were expressing alarm about what they’re seeing on their whip cards. These sources said that they were racking up no’s from lawmakers who they didn’t expect would be opposed to the bill.

Again, it is likely the bill passes in the next 24 hours but as we learned with the Trump’s failed effort to repeal the ACA in 2017 nothing is pre-ordained in this business, and we just have to keep working as hard as we can.Subscribed

If you have live in one of these 29 Republican seats please contact your House Member today. Call, email, get everyone you know to join you. Contact your state and local Dem party and see if you can join some broader effort. Use whatever works for you - savage assault on our health care, unacceptable undermining of our clean energy future and vital manufacturing jobs, dangerous deficits, reckless expansion of the “royal” Interior Ministry. And if you don’t live in one of these 29 districts call, contact your Rep anyway. Congress needs to hear a roar of disapproval from the American people today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

President Trump and Elon Musk (photo-grahic via Proof).

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Trump Is Still Coming for Musk, Seth Abramson, left, July 2, 2025. Here Are 20 Reasons Musk Has the Upper Hand—Even If He Doesn’t Realize It Yet. A Trump and Musk biographer explains why below.

Proof is surprised at how many Americans seem to think Donald Trump automatically has the upper hand in his feud with Elon Musk. This author has become convinced that it’s the urgency of the media narrative in this direction that prompts so many to take this counterfactual view.

While it’s possible Musk will lose this feud—which has just entered Round 2, with the president threatening to deport Musk and Musk threatening an unnamed “escalation” he is only holding back on “for now,” which threat may have something to do with his claim that he knows, “Steve Bannon going back to prison, this time for a long time”; he’s also said he will launch a third party on the very day Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” is passed, and will fund primary opponents to anyone who votes for it to ensure they lost their political careers “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth”—if that happens it will almost certainly not be a loss on points (see infra), but because the beleaguered Tesla CEO has for whatever reason decided to end it prematurely.

But in the face of that possible outcome, we still must consider the facts of The Biggest Feud Ever (an appellation earned by the fact that it’s hard to imagine calling a public feud between The Richest Man on Earth and The Most Powerful Man on Earth anything else) as they appear to all of us in the here and now. Those facts advantage Musk.

It should be added that Bannon is the chief and most vocal proponent of deporting Musk, and that Proof Project research suggests Musk may well be deportable if the Trump administration somehow still has access to Musk’s original U.S. citizenship application—a document in theory his DOGE agents could have deleted from government servers. If those documents remain accessible, and keeping in mind that Musk has the financial capacity to fight deportation for years if need be, this is Trump’s best bet to win The Feud. But readers should keep in mind, too, that Trump is willing to “deport” citizens, so even if Musk has a legal claim to make regarding the tolling of the statute of limitations on lies he may have told on his late 1990s citizenship application, that wouldn’t necessarily protect him from removal from U.S. soil. Musk knows this. He knows, too, that he may have enough control over his company’s boards to remain CEO even if he were removed from the U.S. and in the midst of a legal battle over his citizenship status; however, he’d surely be concerned that removal could risk his position at his companies, at least the publicly traded ones. The Trump administration has made clear that it will not merely remove citizens from America but even prevent visitors to the country on the basis of their viewpoints. That could one day include Mr. Musk, if he’s removed.

So why is this such an urgent inquiry? Because no one who knows and understands Trump believes his feud with Musk is over. That’s what the Proof Project reported after Round 1—which ended weeks ago, now—and it was a submission proven correct once Round 2 began 48 hours ago. But on a far more important level, Trump’s inability to let a feud dissipate unless and until he’s totally humiliated and subjugated his rivals in a way most would deem sadistic is important because it holds true outside The Feud as well. For instance, the Proof Project had said that Trump will restart the Iran War because the Iranian regime has plans to kill him, because the Iranian regime just put a fatwa out on him, and because the Iranian regime says that it’s utterly defeated him.

Those who don’t study Donald Trump daily may not fully understand how enraged such provocations make him, or how little he cares how many American lives (or for that matter the lives of civilians overseas) must be sacrificed to restore his sense of dominance—particularly dominance over what he perceives to be no more than a foreign cabal of poor, ignorant, nonwhites Muslim rabble. (Indeed, it’s far too rarely noted that Trump, an infamous racist, perceives Middle East military interventions in part through the lens of placing no value whatsoever on the lives of most who live there.)

We may be, days from now, in a lull—especially if Musk’s second apparent retreat from the Feud in the face of a deportation threat holds—and that lull, if it arrives, could last a few hours or days or even some weeks. But the Pandora’s Box that broke open weeks ago when these two globally recognizable figures entered into a historic tilt cannot be closed. There will be a Round 3, a Round 4, and a Round 5 unless and until one of the two is vanquished by the other. There’ll be no ties, either—not between these two men.

When the first version of this report was written during Round 1, the next sentence in it was this one: “One way or another, Musk is soon going to learn that he’s still at war, that he must develop battle plans, and that his arsenal of options is actually larger than his opponents’, and that he therefore can launch a considerably more devastating counterstrike than anyone in U.S. media now seems to be allowing for.”

Those words remain true today. If Musk thought the end of Round 1 was the end of The Feud, as many in U.S. media inexplicably did, the beginning of Round 2 just 48 hours ago disabused him of that notion and renewed the relevance of this Proof report.

So let’s consider how the elements listed below, all of which are in play in The Feud, all seem to clearly advantage Elon Musk.

  

Paul Krugman via Substack, Muskenfreude: When an oligarch confronts an autocrat, guess who wins? Paul Krugman, right, July 2, 2025. So the Senate has passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. True, it could still be blocked if House Republicans stood by their principles. But they won’t. This monstrosity will become the law of the land, and tens of millions of Americans will suffer so that billionaires can pay lower taxes.

Looking forward, those of us who care about a decent society will have to do what we can to make sure that Americans understand who ruined their lives and make the people responsible pay a heavy political price. But there will be plenty of time for that, so I thought I’d devote today’s post to a more pleasant topic: The humiliation of Elon Musk (shown above in a file photo).

Does taking some satisfaction in Musk’s demise make me a bad person? Maybe, but I’m only human. Should I go easy on Musk because he came out against the terrible bill that just passed? No.

For one thing, Musk’s opposition predictably made no difference. Musk and other oligarchs will soon learn just how little political power their wealth gives them in the political environment they helped create. More on that in a minute.

Beyond that, Musk was against the bill for all the wrong reasons.

The whole DOGE story remains remarkable on a couple of levels. It’s not just that Donald Trump temporarily gave immense power over federal spending to someone who had no legitimate basis for that power — he was neither elected by voters nor, as is normally required for senior officials, approved by the Senate. Beyond that, Trump gave that power to a man who clearly understood nothing about what the government does and what it spends money on — but who, in his arrogance, assumed that he could eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

He couldn’t, of course, and he should have been fired on the spot after making the absurd claim that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security checks. But he wasn’t. For months after that episode Musk remained in a position to create chaos and degrade the functioning of the government — oh, and condemn large numbers of children to death.

Now he’s on the outs — but he still lacks the honesty and courage to admit what he got wrong. Here’s Musk condemning the Beautiful Bill: What is the “insane spending” and “pork” of which he speaks? If there’s huge wasteful spending going on, well, Musk had months of unprecedented power and access to find it — and came up empty. The truth is that this bill will explode the deficit because of the huge tax breaks it’s offering to the wealthy and corporations. But Musk can’t handle the truth.

What about Musk’s threat to form a new political party? It will go nowhere if he tries. But I don’t think he’ll get anywhere near making good on that threat. As Trump might say, Musk just doesn’t have the cards. My prediction is that very soon one of two things will happen. Either Musk will slink off, tail between his legs. Or he will see his wealth destroyed, faster than he imagines possible.

Most immediately, Musk’s business interests are unusually dependent on federal support, and hence on the good will of whoever is running the government. I’m not sure whether Musk is really the most subsidized businessman in history, but Trump basically got it right here: Beyond that, even great wealth offers little protection from the people in power under an authoritarian regime.

 

Three years ago NPR’s Planet Money newsletter published a article titled “How Putin conquered Russia’s oligarchy” that people like Musk really should have read before throwing their support behind Trump. As the article explained, Russian oligarchs played a large role in Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. But a few years after his ascent, Putin summoned the wealthiest among them to the Kremlin to explain who was in charge:

Putin, shown above left, offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government). In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances.

And oligarchs who refused to come to heel were replaced by a new breed of oligarchs, who have accrued wealth and power under Putin: the siloviki, which translates roughly to "men of force."

It can’t happen here, you say. Trump can’t arbitrarily punish wealthy men or seize their property. After all, that would be against the law. And the rule of law still prevails in America, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re not the kind of country where masked men claiming to be government agents kidnap people off the street. Oh, wait.

Still, Musk is a U.S. citizen, which gives him protection, right? Except the Department of Justice has already announced that it will soon be seeking to revoke citizenship for many naturalized Americans. And Trump is already fantasizing about sending Musk back to South Africa.

OK, I don’t expect things to go that far for Musk or any of the other Trump-backing oligarchs who may be having second thoughts — not because I think there are limits to what Trump is willing to do, but because I don’t think any of these guys will have the courage to stand up to him.

Just to be clear, much as I hate what Musk has done, I don’t want to see him exiled or falling out of a window, because I don’t want to live in that kind of country. But if we do become that kind of a country, people like Musk will bear much of the responsibility — and, whatever they imagine, may pay part of the price.

 

New York Times, Investigation: Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback, Russ Buettner (who reviewed 2,000 documents filed in a legal action against Donald J. Trump for a more complete understanding of his financial state than was previously known), July 2, 2025. Contrary to the president’s assertions, records filed in a fraud case against him suggest that his riches were not the product of a steady and strong empire.

Last spring, even as Donald J. Trump’s march back toward the White House dominated public attention, his finances, largely out of view, faced serious threats.

His office building in Lower Manhattan generated too little cash to cover its mortgage, with the balance coming due. Many of his golf coursesregularly lacked enough players to cover costs. The flow of millions of dollars a year from his stint as a television celebrity had mostly dried up.

And a sudden wave of legal judgments threatened to devour all his cash.

Then, with his clinching of the Republican nomination, everything began to change.

In the following months, Mr. Trump, along with his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., refocused the family business, forming a series of partnerships, especially in cryptocurrency, with investors who were willing to bank on his victory.

Once Mr. Trump won the presidency in November, that approach kicked into overdrive.

His family business announced numerous new deals that would financially benefit Mr. Trump directly, even as he made policy decisions that affected those industries or that involved countries in which the United States had political interests. Most glaringly, Mr. Trump is now both a partner in several crypto ventures and, as president, crypto’s chief policy regulator, and he has signaled that he wants his administration to have a hands-off approach to digital currencies.

Today, those moves are seen by Mr. Trump’s detractors as a money grab of historic proportions. But an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of pages of internal Trump Organization documents filed in one of the legal actions against him suggests a more urgent motivation for Mr. Trump’s behavior: a need, rather than simply a desire, for easy money to keep his empire intact.Editors’ Picks:( Microsoft’s ‘Blue Screen of Death’ Is Going Away20 Books Coming in JulyLike Chaucer’s Pilgrims, but With a Sports CarImagePresident Trump’s five children, seen from above, standing in a government building beneath an American flag.Donald Trump Jr., front right, and Eric Trump, behind him, have shifted the focus of the family business from real estate development to deals that monetize the family name and now, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency.Credit...Pool photo by Kenny Holston

In late 2023, Mr. Trump boasted of having between $300 million and $400 million in cash when he testified as part of that legal action, a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that accused the Trumps of defrauding their lenders. His cash stockpile, Mr. Trump said, showed “how good a company I built,” and, he added in earlier testimony, “especially for a developer.”

Contrary to those assertions, records filed in the fraud case suggest that Mr. Trump’s cash was not the product of a steady and strong empire. His balance had fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of $52 million in 2018, a small figure for the size of his operation. The subsequent increase came largely from the sale of properties and a payout of more than $150 million from a passive investment.

Moreover, the version of Mr. Trump’s business that he projects — a real estate development company that executes large, complex tasks — hasn’t existed for a nearly a decade, since the Trumps’ last two major construction projects failed to make money. 

New York Times, Investigation: What We Know (and Can’t Know) About Trump’s Wealth, Ben Protess, Andrea Fuller and David Yaffe-Bellany July 1, 2025 (print ed.). Asset Values:

• Cryptocurrencies: As much as $7.1 billion
• Stocks, bonds and cash: At least $2.2 billion
• Real estate and other business holdings: At least $1.3 billion

New York Times, Trump Withholds Nearly $7 Billion for Schools, With Little Explanation,Sarah Mervosh and Michael C. Bender, July 1, 2025. The money, which was allocated by Congress, helps pay for after-school programs, support for students learning English and other services.

The Trump administration has declined to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services.

The money was expected to be released by Tuesday. But in an email on Monday, the Education Department notified state education agencies that the money would not be available.

The administration offered little explanation, saying only that the funds were under review. It gave no timeline for when, or if, the money would be released, saying instead that it was “committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities.” The frozen funds are unrelated to the millions of dollars in cuts included in the domestic policy bill that squeaked through the Senate on Tuesday.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, a group that works to expand after-school services for students. She estimated that the federal dollars for after-school and summer-school programs — about $1.3 billion annually — support 1.4 million students, mostly lower income, representing about 20 percent of all students in after-school programs nationally.

The move is likely to be challenged in court and has already been criticized as illegal by Democrats and teachers’ unions, who emphasized that the money had been appropriated by Congress and was approved by President Trump in March as part of a broader funding bill.

“This is lawless,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

The administration has taken an aggressive approach to cutting back the federal government’s role in education, including plans to eliminate the Education Department entirely. Though only Congress can abolish the department, the Trump administration has taken an ax to education staffing and funding more broadly as it seeks to whittle down the department.

The administration has suggested that it may seek to eliminate the nearly $7 billion in frozen funding. Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week that the administration was considering ways to claw back the funding through a process known as rescission. The administration would formally ask lawmakers to claw back a set of funds it has targeted for cuts. Even if Congress fails to vote on the request, the president’s timing would trigger a law that freezes the money until it ultimately expires.

MeidasTouch Podcast, U.S. Fails To Cover Major Russian Setbacks In Ukraine War, Ben Meiselas, July 2, 2025. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on how Donald Trump’s attempt to help Putin and to distract from his disaster budget bill have backfired in his face and Meiselas breaks down in meticulous detail what American media refuses to cover.

New York Times, Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down 1849 Abortion Ban, Kate Zernike, July 2, 2025. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Republican prosecutors in Wisconsin said they intended to enforce the old law.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated a state abortion ban that was enacted in 1849 and had been dormant for five decades.

The decision on Wednesday settles an uncertainty that has surrounded abortion law in the state since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

It also reflects the significance of the state’s elections for Supreme Court justices, which have been hotly contested and revolved largely around abortion rights since the fall of Roe.

The court ruled 4-3 to strike down the ban, and while the justices are officially nonpartisan, the decision split them along ideological lines. A new justice who had campaigned on her support for abortion rights, Janet Protasiewicz, joined the majority.

The 1849 state law had said that anyone other than the pregnant woman “who intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child” could face six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The only exception was for a “therapeutic abortion” to save the life of the pregnant woman.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe returned the regulation of abortion to the states, Gov. Tony Evers and the attorney general, Josh Kaul, both Democrats, sued to invalidate the 1849 ban. They argued that it had been effectively repealed over the years by other abortion regulations, including a law that prohibits abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and one that imposes a 24-hour waiting period for abortions.

But some prosecutors said they would enforce the 1849 law, prompting doctors and clinics to cease providing abortions in the state for nearly 18 months.

Clinics resumed providing abortions in December 2023, after a Dane County judge ruled that the 1849 ban was not valid and the state’s voters elected Justice Protasiewicz, who declared her support for abortion rights on the campaign trail.

CIA, CIA Director John Ratcliffe Declassifies Internal Tradecraft Review of 2016 Election ICA, Staff Report, July 2, 2025. Earlier this year, CIA Director John Ratcliffe tasked Agency career professionals with decades of experience to conduct a lessons-learned review of the procedures and analytic tradecraft employed in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) conducted shortly after the 2016 election. Today, Director Ratcliffe declassified the results of this review.

The tradecraft review identified multiple procedural anomalies in the preparation of the 2016 ICA, such as a compressed timeline, uneven access to compartmented information, marginalization of the National Intelligence Council, and excessive involvement of agency heads. The review notes that adhering to established analytic processes and rigorous tradecraft is essential to ensure credibility, objectivity, and accuracy of CIA analysis.

Director Ratcliffe declassified this review in order to promote analytic objectivity and transparency. “Agency heads at the time created a politically charged environment that triggered an atypical analytic process around an issue essential to our democracy,” said Director Ratcliffe. “Under my watch, I am committed to ensuring that our analysts have the ability to deliver unvarnished assessments that are free from political influence.”

The lessons-learned review can be viewed here.

New York Times, Updates: Sean Combs Acquitted of Sex Trafficking but Found Guilty on Lesser Charges, Ben Sisario and Julia Jacobs, July 2, 2025. The music mogul celebrated after being found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He was convicted of transporting people for prostitution and could be released on bond.

Sean Combs, right, was acquitted on Wednesday of sex trafficking and racketeering charges, but convicted of transportation to engage in prostitution after an eight-week federal trial.

A jury in Manhattan found Mr. Combs, 55, not guilty of the most serious charges against him. Prosecutors had accused the famed producer of coercing two former girlfriends, Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified pseudonymously as “Jane,” into unwanted sex with male prostitutes, aided by a team of pliant employees.

Even with a partial conviction, the result is something of a victory for Mr. Combs, who faced a possible life sentence had he been convicted of other counts in the case. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the two transportation for prostitution charges. Each of the counts carries up to 10 years in prison, but the final sentence will be up to a judge.

Here’s what else to know:

• Racketeering: Jurors said on Tuesday that there were “unpersuadable opinions on both sides” in regard to the racketeering count. Racketeering law was once intended to combat the Mafia but has become central in cases against R. Kelly, Young Thug, Wall Street executives, gang members and President Trump. 
• The jury: The racially diverse panel of eight men and four women, ranging in age from 30 to 74, sent several notes to the judge during deliberations, both asking for evidence and expressing concern about a juror. 
• Felony charges: Had he been convicted of sex trafficking, Mr. Combs would have faced a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. The charge of racketeering conspiracy also carries a potential life sentence. 
• Prosecution’s case: Mr. Combs was portrayed as the head of a criminal enterprise who “used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted” in the government’s closing argument. A prosecutor said Mr. Combs used violence, financial control and threats to manipulate his girlfriends into physically taxing sex sessions with hired men, while he masturbated and filmed. Read more >
• Defense’s case: In its closing argument, Mr. Combs’s defense team told jurors that the government’s evidence contradicted its case. It acknowledged that Mr. Combs had engaged in domestic violence and drug use, but argued that the accusation that Mr. Combs was a sex trafficker or criminal ringleader was “badly exaggerated.” 

 

New York Times, Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit, Benjamin Mullin, Michael M. Grynbaum, Lauren Hirsch and David Enrich, July 2, 2025. President Trump had sued over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale.

Paramount said late Tuesday that it has agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” an extraordinary concession to a sitting president by a major media organization.

Paramount said its payment includes Mr. Trump’s legal fees and costs and that the money, minus the legal fees, will be paid to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library.

As part of the settlement, Paramount said that it had agreed to release written transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates. The company said that the settlement did not include an apology.

The deal is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Trump’s ability to intimidate major American institutions extends to the media industry.

Many lawyers had dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit as baseless and believed that CBS would have ultimately prevailed in court, in part because the network did not report anything factually inaccurate, and the First Amendment gives publishers wide leeway to determine how to present information.

But Shari Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, told her board that she favored exploring a settlement with Mr. Trump. Some executives at the company viewed the president’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance, which requires the Trump administration’s approval.

After weeks of negotiations with a mediator, lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump worked through the weekend to reach a deal ahead of a court deadline that would have required both sides to begin producing internal documents for discovery, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. Another deadline loomed: Paramount was planning to make changes to its board of directors this week that could have complicated the settlement negotiations.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the settlement was “another win for the American people” delivered by the president, who was holding “the fake news media accountable.”

The size of the settlement, $16 million, is the same sum that ABC News agreed to pay in December to settle a defamation case filed by Mr. Trump against the network and one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos. Paramount’s board was concerned that paying a higher amount to settle the case could increase the company’s exposure to potential legal actions from shareholders accusing them of bribery.

The sale of Paramount would end the Redstone family’s decades-long control of CBS News and Paramount Pictures and put it in the hands of David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, a tech billionaire who has backed Mr. Trump.

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has said that the president’s lawsuit against Paramount was not linked to the F.C.C.’s review of the company’s merger with Skydance. Paramount has also said that the two issues were unrelated.

Within the CBS newsroom, a prospective settlement was seen as a low moment in the near-century-long history of a network that once housed Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, whose famed rebuff of McCarthyism in the 1950s was recently depicted on the Broadway stage by George Clooney. “60 Minutes,” which pioneered on-air investigative reporting, recently completed its 51st consecutive season as the country’s most-watched news program.

Mr. Trump sued Paramount for $10 billion last year, claiming that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in order to interfere with the election. 

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, CBS bends a knee. I never will, Marc Elias, July 2, 2025. Earlier this year, I appeared on “60 Minutes” to stand up to Donald Trump’s threats against law firms. As anchor Scott Pelley said in his introduction, I was “the only lawyer the president has named who was willing to appear” on the show.

During the episode, I spoke plainly about the damage large law firms were doing by cutting deals with Trump. I made it clear that their actions threatened the rule of law and democracy. I warned that other businesses would be next.

I agreed to speak out then — and continue to speak out now — because democracy is under attack in our country. The president is weaponizing all aspects of the federal government to punish his political opponents and the institutions that seek to hold him accountable. And if those of us with platforms retreat and stay silent, he will succeed.

Today, we received the news that CBS’s parent company, Paramount, has joined the ranks of disgraced institutions that have bowed down to Trump. The once-proud Tiffany Network agreed to pay $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit Trump filed over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

Some in the media and business world are already trying to justify this as a necessary — or even savvy — business move. They couldn’t be more wrong. I will call it what it is: shameless capitulation. If our largest media outlets will not stand up to Donald Trump’s baseless lawsuits, why should we believe they will stand up to him in their reporting?

Sadly, CBS is not alone in bending the knee to Trump. ABC News did the same thing earlier this year when Disney settled a similarly meritless lawsuit. The owner of The Washington Post has not only handed over money without any threat of legal action but has also crippled the editorial page’s coverage of Trump.

I could go on and on with further examples of legacy media organizations failing to meet the moment in order to please — or at least not anger — a vindictive president.

I started Democracy Docket in 2020 to be an independent source of news, information and analysis of what is happening to democracy and the courts. Since then, it has grown to more than 20 employees and over 425,000 subscribers. Many more access its free website, where it provides news and the most comprehensive free database of voting and election cases anywhere.

To better serve you, Democracy Docket has recently expanded its YouTube channel, which now offers short- and long-form explainers and interviews about the threats facing our democracy.

Democracy Docket has no corporate parent or overlords. It will never back down. It will never compromise. It will not obey.

In light of today’s news, I’m resending the piece I wrote right after my “60 Minutes” episode aired in May. I was overwhelmed by the positive and encouraging messages people sent after reading it, so I thought I’d share it again.

New York Times, Planned Parenthood Must Choose Between Abortion or Millions in Federal Funding, Katie Benner, David A. Fahrenthold and Margot Sanger-Katz, July 2, 2025. The nation’s largest abortion provider must stop offering it in some states or risk losing millions in Medicaid funding to provide basic health care for low-income Americans.

When Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday to pass President Trump’s spending bill, abortion opponents came one step closer to stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding — a move that could jeopardize abortion access for patients even in states where abortion is legal.

The bill imposes a one-year ban on state Medicaid payments to any health care nonprofit that offers abortions and received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023. The restriction jeopardizes Planned Parenthood’s ability to keep operating in some states.

While federal law already prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from paying for abortions, the bill would affect the stream of federal money that covers other services, and thus helps keep clinics open. Though not all individual Planned Parenthood locations provide abortions, the legislative language could knock them out of Medicaid if they are part of a regional network that does offer the procedures.

Planned Parenthood affiliates — each an independently run nonprofit that operates clinics across a geographic region — are in the unusual position of being both an abortion provider and an operator of clinics. The facilities provide a wide range of other medical services for more than two million Americans who cannot afford health care anywhere else.

“This bill threatens to close nearly 200 Planned Parenthood health centers and will create devastating gaps in our health care infrastructure,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the national umbrella organization, said in a statement.

The bill most deeply affects Planned Parenthood clinics in blue states, including California, Oregon, Washington and Illinois, where abortion is still legal and where there are also large numbers of patients who are eligible for Medicaid reimbursements for other health care.

Planned Parenthood, whose affiliates already faced dire funding shortfalls in many states even before the latest Medicaid cuts, said in a statement that 200 clinics in 24 states were at risk of closing if the bill passes. Of those clinics, 90 percent are in states where abortion is protected and legal.

The looming funding crisis is one that abortion opponents had wanted for decades.

 

Jabari Peoples (Peoples Family/WVTM/YouTube)

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism, What really happened to Jabari Peoples? Judd Legum, right, and Rebecca Crosby, July 2, 2025. Alabama law enforcement is refusing to release the body cam footage.

On June 23, 18-year-old Jabari Peoples was fatally shot by the police at a city park in Homewood, Alabama. Peoples was parked with a friend at the Homewood Soccer Park. Around 9:30 p.m., an officer with the Homewood police approached and ordered Peoples and his friend to exit the vehicle.

What happened next is hotly disputed.

According to a statement released by Peoples' family, his vehicle was "approached by an individual in an unmarked vehicle, with no lights, no sirens, and no visible identification." The statement says that Peoples was "not armed," "not aggressive," "did not resist," and "complied" with all instructions from the officer.

A lawyer representing the family, Leroy Maxwell, said that an independent investigator he hired concluded Peoples' "was shot once in the back" and the finding is "consistent with the eyewitness account we have obtained, all of which clearly state that Jabari did not possess a weapon at the time he was approached by the officer."

Maxwell emphasized that Peoples, who graduated from high school in 2024 and worked as a security guard at a local hospital, "was an 18-year-old with a bright future" and had "no history whatsoever of being disrespectful to law enforcement."

The family alleges that they were not informed of Peoples' death until they were "contacted by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office at 10:00 AM the following morning — over 12 hours after Jabari was pronounced dead."

The official police narrative is radically different.

In a statement, the Homewood police said that when the officer approached the vehicle, he "smelled the odor of marijuana." When Peoples exited, according to the statement, the officer "observed a handgun in the door pocket of the open driver’s side door." The officer then "attempted to secure Mr. Peoples in handcuffs to affect an arrest for Unlawful Possession of Marijuana and possible other charges, at which point Mr. Peoples began to actively resist."

According to the police, a "physical struggle ensued, at which point the officer was knocked to the ground." Then, "Mr. Peoples broke away from the officer and retrieved the handgun from the open driver’s side door pocket, creating an immediate deadly threat to the officer." At that point, "[t]he officer, fearing for his safety, fired one round from his service weapon to defend himself." Peoples, police say, "fell to the ground, still gripping the handgun in his right hand."

Police say that emergency aid was administered at the scene. Peoples was then transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Who is telling the truth? Right now, it is impossible to say. There are simply two conflicting stories.

The Homewood police say that their version of events is "clearly captured on the officer’s body-worn camera." That footage was turned over to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), which is investigating the shooting. On June 25, Homewood police said that "arrangements are being made for the family to view the video."

On Tuesday, ALEA released a statement saying it was denying the family's request to release the body camera footage, claiming that doing so would "affect the ongoing investigation." ALEA gave no indication of when, if ever, the body camera footage would be released. Alabama law permits them to withhold the footage as long as it is relevant to any investigation or prosecution, which could be years.

While body cameras have been widely deployed over the last decade to bring a measure of accountability to police, withholding footage in sensitive cases is a common tactic employed by law enforcement. In some cases, when the video is ultimately released, it contradicts or complicates the initial police narrative.Police closely guard body camera footage

Body camera footage is often difficult to obtain and can be withheld from the public for extended periods of time. A 2023 analysis by ProPublica found that in June 2022, 101 people were killed by law enforcement officers. In 79 of these incidents, body camera footage exists. But over a year later, footage from only 33 of the incidents had been released.

Some cities and states have policies requiring departments to release body camera footage within a specified timeframe. In New York City, for example, the New York Police Department (NYPD) is “supposed to release video within 30 days of a critical incident.” But a 2023 ProPublica analysis found that, at the time, “of 380 such incidents since the policy was enacted, the department released videos only 64 times, and only twice within its own 30-day time frame.”

Without body camera footage, the public must rely on the official narrative released by police departments. But sometimes, when body camera footage is later released, it does not match up with the police account.

In 2023, for example, Tyre Nichols was killed by law enforcement in Memphis. The police report said he “started to fight” with police officers and “at one point grabbed one of their guns,” CNN reported. But body camera footage released weeks later did not show evidence of either claim. The initial report also did not mention that officers punched and kicked Nichols.

In May 2020, George Floyd was killed by law enforcement in Minneapolis, but the body camera footage was not released until August. The police report said Floyd died of “medical distress,” but failed to mention that it was "brought on by an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as Floyd experienced seizures and cried out for help,” the ACLU of Wisconsin reported.

In 2014, teenager Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by Chicago law enforcement, who later covered up the shooting, lying in the police report and “exaggerat[ing] the threat McDonald posed.” Dash camera footage from the incident, contradicting the original police incident reports, was not released until late 2015.

In other cases, police officers have attempted to hide body camera footage. In 2019, Ronald Greene was killed by law enforcement after a traffic chase. Louisiana law enforcement denied that body camera footage of the incident existed. State troopers “initially told Greene’s family he died on impact after crashing into a tree during the chase,” the Associated Press reported. Later, a police statement acknowledged that he “struggled with troopers.” But two years later, the AP obtained the footage. The footage showed Greene getting beaten, tased, and pulled out of his car and dragged by the ankles. In the video, Greene can be heard screaming, “I’m sorry” and “I’m scared.”

 

Shryk is now awaiting examination and surgery by a specialist to save its wing (Photo via Facebook by Veronica Konkova).

TVP World (Ukraine), Ukrainian falcon injured in attack on Russian drone becomes overnight hero, Staff report, July 2, 2025. A wild Ukrainian falcon has become an unlikely symbol of resistance and heroism after a daring mid-air attack on a Russian drone.

According to Ukrainian troops who witnessed the incident, the ‘battle bird’ named Shryk had been close to the front line in the southeast of the country when it swooped on the drone, knocking it off course.

After being forced to land with a broken shoulder, the bird was rescued by Ukrainian troops who transported it to the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia, from where it made the 85 km drive to the city of Dnipro.

Posting on social media, animal welfare volunteer Veronika Konkova said: “Meet Shryk. This brave bird of prey rightly decided that Russian drones have no place on our [and his personal] territory, and attacked one of them.

“Unfortunately, metal was stronger than a living bird, and he got a fracture in his right shoulder. “Fortunately, our drone operators on this part of the front, who witnessed the incident, didn't leave the wild comrade in trouble, immediately took him in, and evacuated him to Zaporizhzhia at the first opportunity.”

The post has since been flooded by well-wishers. One said: “A huge thank you to him! Dads love him very much, and have hope for recovery. Hang in there, Shryk!” Another commented: “Thank you for your hard work! Strength to you! An honor!” Yet another posted simply: “Cheers to the little one.”

Shryk is now awaiting examination and surgery by a specialist to save its wing, with the Ukrainian military promising to cover all treatment costs.

July 1

 

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican majority leader, obtained the votes to pass a sprawling domestic policy bill requested by President Trump 

New York Times, News Analysis: Republican Bill Puts Nation on New, More Perilous Fiscal Path, Andrew Duehren, July 1, 2025. Among the most expensive pieces of legislation in years, the Republican legislation could reshape the country’s finances for a generation. 

Washington has not exactly won a reputation for fiscal discipline over the last few decades, as both Republicans and Democrats passed bills that have, bit by bit, degraded the nation’s finances.

But the legislation that Republicans passed through the Senate on Tuesday stands apart in its harm to the budget, analysts say. Not only did an initial analysis show it adding at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years — making it among the most expensive bills in a generation — but it would also reduce the amount of tax revenue the country collects for decades. Such a shortfall could begin a seismic shift in the nation’s fiscal trajectory and raise the risk of a debt crisis.

The threat is a reflection of the fact that Senate Republicans have voted to make tax cuts that the party first passed in 2017 a permanent feature of the tax code. That means the growth in the country’s debt, already at levels economists find alarming, would only accelerate as the bill shaves down the country’s main source of money.

“We are looking at the most expensive piece of legislation probably since the 1960s,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “The danger is that Congress is piling trillions of new borrowing on top of deficits that are already leaping.”

Historically, lawmakers have been unable to make such a large change in the country’s finances without bipartisan support, helping contain how much debt is added at a time.

New York Times, Some House Republicans Already Plan to Vote Against Trump’s Agenda Bill, Robert Jimison, July 1, 2025. To meet the president’s Friday deadline, the speaker will have to corral his party into accepting a bill several have criticized.

Moments after a divided Senate was able to overcome a small Republican rebellion and pass President Trump’s marquee domestic policy bill, all eyes turned to the House, where Republican leaders must now contend with growing opposition within their ranks that could derail plans to deliver the legislation to Mr. Trump by Friday.

Speaker Mike Johnson, right, was able to win over reluctant Republicans in May by offering a range of concessions to bring House members in line to pass its version of the reconciliation package. But since the Senate made significant changes, he must again stamp out intraparty rebellion without making changes that would require it to go back to the Senate.

The path is steep: Multiple members who voted to pass the House version criticized what emerged from the upper chamber, and Mr. Johnson can lose fewer than a handful if all members vote. When the House first voted on the measure in late May, two Republicans, Representatives Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — both anti-deficit conservatives — joined all Democrats in voting against it.

“The changes the Senate made to the House-passed Beautiful Bill, including unacceptable increases to the national debt and the deficit, are going to make passage in the House difficult,” Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana, wrote Tuesday in a social media post.

He did not say whether the changes would affect his vote, but he did express a willingness to do away with the arbitrary July 4 deadline set by Mr. Trump to seek improvements to the bill. “We cannot in good faith pass a bill through our chamber that hinges on cut corners and earmarks,” Mr. Stutzman wrote. “The American people won’t stand for it.”ImageSpeaker Mike Johnson has little wiggle room in getting the Senate-passed version of the policy bill through his caucus.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Other members of his party were less circumspect.

“No,” Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, repeated when reporters asked if he would vote for the bill as he did before.

“No,” he said again when asked if he would cast a procedural vote to allow the bill to make it to the floor.

“What we ought to do is take exactly the House bill that we sent over and go home and say ‘when you’re serious, come back,’” he added, before entering the committee room where House deliberations on the bill began shortly after it passed the Senate.

There were other immediate signs the Senate-passed bill had a tough path ahead.

Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee called it a “dud” that “guts key Trump provisions.” Representative Chip Roy of Texas said the Senate’s treatment of clean energy tax credits were not aggressive enough and called it “a deal-killer of an already bad deal.”

More moderate and politically vulnerable Republicans repeated their opposition to its cuts to Medicaid.

“I’ve been clear from the start that I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid,” Representative David Valadao, Republican of California, said in a social media post over the weekend. He argued that the version passed by the House made “reasonable” changes to the program but warned that his support would be lost if deeper cuts were made in the Senate.

Senate Republicans did just that, planning to help offset tax cuts and new spending with steeper cuts to Medicaid, tens of billions of dollars more than the House plan.

New York Times, Murkowski Casts Decisive Vote for G.O.P. Policy Bill, Making an ‘Agonizing’ Choice, Annie Karni, July 1, 2025. The Alaska Republican, a frequent critic of the president who is often a swing vote, acknowledged the bill would harm Americans but backed it after winning carve outs for her state.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, right, Republican of Alaska, on Tuesday cast the deciding vote for President Trump’s sprawling bill to slash taxes and social safety net programs, embracing a measure she acknowledged would harm Americans after securing carve outs to protect her constituents from its harshest impacts.

“Do I like this bill? No,” Ms. Murkowski, who appeared to be quietly seething as she was questioned about her vote, told NBC News. “But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests. But I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

For weeks, Ms. Murkowski, the moderate fourth-term senator who has criticized Mr. Trump and has long been a swing vote in her party, had expressed concerns about the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance contained in the bill. It would impose strict new work requirements for both programs and reduce the federal contribution to their costs.

But with Mr. Trump demanding quick action and Republicans facing a tight vote margin in the Senate, Ms. Murkowski wielded unique leverage with party leaders to insist on changes. Republicans stuffed the bill with all sorts of goodies designed to win her over, including a provision that would allow certain Alaskan whaling captains to deduct more of their expenses.

Some viewed the backroom dealing as the work of a savvy and experienced lawmaker fighting for her constituents. But critics castigated Ms. Murkowski, saying she had besmirched herself by taking a bribe from Republican leaders to secure her vote for a bill that she, herself, said was dangerous for the vast majority of the country.

New York Times, Trump Administration: Updates: Senate Debate on Trump’s Policy Bill Stretches Into Third Day, Michael Gold, Megan Mineiro and Catie Edmondson, July 1, 2025. Vice President JD Vance arrived at the Capitol prepared to cast a tiebreaking vote on the sprawling bill, but it was not clear when Republicans would be ready to call a final vote.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary, Trump Supporters' Death Threats Against Meidas, Ben Meiselas, July 1, 2025. Yesterday, the MeidasTouch Network reported on the funeral of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were assassinated on June 14.

In response to our coverage of the funeral, radicalized Trump supporters sent us some of the most heinous messages, including death threats. For example, one Trump supporter said to us, “The country will be lucky once you’re in one of those [caskets] soon. Whole family actually. Couldn’t happen to better people.”

This reminds me: we are not living in normal times. Trump and his supporters are not capable of empathy. It’s why I often refer to it as a death cult. When Trump was asked if he would call Minnesota Governor Walz or attend the funeral, he responded, “I’m not calling him… he’s whacked out… he’s a mess.”

Cruelty is the point with MAGA.

Case in point: today, Donald Trump is spending the day on a remote airstrip in the swampy Everglades of Florida that he and DeSantis spent $450 million to convert into a concentration camp. They are calling it “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The camp will be filled with 5,000 migrants. There is no air conditioning, the weather will be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is infested with alligators and pythons that could eat and kill the migrants.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has been publishing AI memes of alligators dressed in ICE agent hats, prepared to eat migrants.

There is no way around it. These are truly sick people.

At the MeidasTouch Network, we call it out in clear terms. We don’t mince words

That often means we are the subject of MAGA death threats and harassment. It’s fine—they don’t scare us, and we are prepared for it.

We don’t view this as a job. We view this as a duty to protect democracy.

We are doing what no one thought was possible. We are controlling the narrative with the truth. That’s why they want us dead or shut down.

Remember after the 2024 election, when everyone said the right-wing media ecosphere was unstoppable? Well, our podcast now gets more downloads than every major right-wing podcast combined, and our coverage gets more digital views than Fox each day. This terrifies MAGA!

Now that July is here, we need to work harder to continue our expansion. Let them be even more terrified! Bring it on!!! 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary, June 30 [Trump's Big Ugly Bill], Heather Cox  Richardson, right, July 1, 2025. "This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

“[W]e're debating a bill that’s going to cut healthcare for 16 million people. It's going to give a tax break to…massively wealthy people who don't need any more money. There are going to be kids who go hungry because of this bill. This is the biggest reduction in…nutrition benefits for kids in the history of the country.”

Murphy continued: “We're obviously gonna continue to offer these amendments to try to make it better. So far not a single one of our amendments…has passed, but we'll be here all day, probably all night, giving Republicans the chance over and over and over again to slim down the tax cuts for the corporations or to make life a little bit…less miserable for hungry kids or maybe don't throw as many people off of healthcare. Maybe don't close so many rural hospitals. It's gonna be a long day and a long night.”

“This bill is a farce,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, ‘I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we’ll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?’... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel.”

“When I worked here in the 70's,” King said, “I had insurance as a…junior staff member in this body 50 years ago. Because I had that insurance that covered a free checkup, I went in and had my first physical in eight years…and the doctors found a little mole on my back. And they took it out. And I didn't think much of it. And I went in a week later and the doctor said, ‘You better sit down, Angus. That was malignant melanoma. You're going to have to have serious surgery.’… And I had the surgery and here I am. If I hadn’t had insurance, I wouldn’t be here. And it’s always haunted me that some young man in America that same year had malignant melanoma, he didn’t have insurance, he didn’t get that checkup, and he died. That’s wrong. It’s immoral.”

Senator King continued: “I don’t understand the obsession and I never have…with taking health insurance away from people. I don’t get it. Trying to take away the Affordable Care Act in 2017 or 2018 and now this. What’s driving this? What’s the cruelty to do this, to take health insurance away from people knowing that it’s going to cost them…up to and including…their lives.”

In fact, the drive to slash health insurance is part of the Republicans’ determination to destroy the modern government.

Grover Norquist, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. “Government should enforce [the] rule of law,” he said. “It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.”

Norquist vehemently opposed taxation, saying that “it’s not any of the government’s business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately,” and proposed cutting government spending down to 8% of gross domestic product, or GDP, the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States.

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, and business owners treated their workers as they wished. Within a year the Great Plains would be blowing away as extensive deep plowing had damaged the land, making it vulnerable to drought. Republican leaders insisted the primary solution to the crisis was individual enterprise and private charity.

When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to steer between the radical extremes of fascism and communism to deliver a “New Deal” to the American people.

The so-called alphabet soup of the New Deal gave us the regulation of banks and businesses, protections for workers, an end to child labor in factories, repair of the damage to the Great Plains, new municipal buildings and roads and airports, rural electrification, investment in artists and writers, and Social Security for workers who were injured or unemployed. Government outlays as a percentage of GDP began to rise. World War II shot them off the charts, to more than 40% of GDP, as the United States helped the world fight fascism.

That number dropped again after the war, and in 1975, federal expenditures settled in at about 20% of GDP. Except for short-term spikes after financial crises (spending shot up to 24% after the 2008 crash, for example, and to 31% during the 2020 pandemic), the spending-to-GDP ratio has remained at about that set point.

The national debt is growing because tax revenues have plummeted. Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic, and have left the United States with a tax burden nowhere close to the average of the 38 other nations in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), all of which are market-oriented democracies. And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations.

Republicans who backed those tax cuts now want more. They are trying to force through a measure that will dramatically cut the nation’s social safety net while at the same time increasing the national debt by $3.3 trillion over the next ten years.

“There are two ways of viewing the government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life,” FDR said in his speech accepting the 1932 Democratic nomination for president. “The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man.” The other “is based upon the simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.”

The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill takes wealth from the American people to give it to the very wealthy and corporations, and Democrats are calling their colleagues out.

“This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on the floor of the Senate. “Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.”

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: The legislative filibuster, which creates a 60-vote threshold, only exists when it is convenient for Senate Republicans, Judd Legum, right, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, July 1, 2025. Whenever the filibuster threatens to impede a Republican priority, it is ignored.

This week, Senate Republicans are seeking to pass President Trump's megabill under the budget reconciliation process, which allows for the expedited consideration of tax and spending measures. Crucially, a budget reconciliation bill is not subject to a filibuster. This allows Senate Republicans, who control 53 seats in the Senate, to pass the legislation with a simple majority.

But the budget reconciliation process, which is used by both parties, is also limited. One basic limitation is that all the provisions must make changes to spending or revenues. Another is that a budget reconciliation bill cannot increase the budget deficit outside of the 10-year budget window. Whether a legislative provision can be included in the budget reconciliation process is determined by the Senate Parliamentarian. While the Senate Parliamentarian is formally selected by the Senate Majority Leader, the position is non-partisan.

The current Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, right, has served in the role since 2012, maintaining her position even as the party controlling the Senate changed.

That created a problem for Senate Republicans. The centerpiece of Trump's megabill is to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts for individuals, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy. This would violate budget reconciliation rules because extending the 2017 tax cuts would increase the budget deficit beyond the 10-year window, adding trillions to the national debt.

This is a matter that would normally be considered by MacDonough. And it is not hard to predict her decision. The permanent extension of the 2017 tax cuts cannot be included in the legislation because it violates budget reconciliation rules. Although the Senate Parliamentarian can be overruled by a majority vote, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has pledged not to do so.

Republicans navigated this issue by refusing to meet with MacDonough to discuss the matter.

Instead, they took the position that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could unilaterally determine the budgetary impact of Trump's megabill. Graham then decided that the extension of Trump's tax cuts should be excluded from the calculations, even though Trump's tax cuts for individuals are set to expire at the end of the year.

Graham accomplished this by directing the Congressional Budget Office to calculate the budgetary impact of the bill, assuming that Trump's tax cuts would continue in perpetuity, even if the megabill did not become law. The technical term for this is changing the budget's "baseline." It is a complete fiction.

Nevertheless, on Monday, Senate Republicans voted to approve Graham's decision to manipulate the budget baseline. The vote was 53-47, with all Republicans voting in support of Graham's scheme and all Democrats opposed.

While the legislative maneuvering is somewhat complex, the bottom line is simple. Permanently extending Trump's 2017 individual tax cuts should be subject to the filibuster. But Republicans want to permanently extend Trump's 2017 individual tax cuts, and do not have the votes to overcome a filibuster. So, Republicans are ignoring the filibuster.

Senate Republicans ignore filibuster at behest of fossil fuel industry

This is not the first time in recent weeks that Senate Republicans have ignored the filibuster. On May 22, the Senate passed three resolutions revoking a set of waivers that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had granted to California during the Biden administration, allowing the state to set strict regulations on vehicle emissions. These resolutions were passed by a simple majority and signed into law by Trump in mid-June, despite the fact that both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and MacDonough advised that they were subject to the filibuster. Repeal of the waivers was a top priority of the fossil fuel industry.

Under the Congressional Review Act, lawmakers have the power to reject rules recently issued by federal agencies and prevent agencies from issuing any similar rules in the future with a simple majority vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster. For many years, the Senate has relied on the GAO to determine what is and is not a “rule” that falls under the purview of the Congressional Review Act. If the GAO decides that an action by a particular agency is not a rule, then the Senate must overcome the filibuster in order to nullify it.In 2023, the GAO decided that the EPA’s waivers for California emissions restrictions are not “rules” that the Senate can easily overturn. Earlier this year, the GOA reiterated its stance, and MacDonough concurred. But Senate Republicans decided to disregard that decision.

Instead, they broke precedent and voted to overrule the GAO and MacDonough’s determination that the waivers are not rules and allow the resolutions revoking them to be passed by a simple majority.

 

New York Times, Bush, Obama and Bono Commend USAID Staff Members on Their Last Day, Christopher Flavelle, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). Two ex-presidents and a rock star thanked the outgoing workers of a doomed agency.

As most staff members at the U.S. Agency for International Development marked their final day with the agency, they got thanks from two presidents and a rock star.

The Trump administration has eliminated most U.S. foreign assistance programming, saying that it fails to advance American interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the former Trump adviser Elon Musk worked to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., arguing that its staff was insubordinate. But in recorded messages shared with employees on Monday, former presidents painted a very different picture of the agency and its place in American foreign policy.

“You’ve shown the great strength of America through your work, and that is our good heart,” former President George W. Bush told the staff in a video message played during a videoconference. The video, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times, was reported earlier by The Associated Press.

Mr. Bush, shown at right in an official photo from his presidency, cited the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which he initiated, and which has been estimated to have saved 25 million lives. That program’s future, like much of U.S. foreign aid, is unclear.

“Is it in our interest that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is,” Mr. Bush said. “On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your hard work, and God bless you.”

Former President Barack Obama, shown at left on a magazine cover, said in a separate message that the decision to dismantle U.S.A.I.D. would “go down as a colossal mistake.”

“Ending your presence and your programs out in the world hurts the most vulnerable, and it hurts the United States,” Mr. Obama said, citing the agency’s efforts to prevent disease, fight drought and build schools.

“To many people around the world, U.S.A.I.D. is the United States,” Mr. Obama added. He encouraged the agency’s staff to take pride in their work, even as they looked for new jobs.

Bono, the U2 frontman and longtime advocate for developing countries, offered a lyrical send-off in a video of his own.Editors’ PicksCondo or Co-op: Which Is Better for First-Time Buyers?They’re Tiny. They’re Slow. And People Are Obsessed.A British Summer Dessert That Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

“They called you crooks — when you were the best of us, there for the rest of us,” he said. “And don’t think any less of us, when politics makes a mess of us.”

“It’s not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick,” Bono added. “If this isn’t murder, I don’t know what is.”

 

Convicted murderer Bryan Kohberger is shown at top right, along with four student victims slain in Idaho, shown at right, from the top: Kaylee Goncalves and Ethan Chapin, bottom right, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen.

New York Times, Surprise Plea Deal Is Reached in Idaho Murder Case, Mike Baker and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). Bryan Kohberger, a former criminology student, is charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students. Prosecutors said they had reached a plea agreement that avoids the death penalty.

Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, has reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to relatives of the victims.

Mr. Kohberger had been set to go on trial on murder charges in August, nearly three years after the killings, which occurred at a residence near the university in Moscow, Idaho. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday.

In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr. Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life sentences and waive all rights to appeal.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, criticized the prosecution team for failing to consult with the families. Some of them had worked to change Idaho law to allow the firing squad as a form of capital punishment.

“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement.

In their letter to the families, prosecutors wrote that the plea deal was “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”

“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice.”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Republicans Beware: Medicaid Is Not a Soft Target, Paul Krugman, right, July 1, 2025. America’s health backstop is more popular than ever.

Does anyone remember the 1995 government shutdown and why it happened? Basically Newt Gingrich, fresh off a big Republican victory in the midterm election, was trying to force Bill Clinton to make big cuts in Medicare. He failed, in large part because Medicare was and is an immensely popular program.

A decade later, George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security. But he, too, failed, because Social Security is also immensely popular.

But the Republican quest to rip up as much of the social safety net as possible never ends. And for the past 15 years or so that has meant steering clear, for now, of Medicare and Social Security, which are middle-class programs, and going after Medicaid instead. If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which is, incredibly, the legislation’s actual name — goes into effect, Medicaid will be cut by around a trillion dollars over the next decade. (As of this morning, the fate of that bill remains uncertain.)

What is Medicaid? Like Medicare, it’s government-provided health insurance. But unlike Medicare, it’s “means-tested”: your income has to fall below a certain level before you’re eligible. This makes Medicaid a program for the poor or near-poor — and that, for many on the right, suggests a political opportunity.

Ostensibly, the right attacks Medicaid because it costs too much. I mean, it’s a government program, which means that it must be riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And surely there must be millions of lazy people getting health care through Medicaid who should be getting up off their couches and going to work.

The reality is that none of this is true.

No doubt there’s waste and fraud in Medicaid, as there is in any system created and run by human beings. But overall Medicaid provides essential health care relatively cheaply. Once you adjust for the relatively poor health of the average Medicaid recipient — chronic illness can make you poor! — Medicaid appears to have significantly lower costs than private insurance:

Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others:

Oh, and one thing we know from repeated experience is that adding work requirements to Medicaid does not, in fact, lead to more people working.

I don’t know how many of the right-wingers clamoring for drastic Medicaid cuts believe the stories they tell about waste and lazy Americans who won’t get a job. My guess, though, is that they don’t care whether these stories are true. They’re going after Medicaid because they see it as a soft target — a program that helps lower-income Americans, and who cares about them? Medicaid’s beneficiaries, they imagine, are the new welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

But a funny thing has happened to public opinion about Medicaid. The share of Americans covered by the program has increased a lot over the past 15 years:

And the fact that so many Americans now receive Medicaid means that many people have either benefited from the program or know people who have. And as a result the program has become remarkably popular:

83 percent favorability — 74 percent among Republicans! — is incredibly high. In fact, Medicaid appears to have slightly higher favorability than apple pie.

What this suggests is that Republicans who consider Medicaid a soft target, a program that only benefits inner-city rats, are going to be shocked by the blowback if they do manage to eviscerate this key piece of American health care.

 New York Times, U.S. Immigration: Why Is Trump Returning MS-13 Leaders to El Salvador? 5 Takeaways From the Times Investigation, Staff Report, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). The agreement with Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is undermining a long-running federal investigation into the gang, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

When Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, agreed earlier this year to imprison deportees from the United States, he had a specific request of the Trump administration: the return of top MS-13 leaders in American custody.

For the past several months, a team of New York Times reporters has been investigating how their return is affecting President Trump’s pledge to dismantle the transnational gang and why Mr. Bukele would want top gang leaders back in his country.Bukele could benefit from MS-13 leaders being let out of U.S. custody.

U.S. and Salvadoran officials have said MS-13 leaders are being returned to face justice in El Salvador. But The Times found that American prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail. Investigators had even begun scrutinizing Mr. Bukele himself.

Some who were part of the federal investigation worry that Mr. Bukele wants the gang leaders back to prevent them from revealing damaging information about his government.The return of top MS-13 leaders could hamper the U.S. investigation.

The investigation began in the first Trump administration, spearheaded by a cross-agency group called Joint Task Force Vulcan. But now two major cases against some of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders that emerged from that effort could be badly damaged, and other defendants could be less likely to cooperate or testify in court, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative.Prosecutors are quietly seeking to drop charges against top leaders.

After working for years to get senior MS-13 leaders into custody, federal prosecutors are now quietly dropping charges against them. One top leader, César López Larios, was put on a plane to El Salvador in March with other migrants sent to a maximum-security prison. Mr. López had been in U.S. custody for less than a year and was awaiting trial on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.

Prosecutors in Long Island are now seeking to drop charges against Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, who was accused along with 12 other gang leaders in February 2023 of narco-terrorism, murder and corruption. 

The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump’s falsehoods endanger national security, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 1, 2025. Words & Phrases we can ‘totally and completely obliterate.’

The “tell” in Donald Trump’s lie about the results of the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites was “completely and totally.” It is one thing to claim (falsely) that we “obliterated” the Iranian program, but “completely and totally obliterate”?

After all, “obliterate” means “to remove utterly.” Did we truly “completely and totally remove utterly” Iran’s nuclear threat? Well, no. We did not.

For one thing, approximately 880 pounds of 60% enriched uranium is “missing.” The Iranians had apparently moved the stockpile stored underground at the Isfahan facility. Moreover, even the most optimistic talk from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggests the program was set back only a couple of years. The U.S. assessment suggested we bought only a few months.

The Trump team spent days frantically trying to deny that, even attempting to divert attention from its misrepresentation by attacking Fox News Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin, perhaps the only real reporter left there.Moreover, we did not even try to hit all underground facilities.

“The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s largest nuclear sites [Isfahan] last weekend because the site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective, the US’ top general told senators during a briefing on Thursday,” CNN reported.

You cannot “obliterate” what you never try to hit. Worse, the Iranians have now learned that the way to protect their sites is to go as far underground as Isfahan.

To add insult to Trump’s bruised ego, the Washington Post reported, “The United States obtained intercepted communication between senior Iranian officials discussing this month’s military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and remarking that the attack was less devastating than they had expected, said four people familiar with the classified intelligence circulating within the U.S. government.” Ouch.

The Iranians are not the only ones underwhelmed. “I just don’t think the president was telling the truth when he said the program was obliterated,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said after a belated briefing. If Iran, as he said, retains “significant remaining capability,” then we didn’t “obliterate” (let alone “completely and totally obliterate”) Iran’s nuclear program.

In a similar vein, Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), who holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, told reporters: “I was very disappointed that we learned very little about the inventory of high enriched uranium — 60% enriched uranium — and [its] whereabouts and what that means for the time to Iran's first nuclear device."

In other words, coherent policy is impossible without an accurate understanding of the status of Iran’s program, something Trump obviously has no interest in determining.

The dispute is not solely about the “completely and totally” unreliable U.S. president nor the reputation and nonpartisan nature of the intelligence community. Should Trump continue his dangerous charade and conclude that there is no longer any need to negotiate, we will have the worst of all worlds: a wounded regime with the capacity and incentive to race toward a nuclear weapon, which it will bury far underground. (To make matters even more confusing, Trump now says talks are back on again; Iran says they are not.)

“If you really want to have reasonable confidence in a solution over time," Christopher Ford, a former assistant undersecretary of state for nonproliferation in Trump's first term, told NPR, “you need to have an agreement with some kind of cooperative verification and ongoing monitoring.”

Something—I don’t know—like the Iran nuclear deal Trump ripped up in 2018 without an alternative in place?By grossly exaggerating the degree of success, Trump loses the plot. The purpose of hard power is to trigger meaningful negotiations toward an improved, long-term version of the Iran nuclear deal. This is what “coercive diplomacy” is all about. With his obsessive need for dominance and his desire to “completely and totally” prove his critics wrong, Trump again fails to understand that there is no permanent military solution to the Iranian nuclear threat.

Veteran Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross wrote, “At minimum, the United States should take advantage of the profound damage to Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure by pushing for a diplomatic agreement on the future of both.” Rather than rely on Trump’s chest-beating or wait around until the next Israeli strike, the United States needs to operate in the real world.

“Washington would be far better off working toward agreements with intrusive monitoring and clear understandings about the consequences of violations,” Ross argued.

Trump foolishly thinks that he can so intimidate Iran (as he does his domestic enemies) that it would not dare try something on his watch. That is simply delusional. (Moreover, if the news report is true, Iran is anything but intimidated by his empty boasts.)

No wonder Trump wants to clamp down on notice to, consultation with, and even briefings for Congress. He surely does not want to give lawmakers grounds to prove that his bluster was baseless, the problem remains, and only negotiations (based on coercive diplomacy) can achieve a permanent solution.

So, let’s stop using “obliterate” (and exercise extreme skepticism when Trump dresses up lies with adjectives such as “completely and totally”) when the truth is: “The military successfully completed its specified mission, setting back Iran’s program some undermined amount of time but not destroying Iran’s capacity or will to rebuild it."  

New York Times, Critic’s Notebook: Lauren Sánchez Bezos Commits to the Corset, Vanessa Friedman, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). At her wedding to Jeff Bezos, the bride took her love of a nipped waist to the next level.

Has any woman loved a corset as much as Lauren Sánchez Bezos? Mae West, perhaps, but that was back in the heyday of her Hollywood career, almost a century before Ms. Sánchez Bezos burst into the public consciousness as the new object of the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ very public affection.

Now that she and Mr. Bezos have made their union official, and the foam and fervor surrounding the wedding that riveted the world has (somewhat) settled, so, too, her affiliation with that garment was made complete.

In many ways, Ms. Sánchez Bezos’ penchant for a constricting garment most associated with monarchs and courtesans has become a symbol of the complicated, impossible-to-ignore feelings that their relationship, and wedding itself, have engendered. The ones rooted in age-old stereotypes about feminism, wealth, class, women’s advancement and how it all looks. Or should look.

Rarely has one woman’s style become such a talking point. For every bosom-boosting bustier Ms. Sánchez Bezos has worn, the criticisms have rained down. “Inappropriate,” shrieked a host of online commentators after she wore a crimson off-the-shoulder corseted gown by Rosario to the state dinner for Japan in 2024.

Megyn Kelly was even less diplomatic on her podcast after Ms. Sánchez Bezos wore a white Alexander McQueen pantsuit with a lacy white corset underneath to President Trump’s swearing in ceremony in January. “She looked like a prostitute!” Ms. Kelly said. “She looked like a hooker!”

And yet, Ms. Sánchez Bezos doesn’t seem to care. She has refused to conform to the archetype of the demure, W.A.S.P. upper class. Bombshell Sophia Loren was her bridal inspiration, not Babe Paley.

 

New York Times, Ford Foundation’s New Leader Is From Yale Law School, Alan Blinder, July 1, 2025. Heather K. Gerken, the dean of the law school, will run the powerful philanthropy, known for pushing for social justice.

Heather K. Gerken, right, the dean of Yale Law School, will become the president of the Ford Foundation later this year, the group said Tuesday.

Ms. Gerken, who was seen last year as a contender for the Yale presidency, will take over one of the country’s wealthiest and mostinfluential philanthropies at a time of especially fraught debate about social justice and inequality, two of the foundation’s touchstones.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Gerken said she was looking forward to working at the foundation “to protect democracy and the rule of law and further our mission to create a more just and fair world for everyone.”

Ms. Gerken will succeed Darren Walker, who announced last summer that he would conclude a 12-year tenure in 2025. About a decade ago, he began to redirect Ford’s philanthropy toward combating inequality, writing then that the foundation would work on “not just wealth disparities, but injustices in politics, culture and society that compound inequality and limit opportunity.”

It was a shift in focus for the philanthropy, which was founded in 1936 by Edsel Ford, the only child of Henry Ford, the auto magnate. For many decades, the foundation’s giving was wide-ranging. An early grant helped create what ultimately became PBS, and the foundation went on to spend on everything from orchestras to disaster relief. In 2014, after the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, the foundation was at the center of a daring effort that limited the cuts to retired city workers’ pensions and protected the Detroit Institute of Arts. (The foundation, whose endowment is valued at roughly $16 billion, has also supported journalism programs, including some at The New York Times.)

The Ford Foundation remained a powerhouse after it adjusted its focus. In its most recent publicly available tax return, it reported spending more than $600 million on contributions, gifts and grants, with hundreds of millions more scheduled to be paid in the future. Much of the money recently has gone toward projects it classifies as related to “civic engagement and government,” but it still spreads its largess on an array of initiatives.

In June, for instance, grant recipients included the American Civil Liberties Union’s foundation in Louisiana, the Clinton Foundation, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the National Down Syndrome Congress and Spelman College.

But the foundation has powerful critics who have called for changes to its tax status. As a candidate for Senate, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that Ford and other foundations were “fundamentally cancers on American society, but they pretend to be charities.” Mr. Vance then asked why Ford should not have its assets seized.

Ms. Gerken is expected to take over in November, leaving Yale before her second term was scheduled to conclude in mid-2027.

Ms. Gerken, who earned a law degree from the University of Michigan, clerked for Justice David Souter, worked in private practice and taught at Harvard Law School before her arrival at Yale. After more than a decade there, she became dean in 2017. She won wide praise for increasing enrollment of veterans and a program covering law school tuition for scores of low-income students.

She also led a revolt against the law school rankings published by U.S. News and World Report, a cultural juggernaut in its own right. Even though Yale’s law school had been a fixture in the top spot of the rankings, Ms. Gerken argued that the for-profit publisher relied on an arbitrary formula that led law schools to shape their priorities to match a publisher’s preferences and whims.

In November 2022, Ms. Gerken said that Yale’s law school would no longer respond to U.S. News’s requests for data that helped power its rankings. Harvard made a similar announcement soon after, and dozens more medical and law schools followed.

U.S. News has continued to rank law schools — its latest list has Yale and Stanford tied for best in the nation — but the uprising dented the publisher’s brand.

During Ms. Gerken’s tenure, Yale Law School has occasionally drawn sharp criticism. In 2022, for instance, after student protesters disrupted a Federalist Society event, two federal appeals court judges accused the school of hostility toward conservative speech and said they would not hire its graduates for clerkships.

The judges, both appointees of President Trump, later agreed to speak at Yale.

More recently, the law school ousted a pro-Palestinian activist, Helyeh Doutaghi, from her role as deputy director of the Law and Political Economy Project after a website that described itself as “empowered" by artificial intelligence accused her of membership in a terrorist group. Dr. Doutaghi denied wrongdoing and told The Times in an interview this year that she was “not a member of any organization that would constitute a violation of U.S. law.”

Yale fired Dr. Doutaghi within weeks, saying it was acting because she refused to aid in its investigation of the matter. The school’s decision sparked an internal backlash, and some of Dr. Doutaghi’s former colleagues accused Yale of a “fear-based and excessive” reaction.

Still, Ms. Gerken’s background in constitutional law — in 2009, she wrote “The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It” — appealed to the foundation’s leaders and supporters as they searched for Mr. Walker’s successor.

Statements from Ms. Gerken’s allies, which Ford distributed on Tuesday, suggested that they expect the foundation to have a sustained focus on preserving democratic norms under her leadership.

Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton University’s president, said Ms. Gerken, an alumna of the university and a trustee, was an ideal choice “in a moment when constitutional democracy needs urgent attention and engagement.”

J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge and a titan of the conservative bar who has sharply criticized Mr. Trump, was even more effusive.

“Wherever there is hope, promise, and common cause to be found for an embattled and beleaguered nation and world, Heather Gerken will find it,” he wrote.