Hey everyone. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today: The courts just handed President Trump yet another loss on one of his key immigration efforts. A federal judge ordered the administration to stop freezing green cards and work permits for people who are already here legally. These are people who did everything we asked them to. Filled out every form, paid every fee. And the government just stopped answering. Some of them lost their jobs and their legal status while they waited. It is a reminder that this President’s crackdown does not stop at the border. It reaches people who follow the rules and call America home. Thankfully, the courts keep stepping in. Because this administration is not going to stop on its own.
We will also get into the Trump ally pushing him to declare a national emergency and seize control of the midterms, a scandal that just blew up the Maine Senate race and how Republicans responded, the new helipad going up on the White House lawn, and a NATO summit where the President is ready to hand Turkey our most advanced fighter jet.
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Let’s get to it.
1. A Judge Orders Trump to Stop Punishing Immigrants for Where They Were Born
Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restart green card and work permit applications it had frozen. The freeze targeted immigrants from countries on the President’s travel restriction list. These are people already living here, many of them for years.
The case was brought by 25 of them. A hospital pharmacist. A nurse doing cancer research on federal funding. College graduates with job offers in science and engineering. Young couples raising kids. They all followed the process, and they all watched their paperwork freeze with no end date.
The Judge wrote that the administration was treating a person’s home country as a “significant and negative factor” in whether their case moved at all. He even named the President and the Vice President, writing that both men have “publicly and repeatedly expressed outright hostility toward immigrants.”
This is the second time in a month a federal judge has thrown out these freezes. A court in Rhode Island did the same in June.
The ruling does not hand anyone a green card. It forces the government to make a decision instead of leaving people in the dark. And the administration could not tell the court how making a nurse who already lives here wait longer keeps a single American safer. Because it can’t.
Here’s what I know after spending more than a decade in Congress. The Republican talking point was always the same. We are not anti-immigrant, we are anti-illegal immigration. Come the right way. Get in line. Well, these people got in line. They did everything my old party claimed to want. And this administration is trying to get rid of them anyway. The talking point was never true. It was just cover. They never wanted any immigrants here at all.
2. A Trump Ally Wants a National Emergency to Take Over the Elections
Peter Ticktin is 80 years old, a Florida lawyer, and by his own account, Donald Trump’s best friend from military school. Today he is the election denial movement’s go-to attorney. He represented Tina Peters. He got sanctioned by a federal judge for filing claims that were, in the court’s words, “knowingly false.” And he is still out here insisting the 2020 election was stolen.
Ticktin sat down with CNN this week and casually laid out a plan to end fair elections in this country. Get this: he wants the President to declare a national emergency, claim foreign countries hacked our voting machines, and use it to take federal control of the midterm elections. He points the finger at China, Iran, and Venezuela. But he offered no proof, obviously because there isn’t any.
Here is how he has described the threat:
So according to this guy, China is invading the United States through voting machines specifically, and the President can do “whatever is necessary” to stop it.
Six years of searching for a stolen election have turned up nothing. The only people actually trying to seize one are the men who keep insisting it was stolen.
This might shock you, but this isn’t the first crazy idea this guy has had. Back in November, while Tina Peters was still in prison, he went on Steve Bannon’s podcast and endorsed sending in the military to break his own client out of an American state prison. He said he would, quote, “love to see that happen.”
But the White House has been downplaying Ticktin. One official said he overstates how close he is to the President. But last week, he was standing in the Oval Office.
The White House wants you to think this guy is a one-off. He isn’t. This is exactly the type of person who is advising the President right now. And notice what they didn’t say. They didn’t say it’s a bad or crazy idea. They just said this guy isn’t that close to the President. But the plan itself? No objection.
3. A Scandal in Maine, and Republican Amnesia in Washington
In Maine, Democrat and progressive Graham Platner is running to oust long-time Republican Susan Collins. Yesterday, a woman accused him of sexual assault. The allegation was serious, and Platner immediately denied it.
But the reaction within the Democratic Party was powerful and immediate. In just hours, senators, party leaders, and the outside groups backing him pulled their endorsements and called on him to step aside.
He hasn’t made a decision yet but it would be pretty remarkable to stay in the race at this point. So we will need to see what happens. But we can’t talk about this story without also talking about how Republicans are reacting to the news. Here’s Kevin McCarthy:
The leader of Kevin McCarthy’s party is Donald Trump. More than two dozen women have accused him of misconduct. The guy is on tape bragging about grabbing women. But as we all know, Republicans made him President. Twice.
And it doesn’t stop with him. In 2017, Roy Moore ran for Senate in Alabama. The Washington Post found multiple women who said he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties. One was 14 years old. The RNC’s first instinct was right and pulled its money. Mitch McConnell said he believed the women. Then Trump endorsed Moore anyway, and the party put its money right back in.
Then there’s Matt Gaetz, the name McCarthy used as his proof Republicans are perfect in this field. A House Ethics investigation found evidence Gaetz paid women for sex, including a 17-year-old. The party did not immediately get rid of him, and Donald Trump even nominated him to be Attorney General of the United States. After those sex trafficking investigations.
There are so many examples of the Republican Party standing behind candidates it knew were bad that I genuinely cannot believe Kevin said this with a straight face. He was there for all of it. I guess he was hoping we already forgot. But we didn’t.
4. Trump Is Building a $13 Million Helipad on the White House Lawn
Yesterday, Donald Trump announced yet another addition to the White House lawn:
He says that Sikorsky, the company that builds the President’s helicopters, will cover the cost. But the Washington Post got the project documents, and Sikorsky’s donation covers only part of its $13 million cost. So who covers the rest?
Well, we have seen this one before. Trump swore for months that his White House ballroom would cost taxpayers, in his words, “not one dime.” But on that project, taxpayers ended up on the hook for more than half of his ridiculous $600 million tab.
So the President tore down the East Wing for a ballroom, paved over the Rose Garden, and is now ripping up the South Lawn for a helipad, all so the People’s House looks more like his gold-plated mansions. And every time he says someone else is paying, right up until the receipts come out.
5. Trump Expected to Reward Turkey With the F-35
Back when I was in Congress in 2019, Turkey bought an air defense system from Russia. At that time Turkey also had access to American F-35 jets, which experts warned would allow Russia to practice defending our best fighter. So I introduced a bipartisan bill to sanction Turkey for that deal, which became law in that year’s defense budget. We also made sure Turkey never had access to F-35s again, as long as it kept its Russian systems.
But when Trump arrived at their NATO summit this morning, he had other ideas:
And when a reporter asked about Russia, Trump said, “I have no concerns at all”. Not about the enemy systems, not about our stealth secrets, not about any of it. Take a look at what changed his mind:
And there it is: if you put this President’s name on a building and get the approval of his Kremlin buddies, he will give you whatever you want. Even if it means putting American pilots at risk in combat with our biggest enemies.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Senator Mitch McConnell has now been in the hospital for three weeks, and his office still will not say what put him there. He has not cast a vote since June 11, and emergency dispatch audio from June 14 describes paramedics giving CPR to someone in cardiac arrest at his DC home. His office keeps it vague, saying only that the 84-year-old is recovering and working closely with staff. Into that silence, conservative activist Laura Loomer posted Monday that his condition is far worse than admitted and that he is “not coming back,” even floating an unverified claim that his wife fled to China.
On Tuesday, at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, President Trump again said Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark.” He said it out loud, at a gathering of the very allies the comment offends, and even admitted the fixation “would hurt my relationship with NATO.” He argued Denmark does not invest enough in the island and claimed it is surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships, a threat experts on Greenland have repeatedly knocked down.
On Monday, President Trump reposted a video on Truth Social of a kindergarten graduation in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the little girls in caps and gowns were wearing hijabs. He added the original right-wing caption: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab... in kindergarten.” The kids are from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black public charter school, and the clip is just children singing on stage. Trump offered no explanation, but the message was clear enough, and his comment section quickly filled with calls to deport the children.
