On Saturday, a senior Iranian national security official issued a set of demands that the US must meet before a key waterway for oil shipping can be reopened—a statement that further suggests a lasting ceasefire will not be in the cards anytime soon.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, called for the US to lift its sanctions and naval blockade on Iran, “completely compensate” Iran for war damages, “unconditionally” release frozen Iranian assets, and end all attacks on Iran’s allies in the region.

According to multiple media outlets, the US government did not deliver an immediate response to the demands. Many of them resemble those in the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran in June. Back then, the Trump administration said that it would only lift sanctions completely if the two countries came to an agreement on Iran’s nuclear development, a project that has become central to the country’s struggle for identity and sovereignty amid a long, violent history of foreign interference. While there was an initial ceasefire, it did not last. A couple of days later, Iran’s military closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit point, stating the US violated their agreement by allowing Israel to continue bombing Lebanon. Combat resumed and even expanded to Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen.

The prospect that the Strait of Hormuz may reopen arose with the news that Iran and Oman, which share territorial waters in the strait, are close to an agreement on a new transit route through the passageway. But Iran’s stipulations presented to the US indicate that an agreement with Oman means little without US concessions. “The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on other conditions, including the United States compensating for its violations of the Islamabad Memorandum,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Saturday, according to the New York Times, referring to the June interim deal.

So, once again, a needless war has killed thousands of people in Iran and 18 US service members, as well as injuring hundreds more US personnel. The war has also threatened the long-term stability across the region by strikes on civilian infrastructure like water and energy facilities and food storage sites. The only certainty now appears to be that the conflict does not have a clear end in sight.

For many of us, news about the new presidential coiffeur first appeared in our podcast feeds this week. But listening instead of looking at YouTube deprived us of the real transformation, the summer glow-up, that our commander-in-chief has enjoyed, seemingly overnight.

Fortunately, the internet has not let us down. The simple version is that President Donald Trump’s storied strawberry-blond-comb-over was looking a little, um, sparse recently. The before and after pictures are not subtle.

But something important has happened. A weave? Extensions? Maybe a toupee? Perhaps he has miraculous abilities to just grow more hair when he decides to. There are so many theories, so many rich interpretations.

Well, of course, the internet has embraced this story enthusiastically. And offered its customary subtle appraisals of what might be going on with the president. Some might not be entirely accurate.

Others have obviously exaggerated his new look.

But the myriad stresses of being POTUS—the economy, the construction headaches of the East Wing ballroom, the war in Iran, the stepped up deportations, his dismal approval ratings—could exact a cost. And self-care, no matter how old one is, clearly pays off.

Early Saturday morning, the Senate voted to confirm Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to the official role after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) caved and publicly backed President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer the day before. 

Blanche was confirmed on a narrow 50-49 vote, with almost all Republicans aligning with the president. The two exceptions were Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). In other words, Cassidy, who initially withheld his approval over concerns about Blanche helping Trump prosecute political enemies, pushing the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization slush fund, and exempting the president from IRS audits, capitulated—knowing that his was the deciding vote. He did so shortly after Murkowski announced her opposition.

In his Friday remarks on the Senate floor, Cassidy raised several reasonable points on why Blanche should not be confirmed: “approving the anti-weaponization slush fund,” “exempting the president from IRS audits,” and the aforementioned “bringing suits against political enemies.”

But the senator—who recently lost his bid for reelection after being targeted as a “disloyal disaster” by Trump—summoned perplexing arguments from his familiar playbook: “Mr. Blanche has made commitments” to be better, Cassidy noted. “I have spoken to Mr. Blanche five or six times,” he assured his colleagues, and not approving Blanche “puts at risk the progress made fighting violent crime, human and drug trafficking, and fraud.” The Trump administration’s fight on crime and human and drug trafficking has led to significant increases in militarization domestically and abroad, while attacks on so-called widespread fraud have cut essential social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

This isn’t Cassidy’s first rodeo in backing down from his principled opposition to a controversial or clearly unqualified candidate. He used similar logic to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as health secretary as the deciding vote, putting naive trust in his “assurances on vaccines.” And the senator did so again earlier this week—although his was not the sole deciding vote—to confirm Erica Schwartz, the physician and attorney who was Trump’s pick for CDC director. Schwartz repeatedly dodged questions on whether she would carry out all of Kennedy’s policies, even if she believed it contradicted scientific evidence.

On Friday, Cassidy said that confirming Blanche would give the Trump loyalist more power. But he also absolved Blanche of any responsibility should Trump ignore any pushback he might offer once he has been confirmed. So why vote in favor? Doing so normalizes and legitimizes the Justice Department and makes no attempt to address the many issues with weaponization that Cassidy and many of his Democratic colleagues have mentioned.

On Saturday morning on X, Blanche thanked Trump, the Senate, and Justice Department staff. Trump, on the other hand, threatened Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the two Republican dissenters on the confirmation vote, calling her a “traitor.” He re-posted a 2022 video of former Attorney General Merrick Garland asking for the release of the Mar-a-Lago raid search warrant next to a photo of Murkowski on Truth Social.

“Lisa Murkowski will not vote for Todd Blanche,” the president wrote. “After having no trouble voting for Merrick Garland. Claiming Blanche will weaponize the DOJ and is too political. The same Garland that personally signed off on a raid of President Trump’s home.” He then concluded, “Lisa Murkowski is owned. Traitor.”

This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Recently, millions of Americans have faced orange skies and air-quality alerts. The struggles many people had with the smoke are a sad reminder of the importance air quality has for our health. Yet the Trump administration has done everything in its power to make our air less clean. Now it is adopting new, stealthier strategies to weaken clean-air standards.

During its first year, the second Trump administration used a “shock and awe” approach to environmental deregulation. In an effort to erase climate policies, the Environmental Protection Agency claimed that climate change was not a serious problem, pointing to a report by hand-picked climate skeptics. The criticisms of the National Academy of Sciences and other prominent scientific organizations were so devastating that the EPA abandoned its reliance on the report when it eliminated key greenhouse gas standards, instead basing its decision primarily on shaky legal arguments.

In the second year of this term, the Trump administration has shifted gears, taking another legally indefensible approach that is less visible but even more pernicious because it extends to all pollutants, not just greenhouse gases. The EPA is now routinely determining that the benefits of reducing air pollution—that is, life-saving health benefits for Americans—are too uncertain to quantify or value at all in regulatory decisionmaking.

The administration is doing this without any analysis or citation to scientific studies. Extensive peer-reviewed science has used sophisticated techniques to quantify the impacts of pollution reductions and account for related uncertainty. And the EPA has relied on these findings for decades, including during the first Trump administration and other Republican administrations. But, beginning this year, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has decided that every health benefit from air pollution reductions is too uncertain to count—and every regulatory cost dispositive.

The EPA announced its new approach in January in a rule on emissions from gas turbines, stating that it would no longer value public-health benefits from reducing fine particulate matter and ozone—two of the most prevalent and damaging air pollutants. The agency referenced uncertainties in how different concentrations of pollutants translate into negative health impacts like premature deaths; uncertainties in mortality valuations, which assign a dollar value to these deaths; and uncertainties in growth and discount rates, which are used to translate future impacts to present values. But the EPA’s longstanding techniques already accounted for these uncertainties.

As a result of its new approach, the EPA no longer estimates the number of lives saved or diseases and hospitalizations averted. It is assigning no value whatsoever to these environmental benefits, thereby ignoring the very health concerns the agency was created to address.

Later, the EPA doubled down on its new approach when it repealed one vehicle emission rule and delayed another one. It similarly did not consider these adverse health consequences in an air pollution regulation for coal and oil power plants, another air pollution regulation for wood products, and, earlier this month, in relaxing emissions test procedures for heavy-duty vehicles.

When the EPA first announced its new approach in January, Zeldin insisted that even though the agency would not assign a dollar value to averted deaths, it would “still be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits.” The subsequent regulatory proceedings confirmed that Zeldin’s statement was false.

Moreover, the EPA did not restrict its approach to particulate matter and ozone. The agency also refused to assign any benefits to the reduction of pollutants like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. And, similarly, in multiple proceedings, it ignored the benefits of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons.

On the cost side of its regulatory analysis, the EPA’s approach is entirely different. The EPA is continuing to fully quantify and consider the compliance costs for affected industries, even though those costs are subject to many of the same uncertainties as the benefits. For instance, like health benefits, compliance costs are borne at different times and must be translated into present value (using the same discount rates that the EPA had found too uncertain to use for benefits).

The EPA is basing some of its cost analyses on disputed industry claims, as long as they align with the administration’s favored deregulatory narrative. To justify weakening requirements to reduce hydrofluorocarbons and other potent greenhouse gases in new refrigeration equipment, the agency relied on unverified assertions about costs from certain supermarkets and other regulated entities, even though major refrigeration trade associations opposed these claims and explained that the EPA action would in fact raise compliance costs.

Without any empirical evidence, Zeldin claimed that the EPA’s action “will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices.” But the refrigeration rule did not impose any costs on regulated entities until future replacements of refrigeration equipment may be needed. Recent increases in grocery prices have been driven largely by supply-chain disruptions and rising energy costs arising from the war in Iran. Any cost savings from this rule, therefore, were unlikely to be felt in the near term.

The EPA’s actions are plainly illegal. Agencies cannot put a thumb on the scale by taking account of a rule’s costs but not its benefits, particularly when there are established techniques for valuing the benefits.

Because there is no “big ticket” action like last year’s questioning of climate change, the EPA’s approach has largely gone under the radar. Zeldin appears to be following John Oliver’s adage that if you want to do something harmful, “put it inside something boring” to avoid public scrutiny. But the American people will suffer greatly as a result of these illegal actions, in the form of additional premature deaths, asthma attacks, hospitalizations, and other serious health consequences.

Patricia Bailey’s four-bedroom home sits high among the trees in lush Edisto Island, South Carolina. It’s a peaceful place where her body healed from multiple sclerosis. It’s also the source of her generational wealth.

Bailey built this house on land that was passed down by her great-great-grandfather, Jim Hutchinson, who was enslaved on Edisto before he was freed and became a landowner. 

“I know this is sacred land here,” Bailey says, “’cause it’s my ancestors and I feel it.” 

Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Orders, No. 15—better known as 40 acres and a mule—implied a better life in the waning days of the Civil War. Hutchinson is among the formerly enslaved people who received land through the field orders, which are often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But 40 acres and a mule was more than that. 

It was real.

Over a more than two-year investigation, our partners at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed thousands of records once buried in the National Archives. In them, they found more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people who were given land by the federal government through the field orders—and then saw that land taken away. 

None of the land Bailey lives on today is part of Hutchinson’s 40 acres. Instead, her family’s wealth is built on her ancestor’s determination to get and keep land of his own, after losing what he thought he had gained through the field orders.

This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity, we’re revisiting our three-part series in which we tell the history of an often-misunderstood government program. We explore a reparation that wasn’t—and the wealth gap that remains.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. 

The Labor Department reported Friday that American nonfarm employers cut 23,000 jobs in July, a drop some attribute to employers’ wariness to hire amidst tariffs and the costs of the war in Iran.

At the same time, the unemployment rate fell slightly, from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent, a drop economists attributed not to more people being employed, but rather to fewer people entering the labor force.

“The rate dropped to 4.1 percent in large part because labor force growth has stalled, not because opportunity is expanding,” Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation think tank, told CBS News.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, spoke to reporters this morning. He cited a burst in construction as a driver of American jobs. But experts have pointed to the boom in data centers as the primary driver of nonresidential construction growth this year—and the vast majority of those jobs are temporary.

On Fox Business, Hassett said this month’s job losses are seasonal, pointing to a “big decline in hospitality workers around the end of the World Cup.” He talked about construction, but did not bring up the healthcare sector, which has been the largest driver of job growth in the country for the past several years. Healthcare and education combined have accounted for more than 75 percent of all private-sector job gains since 2023, according to researchers for the ADP National Employment Report.

Administration officials are optimistic that this month’s numbers may be just a blip. “In the end, you know, the proof will be in the number that we get next month,” Hassett said, adding that the administration remains “very bullish.”

Don Beyer, the senior House Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, took a different view of the numbers. “Today’s jobs report is deeply alarming and offers some of the clearest evidence yet that President Trump’s policies are doing serious damage to the American economy,” Beyer wrote in a statement. “Job creation has effectively ground to a halt, and businesses simply are not hiring at the pace a healthy economy demands.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently told Congress that the US government has spent an estimated $37.5 billion to date on the Iran war and requested an additional $67 billion in emergency funding. 

But there are several hidden costs that don’t factor into Hegseth’s accounting—ones that the rest of us are actually paying.

The most obvious example is increased fuel prices. As of this writing, Americans have already paid more than $75 billion in additional gasoline and diesel costs—more than $570 per household—since the war began, according to a live tracker from Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab.

The jump in fuel prices has raised the cost of airline tickets, and delivery fees for Amazon, UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service have gone up as much as 8 percent. Because trucks carry more than 70 percent of goods in the US, higher diesel prices affect almost everything on store shelves, including groceries.

Oil is used to make plastics and petrochemicals, so higher prices are already starting to work their way into the cost of everything from stuffed animals, diapers, and baby wipes to crayons, bottled water, soft drinks, and clothing.

And because K-12 schools in the US spend more than $8 billion a year on energy—their second-largest expense after teacher salaries—rising utility costs will likely strain already-stressed public schools.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has also caused the price of fertilizer to skyrocket. About 70 percent of US farmers said they were unable to afford all the fertilizer they need, according to a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation. In the US, that will likely eventually mean higher food prices. In other parts of the world, the UN is warning that the war in Iran is driving historic levels of global hunger. The head of the World Food Programme recently said the organization is being forced to “take from the hungry to give to the starving.”

Of course, the impact of the cost in human life is incalculable. At least 18 US service members have been killed and more than 100 wounded. In Iran alone, human rights groups have documented at least 1,700 civilian deaths, with the regional toll likely thousands more.

Ultimately, the cost of the war doesn’t end when the last shot is fired. Veterans will draw care and disability payments for decades. Historically, these costs don’t peak until 30 to 40 years after a war ends. Meanwhile, US weapons stockpiles will need replenishing and American facilities in the Middle East—damages to which are reportedly more extensive than the Trump administration has acknowledged—will need to be rebuilt. 

Taken all together, $37.5 billion isn’t anywhere near a final number. It’s more like a down payment—one that all of us are making.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The German energy company RWE has reached a $1.22 billion deal with the US government to relinquish its offshore wind leases and instead redirect funds towards fossil fuel investments.

The agreement marks the fifth deal the Trump administration has struck with energy companies, offering payouts in exchange for abandoning renewable energy projects and redirecting investment towards fossil fuels.

This latest deal takes it to almost $4 billion of taxpayer money spent on killing offshore wind projects.

Announcing the deal with the US Interior Department on Thursday, RWE said it had agreed to give up its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California, and Louisiana.

“After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future,” the company said, referring to the leases it initially secured with a “long-term commitment to develop offshore wind capacity.”

RWE paid $1.1 billion for its New York lease in a 2022 auction held by the Joe Biden administration, while its leases in Louisiana and California cost a combined $163 , million, Reuters reports.

“The settlement resolves RWE US Offshore’s legal claims and provides $1.22 billion in settlement funds,” RWE continued, adding that the deal would allow it to “direct resources toward energy projects that can be advanced with certainty.”

As part of the agreement, RWE will spend $900 million to acquire a 16 percent stake in an unnamed Louisiana liquified natural gas (LNG) project. The company said the settlement proceeds would be used to fund construction of the terminal.

RWE has also signed a $300 million turbine reservation agreement under which it will develop a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaker plants across the country.

The interior secretary, Doug Burgum, hailed the deal, saying on Thursday: “We welcome RWE’s agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation’s energy security, provide dependable baseload power, and help keep electricity affordable for hardworking Americans today while supporting our country’s long-term energy future.”

The RWE agreement appears to be the largest deal the Trump administration has struck with an energy company to kill clean energy projects. Earlier agreements with other companies, including TotalEnergies and Duke Energy, amounted to $2.7 billion in taxpayer money.

Following the Trump administration’s $928 million deal with French energy company TotalEnergies to cancel its offshore wind lease off the coast of New York, seven states, including New York, sued the administration over what the New York attorney general, Letitia James, described as a “sham deal” and “illegal agreement.”

The administration has also spent up to $1.1 billion to boost coal, a move critics argue is “fattening the wallets of his cronies” while raising working Americans’ energy bills, particularly as the US’s war on Iran drives up fuel prices.

At the same time, the federal government is seeking to slash public input periods for fossil fuel drilling on federal lands while shifting more of the financial risks of cleanup to taxpayers.

Meanwhile, a report released last fall by the Environmental Integrity Project found that every fully operational LNG facility in the US had violated federal pollution limits in recent years.

According to the non-profit research organization, violations included the discharge of illegal amounts of bacteria, zinc, oil, and other pollutants into waterways, as well as failures of terminal managers to submit monitoring reports for waterway discharge.

In 2019, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) denounced a “stealth anti-immigration campaign” by the first Trump administration. Through a combination of high-profile policy changes like the travel ban on foreigners from Muslim-majority countries and less visible administrative tweaks, a report from the senator comprehensively documented that President Donald Trump “surreptitiously remade” the immigration system to fulfill a “perverse vision that erases the existence of immigrants in the United States.”

As it turns out, that was only the beginning. Now, seven years later, the second Trump administration has expanded those “under the radar” attacks against the entire US immigration system, as the senator again details in a follow-up report shared exclusively with Mother Jones. Those efforts, the report says, have “destabilized lawful presence, expanded enforcement, and reengineered adjudication to accelerate and prioritize removal.”

“This report shines a light on Trump’s cruel project to dismantle due process, strip immigrants of their lawful status, and turn our immigration courts into deportation machines,” Markey told Mother Jones. “The Trump administration must be held accountable for its attacks on our immigrant neighbors.”

The report reveals an administration that is pulling all levers to completely reorient the immigration system—including the elements that had been intended to support immigrants. The sweeping goal appears to be destabilizing the lives of noncitizens in the United States and boosting deportations. “Refugee admissions have effectively stalled, humanitarian protections have been withdrawn or narrowed, work authorization has become more tenuous, and avenues to secure or retain lawful status have grown increasingly uncertain,” the report reads.

The Trump administration has not only stripped the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, but it has also made the process of seeking lawful status and even citizenship more burdensome and riskier. (Not to mention the ongoing crusade to undermine birthright citizenship.) For instance, last August, the Department of Homeland Security’s agency in charge of visas and immigration benefits rolled out a policy expanding the “good moral character” standard requirement for citizenship applicants, a requirement that introduced more subjectivity and unpredictability into the process.

Another approach with sweeping consequences with which the administration is changing the playing field can be seen in the politicization of the immigration courts, which are part of the Department of Justice. In addition to firing more than 100 immigration judges and replacing them with temporarily assigned military lawyers, the administration has transformed the makeup of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which reviews judges’ decisions. This body, in turn, has issued precedent-setting rulings that restrict immigrants’ access to due process and relief from deportation.

Even without formal legislative changes and while ostensibly keeping protections on the books, Markey concludes, Trump has nonetheless managed to create “not an openly dismantled immigration system, but one transformed from within, appearing legally intact” in which “individuals are not only more likely to become vulnerable to enforcement, but less able to avoid or defend against it.”

Today, the consumer protection watchdog group Public Citizen released a report detailing the Trump administration’s secretive web of critical minerals deals around the world. The report, exclusively shared with Mother Jones, shows that the number of deals the administration has publicly claimed to have does not match up with the number of countries known to have signed these agreements. The researchers also detail the many ways these deals can exploit countries experiencing violent conflict—and the ways they might enrich the president’s backers. 

“This is now a huge web of deals that are being negotiated behind closed doors, without any public scrutiny or oversight,” said Melinda St. Louis, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch research group. “Even the things they are announcing, the numbers don’t add up.” 

It’s clear that President Donald Trump and his administration are fixated on critical minerals—things like cobalt, lithium, and graphite, used for purposes as wide-ranging as building batteries or missiles. “It’s really striking just how much President Trump is personally involved in this,” St. Louis said. Trump has released 12 executive orders related to critical minerals since the start of his second term, and the country has signed on to a bevy of trade agreements related to critical minerals. But according to Public Citizen’s research, there’s no publicly available database of what exactly all those agreements are, which countries are involved, or who might be profiting. And many of these moves, based on executive orders, don’t require congressional approval. 

“The most complete information available is from a February 2026 State Department fact sheet that stated that at least 38 international critical minerals agreements have been completed or were pending at that time,” today’s report says. But that fact sheet names only 11 of the countries involved, meaning 27 are unaccounted for. Public Citizen’s review of available documents was able to confirm only the existence of some of those agreements. “Less than half of the memoranda of understanding announced have been made fully public, only two of which were released by the US government,” the report says. The rest are public only because the other country involved publicized them. 

The Biden administration prioritized trade deals for critical minerals—like one signed with Japan—with the justification that securing resources for the green transition was a priority. “Now, of course, under the Trump administration, even the pretext of a clean energy transition is not even part of this. It’s really to seize these minerals for AI, military dominance, et cetera,” St. Louis said. In particular, the president is interested in military dominance over China. 

“Trump and his acolytes all use this very apocalyptic language, that it’s about our security, that it’s about the future of Western civilization,” said Nghia Nguyen, a lead author on the report. “I think that says a lot about why the government is throwing so much into it.” Report after report says military contractors are being pressured to limit their reliance on trade with China for weapons components, and the US government is now seeking those same minerals wherever it can find them.

Sometimes, Trump’s own family members might profit. A group of American investors that includes two of the president’s sons got access to a massive untapped reserve of Kazakhstan’s tungsten (a mineral widely used in missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips) through a government-brokered deal. And agreements with other countries are even more exploitative. The Trump administration’s “minerals for security” deals with Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo sign over portions of those countries’ mining sectors to US actors as they experience active conflict. 

The US deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo may even have been a pretext to make the country amend its constitution. “In practice, the deal gives sweeping financial and regulatory incentives to U.S. mining companies and grants the U.S. government unprecedented control over Congolese mineral resources,” the Public Citizen report says. “These are binding agreements devoid of meaningful labor, human rights, or environmental safeguards.” And in Zambia, as the New York Times reported, the State Department has considered making medical aid contingent on a $2 billion critical minerals deal. 

“In seeking to encourage mining, the Trump administration is prioritizing speed over corporate accountability and ethical safeguards,” the researchers wrote.