Hey everyone. Welcome to the show. Good to have you here today.
We start inside the White House, where, according to Politico, the “knives are out.” New reporting this morning describes a President who is angry, isolated, and leaning on a small circle of loyalists. The first real casualty may be one of the country’s most important surveillance programs, set to expire on Friday.
And I’ll just say this up front. I flew missions overseas that depended on intelligence exactly like this. And I was in Congress for plenty of these reauthorization fights. They were ugly, members had real concerns, and we still got it done, because both parties understood the program keeps Americans safe. This week, I’m not sure anyone in that building can put anything ahead of partisan politics.
We’ll also cover a new rule on mail-in ballots, fresh Epstein reporting, the Iran war escalating again, and the President’s very crowded doctor’s visit.
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Okay. Let’s get to it.
1. Trump's DNI Pick Jeopardizes a Surveillance Program and Sets Off a White House Brawl
Politico’s Playbook reports that the mood around President Trump has turned angry and insular, with the President leaning on a tight group of aides who can reach him directly. One White House ally put it this way: “the knives are out. People are stabbing people. It’s chaos.”
Here’s what lit the fuse: Last week, Trump named Bill Pulte, his housing finance chief, as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has no national security background, and lawmakers in both parties objected.
The main trouble is the timing. A major surveillance authority known as Section 702 is set to expire this Friday. It lets the government collect the communications of foreign targets overseas, and it feeds more than half of the President’s daily intelligence briefing. The deal to renew it was nearly done.
But the Pulte pick blew it up. Democrats now say they will not vote to reauthorize the program while he runs the intelligence community. Here is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:
Speaker Mike Johnson went to the White House on Tuesday to find a way out. He came back promising to pass it anyway. “The president has a prerogative,” Johnson said, “and we’re going to pass FISA this week.” But he is well short of the votes he needs, and after the meeting, Trump only dug in harder.
The White House waved all of it off. A spokesman called Pulte “a great selection” leading a “world-class team.”
It is unfathomable to me that Republicans would let one of the country’s core intelligence tools go dark to protect a single loyalist. But then again, there’s no bottom to what Trump and his lackeys will do to maintain their power. Even if it means putting Americans at risk in the process.
2. USPS Won’t Deliver Mail In Ballots in States that Don’t Give Voter Lists to Trump Admin
The Postal Service has drafted new rules to carry out an executive order Trump signed this spring on mail-in voting.
The newly minted rules dictate that if a state wants the Postal Service to deliver its mail-in ballots, it would first have to hand the federal government a list of every voter that’s set to receive one.
If a state refuses, the ballots won’t be delivered to their voters.
The same order tells the Department of Homeland Security to build its own citizenship lists of voters using data pulled from across the government. So far, 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia are suing.
As we know, the President has spent years casting mail-in voting as fraud, with no concrete evidence to back up such a claim.
The White House is saying it is confident the order will be in force by November, and that the administration is simply “lawfully enacting” the agenda voters chose.
A former vice chair of the Postal Service’s board of governors said it in simpler terms, stripping this all down to just plain mailing ethics. “If proper postage is paid on a mail piece,” he told CNN, “the USPS should deliver it.”
It’s worth noting that of course, the president has the ability to appoint members of the USPS Board of Governors. Don’t expect to see a majority on the board that disagrees with this new policy any time soon.
3. Vance Led a Situation Room Meeting to Bury the Epstein Story
A new book from New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, out later this month, takes us inside the administration’s response last summer. An excerpt published Wednesday describes an emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room on July 17th of last year.
It came ten days after the Justice Department put out a memo saying there was no Epstein client list and that the matter was closed. That memo did not calm the President’s base. In fact, it set it off and created a political crisis at the White House.
So, according to the book, Vice President JD Vance gathered the administration’s top officials to manage the fallout, with a damaging report about the President’s ties to Epstein also on the way. The chief of staff, the press secretary, the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the FBI director all took part. Vance opened with a probably understated line: “This is a huge problem.”
The book says Vance pitched a plan to clear the President’s name, floating an interview between Tucker Carlson and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice. He also pushed to release the files fast, to get ahead of Congress. A week later, the deputy attorney general sat down with Maxwell himself.
All of that was happening behind closed doors. In public, those same officials and the president were brushing the story aside.
Every administration has to manage bad press. But what actually matters is getting justice for survivors of that terrible situation. Holding a top-secret meeting in the White House Situation Room that’s reserved for natural disasters and other crises and making it solely about shielding the president says all you need to know about who they’re actually trying to protect.
4. Trump Floats a Ground War for Iran's Oil
On Truth Social this morning, Trump vowed that American forces would take Kharg Island and, as he put it, “assume total control” of Iran’s oil and gas, comparing the plan to what he says the United States has done in Venezuela.
If you haven’t heard of it before, Kharg Island is a small island in the Persian Gulf that handles close to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. Military experts have said that actually taking the island would mean putting American troops on the ground, within range of Iranian fire, with no promise it ends the war.
But Trump doesn’t seem to care:
So he knows where the country is on this. He is floating a ground war anyway, because the prize is a fortune he can make on Iran’s oil.
This is the pattern now. The oil money he wants, the inflation he says he “loves”, the soldiers he would risk for both. The cost of this war keeps landing on Americans, and the President doesn’t care, as long as he and his friends come out on top.
5. The White House Won't Explain Trump's Record Number of Doctor Appointments
In the medical report the White House released after Trump’s latest checkup, the figure that stood out was 22: the number of medical specialists that examined the President. It is a record for anyone who has held the office.
For comparison, George W. Bush saw 12 at his first checkup. His father saw 5. Trump himself saw 11 in 2019 and 14 last year. This year, 22.
The White House will not say which specialists they were or what most of them were checking for. The President’s physician says Trump is in “excellent health,” and Trump posted that everything had “checked out perfectly.” But the cardiologist who treated Dick Cheney for years said the figure is “an extraordinary number,” and asked the obvious question: “Why so many?
Dr. Oz — who now runs Medicare and Medicaid for the federal government — had an interesting explanation:
The White House says it has “nothing to hide,” and calls the exam routine care for someone in the job. But put those specialist counts side by side, president to president, and routine is not what they describe.
A President’s health is a public matter, because the country is trusting that one person with the hardest job there is. The White House is betting it can keep shrugging these questions off. We’ll have to see how long that bet holds.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
On June 10, US strikes hit two concrete drinking water reservoirs in southern Iran. The reservoirs left roughly 20,000 people without safe drinking water right in the middle of a brutal heat wave with temperatures near 120 degrees. The Pentagon hasn’t said much, and when asked about it directly, US Central Command declined to comment. This isn’t the first time water or even civilian infrastructure has come up in this war. Trump had floated the idea of going after Iran’s water infrastructure on Truth Social back in March, as well as targeting power plants and bridges, and that alone rattled Gulf allies.
On Wednesday, Trump used a rare moment of praise for Sen. Susan Collins, calling her “a sane woman” as she heads into a tough reelection fight in Maine. He spent most of his time attacking her likely opponent, Graham Platner, calling him a “thug,” a “fake,” and “the worst human being to ever run for office.” Trump claimed Platner had a “rap sheet,” even though Platner has no criminal record. Platner, a progressive oyster farmer, easily won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, but a sexting scandal and reports of misconduct with several ex-girlfriends have rattled his campaign. Maine is seen by Democrats as one of their best paths to retaking the Senate majority, since Kamala Harris won the state by 7 points in 2024. Trump even brought up Collins’ voting record, noting she’s cast 10,000 consecutive votes without missing one. He made sure to bring up that many of those votes were against him.
