The BBC noted in a reply memorandum Wednesday that it has already sent multiple “requests to government agencies seeking to obtain the same evidence the Special Counsel gathered and described as ‘evidence establish[ing] that the violence [on January 6] was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay.” 

But the Trump administration rejected those requests, claiming executive privilege. The BBC demanded more information on how Trump lost those same claims during Smith’s probe.

“The government errs in characterizing the Executive Privilege Decisions as ‘information that might be incrementally helpful in litigating a potential future discovery dispute.’ Instead, unsealed decisions will likely be crucial to obtaining information that could be dispositive of President Trump’s lawsuit, as the BBC expects them to show that President Trump’s assertions of executive privilege have already been rejected,” the BBC wrote. “The Court should therefore further unseal the Executive Privilege Decisions and prevent the injustice that would arise from President Trump using already-rejected privilege claims to withhold such vital information.”

This all stems from a $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed last year against the BBC over a 2024 episode of Panorama that he claimed was defamatory because it spliced together sections of his January 6, 2021, speech, highlighting his call for supporters to “fight like hell,” while omitting his request for peaceful protest. If the BBC can prove that Trump was aware of the violence he was fomenting, his whole defamation case falls apart.

On Tuesday, a judge allowed the BBC to move forward with subpoenas against Trump’s closest advisers and confidants—like family members, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon—to better determine what Trump’s actual goals were on January 6. The judge also ordered Trump to hand over his financial records, opening yet another lane of exposure against the president.  

The funding did not align with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health’s outlined priorities, according to a government fact sheet that specified the office would not support “content that encourages, normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.”

One such organization interrogated by the assistant secretary—South Carolina nonprofit Fact Forward—was accused of including lessons with “advice on making condom use more pleasurable” and promoting discussions that normalize “use of pornography,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.

“That information was just not true,” Rena Dixon, who runs the group, told the Times. Dixon added that Fact Forward had never used the lessons or materials to which the assistant secretary referred.

Other program directors that spoke with the Times also said that the government had distorted the materials they were using in order to make erroneous claims about their education plans. Several noted that the grants they won required them to use “courses from a federally approved list shown by research to be age-appropriate and effective,” according to the Times.

The federal government first got involved in preventing teen pregnancy in 2010, allocating roughly $100 million to the cause and eventually creating the Office of Adolescent Health and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, or OAH.

At the time, teen birth rates were already in decline, yet the program’s influence still caused rates to fall faster than ever. The government-funded programs advanced the waning trend by investing in proper sex education and increasing access to reproductive health care in communities suffering from disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy.

But Donald Trump and his allies have nonetheless abhorred the effort. Last month, a spokesperson for Health and Human Services revealed that the agency had canceled 53 out of 67 grants—totaling $68 million—alloted to the pregnancy prevention program. The impact was broad, affecting more than two dozen states across the country.

It’s unclear if the effort will hold up in court. Trump took similar actions during his first term, suddenly canceling dozens of grants issued under the Obama-era program in 2017, though his efforts did not succeed.

In April 2018, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—then a U.S. district judge—ruled that HHS had violated its own regulations by prematurely ending the grants without an adequate explanation, ordering the agency to restore the terminated funds.

But the family of 15-year-old Aangad Singh believes he may have been kept out of the competition’s final because of his Sikh background and visible turban, NOTUS reports.

Singh, a rising high school junior who lives in Connecticut, entered the competition in February just like other high school students around the country. He scored well enough to reach the finals in Washington, D.C., at the end of June and make the final eight. But his elimination after that left his family—and many of his competitors—puzzled.

The Singh family didn’t think Aangad had performed poorly, but there wasn’t a live scoreboard. Other contestants told them after the competition that they were sure Aangad had won and were shocked that he wasn’t in the top three. When Aangad’s mother, Ramandeep, asked an official with the Department of Education, which helped run the contest, for the final scores, the official told her that was proprietary information.

So the Singh family waited until the competition was televised on CBS three weeks later, and Aangad was shocked to learn some of his correct answers were labeled wrong.

In one instance, Aangad was asked to give four examples where federal courts have jurisdiction, as outlined in Article 3 of the Constitution.

Two of his answers—“Parties of state and citizens of another state,” and “Case with state and foreign nation”—were marked wrong. He showed his father a copy of the Constitution proving that his answers were right.

In another instance, during a lightning round, Aangad was asked, “Which amendment ended slavery?” and his answer was marked wrong. Initially, he thought his pronunciation of “Thirteenth” was bad and that his th sounded like an f. But he was reassured when the TV subtitles proved that he said the correct answer.

After the round ended, each contestant was interviewed by host Mario Lopez before he announced the three finalists, and Aangad gave an answer about being proud to share his knowledge about the country’s founding principles. Then he watched white contestants from Michigan, Washington, and Wyoming announced as the winners.

Singh’s family thought that he was robbed, and weighed taking action. To his mother and uncle, it seemed like Aangad was being kept out of the spotlight—and a visit to the Oval Office to meet President Trump—because he was a brown kid with a turban. They didn’t care as much about getting a share of the $250,000 in scholarship money as much as Aangad being recognized for his hard work.

The Wyoming winner was a homeschooled girl who would later be touted by the Department of Education for culture-war propaganda, and the Washington state winner told Trump at the White House that she wanted to attend Hillsdale College, a politically conservative school, to which Trump said he could give a recommendation.

Aangad’s father, Bhalindar, reached out to the Department of Education twice by email, but has yet to get a response. The department told NOTUS that the questions in the competition were “developed, judged, and scored independently by the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation.” NOTUS sent the foundation a detailed list of questions, but also hasn’t heard back.

Minutes before NOTUS’s deadline, the Department of Education responded, saying that the competition’s rules stated that judges would “exercise independent good faith judgement [sic]” in selecting finalists and winners, and that, by participating, contestants “agree that the decision of the judges is final and binding.”

Siad was one of many friends and associates that Epstein had in France, and was under investigation in the country for rape and human trafficking. 

Siad is mentioned in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice more than 2,000 times. Some of the most disturbing conversations between him and Epstein, occurring over a decade, involve him sending pictures and descriptions of young women to the convicted sex offender. 

“Hello Jeffrey I just found an amizinng One she is 20 years old but she looks younger from Latvia 5’8 She just Did a world campaign For Nivea Last weeck and she will be Doing an other campaign for Garnnier this week willing to sign with me as a personal agent. I am traveling with here to Paris this week let me know if you think it will be good to take here To Next and also what Agency you thing is apropriate for here in The US she said that she meet Jean luck once in Danemark wile she was there with Scoop Models . because a girl like this is future star we need to make here a good contract world wide” Siad wrote in one email in 2009, referring to another modeling agent, Epstein friend, and alleged sex trafficker, Jean-Luc Brunel—who died by suicide in his jail cell in 2022.

“The Russian girl as canceled her fly . I wanted to make for you a great surprise ,it didn’t work this time ,I really hope that it work next time . In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick , some time no fish,” he wrote in another 2015 email to Epstein. “I really did good work for scouting in Scandinavia most of them will be ready to start with 2morrow at list 5 of them sixteen and seventeen will be ready for next year .But I can’t send you there pictures as know.”

“The French her name is [REDACTED] she is fifteen her parents checked me out and they are very happy there daughter to start modelin,” he continued. “I am going back to Stockholm then Gotland for what we call Stockholm week all the girls from sweden gather there for five days non stop Parties .to through my hooks.”  

These emails sound like Epstein commissioned Siad to go around and find women and girls to funnel to him for over a decade. Siad has denied all allegations against him, telling CNN just last month that he had no idea Epstein was abusing the girls he sent his way. 

“I never doubt that because I never heard anything from anyone who I introduced [to Epstein] who came back to me that they had a bad—a bad situation with him,” Siad said. “He was such a powerful person. And how can I not trust him?”

Siad was originally from Algeria and moved to Sweden in the 1980s before settling in Paris, where he likely met Epstein through Brunel, although it’s unclear when. 

Epstein spent a lot of time in Paris, particularly after his first conviction. Conductor Frédéric Chaslin and diplomat Fabrice Aidan are two of the other most prominent Frenchmen mentioned in the files along with Siad and Brunel. 

For the U.S. to sell enriched uranium or nuclear power plants abroad, it must first reach an agreement with the country under article 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The U.S. has 26 of these so-called 123 agreements with 51 governments, including Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates. Most of these were negotiated so the U.S. could sell both reactors and low-enriched uranium fuel that cannot be used in nuclear weapons. Almost all of the deals omit permission for states to pursue uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing—thus reducing global risk, as highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium can both be used to produce nuclear weapons. Japan and the European Union, with their strong legal systems and acceptance of the most stringent inspection obligations conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, are the only two 123 deals that allow significant enrichment or reprocessing of U.S. materials.

Saudi Arabia is not Japan or the EU, and its agreement with the U.S. sounds a lot different from the standard 123 deal. This raises concerns that Saudi Arabia is using its close financial ties to the Trump family to manipulate U.S. cooperation to pursue a nuclear weapon option, especially if Iran continues to be a nuclear threshold state.

Of greatest concern is a provision that could open the door to Saudi Arabia having a uranium enrichment facility. The pact reportedly agrees that the two countries will conduct a two-year fuel-cycle study on the economic feasibility of domestic enrichment in Saudi Arabia. If the two sides agree that it’s feasible, then the U.S. would build an enrichment facility there without giving Saudi Arabian citizens access to the sensitive technology—a so-called “black box” approach. If the two sides do not agree enrichment makes sense, then Saudi Arabia would not be allowed to build its own domestic enrichment for 10 years. What happens after that is not clear. The fact that the two-year window would fall within the time remaining in Trump’s term is a sign that the fix for Saudi Arabia might be in and approval of enrichment a foregone conclusion.

Another worrying provision in the deal “may limit international inspectors from going to any sites in the country that they think could be a pathway to diverting fuel to weapons projects,” the Times reported. 

That the U.S. negotiated a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia is not itself a shocking development. The Biden administration held preliminary discussions with Riyadh about a 123 agreement, but with a set of very stringent provisions that are not included in the new deal. The Biden administration’s goal was threefold: Improve regional security by facilitating Israeli-Saudi reconciliation, keep China from becoming a major provider of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and the region, and boost the prospects for U.S. nuclear commercial sales while enhancing nonproliferation goals and standards.

The Biden deal would have required that Saudi Arabia establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, and that Israel agree to make progress on the treatment of Palestinians and on the status of the Occupied Territories in West Bank and Gaza. The Biden concept would also have required Saudi Arabia to agree to only pursue nuclear cooperation with the U.S., cutting out China, Russia, and other states. This clause was driven largely by concern that Beijing or Moscow might not be as careful as the U.S. about sharing sensitive nuclear technology; if the U.S. were the main provider in Saudi Arabia, it could maintain greater control over any nuclear activities the country might want to pursue. (There are reports of an exclusivity clause in a secret side letter to the Trump deal, but that has not been made public.)

Lastly, the Biden deal would have required that Riyadh accept the highest possible standards for nuclear transparency and inspections by the IAEA, including the Additional Protocol accepted by Japan, the EU, the UAE, and even Iran under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. If those goals were met, then the Biden administration was willing to consider an option for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to jointly own a uranium enrichment facility under a black box arrangement—with the facility being either in Saudi Arabia or in the United States with Saudi financing.

Even these conditions raised serious concerns among U.S. nuclear experts. But it was for naught: Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel derailed the discussions.

Now Trump is on the verge of striking a notably looser, less restrictive deal with Saudi Arabia. There are good reasons to be concerned that the administration has neither the motivation nor the expertise to ensure that any complex nuclear negotiation advances U.S. interests in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The mishandling of nuclear negotiations by the first and second Trump administrations are well documented, including the decision to blow up the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal struck by President Obama and the loose wording of last month’s memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran.

Any deal that gives sensitive nuclear technology to a country whose leader has openly stated he would develop a nuclear weapon if Iran did so should raise major concerns—and draw scrutiny by Congress. Under the Atomic Energy Act, nuclear cooperation agreements must be submitted to lawmakers, who then have 90 days of “continuous session” to decide whether to reject them. If Congress takes no action, then the agreement would go into force and could be ratified by the executive branch. There are not enough in-session days in the current Congress for this deal to be reviewed, which means the next Congress after the midterms will have to consider this deal. There are a number of questions that need to be answered:

• What conditions would be imposed on any future U.S.-Saudi enrichment facility, and what happens if Saudi Arabia violates its nuclear nonproliferation obligations?
• Can Saudi Arabia pursue enrichment or reprocessing if the fuel-cycle study is inconclusive or determines domestic fuel-cycle activities are not economically justified?
• Can Saudi Arabia acquire nuclear or other sensitive technology from China or other states?
• Does pursuing this deal reduce or eliminate America’s ability to encourage future diplomatic engagement between Israel and Saudi Arabia?

In the end, the Trump administration and a GOP-controlled Congress is all but certain to let the proposed agreement enter into force. However, it will take many months for that to happen and many more for any nuclear contracts and deals to be put into place. But now is the time for vigilance. These next few months, between the U.S.-Saudi deal and the Iran war (the country’s 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium are still unaccounted for), may well determine whether the nearly 80-year effort to prevent nuclear weapons from spreading to dozens more countries succeeds or fails.

Defending the deal to an angry Congress during his confirmation hearings last week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche adopted a two-part mantra. The slush fund would not go forward, though he has perversely refused to formalize that and has been prickly toward anyone who insists he should. The tax amnesty, meanwhile, remains, legitimized as consideration for Trump’s dismissal of his suit against the IRS.

Unfortunately for Blanche, both legs of his defense were sawed out from under him last Wednesday at his hearing. The unraveling of Blanche’s position on the fund came under questioning from Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn stood at the witness table with an enlarged copy of the settlement and walked Blanche through its own language: The terms “may be modified only upon the written agreement of the parties.” Had there been any such written agreement? No, Blanche conceded. Then Cornyn asked the pivotal question: Is the settlement an enforceable contract? Blanche’s answer: “Yes, it’s an enforceable document.” Trump’s side, he allowed, “could try to enforce the contract” and “could potentially say that we breached by not moving forward.”

That is the whole ball game. If the agreement is enforceable, it is enforceable by its beneficiary: Donald Trump. He and his companies have already done their part, dismissing the (worthless) lawsuit, which obligates DOJ to come through with its promises of the slush fund and tax amnesty.

So Blanche did two remarkable things at once. First, he handed Trump an enforceable right to $2 billion in public money in return for nothing. And second, by insisting his own say-so can terminate the fund, he confirmed the deal is collusive. In a real dispute between real adversaries, DOJ’s assurances about termination would be meaningless, even absurd, because the beneficiary could simply enforce the contract. Blanche’s word carries weight only because Trump and his Justice Department were never on opposite sides of the “v.” here to begin with.

Blanche’s testimony also reanimates the tax amnesty; and here the trouble is not that his defense collapses but that it proves too much. Pressed by Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Adam Schiff on the order shielding Trump, his sons, and his companies from IRS audits, Blanche rested his entire defense on the settlement, calling the audit release “typical” and anchoring the immunity to “that settlement” at every turn.

But set his two answers side by side. On the amnesty, the agreement is valid, binding, enforceable—a live instrument DOJ means to honor. On the fund, the same agreement is a dead letter the department can simply decline to perform. The provisions sit in one document, rise on the same consideration, stand or fall on the same enforceability. What legal principle keeps one alive and lets the other lapse? There is none: No doctrine of contract carves a single agreement in half this way.

What Blanche offered the committee was not a legal position at all. It was doggerel: a contract that binds when he wants immunity and evaporates when he wants to bury the fund, a settlement at once ironclad and a dead letter. It has the meter of law but none of its logic. You cannot pocket Trump’s consideration, enforce the amnesty, and bury the fund.

According to Blanche’s account, what survives is decided not by law but by the caprice of the attorney general, good only until it meets the caprice of the boss who wants it otherwise.

There is a graver point still, one the committee let pass: Two federal courts have already ruled against him. Judge Leonie Brinkema, in the Eastern District of Virginia, held that the challenge to the fund is not moot; and it does not matter what Blanche tells Congress, because mootness is a legal question for a court, not the biased acting attorney general, to determine.

Judge Kathleen M. Williams, in the Southern District of Florida, went further, finding no genuine settlement at all—only a bogus, collusive suit filed for an “improper purpose” that no federal court has power to hear.

Yet Blanche ignored these binding rulings, which DOJ has not challenged. In fact, he had the temerity to tell senators he’d studied the Eleventh Circuit and disagreed with Williams. It’s the same contempt for the courts that was on display in March 2025, when Blanche and Emil Bove pressed removals to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in the teeth of a court order. An attorney general nominee who believes he can pick and choose which legal judgments bind the government is, on that ground alone, disqualified from running the Justice Department.

Blanche made a slip during his testimony of which much has been made. Asked whether he and Trump were friends, Blanche answered, “I’m his lawyer,” before catching himself: “was his lawyer, and now I’m the deputy attorney general.” The correction came a beat too late. It’s not a “gotcha” low blow, but a fair highlight. Everything in last Wednesday’s testimony points to a man who still understands the job exactly as he blurted it out: He is Trump’s lawyer.

Senators, take note. The slush fund and the tax amnesty are both very much in play. Right now, you have leverage: the same leverage that forced Blanche to meet, however cursorily, with victims of Epstein’s crimes after Republican North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis signaled his vote turned on it. If Blanche is confirmed, that leverage is gone.

More, you have clear evidence that this nominee conspired to create a bogus, illegal deal to enrich the boss and impoverish the public, then, to put it gently, misled you about it. A vote to confirm is a vote to ratify not simply these putrid thefts for Trump’s benefit but also the politicization of the Justice Department, the subordination of the courts to the man who runs it, and a single-minded devotion to the one person Blanche aptly, if inadvertently, identified as his client. He has more than earned your “no” vote.

Republicans in the Senate are skeptical of Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on most Canadian goods, excluding energy products, potash, fish, and critical minerals. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told The Hill that he was skeptical and needed more information. 

“I’m not a huge fan of tariffs as a general rule, unless there’s a specific purpose behind it, in most cases, creating a more level playing field for America’s businesses and our economy,” Thune said. “But I don’t, I haven’t heard the rationale for this one just yet.”

Senator Mike Rounds was concerned about the Trump administration’s legal rationale for the tariffs, considering that the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s previous tariffs months ago. 

“My initial concern on it was what the purpose of it was, what the expectation is for, you know, considering a result a success,” Rounds told The Hill. “What is the goal of the tariffs? And I haven’t seen which provision within the law he’s utilizing.”

Trump announced a fresh round of tariffs on Canada Monday, defending his move as a response to trade “discrimination” from Canada on cars, alcohol, and dairy products. Trump is using Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act as legal justification, the Associated Press reports, citing an anonymous administration official. The tariffs apply to goods that the recently expired United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement used to cover. 

Rounds said that the tariffs could also affect the price of goods and hurt American consumers. 

“The affordability side of this thing is something that we should all be concerned with,” Rounds told The Hill. “Right now inflation is not as low as it was; it is up. Fuel prices are very important that we try to maintain, bring down. International issues going on have caused it to come back up again. We need to get the price of gasoline back down again for the American consumer.”

“Tariffs of that magnitude will translate into higher prices for the American consumer,” agreed Senator Bill Cassidy, who is leaving Congress at the end of the year. 

Senator Susan Collins, who is in a tough reelection campaign in Maine, told Politico Tuesday that she has “voted repeatedly against the Canadian tariffs.”  

“Maine and Canada’s economies are very intertwined. A lot of our blueberries, our potatoes, our lobster, our lumber are harvested in Maine, processed in Canada and then come back. I don’t want to see the tariffs on the books,” Collins said. 

Businesses sued the government over Trump’s previous tariffs and they were eventually overturned, with refunds doled out to companies that applied for relief through U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But every time those tariffs were put to a vote in Congress, Republicans refused to overturn them. With the midterms looming, will that be the case again? 

The Trump administration is reportedly considering taking military action against an  Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Mali known as JNIM, according to several current and former U.S. officials that spoke with The Washington Post Wednesday. 

Doing so would add to the president’s warmongering tally, marking the eighth nation he has ordered strikes on since he began his second term as president.

The other affected countries are Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Trump has also ordered 66 strikes against small watercraft in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific in an admittedly futile attempt to interrupt drug smuggling into the U.S., killing at least 221 people in the process.

One of the administration’s top proponents for using brute force in Mali is Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism. The London-born Hungarian has been a fixture in Trump’s inner circle since 2017, though his appointment to Trump’s first administration came as a surprise to many in his field. Gorka had previously been known for his extremist, Islamophobic views, which relegated him to the fringes of Washington and his position as an editor at Breitbart.  

But specialists in the region disagree with the violent approach.

Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, which focuses on the Sahel region, said that America’s influence would be better used in “conflict resolution” by forcing Mali’s stratocracy into talks with JNIM. Otherwise, the White House could be squaring up for another major loss.

“Opting for the military solution one more time won’t get things resolved,” Nasr told the Post. “The French tried that for 10 years. The Russians have been trying for five years. The situation has only gotten worse and worse.”

The DOJ is prosecuting two journalists over their coverage of an anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in Minnesota in January, and one of them, Georgia Ellyse Fort, is charged with three felonies, including a hate crime. Fort’s defense counsel is accusing the government of spying on her, and a judge barred the government from using toll records and cell phone simulators that include Fort’s phone activity.

A Homeland Security Investigations agent, Timothy Gerber, allegedly began using customs summonses to get information about Fort, whose lawyers said that the prosecutors would not say whether the government was continuing to use those summonses. The prosecution is supposed to turn over its evidence to defense counsel in any legal case, but only described the cell phone data from Fort’s phone without turning over the data itself.

In a letter to DOJ prosecutors, first flagged by independent journalist Mary Wheeler, Fort’s lawyers referred to a phone call with DOJ lawyer Ned Hedley in which they got the indication that “the government does not intend to respond to our correspondence in writing, out of the concern expressed on the call that what it represents to us could be put before the Court and/or otherwise used against it.”

It’s an astounding thing for government lawyers to say, especially considering that documenting conversations is a basic requirement in the legal profession. Hedley’s words seem to indicate that the Trump administration is trying to hide something, or knows that its activities might not be legal.

Fort was arrested alongside journalists Don Lemon and Michael Beute—and the case against all of them is weak. The three are accused of rioting and protesting, while they say they were merely covering the event. Refusing to put certain things in writing would seem to undermine the government’s case.

Trump last year filed a lawsuit against the BBC over a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance.” Trump claims the episode was defamatory because it edited together two sections of his January 6, 2021 speech, highlighting his line calling on his supporters to “fight like hell,” while omitting a section in which he told them to peacefully protest. The BBC apologized after Trump threatened them with legal action last year but refused to pay up.

But on Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett said the BBC can proceed with subpoenas for Trump’s closest advisers and confidants—including his family members, Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon—to make the case on what Trump’s actual goals were on January 6.

Lett also ruled that Trump must hand over hundreds of financial records, as Trump argued in his lawsuit that the episode hurt his many businesses.

“All of President Trump’s brand, properties and businesses are impugned or said to have been impugned. Reputational, economic damages, all of that is now at issue in this case,” Lett said, allowing the BBC to investigate the more than 400 companies owned by Trump’s family trust.

The president’s wanton spitefulness, which has earned him a payoff in cases against CBS and ABC, may now be the chief reason he’s finally exposed.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer thwarted attempts by the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday to pin down when the Trump administration would return the money it has reaped from American consumers since Donald Trump initiated his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025.

“The question I’m asking the administration: Are you going to give money back to the American people who paid more?” asked Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. “What the data shows is that the American people picked up about 95 percent of the costs of those Trump tariffs.”

Warren then cited a figure from a February 2026 fact sheet compiled by the Joint Economic Committee Minority, which estimated at the time that Trump’s tariffs had cost American families more than $1,700 each over the course of his second term.

“I just want to know if you even have the slightest effort—are making even the slightest effort—to try and get some of that money back into the pockets of American families,” she continued. “Or does that just not matter to the Trump administration?”

“So what happened is the foreign and domestic importers, right? Who were buying foreign goods, not goods from American workers, foreign goods made by foreign workers who had to pay a fee on those foreign goods, those foreign importers … they can file, they had to pay the tariff, they can get the tariff back,” Greer said, throwing the responsibility of the situation on the Biden administration and what he suggested was its poor budgeting.

“I take that what you’re saying … is that the Trump administration just doesn’t care,” Warren said, chastising Greer for fixating on foreign producers rather than struggling Americans. “[The administration] isn’t even lifting a finger to try and get one nickel of the money that was collected from consumers back into the pockets of consumers.”

She then accused the White House of attempting to peel even more money from the American public by implementing new tariffs under an “obscure law from the 1930s.”

“Here’s my question: Ambassador Greer, if the Supreme Court strikes down your next round of tariffs, do you have a plan in place on how to return the money that American consumers pay under those tariffs?” she asked.

But Greer only regurgitated his previous response, claiming that U.S. Customs had already outlined how foreign manufacturers could recoup their losses.

Warren grills Jamieson Greer about if the Trump administration has any sort of plan to return money American families spent on Trump's illegal tariffs back to them. But Greer quickly pivots to talking about importers, revealing that in fact American families are not on the… pic.twitter.com/tHGebnIfYx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2026

The Supreme Court deemed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs illegal in February, throwing not only the White House’s economic plan into wack, but also the primary driver behind the administration’s foreign policy agenda. The ruling, however, did not stop the president, who within days had already announced new plans to impose more global levies.

Wells was a Black college freshman who went missing on July 4 in the water near Mississippi’s Horn Island while attending a boat party with around 300 other young people. According to Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter, Wells stayed behind on the island with a young woman while the friends he came with left, as he was apparently expecting to get a ride home from someone else. His friends brought back his phone and keys, but not him. His body was found two days later.  

Ledbetter announced that there was likely no foul play involved before even completing an official autopsy, leading civil rights lawyer Ben Crump to step in and call for an independent one, paid for by former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick and conducted on July 10. It found Wells’s cause and manner of death to be “undetermined” but did not rule out foul play.

The independent autopsy most notably showed “red discoloration” on the back of Wells’s head, just above the start of his neck.

While the toxicology report is still missing, this is much more information than what the state was prepared to provide. The state performed an autopsy as well, but has yet to make its findings public.

Ledbetter’s premature dismissal of foul play, the involvement of the son of a local judge, the lack of pictures or videos from that day on Wells’s phone, and the picture his mother shared on social media of him from the day of his disappearance—smiling with three white peers—fueled speculation that race played a role in his death. This most recent finding will only stoke the flames more. 

“We are in Mississippi,” Crump said during a speech at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta on Sunday. “These were three young white men. Nolan was the only young Black man. Had the roles been reversed, we know this investigation would be going differently. It would be like the first 48. They would be interrogating those young, Black boys.”

While there are still questions swirling, claims of foul play or racism are not completely unfounded. Mississippi has a long, disturbing history of anti-Black racism, from the murder of Emmett Till 71 years ago to more recent decisions by state medical examiners to ignore police brutality and other misdeeds during autopsies. 

Trump made the remarks as he was about to board Air Force One and head to Dover Air Force Base for a dignified transfer ceremony to honor the remains of four soldiers killed in the Iran war over the last week.

“Some of you are going with us to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes actually. All of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’ They won’t have a nuclear weapon. So we’re going to honor them,” Trump said.

Trump on fallen US troops: "All of them said very strongly, 'We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.'" pic.twitter.com/q4VklRCFsx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 22, 2026

It makes sense for a president to say that the deaths of U.S. troops are not in vain. However, saying that they all proudly spoke in favor of the war is another story. Military service compels troops to follow orders and deploy wherever they are told, regardless of their personal opinion.

Iran has responded to U.S. and Israeli strikes on its territory with missile strikes across the Middle East, including on Israel, oil infrastructure in the Middle East, international business targets, and U.S. military bases. That has put U.S. troops on the front lines of the war, and so far, at least 18 American soldiers have been killed since hostilities began in February, with more than 500 wounded.

Some soldiers have accused the U.S. government of downplaying injuries from the war, and even lying about the nature of some of the strikes. For Trump to claim that soldiers who are no longer alive were in full agreement with his war is astounding, and insulting to their memories. Trump has no idea how the fallen soldiers felt about the war or if they agreed with it, and the opinions of U.S. troops are as diverse as those of any other group of Americans. The soldiers honored in Dover Wednesday were simply doing their duty and following orders.

Inside Washington

“On day one, Democrats will pass a bill to end the Iran war” 

Democratic lawmakers currently can’t do much to stop the Iran war, House members admitted on Tuesday. Instead, their strategy is to continue to push for oversight and remind voters why gas prices are high. Then, if voters deliver them the House in November, Democrats could cut off funding. Some members would like to see that happen right after the swearing-in ceremony.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” said Representative Adam Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, when I asked what legislative options Democrats currently have to curtail the war. “At the end of the day, this president—most presidents—have asserted their authority to use the military as they see fit.”

Democrats have tried a number of options against President Trump and Republicans. They’ve offered multiple amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, that would prevent future Defense Department funds from being spent on the war, but the Republican-led Rules Committee rejected the amendments. In June, Democrats passed concurrent war powers resolutions in both the House and Senate, each time with the help of four Republicans. But concurrent resolutions don’t have the force of law. Just this Monday, two American service members were killed in Jordan by an Iranian strike.

Now, some House Democrats are planning to vote against the NDAA this week in protest of its unrestricted funding for the war. “To ask us to spend another $1.5 trillion of our constituents’ taxpayer funds, hard-earned, is just outrageous,” said Representative Pat Ryan on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on the Hill Tuesday afternoon making the case that the funding is crucial for national security, and for the first time gave an estimate on the war’s cost to date: a staggering $37.5 billion. His testimony was interrupted multiple times by antiwar protesters, who were removed from the hearing room.

Representative Pete Aguilar, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said Dems’ other symbolic legislative protests will continue, too. “We’re going to use the opportunities we have in the Rules Committee to add amendments to the NDAA [and] to future appropriation bills each and every time,” he said—even though Republicans will likely continue to reject the amendments.

But Dems also have a parallel mission: winning the messaging fight. “Normally, the way this works is public opposition reaches the point where the executive branch realizes they have to respond. But Trump has decided the public opinion doesn’t matter, and that puts us in a very dangerous place,” said Smith.

Even if Trump doesn’t respond to public opinion like most presidents do, Democrats hope voters will. “I think the American public is clear that this is a war they didn’t ask for,” said Aguilar. “I think they’re also very clear that Democrats want nothing to do with this, and so that’ll be the case that we make over the next 105 days or so.”

Representative Ro Khanna thinks the case will make itself: “As gas prices go up, as food prices go up, as Americans see more, unfortunately, of their service members be killed, the cry to end the war will increase,” he told me.

Without currently having enough votes to get their oversight amendments into the NDAA and enforce restrictions on the war, some Democrats are looking ahead to January, when they hope to have a majority in the House. “Hopefully, this war is going to be ended soon,” said Representative Ted Lieu. “If it is still around next term, on day one, Democrats will pass a bill to end the Iran war.”

—Emma Janssen  

Outside Washington

Rob Sand rakes in the (populist?) cash 

Democrat Rob Sand is smashing fundraising records in the Iowa gubernatorial race, The Des Moines Register reports. The most recent disclosures, filed this week, show $9.4 million flowing to Sand and only $6.4 million to Republican Zach Lahn, bringing Sand’s total receipts up to almost $38 million, while Lahn stands at $10 million. 

The Sand campaign on Tuesday was quick to argue that these numbers weren’t just high, but also fundamentally populist: Sand’s donations, the campaign wrote in a press release, came from 33,500 individuals as opposed to Lahn’s 431. Also, 95 percent of Sand’s contributions were under $100, with an average contribution of $280, whereas only 61 percent of Lahn’s contributions were under this figure, with an average contribution of $14,786.

This week, noted political commentator Charlie Cook predicted to people on a Zoom call that Sand will win in November, but he cast doubt on Democrat Josh Turek’s chances against Ashley Hinson in the Senate race. A New York Times/Siena University poll in late June showed Sand up two points, while a Fox News poll conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research showed Sand up nine points.

Elsewhere:

• Florida’s gubernatorial hopefuls, still waiting for the state’s very late August 18 primary, are already pivoting to their general election messaging. Democratic front-runner David Jolly, a former Republican congressman, spent Tuesday hammering his likely Republican opponent Byron Donalds on data centers, Politico reports—“reiterating” his own support for a moratorium and saying Donalds is in the industry’s pocket. Maybe you haven’t been following this race, given that Republicans have occupied the Florida governor’s mansion for the past 27 years. But a recent poll from the University of North Florida showed Donalds leading Jolly by only five points—an intriguingly close margin given that the state’s voters backed Trump to the tune of over 13 points in 2024.
• The Washington Post’s “Climate Coach” columnist Michael J. Coren reports that peanut butter jars only need “a quick scrape” to be recyclable—no scrubbing or rinsing. Huge, if true, as they say on social media. “Peanut butter jars” were trending on the WaPo homepage on Tuesday, while the paper’s scoop on Troy Jackson’s temper languished below the digital fold.

—Heather Souvaine Horn  

The Ideas Factory

Public Citizen announces a “Combating Corruption” event on July 30 at the National Press Club, featuring Senators Chuck Schumer and Sheldon Whitehouse. The watchdog promises that the event “will dive into topics such as money in politics, contracting scandals, pay-to-play schemes and family enrichment deals for elected officials.”

Data for Progress releases a new poll finding that jittery voters overwhelmingly want the government to put some guardrails on AI. First, 69 percent of voters support “requiring AI companies to give the U.S. government a 30-day window to review their new AI models before releasing them to the public.” Second, 68 percent support “requiring large AI companies to invest a portion of their revenue in local development projects and community services.” And even larger majorities support creating new jobs training programs and direct government employment programs for workers who may be displaced by AI.

On Thursday, Brookings hosts a conversation about “top priorities for US-Africa relations in an era of great power competition,” featuring numerous experts, including Brookings senior fellow Landry Signé; Mozambique’s ambassador to the U.S., Alfredo Fabião Nuvunga; U.S. Trade and Development Agency Director of Policy and Program Management Mary Sloan; Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary Dan Byers; and others.

—Heather Souvaine Horn  

In Closing

Book of the Week: This Is The Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy by Ben Wikler.

THE GIST: This Is the Plan is a “field guide” to “dictator-proof” the United States. As former head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Wikler helped Democrats win back the Midwestern swing state after years of gerrymandering and attacks on unions. He knows how to organize locally to fight GOP-backed voter suppression, and he knows what works in swing states, particularly in the Midwest. His plan also includes abolishing the filibuster, Supreme Court reform, and changing how the 435 members of the House of Representatives are elected. Most importantly, he thinks reform should be joyous. Democrats, he writes, should “have fun storming the castle—in a civil, metaphorical, and non-January-6th-y way.”

PRAISE: Nancy Pelosi says, “If we do what this book says, we will win.”

CRUISING THROUGH THE INDEX: In addition to big-ticket reform, Wikler also favors passing the Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO, Act, which would expand collective bargaining rights and expand labor protections, and the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a nationwide statutory right to provide and receive abortion care. 

TNR’S QUICK CRITICAL ASSESSMENT: With hindsight, it’s clear that Wikler should have been elected as chair of the Democratic National Committee after the 2024 election—though that was clear at the time, too. This isn’t the first book about unrigging democracy and saving America—but Wikler’s résumé makes this stand out. His plan worked in Wisconsin. It can work everywhere else, as well.

—Alex Shephard

Only one American president was officially kicked out of his own political party while serving as president. Who was it, and what was the party? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

The U.S. and Iran continued to exchange strikes this week, pushing the prospect of a potential peace deal further out of reach. The escalating conflict has killed four more American service members and sent gas prices shooting back up.

That’s put incumbent Republicans in a bind: The party already had a short list of accomplishments to curry favor with voters ahead of the midterm elections. Now, even races once thought to be safe zones for the conservative party are in doubt. Battleground areas now include Iowa, Alaska, and Ohio, as well as House districts that Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

“We’re preparing for the bottom to fall out,” one GOP operative working on midterm races told Politico Playbook Wednesday. “Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November.”

The war has taken an enormous toll on American life, inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil prices. Iowa Democratic state Representative Josh Turek—who is running for the Hawkeye State’s Senate seat—told Politico that the war has become a touchstone for his campaign.

“Everywhere I’m going—it doesn’t matter, urban or rural areas—people are telling me they’re struggling just to keep food on the table, a roof above their head, and now with this unnecessary war in Iran, we’re looking at being able to afford gas,” Turek said.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly rejected the idea that Trump’s scoresheet was negatively impacting Republican races, contrasting his “record of success” on national security issues with an alleged Democratic interest in “transgender surgeries for children.”

But off the record, people around the president aren’t so confident that his influence on the upcoming races is a good thing. One unnamed person close to the White House told Politico that the administration had badly mismanaged the war, and that the conflict was largely driven by Trump’s inability to see that he’d lost.

“They don’t have a plan here,” the person told Politico.

The source warned that a ground invasion—which Trump has repeatedly floated and Tehran has welcomed—could spark another long and inconclusive Middle East war that “runs the risk of ruining his second term.”

“This is a classic escalation trap,” they said.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump vowed to destroy “one bridge or power plant” for every time Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Targeting civilian infrastructure is prohibited by international humanitarian law. Attacking a power plant would cause disproportionate harm to Iranian civilians.

If Trump does follow through on his threat, it wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. military has committed war crimes in the president’s military campaign against Iran.

The U.S. military has reportedly already bombed a nuclear power plant, executed a deadly double-tap strike on a bridge, violated the rules of engagement, and killed dozens of children at a primary school.

Trump’s turn to war crimes is a clear example of his failed negotiation tactics. The president’s plan seems to be to just keep bombing until the other side gives up. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is running out of weapons and money.

Trump’s threat to escalate these lawless strikes comes as the death toll of U.S. service members has risen to 18, with hundreds more injured.

When Trump first seized the “millions of barrels” of oil back in January, he assumed complete control. His administration eventually proclaimed that it would use any profit from the sales for “the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people.” The State Department has since claimed that “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy” and that “financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people.”

But none of that has been proven to be true. The Financial Times reported Wednesday that there has been no evidence of oil money going back into the hands of the Venezuelans Trump claimed to care for, and that Venezuela’s first-quarter gross domestic product was the lowest it’s been in five years.

“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro told the FT, adding that all of Congress had been “kept in the dark” by the Trump administration. And on Tuesday, Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar called on Trump to make the transactions known, citing “the importance of transparency over where the money is going.”

It seems clear that the most corrupt president in history is withholding oil revenue from Venezuelans who badly need it, as oil makes up nearly a quarter of the entire country’s GDP. In January, Semafor reported that Trump would be keeping proceeds from the first $500 million sale of Venezuelan oil in an offshore bank account based in Qatar. It might be worth checking up on that account.

Mamdani posted a video on social media Tuesday night laying out the International Criminal Court’s charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Netanyahu, noting that while the city couldn’t arrest him, the U.S. government should. That video set off MAGA politicians and the far right. 

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. pic.twitter.com/YRezmW6YVx

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 22, 2026

“Would be easy to say NY Mayor is just an ignorant bigot, but he is not dumb. He’s an evil anti-Semite who deliberately lies about serious things like ‘genocide’ to stoke Jew hate. If anyone should be arrested, it’s the Mayor of NY for incitement. NYC should be ashamed,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted. 

“The same crowd that rushes to condemn Israel never has much to say about the terrorists who started the war, massacred civilians, raped women, kidnapped children, and still hide behind their own people. Mamdani wants the headline that comes from attacking Netanyahu, not the consistency that comes with confronting Hamas,” Senator Tim Scott complained, calling Mamdani’s words “ridiculous.” 

Representative Mike Lawler tried to label Mamdani hypocritical for only calling for Netanyahu’s arrest, while opposing the Trump administration’s arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “Sadly, he has not called for the arrest of Putin, Xi, the Ayatollah, or any other enemy of America,” Lawler whined. But Mamdani has said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin should be arrested, and the leaders of Iran and China don’t have arrest warrants from the ICC. 

Meanwhile, Islamophobic Representative Randy Fine simply responded with, “You are a Muslim terrorist.”  

Multiple international organizations have joined the ICC in calling Netanyahu and Israel’s massacre of Gaza a genocide, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.  

Even though Mamdani’s post was symbolic, it still drove conservatives nuts because they refuse to acknowledge Palestinians as human beings, let alone acknowledge the horrific crimes Israel has committed in Gaza since 2023. These people, along with President Trump, are blocking any sort of accountability for the destruction of Gaza and the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people. 

No sooner had the American death toll risen to 18 than the president started bragging that their deaths weren’t such a bad thing.

“Afghanistan War: 20 years, 2,000 DEAD. Iraq War: 9 years, 4,600 DEAD. Vietnam War: 19 years and 5 months, 58,220 DEAD. Korean War: 3 years and 1 month, 36,574 DEAD. Venezuela War: 1 day, 0 DEAD. Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used the deaths of U.S. service members to hype himself up.

At the first dignified transfer in March, Trump sported a gaudy $55 gold-embroidered “USA” baseball cap. The second dignified transfer he skipped altogether. The third was used for content—against the wishes of the families of the deceased.

Following the collapse of Trump’s ceasefire deal, at least four U.S. service members have been killed, bringing the official death toll to 18. Roughly 500 U.S. service members have been injured, according to the Department of Defense.

The president cannot accept the reality that he lost: Trump’s legal team demanded that the former Elle columnist repay him the $5.6 million that he was court-mandated to give her, The Independent reported Tuesday.

The money was disbursed to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account on July 9—three years after a nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her in the early 2020s when she went public about the attack. Trump had done everything in his power to avoid paying Carroll her due, including attempting to take the case to the Supreme Court, although it ultimately refused to hear the case in June.

“But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a legal filing Monday night, noting that the payment should have been the end of the case.

“But Defendant now demands yet another unprecedented remedy,” Carroll’s attorneys continued. “The judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.”

Her team added that each of the president’s attacks has a “domino effect” that subjects the writer to “ongoing and prolific harassment” from people who take Trump’s word as gospel, “including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.”

The sum is just the tip of the iceberg for how much Trump owes Carroll, however. After the 2023 civil case, Trump tried and failed to sue Carroll for defamation, insisting, despite the jury’s determination, that he had not sexually abused her. A federal judge eventually ruled that Trump—not Carroll—was the liable party, as he had defamed the advice columnist by denying the sexual abuse on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of inventing the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book.

A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case, though Carroll has not yet seen a dime from that decision.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump faced tough questioning from reporters Tuesday about his worsening Iran debacle, and he quickly lost his temper. In the process, however, he revealed that the lines of questioning were correct. Trump simply does not know how to extricate himself from this mess. It’s no accident that this comes as Republicans are reportedly sinking into a very bleak realization about this situation. Trump’s own allies now fear that he’s stuck in a quagmire that could continue right through the elections.

We’re trying to make sense of it all with Marie Harf, a former State Department official who was an advisor to the team that negotiated Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Marie, nice to have you on.

Marie Harf: Thank you so much. I guess I would say I’m happy to be here, but with the news where it is, it’s a strange time to be commenting on these things.

Sargent: It sure is. It’s a real disaster. So right now we’re up to at least 14 U.S. troop deaths in the Iran war, and the Pentagon is running out of money for it. The White House is demanding another $87 billion.

Meanwhile, Trump is stating categorically that he’s won already, that he’s won the war—if he ended it tomorrow, it would be a great triumph. But the Strait of Hormuz is still mostly closed. There’s no end in sight. Marie, can you just sum up how we got to this point and where we are now?

Harf: Well, where we are now is, it seems like we’re back in almost a full-scale war between the United States and Iran. Since President Trump did something no other U.S. president had ever done—militarily attack Iran—realizing after he did that, that even if you could kill the leadership, even if you could damage their military, the regime would stay in power, they would shut down the Strait of Hormuz, they would cripple the global economy, and they would continue attacking us in the region—President Trump knew he needed a way out.

So he negotiated this ceasefire about a month ago that today is sitting in tatters. Because the Iranians know they have the upper hand. They have the leverage. They have survived U.S. military power. They have shown they can control the global economy, and they can stay in power.

Sargent: Let’s check out what Trump says when he’s questioned by a reporter. Note that when Trump says Iran might want to surrender, the reporter flatly points out that, well, Iran continues to attack our allies and Iran continues to kill American soldiers, and that sets Trump off. Listen to this.

Reporter (voiceover): Mr. President, there are no signs that Iran is ready to stop fighting. So what is the plan? Is the plan to just keep bombing until they give up?

Trump (voiceover): Well, how would you know there are no signs? Why? Do you know something that I don’t know?

Reporter (voiceover): Well, they continue to attack our allies and kill Americans.

Trump (voiceover): You don’t know what the dialogue is behind the scenes: that they want to meet desperately to try and end it, because they’re getting decimated. You don’t get that when you listen to your fake station, but you don’t know—you don’t know anything.

Reporter (voiceover): So talks are still possible?

Trump (voiceover): Do you know something I don’t know?

Reporter (voiceover): Well, tell us.

Trump (voiceover): I will tell you—they want to desperately meet. And until they’re ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest in even meeting with them.

Sargent: So let’s break this up into pieces. First, it’s interesting that Trump says Iran desperately wants to meet, which is supposed to show that he’s won a glorious victory. But then seconds later, he suggests that Iran doesn’t want to meet in a “meaningful way.” So if they don’t want to meet meaningfully, how has he won? Didn’t Trump undercut himself there?

Harf: I think this may be the issue where the fact that Trump is very divorced from reality is most noticeable. Because I think we all know that his team doesn’t give him good information on many subjects. They don’t give him the actual truth. And we have reports that he just gets every day video of the coolest bombs being dropped in Iran. I think he has absolutely no sense of what’s actually happening here.

Sargent: I think that’s absolutely right. It seems to me that he doesn’t understand the situation on the most fundamental level. Military force exercised by the U.S. is not enough to get Iran to agree to what Trump wants Iran to agree to. And so we’re trapped in this weird Trumpian reality loop where he just keeps saying over and over that he’s going to obliterate them, or he’s going to really hit them hard this time.

I mean, he already said he was going to obliterate their civilization entirely, and that didn’t force Iran’s hand. So now we’re back to, I’m going to bomb them again really hard this time. And I think there’s a real disconnect there that you really put your finger on.

Harf: The Iranian regime has shown that they can withstand quite a bit of American military power and stay in charge of the country. And it used to be that the threat of the U.S. striking them was so great that you could convince them to do things. Not anymore. They realize they have the leverage.

The Iranians are very astute followers of American politics. We learned this during the Iran negotiations under President Obama. They can read polls as well as we can. They know that the American people do not support this war. They certainly do not support a return to an even broader conflict with Iran, and that President Trump is very cognizant of the time ticking towards the midterm.

So look, the Iranians, sure, they’re happy to talk. But sitting here right now, they know that they still have missiles they can fire, they still have a nuclear program, they still have enriched nuclear material. And the president keeps making threats that he can’t back up.

Sargent: Yeah, in fact, Trump said something else that really kind of illustrates this reality distortion loop of his. He said, “Honestly, they haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve been nice. We’ve been nice.” You’ve been inside this beast before. What is he being told, exactly?

Harf: This is a very different beast, I think, than any of us are used to. I think that they confuse tactical military success with strategic victory. We can do a lot of damage to Iran’s military and civilians and infrastructure. We’ve seen all of that damage being done.

None of that has—or, I would argue, will—lead to a stronger position for the United States. Anyone who has ever followed this topic would have told you that if the United States attacked, the first thing any rational country would do is close the Strait of Hormuz. It’s their trump card.

I don’t think that the Iranians are particularly scared that President Trump is going to rain some military firepower down on them that they haven’t already seen. And so I don’t think that they take his threat seriously. I think that he’s become kind of a joke in these negotiations. And I don’t say that lightly—the damage we are doing, including to civilians in Iran, is quite serious. But I do not think that his threats hold any weight in these negotiations.

Sargent: I really wonder if he’s intimating that he’s prepared to use nuclear weapons. Do you think that’s what he’s doing?

Harf: That’s the nightmare scenario that I think we are all afraid of. I think he likes flirting with the idea. But I mean, we see this from Pete Hegseth, who’s up on Capitol Hill this week trying to get more money and support for this incredibly unpopular war.

There’s just this obsession with using the strongest, toughest, most bellicose language they can come up with, like somehow that makes them tougher, more manly, more scary. And the Iranians, throughout their history, have fought wars for decades to stalemates, including with Iraq. Like, they are not scared of Trump tweeting at 3 a.m.

Sargent: Yeah, I think the basic situation is that he just doesn’t know how to get out of it. That’s really the bottom line. Politico has this really striking new report, which suggests that Republicans are realizing this. It says GOP midterm anxiety is growing precisely because they see that Trump is stuck. One White House ally says, “This is what a quagmire looks like.”

Marie, you now have Trump saying every American death will be avenged many times over by a much higher number of Iranian deaths. Is that tantamount to saying we’re now in an open-ended conflict? Is that where we are now?

Harf: It seems that way. This feels like a new forever war, because there’s no clearly defined objective that we can meet or not meet. He has no way to get out of this. And the reason I say that is because there are two conflicting principles in Republican orthodoxy butting up against each other right now.

This hawkish line that you never give anything to Iran—Republicans hated his ceasefire deal with Iran because it gave Iran everything and got nothing for the United States—coming up against a bad global economy, rising oil prices, and instability in a midterm year. Those are two fundamental principles that Republicans have claimed to care deeply about. Which one do you pick?

Sargent: Yes, and in fact, Politico reports something that really bears out what you’re saying. It says this: “Republicans close to the White House are distressed about the war’s economic impact on everyday Americans in an election that is expected to hinge on cost of living issues.”

Just to underscore your point a little more, the two conflicting forces are: One, you never give in to Iran at all, because we’re strong and they’re weak. But two, if you continue this war, we’re going to get crushed in the midterms, right?

Harf: Exactly right. And we should not lose sight of the fact that President Trump chose to go to war. This was a war of choice. And it was one that Israel and others, really, for decades had wanted us to undertake. And President Trump was the first one to do it. But the problem is, he did it without a plan. And he did it without considering any of the consequences. And all those Republicans who used to make fun of us in the Obama administration for saying, think about the second and third and fourth order consequences if we have to take military action—which we were willing to do—they all made fun of us.

Now they’re coming up against those. And they are realizing that you cannot just drop a bunch of bombs and do a bunch of tough talk on Twitter. That does not lead to a strategic victory for the United States against an enemy with a huge country, so many resources, geographic superiority in many ways.

I don’t know, to your earlier question, I don’t know what information he’s getting, but this is the consequence of putting people like Pete Hegseth in charge of the United States military—people that are not serious, that just like to beat their chests and try and prove that the United States is still the strongest military in the world, with absolutely no plan for how to win wars.

Sargent: I want to highlight one other thing from the Politico story, because it’s sort of amazing. It goes on to say that all this is casting a grim shadow over the campaign season for the GOP. One Republican is quoted saying this: “The war has become a persistent dark cloud that is souring the national mood, which typically depresses the base of the party in power and motivates supporters of the opposition.” That’s quite a quote from that Republican there.

There’s a deep irony to this as well, which is that Republicans created this situation for themselves. They sent a very strong signal at the outset of this that they would not use their congressional power to constrain Trump, to exercise oversight on what he was doing, and to essentially vote on whether to go to war or not. They essentially said, Mr. President, you have a blank check. And now they’re screwed. That’s what happened.

Harf: You’re exactly right. Look, 28 percent of Americans—only 28 percent—in recent polls said that the Iran war was worth it. And we are how many months in? Not that long into this war. It’s now as unpopular as the Iraq war was after three years, during the height of the insurgency.

So this is a problem of Republicans’ own making. And I’ve said this about Iran for a long time—when they constantly fear-mongered and put out all these hawkish statements and policies about how Iran was a country we could never negotiate with, Iran was the ultimate threat to the United States. Look, Iran does a lot of bad things, but it’s not an existential threat to the United States.

This is the consequence of all of those decades of rhetoric, that they pushed a president who is deeply erratic to undertake a war of choice that has had disastrous consequences in the region and, in the United States, for the global economy—that we warned would happen if they did it. And now they have no way to get out of it. And they are led by a man who I think has zero concept of the actual reality on the ground.

Sargent: How does this resolve itself? The president clearly will not end this unless there’s an ending that he can describe as a world historical triumph that outdid what Barack Obama did in the Iran nuclear deal that you were a part of. And so that’s not going to happen, right? Iran’s not going to give him those things. So what happens? How do we get out of this?

Harf: Iran is not going to give him those things. That ship has sailed—the day Donald Trump ripped up the previous Iran nuclear agreement. I think if we can get to a place where there is some sort of agreement on the Strait of Hormuz, that will probably end with Iran making money. It will be open, but Iran will probably charge a toll, which is money in their pockets.

If we can get to a place where somehow the existing enriched nuclear material is secured, if we can get to a place where Iran is not sending missiles into the region—basically sort of a ceasefire plus. If we can get to that, I think that is the best they can hope for. Because as long as Donald Trump is president, the Iranians, I think, feel like they have quite a bit of leverage. And anytime America or Israel—they blame us for everything Israel does too, fairly or unfairly—steps out of line, they can close the strait in what, 24 hours? So that’s the best I think we can hope for.

This disastrous policy will have consequences that last for a generation. And there is no easy Iran deal to be had now. There is no magic wand that we are going to be able to wave, in the best-case scenario. And this is far from the best-case scenario.

Sargent: And it seems that maybe the only way out of this, other than the one you’ve outlined—which is a tough road—would be that Democrats take back the House and possibly the Senate and use their power to grind this thing to a halt and defund it if necessary. Now, I don’t know if Democrats will do that, but they certainly should. How do you see that piece of this playing out? Is that a possibility?

Harf: I think if Democrats can take the House and the Senate it would be very helpful. I have no faith or confidence that this administration would actually end the war if Congress did something to try to stop it. This will be very interesting if Democrats take Congress—subpoenas, investigations, defunding ICE—there are a whole bunch of priorities that I think the Trump administration right now is figuring out how to circumvent if Democrats take the House and the Senate.

But I think that we have to try, because Americans are dying. We are spending trillions of dollars, and we are less safe today. And our friends and allies are less safe today because of this. I think it will take a new president, quite frankly, to really end this era of American military adventurism, whether it’s in Venezuela or Iran or elsewhere.

Sargent: Well, that sounds like it’s the size of it. I guess we shouldn’t have elected a madman, huh?

Harf: No, this is what happens when you elect a madman who is drunk on power. You get a paramilitary roaming American cities, killing American citizens, and you get this hyper-hawkish U.S. military going around the world looking for places to intervene, because they think that’s how you advance American power—at the end of a gun.

And it’s like all of these people who fought in Iraq and who now are in the Trump administration learned nothing from the Iraq war. Because we are in an even bigger mess today, with no way out of it. And this is what happens. This is the consequence of Republicans not taking him seriously enough and using him for their own aims. You can’t control him, it turns out.

Sargent: Well, the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by Barack Obama told the opposite story—that negotiation and patience is what’s required, and that’s the real exercise of American power. But since that was done by Obama, Donald Trump had to rip it up. And we’re here. Marie Harf, thanks so much for coming on. That was bracing stuff.

Harf: Thank you.

David Wain’s new film, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, turns on an egregious no-strings-attached mishap, complete with a cameo from the erstwhile Ms. Green. The setting is Wilbur, Kansas, all picket fences and strip malls, where former high school sweethearts Gail (Zoey Deutch) and Tom (Michael Cassidy) are set to be wed. She’s bubbly and sweet, beloved by her neighbors and beauty parlor clients; he’s gormless and visibly out of his depth. Both are seemingly happy to go through the motions till death do them part. Pregaming an author event at their local bookstore, Gail and Tom start hypothesizing about their celebrity freebies; since the writer in town for the signing is Jennifer Aniston—there to hawk a no-frills cookbook of “Sensible Suppers”—they both agree that she’d be a suitable fantasy fling. 

Cut to Tom in flagrante delicto a few hours later in the back of the store with America’s Sweetheart. “We talked about this,” he pleads to Gail, who’s mortified, as is Jennifer, which doesn’t stop her from arranging to send Tom some DVDs of Friends (he only knows her from The Morning Show). Heartbroken, but determined to get even on her own set of ethical terms—and egged on by her standard-issue sassy best pal, Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley)—Gail puts her game face on. Otto is off to Los Angeles for a hairdressing convention and suggests she tag along. Their target: Jon Hamm, a handsome prince ensconced at the Chateau Marmont.

No sooner have Gail and Otto landed at LAX than they’ve caught a cab ride with Richard Kind, obtained some star maps, and learned about the best spots in town to get a burger (McDonald’s), a coffee (Starbucks), and a blow job (Foot Locker). They also accidentally obtain the briefcase of a reigning Mafia queen bee (Sabrina Impacciatore) who has designs on bringing down the global financial system and is willing to kill the strangers who’ve made off with her documents. Other impediments to Gail’s righteous carte blanche booty call include misfiring hitmen, unctuous personal assistants, and a machine-gun-toting “Weird” Al Yankovic, who helpfully tells her and her friends to “eat it” while chasing them off his property.

Suffice it to say that Wain, who once cast Aniston opposite Paul Rudd in 2012’s Wanderlust, does not make realistic, or even halfway plausible, movies. This laxity is his badge of honor, and he wears it well. Where a status-climber like Judd Apatow cultivates a strenuous, and largely disingenuous, naturalism—John Cassavetes by way of SNL—Wain has no use for respectability. He’s yet to abandon the slovenly, see-what-sticks shtick of Wet Hot American Summer (2001), an epochal work that has informed a swath of postmillennial alt-comedy. By sticking to his guns—and also letting them misfire, or shoot blanks—Wain runs the risk of seeming like an inept veteran, when he’s actually an old master of his very particular chosen form. 

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is not a good-looking movie: Kevin Atkinson’s cinematography is so hypnotically bland that Main Street USA and the Inland Empire become virtually indistinguishable from one another. The performances are broad to the point of active mugging; the storyline doesn’t so much strain continuity and credibility as leave them to bleed out in a ditch. This is all to the good. Wain and his co-writer, Ken Marino, who appears as a veteran paparazzo helping Gail navigate the City of Angels, have each worked on plenty of “normal” television and streaming series since their days on MTV’s The State. They’ve had successful careers meeting the industry halfway—especially Marino, who’s usually the funniest part of whatever he’s in. What they refuse to do is make compromises on their own time. Instead, they play a game of (rubber) chicken with themselves and the audience, torquing artificiality and contrivance into its own screwily lucid sort of worldview: a wryly complacent gaze into the pop-cultural abyss. 

Wain is often called a satirist or a parodist, which is true for instance of the winking, ruthless Nora Ephron–esque They Came Together (2014), which leaves vintage rom-com tropes to ripen and rot on the New York City pavement. The label doesn’t always fit, however. “I don’t consider Wet Hot American Summer a spoof at all,” Wain told The Film Stage; “it’s just a movie really sourced in actually going to summer camp, and it’s funny.” The skeleton key to unlocking the director’s sensibility—not that it’s necessarily airtight in the first place—might just be Wet Hot’s gee-whiz, summer-stock metaphysics—the wholesome, theatre-kid excitement of getting your friends together and putting on a show. Think of the wonderfully sincere sequence where a group of preteens perform “Day by Day” from Godspell, an almost enchanted interlude that feels plucked from memory. And then there’s the final act of Wain’s deceptively conventional and Apatow-adjacent 2008 masterpiece Role Models (co-written with Marino), in which the protagonists are finally reconciled by a rousing game of Medieval cosplay—an immersion in nerd culture enacted with a welcome lack of condescension toward characters and audience. 

It makes sense that such an inveterately playful filmmaker would finally get around to riffing on The Wizard of Oz: Victor Fleming’s 1939 classic is the primal scene of Hollywood escapism, after all. The sheer slack-jawed obviousness of the references here is part of the point: “Gail Daughtry” inverts “Dorothy Gale” as surely as “Otto” scrambles “Toto,” and Hamm eventually refers to himself as a wizardly “man behind the curtain.” Within the film’s Emerald City framework, John Slattery, playing a B-list celebrity, serves as a modern version of the Cowardly Lion (“Put ’em up, put ’em up,” he mumbles, shadowboxing in his garage). Ben Wang, playing a Creative Arts Agency rookie, is a scatter-brained Scarecrow manqué, and Marino as the cynical, heartless photographer has shades of the Tin Man. Slattery’s performance is wonderfully unhinged; he’s funniest when he’s being used as a punching bag, whether rhetorically—as in an uproarious series of text messages narrating his incremental estrangement from Hamm (who’s left his buddy on read for several years)—or literally, as when he gets a hotel room door slammed on his ankle 34 times, each jolt punctuated by its own piercing yelp of “Ow!”

David Lynch used to suggest that most of his movies were spiritual remakes of The Wizard of Oz, and Wain’s embrace of low-rent surrealism can feel Lynchian at times; by following a guileless ingenue through a freaky version of “Hollyweird,” Gail Daughtry becomes the director’s Mulholland Drive, right down to the script’s winking anxiety about the perils of show-business-as-usual. There aren’t a lot of comedy directors who are so willing to deal in outright alienation effects, like the repetition-compulsion of Slattery’s battle with the door, or the gratuitously brutal violence of a late action sequence seemingly staged in one of the same locations as Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 

And then there’s the narrator, played by the honey-voiced character actor Fred Melamed, who starts out cheerful and folksy about Gail and her friends but begins wearying of the WTF nature of the material around the same time we do. Melamed’s descent into raging dyspepsia is a signal that Wain knows very well he’s wasting his—and our—time and trusts that we don’t mind. There is a fine line between liberated and lazy, and Gail Daughtry refuses to pick a lane on principle. The swerving is the point; the pleasure resides in the high-minded notion—rooted in the golden rule of improv—that all jokes, including and especially the bad ones, are created equal. 

It’s hard to reconcile deliberately half-hearted humor with real emotion, and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is deliberately underwhelming both as a love story and as an attack on the culture industry. Wain loves his offhand anticlimaxes; no surprises for guessing that, choosing between a cheating dork on the one hand and Don Draper on the other, our heroine finally chooses herself. But Gail’s parting words sum up the movie, its makers, and their passions so nicely that they bear repeating. “Let’s keep it loose and freaky,” Deutch tells Hamm before they float off together in a hot air balloon, somewhere over the rainbow.

The justices announced on Monday that they would hear Jouppi v. Alaska next term, giving them a rare opportunity to expand upon of one of the Eighth Amendment’s most overlooked provisions. The case’s basic facts illustrate how states can pursue harsh financial sanctions against defendants, even for some misdemeanor offenses.

“For certain Alaskan villages, it’s a crime to bring in alcohol,” the defendant noted in his petition for review. “And when the means of importation is an airplane, the plane is subject to forfeiture. No matter that the offense is a misdemeanor. As here. No matter that the pilot is a first-time offender. As here. No matter that the alcohol is a six-pack of Budweiser. As here. No matter that it belonged to a customer. As here. The result: an airplane forfeited for a six-pack.”

What may seem strange to Americans in the Lower 48 states is likely a familiar tale to those in the Last Frontier. Alaska’s vast interior is populated by small villages. Many of those villages have strict “dry” laws. The strictest ones forbid not only the sale of alcohol but also the importation and possession of it. Alaska’s state legislature gave rural communities the power to set these limits in the 1980s to address concerns about high alcoholism rates and their associated ills.

Much of Alaska’s interior can also only be reached by airplane, so residents and tourists frequently rely on small-scale private pilots to reach their destinations. One of those pilots is Ken Jouppi. He was in his late sixties when he flew passengers from the city of Fairbanks to the village of Beaver on his small private Cessna in 2012. A passenger on the flight was bringing groceries with her, including three cases of beer.

According to state officials, Jouppi’s company was under investigation at the time for suspected violations of state liquor laws. Alaska state troopers approached Jouppi while he was loading the plane to Beaver, found the cases of beer, and promptly arrested him and charged him with misdemeanor importation. Jouppi was sentenced to three days in jail with an additional 177 days suspended, a suspended $1,500 fine, and three years of probation.

Most importantly, state prosecutors also sought to seize Jouppi’s plane. Alaska liquor law requires forfeiture, but the trial court declined to grant it at first because the plane never actually reached Beaver. The Alaska Court of Appeals reversed that decision because state law required forfeiture either way. When the trial court reconsidered the matter, Jouppi argued that the forfeiture would violate the excessive fines clause because the law only allowed a maximum $10,000 fine and the plane’s estimated value was $95,000.

The Eighth Amendment is best known for its ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.” Until the last 30 years or so, its prohibition of “excessive fines” received scant attention. The Supreme Court did not rule that a particular fine had breached the excessive fines clause until 1998, in the case United States v. Bajakajian. The justices sided with a Syrian man who brought more than $350,000 in cash into the U.S. without formally reporting it. Though the maximum fine under the Bank Secrecy Act was $5,000, federal prosecutors seized the full $357,144.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court then, noted that the justices were breaking new ground at the time. “Until today, however, we have not articulated a standard for determining whether a punitive forfeiture is constitutionally excessive,” he wrote. “We now hold that a punitive forfeiture violates the Excessive Fines Clause if it is grossly disproportional to the gravity of a defendant’s offense.”

In the 2019 case Timbs v. Indiana, the Supreme Court held that the excessive fines clause also applied to the states. But the lower courts have divided on exactly how to interpret whether a fine is “proportional” to the “gravity” of a defendant’s offense. Most courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Alaska, have concluded that the fine must be proportionate to a defendant’s particular acts. That approach would likely favor Jouppi, who is now 82 years old, lacks any prior criminal record, and never actually brought the alcohol in question into Beaver.

But a handful of courts, including the Alaska Supreme Court, have instead concluded that the fine must only be proportionate to the offense in general terms. This would be bad news for Jouppi. Alaska prosecutors and courts noted that the state’s geography makes it uniquely difficult to address alcohol abuse. “Many remote communities in Alaska have limited law enforcement resources to respond to, for example, alcohol-fueled domestic violence,” the state told the Supreme Court in its reply brief. “They also lack the public health resources to address other problems associated with alcohol abuse.”

Ultimately, the Alaska Supreme Court held that forfeiture of Jouppi’s airplane did not violate the excessive fines clause. The court gave significant deference to the state legislature’s conclusion that the “forfeiture of an aircraft is proportional to the gravity of the harm that results from unlawful alcohol importation into a dry village.” It also addressed Jouppi’s culpability in a more abstract sense, rather than what actually happened.

“Alcohol abuse in rural Alaska leads to increased crime; disorders, such as alcoholism; conditions, such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; and death, imposing substantial costs on public health and the administration of justice,” the court held. “Within this context, it is clear that the illegal importation of even a six-pack of beer causes grave societal harm. This factor strongly suggests that the forfeiture is not grossly disproportional.”

Though the case hinges on circumstances that are specific to Alaska, its implications could stretch far beyond that state. Multiple justices have raised concerns in various cases about the degree to which states and the federal government rely on fees and fines to achieve policy goals. In Timbs, for example, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the Eighth Amendment’s provisions represented a much deeper aversion to high fees and fines in the Anglo-American legal tradition.

“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” she explained. “Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies, as the Stuarts’ critics learned several centuries ago.” Ginsburg and other justices also pointed to the growing trend where states offset declining tax revenue with higher fee and fines.

In a 2024 case involving an Alabama woman whose car was seized after her son was arrested while driving it, five of the justices also expressed some concern about the modern prevalence of civil asset forfeiture. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the court’s other two liberal justices, expressed concern about civil forfeiture procedures on due-process grounds, especially when lower-income defendants relied upon their car for everyday life.

“Given these burdens, low-income communities are also the most vulnerable to pressure from unchecked prosecutors, who can use coercive civil forfeiture processes to extract settlement money from innocent owners desperate to get their property back,” she wrote. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas concurred with the majority in that case but also signaled some alignment with the court’s liberals on the matter. “Why does a Nation so jealous of its liberties tolerate expansive new civil forfeiture practices that have ‘led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses’?” Gorsuch wrote, quoting from an earlier opinion by Thomas.

Civil asset forfeiture is a distinct legal matter from the criminal forfeiture at issue in Jouppi. At the same time, the justices’ concerns about excessive fines, fees, and forfeitures in one area may also apply in another. If the court adopts the Alaska Supreme Court’s approach, state legislatures might be more encouraged to adopt stricter forfeiture regimes across the board. A ruling in favor of Jouppi, on the other hand, might give state and local governments pause when adopting harsh measures. The court’s path—and the country’s—will become clearer after oral arguments later this fall.

Netanyahu was not then a suspect in that investigation. But he was already on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. A sitting prime minister was telling two democracies that their justice systems were instruments of usurpation rather than forums of judgment.

The language was borrowed from Donald Trump. The method had long been Netanyahu’s own. Whenever an institution moves to judge him, he puts the institution on trial.

The most recent example came earlier this month. On July 5, in defiance of a High Court order, Netanyahu’s government declared that it would not recognize decisions made by the country’s TV and radio regulator. Eleven days later, in the final hours of its term, the Knesset—whose ruling coalition was led by Netanyahu’s Likud party—passed a law abolishing the regulator and replacing it with a new authority whose leadership the government would largely control. Netanyahu participated in the legislative debate, despite the fact that his bribery charge concerns alleged regulatory favors exchanged for favorable coverage. The July 5 declaration had not yet precipitated a full constitutional crisis, but it supplied the logic of one: When the court judged the government, the government claimed the right to judge the court.

Israel is now in an election campaign. The Knesset dissolved on July 17, after completing its first full, four-year term since 1988, and Israelis are scheduled to vote on October 27, in the first national election since the judicial upheaval of 2023 and Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023. Successive polls place the parties of Netanyahu’s outgoing coalition below a governing majority, although his opponents have no certain path to power. The deeper question is whether electoral defeat would also discredit the political method he has normalized.

Netanyahu is commonly described as divisive. But division describes the effect, not the method. The sharper word is accusation. He turns every judgment against him into evidence of conspiracy and leaves the public unable to distinguish prosecution from persecution.

The pattern predates Netanyahu’s indictments. During the struggle over the Oslo accord three decades ago, Netanyahu helped lead an opposition campaign that increasingly treated political disagreement as betrayal of the people. In October 1995, Netanyahu addressed a crowd at Jerusalem’s Zion Square where protesters called Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister at the time, a traitor and chanted “death to Rabin.” Photomontages of Rabin in an SS uniform circulated during protests that fall. Rabin was assassinated on November 4 by a right-wing opponent of the accord.

Netanyahu has always denied that his rhetoric during the campaign against the Oslo accord was intended to incite violence. But a politics of accusation does not require the leader to author every charge. It requires him to benefit from the atmosphere the charges create, and to let the boundary between opposition and treason dissolve. Two years later, as prime minister, Netanyahu was caught by an open microphone as he whispered to Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, “The left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” This was not a policy argument. It was an act of excommunication.

After Netanyahu was indicted in 2019, the same logic entered the courtroom. He denies the charges, as he is entitled to do. But his chosen defense has always been larger than legal denial. He and his defenders cast the police as fabricators; the attorney general who indicted him, his own appointee, as captive to the system; the courts as instruments of a coup; the press as propaganda; and the security chiefs as political actors. The chorus includes his son Yair, Likud ministers, sympathetic broadcasters, and online activists. Netanyahu need not utter every accusation himself. Israeli commentators call this ecosystem “mekhonat ha-ra’al” (the poison machine): a loose network that allows him to benefit from what others say aloud.

In 2023, the counter-prosecution became a program of government. Netanyahu’s coalition sought to reduce the Supreme Court’s power, alter the selection of judges, and limit the legal institutions capable of restraining the executive. Arguments could be made for rebalancing the court’s authority; Israelis had debated its reach for decades. The tell was scale, simultaneity, and authorship: so many restraints loosened at once, under a prime minister standing trial.

The result was civic rupture. Army reservists warned that they would not serve a dictatorship. Pilots and intelligence veterans signed letters. Former security officials treated social cohesion as a strategic asset under assault. The court, the attorney general, the general staff, the security service, and the press were recast as conspirators.

Accusation alone, however, does not explain Netanyahu’s endurance. His rule offered Israelis a bargain. They were told that Hamas could be deterred, that the conflict could be managed indefinitely, that normalization with distant Arab states could bypass the Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation, that prosperity could substitute for political settlement. What was sold as vigilance became permission not to see.

On October 7, 2023, that bargain collapsed. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. The doctrine Israelis call “the conception,” the belief that Hamas had been deterred and could be contained, burned with the kibbutzim and the music festival. The man who had promised mastery delivered exposure.

Even then, accusation moved faster than accountability. In the early hours of October 29, Netanyahu posted that the heads of military intelligence and the Shin Bet had never warned him of Hamas’s war intentions and had instead assured him that the organization was deterred. Hours later, amid criticism that he was shifting blame while the war was still unfolding, he deleted the post and apologized. It was later revealed that he had received warnings that Israel’s deterrence was eroding and the danger of attack was rising (although no public evidence has established that he was specifically warned of the October 7 assault). The deletion could not erase the reflex the post revealed: to assign blame before accepting responsibility.

The same method explains his resistance to an independent state commission of inquiry. After the 1973 war came the Agranat Commission; after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the Kahan Commission. In each case, the government established a state commission, but the president of the Supreme Court appointed its members. After October 7, Netanyahu’s coalition instead advanced legislation to create a commission whose members would be selected through a political process.

The bill passed only the first of three required readings before the Knesset dissolved; no commission was created.

The catastrophe of October 7 had many authors; an independent state commission would name them all. That is both its democratic purpose and what makes it threatening to a politics organized around counteraccusation. A commission of inquiry turns accusation into judgment. It gives fury a room, evidence a sequence, and blame a public test. The accuser cannot easily submit to judges he did not choose.

The charges against Netanyahu concern conduct that can seem petty beside the national crises he has helped create: accepting cigars and champagne from wealthy benefactors and using public power to secure favorable media coverage. But the smallness of the appetites does not diminish the scale of the damage; it exposes the private interests beneath the public crusade. Netanyahu presents himself as a statesman acting on behalf of Jewish history, while the trial—now in its sixth year, with likely two more to go—depicts a politician repeatedly bending public office toward personal advantage. His private interests become national causes, and institutions that threaten them become enemies of the people.

Still, the accusation must return to the accuser. What would acquit him?

The tempting answer is nothing. That answer must be refused. If nothing could acquit Netanyahu, the argument would become theological, a claim about essence rather than conduct. A secular argument knows only sequence, choice, and repetition. There were exits: retirement after losing power in 2021; a plea agreement that would have required his withdrawal from politics; acceptance of an independent state commission after October 7; a pardon accompanied by an acknowledgment of responsibility. More fundamentally, there was always the possibility of submitting to judgments not of his own making. He rejected or evaded every exit that required him to relinquish power, accept responsibility, or recognize an authority he did not control. The pattern is accumulation, not essence. At every available exit, he chose accusation.

The method is not confined to Israel. Netanyahu took the deep state from Trump’s lexicon; Trump has returned the favor, calling Netanyahu’s prosecution a political witch hunt and writing to Israel’s president to urge a pardon. Their alliance is more than strategic or personal. Each ratifies the other’s account of democratic institutions: Courts do not judge leaders; they persecute them. Investigations do not establish facts; they manufacture conspiracies. Defeat does not withdraw authority; it proves betrayal.

That is why even an electoral defeat in October would not settle the question posed by Netanyahu’s politics. A leader may lose while his method survives him. Institutions can remain standing after the public has been taught to see every judgment as partisan, every finding as fabricated, and every restraint as an enemy act.

The remedy is defense: judges still judging, reporters still documenting, civil servants still upholding procedure under pressure, families still demanding an accounting, citizens still insisting that accusation must answer to evidence. Let accusation be silenced, and let the defense be heard.

MS NOW, citing two anonymous sources, reports that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal probe into the Florida man, who is accused of sexual misconduct, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations.

A third source told MS NOW that the FBI has spoken to at least one person about Mills’s finances and the allegations against him, which are numerous. Mills told the outlet by phone, “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“The [Federal Election Commission] dismissed all the campaign stuff,” Mills said, referring to allegations he misused campaign funds. He said that he thought the investigation must be about “all the things stemming from the Ethics investigation.” The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into Mills last November, and was still gathering evidence about Mills’s misconduct as of May this year.

Mills allegedly harassed his ex-girlfriend, former Miss United States Lindsey Langston, and threatened to release revenge porn of her after she dumped him last year upon learning of his affair. Mills also allegedly assaulted the second woman he was dating, who reported him to police.

Mills didn’t face any criminal consequences in the latter case, as the interim District of Columbia U.S. attorney at the time, Ed Martin, refused to sign the Metropolitan Police Department’s arrest warrant. Later reports found that Mills tried to get out of being arrested by threatening to call then–Attorney General Pam Bondi. Also in 2025, news reports revealed that Mills was caught with sex workers in 2021 in the East European country Georgia while en route to Afghanistan.

Mills has ignored calls to step down, and Republicans in Congress have decided not to pursue expelling him from the House. Mills is still running for reelection, and it remains to be seen if he’ll face any consequences in Florida’s August 18 primary, or the November general election.

Hegseth, alongside officials including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday to update lawmakers on the state of the war and to request nearly $88 billion more for “urgent needs” in the war effort.

About 15 minutes into Hegseth’s testimony, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin asked if he had a new estimate for how much the war in Iran has cost so far.

“Senator, the estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion,” the defense secretary replied.

In reality, both U.S. intelligence officials and independent analysts are putting the total cost of the war upward of $100 billion. That’s at least $62.5 billion more than Hegseth claimed.

“It’s my understanding that this whole supplemental funding request is $87.6 billion,” Durbin continued. “We are told the Department of Defense still has $75 billion in un-obligated funding from last year’s reconciliation package. Is that true?”

Hegseth stammered about his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, and replied that he couldn’t offer “specific numbers” as to where that extra $75 billion in defense spending had gone.

At the start of the month, Popular Information’s Stephen Semler published an independent review of U.S. expenses in the war so far, including $28 billion in mobilization, administrative, and immediate combat costs; $46.7 billion on missiles, interceptors, and bombs; $20.3 billion on damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.9 billion on Israel’s bombs and interceptors; and an additional $4.8 billion on war costs to nonmilitary U.S. agencies. Put that together, and you have a whopping $102.7 billion—not counting repairs and replacements for the 42 U.S. aircrafts that have been lost, damaged, or destroyed.

Hegseth’s testimony came only days after the U.S. military announced the deaths of at least three more American service members in the war, bringing the official death toll to 17. (A fourth service member is still missing.) The secretary is calling the request for more funding part of his national defense strategy, “peace through strength.”

The Trump administration’s war in Iran is wildly unpopular, and Republicans know it. Maybe Hegseth thinks lowballing the price tag will distract the American people with a discount rate.

The pro-Trump produce supplier deleted all mentions on social media of the aforementioned penitence following a false positive by the FDA that incorrectly identified some of Taylor Farms’ products as a source of the cyclospora outbreak that has caused explosive diarrhea across the country.

In statements since scrubbed from social platforms, the vegetable company said Monday that the FDA had “apologized” for the error.

That set off the federal government, which initiated a typhoon of P.R. damage control that has since been described by agriculture journalists as a “public health communications nightmare.”

On Monday, the FDA denied that it had offered the company any such apology. And in its own since-deleted post, the Department of Health and Human Services asserted that Taylor Farms’ statement “DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

“Epidemiological evidence and traceback analysis provide strong, actionable public health evidence,” HHS shared Tuesday afternoon, responding to a CNN report that Mexico denied its regional cases had anything to do with the current outbreak in the U.S. “By looking at the supply chain—from point of sale to distributors, processors, and growers—the data gathered from the 5-state outbreak converged on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms locations in Mexico.”

Taylor Farms is one of the largest fresh-produce suppliers in the country, providing products to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, SYSCO, Aldi, Target, and Dollar General. It also sells food for private-label brands, such as Whole Foods’ “365” line, and offers assembly-line products for a slew of fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, and more.

Taylor Farms said that it had recalled all of the shredded iceberg lettuce that was grown and processed in central Mexico out of an “abundance of caution.”

“While the FDA traceback is indicating a specific independent farm, which represents less than 1% of the U.S.’s iceberg lettuce supply, as the potential source of the outbreak, we have removed all iceberg lettuce from the region indefinitely,” the company said Friday in a statement.

Yet somehow, sending Americans rushing to the lavatory isn’t the only scandal plaguing Taylor Farms. The supplier’s parent company, Taylor Fresh Foods Inc., reportedly donated $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc.—a super PAC affiliated with the president—in March 2025.

Company executives also met with White House officials and FDA representatives last week, just before Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall of its Central Mexico lettuce supply, reported the Daily Beast Tuesday.

Since the beginning of May, the CDC has confirmed 1,645 cases of cyclosporiasis and is investigating 5,100 more, though the agency noted that most cases have likely gone unreported. Still, both totals are substantially higher than normal: This time last year, just 249 cases had been reported. So far, 141 cases have resulted in hospitalization, and no one has died from the disease.

“General, I wanted to give you a chance to respond to state Representative Talarico and his campaign,” a reporter asked Paxton while flanked by over a dozen law officers in cowboy hats during a Tuesday press conference. “They’ve made a lot about the reports that have come out, one in The New York Times about you acquiring properties worth—”

“So Jack, can we keep this to law enforcement today?” Paxton interrupted.

“Well, I’m giving you the opportunity to answer the question.”

“We’re here with the sheriffs, I’d like to keep today to law enforcement, so that’s what I’m gonna answer, questions about law enforcement,” Paxton replied.

Paxton was then pressed on a separate scandal just seconds after.

“Will you answer a question about why you voted in Collin County? Clear that up?” the reporter asked, only to be shut down by a staffer immediately while Paxton began to leave, looking visibly uncomfortable.

Wow -- Ken Paxton and his team abruptly shut down a news conference and bail after journalists try to ask him about his various scandals pic.twitter.com/GlXJ7ClLKD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 21, 2026

Paxton refused to answer the questions even as he spoke at a podium with Talarico’s face plastered on it, alongside the caption “Talarico: Handcuffed to his record.”

A Times report last week detailed how Paxton—who has been Texas attorney general since 2015—has acquired 15 properties worth $9 million in states like Utah, Hawaii, Florida, and Oklahoma, all on a government salary while in the midst of both a Senate run and a divorce.

Another ProPublica report from earlier this month found that Paxton, who has echoed Trump’s concern with voter fraud, voted using an address he didn’t reside at in six elections in two years. Paxton didn’t really address those allegations at the time of those reports, and he certainly didn’t do so on Tuesday.

According to a report Tuesday by the Financial Times, Trump is preparing to let loose a “barrage” of fresh tariffs on dozens of countries this week, just before his temporary 10 percent global tariff expires on Friday. More tariffs, on top of energy prices already skyrocketing in response to the Iran war, risk “inflaming voter frustration over the high cost of living,” the Times reports.

Trump’s seemingly endless tariff campaign is unpopular with voters across the political spectrum. A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll puts Trump’s overall approval rating at just 37 percent, dragged down by his handling of the economy and the war in Iran. Two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of how Trump is handling affordability. Republicans, staring down the fast-approaching midterm elections in November, are shaking in their boots.

Trump, on the other hand, either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care—just Monday, he announced new 50 percent tariffs against Canada. These tariffs are potentially retaliation for the wildfire smoke that drifted across America’s northern border last week.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein,” the president wrote on Truth Social Friday. “This is Willful Negligence … which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.” A senior administration official has since denied any relation between the wildfires and the new tariffs.

Even if Trump can’t see it, White House insiders know that another round of tariffs is a bad look.

“Behind the scenes, senior officials have been counseling the president to maintain stability with trading partners and honor the deals that Washington struck with them to reduce their tariffs … according to two people familiar with the matter,” the Financial Times reports.

“If candidates are not talking about the economy, if candidates are not talking about affordability, if they’re not talking about how they’re going to make people’s lives at home cheaper and less expensive, then they’re not talking about the issues that voters care about,” Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist told The Washington Post Monday.

Republicans know that resurrecting Trump’s trade war, not only with Canada but with the rest of the world, is a recipe for disaster. The question is: Do they have the guts to stop it?

Loomer touched down in Ukraine on Monday, posting herself eating McDonald’s near a destroyed building and heaping praise and defense on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Loomer acknowledged that she previously fell for Russian propaganda. In another post on X Monday, she wrote:

I did say these things about Ukraine and Zelensky and I am not deleting my posts because I’ve realized, I was wrong. I was living in a media echo chamber and I was propagandized by Russian media on social media to believe those things. So I came to Ukraine to see the country for myself. I am going to try to find evidence for the propaganda I’ve been fed, and if I don’t find it, I will let everyone know so they too can come to see the light. On day one, I’ve already seen photos of dead priests in Bucha murdered by Russia and I saw the mass grave where the bodies of murdered Christians were placed after Russia sent forces from Chechnya to massacre innocent people. I spoke with officials who rescue POWs and they showed me photos of Ukrainian POWs who had swastikas engraved into their forehead by Russians.

She noted that she had been lied to about who the real Nazis were. (There are real Nazis everywhere, including in Ukraine, for what it’s worth.)

“Just experienced my first air raid in Ukraine. Sirens blaring. This is everyday for every Ukrainian,” Loomer said in another post Tuesday. “I feel like such an asshole for minimizing the struggle of Ukrainians for the last 5 years. I often said I don’t care. Looking back, that wasn’t very nice of me to say. There are people in Ukraine who have to run to a bomb shelter everyday and some of us had the audacity to say Russia wasn’t wrong because we believed the lie that Ukraine is a country full of Nazi sympathizers. We have been so propagandized by Russia and we don’t even realize it.”

Zelenskiy welcomed Loomer’s visit. “It is really important that [LauraLoomer] is in Ukraine and sees things with her own eyes as they are,” his office wrote on X. “There is no better way to get informed opinion than through personal experience which allows to deal with Russian propaganda.”

This is a radical departure for Loomer, who has spent years attacking Ukraine, and even wrote a few columns for the Kremlin-sponsored Russia Today.

“Zelensky shaking hands with an Islamic terrorist who has murderer US soldiers is another reason to have disdain for [Zelenskiy]. I don’t want any more of my tax dollars going to Ukraine. Ukraine is a country full of Nazi apologists and now it’s clearly a country led by a Jihadi apologist,” Loomer said in a post last year following Zelenskiy’s meeting with Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa, whom she referred to by his nom de guerre, Julani. “Julani is a cold blooded killer. He was wanted by the US for $10 million up until May. He’s a very bad guy who wants a global Islamic caliphate. This is going to backfire spectacularly on everyone who is shaking hands with Julani.”

In another post from 2023, Loomer accused former President Joe Biden of “funding Nazi death squads in Ukraine with US taxpayer dollars.”

“Look forward to your balanced coverage from ‘Kyiv,’” RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan wrote Monday. “To Ms Loomer’s credit, we did enjoy her columns for RT back in the day.”

It’s unclear why Loomer has changed her tune so suddenly, but as an influencer who unfortunately has a direct line of communication to Trump, this may have wider ramifications.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz made the announcement in a press conference Tuesday, accusing recipients of the programs in the two states of “suspected fraud and noncompliance.” 

“If those ​states want that money they need to provide ​documentation that these payments are legitimate,” Kennedy said. 

But as Reuters reported, neither Kennedy nor Oz offered new evidence of fraud. 

President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and multiple administration officials have attacked Democratic-run states in the last few months, accusing them of engaging in widespread fraud when it comes to public services. In May, the White House blocked $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for California, claiming that the state was not tackling fraud in its home and hospice health agencies. 

Last month, Trump reportedly directed federal agencies to look into how they could block funding for the state of California, and the Federal Emergency Management Association was caught holding up disaster aid to blue states earlier this year. Less than a week ago, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened not only to block federal grants but also to jail state officials in Democratic states that refuse to hand over voter registration to the Trump administration. 

In the past, states have appealed these cuts in court and won. Minnesota and California will likely sue to get their funding back, and they’ll have plenty of evidence that the White House is targeting them for vindictive reasons.  

In written answers provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee following his congressional hearing, Trump’s former personal attorney refused to rule out the possibility that taxpayer funds could, at some point, be redirected as a form of reparations to Trump’s aggrieved political allies.

“Will you issue a memorandum directing DOJ not to enter into any settlement that would result in paying money or issuing an apology to any person convicted of assaulting law-enforcement officers during the January 6 attack on the Capitol?” prompted one question.

“Every claim submitted pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act is reviewed on the merits and addressed by the Torts Branch of the Civil Division,” responded Blanche. “The compromise and/or settlement of any claim is made only in the best interest of the United States.”

But what Blanche chose not to answer on the Senate’s “Questions for the Record” was just as remarkable.

In one exchange, Blanche refused to expound on whether Justice Department officials had discussed potential payouts with convicted January 6ers. Blanche also refused to answer a point-blank question on whether it was “appropriate” to grant Trump and his family criminal immunity. He similarly declined to answer whether he or the Justice Department had pressured officials at the IRS to sign a settlement agreement with the president.

Of course, Blanche’s opinion doesn’t supersede that of a federal judge who found the whole enterprise wildly unlawful. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams nixed the settlement underlying Trump’s slush fund, ruling that the settlement parties—Trump’s IRS and Trump’s attorneys—were never actually at odds when they opted to forgo the president’s $10 billion lawsuit in favor of a massive, taxpayer-funded honeypot.

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, was one of the social safety net programs gutted by Trump’s budget, which narrowed eligibility for food aid and foisted the costs associated with SNAP onto states. As a result, CBPP estimates that 11 percent of SNAP participants—including 1.5 million children—were knocked off their food assistance between July 2025 and April 2026.

The “big, beautiful bill” marked the most significant cuts in SNAP history. This included the expansion of work requirements for homeless people, veterans, and all able-bodied adults without children up to age 65, although people over age 54 were previously exempt. The bill also ended eligibility for many people with lawful immigration status and required states with high error rates to pay significantly more in benefit costs.

Some parts of the country are being hit harder than others. Arizona in particular has seen a decline of more than 50 percent, as more than 440,000 Arizonans receiving SNAP benefits have been dropped from the program in less than a year. These new cuts have snowballed with bureaucratic red tape, anxieties around error rates, and problems in the state’s SNAP offices, including cuts to staff.

Arizona’s approach to SNAP has been praised by federal officials, however, for “leading the way” in carrying out Trump’s changes and cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“Arizonans losing SNAP say they are skipping meals, quarreling over food, and missing rent payments to restock pantry shelves,” The New York Times reported Monday. “For the first time, monthly visits to the state’s food banks—private charities—have exceeded enrollment in SNAP.”

In its report, the CBPP wrote that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” poses a “great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger.… We expect these harms to grow as states fully implement eligibility restrictions and take actions to lower their error rates.”

But hey, at least the White House is getting a new ballroom.

On Tuesday, Trump was asked by a reporter if he was planning to impose consequences on China, which he blamed for interfering in the 2020 presidential election, during his nationally televised address on Thursday. His answer was dismissive.

“Well, we talked to them about it. It took place a long time ago, I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then. But look, they do things, and we do things to them, I’ll be honest. We do things to them too, it’s not a one-way street. But we’ll be talking to them, yeah,” Trump responded.

Q: Are you planning to impose consequences for what you announced about them meddling in The 2020 election?

TRUMP: It took place a long time ago. I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then. But look, we do things to them too. pic.twitter.com/OxNElA7LLt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 21, 2026

It was a rather nonchalant answer, considering that Trump took over Americans’ televisions to rail against voting fraud and foreign interference in elections. He singled out China for its efforts in the 2020 election, and the White House released declassified documents that supposedly backed up Trump’s claims but in reality exposed his lies.

The files said that China attempted to sway public opinion without interfering with ballots or voting machines. Any information presented in the files didn’t support the points Trump was making in his speech. The remarks were panned for fearmongering with meager evidence, and even conservatives, including Trump’s friends at Fox News, didn’t take it seriously. Based on Trump’s remarks Tuesday, he didn’t believe his own words, either.

“Mr. President, there are no signs that Iran is ready to stop fighting, so what is the plan?” a reporter asked Trump on Tuesday morning while he met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office. “Is the plan to just keep bombing until they give up?”

“How would you know that there are no signs? Why, do you know something I don’t know?” Trump replied.

“Well, they continue to attack our allies and kill Americans.”

“You don’t know what the dialogue is behind the scenes, that they wanna meet desperately to try and end it because they’re getting decimated. You don’t get that when you listen to your fake station,” Trump responded defensively. “You don’t know anything.”

“So talks are still possible?” the reporter pressed.

“Do you know something I don’t know?” Trump asked again.

“Well, tell us.”

“I will tell you: They wanna desperately meet. And until they’re ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest in meeting.”

So the answer is yes—the plan is to keep bombing Iran until something changes. It’s been 10 days of back-and-forth strikes between the two countries as Iran continues to hold tight to the Strait of Hormuz, with help from the Houthis reportedly on the way. Three U.S. service members have been killed since Friday, and Iran has demonstrated that it doesn’t need a massive Air Force or Navy to make U.S. efforts to control the region look futile. This comes as Trump continues the tough talk, threatening death and destruction while oil prices rise and the Pentagon runs out of money and weapons.

Q: There are no signs that Iran is ready to stop fighting. So what's the plan?

TRUMP: How do you know there are no signs? Do you know something I don't?

Q: They continue to attack our allies and kill Americas

TRUMP: They want to meet desperately to try to end it. You don't get… pic.twitter.com/lJJiCRRKWk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 21, 2026

The Trump-Vance campaign’s email to supporters starts with the subject line “Respectfully, I’m sorry.” The email then tells them that their “Trump Inner Circle” application “FAILED because of technical difficulties.”

“Was this a technical error? Your application was denied!” the email reads, before directing the recipient to click a button labeled “TRY AGAIN HERE.”

The email, which was first reported on by MeidasTouch News, ends with a message that Trump is “expecting to see your name” on his “roster before the doors close at midnight tonight,” creating a sense of urgency to fix or complete the application. But there is no application. Clicking the button just redirects to a fundraising page asking for a contribution.

It looks like a typical email scam, down to the bright red color used on the “TRY AGAIN HERE” button. But the email address it’s coming from is legitimate: contact@win.donaldjtrump.com, and it’s likely to dupe a lot of Trump supporters, particularly older people who think they need to pay up. It’s not the first time Trump has done this.

In December, Trump sent out a fundraising email warning recipients that Democrats would steal their “tariff rebate checks” if they didn’t donate money to him within the hour. Republicans as a whole have often raked in cash from older people, even when they have dementia, with misleading tactics.

Trump has already raised a massive war chest, with many Republicans worrying that he’s hoarding much-needed funds. He’s not even engaging with GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill that much. These fundraising emails appear to be yet another grift.

This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.

Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted.

In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.

Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied.

Blanche lashed out Monday in a melodramatic brief attacking Phang’s argument as “outlandish,” “absurd,” and “hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to impose punitive sanctions” on the Department of Justice. He called her lawsuit “sensational and unsubstantiated,” despite the reality that her entire argument is based on cold, hard facts.

Phang’s ongoing lawsuit is yet another headache for Blanche, whose scheme to secure a permanent promotion to attorney general has not exactly been smooth sailing. After days of tense confirmation hearings in the Senate, an uncomfortable meeting with Epstein survivors, and hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues opposing his nomination, $1,000 a day just might drive him over the edge.

Too bad. Let’s see the money.

The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is facing an upcoming budget deficit caused directly by President Trump’s war on Iran, forcing it to cut training, maintenance, and military preparations. Hegseth has also not been transparent or timely about the ultimate costs of the war, leading to more confusion and disarray.

“We need to know what we’re purchasing and why we’re purchasing it,” Democratic Representative Betty McCollum, ranking member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, told the Post, noting that other Pentagon officials were “very concerned” about the lack of information they were receiving.

The House is set to vote on a $73 billion defense package this week, more than the $67 billion the administration requested to help it out of the hole it’s dug. That request has not been well received, as most Democrats oppose any new funding for the Iran war.

This news also comes as the U.S. is dealing with a dwindling stockpile of munitions, contributing to the administration’s financial requests.

It’s absurd that the Pentagon is running out of money when its budget for this year was $1 trillion, with the Trump administration already requesting $1.5 trillion for 2027—a record-setting amount. They’re stacking up bills with your taxpayer dollars to go deeper into a war that the vast majority of the country does not support.

A Second Circuit panel, made up of one George W. Bush judge and two Donald Trump first-term appointees, determined that Mahdawi should not have been released from ICE custody in 2025. They argued that the Vermont-based federal judge that made the initial ruling lacked jurisdiction to do so.

The panel concluded that only an immigration court could oversee Mahdawi’s detention challenge, as the case was inextricably linked to his deportation suit.

“Today’s decision is a grave setback, although I am confident justice will ultimately prevail,” Mahdawi said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union. “It reflects a dangerous failure under political pressure, one that risks turning the federal courts into instruments of politics rather than guardians of constitutional freedom.”

Mahdawi was arrested by masked agents in April 2025 during his scheduled citizenship interview. He later told ABC News that he felt the appointment was a “trap.”

His detention was the result of an aggressive pressure campaign fronted by State Secretary Marco Rubio to push the West Bank refugee out of the country. Rubio at one point argued that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy on the basis that his pro-Palestinian advocacy could create “adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where most of his family remains. He has been outspoken about his experiences growing up in the occupied region, describing the murders of his friends and loved ones by Israeli forces, and the violence he experienced when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15.

He co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside detained (and freed) peer Mahmoud Khalil, another legal U.S. permanent resident who was shipped to an ICE center in Louisiana last year shortly after being ripped away from his pregnant wife by plainclothes ICE agents.

U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford in Vermont, who released Mahdawi after two weeks’ detention last year, ruled at the time that the 35-year-old enjoyed the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens. In Trump’s America, that is apparently not the case.

“By weakening the First Amendment and creating different tiers of rights for citizens and non-citizens, this ruling hands the government a dangerous power: the power to intimidate, censor, and punish dissent without meaningful restraint,” Mahdawi’s Tuesday statement continued.

“But I still have faith that the full court will correct the legal error and restore the constitutional principles that protect all people equally. This struggle continues for Palestine, for dignity and equality everywhere, and for the democratic promise of freedom that must belong to us all; until Palestine is free.”

This story has been updated.

The president seemingly does not care that Congress’s long August recess is mere days away, or that the break will force Republicans to head into midterms woefully ill equipped to impress voters.

When asked about Trump’s current engagement on the Hill, a person close to him told Politico Playbook Tuesday that it was currently at “zero.”

Trump “doesn’t care about anything beyond SAVE, Iran, and the ballroom,” another White House ally told the newsletter.

That’s left Republicans in the lurch. Without Trump’s help to ram through key legislation before midterms, incumbent conservatives will have to rely on weak ad hominem attacks to whittle down the predicted Democratic advantage.

Michigan Representative Lisa McClain, the GOP conference chair, told Politico that her party’s midterm tagline will rely on framing Democrats as crazy—as opposed to advertising Republican candidates on their own slim merits.

“We voted for capitalism,” McClain told Playbook. “We voted to lower your taxes: every Democrat voted to raise your taxes, and they are crazy. They want communism. They hate this country. They hate what this country stands for. That’s crazy.”

But Trump can’t even get behind that. When asked if the White House had bought into the agreed-upon message, McClain told Politico: “No.”

“We need to use it, and then when we think we’ve exhausted it, we need to use it some more,” McClain said.

Trump hasn’t had many wins in his year and a half back in office, either. So far through his second term, the president has failed to resurrect the economy or adequately address the cost of living crisis, inflamed long-standing U.S. alliances, repeatedly tested the rule of law, attempted to create a slush fund for his far-right allies with taxpayer funds, and started another wildly unpopular war in the Middle East—all while grifting billions of dollars in the process.

In the meantime, he’s fixated on his White House ballroom renovation and his highly controversial voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act, which even House Republicans have dropped as a lost cause.

Inside Washington

The three keys to a Jackson victory in Maine

Today we’re focused a bit north of Washington, D.C., where Maine Democrats are rallying around a new presumptive nominee for U.S. Senate to replace disgraced Democrat Graham Platner: logger and former State Senator Troy Jackson. Maine political insiders see some positive signs in how quickly the party has resolved the chaos surrounding Platner’s exit. But Jackson, they add, now has a tough task ahead.

Over the weekend, the state Democratic Party’s delegates election process delivered Jackson a majority of the 601 delegates who will officially nominate the Democratic candidate for Senate, making Jackson’s victory in the official nominating convention on Saturday all but certain. Anthony Emerson, a 31-year-old Portland resident who’s been active in Maine politics since middle school, was running to be a delegate for Cumberland County, but wasn’t selected. When we spoke on Saturday, Emerson still thought Nirav Shah had a decent chance of winning a formidable number of delegates. By the time Monday rolled around, Jackson’s main opponents had dropped out and coalesced around him. That’s a good thing, Emerson told me. “It shows enthusiasm for his campaign, and that his campaign can organize people efficiently,” he said.

Emerson said that the energy at the virtual Cumberland County delegate election meeting was slightly anxious. “But I feel like that’s just Democrats for you,” he added. “We’re always worrying. Especially because Collins overperformed expectations so much in 2020.”

Collins’s decisive, nine-point victory over Democratic state Representative Sara Gideon in 2020, despite trailing in every major poll in the lead-up to the election, is the stuff of Democratic nightmares. But David Farmer, a Maine political analyst I spoke to, said 2026 could be different—if Jackson manages a few key tasks. Here are the ones he highlighted:

1. Get Democrats to turn out. It sounds obvious, but voters are less likely to cast ballots during a midterm election than a presidential election. Getting Democratic voters to the polls should be possible: Democrats in the state have been activated by the two-week process of finding a replacement for Platner, and the party has a monopoly on attention. The murder of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero at the hands of an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13 will also likely galvanize pro-immigrant Democrats to head to the polls.

2. Pick up independents in Portland and surrounding suburbs. In 2020, Gideon received 67 percent of the vote in Portland, a deep blue city that Farmer says she should have performed better in. He attributes that underperformance to Lisa Savage, who was running as an independent and picked up nearly 11 percent of the Portland vote. “Those Lisa Savage votes came straight off of Sarah Gideon,” Farmer said. “In a two-way race, [Jackson] has the opportunity to pick up thousands of votes just in Portland.” Jackson won the plurality of the Portland vote, 28 percent, in the gubernatorial election this June, a good sign for his prospects in the city.

3. Win over undecided female voters. Farmer suggests that independent female voters could be key to Jackson’s win. Collins was a pivotal vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Collins called the decision “ill-considered.” But Democrats are emphasizing Collins’s role in confirming a crucial vote in the 5–4 decision overturning Roe, hoping to pick up pro-choice female voters who otherwise might stay home.

“It’s always going to be tough. There’s a reason that she’s won for 30 years,” said Farmer about Collins. But Jackson still has a path to victory. If Democrats can harness the attention and energy around his nomination, and strategize carefully from here, the Maine Senate seat could still be in play.

—Emma Janssen

Would Dems pass a different version of the Massie amendment?

Democrats aren’t even close to finding a sustainable path forward on Israel, following a seismic House vote splitting the party down the middle on aid to the country. But all signs point to a sea change in how the party talks about the Middle East.

On July 15, representatives voted on the Massie amendment, which would cut $3.3 billion in unconditional aid to the country. The amendment failed, but in a major shock, 103 Democrats—even some who have previously received funding from pro-Israel organizations—voted for the amendment. Even Representative Thomas Massie, the Republican who brought the amendment and the sole “yes” vote in the GOP, was shocked by how many Democrats supported it. “I thought we might get 24, and 60 in my mind would have been a tremendous victory,” he told me on Thursday.

Democrats who voted for the amendment say they did so because there was no better way to express their dissatisfaction with Israel’s war in Gaza and actions during the war in Iran. “Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel is an ally. Israel does not have a right to buy F-35s on its ally’s credit card,” Representative Jake Auchincloss told me.

Auchincloss has been a beneficiary of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and received $10,000 from the group during the 2025–26 cycle. After his “yes” vote, though, the option to donate to him disappeared from AIPAC’s website, along with the other Democrats the group supports who voted for the amendment.

Representative Sarah McBride is another typically pro-Israel Democrat who voted for the amendment. “It was a hard decision to come to,” she said. “The language was poorly written. The vehicle was deeply imperfect. But when the question is called, you have to decide: What is the message you want to send?”

Many of the 98 Democrats who voted “no” on the amendment emphasized that their vote wasn’t because they support the actions of the Israeli government. Representative Rosa DeLauro, for example, pointed to the amendment’s broad language as the reason that she couldn’t vote for it. “Its vague wording gives the Trump Administration broad leeway to determine which programs are defunded and how,” she wrote in a statement.

In her statement, DeLauro signaled that she wants to set stronger restrictions on Israel in the future. “We must ensure that any future security relationship with Israel is structured similarly to defense agreements with our Western and democratic allies,” she wrote. “A new defense agreement must be based on respect for human rights and allow for a route to Palestinian sovereignty.”

Auchincloss also has a vision for future legislation on Israel: “It needs to provide for Israel’s qualitative military edge,” he said. “But it also needs to represent the profound concerns of the American public about further conflict in the Middle East.”

I asked him if there’s a middle way forward for Democrats on Israel, and whether the party would be able to coalesce on a policy toward the country. “Is there a middle way? There needs to be, both in terms of individual policies that point Congress in that direction, and also as we start to architect the next memorandum of understanding,” he said, referencing the Obama administration’s agreement that guaranteed Israel $38 billion in military aid between 2019 and 2028.

Even though Democrats haven’t come to any concrete solutions to their Israel problem, the votes on the amendment signal that a shift is coming. “Number one: Public opinion is changing. Number two: It’s being reflected here in Washington, D.C. And number three: AIPAC’s grip, at least on one party, has been severely diminished,” Massie said of the vote.

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Warren enters the fray in Michigan

There are just two weeks to go until Michigan’s August 4 primary, and the big battle between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Representative Haley Stevens over who gets to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters shows zero signs of calming down. Monday morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren became the latest sitting progressive to back El-Sayed, despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer having endorsed Stevens.

“Michiganders deserve a senator who will fight for you, not for special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat,” Warren said in a subtextually spicy video posted to X. Warren also touted El-Sayed’s union credentials, and insisted that El-Sayed was the “only candidate in this race who can build the grassroots movement needed to win in November”—a not very thinly veiled rebuttal of establishment Democrats’ view that El-Sayed is too far left to defeat a Republican in the general election. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are also backing El-Sayed and appeared at a rally with him in Lansing on Sunday.

The context for that line about special interests: Pro-Stevens TV ad buys have outpaced pro-El-Sayed ad buys by a 12-to-one margin, The Detroit News’s Craig Mauger reported last week. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliates alone have dropped almost $30 million. (Stevens recently voted against a proposal to cut off military aid to Israel.) But also, “a group called A Stronger Michigan, which hasn’t reported its donors’ names to the Federal Election Commission, has spent $12.1 million in support of Stevens,” Mauger wrote. The Detroit Free Press’s Todd Spangler, who calculated the spending ratio as more like 13 to one, noted that both A Stronger Michigan and Center Forward “have been linked to Jefferies Murray, a corporate lobbyist in Washington whose firm has represented defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Facebook parent Meta, among others.”

Last week, El-Sayed took to social media to ask his supporters to stop taking potshots at Stevens over things like her speaking voice, and instead “focus on the issues,” like the “corporations and special interests” who “support her.” Warren’s video would seem to fit the bill. It also hits many of the same notes AOC and Sanders hit over the weekend.

So who’s ahead? Recent polls are oddly split on the question. A Detroit News poll last week had Stevens up seven points. Then Data for Progress found El-Sayed up 13 points. On Monday, Tulchin Research released another poll finding El-Sayed up 16. And they were all in the field at more or less the same time. Obviously, they’re making pretty different guesses about who the electorate is going to be.

Elsewhere:

• Gas prices are up above $4 again due to renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. Last week’s optimistic reads on consumer spending—and thus the economy in general—after gas prices fell in June sure didn’t last long.
  
  
• Analysis from CalMatters’ Digital Democracy project finds that current members of the California legislature have, on average, only broken from their party majority 1 percent of the time. But some are more open to bucking the party line than others. Republican Greg Wallis, representing the swingy 47th district, has strayed in 8 percent of his votes. Democrat Jasmeet Bains—who ran for Congress this year but lost the June “top-two” primary to progressive Randy Villegas and Republican incumbent David Valadao—defected “just under 2 percent of the time since she was elected to the Legislature in 2022.”
  
  
• South Carolina Republicans continue to hurl their hats into the ring for the August 11 primary to replace late Senator Lindsey Graham. On Monday, Graham’s sister Darline Graham Nordone (backed by Trump) and Representative Russell Fry joined a field that already includes Representative Ralph Norman, businessman Mark Lynch, former Governor Mark Sanford, and lawyer Duke Buckner. Don’t forget that two sources have said former Representative Nancy Mace is “strongly considering” a “YOLO” run, too. Watch this (crowded) space to see who Democrat Annie Andrews will be facing in November.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

A new poll from Data for Progress and the Center for Climate Integrity finds that voters “strongly support legal action to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for misleading them about the harms of natural gas, whether in the context of climate change or public health.”

July 21 is Equal Pay Day for Black women—the day marking the extra days in 2026 that a Black woman would have to work in addition to all of 2025 to earn the same amount for the year as a white man. At the Century Foundation, Janelle Jones, Michelle Lavere, Michaela Minnis, Tiara Moultrie, and Lea Woods write about the various policies that might help close the gap. These include paid leave; “direct public investment” in childcare, both to lower costs and to “[raise] wages for early educators, 16.7 percent of whom are Black women”; reducing the cost of higher education; tracking Black employment in Fed data to “resist declaring full employment until Black workers experience it too”; and more.

Tuesday at 10 a.m., the Urban Institute hosts a hybrid event titled “Mobilizing Community and Economic Development to Address Climate Change: Paths for Transformative Action.” Speakers will include Jobs for the Future’s Madeleine Chaisson, Urban Institute’s Oriya Cohen, Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice’s Stuart Clarke, the Tucson, Arizona, city manager’s chief of staff Lane Mandle, and more.

Wednesday at 12:30 p.m., the Center for American Progress hosts an online conversation with Senator Chris Murphy titled “Stopping Trump’s Crypto Corruption,” focusing on “why stronger oversight and anticorruption rules for cryptocurrency markets are essential to protecting U.S. national security and our democracy.”

—Heather Souvaine Horn

Four Questions For: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Interviewed by Matt Ford

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: I’m currently senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, where I’ve been for almost 10 years now. I started my career as an immigration lawyer, but these days, rather than explaining immigration law and policy to a single client, I spend my days explaining immigration law and policy to the general public, policymakers, and the media. Right now, with the imminent loss of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people, I’m diving into co-writing a new publication looking at the Trump administration’s broader “de-legalization” campaign, which is shaping up to be the largest in modern American history.

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

A: The most difficult thing about tracking immigration law and policy is the sheer volume of changes, which keeps accelerating. Statements which are true on Monday may be false by Friday. Protections which lasted for generations can end in a heartbeat. If the first Trump administration was like running a marathon, the second one feels like trying to run a triathlon when the water’s covered in an oil slick, the bike has two flat tires, and every other competitor gets to take shortcuts.

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?

A: It’s been a whirlwind couple of years. But the work I’m most proud of recently is our May publication “Restoring Credibility and Humanity to Immigration Enforcement: A New Framework for Interior Immigration Enforcement.” At a time when the need to make major changes to ICE has never been more clear, I think we offer a uniquely positive vision for fixing what is broken; one that offers high-level solutions, messaging, and concrete policy ideas that are usable for anyone looking to answer the question of what to do with ICE.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: It’s a cliché, but spending time with friends and family has never been more important to me, and I’ve been prioritizing that whenever possible. Beyond the directly personal, I keep coming back to the community response we saw in Minneapolis; how people came together to respond to Trump’s shock and awe campaign leveled against an American city. That level of mutual aid and community support is a model for an American future that is not as atomized and divided as our social media feeds want us to feel, and reminds us that basic human decency and a love of our neighbors makes us far stronger than stigmatizing immigrants ever could.

This state didn’t elect its first Democratic senator until 1974. What’s the state, and for bonus points, who was the senator? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

Representative Jamie Raskin sent a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday asking for records from the Trump administration on Epstein’s international ties.  

“Our examination of available evidence has already revealed damning indications of Mr. Epstein’s activities on behalf of foreign states,” Raskin wrote in the letter, pointing out public evidence of the billionaire’s ties to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, and Israel.  

In addition, Epstein “repeatedly capitalized on his long-term friendship with President Donald Trump to sign up business from these and other foreign governments and actors in the aftermath of President Trump’s first election, without ever registering as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” Raskin added. “By advocating and facilitating on behalf of foreign countries without filing the mandatory disclosures, Mr. Epstein almost certainly violated FARA. His actions also create serious questions about the extent to which he wielded his ties to President Trump in dealings with foreign governments.”

The Department of Justice still has not released 2.5 million files related to Epstein, and Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, believes that some of them concern his foreign dealings. Raskin also asked in the letter for the DOJ to respond in writing as to whether Epstein was ever investigated for being a foreign agent. 

“Jeffrey Epstein never registered as a foreign agent. Yet numerous recently released documents now show he acted aggressively on behalf of multiple foreign governments, including several with interests adverse to the United States, in order to influence policies of the first Trump Administration,” the letter states. 

Trump’s Justice Department has been under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike over its handling of the Epstein files, from its selective redactions to its barely meeting with Epstein’s victims. Investigating Epstein’s foreign ties could reveal more damning decisions from administration officials. 

Patel will likely be hosted on his trip by the FSB, the Russian security service that succeeded the Soviet Union’s KGB, Politico reported Monday. Democrats and Republicans alike were shocked by news of the trip.

“Kash Patel, the man who spent years peddling conspiracy theories to protect Trump from Russia investigation fallout, is now planning to personally fly to Russia and cozy up with the very security apparatus his own agency is supposed to be defending America against,” Occupy Democrats wrote on X. “No sitting FBI director has visited Moscow since Robert Mueller, back in 2013, before he went on to lead the very investigation into Trump-Russia collusion that Patel has spent years dismissing as a ‘hoax.’ Let that sink in.”

“Our FBI Director, who was an unregistered lobbyist for Qatar, is heading to Russia as the White House prepares to impose more sanctions on Russia, which is supplying Iran with weapons to murder U.S. soldiers,” far-right sycophant and close Trump ally Laura Loomer said. “Nothing to see here.”

“On the same day Trump imposes a 50% tariff on Canada, Kash Patel announces he’s traveling to Russia,” said Democratic Representative Andy Kim. “Trump continues to destroy our reputation abroad by treating enemies like friends and friends like enemies.”

Patel’s short time as FBI director has been mired with controversy, from his reported drinking problem to his temper tantrums, to his private jet flights with his young girlfriend on the taxpayer’s dime. While it’s not yet clear whether he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on his trip, it’s still telling that both the right and center left are suspicious of Patel’s motives—especially given the Trump administration’s greater deference to the Kremlin.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone to temporarily fill Graham’s vacancy last week, days after the 71-year-old lawmaker suddenly passed away from a heart issue.

“I feel like I can do it. I feel an inner peace about it. Will it be difficult? Yes, absolutely,” she told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in an interview clip shared Monday. “I’ve made a decision: I’m in.”

The younger Graham took the reins of her brother’s position with Donald Trump’s blessing, despite bringing zero legislative experience to the job. Yet her determination to fill Graham’s shoes for another six years surprised the South Carolina GOP.

“My understanding is that she told Governor McMaster that she would accept the appointment to fill the rest of the term, not to be a candidate for it,” state GOP Chair Drew McKissick told Politico last week, when Nordone first began publicly mulling running for a full term.

Her Monday decision also aggravated a number of right-wing influencers and media personalities, some of whom referred to the high-powered inheritance as moronic.

“Hard pass. Birthright senatorship is idiotic,” Sean Davis, the CEO of The Federalist, wrote on X.

“Trump continues to fill the Swamp with the worst congressional creatures, including his predictable endorsement of Darline Graham,” posted former Virginia Representative and chair of the House Freedom Caucus Bob Good. “Are there worse criteria than 1) family name, and 2) pledged unconditional and unconstitutional allegiance and obedience to the president?”

Glenn Greenwald, one of the co-founders of The Intercept, observed that “it didn’t take Lindsey Graham’s sister very long to go from ‘thank you for this placeholder appointment to honor my brother until an election can be held’ to ‘you know what? I kind of like sitting in this Senate seat. Like a lot. I think I’ll stay for life, like my brother did.’”

But Nordone does not have much time to prepare herself for what will likely be a whirlwind special election. The deadline to enter the August race is July 28. Other GOP candidates already in the mix include Representatives Russel Fry and Ralph Norman, as well as businessman Mark Lynch, who lost to Graham in the June primary. The winner will face Democrat Annie Andrews in November.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump is smashing his way to new record lows in the polls. A pair of new surveys shows Trump faring worse than his predecessors by several crucial metrics, especially among the independents who are absolutely key in midterm elections. As a new analysis from CNN concludes, his numbers are, quote, unquote, “horrible.”

And yet there are some signs this may not be translating into the advantage Democrats need in the midterm contests. In truth, the signs point in all directions right now. Trump’s travails are enormously important, but there are hidden structural factors here that could work against that. So today we’re trying to get to the bottom of what we know and what we don’t with Christina Reynolds, a veteran Democratic strategist who’s worked on a lot of midterm elections. Christina, good to see you.

Christina Reynolds: Good to see you too, Greg. Happy to chat.

Sargent: So we just had this new Washington Post poll that finds Trump’s overall job approval at 37 percent among Americans, with 61 percent disapproving. That’s 24 points underwater. Meanwhile, a new CNBC poll has Trump 19 points underwater. Average those together and you get around negative 22 points, which is pretty terrible. Christina, how important are presidential approval numbers in midterms, and why? Can you just lay that out for us?

Reynolds: Sure. I think they’re incredibly important, particularly with this party and this president, because this is a party that is driven—a lot of the turnout is driven—by people being excited about Donald Trump. That’s why we’ve seen wins in past cycles, and they’re not going to have that. This is a historically low, epically low number.

What’s particularly important here? I mean, Bush had low numbers in 2006 when Democrats took back the House. Obama had low numbers in 2010, largely because of Obamacare, when Republicans took back the House. Both of those were rationally political actors who understood what it meant to deal with those low approval ratings, who tried to keep the focus on things that mattered to voters, who maybe didn’t go out and campaign in the way you might have. And that’s not what we’re dealing with here.

We have a president with terrible numbers who doesn’t believe it, and does things like goes into Derrick Van Orden’s very at-risk district and does an event where he talks about the beautification of Washington and the ballroom that he’s building, in a district that could not give two you-know-whats.

So I think this is an important point—that Donald Trump is someone who is incredibly underwater and completely unaware that he is not on land. And that’s something that’s going to be a struggle for Republicans who are on the ballot this cycle to deal with.

Sargent: So you talked about George Bush and Barack Obama, and Trump faring worse than them in many ways. And so did CNN analyst Harry Enten. He had a long discussion of this on CNN and it was pretty fascinating. He talked in particular about Trump being an average of 22 points underwater in these two new polls. Listen.

Harry Enten (voiceover): Yeah, just how horrible are these numbers. It’s the worst this century for a president at this point in the second term when you look at an average of the CNBC and Washington Post polls. We’re talking about right here the average of CNBC and Washington Post, minus 22 points. Barack Obama was underwater, but not anywhere near this level. He was at minus eight. And George W. Bush, in the middle of the Iraq War, when that was going south, he was at minus 20 points. So at this point, Donald John Trump is in fact holding the record for the lowest net approval rating for a president in a second term at this point in the second term of any president in the twenty-first century.

Sargent: Just to recap, Trump is underwater by 22 points. Barack Obama was eight points down at around the same time in his second term, and George W. Bush was 20 points underwater. Let’s remind everyone, as you just did, that Democrats suffered huge midterm losses under both those presidents—in 2014 under Obama, and the GOP suffered pretty badly under Bush in 2006. Trump is in a worse place than either were. Your thoughts on all that?

Reynolds: Yeah, I think this is the thing that works to Democrats’ advantage right now, one of the major things. We have the right direction of the country—all of the indicators that we would look at and say, boy, this doesn’t look good for the party in power—don’t look good for the party in power, which is the Republicans. And so you have Democrats running a bit with the wind at their backs, simply because Donald Trump is taking those Republicans off a cliff.

I’m using so many different analogies here, but you get the point, which is I would rather be us than them when you’re looking at these numbers, because we can point to what Donald Trump has done to drive us in the wrong direction. And we can point to failure of doing anything he said he was going to do, the wrong priorities, which matter to voters.

Voters are paying attention every time he talks about the ballroom instead of how to make their lives better. And that’s something that permeates and will either get his voters to stay home or potentially turn some of them into Democratic voters.

Sargent: Well, as you mentioned, here’s a case where voters can really directly connect Trump’s policy decisions to their own personal lives in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen before. And by the way, I should float these numbers as well. The Post poll has 33 percent of Americans overall approving of his handling of the economy. That’s one in three. That’s pretty bad. And it has 29 percent approving of his handling of the war with Iran.

And yet now he’s continuing the war in a major way, escalating it. And the war, of course, is one of the big reasons people are so sour on the economy—that and the tariffs. So not only is Donald Trump talking about his ballroom and so forth, he’s hailing this as the greatest economy in human history and saying that we’re going to continue this war for as long as it has to continue. There’s a real clear example of him not really being at all in touch with his own political situation, I think, don’t you?

Reynolds: One hundred percent. I think the worst thing that a politician can do—and honestly, we saw this some in 2024. I would argue one of the biggest challenges that Biden-Harris faced was trying to sell Bidenomics, trying to tell people that even though inflation was bad, they were doing things to fix the economy, and many indicators were in good shape.

That may have been true, but voters don’t like to be told what they’re not feeling in their own bottom line. And Trump is trying to do that again, while also focusing on things that voters know are driving up prices.

Everyone buys gas, everyone buys groceries. And those are things that are directly impacted by fuel costs, which are directly impacted by the war in Iran. And so I think that what we see is very easy dots to be connected by voters. And they’re already doing that. And that’s why these numbers are in the place that they are.

Sargent: Well, let’s listen to a bit more of CNN’s Harry Enten. This time he’s talking about independents.

Enten (voiceover): And if you think this is bad, what is driving this number? It’s independents, baby. It’s independents. Look, all-time worst at this point in a second term, net approval rating among independents. Donald John Trump at minus 45 points among independents, even worse than Richard Milhous Nixon, who was about to leave office because of Watergate, who had previously held the record at minus 37 points. And the aforementioned George W. Bush at minus 31 points. Donald John Trump, the worst-ever net approval rating with independents at this point in a second term.

Sargent: So Trump is 45 points underwater with independents in the Washington Post poll. His approval rating among independents is 26 percent, which is just absolutely abysmal. And according to Harry Enten, he’s faring even worse than Nixon during Watergate. Christina, can you explain why independents in particular are so important in midterms, and what all this means?

Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, midterms are about two things. Who turns out—because not everyone does. Can you get your party excited to turn out? And then can you get those people in the middle? And honestly, more and more we are seeing voters declare themselves independent. They’re not in love with either party. We see that in almost every poll. And so that number’s getting bigger.

So winning that group of people is critical to winning, particularly in states where we already know the die is cast in a lot of districts, right? The lines are set up so that the partisan makeup is tough. You’ve got to appeal to independents. And Trump is pushing them away in a pretty massive way, right?

Sargent: Yeah, that’s a critical point. And just to add to it, the independents are going to be really important in places like Texas, where there’s a pretty competitive Senate race, amazingly. That’s going to be a place where this whole thing is decided as well. It’s precisely because a lot of this map is being fought out in places that are somewhat friendly to Republicans—in part because of the Senate map being what it is, and in part because of Republican gerrymandering horrors being somewhat successful, unfortunately. And so given that Dems are fighting it out in somewhat less friendly territory, you really need the independents, right?

Reynolds: Absolutely. You see that in my home state of North Carolina—there’s a growing number of independents or unaffiliated voters. You see it in places like Alaska, which is a Senate seat, I believe, that is within reach. And you see it in places like Ohio. There’s a ton of races in those areas that move into competitive territory if you can move those independent voters. And it sure looks like they’re movable.

Sargent: I mean, Trump is at 26 percent among independents, which is pretty terrible. But here’s the harder part, Christina. The Post poll has Dems only three points ahead in the generic House ballot matchup. The CNBC poll finds them only four points ahead.

Now, some of the polling averages have it a bit bigger, at around five points. But it really does look as if—and Ron Brownstein’s been good on this—Democrats aren’t quite running where Trump’s approval numbers suggest they should be. Why do you think that’s happening?

Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s happening for a couple of reasons. I think the first thing is, there’s kind of a pox on politics in general right now. Everything has felt so negative. I don’t think people are in love—they’re certainly not in love with either party. You don’t have to read many polls to see that Democrats’ numbers are not that much better than Trump’s. And that’s one of the challenges in a generic ballot—you’re asking people to compare Democrats writ large, not popular, versus Republicans and Trump, not popular.

The biggest challenge that Democrats face right now is getting an agenda to break through. Voters want more than just “you’re not Trump.” Voters want more than “I won’t be them.” And while voters want change, they want to see you actually take action, and they want to know that you have their best interests in mind. And I believe that to be true—it’s why I’m a Democrat, it’s why I’ve worked for Democrats for years. But that is not breaking through right now.

I think one of the reasons is we spend a lot of time talking about the outrage of Donald Trump, and there’s a lot of outrage to go around. And one of the reasons is right now we’re spending a lot of time fighting amongst ourselves, and talking more about party and process and who’s the establishment and who’s not and all of that. And I’m, by the way, not crediting one side of that fight more than the other. Everybody’s doing it.

But when we are talking about party and process, we are not telling voters what we’ll do for them. And fundamentally, that may win you points on the internet, but it does not win you votes. We also run the risk of continuing to turn off voters who we need to win. You know, we need to encourage them to come out and vote. And in a midterm, that’s not easy. And we’re not doing a great job of that right now.

Sargent: Well, let me ask you this. What do you make of the argument in some quarters—mostly centrists are making it—that the party brand is so damaged that that’s why the party is not performing in the generic matchup quite where it should?

I want to stress, by the way, that Democrats are still quite favored to take the House and miraculously have a real shot at the Senate. It’s just that they’re not quite where I think we need them to be. What’s your take on the argument that the brand overall is badly damaged, and that the party needs to moderate in response to that?

Reynolds: Well, those are two separate questions. Do I think the party brand is damaged? Sure, I do. But I think that we have some strong candidates, and I am less concerned about that than some people. I don’t love it, but I think we can get beyond it if we start talking about our values, because we do share many of the same values there. But I don’t think that necessarily means we have to moderate.

I think that means we need to run good candidates who understand their districts and are speaking to what voters’ concerns are in those districts. And I think we are seeing that with some great candidates. And we are seeing that across ideologies within the big tent of the Democratic Party. But I don’t think it’s about, you know, putting the big D on your chest and running with that.

And I certainly don’t think it’s about how do we take over the Democratic Party, or how do we make sure that our wing of the Democratic Party is the one that comes out ahead. I don’t think most voters care. And I think the more we fight about that, the more we are turning off the people who we need to turn out.

Sargent: Yeah, and I just want to underscore your point there, which is, I think that a lot of these Democratic candidates in some of these tough House districts are really pretty independent. They have relationships with the district. They know what the district requires. It’s not as if they’re flaming leftists running in some of these House seats in Pennsylvania and in North Carolina and California and New York—some of the tougher districts, in those bluer states, the last two.

And so that’s where it breaks down for me a little, that the Democratic brand is the issue. The Democratic brand didn’t seem to hold back Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and it didn’t hold back Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, both of whom are quite independent.

Now, I think some people would say, well, they’re pretty moderate. I think that’s sort of true, but it’s also more complicated than that. They essentially ran as pro-democracy candidates, as well as running on the economy. They ran as patriots, as Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg puts it. They’re not exactly just pure milquetoast moderates in any sense.

They have strong identities, they know how to talk to the people of their states. And I think these candidates—also a lot of them that we’re seeing in these House races—are similar. So I think that there’s probably a decent chance that the brand doesn’t really matter all that much in the end. Does that seem right to you?

Reynolds: It does. And I would say, you know, there’s other places where we can look for actual votes and actual proof, right? In the last year, one of those is that we have flipped 30 state legislative seats from Republicans since Trump took office for his second term. They have flipped zero. And those are candidates who run the gamut across our ideological spectrum as Democrats, but they’re candidates who got in, knew their districts, went in and did the work, and told good stories and convinced voters that it mattered that they were in office. That’s something that I think we’re seeing more and more of.

You don’t have to moderate for the sake of moderating. Get out there, tell a story, tell what you’re going to do for people, maybe get something done. You know, it’s interesting that we’re seeing things like, in both New Mexico and New York, where they’re trying to pass childcare. I think families care about that, right? That is something that is popular and shows action, and in very different areas, right?

I think that we’re seeing people actually try and get things done and actually offer arguments. You know, Paige Cognetti is a good example in Pennsylvania, where she’s running against corruption, because voters think that people in office are not for them. She’s showing that she is, right? I think it’s about understanding your districts, it’s about showing who you’re fighting for, and it’s about showing that you have a plan, more than just I’m not going to be them.

Sargent: Right. I guess what you’re saying is, if you’re running on childcare or if you’re running against Trumpian corruption, that’s not really either moderate or leftist. It just doesn’t really map onto this weirdly tidy ideological template that all these factional fighters in the party keep insisting that we have to like dance around all the time. It’s just sort of bullshit, really, isn’t it?

Reynolds: Amen, Greg. Yes, that is exactly what I was saying. And I think there are candidates across the country who break those rigid little norms, and we can learn something from all of them. And that’s what we should be doing. And we should be lifting those people up, instead of having some of these ridiculous interparty fights, or having some of these days where all we do is talk about Trump. Voters are ready to move on, clearly. We need to be too.

Sargent: It sounds like you’re kind of putting your finger on a bit of a paradox, which is: Trump’s madness, the nonstop lunacy, and just the profound incompetence and buffoonery of him on a daily basis, really has wrecked his approval ratings and driven them to real record lows.

But at the same time, it sort of sucks up all the oxygen in a way that makes it harder for Democrats to campaign on their own agenda, and that’s one of the reasons that they’re kind of held back. You’d like to see them be a little clearer on, here’s what I will do if I win—A, B, and C—both in terms of protecting democracy and fighting corruption, and on the economy, right?

Reynolds: That’s exactly right. I think Trump’s numbers are why Republicans will lose. We need to give them a reason why Democrats can win. And that’s how we pick up some of those seats that are bigger reaches. That’s how we flip the House, we flip the Senate, we flip some of these state legislatures, and we keep these governors’ mansions that are so important—and flip some of them. There are a number of them that we could take over. And the way we do that is, we do better than trying to make them lose. We try and win.

Sargent: And what’s your view on the odds of the House and Senate right now, more or less?

Reynolds: I think we talked about this last time. I’m not usually optimistic, but I kind of still am. I think we can do both. And I’m excited to see it. North Carolina’s going to do our part—we’re going to flip this Senate seat. But I feel pretty good about it. And I think we’re going to see some surprises down ballot as well. But we have to give voters a reason to turn out.

Sargent: All very well said. Christina Reynolds, thank you so much for all that. Thanks for coming on.

Reynolds: Thanks, Greg.

The filing is the latest front in the right’s ever-expanding campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. What began as a challenge to affirmative action in college admissions has grown into a sweeping effort to dismantle diversity offices, race-conscious scholarships, employee affinity groups, and educational programs that acknowledge the continuing significance of race in American life. At every turn, it seems like the mere presence of a Black person or a woman or someone from any number of other identities in a position of authority is “illegal DEI.” It is no longer enough to prohibit universities from making admissions decisions on the basis of race. Now, even voluntary communities that students create for themselves are supposedly suspect.

The fact that these voluntary affinity spaces are the only ones being targeted is telling. Universities are full of affinity spaces. It’s fairly typical for honors students to choose to live with other honors students. Some students join language houses to provide second-language immersion. Others enjoy a range of themed residential communities organized around academic interests, service, religion, or shared hobbies. Fraternities, athletic communities, and countless informal networks built around common experiences are accepted as ordinary features of campus life.

The UConn programs at issue do not assign students to housing based on race, nor do they exclude anyone from participating in university life. They are voluntary residential learning communities that students opt into because they believe they would benefit from living among peers with shared experiences. But the complaint effectively argues that students cannot be trusted to make that determination for themselves. A group of honors students may decide that living together would foster their academic development. French speakers may conclude that a shared living arrangement would deepen their cultural and linguistic experience. But if Black or Latino students believe there is value in spaces that acknowledge their experiences as members of historically marginalized groups, their decision suddenly becomes so suspect that it is characterized as unlawful segregation requiring government intervention.

That idea has a long history in the United States.

Throughout our history, communities built by marginalized groups have been portrayed as divisive, illegitimate, or contrary to universal principles, and again and again, governments and powerful institutions have sought to dismantle those communities in the name of equality, progress, or neutrality. Whether they have been tribal governments, labor unions, Black business districts, or mutual aid societies, institutions that enable vulnerable people to support one another and exercise collective power have been seen as threats precisely because they lessen dependence on dominant institutions. Spaces for building solidarity outside of an ideologically dominant vision of white supremacy and patriarchy are particular targets, with cross-community solidarity efforts being particularly threatening.

For example, the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion—a 1676 uprising of frontier settlers, indentured servants, and enslaved people against Virginia’s colonial government—were complex, but the uprising alarmed colonial authorities in part because it demonstrated the possibility of solidarity between poor whites, indentured servants, and enslaved Black laborers. In its aftermath, colonial governments increasingly hardened racial distinctions and distributed rights and privileges in ways that made such expressions of solidarity more difficult to foster, the better to prevent the formation of any durable interracial community. The point was not only to elevate whiteness but to make collective action among the oppressed less likely.

Black Americans repeatedly built institutions of their own. After emancipation, Black people were excluded from many white institutions and denied equal protection of the law, and they were still the frequent targets of extrajudicial violence. They created churches, schools, businesses, newspapers, and mutual aid organizations that provided forms of security and independence unavailable elsewhere. Tulsa’s Greenwood district represented one of the most remarkable examples of this process. Known colloquially as “Black Wall Street,” this community was not just a prosperous Black neighborhood. It was a thriving ecosystem of businesses and civic institutions that gave Black Tulsans a degree of collective autonomy in a society organized around white supremacy.

That autonomy itself was intolerable to many white Tulsans. In 1921, a white mob joined and deputized by local authorities descended on Greenwood, looting and burning homes and businesses, killing hundreds of residents, and leaving thousands homeless. The massacre that destroyed Black Wall Street was more than an attack on individual wealth. It was an effort to annihilate a thriving Black community and the institutions that sustained it. The physical destruction was compounded by decades of official neglect and historical erasure, ensuring that the loss of wealth, property, and communal infrastructure would reverberate across generations.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these extrajudicial forms of repression increasingly became formalized through law. Jim Crow helped maintain a social order in which Black political and economic institutions could be constrained, surveilled, and periodically subjected to violence. Legal rules and extralegal terror worked together to preserve relationships of dependence and limit the development of collective power.

There is no example that better demonstrates the relationship between violence, law, and the dismantling of solidarity than the federal government’s policy of Native American allotment. By the late nineteenth century, the United States had already spent decades violently displacing Indigenous peoples through warfare, forced removal, and coercive treaties. Native American nations posed a particular threat to white settler hegemony through their ancestral ties to the land, collective identity, and separate systems of governance, social obligation, and relationships to land that organized collective life. Federal policy sought not only to remove Indigenous people from their lands, but to transform the forms of community that made collective resistance to removal and settlement possible.

The Dawes Act of 1887 represented a legal culmination of this project. Rather than openly presenting allotment as an effort to weaken Indigenous nations, its supporters framed it as a path toward equality and citizenship. They argued that tribal governments and communal landholding kept Indigenous people from becoming proper, independent Americans. The solution, they claimed, was to divide collectively held lands into individual parcels, transform Indigenous people into private property owners, and replace relationships of collective responsibility with direct relationships between individuals and the federal government.

The language was similar to the “colorblind” talk we see today, selling freedom through individual ownership, equality through the elimination of group distinctions, and progress through assimilation. And, of course, the result was dispossession. Millions of acres of land were transferred out of Indigenous control, often through fraud, coercion, and exploitation. Beyond the dissolution of collective property, allotment weakened the institutions through which Indigenous communities governed themselves, cared for one another, and maintained collective identities. It transformed land stewardship from the foundation of a community into an asset that could be individually owned, bought, and sold.

The importance of allotment is that it demonstrates a recurring pattern in American history. The destruction of marginalized communities often begins by portraying those communities as the obstacle to equality and their institutions as barriers to individual freedom, rather than responses to conditions of exclusion. The solution offered is not greater power for those communities but their dissolution, and the same logic appears in contemporary attacks on affinity spaces.

The complaint against UConn relies on the idea that the university should treat students solely as individuals and that any institution organized around shared racial experience is inherently suspect, but that standard has never been applied evenly. American society is filled with communities built around shared identities and experiences, but the history of anti-solidarity politics reveals the distinction. Communities that allow marginalized people to reduce their dependence on systems that have historically excluded them are consistently targeted.

The question raised by the UConn complaint is therefore much larger than whether a university may offer Black and Latino residential learning communities. It is whether equality requires people to stand alone—or whether people who have historically faced exclusion have the right to build the communities through which they can stand together.

One year after Sanchez Estrada’s arrest, his sister, Ana Bell, posted a video statement about her brother and the trauma the government has put her family through in its prosecution of the Prairieland case. In the video, released earlier this month, Bell is surrounded by shelves of fantasy and science fiction books, including some familiar titles that frequently show up on banned book lists: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984. With her children, Bell co-owns and runs a bookstore in Rockwall County, Texas. “I feel it is a war on free speech, rather than just my brother,” she told me when we spoke last week. In the government’s efforts to paint a temporarily connected group of people who opposed immigration detention as a “North Texas Antifa Cell,” it may not have said flat out that sharing a book is now a crime. It didn’t have to.

Literature, in the Prairieland case, was turned into a vector of criminalization. In the hands of a prosecutor, the fact that a book or a zine can be passed from reader to reader became the accumulating elements of a criminal conspiracy. FBI Special Agent Joseph Clark Wiethorn’s lengthy sworn statement recounted discovering the box of literature that Sanchez Estrada allegedly took to an apartment in Denton, Texas. The government claimed that the box had been moved after a call between Rueda, then already in jail, and her husband. The agent characterized what he found inside as “anti-law enforcement, anti-government, anti-Trump sentiments.” One zine pictured was a guide to squatting (“The average life expectancy of a squat in San Francisco seems to be only three weeks”); another was a collection of essays about anarchist tactics in historical context (“What happened in Asheville on May Day was not a riot”). ICE posted additional photos of the zines to Instagram, claiming that the FBI had “found literal insurrectionist propaganda.” Crafting its own propaganda, ICE connected the zines, Sanchez Estrada’s arrest, and his immigration status. (You can read the zines yourself, available as part of a recent republished series in print, or free online.) Two other defendants, the couple Elizabeth and Ines Soto, also had zines used against them, particularly their at-home zine-making and their book club, which was named for Emma Goldman. Each was sentenced to 50 years.

Until now, Ana told me, her family “kept quiet.” They didn’t want anything they said used against Sanchez Estrada. “But it is bigger than him,” she said. “I love my brother dearly and I want him to come home.… Out of all the defendants, I believe everybody should go home.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Melissa Gira Grant: What was it like in court? You were there for the sentencing, just a couple weeks ago?

Ana Bell: I was there. It’s very nerve-wracking to be in that room, after a whole year, knowing what we know of my brother, and knowing that his life is pretty much in someone’s hands. From the beginning for us it was like, “This doesn’t make sense.” All of this is leaking into social media and feeding this narrative that he is a criminal, when all he did was move a box of his own belongings.

Melissa: During your brother’s sentencing, the judge said, essentially, “We’re doing this to send a message to anybody else who shares this ‘ideology.’” What did it feel like in the moment for that to be said so directly?

Ana: I was just like, “Oh my God, they’re not even trying to cover this up.” They feel in the right to do this. And I don’t understand it. I felt like hope had been taken from us. I felt like my brother was on trial simply out of support for this administration and the things that they are doing, because other than that, it makes no sense.

I own a bookstore. We are a fiction store only. But my shelves are full of female and male characters that lead armies to battle, fighting oppression, fighting injustice, fighting their own types of fascism in their worlds. You have Katniss in The Hunger Games, you have even Harry Potter in his own world. You have all of these characters that are standing up against injustice and they’re in fiction books. If you were to say that reading these types of books makes you antifa; that’s your ideology because you love reading these? Then all of us in the bookish community will be in jail.

They say that he went to the house to remove evidence. They specifically used the wording, he went to “her house.” And I would like to make the record clear here: He went to his house. He lived there. [A federal agent acknowledged, in a sworn affidavit, that Sanchez Estrada’s parents told investigators that he lived with Maricela Rueda and split his time between the couple’s house in Fort Worth and his parents’ home.] They make it sound suspicious.

If you were going to tell me that the contents of the box, the zines, the stickers, the poetry, that’s the crime—then we have a bigger problem here, which is free speech.

That’s what is being targeted here, not my brother. My brother is just a vessel. It’s like they have to have a body to put in jail. And unfortunately, that happens to be my brother.

How is talking about corporations destroying our environment a big issue that someone will have to be in jail? How is a book of poetry expressing your own feelings on a political climate? It’s a crime that you should be in jail for 30 years. Look at all of those things, and then look inside of your home, at what things that you have in your own home that fit the same sentiment.

Because a lot of people don’t understand that. This is way beyond my brother just being in jail. I’m a bookstore co-owner, my kids own the other part. All the time, new bills are being introduced in Texas about banning books, things that people don’t want you to be reading. There was a bill that would’ve made us, the people who own bookstores, criminals and charged like pedophiles for having smut in our stores. [The Texas House considered a bill in 2025 that would have held bookstores liable for “damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor.”] If you don’t like it, don’t read it. It is so easy. You don’t get to control what other people say or do. And it is not a crime to either read it or not read it.

I feel it is a war on free speech rather than just my brother, but I feel that he’s right now the flag or the one thing that is representing the battle.

Melissa: You mentioned you were out of the country when your brother was arrested, but your parents and your kids were here?

Ana: When it happened, I was in Mexico. My parents, they live about three miles away from my house. [Law enforcement] raided their home. I called my kids, I called some friends, and I was telling them, this is what happened to my parents. I told my kids, “If somebody comes into the house, you let them take whatever they want to take, you step aside, you don’t talk to them, you don’t engage.” And I had friends ready so that as soon as something would happen in my house, my kids will send them a message, they will come and keep the kids safe. My youngest was 15 last year, and my oldest is 20.

How is this happening? We haven’t done anything. They’re looking for anything and everything. They took my mom’s little notepad that had phone numbers from Mexico, with the little Disney princesses on the front. They took my sister’s phone. That’s the one thing that we would love to have back. That phone had my sister’s photos, things that we can’t get back because she passed away nine years ago. They took my dad’s tablet, where you log all your trips [for an 18-wheeler trucking company] and then you send that information automatically to the company you’re working with and then they pay you. So his income was gone when they took that tablet with them.

I’m not saying the officers that came to the house came in with the purpose of getting my mom to faint, came in with the purpose of taking my dad’s income, came in with the purpose of taking my sister’s phone. That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is their actions are following orders that had no legal basis whatsoever. They’re rummaging through my parents’ house, and we still didn’t know what my brother’s charges are or where he’s at.

And so you have parents going through all of this trauma, and then there’s [the] aftermath. The loss of income, the health decaying for my mom, the nightmares that come. I cannot even open the door without letting them know I’m coming over, even though I have a key to the house, because it freaks my mom out every time that we rattle the doorknob on the house.

It just makes no sense. It was terrifying because I was away from the country. I’ve been divorced for almost 14 years, so it’s just me and my kids, and having to be away to earn an income and then hear that all of this is happening.

I came back, and within hours I was on my way to Fort Worth to the hearing. And then I get to hear this: My brother is not going to go home. He’s going to stay in there.

Melissa: What happens next?

Ana: At this point, we are being told that the timeline is about probably two years before we are heard on the Fifth Circuit for appeals, unless they move really fast. But what we are looking for is a pardon.

So we just have to hope that whoever comes in power understands that carrying a box of your own magazines is not a violation of any kind of law, you’re actually protected under the First Amendment for freedom of speech. So it should be a no-brainer to be like, “We really messed up over here.” He’s totally entitled to read about raccoons and the environment. And he’s totally entitled to not feel that police brutality is OK. You know what I mean?

Melissa: Looking through the zines, I just thought, This is all very familiar. If you’ve ever been in an independent bookstore, if you’ve ever been to a protest, none of this is unfamiliar. And it feels like the point, I guess, of looping your brother in was to say, “Well, this is the ideology of this group, and isn’t this scary?”

Ana: Yes. And that was it. They kept saying they shared this ideology, they shared this type of mentality, this is what terrorism looks like.

And I’m like, “This is just reading material.”

They’re not telling us in any of the documents that they put in the court record, “We’re coming after your freedom of speech.” They’re saying he was holding a box of zines that are considered antifa. Well, what do you consider antifa? Well, [the zines] are talking about the government. They’re talking about police brutality. They’re talking about consent. They’re talking about the environment.

Melissa: And that seems to be what it’s about with this administration—the enemy is criminal, dissent is criminal, an immigrant is criminal. The man in Houston who ICE killed last week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo …

Ana: To me, bringing that point of Lorenzo’s passing, which is super unfortunate, then you start reading articles from the right-wing media and they’re talking about, “He was illegal, he was a criminal,” all these things. Dehumanizing him. I didn’t know him. I don’t know who he is. But I’ve seen what happened to Renee Good before. I’ve seen what happened to Alex Pretti before. So for me, it is so important that people understand. Yes, you will see the videos. But when you are watching these videos, you need to look—actually pay attention to what is happening on the screen, not the narrative that is being painted for you.

Because I realized pretty quick, when I read the original charges, the original Prairieland affidavit, it said that it was an ambush. Again, I am not a tactical person, I am not in law enforcement, but I’m pretty sure an ambush means they’re coming at you, not running from you. At no point are [law enforcement] running and hiding because they fear for their lives.

I live with what I tell people is kind of like my own survivor’s guilt. And it is the fact that I get to be free while he doesn’t. Like just lying on my bed for five extra minutes, I feel guilty of it because he doesn’t get that. And it’s not anything that I did, it’s not anything that he did, but it is there. That feeling is there when we eat some food and we’re thinking, like, “Man, he’s barely getting the knockoff brand of noodles in his cell, and here we are at an Asian restaurant eating the great noodles,” that type of thing. All of that, it comes back, and it’s a constant reminder that he’s not with us and through no fault of his own.

Melissa: When’s the last time you got to talk with your brother?

Ana: This past week we had a phone conversation. One of our friends, in an email, told him I had posted the statement video, and he was so grateful. He just wanted to let me know that he appreciated that I had done that.

It’s so hard that he’s in jail right now. It’s so hard that he lives in the conditions that he’s in. I’m telling you, he used to travel for two months a year and just be out in the wilderness, and right now, he gets one hour outside of his cell in the sun. One hour where they get taken to the yard. He likes to go where the trees are and look at the little squirrels and try to make friends with them. He says everybody tries to feed them something. That’s their entertainment when they’re there. But he tells you, “It rained today and I saw the rain and it felt amazing.”

You’re literally depriving him from the things he loves the most, and for no reason.

That review process turns out to be further along than I realized (hat tip to Janay Kingsberry of The Atlantic for filling me in). Now the ACHP, which is under the firm control of President Donald Trump, has produced a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (text here and here) that would make it significantly easier for Trump “to fast-track projects that destroy, or cause irreversible damage to, our historic places, with virtually no public oversight,” according to Sara Bronin, who chaired the ACHP under President Joe Biden. The ACHP is expected to publish the notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of this week.

Given Trump’s demolition of the East Wing, his plans to build a White House ballroom that dwarfs the executive mansion, his efforts to erect an Arc de Trump in the traffic circle leading to Arlington Cemetery and a National Garden of American Heroes in West Potomac Park; and, given further the Trump White House’s previous plans, now set aside, to demolish the Wilbur J. Cohen building and three other federal office buildings in Southwest Washington that it’s been trying to unload—these regulatory changes would be like handing a box of matches to an arsonist.

The main thrust of the proposed revisions is to reduce opportunities for public input into preservation decisions and to reduce preservation’s scope. “We’ve never seen a proposal that would do this much damage to this much of the country’s history in one stroke,” said Greg Werkheiser, founding partner of Cultural Heritage Partners, which is currently litigating against Trump’s Kennedy Center alterations and his planned whitewashing of the Old (now Eisenhower) Executive Office building. Cultural Heritage Partners has set up an online war room to fight against the proposed Section 106 changes.

But in a telephone conversation late Monday, Bronin warned me not to think solely of Trump’s Mad King Ludwig–like desire to reshape the nation’s capital according to his whims. (My analogy, not hers.) “I would encourage people not to get distracted by the types of projects that have been in the news,” Bronin said, “because these changes are geared toward a more systematic overhaul of the process” to “benefit some of the most destructive projects that are in the federal pipeline,” including lucrative mining and oil exploration on federal lands previously protected by the National Historic Preservation Act.*

Bronin cited as an example an area of Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, known to the local Indigenous community as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel and to everyone else as Oak Flat. To these Native Americans, it’s a sacred site, and as such it’s listed as a Traditional Cultural Property in the National Register for Historic Places. In 2014, then-Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, Republicans of Arizona, inserted into a defense bill a provision requiring transfer of Oak Flat to an Australian mining company called Resolution Copper. The mining would obliterate Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, and thus far Section 106 has been a useful tool to block this activity in court.

But the proposed revisions to Section 106 require (on page 47) that to qualify for protection, a physical location must be “geographically compact,” which Oak Flat is not. It also states that “noncompact, unimproved natural features such as mountains, valleys, bodies of water, or landscapes, including ethnographic landscapes, do not qualify as property for the purposes of section 106.” If this change is adopted, Resolution Copper, which has already taken title to the land from the U.S. Forest Service, will likely soon dismantle Chi’chil Biłdagoteel.

The “geographically compact” restriction has an urban application, as well, Bronin said. It could be used to remove existing protections under the National Historic Preservation Act for historically significant neighborhoods such as New York’s Greenwich Village and Washington’s Georgetown. “These two words,” Bronin said, “would greenlight a wave of destruction of our historic and culturally significant properties that we’ve never seen before.”

The Cohen building would be affected because Section 106 determines how the General Services Administration assesses the fate of the murals and sculptures inside and outside the building as it prepares to sell the Cohen. Passage of Representative Dina Titus’s bill putting those protections, and more, into statutory language would help, but, as I noted last week, at the moment greater protection for the Cohen comes from GSA’s recent revelation that selling it would incur large expenses to separate its heating and electrical equipment from an adjacent structure, the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Federal Building, which is used by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The proposed Section 106 revision is expected to be approved by the end of this week and published in the Federal Register soon thereafter. The public comment period will be limited to 30 days. After that, the ACHP will likely ignore public comment and finalize the regulation, because that’s now routine practice in the Trump administration. But posting a comment wouldn’t hurt—and you might also want to call your member of Congress about this latest scheme to sell cherished pieces of the United States to the highest bidder.

* This article originally misidentified the National Historic Preservation Act.

The progressive nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, released a report Monday examining Trump’s personal financial disclosure, which he released last month. The organization found he made almost as much in 2025 from overseas ventures ($117 million) as he did during his entire first term (at least $149 million).

Trump reported a total of 28 different accounts, each with at least $50,000 in revenue, the report said, compared to just nine accounts in the last year of his first term. Trump made more than $2 billion from all of his businesses in 2025, thanks in large part to cryptocurrency, again more than the $1.7 billion he made during his first term as president.

The foreign income stands out for Trump, as it undermines his America First rhetoric. But it also raises questions about foreign governments, companies, and individuals using money for influence peddling with the White House, as well as the U.S. government overall. Trump has taken in over $500 million in foreign income since 2014, and the true number could exceed $650 million, according to CREW.

That number will likely increase for the rest of Trump’s second term, as there are currently 24 Trump-branded developments in progress overseas, 13 of which began after he announced he was running for a second term in 2022. These include new developments in the United Arab Emirates, where Trump has already made several corrupt deals.

Trump and his family don’t care about any conflicts of interest in his second term, and their businesses are operating without the fear of accountability. Congress isn’t stepping in to investigate Trump’s businesses now, but that could change after November if Democrats take over. Even then, the president and his family will use every legal resource to evade scrutiny.

In the incident, captured on video, a suspect poured gasoline all over a set of stairs outside 26 Federal Plaza, which houses dozens of agencies, including ICE. The suspect ran away as a large plume of flame appeared. He was quickly detained by multiple NYPD officers. One policeman and a bystander sustained minor injuries. 

A video shows the moment a suspect started a fire outside of 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, where a federal immigration court is located. More: https://t.co/Qgi8dXyKUq pic.twitter.com/ZOlAGTtsRP

— Eyewitness News (@ABC7NY) July 20, 2026

Arrabaca, 43, was also accused of setting off fireworks outside the federal building. Police said he carried a hammer, knives, and a machete along with the pellet gun when he was arrested. 

FBI New York field director James Barnacle told the Associated Press that Arrabaca “came armed with bad intentions,” and is “an anti-American, anti-government extremist.”

“What occurred outside 26 Federal Plaza this morning was deeply disturbing. I’m relieved no one was seriously injured and that a suspect is in custody,” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on X. “My team is in touch with the NYPD and we will support the federal investigation. Our administration will continue to ensure that every New Yorker is safe in their city—and hold accountable any who threaten that.”  

26 Federal Plaza houses the immigration court that has seen countless protests in President Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and state Senators Jabari Brisport, Gustavo Rivera, and Julia Salazar have all been arrested while protesting there. 

This comes after three men were killed in just seven days—either by ICE agents directly or while fleeing them. 

If you look more closely at the photo FIFA shared, though, you’ll notice something odd in the bottom-right corner: a glimpse of a slightly crumpled blue suit. It is a visual metaphor for the 2026 World Cup. President Donald Trump largely stayed out of the way—but he was always there, just out of sight, exerting malign influence.

In the case of Spain’s celebration, Trump did exactly what you would expect him to do. After presenting the World Cup trophy with his pal, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, he should have hightailed it out of there so the team could have its moment. But Trump does not let anyone have celebratory moments in his presence without his participation. A year ago, in the very same MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, he inserted himself into Chelsea’s title celebration at the Club World Cup. And so, once again, he awkwardly lingered onstage, even as Infantino tried to pull him off. When Rodri lifted the trophy, Trump was still there. In other photos, you’ll see Infantino patiently explaining to him that he wasn’t supposed to be there. Not like he cares. For Trump, this was his moment and he wasn’t going to let it go to waste—even though he had just been loudly booed by tens of thousands of fans.

Trump was largely out of sight at the final, just as he was throughout the tournament. The direst predictions—of his immigration goons running amok, of foreign fans being detained, of political violence—never quite materialized. But it was nevertheless rare to go very long without the president and his noxious regime barging into view. There was Trump blocking a Somali referee from entering the country, on spurious grounds. There was the Uruguayan team being invasively searched by drug dogs. There was Trump getting on the phone to Infantino to demand that he let a suspended U.S. player play.

It was a good tournament, in the end. It was very close to a great one. But it will always have Trump’s greasy fingerprints on it. This, coupled with the U.S. Men’s National Team’s embarrassing loss to Belgium in the Round of 16, ensures that the 2026 World Cup will not be fondly remembered by most soccer fans here in the U.S.—even as the tournament created many more of them.

It is strange to still hear Trump boast about being “forced” to intervene to get FIFA to let USMNT striker Folarin Balogun play against Belgium after he had received a red card in the previous match. But that’s exactly what he did on Saturday evening, at a press conference where he had been well briefed to sound like he knew the sport—praising Djed Spence, critiquing England manager Thomas Tuchel’s admittedly bizarre tactics. But mostly, he was there to pat himself on the back for his role in the overturning of Balogun’s red card:

This has been a tournament like no other, filled with fierce competition, unforgettable moments. Probably the most unforgettable is when they gave that gentleman—is it a red card? And I was forced to call Gianni and just make a recommendation. I said “Gianni, I’d like to make a recommendation. Let the guy in the game!”

No, I didn’t say that. I said, “I’d like to wage a complaint.” I had no idea what was going to happen. But, you know, so much better the way it worked out because there’s no controversy. They won the game and our team had all of its players. [Infantino] made another great decision if you think about it. You’ll never get credit for that.

It’s a bizarre point to dwell on because, even though Balogun played well, his team got demolished by Belgium, 4-1. Not only that, it was clear that Trump’s intervention had backfired badly. The Belgians were fired up out of the gate, while the U.S. played like sheepish kids who knew the president of the United States had just cheated on their behalf. And pretty much the whole world, outraged over the president’s meddling, was rooting for Belgium. It was the low point of the tournament—for everyone but Trump.

No one wanted to see Trump onstage with the Spanish team, either. He was just there because he could be and because he knew that no one could really take it away from him (though they could edit him out of official photographs and videos, as FIFA and Spain’s Soccer Federation did). For Trump, the ability to cheat on the home team’s behalf is just another perk of the office. And for Infantino, who was instrumental in the Balogun Affair, it’s just another piece of client service. Catering to the whims of despots is part of the job of running FIFA.

This is nothing new. At the 2022 World Cup trophy lift, the emir of Qatar placed a ceremonial robe over Lionel Messi—meaning his Argentina uniform was obscured in every photo. But this World Cup may have been a new low, thanks to the Trump administration’s treatment of Somali referees, the Iranian national team, and fans. The exorbitant cost of tickets was yet another black mark, though that is already being treated as proof of the tournament’s success. As predicted, this was the most profitable World Cup ever—and for Infantino, that’s all that really counts.

It’s tempting to look at the outcome—a Spanish team that privileges selflessness, solidarity, and patience triumphing over an Argentine one that thought it could foul its way to a repeat title—as yet another example of this World Cup’s greatness. After all, a great deal of this tournament did not belong to Trump and Infantino—or, for that matter, to Lionel Messi and the defending champions. This was also the World Cup of Cabo Verde, of “Rock Chalk Algeria,” of Scots taking over Fenway, of Mexico vs. England at the Estadio Azteca, of the U.S. finally becoming a soccer nation. It was a good tournament that ended with the best team winning, which is more or less what the World Cup should be.

But the victory over cynicism was far from complete. It’s not clear to me that it’s even a victory. Yes, Spain won and Argentina lost. Yes, Trump is being cropped out of official photographs as if he had done something to upset Stalin. Yes, the worst predictions about MAGA mayhem never materialized. But FIFA and Trump still largely got what they wanted out of it—more money, power, and glory—and that’s a huge loss for the rest of us.

Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran was in a car with three other people on July 14 when ICE and Homeland Security agents pulled them over near State Road 16 in St. Augustine, Florida. Coronilla Duran fled the scene on foot and was hit by a semi-truck as he attempted to cross the highway.

His wife, Yésica Alamilla López, told reporters that Coronilla Duran had only just recently arrived in the U.S.

“He had a tourist visa and had been here in the United States for a short time—only three weeks,” she told Spectrum News after arriving at the Orlando airport from Mexico. “He had been in Florida for just two days.”

Isaret Jeffers, the founder of Orlando-based farmworkers’ advocacy group Colectivo Arbol, has been assisting Alamilla López in the wake of her husband’s death. Jeffers told the Miami Herald Monday that at the time of his death, Coronilla Duran was planning to return to Mexico within days.

“He was going to return this past Saturday. He had already bought a flight,” Jeffers told the paper. “Now, unfortunately, if he is returning, his return is different.”

Jose Rivera, a local garbage truck driver who witnessed Coronilla Duran’s demise, told the Herald that the 28-year-old slipped and fell when he reached a small piece of grass in the median of the highway. Coronilla Duran reportedly picked himself up but stumbled into the oncoming traffic.

“The traffic was coming pretty quick, and he just lost his footing and didn’t look where the traffic was coming,” Rivera said. “He kept looking back.”

Alamilla López told the Herald that she and her husband were married for 10 years and share a seven-year-old son and a seven-month-old daughter together. They also run a small business in San Luis de La Paz. She revealed to the paper that she had only come to learn of her husband’s death while watching television.

Coronilla Duran’s death is the latest in a long string of domestic bloodshed by ICE and its affiliates. Just this month, federal agents have shot and killed at least two people: Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was killed in Biddeford, Maine, and was targeted despite having a valid work permit and Social Security number, as well as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small-business owner who was killed in Houston.

There have been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda.

“I said this a year ago—if the hateful rhetoric doesn’t stop, there will be bloodshed. And unfortunately I was right. And I’ll tell you something else: It’s not over yet,” Homan said to reporters outside of the White House Monday, accusing critics of continuing to attack and “miscommunicating what ICE does every day.”

“Comparing ICE to the Nazi regime—are you kidding me?” Homan continued, claiming that these words embolden people to “do something stupid.”

“I’m afraid that we’re going to bury an ICE agent. I’m afraid that I’m going to hand another folded flag to a spouse or child of an ICE agent for simply doing his job. And for any member of Congress who keeps attacking ICE and calling them fascists and Nazis, I said a thousand times, if there are Nazis enforcing the laws, what’s that make them? They wrote the law,” Homan added, his voice rising.

Homan: "I said this a year ago -- if they hateful rhetoric doesn't stop there will be bloodshed. And unfortunately I was right. And I'll tell you something else -- it's not over yet ... I'm afraid we're gonna bury an ICE agent." pic.twitter.com/M0U9epbXH0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2026

The people ICE has killed this year include U.S. citizens, such as Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota, and immigrants with legal status who weren’t even the actual targets for immigration violations, such as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Homan seems incredibly blasé about their deaths, and puts the hypothetical death of an ICE agent (which hasn’t happened at all in Trump’s second term) on a higher level than the deaths of innocent people.

In addition to killing people, ICE agents are also committing violent acts on a regular basis, from tackling a person at Las Vegas’s airport to shooting a protesting clergyman in the head with a pepper ball. They also have been accused of racial profiling, even winning a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court to consider race and ethnicity in their operations. If Homan is mad about ICE being compared to fascists and Nazis, perhaps he should be concerned about what agents are actually doing.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Homan made the shocking remark while complaining that Democratic lawmakers had wrongfully withheld Department of Homeland Security funding over what they claimed were “mistakes” made during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. 

“They kept going to Minnesota, all the mistakes they say happened in Minnesota. I don’t think there’s a lot of—the mistakes they claimed in Minnesota, a lot of them were I don’t think mistakes,” Homan stammered. 

Homan: "All the mistakes they say happened in Minnesota -- the mistakes them claim in Minnesota, a lot of them I don't think were mistakes." pic.twitter.com/GuxODg4lsw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2026

It seems that Homan hoped to blame the lack of body cameras in a recent shooting in Maine on Democrats. Instead, he suggested that federal immigration agents had not erred when they shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens who were protesting against ICE’s operations in Minneapolis. When a reporter pressed Homan repeatedly on his outrageous claim, the immigration chief struggled to dodge the question.

“No, I went to Minnesota and I said day one it was not a perfect operation. There were several chains of command, I had a problem with the targeting,” Homan said. 

Backed into a corner, Homan laid out why he believed these people deserved to die. 

“It comes down to one simple fact—these people failed to comply with law enforcement. Even some of the major chiefs in this country, who don’t necessarily agree with this administration, say you gotta always comply with law enforcement,” Homan said. 

“All they had to do was simply comply with law enforcement. If you don’t like what law enforcement did to you, then go to the courts. Sue. Call ACLU. Do whatever you want to do. You should always comply with law enforcement. If they did, they’d be alive today,” he added. 

Homan forgets that in the United States, failing to comply with law enforcement is not punishable by death. Federal immigration officers are similarly welcome to go to the courts and let the criminal justice system hand down decisions on fines and jail time for those who resist arrest or evade law enforcement. Instead, spurred by the Trump administration’s fanaticism, they are killing people.  

Since Trump returned to office, launching a widely unpopular mass deportation scheme, federal immigration officers have shot and killed 11 people.

Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man legally in the United States, while he drove with his three-year-old daughter in Maine. The week before that, an ICE agent shot and killed longtime Houston resident and father of three Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while he was driving. Federal agents claimed that he tried to ram the officers—a claim that eyewitnesses denied and that has crumbled under the slightest scrutiny. 

“Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” The president wrote Monday afternoon on Truth Social. “This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.”

This outburst—which ignores the fact that the U.S. started the war, killed Iranian leaders and civilians, and attacked critical infrastructure—came after two American soldiers were killed and one went missing following an Iranian attack on a U.S. base in Jordan on Friday. A third U.S. service member was also killed in northern Iraq over the weekend, bringing the number of American casualties to 17. The U.S. has bombed Iran for nine straight days.

Three hours prior to Trump’s threat, the official White House X account posted an unattributed poll showing that 60 percent of voters support President Trump’s peace deal with Iran. The poll is captioned “TRUST IN TRUMP: Voters Overwhelmingly Support Iran Peace Deal.”

Even if this poll is accurate, there is no peace deal whatsoever. An initial memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran collapsed earlier this month, after just three weeks. To brag about a peace deal after nine days of bombings—and a threat to kill “many times over”—shows just how incapable Trump is of being any kind of wartime president.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a 14-day restraining order on the transaction Monday. Martínez-Olguín ruled that the two companies should not be allowed to finalize the deal, agreeing with a 12-state coalition (led by California) that merging the media behemoths would result in higher consumer prices, produce fewer movies and TV shows, and ultimately “substantially lessen competition.”

“Plaintiff States’ showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief,” the judge wrote.

“Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case,” Martínez-Olguín continued. “The balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”

Paramount disagreed with the judge’s determination. “We will vigorously defend the transaction and demonstrate that this challenge is inconsistent with sound competition policy and the competitive realities of the media marketplace,” Paramount said in a statement.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta praised the decision, describing it as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.”

“History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people,” Bonta said in a statement shortly after the ruling was announced. “With our lawsuit, we’re fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case.”

The merger would have fused two gargantuan film studios, two streaming platforms, and two news organizations under the helm of David Ellison, the millennial son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, who’s a close friend of Donald Trump.

The decision has put Paramount executives in a bind: the company placed a bet against time, promising Warner Bros. shareholders 25 cents a share each quarter if the deal isn’t wrapped by September 30. That could potentially penalize Paramount by more than $600 million per quarter.

The gamble may have seemed less perilous earlier this year, when the younger Ellison was courting Trump while his administration weighed whether or not to approve the merger at the federal level. Ellison hosted a much-critized private dinner “honoring the Trump White House” on April 23. Trump attended, as did Secretary of State Marco Rubio, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Seven weeks later, the Justice Department’s antitrust division granted regulatory clearance by closing its investigation into the merger.

The younger Ellison transitioned from a major Hollywood producer to a media mogul almost overnight last year when his company Skydance merged with Paramount in a deal predicated on an $8 billion investment. The deal made Ellison chairman and CEO of a combined entity that owns the CBS network, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, Skydance Animation, and more.

Paramount Skydance came to an agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year when it undermined a previous deal between Warner Bros. and Netflix by offering an all-cash bid to buy the company with $31 per share.

The deal would have also granted Ellison control of CNN, TBS, TNT, HBO, Cinemax, Discovery, HGTV, and more.

This story has been updated.

Late last week, the Department of Justice told the publication it had issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers in order to acquire records of journalists’ phone calls and text messages—including messages with one reporter’s mother and two reporters’ spouses, the Times reported Monday.

Those subpoenas were issued in addition to ones earlier this month compelling the reporters to testify before a grand jury. Lawyers for the Times journalists filed a motion Saturday to quash the new subpoenas.

White House officials were left fuming earlier this month after the Times reported that Trump had ditched his Qatari-gifted Air Force One in Europe because it was missing certain security and communications capabilities. Trump claimed that U.S. forces in Europe were clamoring for a chance to see the magnificent plane.

But it seems the Times’ reporting was right on the money: The president announced plans Sunday to further “max out” Air Force One, suggesting that the $400 million luxury jumbo jet had insufficient security features.

The Air Force has already spent roughly $400 million on renovating the plane, changing the cabin layout, communications system, and security upgrades. That doesn’t account for the taxpayer-funded continued maintenance of the plane, either. The jet—one of the largest presidential gifts ever—will be moved to Trump’s presidential library foundation in 2029, where it may be available for him to use as a private citizen.

This story has been updated.

In a report published Monday titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” the State Department singled out political commentator-streamer Hasan Piker, Amazon union leader Christian Smalls, the Democratic Socialists of America, and environmental activist Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, for allegedly supporting the Cuban government.

“This constant stream of Western left-wing activists, influencers and organizers is coordinated by a network of Cuba-backed nonprofits, foundations, academic and cultural partnerships, and even dedicated U.S.-based travel agencies,” the report said, mentioning the activists’ visits to the island.

The report also asserts that the DSA, an organization claiming over 120,000 members, “maintains a fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime—not because the group is controlled by Cuban agents, per se, but because that commitment is now simply the de facto policy orthodoxy on the American far left.”

It seems to be part of the administration’s attack on “far-left political terrorism,” coupled with an attempt to engineer regime change in Cuba, both led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Under his watch, the U.S. government has taken the decades-long economic embargo against Cuba and escalated it into a de facto oil blockade that has crippled much of the country.

Rubio has refused to answer questions about whether the U.S. plans to invade Cuba or to elaborate on long-term plans for the island. In January, the U.S. military abducted and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an overseas raid and brought him to the U.S. to face trial. Is Cuba headed toward a similar fate? And will the White House brand its left-wing opponents in the U.S. as terrorists who support Cuba?

The Intercept has reported that the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was cut from 40 to just nine staffers at the beginning of last year. No new hires have been made since, leaving the center unable to do its job: protecting civilians from harm due to wars we’re fighting in their regions. Remaining staff also said they are not allowed to investigate incidents like the Minab elementary school bombing that left 120 children dead on the first day of the war in Iran.   

CHMR suffered across the Defense Department, as AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and SOUTHCOM saw civilian casualty prevention infrastructure cut, signaling what has been obvious for years: Those casualties are not a moral priority for the United States. CENTCOM’s CHMR has only one person remaining, while cuts to SOUTHCOM’s team left them unable to identify the full scope of civilian harm in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

“The Hegseth regime held on to a thread of the program mostly in effort to be able to say they are following the law, but the reality is the Center and its efforts have had little to no influence on or oversight or visibility on operations,” former Protection Center Chief of civilian harm assessments Wes Bryant told The Intercept. “As long as they sit in the seat, they are continuing to try to put out good work, but the reality is, most of it is being thrown into the wind, and neither institutionalized nor operationalized.”

Now, instead of human beings, Hegseth is relying on a Palantir-created Maven Smart System, which a defense official claimed presents a “better layer of protection” for people living in places we’re currently attacking. 

“The Department’s failure to implement the CHMR [Action Plan] has profound consequences for civilians in conflict zones and makes service members’ jobs harder and riskier,” Senator Elizabeth Warren and nine other Democrats wrote in a letter to Hegseth earlier this month. “Gutting CHMR programs leads to ‘target misidentification [that] harms readiness by wasting Do[D] munitions’ and increases the operational risk of ‘civilian casualties, damaged coalitions and alliances, loss of legitimacy, increased local resistance, propaganda opportunities for adversaries, prolonged conflicts, and failed strikes.’”

Thousands of Iranians have been killed since the downsizing of CHMR. 

The president spent more than 25 minutes last week addressing the public—and his supposed congressional allies—to revive his 2020 election fraud claims. He demanded that Republicans prioritize mail-in ballot bans and voter roll purges, and investigate what he claimed was a nationwide cover-up by the “deep state.” Days later, however, the conservative caucus appears to have completely missed the message.

Most GOP candidates aren’t willing to revisit Trump’s thoroughly debunked election fraud claims as the issue has failed to galvanize voters, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The day after Trump’s address, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley—who is trailing former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in the race to replace retiring North Carolina Senator Thom Thillis—held a 34-minute campaign event that touched on none of Trump’s advertised priorities. Instead, Whatley told local voters that the number one issue this election cycle is “keeping our kids and our communities safe.”

Whatley had previously supported Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims. But when asked by a Post reporter to expound on Trump’s latest speech, Whatley simply mentioned that he is a “big proponent of election integrity.”

Top Republicans also seemed disillusioned with the president’s fixation. Outgoing Texas Senator John Cornyn lamented to the Post that “we have 109 days until the midterm elections, and I don’t understand talking about what happened six years ago in light of these upcoming elections.”

The situation for the campaigning caucus is precarious: If they attempt to get in good with the MAGA movement by publicly supporting the president in an act of fealty, they also risk alienating independent voters in their districts who have become increasingly disillusioned with Trump’s second term.

Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime political adviser to Tillis, told the Post that the “clear and simple” explanation for the difference in messaging is that voters are focused elsewhere.

“If candidates are not talking about the economy, if candidates are not talking about affordability, if they’re not talking about how they’re going to make people’s lives at home cheaper and less expensive, then they’re not talking about the issues that voters care about,” Shumaker said.

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in the State Department during Trump’s first term, said many GOP candidates seem relieved that Trump’s prime time speech has failed to make major waves.

“If the president makes outrageous claims about an election and no one is listening, did it even happen?” Bartlett asked rhetorically when describing the Republican response to the Post.

Democrats have criticized the address for laying the groundwork for potential challenges to the upcoming midterm elections. They have good cause to believe so: Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that the government already plans to take action against state election officials who refuse to bend to the White House’s demands. In a press conference, Mullin pledged that state officials who decide not to scrub their voter registration lists could be fined or even jailed for their disobedience.

Mullin does not have the authority to make such a threat, however. The Department of Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.

Donald Trump’s presence loomed large over FIFA’s World Cup Finals on Sunday—but footage from the event has sparked speculation that the president’s actual stature may be smaller than he claims.

For years, Trump has claimed to be six feet, three inches tall. His past two annual physical reports, published in April 2025 and April 2026, confirmed this, asserting that the president is 75 inches tall—equal to six feet, three inches.

But a video shared Sunday on social media by the White House showed Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, the six-foot-three captain of Spain’s national football team known as Rodri, towering over Trump. If both men are supposedly the same height, why does Trump appear so much shorter?

.@POTUS congratulates Spain captain Rodri on winning the 2026 @FIFAWorldCup Golden Ball award pic.twitter.com/qle8N0HQ3l

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 19, 2026

Considering soccer cleats only add about an inch maximum of height, it seems unlikely Rodri’s footwear is responsible for the difference. In the video, Trump appears much closer in height to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is reportedly only five feet, 11 inches tall.

The debate about Trump’s height has been going on for decades. In 1999, Trump told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that his seemingly diminutive stature was merely a trick of the camera. “I photograph short. I’m six foot three,” he said.

As recently as last month, the president appeared much shorter than Republican Senator John Thune, who is widely reported to be six feet, four inches tall. In response to those photographs, The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles suggested that Trump was actually getting shorter. “He’s shrinking into the giant shrimp that Steve Bannon said that he was,” Coles said. “I think that Donald Trump is literally shrinking as we see him.”

It’s certainly not impossible. It’s a scientific fact that people can get shorter as they age, and last month, Trump officially became an octogenarian. Still, the president clearly feels the need to lie about his height, when Americans can see for themselves that the president just doesn’t measure up.

Following the draining of the Reflecting Pool last week, David Hearn filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment against him. In his motion, Hearn argued that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia failed to preserve the physical evidence against him: the lining of the pool that he is accused of damaging.

Hearn’s attorneys said in their motion that they had made a written request for federal prosecutors to preserve the evidence, but the pool has repeatedly been drained more than once since his arrest, and large sections of the liner are missing.

The case against Hearn has always been weak, considering that other people have noticed sections of the pool’s paint and lining, applied on President Trump’s orders, coming apart and peeling. Hearn is accused of “forcefully and violently” tearing two square feet of the pool’s newly added blue paint, and he maintains that he merely touched an already peeling piece of paint.

Trump has blamed vandalism for the sorry state of the pool, when in reality the addition of hydrogen peroxide to the water in a futile attempt to kill algae probably led to the paint and liner peeling away. The judge in the case, D.C. Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean, rebuffed the government’s attempt to bar Hearn from the pool earlier this month, in effect recognizing the case’s weakness.

Meanwhile, the White House has enlisted the FBI to bolster the case, but considering that the pool has been repeatedly drained, they’re not likely to come up with any new evidence, wasting even more tax dollars. Over $14 million has already been spent on the Reflecting Pool, and that number can only be growing as it seems to get worse every day.

Anonymous sources told The Washington Post that a life-size bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson last week joined Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and a “Freedom’s Charge” statue depicting the Revolutionary War. The Jefferson statue, which was sculpted by George Lundeen and shows the former president seated next to the Declaration of Independence, has yet to be announced.

The Franklin, Hamilton, and “Freedom’s Charge” statues were loaned by conservative activist, billionaire real estate mogul, and Republican donor Harlan Crow. The White House has only said the statues come from “generous private American patriots.”

Trump reportedly privately called Lundeen to thank him for the new addition to the Rose Garden. “When you’re a farm boy from the middle of Nebraska, it’s kind of neat to get a call from the president,” said Lundeen, who also built a seven-foot statue of Trump for his West Palm Beach golf club based on his “fight, fight, fight” moment after his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “You get a call like that, and you don’t know if it is one of your buddies playing a trick on you. If it’s a hoax, it’s a really good one.”

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the president’s recent statuary efforts.

“All told, the statues dating to his second term are of negligible artistic value,” Maxwell Anderson, the former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, told the Post. “President Trump’s embrace of an official classicizing style in art and architecture finds its closest equivalent in authoritarian regimes.”

From the entire East Wing of the White House to the Reflecting Pool disaster, to these pointless statues that no regular people will ever see, it’s clear that the president’s priorities lie more in decor than in governance.

Thus begins the story of Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) in The Bourne Identity and of Odysseus (Matt Damon) in Christopher Nolan’s new film, The Odyssey. Though one is adapted from a nearly 3,000-year-old Greek epic and the other from a 1980s spy thriller, it’s no coincidence that Damon is Bourne again as an amnesiac veteran fighter. “Matt plays an Everyman very well in a lot of films,” Nolan has said, explaining the casting of his relatable superhero. “But he’s also Jason Bourne.” When we first encounter Odysseus in the narrative’s present day, his well-meaning caregiver Calypso (Charlize Theron) has been keeping him in a lotus-induced stupor for seven years, sensing that he isn’t ready to confront his trauma and check out of her idyllic clinic. Slowly, he begins to remember the endless war in Troy, the ill-fated attempt to bring his men home to Ithaca, and the wife and son who have been waiting for him for nearly 20 years.

In The Odyssey, as in The Bourne Identity and Nolan’s breakout hit Memento, memory loss is a screen for guilt. But Nolan’s Odysseus is too simple a man to have a guilt complex. He straightforwardly regrets the consequences of his well-intentioned choices and wants to forget them. The Homeric characterizations of Odysseus—“wily,” “crafty,” “lying”—don’t easily stick to the open-faced Damon, and in Nolan’s version, they don’t have to. More than the much-discussed racially diverse casting of the film, what makes The Odyssey feel most like a product of the twenty-first century is its simplification of a character famously described as “polytropos”—“of twists and turns” in Robert Fagles’s translation; “complicated” in Emily Wilson’s—into a basically good guy who feels bad. He’s closer to the protagonists of Nolan’s previous films, or to someone you might meet in group therapy, than to the conniving storyteller, arrogant bully, and cheating husband of the ancient epic.

This isn’t to say that Homer’s hero isn’t haunted by war, or that he’s not at all sorry about the men who died under his leadership. Part of what makes Odysseus so relatable to modern readers is that he feels figuratively as well as literally at sea in a world that no longer seems governed by meaningful laws, divine or human. Daniel Mendelsohn, who recently translated the poem, said in an interview that The Odyssey is not just a postwar poem; “it’s also sort of a post-everything poem.” As Nolan’s grieving Penelope (Anne Hathaway, perfectly balancing regality and humanity) tells her son Telemachus (Tom Holland), there’s no easy way to restore Ithaca to the prosperous peace of her husband Odysseus’s rule: “That world is gone.”

The gods, whose active participation in the Trojan War made them major characters in Homer’s Iliad, are relatively absent in the poem often read as its sequel. A couple come down to earth to help Odysseus and Telemachus out at crucial moments—including Athena, played by Zendaya in the film—and we’re sometimes privy to their strategy sessions up on Olympus. But their existence is often simply inferred, usually as the source of bad weather. After multiple shipwrecks, murderous monsters, and harrowing near-death experiences, it would be understandable if Odysseus, like George Costanza, began only to believe in the gods for the bad things.

Homer’s Odysseus deals with the alienation and fragmentation of this postwar reality not through drugs but through narrative manipulation, with a sophistication notably absent from Nolan’s film. In the poem, right before reaching Ithaca, Odysseus washes up on the shore of Phaeacia, where he finds refuge at the king’s court. In the guise of an anonymous traveler, he flatters the bard-in-residence into singing of the Trojan horse, masterminded by the cunning Odysseus. Moved to tears by hearing his own story, he reveals himself and picks up where the bard left off. His narration takes up four action-packed books at the center of the poem, telling the tales of the man-eating Cyclops, the giant and also man-eating Lestrygonians, the sorceress Circe, the shades of Hades, the Sirens’ song, Scylla and Charybdis, the sun god’s forbidden cattle, and finally Calypso.

The stories that Odysseus expertly (and perhaps not altogether truthfully) weaves for his audience appear in Nolan’s film as facile flashbacks; the plot is nonlinear, but we get none of the disorienting temporal tricks we might expect from the director of Inception and Tenet. Much of what, in Homer’s version, prolongs Odysseus’s journey and thus his story—his horniness, his hubris—Nolan’s script strips away, leaving only a guilty conscience buffeted about by some very cool-looking waves.

Nolan recently said that he realized, while embarking on The Odyssey, “I’ve been telling this story in all my films for years.” In Dunkirk, his best film about how hard it is to get home from a war in a boat while hostile unseen forces attack you from above, Nolan tackles some of Homer’s thorniest themes: cowardice, temporal confusion, fatally stupid decisions, the complications that compromise even the most sentimental homecomings. But with The Odyssey, he’s taken his own pet themes—self-deception; “the noble lie”; superheroes whose moral virtue makes them lonely and sad—and willfully projected them onto the poem. Reverse-engineering the epic to produce the same moral lesson as his last film, Oppenheimer, Nolan asks us to believe that Odysseus views his creation of the famous gift horse as a god-defying abomination; a violation of “Zeus’s law” of hospitality that ended the war but doomed an entire civilization to a post-literate dark age.

It takes quite a few twists and turns of the basic plot to arrive at this framing. Something has indeed gone wrong with xenia, the Greek term for the custom of hospitality often translated as “guest-friendship,” in the world of The Odyssey. During her husband’s long absence, suitors have descended on Penelope and are overstaying their welcome, and the godless monsters Odysseus’s men encounter are not gracious hosts. But if there’s an original sin of xenia-violation in this story, it’s not the Trojan horse. Ten years earlier, Paris, the Trojan prince, started the war by absconding from the house of the Greek King Menelaus, where he was a guest, with Menelaus’s wife, Helen, who may or may not have gone willingly. In Nolan’s version, it’s made clear that Helen’s abduction was used as a cynical pretext for Menelaus’s brother, Agamemnon, to gain control of the region’s trading routes, a plot Odysseus regrets abetting. A similar imperialist motive with obvious contemporary relevance is attributed to Agamemnon in Troy, the loose Bush-era adaptation of the Iliad; some stories really are timeless.

All this spinning of Odysseus’s self-interested guile into world-historical guilt awkwardly stretches the fabric of the poem. But Nolan has no scruples about turning a story to his own ends. Brute physicality and equally brute didacticism are what interest him, not winged words and moral ambiguity. The emphasis on immediacy over the layered narration that structures the poem is most obvious in the many spectacular scenes of natural and supernatural violence during Odysseus’s adventures, where flames, waves, and monstrous appendages hit like a reel of IMAX film to the head. But in quieter domestic moments, Nolan’s commitment to literalism becomes almost poetic. When Circe (Samantha Morton), a goddess in the poem but earthily human in the film, pauses dinnertime conversation to turn Odysseus’s men into pigs, she transforms them not through subtle potions or spells but by molding their faces and bodies like clay.

Back in Ithaca, as the suitors feast in Penelope’s hall, she mostly remains in her adjacent bedroom behind sliding latticed doors: she’s literally screening her callers. When the boldest of the suitors, Antinous (Robert Pattinson, having a great time), proposes marriage, we see them through a similar scrim: from behind Penelope’s loom, through the threads of the burial shroud she’s weaving and upon completion of which, she had promised, she will finally remarry. It’s a ruse—she’s been unweaving her work every night, before she gets caught—but Nolan dwells more on the beautiful distortion of light through fabric than on the distortion of the truth through fabrication.

Even Odysseus, when he returns in disguise as a beggar, must initially speak to his wife not only through the emotional wall she’s put up in her half-believing grief but also through the literal one outside her room. In the poem, Penelope finally accepts the ragged stranger as her husband only after he passes a mental test, demonstrating intimate knowledge only Odysseus could know. Nolan focuses on the physical test to which Penelope puts Odysseus, when she announces she’ll marry whoever in the palace can string Odysseus’s massive bow and fire an arrow straight through a row of axe heads—a feat only Odysseus could ever achieve. One by one, the suitors fail; they complain it can’t be done. Finally, the undercover Odysseus steps up. He too seems to struggle. Penelope turns to walk away, heartbroken; it’s not him, after all. When, after a few tense moments, he succeeds, he playfully plucks the bowstring. She freezes.

It’s the most affecting moment in the film, perhaps because the suspension of the string marks the last moment of calm before Odysseus—Bourne again—breaks back into action hero mode. Or perhaps it’s because the sound effect, according to the film’s composer, Ludwig Göransson, was created with a lyre. The ancient instrument, featured prominently in the film’s score, was used to accompany performances of epic, and Homer compares Odysseus in this moment to a musician stringing his lyre; the plucked string “sang like swallow-song.” A prosaic tool, ubiquitous in hunting and war, becomes literally lyrical. To twist a line from Tenet, it’s an expression of faith that the mechanics of the world too can be poetry.

The FDA initially announced Friday that iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms had tested positive for cyclospora, a parasite that can cause explosive bowel movements. Within 24 hours, however, the agency walked back its determination, claiming that the original lettuce sample was a false positive.

“FDA has notified Taylor Farms and continues working with the firm to ensure product implicated in this outbreak has been removed from the market,” the FDA stated on its website.

In their own statement Sunday, Taylor Farms said that the FDA had “apologized” for the error and that the agency “has not identified a single positive product test result for cyclospora” from its offerings. But on Monday, the FDA denied that it had offered the company any such apology.

But the damage had already been done: Taco Bell, one of Taylor Farms biggest clients, said in a statement Friday that it would move away from using the brand due to public health concerns.

Taylor Farms is one of the largest fresh-produce suppliers in the country, providing products to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, SYSCO, Aldi, Target, and Dollar General. It also sells food for private label brands such as Whole Foods’ “365” line, and offers assembly-line products for a slew of fast food chains including McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, and more.

Taylor Farms said that it had recalled all of the shredded iceberg  lettuce that had been grown and processed in central Mexico out of an “abundance of caution.”

“While the FDA traceback is indicating a specific independent farm, which represents less than 1% of the U.S.’s iceberg lettuce supply, as the potential source of the outbreak, we have removed all iceberg lettuce from the region indefinitely,” the company said Friday in a statement. 

Yet Taylor Farms de Mexico—a direct subsidiary of the company—is still implicated in the cyclospora outbreak, according to FoodFix newsletter writer Helena Bottomiller Eviche. Eviche noted that the FDA’s false positive had stemmed from lettuce that came over the border from Mexico and that was not a part of the original recall.

“If that positive had been accurate, it would have meant more lettuce needed to be recalled,” Eviche wrote on X, adding that the whole situation was a “public health communications nightmare.”

Since the beginning of May, the CDC has confirmed 1,645 cases of cyclosporiasis and is investigating 5,100 more, though the agency noted that most cases have likely gone unreported. Still, both totals are substantially higher than normal: this time last year, just 249 cases had been reported. So far, 141 cases have been hospitalized, and no one has died from the disease.

This story has been updated.

Trump has made it more than clear that he’s done negotiating with Tehran, after the U.S. military launched yet another wave of strikes against Iran Saturday in retribution for the deaths of at least two U.S. military service members in Jordan. (A third service member is missing after the strikes.) Clearly, the ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is over—and there’s no sign that the U.S. plans to turn back.

“The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” one U.S. official familiar with the matter told The Washington Post Monday. The official warned that U.S. military operations would be kneecapped by dwindling stockpiles of air defense and long-range munitions, as well as widespread damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

“We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official added.

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies published in May estimated it will take until at least 2030 to restore the U.S. missile stockpile to prewar levels, leaving a multiyear “window of vulnerability” for the United States in potential future conflicts.

Since that study was published, the United States has only continued to execute military strikes, and Trump’s war against Iran has racked up a total estimated bill of more than $100 billion. U.S. Central Command said that the latest series of strikes had “successfully hit Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, and missile and drone storage sites.” Iran also claimed that the U.S. attacked a nuclear power plant in a “dangerous assault on Iran’s peaceful infrastructure.”

So far, at least 17 American service members have been killed in the war.

Last week, Iran carried out three strikes against U.S. military personnel in Jordan, wounding dozens and damaging multiple helicopters, The New York Times reports. But the Department of Defense did not disclose those attacks to the public.

U.S. Central Command is not required to release information about injured soldiers, a U.S. military official told the Times, noting that releasing such information could help Iran refine its attacks. On Saturday, four injured soldiers were taken to hospitals in Jordan and then discharged, according to Central Command, but their statement did not mention any of the service members injured in the country last week.

The DoD angrily attacked the Times Monday, calling its report “baseless and malicious accusations.”

“Claims of concealment are fabrications meant to further distress the American people in the wake of three service members killed in action. Disgusting behavior, even for the New York Times,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell posted on X. “In fact, U.S. military casualty information is publicly available and regularly updated online on the Defense Casualty Analysis System for everyone, including the media, to review.”

Meanwhile, the American death toll in the war is rising. Two American service members were killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan on Friday, while a third was killed in an Iranian attack in northern Iraq the next day. Since the war began on February 28, 17 American soldiers have been killed, and over 400 have been wounded.

Operational security is a convenient excuse for setbacks in a war that has not gone as well as President Trump promised. Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has hurt the U.S. and world economies and sent gas prices soaring. The civilian death toll in Iran continues to climb, with Trump refusing to take responsibility for egregious strikes, such as one that hit a school in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war.

It isn’t surprising that this administration is trying to diminish and hide American casualties, but the real reason is that full transparency would make this already unpopular war even more politically toxic for Trump and his party.

This story has been updated.

“Mr. President, this plane does not have anti-missile defense systems on it. Why are you flying it?” a reporter asked Trump Sunday as he was preparing to board following the FIFA men’s World Cup final. 

“Well, it has—it has a lot, and you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they’re going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they’re going to be sending it, and they’ll have it be maxed out,” Trump replied. “It’ll take about a month.” 

While it’s unclear what exactly the president means by “maxed out,” and whether his timeline is accurate, his answer confirms pretty much what every expert was saying about the jet from the moment he got it—that it would take time and lots of money to bring it to the security standards of Air Force One. Yet when Trump refused to fly on the jet following the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month, he told the media that it was because U.S. soldiers at a European base really needed to see it for some reason. This was his story, even though it was reported that the Secret Service advised him to take the old Air Force One as the war with Iran resumed. 

This jet—a questionable gift at best, an obvious bribe at worst—has already cost U.S. taxpayers $400 million. Trump plans to move it to his presidential library in 2029. 

Reporter: Mr. President, this plane does not have antimissile defense systems on it. Why are you flying it?

Trump: Well, it has — it has a lot, and uh, you know it has a lot of capability, but as I understand it, in about a month or so, they're going to send it to have it be,… pic.twitter.com/wDimk6RiQm

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 20, 2026

The official account for Spain’s national football league shared an altered image of the country’s celebration in New Jersey Sunday, snipping the U.S. president out of photos after he refused to leave the dais. The FIFA World Cup account also cropped Trump out of the shot, leaving only the president’s shoulder in view.

Trump handed the World Cup trophy to Spain’s team alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino, after they beat Argentina 1-0. But the U.S. president then refused to leave the picture, apparently trying to run out the clock before the traditional trophy lift by chatting with the players as he jockeyed for a prime position in front of the group.

Spain’s team, however, was not having it. Video footage of the historic celebration captured several players politely pushing Trump away as they prepared for their official photograph.

Spain’s players refused to celebrate with Trump after the U.S. president attempted to insert himself into the middle of their victory photo. He was politely pushed aside. pic.twitter.com/x82yxxCZgw

— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) July 20, 2026

Yet Trump stayed anyway, lingering beside the team even after repeated attempts by Infantino to pull him off the stage. He finally exited only after the team lifted its trophy and blew the confetti cannons in a glaring attempt to ensure he’d be included in the photograph.

His insistence on remaining in frame followed weeks of scathing remarks by Trump against Spain and its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, over NATO defense spending. Trump has referred to Spain as “hopeless,” derided its people as “bad,” and also threatened to “cut off all trade” with the longtime U.S. ally as he ramped up his NATO disputes. In the months prior to that, he also raged against Spain after it refused to let the U.S. military use Spanish bases to bomb Iran.

None of that hostility was on display after the game, however—at least publicly. Back at Joint Base Andrews, Trump said he had “spoken to Spain” and “congratulated them on having a great team.” He also noted that he had “no tension” with the country’s leadership.

“I have no tension with anybody,” Trump remarked cavalierly.

Last week, FBI agents received notice that their agency would no longer investigate claims of assault against immigration agents, sources told The New York Times.

Instead of involving the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations—a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—would likely be responsible for investigating confrontations, according to the agency’s guidance.

The purpose of these investigations is to determine whether federal immigration agents were in fact attacked, but their findings can also be used to prosecute DHS agents who are involved in violent confrontations.

Trump administration officials have insisted that anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with immigration agents should be charged with felony assault, which is punishable by up to eight years in prison. In multiple violent confrontations between agents and civilians, both fatal and not, the government has been quick to claim that the agents felt threatened.

The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security denied that any such change had been made.

“The relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and F.B.I. will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the agencies told the Times in a joint statement. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Already, hundreds of criminal cases alleging assault against immigration officers have completely fallen apart. If implemented, this guidance would be particularly concerning considering how many lies immigration officials have told about their violent confrontations with protesters and immigrants.

Last week, an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man legally in the United States, while he drove with his three-year-old daughter in Maine. The next day, a man in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer while being chased by ICE.

The week before that, an ICE agent shot and killed longtime Houston resident and father of three Lorenzo Salgado Araujo while he was driving. Federal agents claimed that he tried to ram the officers—a claim that eyewitnesses denied and that has crumbled under the slightest scrutiny.

The signs are mounting that Donald Trump is preparing a serious effort to steal the midterm elections outright. A key tell came during his rambling speech about our election infrastructure a few days ago, in which he raged at news organizations for not carrying him live. In doing this, Trump accidentally revealed that he fully expects the media to help him sow distrust in our elections. That’s an essential precursor to his rigging plot. And remarkably enough, even Fox News balked at participating in this, another sign of how deranged his scheming has become.

Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos is arguing that the right way to think about this is to face forward. If we’re going to avert the worst, we need to prepare for it right now. So we’re getting into all of it. Ryan, good to have you back on.

Ryan Enos: Yeah, thanks. I’m glad to be here.

Sargent: So let’s look forward. In his speech, Trump made wildly deranged claims about intelligence documents supposedly showing that our elections are deeply vulnerable. He also insisted that China had compromised our election data, and said the deep state is covering it all up. Numerous media outlets fact-checked and debunked all of it. But that aside, Ryan, what do you think Trump is signaling about his future intentions here?

Enos: We can’t overstate how dangerous this is. Democracy doesn’t work if people don’t have faith in the legitimacy of elections, because things can go wrong. And all signs are that Republicans are going to lose at least the House in the upcoming election, and maybe the Senate. And obviously Trump wants to avoid that. So it looks like he’s trying to sow doubt in these elections, either to take actions as the president, to use the government to try to undo the result of the elections in which he loses, or to encourage his supporters to undo them through violence, like he tried to do in 2020.

Sargent: And we’re going to get into the specifics of all that in a second, but let’s first listen to a couple things. Here’s Trump during the speech, raging at news organizations for refusing to carry him live.

Donald Trump (voiceover): There’s no third world country that has elections like we have—in a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about. Because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country—and that’s true, you can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.

Sargent: And here’s Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin echoing Trump’s anger at a news conference the next day.

Markwayne Mullin (voiceover): The major networks not willing to carry the President of the United States’s address to the nation on election security. How shameful is that? What are they trying to cover up?

Sargent: So the fact that Markwayne Mullin felt obliged to keep pushing this nonsense shows Trump continued to rage over it, because that’s the only reason these guys ever say anything. It’s to minister to the audience of one. But Ryan, I think something’s getting lost about this. Trump isn’t merely angry because the networks refused to give him attention. He’s angry because he needs the media to broadcast his lies about our election system precisely in order to help him spread distrust in the outcome, right?

Enos: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think there’s two ways to look at his anger at the media. On the one hand, it shows the media is doing the right thing. They figured out what Trump’s up to. They know he’s going to lie. And they’re, in many ways, taking a stand for democracy. They’re saying, we are not going to broadcast the thing that everybody knows is a lie, and the media has learned not to broadcast Trump’s lies. That’s the independence of the media, a bedrock of our democracy.

But on the other hand, what we’re seeing is just how dangerous it is when a president goes full authoritarian like this. Because it’s not just about him up there ranting on television. He can use the federal government to coerce media firms like these—like CBS and NBC and everybody else—into doing his bidding, because they could very well be punished.

The fact that we have the secretary of DHS up there pushing this—what does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with compelling media organizations to carry the president’s lies? It just shows you all the levers that the president can pull in order to get his authoritarian agenda going. And it’s really, really dangerous.

Sargent: I want to underscore your point by reminding everybody that in the clip we played, Donald Trump actually said that these news organizations should lose their licenses for failing to carry his speech live. And Markwayne Mullin accused them of refusing to share vital, essential information with the American people. It’s more convoluted than Donald Trump says—it’s the subsidiaries and the affiliates that have the licenses.

But the basic point stands here, that now these news organizations may hesitate the next time Trump says, “I’m going to be giving some remarks on the corruption of our election system.” They may say to themselves, he threatened us last time, we don’t want to have the headache of protecting our licenses, and so we’re going to carry it this time. And then Trump’s plot of using the news organizations to spread distrust in our elections could work. What do you think of all that?

Enos: Yeah, one hundred percent. That’s exactly correct. And it’s important to emphasize just how unprecedented this is, right? I mean, this is a clearly authoritarian move, and there’s never been a president in American history that’s done this—has said, if you don’t broadcast what I want, I’m going to essentially put you out of business. And that’s the reason we have things like an independent licensing commission—at least we did until Trump came along and the Supreme Court sided with his unilateral authority to take away its independence.

But even if you take away all those grander things about democracy, this is just essentially schoolyard extortion, right? Like, it’d be really bad if you didn’t do what I want. Maybe you’ll have an accident next time you’re walking home, or something like that. Everybody knows what he’s implying in that case. It’s very clear. And so yeah, ultimately these media firms, they care about their bottom line.

And if they’re worried about losing the broadcast license—which it seems to be now that there’s some evidence Trump could at least try to exercise that authority—then they might comply with what he does next.

Now, it could go to the courts, and hopefully the courts would ultimately side with these organizations, because the First Amendment protections are very powerful. But they don’t want that headache. And this is why so many organizations in civil society that know they could ultimately prevail in the courts would take the easy way out, essentially. And that’s the problem, how we end up in these situations.

Sargent: Donald Trump is essentially saying, look, the next time I give remarks that are designed to sow distrust in our elections, you damn well better carry it, otherwise the full weight of the federal government is going to bear down on you.

Enos: Yeah, a hundred percent. And look, it’s really worth emphasizing this thing about the DHS, right? The DHS was supposedly set up essentially to protect Americans against terrorism. And of course, critics at the time pointed out that this was something that could end up having overreach, but it never really realized that until Trump took it over and turned it into essentially his private secret police force, right?

And so here you have an agency where it’s threatening news organizations, it’s threatening the independence of elections—if you listen to more of what was said in that news conference about how they’re going to examine the voter rolls and things like that. And people have this real fear, which is probably still low probability, but there’s a real fear that you’re going to have things like ICE agents and these other sort of shock troops of Donald Trump showing up at polling places trying to intimidate people from casting their ballots.

And once you get DHS involved in things they have no place in—like the administration of elections—that becomes a real, real concern and a real threat to our democracy.

Sargent: Just to underscore what you were getting at there—during the press conference at which Markwayne Mullin sided with Trump’s theory against the news organizations, he also made a whole bunch of outlandish claims about what DHS is going to require from state officials in terms of election administration, even going so far as to say that if they don’t protect our elections, they may face prosecution.

I just want to make one more point about what you’re saying there, which is that it gets even more vile when you consider how Markwayne Mullin talked about this. He had the goddamn gall to say with a straight face that he’s essentially trying to protect the national security of the United States by pressuring news organizations to carry this stuff.

He accused the news organizations of selling out the country and its national security by refusing to share vital information with them. It’s exactly backwards. What they did do was actually, in a way, a patriotic gesture—refusing to participate in this Trump-Markwayne Mullin effort to gaslight the country.

Enos: Yeah, and look, you’re exactly right. And it fits a really disturbing pattern. Because this is sort of the refuge of bullshit that every authoritarian turns to, right? You’ve heard these same things in Turkey, you heard them in Russia, you heard them in Hungary. Authoritarian leaders, they always claim it’s about national security, right?

Somebody is threatening our national security, in this sort of convoluted logic. And that’s hard for people to argue against, because they don’t want to be on the wrong side of endangering our citizens, right? But look, if we’re willing to turn over the legitimacy of our elections because somebody waves this flag of threats to national security, if the media is not willing to do its job, then that’s how we lose our democracy.

And that’s what’s being attempted here. It’s something that we really have to be aware of, and we have to—to use this word again—we have to call this bullshit when we see it. And that’s clearly what’s going on.

Sargent: One hundred percent. Now, here’s where this takes a weirdly, darkly comic turn. Even Fox News hesitated to validate all this. Fox stated explicitly, right after the speech or during it, that it wasn’t in a position to evaluate some of Trump’s most incendiary claims. And according to both Aaron Rupar and Media Matters, who monitor Fox pretty relentlessly, Fox declined to carry Markwayne Mullin’s presser rehashing Trump’s claims.

And it gets even better. CNN’s Brian Stelter reports that many at Fox just didn’t want to hear Trump talk about the 2020 election anymore, and thought it was bad politics for the GOP. And of course, some at Fox thought, oh my God, we better be careful here, because they had a major settlement against them to the tune of, I guess, $700 million, in a lawsuit brought by Dominion over their false election claims. Ryan, what do you make of that?

Enos: Well, there are two things I’d say about this. First is, I know sometimes things like civil lawsuits get a bad rap—people going around suing each other. But we actually see the purpose of these in a well-functioning country, right? Because Fox very clearly said things after the 2020 election that were defamatory toward some of these election administrators. And they were punished for it through the civil suits. And they want to avoid that. That’s our court system working.

Now, the other thing I would say about it is this fact that Fox thought it was just bad politics. And you see a lot of Republican politicians saying this too. There’s a lot of signs that members of Congress want Trump to move on. And they all know what he’s saying is not true, but they unfortunately feel obligated—they can’t cross him on this issue, right? And what that signals is that the American people aren’t buying this, right?

Trump thinks that the American people are a lot dumber than they actually are, which is sort of one of the tragedies of his whole administration, is how stupid he actually thinks the American people are. But the American people aren’t buying this. You can see this in the polls. Like, only about half of Republicans actually say they believe this, right? And I’m not sure even that half actually believes what they’re saying they believe.

So people really aren’t buying this, but Trump keeps trying to sell it. And what’s unfortunate about that, though, is what it signals is that Trump very well could want to move beyond politics in order to try to make this happen. He can’t convince Americans that the other party is crooked. And so that’s when we start worrying that, in order to satisfy these delusions that he’s having, he’s going to do things like—which was reported he considered in 2020—like have the National Guard seize ballot boxes, or have, as I suggested and other people suggested, ICE officers show up at the polling stations, purportedly to try to stop illegal voting or something like that.

And so at that point you’re interfering with an election that you can’t win legitimately, and in which the American people have rejected you, in order to impose your will essentially on the country. And at that point, we’re not living in a democracy.

Sargent: Right. Well, let’s talk about the specifics of the threat. There’s a lot of chatter about how Trump might use his security services like DHS to maybe seize ballot boxes and try to interrupt the count of votes. And the way they would do that is focus it in states where control of the House and Senate will be decided. And that, I think, is why seeing Markwayne Mullin talking this way is so alarming.

And we should focus on the context as well. The FBI has already seized ballot boxes in Georgia. Trump himself has already said he wants Republicans and the federal government to take over elections.

Now, there’s also the talk about ICE showing up at polling places. I don’t take that as seriously. It’d be hard for them to cover all the polling places that they would need to—although it’s possible they could maybe stage showdowns in select places to create atmospheres of crisis and terror in certain precincts or whatever. But is seizure of ballot boxes something you take seriously? And if so, what can be done about it right now? How do we prepare?

Enos: Yeah, I mean, look, I think we have to take everything seriously. And it could be that these things are all low-probability events—and in many ways, I believe they are. But the fact that we’re talking about them seriously, and the fact that these are direct threats to our democracy, means that we have to take them seriously. We take low-probability events like airplane crashes seriously because they’re so catastrophic, right? And they can actually happen.

And so we also have to consider what we know Trump wants. And he signaled this very clearly in 2020, when he tried to overthrow an election in which he had legitimately lost. There is no doubt that that’s what he did—the historical record is clear. And we know that essentially what stopped him was members of his own administration, to their credit, people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr, who eventually said, “We’re not going to go on with this. We aren’t going to do his bidding.”

And then members of Congress, that actually ended up in his own party, that didn’t side with him as well, right? But a lot of those people are gone. There’s none of those people in his administration anymore. They’re all loyalists. They’re all people that essentially are there because they will do whatever Donald Trump wants. And so there’s none of those roadblocks in the way.

Because of that, if Trump decides he wants to order people to do extraordinary things, like seize ballot boxes or something like that, it’s hard to imagine that people are going to say no. You know, we’ve already seen, for example, something that was hard to imagine even a few years ago—we have essentially a masked secret police going around terrorizing American citizens, terrorizing Democratic cities on the flimsiest of pretexts. It’s simply political terror, right? And that’s operating in the United States right now.

So there’s obviously people that are willing to do those types of things. And if he told people—I don’t know if everybody would do it, but there are certainly people that, if he told them, “Go seize these ballots, these ballots are illegal, you go seize them,” they would go do that.

And so we can imagine that happening. It’s not hard to know who they’d target. They would target Democratic cities that were in, for example, contested Senate races, where they knew they would take out a bunch of Democratic ballots. And the math on it is not hard to figure out. Now, the advantage we have against such things is the constitutional system—it means that we have this big, dispersed electoral system. And this is part of what you’re alluding to with ICE. The numbers in many ways just don’t add up, right?

Fortunately, this is where having a small federal government becomes fortunate in a really big country—there’s not enough people to go steal every ballot box in every dispersed election. You could come up with ways it could happen if you federalize a National Guard and things like that, but then things like that are slow-moving. So it’s hard logistically to make happen.

But I think we have to treat it as reality, and one way we guard against that right now, is exactly what we’re doing—we’re talking about it. And we have to make people like governors in these states aware that this is a real reality and let them plan for it, right? We need to put them on the record to say, “If somebody illegally tries to interfere with an election in your state, what will you do?”

And in 2020, to their credit, a lot of governors, even in red states—I’m thinking about Georgia, for example—stood firm, because they believed in democracy more than they believed in Donald Trump’s lies. And so we need to have people go on the record now that they believe in democracy and they believe in the local administration of elections, which has been a cornerstone of the way elections have been administered in the United States for its entire history. And in many ways, we see the wisdom of that now. And we have to ensure that that process will have integrity moving forward.

Sargent: Right. You could see the media putting pressure on Republicans in places like Ohio and Texas, which have critical Senate races that’ll decide Senate control, pressuring Republicans to say whether they will stand up against any effort to seize ballot boxes.

Enos: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s very well said. Because nobody should agree to that. And you would hope somebody’d be very willing to say right now that we are going to stand up to that, right? And we need elected officials, whether Democrats or Republicans, to be going on the record right now to say, we are going to protect the integrity of our elections.

We believe in the integrity of our elections. That’s how we all got here, right? They are elected under that system that Donald Trump is attacking, and we’re going to protect it moving forward, because that is our constitutional duty.

Sargent: Well, Ryan, speaking of that—do we need to hear Democrats, maybe all the governors, all the senators, all the House members, and all the secretaries of state stand up in unison, maybe even hold a joint press conference and say, “This is an emergency”? Do we need to hear them say, “Republicans, now you must say where you stand on all this”? Do we need to hear them say, “The president just signaled an effort to steal the midterms, and we are in an urgent situation right now”? Do we need to hear that?

Enos: Yeah, I think we do. Look, I think they all need to stand up. One thing we understand very clearly from decades of political science research is that people take signals from these politicians to understand what is going on, right? And if they’re only hearing one side, if they’re only hearing the lies from Donald Trump—first of all, some people might not realize those aren’t true, which is a little shocking to us, but if you hear a lie often enough, it kind of seeps into your consciousness. But moreover, not everybody’s going to realize what a threat to democracy this is. And how much people need to stand up against it.

Because frankly, if Donald Trump tries anything like this—if he tries to steal the election through taking ballot boxes, through interfering with voters casting their ballots, if he tries to do anything—then people frankly need to take to the streets, right? I mean, this is our democracy under threat.

And in November, if that happens, then people need to be prepared to stand up against it, using the power of citizens, but also the power of our elected officials. And so that starts with awareness. People need to be aware that this is a threat, and start standing up for democracy now, not later, after something has happened.

Sargent: Well, I think the upshot here is that we all have a lot of work to do to get ready for what might be coming. Ryan Enos, thank you so much for all that. It was really bracing stuff.

Enos: You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here.

If only we knew as much about the medical status of our elected officials. Judge, despite his name, does not wield any official power on the American people’s behalf. Those who do are increasingly aged, infirm, and secretive about their health. Congress has been greatly weakened as an institution and a branch of government over the past few decades. Now it is increasingly diminished in a physical sense, as well.

Five lawmakers have now died in office in this current Congress, with the latest being South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who suffered from an aortic dissection earlier this month. A handful of others have gone missing for extended periods of time as they deal with serious medical events. Even more of them are visibly declining, with multiple lawmakers stepping down or retiring after their physical and mental impairments became impossible to ignore.

There is no shortage of reforms that Congress could enact to strengthen itself. Perhaps the most useful one for the public would be to take a page from professional sports and create a congressional injury report. Baseball, basketball, and football teams are required by their leagues to publicly list when and why players are unable to compete at regular intervals. The nation’s legislature should do the same thing.

The U.S. government is no stranger to covering up serious illnesses and incapacities. After suffering a stroke during his second term, President Woodrow Wilson was increasingly reliant on his wife, Edith, to carry out basic tasks for the last two years of his presidency. For a time, she even served as the sole conduit of communications between Wilson and his Cabinet. Congress and the states later ratified the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to provide mechanisms to remedy the possibility of presidential incapacity.

There is no mechanism to remove a Supreme Court justice other than impeachment. On at least one occasion, however, the justices have effectively stripped a colleague of power. Justice William O. Douglas suffered a major stroke on New Year’s Eve in 1974 that seriously damaged his memory and cognitive abilities. He refused to resign, however, because he held out hope that his replacement would be appointed by a Democratic president after the 1976 election.

While the public knew of the stroke and newspapers reported rumors about his mental condition, Douglas publicly insisted that he was capable of staying on the court. Only in 1979, with the publication of Bob Woodward’s book The Brethren, did Americans learn the extent of his incapacity at the time. Douglas’s condition was so severe, Woodward reported, that the other justices secretly agreed to punt cases in which he cast the deciding vote to the following term—an ad hoc way of stripping him of his power until he finally announced his retirement in November 1975.

But what was once a rare occurrence among public officials is now an increasingly visible problem. Both President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have faced considerable scrutiny over their declining mental faculties and overall health. Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race that summer after a disastrous presidential debate where the once-eloquent statesman struggled to speak clearly. Trump’s own decline speaks for itself.

The federal courts have wrestled with it, as well: Earlier this month, the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Judge Pauline Newman, a 99-year-old jurist who has been suspended from her duties since 2023 by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals over her alleged mental deterioration. Newman vociferously denies the allegations and produced testimony from physicians that asserted her faculties are still intact.

But it is Congress where this problem is most apparent—and most easily remedied. Members of Congress are more visible than any other public official save for the president, with reporters able to observe and interact with them often in the halls of the Capitol. The grueling schedule of public events and fundraisers, especially in an election year, also theoretically makes it harder for them to hide for extended periods of time.

That does not stop members of Congress from trying their best to escape public scrutiny. Last week, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell posted a photo with a copy of that day’s newspaper after six weeks of absence from the public eye while he was hospitalized for an undisclosed medical condition after a fall. (McConnell said in a statement that it was pneumonia.) His absence, as well as the silence surrounding it, led to intense speculation on social media about whether he was even alive and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear taking the unusual step of publicly requesting an update on his health. (This week, Beshear told Katie Couric that he’d received credible intelligence that McConnell had, in fact, passed away.)

One can hardly blame the public for its interest in the lives and livelihoods of its elected public servants. The former Senate majority leader has been increasingly frail over the last few years, including two troubling episodes where he stopped speaking mid–press conference and began staring into the middle distance before aides escorted him away. His health status also had electoral implications—the deadline to appoint a replacement is next month—and political ones with a narrowly divided Senate.

In recent years, members of Congress also have been part of a growing trend in which they simply go missing for long periods of time. In 2024, Texas Representative Kay Granger quietly stopped showing up to Capitol Hill and cast her final vote in July of that year. Shortly thereafter, the 81-year-old legislator moved into an assisted-living facility in Fort Worth for the final six months of her term because she was suffering from dementia. Granger’s constituents did not know her fate until The Dallas Morning News tracked her down that December.

Earlier this year, New Jersey Representative Tom Kean Jr. also vanished from Congress in March without a public explanation. Unlike Granger at the time, Kean is running for reelection, making his absence from both the House floor and campaign events even more noticeable. After intense public scrutiny and multiple efforts to locate him, the 57-year-old Republican returned to Capitol Hill in June and revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression.

“When I first informed the public that I was dealing with a medical issue, I was still trying to understand what was happening myself,” Kean said in a speech on the House floor. “When I said I hoped to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it. Those were the best estimates the doctors could provide. But, as the over 48 million of my fellow Americans being treated for this illness have come to discover, there is no timeline for healing. There is no timeline for recovery. Only the work of getting better one day at a time.”

It is rare to hear public figures, and especially elected officials, discuss their struggles with depression and similar mental illnesses. Kean deserves credit for his honesty about his condition. At the same time, it is democratically untenable for the people’s elected representatives to vanish without a trace from their jobs without explanation or consequence. In no other profession or vocation in the country would it be allowed.

This problem won’t be going away on its own. The 119th Congress was the third-oldest in the legislative branch’s history when it was sworn in in 2025, according to an NBC News analysis, behind only the Congresses that began in 2017 and 2021. Part of this stems from increases in American life expectancy over the last 250 years. The average age of the First Congress in 1789 was a mere 42 years old. But it also reflects the unwillingness of longtime lawmakers to step aside when they are no longer completely able to carry out the job to which they were elected.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, whose physical and mental decline was apparent in recent years, announced in January she would retire at the end of her current term after intense public pressure. She had originally planned to run for reelection this year at the age of 88. California Senator Dianne Feinstein was once a formidable presence on the Senate’s Judiciary and Intelligence committees. In her final years, however, she became wheelchair-bound and increasingly confused about where she was and what she was doing, only retiring in 2023.

The Constitution sets the qualifications for members of Congress. It grants life tenure to federal judges and has set a two-term limit for presidents. But there is no legal or constitutional restriction on how many times a lawmaker may serve in that position. Michigan’s John Dingell, who served for six decades, holds the record for longest-tenured lawmaker. Imposing term limits or age limits on federal lawmakers is a perennial issue, but there is no viable pathway to enacting either reform. In 1995, the Supreme Court struck down more than two dozen state laws that restricted candidates from appearing on the ballot if they had already served a certain number of terms. States, the high court reasoned, could not impose additional restrictions on federal election candidates beyond what the Constitution required.

Congress, unsurprisingly, has shown little interest in ratifying a constitutional amendment that would limit its power. As a result, Americans are left with legislators who are increasingly aged and infirm. For now, the best that we can hope for is regular updates on their health status, the reason for any extended absence, and the expected timeline for their return to duty—though the fact that so many high-profile lawmakers have essentially flouted their obligation to keep their constituents informed about whether they’re medically fit for duty suggests that those hopes should not be high.

Fortunately, Congress already has something akin to an in-house doctor. In 1928, the House formally requested that the Navy provide a medical officer to Congress and created the Office of the Attending Physician, or OAP. Lawmakers and Supreme Court justices can receive primary care from the attending physician’s medical staff on a regular basis at a heavily discounted price. The OAP also provides members with vaccinations, first aid, and other urgent-care needs.

Medical privacy laws like HIPAA prevent hospitals, doctors, and other health care providers from simply telling reporters what is wrong with public officials. A lawmaker’s own staff also has no independent duty to provide updates on its boss’s medical condition, and plenty of reasons to keep it quiet on their behalf—or even its own. Rumors have long haunted certain elderly former lawmakers about the influence of top staffers over their decision-making.

Fortunately, our nation’s sports leagues have already provided us with a blueprint for what should be done. Congress could pass a law that allows the OAP to independently verify a lawmaker’s medical status once per week and report it to the public on a regular basis. In professional sports, injury lists do not require full disclosure of every medical condition that an athlete suffers from. But it does require teams to explain why an athlete isn’t playing, what the injury is, and when they will be expected to return.

This can be a relatively modest reform on lawmakers’ part if they wish. I doubt members of Congress would wish to submit to regular cognitive screenings, for example, even though the president of the United States seems to enjoy taking them as often as he can. They should also not be required to disclose every aspect of their medical history to the public as a condition of taking office. Lawmakers need not give up medical privacy altogether.

Nor should the attending physician have the power to suspend or remove a lawmaker in any way. Congress itself does have the power to remove lawmakers if they are permanently incapacitated. In 1981, the House declared Maryland Representative Gladys Spellman’s seat vacant after she fell into an irreversible coma from a heart attack. Thankfully, her tragic situation has been a unique occurrence in modern American history. But with an increasingly aged legislature, it may only be a matter of time before it happens again. And in our increasingly distrustful and conspiratorial age, it would be helpful to have an independent physician who can provide a brief, frank assessment of an impaired lawmaker’s condition if and when it does.

When a member of Congress doesn’t show up to work for at least a week or disappears for undisclosed medical reasons, the public—and their constituents in particular—should receive some kind of mandatory explanation about what’s happening. If our legislative branch is going to strengthen itself as an institution once more, it should start with a modified version of that ancient maxim: Congress, heal thyself.

Donald Trump actually makes a fair point when he reminds people that Vietnam lasted a decade and cost 58,000 American lives (and two million Vietnamese ones, which he doesn’t mention as often). Iran isn’t close to being a “quagmire” just yet—not even a Dubya-style one. People can get a little overwrought when discussing these things.

Having said that, though, the future looks pretty grim. I mean, we’ve got Trump doing the one thing he said he’d never do: running a war. Knowing what we know about his attention span, his decision-making process, his willed ignorance of history, his refusal to read briefing papers, and his habit of responding to the last thing he saw on Fox News or Newsmax, we have plenty of reason to be worried here—and by “we,” I don’t mean liberals or Democrats or even Americans. I mean the world.

Let’s sort through the possible scenarios. Granted, they are extremely unlikely to involve 58,000 American deaths. But Vietnam was probably the largest military tragedy in the history of this country. There are other, less costly ways to lose a war. The United States lost around 4,400 service members in Iraq. That’s minuscule compared to Vietnam, but it’s still a war we largely lost (the military objective of toppling Saddam Hussein was achieved, but at a huge and off-the-books financial cost, and Iraq today is at best a kinda-sorta democracy).

So, some possible scenarios, from least bad to worst:

• Trump bombs some civilian installations like power stations, commits a few war crimes but nothing that deeply shocks and appalls world opinion (bombing Pickaxe Mountain, for example); Iran finds a way to exert fuller control over the Strait of Hormuz; gas prices go up again, and Wall Street gets jittery; and Trump finds an exit ramp. In other words, we just rerun the conflict we’ve already watched transpire.
• Or, Trump may decide to do a massive bombing raid on Kharg Island, the distribution point for 90 percent of Iran’s oil and natural gas. He bombed Kharg back in March, but that raid deliberately did not involve attacks on the island’s oil and gas infrastructure. Would Trump simply repeat that—an attack that had little discernible impact on events—or would he raise the stakes and hit the oil and gas installations this time? There has also been talk of a full-scale invasion of the island by U.S. troops. Doctor Testosterone over at the Pentagon probably can’t wait. Trump is surely holding off on both of these options because he knows full well that either would likely send gas prices soaring to the heavens and have other negative effects on the global economy. But Iran could do something that makes Trump change his mind, makes him feel he needs to do something dramatic, give Fox and Newsmax some A1 footage of things going boom.
• An even worse scenario would see both sides escalating until some utterly predictable “unpredictable” thing happens. A U.S. bomb hits another school, or a town square, and a few hundred civilians die. Iran kills some critical mass of American soldiers—a couple hundred, say. Slowly, or maybe not so slowly, this becomes a real shooting war, the kind of conflict that leads the news every night and has no plausible end in sight.
• Finally, there is the possibility that Trump gets impatient over a war he thought he was going to win in two weeks, and he takes drastic action that truly does shock world opinion. The wholesale bombing of civilian infrastructure. Bombing of civilian targets resulting in heavy casualties. The metaphorical “nuclear option” in this scenario would be quite literally nuclear. When people think of nuclear war, they think of the planet being blown to smithereens. But in fact, the United States has many small, tactical, variable-yield nuclear weapons in its arsenal, much smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima (15 kilotons). I know—no one thinks this will happen, no one takes it remotely seriously. And they’re probably right. I’m just saying—with Donald Trump (and Pete Hegseth), never say never. I’m sure if you’d told the experts two years ago that the United States of America would start downing small watercraft in the Caribbean without apparent justification, going so far in at least one case as to strike a vessel a second time to kill the survivors, you’d have been greeted with condescending laughter.

I don’t think conscience would constrain Trump from dropping a message-sending little nuke on Qom. I mean, come on. I do however think there is one force that would constrain him: the stock market. That’s what he cares about at the end of the day. He has to know, all his ridiculous and offensive bluster aside, that he really screwed the pooch here. His war didn’t end in two weeks. Incredible as it must have seemed to him, the Iranian people did not rise up as one in gratitude to Trump and overthrow the mullahs. (Those who thought that was a possibility seemed to have missed the part where the ruling regime brutally put down—that is to say, slaughtered—the protest movement that for a time gained worldwide attention.) Now he has to find a way out of this without causing a global depression.

So that’s probably what he’ll do. Trump Always Chickens Out. He has more important things on his mind, at least more important to him: money to steal, lucre to rake in while still in office, a ballroom to build, a Reflecting Pool to fix (after re-ruining it), an election to rig, tens of thousands of brown people to harass and detain and, when deemed necessary, kill.

But as this war restarts, we would do well to remember two things. First, war is always unpredictable; things happen that the experts said would never happen, and before you know it, the casualties are mounting, and the warmakers are screaming about patriotism. Second, Trump is Trump—a vain man-child who rarely thinks more than an hour or so ahead. At any given moment, he’ll do what he thinks he needs to do to get out of whatever immediate jam he’s put himself in. That’s why we’re in this war in the first place. And that’s why Donald Trump running a real-live war is the world’s worst nightmare.   

When I build a building, I let various builders and architects compete for the contract. Why? Because it sharpens their game, makes them bid competitively on price, and encourages them to give me the best quality product possible.

—Donald Trump, Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, 2011

As a real estate developer, Donald Trump would routinely put contracts out to bid to get the highest possible quality at the lowest possible price. This is, of course, a common practice in business. You send out a request for proposal, contractors submit bids, then you choose whichever bid looks most attractive.

Alas, Trump’s next step was often to ignore contractor invoices, leaving these poor saps no way to recover their costs except by filing an expensive lawsuit. Roy Cohn taught Trump that rich-jerk bullying technique. In 2016, USA Today identified at least 60 such contractor lawsuits, including a few brought by the same law firms Trump had earlier hired to fend off stiffed painters, stiffed carpet companies, stiffed real estate brokers, et cetera. Trump’s attitude was that his contractors should work free of charge. “Do you know how much publicity these people get for having me as a client?” Trump would say, according to Maggie Haberman’s 2022 Trump biography, Confidence Man.

The president’s past abuse of contractors does not discredit his past preference for competitive bidding. It’s a sound, sensible way to get value for your money. If you’re a homeowner, you’ve probably done some version of it yourself before undertaking some pricey renovation like replacing a roof or furnace.

Competitive bidding is even more common in government. That’s because when the money to buy goods or services doesn’t come out of the buyer’s pocket, it creates what economists call moral hazard. Competitive bids help overcome moral hazard by making the contracting process more objective and transparent. By one estimate, 97 percent of government contracts are put out to open bid. On those rare occasions when exceptions are made, it’s usually because either speed is of the essence or some extremely rare expertise is required.

Regrettably, to about the same degree Trump favored competitive bidding as a real estate tycoon, he disfavors it as president of the United States. That’s partly because Trump lacks the necessary patience, but mostly it’s because he lacks the necessary honesty. The man never met a moral hazard he didn’t like. Donald Trump will be remembered as (among other things) America’s No-Bid President.

Look under any rock in Washington these days, and you’ll find a no-bid contract. The Interior Department awarded one $1.7 million no-bid contract to Green Water Solutions to clean up the water in the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall and a second $14.7 million no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings to attach blue waterproofing to the Reflecting Pool’s concrete bottom. Customs and Border Protection awarded a $1.6 billion no-bid contract to Barnard Construction Company to build 112.5 miles of “secondary” border wall in New Mexico. Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded a $4.2 million-per-month no-bid contract to Core Civic to detain immigrants at its shuttered prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, then later replaced that with a $60 million annual contract, according to the Kansas Reflector and the Lawrence Times. The Homeland Security Department awarded $220 million in no-bid contracts for a public relations campaign.

To build an East Wing ballroom, the White House awarded a $500 million no-bid contract to Clark Construction, which in turn awarded subcontractors 11 no-bid contracts for demolition, excavation, fencing, and other services, according to Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell in The Washington Post. The National Park Service awarded Clark Construction a second no-bid 17.4 million contract to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park, according to David Fahrenthold, Luke Broadwater, and Andrea Fuller of The New York Times.

The Navy and the Treasury Department awarded five contracts worth $13 million to Event Strategies, a public relations firm, to organize celebrations of the Navy’s 250th anniversary and publicize the administration’s “Trump accounts” for children, according to Fahrenthold and Fuller.

Trump tried to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, only to be foiled by a federal judge. Right now, a better name might be the Donald J. Trump Center for No-Bid Contracts. The Kennedy Center, of which Trump became board chairman after he fired the previous board and replaced it with loyalists, declared itself in November to be exempt from the Federal Acquisition Regulation that governs federal contracting. The regulation stipulates that “contracting officers shall promote and provide for full and open competition in soliciting offers and awarding Government contracts.” Ditching it was handy because the Trump regime had already started awarding no-bid contracts.

According to a July 13 Washington Post report by Jonathan Edwards, and some whistleblower disclosures that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, published with supporting documents, the Kennedy Center awarded an $8 million no-bid contract to Low Country Flooring to replace and maintain wood floors and a $4.4 no-bid contract to Washington Office Interiors, which in turn subcontracted to Cypress Painting Systems to paint the exterior’s gold columns white, to sand and repaint a reflecting pool on the Kennedy Center’s east plaza, and to retile the bathroom floors and gild the ceilings of the Kennedy Center’s presidential boxes.

It shouldn’t surprise you that many of these no-bid dollars end up inside the capacious pockets of Trump donors and cronies. Green Water Solutions, the Reflecting Pool contractor, is owned by a trust led by John J. Cafaro, a Palm Beach neighbor of Trump’s who (per Fahrenthold) has given more than $300,000 to political committees connected to Trump. Cafaro is a two-time felon. In 2001, Cafaro pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe the outrageously crooked Representative James Traficant, Democrat of Ohio. He paid a $15,000 fine but avoided jail time by testifying against Traficant. In 2010, Cafaro pleaded guilty to violating campaign law by not reporting a $10,000 illegal campaign contribution to his daughter’s unsuccessful 2004 congressional bid.

Some of Homeland Security’s $220 million P.R. spending spree found its way to a consulting firm with what Pro Publica called “longstanding personal and business ties” to then–Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Trump fired Noem after she said at a congressional hearing that Trump approved the expenditure.

Event Strategies, the P.R. firm hired by the Navy and Treasury, is closely tied to Trump, having collected more than $67 million over the years from political committees connected to him, per Fahrenthold and Fuller. On January 6, 2021, Event Strategies organized the fateful Ellipse rally at which Trump urged supporters to march on the Capitol (“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”).

The owner of Barnard Construction, which is building that border fence in New Mexico, contributed more than $1 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. CoreCivic, which owns Leavenworth, gave $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee.

The poor-quality work products that Trump’s no-bid contracts tend to produce speak for themselves. Here is what the Reflecting Pool looks like today. Here is a sampling from DHS’s no-bid public relations campaign (more a commercial for Noem than for immigration control).

The White House ballroom that Clark Construction was hired to build may, for all we know, end up being constructed perfectly—but nobody except Trump wants even a perfectly crafted ballroom because it will be so big that the executive mansion will end up looking like a dollhouse. Cypress Painting Systems’s work on the Kennedy Center reflecting pool, meanwhile, is not encouraging. The pool is rusting, according to Whitehouse’s whistleblower, along with Cypress Painting Systems’s whitewashed Kennedy Center columns.* We already know that the Kennedy Center’s presidential boxes will be vulgarized because we’re all well acquainted with the president’s bordello baroque aesthetic. The most poignant of Trump’s delusions is that he possesses good taste.

The semiquincentennial celebration, which thus far has been a fiasco, is a no-bid affair. Before Trump’s first presidential term, Congress created a Semiquincentennial Commission, which in turn created a nonprofit called America 250. But as Toni Aguilar Rosenthal of the Revolving Door Project and Alan Zibel of Public Citizen pointed out last month, after Trump tried and failed to gain control over the nonpartisan America 250, he created a MAGA-friendly alternative nonprofit called Freedom 250 that took charge of $103 million in no-bid federal grants, representing about 80 percent of all federal funds allocated for the semiquincentennial since October. This included about $68 million awarded by the Interior Department to Freedom 250’s parent, the congressionally chartered National Park Foundation, plus another $10 million transferred from America 250 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a government agency of which I was previously unaware. More than $7 million in grants (here, here, here, and here) went to the January 6 impresarios Event Strategies. When Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency is on record authorizing most of these grants, was asked to account for Freedom 250’s finances, he said it was run out of the White House.

The most conspicuous Freedom 250 failure was the Great American State Fair, which took over the National Mall from June 25 through July 10. It too was a no-bid production. I didn’t go, but it doesn’t appear to have been much fun. “There wasn’t any line to get in,” TNR’s Malcolm Ferguson reported on June 29. (I observed the same one week later.) Ferguson witnessed a child rolling in the grass, crying and screaming, “I. WANT. TO. GO. HOME!!!” In The Washington Post, Philip Kennicott wrote that “everything is stuffed into a fake agora with Doric columns and arched niches painted onto cheap theatrical flats, which look like someone scaled up the photo murals found in a tatty Greek diner that sells gyros, moussaka and heart-bomb platters of pastitsio.”

On July 4, Trump gave a speech at the fair that didn’t start until 11 p.m. because of heavy rain (which at least brought relief from summer temperatures so high that weekend that visitors were twice sent home). The fireworks Washingtonians typically enjoy on July Fourth didn’t start until it was July 5. After the show, the District of Columbia government issued a Code Red declaring outdoor air quality to be “unhealthy for seniors, kids, people with medical conditions.”

Naturally, competitive bidding wouldn’t have moderated the July Fourth weekend weather. But it might have prevented the National Mall from looking that week, from the outside anyway, like Manzanar. As it was, you had to be a hard-core Trump supporter to even want to go. On top of everything else, having a No-Bid President is No Fun.

* This article originally misidentified the name of the contractor responsible for the work on the Kennedy Center and the Reflecting Pool.

On Truth Social Friday afternoon, the president accused Canada of “Willful Negligence,” vowing to add billions of dollars to existing tariffs against Canada to make up for the wildfires’ cost to the U.S.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein,” the president wrote, “and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air.” Trump vowed to contact Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Trump was joining a growing chorus of angry Republicans. Earlier Friday, GOP Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio proposed a bill to slap Canada with sanctions “in response to transboundary wildfire smoke affecting the United States,” which he called an “atrocity.” Before that, three Republican congressmen representing Michigan penned a letter warning Carney to take “immediate action.”

Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada who also hails from Michigan, has sung a more temperate tune. On Wednesday, he described the more than 800 ongoing Canadian wildfires as “a shared challenge” that “demands a shared response.”

“I commend the outstanding cooperation between the United States and Canada as we confront these fires together,” Hoekstra said in a statement. “Our two governments are monitoring and sharing information in real time—coordination that reflects our partnership at its best.… This challenge knows no borders.”

Some obvious wrinkles plague MAGA’s blame-Canada narrative: A primary driver of the devastating wildfires is climate change, which Trump dismisses as a “con job.” Research shows that the United States is culpable for $10 trillion in climate damages globally since 1990. And Trump has systematically rolled back federal clean air protections while in office.

An employee at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado, shot a protester Thursday evening, Aurora Police Department shared in a written news release. The woman was hit in her lower body but is expected to survive.

The suspected shooter is Brandon Booth, a 42-year-old who works for ICE contractor GEO Group. Moments before the violent incident, Booth and other facility employees were waiting in their cars on Nome Street, reportedly unable to enter the detention center due to an anti-ICE protest, according to local law enforcement. Police say that two women broke off from the demonstration, verbally confronted Booth, took photos of his car, and walked away.

But Booth wouldn’t let them. Instead, he grabbed his pistol and fired a shot at the women, striking one in the lower body, according to the police report. He then hopped back into his car and drove away before he was caught by Aurora Police.

The department noted that additional officers found Booth in his car with his gun “a short distance away” after he fled the scene. Booth was booked on probable cause of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon.

In a statement to Colorado Public Media, a spokesperson for GEO Group acknowledged that one of its off-duty employees had been involved in a shooting. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement,” the spokesperson said.

“This is a tragedy on all fronts, and the Aurora Police Department will investigate this incident with the same commitment to transparency and integrity as we do all shootings,” said Aurora Chief of Police Todd Chamberlain. “We remain committed to ensuring an ethical, thorough, objective, and comprehensive review of this case. Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society—violence is not.”

The attack is the latest in a long string of domestic bloodshed by ICE and its contractors. Just this month, federal agents have shot and killed at least two people: Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was killed in Biddeford, Maine, despite having a valid work permit and Social Security number, as well as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican father of three and a local small-business owner who was killed in Houston.

There have now been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since Donald Trump returned to office and made mass deportations a cornerstone of his second-term agenda.

In January, federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Nicole Good and, days later, ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Both were U.S. citizens. Their deaths sparked national outrage and further exacerbated the local pandemonium in Minneapolis that started weeks prior with Trump’s sudden decision to occupy the city with federal agents.

It’s been over six months since their deaths, but still virtually nothing has come of the federal investigation into the extrajudicial killings. Instead, Washington has reportedly utilized its heft to stow critical evidence—such as Good’s vehicle—away from the local and private detectives attempting to hold their killers accountable.

The voyage has not been well received.

The so-called “Coastal Diplomacy 250” tour, which began last month, has made a handful of its 13 planned stops. But Fertitta’s arrival in Venice on Friday, scheduled to overlap with a major Venetian festival, was all but smooth sailing. The ostentatious display was met with hundreds of protesters.

Demonstrators carried a banner stating “Venezia non si USA,” a double entendre combining the acronym USA with the statement “Venice is not to be used.” Organizers made the sign the length of Fertitta’s yacht, they said, to match “the dimensions of his arrogance,” according to the Associated Press.

Footage shows demonstrators delivering remarks against the Trump administration for promoting oligarchy, bombing Iran, and supporting genocide in Gaza, among other misdeeds. After a brief clash with riot police, protesters can be heard shouting “Shame!” at the authorities.

Protesters carried Palestinian flags, inflatable pool floats, and signs and T-shirts bearing anti-Trump messages. A sampling of those messages included: “Party Yes, American Arrogance No,” “No Kings, No Oligarchs,” “Trump Voters are Illegal Immigrants Here,” “Make America Read Again,” and “We are Not Trump’s Slaves and You Are Not the Emperors of the World.”

Despite Trump specifically ordering his congressional allies to include his unpopular voter restriction bill in the government funding mechanism during a late-night address to the nation the night before, Republicans’ 15-page C.R. makes no mention of the SAVE America Act.

“Congress must pass the SAVE America Act. How easy is that to do? Unless you want to cheat,” Trump said Thursday night. “The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat, because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way.”

Instead, Republicans offered a clean funding package. If passed, it would fund the federal government until December 4.

The president has predicated his support for any legislative effort on the Save Act’s passage. Since the beginning of the year, Trump has insisted it should be Congress’s top priority, refusing to sign any bill and derailing Cabinet confirmations until Capitol Hill bends to his will. So far, that stalemate has gummed up efforts to fund the Department of Homeland Security, stalled attempts to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, and upended a planned photo op of Trump signing a landmark housing bill.

The original iteration of the SAVE America Act sparked nationwide backlash for proposing numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, perhaps chief among them a requirement that voters bring either a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Critics argued that the mandate would unduly restrict millions of Americans from voting, pointing out that half of the country’s population lacks a passport and furthermore that the legislation as written would make it difficult for anyone who changed their name—including married women—to register.

The bill would also require voters to present photo identification when casting a ballot, and a total ban on mail-in voting. Trump has described the latter procedure as “crooked” and “corrupt,” despite the fact that he himself has cast several mail-in ballots.

The continuing resolution would temporarily extend current funding levels for the government while Congress continues negotiating appropriation bills for the coming year. It is expected to be put to a floor vote next week.

This story has been updated.

“Whoever wins this nomination, we need to show up at the polls,” said Ashley Webb, a transgender activist. “We need to vote for them, and we need to make sure they win, no matter what, because what’s going on in this country is not right.”

When sexual assault accusations forced Platner from the race on July 9, a month after he’d won the Democratic primary, he posted an 11-minute video on social media claiming innocence and blaming the political establishment and corporate media for his exit. He said “large forces” were working against him. “We live in a political system that is not built for normal people,” he said. “It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish. That if they begin to succeed they can be crushed.”

That video left a sour taste in my mouth because he seemed to imply that any “normal” person running for Congress could be plagued by scandals such as having a Nazi tattoo and being accused of rape. Yet eight normal-ish people took the stage on Thursday to be his replacement, and none thus far seem to have a past like Platner’s—but they do presently have a politics like Platner’s, as all sounded eager to win over the enthusiastic movement he’d built. It made me wish for an alternate timeline in which the Democratic establishment hadn’t meddled in the primary, allowing for a wide-open field. Instead, primary voters had a choice between Governor Janet Mills, the 78-year-old centrist who was handpicked by Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer, and an oyster farmer whom political operatives plucked from obscurity and didn’t properly vet.

Because nine candidates jumped into the truncated race, which will be decided by 601 delegates at the party’s state convention on July 25, the debate was held in two-hour blocks between four candidates each. The first half contained the expected front-runners: Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Senate president Troy Jackson, former state CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah, and Jordan Wood, who came in third in the primary for the 2nd congressional district. In the second half, there was David Costello, an environmental policy consultant who worked in Maryland’s Department of the Environment, former state Representative Elizabeth Dickerson, brewery owner Dan Kleban, and Webb, who visibly teared up when she spoke about trans rights issues.

Their responses to questions were often hurried, unfinished, and a little unprepared—except Shah, who sounded the most polished, if a little professorial. But on substance they were very similar, and there wasn’t much time to go deep. The ICE shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday was top of mind, especially because Collins had voted for no-strings-attached funding of the agency in April. Not a single candidate wanted ICE to continue in its current, lawless form. They also all wanted to guarantee health care for all, a big issue for Mainers, enshrine abortion rights at the federal level, and fortify Social Security. And they all pushed back on the idea that there wasn’t enough money to support the kinds of reforms they wanted, blaming instead a political system that favors the elite.

“Senator Collins is just a rubber stamp for the wealthy elite in this country, and that is nothing that’s ever going to help the people here in Maine,” Jackson said, arguing that Collins’s seniority power did little for Maine’s voters in the end because she didn’t stop Trump when she could have. “She wasn’t willing to because she’d rather go along with the Trump administration and make it harder for … working-class people all across the state.”

Bellows, too, argued that the country’s wealth was going to the wrong places. “Stop spending money on things that the billionaires and the massive corporations want, like endless war, and trying to create urgency and panic, so we fall for it, and start spending money on the things that matter for folks at home,” she said.

Indeed, they all sounded like Democrats, which was the point that Dickerson wanted to make in the second half. “The platform that we all have, I think, that we’ve heard tonight, is kind of simple,” she said. “But the thing that really keeps us from achieving this is one seat in the Senate, and that seat is currently held by Senator Collins. And it’s really important for people to vote blue to get that seat in Democratic hands for food security for all, health care for all, housing for all, to abolish ICE, and to reverse climate change and end the war.”

Since the choice to replace Platner will be up to convention delegates instead of primary voters, it was hard to see the point of the debate until then. What will people watching at home be able to do, if they can’t pick the party’s nominee? Instead, the debate served as a pitch for the Democrats in general, a plea to Mainers not to give up on the party this year just because of the Platner mess. Vote for us—whichever one of us is on the ballot in November—over Collins, they effectively argued. We’re all better than she is.

The delegates, meanwhile, will have a tough choice because instead of sharp ideological differences, they will be deciding based on the candidates’ résumés and vibes (or their personal or political connections to candidates, in some cases). The state party undoubtedly wishes it had more time—if not to hold a new primary, then at least to give the candidates more runway in their campaigns, to polish their talking points and policies. But the debate at least illustrated that Maine voters don’t have to choose between political beliefs and moral ones; that they don’t have to back a deeply flawed candidate just for the sake of a movement. Plenty of normal-seeming people were ready to show up and assume the mantle, after all.

In May, Freedom 250 and a Trump-tied event management company, Event Strategies Inc., installed temporary lighting while setting up the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. Then, on May 20, fuel lines on the lighting equipment spilled at least 30 gallons of fuel onto the mall. The fuel seeped underground, contaminating rainwater repositories used to irrigate the mall. And another spill of an unknown quantity came soon after.

The government awarded a “rushed, no-bid contract” of $1.8 million for the cleanup, reported Anna Kramer of NOTUS Friday. It took two months for the contract, which was awarded to Maryland-based business Custom Lawn Service Inc, to be posted publicly. Officials told Kramer that was due to the “emergency nature of the situation.”

Government records reported in May by The New York Times suggest the spill was due to negligence, originating “from event-related equipment that lacked required secondary and tertiary containment measures.” But the Trump administration has described hiccups in its 250th celebrations as the fault of left-wing saboteurs, and this time was no different: The administration alleged that vandals slashed the fuel lines.

The government does not ordinarily foot the bill for such cleanup jobs. Permit holders are typically held “liable for the environmental mitigation after a spill of such magnitude,” NBC News reported last month. Accordingly, hundreds of concerned citizens petitioned for Freedom 250, not the taxpayer, to be made financially responsible, but their calls apparently fell on deaf ears.

The $1.8 million price tag is also markedly higher than initially estimated. According to the Times, the National Park Service in May was seeking a contractor for $1.1 million, and an interior department spokesperson said the cleanup “could end up costing far less.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference in Washington Friday that state officials who refuse Washington’s new election demands could be jailed for their disobedience.

“If the states choose not to participate with the state program, and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states, and hold them—the election officials—accountable,” Mullin said. “If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even—depending on how far it goes—prison time.”

The pledge came hours after Donald Trump delivered a national address that not only included numerous factual inaccuracies and vast exaggerations about how he lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but also weaponized those conspiracies in an attempt to undermine American trust in future elections.

“Working with [Commerce] Secretary [Howard] Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory. Meaning that if these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they are going to have to implement security issues,” Mullin said. “Just security issues. We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration lists need to be scrubbed.”

“We need to make sure that individuals legally able to vote are voting.”

The homeland security chief confidently announced the plot while standing in front of several American flags, despite the fact that the entire scheme is most likely illegal and that he is acting far outside the limitations of his office and even the executive branch. Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.

Beyond that, voter fraud is a statistical nonissue in American elections. For instance, a 2024 statewide audit out of Georgia—the epicenter of one of Trump’s baseless 2020 theories—revealed that 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections many years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

This story has been updated.

Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a nonprofit that monitors right-wing media, wrote that Fox News’s Friday morning programming prioritized several other stories over Trump’s speech. Among the stories covered were Caitlin Clark’s WNBA game Thursday night, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s policies toward landlords, Fox’s World Cup coverage for Sunday’s final, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s antifa summit Thursday. Fox & Friends didn’t even mention the speech.

It’s a continuation of how the network treated the speech last night. Laura Ingraham didn’t even discuss the speech, even though Trump was scheduled to speak just two hours later. Jesse Watters gave it a passing mention at the end of his show, prioritizing one of his correspondents interviewing people in bathing suits at Central Park. Sean Hannity gave the speech a small amount of discussion and said his show would look into it in the coming days.

The most attention Fox gave to the speech was on Special Report, with Hugh Hewitt saying in advance of the speech that he hoped Trump would focus on renewed hostilities in the Iran war, as it was “vital that the president keep that in mind that American servicemen and women are in harm’s way when he is on the air.”

The network’s reluctance to give Trump’s speech heavy coverage may have something to do with the hefty settlement Fox News was forced to pay in 2023 to get rid of a lawsuit over how it covered election denial conspiracies from the 2020 presidential election pushed by Trump and his allies. Or it also could be due to the fact that Trump was just repeating old, tired claims of election fraud, and making up new claims of foreign interference without evidence. Maybe Fox sees that Trump is desperately trying in vain to forestall a big defeat this November.

On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order imposing a yearlong statewide moratorium on data-center construction. This panics the AI overlords. If a commie-style ban can make it in pro-business New York, it can make it anywhere.

“The real worry in the industry isn’t New York specifically, it is the precedent,” said Joseph Hoefer, a key AI lobbyist, about the response of Silicon Valley to Hochul’s move. “The concern is real, and it moved fast.”

And then there’s the mounting popular disgust with facilities that guzzle water and power from rural communities, giving nothing back.

“Data centers—why would you want that?” Tucker Carlson said recently on a podcast. “Why are you telling me all of the bad things that are going to happen, not telling me really any of the good things, and then telling me that it’s inevitable and I can’t have electricity or water because the machines need it?”

Indeed. We know that data centers drain water reserves and strain electrical grids. But their round-the-clock “brute force” lighting also eliminates dark nights, wreaking havoc on the circadian rhythms of humans and animals.

As for air pollution, according to a recent study, just one data center in Northern Virginia pumps out enough aerosolized waste to cause respiratory diseases and premature deaths to the tune of $53 million to $99 million in health damages annually.

And then there’s the headache- and insomnia-inducing noise pollution. No wonder seven in 10 Americans now oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans.

Caleb Max, another AI lobbyist, describes this polling on data centers as  “devastating” and warns, “If the industry doesn’t wake up quick and start solving this, it’s going to get a lot worse.”

All of which brings us to tomorrow, July 18, when Humans First, an activist group fronted by staunch America First conservatives and supported by Marjorie Taylor Greene, is planning a national day of protest to fight the facilities across the country, from Alabama to New Mexico, Missouri to Idaho, West Virginia to Wyoming.

With conservatives in the fight, AI’s foes can no longer be dismissed as tree-huggers, degrowthers, and union thugs. This leaves almost nothing in Silicon Valley’s rhetorical arsenal.

The idea that the data centers are noble citadels in the AI war with China doesn’t exactly fire up the popular imagination.

The 2010s concept that our Silicon Valley overlords are entitled, as geniuses, to turn American towns into sacrifice zones—that also rings hollow.

So this week, the oligarchs resorted to the last refuge of a scoundrel: They described the protests as a psyop.

Trump megadonor Marc Andreessen amplified a thread alleging that Humans First is really an anti-ICE socialist outfit. The thread pointed to a March article about Humans First called “Built to Deceive: How the Effective Altruist Machine Infiltrated the Conservative Right on AI,” by Jordan Schachtel, an AI zealot with Blaze and Breitbart bylines and a Substack called The Dossier. (On Friday, Schachtel argued in the newsletter AG—yes, American Greatness—that data centers power “the new American Industrial Revolution.” )

Aspiring trillionaire Elon Musk, along with mere billionaire David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, showered X love on Schachtel’s gotcha when it came out.

But the exposé is not as revelatory as they think it is. Schachtel chronicles how a small group of Effective Altruism activists committed to AI safety—not socialism—fostered Humans First to engage conservatives in the fight against data centers. Then they handed it off to them. That sounds like coalition-building, not deceit. (The “pro-human” mobilization against data centers has been ideologically diverse from the start.)

In May, Humans First published an open letter urging Trump to pump the brakes on data-center construction: “We write as committed America First leaders to thank you for considering an Executive Order to vet potentially dangerous frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models before they are released.”

This remarkable appeal, both populist and pro-regulation, is signed by marquee rabble-rouser Steve Bannon, as well as other leading lights of America First, the MAGA splinter group.

Amy Kremer, another signatory and the chair of Humans First, is an inveterate Tea Partier who founded Women for Trump and organized the rally that spun into the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington.

Cathy Latham, who also signed the letter, is a former Georgia elector who was indicted in 2023 for signing “alternate ballots” certifying Trump as president (Trump pardoned her). Outside of data centers, Latham’s interests include “advocacy for transparent, non-ideological education that prioritizes critical thinking, American history, and conservative values over ‘woke’ or Marxist influences.”

Kremer, for her part, considers the data-center protests “the most important fight of our lifetime” because “this technology could wipe us off the face of the planet.” This week, she wrote in RealClearEnergy, “The same disconnect that gave rise to the Tea Party in 2009 is happening again in 2026. Instead of a battle over bailouts and Obamacare, this time the battle is over runaway big tech, dangerous AI, and AI hyperscale data centers.”

The right comes by its skittishness about data centers honestly. Even Schachtel concedes: “Their AI skepticism might be fairly perceived as genuine, rooted in years of commentary on transhumanism and civilizational risk involving Silicon Valley elites having power over the average American.”

So have right- and left-wing populists really made common cause at last—or is someone playing someone? If the left is pulling the levers, America Firsters may end up supporting green policies or government regulation. If the right’s in charge, DSA types might have to recognize that conservatives, in Schachtel’s words, “arrived at doomer-adjacent conclusions through a distinctly conservative and Biblical lens.”

Not bad. The only losers are the oligarchs. And religious tolerance, along with a government that works for the people, seem like a pretty American place to converge.

Indeed, waste is now being expelled on an incredible scale, across the country: A diarrhea-causing parasite, cyclosporiasis, has sickened thousands of people in more than two-thirds of U.S. states. And the outbreak’s severity—evidence increasingly shows—can be attributed at least partly to DOGE.

According to a Friday report by WIRED, DOGE cuts significantly reduced the size of the team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responsible for responding to cyclospora outbreaks. The lab was “downsized from 11 people to just three” last year, parasitologist Joel Barratt, who formerly led that operation, told the publication.

“Based on simple math, these outbreak responses—which require rapid, timely responses—are going to be greatly diminished,” Barratt told WIRED. “Cyclospora is just one piece. It’s making the news right now, but there are other, more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora.”

That’s not the only way Trump’s cuts have hamstrung the response. In an analysis at The American Prospect, for example, Ryan Cooper details how the administration devastated American food safety and public health infrastructure in ways relevant to the outbreak.

Additionally, in July 2025, the CDC under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. quietly changed the monitoring of cyclospora from mandatory to optional in Foodnet, its pathogen-tracking partnership with 10 state health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration.

With WIRED’s report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claim Thursday that the administration’s funding cuts did not impact the response to the outbreak “at all” sounds more dubious than it already did.

Describing the wreckage left in DOGE’s wake, one GOP senator recently coined the phrase “DOGE shit.” The department’s increasingly apparent role in exacerbating this outbreak suggests there’s more mileage in that pun—a couple social media wordsmiths have already seized on it, nicknaming cyclospora “the DOGE shits.”

Speaking with journalist Katie Couric in an interview published on YouTube July 15, Beshear explained why he had requested a formal update from McConnell’s office earlier this month. In his explanation, Beshear revealed that he had received information from multiple officials indicating that the 84-year-old Republican had passed away.

“It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell,” Beshear recalled. “In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies—not state agencies—suggesting he’s passed.”

The Kentucky senator went missing for nearly a month after he was found unconscious in his Washington residence and rushed to the hospital on June 14. For weeks, McConnell’s office refused to explain his extended hospitalization or elaborate on his eventual return to Capitol Hill.

But the media blackout finally ended on Sunday, when the senator’s office shared a photo of McConnell sitting upright in a chair beside his wife, holding a copy of The Washington Post’s Sunday sports section in his lap.

Far-right influencers immediately jumped on McConnell’s statement, baselessly claiming that the picture had been AI-generated while demanding that McConnell release a video statement to address public concern. (Forensic analysis teams concluded that McConnell’s “proof of life” image was very much real and not AI-generated.)

McConnell’s team has not provided any further explanation or evidence supporting McConnell’s improving health condition since Sunday.

Earlier this week, Beshear held a press conference in which he acknowledged that while the July 12 update was a “step in the right direction,” McConnell ultimately needed to provide a more comprehensive update in order to cut through the resulting conspiratorial noise.

“We hope that there is a speedy recovery,” Beshear said on Tuesday. “But with all the speculation—and there’s been a ton—the fastest way to end all of it is calling into a news station if you’re otherwise taking calls, putting out a video or two, which all of us do in office.”

David Brouillette has a history of violent and abusive behavior, his relatives told the Associated Press, including attacks on the women and girls in his life. His first ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, said that she divorced him after he became violent with her while she was pregnant with their daughter.

In one instance, she told the AP, he threw boiling water at her while she was holding their daughter, which her mother, Avis Collins, also confirmed. In court records, another of Brouillette’s ex-wives also alleged years of physical and verbal abuse against her and her daughters. The AP did not identify her because she fears retaliation.

Brouillette’s second ex-wife said he stalked and harassed her, and engaged in physical and verbal abuse against his daughter, forcing them to seek temporary protection orders. Brouillette allegedly tackled his teenage daughter, smashed spaghetti in her hair, and one in instance, dragged her around the house while she was crying.

“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” the ex-wife wrote while applying for a temporary protective order on behalf of Brouillette’s teenage daughter, which a judge granted in 2021.

Brouillette’s oldest daughter, Madison, also told the AP about her father’s mental health issues.

“I saw my dad struggle with a lot of things,” she said, recalling one instance where she came home from school and he told her that he had sat on a tree stump holding a gun to his head. “If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help.”

One relative anonymously told the AP that Brouillette was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and severe bipolar disorder as a kid, which Ashley Brouillette confirmed. That relative said that David Brouillette was “extremely mentally ill,” attempting suicide when he was 12 years old and having to go to the hospital. His ex-wife Ashley shared a three-minute voicemail with the AP from last winter where he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

In that message, sent around the time he joined ICE, he called her “disgusting” and said that she and other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.

“And all of you should have your f—king throats cut,” Brouillette’s voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f—king throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”

Brouillette reached out to Ashley and his daughter Madison after the shooting, telling them it was justified and that Durán Guerrero tried to run him over with a car. In those calls, he told his ex-wife to lie for him and to cover for his “character.” Based on his history, that was a lost cause.

“This is a 25th Amendment moment,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said, referring to the law that allows Congress to replace the president if deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the job. “I just watched the ramblings of a mad king, and what else can I say—the only thing missing was tinfoil. Donald Trump is trying to rig our elections, and we have to stop him. Show up and VOTE this November.”

“How can anyone deny the urgency of the 25th Amendment at this point,” echoed Representative Yassamin Ansari.

Others focused on the illegitimacy of the claims Trump made.

“Tonight I heard a failed and desperate president who as war spirals and prices rise is as always focused on his grievances, his shame, and above all his fear of the accountability that will come with defeat,” Senator Jon Ossoff wrote on X. “I also heard a president signaling his unmistakable intent to attack these elections and our voting rights, just as he tried to throw out our votes and seize the presidency in 2020. Our answer will be overwhelming.”

“Donald Trump is releasing unverified, meaningless documents to appease his own delusions about an election he lost resoundingly, all while continuing to withhold 3 million pages of the Epstein files,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Donald Trump is a feeble, unhinged conspiracy-peddling 80-year old failed President. The economy is a disaster under this guy and the American people know it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffires said. “Pathetic.”

“Trump says Democrats forgot to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *he* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats supposedly stole was the one he himself controlled,” said Representative Jim McGovern. “You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe this bullshit.”

“Donald Trump just used a primetime address to relitigate an election he lost six years ago—and to demand new laws making it harder to vote,” former gubernatorial candidate turned voting rights activist Stacey Abrams wrote. “Americans see through the lies. He tried this in Georgia first: a call to ‘find 11,780 votes,’ a raid on Fulton County, and now a war on the ballot itself. That’s not democracy. That’s cowardice. America, we’ve beaten it before.”

“Tonight, the same President who once badgered Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to find 11,780 votes that didn’t exist, so he could overtake Biden’s lead in the state in 2020, put out a whole new set of lies about our elections, past and present,” Senator and Trump nemesis Adam Schiff added. “All of his claims and the selective release of any documents must be treated with the greatest skepticism given the President’s many lies and misrepresentations about our elections.”

Outgoing GOP Representative Thomas Massie had some words for the president, as well.

“This is absurd,” he wrote. “Every piece of voter data Trump mentions here, as well as which elections each voter voted in, is readily available in Kentucky for a small fee.”

Trump’s rambling speech was as inaccurate as it was disconcerting. He sounded bad, had no energy, and stuck so closely to the teleprompter it seemed like he’d never seen the speech before he read it. Not exactly a vote of confidence for the next two years.

So Trump’s much-ballyhooed (chiefly by him) speech Thursday night was a dud. So say I; so, in not so many words, said Hannity (perhaps lurking in the corners of his mind last night was the nearly $800 million his network paid out in a legal settlement after it was caught promoting Trump’s lies); so said Playbook this morning (“Trump’s anticlimax”); so said the gang on Morning Joe. That’s good. It tells us that that power he had over people and institutions a year or 15 months ago has evanesced.

More than that, it was just an embarrassing moment for the United States of America. When has a president ever done anything like that—commandeered the bully pulpit to spread poisonous half-truths and lies? Presidents often lie about this or that particular thing. But no one has ever pressed an obviously bogus case like that. Even the throwaway lines were poisonous lies (“We had transgender for everybody” before he returned to the White House). So it’s unlikely that most Americans are taking it very seriously.

Still: He’s the president, he’s backed by a couple hundred lapdogs on Capitol Hill who will repeat and endorse whatever he says, and of course he is reinforced by a propaganda network that reaches millions of Americans every day that will do the same. So the speech still matters, and it may set in train naked attempts to rig the election and prevent some Americans from voting.

But having seen the speech, and despite what everyone is saying, and indeed despite what I myself assumed going in, I’m not so sure that the main point here was to lay some kind of groundwork for November. Trump may be the most corrupt and furtive man ever to occupy the presidency, but in this one way he is achingly transparent: His motivations are always right out there. And his motivation last night wasn’t really November. It was just what he said. It was 2020.

This man-child with the emotional life of an 11-year-old and an ego that bruises more easily than a three-day-old banana will never stop being obsessed about 2020. In Trump’s mind, Trump can’t lose. It simply can’t happen. (Privately, he has admitted to more than one former aide that he lost, but let’s set that aside for now.) And nothing is ever his fault. Ergo, the election had to be stolen. And he has to “prove” it.

A normal person would let this go after a while and start focusing on the future. The broad interpretation that last night’s speech was really about 2026 and 2028 is a function of people making that assumption. But it’s a fatal assumption in this case. Trump is not normal. Trump is possessed.

His loss must be vindicated, whatever it takes. It might be vindicated by lies. He will know deep down that they are lies, but he won’t care. For Trump, the world is a jungle—eat or be eaten. It’s an authoritarian worldview, because if that’s what you believe, then any action is justified to avoid being the eaten. But he can’t drop it until the vindication is received.

Plenty of dangers lurk for the republic, despite his motivation being mainly retroactive, by the way. The sycophant he wants to install as attorney general, who referred to himself as Trump’s lawyer at his nomination hearing this week, has proven himself more than capable of filing charges against anyone Trump wants him to indict. And the sycophant he wants to install as director of national intelligence, who at his hearing this week couldn’t bring himself to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, will presumably gather intel on anyone Trump tells him to look into. So we have every reason on earth to fear that if Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton are confirmed in their respective positions, they’ll take a torch to the Constitution in an attempt to give Trump his vindication.

So picture it. Two and a half more years of sham indictments, destroyed reputations, phony charges repeated by state propagandists who call themselves journalists. And since none of it will work, because the 2020 election was not in fact stolen, it will continue until the day Trump leaves office. Beyond, actually. He’ll be on this jihad until the day that last well-done steak with ketchup arrests whatever’s left of his heart.

That’s bad enough. But yes, inevitably, the speech will have ramifications for this November. It’s hard to know right now what they will be. On the one hand, it seems that his cherished SAVE America Act will never become law. So he probably can’t do that.

Otherwise, though, saying what he said last night about 2020 tees it up for him to repeat as needed between now and November 3 that he—and Attorney General Blanche and DNI Clayton—have unearthed new evidence that the deep staters are up to their old 2020 tricks. Therefore, they have no choice but to deploy ICE agents to certain polling places. This is clearly against federal law. Blanche had said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March that such a move might be necessary; at his hearing, under questioning from Senator Amy Klobuchar, he said he’d “follow the law,” but his language was slippery.

In sum: Trump’s motivation may be retroactive, but for the Republican Party and the right-wing media machine, the speech’s greatest utility is proactive. Either way, we’re left with the grim reality that a steaming pile of lies that nearly everyone knows to be lies could end up exerting a chilling influence over the administration of justice in this country and our electoral process.

At the same time, let’s conclude on a more positive note. The reaction to the speech is for the most part encouragingly negative and dismissive. The New York Times, well known for the cowardly equivocation of its homepage headlines regarding such matters, actually used the phrase “outlandish claims” in an early headline. For the Times, that’s a shot of Tabasco sauce.

Maybe this speech, combined with those Justice Department goons serving subpoenas to four Times reporters at their homes, will finally convince executive editor Joe Kahn that a newspaper’s job actually is to fight for democracy. The water’s fine, Joe; as Victor Laszlo said to Rick Blaine, it’s never too late to join the fight.   

The Thursday meeting was an obvious gambit for Senate support for Blanche’s potential promotion to permanent attorney general.

The encounter was arranged hours after Republican Senator Thom Tillis said that his vote for Blanche’s confirmation would be predicated on whether the acting attorney general met with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.

During the second day of Blanche’s committee confirmation hearing, Epstein victim Dani Bensky warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that Blanche had dodged her and other victims for months, yet showed a sudden willingness to talk shop once he needed them to advance his Senate confirmation.

By 4 p.m., the meeting was a go, as several survivors were spotted filing into the Justice Department. Two hours later, however, they reappeared outside the building, looking “distraught and emotional,” according to MS NOW. Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, informed reporters outside the Justice Department: “I think we have a little ways to go here.”

“It had absolutely nothing to do with us, and it had everything to do with Blanche checking a box so that he can get a promotion,” Epstein victim and anti–human trafficking educator Elizabeth Stein told the network. “I don’t think that we had high expectations going into this meeting. I certainly did not. But I didn’t expect to walk out of the meeting feeling the way that we feel right now.”

“It was demoralizing, to say the very least,” she added.

Stein recalled that Blanche was completely unwilling to provide the group with anything substantial, actively dodging questions and refusing to provide assurances that his department would follow up on potential investigative leads. She noted that he could not provide a concrete explanation for Ghislaine Maxwell’s cushy prison transfer to a low-security prison camp, and wouldn’t clarify the improper redactions rampant throughout the released Epstein files.

“It just felt like more political posturing and using survivors the way that we’ve been used as political pawns,” Stein continued. “We’re victims of the crime of sex trafficking. And the fact that our Department of Justice will not take that seriously is beyond concerning, not just to us, but should be concerning to Americans all across this country.”

Epstein survivor Annie Farmer told ABC News she is “even more confident in urging senators to vote against his confirmation as the United States Attorney General” after finally meeting Blanche face to face.

“I found him abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors—a marked contrast to his public testimony during his confirmation hearing,” said Farmer, who served as a key witness for the government during Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial.

Tillis did not feel the same way: The North Carolina senator indicated over social media Thursday evening that he was satisfied by Blanche’s efforts.

“I commend Todd Blanche for doing what all his predecessors over the last two decades never did: meet with the victims of Jeffery Epstein’s horrific crimes,” Tillis wrote. “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

With midterms fast approaching and divisions in the ranks of a thin majority stymieing Republican legislative priorities, many in the party have hoped for Vance to step up, leveraging his position as president of the Senate to be a liaison between Congress and the White House.

Instead, “lawmakers can count on a few fingers the times … Vance has set foot in the Capitol,” Kimberley Ann Strassel writes in a reported column for The Wall Street Journal. The vice president has jilted members of Congress for podcasters and talk-show hosts, appearing on programs such as Real Time With Bill Maher and The View, in no small part to promote his new spiritual memoir.

Most recently, Vance flaked on a meeting scheduled Tuesday with House Republicans to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience.

And remarks Vance has made during his absence have only been salt in Republicans’ wounds. In his public comments, the vice president has been perceived as “bashing his own party to win praise from online influencers” and positioning himself as “scolder of the body over which he constitutionally presides, rather than showing up for the work,” Strassel writes.

In his recent media hits, for example, Vance has called those who oppose eliminating the filibuster as “married” to “weird Senate procedural bullshit,” and angered some conservatives by touting an interventionist “Christian” organization of the economy over laissez-faire economics.

One GOP senator told Strassel, “As we approach incredibly consequential midterms for this nation and this presidency, Senate Republicans are pretty confused as to why the president of the Senate is actively criticizing the GOP, while also being absent from his Senate duties.”

In the past, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly provided a line of communication between GOP lawmakers and the White House, but she’s now being treated for breast cancer. And while lawmakers reportedly “appreciate” appearances Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made on Capitol Hill, they have only made Vance’s “lack of interest” all the more clear.

In his 27-minute speech, Trump complained that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and accused China of stealing and hacking into voting data to prevent his victory, touting the newly declassified documents as evidence. Those documents didn’t support the claims he was making.

Much of the information in the more than 270 pages released presented information already known from 2020 and 2021, with the new details nowhere near earth-shattering. For example, China looked at ways to affect U.S. public opinion, downloading public voter rolls in multiple states (which are already easy to download or purchase). But that’s been known for years, and there was no proof China messed with any ballots or voting machines.

Another document from the Department of Homeland Security declared that over 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Nevada, California, and New Jersey, but did not include any supporting evidence. Officials in those states also pushed back against the claims.

A declassified 2021 U.S. intelligence report also contradicts Trump’s claim of foreign actors altering election results. That document found no proof that any overseas actor tried to, or succeeded in, changing “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election, including ballots, voter registrations, results, or the counting process.

Trump cited two CIA documents to back up his claim of China’s election meddling, and posted them to the White House website. But again, those documents don’t support his words, and in some cases they say the opposite. One document, for example, said that Russia, China, Iran, and other countries were capable of interfering with voting and stealing sensitive information, but didn’t say that they actually engaged in those actions.

Trump only mentioned Russia in passing during his speech, but the declassified documents highlight Russian interference. The same document said that China wanted Trump to lose and tried to shift public opinion also warned that Russia was boosting the president’s campaign. Russia was singled out as the sole country trying to interfere in American election processes.

Russia also tried to amplify corruption stories about Hunter Biden and undermine faith in mail-in voting, much like Trump, the documents reveal.

What was the purpose of Trump’s speech? Much of the information presented was already known, and his comments about China aren’t even backed up by the evidence the White House itself provided. As recently as May, Trump praised China in a visit to the country, saying that the two countries would have a “fantastic future together.” It seems as though the president just wanted to undermine confidence in advance of elections that are forecasted to go badly for him.

“Can you acknowledge that there were no votes changed in 2020?” MS NOW’s Vaughn Hill asked John Solomon, an election interference conspiracy theorist who now sits on the White House’s election task force, after Trump’s speech Thursday night.

“All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows. I only know—the intelligence community has zero evidence that … a foreign power flipped the vote in 2020, ’22, or ’24,” Solomon replied.

“And you’re able to acknowledge that Venezuela has not tampered with voting machines in the United States?”

“No, the intelligence is very clear: They did it on their own machines,” Solomon said before fleeing the scene.

Trump used his prime-time speech to accuse China of “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.” He said that there was a “specific plot to do a big number in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela,” and that no vote would be safe and sound unless his restrictive SAVE America Act was passed. And yet Solomon, a MAGA journalist who has made a career out of manufacturing consent for Trump’s claims, couldn’t even back this one up a little bit.

NEW: John Solomon acknowledges no votes were changed in the 2020, 2022 or 2024 elections. He also, when asked if the 2020 results showing Biden won the presidential election are accurate, said, “I'm researching.” And says no intell that Venezuela tempered with US voting machines. pic.twitter.com/nllLSKgPl7

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) July 17, 2026

That’s probably because Trump’s own intel doesn’t back it up. Alongside his speech, Trump declassified documents that confirmed Russia interfered in his favor by pushing claims about Hunter Biden and conspiracies about the reliability of mail-in voting.

Perry Bacon: This is Right Now on The New Republic, and I’m the host, Perry Bacon. Our guests today are two of my favorite political scientists. Julia Azari is a professor at Marquette University. Seth Masket is at the University of Denver. They’re both experts on political parties and how political parties work. And so I want to talk to them about what’s happening in the Democratic Party right now. So Julia and Seth, welcome.

Seth Masket: Thank you.

Bacon: So what I want to talk about is—Seth lives in Colorado, so he experienced the unseating of an incumbent House member just recently here, and some primaries that were unexpected, in that both the incumbent senators did fairly poorly, and Diana DeGette obviously lost. And we had the New York races where the three Zohran-endorsed candidates won.

And you’ve had some other races around the country where the more left-wing, progressive, socialist—pick your term here—candidates are winning. We’re all looking at Michigan, where that Senate race is closer than I would have guessed a couple years ago, let’s say.

So let’s jump into the factors here. I’m going to ask you about four or five different things that might be going on, and ask you if they’re a big factor, a medium factor, or not a factor at all, or not really that important to what the story is.

So I’ll start with ideology. Is the average Democratic voter becoming more progressive, more left-wing? Particularly on issues of Israel, Palestine, and on maybe issues of billionaires and wealth in politics—which are the two issues where I perceive some change in terms of ideology among Democratic voters. But I’m just curious, when you look at these primary results, do you think it’s about the ideology of Democratic voters moving left? And I’ll start with Seth.

Masket: It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Generally, I don’t want to overstate the ideological nature of the American electorate, which is usually not huge, but there is something motivating this. And I have this impression that it’s not necessarily that a lot more people are becoming socialist, but rather that fewer people are afraid of socialism.

A lot of the current political system was designed by people who grew up during the Cold War and associate socialism with the Soviet Union and with the fear of war and military expansion and repression. And the Cold War’s been over for almost forty years. And so this newer generation coming into politics, they don’t have those associations. They don’t have those fears. They’re more open to the idea that this could solve some pretty overt economic problems we’re having right now, and they just find the whole concept less toxic.

Bacon: Julia?

Julia Azari: Yeah. So I think all that’s generally right. I think there’s two things I would maybe add there about ideology. I forgot what our scale is for—

Bacon: So the scale is: is it a big factor, a medium factor, or not really a factor at all? So it’s a three-point scale. And we’ll press Seth on an answer afterward, but I didn’t get his. But anyway, what were you saying, Julia?

Azari: I think put it to high, medium.

Bacon: Yeah, OK. It’s a three-point scale. High, medium, low.

Azari: Yeah. I’ll give it like a two and a half. Sorry, this is what happens with political scientists. But OK, so two things.

One is the socialist label. So I think that’s right, that the label’s not as toxic among people who were born after the Cold War ended. But also, what’s interesting to me is that what the label indicated in past political conversations was, this person wants a huge government takeover—and you know what it actually is, right? The government and the people own the means of production.

That’s not actually the agenda, as I understand it. For the Democratic socialists, the actual agenda sounds much more like some combination of the New Deal Democratic Party in the ‘40s and your average Labor Party in Europe. It’s not really radical reimagining of the structure of the economy. It’s just more social supports, basically. So I think that’s part of the story.

The other piece—I think when you lay it out the way you’ve laid it out, the socialism, the economic agenda, the millionaires and billionaires, the Gaza issue—it’s a new way of thinking about how to assemble a Democratic coalition. So it’s not overestimating the overall ideology of the American electorate, and that everybody understands every issue and understands how they bundle together, but that there may be pockets of the population for whom these issues are very important.

And I think that’s how to understand the Gaza issue. Most people in the US are not paying attention to foreign policy and don’t prioritize those issues. But for a small subset of people, they’re really looking for a politician to address concerns that they’ve had for a long time and haven’t seen in the electorate.

And so this is entrepreneurship of mobilizing a new coalition in a new way, and bringing them into conversation with people who are joining the electorate through age—what do you call it—cohort replacement. I think that’s the story. So I think if we understand it as different pieces, as opposed to one overarching ideology, that gives us more purchase.

Bacon: So to pin you down, is it a big factor, a medium factor, or a small factor, the ideology part? Either one of you can answer.

Masket: Sorry. I had high medium.

Bacon: You said high medium. OK. What did you say, Julia?

Azari: I think I also said two and a half, but I’m uncomfortable with the word ideology.

Bacon: OK. All right. High medium, I like that. OK.

Second factor would be what I’m going to call frustration with the Democratic Party, the Democratic establishment—a term I don’t always love. But anyway, a general sense that the Democratic Party screwed up by running Biden in 2024 when he was too old, and then did not fight enough against Trump early last year, had to be pushed to resist and didn’t do enough. The votes for various Trump Cabinet members that various senators voted for. That kind of frustration with the DC leadership, Congress overall. Is that a high factor? Talk about that, and then do the scale again—Julia, this time.

Azari: OK. So I guess, like you, I’m really skeptical of the establishment term, and I have a really unsatisfying non-answer, because I think it’s omnipresent, and I think it’s usually framed backwards. Whoever is doing well is now the anti-establishment candidate. I’m thinking back to 2008 and Barack Obama.

I do think that frustration is probably real among people who are highly engaged, and potentially the people that are voting in these primaries—especially the frustration with the procedure in 2024. And Seth and I have done some actual survey work on this, and I asked open-ended questions, and people definitely brought that up, and also the age factor and the gerontocracy.

Bacon: Brought up what, exactly?

Azari: Specifically, they brought up the procedure, or lack of one, in 2024.

Bacon: The lack of procedure to do what?

Azari: To nominate Kamala Harris.

Bacon: OK. So the picking of Harris without a vote of any kind. Without a formal—OK.

Azari: Yeah. And I think this also goes back to work in political psychology about losing. I think there’s a sense that the Democratic establishment is synonymous with losing, and people will do all sorts of things in their mind to avoid that feeling.

So in one way, it’s really important, but in another way, I don’t know that it distinguishes it from other types of developments that we’ve seen in the past. Does that make sense? So it’s either a one or a three, not a two. You’re never inviting me on again.

Bacon: Seth, go ahead.

Masket: Yeah. I’m going to give this a high importance. And in some ways this is bigger than ideology, as far as I could tell, because it’s more of the symbolism of insider versus outsider.

We saw a lot of this in the recent Colorado Democratic primaries. These perceptions were very big in the first congressional district, where Diana DeGette, a long-term incumbent, loses to Malat Keros, a twenty-nine-year-old challenger. A lot of Keros’s pitch was that, I have a lot of respect for DeGette’s career. She was a leader on abortion issues, but what has she done for us lately? What is she doing to stand up to the administration now? Why isn’t she in the street? Why isn’t she just more visible?

And that’s like a general anger we’ve seen toward folks like Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer, where it’s not necessarily disagreeing with their policy stances. It’s not disagreeing with the work that they’re actually doing. It’s just, we’re saying they need to be doing it more. They need to be doing it louder, more aggressively.

So we saw some of that. But I’d also add another race in Colorado here. This was the Democratic gubernatorial primary between Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser, which was very much framed as an outsider-versus-establishment story when these were two really establishment candidates.

Bacon: The attorney general is running against a senator to be the governor nominee. So no one’s an outsider, yes.

Masket: Yeah. And somehow that got framed as Michael Bennet was the insider. He had a lot of DC-area support, and Weiser pitched himself as the challenger who was going to shake up the system.

Ideologically, there’s no difference between them. Most policy stances, their demeanor, their backgrounds are not hugely different. But it seemed to matter to a lot of voters going into this.

Bacon: And Bennet had voted for a few Trump nominees, not a ton—but that was something Weiser was able to really focus on, right?

Masket: Yeah.

Bacon: Next factor: the DSA as an organization specifically—not the ideology, but the DSA and its get-out-the-vote operation and so on. And I think that’s a big factor in New York particularly, but I want to let you all talk. In New York it seems like there’s a very organized DSA. So talk about the DSA itself and the role it’s playing. Start with Julia.

Azari: Sure. So I would actually give this a three. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. One race we haven’t talked about is the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, which—the primary’s in a couple weeks. And at different points in time, the Democratic Socialist candidate has been winning. She very well might win. And the main factor for me seems to be there that no one else is organized.

Bacon: Tell people her name, for people who don’t—

Azari: Sorry. Yeah. Francesca Hong is her name. And the other candidates are—pick a Democrat in Wisconsin, and they’ve probably been running. But the lieutenant governor, Sara Rodriguez, and former lieutenant governor and 2022 Senate candidate Mandela Barnes are the leading ones. And both pretty establishment Democrats.

Hong has been running on a pretty straightforward economic democratic socialist platform, and like I said, has been very competitive in the polls. In my urban neighborhood in Milwaukee, she is winning the signage war. Honestly, some people are saying it feels like no one else is running.

So I think that does speak to the DSA as an organization. Not that they’re necessarily doing anything out of the ordinary, just that they’re doing something. And that unlike these other viewpoints in the Democratic Party that are trying to figure out how they position themselves relative to the Trump administration, relative to the legacy of the Biden administration, they’re not very organized, and the DSA is quite organized. So to me, that really seems like a critical factor, is the coordination.

Bacon: The coordination piece. I want to follow up here, because we’ve heard a lot about the DSA in New York, and I read a little bit about the DSA in Denver. And New York and Denver, I think, are perceived to be cities with lots of rich yuppies, for lack of a better way to say that. You’re in Milwaukee, right?

I don’t perceive Milwaukee as being like a DSA... Milwaukee does not have the reputation of a place that would be strong for DSA—and Milwaukee is candidly heavily Black, and not as upper income as Denver or New York, I don’t perceive at least. So is there a real strong DSA in Milwaukee? Because I don’t think I knew that.

Azari: I feel like whatever I say here, someone I know is watching it and they’re going to be mad at me. But there certainly is a well-organized DSA in Milwaukee, and Milwaukee is an interesting place. As you pointed out, it’s heavily Black. It’s also fairly Latino. But it has a long socialist history. And it has a very strong working-class identity. And so I think the DSA in Milwaukee probably looks a little bit different than those places, but actually maybe mobilizes more people who are active in the trades and in unions.

And people are very mobilized around those issues because of the Scott Walker governorship a decade ago. And so this is a Republican governor who really gutted labor protections in Wisconsin, and so that will really mobilize working people. Yeah, it’s a different political tradition, but actually Milwaukee is a very fertile ground for socialist movements.

And I think there is a real sense—if we’re talking about who is feeling the economic impacts of things that have happened, cities that don’t have that upper echelon are certainly feeling it. So that’s some of what’s happening. People really want to see something different, and so Hong’s message has been landing.

Bacon: Seth, DSA. She said it’s a high, as opposed to medium or low. Do you agree? It was interesting. I didn’t expect that.

Masket: So are we coming for the white yuppies in Denver?

Bacon: I did not—I think yuppies are good. It wasn’t an insult. It was more just—Denver and Milwaukee are different. There’s no way around that.

Masket: Yeah, correct. I was going to give this a medium importance, and I agree with what Julia was saying here. And I saw some of that echoed in the Democratic primaries here in Colorado as well, where up until maybe the mid-spring, most people involved in Democratic politics were saying, Look, all the incumbents are going to win these races. They’re way ahead in all the polls. They usually win. They just have easier access to money and everything. No one really expected that much out of these DSA challengers and other left challengers.

And in part, the incumbent advantages in all those polls was almost entirely name recognition. And like Julia said, it seemed to be the DSA folks were the ones doing the actual organization, and everyone else was just kind of coasting.

So yeah, this is a great example of organization. Where I don’t give it a three and give this a two, a medium importance, is that I think this is all downstream of a number of other things going on—of the rising populism on the left, of the anger against incumbents and the establishment that we were talking about in the last question. So I think DSA has been doing some real—they’ve been raising money very well, and they’ve been doing some important candidate recruitment and some important campaign work, but none of that happens without the overall environment.

Bacon: Let me probe one more. For me, it’s: in New York, DSA is a three, and everywhere else, I’m not sure about it. I’m not on the ground. I’ve read enough about New York to think the DSA in New York is a three—very organized, so on. I would’ve said Wisconsin was a one, but I feel maybe I was uninformed about them, and I would’ve said Denver is a two. So do we think the DSA of New York is a unique thing, or what’s your sense of that?

Masket: That sounds right to me. I think it matters a lot that New York City has a popular DSA mayor who is very comfortable weighing into Democratic primaries a lot, and it just doesn’t have that kind of visibility in other states.

Azari: Sorry, the question was where would I weigh it differently—

Bacon: The DSA of New York, a distinct thing from every other DSA.

Azari: I’m sure that’s true. Can I say two short other things? One is, I think you asked about DSA, but my overall point is more about organization on the left in general.

Bacon: Yeah, but there are places—other people have an organization, right?

Azari: Yeah, but there’s also like a national media apparatus. So Francesca Hong, our candidate, went on Hasan Piker, and that was a whole big thing.

Bacon: You bring it up. That was point number four, but go ahead. Finish your point.

Azari: OK. I’m just saying, the organization on the left side of the political spectrum, of doing things like having signage, just having a media apparatus, is coming out of the DSA wing. But I also do want to point out, just as we’re exposing how Wisconsin politics works—like New York, Wisconsin also has a pretty active Working Families Party. So it’s not just DSA. I think we’re using DSA a little bit to stand in for this broader left apparatus, and I’m going to be a stickler about terminology.

Masket: It’s like the word DNC, right? It just means everything.

Bacon: In New York especially, because I think DSA and WFP were competing against each other in New York. But I think other places, in general, they align with each other.

So the fourth factor I wanted to talk about was this media apparatus. I was going to say Hasan Piker, Drop Site News. We can talk about other parts of the media atmosphere, but there is a left media that has emerged. Zeteo, I think is how you pronounce it. I’m trying to think of others that are in that space. But there is a space where the candidates, Abdul El-Sayed, they go on these media platforms, and these people endorse them and so on. Seth, is that a medium factor, a small factor, big factor?

Masket: I have a really hard time assessing this one, honestly, because I’m just not super tuned into that part of left messaging. But I know it’s big. And I know this is in many ways an echo of what we saw on the right over the last few cycles with Joe Rogan and a handful of other YouTubers, bloggers, social media influencers.

My impression is that there’s a lot of younger, pretty left progressive voters who don’t necessarily show up in primary elections, but can be persuaded to by this kind of messaging, by Hasan Piker and other types like him—who is talking about politics in a way that they get, and in a medium that they’ll follow.

And so if they can get incensed by something, they will show up in these primary elections. And so I would give that at least a two, a medium, as far as I can tell. But I have a hard time just knowing how to measure any of this.

Bacon: To give my own view, this is one where I have a one. My only reason I say this is because primary voters tend to be older and more politically mature, and people more politically engaged. So I would be curious how many people in the Colorado Senate primary electorate listen to Hasan Piker. I feel like that number must be extremely low. It’s worth knowing, but that’d be the one where I’d be skeptical. But Julia?

Azari: Yeah, I’ve been trying to piece together this phenomenon for a long time too. And I’m generally pretty skeptical of causal arguments that start with media, because I think it tends to reflect rather than be a causal force. But I think you have to understand everything we’re saying about the left wing of the Democratic Party in the context of it being relative to what the rest of that side of the political spectrum is doing.

And there, where I would give this like a two or maybe even a two and a half, is that it gives these types of candidates a fundraising apparatus outside of the usual channels. Again, this is the Wisconsin example, but I think that’s the other thing—it’s a movement-building piece for the long term. Also, it’s not just you’re reaching voters, it’s you’re raising money.

Bacon: And I said Hasan Piker and Drop Site News. What else is a part of this? Because I’m struggling to maintain the big factor, in part because I only really know of one person. Hasan Piker’s got this outsized reputation now because the media’s covering him up. But I’m not actually sure—if it’s just Hasan Piker, that feels to me like we don’t want to overdo it too much.

Azari: Sure. But I also think you could have—not to be a troll—but you could have said in like 1991, if it’s just Rush Limbaugh...

Bacon: All right, fair enough. That’s good. No, that’s a good answer. Because I’ve been studying Rush Limbaugh my entire life. So is Hasan Piker a modern-day Rush Limbaugh, in a certain sense? Not in terms of politics, but in terms of influence. Is he close to that level, you think?

Azari: I think we’ll see. I think we’ll know in a couple primaries. And a lot of the questions you’re asking will be clear in a few election cycles.

Masket: I was just going to say, I don’t know—I remember the Carter presidency. That’s how I don’t know. But one thing I would say is that one symbol that Hasan Piker and others are becoming a real presence is that incumbents, establishment, are worried about him, and they’re complaining about him. And talking about trying to disempower him. He’s making an impact. It’s just hard to know how much—is this at the level of Rush Limbaugh in 1991?

Bacon: Julia is making me think that—I’ve separated out DSA from WFP from Hasan Piker, but if they’re actually one big organization of left-wing apparatus, then that is maybe the answer to this question, of what we’re talking about here. I should think about them more connected.

But the fifth factor that I’m going to ask—and I have one more after this—is Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie Sanders. Is this really about there are three individuals with huge outsized followings, and that they have created a political movement almost on their personalities, and that’s what we’re seeing? Because you notice all these candidates want to be endorsed by one of them.

In New York, it was like AOC endorsed the state legislators, and Zohran endorsed the House candidates. Bernie Sanders is endorsing all these people. Is this really a movement about these three people—not Ro Khanna, really these three people, and not Elizabeth Warren? Is it really about these people? Seth, I’ll start with you.

Masket: I would say they’re the most prominent people in this, but this is not just a personal machine or anything like that. I think this is a bigger organization. Until last year, Mamdani would not have been in that mix, obviously. I think we could broadly extend it more to the squad a few years ago. There’s plenty of others involved. These folks are just among the most organized, the most famous, and, in some ways, really the most eloquent.

Bacon: Julia?

Azari: I think that this is a long-standing feature of American politics too—that what we lack in party organizations compared to other countries, we make up for with these figures. Seth brought up remembering the Carter administration. So I don’t remember this, but in 1844, right, the Democrats are in total mess and don’t know who to nominate for president. And so they go to Andrew Jackson on his deathbed and have him sort it out about who’s an acceptable nominee.

So I think that’s just always been a feature, because of the way our politics work—single-member districts, presidency. It’s this individualist focus, and the media environment has exaggerated that, but it’s always been there.

Bacon: Let me push back a tad and say, it is the case that the left became stronger when one senator from Vermont ran for president twice, and the left movement is looking for one congressman from New York to run for president. I think there is a difference between Ro Khanna running and AOC running. In some ways, you’d rather be endorsed by AOC than by WFP or DSA, right?

Masket: Repeat that?

Bacon: You’d rather be endorsed, if you had a choice, by AOC than by WFP or DSA. That would be my thesis—if I’m literally outside of New York City, where DSA is very strong, but again, of course, AOC is very strong there. So wouldn’t you rather be endorsed by an AOC than DSA or WFP?

Azari: I think the simple answer is yes.

Bacon: And so doesn’t that tell us something about these individuals themselves then?

Masket: I think it tells us that these are the faces of this movement, and people associate with them. People on the left have positive feelings toward these folks more than they do with an organization. So like Julia says, it makes sense to associate it with that. But I think there actually is something of a movement there. If you took AOC and Bernie and Mamdani out of politics and someone else rose up, you can still identify a through line ideologically there, right?

There’s a set of policies—Medicare for All, or reducing or eliminating military funding to Israel, a handful of other things. Conversely, if you think about, is the MAGA movement an organization separate from Donald Trump? I don’t think it is. He’s gone, that’s gone.

Bacon: You guys are kind of hinting at the Ella Baker quote. I don’t want to compare these people exactly, but Ella Baker famously said, “The movement made Martin. Martin didn’t make the movement.” Meaning the idea that the movement is creating stars—there would be stars because there’s a movement, and it’s creating leaders in a certain way.

Azari: Yeah. I would again go back to the comparison with the development of the right—not that these are going to be identical, but I guess I’m also thinking, how would you answer the question, would a candidate in 1988 rather be endorsed by Ronald Reagan or the Christian Coalition, or Pat Robertson or the Christian Coalition, in a Republican race?

Bacon: The answer is Ronald Reagan. But I get the point you’re making. That’s a good way to frame it. That’s exactly right.

Bacon: OK. So the last factor is, are we seeing some kind of just reaction to Donald Trump? Is it that Donald Trump is so radical, and DOGE, and having ICE invade cities and having ICE kill people—are we seeing some kind of reaction where the Republicans have gone so far to the right that’s creating a left, in the sense that if he can do Project 2025 and destroy the government, why can’t we do socialism?

Is that what’s going on here, a really big reaction to Trump? Versus in 2017, 2018, it was more like, let’s double down on normal, let’s elect Joe Biden. And now it’s, let’s elect Zohran Mamdani, AOC should run for president. Is that what we’re seeing, a reaction to Donald Trump? Julia?

Azari: I think everything is a reaction to Donald Trump. It’s hard to downplay the significance. And I think what you’re talking about there is just a broadening of the general political spectrum. But I actually think if we’re telling an organizational story, this is a reaction to the financial crash of 2008. And that’s where this movement builds out of. And if we’re talking about Sanders, that’s really where he’s coming from in 2016. He’s not reacting to Donald Trump. So that’s my take. I give that like a one point five, maybe.

Bacon: OK. Seth?

Masket: I’m going to place this with higher importance than that, just because, like Julia says, it’s in the background of everything. I think for a lot on the left—and I hear this in a lot of conversations with people—that the second Trump administration has been a lot more consequential than expected. It’s been a lot more jarring for people. And related to that is a sense that a lot of the Democratic establishment, Democratic incumbents, aren’t taking those threats as seriously as they should be.

That they’re not meeting the moment, they’re not meeting the aggression of the Trump administration. And so I hear from a lot of more progressive voters like, We need to put in someone who will fight back as hard, and who, if they’re going to do a violation of some norm, then we should do a violation of some norm. For good or bad, I think that’s created a big wellspring of energy there.

Bacon: Let me finish with two questions. The first is, are there any factors that I haven’t named that are really obvious when you look at what’s happening, why these socialist candidates are winning, why there’s a progressive surge? Anything you all can think of that is really important that I didn’t ask?

Seth Masket: I have a thought on that. We’ve touched on Israel and Gaza as an issue. In some ways, I’m finding it surprisingly central to a lot of these left candidates—that they bring it up as one of the main things they want to work on when they’re in government, and one of the main things that’s motivating them and their supporters.

I think part of that is downstream from the way this issue was handled in 2023, 2024, and 2025, where for the most part, the mainstreams of both parties remained very supportive of Israel—at least for a while. Democrats have been recently moving away from that.

But for a while, if you were critical of Israel, and you were looking for someone to champion that view, you weren’t finding it in either party. And if you wanted to protest that, suddenly that was the exception to the First Amendment, and you couldn’t protest that on campuses. And so I think that created a lot of frustration for people focused and motivated by these issues, and I think one of the things you get from that is an insurgency movement within one of the major parties.

Bacon: OK. Anything else, Julia?

Azari: We’ve touched on this, but I would actually really emphasize the economic context. And again, this is maybe coming from a state with less of an upper wealth echelon. But I think that’s really a big part of it—this sense among younger people that purchasing a home will be out of their reach forever, and that general sense. So that’s, I think, hard to underestimate. Or overestimate. I don’t know.

Bacon: For the young, that’s true. I saw some data that Zohran and AOC—my sense is some older voters are also voting for the insurgency as well. And maybe those people also have bad economics, but that’s what I want to see now: I think some older voters who might be financially comfortable also want to see change. It doesn’t mean economics doesn’t matter, but those people might have other factors going on as well.

So the last thing I want to ask is—I think it’s possible a month from now that Haley Stevens has won the Senate primary in Michigan, Mandela Barnes or one of the more traditional candidates has won in Wisconsin, and you have a few wins by the quote-unquote “establishment,” or the most left-wing candidates don’t win. So if those things happen, how does that change the story at all? Do we downplay what we’ve seen? How does that change the story?

Masket: I think in a few months we’ll be trying to assess just how big this moment was. In some ways, I think it’s bigger than 2018. More progressives or DSA people are going to get elected or nominated than happened in 2018. And not as big as the Tea Party of 2010, which really fundamentally took over a party with a lot of new candidates—this is not at that level.

But tied into the fact that Democrats are probably looking at a pretty good election year overall, you’re going to have some new pretty far left people in the House next year that we just don’t see that often. They’ll be somewhat more visible than others. They’ll come in with a lot of energy.

I don’t know how much that actually transforms the congressional party, but those folks, I can imagine, will be pretty outspoken, and they’ll be really trying to, if not necessarily outvote everyone, at least try to steer the agenda.

Bacon: Julia?

Azari: Yeah, I think election narratives kind of take on a life of their own. So it can go a lot of ways, but often, if the elections we’re talking about are primaries, then that can really get overshadowed by whatever happens in the general.

Bacon: Let me narrow it down. My question is, does the narrative we’re talking about get shut down if the normal candidates win in Michigan and Wisconsin? Because I think that’s very possible in the next few weeks. Does the narrative get shut down? Would we be having conversations like this if the candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin who are more progressive lose?

Azari: Maybe. We still have these races where people have overperformed expectations. Sorry, I lost my other thought.

Bacon: So the question was, how do Michigan, Wisconsin—the part I was trying to get at was, does that change the overall story if the big swing states end up acting more normal?

Azari: I think I’m, once again, challenging the premise of the question, because I think that part of the narrative story right now is struggling with the fact that DSA seems to be—or whatever we want to call it, the left wing of the party—seems to be about 30 percent of the Democratic electorate. And that’s Pew data. And we don’t really know how to talk about that kind of persistent division anymore in American politics, as we’re used to parties being so ideologically sorted.

So this question about how big are these policy differences between the two wings, or are they largely stylistic differences, are they focused on a couple issues—that’s a question. And then there’s this question of, what do you do with a significant minority of a party? That’s not a question with an obvious answer.

And I think that if Stevens wins in Michigan, if the month ahead is a good month for more establishment Democrats, then the narrative becomes more, what do we do with—that’s the accurate narrative anyway—what do we do with two contending factions that each have a pretty strong base of support?

Whereas if this is a DSA sweep—I don’t know if that’s going to be accurate, even if August is a really good month for those candidates—but I think that will be more the narrative going into the general, and then whatever happens in the general will shape the longer trajectory.

Bacon: That’s helpful. I guess I hadn’t thought of that. El-Sayed is at 44 percent but loses—that’s obviously not zero, and that’s really high. So in certain ways that means something. That’s an interesting way to put it. That’s helpful.

Anything else you all want to add on this subject? We went on a while, but I think we’ve hit most of the main factors here. I guess I’ve left this thinking we are talking about a party within a party. Is that how you would frame it, Julia? Maybe not quite that far.

Azari: Yeah, I would frame it as an emerging organized faction within the party.

Bacon: And more organized than it was in 2018, and even more organized than it was in 2024. Good. Thank you all. This is Julia Azari and Seth Masket. Tell everybody where they can read more of your work.

Azari: Oh, go ahead.

Masket: I’m working a lot these days on Substack. You can follow my Substack called The Smotus Report. It’s at smotus.substack.com. Smotus is S-M-O-T-U-S—Seth Masket of the United States.

Azari: I am at Good Politics, Bad Politics on Substack with Jonathan Bernstein and David Bernstein, our group blog. I also have—if you were really intrigued by my 1844 comments and you want more history—I have a book called Backlash Presidents, available from Princeton University Press. And I believe Seth has a new book as well.

Bacon: I was going to say, Seth’s agent would like us to hype his book, since he missed the opportunity. Your title, the title of your book, is what again?

Azari: Backlash Presidents. I left my copy in the other room, but yeah—Backlash Presidents.

Bacon: Seth’s is available, it appears. He’s moving his hand.

Masket: Mine is called The Elephants in the Room, new from Cambridge Press. It’s all about the Republicans’ decision to nominate Donald Trump in 2024 specifically, and all the changes that happened within the party to make that seem like a good idea.

Bacon: Thanks, guys, for joining me. Julia, of course I’ll have you back. I knew you would reject the premise of my questions. You’ve always done that. We’ve worked together for five or six years now. But I appreciate your wisdom, and it’s great to see both of you. So take care. Bye-bye.

Masket: Thanks so much, Perry. Bye.

But court-watchers have overlooked what may well prove to be the single most radical, atextual, consequential—and, for long-standing liberal programs and constituencies, most catastrophic—decision of the term.

This is the June 23 decision in Landor v. Louisiana Dept. of Corrections and Public Safety. Here, the court denied a federal prisoner, Damon Landor, the right to sue prison guards for damages for knowingly violating a federal statute, by forcibly shaving off dreadlocks prescribed by his Rastafarian religious tenets. The court split 6–3 along partisan and ideological lines, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion with no qualifying concurrences.

This lockstep unanimity prevailed, although Gorsuch’s radical rationale flouted positions previously joined or penned by four of his conservative colleagues—including himself—as recently as a three-year old 7–2 decision in which all the conservative justices other than Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined an opinion for the court written by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. This June, in Landor, Jackson wrote a dissent fiery by even her high-decibel standards, in which the other two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, joined; she excoriated decades of the court’s ever more right-shifting precedents.

Media reports on Landor noted its result—that it canceled the ability of inmates in state prisons to enforce in federal court the provisions of a 2000 federal statute requiring states to accommodate inmates’ religious tenets and expressly conferring on them the right to sue and obtain “appropriate relief.”

But the greater import of the decision lies not in its result but in its rationale. Justice Gorsuch exhumed a theory first surfaced in an outlier 2001 decision, Westside Mothers v. Havemann, by a Michigan federal district judge, scornfully reversed by a unanimous Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel and a dead letter ever since. In the words of the only published recognition I have found of the earthquake potential of this term’s Landor rationale, professor Steven Vladeck wrote, the “Westside Mothers theory was treated as a long-shot attempt to rewrite the Constitution—one that failed.”

This theory is that a federal law implementing Congress’s authority, enumerated in the first sentence of Section 8, Article 1 of the Constitution, to raise and spend funds “for the general welfare of the United States”—is not a law at all but a mere contract offer to potential recipients of federal largesse. As such, the theory goes on, in another leap similarly untethered to constitutional text or discernible logic, individuals cannot sue any nonconsenting state agency or official who violates conditions prescribed in such spending laws—and Congress cannot constitutionally authorize such suits, as a “necessary and proper” means of ensuring compliance with the conditions.

For the past century and a half, individual suits have been authorized by a Reconstruction-era statute to redress state officials’ violations of federal law. That statute, widely known as Section 1983, provides that “every person who, under color of law,” deprives any person “of any rights secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.” As noted above, only three years ago the court brushed aside a defendant’s invitation to “reject decades of precedent, and to rewrite Section 1983’s plain text to read ‘laws (unless those laws rest on the Spending Power).’” But on June 23 of this year, five justices joined a decision expounding precisely that constitutional rewrite.  

The largest class of victims of this volte-face will be Medicaid beneficiaries. Medicaid (including the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP) is the largest public or private health insurance program in the U.S., covering 82 million individuals, 25 percent of non-elderly Americans, three of five nursing home residents, and 40 percent of all births. All in all, we’re talking about $931 billion worth of expenditures in 2024; approximately two-thirds from federal coffers, the remainder from states. 

Over the decades since Medicaid was enacted in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, major provisions have been held to “create rights” enforceable via Section 1983. These include the safeguards vindicated in the aforementioned 7–2 2023 Supreme Court decision, that nursing homes not deploy “physical or chemical restraints for convenience or discipline,” nor “transfer or discharge patients [without] advance notice.” Landor’s head-scratching “contract” theory gutting conditional spending laws first reared its head 25 years ago amid an aborted boomlet of challenges to court enforcement of Medicaid conditions. 

Medicaid is by no means the only program threatened by this legal theory. Myriad programs vital to millions of Americans deploy the “cooperative federalism” template that structures Medicaid. To name a few such landmark programs: Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bars any state or local government, any subunit of which receives federal funds, from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments bars sex discrimination in any entity operating an educational institution or program receiving federal funds—which in practice is every educational institution in the nation.  

Most U.S. environmental laws “work through” cooperative federalism arrangements. The Clean Air Act, for example, as described in May 2025 by the Congressional Research Service, “establishes a framework whereby [the Environmental Protection Agency] is responsible for establishing various nationwide standards, and states bear primary responsibility for implementing those standards, including by regulating on a source-by-source basis.” This list is hardly exhaustive. As Justice Thomas noted in dissenting from the court’s 2023 affirmation of individual court enforcement, “other examples, spanning virtually every domain of national and state policy, abound.”

And such individual enforcement has long been recognized as essential to rendering federal guarantees effective. The conservative justices purport to disagree. In Gorsuch’s Landor opinion and on prior occasions, they have asserted that when a state violates federally prescribed conditions, “the typical remedy” is not a private enforcement suit “but rather action by the Federal Government to terminate funds to the State.” But that premise is not only factually false, it is transparently disingenuous, as Gorsuch and his savvy conservative colleagues well know.

“In practice,” as Jackson’s Landor dissent notes, “[the Department of Health and Human Services] rarely invokes its authority to withhold funding because doing so would inevitably harm the program’s beneficiaries”: the poor, working-, and middle-class Americans who depend on Medicaid for health care. Stripping beneficiaries of their ability to redress state officials’ violations of federally set conditions strips Congress of its most effective—perhaps only effective—tool to ensure that those conditions are not empty paper promises but life-sustaining benefits for individuals and families.

However baseless and contorted, this “spending-clause-laws-are-actually-not-laws” theory gives opponents a handy backdoor ploy to kneecap popular programs without provoking the blowback expectable from overt invalidation or repeal. The theory did not spring from nowhere. Indeed, its acceptance was foreshadowed in 2004, in a cryptic concurring opinion by Samuel Alito when he was a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Obviously, it has been a bee in his bonnet ever since. Nor was Alito alone. States’ rights devotees had long recognized that, as libertarian Texas law professor Lynn A. Baker spotlighted in 1995, “the greatest threat to state autonomy is, and has long been, Congress’ spending power.”

In 2008, after the dust settled from the failed attempt to subvert that power, spending clause expert Samuel Bagenstos, then a Michigan Law School professor and recently general counsel of President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services, spelled out the carnage that would follow, should any such attempt succeed in the future. Applied literally according to its terms, Bagenstos detailed, that construct “would bar Congress from giving a Spending Clause statute preemptive effect, authorizing a private right of action for its violation, and enacting additional laws necessary and proper to carrying it out.” Bagenstos predicted that anti-entitlement ideologues would keep looking for ways to constrain federal conditional spending authority, but would stop short of the Westside Mothers wrecking-ball extreme. 

Until this past June, Bagenstos’s forecast seemed on track—though looking back, there were signs the court’s anti–conditional spending members were straining at the bit. Jackson’s 2023 majority opinion held that two Medicaid provisions “do unambiguously create Section 1983-enforceable rights,” and mocked the notion that “1983 contains an implicit carveout for laws that Congress enacts via its spending power.” 

But Jackson included a nod to conservatives’ oft-repeated riff that, “for Spending Clause legislation, we have recognized that ‘the typical remedy for state noncompliance is not a private cause of action for noncompliance but [termination of] funds to the State.’” In retrospect, for the four conservative colleagues who joined Jackson’s opinion, that boilerplate was deadly serious. More pointedly, Justice Gorsuch added a terse concurrence stating that, though he agreed that the Medicaid provisions before the court constituted “a law,” not a mere “contract,” nevertheless there was an issue “lurking here … not fully developed by the parties,” hence a “question for another day.” 

That question, he wrote, was whether the specific “rights-creating” Medicaid provisions enforced by the court were “secured” by the statute, as phrased in Section 1983. In retrospect, that mind-numbing hyper-technical aside was an invitation to conservative litigators to “fully develop” an argument that could in a subsequent case flip Gorsuch’s vote.

Unsurprisingly, Gorsuch’s audience got the hint. Two years later, in 2024 they took his “secured by” work-around gimmick back to the court. Seizing this opportunity, the conservative justices, regretting that they had given Jackson too much leeway in Talevski, improvised a wrenching course correction.

The new case was Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. Here South Carolina was alleged to have violated a Medicaid provision guaranteeing coverage of patients’ choice of any “qualified” provider, after the state had dropped Planned Parenthood from its list of reimbursable providers. A 6–3 Supreme Court majority threw out the suit. While South Carolina had indeed violated Medicaid’s qualified provider condition, the flipped majority acknowledged, challengers must demonstrate, at a minimum, that a provision “does not just seek to benefit them or serve their interests but ‘clear[ly] and unambiguous[ly]’ gives them individual federal rights.”

Then the majority went on to add an additional, startling wrinkle. While other major decisions dating back to 1980 had mandated individual enforcement of spending clause conditions, they wrote, neither those earlier cases nor the Planned Parenthood case before them involved statutory terms as literally “rights-creating” as those at issue in their 2023 grant of individual enforcement authority. Hence, they ruled, all the court’s pre-2023 jurisprudence was irrelevant: “The statutes at issue in Talevski supply the only reliable yardstick against which to measure whether spending-power legislation confers a privately enforceable right.”

Jackson angrily dismissed, as a bait-and-switch, this crumpling of her Talevski precedent to its precise facts. “That view,” she thrusted, “distorts beyond recognition” the long-standing test applied in that decision “and strains our precedential holding that [Section] 1983’s unqualified use of the word ‘laws’ means exactly what it says.” 

When the next shoe dropped, this past June, Jackson and her two liberal colleagues amplified their perception of betrayal, branding the majority’s “severance of right and remedies a sleight of hand [that] magically transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized.”

To be sure, in his Landor opinion’s conclusion, Gorsuch included some confusing bobs and weaves—perhaps a signal that at least some of the six conservative justices want wiggle room to leave open the option of zagging back from the brink of a scary precipice. Their ambivalence was called out, acidly, in Jackson’s conclusion to her dissent:

Today’s decision might well land a serious blow to Congress’ effectiveness. Or it could end up merely a bothersome statutory drafting guide: If Congress adapts its Spending Clause legislation to fit the Court’s newly prescribed formulas—and if the Court lets it do so—then the majority’s robotic importation of contract principles will have little real-world effect.

Jackson made clear her bottom line: “Either way, the suggestion that [spending clause] statutes are not ‘law’ on the same level as other pieces of legislation makes little sense.”

Will the justices feel obliged to take Jackson’s latter, innocuous option? The answer is up to liberal leaders. Their pundits, advocates, and—especially, politicians—need to step up to the plate, warn the public about the scale of this threat from an imperialist Supreme Court majority, and confront the conservative justices with credible political retribution if they don’t rein themselves in.

This is a tall but not insuperable challenge. In the relevant past, against blatant overreach by the Supreme Court’s right, congressional leaders have deployed trenchant critiques and well-crafted reform proposals. These pushback efforts induced dramatic—if temporary—pullbacks by the conservative justices.

Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Republican Chair Arlen Specter, used confirmation hearings to grill Supreme Court nominees Roberts and Alito on how conditional spending and other conservative jurists’ made-up gutting stratagems “plucked out of thin air” constituted the “very essence of judicial arbitrariness and activism.” To finesse this fusillade, Roberts went out of his way to denounce multiple right-wing doctrinal favorites, including those marginalizing conditional spending guarantees now revived this term with his assent.

Three years ago, facing bipartisan clamor for judicial reform, especially term limits and Supreme Court conflict-of-interest safeguards, the conservative justices, in particular Roberts, startled observers by backpedaling from prior opposition to iconic liberal enactments and decisions. Roberts repudiated an election-canceling theory he had endorsed eight years prior—that the Constitution confers exclusive, uncheckable power on state legislatures to select presidential electors, free from constraint by state constitutions, judges, governors, or voters. For a 6–3 majority, Roberts reaffirmed a 2015 decision in tension with that antidemocratic theory, a 5–4 decision to which he had written a dissent; most telling, eight years later, he embraced that decision’s “core principle: redistricting is a legislative function … with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the governor’s veto.”

Even more “surprising” was, as noted by liberal columnist Jonathan Chait, a 5–4 majority’s “expansive” interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, or VRA. Roberts, infamous for career-long bitter hostility to the VRA, lauded that act for “creating stringent new remedies attempting to forever banish the blight of racial discrimination in voting.”

In 2023, the court adopted a code of ethics substantially identical to that covering the rest of the federal judiciary. Although the code lacked a meaningful enforcement mechanism, for these life-tenured justices—who for decades had spurned a code of conduct as unnecessary, useless, and unworkable—“this abrupt 180-degree about-face was grudging surrender to reformers’ superior political momentum,” as I wrote at the time.

Not coincidentally, that same term saw the 7–2 Talevski decision that appeared to repudiate the very doctrine gutting court enforcement of conditional spending protections revived this term.

The court’s overreach this past term can likewise be turned back. Indeed, the reactionary justices’ palpable arrogance and indifference to law, legal logic, their own recent precedents, and the needs of virtually all Americans, present opportunity no less than challenge. But this time, liberals and rule-of-law-faithful independents and Republicans will have to mobilize support to make real reform, with teeth, a credible political priority and stick with it. In this article, there isn’t enough space to write the playbook for what needs to happen from here. But for starters:

• Spotlight the dire threat the justices’ rightward tack poses to priority needs of millions of individuals and families who to date have paid little or no attention to the court’s machinations.
• Spell out the impact on ordinary people’s budgets and lives of gutting vital programs, especially Medicaid, at a time when reactionary politicians, with assistance from their judicial allies, are redistributing wealth upward to billionaires.
• Retail the liberal justices’ searing sound-bite critiques, such as Justice Kagan’s 2023 riposte to “we-are-not-a bunch-of-partisan-hacks” protestations by Amy Coney Barrett and Roberts. To that, Kagan shot back, “The court shouldn’t be inserting itself into every hot button issue in a way that reflects one set of political views over another.”  
• Call out the reactionary justices—and brand them “reactionary,” not “conservative”—for playing fast and loose with what the Constitution and laws actually say, with the democratic republic their architects designed, with the justices’ own precedents, and for breaking their promises, in particular Chief Justice Roberts’s confirmation commitments noted above, which he now cynically sidelines as mere job interview pretense.

Evidently, the justices on the court’s right are riding high on what they seem to regard as a de facto equivalent of the immunity they awarded presidents in 2024. They would do well to take on board the admonition voiced a half-century ago by the revered Justice Robert H. Jackson, “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” If liberals and rule-of-law-treasuring allies puncture the public’s perception of Supreme Court infallibility, they can pare back its finality. 

Bodnar, a veteran and former University of Montana president who launched his anti-partisan bid in March, is part of a rising Democratic strategy to win Senate seats in red states: Rather than running as Democrats, opposition candidates are filing as independents. The logic makes sense on paper. Roughly three in five Americans have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, whereas what the party in theory stands for—better health care, lowering the cost of living, and the like—remains very popular.

When I worked in Montana for now-former Senator Jon Tester’s 2024 campaign, I saw that contrast every day. Voters across the state told me that while they might like Tester’s dirt-farm-populist schtick, they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him because they really hated the Democratic Party. If the sole problem with moderate Democrats in red states is that they’re Democrats, running someone with some left-adjacent views who doesn’t have that unpleasant D next to their name on the ballot seems like a great workaround.

Schweitzer, and nearly a dozen other Montana Democrats I spoke with, disagree. The former governor’s main issue with Bodnar is that he thinks the political newcomer has no shot of winning, independent or not. Alani Bankhead, who won the Democratic nomination for Senate last month, has insisted she won’t drop out of the race, despite recent calls from Montana Democratic legislators for either her or Bodnar to exit. Diluting the anti-Republican vote share basically kills any hopes of defeating GOP nominee Kurt Alme. Hence the dead end.

But once you reach a dead end, you still have options. Sometimes, you can turn your car around and head toward a two-lane highway. Other times, you don’t see a dead end sign until it’s too late, and plow right through. Bodnar’s campaign is doing the latter with the state Democratic Party. His candidacy is entirely focused on one short-term win—and if what he’s doing becomes the norm, there might be no rescuing the party from the wreckage.

Bodnar would probably like Schweitzer’s dirt road allegory because he really wants everyone to know he’s all about the old-school Montana lifestyle. Bodnar’s campaign launch video focuses less on the reason he moved to the Last Best Place in 2017—to head the University of Montana—and more on the “oath” and “prayer” he took as a member of the military. The following few minutes cut between images of Montana’s wilderness, small towns, and Bodnar posing next to animals he recently shot, all with a 1980s electric guitar riff running in the background.

Beyond all the Montanan machismo, though, the main thing Bodnar wants his viewers to know is that he’s definitely not a Democrat. Sure, he might be the main opposition to a Republican in a two-party system, but don’t mind that. He tells the viewer that both parties are “failing us” and “to blame” for rising costs and that they all “pit us against each other while they line their own pockets.” “Montanans are an independent people,” he says, and thus “they deserve an independent voice fighting for them.” To drive the point home, his website touts endorsements from noted moderates like former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger.

In a recent interview, Bodnar told me he filed as an independent to fight the system that has caused so many people to feel “politically homeless.” “I’m running against a national political system that has stopped showing up in Montana,” he said.

Despite what his posturing might suggest, Bodnar is very much a Democrat. His campaign is staffed by a bunch of Democratic ex-Tester consultants, he was previously registered as a Democrat, and he says everything past Democratic candidates in the state have said. Tester himself is fundraising for Bodnar, as is former Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who told me Bodnar is “one of the very very best people” to run for office and a “no brainer” endorsement. The only thing not true blue about Bodnar is his party affiliation on the ballot.

Even if his smokescreen isn’t hard to see through, what Bodnar is doing makes sense from a national perspective. The U.S. Senate is so biased in Republicans’ favor that Democrats have to fight for any Senate seat where they can get the slightest foothold, including in places that voted for Donald Trump. But in parts of the country like Montana where Trump has reached almost rock-star status, it’s hard to see a lot of voters suddenly deciding to vote for someone representing the party their president called “human garbage.”

It’s a lot easier to imagine some of those same voters being fed up with politics and going with the “plague on both your houses” guy. Operatives tried this approach in Nebraska two years ago, running independent Dan Osborn against Republican Deb Fischer. Osborn lost by seven points, but he made the race competitive in its final weeks and is running again this cycle. Under a basic nationwide cost-benefit analysis, the strategy seems to give Democrats nothing to lose and everything to gain.

From a local perspective, though, the downsides are clear. Running as an independent probably gives Bodnar a better shot to win in 2026. But such a decision may as well guarantee no Democrat will be able to win in Montana in 2028, 2030, or further down the road. “It destroys, over time, the Democratic Party,” said Mike Jopek, a former Montana state representative.

Jopek’s concern—one shared by a number of Montana political figures and strategists I spoke with—is that Bodnar’s candidacy will kneecap downballot Democrats. Since a Senate race is much higher-profile than, say, a state House race, Bodnar will suck up most of Montana’s political energy and money. If he were a Democrat coordinating with the party, that energy and money would disperse itself across every race on the ballot. As an independent, it all goes to one man, and the rest of the resourceless candidates are left to fend for themselves. Bodnar confirmed this himself, saying while he supports “Montana first” politicians without “blind loyalty to a party,” he isn’t coordinating with any other candidates and his campaign is “focused on our race.”

Jopek says this is partly a consequence of a broader trend. Political power and influence in the state, he explained, have shifted from parties to “out of state” consultants and PACs entirely focused on the immediate national ledger, not the health of the Montana Democratic Party in the long run. “Over time, those PACs … they’ve really kind of consolidated the power away from the parties, both on the Democratic and the Republican side, and so they really are starting to gain a lot more influence on how politics plays in Montana,” he said.

On the one hand, you can’t totally blame those national players. One seat in the U.S. Senate impacts the immediate future of the country much more than one seat in Montana’s House of Representatives. But small downballot victories are important—especially for a minority party—to achieve bigger wins in the future and build more sustainable political power. They’re how you recruit new candidates, get people excited about volunteering for campaigns, and ultimately make voters on the ground realize Democrats aren’t so bad after all. Republicans understand this. In 2010, the GOP launched its national REDMAP strategy, investing in downballot races that helped to grow ground-level infrastructure, win state legislature seats, and ultimately redraw congressional maps in the party’s favor. The holistic approach is still reaping national benefits today, and the Democrats are still trying to play catch-up.

Such long-term thinking is especially essential in Montana, because the state has basically no Democratic infrastructure. In the final weeks of Tester’s campaign, senior staff members offered to pay for anyone around the country to fly to the state to knock doors for the campaign. The campaign even hired me, who grew up around Ivy League professors and lived in D.C., to try to convince voters that I held authentic Montanan populist views. If state Democrats in the past had devoted themselves to ground-level organizing, I’m sure Tester could have found better messengers for his campaign.

Baucus, a Bodnar supporter, said he’s seen the same problem. He doesn’t think the state party has “sufficient resources,” “quality candidates,” or “a message that’s really connecting directly with the average voter in the state.” For what it’s worth, the former senator said that’s part of why he endorsed Bodnar: While he wants to help the Democratic Party “get its act together in Montana,” he cares more about electing “the best person to represent the state.”

The issue with that logic is that Bodnar’s campaign will only exacerbate the problems Montana Democrats face. If you keep telling voters that being a Democrat sucks, sooner or later they’re going to start believing you. “It’s a shame that they’re trying to fool people like this and weaken the party and taking short term over long term,” said local organizer Andy Boyd. “It’s pretty frustrating to watch.”

Bodnar agrees that he’s only focused on the short term—only he doesn’t see that as a problem. He said national Democrats (as well as national Republicans) aren’t “showing up in rural America” and that the two-party system has “stopped working for Montanans.” Bodnar said he just wants to improve conditions for the next generation, even “if that means shaking up the political coalitions in this country.”

“This race isn’t about positioning one party or another for long-term electoral success,” he said. “This race is about positioning this country for long-term success, so our kids could grow up in a country that is in a better state than the one that we lived in.”

But Bodnar’s long-term vision might be shortsighted too. Though we sometimes think about elections as a horse race, there is an end goal beyond winning: One gets elected to pass policies and actually improve people’s lives. It’s not totally clear that Bodnar would be effective at that part of politics.

Bodnar’s campaign website features a collection of policy goals tailored to offend no one. He wants a strong military but more international cooperation, a strict border that also allows for “Montana’s farmers” to get “legal labor,” and improved but still private health care. He hopes to eliminate the national deficit not by doing what the Democrats want (taxing billionaires) or the Republicans want (cutting Social Security). Instead, he “can say what neither party will”: that it’s possible to eliminate the national deficit and still invest in the future simply through “honesty,” whatever that means.

When I spoke with Bodnar, he added a bit more specificity to some issues, saying he hopes to bring a renewed focus to “food security” amid an eight-year gap since Congress last passed a farm bill. But he also tried to stay on everyone’s good side on other topics, like saying he wants an “all of the above” approach to energy policy.

The first-time candidate has also said he won’t caucus with either political party if elected to the Senate—which, while an easy way to show Montanans he’s truly independent, means he’ll have a hard time getting any committee assignments, and thus won’t have any power. “Is he actually so stupid he thinks he can go to D.C. and get anything done without caucusing with the party?” said Jesse Mullen, the 2024 Democratic nominee for Montana secretary of state.

Bodnar said he’ll “negotiate for committees the same way every senator does” and take advantage of his power as just one of 100 votes in a closely divided chamber. But it’s hard to imagine a Democratic or Republican leadership prioritizing him, after he just spent a campaign attacking them, over a member of their own party.

In all likelihood, the logistics of how Bodnar would operate as an independent senator won’t wind up being relevant. Bodnar insists he has a path to victory by combining independents with people from every party (including even “members of the Green Party”). But the polls say different: Bodnar consistently trails Republican nominee Kurt Alme by double digits.

The past says different too. Bodnar-style centrists are why Montana Democrats keep losing in the first place. Regardless of what think tank studies say, candidates who tout the middle, whether independent or Democrat, haven’t won national elections in Montana, or really any Mountain West states, in nearly a decade. Maybe that has more to do with the Democratic brand than anything else, where voters hate the party so much even independents become guilty by association for running against Republicans. But one can’t fix that brand by spending election after election talking about how much they too hate Democrats. That’s a problem locally, where Republicans dominate every aspect of Montana government, and nationally, where small states overrepresented in the Senate just keep getting redder.

Brian Schweitzer, again, turned to a road analogy in explaining the solution to Montana Democrats’ woes: “To run a campaign in Montana, you have to understand that Montana is a small town with a long Main Street.” He said current candidates in Montana, regardless of party label, are “lazy,” not willing to do the hard work of canvassing the entire length of Main Street—the grocery store, the school, the bar—to reintroduce themselves to voters and fix the party’s brand.

Only when they walk that street will Democrats win enough local races and build the power necessary to prove people like Bodnar wrong, by enacting progressive policies that people want to see and giving Montanans and Americans alike a reason to support their party. That path might be slow—a long, winding, bumpy dirt road, if you will—but at least it arrives at a rewarding destination. That’s a whole lot better than trying to take a quick short cut and finding yourself at a dead end.

Incumbent Democrats and establishment candidates are falling across the country to more progressive opponents, most notably in recent primaries in Colorado and New York. What’s driving these surprising results? A host of factors, including more liberal attitudes among Democratic voters, the robust get-out-the vote operations that the Democratic Socialists of America have built in cities like New York, and the party base’s frustration with the Democratic leadership for losing twice to Donald Trump. In the latest edition of Right Now, Julia Azari and Seth Masket, two professors who specialize in studying party politics, break down which factors are most and least important in this recent leftward surge in the party. Azari teaches at Marquette University; Masket at the University of Denver.

Fair enough. Of course, Infantino said those words at a meeting of Trump’s preposterous Board of Peace—an organization ostensibly created to solve world problems but whose funds are totally controlled by its chairman (none other than Trump himself). He said them shortly before announcing that his organization would spend $50 million building soccer stadiums in war-torn Gaza and concluded his remarks by donning a Trump-branded red “USA” hat.

The World Cup has always been political—its second iteration, after all, was hosted in Benito Mussolini’s Italy. But has it ever been more political? Infantino invented the farcical “FIFA Peace Prize” for Trump to assuage his bruised ego after he lost the real one and has joined the president at his inauguration, on state visits overseas, and repeatedly in the Oval Office. He has dutifully gone along with the president’s xenophobic travel bans and said nothing as players and officials have been detained and questioned for hours, invasively searched, and even banned from entering the nation entirely. Trump may have declared victory in the Iran war shortly after the beginning of the tournament—though the war would soon restart—but the Iranian national team wasn’t allowed to stay in the country overnight—it was not even allowed to linger for an hour after playing a game in punishing heat. Football may be about hope and joy and happiness, but it’s also very much about money and power.

Russian oligarchs are out—sorry, Roman Abramovich—but American ones are in. Half of the 20 English Premier League teams are owned by residents of the 2026 World Cup’s principal host nation, many of them hedge funds. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates all have their own teams in England and France; Qatar’s Paris Saint-Germain has won the European Champions League two years in a row. The rise of petrostate ownership means that oil prices and Middle East conflict can dictate transfer policy and often raise uncomfortable questions. What does it mean when Newcastle United—owned by Saudi Arabia—participates in a Pride event? And what does it tell us when a state-owned Saudi club massively overpays for a Brazilian striker from a Russian team owned by oil and gas giant Gazprom?  And then, of course, there’s the 2026 World Cup, which is occurring in the shadow of Donald Trump’s second, decidedly more sinister and xenophobic administration. Want to understand the world? Soccer is not a bad place to look.

That, at least ostensibly, is the premise of Franklin Foer’s 2004 book, How Soccer Explains the World, which was rereleased with a new foreword earlier this year in advance of the 2026 World Cup. It’s a bold and—for an American, at least—presumptuous title, but it’s also a somewhat misleading one. How Soccer Explains the World is really three books in one. It’s a travelogue, in which Foer, a former editor of this magazine, travels the globe to glean lessons from fans and social scientists. It’s a plea to Americans like himself—educated, erudite, indoor kids—to open themselves up to the magic of the world’s game. And it is an attempt to stitch together his reporting into a larger theory about how soccer points to the future of a globalized, interconnected world; he notes the persistence of tribalism, nationalism, and antisemitism and the fact that globalization not only creates its own winners or losers but provides its own incentive structure for corruption. There are parts of this book that very much anticipate a world—and a sport—dominated by oligarchy and greed.

Yet travel books—and books about sports, for that matter—are inevitably time capsules and Foer’s feels like one somewhat out of step with his own time, let alone ours. Published a year after the start of the Iraq War, Foer’s rosy look at globalization was already passé as the U.S. took on a more aggressive, hostile, and xenophobic posture to the rest of the world. It arrived at a pivotal moment in the rise of U.S. soccer but also one for the economic trends he describes. It was still possible to be hopeful, albeit faintly so, about globalization in 2004. In 2026, it looks considerably different. 

The fact that the world’s most popular sport is a reflection of the world is neither a novel nor a particularly interesting observation on its own. Writers have been drawing political conclusions from the sport for roughly as long as it has been played, and the canon of soccer literature is full of works solely or partially devoted to its politics, notably Ryszard Kapuściński’s 1969 The Soccer War, about a conflict between El Salvador and Honduras that started during a World Cup qualifier, and Eduardo Galeano’s 1995 Soccer in Sun and Shadow, a poetic history of the sport.

Soccer in Sun and Shadow and How Soccer Explains the World are mainstays on bookstore tables during every World Cup and are both regularly featured on the dozens of lists of books to read before every tournament. They’re strange bedfellows. Indeed, How Soccer Explains the World feels in many ways like a response to Galeano’s book, which decried the commercialization and homogeneity of the post–Cold War, globalized, unipolar world.

“These are days of obligatory uniformity, in soccer and everything else,” writes Galeano in his canonical 1995 book. “Never has the world been so unequal in the opportunities it offers and so equalizing in the habits it imposes: in this end of century, whoever does not die of hunger dies of boredom.” The 1994 World Cup, the first held in the United States, looms over Galeano’s book. Today—especially in contrast to the 2026 tournament—that tournament is largely remembered as a big, beautiful party in which the U.S., newly dominant on the global stage, welcomed the world.

For Galeano, soccer is a perfect entry point to a world dominated by U.S. hegemony—culturally, politically, and economically—as well as a vehicle for elucidating Latin American politics. If some of his commentary is inevitably dated, his larger argument—that the sport is inherently polluted by money—still resonates. “The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty,” he writes. “When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots.” 

How Soccer Explains the World accepts the premise—which in 2004 was hard to deny—that globalization was the world’s dominant force and that soccer “seemed much further along in the process of globalization than any other economy on the planet.” Foer, moreover, writes that he expected to find “the power of mega-brands like the clubs Manchester United and Real Madrid, backed by Nike and Adidas … prying fans away from their old allegiances” but instead found something different: Fans, players, and clubs were retaining aspects of their local or national cultures while, in many ways, using globalization to benefit in their own way. 

Soccer, particularly European soccer, in the early 2000s was in the midst of a remarkable cross-cultural transformation, in which top European clubs routinely featured players from across Europe, South America, and Africa and in which playing styles that once characterized local teams or nationalities were jumping borders and fusing with each other. The era of Dutch “total football” was over. A new era had arrived, in which a Portuguese coach managed a North London team owned by a Russian oligarch with a striker from Cote D’Ivoire. Foer was clearly intoxicated by this transformation. (It was hard not to be—this was the era when I fell in love with the sport in upstate New York, where I attended a high school where I was, to the best of my knowledge, one of two fans of European soccer.) As the book progresses, it increasingly becomes an argument for globalization as soccer or soccer as globalization: that by heralding a more interconnected world, the sport can bring freedom, prosperity, and even peace where it is currently absent.

Foer, to his credit, is a reporter—and a very good one—more than a polemicist. And more than two decades on, the most interesting thing about How Soccer Explains the World is the tension between being a travelogue and an airport book. In the former category, it is almost uniformly excellent: Foer is curious and incisive, with a great eye for character and detail. As an outsider—an American and a Jew—he is able to move seamlessly between fans of Glasgow’s Catholic team—Celtic—and its Protestant outfit—Rangers—in a chapter about the persistence of sectarian rivalry in a society that had otherwise “eradicated discrimination in the public sphere.”

That chapter mixes first-person reporting among ultras—or hooligans—that is funny and self-effacing with social science and reporting to advance a fairly sophisticated argument. The bitterness and fractiousness of the rivalry, he argues, stem in part from globalization. In Scotland, public discrimination was swept away when American and Japanese firms took over Glasgow’s steel mills and shipyards after the oil shocks of 1973, opening up economic opportunity where it had previously been closed off based on religious affiliation. But in Scotland, discrimination had been ended by globalization rather than a “civil rights movement to sweep away anti-Catholicism,” which meant that it was never truly reckoned with—which is one reason why the Old Firm, even in 2026, is one of Europe’s (and arguably the world’s) most intense rivalries.

Of course, Foer also acknowledges the biggest reason for the persistence of that animosity, which is its significance in Northern Ireland, where tensions between Catholics and Protestants are not a pageant to be played out in the soccer field. It’s an acknowledgment he doesn’t shy away from, but it’s one that troubles any rosy picture of globalization. Discrimination and sectarian tension have shown themselves to easily adapt to—and in many cases transcend—economic forces.

Many of Foer’s dispatches resist pat conclusions even as Foer puts his thumb on the scale. In a section on the persistent corruption in Brazilian soccer, he argues that nepotism and cronyism have made the sport’s insular culture immune to the benefits of globalization. One on Iranian women’s quest for equality—the movement against the state’s ban on women attending soccer games was then in full force—suggests that a growing hunger for Western brands, thanks in part to pitch-side advertisements during the World Cup, would lead to a movement for economic and cultural liberalism. Chapters on the Balkan Wars and the rise of Silvio Berlusconi point to the sport’s ability to be co-opted by nationalism, oligarchy, and corruption. These forces are everywhere you look in How Soccer Explains the World and, in most cases, they show astonishing malleability in a globalized world.

There is, especially in retrospect, also a sense that a devotion to a flawed thesis means Foer is missing the bigger story. The era he is writing about was already over in 2004. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the world was calcifying; the good feelings that—at least in the United States—followed the end of the Cold War were long gone. Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, bought Chelsea in 2003, heralding a new era of financialization and oligarchic control. There was, even then, a strong sense that globalization was being used by oligarchs and elites to entrench their control, that liberalism, free trade, and cultural exchange were not antidotes to tribalism or sectarianism, and that the rosy post–Cold War projections of rising tides lifting all boats were already wrong. Soccer certainly explains that world too. 

The relative absence of the September 11 attacks is one of the more curious features of How Soccer Explains the World. It isn’t until the very end of the book, in a chapter on the American culture wars, that Foer directly acknowledges the fact that the world was rapidly being remade. After 9/11, he writes “two camps in American politics have clearly emerged.” One, he writes, embraces globalization and global institutions like the U.N. and the WTO, opposes the Iraq War, and shares “cultural values with Europeans.” They “consider themselves to be part of a cosmopolitan culture that transcends national boundaries.” The other believes in “American exceptionalism,” believes the U.S. should ignore international bodies, and believes Europeans are “degraded.” To these people, soccer “isn’t exactly pernicious but it’s a symbol of the U.S. junking its tradition to ‘get with the rest of the world’s program.’”

The division largely tracks, though Foer—like many American white soccer fans—largely handwaves or ignores the sizable number of Latino fans of the sport who were present in the U.S. at the time. At least as far as white American culture in the early 2000s was concerned, soccer was European. Some people thought it was good, and some thought it was bad.

How Soccer Explains the World wasn’t just aimed at the former. It was aimed at the millions of liberal, cosmopolitan Americans who weren’t interested in the sport. Its publication should be considered a seminal moment in the off-field history of the rise of U.S. soccer. How Soccer Explains the World was the first popular, serious book about the sport written for Americans by an American.

What does soccer tell us now? Our world, to be fair, is rather different now than it was in 2004. How Soccer Explains the World was published before Obama, the global financial collapse, and the rise of global autocracy. It was published before Messi, the (near) fall of FIFA, and the emergence of petrostate and hedge fund ownership. Foer acknowledges as much in an excellent new preface included in an edition published for the 2026 World Cup, as he discusses Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Newcastle United, private equity goon Todd Boehly’s purchase of Chelsea, and the explosion of transfer fees.

When Foer writes that he failed to anticipate “the day when foreign governments would own English soccer clubs,” it’s hard to blame him. Even if one criticized Abramovich’s purchase of Chelsea in 2003, as many did, few saw the explosion of transfer fees and the expansion of state-owned clubs coming. Soccer was ahead of the curve, then as now, but it’s a lousy crystal ball.

Foer insists, somewhat defensively, that soccer tells us the same thing it did in 2004. “The thesis of the book,” he writes, “was that the global game of soccer was a leading indicator of the future. Soccer was globalization—and capitalism—in its most advanced form. And the nature of both phenomena is their ever-accelerating velocity, their endless churn.”

If that is self-serving, it’s also fair. That’s more or less what the reporting in How Soccer Explains the World shows, even if the conclusions Foer draws are often different. Sniffing at the term “late-stage capitalism”—to be fair, it’s not a favorite of mine, either—Foer argues soccer tells a different story. “The logic of business can always be pushed further, into realms once thought off-limits.”

Is that a thesis for an airport book? Certainly not in 2004. But it’s hard to argue with now.