July Updates

July 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I told Greg,

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

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

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

July 30

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three months later, conservative Christians scored a major victory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

This is the key exchange:

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

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

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

TRUMP: In the spa.

Q: In the spa?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The difference comes down to what the farms grow, and illustrates the stark disparity in who stands to benefit from the president’s sweeping tax and domestic policy bill. Under the new law, more than $60 billion in additional funding.

July 29

Meidas Touch Network, Trump’s Biographer REVEALS PHOTOS that COULD SINK HIM, Ben Meiselas, July 29, 2025. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s former biographer Michael Wolff describing photos he saw of Donald Trump that were presented to him by Epstein — and Meiselas introduces Wolff as a contributor who will be providing more exclusive stories to the MeidasTouch Network.

New York Times, Trump and the E.U. Have a Blueprint for a Giant Trade Deal. Is it Good for Europe? Jeanna Smialek, July 29, 2025 (print ed.). President Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, clearly agreed on one thing as they announced the outlines of a trade deal between their two massive economies. It would be huge.

July 28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Blood and soil” ideology claimed true Germans were defined by race within a specific land. Nazi propagandist Richard Walther Darré reflected those ideas when he celebrated agricultural life and what he claimed were rural values. Elevating those who had lived in Germany for generations, he suggested that German blood was mystically connected to German soil.

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

Those ideas are now advanced by MAGA leadership. On July 5, 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance told an audience at the Claremont Institute he rejected the idea that being an American simply meant agreeing with the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

Vance claimed that “Democrat politicians” and “corporate oligarchs” want to import “millions and millions of low-wage serfs,” and he hailed Trump’s immigration policies as “the most important part” of Trump’s first six months. He said “citizenship must mean recognizing the unique relationship, but also the obligations that we all share with our fellow Americans. You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect for America to remain unchanged…. “[T]his is a distinctive moment in time with a distinctive place and a distinctive people.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, VandeHei and Allen have political opinions and express them publicly. VandeHei simply redefines his right-wing ideology as patriotism. “The American miracle rests on untamed democracy, the animal spirits of capitalism, the magic of unrestrained innovation, and the soft power of a vigilant and vibrant free press,” VandeHei wrote in a December 2, 2024, Axios column. “I’m a believer in — and beneficiary of — all four.”

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

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

Pretending that expressions of right-wing economic ideology are “clinical reporting” is quite lucrative. In 2018, one of Axios’ launch partners was Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire David Koch, who spends hundreds of millions of dollars promoting Republican candidates and causes.

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

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

July 27

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

July 26

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

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

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

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

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

 

New York Times, Gazans Are Dying of Starvation, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner and Abu Bakr Bashir, Visuals by Saher Alghorra, July 24, 2025. After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are facing what aid groups say is impending famine.

 

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

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

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

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

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

• Get ready for Social Security cuts: If you’re on Social Security and Medicare, get ready: Republicans just screwed you in a huge way with their Big Ugly Bill, and starting in a mere 7 years you’ll see an average $18,000/year cut in Social Security for the average married, retired couple and an 11% reduction in Medicare payments to providers. If enough Americans learn about this and are outraged by it, it’s barely possible enough Democrats could win election in 2026 and/or 2028 to correct the situation, but already — because Trump and Musk cut over 7,000 employees from the Social Security Administration — seniors aging into the system (10,000 a day) are finding painful, frustrating delays in filing for benefits. Republicans have been trying to repeal the New Deal and Great Society ever since both were passed, calling them “socialism” and are outraged because morbidly rich people are expected to pay their taxes to help fund them. Instead, the GOP workaround has been to let the average billionaire pay less than 3% in income taxes while putting the bill for their tax avoidance on the nation’s debt tab that will be paid by our children and grandchildren. Fiscal conservatism was always a joke; it’s amazing they can continue to use the phrase without falling down laughing at the suckers who keep electing them to office.
• CBS is installing a monitor to look out for “leftwing bias.” You know, like facts? Reality has a well-known leftwing bias because much of the rightwing ideology out there is based, simply, in lies. Trickle-down economics benefits working class people. Immigrants are more likely to be criminals. Women love getting abortions, particularly late term. Unions steal from their workers to make “union bosses” rich. Global warming is a hoax. The fossil fuel and chemical industry aren’t poisoning us and our environment. Green energy is more expensive than gas, oil, or coal. People on Medicaid and food stamps are lazy. Unemployment insurance discourages work. Raising the minimum wage increases unemployment. People only value a college education if they go into debt to get it. Healthcare for all Americans is too complicated for any government to create and administer. America was created as a Christian nation. Every single one of those statements is a demonstrable lie, but when they pop up on CBS News going forward don’t expect any push-back. As part of Skydance’s deal with Trump and the FCC, they not only gave the president a personal $16 million bribe (and apparently also offered a similar amount in free advertising) but also agreed to install in the CBS operations a “monitor” to catch and kill any semblance of “leftwing bias.” This is the sort of thing that routinely happens when nations lose their democracy, and is a flashing red sign that we’re in the actual process of losing ours.

New York Times, White House Memo: Competing Conspiracy Theories Consume Trump’s Washington, Peter Baker, July 26, 2025. President Trump is trying to divert attention from the Epstein conspiracy theory with new-and-improved one about Barack Obama and treason.

New York Times, A Clash Over a Promotion Puts Hegseth at Odds With His Generals, Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper, July 26, 2025. Suspicions about leaks and a mistrust of senior military officers have defined much of the defense secretary’s first six months on the job.

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

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

July 25

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

• • Education funding: Under bipartisan pressure from lawmakers, Trump administration officials announced they would release $5.5 billion in education funding to states, money that had been frozen weeks before the new school year. The money will help train and recruit teachers, support children learning English and fund arts and music education. Read more ›
  • Ghislaine Maxwell: Justice Department officials interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, again on Friday. President Trump did not rule out a pardon, telling reporters he hadn’t “thought about” clemency for her but that he was “allowed to do it.” The interview is part of the department’s effort to quell criticism that it is concealing details of Mr. Epstein’s crimes and ties to prominent figures, including Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump also denied reports that he was briefed on his name being in the Epstein files, saying, “No, I was never, never briefed.” Read more ›
  • Scotland trip: Mr. Trump is in Scotland for a five-day visit, where he will celebrate the opening of a golf course and meet with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. Read more ›

In other news:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, even if the administration’s use of the reports is wildly overstated, some of the information has not been made public before. It provides some messy details about how the intelligence community assessment was hurriedly produced during Mr. Obama’s final months in office.

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

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

July 24

New York Times, Columbia and Penn Made Trump Deals. More Universities Could Be Next, Alan Blinder, July 24, 2025. Trump officials hope deals with two Ivy League schools create a template that others, including Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cornell and Northwestern, will follow.

White House officials have reached deals with two Ivy League universities and are now armed with a proven strategy to pressure other schools to rewrite their policies and reorient campus politics.

First, they strip away hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding, based on vague accusations that a university abets antisemitism or unlawfully supports transgender rights. Then they make demands, wearing down school administrators until making concessions to the White House appears to be the only way forward.

The strategy worked twice in the last month, with Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. That leaves at least five more embattled schools — Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern and Princeton — with decisions to make about whether to fight or to bargain.

The White House has touted the deals with Columbia and Penn as victories. But they also offer frameworks for wary college administrators as they consider which sacrifices are worth making to try to placate a president bent on bringing elite institutions to heel. Now Columbia has shown that a fragile peace can be purchased.

Under the deal announced Wednesday night, Columbia will pay $221 million and stand by an array of previous pledges, like limits on protests and greater internal oversight of certain academic programs. But it secured a provision saying that no part of the agreement “shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions, or the content of academic speech.”

Penn did not agree to pay anything, but promised, among other terms, that its athletics policies would align with the Trump administration’s beliefs about participation by transgender people.

“Two hundred million dollars is not a lot of money when you have billions at stake, and any corporate person will tell you that,” said Donna E. Shalala, who was health secretary under President Bill Clinton and has led four schools, including the University of Miami and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Basically, they’re cutting their losses and ensuring their future — for at least a short period of time.”

Assessments like Dr. Shalala’s are deeply unnerving to many people in academia. Professors have spent months warning about how history shows that aspiring autocrats seek to tame and bully universities. They worry that settlements like the ones signed by Columbia and Penn will encourage the White House to conjure reasons to make more demands, and give administrators on campuses across the country cover to make agreements that could poison American higher education.

“Universities, as they make concessions, do not stop the demand for future concessions,” said David A. Bateman, the president of Cornell’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “They just open the door for more.”

Trump administration officials are openly eager to use Columbia as an example of how to satisfy the craving among some conservatives to remake higher education, a sector they regard as a cradle of liberal indoctrination.

 

Shown above is a  graphic illustrating a news report during the spring of 2025 as the Trump Administration launched its test initiative to control admissions, curriculum, faculty and budgets of American higher education, beginning with the oldest and best-funded institution, Harvard University.

New York Times, State Dept. Opens Investigation Into Harvard’s Use of International Visas, Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). The Trump administration has continued to pressure the university despite continuing talks to settle a monthslong dispute over the federal government’s role in higher education.

The Trump administration has opened a new investigation into Harvard University’s compliance with a government-run visa program for international students and professors, targeting the elite college with another aggressive action even as the two sides negotiate a possible settlement to their acrimonious dispute.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified Dr. Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, of the investigation in a letter on Wednesday, according to a copy of the correspondence reviewed by The New York Times.

Mr. Rubio, left, did not refer to any specific allegation of wrongdoing and instead said the inquiry was necessary “to assist the department in meeting its policy objectives.”

The investigation targets the university’s participation in the Exchange Visitor Program, which is designed to promote cultural and educational programs with visas for a variety of applicants, including students and professors as well as researchers, interns and au pairs.

Mr. Rubio’s letter gave Harvard a one-week deadline to produce a lengthy list of university records related to the student visa program. He said the department plans to interview university staff associated with the program and also may want to speak with visa holders.

A Harvard spokesman did not immediately comment. In a statement, Mr. Rubio said the investigation was aimed at verifying that the visa program does not “compromise the national security interests of the United States.”

“The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law and provide safe environments for all students,” Mr. Rubio said.

Mr. Rubio sent his letter two days after some of the Trump administration’s tactics against Harvard received a skeptical reception from a federal judge in Boston. During a crucial hearing in one of the university’s lawsuits against the administration, Judge Allison D. Burroughs’s questions suggested she had serious doubts about the legality of the government’s effort to condition Harvard’s federal research funding on its acceptance of demands from Washington.

New York Times, Columbia Agrees to $200 Million Fine to Settle Fight With Trump, Sharon Otterman, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). The White House had canceled more than $400 million in research funding to the university, saying it had failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.

Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached on Wednesday to restore the university’s federal research funding, according to a statement from the university.

In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring, and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March.

The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in the release. “The settlement was carefully crafted to protect the values that define us and allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”

The deal is a significant milestone in the Trump administration’s quest to bring elite universities to heel. Columbia is the first university to reach a negotiated settlement over antisemitism claims. Harvard, which has sued the administration over funding cuts, is also negotiating for restoration of its federal money. The expectation is that the Columbia settlement will provide a template for future deals.

The federal government is agreeing to restore grants terminated by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, and allow money to start flowing again to grants that had been frozen but were not canceled. Columbia can also compete on equal footing for new grants. The university will pay the $200 million in three installments over three years.

The loss of funding for scientific research had become an urgent matter for Columbia, imperiling decades of work and bringing Columbia to the “tipping point” of preserving its research excellence, the university said.

But making a deal with the White House brings its own risks for Columbia, challenging the limits of the private university’s independence and lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s strategy of weaponizing research funding to accomplish an unrelated aim of reining in campus unrest.

The federal government announced on March 7 that it was canceling $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, an extraordinary step that made the university the first to be punished by the Trump administration with a freeze on research funding for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. Other schools, including Harvard, Cornell and Northwestern, soon followed.

As weeks passed, it became evident that the damage to Columbia’s research enterprise went further than the original $400 million cut. The National Institutes of Health, the government’s key medical research funder, froze nearly all research funding flowing to Columbia, including for reimbursement of research grants that were still active.

New York Times, Gazans Are Dying of Starvation, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner and Abu Bakr Bashir, Visuals by Saher Alghorra, July 24, 2025. After 21 months of devastating conflict with Israel, Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians — the young, the old and the sick — are facing what aid groups say is impending famine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plan—in English its title is “The Riviera in Gaza—From Vision to Reality”—is a blueprint for a future in Gaza without the Palestinians who now are living and dying there. The meeting was held in the unpretentious second floor Negev Hall in the Knesset in Jerusalem.

At least two journalists from online news organizations that cover the religious right in Israel were invited to attend and publish what they wished. The meeting was headlined by two of Israel’s most outspoken and controversial advocates for the settlement of Israeli citizens in Gaza: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler who has a long history of violent anti-Arab agitation and at least eight convictions for violent anti-Arab activities.

Smotrich told the conference that Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, the new Israeli military chief of staff, assured him in a recent conversation that the northern border of Gaza should be annexed “for security purposes.” Early in his career Zamir served as the military aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is considered by many on the religious right to be an opportunist, although an increasingly welcome one…

Proof, Investigative Commentary: How the Sadistic Sex Games Trump and Epstein Played During a Seventeen-Year Friendship — As Told By Epstein Himself — Reveal the Epstein Secrets Trump Is Hiding, Seth Abramson, left, July 24, 2025. WARNING: This report includes disturbing accounts of sexual misconduct from an eyewitness—namely, dead pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump’s best friend for over a decade.

In 2017, at a time when Donald Trump was the most powerful man on Earth, famous for seeking the destruction of anyone who disparaged him and capable of smiting any American he trained his legions of supporters on, a Florida billionaire living a life of luxury beyond measure — one he had every interest in maintaining — sat down with a New York Times bestselling author to tell the shocking truth about the then-president.

That Florida billionaire was Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, as he explained across 100+ hours of bracingly frank conversation with the New York Times bestselling author, Michael Wolff, had been Donald Trump’s “closest friend” for well over a decade — spanning the late 1980s, all of the 1990s, and almost half the 2000s — and he had evidence to prove it, in the form of not only anecdotes and easily corroborated secrets but photographs and hard data. While today, in 2025, the statement that President Trump was best friends with a convicted pedophile, serial sexual predator, and notorious child sex trafficker is uncontroversial, having been the subject of thousands of major-media news reports in the current decade, back in 2017 the assertion was fairly new outside the high society of southern Florida’s Palm Beach.

Epstein spoke to Wolff knowing that he would have to stand by everything he said — possibly in a court of law. The premise of a future lawsuit, or something even worse, was a considerable risk for Epstein, given that he’d previously served a jail sentence of over a year for his past misconduct—if, infamously, a cushier and shorter jail sentence than was appropriate. That sentence came courtesy of a prosecutor, Alex Acosta, who Donald Trump would later reward for his prosecutorial malfeasance with a promotion to United States Secretary of Labor (the federal department that, among much else, oversees some of the offenses Epstein was guilty of but deliberately never charged with).

Also top of mind for Epstein would have been the fact that the man he was speaking to Wolff about, Donald Trump, was and remains one of the most litigious persons in recorded human history, having been involved in a staggering 4,095 lawsuits prior to his ascension to the U.S. presidency in January 2017 and many more since then (the latest Lawfare Litigation Tracker displays almost 400 lawsuits, focusing exclusively on those of a more recent vintage). This despite the fact that Trump has made one of the cornerstones of his political persona a supposed aversion to “frivolous” lawsuits, and at least in his second presidential term has ignored judicial outcomes he dislikes about 33% of the time, according to a recent Washington Post analysis.

Epstein also would’ve been concerned that his former longtime friend would jail him.

More than any American president in the nation’s history, Donald Trump routinely makes credible threats to prosecute, imprison, and even executive his personal rivals.

His history of such unprecedented public threats currently sits in the triple digits, and includes some of the most harrowing statements ever made by a sitting president—including an expression of desire that his own former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, be executed, and that former president Barack Obama be charged with Treason—a federal crime intended to be punished by state-sponsored homicide and, like President Trump’s threat to General Milley, “supported” by baseless claims.

In this context, how concerned should a mere private citizen have been in 2017 about angering the sitting President of the United States? Very concerned, it would seem.

So while no one would deem the now-deceased Epstein an honorable or honest man—he was, as noted, a historically rapacious pedophile and child sex trafficker for much of his adult life, and the entirety of his seventeen-year friendship with Donald Trump—he was a famously calculating man who put self-interest above all other considerations.

So if Epstein were going to speak to an author whose forthcoming book, Fire and Fury, all concerned knew was a likely future national bestseller, one to be placed on sale at every bookstore and even airport—whether the new book were to take the form of an exposé on Trump, as Wolff intended, or, as there’s evidence Epstein anticipated, be a biography of his life that would become a bestseller simply because so much of that life was entwined with the sitting president’s—he was going to have to make sure he told only the truth over his 100+ hours of revelations to Wolff.

So how did Epstein do? Well, as already observed, he did ultimately speak to Wolff for over 100 hours, on topics large and small. Donald Trump was just one of those topics, seemingly confirming that Epstein didn’t speak to Wolff simply to harass Trump and indeed believed he was telling his life story for national consumption—a story which, while it would have to include discussion of his own past misdeeds (as he had gone to jail for some of them), would more generally need to spare few details about his seedy life in order to justify any prospective reader’s purchase of it.

But what Epstein revealed about Donald Trump was, nevertheless, astonishing.

In fact, what he told Wolff about Trump would include some of the most damaging things ever said about the then-and-now sitting U.S. president outside a courtroom.

So did that sitting President of the United States, the most litigious American of his long lifetime, sue Jeffrey Epstein, following the publication of Fire and Fury, for what he’d said to Wolff?

No, he did not.

But surely, then, President Trump sued Wolff post-publication, for all that he wrote?

No, he did not.

He tried in vain to block publication of the book ex ante, but when that effort failed, took no further action against Wolff or any of his sources—as doing so would have forced him to sit for hours of depositions about the book’s horrifyingly seedy content.

After all, truth is an absolute defense to a Libel or Defamation claim, as Trump knows.

So what did Trump do about one of the biggest betrayals he had ever experienced— which betrayal became clear to the public in October 2024, when Wolff revealed that Epstein had been one of his sources (even as the source of the betrayal would have been clear to Trump years earlier, not long after the publication of Fire and Fury in January 2018, as Wolff could only have had certain information from certain people)?

 

New York Times, Guest Essay: I Covered the Epstein Case for Decades. These Are the 9 Questions We Actually Need Answered, Barry Levine, July 24, 2025 (print ed.). Mr. Levine, right (Michael Goldman photo), is the author of “The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.” He began reporting on Mr. Epstein in the mid-2000s.

President Trump and members of his administration teased us with the prospect of making public Jeffrey Epstein’s F.B.I. files. Instead, we got zilch.

Mr. Trump then ordered the Department of Justice to seek the release of some grand jury testimony — a request that a federal judge in Florida denied on Wednesday. But even that information, though it might have filled in some gaps in the Epstein story, would have been only a sliver of what’s in the F.B.I. files — which include a mind-boggling “300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” according to the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.

The American people — and above all, the victims of Mr. Epstein’s crimes — deserve answers to outstanding questions about how he operated, with whose help and in whose service. With the exception of redactions required to protect the innocent and materials that must be withheld while under court seal, the complete F.B.I. files should be released.

Here are nine unanswered questions about the Epstein case — ones that a curious, non-conspiracy-minded citizen might have — that the files might help answer:

No. 1: How did Mr. Epstein make his money, and how did he finance his sex trafficking over two decades?

At the time of Mr. Epstein’s death in 2019, his estate was worth an estimated $600 million. He worked briefly on Wall Street and built his wealth with the help of several billionaires, including the L Brands founder Leslie Wexner and the Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, for whom Mr. Epstein provided consulting, tax advice and other financial services. But it’s still not clear how Mr. Epstein amassed such a large fortune — or how he was able to fund such a complex trafficking scheme.

(Neither Mr. Wexner nor Mr. Black has been accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement in connection with Mr. Epstein’s crimes, and both men have said that they did not know about his criminal behavior.)

In addition to trafficking underage victims within the United States, Mr. Epstein imported young women and children from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan, according to an investigation conducted by the office of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This trafficking was presumably expensive. Treasury Department files reviewed by Mr. Wyden’s staff members detail, among other things, 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion associated with just one of Mr. Epstein’s bank accounts.
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We need to follow the money. The F.B.I. files may reveal more about the funding and other financial mechanics of Mr. Epstein’s operation.

No. 2: Did Mr. Epstein have any ties to spy agencies? …..

July 23

 

New York Times, News Analysis: Targeting Obama, Trump’s Retribution Campaign Takes Another Turn, Michael S. Schmidt, July 23, 2025. After focusing his second-term ire on other individuals and institutions, President Trump is again seeking prosecution of his most prominent rivals — this time with aides more inclined to carry out his wishes.

President Trump on Tuesday resurfaced his grievances against former President Barack Obama and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution.

When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to “lock up” or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama (shown below in a photo from his White House years).

Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.

Displaying a willingness to weaponize the federal government in ways that were as novel as they were audacious, he took on a wide variety of individuals and institutions — from law firms and universities to journalists and federal bureaucrats — that he felt had crossed him, failed to fall in line or embodied ideological values that he rejected.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump reverted to earlier form, resurfacing — in a remarkably unfiltered and aggressive rant — his grievances against Mr. Obama, prominent figures in past administrations and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution dating back to the 2016 election.

Seeking to change the topic at a time when he is under bipartisan political pressure over his unwillingness to do more to release investigative files into Jeffrey Epstein, he said the time had come for his opponents to face criminal charges.

“I let her off the hook, and I’m very happy I did, but it’s time to start after what they did to me,” Mr. Trump said of Hillary Clinton, adding: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly.”

“He’s guilty,” he added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

But if his enemies list was familiar, his capacity to pursue retribution appears to be expanding.

Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on those who crossed him.

Many of them were investigated, and two of them were the subjects of highly unusual and invasive audits, but none of them were ever charged.Editors’ Picks36 Hours in Key WestWant More Self-Control? The Secret Isn’t Willpower.Is She Jazz? Is She Pop? She’s Laufey, and She’s a Phenomenon.

The difference now is that Mr. Trump, much more so than during his first term, is surrounded by aides and cabinet members who often appear willing to follow through on his angriest and most authoritarian impulses.

The Justice Department, whose top ranks are populated by loyalists, including two of his own lawyers, has shown a willingness to carry out Mr. Trump’s personal agenda. The department has dismissed prosecutors involved not just in the criminal cases brought against him two years ago by a special counsel but also those who pursued Jan. 6 rioters. The department also dropped a prosecution against New York City’s mayor after he agreed to help Mr. Trump on immigration issues. And the administration also targeted first-term officials who became public critics of Mr. Trump, like Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs.

But now the efforts to target top officials from previous administrations appears to be gaining momentum.

The intelligence community under Mr. Trump is engaged in a campaign seeking to show that Mr. Obama and his aides wrongly sought to tie Mr. Trump to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor — and that some of Mr. Obama’s officials and perhaps Mr. Obama himself should be held criminally liable.

John Ratcliffe, left, the C.I.A. director, conducted a review that was deeply critical of the Obama administration and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan. Mr. Ratcliffe wrote on social media that the review had shown that the process was corrupt, and then he made a criminal referral to the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, issued another report last week including documents that she asserted showed that there was a “treasonous conspiracy” in 2016 by the Obama administration to harm Mr. Trump. On Wednesday, Ms. Gabbard released more material: a 2017 House Intelligence Committee report that took issue with elements of the Obama administration’s assessment. Those House findings were at odds with a bipartisan series of Senate reports that later affirmed the work of the C.I.A. and the other intelligence agencies.

The Trump administration reports have so far provided little or no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Obama or his aides, but on Sunday, Mr. Trump posted a fake video of Mr. Obama being apprehended by F.B.I. agents in the Oval Office.

It is not yet clear whether even a compliant Justice Department will be willing to open criminal investigations into Mr. Obama or other prominent Democrats and Trump critics, or be able to find grounds to do so. Even if prosecutors lodged charges, prosecutions could be difficult. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Trump, presumably enjoys immunity from prosecution for any official acts while in office, based on the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential immunity ruling last year.

But Mr. Trump often seems intent on using the federal government to subject his foes to the same kinds of scrutiny he has undergone.

 

New York Times, E.P.A. Is Said to Draft a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change, Lisa Friedman, Updated July 23, 2025. According to two people familiar with the draft, it would eliminate the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten human life by dangerously warming the planet.

The Trump administration has drafted a plan to repeal a fundamental scientific finding that gives the United States government its authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and fight climate change, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration known as the “endangerment finding,” which scientifically established that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endanger human lives.

That finding is the foundation of the federal government’s only tool to limit the climate pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industries that is dangerously heating the planet.

The E.P.A. proposal, which is expected to be made public within days, also calls for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. Those regulations, which were based on the endangerment finding, were a fundamental part of the Biden administration’s efforts to move the country away from gasoline-powered vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The E.P.A. intends to argue that imposing climate regulations on automakers poses the real harm to human health because it would lead to higher prices and reduced consumer choice, according to the two people familiar with the administration’s plan. They asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to discuss the draft proposal.

The draft proposal could still undergo changes. But if it is approved by the White House and formally released, the public would have an opportunity to weigh in before it is made final, likely later this year.

 

The Hartmann Report, Political Opinion: Oligarchs, Outlaws & the End of Journalism: Reagan’s Real Legacy in Trump’s GOP, Thom Hartmann, right, July 23, 2025. The CBS merger isn’t a business deal — it’s a pay-to-play scheme fueling America’s slide into oligarchy…

The CBS merger deal illustrates everything that’s wrong with post-Reagan Revolution America. It’s not just another corporate merger: it’s a road sign on our accelerating march toward oligarchy, propaganda, and the collapse of honest media.

We’ve watched one of the most important legacy broadcast platforms in America pay a $16 million bribe to our convicted felon president, reportedly offer him another $16 million worth of free air time, and try to sell its entire operation to a billionaire with a God complex. It’s the worst of the Reagan revolution coming home to roost, on our screens, in our homes, and in our civic life.

Start with the $16 million payoff: Trump sued CBS and its parent company Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, laughably arguing that CBS’s editing of the interview constituted unlawful election tampering. The lawsuit was instantly and widely regarded as frivolous, but instead of fighting it, CBS quietly settled for an astonishing $16 million. No trial. No discovery. Just a big, fat check.

This isn’t journalism: it’s tribute. It’s what oligarchs have done for centuries when they want to please the king.

This should shock the conscience of any functioning democracy, and has the rest of the world wondering about the health of ours. But in the GOP’s America — where billionaires are gods and corporations are people — this is just Wednesday.

Antitrust laws that were once enforced to keep our economy and our media diverse and competitive are now all but ignored.

It wasn’t always this way, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. Before Reagan took office, the federal government blocked mergers that would’ve concentrated too much economic or political power.

In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that said giant companies couldn’t dominate markets simply because they had the financial muscle to buy up their smaller competitors or drive them out of business by dropping prices long enough to run them into bankruptcy. It was later augmented by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914) and the Celler-Kefauver Act (1950).

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control 5 percent of the shoe market. But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to basically stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and media.

In the decades since Reagan and the GOP stabbed small businesses in the back, things have deteriorated badly. In 1983, there were about 50 companies that owned 90% of American media, controlling roughly 90% of what Americans see, hear, and read. As of today, it’s six: Comcast, Disney, News Corp, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount (for now). That’s not a free press, it’s an oligopoly.

And now Larry Ellison, the tenth-richest man in the world with a net worth north of $150 billion, and his son are stepping in to consolidate even more control. Ellison already uses his wealth to push far-right political causes; he was the single largest funder of a rightwing PAC. Now he’ll have one of the largest megaphones in America.

This is what oligarchy looks like, courtesy of the Reagan Revolution and, most recently, the corrupt Citizens United decision by five bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.

An oligarch buys a media empire. A corrupt president extorts that empire for cash and air time. The journalists there who once held power to account get fired. And now Stephen Colbert — whose nightly monologue is one of the few mainstream platforms consistently skewering Trump and the GOP — is on the chopping block. So is the legendary “60 Minutes” team, neutered to avoid offending Ellison’s political pals. All to grease the wheels for a merger and keep Trump happy.

Meanwhile, the average American gets nothing. No trustworthy journalism. No independent voices. No real debate. Just more billionaire-driven narratives, more Trump hagiography, and more of the toxic sludge that passes for news in post-Reagan America.

• • New York Times, Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit, Benjamin Mullin, Michael M. Grynbaum, Lauren Hirsch and David Enrich, July 2, 2025. President Trump had sued over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. The company needs federal approval for a multibillion-dollar sale.

It’s not normal to pay a criminal ex-president $16 million to go away and then invite him back on air; this sort of thing doesn’t happen in any other developed country in the world.

It’s not normal to fire comedians and journalists for telling the truth. It’s not normal for one politician to cow the nation’s news organizations. And it’s sure as hell not normal for the Fourth Estate to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the neofascist MAGA movement.

This isn’t just a CBS problem. It’s not even just a media problem. It’s a democracy problem. If Congress lets the Ellisons and Trumps and Redstones buy and sell the truth, it’ll be years before we get it back, if ever.

The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Pass it along.

If you value independent journalism and fearless analysis, join us.

New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump Fire Consumer Product Safety Regulators, Adam Liptak, July 23, 2025. The court’s order was the latest in a series of emergency rulings on the scope of the president’s power over independent agencies.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Trump to fire the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a five-member group that monitors the safety of items like toys, cribs and electronics.

The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The order is not the last word in the case, which is pending in an appeals court and may return to the justices.

In a series of rulings since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court has almost without exception given him broad leeway to exercise control over the executive branch, including by firing officials despite a federal law limiting his authority to do so.

The Supreme Court has been chipping away at a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to shield the leaders of independent agencies from politics by making it hard to fire them. In response to an emergency application in late May, the Supreme Court let Mr. Trump remove, for now, the leaders of two other agencies: Cathy A. Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne A. Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board.

The majority wrote that Mr. Trump could remove officials who exercised power on his behalf “because the Constitution vests the executive power in the president.”

As for the product safety board, Mr. Trump notified the three commissioners in early May that he was removing them. Although a federal law allows them to be terminated only for “neglect of duty or malfeasance,” the president gave no reasons for the firings.

He has said that congressional limits on his ability to remove leaders of independent agencies are an unconstitutional check on the president’s power to control the executive branch.

The commissioners — Mary T. Boyle, Richard L. Trumka Jr. and Alexander Hoehn-Saric — said they had been targeted for votes they had cast to stop the import of poorly made lithium-ion batteries and for objecting to staffing cuts.

The three officials were forbidden from entering their offices unescorted and from using the agency’s computer system.

About a month later, Judge Matthew J. Maddox of the Federal District Court in Maryland reinstated them, and they resumed their work.

Judge Maddox, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the 1935 Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, barred the firings.

 

 

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

Lincoln Square Media, Investigation: Trump and the Elite Modeling Scandal: How Power Seduced and Silenced Teenage Dreams, Brian Daitzman, July 23, 2025. The untold story of Trump’s presence among predators exploiting underage girls at the world’s biggest modeling contest — and the culture that enabled it.

On a breezy evening in September 1991, the Spirit of New York yacht glided toward the Statue of Liberty. Teenage girls, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights in the company of much older men, including real estate mogul Donald Trump, according to a report by The Guardian. It marked the start of a week-long contest that revealed troubling questions about how power and privilege preyed on vulnerability in the modeling world.The Contest: Glamour and High Stakes

At 45, Trump was more than a guest; he sponsored and judged Elite Model Management’s Look of the Year contest in 1991 and 1992, hosting events at his Plaza Hotel and aboard the yacht. The contest, founded by model agent John Casablancas, promised a $150,000 contract and the chance at stardom to girls as young as 14, The Guardian reported. Although officially open to contestants up to age 24, most were under 19 and away from home for the first time.

Footage from the event shows Trump greeting contestants backstage, mingling in dressing rooms, and watching swimwear rounds alongside other male judges. Stacy Wilkes, then 16, recalled judges — including Trump — telling her to lose weight as she stood in a swimsuit and visiting dressing rooms where the girls changed, according to The Guardian.

Two yacht parties in September 1991 and 1992 became defining moments of discomfort and coercion. Shawna Lee, age 14 in 1992, was pressured to descend stairs and “dance” before Trump and Casablancas despite her objections, The Guardian reported. Another 15-year-old contestant said she was warned that refusing would jeopardize her standing in the competition. Witnesses described underage drinking and inappropriate touching during these events. Trump denies any knowledge of or participation in such behavior and stated he was unaware of misconduct by others.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Attorney General Alerted Trump He Was Named in Epstein Files, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, July 23, 2025. It was not clear in what context Trump’s name was raised in the files.

Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in the spring that his name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to three people with knowledge of the exchange.

The disclosure came as part of a broader briefing on the re-examination of the case by F.B.I. agents and prosecutors. It was made by Ms. Bondi during a meeting that also included the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and covered a variety of topics. Ms. Bondi frequently meets with Mr. Trump to brief him on various matters, officials said.

Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche informed the president that his name, as well as those of other high-profile figures, came up in their re-examination of documents connected to the case that had not previously been made public. Mr. Trump, a friend of the disgraced financier, has already appeared in documents related to the investigation. Appearing at the White House in February, Ms. Bondi distributed a series of binders about the Epstein files with the phone numbers of the president’s former wife and his daughter in them.

“As part of our routine briefing, we made the president aware of the findings,” Ms. Bondi and Mr. Blanche wrote in a statement in response to questions about the briefing. “Nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution.”

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, would not address questions about the briefing, but called any suggestion that Mr. Trump was engaged in wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein “fake news” and said Mr. Trump ejected Mr. Epstein from his club, Mar-a-Lago, for “being a creep.”

Department officials have regularly informed some White House officials about developments in the inquiry. Such communications are permissible under the law.

The conversation was reported earlier by The Wall St. Journal.

One person close to Mr. Trump, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said that White House officials were not concerned about the latest disclosures given that Mr. Trump’s name appeared in the first round of information that Ms. Bondi released.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Denies Request to Unseal Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts in Florida, Staff Reports, July 23, 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi, right, had been instructed by President Trump to seek the release of grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation earlier this month.

• Epstein ruling: A federal judge in Florida has denied a Justice Department request to release grand jury transcripts from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The quick denial blocked efforts by the Trump administration to blunt criticism of its handling of files related to Mr. Epstein, a sex offender who was once a friend of Mr. Trump. Read more ›
• New Obama attacks: President Trump’s top intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, released new documents intended to target the Obama administration over the 2016 election, a day after Mr. Trump accused former President Barack Obama of treason. Read more ›
• A.I. plan: The Trump administration plans to open the door for companies to develop artificial intelligence technology unfettered from oversight and safeguards, but added that the technology needed to be free of “ideological bias. Mr. Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks on the plan on Wednesday afternoon. Read more ›

New York Times, A judge denies the Justice Department’s request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts in Florida, Zach Montague, July 23, 2025. A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied a request from the Trump administration to release grand jury transcripts from an investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, stymying efforts by President Trump to dispel a storm of criticism from many of his supporters.

The quick denial came in response to a request by the government last week asking the court to unseal those documents and to transfer the case to New York, where Mr. Epstein was indicted after a grand jury investigation in 2019. In its request, the Justice Department cited “extensive public interest” and “transparency to the American public.”

Mr. Trump and his subordinates, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, have come under enormous pressure to release further details about Mr. Epstein. Ms. Bondi had promised to do so but reversed course after a joint memo issued by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department on July 6 indicated that no more disclosures about Mr. Epstein’s conviction would be forthcoming.

The memo concluded that after an exhaustive review of evidence in the cases against Mr. Epstein, the government had uncovered no new evidence “that could predicate an investigation into uncharged third parties.”

Judge Robin L. Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied.” The government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, she wrote, adding that district courts are generally prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in narrow circumstances.

She ordered that a new case be created “in the public interest” that provided access to the government’s requests and the denial order, as the Epstein grand jury docket is still sealed. But she ordered closed the case where the government filed its request, which started with the investigation into Mr. Epstein in Florida in 2005.

Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: Trump Awakes to Nightmare as Epstein Scandal Explodes, Ben Meiselas, July 23, 2025. Trump SUFFERS in Morning as AWFUL NEWS.

Donald Trump woke up to a nightmare on Wednesday, and I don’t mean one of his usual rant-filled 3 a.m. bathroom tweet storms. I mean real-world consequences. The economy is cracking, the Epstein scandal is blowing wide open, and even Trump’s most loyal lackeys are stumbling all over themselves trying to cover for him.

Let me walk you through it.

Let’s start with the Epstein files. Congress just fled town for recess—because apparently doing your job is optional when it might expose the guy you worship. And who’s Trump sending to handle damage control? Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche—his attorney general and deputy AG, aka his former criminal defense attorney. They’re meeting directly with Ghislaine Maxwel (shown above with Trump)l. That’s right, the convicted sex trafficker is now somehow central to Trump’s cover-up strategy.

And Ghislaine? Through a statement by her brother, she says she fears for her life. Meanwhile, Epstein’s old lawyer Alan Dershowitz is out here begging for a full pardon for her. The not-so-subtle message from Trump’s regime: cooperate, and you might walk. Don’t—and, well, you’ve seen what happens to people who cross Trump.

As all this unfolds, Trump is flooding inboxes with unhinged emails. I subscribe to them so you don’t have to—and let me tell you, these things read like a stalker with a marketing budget. “Missed call from President Trump,” one says. “Ben, I just tried to call you.” Click the link? Surprise—it’s a donation page. Another one says, “Ben, did I do something wrong?” Like, is this a campaign or an emotionally unstable ex?

Now let’s talk about the economic collapse Trump’s trying to gaslight us about. Homebuilders are slashing prices. Recruiting firms are going bankrupt. Subprime auto loan delinquencies are at a 15-year high. Nearly 60% of college grads this year still can’t find jobs. The cost of cocoa, and therefore chocolate, is exploding. Inflation is hitting everyday items like ground beef and coffee. And tariffs? They’re just taxes we pay at the checkout counter, no matter how much Trump wants to pretend otherwise.

And what’s Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Benson doing? Lying on national television, pretending companies are “eating” the tariffs instead of passing them to consumers. This is economic denialism mixed with straight-up fraud.

Even MAGA Republicans are caught in the chaos. James Comer gave a trainwreck of an interview about the Epstein cover-up and then claimed Trump isn’t even distancing himself from Epstein. That’s… supposed to be a defense? Josh Hawley is out here warning about exploding health insurance costs—after he voted to make it happen. And Randy Fine? He went on Fox News to proudly call for the mass deportation of immigrants—criminals or not.

This is the real face of Trumpism: cruelty, corruption, and economic collapse wrapped in gaslighting emails and banana republic tactics. But here’s the good news: the truth is getting harder and harder for them to bury, no matter how many recesses they run off to or how many sociopathic fundraising emails they send.

We’re going to keep exposing it all. Keep spreading the word, stay loud, and stay in the fight.

The Bulwark, The Triad (Political Opinion): Liberalism and the Surrender Trap, Jonathan V. Last (JVL), July 23, 2025. Don’t let Trump do to the Fed what he did to the FBI.

1. Resigned. Mohamed A. El-Erian is a respected figure in economics. He is neither a partisan nor a Trump supporter. Yesterday he argued that Jerome Powell should resign from the Fed in order to save the Fed.

His suggestion isn’t crazy.

But it is a form of misunderstanding that is marbled throughout all of institutional liberalism. And it is dangerous.Today we’re going to talk about about how institutional liberalism has a Zero-Day Exploit, a hack built into its source code that Donald Trump has discovered.

I call it the Surrender Trap.

Yesterday began with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, above, calling for the executive branch to conduct a full review ofthe entire Federal Reserve. This represented an escalation from President Trump’s social media crusade against the Fed chairman. Previously Trump said he wanted to fire Powell because the chairman had not cut interest rates. Then he concocted an excuse that Powell should be fired for corruption related to renovations to the Federal Reserve offices.

This was the SecTreas—one of the “grownups” in the administration—proposing a wholesale takeover of the Federal Reserve by the president.

In light of this escalation, El-Erian wrote:

This morning, US government criticism of both Federal Reserve Chair Powell and the institution itself has broadened to include “mission creep” and the effectiveness of other officials. The developments of the last few days reinforce my view: If Chair Powell’s objective is to safeguard the Fed’s operational autonomy (which I deem vital), then he should resign. I recognize this isn’t the consensus view, which favors him staying until the end of his tenure in May. Nor is it a first best, which is simply not attainable. Yet, it’s better than what is playing out now –growing and broadening threats to Fed independence – and will undoubtedly increase should he remain in office. As to market reaction, most of the frequently mentioned candidates to replace Chair Powell would be able to calm any potential market jitters.

In sum, El-Erian argues:

• We must preserve Fed independence.• We know that Trump will continue to attack Fed independence as long as Powell remains chairman.• So Powell must give Trump what he wants willingly.• Because if Powell holds out, then Trump will take what he wants by force.• The act of taking the Fed by force would hurt the Fed more than Powell’s volitional surrender.• Therefore Powell should leave while we hope that Trump names a grownup to replace him.• Hopefully it will be someone responsible and normal. Like Scott Bessent. 🫠

This is the same logic that led Christopher Wray to voluntarily resign as FBI director.

Trump wanted Wray gone. Either Wray was going to resign or be fired. Wray believed that by resigning, he could protect the institution of the FBI; sparing it a bitter fight and all the attendant damage.

Wray miscalculated. As we talked about a couple weeks ago, the FBI has been perverted almost completely. It is now an organization ruled by struggle sessions and loyalty tests. The institutional damage done to it is probably total. The bureau will not become a healthy organization again unless it undergoes a rigorous program of de-Trumpification at some point in the future.

All of which is exactly what would have happened had Wray forced Trump to fire him.

The difference is that had Wray stood his ground, Trump would have paid some small price. And the public would have understood that the FBI had been maimed from the beginning.

Instead, Wray gave Trump what he wanted for free while liberal institutions pretended that authoritarianism was not on the march.Whose interests did that serve? Not the FBI’s. I promise you that.

 

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won civil suits against him in New York City on claims of sexual battery and defamation.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, It’s Time For The “Just Locker Room Talk” And Sanewashing To End – Trump Is Pushing The Country To The Brink, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 23, 2025. Trump’s madness, depravity and decline have become impossible to ignore.

For years we’ve heard all sorts of rationales that soften what we see with our own eyes every day — was just “locker room talk”; he was just joking; all you guys have Trump derangement syndrome; he didn’t really mean it; oh those swollen ankles no biggie; he misspoke; no one has been hunted down or attacked like him; it was a peaceful protest; Putin wants peace; we aren’t cutting Medicaid; the tax cuts will pay for themselves; the tariffs won’t be paid for by American consumers, we’ve defeated inflation…..the list goes on and on.

Trump has from the day he came down that elevator ten years ago lived in a fictional world of fantasy and untruth of his own invention. His weaving of these fictions and the battle he has waged to make and keep them true has been his central project. But there is an objective reality out there, and Trump’s fictional world has occassionally crashed hard into it — they got blown out in the elections in 2018, lost 2020 and the red wave never came in 2022; hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily and the economy crashed in 2020 due his negligence; he is a 34 times felon; he did sexually assualt E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. There are limits to his powers of invention and spell-casting. The Apprentice was eventually cancelled.

I don’t think we’ve ever really settled on how to describe what I am trying to get at here. Crazy like a fox, or crazy like a loon? Both? His clownish charm and superhuman capacity to remain in these fictional worlds he invents and cajole others to join him there have overwhelmed the legacy media’s he said/she said storytelling construct.

He has in many ways hacked the media, and our broader information ecosystem. The show must always go on, and it does, every day; a show full of imaginary wins, of an adoring public, of adversaries bending the knee; a show of POWER, STRENGHT, VIRILITY, SUCCESS, VICTORY; a show of spectacle and outrage, of the new and bizarre, of cruelty and venality. The show must always go on.

The problem for Trump now is that folks just aren’t into the show and it’s ratings are tanking; people are coming to understand that his agenda really is one of sabotage, plunder and betrayal and he has no plans to make America great; and the rancid reality of what he is doing, not the story he has invented and sold to us, has begun to catch up to him, and unfortunately for all of us too.

Asked about the brutal polling we’ve seen here is what Trump said this week:

I have the best numbers I’ve ever had. You know, it’s amazing, I watch people on television, “Well, what about Donald Trump’s polling numbers?” Yeah, they’re the best numbers I’ve ever had.

And with this made-up hoax that they’re talking about, my numbers have gone up four and five points. They want to do anything to get us off the subject of making America great again, and we’re not gonna put up with it.

New York Times, China Flexes Muscles at U.N. Cultural Agency, Just as Trump Walks Away, Mara Hvistendahl, July 23, 2025. Washington had been a buffer against China’s efforts to use UNESCO to influence education, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.

Any traveler who has picked up an international guidebook knows the UNESCO designation as shorthand for a must-see cultural destination that’s worthy of a detour.

But the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has also become the target of an intense Chinese influence campaign in recent years as Beijing has sought to increase its reach over educational curriculums, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.

President Trump’s decision Tuesday to withdraw the United States from the group removes a powerful check on China’s effort, in the latest example of how the White House retreat from international institutions offers an opening for China to advance its soft power.

The United States was once the largest UNESCO backer, accounting for nearly 25 cents of every dollar. But Washington has had an on-again-off-again relationship with it for years, especially since Mr. Trump first took office in 2017, and China has stepped up to take its place. A Chinese official is now UNESCO’s deputy director general, a post that diplomats said is often awarded in exchange for political or monetary favors.

UNESCO has lent support to major priorities for China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, including the global infrastructure program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing has also lobbied heavily for World Heritage designations and is jockeying to surpass Italy as the country with the most culturally significant sites. Some of those sites are in oppressed regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, where many local residents view them as an attempt to appropriate and control their culture and history.

And while UNESCO wields tremendous clout over what counts as history, it is also the U.N. agency in charge of setting artificial intelligence guidelines. UNESCO has an agreement with iFlytek, a major Chinese A.I. company, to cooperate on higher education in Asia and Africa, according to Chinese state media. (UNESCO said it has partnerships with many artificial intelligence companies worldwide.)

July 22

New York Times, Trump’s Student Arrests, and the Lawsuit Fighting Them, Tread New Ground, Zach Montague, July 22, 2025. The Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views under a little-used foreign policy provision have no obvious legal parallel.

The four veteran immigration agents who recently took the stand in federal court had at least two things in common. All were career law enforcement officials. And none could remember ever being asked to make arrests like the ones they carried out earlier this year.

The men said they acted on orders handed down from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office in March to detain several noncitizen students, including a doctoral student from Tufts University whose arrest was captured on video and garnered significant attention. Mr. Rubio, right, had abruptly revoked their legal status, which cleared them for detention by immigration agents, citing a rarely used law.

The agents’ testimony — given as part of a trial that concluded in Boston on Monday over the Trump administration’s efforts to deport foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views — underscored a major theme of President Trump’s return to the White House. The administration’s tactics have no obvious parallel as Mr. Trump pushes the bounds of executive power and defies legal limits to carry out his agenda.

Challenges to his policies are also, by necessity, treading new ground.

The academic associations that sued over the highly publicized wave of arrests in March have said the government targeted those international students in violation of the First Amendment. In court over the past two weeks, lawyers for the associations argued that the Trump administration stretched Mr. Rubio’s narrow power to revoke visas and green cards in order to stifle the speech of the most vulnerable activists and chill political activity on campuses more broadly.

The government dismissed the notion in its closing arguments on Monday, saying the idea of a coordinated policy targeting noncitizen activists is “the product of the imagination and creative conjuring.”

The Supreme Court has already held that noncitizens in the United States have the same First Amendment rights as citizens in several contexts. Still, constitutional scholars and legal experts have warned that it is precisely because the Trump administration’s actions are so novel that the lawsuit carries some inherent risk, as courts have not previously addressed all the potentially thorny legal questions at hand.

The suit fundamentally pits a clear authority, granted to the secretary of state by Congress, against the protections granted to noncitizens under the First Amendment, in a way that has not been tested before. And should it eventually reach the Supreme Court, the court’s conservative majority may be particularly unconstrained by legal history in deciding whether to allow the Trump administration to continue.

“It is risky because obviously the courts might decide the government can deport people because of what they say, and that would be just an incredible setback — a terrifying setback, I would say — for freedom of speech,” said Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He added that “one reason we haven’t had this test before is because governments did not do this before in the modern era of free speech law.”

In their testimony last week, the four current and former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents recalled gearing up to arrest individuals including Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident, and Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts doctoral student, after being notified the students’ green card or visa had been revoked.

 

New York Times, White House Leads Push to Block Watchdog’s Inquiries Into Spending Cuts, Tony Romm, July 22, 2025. A federal watchdog has opened dozens of investigations to determine if President Trump and his top aides have illegally withheld billions of dollars in congressionally approved funds.

Republicans are seeking to undermine the Government Accountability Office as it investigates, and considers suing, over the Trump administration’s withholding federal funds.

Now, Republican lawmakers are working alongside the White House to stymie those inquiries and the officials conducting them, in amove that could help Mr. Trump seize more control over the nation’s budget.

The attacks target the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The legislative office primarily produces detailed reports on ways that Washington can save money, sometimes rankling administrations that are not so keen about its allegations of waste.

But oversight officials have recently found themselves in a direct and highly unusual confrontation with the White House over the power of the purse. The watchdog chiefly enforces a 1970s law that prohibits the president from defying congressional instructions on spending. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has sought to test that law, working swiftly to disband entire agencies and programs without lawmakers’ approval.

The G.A.O. has twice determined in recent months that Mr. Trump’s actions violated rules that prohibit him from unilaterally canceling funding, a move known as impoundment. The office has 46 open investigations into other allegations that Mr. Trump illegally withheld funds, the agencyconfirmed this week.

The inquiries concern the White House’s handling of foreign aid, such as money for Ukraine, along with climate investments, including funds for wind energy and clean school buses, according to internal documents from June viewed by The New York Times. The administration’s treatment of public-health and education grants, such as those for the National Institutes of Health and the child-care program known as Head Start, are also being investigated, the documents show.

Russell T. Vought, right, the White House budget director (who previously led the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” presidential transition plan for a new Trump Administration,), has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the administration seeks to manage taxpayer dollars more effectively. He and his deputies have also initiated a series of attacks on the G.A.O., deriding it as partisan and publicly refusing to comply with some of its investigations.

New York Times, White House Bans Wall Street Journal From Press Pool on Trump’s Scotland Trip, Katie Robertson, July 22, 2025 (print ed.). The president sued the publication last week, accusing it of defamation for an article about his ties to the disgraced former financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The White House said on Monday that it had barred Wall Street Journal reporters from the traveling press pool for President Trump’s coming trip to Scotland, attacking the publication again for its reporting on ties between the president and the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On Thursday, The Journal published an article saying that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Epstein a lewd birthday note in 2003. It included a drawing of a nude woman, The Journal reported, and ended with Mr. Trump writing, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Mr. Trump said that the drawing and letter were fake and put intense pressure on The Journal not to publish the article. The day after its publication, he sued The Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones; its parent company, News Corp; Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp; Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls News Corp; and two Journal reporters.

“Thirteen diverse outlets will participate in the press pool to cover the President’s trip to Scotland,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Monday. “Due to The Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the 13 outlets on board.”

A Wall Street Journal spokeswoman declined to comment. Last week, Dow Jones defended its reporting in a statement: “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association denounced the barring of The Journal from the press pool, saying in a statement on Monday, “This attempt by the White House to punish a media outlet whose coverage it does not like is deeply troubling, and it defies the First Amendment.”

The press pool is a group of journalists from various outlets who travel with the president and act as the eyes and ears of the broader White House press corps. The Trump administration has exerted considerable pressure on the press pool, including taking over the role of deciding which publications could participate in the pool from the Correspondents’ Association.

The White House had previously barred The Associated Press from the press pool because it did not abide by Mr. Trump’s name change of the Gulf of Mexico.

New York Times, G.M. Profit Shrinks on Billion-Dollar Tariff Hit, Jack Ewing, July 22, 2025. General Motors was the second auto company this week, after Stellantis, to show the toll that President Trump’s trade policies are taking on the industry.

General Motors said on Tuesday that its profit in the second quarter fell by more than a third, after President Trump’s tariffs cost the company more than $1 billion.

G.M. was the second automaker in as many days to show the toll that the Trump administration’s trade policies are taking on the industry. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram vehicles, said on Monday that it lost 2.3 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in the first half of the year because of tariffs and other Republican policies.

July 21

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 20, 2025 [Trump’s Popularity], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 21, 2025. On Friday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that “polls show Trump’s position plummeting.” On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6% with 53.5% disapproving.

Those numbers break down by policy like this: Gallup polls show that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policy with 62% opposed.

American approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unlikely to rise as news spreads that last Monday, the government gave ICE unprecedented access to the records of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid, allegedly to enable ICE to find undocumented immigrants. Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that enables ICE to access Medicaid recipients’ name, ethnicity and race, birthdate, home address, and social security number.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, although they may use it in an emergency to cover lifesaving services in a hospital emergency room. The release of personal information from Medicaid lists is unprecedented. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned: “The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American…. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”

Trump’s tariffs are not popular. An Associated Press–NORC poll on Thursday found that 49% of Americans thought Trump’s policies have made them worse off while only 27% think his policies have helped.

And then there are the Epstein files.

A YouGov poll from Tuesday showed that 79% of Americans think the government should release all the documents it has about the Epstein case while only 4% think it should not. Those numbers included 85% of Democrats, but also 76% of Independents and 75% of Republicans. And that was BEFORE the publication of the Wall Street Journal article detailing the lewd and suggestive birthday letter Trump apparently contributed to Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album.

 

CECOT stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, which translates to Terrorism Confinement Center. It is a maximum-security “mega-prison” located in Tecoluca, El Salvador. File photos above and below. Capacity: It is one of the largest high-security prisons in the world, initially designed to hold 20,000 detainees, but with a reported capacity later doubled to 40,000 inmates.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Andry Is Free. Trump’s Barbarous Immigration Regime Is Just Getting Started, Tim Miller, July 21, 2025. Keeping Rage Alive.

Andry is alive. And for now he is freed from a horrid detention center in El Salvador. Thank God.

This morning his mother is awaiting his arrival, supposedly today or tomorrow. They spoke by phone on Sunday for the first time in more than four months, according to his attorney. I cannot imagine her relief.

For 125 days Andry and hundreds of other men were held in a torture prison where they got a “beating for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner.” They had been kidnapped by our government and left in that hellhole to rot with no due process, no access to legal counsel, no phone call home. They were completely stripped of their humanity. In many cases their only crime was existing in Stephen Miller’s America while being Venezuelan. For some, their sin was having the wrong tattoo.

On Friday, these men were released, at long last, in what was described by the participating governments as a “prisoner exchange” between El Salvador and Venezuela. In reality this was a hostage swap between the United States and the Nicolás Maduro regime. A hostage swap in which the Americans were the villains, using a tactic previously deployed by despots like Putin, who imprisoned an American athlete for minor cannabis crimes in order to extract concessions from the earnest West.

It’s remarkable that our administration’s actions were so depraved that they somehow made Maduro seem like the good guy. We gave him a domestic public relations victory, so he can crow about the humanitarian aid he brought to Venezuelans who had been tortured by the capitalist American devil.

That is Marco Rubio’s legacy in this story. He (shown at left) became the despot enabler he claimed to hate. First by wrongfully imprisoning and permitting the abuse of people who, like his ancestors, had fled communism and come to America in the hope of finding freedom. And then by using them as pawns in a trade for Americans who had themselves been tortured in Venezuela. In the process, he handed a massive geopolitical win to the communist dictator whom he has said in the past should be toppled by military coup.

As for the pawns in this game of caudillo chess, we can at least have the comfort of knowing they survived. My sense is that there is cautious optimism among the families of the Venezuelans and their legal teams that these men will be treated better back in Venezuela than they may otherwise have been so that Maduro can look good and cash in on this political gift from the Americans.

Hopefully that turns out to be true. Because watching them deplane in Venezuela, knowing what our government had done to them, it was hard not to be overcome with emotion.

This video of a man named Ysqueibel, for one, took my breath away.

But as Andry’s lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski told us in our livestream following the hostage release Friday night: “If I had to sum up how I feel right now, I feel relief he won’t be sleeping in a torture prison tonight, but I have outrage at the situation.”

That sentiment resonated with me in a deep way. After spending months thinking about Andry, wondering about his well-being, worrying about how they must be treating him in that hell, I wanted to just feel joy that he could go home and be with his mother and friends.

But I couldn’t. What I felt, instead, was rage over how fucking outrageous it was that he was in this situation in the first place. It seems like the Germans should have invented a word in the ‘40s that sums up the feeling when a person survives fascist barbarity, but my search for such a term that describes that cyclone of emotion came up empty.

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At some level, I think it’s important for both reactions to live together. The relief is real. God willing, Andry and the rest will be able to move on with their lives, find purpose and meaning and love and not be consumed by this nightmare to which we subjected them. At least they will be able to be with their loved ones and not worry at every moment that they might not survive the day.

But the rage is important as well. The administration that subjected these men to this crime against humanity is plotting more such atrocities. Congress gave them a $45 billion slush fund for domestic detention. The Supreme Court has greenlit deportations to war-torn countries with little to no due process.

The CECOT experiment might have failed (for now) thanks in part to the legal and political pushback this administration received.

But the fight against this barbarous immigration regime is only just beginning.

If the fight for Andry resonated with you, please support the Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Their work is ongoing.

New York Times, News Analysis: How Trump Deflected MAGA’s Wrath Over Epstein, at Least for Now, Erica L. Green, July 21, 2025. By tapping into other grievances, President Trump managed to turn one of the most fractious moments for his base into a unifying one.

In the week after the Justice Department walked back its promise to release the full collection of files about the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, it seemed there was nothing President Trump could do to quell the fury of some of his supporters.

He tried to coax them as he defended his attorney general against their wrath, asking “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” He said he did not understand their interest in the case, downplaying it as “boring.” He even castigated them as “weaklings” and disavowed them as “PAST supporters.” Still, the backlash kept building.

But when The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing a decades-old letter with a lewd drawing that Mr. Trump allegedly sent Mr. Epstein for his birthday, Mr. Trump got a respite from the revolt, as some of his core supporters rushed to his defense.

New York Times, Republicans and Democrats Call for More Information on Epstein Case, Michael Gold, July 21, 2025 (print ed.). Members of Congress from both parties said they wanted to see more files released, while President Trump has encouraged his base to move on.

Days after the Justice Department asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury testimony related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Republicans and Democrats suggested on Sunday that the move was insufficient and called for the release of more information.

“I think it’s a good start,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said in an interview on CNN. But he still wanted to see as many files as possible released, he added later.

New York Times, Judge Challenges Trump Administration in Hearing on Harvard Funding, Alan Blinder, July 21, 2025. In a courtroom in Boston on Monday, a lawyer for Harvard called the Trump administration’s case against the school “cooked up.”

A federal judge appeared deeply skeptical on Monday of the Trump administration’s efforts to strip Harvard University of billions of dollars in research funding, suggesting the school might prevail in its legal battle against the government.

Judge Allison D. Burroughs did not issue a ruling during a crucial hearing, which lasted more than two hours in her courtroom in Boston. But she did seem receptive to Harvard’s arguments, as both the school and the government sought to have the case decided in their favor without a trial.

The judge unleashed a barrage of pointed questions at the lone Justice Department lawyer. She demanded to know, for instance, how the administration could reasonably tie withdrawal of medical research funding to concerns about the civil rights of Jewish people.

And she appeared bothered by the administration’s hurried approach to attacking Harvard’s research funding, suggesting there were potentially “staggering” constitutional consequences if the government could punish a university without due process.

Monday’s hearing came two months after Harvard sued the Trump administration. In the lawsuit, Harvard accused the government of threatening the school’s First Amendment rights when it conditioned federal funding on the university bowing to a set of Trump administration demands. Beyond free speech concerns, a central question in the case is whether the Trump administration ignored rules and procedures when it blocked the funds.

The administration framed its tactics as a righteous response to antisemitism. But Harvard and its allies saw the roster of federal demands as intrusions untethered from trying to eradicate discrimination.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political Economy Opinion: Enshittification and the Bitterness of Billionaire Bros, Paul Krugman, right, July 21, 2025. Hell hath no fury like a tech god scorned.

One of the many weird, ugly developments in these weird, ugly times has been the MAGAfication of a number of Silicon Valley billionaires. In a fully functional democracy, the views of a handful of people with anti-democratic ideas wouldn’t matter. But we live in a corrupted democracy in which wealth buys power, so when people who accumulated vast fortunes largely thanks to U.S. scientific preeminence begin backing a deeply anti-scientific movement, it matters quite a lot.

Silicon Valley used to be generally pro-Democratic. So did the Biden administration mishandle its relationship by starting to impose some regulation on the industry?

I don’t think so. The actual regulations imposed during the Biden years wouldn’t have significantly reduced industry profits and were weaker than those in Europe. But the industry was right to see them as a harbinger of more regulation to come, because the public, which used to have a highly favorable view of tech and its leaders, had lost faith.

The thing is, the tech bros haven’t just turned right. Many of them are filled with rage — that special kind of rage exhibited by men who enjoy vast privilege and can’t abide any suggestion that their privilege is unjustified.

I’ve written about this before, but am revisiting the subject for a couple of reasons. One is that I discovered some new data, which I’ll show shortly. Another is that I realized that we’ve seen a version of this movie before.

Do people still remember “Obama rage”? Circa 2010 Wall Street titans — who had become accustomed to being seen, to use Tom Wolfe’s phrase, as Masters of the Universe — erupted in anger over what they insisted was a lack of respect from the Obama administration. Obama had bailed them out, on very generous terms, but he had the temerity to suggest that the industry bore some responsibility for the financial crisis that made bailouts necessary.

Were the Masters of the Universe really that angry over Obama calling them “fat cats”? Or was their outrage performative, aimed at heading off tighter financial regulation? Yes.

Wall Street had good reason to fear increased regulation — in fact, it did face tighter regulation after the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. And the climate of public opinion had turned decisively against finance. Every year Gallup asks for public evaluations of a number of industries.

 

 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Does Trump’s alleged letter to Epstein “sound like” Trump? An investigation, Judd Legum, July 21, 2025. This piece first appeared in Musk Watch.

Already, our report has become national and international news, covered on CNBC, NBC News, Fortune, Quartz, The Independent, and many other outlets. This is why we started Musk Watch. To create transparency and accountability that otherwise would not exist.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report about President Trump’s relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to the Journal, the materials collected as part of the Department of Justice’s investigation into Epstein included a 2003 birthday message from Trump to Epstein.

Trump’s alleged message consists of “several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.” The drawing, which the Journal describes as “bawdy,” includes “[a] pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.” Inside the figure of the woman was the following text:

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Trump told the Journal that the letter is “fake” and quickly sued the paper, its owner Rupert Murdoch, and the two reporters who wrote the story for $10 billion. On Truth Social, Trump insisted that the letter is “not the way I talk.”

Meanwhile, numerous allies of the president have echoed this claim, arguing that the letter is inauthentic because its language does not sound like Trump. “Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?” Vice President JD Vance asked rhetorically on X. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the letter published by the Journal is “not at all how he speaks or writes.” Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said it is obvious the letter is inauthentic because it doesn’t match his father’s “very specific way of speaking.”

To evaluate these claims, Popular Information examined the most distinctive aspects of the letter and assessed whether they are consistent with Trump’s history.

Would Trump use the word “enigma”?

The most distinctive single word in the letter is “enigma.” Is it plausible that Trump, known for using simple language, would use that word?

Trump’s defenders do not believe so. “I find it to be an enigma that Donald Trump would use the word enigma,” billionaire Bill Ackman, a prominent Trump supporter, wrote on X. Sean Davis, the CEO of the right-wing publication The Federalist, posted that he asked Grok, the chatbot created by xAI, to “search every record of Trump speaking or writing” for the word “enigma” and determined “there is no record of him ever saying or speaking the word.” (Trump Jr. also reposted Davis’ claim.)

Davis’ confident assertion is false and demonstrates the hazards of relying exclusively on AI tools for research. In 2015, Trump used the word “enigma” twice to describe Ben Carson, one of his Republican primary opponents. “Now, Carson’s an enigma to me,” Trump said. “Carson’s an enigma.”

Trump also used the word “enigma” twice in his 2004 book, Trump: How to Get Rich. “Dan Rather is an enigma to me,” Trump wrote on page 166. He uses enigma again on page 55, writing that entrepreneurial skills are “one of those grey areas that remain an enigma even to those with finely-honed business instincts.”

Trump also used the term in his 1990 book, Trump: Surviving at the Top. “Any discussion of Mike’s affairs eventually leads to the subject of Don King,” Trump wrote about Mike Tyson on page 200. “Don, like Mike, is something of an enigma.”

So, while enigma is not a commonly used word, it is one that Trump has deployed in a variety of contexts for many years.

Would Trump have called Epstein his “pal”?

The word “pal,” which appears at the end of the letter to Epstein, is somewhat old-fashioned and less commonly used than the more straightforward term “friend.” Trump, however, has used “pal” over the years to describe his close associates.

In a 2018 roundtable on tax reform, Trump talked about his friendship with Steve Witkoff, who is currently Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. “He’s become a very wealthy, successful man,” Trump said. “And he’s my pal.” During a 2011 speech to the Nevada Republican Party, Trump referred to developer Phil Ruffin as “my pal.”

Would Trump have been familiar with Maurice Sendak?

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the letter is the opening line: “There must be more to life than having everything.” This is a direct quote from Higglety Pigglety Pop!, a classic 1967 book by children’s author Maurice Sendak. It comes off like an inside joke between the two men.

Sendak and Trump have a history. In 1993, Sendak published We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy. The book, which stirred controversy due to its exploration of weighty topics such as the AIDS crisis, garnered extensive coverage in the national media, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Palm Beach Post, the local paper for Mar-a-Lago. It also featured a direct attack on Trump, with one illustration featuring homeless children against the backdrop of Trump Tower. The children exclaim, “Tricked. Trumped. Dumped!”

A September 5, 1993, story in the New York Times highlights Sendak’s criticism of Trump. The reporter, Degen Pener, said he reached out to Trump for comment. (Trump did not respond.)

July 20

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 19, 2025 [Moon Landing Thrills, Pride in  America], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 20, 2025. On July 20, 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from Lunar Module Eagle to the surface of the Moon.

One hundred and twenty-five million Americans—63% percent of the population—were watching on live television as Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon.

Televisions showed Armstrong (shown in a posed photo that year) stepping out of the lunar module onto the Moon just before 11:00 p.m. Eastern time.

My siblings and I were among those watching. Our parents had taken us across the harbor to our aunt and uncle’s house, where there was a TV. I remember being groggy from being rousted out of bed and unimpressed by the fuzzy little black-and-white screen the adults were crowded around and kept trying to get us to look at. At six, I had no idea that it was an unusual thing for people to walk on the Moon and was much more impressed that my aunt had a big fishing net with colorful glass weights in it hanging as a decoration near her fieldstone fireplace.

Clearly, it was a night to remember, even if we didn’t quite understand why. And at a time in which our elected leaders are deliberately breaking our government and institutions, it seems worthwhile to look back at a time when the U.S. government put its power behind enabling the American people to achieve something epic, leading a scientific triumph for people around the world.

So here, thanks to my wonderful team, is the story of Apollo 11. I hope you enjoy it.

And, if you are old enough to remember the Moon landing, I’d love to read your recollections in the comments. Let’s make a record of what that moment looked like.

New York Times, After a Chaotic Start, a U.S. Attorney’s Time May Be Running Out, Jonah E. Bromwich and Tracey Tully, July 20, 2025. Alina Habba, President Trump’s choice to run the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, has pursued investigations against Democrats. Her tenure has damaged morale inside the office.

A brash media personality and former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, Ms. Habba is among the most high-profile of the new U.S. attorneys appointed by a president who has taken closer control of the Justice Department than any other in the past half century. She has made frequent media appearances and drawn attention for a series of notable investigations into Democratic political figures.

Her tenure has also shattered morale inside the U.S. attorney’s office and left many prosecutors looking for a way out, according to 16 close observers of the office who were interviewed for this article and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

New Jersey’s two Democratic senators have said she is unfit to serve after degrading the office with politically motivated prosecutions, making her confirmation in the Senate unlikely after Mr. Trump nominated her last month to the position permanently. The state’s district court judges, who have the power to extend Ms. Habba’s tenure, which would otherwise end Tuesday, are expected to meet early this week to discuss their options, according to three people with knowledge of the judges’ plans.

In the staff meeting last week, according to people familiar with her remarks, Ms. Habba acknowledged that she was unlikely to be appointed by the judges and offered an emotional, pre-emptive farewell.

 

Palestinians mourning their relatives at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Sunday, July 20, 2025, after Israeli forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip (Saher Alghorra photo for the New York Times).

New York Times, Israeli Troops Kill Dozens Near Border Crossing, Gaza Health Officials Say, Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman, July 20, 2025. The attack occurred after the Israeli military had told Palestinians to leave an area where many have sought refuge and warned that it may expand operations.

Israeli forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians on Sunday in the northern Gaza Strip, after crowds gathered near a crossing from Israel into the territory where aid trucks often enter the enclave, according to the Gaza health ministry and hospital workers.

Palestinian health officials said the attack took place near the Zikim crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. More than 60 people were killed, according to the health ministry and Mohammad Abu Selmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

A field hospital operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society in northern Gaza was flooded with gunshot victims, including two killed and more than 100 wounded, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Red Crescent.

The Israeli military said it had fired “warning shots” after thousands of Gazans had gathered in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers had opened fire to “remove an immediate threat posed to them,” it added. The also said that the number of reported casualties “does not align” with its initial review of the attack.

The deadly shooting followed an Israeli military order to Palestinians to evacuate parts of the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, one of the few areas in the territory that has not seen major Israeli ground operations during its military campaign against Hamas.

Chaos has gripped aid distribution sites in Gaza amid widespread hunger in the territory. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly opened fire near huge crowds of desperate Palestinians heading to sites run by American contractors for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private and controversial Israeli-backed group, according to witnesses and the Israeli military.

At least 32 people were killed on Saturday after Israeli soldiers began shooting near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in southern Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.

New York Times, A Push for More Organ Transplants Is Putting Donors at Risk, Brian M. Rosenthal and Julie Tate, July 20, 2025. People across the United States have endured rushed or premature attempts to remove their organs. Some were gasping, crying or showing other signs of life.

July 19

Proof, Investigative Commentary:The Top Ten Most Incriminating Elements of the Newly Released 2003 Trump-Epstein Communication—Which Clearly Reads As Being About Pedophilia, Seth Abramson, left, July 18, 2025. This is the closest thing to a smoking gun with respect to Trump and Child Rape that America has ever seen—which explains why Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths (even for him) to lie about it.

Update on Friday, July 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM EDT: Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal. This seemingly confirms that he sees the “Birthday Note” discussed in detail below—the only part of this Wall Street Journal report that’s at all new—as a tangible threat to his presidency.

How is it possible that The Epstein Scandal could be the biggest-ever Trump scandal, given that the man was impeached twice, convicted of thirty-four felonies in New York, adjudicated by a federal judge to be a rapist, charged with state and federal offenses related to a violent insurrection in multiple state and federal jurisdictions, and near-daily is caught (i) offering or accepting bribes, (ii) seeking illegal foreign election interference, (iii) issuing an executive order that flagrantly violates the U.S. Constitution in the view of federal prosecutors and judges, or (iv) manipulating the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government in clandestine, corrupt, and decidedly seedy ways that even President Richard Nixon (of Watergate infamy) would never have imagined? (Sometimes the manipulations aren’t even clandestine at all.)

Well, it’s simple, really.

As a longtime Trump biographer and presidential historian who has written several national-bestselling books about Trump, I can summarize what makes the Epstein Scandal different in just five bullet-points:

1. 1. This scandal involves Child Rape, one of the worst crimes known to mankind;
   2. this scandal has dogged Trump for the entirety of his political career, and unlike every other scandal he has ever faced, it’s never receded to any significant degree;
   3. this scandal is the first that has the president’s own political base even angrier at him than his critics are;
   4. this scandal is the first that the president himself appears to have no idea how to combat, leading to a host of first-ever blunders (such as viciously savaging his own political base) that bespeak a POTUS unnerved by the potential consequences of what he’s now facing; and
   5. unlike prior political scandals that struggled to break through to the average American because they centered (at least in the public’s imagination) on just a single phone-call transcript (the Trump-Ukraine Scandal) or primarily the actions of Trump agents being indirectly orchestrated by him (the Trump-Russia Scandal), or that could only be properly recounted in FBI interviews no one wanted to read in their entirety (the January 6 Scandal), this scandal involves Trump directly interacting with disgusting figures, comprises a mountain of physical evidence that almost every American has seen and finds is undeniable (notably, hundreds of photographs and video clips of Trump happily cavorting with child sex traffickers) and involves sex—a national obsession in America.

This last point is particularly crucial, as the Epstein Scandal has now come to a head precisely because of two pieces of physical evidence nearly all Americans are now well aware of: (i) the missing “Phase 2” binder from the Epstein Files that Trump personal lawyer Pam Bondi (still working as Trump’s personal lawyer, just now under the title of “Attorney General”) explicitly promised to supply to all Americans and said would include an Epstein “client list,” and (ii) a “birthday note” that Trump sent to Epstein in 2003 (hereafter referred to, in this Proof report, as simply the “Birthday Note”). MAGA media’s Epstein conspiracy theory enters a dangerous new phase | CNN Business

Had Trump’s lawyer Bondi, right, not pulled the stunt—on behalf of her client—of inviting to the White House all of the most irresponsible MAGA influencers (even some with potential ties to events that occurred in D.C. on January 6, 2021) to give them a binder of Epstein evidence that said “Phase 1” on the cover, thereafter sending them out to the White House Press Corps to crow about how “Phase 1” was just the beginning of Trump and Bondi’s promised revelations about Epstein, America would not have been waiting for “Phase 2,” or be so richly able to imagine what that binder would look like in the hands of not just far-right trolls but actual journalists and experts.

Just so, had the Wall Street Journal not just published a detailed report on the birthday note Trump sent in 2003, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, to his longtime best friend—a pedophile who had been raping kids for years and years—Americans would not be able to imagine exactly what sort of evidence was still being hidden from them when Bondi suddenly declared that there would be no “Phase 2” Epstein releases or indeed any further releases about Epstein or his associates at all. (Yes, that’s right, the Birthday Note that’s the subject of this report appears to be part of the evidence that Trump and Bondi have been hiding from America, as everything taken from Epstein’s home is part of the Epstein Files now in government custody, and the bound book of birthday wishes for Epstein the Birthday Note is from was taken from Epstein’s home.)

All of the foregoing also explains why Trump has been virtually out of his mind—not figuratively but literally, as his public conduct in the last week has been conspicuously deranged—trying to (a) keep the Wall Street Journal from publishing even this one piece of evidence that he and his lawyer have been hiding from Americans, and (b) trying to use brute rhetorical force to get his fans to “shut the fuck up” (his words) on Epstein.

Right now, Donald Trump and not just one but two of his personal lawyers (new FBI director Kash Patel is also his personal lawyer, and also still working as Mr. Trump’s lawyer while ostensibly holding a title at a government agency) are trying to hide the full contents of the federal investigative file on Epstein, not just Phase 2 but almost certainly what would comprise Phase 3, Phase 4, and Phase 5 releases at a minimum.

So the fact that the Wall Street Journal just released the very first tranche of data from what would have been Phase 2—a minuscule drop in the bucket of Epstein data in terms of its word-count, if not its significance—and just this one release sent the entire Trump administration into a tailspin, followed immediately by a downward spiral, is as telling as anything else.

In other words, the Birthday Note Incident suggests—not just by way of its contents but how Trump and his legal team are responding to it—that the Trump-Epstein evidence the White House is currently hiding from America (and particularly the president’s “MAGA” base, which has been eerily obsessed with Child Rape for years via its “QAnon” sub-cult) is significantly worse than anyone could have imagined.

Why? Because just the Birthday Note is one of the worst things this former federal criminal investigator, criminal defense attorney, Trump biographer, and presidential historian has ever seen—and I say this as someone who published a full-length book on every known instance of Trump being violent to women, kids, or helpless persons.

What 2024’s Proof of Cruelty couldn’t have imagined, however—despite it being a book that describes Mr. Trump engaging in dozens of Assaults, Sexual Assaults, and even Rapes—is that the perpetrator of these many crimes and alleged crimes would be so brazen about them, indeed so gleeful about their commission, that he’d risk implicitly acknowledging some of the worst of them in a note to a major co-conspirator. That level of criminal sociopathy is, I can say from professional experience, quite rare; most criminals do all they can to hide their conduct, indeed not just their criminal conduct but any antisocial or otherwise unsavory conduct that surrounds it. Trump appears to have done the opposite: recklessly tossing out bread crumbs about his malfeasance without any apparent worry that the long arm of the law would ever come for him.

Clearly, judging from Trump’s own actions this week, that perspective has changed.

If Proof of Cruelty revealed that, according to multiple witnesses—including one who gave his name to the press—Trump regularly threw sex parties for underage models at the Plaza Hotel in the 1980s and early 1990s, parties during which he was well-known to be having sex with the attending models, apparently what Trump believes will soon be coming out about him and Child Rape is much worse than even that.

And it would appear, now, that the proverbial tip of the iceberg is the Birthday Note.

 

White House Chronicle, Political Notebook: Requiem for American Justice, Llewellyn King, July 19, 2025. I have loads of my words to eat, a feast of kingly proportions.

I don’t know when I started, but it must have been back when I was traveling on the speaking circuit. It doesn’t matter.

This tale of getting it wrong starts in London, where I was asked to address a conference on investing in America. Most of the questions weren’t — as I imagined they would be — about investment and returns on it, or taxes, or the exportability of profits. Instead, the questions were about the U.S. legal system; how litigious we are and what that is like.

My response was that our courts are fair, there is less day-to-day litigation than you might think, and the courts can serve you as well as those who dispute your actions. I said, “Don’t be afraid of litigation. It could be your friend.”

Next stop: New Delhi. The question was how can we get more U.S. investment? My answer: Fix your courts. They are famous for how slow they are to reach a decision. Americans are used to predictable legal speed.

In Moscow, during the halcyon Mikhail Gorbachev days, I was asked about how to get U.S. companies to invest in Russia. My answer: Make sure the courts work fairly and, above all, are clear of politics.

In Ireland, I debated Martin McGuinness, the late IRA leader. It went well, despite my English accent. My contribution was to tell McGuinness that if there ever is a united Ireland, make sure the constitution doesn’t hide anything under the mat (I was thinking of slavery in America) and make sure the court system looks to that constitution, not to politics.

Why am I eating on my words? Why am I shoveling them down my throat by the (Imperial) bushel?

The front page of The Washington Post for July 18 tells the story: Three pieces there add up to up a requiem for American justice.

• • Exhibit 1, this headline: “In deadly raid DOJ eyes 1-day sentence.”
  • Exhibit 2: “Thousands here legally have 60 days to leave.”
  • Exhibit 3: “Brazil judge in Trump’s sights.”

Two of these shameful reports show that neither the judicial process nor the laws of the United States are sacrosanct anymore.

The third shows that the Trump administration not only doesn’t respect our own judicial processes, but also those of other countries.

The perversion of justice isn’t a domestic matter anymore.

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Legal Commentary:Pro=ed states are already suppressing your votes, Marc Elias, right, July 19, 2025. Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order may be facing roadblocks in the courts, but that’s certainly not stopping Republicans from implementing it in the states.

Across the country, GOP lawmakers are attacking voting rights by enacting strict voter ID laws, making it harder to vote by mail and imposing onerous proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration.

North Dakota eliminated its grace period for mail ballots specifically to align with the executive order. Missouri’s top election official says he wants to “make sure we’re compliant” with the order and is pushing for new legislation to tighten ID rules. And in Texas and Louisiana, Republican officials have praised Trump’s anti-voting order for helping them crack down on the non-existent problem of noncitizen voting.

Be warned: all of this is part of a broader scheme to suppress Democratic votes and keep the Republican majority in 2026.

Trump wakes up every day focused on the midterm elections. Congressional majorities allow him to enact new laws that cut taxes on his friends and punish the working class. A Republican Senate allows him to confirm outlandish characters like Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi while stacking the federal judiciary with the likes of Emile Bove. Most importantly, he knows that if Democrats gain control, it means real oversight of his corrupt administration.

That’s why he’s desperate for Republicans in the states to do his anti-voter bidding — and why other members of his administration are following suit.

Under the leadership of puppy killer Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security upgraded its Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, allowing state officials to access private information about voters, including citizenship — a key goal of Trump’s order. Republican election officials are already using the data to purge voter rolls. The Department of Justice also asked at least nine states for access to their voter rolls — a story Democracy Docket has been tracking closely.

Of course, actual reports of noncitizen voting are virtually unheard of and these efforts are intended to cause confusion and block eligible citizens from voting.

If you were concerned that we were missing an MVP in election conspiracy corner, don’t you worry. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says he’s been having regular meetings with Trump to fan the flames of 2020 election denialism and make plans for 2026.

We also learned this week that a GOP operative acting on behalf of White House adviser Stephen Miller has been contacting local election offices in Colorado. The operative has been asking to inspect election machines and gain access to voter rolls.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 18, 2025 [There is a lot about sexual assault in tonight’s letter], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 19, 2025. Now we know why President Donald J. Trump earlier this week began saying nonsensically that Democrats he dislikes wrote the Epstein files.

Apparently, Trump was trying to get out in front of the story Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo broke last night in the Wall Street Journal, reporting that Trump contributed what the newspaper called a “bawdy” letter to a leather-bound album compiled by Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

The journalists say the letter “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.”

The lines of text represent an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein:

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.

“Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

“Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

“Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

“Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

“Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

“Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

“Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Florida police began investigating Epstein in 2005 after allegations that he had sexually abused a minor. They identified five victims and 17 witnesses, but ultimately the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alex Acosta, negotiated a plea deal with Epstein in 2008, by which Epstein pleaded guilty only to state charges, including soliciting a minor, and avoided federal charges. Trump appointed Acosta to be the secretary of labor in his first administration; Acosta resigned in 2019 after new reporting by the Miami Herald accused Epstein of abusing about 80 girls and women and showed how Acosta had shut down an FBI investigation into Epstein’s actions.

In July 2019, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey S. Berman charged Epstein with sex trafficking of minors as young as 14. The indictment charged Epstein with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage girls who engaged in sex acts for money at Epstein’s properties in New York and Florida. Arrested in New Jersey in July, Epstein died in his Manhattan prison cell in August.

In 2020, Epstein’s associate Maxwell was indicted on charges of assisting, facilitating, and contributing to Epstein’s abuse of minor girls, not only in New York and Florida, but also at his residences in New Mexico and London, “helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.” Epstein also owned a private 72-acre island off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, rumored to be another site of sex trafficking. In 2021 a jury found Maxwell guilty on five of six counts, including sex trafficking of a minor and transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

New York Times, Inside the Long Friendship Between Trump and Epstein, Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein, July 19, 2025. For nearly 15 years, the two men socialized together in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., before a falling out that preceded Mr. Epstein’s first arrest.

In the swirl of money and sun-tanned women that was their Palm Beach-and-Manhattan set, Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein spent nearly 15 years mingling side-by-side as public friends.

But behind the tabloid glamour, questions have lingered about what Mr. Trump’s long association with Mr. Epstein says about his judgment and character, especially as his allies have stoked sinister claims about Mr. Epstein’s connections to Democrats. After their relationship ruptured, the disgraced financier ended up behind bars not just once, but two times, after being accused of engaging in sex with teenage girls.

New York Times, Trump Sues Wall Street Journal for Article on Note to Epstein, Katie Robertson, July 19, 2025 (print ed.). The lawsuit argues that The Journal falsely claimed President Trump “authored, drew and signed” a lewd birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein.

President Trump on Friday accused Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal of defaming him in an article about a lewd birthday greeting that the publication said Mr. Trump had sent to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein decades ago.

In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the article “falsely claimed that he authored, drew and signed” the note to Mr. Epstein.

The complaint claimed that “given the timing” of the article, “the overwhelming financial and reputational harm suffered by President Trump will continue to multiply.” It asked for awarded damages “not to be less than $10 billion.”

The suit named as defendants The Journal’s parent company, News Corp; Mr. Murdoch, News Corp’s founder and former chairman; Robert Thomson, News Corp’s chief executive; Dow Jones, the publisher of The Journal; and two Journal reporters.

The Journal published the article about the note on Thursday under the headline: “Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump.” The article described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump in a 2003 birthday album compiled for Mr. Epstein. The letter, which The Journal said it had reviewed, had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump’s signature below her waist, alluding to pubic hair, the article said.

“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” The Journal said the note read.

Mr. Trump denied to The Journal that he had written the letter and said it was “a fake thing” and threatened legal action.

He repeated his intention to sue in posts on his social media site, Truth Social. “I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Mr. Trump wrote on Friday morning. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”

New York Times, Vance Boelter’s Life Before the Minnesota Shootings, n BarryErnesto Londoño and Ruth Graham, July 19, 2025. Periods of religious zealotry and an unsettled professional career were intertwined for years before he was accused of murder.

The sudden change in the teenager was dramatic and unsettling, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Those who knew him could only wonder: What’s come over Vance Boelter?

One moment he was an affable college freshman, pursuing a family passion by trying out for the baseball team. The next, he was giving up the game and shedding his belongings — even his cherished baseball bat — as if to put away childish things.

Suddenly, he was telling dorm mates they were going to hell, denouncing a guest speaker on campus as “Satan’s worker” and announcing he was now “all in for Jesus.” It was a lifelong commitment he would just as suddenly violate 40 years later, prosecutors say, with an act of political assassination that would stun the nation and send his home state of Minnesota into communal mourning.

Throughout his life, Mr. Boelter’s Christian belief in the sanctity of life seemed unwavering. He told a church congregation in 2021 that all the world’s wealth was “not worth the value of the person on your left, or the person on your right, or the person you see going home today.”

But his worldview darkened as his fortunes declined. He moved from state to state, job to job. He went from overseeing large food-service operations to collecting bodies for funeral homes, struggling at the same time to pair his spiritual and business interests while his wife home-schooled their five children. He began following a far-right website that trafficked in conspiracy theories about stolen elections and evil Democrats. He became distant.

In the first dark hours of June 14, prosecutors say, the pious Mr. Boelter, 57, set out to commit a crime that would break a commandment. He drove off in a black S.U.V. outfitted to resemble a police cruiser with several firearms and the names and addresses of intended targets. Less than two hours later, a Democratic legislator and her husband were dead, and another Democratic lawmaker and his wife had been critically wounded.

New York Times, Floods in Texas: More Than 100 People Are Still Missing in Texas, 2 Weeks After the Floods, Orlando Mayorquín and Pooja Salhotra, July 19, 2025. The number of people unaccounted for dropped this week but was stubbornly high as some searchers were losing hope of finding them.

New York Times, A Kite Surfer, Navy SEAL and Makeup Artist: Freed in a U.S.-Venezuela Swap, Julie Turkewitz, July 19, 2025. Over 260 people were released from prisons in El Salvador and Venezuela. Now they face the challenge of coming home.

A kite surfer on a South American adventure. A Navy SEAL whose family said he had traveled south for romance. A gay makeup artist who fled north for a better life. A man who sold bicycle parts for meager wages in Venezuela, before leaving for the United States.

All of these men were part of a large-scale prisoner swap conducted Friday between the United States and Venezuela’s governments.

The deal exchanged 10 Americans and U.S. permanent residents seized by the Venezuelan government for 252 Venezuelan immigrants the United States had deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

The men came from very different backgrounds. The American kite surfer, Lucas Hunter, 37, worked in finance in London and had gone on vacation in Colombia, where his family says he was nabbed by the Venezuelan authorities near the Colombia-Venezuela border. The Navy SEAL, Wilbert Castañeda, 37, spent his adult life in the U.S. military and had gone to Venezuela to see a romantic partner, according to his brother.

The Venezuelans, according to many of their families, had traveled to the United States for far different reasons. Many had trekked from South America through a dangerous jungle called the Darién Gap, seeking to escape an economic crisis and a repressive government.

The makeup artist, Andry Hernández Romero, fled persecution for his political opinions and sexual orientation, according to his lawyers. The seller of bicycle parts, Alirio Belloso, 30, left because he could not afford school supplies for his 8-year-old daughter or medicine for his diabetic mother, according to his wife.

But the Venezuelan and American men ended up in what some analysts and family members have described as unexpectedly similar circumstances. Over the last year they were detained and accused of trying to destabilize the country they had entered. Then they were incarcerated without due process or contact with their families.

In both cases, the leaders who detained the men — Presidents Trump and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela — said they were trying to protect their countries from foreign invaders. Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to carry out mass deportations, has invoked a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to detain and deport many of the Venezuelan men. Mr. Maduro, meanwhile, wants the United States to lift oil sanctions, and security analysts say he believed seizing Americans could help him persuade Washington to do that.

Human rights groups have accused both governments of forcible disappearance, in part because they have both refused to release the names of all of the detainees. The United Nations defines the practice, which has a long and dark history in Latin America, as a detention by state agents followed by a refusal “to give information on the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.”

July 18

New York Times, Jeffrey Epstein Fallout: Trump Tells Bondi to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony, Glenn Thrush, Updated July 18, 2025. The attorney general plans to ask a court to release the papers. But even if the request succeeds, it would fall far short of critics’ demands to release all investigative materials.

President Trump announced Thursday night that he was authorizing Attorney General Pam Bondi, left,  to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Ms. Bondi said she would make that request in federal court on Friday.

Mr. Trump, under intense pressure from his right-wing base after a Justice Department review found no evidence to support conspiracy theories about the sex trafficking case, ordered Ms. Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” in a social media post.

The president cited “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein” for his directive, which falls far short of demands from some congressional Republicans to make public all investigative files collected by the department and the F.B.I., not just testimony presented in federal court.

Ms. Bondi, a Trump loyalist accused by far-right influencers of abetting a cover-up, responded immediately with a post on social media that undercut the memo the department and F.B.I. drafted this month declaring Mr. Epstein’s 2019 jailhouse death a suicide and the case closed.

“President Trump — we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts,” she wrote, quickly reversing course at his command. But it was not clear that she would succeed, because the secrecy of grand jury transcripts is highly protected.

Mr. Trump’s request came hours after The Wall Street Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting it said Mr. Trump sent Mr. Epstein in 2003, including a sexually suggestive drawing, an expression of friendship and a reference to secrets they shared. They are shown together in a 1990s photo at a party with cheerleaders hosted at Mar-A-Lago.

The president vehemently denied the report, which The New York Times has not verified. He warned Rupert Murdoch, the founder of News Corp., the paper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.

An angry Mr. Trump, referring to himself in the third person in a long Truth Social post, claimed that Mr. Murdoch had agreed to “take care of” the article but apparently lacked the authority to overrule the decisions of the paper’s top editor, Emma Tucker. He accused The Journal of publishing a “false, malicious and defamatory” report.

“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” he added.

In 2019, Mr. Epstein was found dead by hanging in his cell at a Manhattan federal prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Two years later, a federal jury convicted his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell of five counts, including the most serious charge, sexually trafficking a minor.

Mr. Trump’s stated desire to address the “ridiculous” publicity around the case may not be enough to convince the judge to release the transcripts. Grand jury transcripts are, under federal guidelines, kept secret to protect crime victims and witnesses. They are typically released only under narrowly defined circumstances.

Even if the transcripts are made public, which might involve months of legal wrangling, the evidence represents a fraction of material collected in the investigation. Over the past several months, dozens of F.B.I. agents and prosecutors with the Justice Department’s national security division were diverted from other assignments to review thousands of documents and a vast trove of video evidence, including footage from video cameras in the prison.

At a cabinet meeting last week, Ms Bondi defended her decision not to release most of the material to the public, saying that most of the video evidence was child sexual abuse material.

But that has done little to quell calls for transparency among some Trump supporters and members of Congress from both parties, who are exploring legislative options to pressure the department and the F.B.I. to release more files and videos.

House Republicans, under pressure from Democrats and their own angry constituents, agreed on Thursday night to lay the groundwork for a potential vote calling on the Justice Department to release material from the investigation. The measure is nonbinding and has not been scheduled for a vote, but it reflected a widening gulf between Mr. Trump and Congress on the issue.

 

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) Resistance Dateline: Epstein case: a look back, Wayne Madsen, left, July 16-18, 2025. With the corporate media acting as if the Jeffrey Epstein scandal just broke, we are running our article from January 9, 2018, almost a full year into the first Trump presidency and the year before Epstein died in the custody of Trump’s Justice Department.

Our 2018 article provides some context into Trump’s catatonic frenzy over the so-called Epstein files. Here’s why:

 

January 9-11, 2018 — SPECIAL REPORT. Welcome to Waterbury: the city that holds secrets that could bring down Trump

By Wayne Madsen and Andrew Kreig

A woman who was allegedly sodomized and raped at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1994 is alive and trying to maintain obscurity from alt-right operatives who have identified her and her current residence.

WMR and the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project (JIP) are revealing here for the first time the story of “Maria,” who was identified as such in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by another underage victim of the pair, Katie Johnson (aka, Jane Doe).

The product of a month-long investigation that took us to the site of the girl’s kidnapping in Waterbury, Connecticut, this information comes from confidential sources in multiple states.

They have been pursuing the “Maria” story since the name and 1994 incident was first referenced in Johnson’s law suits. Johnson dropped the suit after she became the victim of physical threats by individuals who claimed to be Trump supporters, according to her account in court records.

The original tip came to WMR, which can report exclusively that a Waterbury girl, “Maria,” was the 12-year old alleged to have been a child rape victim of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The crimes allegedly occurred at a midtown Manhattan mansion then owned by Epstein’s friend Les Wexner, a billionaire retailing mogul.

Maria was kidnapped on March 20, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury. The girl’s kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan, according to our information.

The Waterbury Police Department has refused to provide us with a copy of the original police report on the abduction. It defers to Linda Wihbey, the city’s Corporation Counsel.

On December 12, 2017, Wihbey made her views known in a phone call with Andrew Kreig of JIP, as this reporter listened. She said that she was ready to “welcome us to Waterbury” until she decided that our investigation was “hostile” to her and Waterbury’s interests, which suffered greatly some 17 years ago over a high-profile pedophilia incident involving the city’s Republican mayor. Waterbury’s stance emerged from our request for the 1993 police report on Maria’s abduction, including any relevant witness statements provided to the police…..

July 17

New York Times, Senate Approves Trump’s Bid to Cancel Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds, Catie Edmondson, July 17, 2025. The bill to claw back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending passed over the objections of Republicans who said it abdicated the legislative branch’s power of the purse.

The Senate early on Thursday morning approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, as Republicans bowed to President Trump in an unusual surrender of congressional spending power.

The 51-to-48 vote came over the objections of two Republicans, who argued that their party was ceding Congress’s constitutional control over federal funding. The Republicans who opposed the measure were Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bulk of the funds targeted — about $8 billion — was for foreign assistance programs. The remaining $1.1 billion was for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. The House is expected to give final approval to the package later this week, sending it to Mr. Trump for his signature.

The debate on the measure laid bare a simmering fight over Congress’s power of the purse. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, the White House has moved aggressively and at times unilaterally, primarily through the Department of Government Efficiency, to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending, a power the Constitution gives to the legislative branch.

Top White House officials, led by Russell T. Vought, left, the budget office director, have sought to rein in the size of the federal government, including by freezing funds appropriated by Congress. It is part of a wider campaign to claim far-reaching powers over federal spending for the president.

This time, the administration went through a formal process by submitting what is known as a rescissions bill. Those measures are rare and seldom succeed, given how tightly Congress has historically guarded its power over federal spending. The last such package to be enacted was in 1999, under President Bill Clinton.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.

G.O.P. leaders said the vote was a symbolic victory that underscored the Republican-held Congress’s willingness to cut federal spending they viewed as inappropriate and wasteful.

But the process left even some Republicans who ultimately voted for the bill uncomfortable. A number of senators said the administration had not provided details about what specific programs would affected.

“If we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds — that advisers to the president decide they are going to cut anyway,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring, said, “then there will be a reckoning for that.”

And even as G.O.P. senators agreed to cancel funding at the White House’s request, 10 them signed a rare public letter to Mr. Vought demanding that he reverse a decision to withhold roughly $7 billion in congressionally approved funding to their states meant to bolster educational programs including after-school and summer programs.

“The decision to withhold this funding is contrary to President Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states,” the Republicans wrote.

To win the votes of Republican senators who initially objected, G.O.P. leaders agreed to strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. The White House signaled it would not contest the change.

They also shielded some funding for some specific programs, including aid to Jordan and Egypt; Food for Peace, a program that provides food assistance to other countries; and some global health programs.

Another holdout, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who had previously indicated that he would oppose the request because of the cuts to public broadcasting, decided to support the package. He said he had been assured by top Trump administration officials that they would steer unspent funds “to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption” for next year.

Ahead of the vote, the head of a network of Native radio and television stations privately appealed to Mr. Rounds to oppose the package, saying the deal he had made was unworkable.

“There is currently no clear path for redirecting these funds to tribal broadcasters without significant legislative and administrative changes,” Loris Taylor, the president of Native Public Media, wrote.

The vote incensed Democrats, who argued that Republicans were ceding Congress’s constitutional powers in the name of cutting a minuscule amount of spending, just weeks after passing their marquee tax bill that would add $4 trillion to federal deficits.

They warned that it could have dire consequences for future bipartisan negotiations to fund the government. Lawmakers are currently working to negotiate spending levels ahead of a Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

“We have never, never before seen bipartisan investments slashed through a partisan rescissions package,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. “Do not start now. Not when we are working, at this very moment, in a bipartisan way to pass our spending bills. Bipartisanship doesn’t end with any one line being crossed; it erodes. It breaks down bit by bit, until one day there is nothing left.”

The vote codified a number of executive actions the administration advanced earlier this year to gut foreign aid programs, many first undertaken by DOGE.

 

Fired federal prosecutor Maureen Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, a Trump target, and (in a separate file photo), Ghislaine Maxwell, a Trump friend whom Maureen Comey successfully helped convict sex trafficking charges for Maxwell’s years-long efforts to groom underage and other young women to gratify her partner Jeffrey Epstein and his high-powered friends.

New York Times, Manhattan Prosecutor Who Handled Epstein Cases Is Fired, Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum, Michael S. Schmidt, Santul Nerkar and Maggie Haberman, July 17, 2025 (print ed.). Maurene Comey, who is the daughter of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maurene Comey, a Manhattan federal prosecutor who worked on the criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, was abruptly fired on Wednesday by the Trump administration, according to six people with knowledge of the matter.

Though the reason for Ms. Comey’s firing was not immediately clear, her dismissal immediately raised questions, given her involvement in the Epstein-related cases that have roiled the White House in recent days.

Ms. Comey was informed of her firing in a letter that cited Article II of the Constitution, which describes the powers of the president, according to two of the people.

Ms. Comey is also the daughter of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, an adversary of President Trump who has recently been under scrutiny by federal law enforcement authorities.

A spokesman for the Southern District of New York declined to comment on Ms. Comey’s firing. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including about whether it had asked the Justice Department to fire Ms. Comey. Ms. Comey could not immediately be reached for comment.

For more than a week, Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, have been seeking to quelloutrage from many of the president’s supporters over the administration’s reluctance to release files related to Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking case. (Trump and his then-close friend Epstein are shown at right at a 1990s party Trump hosted for cheerleaders at his Florida mansion Mar-A-Lago.)

 

New York Times, 900 former Justice Dept. lawyers urge the Senate not to confirm Emil Bove as a federal appeals judge, Tim Balk, July 16, 2025. More than 900 former Justice Department lawyers have signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing “deep concern” about the nomination of Emil Bove III, above, a senior Justice Department official, to serve as a federal appeals judge.

In the letter, dated Wednesday, the former department lawyers suggested that Mr. Bove had disgraced the department during his half-year tenure there, and that his confirmation would be “intolerable.”

Mr. Bove has been the face of some of the most controversial moves by the Justice Department in President Trump’s second term, and he has been accused by a whistle-blower of openly considering defying the courts, an allegation he has denied.

The Senate panel was scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to advance Mr. Bove’s nomination to the full Senate. Mr. Trump has nominated Mr. Bove to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

The letter also mentioned Mr. Bove’s decision to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York (the interim Manhattan U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than sign off on Mr. Bove’s directive), and his role in firing prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who is now the top deputy to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, was accused in the whistle-blower complaint last month of having told subordinates that he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Mr. Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign.

When Mr. Bove testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 25, he denied having suggested the department might defy court orders, telling lawmakers, “I am not anybody’s henchman, I am not an enforcer.”

The allegation was made by Erez Reuveni, a fired department lawyer, in a complaint filed to lawmakers and the Justice Department’s inspector general a day before Mr. Bove’s testimony to the panel.

The letter from former Justice Department lawyers noted that Mr. Reuveni had been in the department for about 15 years and had defended Trump administration policies. It described his whistle-blower complaint as credible, saying that it was “supported by contemporaneous communications between department attorneys.”

The former lawyers said that few actions would cause greater damage to the rule of law than a senior official in the executive branch flouting the authority of the judiciary. They argued that Mr. Bove’s leadership had undermined the work of the Justice Department.

“Mr. Bove’s trampling over institutional norms in this case, and in others, sent shock waves through the ranks — cratering morale, triggering mass departures, and eroding the effectiveness of DOJ’s vital work,” the letter said.

The letter was signed by 915 lawyers, according to Justice Connection, a group of former department employees, which organized it. Justice Connection formed this year in response to the Trump administration. Reuters previously reported the existence of the letter.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Gates McGavick, said in a statement that Mr. Bove was “a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again.”

Mr. McGavick added, “He will make an excellent judge — the Department’s loss will be the Third Circuit’s gain.”

The letter on Wednesday was addressed to Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s top Democrat.

NDTV (United Kingdom), Did Donald Trump Really Keep Original FIFA Club World Cup Trophy, And Chelsea Receive Replica? Edited by Srishti Singh Sisodia, July 15, 2025. United States President Donald Trump said that FIFA President Gianni Infantino gave him the original Club World Cup trophy during a White House visit in March, saying he could keep it “forever.”

Trump said that FIFA made a copy and gave it to Chelsea after they won the competition 3-0 against Paris Saint-Germain at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The trophy was unveiled by Infantino for the first time in an event at the Oval Office in March. And since then, the trophy has stayed there.

Also Read | Why Was Donald Trump Booed At FIFA Club World Cup Final? Video Goes Viral

“I said, When are you going to pick up the trophy? [They said] ‘We’re never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We’re making a new one,'” Trump said in an interview with official Club World Cup broadcaster Dazn on Sunday. “And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting, but it is in the Oval [Office] right now.”

Chelsea players were surprised by Trump’s extended presence during the trophy ceremony. Cole Palmer, who scored twice in the game, said, “I knew he was going to be here, but I didn’t know he was going to be on the stand when we lifted the trophy. I was a bit confused.”

Trump’s relationship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino appears to be close, with FIFA recently opening a new office in Trump Tower, New York City. Trump jokingly mentioned he could issue an executive order to change the name of “soccer” to “football” in the United States.

The incident has sparked controversy, with many questioning Trump’s actions and the close ties between him and FIFA. Trump’s presence at the final attracted attention, with fans booing him when he appeared on stadium screens alongside First Lady Melania Trump when they arrived for the match.

New York Times, News Analysis: Even After Bondi Gains Trump’s Backing, Her Survival Remains an Open Question, Glenn Thrush, July 17, 2025. The sustained backlash has exposed the hazards of the attorney general’s focus on courting President Trump, with the assumption that he maintains the total backing of his base.

Chelsea captured the FIFA Club World Cup last weekend and President Trump, who attended the game, managed to obtain one of the gilded Tiffany trophies to display in the Oval Office.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had been invited to the presidential box at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, took home what was, for her, an equally valuable prize: a photograph of Mr. Trump offering her a magnanimous smile and the thumbs-up sign.

The snapshot provided visual proof that Ms. Bondi has, for now, prevailed in her fight with Dan Bongino, a top F.B.I. official who blamed her for bungling the endgame of the investigation into the financier Jeffrey Epstein. Some Trump advisers share that view, but Mr. Bongino badly overplayed his hand and Ms. Bondi parlayed close relationships in the White House into a Truth Social post by Mr. Trump commanding her critics to shut up.

“LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT!” he wrote in all caps.

Yet Ms. Bondi’s long-term victory, and perhaps her survival, is anything but assured. Her decision this month to issue a memo affirming that Mr. Epstein’s jailhouse death in 2019 was a suicide precipitated an intense, unexpected right-wing backlash against Mr. Trump with no precedent, no obvious off-ramp and no mercy shown to an attorney general seen by some Trump die-hards as a symbol of second term littered with broken promises.

“I’m going to be here for as long as the president wants me here, and I believe he’s made that crystal clear,” Ms. Bondi told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday.

“It’s four years — well, three and a half now, right?” added Ms. Bondi. “We’ve got six months in, and it feels like six years.”

The Epstein saga has exposed the hazards of Ms. Bondi’s focus on courting her mercurial political patron, an inside-game strategy rooted in the assumption, now an open question, that Mr. Trump will maintain the total backing of his political base. Mr. Bongino and his boss, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, have also been fierce Trump defenders.

But unlike Ms. Bondi, they cultivated independent bases of support by positioning themselves as outsiders, even if it meant appealing to the conspiracy theorists now turning on the Justice Department and F.B.I.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 16, 2025 [Trump Fears Epstein Case Revelations], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 17, 2025. After years of covering Donald J. Trump, I am used to seeing stories that would have sunk any other president simply fade away as he hammers on to some new unprecedented action that dominates the news. So I am surprised by what appears to be the staying power of the recent Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

That Trump is panicked by the threat of the release of material concerning convicted sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein seems very clear. After the backlash against the Department of Justice’s decision not to release any more information and to reiterate that Epstein died by suicide, Trump tried first to downplay Epstein’s importance and convince people to move on. When that blew up, he posted a long screed on social media last Saturday saying the files were written by Democrats and other supposed enemies of his.

This morning, Trump posted another long message on social media blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for creating the story of the Epstein files. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” he wrote, and then he turned on his own supporters for demanding the administration release the files. “[M]y PAST supporters have bought into this ’bullsh*t,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Tellingly, Trump compared “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax” to “the Russia, Russia, Russia Scam itself, a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide Crooked Hillary Clinton’s big loss in the 2016 Presidential Election.” But of course, the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 election were not a hoax: they were well established both by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—a Republican—and by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ever since his campaign’s ties to Russia first came to light, Trump has hammered on the idea that the investigation was a hoax, not just to distance himself from potentially illegal behavior but also because if he could get his followers to reject the truth and accept his lies about what had happened, they would be psychologically committed to him. Although thirty-four people and three companies were indicted or pleaded guilty in the attack on the 2016 election or its cover-up, Trump loyalists believed Trump was a victim of a “deep state” run by Democrats.

Trump had successfully marketed his own narrative over the truth, and his supporters would continue to believe him rather than those calling him out. From then on, whenever in danger of being called out, he harked back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “the Russian hoax” to rally supporters to him.

Once again, he is reaching back to “Russia, Russia, Russia” to reinforce his ability to control the narrative. But this time it does not appear to be working.

As Jay Kuo outlined in The Status Kuo today, Trump owes his 2024 victory to QAnon followers, who believe a cabal of Democratic lawmakers, rich elites, and Hollywood film stars are sex trafficking—and even eating—children. PRRI, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that researches religion, culture, and politics, estimated that in 2024, about 19% of Americans believed in QAnon. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten noted yesterday that QAnon supporters preferred Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 61 points.

More broadly, Enten noted that Trump’s political career has depended on conspiracy theorists, from his 2016 support from those who believed Trump’s “birther” charges that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, to his 2024 primary support from those who believed President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election legitimately.

Those supporters followed Trump because they believed he was leading a secret charge against those child sex traffickers. Now that his administration says it will not release any more information about Epstein’s files, they appear to feel betrayed.

Trump seems to be in full panic mode over the idea that information from the Epstein investigation might come to light. He and Epstein were friends, frequently photographed together in the years of Epstein’s operation. After turning on his former supporters on social media, Trump continued his attacks in an Oval Office meeting today, reiterating his claims that the Epstein files were written by Democrats.

But then he continued to attack his own supporters, saying that “stupid Republicans,” “foolish Republicans,” and “stupid people” had fallen for the Democrats’ Epstein hoax and were demanding the release of the files.

Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s sidekick in the White House before the two fell out, has been hammering on the issue to his 222 million followers on his social media platform X. “He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote.

Trump’s political success has stemmed in large part from his projection of dominance, and perhaps part of supporters’ willingness to cut ties to him comes from his recent behavior, which projects confusion. On Saturday, at the FIFA Club World Cup trophy ceremony, Trump seemed to miss the signal that he should leave the stage as the winning team celebrated, and had to be maneuvered behind the players.

Yesterday he fell asleep on stage at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. At the same event, Trump told what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “an especially odd imaginary tale,” claiming that his uncle, a MIT professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had taught Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Trump recounted a conversation with his uncle about Kaczynski, but in fact Kaczynski didn’t go to MIT, and Trump’s uncle John died more than a decade before Kaczynski became famous, so Trump and his uncle could not have identified him as the Unabomber. Today, Trump called chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell a “terrible Fed chair” and added: “I was surprised he was appointed.”

Trump was the president who appointed him.

Finally, today Trump’s Department of Justice fired longtime employee Maurene Comey, who had prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. To bring things full circle, Maurene Comey is the daughter of James Comey, the Republican former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom Trump fired for refusing to drop the FBI investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Economic and Political Commentary: The Road to MechaHitler, Paul Krugman, right, July 17, 2025. Reality still has a well-known liberal bias.

Yesterday I wrote about the politicization of monetary policy, and I could have written more, what with Trump telling House Republicans that he was ready to fire Jerome Powell to distract from the Epstein story because he believes that interest rates are much too high. But I need a break, so let’s talk about something very different — namely, is AI fundamentally a communist technology?

That’s not a question I would have thought to ask, but apparently the claim is widespread among right-wing tech bros. JD Vance more or less endorsed this view at a speech he recently gave at a Bitcoin event:

One of the ways you hear this stated is that crypto is fundamentally a conservative or right-leaning technology and artificial intelligence is fundamentally a left-leaning or a communist technology. Now, I think that overstates things a little bit in both directions, but there’s a fundamental element of truth to it.

And now I understand why Elon Musk’s recent modifications to Grok caused his chatbot to begin spewing antisemitic propaganda and eventually declare itself “MechaHitler.” And although I don’t claim any expertise in the technology, I think I understand why he’s having such a hard time fixing the problem.

A word about crypto. As I explained in Sunday’s primer, crypto is basically a giant grift. But there has always been an element of right-wing ideology. As I’ve written in the past, arguments for Bitcoin in particular are a combination of technobabble and libertarian derp.

But AI as communist? For what it’s worth, I’m not fully sold on AI’s potential. As far as I can tell, large language models — which we are, misleadingly, calling artificial intelligence — are still, essentially, a souped-up version of autocorrect. On the other hand, there are a lot of jobs, some of them highly paid, that could also be described as souped-up autocorrect, so AI may have large economic impacts.

But how does that make AI communist?

You have to start with the fact that U.S. conservatives now routinely describe anyone holding views to their left as a Marxist or communist. This goes along with the general principle that every accusation from that side of the political spectrum is really a confession. Democrats have indeed moved a bit to the left on economic issues in recent years. But they’re hardly extremists. They’re basically a lot like a European Social Democratic party.

Republicans, however, are extremists. The whole party has raced to the right into what amounts to full-on fascism.

If that last statement has you reaching for the smelling salts, ask yourself, what more evidence do you need? Do we have to wait until a Republican administration creates a masked secret police force that snatches people off the streets and starts building concentration camps? Wait, that has already happened.

So in modern Republican rhetoric, anything to the left of MAGA ideology is communist extremism. And here’s the thing: The answers you get from AI generally don’t adhere to the right-wing party line.

For example, two of the central planks of modern right-wing ideology are climate change denial and voodoo economics. So I asked Google “Is climate change real?” and its automatic AI summary said this:

Yes, climate change is real. It refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, primarily driven by human activities like burning fossil fuels and deforestation. The scientific consensus overwhelmingly agrees that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by human activities, specifically the release of greenhouse gases.

Then I asked “Do tax cuts pay for themselves?” The summary response was a bit roundabout, but eventually got to this:

[T]he weight of evidence suggests that tax cuts rarely, if ever, fully pay for themselves through economic growth. While they can generate some economic activity and partially offset the revenue loss, the claim of complete self-financing is generally not supported by economic theory or evidence.

Both answers are anathema to the modern G.O.P. So why is AI giving what right-wingers consider left-wing, even communist answers to these questions?

It all goes back to Stephen Colbert’s dictum, almost 20 years ago, that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” What he meant, of course, was that to be a conservative in good standing, you have to deny reality, which was true even then and is far more true now.

Now, LLMs don’t reveal reality. On issues like climate or economic policy, however, they usually do a pretty good job of summarizing expert, informed views about reality. Since Republicans have staked out positions on these issues that run completely counter to informed views, they consider the answers AI gives on such issues left-wing.

Hence the Musk/MechaHitler disaster. Musk tried to nudge Grok into being less “politically correct,” but what Musk considers political correctness is often what the rest of us consider just a reasonable description of reality. The only way to move Grok right was, in effect, to get it to buy into conspiracy theories, many of them, as always, involving a hefty dose of antisemitism.

So, going back to my starting point, will there really be an internal war within MAGA between crypto boosters and AI enthusiasts? I have no idea. But MAGA really does have a problem with AI, because LLMs too often give answers the movement doesn’t want to hear. And there’s no good fix for this problem, because the fault lies not in the models but in the movement. As far as we can tell, there isn’t any way to make an AI MAGA-friendly without also making it vile and insane.

July 16

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President Says Epstein Critics Are Being Used by Democrats, Staff Reports, July 16, 2025.

Epstein investigation: President Trump took aim at supporters who have criticized his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. In a blistering social media post, he called the outcry over the Justice Department’s decision not to release additional files on Mr. Epstein a Democrat-led “scam.” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Republican critic of Mr. Trump, is trying to force a House vote on whether the administration should release the files.

Federal Reserve chair: Mr. Trump confirmed that he asked House Republicans about firing Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman he has targeted with withering criticism. He said he had no intention of firing Mr. Powell immediately but said he would not rule out doing so. Read more ›

Spending bill: The Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that would claw back $9 billion already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. Read more ›

Disaster Relief: A coalition of 20 states sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over its decision to shut down a multibillion-dollar grant program aimed at protecting communities from floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, accuses the Federal Emergency Management Agency of unlawfully terminating the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, without approval from Congress. The filing came two days after heavy rains inundated parts of New York and New Jersey and nearly two weeks after catastrophic floods hit Central Texas.

 

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as “Alligator Auschwitz.”

New York Times, The Chaotic Early Days Inside Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center, Patricia Mazzei and Hamed Aleaziz, July 16, 2025. Several immigrant detainees described high tension and anxiety at the remote, hastily constructed facility over a lack of information, recreation and access to medication.

The men at the new immigrant deterniont center in the Florida Everglades have no pencils, books or television. The lights stay on through the night. When it rains, which is nearly every day during summer, the tents housing detainees spring leaks and bugs crawl in.

In phone interviews, several detainees described infrequent showers, meals that amounted to little more than snacks, other detainees falling ill with flulike symptoms and sleep deprivation. They described unrest over a lack of information, recreation and access to medication.

“It’s a tinderbox,” said Rick Herrera, one of the detainees, who called a reporter repeatedly over five days, offering a rare window into the chaotic early weeks of what experts say is the nation’s only state-run facility for federal immigration detainees.

Florida raced to open the center — officially naming it “Alligator Alcatraz” to play up its remote, swampy location — on July 3, eager to help President Trump’s immigration crackdown by providing more detention capacity. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said on Sunday that other states want to follow Florida’s lead.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, has positioned his state as particularly aggressive on immigration enforcement, deputizing state and local law enforcement to act as a “force multiplier” for federal authorities.

But opening the detention center in the Everglades was a move with little precedent that relied on emergency state powers. Until recently, the federal government has been responsible for housing immigration detainees, and it has largely detained people who recently entered the country illegally, or who have criminal convictions or outstanding deportation orders. But immigration enforcement has changed substantially under Mr. Trump, sweeping up people who were not the focus before.

The Everglades facility serves as part of the local-federal immigration cooperation process known as 287(g). Under that system, local officials can arrest and detain migrants on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is unclear, however, if and when detainees at the Everglades center would be transferred to ICE custody before being deported.

Most detainees at the center do not have criminal convictions, according to a government official with knowledge of the data who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it. At least some were transfers from local jails who had been taken into custody after getting pulled over for traffic violations; others had been transferred there from ICE custody.

Another government official who requested anonymity for the same reason said that in all, 60 percent of the center’s detainees either have criminal convictions or criminal charges pending against them.

 

New York Times, H.H.S. finalizes thousands of layoffs after the Supreme Court’s decision, Christina Jewett and Benjamin Mueller, July 16, 2025 (print ed.). The Department of Health and Human Services finalized the layoffs of thousands of employees after a Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with mass firings across the government.

Employees received notice of their termination late Monday, marking a turning point in the reshaping of the nation’s health care work force. Those let go included people who coordinated travel for overseas drug facility inspectors, communications staff members, public records officials and employees who oversaw contracts related to medical research.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, announced 10,000 layoffs late in March, cutting workers across the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal health agencies. Some workers who received the initial layoff notices on April 1 found out only when their badge to enter a building did not work.

Still, many of them remained on the federal payroll until Monday at 5 p.m., when a message went out citing last week’s Supreme Court decision that allowed Trump officials to significantly slash the size of the federal payroll even as court challenges to the administration’s plans play out.

“Thank you for your service to the American people,” the email said.

While many of the workers were described by the Trump administration as redundant or duplicative, critics have compared the cuts to leaving only doctors — and no support staff — to operate a hospital.

The result is a hobbled work force, said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a former Biden administration health official.

“What I have seen is some of the very best people, people who have alternatives, who have choices, have decided they just don’t want to stay in this limbo land,” Dr. Jha said. He added that those who survive the layoffs may look elsewhere, because “they don’t want to be in an organization that’s under such upheaval.”

In March, Mr. Kennedy announced a “dramatic restructuring” of the federal health work force, with a total of 20,000 jobs pared from the health department through a February round of layoffs, early retirements and buyouts. The plan also called for paring the department’s 28 divisions to 15.

Though Mr. Kennedy cited the department’s $1.8 trillion budget at the time, experts on federal spending said less than 1 percent of that funding went to payroll, with the vast majority of the money covering medications, and hospital and nursing home bills for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

 

New York Times, News Analysis: Supreme Court Keeps Ruling in Trump’s Favor, but Doesn’t Say Why, Adam Liptak, July 16, 2025. In a series of terse, unsigned orders, the court has often been giving the green light to President Trump’s agenda without a murmur of explanation.

In clearing the way for President Trump’s efforts to transform American government, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that often lacked a fundamental characteristic of most judicial work: an explanation of the court’s rationale.

On Monday, for instance, in letting Mr. Trump dismantle the Education Department, the majority’s unsigned order was a single four-sentence paragraph entirely devoted to the procedural mechanics of pausing a lower court’s ruling.

What the order did not include was any explanation of why the court had ruled as it did. It was an exercise of power, not reason.

The silence was even more striking in the face of a 19-page dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

The question of whether the nation’s highest court owes the public an explanation for its actions has grown along with the rise of the “emergency docket,” which uses truncated procedures to produce terse provisional orders meant to remain in effect only while the courts consider the lawfulness of the challenged actions. In practice, the orders often effectively resolve the case.

The court has allowed the administration to fire tens of thousands of government workers, discharge transgender troops, end protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants from war-torn countries and fundamentally shift power from Congress to the president — often with scant or no explanation of how it arrived at those results.

In the last 10 weeks alone, the court has granted emergency relief to the Trump administration without explanation seven times, according to a tally by Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown and the author of a book about the court’s emergency work called “The Shadow Docket.” (In that time, the court issued roughly the same number of emergency orders in which the majority gave at least a bit of explanation.)

Monday’s ruling, Professor Vladeck wrote this week in his newsletter, was the latest “completely unexplained” ruling “that is going to have massive real-world effects long before the justices ever confront whether what the government is doing is actually lawful.”

All of this is in stark contrast with cases on the court’s merits docket, which unfold over about a year and include two rounds of briefs, oral arguments, painstaking deliberations and the exchange of draft opinions. The end result is often a comprehensive set of opinions that can be as long as a short novel.

New York Times, Senate Advances Trump Clawback of Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds, Catie Edmondson, Updated July 16, 2025. The vote to take up legislation to rescind $9 billion in congressionally approved funds suggested that Republicans would bow to the president’s wishes in the simmering fight over spending powers.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to take up legislation to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, signaling that the Republican-led Congress is poised to acquiesce to President Trump in a simmering battle with the White House over spending powers.

The 51-to-50 vote came after Republican leaders agreed to a handful of concessions to win the votes of holdouts who were uneasy with the proposed rescissions. G.O.P. leaders said on Tuesday they would strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, a move that the White House signaled it would not contest.

Even then, some Republican senators refused to support a move that they said would relinquish their constitutional power over federal spending, forcing their leaders to summon Vice President JD Vance to the Capitol to break a tie and ram the legislation through a pair of procedural votes.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Epstein, Musk, Putin, Rising Inflation, Ongoing Tariff Fiasco, Simon Rosenberg, right, July 16, 2025. The World Just Isn’t Bending The Knee To Trump.

I wake today having those two thoughts in my head at the same time that we often talk about here: 1) Trump and his corrupt enablers at the Supreme Court keep breaking things that will be difficult if not impossible to repair and we must continue to act with great urgency; and 2) The “Trump as revered strongman” project is struggling way more than they anticipated, and the American people, leaders around the world and reality itself are just not bending the knee as he — delusionally, pathetically, illiberally — expected.

So there is a weakness, a struggle, a nagging sense that this thing ain’t working at the core of Trumpism right now that we need to continue to exploit.

I spend a lot of time trying to game out what happens with Trumpism through the end of this year. And it is hard to see where it goes.

The public has rejected his immigration escalation, and as I wrote to you yesterday it is on its face a ridiculous and unsustainable project. Despite his bluster the economy isn’t roaring as they imagined, and the public is really unhappy with rising prices and his betrayal of his core campaign promise to make things better. His reckless gutting of the US government helped create the tragedy in Texas last week. No one bought whatever the f—k the Iran bombing was. He has not brought peace to Gaza, the Middle East, Ukraine. His trade policy — 90 deals in 90 days – is already one of the great policy fiascos in American history.

In what has become an enormous problem for Trump Elon, right, keeps attacking and undermining him in ways that is being seen and felt in MAGA world. They keep losing in the lower courts, daily, consequentially. The big, ugly bill is historically unpopular, is already doing material harm to the country and Republicans are already trying to find ways to undo parts of it to lessen the political fallout.

And then came Epstein, and Trump now looks and sounds unsteady, weak and just incredibly full of shit; and it risks bringing back what is without question the ugliest part of Trump – his decades of abuse of women, his infidelities, his sex with porn stars, his grabbing them by the …….All of it.

Watch this video clip from yesterday. It’s incoherent gibberish. Russia, Russia, Russia. The pressure is getting to him.

Wired Magazine published an incredible story last night that the “raw” video footage of Jeffrey Epstein in his cell at the time of his death assembled by the Justice Department under Trump in his first term and released by the Justice Department in his second had 3 minutes edited out. Yes, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, charged and died while Trump was President in 2019. From Wired (paywall, sorry):

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “full raw” surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.

WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.

Late yesterday Speaker Mike Johnson, right, broke from Trump and called for the Epstein files to be released. Ruh-roh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein seem to have spotted something at a party Trump held for cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago in the 1990s (NBC). 

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Legal Commentary: Trump’s growing Epstein crisis, Marc Elias, right, July 16, 2025. This much is clear: Donald Trump is in a full-scale panic. What started Saturday night with a long, rambling social media post has now turned into a full-blown crisis for him, his administration and the GOP. His effort to silence calls for the Department of Justice to release the Epstein Files has only served to broaden and amplify the voices insisting on transparency.

Since then, he has tried various strategies to contain the damage: deny the files exist, suggest Epstein is irrelevant and even claim the files are forgeries. But within the last 24 hours, things have quickly escalated as Trump has gone into a full meltdown.

As of this morning, Trump is attacking his own base, lashing out at Republicans, and complaining about Democrats. His latest rant, posted only hours ago on Truth Social, attacks Republicans and — what he now calls — his “PAST supporters” who have abandoned him over the newly branded “the Epstein Hoax:”

“…these scams and hoaxes are all Democrats are good at – It’s all they have – they’re no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates… all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jefferey Epstein Hoax.”

Trump’s efforts to talk his way out of this dilemma have backfired. His rambling style of speaking — moving from one incomplete sentence to an entirely different unrelated topic — often serves him well by distracting from the issue at hand. In this circumstance, however, it seems evasive and calculated, rather than carefree and free-flowing.

Trump’s message has increasingly boiled down to two points:

Epstein is a minor figure that people should not care about. The Epstein Files are forgeries written by his political enemies, aimed at smearing him.

On the first point, as he stood on an airport tarmac, Trump’s dismissal of his supporters’ interest in Epstein was awkward and, well, weird: “He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life.” On the second, Trump claimed that “these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden” administration.

This last point is the key and the one he seems most settled on today.

It seems increasingly clear that Trump believes he is named in the files in some unflattering way and that their release is likely or inevitable. To hedge against that, he is trying to decrease the pressure on their release — by downgrading Epstein as a figure and shaming his own supporters who continue to promote their importance while at the same time discrediting the content of the files altogether as the product of Democrats.

Trump’s biggest problem? His claim that the files are the product of his political enemies is easily disproven.

First, there is the timing — Epstein was prosecuted, and thus the bulk of the files were created and collected under Trump’s first administration — not Obama’s and certainly not Biden’s.

Second, scores of career prosecutors and FBI agents have no doubt been involved in the collection and compilation of the files. They will know the truth and can easily dispute any claim of fabrication.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, can no doubt corroborate and expand on the contents of the files if she is ever called to testify publicly on the matter.

There are also increasing signs that Trump’s efforts to save himself are exposing his movement and his party to claims of lying, cover-up and hypocrisy. While many on the right — like Fox News — are toning down their coverage of the issue, others are not.

The biggest losers in this entire mess are Congressional Republicans. They are on record as being in on the Epstein conspiracy for years. Previously, they promised they would fight for the files to be released. Their voters — who they will face in 2026 — believe the files exist and must be made public.

Yet, the GOP voted yesterday in near unison to keep the Epstein Files a secret. And their so-called leader, Speaker Mike Johnson, has been transformed from a spineless coward into someone who simply spews gibberish: “I’m for transparency. We’re intellectually consistent in this… It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

Nothing Johnson said is true:

He is blocking transparency. The GOP is completely inconsistent on the release of the files. There is nothing delicate about this, other than potential embarrassment for Trump. Johnson and his conference are literally preventing the files from being released to let the “people decide.”

In contrast to Trump and the Republicans, Democrats are increasingly willing to raise the subject of the Epstein Files and seek their release. This is not just an 80/20 issue for Democrats (actually 79/4 according to a recent poll), but it also works effectively to galvanize the Party and send the other into disarray.

The fight over Epstein is energizing the Democratic coalition and it has been embraced across all factions of the Party. Meanwhile, it deeply splits Republicans in a way that harms their electoral prospects while sidelining Trump as someone who can fix these divisions — since he is the cause of them.

None of this is to say this issue will endure until 2026 — or even until next month. However, unless and until Trump can answer some basic questions, he will struggle to change this narrative. While he remains on defense, other Republicans, who are on the ballot next year, will suffer.

Faced with this reality, Trump will almost certainly seek to divert attention away from the Epstein Files to some other topic. The most obvious move is for him to escalate the weaponization of the DOJ against his political opponents, including appointing a new special prosecutor.

Will that work? It depends on two factors. First, does his base — which has been committed to this Epstein narrative for years — pivot with him or see it as another clumsy effort to distract from the current scandal? Second, does the legacy media treat that weaponization as a legitimate use of government power or an abuse in furtherance of a cover-up?

This is where things stand as of today. More later this week.

 

The Bulwark, The Triad: Political Opinion: How to Talk to Your MAGA Friends About Jeffrey Epstein, Jonathan V. Last, July 16, 2025.

1. The List

Some of the Trump supporters in your life may have questions about the Jeffrey Epstein situation. You want to be there for them; to provide support in these trying times. Here’s how.

#1 Validate their concerns: This is a conspiracy theory you can believe in.

The other day I made the case for the Epstein coverup based purely on statements made by Trump administration figures who were in positions to know the real story.

But there are other reasons to believe. Starting with this: Why were Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell the only people charged?

In big, sprawling criminal cases—especially one involving money—there’s always a list of alleged co-conspirators. Take Bernie Madoff.

Madoff claimed that he was solely responsible for running his $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme. But that wasn’t credible. The sheer logistics involved in shoveling around so much money required the participation of others. And boy, howdy, you should look at the list of alleged co-conspirators from his case.

Some of these co-conspirators were never prosecuted. Some were the subjects of civil actions. Some agreed to forfeiture without admitting guilt. Some committed suicide. Some struck plea deals with prosecutors. Some went to jail. At least seven people aside from Madoff himself were convicted of crimes.

These were people like Madoff’s corporate controller, who signed the company’s checks, and staff supervisors who filled out documents for Madoff. Running a financial conspiracy requires a lot of paperwork and investigators usually go after everyone who ever put ink on anything having to do the business.

Yet Epstein and Maxwell ran a sex trafficking ring on a private island backed by money from a highly dubious career in “banking” without anyone else signing documents, anywhere?

C’mon, man.

#2 There are good people in MAGA working to find the truth. You aren’t a traitor for asking questions.

• • Dan Bongino is the deputy director of the FBI. Last Friday he was so distraught by Pam Bondi’s coverup that he took the day off from work.
  • Benny Johnson is all over this story.
  • MAGA-loving pod bros think it all stinks to high heaven.
  • On Thursday, Tucker will be interviewing “America’s most honest historian,” Darryl Cooper, about the real history of the Epstein case.

Point is: Questioning the “official” story doesn’t make you a soy-boi socialist.

#3 If you can’t believe in the Epstein case, then you have to give up all your other conspiracies, too. MAGA has a list of conspiracies that have been formed against it:

• • QAnon
  • Russia Russia Russia Hoax
  • The stolen 2020 election
  • The Biden crime family
  • Epstein as a story created by Democrats
  • And yet . . . where are the arrests?

If the 2020 election was stolen, then why hasn’t Trump’s FBI rolled up the people who did the stealing? Where is the investigation of the Biden crime family? Why aren’t the people who created the Russia hoax in jail? Where are the frazzledrip videos?

Hell: If Barrack Hussein Obama created the Jeffrey Epstein documents, as Trump now says, then why isn’t the FBI going after him right now?

In short: If you’re willing to accept that the Epstein files are all a hoax, then you have to admit that it was all bullshit and that none of the conspiracies you believed were true.

Which is tantamount to admitting that the establishment was right about everything.

The Bulwark, Morning Shots Political Opinion: Political Opinion: Sorry Trump, You Can’t Wish the Epstein Story Away, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, July 16, 2025.

JD Vance has been mostly out of the news lately, only popping up here and there to offer a fixed-grin endorsement of Trump’s foreign policy moves he secretly hates, like the pivot toward offering more support to Ukraine.

Today, though, he’ll be heading to northeastern Pennsylvania to perform one of his chief roles: that of Trump’s Rust Belt whisperer. Politico notes he’s going to pitch the benefits of Trump’s new Big Beautiful Bill, which Democrats plan to make a centerpiece of their attacks ahead of next year’s midterms.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Epstein Case: A Guide for the Perplexed, William Kristol, right, July 16, 2025. The president of the United States is perplexed.

“He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. . . . I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. . . . I don’t understand why it keeps going,” Donald Trump told reporters late yesterday afternoon.

At Morning Shots, we exist to serve—so let me take a shot at briefly explaining to our perplexed president why the Epstein case is interesting.

Trump dismisses the Epstein case as old news: “He’s dead for a long time.”Well, Jeffrey Epstein hasn’t been dead for that long a time. He died less than six years ago, during the first Trump administration, in a federal prison, and not of natural causes.The cause of death was officially determined to be suicide.

But Trump himself had his doubts. In 2020, he told reporter Jonathan Swan (then at Axios) that Epstein “was either killed or committed suicide in jail. . . . And people are still trying to figure out: How did it happen? Was it suicide? Was he killed?”

That’s an interesting question.

The Trump administration claimed to have resolved the question in its terse statement ten days ago, which supported its finding of suicide. It even released what it described as the “full raw” surveillance video from the only working camera near Epstein’s cell.

But as Wired reported yesterday, “Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut” from that video, raising “new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.”In other words, the tape was doctored.

That’s kind of interesting, too.

Trump is dismissive of Epstein’s importance: “He was never a big factor in terms of life.”

Well, I’m not so sure about that. Jeffrey Epstein ran a massive criminal conspiracy for many years that the federal government says victimized more than 1,000 girls. This enterprise involved very prominent figures, ranging from American billionaires to British royals. How he got away with that for so long, who helped him, who else participated in his crimes, how he was able to get the sweetheart deal he got from the George W. Bush Justice Department—all of those are interesting questions.

Furthermore, among Epstein’s friends was one Donald J. Trump, who subsequently became president of the United States. Trump said of Epstein in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Especially in light of that last remark, but also in light of the fact that Trump and Epstein certainly seem to have enjoyed each other’s company, it’s worth asking just what President Trump knew of Epstein’s criminal activities, and how close his own active social life intersected with Epstein’s.

All of that is kind of interesting.

President Trump is claiming that the Epstein case files “were made up by” James Comey, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. These are the same files that were supposedly meticulously reviewed this year by his own Justice Department and FBI, and whose authenticity they found no reason to question. One would certainly want to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi or FBI Director Kash Patel whether they agree with this novel assertion by the president. Is there evidence for such a fraud? And of course, if fraud on the scale alleged by the president happened, then Congress surely needs to hold hearings to look into it.

These are just a few of the reasons why the Jeffrey Epstein case “would be of interest to anybody” and “why it keeps going.”

Indeed, the case is of interest to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. He’s a Trump loyalist who said just this week of President Trump that “There is no doubt that he was miraculously saved by God in order to lead our great nation again.” But Johnson said yesterday that he is dissatisfied with what the administration has done, and wants it “to put everything out there.”

Meidas Touch Podcast, Ghislaine DROPS BOMBSHELL as Trump BURIES IT ALL, Ben Meiselas, July 16, 2025. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest move after Trump continues the cover up of his dark past.

July 15

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary, House Republicans Block Release of Epstein Files, Troy Matthews, July 15, 2025. Democrats pushed an amendment to make the files available to the public but were rejected

House Republicans on the Rules Committee voted to block the public release of the Jeffery Epstein files Monday evening. The vote was on an amendment filed by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to the GENIUS Act, which would have required that the Department of Justice make all files related to Epstein’s case available on a publicly accessible website within 30 days.

The vote was 5-7, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) joining with all Democrats to vote for the amendment. “The public’s been asking for it,” Norman said. “I think there are files. All of a sudden not to have files is a little strange, We’ll see how it plays out…I think the president will do the right thing.”

“I want to know what the hell is in these files,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). “This is about trust. Republicans said, ‘Trust us. Vote for us and we will release these files.’ Well here we are, they’re backtracking.”

The vote comes amidst a right-wing revolt against the Trump administration following the fallout from a DOJ memo that stated the infamous Epstein “client list” does not exist and that Epstein committed suicide in jail, despite Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi telling reporters in February that the list was sitting on her desk.

On Monday it was reported by the Daily Mail that Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell is willing to testify to Congress about her knowledge of the case, but no one in the Republican majority has called her to testify, which seems strange for a party that campaigned on making the Epstein list public for so long.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges and is to date the only person charged in the Epstein pedophilia ring.

July 14

New York Times, News Analysis: Republicans in Congress Shift to Backing Ukraine, Matching Trump’s Reversal, Robert Jimison, July 16, 2025 (print ed.). After years pressing to end U.S. aid to Ukraine, many Republicans have abandoned that position now that President Trump is supporting the country against Russian aggression.

Less than two years ago, House Republicans were so livid about the idea of continuing to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression that they deposed their own speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in part to protest what they said was a “secret side deal” he had made to do so.

Months later, Speaker Mike Johnson risked his own job to push through a funding package for Ukraine, with the majority of his members voting “no.”

But now, more than three years into the war, many Republicans in Congress who have railed consistently against sending more money and weapons to Ukraine and clamored to end American involvement in the war are rushing to shift their stance, following the lead of President Trump.

It is the latest evidence that Mr. Trump, whose “America First” foreign policy approach has upended decades of Republican orthodoxy favoring muscular U.S. intervention in conflicts around the world, holds an iron grip on his party. And now that the president, who once disdained American aid to Ukraine, has pivoted and announced a new plan to speed weapons to the war-torn country, some Republicans are contorting themselves to stay aligned with him.

That has involved relative silence from some previously vocal opponents of supporting Ukraine and striking public reversals from some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, many of whom spent considerable time on Capitol Hill arguing against a policy they once called reckless but now argue is brilliant diplomacy from a master strategist.

Representative Derrick Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, last spring savaged the Biden administration for failing to have a plan for further aid to Ukraine, proclaiming, “We must stop entering into endless wars.” On Monday, he endorsed Mr. Trump’s announcement of more help.

New York Times, As Iran Deports a Million Afghans, ‘Where Do We Even Go?’  Elian Peltier, Farnaz Fassihi and Yaqoob Akbary, Visuals by Jim Huylebroek, July 16, 2025. Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.

At the sand-swept border between Iran and Afghanistan, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day — shocked and fearful Afghans who have been expelled from Iran with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.

More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on undocumented refugees, according to the United Nations’ Refugees agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crisis of the past decade.

Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.

New York Times, Trump Official Accused PEPFAR of Funding Abortions in Russia. It Wasn’t True, Apoorva Mandavilli,  July 16, 2025 (print ed.). PEPFAR, the AIDS relief program, hasn’t operated in Russia since 2012 and does not fund abortions.

On June 25, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a Senate committee that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, had spent $9.3 million “to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis.”

His statements had immediate consequences for the committee’s vote and had the potential to create long-term damage to PEPFAR, a program that has long had bipartisan support and has been estimated to have saved 26 million lives since President George W. Bush started it in 2003.

Mr. Vought was at the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend a package of cuts proposed by the Trump administration to this year’s spending on global health programs and public broadcasting. If the Senate votes to approve the package, global health programs will lose $900 million, including $400 million from PEPFAR for the current fiscal year. PEPFAR and other programs also face huge cuts, even terminations, for the coming fiscal year. The full Senate is expected to vote on the “rescissions bill” by Thursday.

At the hearing, Mr. Vought listed funding of abortions in Russia as evidence of PEPFAR’s waste of government funds. The example prompted Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a longtime supporter of PEPFAR, to say he would vote in favor of rescinding funds from the program.

“You know why I’m going to vote for it? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important, but it’s not beyond scrutiny,” Mr. Graham said. “There is a consequence to this crap.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ethiopia and Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

PEPFAR has not operated in Russia since 2012, when President Vladimir Putin kicked the United States Agency for International Development out of the country. U.S. law prohibits the use of any federal funds to pay for abortions. Funding abortions through PEPFAR would imply not just waste, but serious crimes or negligence, or both.

“If they have reason to believe that’s true, they should put the information forward,” said Dr. Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR under Mr. Bush, adding that he was “shocked” by the allegation.

Other former PEPFAR leaders and staff members were incensed. “It’s so irresponsible and so demeaning for them to think that they could get away with a strategy that includes open, overt, aggressive, accelerated lying,” said Dr. Eric Goosby, who led PEPFAR under President Barack Obama.

 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 15, 2025 [Supreme Court Enables Presidential Override of Congress], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 16, 2025. Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court’s order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while the issue is in the courts.

The majority thus throws the weight of the Supreme Court behind the ability of the Trump administration to get rid of departments established by Congress—a power the Supreme Court denied when President Richard M. Nixon tried it in 1973.

This is a major expansion of presidential power, permitting the president to disregard laws Congress has passed, despite the Constitution’s clear assignment of lawmaking power to Congress alone.

President Donald J. Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education because he claims it pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” Running for office, he promised to “return” education to the states. In fact, the Education Department has never set curriculum; it disburses funds for high-poverty schools and educating students with disabilities. It’s also in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding.

Trump’s secretary of education, professional wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, right, supports Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. In March the department announced it would lay off 1,378 employees—about half the department. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued to stop the layoffs, and Massachusetts federal judge Myong Joun ordered the department to reinstate the fired workers. The Supreme Court has now put that order on hold, permitting the layoffs to go forward.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan concurred in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, noting that Trump has claimed power to destroy the congressionally established department “by executive fiat” and chastising the right-wing majority for enabling him. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” they say.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Economic and Politial Commentary: Hawks, Doves and Lapdogs, Paul Krugman, right, July 16, 2025. The next Fed chair will be an obedient partisan.

Yesterday’s CPI report looked fairly tame on the surface, but if you look at the details it showed clear signs that Trump’s tariffs are starting to drive up prices. And private surveys suggest that there’s a lot more inflation in the pipeline. For example, look at S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing, which shows the percentage of firms reporting higher prices.

Why aren’t we seeing the full effects of the tariffs in official statistics? For the record, I don’t believe Trump officials are cooking the books — yet.

That’s not to say that they won’t at some point, and there’s a good chance that they will. But so far what we’re probably seeing is a combination of ordinary lags and the temporary effects of the TACO (Trump always chickens out) narrative. Buyers get pissed off at sellers when prices rise, so sellers who don’t want to lose market share have an incentive to hold prices down despite higher costs if they think the Trump tariffs will come back down in a few weeks.

I, however, am a TACO skeptic. I think Trump really is a Tariff Man who will keep us at Smoot-Hawley-level tariffs indefinitely, and businesses will eventually realize that and raise prices accordingly.

And then what? Clearly, we shouldn’t expect Trump to admit that his tariffs are raising prices, or even to admit that prices are rising. What we can expect is that he will keep putting pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates. I don’t think he’ll manage to push Jerome Powell out before next May, but as I wrote last week, whoever he picks after that will do his bidding.

Bloomberg has an interesting article about Kevin Warsh, one likely choice — although a newer article suggests that Kevin Hassett, whom nobody suspects of having any independent principles, may be in first place. The article expresses puzzlement over Warsh’s support for rate cuts now, despite above-target inflation, when he was a big advocate of higher rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. How did such a monetary hawk suddenly become a monetary dove? But one of the people the article quotes hits the nail on the head:

“He was the one for years complaining about inflation when it didn’t exist, and has kind of changed his tune,” said Stephen Myrow, who runs Beacon Policy Advisers and crossed paths with Warsh while working in the Bush administration.

“People will like that he has the resume and can play the part, but he clearly doesn’t have any core convictions,” Myrow said.

Indeed. Back in 2010 I went through one of Warsh’s hard-money speeches, and found it completely incoherent.

If Warsh does get the nod, many on Wall Street will probably be reassured, believing that he’s a serious person. But he isn’t and never was. The Fed will soon be as politicized as everything else in the federal government.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: The secret to Baltimore’s extraordinary year, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, July 16, 2025. The secret to Baltimore’s extraordinary year.

This April, Baltimore saw five homicides. That is the fewest of any month since 1970, when the city began tracking monthly homicide numbers. In the first six months of the year, homicides were down 22% compared to 2024, and non-fatal shootings were down 19%.

This is the latest in a string of historic declines in violent crime. In 2024, homicides dropped 23% from 2023 numbers, and non-fatal shootings dropped 34%. In 2023, the city also saw record-breaking decreases.

What has made Baltimore — which President Trump and other conservatives deride as a “filthy” Democrat-controlled “slum” — so successful in making its streets safer?

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who was first elected in 2020, has brought the city’s homicide rate down by treating violent crime as a public health crisis. That means treating violent crime as a symptom of multiple factors, including racism, poverty, and past violence. Addressing violent crime as a public health issue involves going beyond arresting people after violence is committed and taking proactive and preventative measures.

July 15

 

New York Times, Dismissals at Justice Dept. Would Bypass Civil Service and Whistle-Blower Laws, Devlin Barrett, July 15, 2025. In court filings and dismissal letters, the Justice Department’s political leadership claims sweeping authority to fire career law enforcement officials without cause.

The Justice Department is accelerating its efforts to undo decades of civil service protections intended to insulate the work of law enforcement officials from political interference, according to current and former officials, ramping up a wave of firings in recent days.

A new batch of more than 20 career employees at the department and its component agencies were fired on Friday, including the attorney general’s own ethics adviser, Joseph W. Tirrell. Others who were dismissed included a handful of senior officials at the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as prosecutors and support staff who once worked for Jack Smith when he was a special counsel prosecuting Donald J. Trump.

On the surface, the various groups have little in common. Justice Department veterans, however, see an overarching pattern: a quickening effort by the Trump administration to ignore and eventually demolish longstanding civil service legal precedents meant to keep politics out of law enforcement work, and to give more leeway to the president’s loyalists.

he latest round of dismissals appears to have picked up steam after the Supreme Court last week allowed, for the time being, the administration to go forward with mass layoffs of federal workers. The decision gave the president more legal leeway to fire people en masse, at least for now.

Posting on a networking site on Monday, Mr. Tirrell asserted that he had been fired without cause and shared his termination notice from Attorney General Pam Bondi. The letter misspelled his name and did not offer a specific reason for his dismissal, saying only that the Constitution authorized it.

Employment law experts say such letters are at odds with decades of case law, as well as the decisions of an obscure part of the federal government called the Merit Service Protection Board. Taken together, both have stood for the principle that career civil servants can be fired only for cause.

New York Times, Trump Official Accused PEPFAR of Funding Abortions in Russia. It Wasn’t True, Apoorva Mandavilli, July 15, 2025. PEPFAR, the AIDS relief program, hasn’t operated in Russia since 2012 and does not fund abortions.

On June 25, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a Senate committee that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, had spent $9.3 million “to advise Russian doctors on how to perform abortions and gender analysis.”

His statements had immediate consequences for the committee’s vote and had the potential to create long-term damage to PEPFAR, a program that has long had bipartisan support and has been estimated to have saved 26 million lives since President George W. Bush started it in 2003.

Mr. Vought, right, was at the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend a package of cuts proposed by the Trump administration to this year’s spending on global health programs and public broadcasting. If the Senate votes to approve the package, global health programs will lose $900 million, including $400 million from PEPFAR for the current fiscal year. PEPFAR and other programs also face huge cuts, even terminations, for the coming fiscal year. The full Senate is expected to vote on the “rescissions bill” by Thursday.

At the hearing, Mr. Vought listed funding of abortions in Russia as evidence of PEPFAR’s waste of government funds. The example prompted Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a longtime supporter of PEPFAR, to say he would vote in favor of rescinding funds from the program.

“You know why I’m going to vote for it? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important, but it’s not beyond scrutiny,” Mr. Graham said. “There is a consequence to this crap.”

PEPFAR has not operated in Russia since 2012, when President Vladimir Putin kicked the United States Agency for International Development out of the country. U.S. law prohibits the use of any federal funds to pay for abortions. Funding abortions through PEPFAR would imply not just waste, but serious crimes or negligence, or both.

“If they have reason to believe that’s true, they should put the information forward,” said Dr. Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR under Mr. Bush, adding that he was “shocked” by the allegation.

July 14

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Supreme Court Clears Way for Dismantling of Education Department, Abbie VanSickle, July 14, 2025. The Supreme Court agrees that the firing of thousands of Education Dept. workers can proceed, 

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday that the Trump administration can proceed with dismantling the Education Department by firing thousands of workers.

The order is a significant victory for the administration and could ease President Trump’s efforts to sharply curtail the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools.

It also represents an expansion of presidential power, allowing Mr. Trump to functionally eliminate a government department created by Congress, without legislators’ input.

It comes after a decision by the justices last week that cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward with cutting thousands of jobs across a number of federal agencies, including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury.

The order by the court was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as is typical in such emergency applications. No vote count was given, which is usual for emergency orders, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined by the court’s other two liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The order is technically temporary, applying while appeals proceed through the courts. In practice, thousands of fired workers whom a Boston judge had ordered be reinstated are now again subject to removal from their jobs.

The Trump administration has announced plans to fire more than 1,300 workers, a move that would effectively gut the department, which manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.

Mr. Trump signed an executive order on March 20 instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon, right, to start shutting down the agency. Trump administration officials cited low test scores by students as the reason to dismantle the department.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said during the ceremony where he signed the executive order.

The move immediately set up a legal fight over the future of the department because it was created by an act of Congress, and legislators had not given approval to eliminate it.

Shortly after, two school districts, the American Federation of Teachers and 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed a legal challenge in federal court in Massachusetts. The challengers asked a judge to block the executive order and to unwind a round of layoffs that gutted the department’s work force by about half.

Lawyers for the challengers argued that the administration’s plans would interfere with the department’s ability to carry out functions required by law.

On May 22, Judge Myong J. Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the fired employees while the lawsuit was pending. Judge Joun, who was nominated to the bench by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said he agreed that only Congress could eliminate the department and that the administration’s actions amounted to an illegal shutdown of the agency.

New York Times, 24 states sue Trump over $6.8 billion withheld from education, Sarah Mervosh, July 14, 2025. About 1.4 million children nationwide attend after-school programs that rely on federal support. 

A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over $6.8 billion in education funding that the administration has withheld a few weeks before the start of the school year.

The withheld money includes about 14 percent of all federal funding for elementary and secondary education across the country. It helps pay for free or low-cost after-school programs that give students a place to go while their parents work. It also covers training to improve the effectiveness of teachers and help for children learning English.

Attorneys general from 22 states signed onto the lawsuit, along with the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. All are Democrats.

The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of holding back the money illegally. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says that a president cannot unilaterally refuse to spend money that Congress has appropriated.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Rhode Island to order the release of the money, which was supposed to be sent to states on July 1.

The Department of Education notified state education agencies on June 30 that it was holding the money back while it conducted a review. The Trump administration has sought to slash federal spending and align the budget with the president’s political priorities.

Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents suburban areas north of New York City, urged President Trump to release $1.3 billion of the money to be used for after-school and other programs that keep children occupied outside of school hours, including in the summer.

In many rural areas, the federally funded after-school programs are the only option. Cutting them would leave working parents there with few alternatives for child care, she said.

The withheld money includes $2.1 billion to help train, mentor and retain effective teachers, with a focus on low-income school districts. It also includes $1.4 billion in flexible funding for schools to spend on art, music, mental health services, physical education and technology. Smaller amounts go toward helping children learning English; adult literacy and education; and support for children of migrant farmworkers.

New York Times, Democrats Must ‘Toughen Up’ Against Trump, Obama Tells Donors, Reid J. Epstein, July 14, 2025. Frustrated that prominent Democrats have not fought harder, former President Barack Obama said in a speech that his party’s leaders needed to step up.

Former President Barack Obama has a stern critique for members of his party: Too many have been cowed into silence.

In private remarks to party donors on Friday night, Mr. Obama scolded Democrats for failing to speak out against President Trump and his policies, suggesting they were shrinking from the challenge out of fear of retribution.

“It’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Mr. Obama said at a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey.

“What I have been surprised by is the degree to which I’ve seen people who, when I was president, or progressives, liberals, stood for all kinds of stuff, who seem like they’re kind of cowed and intimidated and shrinking away from just asserting what they believe, or at least what they said they believe,” he added.

Locked out of power in Washington, Democrats have been largely arguing among themselves about how to confront a hostile Trump administration. Mr. Obama’s remarks were circulated by his office on Monday.

He expressed particular disdain for law firms that he said had been willing to “set aside the law” in response to Mr. Trump’s actions “not because, by the way, that they’re going to be thrown in jail, but because they might lose a few clients and might not be able to finish that kitchen rehab at their Hampton house. I’m not impressed.”

Mr. Obama did not mention Columbia University, his alma mater, which is on the verge of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to settle with the Trump administration over accusations it permitted antisemitism on campus, or name any of the prominent Democratic law firms that have made deals with Mr. Trump’s White House.

But the former president’s comments were interpreted by people in the room as a critique of the party’s elites for having gone quiet when they were sorely needed to step up, according to a person who attended.

The excerpts provided by Mr. Obama’s office contained no evidence of physician-heal-thyself reflectiveness. Mr. Obama, after all, has scarcely been at the tip of the Democratic spear in resisting Mr. Trump. He has issued few public statements opposing Trump administration actions and has yet to appear this year at a rally, town hall or other public event staged by opponents of Mr. Trump.Last month, Mr. Obama appeared in a conversation in Connecticut with the celebrity historian Heather Cox Richardson during which he said the country was “dangerously close” to sliding into autocracy.

New York Times, He Helped Big Companies Dodge Taxes. Now He’s Writing the Rules, Jesse Drucker, July 14, 2025. Ken Kies, a longtime tax lobbyist who worked for some of the world’s largest businesses, is now running the Treasury Department’s office that will administer Trump’s tax law.

In January 2022, the Internal Revenue Service was cracking down on a tax dodge from the agency’s “dirty dozen” list of abusive shelters. To fight back, promoters of the scheme turned to the lobbyist Ken Kies.

In a conference call with lawyers and financial advisers, Mr. Kies outlined plans to fight the I.R.S., including by capitalizing on his close relationship with a top agency official, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.

Now Mr. Kies has become the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official. The former veteran lobbyist, who has worked for some of America’s biggest companies, was confirmed by the Senate last month to serve as Treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy.

It is not uncommon in President Trump’s Washington for lobbyists or other interested parties to get high-level positions at agencies where they once sought access on behalf of corporate clients. But Mr. Kies is not just any lobbyist. For decades, he has played an instrumental role in enabling some of the most lucrative and most important tax avoidance strategies used by multinational companies and the wealthiest Americans.

When the Clinton administration sought to stem the tide of companies shifting trillions of dollars of profits into offshore havens, Mr. Kies led the effort on behalf of a coalition of businesses to kill the regulation. In the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Kies successfully pushed for legislation to make such offshore tax dodges even easier to execute. During the Obama administration, he fended off another attempted crackdown on those strategies.

In 2017, as part of a sweeping package of tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Kies lobbied for a new tax break that provides a 20 percent deduction to certain businesses, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans. And most recently, he advised the Trump Organization on a dispute with the I.R.S.

New York Times, Plan to Indefinitely Displace Palestinians Threatens to Derail Gaza Truce, Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, July 14, 2025. An Israeli proposal to force much of Gaza’s population into a small enclave is now overshadowing negotiations over a truce.

Israel’s defense ministry has promoted a plan to force much of Gaza’s population into a small and largely devastated zone in the territory’s south, a proposal that threatens to derail the latest efforts to forge a truce between Israel and Hamas.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have briefed journalists and foreign counterparts on a loose plan to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into an area controlled by Israel’s military close to the Gaza-Egypt border. Legal experts have warned that the plan would violate international law because the civilians would be barred indefinitely from returning to their homes in other parts of Gaza, a restriction that would constitute a form of ethnic cleansing.By Samuel Granados

While the Israeli government has yet to formally announce or comment on the plan, the idea of a new encampment in southern Gaza was first proposed last week by Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister. He discussed it at a briefing with Israeli correspondents who focus on military affairs, and The New York Times reviewed readouts of the briefing written by its attendees. Several attendees also wrote articles that attracted widespread attention among both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Hartmann Report, America on the Brink: Trump’s Roadmap to Recession, Fascism, and World War IIII, Thom Hartmann, right, July 14, 2025. We must call this what it is: a full-scale assault on our economy, our democracy, and the peaceful world order that’s prevented a third world war for nearly 80 years…

The headlines this week are wild: Trump is threatening nutso tariffs against America’s traditional trading partners (although none for Russia, of course), demanding that our allies proclaim their willingness to go to war with China, and — along with his billionaire buddies — looting our government while immiserating small business and the American middle class.

As a result, America stands today at an extraordinarily dangerous crossroads economically, politically, and geopolitically. We’re talking a second Republican Great Depression, fascism, and the very real possibility of a third world war.

As the Trump administration abandons manufacturing and building out America’s infrastructure in favor of financial speculation and deregulation, we’re hollowing out the very foundations of real wealth. Simultaneously, the GOP is doubling down on policies that have repeatedly crashed our economy, stripped support from working families, and handed more money and political power to the morbidly rich.

Now, with economic stagnation looming and international tensions escalating, Trump’s erratic and belligerent approach threatens not just recession but war. If Democrats and people who love America and democracy don’t find their voice — and fast — we may be sleepwalking not only into a massive economic disaster, but into a global conflict that could define the rest of this century or even bring about the end of western civilization.

There are a few basic principles that undergird this argument. I’ll walk through them here, building the case brick by brick, and ending with the most important task before us.

Ten of the last eleven recessions occurred under Republican presidents. That’s not a coincidence.

New York Times, Ukraine war: Updates: President Tells Russia It Has 50 Days to Make Peace With Ukraine 2025, Steven Erlanger, July 14, 2025. President Trump said the United States would impose “very severe tariffs​” on Russia if there was no peace deal with Ukraine in 50 days.

He said there would be “secondary tariffs” at about 100 percent. Mr. Trump’s remarks came as he met with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, at the White House; Mr. Rutte, right, has been coordinating European efforts to send Ukraine more weapons to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. Under the arrangement, NATO would buy American weapons and pass them on to Kyiv. Read more ›

Lev Remembers, Breaking: Trump Gives Putin 50 Days to Strike—While Ukraine Burns, Lev Parnas, right July 14, 2025. This morning, while the media circled around Donald Trump’s latest so-called “breaking news,” Ukrainians awoke to the sound of sirens and explosions once again tearing through the early dawn sky. As the world waits for Trump’s press conference—debating whether he’ll send weapons, impose sanctions, or threaten tariffs—Russia is acting.

Let me tell you what actually happened today.

Russia launched 136 air threats overnight—Shahed drones, S-300 and S-400 missiles—targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across Ukraine. The Air Force of Ukraine shot down 61 drones, and another 47 were jammed or lost from radar. But the rest made impact.

Six civilians were killed—three in Sumy and two in the village of Bokove, Donetsk. At least 30 others were wounded, including a 77-year-old woman in Zaporizhzhia. Social infrastructure, homes, and entire communities were once again under siege.

As I told you before, this war is being played on two levels. One is physical—missiles, blood, destruction. The other is political—the stage-managed optics of diplomacy, the dangling carrots of announcements, and the strategic delay that buys time not for peace, but for Putin.

While Trump strings the media along with half-baked press teases, the real decisions were made weeks ago. The delegation from Trump’s circle, led by Steve Witkoff and others in close coordination with Kremlin intermediaries, already laid the groundwork. The goal: delay, bleed Ukraine out, keep the public confused, and offer just enough performative support to justify the narrative.

And now you’re watching it all play out.

You can’t make this up. While missiles rain down and civilians are pulled from rubble, Trump is planning to “punish” Russia by threatening 100% tariffs—but not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. He’s giving Putin 50 more days.

Let me be crystal clear: this is not a new strategy. This is stalling. This is delay-by-design.

New York Times, News Analysis: Trump’s Willingness to Arm Ukraine Puts Him Closer to Biden Approach, David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, July 14, 2025. President Trump is expected this week to formalize a new plan to sell American weapons to European allies, who would pass them onto Kyiv.

The Contrarian, Stopping Trump isn’t Enough; It’s time to hold lawbreakers accountable, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 14, 2025. It is one thing to stop Donald Trump’s lawlessness (e.g., ending deportation to CECOT), but it is far more difficult to hold accountable the officials responsible for harm inflicted on their victims.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and permanent resident, has been freed from his unjust and illegal detention. On Wednesday, he filed a claim for injunctive relief, asking the court to prevent deportation on a new charge against himconcerning his immigration paperwork.

This sort of after-the-fact, concocted claim (akin to the human smuggling charge manufactured to distract from the government’s humiliating retreat in returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador) sure looks like an attempt to continue Khalil’s persecution at the hand of the Trump gang. This sort of picayune charge is “rarely, if ever” brought against permanent residents, his complaint states—unless, of course, someone is the object of the MAGA administration’s ongoing “pattern of antagonism.”Khalil’s chances of success appear strong. However, preventing future harm does not make up for the wrongs already perpetrated.

Khalil told the Associated Press, “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”If the result of MAGA functionaries’ unconstitutional conduct is merely a court order for them to stop persecuting a particular individual, they have little to no disincentive to stop, and will continue systematically violating constitutional rights (especially after the Supreme Court’s ruling limiting nationwide injunctions).

Khalil’s legal team has a solution. On Thursday, his lawyers announced that Khalil has “filed a claim detailing the harm he has suffered as a result of his politically motivated arrest and detention…The claim is a precursor to a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, which he will bring under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 federal statute that allows individuals to sue the U.S. government for damages for civil law violations.”

July 13

The Real Michael Cohen, Rosie O’Donnell and the Death of Citizenship, Michael Cohen, right, best-selling author, podcaster and former longtime Trump Organization counsel, July 13, 2025. This isn’t about Rosie. It’s a litmus test of how far Trump can push the Constitution; and how many MAGA Americans are dumb enough to let him try

I’m writing this not just as someone who once stood too close to the sun, but as a man who’s been burned by its fire, singed by its radiation, and still smells of smoke.

Because what we’re witnessing right now isn’t just another unhinged social media tantrum by President Trump; it’s a calculated test. A litmus of lunacy. A dry run for dictatorship.

This time, the target is Rosie O’Donnell, left. Next time, it could be you.

Let me be crystal clear: Trump’s threat to revoke the citizenship of Rosie; an American-born citizen, comedian, and longtime thorn in Trump’s side, isn’t just some off-the-cuff late-night post.

No. It’s the probing of a system. A poke at the Constitution to see if it flinches.

It’s not about Rosie. It never really was. It’s about finding the weak seams in American democracy and prying them open until the entire foundation splits apart.

I spent years by this man’s side. I know how he thinks. This wasn’t said in jest or hyperbole. It was a balloon floated into the ether to see who salutes, who shrugs, and who screams. And the silence, my Substack friends; the fuckin silence* from too many so-called patriots, is deafening.

Because if Trump can get the courts, or even a whisper of legal standing, to strip Rosie of her citizenship because she “is not in the best interests of our Great Country,” what’s to stop him from doing it to you for tweeting the wrong meme? For disagreeing with a policy. For not liking how you look.

Let’s pull back for a second and get grounded in the facts, because facts do still matter; at least to some of us. Rosie O’Donnell, right, was born in the United States. She has, under the Fourteenth Amendment, an unshakable constitutional right to her citizenship. Period. Full stop. The Supreme Court said as much in 1967.

Yet Trump, now once again sitting behind the Resolute Desk is tossing around the idea like it’s just another item on the Mar-a-Lago lunch menu; “Grab me a Diet Coke, and while you’re at it, strip Rosie of her constitutional rights.”

And you think this ends with Rosie? Really? C’mon, you’re not that naive.This isn’t a temper tantrum. It’s a blueprint. Trump wants to rewrite the rulebook, not just with pen but with a nuclear bomb. He’s testing what the public will accept, what the courts might allow, and which judges he can bully into compliance. If he can target someone as high-profile, as loud, as well-connected as Rosie; and get away with it, then no one’s safe. Not the journalists. Not the protestors. Not the immigrants. Not even you, Mr. MAGA hat wearing sycophant, if you dare turn on your king.

We have to stop treating every Trumpian outrage as some new and bizarre anomaly. These are not outbursts; they are strategy. This is how autocrats work. You float the radical idea. Watch the response. Gauge the legal boundaries. And then if no one stops you; boom, you codify it into policy.

You want to make a difference? Then make it. Right now. Because if we don’t fight for truth—no one will.

And if we fight together? They’ll never drown us out. Let’s be impossible to ignore.

 

New York Times, American Allies Want to Redraw the World’s Trade Map, Minus the U.S., Jeanna Smialek, July 13, 2025. Facing growing chaos, the European Union and numerous other countries are seeking to forge a global trading nexus that is less vulnerable to American tariffs.

Trade chaos is forcing America’s allies closer together, and further from the United States. And as that happens, the European Union is trying to position itself at the center of a new global trade map.

The 27-nation bloc learned this weekend that America will subject it to 30 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive branch, responded with a pledge to keep negotiating, and to retaliate if necessary.

But that was not the entire strategy. Europe, like many of the United States’ trading partners, is also looking for more reliable friends.

“Meanwhile, we continue to deepen our global partnerships, firmly anchored in the principles of rules-based international trade,” Ms. von der Leyen said.

She will make good on that starting Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen is scheduled to give a speech alongside Indonesia’s president. Just as Mr. Trump threatens to put hefty tariffs on the Asian nation, the European Union is working to relax trade barriers.

It is a split screen that is becoming typical. On one side, the United States sows uncertainty as it blows up weeks of painstaking negotiations and escalates tariff threats. On the other, the European Union and other American trading partners are forging closer ties, laying the groundwork for a global trading system that revolves less and less around an increasingly fickle United States.

It will be hard to move away from the United States because it is the world’s largest economy, home to a bustling consumer market and cutting-edge technologies and services.

But many American trading partners feel that they are left with little choice but to diversify. And while trade relationships are difficult to alter, they are also difficult to change back once they have been totally reorganized.

New York Times, Tariffs on Brazil Could Leave Coffee Drinkers With a Headache, Emmett Lindner, Julie Creswell and Kevin Draper, July 13, 2025. Trump’s pledge to place a 50 percent tariff on all imports from the South American nation will drive up the prices of coffee — and orange juice.

Getting a daily caffeine fix could become more expensive.

President Trump’s plan to impose a 50 percent tariff on all imports from Brazil starting next month would drive up the price of coffee, whether it’s served in cafes or brewed in the kitchen.

Such a tariff would put more pressure on the coffee industry as prices have peaked globally this year. Droughts in Brazil and Vietnam, two of the biggest coffee exporters to the United States, have resulted in smaller harvests in recent seasons, driving up prices.

Consumers are already paying more at the grocery store. At the end of May, the average price of one pound of ground roast coffee in the U.S. was $7.93, up from $5.99 at the same time last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mr. Trump’s pledge to place tariffs on Brazil’s imports is partly in retaliation for what he considers a “witch hunt” against his political ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, left, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.

More than 99 percent of the coffee Americans consume is imported from South America, Africa and Asia. Last year, the United States imported 1.6 million metric tons of both unroasted and roasted coffee, according to the Agriculture Department.

New York Times, Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response, Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow, Coral Davenport and Megan Mineiro, July 13, 2025. As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.

In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say.

Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather.

Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that research the ways a warming planet is changing weather, among other things. That work is essential to more accurately predicting life-threatening hazards. Among the shuttered labs would be one in Miami that sends teams of “hurricane hunters” to fly into storms to collect critical data. The proposed budget would also make major cuts to a federal program that uses river gauges to predict floods.

The president is also envisioning a dramatically scaled-down Federal Emergency Management Agency that would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA to hundreds of communities around the country, which were to be used to help these areas protect against hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. About 10 percent of the agency’s staff members have left since January, including senior leaders with decades of experience, and another 20 percent are expected to be gone by the end of this year.

The White House and agency leaders say they are making much-needed changes to bloated bureaucracies that no longer serve the American public well.

New York Times, Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response, Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow, Coral Davenport and Megan Mineiro, July 13, 2025. As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.

In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say.

Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather.

Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that research the ways a warming planet is changing weather, among other things. That work is essential to more accurately predicting life-threatening hazards. Among the shuttered labs would be one in Miami that sends teams of “hurricane hunters” to fly into storms to collect critical data. The proposed budget would also make major cuts to a federal program that uses river gauges to predict floods.

The president is also envisioning a dramatically scaled-down Federal Emergency Management Agency that would shift the costs of disaster response and recovery from the federal government to the states. The administration has already revoked $3.6 billion in grants from FEMA to hundreds of communities around the country, which were to be used to help these areas protect against hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. About 10 percent of the agency’s staff members have left since January, including senior leaders with decades of experience, and another 20 percent are expected to be gone by the end of this year.

The White House and agency leaders say they are making much-needed changes to bloated bureaucracies that no longer serve the American public well.

New York Times, News Analysis: From Science to Diversity, Trump Hits the Reverse Button on Decades of Change, Peter Baker, July 13, 2025. President Trump has moved aggressively to reopen long-settled issues and to dismantle long-established institutions as he tries to return to what he considers better times.

Fluoride was introduced into drinking water starting in 1945. The flu vaccine was first made available to the general public a year later. Fuel efficiency standards for cars were adopted in 1975.

Such innovations long ago became stitched into the fabric of American life, largely accepted by most Americans who came to rely on them or gave them little thought. That is, until President Trump and his team came along and began methodically rolling back widespread practices and dismantling long-established institutions.

It should come as no surprise that Mr. Trump would try to undo much of what President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did over the past four years. What is so striking in Mr. Trump’s second term is how much he is trying to undo changes that happened years and even decades before that. At times, it seems as if he is trying to repeal much of the 20th century.

On matters big and small, Mr. Trump has hit the rewind button. At the broadest level, he has endeavored to reverse the globalization and internationalism that have defined U.S. leadership around the globe since World War II, under presidents of both parties. But even at a more prosaic level, it has become evident that Mr. Trump, 79, the oldest president ever inaugurated, simply prefers things the way he remembers them from his youth, or even before that.

He has made clear that he wants to return to an era when “Cats” was the big hit on Broadway, not “Hamilton”; when military facilities were named after Confederate generals, not gay rights leaders; when coal was king and there were no windmills; when straws were plastic, not paper; when toilets flushed more powerfully; when there weren’t so many immigrants; when police officers weren’t discouraged from being rough on suspects; when diversity was not a goal in hiring or college admissions or much of anything else.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Kernville, Texas, on Saturday, July 5, 2025. Ms. Noem did not renew a contract to staff call center workers until Thursday (New York Times photo by Jordan Vonderhaar).

Letters From An American, Historical Commentary: July 12, 2025  FEMA Failings As Mandate], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 13, 2025. On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Joselow of the New York Times.

But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around15.9%. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said: “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel notes that one reason Noem has been cutting so ferociously at FEMA is because she has run through the money Congress allocated for HHS with her single-minded focus on immigration.

In May, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called out Noem’s expenditure of $200 million on an ad campaign pushing Trump’s agenda and $21 million to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay only to have many of them transferred back out. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Noem: “You are spending like you don’t have a budget…. You’re on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you’ve been given, or to invent money. And this obsession with spending at the border…has left the country unprotected elsewhere.

Noem, left, responded to Blumenthal that she was fulfilling a mandate. She told him: “The American people overwhelmingly in the last election said, ‘We want a secure border, we want to make sure no longer are the scales of justice tipped in the favor of criminals….’”

A recent video posted to Facebook Reels by the Department of Homeland Security makes it clear Noem’s justification was cover for a violent Christian nationalist vision in which ICE and the Border Patrol are enforcing God’s commandments. A dark film invokes Isaiah 6:8, the Bible verse in which God asks, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answers, “Here am I! Send me.” The exchange is widely interpreted to show volunteers willing to do God’s work.

A  poll released Friday makes it clear that the American people do not support such a vision and did not, in fact, expect a Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record and have lived in the U.S. for years. A Gallup poll released yesterday shows that the administration’s draconian policies toward immigrants have created a backlash. A record 79% of adults say immigration is good for the country, with only 17% seeing it as bad. That change has been driven primarily by a shift in Republicans, 64% of whom now agree that immigrants are good for the country, up from their low of under 40%. The percentage of American adults who say immigration should be reduced has dropped to 30%, down from 55% in 2024.

Lincoln Square Media, Political Commentary: Big, Beautiful, and Predictably Cruel, Kristoffer Ealy, July 13, 2025. It’s not just bad policy — it’s social vandalism dressed in patriotic language.

I tried to warn people.

I said it in the classroom. I said it on social media. I said it in passing conversations with politically engaged friends who were optimistic in ways I couldn’t relate to. I told them this “Big Beautiful Bill” — or more accurately, this big, dangerous piece of legislation — was always going to pass. I’ve seen the playbook before, and it never changes.

Because at its core, this isn’t about traditional legislative strategy. It’s about MAGA, and MAGA doesn’t legislate — it performs. And while there may be gradations of MAGA, the movement as a whole is not rooted in compromise or conscience. It is a machine of obedience, built around the authority of one man. There are no “better angels” to appeal to — not necessarily because the individuals are all evil, but because the structure demands total alignment. It’s not governance. It’s choreography.

President Trump has now signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law. It is not just bad policy — it’s social vandalism dressed in patriotic language. It includes over $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts, with projections that over 11 million people could lose coverage over the next decade. It slashes funding for food assistance, undermines public education, expands military spending by billions, and hands permanent tax breaks to the wealthy. It does this while adding an estimated $2.7 trillion to the national deficit, all under the banner of fiscal responsibility.

And yet, despite all that, Democrats shouldn’t waste time lamenting its passage. It was always going to pass the moment we lost control of all three branches. The real question is what we do next.

I’ve always said the Democratic Party functions best when it’s grounded in strategy and purpose. That’s what gave us Obama in 2008 and 2012. That’s what brought Joe Biden to victory in 2020. But in 2024, when panic took over strategy, we lost focus. The result wasn’t just electoral defeat. It was a vacuum that allowed the worst impulses of the right to move unchecked.

So no — this moment is not about grief. It’s about clarity.

There will be harm. That’s unavoidable. But our job now is to mitigate that harm, call it out in real time, and prepare a disciplined offensive for 2026. As bleak as things may feel, there are still strategic opportunities. The House is in play. The Senate map is difficult, but not impossible. And more importantly, the GOP has now fully branded itself to this bill. They own every line item, every cut, every tax giveaway, every act of cruelty disguised as reform.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, right, who isn’t always every progressive’s favorite voice, showed up big on July 3rd. His speech wasn’t just symbolic — it was strategic. He laid out a forward-facing vision that treated the bill not as the end of something, but the beginning of a new fight. And it’s a fight rooted in accountability.

Massachusetts Democrats, for their part, have already mobilized. Their launch of Project 2026 was swift and purposeful — a clear signal that the fallout from this bill will be the campaign issue in dozens of House races next cycle. They’re not waiting for things to “shake out.” They’re activating now.

And they’re not alone.

For those looking for a roadmap, Democracy Docket offered exactly that: stay message-disciplined, focus on community-based field work, develop strong candidates early, and invest in plain-language communication with working-class voters — including poor white voters, who are too often talked about but rarely talked to.

Kristoffer Ealy is a political science professor who teaches at California State University Fullerton, Ventura College, Los Angeles Harbor College, and Oxnard College. He is the author of the upcoming book “Political Illiteracy: Learning the Wrong Lessons.”

July 12

Democracy Docket, Political Advocacy: It’s the states, stupid, Marc Elias, below right, July 12, 2025. A defining feature of Donald Trump is that he demands attention. From outrage to stupidity to outright cruelty, he forces us to look at him the way a disaster prevents us from averting our eyes.

Much has been written about the attention economy and how Trump makes us more polarized, less informed and, frankly, dumber. But there is another byproduct of focusing on Trump that is far more dangerous to democracy. It allows other Republicans, particularly at the state level, to operate under the radar — with little attention paid to how they are tilting the playing field in their favor for next year’s elections.

Across the country, the GOP has built an election operation focused on gerrymandering, voter suppression and election denialism. Fueled by dark money and false conspiracy theories, it is the Republican Party’s top priority.

This is no accident. Trump knows that the greatest threat to his power is losing the majority next year. By slowly eroding voting rights, Republicans are gunning to secure a victory the only way they know how.

We can’t let them get away with it.

Let’s start with North Carolina. At this point, Republicans in the state see voter suppression as their side hustle — while outright election subversion is their main hustle. After trying to steal a Supreme Court seat with a failed effort to disenfranchise 65,000 voters, they’re back at it and raring to go.

Last month, state Republicans introduced a sweeping elections bill aimed at restricting voting. Among other steps, the measure would bar state and local election officials from promoting voting. It would also require members of the military and citizens voting from abroad — the latest targets of the GOP voter suppression campaign — to provide a photo ID. North Carolina Republicans know that without these efforts, Democrats are more likely to win.

 

 

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and CIA Director John Ratcliffe speak before a Cabinet meeting featuring “Gulf of America” hats for everyone on April 30, 2025, in the Cabinet Room (White House Photo by Molly Riley).

Lincoln Square Media via Substack, Political Opinion: Your Silence Isn’t Strategy. It’s Surrender, Rick Wilson, right, July 12, 2025. Stop deluding yourself that you’re the adult in the room. If you stay, you’re complicit in Trump’s crimes.

There are two kinds of Trump appointees.

At the senior level, we have the ambitious, the telegenic, and the master sycophants. This column is most certainly not for J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, or any of the other Fox alumni staining the government with their incompetence and malice.

It’s not for the committed cultists and Trumphadi ideologies like Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and Karoline Leavitt. They’re part of the inner cult, the Worshipful Company of the Golden Kneepad.

It’s not for the MAGA Schedule Cs trolling on government accounts or the misfit lawyers with degrees from state schools who got here by pretending they spotted election fraud or the sons of donors in tailored suits, but rather for the quietly horrified agency staffers who grimace at the orders but execute them anyway.

This is for the ones who reassure themselves that they’re “the adults in the room,” that they’re protecting the country from even worse outcomes by staying in a job that’s now indistinguishable from a moral meat grinder. This is for the law enforcement types in DHS, ICE, the FBI who feel themselves being tugged closer and closer to a new role as a domestic Federal brute squad. This is for the officers in the military being pushed to use their troops against American citizens.

You know what’s happening. You see it every day, and unlike the rest of us, you’re not guessing. You’re not reading tea leaves or decoding threads on X or poring through court filings; you’re in the room. You’re reading, and sometimes writing, the memos, hearing the plans, watching the dismantling of decency and law and human dignity in real time.

And still, you stay. Silent. Complicit.

You don’t get to play the stunned victim later. Not this time.

The first Trump administration was a test, and most of you failed it. You watched children get caged, whistleblowers silenced, loyalty oaths administered, the law weaponized and warped, and you did what? You gritted your teeth, grabbed another bourbon from the bottle in the lower left drawer of your desk, and told yourself you were “staying to prevent worse things.” And then, when it was over, you tried to launder your reputations through deliberate amnesia, or running to think tanks, private equity, or writing some self-serving memoir no one read.

Then, you squirmed and bleated on January 6th, and when Trump’s fraud verdict hit, and when the Trump classified file theft was discovered and somehow, dragged yourself back into his orbit, accepting the discount price he got for your soul.

Well, here we are again. The crimes are bigger. The action is more openly fascist. The human damage is more severe. The surveillance state is spreading. The lies are thicker and more pungent. The enemies list is growing at home, and the list of allies abroad is shrinking as Trump joins the Dictator Club.

New York Times, Tariffs or Deals? Trump Seems Content With Punishing Levies, Ana Swanson, July 12, 2025. The president’s supporters portray him as a top dealmaker. But, at least for now, far more trading partners have gotten stiff tariffs than trade deals.

Even after President Trump announced sweeping global tariffs in April, some investors and supporters comforted themselves by arguing that the president’s goal was still to open global markets, not close them off.

New York Times, Strategies: The Danger of a Market Melt-Up, Jeff Sommer, July 12, 2025 (print ed.). Traders have repeatedly shrugged off President Trump’s disruptive tariff wars and fiscal policy, pushing U.S. stock prices back into expensive territory, our columnist says.

Market meltdowns have been a big worry lately, and for good reason. With President Trump imposing the highest tariffs since the Great Depression and enacting myriad other disruptive policies, the threat of another market crash can’t be ignored.

Yet despite an 18.9 percent downturn in the S&P 500 earlier this year, the stock market has rebounded. It has continually shrugged off shocks that, in previous years, may have set off a prolonged bear market.

New York Times, The Surprising Scientists Hit by Trump’s D.E.I. Cuts, Kate Zernike, Updated July 12, 2025. The N.I.H. has terminated hundreds of diversity grants awarded to young researchers, many of whom come from the very places that supported Trump.

Lucas Dillard describes himself as sort of a JD Vance, scientist version.

Raised by a single mother in rural Appalachia, he was about to enlist in the Navy when he received a Pell grant that allowed him to go to North Carolina State University.

A work-study requirement delivered a stroke of fortune: a job in a lab with a structural biologist who let him conduct his own research. Those projects got him into a post-baccalaureate program at the National Institutes of Health, where he published papers that helped him get into a Ph.D. program in molecular biophysics at Johns Hopkins.

And last year, his work at Hopkins won a prestigious N.I.H. fellowship that pays the country’s most promising doctoral students to continue their scientific research.

Mr. Dillard’s grant was one of thousands the N.I.H. canceled as it rushed to comply with President Trump’s executive order banning federally funded diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The order accused the programs of using race- and sex-based preferences that it said were “dangerous, demeaning and immoral” and “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement.”

But Mr. Trump’s push to end D.E.I. has been a blunt instrument, eliminating highly competitive grant programs that defined diversity well beyond race and gender. Those who have lost grants include not only Black and Latino scientists, but also many like Mr. Dillard, who are white and from rural areas, which are solidly Trump country. The administration has denounced universities as hotbeds of liberal elitism, inhospitable to viewpoint diversity. The canceled diversity grant programs were intended to make science less elite, by developing a pipeline from poorer areas of the country that tend to be more conservative.

“I think it’s very different in their minds, who is getting the D.E.I. stuff,” Mr. Dillard said. “People on the right, they don’t realize they’re limiting the opportunity of their own kids by supporting this.”

July 9

New York Times, With Taxes and Tariffs in Place, Trump Takes Reins of U.S. Economy, Tony Romm and Colby Smith, July 9, 2025. President Trump has achieved much of his agenda, leaving the fate of the economy squarely in his hands.

His expensive tax cuts have been signed into law. His steep global tariffs are taking clearer shape. And his twin campaigns to deregulate government and deport immigrants are well underway.

With the major components of his agenda now coming into focus, President Trump has already left an indelible mark on the U.S. economy. The triumphs and turbulence that may soon arise will squarely belong to him.

Not even six months into his second term, Mr. Trump has forged ahead with the grand and potentially disruptive economic experiment that he first previewed during the 2024 campaign. His actions in recent weeks have staked the future of the nation’s finances — and its centuries-old trading relationships — on a belief that many economists’ most dire warnings are wrong.

Last week, the president enacted a sprawling set of tax cuts that he believes to be the ingredients for rapid economic growth, even as fiscal experts warned that the law may injure the poor while putting the U.S. government on a risky new fiscal path.

Then, on Monday, Mr. Trump began to issue his latest round of tariff threats, insisting that “we’re done” negotiating as economists warned about a potential surge in consumer prices that could arise from taxing imports.

The White House also proceeded with its aggressive and legally contested plans to eliminate scores of federal regulations and deport millions of migrants. The immigration crackdown, in particular, could come to the detriment of many sectors, like agriculture, that rely heavily on foreign labor, experts believe.

So far, the U.S. economy has remained resilient in the face of these seismic changes, while Mr. Trump has ascribed the faintest hint of negative news to his predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in May.

But the president has now achieved broad swaths of what he set out to do, making him responsible for the highs or lows on the horizon. The coming months will serve as a gauge of whether he is merely enjoying a calm before a damaging storm — or is correct in asserting that his agenda is not as perilous as many economists have feared.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President to Target More Countries With Trade Announcements, Staff Reports, July 9, 2025.

• Trade war: President Trump said he would make more announcements about trade on Wednesday involving at least seven countries. Mr. Trump began issuing his latest tariff threats this week, insisting that “we’re done” negotiating, as economists warned about a potential surge in prices for American consumers.
• Mass layoffs: Thousands of federal workers are in limbo as they wait for their employers to decide whether they get to keep their jobs. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed, for now, with its effort to shrink the federal work force. Read more ›
• Federal Reserve: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is among several contenders to be the next Fed chair even as he leads the search process, has shown a new willingness recently to deliver broadsides against the policies of the central bank. Read more ›

New York Times, Trump Didn’t Always Tout Tariffs. Now He Sees Them as a Way to Flex Power, Maggie Haberman, July 9, 2025. Instead of treating tariffs as part of a broader trade policy, President Trump views them as a valuable weapon he can wield on the world stage.

President Trump’s allies often describe him as a 40-year devotee of tariffs who, stymied by his first-term advisers, is finally able to put his long-held economic theory into practice.

But while Mr. Trump spoke about tariffs off and on before becoming a presidential candidate, he usually described his broader grievance about trade in terms of other countries or companies “ripping off” the United States. It is since Mr. Trump became a candidate in 2015 that he has talked about tariffs in earnest, describing them as a tool that he could easily deploy to rebalance the country’s economic footing.

“We are going to have 10 percent to 20 percent tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years, we are going to charge them 10 percent to 20 percent to come in and take advantage of our country because that is what they have been doing,” Mr. Trump said in August 2024, one of many comments he made in that race emphasizing he would impose sweeping tariffs if he won, far beyond those in his first term.

Mr. Trump’s latest retreat this week from his own self-imposed tariff deadlines underscores the challenge he has faced in treating tariffs as a quick-fix — a tool that he asserts will bring in lots of money for the country while swiftly resetting trade relationships.

A review of Mr. Trump’s comments about tariffs over the decades shows he has often been fairly vague on the topic, and only more recently came to describe them as the centerpiece of his approach to trade.

Far more frequent and durable has been Mr. Trump’s repeated refrain that other countries are turning the United States into “suckers.” His references to tariffs often came as part of his description of a feeling of national injury that became common as the country’s manufacturing base began eroding. That attentiveness to trade as an issue, even absent a cohesive policy plan, helped Mr. Trump win in 2016.

This year, administration officials say they have brought in roughly $100 billion in tariffs so far. But after pledging that the president would get “90 deals in 90 days,” the White House has secured only a handful of trade agreement frameworks with other countries.

Instead of treating tariffs as one tool that is part of a broader trade strategy, Mr. Trump often describes them as an end unto themselves. While business experts and corporate leaders say the tariffs will raise costs on their products and for consumers who rely on imports, the president has largely dismissed those concerns. And he has relied on his own belief that markets and long-term concerns will eventually level out, even as economic experts have wondered what the end game is.

“What does winning look like? What is the definition of victory?” said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “He seems to view the definition of victory as eliminating other countries ‘unfair trade practices,’ which in his mind translates one-for-one into reducing our bilateral deficits with every single trading partner.”

Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served in the Obama and Biden administrations, said, “He hasn’t really been willing to make that many real deals.”

The deals Mr. Trump has been interested in so far, Mr. Setser said, appear to be that “you accept my tariffs at the level I set them, and you give me additional concessions” because “otherwise I will raise them further.”

That has left countries with concerns that no matter what they agree to, Mr. Trump will again raise the cost for them.What has been dizzying for other foreign nations is clear to Mr. Trump, however. Tariffs are a weapon he has at his disposal, and he sees them as a way to rebalance global influence.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 8, 2025 [Impact of MAGA Cuts, Policies Becomes Apparent], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 9, 2025. One hundred and eleven people are dead and more than 160 are still missing in Texas after Friday’s tragic flood.

​​“‘[W]ho’s to blame?’” Texas governor Greg Abbott, shown above in a file photo, repeated back to a reporter. “That’s the word choice of losers.” “Every football team makes mistakes,” he continued, referring to Texas’s popular sport. “The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who’s to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, ‘Don’t worry about it, ma’am, we’ve got this.’”

Abbott’s defensive answer reveals the dilemma MAGA Republicans find themselves in after the cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service that came before the Texas disaster. Scott Calvert, John West, Jim Carlton, and Joe Barrett of the Wall Street Journal reported that after a deadly flood in 1987, officials in Kerr County applied for a grant to install a flood warning system, but their application was denied. They considered installing one paid for by the county but decided against it. Then county commissioner Tom Moser told the reporters: “It was probably just, I hate to say the word, priorities. Trying not to raise taxes.”

Since 1980, Republican politicians have won voters by promising to cut taxes they claimed funded wasteful programs for women and racial and ethnic minorities. Cutting government programs would save money, they said, enabling hardworking Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money. But leaders recognized that Republican voters actually depended on government programs, so they continued to fund them even as they passed tax cuts that moved more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Now, in Trump’s second term, MAGA Republicans are turning Republican rhetoric into reality, forcing Americans to grapple with what those cuts really mean for their lives.

Today the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to fire large numbers of employees at 19 different federal agencies and to reorganize them while litigation against those firings moves forward, although it required the administration to act in ways “consistent with applicable law.” A lower court had blocked the firings during litigation. Ann E. Marimow of the Washington Post notes that this court has repeatedly sided with President Donald Trump as he slashes the federal government. The court said it is not expressing a view on the legality of the cuts at this time.

The administration’s cuts were in the news today as Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has just 86 people deployed in Texas today although Trump declared a disaster on Sunday. At a press opportunity at a cabinet meeting today, Trump said it wasn’t the right time to talk about his plans to phase out FEMA.

The administration is getting pushback in a number of other places as well, including from medical organizations. Yesterday the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American College of Physicians, and four other groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the changes Kennedy has made to the vaccine advisory panel, to the availability of covid vaccines, and to vaccine recommendations. The lawsuit calls those changes “unlawful” and “unilateral” and says they violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

Just who is in charge of the administration remains unclear. In the New York Times yesterday, Jason Zengerle pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as the “final word” on White House policy. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem defers to him. Attorney General Pam Bondi “is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice” to him. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is concentrating on “producing a reality TV show every day,” a Trump advisor told Zengerle.

So Miller, with his knack for flattering his boss, wields power.

July 8

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 7, 2025 [Armed, Masked Federal Forces Raid LA’s MacArthur Park], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 8, 2025. At about 10:30 this morning local time, heavily armed masked agents in trucks, armored vehicles, a helicopter, on foot, and on horseback, accompanied by a gun mounted on a truck raided the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles.

Journalist Mel Buer reported that agents from Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the National Guard, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brought what he called a “massive federal presence.”

Fox News Channel personnel were embedded with the raiders and broadcast throughout the operation, suggesting that it was designed for the media as a show of force to intimidate opponents. CBP brought its own press team, and its people were also taking photos of bystanders. After Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass arrived and spoke with Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, the agents left. It is not clear that there was a specific target for the raid, or that anyone was arrested.

Later, Bovino told Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, “I don’t work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

Immigrants rights groups sued Bovino last week to block what they call an “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids.

Steve Beynon of Military dot com reports that about 70 National Guard troops have been deployed to the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades as the administration “leans harder on the military to enforce its nationwide immigration crackdown.” Unlike the National Guard troops Trump federalized in Los Angeles, these troops are operating as state troops under Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Another 8,500 active-duty and National Guard troops are stationed along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

The Trump administration is also sending 200 Marines to Florida to aid ICE, part of a push to increase deportations by using active-duty troops.

The U.S. Marine Corps has launched a pilot program to station ICE agents at Camp Pendleton in California, Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, and Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Sarah Rumpf-Whitten of Fox News writes that the plan is to strengthen security at those bases, although University of Tampa defense professor Abby Hall Blanco pointed out: “It gives kind of an odd impression that the Marine Corps is not handling its own security sufficiently. Having known quite a few Marines in my time, I can’t imagine that they would find that to be a particularly flattering interpretation.”

As Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol pointed out in Talking Points Memo, it appears that officials in the Trump administration are using immigration as a way to establish a police state. Indeed, they are using the concept that presidents have control of foreign affairs as a way to work around the laws in place to prevent a dictatorship.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, above left, protests the unannounced federal military-immigration deployment in the city’s MacArthur Park on July while children were playing and other customary activities continued, including a homeless man (top right) resting with no apparent concern as the show-of-force deployment proceeded around him.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary Resistance Dateline: Trump’s Gestapo on the move after the Fourth of July weekend,Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books, prolific commentator and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, July 7-8, 2025.

All rested up after marking America’s Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump’s Gestapo agents wasted no time in rounding up more people throughout the United States:

• Three Border Patrol vehicles and many Border Patrol officers outside of Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego.
• Possible Proud Boys bounty hunters staging at the gas station at Lincoln and Euclid in Anaheim, California. ICE agents are domiciled in 9 floors at Fairfield Hotel across from Disneyland in Anaheim.
• Several federal law enforcement officers, some on horseback and others in armored vehicles and supplemented by 90 members of the federalized California National Guard, descended on MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass interceded with the federal agents and demanded that they leave the park. The famous park was largely empty save for a group of children at a day camp. Bass stated, “What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.” MacArthur Park is surrounded by neighborhoods where Mexicans, Central Americans, and other immigrants live and run small businesses.
• Health care outreach personnel who tend to the needs of homeless residents in MacArthur Park told the mayor that federal agents pointed guns at them and told them and their homeless clients to leave the park. One homeless man decided to sleep in, ignoring the threats from Trump’s and Tom Homan’s thugs. ICE refused to disclose how many people were detained during the Siege of MacArthur Park. ICE agents were also seen moving from the park toward Korea Town.
• US Border Patrol El Centro sector chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News: “I don’t work for Karen Bass . . . Better get used to us now, cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.”

Ten law enforcement agencies used radio code names during the siege of MacArthur Park. The code names are all soda brand names.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases We Can Do Without, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 8, 2025. DHS is a human rights monstrosity.

The Department of Homeland Security sounds so innocuous. Who could be opposed to affording America “freedom from danger” or “freedom from fear or anxiety,” as Merriam-Webster defines “security”? Surely we do not want to deprive Americans of “measures taken to guard against espionage or sabotage, crime, attack, or escape,” and/or deny them “the state of being able to reliably afford or access what is needed to meet one’s basic needs,” (two other definitions of “security.”)

But in its current incarnation, the Department of Homeland Security is providing precisely none of those things. It is provoking fear and anxiety among immigrants (legal or undocumented) and even native-born citizens. It has ceased to focus on protecting Americans from criminals or espionage (more than 93 percent of whom have never been convicted of any violent offense, while 65 percent have no convictions whatsoever).

Instead, masked, unidentified shock troops have been regularly attacking hard-working immigrants or just those they assume are immigrants, mistakenly seizing citizens, and shipping them off to foreign hellholes or unsafe domestic camps. Depriving suspected undocumented migrants of dignity, due process, and humane treatment, conducting violent intrusions into workplaces, schools, and courtrooms, and creating labor and food scarcity as workers disappear, DHS has become a menace to public safety.

The Los Angeles Times reports: Masked, unidentified agents have been “systematically” cornering brown-skinned people in a show of force across Southern California, tackling those who attempt to leave, arresting them without probable cause and then placing them in “dungeon-like” conditions without access to lawyers, a federal lawsuit alleges.

The report continues:

The lawsuit filed Wednesday by immigrant rights groups against the Trump administration describes the region as “under siege” by agents, some dressed in military-style clothing and carrying out “indiscriminate immigration raids flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners.” It seeks to block the administration’s “ongoing pattern and practice of flouting the Constitution and federal law” during immigration raids in the L.A. area.

And if things have not been horrifying enough, DHS is about to morph into an even more monstrous operation that will bring America that much closer to a police state. Under the morally repugnant reconciliation bill, taxpayers will be spending “$170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions.” That includes $45B (a 265% increase in ICE’s detention budget) and “$29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) warned on Bluesky:

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion—making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA, & others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

The Florida migrant detention center, recently the subject of coverage that inanely adopts Donald Trump’s deplorable, alliterative nickname, stands as a human rights abomination. “The hastily constructed detention camp in the Everglades that began processing immigrant detainees late this week has already flooded once, may not meet hurricane codes and is not officially approved or funded by the federal government,” the Washington Post reports. “Experts say detainees and staff will face far more common hazards than the swampland terrors gleefully envisioned by state and national Republicans to discourage escapes.”

The detention camp is “reminiscent of some of our country’s darkest chapters,” the ACLU of Florida explains. “Expanding the mass detention machine — especially in remote, dangerous, and unsanitary conditions — puts lives at risk and diverts public dollars from the services our communities truly need.” If we tolerate, or worse, make jokes about these conditions, we are inviting DHS to set up throughout the U.S. similar facilities that international human rights organizations would deplore in other countries.

In addition to that stain on America, DHS is complicit in torture, according to the amended complaint of wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He alleges that “he was subjected to severe mistreatment upon arrival at CECOT, including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.” He attests:

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, Republicans’ 2026 strategy, Marc Elias,right, July 8, 2025. We are still 16 months away from the midterm elections, and Republicans are already spending millions of dollars to make voting more difficult. Their court filings explain — in clear terms — that their motivation in these cases is to disenfranchise Democrats.

Unfortunately, the legacy media is burying the lede and offering sanitized versions of these attacks on voting rights. Let me be clear: If we don’t start taking the GOP’s voter suppression claims literally and seriously, we won’t have free and fair elections in 2026.

Just take a look at Arizona, where the Republican Party recently sued to block certain U.S. citizens from voting in state elections. Their reason was straightforward — the voters at issue almost certainly skew Democratic in their voting patterns. Here is what they told the court:

“Among only overseas UOCAVA voters registered in Maricopa County, which include registrants who have never resided in Arizona, only 18.2% are registered Republicans, 51.3% are registered Democrats, 26.5% have no political party affiliation, and 4% are associated with other recognized political parties.”

If this claim sounds familiar, it is. This is similar to the claim the Republican Party and Jefferson Griffin, the candidate for the North Carolina Supreme Court, brought in their effort to disenfranchise more than 65,000 voters. A victory for the GOP in that case would have flipped the result of the election.

The Republican National Committee has likewise been supporting litigation around the country to disqualify mail-in ballots that are cast by the voter before Election Day but, due to mail delays, are received in the days following. The RNC is not shy about telling the court why:

“Mail-in ballots from Democratic voters also tend to arrive late, in part because ‘Democratic get-out-the-vote drives—which habitually occur shortly before Election Day—may delay maximum Democratic voting across the board, and produce a ‘blue shift’ in late mail ballots.’”

As the RNC put it succinctly: “Counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day doesn’t just dilute the valid ballots — it specifically and disproportionately harms Republican candidates and voters.”

Similarly, in a federal case challenging Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to take over federal election administration, the RNC submitted an affidavit from a senior party official to defend the law:

“Post-election mail-in ballot deadlines also specifically harm Republican candidates and voters [because] Democratic voters tend to mail their ballots later on average than Republican voters, which results in late-arriving ballots favoring Democratic candidates.”

The RNC’s perceived advantage (or disadvantage) is not limited to cases involving mail-in ballots. The RNC also sought to defend a Wyoming proof-of-citizenship law on the grounds that: “The RNC wants Republican voters to vote, Republican candidates to win, and Republican resources to be used effectively to achieve its mission.”

Despite the GOP’s own insistence that they are trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters, too many in the legacy media — and some self-appointed experts — continue to paint a different picture. They believe that Republican efforts are more symbolic than real and have little impact on voters.

New York Times, Opinion: Everyone Hates This Bill. Dan Osborn Could Make Republicans Pay for It, Michelle Goldberg, July 8, 2025. It’s hard to think of a major piece of legislation more hated by more people than the monstrous bill Republicans passed last week.

It is, of course, almost universally reviled by Democrats, but there’s also opposition to it in every part of the Republican coalition. Susan Collins, perhaps the most moderate Republican senator, and Rand Paul, one of the most conservative, both voted against it. Elon Musk called it “insane” and threatened to form a new political party over it. Senator Lisa Murkowski tried to distance herself from it immediately after casting the craven vote that put it over the top.

In a June Quinnipiac poll, only 29 percent of respondents, including a relatively anemic 67 percent of Republicans, approved of the bill, which makes deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps while adding trillions to the national debt.

Had Dan Osborn won his independent Senate campaign in Nebraska last year, it’s possible the bill would never have passed.

Now, as he starts a new independent run for the Senate, he thinks some Republicans have buyer’s remorse.

July 7

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as “Alligator Auschwitz.”

MSNBC Daily, How ICE’s massive cash infusion is poised to transform America, Hayes Brown, July 7, 2025. With a cash infusion of around $150 billion toward immigration enforcement and border security in last week’s budget bill, congressional Republicans handed the Trump administration the resources needed to carry out its mass deportation policy.

The intended result is as aggressive as it is likely transformative: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is slated to become the largest law enforcement agency in the country as dozens of new detention centers spring up to hold hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting expulsion.

In the six months since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, there has been a surge in ICE raids, detentions and removals. The majority of targets in this increase are not the hardened criminals that MAGA supporters and administration officials claim. Shifts in policy have already stripped hundreds of thousands of immigrants of their legal protections to remain in the country.

But the wide-ranging sweeps ICE has launched in churches, at farms and in Home Deport parking lots still haven’t resulted in enough arrests to satisfy White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has spent weeks insisting that more dedicated resources are needed to meet his goal of 3,000 arrests per day.

But Republicans gave Miller exactly the tools he wants when they passed their budget reconciliation bill last Thursday.

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration’s firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic).

New York Times, Live Updates: Search for Texas Flood Victims Enters Fourth Day, Edgar Sandoval, Amy Graff, Jill Cowan and Yan Zhuang, July 7, 2025. The death toll from a devastating flood in Central Texas topped 100 on Monday evening, as the chance of finding more survivors faded on the fourth day of searching. The death toll includes at least 27 campers and staff members from a single summer camp, where 11 people were still missing.

• See also:  North Carolina Faces Widespread Flooding After Chantal Dumps Heavy Rain

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas acknowledged on Monday that flood-warning sirens might have saved lives if they had been along the river. He added that they needed to be in place by next summer. Kerr County officials considered installing them, but balked at the price tag.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said there would be a “careful examination of what happened” to prevent the same loss of life in the future. The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, requested an inquiry into whether cuts at the National Weather Service contributed to the death toll.

Also on Monday, the mayor of Kerrville, Joe Herring Jr., warned residents to expect a “rough week” as chances fell of finding anyone still alive. He said rescue crews would push forward with their searches, slashing through debris and downed trees even as they braced for the possibility of more flash flooding.

The deluge in Central Texas has become one of the deadliest floods in the United States in the past 100 years. Here’s what else to know:

Rescue efforts: Hundreds of people have been searching for survivors, some of whom have been found clinging to trees and floating on furniture. Read more ›

Forecast: Flash flooding is a threat in Texas’ Hill Country on Monday night. Two to three inches of rain could fall per hour as slow-moving storms pass through, the National Weather Service said. The Weather Prediction Center has cautioned that “any storms that move across this extremely vulnerable region will rapidly cause flash flooding.”

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 6, 2025 [U.S. Weather Warning Cutbacks], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 7, 2025. At least 80 people are dead and more than 40 are still missing in Central Texas after almost a foot (30 centimeters) of rain caused flash floods overnight on Friday. Most of the deaths were in Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet (8 meters) in 45 minutes, engulfing a Christian girls’ camp.

Even as rescuers search for survivors, the disaster has highlighted the dangers of MAGA governance. The steps that left people in the path of the floods on Friday are unclear, but observers are already pointing to the administration’s cuts to government as well as the lack of systems that could have provided earlier warnings to those in the path of the floods.

Immediately after the catastrophe became apparent, Texas officials began to blame cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS)—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—for causing inaccurate forecasts. The “Department of Government Efficiency” cut about 600 staffers from the NWS. After the cuts, the understaffed agency warned that “severe shortages” of meteorologists would hurt weather forecasting.

All five living former directors of the NWS warned in May that the cuts “[leave] the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit…just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes…. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

Democracy Docket, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, This July 4, kings were back in fashion, Marc Elias, July 7, 2025. Publishing the Declaration of Independence was an act of radical defiance. If you look beyond the niceties of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Declaration is a harsh indictment of mistreatment under a dictatorship.

The authors wrote: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

The colonists who declared independence were not only angry at the King. They also chafed at a British Parliament that aided and facilitated the King’s tyranny. And, in the penultimate paragraph of the Declaration itself, they condemned the British public that remained indifferent:

“We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Every time I read this section of our first founding document, I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition, 180 years later, that “history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

As we celebrated Independence Day on July 4, our Congress’ own submission and appalling silence was hanging in the air. Trump and his Republican enablers marked the historic day by signing a bill that will take basic health care away from the neediest Americans to give tax breaks to the wealthiest.

This is a bill that will hit red areas harder than blue. Few Republican members of Congress wanted it to pass. Yet nearly all of them lined up to vote for it.

Fittingly, the bill signing ended with Rep. Mike Johnson handing his speaker’s gavel to Trump. “I want you to have that,” the speaker said. I would say it reminded me of British Gen. Cornwallis’ sword being presented to George Washington to end the war in 1781 — but there’s a key difference. Johnson never actually fought to keep his power.

The pathetic bit of theater playing out at the White House may have been a distraction for what was going on down the street. Justice Department lawyers were rushing to deport eight migrants to South Sudan. It is not clear why the Trump administration picked South Sudan — or the men to send there — since none were from the war-torn country.

One cannot help but conclude that the timing was no coincidence. Seven o’clock on the East Coast — just in time to celebrate Independence Day and prepare for fireworks. It’s sickening.

Finally, we learned something new about the latest capitulation by legacy media. When Paramount announced its $16 million payment to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit, it assured us there were no other financial sweeteners. Now it seems that was a bit of semantics.

According to news reports, once the Paramount merger is completed, the new company will run millions of dollars’ worth of Trump-approved public service announcements. Trump described it as an additional $16 million —“or maybe more than that in advertising”— making the value of the entire deal “$32 to maybe $35 million.”

Between all of the capitulations since he took office, Trump has collected hundreds of millions in pro bono legal services from Big Law and millions in free propaganda commercials from legacy media. I am confident this is not what Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, “those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

On Thursday night, Donald Trump spoke at a rally where he described unscrupulous bankers lending money as “Shylocks.” One might think this would earn him universal condemnation for using an anti-Jewish slur. Instead, too many on the right dismissed his use of an antisemitic term. That was to be expected.

What I did not expect was the tepid response from legacy media and many in the center and on the left. Let’s be clear: The character Shylock has, since Shakespeare’s creation, been antisemitic. In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock’s Jewishness is not merely part of his character — it is the purpose of his character. He is literally introduced into the play as “the Jew.”

Calling someone a “Shylock” is antisemitic, period. When so-called responsible media fail to call it what it plainly is — and when those who police other forms of racism fail to speak out — it only reinforces the games antisemites play to deny Jews their humanity.

The Contrarian, Political Opinion: What now? It is time…,, Jennifer Rubin, right, July 7, 2025. The worst piece of legislation since the Slave Fugitive Act passed 175 years ago rips a gash in the social safety net, delivers the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in memory, and supercharges a violent, reckless, and cruel deportation machine—one which approves of “spending tens of billions of dollars to expand the unconstitutional kidnapping, trafficking, and confinement of people who’ve committed no crime,” as Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren put it.

It strangles our soft power in the world (hollowing out foreign aid, demolishing the State Department); guts investment in science and green energy; and consigns millions—many of them children—to a life bereft of decent nutrition and medical care. It piles unsustainable, stupefying debt on future generations. In total, the American people will have less access to healthcare, nutrition, education, and economic opportunity.

This MAGA assault on working and middle-class Americans will reverberate for years, if not decades. As dire as that reality is, however, the monstrous legislation also could provide the unity and solidarity Democrats will need to regain power, remove the source of so many Americans’ suffering, and reform our democracy. So, what is next?

It is time to stop berating House and Senate Democrats for not “doing enough.” They did everything humanly possible to oppose the bill, pressure and shame Republicans, educate the public, and unify their ranks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and their colleagues (not to mention their indefatigable staffers) challenged and knocked out one measure after another in the so-called Byrd Bath process. They delayed and debated so the full horror of the bill could be covered for days and debated in the light of day, for all Americans to behold. In the House, discipline in the ranks and truly eloquent rhetoric from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a record-setting 8+ hours of debate on Thursday underscored Democrats’ devotion to ordinary Americans.

Democrats lost this bill because they lost too many seats in 2024. Math is math.

It is time to focus instead on the MAGA culprits. Democrats have a knack for infighting and back-biting. But the mammoth horror inflicted on the United States and the moral and political imperative to reverse it should push to the side less important chatter—for example, focusing on the practicality of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promises as the New York City Democratic nominee. (He’s running for mayor of New York, making him reflective of, well, New York City.)

Progressives and moderates in the party need to lower the temperature in intercine debates and conduct substantive discussions on the best means of attaining common goals. Moderates have been too cautious in response to demands for change, while the far left have been too dismissive of concerns about immigration and crime.

Unlike the MAGA cult, Democrats must tolerate a range of views to build a governing coalition. The urgent need to unify behind the common goal of dislodging a neo-fascist party from power must take precedence over every internal squabble. Frankly, if safe blue districts want super-progressive representatives, the rest of the party should not care. If moderate Democrats have the best shot to win back swing seats, they should prevail in primaries.

New York Times, Trial Over Free Speech on Campus, and Trump’s Student Crackdown, Begins, Zach Montague, July 7, 2025. The case challenges the Trump administration’s targeting of noncitizen student activists for arrest and deportation on First Amendment grounds.

A federal judge in Boston on Monday will hear opening statements in a trial expected to cut to the heart of several of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics, including President Trump, Israel and free speech on college campuses.

The case, filed by a pair of academic associations in March, has become the foremost challenge to the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward foreign students who espoused pro-Palestinian views. It contends that the government’s targeting of prominent noncitizen academics who have criticized Israel — such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi of Columbia University and Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts — has already partially succeeded in chilling political speech across the country, and should be categorically stopped on First Amendment grounds.

All of those academics, who are either legal permanent residents or in the United States on student visas, have successfully fought for and obtained their release even as their immigration cases continue to wend through the courts.

But lawyers for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who are representing the associations, will argue at trial this week that the arrests were part of an official policy that could just as easily be turned on other groups that clash with the Trump administration.

While the Supreme Court has affirmed in at least one major case that foreign nationals living in the United States are generally entitled to First Amendment rights, constitutional law experts have cautioned that there are few obvious legal parallels in American history.

In its filings, the government has argued that pro-Palestinian demonstrations are an expression of support for Hamas, which the American government considers a terrorist organization. It has relied on Cold War-era precedents in which the Supreme Court upheld the government’s power to deny entry to people over their past membership in the Communist Party.

Deciding whether the Trump administration overstepped will now fall to Judge William G. Young of Federal District Court in Massachusetts. A lifelong believer in the power of trials to clear up thorny legal questions, Judge Young has scheduled a nine-day bench trial — a trial without a jury — to explore whether the arrests and planned deportations fall within the president’s authority or amount to a grave abuse of power.

July 6

Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas devastated by floods that swept away dozens of campers at night with scant warning. Some said the Trump Administration’s firing of some 600 employees of the National Weather Service this year may have contributed to the lack of warning (New York Times photo-graphic).

New York Times, Live Updates: Desperate Search for Missing in Texas Floods as Death Toll Reaches 80, Yan Zhuang, Edgar Sandoval, Rick Rojas and Jack Healy, July 6, 2025. Nearly a dozen girls from a summer camp along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country are among those unaccounted for. Forecasters warned of more rain and possible flash flooding in hard-hit areas on Sunday.

Forecasters on Sunday afternoon said more flash flooding was possible in areas of Central Texas where hundreds of emergency responders, desperate family members and volunteers raced to rescue survivors of the catastrophic deluge that killed at least 80 people, including 28 children.

At least 41 people were still missing, officials said on Sunday, while 28 of those found dead had not yet been identified. Officials said that a fuller picture of the devastation was slowly emerging.

In Kerr County, waterways were gorged by thunderstorms in the predawn darkness of July 4, and tore through the Christian girls’ summer camp, trapping families inside trailer homes and sweeping people into the currents.

The authorities said that there was “no cap” to the broader tally of the missing, and officials said the search was now a race against time, even as they refused to give up hope.

New York Times, As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas, Christopher Flavelle, July 6, 2025 (print ed.). Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.

Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.

The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.

In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: We Make NO APOLOGIES For Being 1st to Connect NWS Cuts & Texas Tragedy, Ron Filipkowski, below right, Meidas Touch ManagingEditor, July 6, 2025.

We make NO APOLOGIES for being the first media outlet to report that local Texas officials were pointing fingers at the National Weather Service for a faulty forecast and noting that dozens of experts and scientists have been warning for months that Trump’s draconian cuts to NOAA and the NWS were going to lead to serious problems and greater loss of life during the summer storm season.

As readers of my daily Bulletins know well, I have included quotes from these experts from multiple media outlets in the column many, many times over the past several months.

Was NWS at fault in some way in Texas? Was it just the Texas officials trying to pass the buck? Maybe one, maybe the other, maybe both.

But we were not going to allow yet another natural disaster on Trump’s watch with huge loss of life to get swept under the rug again, while he dismantles FEMA and the agencies tasked with warning and informing the public are decimated, without serious questions being asked.

We also were not going to let Trump and the MAGA propaganda machine to set the narrative on this as they have done so many times in the past over many years with little to no response by Democrats.

This also comes after we endured 4 years of Trump and Republicans blaming Biden using lies and disinformation after every single natural disaster, train derailment, war overseas between other countries, on an on. They blamed Biden for everything despite zero evidence and used a firehose of lies, fake videos, and coordinated disinformation.

We did our best to fight it, but honestly we didn’t have much help from the Biden admin pushing back because too often their strategy was to just ignore it. But you can’t ignore it because it is like a cancer that just spreads and gets worse if you do.

We got criticism even from some Democrats along with the typical vicious personal attacks and threats from MAGA. I started to see my DMs fill up with the usual blue-checked right-wing chuds after the story was published with threats and venom. I’ve gotten so many over the years opposing not just Trump but the entire MAGA movement that I don’t even hardly notice or care anymore.

They can’t scare or intimidate us. But we also got some comments from a few Dems scolding us for “politicizing a tragedy.”

Well, we are not interested in being polite or giving the benefit of the doubt to Trump and his minions like Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Russ Vought (left, a top Trump White House budget advisor and former leader of the Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive “Project 2025” to slash federal spending and cut taxes for the rich in a new Trump administration), Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, right, Karoline Leavitt, et al.

We question everything because they lie to us about everything and try to cover up what they are doing across government. If that means we sometimes get accused of “politicizing” tragedies by some on our own side, so be it. If we can endure daily threats from MAGA, we can handle criticism from some squeamish old guard Dems and legacy media about our aggressive and relentless methods.

Now the NYT and other media organizations have joined in with stories documenting how cuts in NWS and other federal agencies may have made this tragedy much, much worse. We were alone out there for most of the day yesterday with our story and got a lot of criticism, but we stood by it because this is a new day and we are determined to make the Democratic Party tougher, more fearless, with thicker skin, and to go on offense against the Trump admin rather than constantly playing defense.

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis inspect cages at the new detention center in Florida to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages in a remote section of The Everglades nicknamed by critics as “Alligator Auschwitz.”

New York Times, Can Democrats Find Their Way on Immigration? Lisa Lerer, Jazmine Ulloa and Reid J. Epstein, July 6, 2025. The party’s leftward shift in the Biden administration arguably laid the groundwork for President Trump’s aggressive approach. Deciding the next move won’t be easy.

The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch.

Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still.

Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction.

Last year, 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that they supported a decrease in immigration, nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so. The embrace of a more punitive approach to illegal immigration includes not only white voters but also working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats had long courted with liberal border policies.

“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico. “This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.”How the Democrats reached this point, and their continued struggles on immigration, is a decades-long story of political failures, missteps, misreadings and misplaced bets — and some shrewd Republican moves.

“We got led astray by the 2016 and the 2020 elections, and we just never moved back,” said Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who introduced an immigration and border security plan in May. “We looked feckless, we weren’t decisive, we weren’t listening to voters, and the voters decided that we weren’t in the right when it comes to what was happening with the border.”

What the party does to change its approach — and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration — may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power.

But while there is party-wide agreement that Democrats have a problem on immigration and border security, there is no consensus on how to fix it.

Some are pushing for a course correction they see as overdue. A soon-to-be-released proposal from the Center for American Progress, the party’s leading policy shop, embraces restrictive ideas long championed by conservatives, including making it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum.

Neera Tanden, the center’s chief executive, said the plan acknowledged a reality that Democrats had long resisted: They must embrace new immigration restrictions in order to have the credibility with voters to fight the far more expansive plans of the Trump administration.

Many on the left vehemently disagree, insisting that more conservative policies will only aid what they see as an insidious and ambitious effort by the Trump administration to demonize and deport Black and brown immigrants who have been in the country for years, remaking the fabric of a nation that once took pride in its diversity.

Whistleblower, author, podcaster and former Donald Trump supporter Lev Parnas, accompanied by his wife (File photo).

Lev Remembers via Facebook, Opinion: A Sunday Message from Lev Parnas, Lev Parnas, author of Shadow Diplomacy, right, July, 6, 2025. Turning Fear Into Power. 

I want to begin today with something simple, but deeply felt: I See You, I Hear You, and I am With You

These past few weeks — these past six months — have been more than chaotic. They’ve been historic. They’ve been terrifying. Every day, it feels like we wake up to a new attack on our rights, our democracy, and the truth itself.

Let me start by saying this clearly:

• • You have every right to be scared.
  • You have every reason to be worried.
  • Because what we are facing is real. It’s dangerous. And it’s not coming — it’s already here.

Over the past six months, we’ve watched Donald Trump and his enablers in Congress — some of the “finest” elected officials money and fear can buy — dismantle protections we once thought untouchable. From defying court orders to weaponizing the DOJ against immigrants and dissenters, to pardoning extremists and cracking down on media, it’s been one move after another designed to erase accountability and consolidate power.

• • We’ve seen him openly deport Americans.
  • We’ve seen ICE raids increase.
  • We’ve seen him lift sanctions on Putin while Ukraine burns.
  • We’ve seen him push a “beautiful” immigration bill that’s anything but.
  • We’ve seen him threaten governors, judges, and whistleblowers.
  • And now — he’s pushing the most dangerous piece yet:
  • What he calls “election reform.”

But let’s be clear — it’s not reform. It’s a plan to rig the system permanently.

That’s why I say this to you from the heart: Now is the time to turn our fear into power.

Because even in the chaos — I promise you — there are cracks forming. I told you they would come. And they’re here.

Inside the Republican Party. Inside MAGA itself. Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Tillis, Thomas Massie — they’re speaking up. They’re breaking ranks. They’re calling him out.

And today, Elon Musk just drove a dagger into the MAGA narrative. Just yesterday, he announced the formation of a third party — the American Party — which he himself is going to fund. This is the worst thing Donald Trump could have imagined. My sources are telling me that Trump’s retaliation will be ferocious. So stay tuned.

Donald Trump knows it. That’s why he’s lashing out harder than ever. He’s threatening to primary them. He’s threatening to deport Elon Musk, right. He’s threatening democracy itself. That’s why he’s desperate to silence voices like mine. Like yours.

• • But I’ll tell you this right now: I’m not going anywhere.
  • Not while we still have breath.
  • Not while this movement is still alive.
  • I get threats every day. They try to shut me up. But I keep going. Because of you.
  • I have no big corporate sponsors.
  • No bodyguards.
  • No party machine behind me.
  • I have YOU.

And together, we’ve made Lev Remembers the number one political Substack two weeks running. We are louder than their lies — and we are just getting started. But I need you to take the next step with me.

July 5

White House Chronicle, Commentary: This Year’s July 4, Llewellyn King, above, longtime journalist and public affairs show host, July 5, 2025.  I think for many, myself among them, it was a somber July 4.

There are dark clouds crossing America’s sun. There are things aplenty going on that seem at odds with the American ideal, and the America we have known.

To me, the most egregious excess of the present is the way masked agents of the state grab men, women and children and deport them without due process, without observance of the cornerstone of law: habeas corpus. None are given a chance to show their legality, call family or, if they have one, a lawyer.

This war against the defenseless is wanton and cruel.

The advocates of this activity, this snatch-and-deport policy, say, and have said it to me, “What do these people not understand about ‘illegal’?”

I say to these advocates, “What don’t you understand about want, need, fear, family, marriage, children and hope?”

The repression many fled from has reentered their luckless lives: terror at the hands of masked enforcers.

I have always advocated for controlled immigration. But the fact that it has been poorly managed shouldn’t be corrected post facto, often years after the offense of seeking a better life and without the consideration of contributions to society.

Elsewhere over this holiday, the media is under attack, the universities are being coerced, and the courts are diminished.

America has always had blots on its history, but it has also stood for justice, for the rule of law, for freedom of the press, freedom of speech. Violations of these values have dimmed the Fourth.

Nonetheless, happy birthday, America. You deserve better: It is guaranteed in the Constitution, one of the all-time great documents of history, a straight-line descendant of the Magna Carta of 1215.

That was when the noblemen of England told King John, “Cut it out!”

MSNBC Daily, Opinion: The GOP megabill fulfills JD Vance’s incredibly depressing vision of patriotism, Paul Waldman, July 5, 2025. The megabill President Donald Trump just signed is remarkably unpopular. Even Fox News admits that according to polls, “Americans are far from thrilled with the measure.”

On Monday, Vice President JD Vance (shown in a photo by Gage Skidmore) took to social media to put some steel in GOP spines. “The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits,” he wrote. The bill “fixes this problem….Everything else — the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Vance has a point, sort of: The legislation will enormously increase the resources the government will devote to rounding up and incarcerating immigrants, providing tens of billions of dollars for nothing less than a redefinition of American identity.

Those provisions are at least as important as the tax giveaways to the wealthy or the brutal cuts to Medicaid, which will take health insurance from as many as 16 million people. Vance has done as much as anyone in the administration to create the philosophical justification for this rejection of not just centuries of history, but America’s very ideals.

Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: History Will Ask: Where Were You? Michael Cohen, below right, July 5, 2025. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was signed while Americans celebrated. Now the damage begins; and if Democrats and truth-tellers don’t act fast, we lose everything.

Well, here we are: July 5th, the day after the fireworks, the BBQs, and the patriotic Instagram posts.

But behind all the red, white, and blue fanfare lurked a darker truth. Because while Americans were busy lighting sparklers and waving flags, President Trump, in true Trumpian fashion, signed the Big Beautiful Bill—a title only someone allergic to detail and allergic to facts could conjure up with a straight face.

Now let me be clear: Trump, once again, managed to pull off what the pundit class—those suit-clad, coiffed-hair, teleprompter-reading, soundbite slingers on cable news—said was impossible. Trump rammed through legislation that fundamentally reshapes American life. And while his supporters were busy chanting “USA” in red hats manufactured in China, most had zero idea of the bomb that just dropped on their own freedoms and future.

That, by the way, is by design. The Big Beautiful Bill is a Trojan horse: wrapped in populist language, paraded around as a gift to the American people, but filled with policies meant to enrich the few, silence the dissenters, and strip away the last threads of a functioning democracy. And now that it’s law, the question isn’t whether it’s bad.

The question is: How bad?

And more importantly: What the hell are we going to do about it? Let’s talk about what’s in this so-called masterpiece.

Corporate tax giveaways so generous they’d make Reagan blush. Environmental deregulation that makes climate denial not just acceptable but codified. Protections rolled back for immigrants, LGBTQ+ communities, women, and workers. Surveillance expansions masked as “security upgrades.”

The fine print reads like an authoritarian wish list—and no one was paying attention because it’s a thousand pages long, no one read it, and, most importantly, the spectacle always distracts from the substance.

But here’s the real kicker: this didn’t happen in the dead of night. It wasn’t hidden in secret rooms. It happened in broad daylight. And do you know why? Because the media—the mainstream media—was too busy obsessing over favorability poll numbers and palace intrigue. Too busy playing both sides to preserve their ad dollars and access. Too cowardly to call a spade a damn spade.CNN?

Still wondering if Trump’s shift in tone means he’s “presidential” again. MSNBC? Chasing ratings with endless panels of talking heads who recycle the same shallow points. Fox News? Please; it’s just state propaganda with better lighting.And so it falls on us—the independents, the truth-tellers, the ones without billionaire backers or corporate filters—to sound the alarm.

That means MeidasTouch Network, that means Lincoln Square, and yes, that means me. We’ve got to scream louder, dig deeper, and stand firmer than ever before. Because if we don’t, then buckle the fuck up, because we are headed for four more years of chaos. We’re headed for a permanent erosion of the America we claim to celebrate every Fourth of July.

Now, to my Democratic friends: stop playing nice. Stop trying to reason with a party that no longer believes in democracy. Stop waiting for the perfect message or the ideal moment. The moment is now, and the message is simple: fight like hell. And stop thinking voters will just “figure it out.” Because guess what? They won’t. Not if their news diet consists of corporate-fed garbage or algorithm-driven outrage porn.

Start using the same tools Trump and his allies abuse every day: social media, viral videos, grassroots coalitions—but use them for truth. For justice. For protecting what remains of this fragile republic.

Because what Trump and his administration understand—and what Democrats too often forget—is that perception is reality in American politics.

They don’t care if what he signs hurts their own voters. They just care that it looks like a “win” on TV. And sadly, too many people fall for the show over the substance.

But we can’t afford to sit this out. The Big Beautiful Bill might be law, but laws can be repealed. Damage can be undone. If we act now.

So don’t just tweet your outrage. Organize. Don’t just wait for midterms. Mobilize. And don’t, for one second, think someone else is going to save this country for you.

They’re not. It’s on us—the independents, the pissed-off patriots, the ones who know that loving America means holding her accountable, not blindly cheering her decline.

This isn’t just another political fight. This is the fight for politics itself—for truth, for democracy, for the soul of a nation that’s already teetering on the edge.

So enjoy your leftovers from yesterday’s cookout. But then get up. Speak out. And show up.

Because the fireworks may be over, but the real fire—the one in the belly of every American who refuses to let this country go quietly into autocracy—has only just been lit.Let’s make it burn so bright that even the cowardly media can’t ignore it.

A guest post by Michael Cohen, right, Principal of Crisis-X #1 and #8 NYT Bestseller Author, Host of The Mea Culpa Podcast, Co-Host of The Political Beatdown, Former Personal Attorney To President Donald J. Trump and Discharged Felon.

New York Times, Editorial Board: The Trump’s Politicized F.B.I. Has Made Americans Less Safe, Editorial Board, July 5, 2025. Only 11 days after President Trump was inaugurated for a second term, his administration began a purge of the F.B.I. that now threatens some of the bureau’s most important missions.

His appointees ousted eight of its most experienced managers, including the division heads overseeing national security, cybersecurity and criminal investigations. Several had worked on prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters or had assisted in the various investigations of Mr. Trump, and Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, said they could not be trusted to carry out the President’s agenda.

That was just the beginning. Over the past five months, many F.B.I. agents, including other top managers and national security experts, have been fired, pressured to leave or transferred to lesser roles. Hundreds have resigned on their own, unwilling to follow the demands of the Trump administration. Their absence has left a vacuum in divisions that are supposed to protect the public. These losses have “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I.,” Adam Goldman of The Times wrote.

Mr. Trump’s playbook for the F.B.I. is plain to see. He is turning it into an enforcement agency for MAGA’s priorities. He is chasing out agents who might refuse to play along and installing loyalists in their place. He is seeking to remove the threat of investigation for his friends and allies. And he is trying to instill fear in his critics and political opponents. Among his many efforts to weaken American democracy and amass more power for himself, his politicization of the F.B.I. is one of the most blatant.

These developments should unsettle all Americans, regardless of party. As one former Justice Department official told NBC News, the decimation of the bureau’s senior ranks has left it “completely unprepared to respond to a crisis, including the fallout from the current conflict in the Middle East.” Mr. Trump’s politicization of the F.B.I. has left it less able to combat terrorism, foreign espionage, biosecurity threats, organized crime, online scams, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and more.

The F.B.I. has a flawed history, of course. J. Edgar Hoover abused his power as the bureau’s director for decades, and Richard Nixon used it to conduct surveillance of political opponents. Yet after the Watergate scandal forced Mr. Nixon’s resignation, the F.B.I., like the rest of the Justice Department, reformed itself to become more independent from the president.

Every president since the 1970s has at times chafed against that independence, wishing that the Justice Department would be more loyal to the White House’s political interests. But those presidents, from Gerald Ford through Joe Biden, largely respected the bureau’s autonomy. As a result, Americans — from the political left, center and right — tended to trust the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump has taken a radically different approach. He has made clear that he considers the F.B.I.’s first priority to be loyalty. Consider the Signal scandal from this spring, when senior officials disclosed sensitive information in a group chat. In any other administration, the F.B.I. probably would have investigated. Under Mr. Trump, the bureau looked the other way.

To carry out this agenda, he chose as its director Kash Patel, right, whose main qualification is his unquestioning fealty to Mr. Trump. In 2022, Mr. Patel published a children’s book, The Plot Against the King, in which a wizard named Kash saves the day by exposing a conspiracy against King Donald. The next year, Mr. Patel published a book titled Government Gangsters.

His mission at the F.B.I. is to politicize it. He is dismantling key operations and reshaping the bureau into an instrument of Mr. Trump’s political will. Mr. Trump spent years baselessly accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of being weaponized against him; now he is turning federal law enforcement into the very thing he claimed it was: a political enforcer. Under Mr. Patel, the bureau has assigned agents to pursue long-running MAGA grievances.

Among the people whom Mr. Patel has scapegoated are the agents he now oversees, which damages the bureau’s morale and its effectiveness. Before taking office, he called the bureau “an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He has described its employees as “political jackals” who tried to “suffocate the truth” in order to rig the 2020 election for Mr. Biden. Mr. Patel has promoted theories that the F.B.I. paid Twitter to censor conservatives and that it used confidential informants to stir up the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. There is no evidence to support any of this.

For his deputy director, Mr. Patel hired Dan Bongino, a longtime right-wing podcaster. Mr. Bongino, left, has called the bureau “the single most corrupt law enforcement institution” in America and a “full-blown leftist political action committee.” Together they began singling out agents who had worked on prosecutions of the Jan. 6 rioters or the federal indictment of Mr. Trump for improperly removing documents from the White House. Many of these agents were fired, pushed to resign or transferred.

Several of the bureau’s most experienced managers have been driven out simply because they angered members of Mr. Trump’s coalition.

The resulting loss of expertise and experience is chilling. The bureau today has fewer people with the skills to prevent crime, political corruption and foreign espionage.

Lance’s Substack, “The New Republic” Reports On Dissidents Within Military Seeking Protection From Being Given Unlawful Orders, Lance F Rosen, right, July 5, 2025. New Veteran’s Group Organizing Support For American “Refusniks.” 

This coverage from “TNR” is important and timely, given that Trump and Stephen Miller will be deploying vast new resources into their Nazi-style mass deportation program under their just passed unconstitutional and morally depraved budget. In response there will be strong and visible growing opposition to the regime, and there should be little doubt that the 1807 Insurrection Act is sitting on Trump’s desk just waiting to be signed.

The article profiling this new group linked here reminds us that in 2020 Trump wanted to invoke martial law and to have protesters shot in the legs.

Soldiers are making known anonymously that they are torn between the necessity of following orders versus honoring their oaths to be loyal to our constitution, two alternatives becoming more mutually exclusive by the day as Trump and Miller move toward dictatorship. They are also angry at having been made into an auxiliary arm of the ICE Stormtroopers being deployed in a nationwide mercenary terror operation run from the top by Stephen Miller along with his flunkies Kristi Noem and Tom Homan. (Note, Marines units were deployed to Florida this week for no apparent reason other than to show that they intend to use muscle everywhere, whether there are so-called violent protests or not.)

The organization covered by “TNR,” named “About Face,” which is organizing pressure to mitigate this administration’s obscene misuse of the military, is hopefully only the tip of the iceberg. The veteran spokesperson speaking for them under the pseudonym “Kim” is one of many patriotic Americans who are reacting with horror at the continuing LA deployment of the National Guard and Marines, and clearly see the writing on the wall for even worse abuses.

The people involved in fighting against this are taking real risks, including that of being reinstated to active duty for purposes of a court martial, jail, and losing their pensions. Their message is very simple. It is about “the right to refuse.”

People often ask which groups are worthy of their support. Most of the time they are asking about political groups which are aligned with the Democratic Party. This however transcends partisan politics, and is rather a fundamental issue of human rights, both those of the many people exercising their First Amendment freedoms to protest, as well as the active duty soldiers who are confronted with the likely prospect of being given orders to shoot them down in a large scale version of Kent State. Therefore these groups need backup. They want protection, to not be forced into a Hobbesian choice between mutiny or massacres.

We have reached the point where for many people reality is reaching them on a personal level, and they will either resist or hunker down. This is true of everyone facing similar dilemmas, such as nursing home administrators who will be forced to throw 80 year-old Medicaid recipients out on the street “to look for jobs” when they couldn’t possibly even care for themselves, much less work.

When murderous policies affecting “others,” which are seemingly abstract, reach large numbers of people personally who never expected to be a target for annihilation, deprivation or persecution themselves, or being compelled to do things which violate their consciences, that is a prescription for social explosions, civil conflict, and revolutions.

For example the last President who used violence and threats against American veterans was Herbert Hoover, when in 1932 he deployed General MacArthur to misuse the military by shooting, beating and gassing the “Bonus Marchers” to disperse them from their encampment in a “Hooverville” away from the federal buildings in Washington DC. They were characterized by the administration as communist radicals who were plotting revolution, when all they wanted was the bonuses that had already been legislated to go into effect in 1945 to be moved up to help them get through “hard times.”

Hoover’s Great Depression, combined with this kind of stupidity, greatly radicalized and divided Americans back then, which if not for President Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership could have led to a Hitler-Style fascist turn in the US as it did in Germany. Our future Presidents learned a great lesson from that travesty, which was to never neglect or abuse our soldiers, active or retired, which is why we even had a Veteran’s Administration and a G.I. Bill.

Most of us foresaw this scenario from the moment Trump was declared the winner in November. We have been hoping that the legislative and judicial branches, combined with the so-called “fourth estate,” the media, would hold Trump in check. Now we have learned the hard way that they won’t, especially in the aftermath of the recent SCOTUS atrocities and the passing of Trump’s mass-murder budget.

That leaves the military as possibly our last guardrail, which is why I will be paying special attention to coverage of groups like this and their stories. You should too.

July 4

New York Times, Trump Claims Sweeping Power to Nullify Laws, Letters on TikTok Ban Show, Charlie Savage, July 4, 2025 (print ed.). In purporting to license otherwise illegal conduct by tech firms, President Trump set a precedent expanding executive power, legal experts warned.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, below right, told tech companies that they could lawfully violate a statute barring American companies from supporting TikTok based on a sweeping claim that President Trump has the constitutional power to set aside laws, newly disclosed documents show.

In letters to companies like Apple and Google, Ms. Bondi wrote that Mr. Trump had decided that shutting down TikTok would interfere with his “constitutional duties,” so the law banning the social media app must give way to his “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.”

The letters, which became public on Thursday via Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, portrayed Mr. Trump as having nullified the legal effects of a statute that Congress passed by large bipartisan majorities in 2024 and that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld.

Shortly after being sworn in, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban and has since repeatedly extended it. That step has been overshadowed by numerous other moves he has made to push at the boundaries of executive power in the opening months of his second administration.

But some legal experts consider Mr. Trump’s action — and in particular his order’s claim, which Ms. Bondi endorsed in her letters, that he has the power to enable companies to lawfully violate the statute — to be his starkest power grab. It appears to set a significant new precedent about the potential reach of presidential authority, they said.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President to Sign Sweeping Domestic Policy Bill Into Law, Staff Reports, July 4, 2025. President Trump is set to sign the policy bill on Friday afternoon in a ceremony at the White House.

Victory lap: President Trump spoke extensively about his policy bill during an appearance in Des Moines on Thursday as he began a campaign to build public support for the legislation that he muscled through Congress. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he would sign it into law in a ceremony Friday afternoon. Here’s how the measure could affect you.

Tariffs: Mr. Trump said that he would begin sending letters on Friday notifying countries of new tariffs the United States would impose on their products. The president signaled that he was set to resume a series of steep tariffs that he initially imposed in April on dozens of countries, before pausing them for 90 days to negotiate individual deals. Most of those deals have yet to materialize.

Immigration: The Supreme Court granted a request from the Trump administration to allow it to send eight deportees to South Sudan. The men, who are from several countries, have been held at a U.S. military base in Djibouti for more than a month as their cases were litigated. Neither the United States nor South Sudan have said what will happen to the men upon their arrival.

President Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam enjoy a lighter moment while helping authorities launch a detainee camp to house alleged illegal immigrants in tents and cages on an abandoned airstrip in The Everglades, reputed to be a model for new camps elsewhere across the United States funded by the Trump-backed budget bill being signed into law on July 4, 2025.

Thinking about… by Timothy Snyder via Substack, Concentration Camp Labor Cannot Become Normal, Timothy Snyder, July 4, 2025. With the passage of Trump’s death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States.

Concentration camps are sites of tempting slave labor. Among many other aims, the Soviets used concentration camp labor to build canals and work mines. The Nazi German concentration camp system followed a capitalist version of the same logic: it drew in businesses with the prospect of inexpensive labor.

File photo of Auschwitz guards and office workers.

We know this and have no excuse not to act.

What happens next in the U.S.?

Workers who are presented as “undocumented” will be taken to the camps. Perhaps they will work in the camps themselves, as slaves to government projects.

But more likely they will be offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits. In the simplest version, and perhaps the most likely, detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working. Their stay in the concentration camp will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful. Trump has already said that this is the idea, calling it “owner responsibility.”

We should remember what drew I.G Farben into Auschwitz: profit. But there are of course precedents for extreme exploitation in American history, including but not limited to the history of chattel slavery. And slavery is not entirely illegal in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment allows slavery if only as punishment for a crime. The people described as “undocumented” or “denaturalized” (and other categories sure to be invented soon) are portrayed as criminals.

If the Trump regime tries to enslave such people on a large scale, there will be a court case. But waiting for the Supreme Court to do the right thing is, to put it gently, no substitute for action. It would be good if there were explicit legislation banning slave labor in all circumstances. But such a law is unlikely without a movement behind it.

The government is putting before us the temptation to cooperate in fascist dehumanization on a grand scale. But that does not mean we must do so. This is an area where actions by individuals, by civil society, by the professions, and by companies can be decisive.

The first action is simple. CEOs should now, this summer, this month, next week, sign a pledge not to use labor from concentration camps. It could be as simple as that: “On behalf of my firm I promise not to use labor from concentration camps nor to cooperate with any firm that does.”

While the CEOs should act first and with explicit clarity, we are all implicated. Americans who shop, which means most of us, should avoid companies that employ labor from camps. Americans who invest should not invest in companies that use labor from concentration camps. And, like CEOs, they can take public action. They can sign a pledge not to invest in companies that use concentration camp labor.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary, Resistance Dateline: Few outside the U.S. doubt rumors of detainees being tossed into the ocean from military transport planes, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 24 books and former Navy intelligence officer, July 1-2, 2025.

Few people outside of the United States doubt rumors running rampant on social media that deported U.S. immigrants are being tossed into the ocean by military transport planes.

The reason for this rumor spreading like a wildfire is that few Europeans, Latin Americans, Asians, and others put it past a regime to carry out such crimes against humanity.

They see the U.S. government and Florida’s banana republic dictator Ron DeSantis setting up in a mere matter of days a concentration camp for immigration detainees in the middle of the Everglades as a grotesque human rights abuse. The camp, located 36 miles south of Miami, was previously administered as the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport at 54575 E. Tamiami Trail in Ochopee by Miami-Dade and Collier counties, has been nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” and, more fittingly, “Alligator Auschwitz.”

Just like the infamous Nazi death camps, Alligator Auschwitz is steeped in bureaucracy.

Auschwitz and other camps were under the ultimate administrative control of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) led by Heinrich Himmler. Auschwitz’s political department was staffed by Gestapo or the Kripo (criminal police) officers.

The political department admitted detainees; subjected them to harsh interrogations (these were conducted by the camp’s Vernehmungsabteilung element); determined those who were to be executed either by mass extermination in Zyklon B gas chambers, firing squad at the camp’s “Death Wall,” or injected with phenol into the heart by medical orderlies; and operated the crematoria.

Personnel of the Schutzstaffel (SS), namely, the feared SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-Death’s Head Units), performed guard duties along with older members of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe. Those who released Zyklon B gas into the gas chambers, billed by the Nazis as “disinfectant showers,” were members of the SS disinfection detail or SS-Desinfektionskommando.

Located at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp complex was the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS, formally the Hygiene Institut der Waffen SS-und Polizei, Auschwitz. This is where prisoners were subjected to horrifying medical experiments, including subjecting men, women, and children to infectious diseases, psychotropic drugs, and other abuses that often led to death.

Alligator Auschwitz, a 39-square mile site sitting alongside an 11,000-foot runway in the middle of the Everglades, involves as many bureaucratic levels as did the actual Auschwitz.

DeSantis and Donald Trump, who visited the Everglades concentration camp on July 1, obviously believe that by creating a bureaucratic labyrinth to oversee what is essentially a concentration camp, no one state or federal agency can ultimately be held fully responsible for the deaths and injuries that will eventually occur at the facility.

Alligator Auschwitz’s build-out and management has been handled by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM). It has tapped money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, funds pulled directly by DHS from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program that have been budgeted to house those left homeless by hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

Michael Cohen via Substack, Red, White, Bruised… But Still Ours, Michael Cohen, right, July 4, 2025. Amid fireworks and fear, America grapples with authoritarian drift; but our history reminds us: we’ve faced worse, fought back harder, and come out stronger.

Today is the Fourth of July; America’s birthday. Fireworks crackle overhead, flags flap on front porches, and kids run around in red-white-and-blue t-shirts bought last-minute from Target.

On the surface, it’s all very normal. Very patriotic.

But beneath the sparklers and barbecue smoke lies a cold, hard truth: this year, Independence Day feels different. It feels heavier. Not because we’ve stopped loving this country, but because, for the first time in generations, many of us are unsure if the country still loves us back.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Where we go from here? Norman Eisen, July 4, 2025. The passage of this bill is the latest in a series of devastating harms that Trump and his MAGA minions have wrought.

New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump Deport Eight Migrants to South Sudan, Adam Liptak and Mattathias Schwartz, July 4, 2025 (print ed.). The court’s order followed a broader one last month allowing removals to countries with which migrants have no connections.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the government to deport eight men who have spent more than a month held under guard on an American military base on Djibouti to South Sudan, granting a request from the Trump administration.

An administration official said it would promptly send the men, who hail from countries around the world, to the war-torn nation. Neither the United States nor South Sudan has said what will happen to the men on their arrival.

This was the second time the court has ruled in the case. Last month, in a broader ruling that was unsigned and offered no reasoning, the court paused a trial judge’s order that had barred the administration from deporting migrants to countries other than their own unless they had a chance to argue that they would face torture.

Lawyers for the eight men rushed back to the trial judge, who blocked their removal again. The administration then asked the justices to clarify that last month’s order properly applied to the men, too.

Thursday’s Supreme Court order, which was unsigned but included two pages of reasoning, said that it did.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the ruling could have grave consequences.

“What the government wants to do, concretely,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death.”

In May, the government loaded eight men onto a plane said to be headed to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country where only one held citizenship.

After Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston intervened, their flight landed instead in the East African nation of Djibouti.

The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained at Camp Lemonnier, a military base, ever since. They spend almost all their time inside a modular, air-conditioned container that the military usually uses as a conference room, according to court filings. Under constant guard, they wear shackles around their ankles, except when showering, using the bathroom or meeting remotely with their lawyers, a member of their legal team has said.

Before coming to the United States, they hailed from Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, welcomed Thursday’s ruling. “These sickos will be in South Sudan by Independence Day,” she said.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants, said the ruling comes “at the expense of the lives of eight men who are now subject to immediate removal to a war-torn country to which they have no ties.”

New York Times, Trump Administration: How Republicans Re-engineered the Tax Code, Andrew Duehren, July 4, 2025. The product of years of Republican effort, the American tax code now blends traditional supply-side economics with President Trump’s populist 2024 campaign promises.

When Republicans last set out to change taxation in America, they spent years combing through the details of the internal revenue code. They traveled the country, held hearings and drafted early versions of a bill, eventually passed in 2017, that they hoped would transform a sclerotic tax system with long-held conservative principles.

This time around, as Republicans prepared for another opportunity to change how taxes in the world’s largest economy are collected, their core ideas came not from a Washington think tank or corporate accountant. Instead, in President Trump’s telling, a waitress at his hotel in Las Vegas complained to him about having to pay taxes on her tips while he dined there during the 2024 campaign.

Soon, the seemingly offhand remark became a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s successful campaign back into office. Republicans on Capitol Hill embraced the idea, too, and Congress this week voted to create a new tax exemption for tipped income for the next few years.

Overall, the tax code now blends this classical Republican vision of a more corporate-friendly and simpler tax code with Mr. Trump’s improvisational notions for popular, easy-to-brand tax cuts. Those two strands have combined, in a sometimes contradictory way, to create a tax system that is expected to bring in far less government revenue than many experts believe is necessary, all while generating little additional economic growth and still returning the largest savings to the rich.

New York Times, How Will Trump’s Big Bill Affect Your Wallet? Ashley Wu, Christine Zhang, Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard July 3-4, 2025 (interactive).

Congressional Republicans just passed President Trump’s sprawling domestic policy bill that extends and expands tax cuts, while slashing Medicaid, food benefits and clean energy initiatives to pay for them — but only partly. The bill favors the wealthy, and low-income Americans stand to lose the most.

What could the bill mean for your pocketbook?

July 3

New York Times, Trump Administration: House Passes Sweeping Bill to Fulfill President’s Domestic Agenda, Michael Gold, Robert Jimison and Megan Mineiro, July 3, 2025. Republicans voting “no”: Fitzpatrick and Massie.

The measure extending tax cuts and slashing the social safety net goes to President Trump for his signature, but the debate over it exposed deep rifts in his party.

The House on Thursday narrowly passed a sweeping bill to extend tax cuts and slash social safety net programs, capping Republicans’ chaotic months-long slog to overcome deep rifts within their party and deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda.

The final vote, 218 to 214, was mostly along party lines and came after Speaker Mike Johnson, right, spent a frenzied day and night toiling to quell resistance in his own ranks that threatened until the very end to derail the president’s signature measure. With all but two Republicans in favor and Democrats uniformly opposed, the action cleared the bill for Mr. Trump’s signature, meeting the July 4 deadline he had demanded.

The legislation extends tax cuts enacted in 2017 that had been scheduled to expire at the end of the year, while adding new ones Mr. Trump promised during this campaign, on some tips and overtime pay, at a total cost of $4.5 trillion. It also increases funding for defense and border security and cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, with more reductions to food assistance for the poor and other government aid. And it phases out clean-energy tax credits passed under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that Mr. Trump and conservative Republicans have long decried.

Also included is a $5 trillion increase in the debt limit, a measure that Republicans are typically unwilling to support but that was necessary to avert a federal default later this year.

The bill’s final passage was a major victory for congressional Republicans and Mr. Trump, who is expected to swiftly sign what he has frequently referred to as his “big, beautiful bill.” G.O.P. lawmakers who had feuded bitterly over the legislation ultimately united almost unanimously behind it, fearing the political consequences of allowing a tax increase and of crossing a president who demands unflagging loyalty and was pressuring them to fall into line.

New York Times, Investigation: Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback, Russ Buettner (who reviewed 2,000 documents filed in a legal action against Donald J. Trump for a more complete understanding of his financial state than was previously known), July 3, 2025 (print ed.). Contrary to the president’s assertions, records filed in a fraud case against him suggest that his riches were not the product of a steady and strong empire. (See details below.)

New York Times, Justice Dept. Weighs Seeking Criminal Charges as It Presses States for Election Data, Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasaniti, July 3, 2025 (print ed.). Such a path could drastically raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, bringing the department and the threat of criminalization into the election system.

July 2

Semafor, Republican megabill faces tallest hurdle yet, Mike Johnson, Eleanor Mueller and Shelby Talcott, July 2, 2025. It’s a make-or-break day for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson as their teams look to muscle the party’s mammoth tax-and-spending bill through the House as-is.

This is their last hurdle and also, potentially, their tallest: The version the Senate passed Tuesday irked both conservatives and moderates by trimming less in spending and more from Medicaid, respectively.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: July 1 [Trump’s Budget Bill], Heather Cox Richardson, right, July 2, 2025. Just after noon today, the Senate passed its version of the budget reconciliation bill.

All Democrats and Independents voted no. Three Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—joined the Democrats in voting no.

That left the bill at 50–50. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the deciding vote, pushing the measure through the Senate and sending it back to the House to vote on the changes made by the Senate.

From the reporters’ gallery above the floor, CNN’s Sarah Ferris heard Senator Angus King (I-ME) yell to his Republican colleagues: “Shame on you guys. That was the most disgusting vote I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The measure cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations and offsets those cuts in part by slashing Medicaid and food security programs for low-income Americans.

But there is at least one aspect of American life on which the bill is lavishing money. While the measure slashes public welfare programs, it pours $170.7 billion into immigration enforcement.

The American Immigration Council broke out the numbers today: The Senate bill provides $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times what Trump spent on the wall in his first term. It provides $45 billion for detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an increase of 265% in ICE’s annual detention budget. It provides $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, a threefold increase in ICE’s annual budget.

When Trump talks about undocumented migrants as being dangerous criminals, he appears to have bought into the fantasy that the U.S. is a hellscape. In fact, about 8% of arrested migrants have been convicted of violent crimes.

The administration defines anyone who breaks immigration law—which is a misdemeanor, not a felony—as a criminal. One of the reasons for the push to get the bill passed before July 4 is that the Department of Homeland Security has blown through its budget and needs the bill’s additional funding to operate.

While the Senate considered the budget reconciliation bill today, President Donald J. Trump visited the new detention facility in the Florida Everglades designed to hold 5,000 undocumented immigrants.

The facility will cost $450 million a year, which will be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Florida attorney general who came up with the plan gave it the name “Alligator Alcatraz,” a cutesy name for tents filled with cages for undocumented immigrants.

Standing in front of the cages with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem laughing, Trump told reporters: “Biden wanted me in here…. It didn’t work out that way, but he wanted me in here, that son of a bitch.”

This is nonsense, but it reveals Trump’s conviction that he is always a victim, his determination to destroy the rule of law that threatened to hold him accountable for his actions, and his own drive to imprison and destroy his political opponents.

Once a new system of detention facilities and ICE agents is established and the idea that a Republican president can legitimately attack his political opponents is accepted, a police state will be in place.

In answer to the question “How many more facilities like this do you feel that the country needs in order to enact your agenda of mass deportations?” Trump said today: “Well, I think we’d like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know Ron’s doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you’re going to keep it for a long time.”

Once that system is in place, it will not matter if Trump is able to do the work of the presidency. Today, a reporter from the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the new detention facility in the Everglades: “Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, weeks, months?”

New York Times, Investigation: Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback, Russ Buettner (who reviewed 2,000 documents filed in a legal action against Donald J. Trump for a more complete understanding of his financial state than was previously known), July 2, 2025. Contrary to the president’s assertions, records filed in a fraud case against him suggest that his riches were not the product of a steady and strong empire.

Last spring, even as Donald J. Trump’s march back toward the White House dominated public attention, his finances, largely out of view, faced serious threats.

In late 2023, Mr. Trump boasted of having between $300 million and $400 million in cash when he testified as part of that legal action, a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that accused the Trumps of defrauding their lenders. His cash stockpile, Mr. Trump said, showed “how good a company I built,” and, he added in earlier testimony, “especially for a developer.”

Contrary to those assertions, records filed in the fraud case suggest that Mr. Trump’s cash was not the product of a steady and strong empire.

His balance had fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of $52 million in 2018, a small figure for the size of his operation. The subsequent increase came largely from the sale of properties and a payout of more than $150 million from a passive investment.

Moreover, the version of Mr. Trump’s business that he projects — a real estate development company that executes large, complex tasks — hasn’t existed for a nearly a decade, since the Trumps’ last two major construction projects failed to make money.

New York Times, Investigation: What We Know (and Can’t Know) About Trump’s Wealth, Ben Protess, Andrea Fuller and David Yaffe-Bellany July 1, 2025 (print ed.). Asset Values:

• Cryptocurrencies: As much as $7.1 billion
• Stocks, bonds and cash: At least $2.2 billion
• Real estate and other business holdings: At least $1.3 billion

New York Times, Trump Withholds Nearly $7 Billion for Schools, With Little Explanation,Sarah Mervosh and Michael C. Bender, July 1, 2025. The money, which was allocated by Congress, helps pay for after-school programs, support for students learning English and other services.

The Trump administration has declined to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services.

The money was expected to be released by Tuesday. But in an email on Monday, the Education Department notified state education agencies that the money would not be available.

The administration offered little explanation, saying only that the funds were under review. It gave no timeline for when, or if, the money would be released, saying instead that it was “committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities.” The frozen funds are unrelated to the millions of dollars in cuts included in the domestic policy bill that squeaked through the Senate on Tuesday.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, a group that works to expand after-school services for students. She estimated that the federal dollars for after-school and summer-school programs — about $1.3 billion annually — support 1.4 million students, mostly lower income, representing about 20 percent of all students in after-school programs nationally.

The move is likely to be challenged in court and has already been criticized as illegal by Democrats and teachers’ unions, who emphasized that the money had been appropriated by Congress and was approved by President Trump in March as part of a broader funding bill.

“This is lawless,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

The administration has taken an aggressive approach to cutting back the federal government’s role in education, including plans to eliminate the Education Department entirely. Though only Congress can abolish the department, the Trump administration has taken an ax to education staffing and funding more broadly as it seeks to whittle down the department.

The administration has suggested that it may seek to eliminate the nearly $7 billion in frozen funding. Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week that the administration was considering ways to claw back the funding through a process known as rescission. The administration would formally ask lawmakers to claw back a set of funds it has targeted for cuts. Even if Congress fails to vote on the request, the president’s timing would trigger a law that freezes the money until it ultimately expires.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Muskenfreude: When an oligarch confronts an autocrat, guess who wins? Paul Krugman, right, July 2, 2025. So the Senate has passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

True, it could still be blocked if House Republicans stood by their principles. But they won’t. This monstrosity will become the law of the land, and tens of millions of Americans will suffer so that billionaires can pay lower taxes.

Looking forward, those of us who care about a decent society will have to do what we can to make sure that Americans understand who ruined their lives and make the people responsible pay a heavy political price.

But there will be plenty of time for that, so I thought I’d devote today’s post to a more pleasant topic: The humiliation of Elon Musk.

Does taking some satisfaction in Musk’s demise make me a bad person? Maybe, but I’m only human. Should I go easy on Musk because he came out against the terrible bill that just passed? No.

For one thing, Musk’s opposition predictably made no difference. Musk and other oligarchs will soon learn just how little political power their wealth gives them in the political environment they helped create. More on that in a minute.

Beyond that, Musk was against the bill for all the wrong reasons.

The whole DOGE story remains remarkable on a couple of levels. It’s not just that Donald Trump temporarily gave immense power over federal spending to someone who had no legitimate basis for that power — he was neither elected by voters nor, as is normally required for senior officials, approved by the Senate.

Beyond that, Trump gave that power to a man (shown in file photos at left and below right) who clearly understood nothing about what the government does and what it spends money on — but who, in his arrogance, assumed that he could eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

He couldn’t, of course, and he should have been fired on the spot after making the absurd claim that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security checks. But he wasn’t. For months after that episode Musk remained in a position to create chaos and degrade the functioning of the government — oh, and condemn large numbers of children to death.

Now he’s on the outs — but he still lacks the honesty and courage to admit what he got wrong.

What about Musk’s threat to form a new political party? It will go nowhere if he tries. But I don’t think he’ll get anywhere near making good on that threat. As Trump might say, Musk just doesn’t have the cards. My prediction is that very soon one of two things will happen. Either Musk will slink off, tail between his legs. Or he will see his wealth destroyed, faster than he imagines possible.

Most immediately, Musk’s business interests are unusually dependent on federal support, and hence on the good will of whoever is running the government. I’m not sure whether Musk is really the most subsidized businessman in history, but Trump basically got it right here: Beyond that, even great wealth offers little protection from the people in power under an authoritarian regime.

Three years ago NPR’s Planet Money newsletter published a article titled “How Putin conquered Russia’s oligarchy” that people like Musk really should have read before throwing their support behind Trump.

As the article explained, Russian oligarchs played a large role in Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. But a few years after his ascent, Putin summoned the wealthiest among them to the Kremlin to explain who was in charge:

Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government). In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances.

And oligarchs who refused to come to heel were replaced by a new breed of oligarchs, who have accrued wealth and power under Putin: the siloviki, which translates roughly to “men of force.”

It can’t happen here, you say. Trump can’t arbitrarily punish wealthy men or seize their property. After all, that would be against the law. And the rule of law still prevails in America, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re not the kind of country where masked men claiming to be government agents kidnap people off the street. Oh, wait.

Still, Musk is a U.S. citizen, which gives him protection, right? Except the Department of Justice has already announced that it will soon be seeking to revoke citizenship for many naturalized Americans. And Trump is already fantasizing about sending Musk back to South Africa.

OK, I don’t expect things to go that far for Musk or any of the other Trump-backing oligarchs who may be having second thoughts — not because I think there are limits to what Trump is willing to do, but because I don’t think any of these guys will have the courage to stand up to him.

July 1

New York Times, Trump Administration:Live Updates: Senate Debate on Trump’s Policy Bill Stretches Into Third Day, Michael Gold, Megan Mineiro and Catie Edmondson, July 1, 2025. Vice President JD Vance arrived at the Capitol prepared to cast a tiebreaking vote on the sprawling bill, but it was not clear when Republicans would be ready to call a final vote.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary, June 30 [Trump’s Big Ugly Bill], Heather Cox  Richardson, right, July 1, 2025. “This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

“[W]e’re debating a bill that’s going to cut healthcare for 16 million people. It’s going to give a tax break to…massively wealthy people who don’t need any more money. There are going to be kids who go hungry because of this bill. This is the biggest reduction in…nutrition benefits for kids in the history of the country.”

In fact, the drive to slash health insurance is part of the Republicans’ determination to destroy the modern government.

Grover Norquist, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. “Government should enforce [the] rule of law,” he said. “It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.”

The Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill takes wealth from the American people to give it to the very wealthy and corporations, and Democrats are calling their colleagues out.

“This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on the floor of the Senate. “Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.”

New York Times, Bush, Obama and Bono Commend USAID Staff Members on Their Last Day, Christopher Flavelle, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). Two ex-presidents and a rock star thanked the outgoing workers of a doomed agency.

As most staff members at the U.S. Agency for International Development marked their final day with the agency, they got thanks from two presidents and a rock star.

The Trump administration has eliminated most U.S. foreign assistance programming, saying that it fails to advance American interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the former Trump adviser Elon Musk worked to dismantle U.S.A.I.D., arguing that its staff was insubordinate. But in recorded messages shared with employees on Monday, former presidents painted a very different picture of the agency and its place in American foreign policy.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Republicans Beware: Medicaid Is Not a Soft Target, Paul Krugman, right, July 1, 2025. America’s health backstop is more popular than ever.

New York Times, U.S. Immigration: Why Is Trump Returning MS-13 Leaders to El Salvador? 5 Takeaways From the Times Investigation, Staff Report, July 1, 2025 (print ed.). The agreement with Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is undermining a long-running federal investigation into the gang, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Trump’s falsehoods endanger national security, Jennifer Rubin, July 1, 2025.  The “tell” in Donald Trump’s lie about the results of the U.S. bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites was “completely and totally.”

It is one thing to claim (falsely) that we “obliterated” the Iranian program, but “completely and totally obliterate”?

After all, “obliterate” means “to remove utterly.” Did we truly “completely and totally remove utterly” Iran’s nuclear threat? Well, no. We did not.

New York Times, Ford Foundation’s New Leader Is From Yale Law School, Alan Blinder, July 1, 2025. Heather K. Gerken, the dean of the law school, will run the powerful philanthropy, known for pushing for social justice.

Ms. Gerken, right, who was seen last year as a contender for the Yale presidency, will take over one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential philanthropies at a time of especially fraught debate about social justice and inequality, two of the foundation’s touchstones.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary, Trump Supporters’ Death Threats Against Meidas, Ben Meiselas, July 1, 2025. Yesterday, the Meidas Touch Network reported on the funeral of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were assassinated on June 14.

In response to our coverage of the funeral, radicalized Trump supporters sent us some of the most heinous messages, including death threats. For example, one Trump supporter said to us, “The country will be lucky once you’re in one of those [caskets] soon. Whole family actually. Couldn’t happen to better people.”

This reminds me: we are not living in normal times. Trump and his supporters are not capable of empathy. It’s why I often refer to it as a death cult. When Trump was asked if he would call Minnesota Governor Walz or attend the funeral, he responded, “I’m not calling him… he’s whacked out… he’s a mess.”