Hey everyone. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today: Republican voters just sent Donald Trump a message. Last night, his handpicked candidates lost in Florida and Wyoming, and Democrats flipped a Pennsylvania seat that has been red for almost thirty years. Trump carried that district by eighteen points in 2024. The man who claims he does nothing but win keeps picking losers. And now even his own voters are saying so.
We’ll also get into Senator Darline Graham’s atrocious debate performance, Ghislaine Maxwell losing her last fight to keep the Epstein files buried, a mystery polling firm admitting its election polls were fake and calling it all a social experiment, and the national debt crossing forty trillion dollars this week after Trump promised us he would pay it off.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Republican Voters Reject Trump's Candidates
Voters went to the polls yesterday in Florida, Wyoming, Alaska, and Pennsylvania. And in race after race, the President’s chosen candidates went down.
Start in Southwest Florida. Trump endorsed Catalina Lauf for the open House seat Byron Donalds is leaving to run for governor. He posted on Truth Social that she has the “Courage and Wisdom to deliver strong results.” Lauf herself said Trump’s endorsement would make or break the race. Well, it broke. She lost to a local businessman named Jim Schwartzel, in a district Trump won by thirty points in 2024.
Florida Congressman Cory Mills, also endorsed by Trump, lost his primary too.
Same story out in Wyoming, one of the reddest states in the country. Trump endorsed his pick for governor there too. She lost to a state senator who campaigned on “respectful, effective leadership.” Imagine that being the winning message in 2026.
And this isn’t just some fluke. Trump’s choices for governor already lost their primaries this cycle in Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina. And the MyPillow guy lost his race in Minnesota just last week. These are Republican primaries. This is his own base telling him no.
But the biggest shocker of the night came from Butler County, Pennsylvania. That is Trump country. It’s where he survived the assassination attempt in 2024. He carried the House district there by eighteen points, and the seat has been red for almost thirty years. Last night, a Democrat named Brandon Dukes flipped it by 88 votes. Dukes could barely believe it himself, saying, “We just flipped a Trump plus-eighteen seat... We made history.”
Democrats have been overperforming in special elections like this all year, flipping Republican seats again and again without losing a single one of their own. And now Trump can’t even carry his own people across the finish line. His base is rejecting his candidates, and swing voters are rejecting his party. Somewhere in the White House, somebody is looking at these results and sweating. They know what’s coming in November.
2. Darline Graham Bombs Her Only Debate
Senator Darline Graham is the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. At Trump’s urging, Governor Henry McMaster appointed her to fill the seat, even though she had never held office in her life. Now she’s running in next Tuesday’s runoff against Congressman Ralph Norman to keep it, with Trump’s full endorsement.
Last night the two candidates met in Newberry for their only debate. Graham was asked a question any Senate candidate should be able to handle: are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? Take a look:
Look, nobody expects every Senator to be an expert on every corner of national security. But every Senator should be able to give at least a basic answer to that question. Taiwan and the South China Sea are at the center of one of our biggest strategic challenges. And she’s running for a Senate seat that will vote on war powers, confirm Pentagon leadership, and decide whether our troops go into harm’s way. But the person Trump wants in that seat says it’s not her thing. At least she’s honest, I guess.
So why does Trump support someone who is clearly unqualified for the job? Because in Trump’s mind, she is qualified. Trump has exactly one requirement for the job: loyalty. That’s the only thing he cares about. And Darline checks the box.
3. Court Orders Maxwell's Sealed Epstein Files Released
A Manhattan judge ruled that the remaining case files from an Epstein victim’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell must be released. That case produced tens of thousands of pages of evidence, including sworn depositions of Maxwell herself, before she settled and paid millions of dollars to make it go away. Nearly all of it has been sealed ever since, and Maxwell fought for years to keep it that way.
But now she has lost. The judge ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act overrides the old secrecy orders, warning that keeping the documents hidden would leave the public with an “incomplete and potentially misleading picture” of Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. The files will be redacted to protect victims, as they should be. But the rest is coming out. Depositions. Exhibits. Evidence that reporters who know this case believe implicates some very powerful people.
And it seems like the administration knows that. In a separate case last week, another federal judge held a hearing over the Justice Department’s refusal to release parts of its own Epstein files, including material about allegations involving Trump himself. That judge has already ruled that the DOJ is violating the transparency law, writing that Attorney General Todd Blanche has admitted it in court. So the DOJ is breaking the very law Trump signed, while a convicted trafficker’s secrets get pried loose by everyone else. Court by court, the truth is coming out anyway. The only question left is why the White House is standing in the way.
4. Anonymous Firm Confesses to Publishing Fake Polls
A few weeks ago, a firm called Median Strategies started publishing polls online that got real attention. One showed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass leading her challenger by twelve points. Bass’s campaign promoted it on social media. News outlets reported on it. Another one showed Wisconsin governor candidate Francesca Hong up more than twenty points in her primary, days before she ended up losing.
But here’s the problem: every one of those polls was made up. After one LA Times reporter repeatedly questioned the company, they admitted the numbers were fake and shut down entirely. In a statement, the firm called itself a “short-term social experiment” to see how fake polling could “spread through the political information ecosystem.” They refused to give any interviews, so we don’t know who was behind it. They just walked away.
So a handful of anonymous people invented polling numbers, and within days they were being amplified by sources that people trust. Polls tell donors where to send money, they tell campaigns where to fight, and they tell voters whether their vote even matters. A fake poll showing big leads can convince people to stay home.
And what exactly is stopping Trump’s operation, a foreign government, or anyone with bad intentions from flooding the zone with phony numbers designed to do just that? Right now, nothing at all. So take this experiment as a warning. Between now and November, treat every poll you see with suspicion, the good ones and the bad ones. Your candidate up ten? Vote. Down ten? Vote. Anything you see online can be fake. The one thing that’s real is your ballot, and it matters now more than ever.
5. The Debt Doubles on Trump's Watch
Back in 2023, Trump made big promises to deal with the national debt if he was reelected:
Of course, that was a lie the moment he said it, and there were receipts to prove it. When Trump was first sworn in back in 2017, the debt stood at about twenty trillion dollars. By the time he left, it was nearly twenty-eight. No reasonable person expected his second term to be any different.
And sure enough, that instinct was correct. Sometime this week, our national debt will cross forty trillion dollars. Double where it stood the day Trump first took office. And on his watch, it’s growing quicker than expected. Six months ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected the debt would top out at 39.4 trillion this fiscal year. But on Monday, the Treasury reported 39.9 and climbing, months ahead of schedule.
Why so soon? Well, on top of the record interest we now pay on the debt, Trump’s war with Iran and tax cuts for the rich are piling on trillions more. The President’s only plan to close that gap, naturally, was tariffs. But the Supreme Court struck those down, wiping out an estimated 250 billion dollars in revenue and forcing the government to borrow even faster.
And where are the so-called “fiscally responsible” Republicans? I once served with people who lectured everyone for years about burdening our grandchildren. But that party is gone. The debt is as high as it’s ever been, and none of them are willing to speak up. Even as Trump breaks every promise he made to bring it down.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Late Tuesday night, less than two hours before 50% tariffs on Canadian goods were set to take effect, President Trump paused them for three days and declared on Truth Social that the two countries “have a DEAL,” pending final paperwork. Prime Minister Mark Carney told a different story. His statement never used the word deal. He said “substantial progress” had been made but that important work remained, and he described the pause as a postponement so negotiations can continue through Friday. The tariffs would have hit roughly $20 billion in Canadian imports under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a provision that has never been used before, and Canada had threatened to retaliate with levies of its own. These are two countries that traded $880 billion in goods and services last year.
President Trump is expected to nominate Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House domestic policy aide, to run the FDA. She wasn’t the first choice. Administration officials say Trump offered the job to former Rep. Brad Wenstrup and to acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas, and both turned it down. The White House is framing Overton as a stabilizing pick, a physician and trusted advi ser who has run health policy since the start of the term. But here’s the state of the agency she’d inherit. The FDA has lost more than 3,000 staffers in the past year, it hasn’t had a confirmed commissioner since Marty Makary resigned in May, and Overton was standing behind Trump this month when he signed the executive order cutting the childhood vaccine schedule, a move most doctors say isn’t backed by science.
