Hey everyone. Welcome back and happy Monday. I hope you had a great weekend.
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.
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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.
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.
