Hey everyone. Welcome back. Good to have you here.
Before we start, I just want to say a quick word about Dolly Parton, who passed away yesterday in Nashville at 80 years old. She grew up one of twelve kids in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains, and spent her whole life giving back. In a country that argues about everything, everybody loved Dolly. May she rest in peace.
Okay, now to the news.
Our top story today: a federal appeals court just blew a hole in Republican plans to flood the airwaves this fall. With help from the Supreme Court and the FCC, Republican party committees were set to buy TV ads at the cheapest rate on the books, the one meant for candidates. Three judges said not so fast. Turns out you can’t rewrite the rules just because you’re scared of losing.
We’ll also get into a Trump-endorsed candidate in Kentucky quietly scrubbing the President from his website, the popular MAGA influencer who turned out to be on the Pentagon’s payroll, the White House threatening to defund the police over election integrity, and new reporting that ties the firing of a top Army general to a helicopter stunt over Kid Rock’s house.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Court Blocks GOP Plan for Cheap Midterm Ads
Here’s some background. Federal law says that in the sixty days before a general election, TV and radio stations have to sell ad time to candidates at the lowest rate they charge anyone. Super PACs and outside groups pay several times more for the same thirty seconds.
Back in the spring, Trump’s FCC issued guidance saying party committees could get the candidate discount too. Then in June, the Supreme Court struck down the limits on how much a political party can spend in coordination with its candidates. That case was brought by JD Vance and the Republican Senate committee, and Trump’s Justice Department refused to defend the law.
Put those together and you have a machine. Republican party committees are sitting on piles of megadonor cash. Democratic candidates raise more from small donors. So the plan was to run the party’s money through candidates and buy ads at the cheapest rate on the books.
Obviously, Democrats sued. And yesterday, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit threw out the FCC’s guidance. Candidates get the low rate. Parties don’t. The sixty-day window opens September 4th, so this landed just in time.
Of course, Republicans are appealing. The Senate Republican committee called it “an incorrect ruling that ignores decades of precedent.”
Remember, this is the party with the cash advantage. Democrats are still digging out from 2024, and the Republican committees have outraised them all cycle. So ask yourself why a party swimming in money spent months fighting for a discount. When you have to try and rewrite the rules to win, it’s probably because you already know you’re losing.
2. Trump-Endorsed Candidate Scrubs Trump From His Website
Ralph Alvarado is the Republican nominee in Kentucky’s 6th District, a Lexington seat Trump won by fifteen points. On May 1st, Trump gave Alvarado his complete and total endorsement, and Alvarado wrote back, “I will not let you down!” He won the primary a few weeks later.
But then, Alvarado made some changes to his website.
On June 9th, he’s a self-proclaimed “America First Fighter” who will deliver on Trump’s vision. By August 24th, he’s promising “Independent Leadership for Kentucky.”
And those weren’t the only changes. Take a look at this photo of him smiling with Trump and bragging about being one of Trump’s earliest supporters.
All gone. Now he’s a doctor who is determined to work with both parties on affordable healthcare and lowering costs.
So what happened in between? A Democratic poll came out showing the race tied at 47, with Trump’s approval in the district at 37 percent. Two weeks later, the rewrite went live. Now the DCCC has the seat on its target list.
And to be fair, shifting to the center after a primary is not uncommon in politics. But you do that in a coin-flip district. Trump won this seat by fifteen points. A Republican here should be able to sleepwalk to November. Instead he’s running like a man defending a swing seat, because according to the polling, he is.
Which brings us to the President. The Atlantic reports that early this month, Trump gathered his political team in the Oval Office to figure out how to spend the four hundred million dollars in his super PAC. His advisers hoped to invest in individual races and local issues. Trump refused. He instead ordered a wave of ads about his own record, telling his team, “Go look at the clips. I cite accomplishments all the time.” If the Democrats are going to make this election about him, he wants to make it about him, too. Because of course he does.
So the President is about to spend a fortune telling voters to judge Republicans by his record. But the people who have to run on that record are treating it like a liability. And every Republican on the ballot this fall knows it.
3. MAGA Influencer Exposed as Paid Pentagon Employee
If you spend any time on X, you’ve seen DataRepublican. She became a MAGA star during the DOGE era by “investigating” federal spending, and has racked up almost a million followers as one of the administration’s top online cheerleaders.
Well, turns out her real name is Jennica Pounds, and she’s been working for the Pentagon since July. Before that, she even had a press pass.
On Friday, she claimed the deep state was trying to entrap her: “It’s not okay when the Deep State sets you up to commit a crime,” she wrote in a now deleted thread. She continued: “I have never been more angry in my life.” Apparently, a government official had offered her documents about Cuba for an exclusive scoop. Pounds was convinced it was a plot to get her prosecuted for leaking classified material.
She posted text messages where she asks, quote, “just to be clear, you want me to leak the material you gave me? Unredacted?” The official replies that the documents contain all the necessary redactions, and assures Pounds that the leaks are simply a gift.
This “deep state operative” turned out to be Sarah Rogers, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. She later explained that the markings on the leaked documents that spooked Pounds were standard redactions, and that there was never any trap.
In other words, Pounds was handed a leak and botched it. Who would hire someone this incompetent? Well, the federal government, of course. On Monday, an AP reporter got it in writing from the Pentagon: “Ms. Pounds serves at the Department of War as a Special Government Employee.” She started in July, never disclosed it, and kept posting as an independent voice the whole time.
Think about that: the government is grabbing propagandists off X and paying them your tax dollars to launder the administration’s message. Pounds only got exposed because she panicked and botched a leak. But you have to wonder: Just how many of those MAGA accounts in your feed are on the government dime?
4. Trump Defunds the Police Over His Election Demands
Earlier this month, Trump went to a police academy on Long Island to talk about crime. Listen to this.
Keep those comments in mind when you hear what Axios reported this morning: the Department of Homeland Security is withholding millions in public safety and counterterrorism grants from cities and counties until they agree to Trump’s election rules. They’re rules Congress never passed: Paper ballots. Citizenship checks. Manual audits.
Last week, two Texas counties and two major cities sued. Harris County’s attorney said: “They are trying to defund public safety and counterterrorism.” And she’s right. The money the Trump administration wants to take away is for bomb detection equipment, SWAT gear, counter-drone systems, and police overtime. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been up front about the administration’s intentions, saying “we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars reimbursing the states that are refusing to secure their elections.”
So there you have it. Trump stands in front of a room full of cops and slams defunding the police. Then his own administration holds their public safety money hostage to force through restrictions not even a Republican Congress could pass.
Threats to defund the police are not what I expected from this administration. But it goes to show you that Trump’s election fraud fantasies are not just about one man’s ego. They have real consequences. I saw those consequences with my own eyes on January 6th, and if Trump gets his way, towns and cities across the U.S. will see them too.
5. Hegseth Punishes a Four-Star for Doing His Job
Back in March, two Army Apache helicopters flew over Kid Rock’s estate outside Nashville. He later posted the video. In response, the Army did what the Army is supposed to do. Fort Campbell grounded the crews and opened an investigation into whether safety rules were broken.
Within hours, Secretary Pete Hegseth killed the investigation. Later, he even went for a joyride in an Apache with Kid Rock himself. Then he fired General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff, without explanation.
So what happened? The Washington Post reported that General George had been told by his own second in command that Hegseth wanted the investigation dropped. But George wanted to follow protocol, telling colleagues the conversation troubled him. Then, he was gone. Hegseth’s former military aide has since stepped in as acting Army chief.
The Army has now gone nearly five months without a confirmed chief of staff, while the campaign in Iran continues to stumble without a clear objective or end in sight.
Short of leadership, the New York Times reports that Hegseth has pushed out at least three senior officers who had been viewed as potential successors. And his acting chief hasn’t been confirmed because of concerns about his lack of experience.
Hegseth’s spokesman calls this incompetency a “tired, old story” intended to manufacture drama. This isn’t just drama.
I flew in the military. I understand what’s at stake. When a crew takes an aircraft somewhere against the code of conduct, you investigate. That’s not politics. That’s how you keep people safe. A respected four-star general lost his job for insisting on this principle. And every officer in the Army just learned an alarming lesson: the rules apply right up until Secretary Hegseth decides they don’t.
As long as he is in charge, the reputation of the military and the safety of American citizens will continue to suffer.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
On August 25, The Guardian reported that the EPA has proposed making public disclosure of air pollution from minor sources voluntary, a change that would cover the diesel generators clustered around data centers. The proposal would apply to facilities classified as “minor sources,” including data centers, landfills, laundromats, steel mills and other industrial facilities. In Northern Virginia alone, a Sierra Club investigation found 10,500 diesel generators at data centers, totaling nearly 27 gigawatts: enough to power 7 million homes. Amazon alone holds enough permits to let its backup generators emit 4,200 tons of pollution there, about the same as a mid-sized coal plant. Without the disclosure rule, residents won’t be able to establish what they’re breathing, making it harder to mount legal challenges or local campaigns.
This week, Republican lawmakers are turning on Trump’s own budget director. Russell Vought, who runs the Office of Management and Budget, is making unilateral calls on whether money Congress already approved for programs actually goes out the door. His office has deployed a process called apportionment, arguing federal spending has to align with the president’s own budget priorities before it can be released. Last fall, Vought used a maneuver called a pocket rescission to cut $4.9 billion in foreign aid, notifying Congress less than 45 days before the fiscal year ended so the money disappeared automatically. A new rule now in the works would go further, letting his office block any grant that doesn’t “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities,” even ones that meet every guideline Congress set. Republican Chuck Grassley has told him to his face, “Congress has appropriated money, and you don’t have the authority to impound it.”
