There is a date every deployed service member carries in their head. It’s the day you’re supposed to come home. You don’t write it on a wall or say it out loud too often, because that feels like tempting fate. But it’s there. You count toward it in the quiet moments. Your spouse counts toward it. Your kids circle it on a calendar in the kitchen and cross off the days one at a time.

I know what that date meant to me on my own deployments. And I know what it felt like when it moved. You think you’re leaving on a Sunday, and then word comes down that it’s been pushed a week, and I promise you, even that lands like a punch to the gut. Because even the toughest soldier or sailor is still human, and because many have been running on empty for a long time, and that date was the thing they were holding onto. When it slides, something inside you sinks.

My deployments were shorter than what the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are living through right now. And I still remember the weight of a single week’s delay. With that in mind, I want you to really think about what these men and women are enduring.

The Lincoln left San Diego last November on what was supposed to be a routine deployment. It got rerouted to the Middle East to support Trump’s war with Iran, and it has been out there ever since. That’s more than 260 days at sea. Over 200 of those without a real port call, which is a modern-day record. The crew has set foot on land twice in all that time. Once in Guam, where many weren’t even allowed off the ship. Once in Oman, where the sailors who could leave were penned inside a secured compound in the port. That’s it. Two days of dry land in the better part of a year.

The reporting on conditions aboard that ship should make every American angry. Families describe moldy showers, food shortages, sailors running out of soap, toothpaste, deodorant. These are the most basic things a person needs to feel like a person.

There are reports of plumbing that doesn’t work. Mail from home rarely seems to make it. And worst of all, a mental health crisis that has reportedly led multiple sailors to try to go overboard. One did on August 3rd, wearing a life vest, pulled from rough seas by a rescue helicopter and treated as a mental health episode.

And before any internet tough guy starts working on an insult, know that these are not soft people. These are some of the most capable and dedicated Americans we have, sustaining combat operations on the far side of the planet, and they are breaking under a burden nobody should have to carry.

There is no clear end date. That is the part that cuts to the bone. Their families told reporters there is no indication of when their loved ones are coming home. The deployment has already been extended more than once. For a crew that has given everything, the one thing they cannot see is a path back to their families.

A few days ago, I shared a post about what’s happening on the Lincoln. Later, I asked people to scroll down and read the comments.

A lot of the replies were some version of the same thing. This is what they signed up for. Man up. Stop complaining. They said it about sailors who have been at sea for nine months. They said it about kids who haven’t touched grass since last winter. They said it about people so exhausted their own families are afraid the strain will get someone killed.

I’ll be blunt: the keyboard warriors are pathetic. The people typing that have never experienced anything remotely resembling a deployment, much less this deployment.

They have never watched a homecoming date get erased and rewritten while a spouse and children waited at home.

They have never spent a single night doing the hard, dangerous, grinding work these sailors do every single day.

And yet they feel qualified to sit in judgment of the toughness of men and women who are doing exactly that in service to a country whose internet macho men are questioning their grit from the comfort of the couch.

It’s cruel. And more than that, it’s ungrateful, which to me is just as bad. This is the moment those sailors deserve our sympathy, our concern, and our loudest advocacy. The last thing anyone stateside owes them is a lecture about manning up.

Let me say something plainly to anyone still tempted to tell a service member to toughen up. Sacrifice is not a competition, and it is certainly not a thing you get to referee if you have never done it. All human beings have a breaking point. Saying so is not an insult to the uniform, but rather the most basic form of respect for the person inside it. The toughest people I ever served with were also honest about the cost, because they had personally paid it.

Here’s the thing that makes me angriest, though. The suffering on that ship is not some unavoidable act of God. It is the direct result of choices. Namely, a war that Trump’s ego started and keeps extending with no clear objective and no end in sight.

The Navy is now reportedly moving another carrier in to take the Lincoln’s place. Good. But it is far too late. It should have happened a long time ago.

We ask an enormous amount of the people who wear the uniform. They accept that. They know the deal when they raise their right hand. But the deal runs both ways. When we send them out there, we owe them a plan to bring them home, the basic supplies to live with dignity while they serve, and leaders who treat their lives as something more precious than a talking point. Right now, on the Lincoln, we are failing that obligation.

So no, this is not what they signed up for. They signed up to serve their country. They did not sign up to be forgotten by it. The least the rest of us can do is refuse to look away and refuse to let anyone tell them their pain is weakness.

Bring them home. And until they’re home, at the very least, honor them enough to care.

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Our top story today: Karoline Leavitt is officially stepping down as White House press secretary at the end of the month. She has been the face of this administration’s shameless spin operation for over a year and a half, and now she’s out the door. And the names floating around to replace her sound as dubious, if not worse.

Here’s what we cover today: A military exercise in Germany exposes American brigade weakness’ against Ukrainian drones; Pete Hegseth shuts Democrats out of classified Pentagon briefings as he pleads with Congress for one and a half trillion dollars; the record-breaking sale of the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger, and the election deniers who just won Republican nominations in swing states.

If you get something out of this show, like it, share it, and subscribe. It genuinely helps us grow and continue our mission of independent journalism.

Let’s get to it.

1. The Youngest Press Secretary in History Is Out

And for some reason, President Trump took it upon himself to announce it on Truth Social. Karoline Leavitt, who is twenty eight years old, will leave the White House at the end of August. Trump said she is vacating the role to spend more time with her family. It’s worth noting she had a baby in May and came back from maternity leave about a month ago. Trump added that she will become one of his top outside advisers, whatever that means.

Leavitt confirmed it herself, writing that she, “cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary.”

Being a parent is hard and deserves respect. But we also have to be honest about what that podium was used for on her watch. This was a briefing room of lies and of limiting the freedom of the press. And day after day, she stood there and sold it. And before doing so, she had the gall to pray with her entire staff as if her actions were morally justifiable.

Take a look at one of those prayer circles before she strutted out there and helped further the Epstein cover up for twenty minutes:

Thou shalt not lie, indeed.

And let’s not forget how weird Trump was whenever he referred to her. Clearly he was so amazed with her constant spin jobs that he couldn’t help himself. Take a look at the way he talked about her on a regular basis:

As for who comes next, there is no announcement yet. But the New York Post reports the early names include Alina Habba, deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, Katie Miller, and Kari Lake.

Karoline Leavitt’s job was to protect Trump from the truth, and whoever he picks next will probably be smoother at it. But don’t assume anything will change. Trump will always demand personal loyalty as the first, last, and only requirement for any job in his administration. So definitely do not expect this White House’s relationship with truth to change. That never will.

2. Ukraine Dominates U.S. in Drone-Based Military Exercise

This is a Wall Street Journal exclusive. During an exercise called Combined Resolve this spring, U.S. Army troops went head to head with Ukrainian drone operators, and it wasn’t close.

The Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted the American armored vehicles almost immediately. The dust plumes those vehicles kicked up made them easy to find from the air, and once they were found, the attack drones moved in to simulate kills. The Journal reported that the U.S. vehicles were eliminated so quickly that some had to be respawned just to keep the war game running.

To their credit, U.S. troops did adjust in later rounds. They dispersed, improved their camouflage, and leaned on electronic warfare.

This is a good thing that we’re doing. Ukraine is the leader in drone warfare and we could learn a thing or two from them. But it’s the hypocrisy of this administration that bothers me. Trump has treated Ukraine terribly, from publicly berating President Zelensky in the Oval Office, to holding up an appropriations package, to not wanting to sign a drone deal with them.

To be absolutely embarrassed in a simulated battle by the very drones we’re hesitating to buy, all because Trump knows his MAGA base hates supporting Ukraine, is humiliating. And, in the end, compromises our safety.

3. Hegseth Iced Democrats Out of Classified Briefings

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly excluded Democrats from at least two recent classified briefings on Capitol Hill, including one explaining the administration’s one and a half trillion dollar defense budget. That request is built around replenishing weapons stockpiles and investing in artificial intelligence to compete with China. Real threats and real money, but half the Senate is locked out of the room. Democrats were also shut out of classified briefings on the Caribbean boat strikes and decoy Air Force One flight. Even the routine bipartisan committee staff briefings, the kind that have been standard on the Hill for decades, have stopped.

Let’s be clear about how unusual this is. Classified access in Congress has never run on party. Democrats and Republicans on Armed Services get briefed together, and the most sensitive intelligence goes to the Gang of Eight, which is bipartisan by law and by design. And even Republican senators are calling it out: Mike Rounds says “the Democrat members need to be brought up to speed,” and Thom Tillis told Hegseth “you got to engage.” They are right. But this is exactly what they signed up for when they confirmed him, so forgive me if I hold the applause.

Hegseth and the White House are pushing Republicans to use reconciliation, the party line budget process, to fund the Iran war and much of the Pentagon increase without a single Democratic vote. But that can only carry so much. The rest of next year’s defense budget has to pass the regular way, with sixty votes, and Democrats have vowed to boycott those funding bills. Let’s hope they keep that fighting spirit.

Look, congressional oversight is not a courtesy, it is how a military stays accountable to the country that pays for it. A Pentagon that briefs only its friends is not stronger. It is weaker, less accountable, and less trusted, and it only hurts the troops who serve and the Americans who pay.

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4. A Kushner Buys The Lakers. Yes, those Lakers.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Lakers were sold to Josh Kushner, the younger brother of Jared, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger for twelve and a half billion dollars. That is the most expensive purchase of an American sports franchise ever.

Now, you may remember the younger Kushner from another story we covered two weeks ago. He was the money behind FIFA’s plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup’s commercial rights, the deal that collapsed within days after European soccer threatened a boycott and Infantino’s own people quit over it, with Trump’s shadow hanging over the whole thing.

So the World Cup deal blew up in his face, and he pivoted to the most famous franchise in basketball instead. Just a little consolation prize.

And for any Lakers fan wondering how Kushner conducts his business, it seems like he follows the Trump family tradition of grifting. Back in 2021, a Maryland judge found that the real estate company he owned with his brother repeatedly violated the state’s consumer protection laws. Collecting debts without licenses. Hitting tenants with fees the law did not allow. Telling people apartments were in better shape than they were. Just last month, they were ordered to pay more than four million dollars to over seventeen thousand tenants who were charged illegal late fees.

But that’s the thing about this family. They always seem to avoid consequences. The judgments get paid, the deals get replaced, and the money keeps coming. For everyone else in this country, breaking the law has a price. For the Trumps, and in this case, the Kushners, it’s just part of business.

5. The Media is Focused on Democrat Primaries While GOP Election Deniers Are on the Ballot

Let’s talk about one of the biggest threats to democracy in the upcoming midterms: Election deniers running for positions that will eventually count votes and oversee our elections. This week, Tom Tiffany won the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin, and will be facing Democratic nominee David Crowley in November.

He has also been one of loudest advocates against validating the 2020 election. On January 6th, hours after the Capital insurrection, he voted against certifying results in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and he has said he would have voted to throw out Wisconsin’s results too. Here’s Tiffany stating that he’d discard his own constituents’ votes.

If Tiffany wins in November, he’ll have the power to appoint the state’s top election officials, meaning the people that actually run Wisconsin’s elections. Put an election denier in the governor’s mansion, and there are real concerns beyond him overturning an election outright. He just has to cast doubt in the system or allow others to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t. And it’s not just Wisconsin. In Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, Republicans have nominated an election denier for governor, secretary of state, or both.

The good news is that an actual stolen election remains very unlikely. The real threat is the unnoticed, and extremely concerning, fear-mongering and complacency in the Republican officials. I was in the Capitol on January 6th. That was a real threat to the safety of our government, in reaction to an unfounded theory meant to scare people. And currently, there are 161 election deniers as sitting members of Congress.

Having free and fair elections is a pillar of democracy in America, and there are 143 congressional races with election deniers on the ballot. Pay attention to who’s running in your states, not just who’s running for president. Ask them one question– did Joe Biden win in 2020? The people representing you can either make your vote count, or discard it.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump was sued in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday over Truth API, a service from his own media company that sells advance access to his Truth Social posts to paying subscribers, some paying up to $100,000 a month. More than a dozen customers, mostly high-frequency trading firms, have already signed up to get his market-moving posts milliseconds before the public does. The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who brought the suit, call the scheme “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional,” arguing the president is profiting personally from selling access to government information. That comes just hours after a senior adviser to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard publicly called on Congress to investigate Trump, his family, and aides including Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff over alleged war-related insider trading. Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, posted a $238 million net loss last quarter, and Trump remains its largest shareholder.

• The Department of Homeland Security spent $464 million last fall on a no-bid contract to buy 10 used airplanes, saying they were urgently needed for deportation flights. Nearly a year later, seven of those planes, aging Boeing 737s, are still parked at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and three luxury jets from the same deal have mostly gone to other uses, including one leased out for FBI Director Kash Patel’s travel. DHS justified skipping competitive bidding by citing “unusual and compelling urgency,” the same authority it has used to award more than $29 billion in contracts without a bid. An internal government document says the department simply doesn’t have enough staff to fly the planes it bought, and the contract went to a Virginia firm with no prior federal experience whose chairman had donated to a political committee backing then-Secretary Kristi Noem.

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Donald Trump spent the aftermath of the 2020 election searching for ways to change a result he didn’t like. Six years later, he is starting much earlier.

Rather than waiting until November 3 to decide whether he trusts the midterm elections, he is trying to change who controls them before any votes are cast.

Yesterday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to fully implement an executive order that would give the executive branch an extraordinary role in running elections. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a “State Citizenship List” of people the federal government considers eligible to vote. It tells the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute election officials who issue ballots to people the administration deems ineligible. It also tells the Postal Service not to transmit mail ballots unless voters appear on an approved list.

This can sound technical because it involves databases, voter lists and mail-ballot rules. But this is what it’s all about: Trump wants more control over the midterm elections and he’s trying to find ways to get it.

He wants the federal government to decide who is eligible to receive a mail ballot. And if state election officials disagree, his administration wants the power to investigate them and possibly prosecute them.

Changing How You Read the News: Here’s Why It Matters

Americans aren’t just disagreeing; we’re being shown completely different stories.

Every day, news outlets decide what to publish. In polarized media environments, audience demographics can split coverage. If you rely on only one side of the media spectrum, you could miss stories entirely, not because it isn’t credible, but because it doesn’t align with certain editorial priorities.

That’s why I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

That kind of visibility is rare right now, and it changes how you understand the news. I’ve worked out a deal with them; if you want that level of insight every day, head to GroundNews.com/AdamK and subscribe to get 40% off the Vantage plan, the one I use.

Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias. By subscribing, you support both our channel and their independent team working to keep the media transparent.

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States normally run elections, including registering voters and distributing and counting ballots. Congress can pass national election laws, but the president can’t make the rules on his own.

Congress has considered some of the election rules Trump wants. The House passed the SAVE America Act, which would impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements and tighter rules on mail voting, but the Senate hasn’t. Trump is now trying to get through executive action what he hasn’t been able to get through Congress.

Trump has been unusually candid about this. In February, he told Dan Bongino, “We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” In an earlier Truth Social post, he claimed states are merely “an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government” in counting votes and “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them” to do.

I was in the Capitol on January 6, and one thing has become clearer with time: January 6 didn’t begin when the mob arrived. It began when Trump decided that election results certified by the states were legitimate only if they declared him the winner.

After losing in 2020, he pressured state officials to change the outcome. On January 2, 2021, he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” exactly enough to reverse his loss there. His allies organized competing slates of electors claiming Trump had won states that had certified Biden as the winner. Trump pressured the Justice Department and Mike Pence, looking for some way to use federal power to undo decisions the states had already made.

What Trump attempted after the 2020 election, he is now attempting before the 2026 election. Then, he looked for ways to use federal power to overturn state-certified results. Now he wants the federal government to have a say in deciding who can vote and to put pressure on the people who run elections.

The administration says it is trying to stop noncitizens from voting. Trump is using a very small problem to justify a much larger federal role in elections. Reuters examined federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting and found only 129 people charged since Congress made it a crime in 1996. None of those cases involved an alleged coordinated scheme to influence an election. Many resulted from confusion, administrative mistakes or bad information from government employees.

But that hasn’t stopped the administration from pushing deeper into state election systems. The Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states for detailed voter rolls containing information such as birth dates and partial Social Security numbers. As of last week, it had lost 21 straight cases. The administration has threatened to withhold some disaster funds from states that refuse to use a federal citizenship database, and Justice Department officials have warned election administrators they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allow noncitizens to remain on voter rolls.

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There’s a problem when you give the federal government too much power over elections: It makes mistakes. One of the federal systems Trump wants states to rely on has mistakenly labeled some naturalized American citizens as noncitizens. If the states act on bad information, lawful voters could be removed from the rolls.

Even if Trump loses this case, the effort could still help him politically. If Republicans lose the House or Senate in November, he can point to months of investigations and fights with the states and say the election had been troubled all along. He can point to all of this as “proof” that the elections were somehow tainted and that he had been right to warn us about them ahead of time.

So far, Trump has been losing in court. A federal judge blocked Trump’s order, and an appeals court has kept that block in place. The administration has also failed repeatedly to make states turn over voter information. In June, the Supreme Court rejected another effort to set a national rule for mail ballots.

There is good reason to think Trump may not get everything he wants. State officials have refused to hand over some of the voter information Trump wants and have challenged his demands in court. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have blocked parts of his plan. Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune rejected Trump’s call to nationalize voting.

The lesson Trump seems to have taken from 2020 is not that he went too far. It is that he started too late. After the 2020 election, Trump searched frantically for officials who would help him undo his loss. This time, he is trying to get his own administration into the election process before voters have even decided the outcome.

I watched our system come dangerously close to breaking after the 2020 election. It held because enough people in positions of responsibility eventually said no. Trump is testing those same boundaries again before the midterms. The answer has to be no again.

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Our top story today: the fallout from the Air Force One decoy operation. The President finally faced questions about using his own staff and the press corps as decoys, and his answer, of course, made everything worse.

I was on CNN yesterday where I talked about this, take a look:

It really is all lies. Constantly and about everything.

Also today: Trump flirts with declaring a national emergency so he can take over the midterm elections; the White House pushes the Justice Department to prosecute a 67 year old Olympian over the Reflecting Pool for a second time; the Treasury tells American companies they can go back to hiding who owns them; and Wisconsin Democrats pick their nominee for governor in a nail-biter with a message for the whole party.

Do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. The Air Force One Decoy Story Only Looks Worse Today

If you read yesterday’s newsletter, you know the gist of what happened. Facing a credible Iranian assassination threat leaving Turkey last month, Trump boarded the old Air Force One in front of the cameras, snuck out the other side into an airport catering truck, and took it to a small unmarked military jet. Air Force One then took off as a decoy, carrying reporters and White House staff oblivious to the danger they faced. If you haven’t seen the footage yet, take a look:

The backlash has been fierce, and the new details keep making it worse. CBS News reported that the only people in the catering truck with Trump were three of his most loyal personal aides, and that the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, flew out on the secret plane with him. The Secretary of State and the Treasury Secretary rode the decoy, but unlike the reporters sitting near them, they knew exactly which plane the President was on.

The reporters who served as the literal human shields are furious. One of them told The Post that defending the president is a staffer’s job, then drew the line: “That’s not my job. I cover the president.”

MAGA world came roaring back with one talking point: Bill Clinton did the same thing flying into Pakistan in 2000. And yes, a decoy was involved. But guess what? The Post ended up digging in and found a key difference. Clinton’s team briefed the press ahead of time. His press secretary, Joe Lockhart, put it this way: “There was no attempt to hide anything, much less lie about it later.”

And when reporters finally asked Trump why it was too dangerous for him to fly on Air Force One but fine for them, here’s what he came up with:

So the plane he escaped on was actually at greater risk, “because that would be the plane they would be more likely to go for.” Nobody on earth believes that, and I doubt he does either.

Of course, Presidents need protection, because the stability of this country depends on it. But we’ve seen Presidents do this before without duping and endangering their staff. Doing that is plain dishonesty. He told everyone that he wanted the military to see the old plane, and that was why he was supposedly flying it back. In reality, he was just sending the White House Press Corps and some of his own staff out as human shields for him.

2. Trump Is Openly Flirting With Using an Emergency to Run the Midterms

Late Monday night, Trump sat for an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a conspiracy theorist on Real America’s Voice and one of his favorite media personalities.

Root had a pitch ready. Since Senate Republicans lack the votes to pass Trump’s election overhaul bill, Root said Trump should simply declare a national emergency over elections and impose it himself. Photo ID, proof of citizenship, limits on mail voting, no Congress required. Listen to how Trump responded:

Well that’s a disturbing thing to hear. He didn’t say no.

The law on this is clear. The Constitution exclusively gives states and Congress the power to run elections, not the president. No president in our history has declared an emergency to run, change, or cancel a vote.

Well, the GOP has a problem with elections, but it has nothing to do with fraud. Mike Lindell, carrying Trump’s complete and total endorsement, lost Minnesota’s Republican primary for governor by eleven points. He is still refusing to concede. He says his team is investigating “anomalies.” Asked if he’d accept the AP calling the race, he answered, “Why would I listen to the AP?” The fraud is there when they lose, gone when they win.

I also tackled this on CNN yesterday. Take a look:

I still don’t think an emergency declaration is the most likely outcome, but I’m more worried than I was a month ago. It matters either way though, because even me having to talk about this corrodes people’s faith that their vote counts, and that’s what the President is trying to do. When citizens stop believing their voice matters, that is how democracies actually die.

3. A Judge Threw Out the Reflecting Pool Case. Trump Wants It Brought Back.

After Trump’s fourteen million dollar renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool started cracking and peeling this summer, the administration went looking for someone to blame. Prosecutors charged David Hearn, a 67 year old former Olympic canoeist, with a felony for allegedly slashing the pool’s new liner. The guy says he briefly touched a loose piece of sealant, nothing more.

Then, the case collapsed. On July 31, the U.S. Attorney for Washington Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the case, telling the court the damage came from a rushed, botched installation and that it was difficult to attribute any of it to vandalism. A judge threw the case out last week.

That should have been the end of it, right? Wrong! Instead, Trump has raged about the dismissal ever since. Watch how he talks about his own hand-picked prosecutor:

Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider charging Hearn all over again, potentially on a new misdemeanor count.

This President doesn’t know when to accept defeat. Trust me, I know a thing or two about that. The government’s own findings cleared Hearn, and the prosecutors said so in writing. And the White House wants him charged anyway, because the President is completely embarrassed over his pool. That is what a weaponized Justice Department looks like, and this time it’s pointed at one private citizen in hopes of soothing the president’s wounded ego.

4. The Rule to Stop Shell-Company Money Laundering Is Gone

Yesterday, the Treasury Department permanently repealed the rule requiring American companies to reveal their major shareholders. The rule, designed to stop criminals from hiding behind shell companies, was originally passed over Trump’s veto at the end of his first term.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the repeal “a victory for common sense and American small businesses.” But small business owners say the forms took less than 10 minutes of their time, and presented no burden to their companies. So what’s the real reason?

Well, look at who benefits. This database was never public. It was a confidential record for investigators, so that a company existing only on paper couldn’t move millions through the US on behalf of people nobody could name. Those are the people getting their anonymity back. Foreign fortunes parked in Trump-branded real estate. Overseas billionaires piling into the family crypto ventures. If any of the President’s business partners registered their identities with Treasury, that record is now headed for the shredder.

5. Wisconsin Democrats Sent a Message About the Future of the Party In Last Night’s Primary

Just days ago, polls showed State Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, leading the Democratic primary by double digits. But last night she lost to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in a race that came down to less than half of a percentage point. So what happened?

In July, Crowley was struggling so badly that he suspended his campaign, until jumping back in days later with the support of Governor Tony Evers. His endorsement was well-timed, because Hong’s surge came with a lot of baggage, including one old tweet urging America to “cancel Thanksgiving.” That’s not exactly the message Democrats need in a swing state like Wisconsin, especially with election denier Tom Tiffany waiting in November.

Ultimately, that move allowed voters to rally behind someone with an actual chance in the general election. And with Crowley as their new opponent, it’s clear that Republicans are worried about their odds:

Because of races like these, the media has said a lot about socialism taking over the Democratic Party. But I think they’re getting the story backwards. What Democratic voters keep demanding is a fighter. For a while Hong looked like the fighter in this race, and she surged. Once it became clear that she couldn’t win in the general, those voters pivoted fast. It’s not about left versus middle, it’s about beating Trumpism.

Still, Democratic leaders should understand what these latest primaries mean. I watched Republican voters decide their establishment wasn’t meeting the moment, and I watched what they replaced it with. If the establishment keeps playing it safe while their voters demand a fight, those voters will find fighters on their own.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• The Trump administration is now set to spend at least 900 million dollars on construction at the White House. That number, reported Wednesday by the Washington Post, is far larger than anything disclosed before, and it centers on the President’s massive new ballroom and a related underground military complex. Here’s the part that should get your attention. Rather than ask Congress for the money, the administration has been quietly gathering funds from other federal agencies and private donors and routing them into an account normally used for basic White House upkeep. The ballroom started as a 200 million dollar project the President said he’d pay for himself. It’s now quadrupled, some donors were kept secret, and the Post says taxpayers will cover most of it.

• ICE is planning to outfit its officers with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks. According to a Homeland Security notice reported by the Associated Press, the agency intends to spend up to 20 million dollars on thousands of these devices by next March, through a no-bid contract. The official pitch is that they’re for, quote, de-escalation, a tool to gain compliance from combative people. But read the fine print. Even the manufacturer warns the gloves shouldn’t be used as punishment, or on someone who’s merely mouthing off, or on children, pregnant women, or the elderly, and the ACLU points out the people getting shocked may get no warning at all.

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In the video above, I talk about the red line I finally reached with Donald Trump. For me, it was January 6.

Trump had already crossed plenty of lines. I criticized him publicly and often voted against him, but I remained a Republican member of Congress who believed that eventually there would be a point when enough Republicans would finally say: That’s too much. We can’t defend this anymore.

I didn’t realize soon enough that every time Trump crossed a line, Republicans would simply draw a new one.

After the 2020 election, Trump claimed an election he had lost was stolen. Bill Barr, Trump’s own attorney general, said the Justice Department had found no fraud that could have changed the result. Republican officials in the states certified Biden’s victory, and members of Congress knew Trump had lost. Some still tried to help him overturn the election, while others admitted privately that he had lost but refused to say so publicly.

On the night of January 6, after we returned to the Capitol, 147 Republicans still voted against certifying the election results. Nobody started out by saying that Trump should be able to stay in office if he yelled loudly enough about nonexistent fraud. They excused lies because they liked Trump’s judges or because they were scared of a primary. When confronted with one of Trump’s outrageous tweets, they could easily dismiss it as just a tweet. They could say the press was exaggerating, or that Democrats were worse. They got there one excuse at a time.

By January 6, breaking with Trump also meant admitting that you had defended things you shouldn’t have defended. For Republicans in Congress, it could also mean a primary challenge or the end of your career. That was when another excuse became easiest to make.

Which brings me to the point of today’s Believe, Fight, Win piece: Decide where your lines are now, before keeping them in place costs you something.

And I am not going to just talk at you here. I want you to really think about this and write them down.

Pick a few red lines and actually memorialize them on a piece of paper or on your computer, before there’s a candidate you feel obligated to defend or an old argument you feel compelled to explain away.

If you’re a Democrat, it’s easy to list things Donald Trump could do that would outrage you. Instead, think about a Democratic president you voted for and wanted to succeed. Decide what would make you stop defending that president, at least on that specific matter. Republicans should do (and should have done a long time ago) the same with a Republican president.

You may wonder what picking your red lines for your own side has to do with the Believe, Fight, Win series. Well, I’m glad you asked. The short answer is that I saw Republicans win a lot of elections and then immediately lose their integrity once they took office. Trump is the obvious example, but it happened for years, starting with embracing Fox News and the scam artists who sprung up during and after the Tea Party wave. Put another way, what’s the point of winning elections if you lose your soul?

Kevin McCarthy drew a clear line after January 6, then moved it almost immediately. After January 6, he said Trump “bears responsibility” for what happened at the Capitol. Less than three weeks later, McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago posing for a photograph with him. Mitch McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the attack. Three years later, he endorsed Trump for president.

I don’t think either man suddenly decided January 6 didn’t matter. They just realized that sticking to what they had said about Trump could hurt them politically. They didn’t have to admit all at once that they had been wrong. They just had to come up with one more reason to stay with Trump.

Most of us don’t have a seat in Congress to lose, but we can make the same kinds of excuses. Maybe you’ve defended a politician for years and hate the idea of admitting that the friend you argued with had a point.

Having a red line doesn’t mean you should never change your mind. I changed mine about Trump, and I’m glad I did. If the facts prove you wrong about a politician, admit it. Don’t keep defending him by lowering the standard you once held him to.

And decide in advance what crossing that line will cost him. Next to each line, write down what you’ll do if your candidate crosses it.

Maybe you stop donating. Sometimes it may mean voting for somebody whose views on taxes or immigration you dislike because the person you normally support crossed a line you said mattered.

Otherwise, it isn’t much of a red line.

One of the things that frustrated me most in Congress was hearing Republicans say privately what they refused to say publicly. They knew Trump had lost. They just weren’t willing to risk the backlash that came with saying so publicly.

You can decide now, before a candidate you support crosses the line. Decide what you won’t excuse from a president you support. Then decide what you’ll do if he or she does it anyway. Because you don’t actually win if your side abandons every promise and principle that you once stood for once you take power.

After your side crosses the line is the worst possible time to decide where you meant to put it.

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Our top story today is one of the wildest things I’ve read in a long time. Back in July, facing a threat from Iran, the President was forced to sneak off Air Force One inside a catering truck, switched to a different plane, and flew home in disguise, while reporters and staff were left on the original jet as a decoy. We’ll get to all the juicy details momentarily.

Also today: Trump’s media company lost a quarter of a billion dollars; he signed an order to reduce the vaccines we give our kids, where he fell asleep while he did it; the White House is still quietly protecting an accused abuser to keep him on the ballot; and the DOJ released a memo that could protect Trump from congressional scrutiny.

Please do me a favor: like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Fled Iranian Assassination Threat Threat in a Catering Truck

You’ll remember back in July, we covered something really strange. Trump flew to the NATO summit in Turkey on his shiny new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, and then decided to fly home on the old one. At the time, he said it was just for old time’s sake and we called BS.

Well, The Washington Post and The New York Times just revealed what actually happened, and it’s wild. There was a credible Iranian assassination threat, so security officials cooked up a full deception operation. Here are the details on it.

Trump walked up the stairs of the old Air Force One in front of the cameras, waving, making it look like he was flying home on it. Then once he got on the plane he slipped out of the other side and climbed into an airport catering truck. That truck then drove him to a plain military jet parked nearby which he boarded. Take a look at the video from The Washington Post of that happening:

Then the old Air Force One took off as a decoy, with its transponder switched off, and still using the presidential call sign even though the President wasn’t on it. Who was actually on it? Reporters and White House staff. Most of them had no idea Trump wasn’t on the plane, and all they were told was to keep their window shades shut the whole flight.

And somehow, when Air Force One landed in Britain, Trump met it there and just hopped back on it, so that he could emerge from it and make it look as if he was inside the entire time.

So at the time, Trump stood on that plane, talked about the threat, and literally told the reporters, “I go, you go.” Almost like that scene from Titanic. But he had already made sure that if a missile found that plane, he wouldn’t be on it, but they would be. That’s not so much like Titanic.

Having to protect the president is legitimate. Every country does it. But slinking off and then turning your own journalists and staff into unwitting human shields, and then looking them in the eye and saying we’re in this together is not leadership. It’s total cowardice. Now that this story is out, expect real backlash. But you never know with this Republican Party.

2. Trump's Media Company Just Lost a Quarter of a Billion Dollars

Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, reported that it lost more than 238 million dollars in just three months.

In those same three months, the entire company brought in about $1.7 million in actual revenue. This is a public company worth billions on paper, and it sells less than two million dollars of anything. Most of the loss came from a big bet on cryptocurrency that tanked when crypto prices fell. Truth Social’s traffic is also dropping sharply.

So how are they trying to make money now? They’ve launched something called Truth API. For up to $100,000 a month, it gives Wall Street trading firms lightning-fast access to posts on Truth Social. And who is the only poster that matters on that platform? The President of the United States, who can move entire markets or the price of oil with a single post.

So for the right price, high-speed traders get a head start on the words of the President. His own company literally confirmed most of the early customers are high-frequency trading firms.

This presidency has been turned into a subscription service. Trump makes policy on that platform, and his private company sells rich people early access to it. Like we’ve talked about before, every previous president put their business in a blind trust to avoid even the appearance of this. But Trump doesn’t even want to hide it. He knows he doesn’t have to. This is the stuff that doesn’t make the headlines as much as Iran, tariffs, and cleaning cart getaways, but it still matters. It’s blatant and unapologetic corruption.

3. Trump Signed an Order Gutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule

Trump signed an executive order to dramatically scale back the vaccines recommended for American children. It cuts the number of diseases we routinely vaccinate kids against from 18 down to 11. Shots for things like hepatitis B, the flu, and COVID would no longer be recommended for all children. And the order wants to split the measles vaccine, the MMR, into three separate shots spread over many months.

And of course, doctors are alarmed over this. There is no sound medical evidence for any of these decisions. Spreading shots out over more visits just leaves kids unprotected longer, and it assumes every family can even make five separate trips to the doctor. And by the way, this is all happening while measles is at a 35-year high in this country.

Listen to how the President himself explained the science behind it:

He talked about a vaccine dose the size of a soda bottle being poured into a little child. That’s not how any of this works. And when a reporter asked him about his claim that the measles vaccine is, quote, quite lethal, watch this:

That’s the standard now. Somebody said it so it’s true. It was probably RFK. And we all know that if RFK says it, it’s true.

And this is supposed to be an important meeting, right? Soda cans being poured into children is terrible. Well here’s exactly how important the president deemed this meeting to be:

We’ve beaten these diseases. Measles was gone from this country. Real doctors spent an entire century figuring out this schedule to keep children alive, and it works. But Donald Trump showed up and had to mess it up. This will get kids hurt. Some will die of diseases we already defeated. This is a terrifying reality we’re in, where everything from science to authority just gets automatically rejected. It’s dangerous, and the person signing it all off couldn’t even stay awake for it.

4. The White House Stepped In to Keep an Accused Child Abuser on the Ballot

Yesterday was the deadline for Ohio Republican Max Miller to drop out of his congressional race, as he faces allegations of abuse against his ex-wife and their two-year-old daughter. A number of Republicans came out against him as the deadline approached, including his former father-in-law Bernie Moreno. But Miller refused to budge.

And now we know why. Politico reported yesterday that when Ohio Republicans tried to schedule a meeting to find a replacement and pressure Miller out of the race, the White House stepped in and told them to stand down. One said that “they basically told us to back off and let the voters decide.” Even Moreno, the grandfather of that little girl, is now saying he’s done talking about it.

So the party wasn’t helpless. They just fell in line, while the White House actively protected an alleged abuser. And if you listen to the way Trump talks about Miller, it’s easy to understand why:

Remember when Kevin McCarthy bragged on Fox News about how Republicans walk away from their bad candidates? Well, the Democrat he was gloating over, Graham Platner, has been out of his race for a month. Meanwhile, the President won’t even let his party walk away from a man accused of breaking his two year old’s collarbone. So much for family values.

5. Trump's New DOJ Just Handed Him a Way to Hide From Congress

Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that executive privilege can cover communications with “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” Members of the public. State officials. Even people who work for Congress or the courts.

And the timing couldn’t be more convenient. If Democrats win the House in November, their investigators will ask for these exact conversations, the ones between Trump and his donors, his business partners, and the outside allies he actually listens to. Now, the White House can meet every one of those subpoenas with a privilege claim and this memo to back it up.

The DOJ released the opinion two days after the Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche to lead the department. The deciding vote came from Bill Cassidy, who said this on the floor before casting it:

That was Cassidy’s pitch: the President’s former defense lawyer was precisely the man to confront him with hard truths. Just two days later, Blanche’s department decided to shield Trump’s conversations from investigators. Not exactly the pushback Cassidy promised, but this isn’t the first time he’s totally embarrassed himself.

Look, when I sat on the January 6th Committee, Trump and his allies threw privilege claims at everything they could. He fought us all the way to the Supreme Court to keep his White House records secret and lost, eight to one. Steve Bannon used the same excuse to defy our subpoena, before a jury sent him to federal prison. Now that theory is the official position of the Department of Justice, run by the man approved by Republican senators. And it just makes you wonder what exactly they’re trying to hide.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, a Project 2025 author and Trump loyalist, to run the Interior Department’s inspector general office on Friday. Kirk previously worked inside the intelligence community’s watchdog office while advising Tulsi Gabbard, then the Director of National Intelligence, as that office investigated the Signal chat scandal. He now takes over the watchdog assigned to review the botched Reflecting Pool renovation. Trump insists vandals did the damage, even after his $16 million refurbishment left the water green and the lining cracked. But his own U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, couldn’t make that case stick, and her review ended up faulting the construction itself.

• The Trump administration has awarded a no-bid contract of up to $244 million to represent unaccompanied migrant children to Our Rescue, the anti-trafficking group that inspired the QAnon-linked film Sound of Freedom. The group’s founder, former ICE agent Tim Ballard, resigned in 2023 amid misconduct claims, and women later sued him alleging he sexually assaulted and trafficked them during the group’s sting operations. The contract comes after the administration let a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice expire because it refused new terms demanding confidential data about the children it serves, information those lawyers say is privileged. The network went unpaid starting in November, leaving about 26,000 kids in limbo, and a federal judge just ordered the government to hand over the $65 million it owed. Days earlier, a separate $150 million no-bid deal went to a small Texas law firm founded by a former Trump appointee, with just two immigration lawyers on staff.
  

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One year ago today, Donald Trump walked into the White House briefing room and announced that he was sending hundreds of National Guard troops into Washington. He called it “Liberation Day in D.C.” and promised to restore “law, order and public safety” to a city he described as plagued by “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.” Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi went further: “Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today.”

A year later, thousands of Guard troops remain in Washington, and Trump plans to keep them there for the rest of his presidency. Their deployment is now scheduled to last until January 20, 2029, the day he leaves office. Apparently, “today” lasts three and a half years.

It’s true that crime has fallen. Total reported crime has fallen 20 percent so far this year, and homicides are down about 31 percent. But Trump sent in the Guard after Washington had already experienced a substantial drop in crime. It’s fine if the administration wants to give the troops some of the credit. That still doesn’t explain why they need to remain in the city for another two and a half years.

The Pentagon says the mission will continue until January 20, 2029, “or until terminated by the President.” More than 4,600 military personnel from D.C. and 24 states and territories were still deployed as of last week. Keeping the troops in Washington through 2029 is expected to cost about $1.4 billion. The Pentagon is planning for a long stay: the administration signed a $292 million contract to move Guard members from hotels into apartments around Washington. If this deployment is really about crime, it should end when the crime emergency ends. Instead, it is scheduled to end when Trump leaves office.

I spent 20 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard, and one reason this personally upsets me is that Guardsmen aren’t a reserve pool of federal employees for a president to use whenever he wants. They have military jobs to train for, not to mention civilian careers and families they leave behind when they are activated. Calling them up for a genuine emergency is part of the bargain. Keeping them in Washington for years to patrol neighborhoods, shovel snow and perform routine city work is absolutely not the mission they signed up for.

I’m sure some of their work was useful to the city, but that’s what makes the situation so easy to get used to. Their deployment, which at first seemed outrageous, now seems almost boring.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic purposes, and for good reason. Civilian police and the military do different jobs and have different relationships to the citizens they serve. People stop noticing when the lines between the two blue over months and years.

Trump has been doing his best to expand his use of the Guard for years. During the protests in 2020, he wanted as many as 10,000 troops deployed in the Washington area. Early in his second term, he has tried to send Guard troops into several Democratic-led cities, with some deployments blocked or limited by courts.

Here’s the run with the current situation: Washington is easier because D.C. is not a state. The president directly controls the D.C. National Guard, and Congress has a lot of control over the city.

That’s why Trump can do things with the National Guard in Washington that he cannot do in a state. Not only does he directly control the D.C. Guard, but the 700,000 people who live there have no governor who can tell him no. A federal judge ruled last November that the deployment was unlawful, but an appeals court let it continue and said Trump was likely to prevail because presidents have more control over the National Guard in D.C. than in the states. Even if the courts decide Trump has this power, that doesn’t mean he should use it this way.

Dwight Eisenhower also sent troops into an American city, but for a clearly defined purpose. In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called up the Arkansas National Guard and ordered it to keep nine black students out of Little Rock Central High School. After Faubus withdrew the Guard and a segregationist mob threatened the students, Eisenhower intervened.

He took control of the same Arkansas National Guard, put it under federal command and reversed its mission. He also sent troops from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the students and enforce the federal court’s desegregation order. He also made clear when the troops could leave: if resistance to the court orders stopped, “the further presence of Federal troops will be unnecessary.”

Trump has done the opposite. Crime in Washington has fallen, but the Guard remains. Troops who were sent in to deal with crime were eventually tasked with shoveling snow and working on beautification projects. And, for reasons that Trump has yet to explain, the deployment is scheduled to end not when some public-safety goal is met, but when Trump leaves office.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the phrase “imperial presidency” in his 1973 book of that name. He was concerned about presidents acquiring power during a crisis and how that power sticks around, especially when Congress fails to exert its constitutional role.

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Trump has accelerated that habit. According to the Associated Press, 30 of his first 150 executive orders in his second term invoked some form of emergency authority, far outpacing recent presidents. Under Trump, everything is deemed an emergency, whether it’s trade, immigration, or crime in Washington. These so-called “emergencies” are useful pretexts for him to expand his power.

What makes this particularly alarming is that the Guard is scheduled to remain in Washington through the 2028 presidential election. I am not predicting that Trump will order troops to interfere with it. But I did serve on the committee that investigated January 6. We learned what happens when a president decides that losing power is unacceptable and refuses to accept defeat.

The country learned, in real time, that many of our safeguards depended on people behaving better than the law required. Normalizing thousands of troops in the capital through another presidential election and transfer of power is a bad arrangement even if the troops never do anything improper.

The good news is that Americans do not have to accept this as normal. If and when Democrats take back Congress, they can limit how long the president can keep troops in the capital without congressional approval, and the public can keep asking a simple question that Trump won’t answer: What are these troops still doing here? Bad precedents become lasting ones only when everyone decides to live with them. We don’t have to.

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Our top story today: just over a week ago, the President stood up and announced a historic breakthrough for peace in Gaza. Again, taking a victory lap before anything was final. And on Sunday, the Prime Minister of Israel, supposedly one of Trump’s closest allies, went in front of his own cabinet and rejected the entire thing.

We’ll also get into the President souring on yet another one of his own Cabinet secretaries, a heartbreaking update on Joe Biden’s health, bulldozers tearing through one of America’s most beloved national parks, and the President’s mysterious new head of hair that has the whole internet talking.

Do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Got Played by Netanyahu in Front of the Whole World

About a week and a half ago, Donald Trump really happily announced that his self-dubbed Board of Peace had reached a “historic agreement.” A 15-point plan to finally end the war in Gaza. Hamas would fully disarm, Israel would withdraw its troops in phases, and Trump would get to claim he did what no one else could.

You could practically see him measuring his mantle for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Then, on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got in front of his cabinet and said, “Israel rejects the 15-point document.”

He even repeated it, on purpose, saying he’d heard people claim he hadn’t said it. He declared that Israeli forces will not withdraw one inch until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.

To understand why this embarrassing moment for Trump happened, you have to follow the politics. Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life at home. Israeli elections are in October and his coalition is on the ropes. Standing up to the American president and looking tough plays well for him right now. In other words, embarrassing Donald Trump was good for Netanyahu’s campaign. So he did it.

The lesson here is one this President will never learn. He thinks foreign policy is only about flattery and personal favors, and that if some leader calls him brilliant and hands him a shiny prize, they’re lovers for life. But world leaders don’t act on flattery. They act on their own interests, and if they’re good leaders, their countries’ interests.

Netanyahu just used Trump for the photo op and then dumped the plan when it stopped being useful for his own politics. Trump calls himself the greatest dealmaker on Earth, but he just played by a top ally in front of the world.

2. Trump Is Already Turning on His Own DHS Secretary

The Wall Street Journal and Axios both report that Trump is getting more and more frustrated with his Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. Mullin is the former Oklahoma senator Trump installed back in March, after the firing of Kristi Noem, the most disastrous DHS Secretary in modern history.

But that’s why Mullin is caught in an impossible spot. He tried to clean up the agency’s image after all of Noem’s terrible choices, and he floated some mild immigration reform, even acknowledging out loud that not every immigrant is stealing an American job and that some industries actually need the labor.

But of course, for that, the MAGA base came after him with torches. Steve Bannon called him the, quote, wrong guy at the wrong time. They’re accusing him of being soft, of going squishy, of caring what the media thinks.

You’ll remember a few weeks ago, Mullin paused ICE vehicle stops after those shootings. Trump publicly overruled him within a day, and Mullin had to reverse himself. Now Trump reportedly wants his enforcement numbers higher, and the knives are out.

I’m not here to shed a tear for Markwayne Mullin, because he still defends this President to the hilt. But this is what happens when the only thing you value is loyalty and cruelty. Nothing anybody can do is ever enough unless they are completely and utterly spineless and blind. The moment one of his people shows a flicker of basic common sense, which we know Trump is allergic to, they become the next name on the chopping block. Trump doesn’t want to build a team. Instead, he wants a line of people waiting to be thrown overboard, each one more spineless and blind than the last.

3. Hunter Biden Says His Father's Cancer Has Gotten Worse

On Friday, in an emotional interview with the BBC, Hunter Biden gave a painful update on his father. Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer last year, and his son says it has gotten worse.

Whatever you think of Joe Biden’s politics, this is a moment for basic human compassion. A family is watching a father and a grandfather suffer. Your politics shouldn’t affect how you feel that news. And Biden himself is a good man, who peacefully transferred power to a president that belittled him and insulted his sons and family countless times during the 2024 election cycle.

When Biden’s diagnosis was first announced, this is what Donald Trump chose to say about a decent man fighting cancer:

I know we expect much from this guy. But for all the young folks watching, when anyone’s father is dying of cancer, there is exactly one decent thing to say. I’m praying for him and his family. That’s it. Guess what Biden said after the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania?

“I’m grateful to hear he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally as we await further information. Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There is no place for this kind of violence in America.”

It’s a sign of how much Trump has corrupted our politics that just hearing gracious words from a President feels almost foreign. Trump couldn’t manage a statement like that if he tried, because cruelty is his whole brand. We all have to be better than that, and remember that electing somebody with kindness and human compassion is important too. This is about basic human decency, and it’s part of the job.

4. They're Bulldozing Big Bend for a Wall Nobody on the Border Wants

Texas’s beloved Big Bend National Park is an American treasure: desert, forest, rivers and canyons, all in one park. The night skies are among the darkest in the country. Half a million people visit every year.

But last week, the bulldozers showed up:

That is Trump’s border wall construction, inside a national park. Seventeen miles of barriers, access roads, and lighting. In June, DHS waived dozens of environmental laws to clear the way, the first time that had ever been done for a national park. And to make that construction easier, hundreds of thousands of acres of American land are being left on the Mexico side.

But there’s just one problem. There is no border crisis in Big Bend. Every local sheriff along this stretch of border, Republican and Democrat, says a wall here is pointless. They already have what one of them calls a “God-made barrier,” canyon cliffs dropping fifteen hundred feet to the river, and a hundred miles of desert above them.

So why is this happening? Well, just follow the money.

The Big Bend wall has been carved up into contracts and handed out piece by piece. Nearly two billion dollars of that work went to Barnard Construction, a Montana firm that has collected more than 5.6 billion dollars in border contracts under this administration. Their single largest award, 1.6 billion dollars for construction in New Mexico, was handed out with no competitive bidding at all. And how did they get so lucky? Naturally, Barnard’s chairman and his wife gave a million dollars to Trump’s campaign in 2024.

Look, corruption has cost this country plenty already. It has wrecked our institutions, our credibility, our trust in each other. And now they are taking its beauty. It will take time, but those agencies can be rebuilt. The credibility can be earned back. But it will be much harder, maybe impossible, to restore a place like Big Bend.

5. The Biggest Mystery in Politics Was Sitting on Top of Trump's Head

Last week, Trump showed up to an event in Las Vegas, with one notable difference in his appearance. His hair. It was, suddenly, fuller. Fluffier. Taller. A whole new lustrous head of hair, appearing out of nowhere on an 80-year-old man.

A day or two later, the magnificent mane was gone, back to the usual style, before puffing back up again at another event.

And the memes did not stop all weekend. Here are just a few of my favorite:

1. Here’s Trump and his mom. The resemblance is uncanny.

2. The “Hair Force One.” I know that Qatar jet came with a lot of luxurious upgrades, but this one’s new.

3. The “Straits of Hairmousse,” with Trump’s Cabinet all wearing the same wigs.

You laugh, but if Trump asked, I could actually see them going along with it.

And what was the official White House explanation? Lighting. Right. The lighting.

Look, I’ll be honest, this isn’t earth shattering news. But it is just plain fun. And amidst the bad news, we can all use the laugh.

But the metaphor is serious. While this President obsesses over how he looks on camera, the real stuff, the war, the economy, the actual governing, is falling apart in the background. But hey, at least the lighting was good.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• The Trump administration is offering up to $300 million to as many as four cities for aggressive police enforcement surges, but the money comes with strings attached. Cities seeking the grants would have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, adopt tougher policies on homelessness and public disorder, and potentially repay the government for future federal law-enforcement interventions. The Justice Department says the program is designed to produce the kind of public-safety gains officials say they have seen in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, and calls it part of the administration’s “Make America Safe Again” mission. The grants would run for three years, and the program is funded through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some city leaders have already rejected the offer, with one mayor calling it a quick fix rather than an investment in the causes of crime.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has revoked the security clearance of former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, accusing him of leaking classified information about the Qatari jet being used as Air Force One. The Pentagon says Kendall disclosed classified information about the aircraft’s capabilities to the media, but Kendall says he has no idea what information he supposedly revealed and insists he was careful not to discuss anything classified. Kendall was quoted in a New York Times story about concerns that the Qatari aircraft lacked some of the defensive capabilities of the traditional presidential jets, and he was also quoted by The Wall Street Journal. The controversy comes after the Justice Department subpoenaed several Times reporters over their reporting on the plane, only to withdraw the subpoenas less than two weeks later.

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We’re back at it with another Ask Me Anything! This week we will leave the topic wide open to whatever is on your minds.

Drop your questions below in the comments!

Thank you being a part of this community. You’re the reason I can keep speaking the truth about what is happening in our country.

-Adam

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Hey everyone, happy Sunday. Are you ready for some good news?

We all know the American health care system has major, major flaws. Getting sick is hard on your body. Paying for care is hard on your wallet. And the number of Americans carrying outstanding medical debt is sobering: more than 100 million of us.

And the policy arguments in Washington around healthcare are ugly, and popular solutions are few and far between in our divided country.

So today, we are going to take a look outside of Washington at a little church in North Carolina who decided to tackle health care in their own way in their own community.

About 200 people make up the congregation of Winston-Salem’s Trinity Moravian Church, of all different ideologies. Their pastor, Rev. John Jackman, calls it a “purple congregation,” with liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between. There are many arguments the church knows better than to start.

As a pastor, Jackman meets with people regularly. During the pandemic, he kept hearing the same thing: families just couldn’t cover their medical bills. So he brought his politically divided congregation an idea.

He suggested raising money for a nonprofit called Undue Medical Debt, which buys unpaid hospital bills the way collection agencies do: in bulk, for less than they’re worth. But instead of collecting on the debt, it forgives. And the math is incredibly impactful. One donated dollar wipes out about a hundred dollars of a stranger’s medical debt.

Trinity Church set out to raise $5,000, a goal modest enough to achieve but large enough to erase half a million dollars of medical debt in the community. And the checks started coming from everywhere.

Paul Sluder spent his career collecting debts for a credit union, but he contributed because “the system’s out of whack.” Catherine Coe is a conservative who works in the accounting department of a hospital, but she gave too, because “we’re all just one medical bill from financial ruin.”

They hit that goal in six weeks, and Jackman called it “the easiest money I’ve ever raised.”

That was back in 2022, and they have not stopped since. And every fundraising campaign ends the same way. Once the letters go out and the debts are dead, the church prints a list of the forgiven and holds a service to burn it.

The latest campaign was this past February. Their eighth, a Christmas drive, had just turned $17,648 into more than $2.2 million of forgiven debt for 1,631 households in the county. Strangers, nearly all of them, but it didn’t matter. Jackman still stood up front and proudly declared that “we act to forgive the debts of many of our neighbors as God has forgiven our debts.”

Nobody at Trinity thinks they’ve fixed American healthcare. Two million dollars is a drop in a $220 billion ocean, and they know it. But campaign after campaign, they managed to buy up all the medical debt for sale in their county. Jackman’s philosophy is that a church cannot mend the whole world, only the corner where it stands. Still, Trinity’s corner is expanding.

At one point, they ran out of debt to buy entirely and took their checkbooks to counties miles away. And now, more than a hundred congregations around the country have launched debt projects of their own. The state of North Carolina took the idea a step further, leveraging billions in Medicaid funding to get the state’s hospitals to erase roughly $4 billion in medical debt for nearly two million people.

Look, we spend a lot of energy in this country trying to argue our way to common ground, especially when it comes to handling healthcare. But at Trinity, two hundred people with wildly different political views all reach for their checkbooks at the same time. And somewhere in North Carolina, a family that will never know their names opened an envelope and felt a little more peace. To these people, it isn’t a political issue. It’s a human one.

That, my friends, is good news for your Sunday.

— Adam

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Our top story today: breaking news out of DC. A federal appeals court just ordered Donald Trump to stop building his $400 million White House ballroom, which he tore down the East Wing to build. The court’s reasoning? It’s not Donald Trump’s to tear apart, and he needs congressional approval.

Also, James Talarico is surging ahead in the Texas Senate race. A state no Democrat has won in more than 30 years, but the momentum is clearly in his corner.

We’ll also get into the wave of scandals and lost primaries that has the GOP worried about their midterm chances, a serious new warning that Russia could attack NATO, and Republican Senators caving and allowing Todd Blanche to be confirmed.

Do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. A Federal Appeals Court Just Ordered Trump to Stop Building His Ballroom

This morning, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Trump administration to stop construction on the $400 million ballroom on the site of the East Wing he demolished. The vote was 2 to 1. The court upheld an injunction won by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued after the administration tore down the East Wing last fall and started putting up a 90,000 square foot ballroom without ever asking Congress for permission.

And I want you to hear the language in this ruling, because it’s remarkable. The majority wrote, quote:

“We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now.”

The judges also said that whether a massive ballroom gets built at the White House is, quote, “for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.”

And it’s worth pointing out that the district judge who blocked this project in the first place, twice, is Richard Leon. A George W. Bush appointee. Not someone Trump can claim is some liberal activist judge.

The administration’s argument in court was basically that judges have no business here, because the ballroom is privately funded, and the old East Wing was a security risk. The preservation group’s lawyer answered that in one sentence: “They just don’t want to go to Congress.”

He got that right.

I served in Congress for twelve years, and one of the first things you learn as a member is that nothing Congress does is more important than the power of the purse. And we used to guard that authority every day, because the Executive Branch was always looking for ways to skirt Congress. The current majority doesn’t seem to care about that, though.

Now, it’s worth noting that the court put its ruling on hold for two weeks so the administration can run to the Supreme Court, and Trump said today they will. Of course they will. But this is a good escalation in the war to combat this president’s executive overreach. By the time this show has been posted, he might’ve already taken to Truth Social and thrown a little tantrum.

2. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico is surging and Republicans are starting to freak out

Democrat James Talarico, a state representative from Austin, is now leading Republican Ken Paxton in the race for Texas’s open U.S. Senate seat. And it’s not just one poll indicating this. Three surveys in a row now show Talarico ahead, including one from Fox News. Talarico is winning independents big, he’s competitive with Latino voters, and he outraised Paxton last quarter by something like three to one.

Polls don’t mean everything. These leads are narrow and Paxton could absolutely still win this.

But the reality here is, to have several polls showing a Democrat leading in Texas is an event itself. Even Ted Cruz went on TV and admitted that:

Many more people than just the left are mad about how things are going, Ted. Or else the polls wouldn’t show your guy down. Anyway, Jesse Watters had a beautiful little meltdown over the fact that Paxton is barely campaigning:

Looks like they’re missing the point that a lot of this is self-inflicted. They had a safe Senate seat and decided on a man buried in scandal, corruption charges, an FBI investigation, and adultery accusations. Wait, that sounds familiar.

Anyway, that combined with what election forecasters are calling an incoming Democratic wave this fall spells trouble for Republicans. And that’s only the start of the GOP’s week.

3. The GOP Fears Misconduct Allegations Will Cost Them the Midterms

The Hill reports that GOP leaders are genuinely afraid that a wave of abuse and misconduct allegations is about to cost them the House. Rep. Max Miller is still refusing to drop out despite domestic abuse allegations from two women. Rep. Chuck Edwards was forced out of his race after the Ethics Committee found he harassed his young female staffers. Rep. Cory Mills in Florida is facing his own investigations. And Mike Johnson can’t even bring himself to force any of them out, because they can’t afford it.

And then, on Thursday, Trump-endorsed Congressman Andy Ogles lost his primary in Tennessee. Ogles is the second candidate Trump endorsed to lose a House primary this week, after Amir Hassan in Michigan on Tuesday. Those are the first two congressional endorsement losses of Trump’s entire second term, and they came in the same week. The magic touch of the Trump endorsement is disappearing and disappearing fast.

So how does the President process a terrible week for his party? He does what he does best and blames everyone but himself. Take a look:

His voters are angry at Republicans in Congress, but, “they’re not angry at me.” Are we serious? Who are Republicans blindly rallying around at every turn?

This is just textbook Trump. When he’s winning, he’s just basking in glory. When he’s losing, it needs to be somebody else’s fault. But he’s the one who endorsed Ogles. He’s the one who endorsed Hassan. He’s the one propping up Paxton. This is his Republican Party. This is one of the things that as hard as he may try, he cannot separate himself from. Too late, buddy.

4. U.S. Intelligence Warns Russia Could Attack NATO This Fall

US intelligence is now warning that Russia could attack a NATO country to test the alliance, possibly as soon as this fall. The goal would be to test Article 5, the promise at the heart of NATO that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

This is a real shift in our understanding of the Russian threat. We used to believe Putin wouldn’t provoke NATO while he was bogged down in Ukraine. But that war has become a grind, and Putin is facing pressure to deliver a win. A cornered Putin may be more dangerous, especially while we are low on the munitions needed to respond because of Trump’s war in Iran.

But yesterday, it seemed like the President himself didn’t get that memo:

The same day Trump’s own intelligence agencies said Russia may provoke Article 5, he still thinks we aren’t involved. Except we already are. We’ve been involved since the day Russia invaded Ukraine, because Putin was never going to stop there. And his next move may be a country we are treaty-bound to defend.

Our intelligence sees it. Our allies see it. So why can’t this President?

5. Trump's Personal Lawyer Will Run the DOJ Because Bill Cassidy Folded Again

As Todd Blanche’s confirmation vote for Attorney General neared, Senators began picking sides. Susan Collins was a no. Lisa Murkowski was a no. Mitch McConnell is still absent. That math made Bill Cassidy the deciding vote, and this morning he announced his choice on the Senate floor:

Before that speech, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein asked repeatedly to meet with Cassidy. He refused. So did his staff. Then he stood on the Senate floor and argued that leaving the job unfilled could risk the department’s progress on, of all things, human trafficking. He wouldn’t give trafficking survivors a meeting, but he’ll invoke them to justify his vote.

That shouldn’t surprise us. This is the same Bill Cassidy that spent years sucking up to Trump after voting to convict him for January 6th. Trump turned on him anyway and endorsed his primary challenger, who defeated Cassidy in May.

But Cassidy still cannot find the strength to oppose him.

So what’s left to explain it? Not a primary, he already lost his. I’ll tell you: it’s the tribe, the access, and the lobbying money waiting on the other side. He did this for himself, not for the country. And soon, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer will run the Justice Department because of it.

Look, I’ve had harsh words for Cassidy in the past. And he deserves more now. But the man has shown he has no courage time and again. And it wouldn’t be news except that every time he caves, Trump gets something Cassidy knows is bad for the country. And that’s why we have to cover it.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump signed two new executive orders Thursday aimed at limiting birthright citizenship, about five weeks after the Supreme Court struck down his first attempt at the same thing. This one takes a narrower shot. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the first order uses the Court’s own ruling as legal cover to expand who’s ineligible for citizenship at birth, reaching people tied to hostile foreign governments, terrorist organizations, and foreign lobbying operations. A second order goes after so-called birth tourism, banning entry for anyone whose real purpose is having a baby on American soil. Back in June, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Trump v. Barbara that his original 2025 order violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship by birth, and the ACLU says this new version runs into that same wall.

• The U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report, far short of the roughly 80,000 job gain economists expected. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1 percent, but only because more Americans stopped looking for work, pushing labor force participation to its lowest level in years. Trump’s answer to bad economic news lately has been to wave it off. He’s called negative polls on his economy “fake” and insisted “we are literally in the golden age of America.” However, May and June’s job gains were revised down by a combined 103,000, and Fox Business called Friday’s report “disappointing.”

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For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has treated patriotism as personal loyalty. Support him and you’re a patriot. If you oppose him, you’re a traitor. He wraps himself in the flag and uses the military as a prop. How much you love the country is irrelevant, just as long as you support him.

Three military veterans running for Congress in Colorado represent a very different kind of patriotism. Dwayne Romero, Eileen Laubacher and Jessica Killin are Democrats competing in Republican-held districts. Each spent years in jobs where the oath was to the Constitution. They know the difference between serving a country and serving one man.

Romero is running in Colorado’s sprawling 3rd district against Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd. He grew up poor in South Texas, was raised by a single mother and, by his account, relied on food stamps. He went to West Point, graduated from Ranger School and served seven years as an Army Corps of Engineers officer. During the Persian Gulf War, he was a combat engineer executive officer and earned a Bronze Star. After leaving the Army, he built a business in Colorado and served on the Aspen City Council, the Aspen school board and the Colorado Economic Development Commission. His company now employs about 120 people in his state.

What struck me most about Romero was how he talks about war. Recalling the Gulf War, he emphasized congressional authorization, the international coalition, defined objectives and a plan for bringing troops home. He clearly understands that sending Americans into combat creates obligations for political leaders.

His concern for constitutional responsibility explains why he’s running. “I believe there’s a palpable sense that the Constitution is under threat,” he told Axios.

Romero learned that lesson in combat. Eileen Laubacher learned it in the Navy and at the highest levels of national security. Laubacher, who is challenging Lauren Boebert in the 4th district, spent 34 years in the Navy. She entered the Naval Academy in 1986 (she was in only the 11th class that admitted women) and was commissioned in 1990. She became an intelligence officer, served in Afghanistan in 2009 and eventually rose to rear admiral. She later served as the senior U.S. defense official and defense attaché in India, then as the National Security Council’s senior director for South Asia. When she deployed to Afghanistan, she had five children, whose ages ranged from 10 to one.

Laubacher was a Republican for years. She left the party because she believed its leader was attacking the institutions she served for decades. She says she first took the oath to support and defend the Constitution at 17 and now feels “called, compelled” to run after watching those institutions come under assault.

Jessica Killin offers a different profile: an Army veteran who later became a lawyer and worked closely with military families. She is running in the Colorado Springs-based 5th district against Rep. Jeff Crank. The district contains five military installations and more than 100,000 veterans, yet it has not elected a candidate with military credentials in decades. Killin grew up in Colorado Springs, earned an ROTC scholarship, and served as an Army captain, paratrooper and military police officer. Her overseas work included peacekeeping in the Balkans and supporting NATO’s expansion in Europe. She got a law degree at Georgetown and spent more than a decade at USAA, where she worked on VA home loans and efforts to stop payday lenders from preying on service members. She also served as chief of staff to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Their biographies deserve this much attention because they show what serious preparation for public office looks like. They have made decisions knowing that a mistake could get someone killed. That’s better preparation for Congress than going on television to try to impress Donald Trump.

But military service by itself proves very little. It doesn’t make you automatically wise or fit for office. Just look at Pete Hegseth, who served in uniform. As defense secretary, he has removed experienced generals and admirals and purged officials whose credentials he deemed insufficiently MAGA.

Hegseth also illustrates the difference between military service and militarism. MAGA loves the flags, the flyovers and the tough-guy talk. Military service isn’t so glamorous. It teaches hard lessons, namely that plans fail and allies matter. The people issuing orders owe the people carrying them out honesty, clear objectives and competent leadership.

I learned that in the Air Force, and I learned it again in Congress. The oath taken by military officers is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” not to serve the personal interests of whoever occupies the Oval Office. The chain of command matters, but it does not place the president above the Constitution.

George Washington established that principle before we had a functioning Constitution. In 1783, unpaid Continental Army officers gathered at their encampment in Newburgh, New York, and considered defying Congress. Washington urged them to remain under civilian control, even though Congress had failed to pay them. As Washington understood, the military couldn’t protect the republic by taking control of it.

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That is the promise in these Colorado races. Romero, Laubacher and Killin learned from their service that the Constitution comes before a commander in chief’s whims and vanity. The country comes before your party.

None of this means veterans are automatically entitled to hold office. The last thing we need is a special political class of veterans pretending to know more than everyone else just because they wore a uniform. What we need are more public officials who understand what duty is and how to carry it out. Military service matters in politics only when veterans continue to live by what it taught them.

All three candidates are running in difficult districts. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, said candidates in races like these need experience “going to tough places and doing tough things.” He meant that the districts will be hard to win. But his words also describe the work of defending democracy when success is uncertain. People have to act before they know whether voters will reward them for it.

Trump does not own patriotism, and MAGA doesn’t own the flag, the military or the word “America.” Those things belong to all of us.

Romero, Laubacher and Killin raised their right hands long ago and took an oath to the Constitution. As someone who has done the same, I can assure you that the oath matters to those who take it. Whether they win or lose, their campaigns show that millions of Americans still recognize that patriotism is about something deeper than wearing a flag pin—and that plenty of Americans are still willing to fight for the real thing.

Video discussion for paid subscribers: (I get more into how the Democrats are, and should be, the true party of patriotism, and some personal reflections as a former Republican)

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Our top story today: behind closed doors at Camp David, the President blew up at Pete Hegseth over what they keep telling you is fake news. We’re running low on missiles. And the President’s response was to threaten to throw the people who told that truth in prison.

We’ll also get into Trump officially crowning JD Vance as his successor, making 2028 about himself despite not being able to be on the ballot. Also today, more losses are piling up for MAHA, the Republican base being so trained to dislike foreign-sounding names that it booed a fallen police officer, and an insane price tag on the battleships Trump wants to name after himself.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Rages at Hegseth Over Missile Shortage

The Washington Post reports that at a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last Friday, President Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, demanding to know why he’d apparently been misled about the severe shortages of American missiles. Trump thought the problem, in his words, had been fixed. Guess what? It hasn’t. Those shortages, in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, are a big part of why he’s had to pull back from striking Iran.

So how did Hegseth handle it? He pointed the finger at his own deputy and said something like “his fault, sir!” This is the same Pete Hegseth, by the way, who talked Trump into this war in the first place, promising it would be quick and easy. Five months later, his answer was to throw his own deputy under the bus.

Well the President got on Truth Social late last night and slipped up a couple of times. He said we have massive amounts of munitions, in quotation marks for some reason, and that more are being, quote, “shipped to the U.S. as needed.” Shipped to us? From where? And then Trump added that the quote, “leakers of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” and promised long jail sentences.

If the stockpiles were really full, they’d just show the receipts and laugh it off. Trump would like nothing more than to do that. Instead, they’re raging, they’re blaming each other, and they’re threatening to jail reporters. When a government reacts to a story like that, the story is almost always true. They’re not angry because it’s false. They’re angry because it’s true, and taking their frustrations out publicly, like a bunch of toddlers. It’s pathetic and it’s humiliating on the world stage and it makes America less safe.

2. Trump Crowns Vance for 2028 as Tucker, MTG, and Massie Plot Their Own Party

The Washington Post is reporting that in a private meeting with donors, Trump told them, quote, “at the end of the day, we need to elect JD.” That’s the clearest signal yet that he wants Vice President JD Vance to be his successor in 2028.

He’s been dangling a contest between Vance and Marco Rubio for months, and made it about himself by acting like he would choose his successor, not the voters. Well that’s how it is in authoritarian countries. Maybe he’s admitting something there.

Hate to break it to you sir, but a big chunk of your movement has already headed for the exits. Over the weekend, Tucker Carlson, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Congressman Thomas Massie gathered at Carlson’s place in Maine to plot what they’re calling a new movement, possibly a third party.

I’m not here to gas these people up. They were about as MAGA as it gets and just because they suddenly decided not to be, doesn’t mean they’re amazing people. But they do represent something that could be happening in the Republican Party. Marjorie Taylor Greene for example said they backed Trump because he promised no more foreign wars, and, quote: “he’s betrayed us all.”

They’re furious about the Iran war. They’re furious that Trump buried the Epstein files. Massie actually lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger for pushing to release them. So now they want out.

Look, I have very little in common with Marjorie Taylor Greene, or any of these people. But it’s not about that. These are commonsense things that the Republican Party of today is ignoring because of the only-Trump mindset. But there are plenty of Republicans who don’t like these things too. Some, like Greene, Massie and Carlson, are louder than others. But when the time comes, the quieter ones will show their preference. The midterms will be the first moment where that really shows.

3. Trump's Own FDA Just Approved the Vaccine RFK Jr. Spent Years Attacking

Two things happened, and both are good news for your health. First, the Senate confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as the new head of the CDC. Now, I’m not going to oversell her. She gave vague answers in her hearing and said she’s all in on the Make America Healthy Again agenda. But on the record, she did say childhood vaccines are safe, the mRNA platform works, and that newborns should get vitamin K. Those positions are rejections of what RFK Jr. and MAHA preach.

Second, and even bigger, the FDA, which is part of RFK’s own health department, approved the country’s first mRNA-based flu vaccine. It’s about 27 percent more effective than a standard flu shot, and uses the exact technology the Health Secretary has spent years attacking. Here’s RFK on mRNA:

This is a man who, just last year, canceled half a billion dollars in mRNA vaccine research, claiming the technology, quote, “poses more risks than benefits.” His own FDA just overruled him and approved it anyway.

So that’s two losses for MAHA in a single 24-hour cycle. However, Senate Republicans did vote today to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress, after he exercised his Fifth Amendment right and declined to answer their questions.

And here’s what you need to understand about that vote. It does nothing. It’s symbolic. It doesn’t send anyone to jail, it doesn’t change a policy, it doesn’t cure a single illness. It’s a headline. Only the DOJ can pursue a case, and to get the full endorsement of Congress the Senate needs 60 votes.

Look, the MAHA movement isn’t wrong about everything. We need to eat more healthy, whole foods, stay active and avoid the things we all know are bad for us. But that’s not what this is about. When Trump’s own government keeps approving the vaccines the MAHA crowd has rallied against for years, you give your supporters a villain to boo instead of a result to celebrate. That’s who Fauci is to them. A distraction from their failures, and somebody to take the blame for their own failures.

4. Trump's Handpicked Candidate Lost to a Man Who Dropped Out of the Race

In the Republican primary to represent Michigan’s 8th congressional district, the President personally endorsed a Navy veteran named Amir Hassan. He rallied with him. He posted that “HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN.” It looked like Hassan had the race in the bag, because no Trump-endorsed congressional candidate had lost a primary yet this cycle.

But that streak ended Tuesday, when Hassan lost by seventeen points to a man named Tom Smith. Smith is a small business owner who ran zero TV ads. His campaign raised less than two thousand dollars, which he reported to the FEC in a handwritten letter because he couldn’t log in to the website. And in mid-July, Smith literally dropped out of the race and endorsed another candidate. His name only stayed on the ballot because it was already finalized. That is the man who beat the President’s handpicked candidate, fifty percent to thirty-three.

How did this happen? Well, the moment Trump endorsed Hassan, MAGA accounts assumed he was Muslim and flooded the post with negative comments. Hassan clarified multiple times on the campaign trail that he is actually Christian, but it didn’t matter. Another candidate in the race said that voters preferred Smith’s “plain-Jane American name.” Today’s Republican voters are so conditioned to hate anything foreign that they defaulted to a man who wasn’t even running. Over their dear leader’s own pick.

And if you need any more evidence of that ugly MAGA reflex, just take a look at this moment from Trump’s rally in Nevada yesterday:

The Governor of Nevada had to stop his own crowd from booing a fallen police officer. Let me repeat that. A fallen police officer. They didn’t know who he was. They heard the name, and that was enough.

Look, Donald Trump built his political career over a decade ago by telling Americans their President was secretly foreign. He taught a generation of Republicans that a name alone is evidence, and now that is what MAGA has become. No critical thinking. No policy solutions. Just reaction and hatred. And whether it’s a Republican governor on a rally stage or the President’s own endorsements, nothing can stop that rot.

5. The Battleships Trump Named After Himself Just Got 50 Percent More Expensive

Last December, Trump announced his plans for a new fleet of battleships with all the usual bombast:

These new ships have a name: the “Trump class.” Named, of course, after himself. But top Pentagon officials are reportedly skeptical of the costly project, as the Navy’s own strategy calls for smaller, cheaper, distributed vessels.

And this week, that project got even more expensive. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that Trump’s new fleet of namesake battleships is going to cost roughly 50 percent more than we were told. The first ship alone is billed at more than 23 billion dollars, which is more than an aircraft carrier. Fifteen ships in total, at around 275 billion dollars. That would make them our most expensive warships ever built. And despite Trump’s promise to finish the first two ships during his term, the report says it may actually take eight years or more.

Remember where we started today. We are short on the missiles we need for Trump’s war in Iran, right now, today. But instead of solving that problem, your money is going toward a 275 billion dollar fleet of floating monuments that won’t be ready for a decade. That is this President’s priority. Not the troops holding an empty magazine, not the failing war he started, and certainly not you, your groceries, or your gas prices. Just another shrine to himself.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• New reports today show that Jennifer Mascott, a Trump-appointed judge on the Third Circuit, spent months running a Washington public affairs firm while serving on the federal bench. Mascott was confirmed in October 2025 and stayed deeply involved in daily operations at the firm, Adfero, for at least six months afterward, according to 14 former employees and clients. Nine of those former employees said she worked out of the firm’s Washington office at least once a week and oversaw staffing, business development and client relations while carrying a full judicial docket in Wilmington and Philadelphia. Mascott, who inherited her ownership stake from her late husband in 2023, told Politico she was meeting fiduciary and legal duties and consulted lawyers and ethics advisers about whether to keep the firm going, sell it, or wind it down. The judiciary’s code of conduct does allow a judge to participate in a closely held family business, but warns that it may be prohibited if it consumes too much time, misuses judicial prestige, or involves a business likely to come before the judge’s court. Adfero’s clients included PhRMA and the National Retail Federation, and its own website advertised marketing campaigns built to influence elected officials. Staff and clients left, and the firm shut down at the end of June.

• President Trump has spoken repeatedly by phone with new Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh since his appointment in May, according to a report yesterday from the Wall Street Journal. The calls come in bursts, several over a stretch of days and then quiet for longer periods, and Trump has asked Warsh for his read on how the war in Iran and the fast rise of artificial intelligence are hitting the economy. It isn’t clear whether the two have discussed monetary policy, though interest rates haven’t come up since Warsh was confirmed. White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump has stressed that he is giving Warsh room to restore confidence in the Fed, and that the president has reaffirmed the chairman’s independence even as he exercises his right to say what he thinks. Trump told the Journal in December that he wanted the Fed chair to consult him on where rates should go, arguing his was a smart voice that deserved to be heard. At Warsh’s swearing-in months later, he told Warsh to ignore him entirely and just do the job. The Fed held rates steady on a contentious 9 to 3 vote in July, with three dissenters pushing for a hike, after which Trump publicly blamed a “political board” for keeping rates where they are.

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As you no doubt have heard by now, Donald Trump wants to place a 250-foot gilded triumphal arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Triumphal arches traditionally commemorate military victory. There is just one problem: Trump is pushing ahead with the triumphal arch while losing a war.

Trump unveiled the idea more than four months before the United States and Israel attacked Iran. At a White House dinner, he displayed three models. He liked the biggest one the best and called it “really beautiful” and “fantastic.” When a reporter asked whom the arch was for, Trump pointed to himself and said, “Me.” Kudos to Trump for his honesty.

Though the war with Iran wasn’t the reason for the arch, the war has made the arch more ridiculous than it already was. Trump understands what the structure is supposed to mean. It’s called a triumphal arch because a triumph is supposed to have occurred. The arch comes after the victory. But Trump, as usual, wants the branding before he achieves the result.

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He does this all the time. At his golf clubs, Trump has made himself the champion of tournaments that never even took place. Trump claimed the 2018 championship at his West Palm Beach club even though he hadn’t played in the tournament. In 2023, after missing the first round of a senior club championship, he counted a round he had played two days earlier and announced that he had won. Owning the course has certain advantages.

The same impulse produced the fake Time magazine cover displayed at several Trump properties. Then there was the infamous FIFA Peace Prize, which Trump—its first recipient—was given in 2025. FIFA president Gianni Infantino presented him with a gold medal and a large gold trophy. It’s still unclear what the FIFA Peace Prize is or what Trump did to earn it.

If Trump could win a million more of these fake prizes and awards, that wouldn’t be enough. He doesn’t see recognition as what you get after you achieve something. For him, the recognition is the whole point. Actually accomplishing something is a waste of time if you can get recognized without doing the hard work.

The war in Iran has now lasted more than five months, though Trump repeatedly predicted it would end quickly. Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” but its government remains in power. The conflict has driven up energy costs, killed 18 American service members and caused enormous suffering in the Middle East. Its cost is $37.5 billion and rising. The administration is now seeking a deal to reopen a waterway that was open before Trump launched the war, while a proposed arrangement could leave Iran controlling traffic into the Persian Gulf. Whatever word the White House uses, “triumph” isn’t the correct one.

As if we weren’t spending enough money already, Trump wants to spend more on his silly monument. It remains to be seen how much it will cost, but your tax dollars will pay for it. The arch would rise more than twice as high as the Lincoln Memorial. There will be elevators, an observation deck and more than 70,000 square feet of space, with a possible café and gift shop.

So, just to recap, we are spending tens of billions on a war that we are losing and an undisclosed sum on a gilded arch to celebrate the embarrassment.

“The Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Associated Press. That is an absurdly grandiose claim for a monument that doesn’t exist and commemorates nothing in particular.

Its location makes the project worse. The National Park Service found that the arch would break the deliberately designed alignment among the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Memorial Bridge and Arlington House, Robert E. Lee’s former home. The alignment and ceremonial landscape, the report said, were designed to “physically and symbolically unite North and South through a coordinated monumental composition” extending across the Potomac.

Trump wants to drop a gaudy monument to himself into the middle of that carefully designed landscape. The Lincoln Memorial faces across the Potomac toward Arlington National Cemetery, established on Robert E. Lee’s former estate when Washington ran out of room for the Union dead. The landscape is already perfectly symbolic. But Trump thought it needed some remodeling. He looked at it and decided the only thing missing was himself.

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To make an obvious point, there are more reasons to honor Lincoln than Trump. The Civil War saved the Union. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed Congress to pass the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery. Just five days after Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Lincoln was assassinated for his service to the country.

When Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address, with Union victory approaching, he didn’t brag about how great he was or demand the biggest monument the world had ever seen. He denounced slavery and spoke about suffering and the duty to care for those who had given their lives to preserve the Union. His hope was “with malice toward none, with charity for all” and a country capable of binding its wounds. Victory made him more humble, not more arrogant, because he understood its price.

And perhaps the most important point in all of this: Lincoln didn’t commission the Lincoln Memorial. Congress authorized it decades after his death. Construction began in 1914, and the memorial was dedicated in 1922. That is just one of the many differences between the two presidents: One earned a memorial; the other built himself one. Lincoln didn’t pick the design or demand that it tower over Washington. His successors decided he deserved it.

Trump, of course, has reversed the order. First comes the monument, then (maybe) the achievement.

The arch may become iconic, though not in the way the White House wants it to be. It will be gigantic, overpriced and empty: a monument in lieu of a victory.

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