Quick note from me: I’m on the road today, so my friend Terry Virts is filling in as host. If you caught our interview earlier this week, you already know Terry. Astronaut, Air Force vet, and a guy who knows a thing or two about keeping calm when things get chaotic. He’s got a great show for you today. I’ll be back with you Monday.
— Adam
Hey everyone. Happy Friday.
Our top story today: the fight over who inherits the Republican Party after Donald Trump has already started, and the first target is his own Vice President. JD Vance is taking fire from inside his own coalition, two years before a single primary vote gets cast.
We will also get into the Justice Department backing down on its subpoenas of New York Times reporters, Trump announcing new tariffs on more than eighty countries, one of the loudest pro-Russia voices in MAGA suddenly deciding Ukraine is the good guy, and the Pentagon removing four fallen service members from the official death toll.
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Let’s get to it.
1. "Never Vance" Erupts Inside the GOP
The Washington Post reported this morning that the Vice President is facing an online revolt from inside his own party. The slogan is “Never Vance.” The charge is that he is unfit for the job, mostly over his role brokering a peace deal with Iran.
It’s not unusual for Vice Presidents to take some heat. That’s part of the job. Presidents often hand them the messy, thankless problems. And the VP absorbs the blame that would otherwise land on the boss. Kamala Harris got the border. Vance got Iran. But that heat almost always comes from the other party.
This is different. The attacks are coming from inside the tent. Conservative accounts, MAGA influencers, people who voted for the ticket he is on. They have gone as far as comparing him to Obama and Bernie Sanders. The Vice President of a Republican administration is being attacked as a liberal, by Republicans.
But Vance’s people say most of it is fake. One close ally told the Post it was “obvious to anyone with an IQ above 70” that the pile-on was “totally inauthentic and probably coordinated to a certain extent.” They point to anti-Vance accounts that do not appear to belong to American voters, and to waves of hostile replies from accounts with no real following.
Whether the attacks are fake or not, they tell you the 2028 race has already started, and Vance is starting on the defensive. He gets to spend the next two years answering for everything this administration does. Every crazy thing Trump has said. That is a long time to play defense, and his opponents know it. That is why they are starting now.
2. Judge Forces DOJ to Drop Its Subpoenas of NYT Reporters
On July 8th, the Times reported that the President flew home from the NATO summit in Turkey on the old Air Force One, because the new Qatari-donated 747 does not carry antimissile defenses. This infuriated Trump. So the DOJ subpoenaed four reporters and went after their phone records, under Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. The same man the President nominated to run our national intelligence.
The subpoenas went out just two days after the story ran. Two days. No interviews, no document requests, none of the normal steps you take to find a leaker. They went straight at the press. And they cast the net so wide it swept up one reporter’s mother and two of their spouses.
But yesterday, it fell apart in court.
The Judge spent the better part of an hour on one question. Why go straight at reporters before trying any other investigative step? Subpoenas to journalists are supposed to be the last resort, not the first move.
He never got a good answer. So he told the government he would quash the subpoenas himself if they did not pull them. He even said that if this were a civil case, he would be asking why the government’s lawyers should not be sanctioned.
The prosecution quickly folded: “Upon further consideration, the government is prepared unilaterally to withdraw the subpoenas at this time.”
Another embarrassing retreat for the administration at the hands of the Courts, and a win for the free press.
3. Trump Slaps New Tariffs on More Than 80 Countries
At 12:01 this morning, new tariffs took effect on goods from more than eighty countries, at rates from 10 to 12.5 percent. Canada is in there. So are Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, China, and the European Union.
Here is how we got here. In February the Supreme Court struck down the President’s tariffs, ruling he had used emergency powers he does not have. Within days he issued a temporary global tariff under a different law that gave him 150 days. That clock ran out at midnight. So last night his trade office rolled out a new set under a third statute, arguing our trading partners fail to police forced labor.
By the administration’s own numbers, this covers 99.4 percent of everything we import. Asked how much money it would raise, the Trade Representative’s office said it could not estimate.
Two days ago the Trade Representative sat in front of the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado asked him what these tariffs do to farmers and ranchers. Watch his answer:
Biden. It’s always Biden.
Senator Elizabeth Warren asked whether the tariffs had raised prices for American families. He said no. She pointed him to his own Treasury Department, to the Congressional Budget Office, who have estimated it has raised prices around $1,700 dollars for American families. He asked what numbers she meant.
The country has already made up its mind. New polling has 63 percent of Americans opposed to these tariffs and 37 percent in favor. In November of 2024, a majority of Americans supported them.
The courts keep striking these down. And every time, they come back under a new law with a new excuse. The prices for all of us, meanwhile, only go one direction.
4. MAGA's Loudest Pro-Russia Voice Flips on Putin
For years, MAGA influencer Laura Loomer used her platform to praise Russia, making outlandish claims like this one:
Clearly, that was not a foreign policy argument. That was Kremlin messaging, word-for-word, aimed directly at Americans. And Loomer would know, because she actually wrote columns for Russia’s state-owned propaganda machine.
But recently, her tone has completely flipped.
After sitting through a Russian air raid in Kyiv, she posted that Americans have been “so propagandized by Russia and we don’t even realize it.” And she echoed those words in an interview with President Zelenskyy:
This is how you know Putin is losing the war. We have known for years that the Kremlin pays American influencers, ever since Biden’s DOJ uncovered the evidence. But now one of MAGA’s loudest voices is saying it too. That is what a failing influence operation looks like. Putin’s oil revenue is down, his budget is bleeding, and his army is struggling to advance. And now, it seems like his MAGA checks are running dry.
5. Pentagon Edits Its Own Death Toll for the Iran War
On Wednesday, the Pentagon’s public casualty database listed 18 Americans that have been killed in the Iran war thus far. But by Thursday, that same database listed 14.
Three military officials told The New York Times why. The four were pulled because they died after the President declared a ceasefire back in April. A ceasefire that has since collapsed. A ceasefire that feels like it never even began.
The Pentagon’s acting press secretary blamed “temporary data disruptions” and “anomalies” on the website, and said it would be fixed shortly.
That is not the only thing missing. Officials say the Department also sat on three Iranian strikes in Jordan last week that wounded dozens of Americans. There has been no full briefing since early May, and the top Democrat on House Armed Services says Congress has been given no casualty numbers at all.
So this is not an isolated incident. Strikes have gone unreported. Congress cannot get any real numbers or straight answers. And the Administration is now trying to edit the cost of the war from its own website. Just when we think this White House can’t go any lower, they prove us wrong. And it’s getting old.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
The House voted 214 to 208 on Thursday to direct President Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran, with four Republicans joining Democrats. Hours later the Senate went the other direction, rejecting a similar resolution 47 to 49. Neither measure binds the president, and Trump has dismissed earlier war powers votes as meaningless. The votes landed the same day Trump told Axios he is considering “a massive attack” on Iran, “bigger than ever before,” adding that he is close to a decision. Eighteen American troops have died since the fighting started in February, four of them in the past week, and the Pentagon counts nearly 500 injuries with 100 in the last two weeks. The House cast its vote on the final scheduled day before members went home for August.
The CDC announced today that 2026 has been the worst year for measles since it was declared eliminated, the second record year in a row. The latest count puts confirmed U.S. measles cases at 2,318 on the year, passing last year’s full-year total of 2,289 with more than five months still to go. HHS says it has mounted an aggressive outbreak response, citing more than $8.5 million sent to state and local partners and CDC staff surged to the hardest-hit areas. But MMR vaccination among kindergartners has slipped under the 95 percent needed for community immunity, leaving roughly 286,000 kindergartners unprotected. Ninety-three percent of this year’s cases are tied to outbreaks, most among people who were unvaccinated or whose status was unknown. In November a Pan American Health Organization panel will decide whether the United States can still claim measles elimination status, a review the administration asked to move from April until after the midterms.
