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Our top story today: the President says affordability is just a Democratic talking point, but his own White House just admitted otherwise. The Vice President is telling donors that prices are high, and Republicans in Congress are scrambling for a fix. Turns out you can only deny a problem for so long before you have to start panicking about it.
We’ll also get into a surge of non-criminal ICE arrests, the real reason behind the CIA Director’s secret trip to Moscow, the DOJ’s failure to wipe out Steve Bannon’s contempt conviction, and a Florida grand jury report on how ten million dollars in Medicaid money became campaign cash for the DeSantis administration.
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Okay, let’s get to it.
1. Republicans Scramble to Fix a Problem Trump Denies
For almost a year, Trump has been saying that affordability is a “Democrat scam” and a “con job.” That groceries are way down, and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you.
But this week the RNC sent out a fundraising text from JD Vance, and it admitted exactly what the President won’t.
“Groceries cost what they cost.” So they’ll be level with donors when they want a check, but not with the American people they’re supposed to be working for.
And that text isn’t a fluke. According to Politico, the White House has internal polling that identified affordability as the issue that could sink Republicans in November. Trump has seen it. That’s why he’s spent the last week picking a fight with cattle ranchers over cheap beef imports. It’s why he’s leaning on oil companies over gas prices and pressuring retailers to cut costs. And it’s why Republicans in Congress are now debating a stimulus package push before November.
That debate came after the latest federal data showed the economy slowing and inflation still hanging around. Paychecks have failed to keep up with prices for three straight months, while consumer confidence is dropping fast. So House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is floating a fourth budget package, more tax cuts, with two months left before the election. Some Senate Republicans want to go big, and others don’t want to touch it. Even if it passes, voters likely won’t see a dime of it before they cast their ballot.
So put it all together. The President says there’s no problem, but his polling says otherwise. The Vice President admits prices are high, but only to donors. And their party is desperately trying to pass a solution that won’t arrive in time. After a year of denial, now begins their ten weeks of panic. We’ll see how it plays out for them in November.
2. ICE Arrests Surge, but Not for Criminals
Remember the pitch? Murderers, rapists, gang members. That is who the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly promised to deport under ICE’s grossly expanded mandate.
The reality is far different. Take a look at this graphic from the New York Times, charting the seven-day rolling average of ICE arrests.
The blue line at the top represents arrests of people with no criminal charges and no convictions. Since Markwayne Mullin took over DHS in March, that category has surged, peaking at over 1,000 average arrests a week. Meanwhile, the red line at the bottom, which has remained relatively steady, represents those with violent convictions.
Further analysis by CBS News backs this story. In July, ICE set a record for daily arrests of people without a criminal record. It was also the first month of Trump’s second term, when people with nothing more than a civil immigration violation made up more than half of all arrests. People with violent convictions? About four percent of those taken into custody.
And that’s the part that should bother all of us. This isn’t a policy that has drifted off course. They knew what mass deportation was going to look like all along. So they lied. They promised the worst of the worst, but in reality they are just kicking people out whose only offense is being here. They just hoped nobody would actually check the numbers.
3. US Intel Fears Putin Will Test NATO in the Baltics
On Tuesday, a U.S. Air Force jet landed in Moscow, and a motorcade rolled through the city carrying CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Here’s how the President explained the secretive visit yesterday.
Semi-routine? The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and Politico all report otherwise. Ratcliffe instead went to Moscow to deliver a pressing warning: do not attack NATO.
That warning came after new U.S. intelligence assessments found that Putin might try to test the alliance with a limited attack against the Baltic states. Something like a cyberattack, a drone incursion, a small land grab. Just enough to find out whether NATO allies are still prepared to carry out Article 5 and cohesively defend one another from attack.
But why now, especially given the ongoing war in Ukraine? Intelligence reports suggest that Vladimir Putin is deciding whether to capitalize on President Trump’s blunders, which have left questions about America’s capacity and resolve to defend its allies.
At the same time U.S. stockpiles of interceptors and long-range missiles have been nearly emptied by the war in Iran, Trump has repeatedly threatened the NATO alliance. He has significantly reduced U.S. contributions, recently ordering five thousand troops out of Germany and threatening deeper cuts in Spain and Italy. And he has openly mused about leaving the alliance altogether.
If Ratcliffe truly delivered that warning, it is a step in the right direction for reaffirming who our friends and enemies are. But it’s a warning that should never have needed delivering. Putin is deciding whether to test the alliance for one reason: this President spent two years telling the world we might not show up.
4. Trump Judge Refuses to Erase Bannon's Conviction
This one is personal. When I sat on the January 6th Committee, Steve Bannon was one of many Trump aides we subpoenaed. The day before the attack, Bannon went on his show and said all hell was going to break loose tomorrow. He clearly knew something, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it. But Steve stood us up. He refused to hand over documents or go to any depositions. He made his choice: a jury convicted him of contempt of Congress, and he eventually served four months in prison.
But this year, as if pardoning rioters that assaulted capitol police wasn’t enough, Trump’s DOJ decided to make Bannon’s conviction disappear. In April, they went to the Supreme Court and got the conviction vacated. After that, the lower court was supposed to be the easy part. But the DOJ didn’t even pretend to make a case. Their entire argument for wiping Bannon’s record was 20 words: dismissal was “in the interests of justice.” No real explanation or argument. They assumed the fix was in and a judge would just sign off.
But this judge wouldn’t. A Trump appointee, no less. He rejected the motion and told the DOJ to come back with an argument, not a conclusion.
So why does Bannon even care? He already did his time, so a dismissal would be mostly symbolic anyway. Well, listen to something he said back in April.
Obviously, Bannon is trying to fire up the MAGA base for the midterms. But there’s plenty of truth here, too. Earlier this week we talked about Democrats’ plans for their subpoena powers; if they take the House this November, a lot of Republicans are gonna be in the hot seat. Bannon wants a clean record in case another subpoena comes his way. But he also wants to show other Republicans that they can get away with dodging Congress. Hopefully the DOJ keeps phoning it in, and this judge doesn’t let him.
5. Grand Jury Exposes DeSantis's Ten Million Dollar Scheme
Here’s what a Florida grand jury found, in a report that’s finally emerged after sitting under seal for seven months.
In 2021, a health insurance company admitted it had overbilled Florida’s Medicaid program to the tune of sixty-seven million dollars. Florida sat on it for three years. Then, in September 2024, forty-five days before the election, the DeSantis administration finally settled. But only fifty-seven million went back to taxpayers; ten million went to Hope Florida, an initiative led by the wife of our favorite governor in heels.
The money stayed there about three weeks. Then it went out as two grants to a pair of nonprofits. Within days, eight and a half million landed in a political committee chaired by DeSantis’s chief of staff, who’s now Florida’s Attorney General. From there, seven million found its way to the Republican Party of Florida, where it was spent defeating a ballot initiative for legalizing marijuana.
The grand jury called it “a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.” But nobody was charged, because in the jurors’ words, “nobody will take responsibility” for deciding where the money went, and nobody could remember who made the call.
DeSantis was asked about it yesterday. He said he wasn’t involved, but he’s “very happy with how everything was done.” He also called it a hoax.
Now, remember this?
That’s DeSantis, clearly without many original ideas, launching Florida’s own DOGE initiative in February of last year. He talks about the efficient use of taxpayer dollars. To him, I guess that means funneling millions of dollars into partisan politics and his wife’s charity.
You’d think the federal government would be interested. According to JD Vance, who heads the Trump administration’s anti-fraud initiative, no amount is too big or too small, and it doesn’t matter who you are. Listen to him on Fox:
But of course, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s precisely about who you are. If you’re an immigrant buying food stamps from customers at your store, they’ll come down on you like you’re Al Capone. But 10 million bucks from the Florida taxpayer? Well, you’re one of them. And it all went to a good cause anyway, right? When the rules only apply to certain people, it’s not about fraud. It’s not about being tough on crime. It’s about power. Let’s hope the Democrats can kneecap theirs this November.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
On Wednesday, the official Department of Education account on X posted a 19-second hype video for President Trump. It opened with Gary Oldman playing Winston Churchill in the movie Darkest Hour, shouting that you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth, then cut straight to a montage of Trump clips. The caption said “No one does it like us” with a tiger emoji. One problem. In that scene, the tiger is Hitler. Churchill is rejecting the idea of negotiating with Nazi Germany. The post got a community note, the department deleted it, and a spokesperson said a staffer made the video off a trending TikTok sound without understanding the context. This is part of a pattern now, where official government accounts churn out fancam-style propaganda for the president.
A tenured West Point professor is suing the academy, saying he was fired for refusing to stop teaching cadets that humans cause climate change. Dr. Adam Kalkstein spent 17 years at West Point and was its only climate scientist. His lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court, says leadership ordered him last fall to cut the human causes of climate change from his climatology course, and when he objected, a general suggested he resign. In May, the academy told him his contract wouldn’t be renewed, citing his “poor character and temperament.” The suit points out that he had nearly two decades of top-rated performance reviews. The Pentagon and West Point didn’t respond to requests for comment. This is the second lawsuit from a civilian West Point professor over academic restrictions since Trump returned to office, and it comes after Trump told the UN that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated” on the world. Kalkstein himself framed the stakes in military terms, asking how we compete with Russia in the Arctic if we won’t study what’s melting the ice.
