Hey everyone. Welcome back and happy Monday.
Before we get to the news, I want to say a word about Senator Lindsey Graham, who suddenly passed away Saturday night. It’s no secret that Lindsey and I didn’t end on good terms. But there was a time we were close. We served together, we traveled overseas together, and I watched him sit down with refugee kids in Syria and actually listen to them. Not for the cameras. Because he wanted to hear it. The last few years pulled us apart, and by the end we weren’t speaking. But the Lindsey I’m choosing to remember is the earlier one. A guy who believed America should show up in the world, and who went to see the hard stuff for himself. My heart goes out to his family and everyone who loved him.
Our top story today gets into how the President chose to mark Lindsey’s death. Because within hours, Donald Trump was on TV turning his supposed friend’s passing into a sales pitch for his voting bill. And that tells you a lot about how this White House actually sees the people around it, even in death.
We’ll also get into the subpoena of reporters over the new Air Force One story, Tehran declaring the Strait of Hormuz closed, a judge throwing out a sedition case from January 6th, and two FBI analysts getting fired for refusing to chase Trump’s 2020 conspiracy in Georgia.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Mourns Graham by Pushing the SAVE Act
As we all know by now, Lindsey Graham passed away Saturday night, just hours after flying home from Ukraine.
On Sunday, Trump called into Meet the Press to talk about him. And it did not take long for the tribute to turn into a classic self-obsessed moment. Here’s the president:
The SAVE America Act is the President’s personal voting bill that would require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote in federal elections. It passed the House last year and has been stuck in the Senate ever since. Trump has been obsessed with it for months.
According to the President, the last real conversation he had with his dying friend was conveniently about that same bill. He said Graham called him Saturday evening, fresh off the plane from Ukraine, and told him the Senate was, quote, “all set” to pass the SAVE Act.
Senator Mike Lee went on Fox and said one of the best ways to honor Graham’s legacy would be…to take up the SAVE Act and pass it this month. A Fox host floated renaming it the Lindsey Graham SAVE Act.
In that same interview by the way, Trump couldn’t resist reminding everyone that back in 2016 Graham was against him:
When this President wants something, there is no line he won’t cross. This is the same SAVE Act he held the biggest bipartisan housing bill in decades hostage over. That bill became law this weekend by the way, but without Trump’s signature. He just knew that Congress could override his veto, so he just sulked and let the clock run out. That’s the man we’re dealing with here. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised he looked at his friend’s death and saw an opportunity.
2. The Justice Department Comes for the Press
On Friday night, federal agents showed up with subpoenas for four New York Times journalists, some of them delivered right at their front doors. They are being ordered to testify before a grand jury in Manhattan this week.
What did they do wrong? Oh, just report on a story we told you about last week. The one where the Secret Service urged the President to fly home from Turkey on the old Air Force One, because his shiny new Qatari jet does not have the same defensive capabilities. Trump was apparently humiliated by that reporting, and sources say he’s been fuming about it ever since.
These subpoenas went out the same day FBI Director Kash Patel went to the White House to discuss the investigation.
The Justice Department has said the reporters are not the targets, that the leakers are. But the Times’ top lawyer said the sight of federal agents on reporters’ doorsteps should “shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution.”
And he’s right. Because this was never about finding a leaker. This is intimidation. The message to every journalist and every source in this country is simple. Cover this White House, and there might be a knock at your door.
3. Iran Widens the War Across the Gulf
Over the weekend, for the third weekend in a row, the United States and Iran traded heavy fire. CENTCOM says American forces hit more than 140 Iranian targets on Saturday alone, and more than 300 over three nights. Iran fired back, and this time it widened the war. It launched missiles and drones at U.S. facilities in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.
The trigger was the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired on a commercial cargo ship trying to pass through, badly damaging it, and then said the Strait was officially closed until further notice. The US military says traffic is still moving and Iran doesn’t control the waterway. So the two sides can’t even agree on whether the most important oil passage on earth is open or shut.
And then today, the President made things even more confusing. He announced the US is reinstating a blockade on Iranian ships. And that America will now be known as, in his words, the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait, and that we’re going to charge every commercial ship twenty percent of its cargo to pass through.
When Kristen Welker tried to ask Trump about Iran on Sunday, he pivoted and attacked Barack Obama of all people, who left office nine years ago. Watch:
Well that’s a pretty disgusting comment. The President is really showing his true colors here. But this back and forth is doing Trump no favors. Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of this president, with sixty-five percent disapproving of how Trump is handling the war in Iran. The longer this back and forth drags on, the worse it’s going to get for him. And we all have to suffer in the meantime.
4. Trump Wipes Away the Last January 6th Convictions
On Friday, a federal judge dismissed what was left of the seditious conspiracy case against the leaders of the Proud Boys, more than a year after Trump overrode the jury that convicted them.
If you want to know who these four men are, you do not have to take my word for it:
Their former chairman, Enrique Tarrio, was sentenced to twenty two years for the same charge. Trump pardoned him completely. The other four he let out of prison with commutations, but their convictions stayed on the books until Friday.
The judge who threw the case out was appointed by Trump himself. And even he made clear he made the ruling under legal constraint, not because he agreed with it.
Kelly called January 6th “a perilous event”, and an assault on our democracy. And he said that if America is going to last another 250 years, we need to come together to protect it.
That is a Trump-appointed judge, forced to free the men who stormed the Capitol, practically begging the country not to forget what they did.
Look, I was there on January 6th. I know what those men came to do, because I watched them try to do it. A jury looked at the evidence and called it what it was. Seditious conspiracy. And now, because one man had the pardon pen and a grudge, that verdict is erased. We are not just letting it go. We are being asked to pretend it never happened. I won’t, and neither should you.
5. The FBI Fires the Analysts Who Wouldn't Chase 2020
Two FBI intelligence analysts in Atlanta were fired last week for refusing to take part in the investigation into Georgia’s 2020 election. They said they did not believe the investigation was justified under the bureau’s own policies, and they were escorted out of the building.
For context, Kash Patel has ordered around 260 intelligence analysts onto this investigation, pulled from field offices all over the country. An internal memo calls it a priority. Overtime on nights, weekends, and holidays has been authorized. And the bureau’s message to its own people is blunt: get on board, or get out.
They are diverting key resources from real threats, and what are they chasing? The idea that the 2020 election in Fulton County was stolen. A claim that has been audited, recounted by hand, litigated, and rejected, over and over. Georgia counted that vote three times, and every count said the same thing. Joe Biden won the state by almost 12,000 votes. End of story.
So the men who stormed the Capitol to overturn an election are free, their records wiped clean. But the analysts who wouldn’t re-investigate their lies were the ones marched out of their office. Whatever that investigation supposedly finds, let’s remember who was left to find it.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
A Washington Post analysis published today found that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are tied to investment funds that have put money into more than a dozen defense technology companies and other firms chasing Pentagon and federal business. Most of those investments came after their father won a second term, and the portfolio runs from established contractors like SpaceX and Anduril down to startups building drones and humanoid robots. 13 other startups linked to the brothers have still locked in close to $1.8 billion in long term federal commitments and $103 million in direct cash under this administration after the brothers bought in. Companies that responded to the Post said they won their federal work on the merits, with no help from the president’s family. The brothers have framed the investments in patriotic terms, with Eric Trump talking about winning the AI race and Don Jr. arguing America needs a drone industrial base to counter China. But neither brother had any real background in defense technology before they started writing checks.
Last week a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from attaching anti-DEI conditions to federal grants sought by 11 cities and counties in California and Oregon for disaster relief, terrorism preparedness, wildfire response, and services for victims of domestic violence and trafficking. U.S. District Judge William Orrick granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that the administration’s bar on programs advancing diversity and equity intrudes on Congress’s control over federal spending and fails the government’s duty to clearly define any strings it attaches to federal money. Orrick wrote that the anti-DEI policies either have nothing to do with what Congress intended when it authorized the grants or actively contradict it, and he pointed out that federal law already bars race and sex discrimination while Congress routinely directs money toward specific underserved groups, including funding to fight human trafficking. The administration’s position rests on executive orders issued last year, including “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which told agency heads to write DEI and immigration compliance terms into their grants and contracts. The cities argued that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to appropriate money, and that the executive branch cannot rewrite the terms after the fact.
