Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative June 2026 news and views. See our News Reports section for coverage of earlier dates in June and previous months and years.

Note: Excerpts below are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this. Nearly all excerpts are drawn from news sources for which the Justice Integrity Project pays a subscription. Readers here are encouraged also to subscribe to these outlets also to receive their full coverage and to support their work. 

June 28

Top Headlines

The U.S. Supreme Court, as portrayed by its official photo and in a 2024 magazine cover portrait, at top, by The New Yorker artist Anita Kunz illustrating the magazine's analysis "The Face of Justice" by Françoise Mouly.

• Democracy Docket, Advocacy: This week the Supreme Court will release its final eight opinions. Here is your guide, Marc Elias, right, June 28, 2026. Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court is asked to hear thousands of cases decided by the lower courts. This term, it heard oral argument in 58 of those cases. As we head into the last week of June and term, only eight remain undecided.
• New York Times, Investigation: Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit, Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton, June 28, 2026. An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.

More On U.S. Politics, Governance 

Elon Musk, an immigrant to the United States, the Trump-supporting world's richest man and a major beneficiary of U.S.contracts and lax immigration law enforcement, gleefully wields a chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) in February 2025 as he began to cut long-established federal programs and employees as the Trump-appointed head of a "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE)) created by Trump without congressional approval. Cheering Musk on at right is Argentine President Javier Millei, a far-right leader who gifted Musk the chainsaw and whose reelection campaign, ironically enough, was supported by a Trump-authorized financial package of some $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer loans and grants, plus trade incentives to help Argentine soybean farmers and Millei's reelection -- to the detriment of U.S. soybean farmers and taxpayers (AP photo).

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Opinion: On Holding Elon Musk Accountable, Paul Krugman, right, June 27, 2026. Why aren't we talking more about DOGE? For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America. He was running a large part of the government’s budget. And during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence. I mean, really evil and really incompetent on enormous scales. And why aren’t people talking about it more?
• New York Times, Investigation: White House Secretly Swayed Board Meant to Stop Civil Service Politicization, Jonah E. Bromwich, Michael S. Schmidt and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, June 28, 2026. Behind the scenes, the Trump White House went to extensive lengths to advance its theory of executive power, potentially giving the president remarkable leeway to install loyalists at nearly every echelon of government.
• New York Times, Rats, Leaks and Broken Elevators: Repair Backlog Plagues Federal Buildings, Eileen Sullivan and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, June 28, 2026. Rain has been seeping into an Internal Revenue Service building in Atlanta through leaks in the roof that have gone on for years. The mold in Veterans Affairs work spaces in Hilo, Hawaii, got so bad that visitors complained. And on any given day, people in an Oakland, Calif., federal building are at risk of getting stuck in one of its outdated elevators.

More On Iran, Lebanon War

• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Trade Attacks With Few Signs of De-escalation, Aaron Boxerman, Euan Ward, Yan Zhuang and John Ismay, June 28, 2026. Here’s the latest.
• Robert Reich, Why Won't the Media Call This for What it Is? Robert Reich, right, June 27, 2026. Trump’s war with Iran is continuing. Today, Iran launched attack drones at Bahrain — which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, a major logistical base for U.S. military operations. Iran also struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, its second attack on a ship since Thursday.
• Meidas Touch Podcast, Trump’s HEALTH COLLAPSES as he ESCALATES WAR!!! Ben Meiselas, right, June 28, 2026. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s health collapsing as he escalates the disastrous war in Iran and rips to shreds the MOU.

Reports, Commentaries On Trump DC Makeovers, MAGA Celebrations

• Everyone is entitled to my own opinion, Commentary: Donny’s ‘Freedom 250’ sucks, and no one is showing up for it, Jeff Tiedrich, right, June 28, 2026. Try not to laugh. ‘Freedom 250’ — Preznit's sleazy, for-profit attempt to hijack America’s 250th birthday and make it all about himself — is quickly turning into a huge, stinky pile.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 27, 2026 [Another Trump White House Construction Boondoggle?], Heather Cox Richardson, right,  June 28, 2026. Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.

More Global News

• New York Times, Venezuela Government Accused of Politicizing Quake Relief, Frances Robles, June 28, 2026. Critics say the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, is trying to exploit the tragedy for her political benefit. Her supporters accuse the opposition of doing the same. 
• New York Times, Kazakhstan’s Leader Deepens U.S. Ties, Saying Trump Was ‘Sent by Heaven,’ Paul Sonne, June 28, 2026. The Central Asian nation is aggressively courting President Trump’s Washington to counterbalance its powerful neighbors, Russia and China.
• Geo Network, Putin Is Ending Belarus As Lukashenko Loses Control... Ukraine SEALS The North, Staff Report, June 28, 2026. As Vladimir Putin orchestrates the total takeover of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has officially surrendered to a devastating Ukrainian ultimatum.

U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

1968 Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shown speaking at the Ambassador Hotel's ballroom in Los Angeles just after he won the California primary in June -- and minutes before he was fatally shot leaving the ballroom in an assassination that changed American history and still prompts intense controversy.

• Mobology, Investigatve Commentary: The tragic suicide of Greg Stone, Dan E. Moldea, right, June 28, 2026. The world's expert on the 1968 murder of Senator Robert Kennedy took his own life. This is the first time that this updated story has been offered to Mobology subscribers. During the summer of 1985, I met Greg Stone, an ex‑aide to the late U.S. Representative Allard Lowenstein (D-New York), and Greg’s associate, Dr. Philip Melanson. Greg and Phil were in the midst of a public crusade to reopen the murder investigation of Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. And they were looking for a veteran investigative journalist to help their cause.

More On U.S. Media, High Tech, Propaganda, Religion, Culture

• New York Times, Chaos Came to CBS News. What’s in Store for CNN? Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, June 28, 2026 (print ed.). The tech scion David Ellison is close to completing a merger that would put the legacy broadcaster and the 24-hour cable news network under the same roof. Over nearly five decades, CNN has survived multiple owners, ratings ups and downs, and attacks by President Trump. Now, its journalists are bracing for its most dramatic transformation yet: a corporate merger that would put the 24-hour cable network under the same ownership as CBS News.
• New York Times, Investigation: Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit, Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton, June 28, 2026. An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten. 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics

• New York Times, Colorado’s Primary for Governor Pivots to Trump and Who Will Fight Him, Jack Healy, June 28, 2026. The Democratic primary on Tuesday is likely to decide the next governor, and Senator Michael Bennet, once seen as a shoo-in, is in a dogfight with Attorney General Phil Weiser.

June 28

Top Headlines

The U.S. Supreme Court, as portrayed by its official photo and in a 2024 magazine cover portrait, at top, by The New Yorker artist Anita Kunz illustrating the magazine's analysis "The Face of Justice" by Françoise Mouly.

Democracy Docket, Advocacy: This week the Supreme Court will release its final eight opinions. Here is your guide, Marc Elias, right, June 28, 2026. Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court is asked to hear thousands of cases decided by the lower courts. This term, it heard oral argument in 58 of those cases. As we head into the last week of June and term, only eight remain undecided.

On Monday morning at 10 am, the U.S. Supreme Court will release opinions in some of the most consequential cases in the country and by the time the fireworks begin on July 4, all eight will almost certainly be public. Collectively, these eight cases represent some of the most consequential for the future of democracy.

For those focused on the 2026 midterm elections, none looms as large as Watson v. RNC – one of two cases I am personally involved in litigating. In Watson, the Court will decide whether the federal law setting a uniform Election Day prevents states from counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but arrive in the days afterward.

The stakes are enormous.

If the RNC prevails, hundreds of thousands of lawful voters — people who did everything right — will see their votes discarded because the U.S. Postal Service was too slow in delivering them to election offices. The impact of such a ruling will not be borne evenly among all voters. Republicans brought this case because they believe that rejecting these ballots will disproportionately disenfranchise Democratic voters — the young and minorities.

In many respects, Watson is a very ordinary case – it does not hinge on the Constitution. It is the culmination of a years-long political project by the Republican Party to reduce the number of mail-in ballots that are ultimately counted.

We have seen this strategy play out in various other forms. Donald Trump's recent executive order seeking to have the U.S. Postal Service refuse to transmit mail-in ballots to citizens not on an approved list is one example. Republican-controlled state legislative efforts to ban drop boxes, shorten return windows, and add technical requirements that serve no purpose except to create reasons to reject ballots are others.

But if the RNC gets its way in Watson, it will immediately impact voters in 19 states that currently allow a grace period for mail-in ballots to be received. It would also pave the way for the GOP to attack other aspects of the voting process.

Also pending is a case I argued in December. In NRSC v. FEC, the Republican Party is attacking a federal campaign finance law that has been on the books for fifty years and has twice survived challenges in the Supreme Court. The only thing that has changed is the composition of the Court.

If the Court sides with the NRSC, it will not just weaken one campaign finance law – it will call into question the entire constitutional foundation underpinning limits on money in politics.

Unlike Watson, which is viewed as a toss-up, most observers expect that I will lose this case and money will gush into American politics in time for 2026.

Also remaining on the docket is Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case. The Court appeared skeptical of the government's position at oral argument in April and it is widely expected that Trump will lose this case.

The fallout of this case, however, may reverberate in other areas. Trump's attempt to restrict birthright citizenship is connected to his broader proof-of-citizenship agenda contained in the SAVE Act.

Eric Trump, center, flanked by siblings Ivanka Trump and Don Jr.

New York Times, Investigation: Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit, Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton, June 28, 2026. An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.

When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.

During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods.

Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.

It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.

Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.

Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in the Kazakhstan project.

Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees. 

• New York Times, Kazakhstan’s Leader Deepens U.S. Ties, Saying Trump Was ‘Sent by Heaven,’ Paul Sonne, June 28, 2026. The Central Asian nation is aggressively courting President Trump’s Washington to counterbalance its powerful neighbors, Russia and China.

More On U.S. Politics, Governance 

Elon Musk, the Trump-supporting world's richest man, gleefully wields a chainsaw at a conservatie convention as he portrays how he plans to cut federal programs and employees as the Trump-appointed head of a "Department of Government" created without congressional approval. Cheering Musk on at right is Argentine President Javier Millei, a far-right leader whose reelection campaign was supported by a Trump-authorized financial package of some $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds, plus trade incentives to help Argentine soybean farmers (to the detriment of U.S. soybean farmers).

Paul Krugman via Substack, Opinion: On Holding Elon Musk Accountable, Paul Krugman, right, June 27, 2026. Why aren't we talking more about DOGE?

For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America. He was running a large part of the government’s budget. And during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence. I mean, really evil and really incompetent on enormous scales. And why aren’t people talking about it more?

Hi, I’m Paul Krugman, doing a brief follow-on to my discussion that was posted earlier today with Ro Khanna, the Congressman from Silicon Valley, who’s a very interesting guy in many ways.

One of the things that has made him especially interesting in the last few days is that he said something entirely reasonable, which is that if Democrats retake Congress, they should hold investigations into the role of Elon Musk as head of DOGE, the sort of not exactly but effectively government agency, in destroying USAID, the agency that was the principal channel for aid to the most desperate, poorest people in the world.

That’s entirely reasonable, and Khanna went on to say that there are credible estimates that the cancellation, the destruction of Doge has led to millions of unnecessary deaths, including millions of children — which is exactly true. There are studies that say that there is both in the field evidence of widespread death as a result of the cancellation and, of course reasonable health models. Because what do you think happens when you cut away tens of billions of dollars of aid to people who are living right on the edge? So of course it’s a reasonable thing to say.

Musk, of course, responded not by saying, no, it’s not true or something like that. He did say that not a single person has died because of those cuts, which is utterly implausible. But he also went on to say that he was going to sue Khanna, though he hasn’t actually so far, and that Khanna should be in prison for saying — not even saying that Musk killed people, but that there are studies that say that he killed people.

It’s quite evil and so much for free speech. Musk is very much like Trump, somebody who can dish it out but can’t take it, can’t even handle the kind of criticism that any public figure should expect to receive. Honestly, you shouldn’t be at all in the public domain unless you’re prepared to deal with a lot of insults and accusations. When you have the kind of role that Musk did that would come with the package even if he had done a decent or non-catastrophic job.

But of course he didn’t. And so let’s talk first about the evil.

It’s not just that Musk more or less personally set out to destroy this aid agency set out to cut off healthcare, nutritional assistance, just basic necessities of life for millions and millions of extremely desperate people. But he did so callously, carelessly, he even actually tweeted out, oh, “I just fed USAID to the wood chipper and I could have gone to some great parties instead.”

What can you say? This is an extraordinarily evil act. It came in the context of somebody who made enormous promises about what he was going to do. People have kind of forgotten that Musk came into DOGE promising to find trillions of dollars in waste, which he would eliminate, none of which happened. Overall, it’s pretty clear that DOGE actually worsened the budget deficit at least a little bit.

He also made specific claims along the way, most notably his claim that there were something like 20 million dead people receiving Social Security benefits. That was because the 19-year-olds that he put in positions of great influence, the Muskrats, whatever you want to call them, didn’t understand government databases. You know, you get parachuted into an agency with access to the computer system but absolutely no knowledge of what the agency does or how it does it and then couple that with a kind of arrogance — believing that these people must all be stupid and I can just sit down for a day or two with their data and find vast waste and fraud.

Well, nobody in a position of responsibility should believe that kind of thing.

It’s possible that Big Balls and his other hench people actually believed that they knew what they were doing. But my god, if you’re put in charge of a hugely important government function, you don’t assume that everybody there is an idiot and that your neophyte attaches have somehow stumbled on things that nobody else noticed.

And of course, Social Security is so pervasive, such a large part of everybody’s life, that the idea that there could be tens of millions of dead beneficiaries and nobody has noticed it, that’s completely crazy. You even wonder, did Musk really believe that? Does he even have a notion that some things are true and some things are not?

But in any case, there you are. And so it was a total disaster. He left the government not, clearly not because Trump thought that he was too extreme, too bad a guy, but because it was so clear that he did not know what he was doing.

And the reports of alleged savings from DOGE: it was starting to get embarrassing because it was so easy for news organizations to find out that the claims were utterly false, that none of what they claimed was happening was actually happening.

So he left. and then he goes back to his companies and becomes at least temporarily a trillionaire with an enormous public offering. Why didn’t people think that his record with enormous public responsibility was somehow relevant to his financial future?

I mean, if a guy who can convince himself that there are 20 million dead Social Security recipients, who can convince himself that you can massively slash foreign aid and it’s all waste and fraud and nobody will be hurt — why would you trust that person to run a company? And furthermore, the character flaws that are revealed here — flaws is what too weak a word, but anyway — when you have somebody who refuses to acknowledge uncomfortable reality, refuses to acknowledge error, who responds to any perfectly truthful statement that reflects badly on him by saying, I want that guy put in jail. — those are not the character traits that make for an effective manager. If you can’t accept that you are ever wrong, how are you ever going to get things right?

Because things will go wrong, and you will make mistakes. We all do. So all of this seems terribly relevant, and yet it says something, I guess, about America that people piled in to SpaceX stock, although some of that has come off now. It really was clearly an early frenzy, a fear of missing out frenzy.

There are now reports that SpaceX also sold bonds, which itself is a little troubling. Why should they be needing to go into debt right away? What is that about? And those bonds have already lost some of their value, which is much more serious than the stock coming down. When bonds lose value, that’s because people think that there is now a risk that this company might default, might not be able to honor its promises. So seeing those bonds start to trade at a discount almost immediately is a pretty bad sign for the company. But again, why did anybody believe any of this?

Musk is a horrible, terrible person and has the blood of millions of children on his hands. Let’s be clear. Yes, it’s not something that has been proven, but it’s close to. It’s so overwhelmingly likely that it clearly has to be true. And he’s also a weak personality — very much like Trump again — he can’t take criticism, he can’t admit error. So what does it say ultimately about our society that so many people are willing to throw money at this guy and that they’re so willing to forgive the incredible failures that he carried out, the incredible disaster of his time in a position of public responsibility. And I don’t really know the answer to that.

There’s a real question about how it is we got at our current age of irresponsible oligarchs and with so little public backlash. And it’s starting to develop. But still, the fact that Elon Musk is still in business, let alone the world’s richest man, is in some sense an indictment of all of us.

New York Times, Investigation: White House Secretly Swayed Board Meant to Stop Civil Service Politicization, Jonah E. Bromwich, Michael S. Schmidt and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, June 28, 2026. Behind the scenes, the Trump White House went to extensive lengths to advance its theory of executive power, potentially giving the president remarkable leeway to install loyalists at nearly every echelon of government.

In the tiny corner of the legal world that follows such things, the March ruling crashed down like a thunderbolt.

It was issued by an obscure government agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board, whose purpose is to protect federal workers from unfair firings. But the decision backed President Trump’s assertion that he has broad authority to reshape the executive branch as he wants.

The ruling broke with decades of precedent, accepting the White House’s argument that Article II of the Constitution gives Mr. Trump the power to dismiss officials without due process. By that theory, he can essentially erase civil service protections, even for public servants — in this case, immigration judges — whose engagement with the law often puts them at odds with Mr. Trump’s political aims.

The board’s decision has no direct bearing on cases that the Supreme Court is expected to rule on this week, which could establish how far the president’s power over the civil service extends. But it defanged the most effective method for federal workers to challenge their dismissals, and if upheld on appeal could undercut protections for broad swaths of the civil service.

And it came after the Trump administration leveled a concerted pressure campaign on the board in public and private, according to people with knowledge of the process. The private push — little different from calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule — was led by a White House aide who for years has been intently focused on making it easier to quickly fire federal workers.

The story of how the ruling came about illustrates the intense effort by the Trump White House to advance its theory of the unitary executive, the belief among many conservatives that the president has sweeping authority over the entire executive branch, and can direct the actions of employees, including federal prosecutors and immigration judges, who handle sensitive matters of law.

“Knowing that it was made with influence from the White House means the decision was not based on positions of law,” said Nicholas Bednar, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota who studies the federal civil service. The decision, he said, “reflects the same ideological considerations that is driving the evisceration of the federal civil service.”

Asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman, Allison Schuster, said: “There can constitutionally be no independent executive branch agencies because independence from the president would mean independence from the voters who elected him.”

A spokesman for the board declined to comment.

An Unsettling Meeting

Four days after an unusual White House meeting in late November, Henry Kerner, the board’s acting chair, assembled a small group of his staff. He seemed shaken and unsure how to proceed.

Mr. Kerner was one of the board’s remaining leaders. The agency’s name is a mouthful, but its function is crucial: It acts as an independent arbiter between government agencies and dismissed workers. After Mr. Trump’s mass firings in 2025, the board was inundated with claims from scores of workers who turned to it as their last resort.

If the administration could sway the board to rule its way, it would drastically enhance the White House’s power — and violate the board’s independence.Image

New York Times, Rats, Leaks and Broken Elevators: Repair Backlog Plagues Federal Buildings, Eileen Sullivan and Rebecca Davis O’Brien, June 28, 2026. Rain has been seeping into an Internal Revenue Service building in Atlanta through leaks in the roof that have gone on for years. The mold in Veterans Affairs work spaces in Hilo, Hawaii, got so bad that visitors complained. And on any given day, people in an Oakland, Calif., federal building are at risk of getting stuck in one of its outdated elevators.

Across the federal government, employees are working in buildings that have persistent health and safety problems, in part the result of decades of backlogged maintenance that totals as much as $50 billion, according to one recent estimate by an oversight board. In several years, the cost is set to exceed the entire value of the federal government’s real estate portfolio, the Public Buildings Reform Board said earlier this year.

The health and safety risks were exacerbated last year by the Trump administration’s push for federal workers to return to the office, forcing more employees into buildings whose longstanding needs had gone unaddressed for years.

Unlocking money for repairs is a lengthy and bureaucratic process. Under federal law, Congress must approve major improvements to buildings run by the General Services Administration that total more than $3.96 million — an amount that would cover the cost of replacing just three elevators at a time when the government needs to replace dozens.

The approval process takes an average of 435 days, the G.S.A. said, and in many cases even longer, meaning costs balloon as problems fester.

A project to replace the roof and HVAC systems and update the electrical system of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston has increased by more than 400 percent since it was first presented to Congress in 2016, according to the G.S.A. Since the 24-story building was first flagged for improvements, it has developed additional problems with its elevators, which are more than 30 years old and have entrapped people at least 49 times in the past two years

Meanwhile, less costly maintenance needs across the government have piled up amid a focus on issues that could be life-threatening, according to federal employees and government officials.

“This isn’t just an accounting exercise,” Edward C. Forst, the head of the General Services Administration, told Congress in March. “This represents real buildings deteriorating and real safety hazards developing when we do not address problems when they arise.”

The conditions affect not just federal workers, but also members of the public who routinely visit the buildings for services such as veterans and Social Security benefits.

In May, Mr. Forst and leaders of 21 federal agencies asked the top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to change the appropriations process and give the G.S.A. full access to the federal buildings fund, and to raise the threshold for how much the agency can spend.

So far, the lobbying effort has not had an impact, and Congress has kept in place the oversight requirement for the G.S.A. to submit detailed requests for projects exceeding $3.96 million. Mr. Forst asked Congress to raise it to $75 million.

Dan Mathews, a former head of the G.S.A. division that manages real estate, said that it was unlikely that Congress would change the law, in part because the state of federal buildings gets little attention. For lawmakers of both parties, spending money on government itself rather more tangible services for voters is not a top priority.

“It doesn’t fall that high, and it never will,” said Mr. Mathews, now a member of the reform board, which was set up a decade ago to identify federal properties that can be offloaded. “Government is a terrible owner of real estate.”

After decades, deferred maintenance totals an estimated $50 billion. But getting repair funds from Congress is a laborious process. 

More On Iran, Lebanon War

New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: U.S. and Iran Trade Attacks With Few Signs of De-escalation, Aaron Boxerman, Euan Ward, Yan Zhuang and John Ismay, June 28, 2026. Here’s the latest.

President Trump and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards exchanged threats and U.S. allies in the Gulf said they had intercepted Iranian drones, as hostilities entered a fourth day.

Iran and the United States exchanged new strikes on Sunday, the fourth day of a flare-up of hostilities with no signs of a de-escalation that would get their cease-fire back on track.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement carried by the country’s state media that it had targeted a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait in retaliation for American attacks. The governments of Kuwait and Bahrain later said that they had come under attack from Iran and that there had been no casualties.

There were no reports of American casualties or of major impact or damage to U.S. assets, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.

U.S. Central Command had said earlier that it had conducted airstrikes on multiple targets in Iran in response to what it called an Iranian attack on an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. A British ship monitoring agency reported that the tanker had been hit by a projectile on Saturday morning. Iranian officials have not claimed responsibility for the strike, the second such attack in recent days in the vital waterway, which Iran is supposed to have reopened under the cease-fire.

The U.S. military said its latest attacks had hit air-defense sites and other military infrastructure, a claim that could not be independently verified. Iran’s state broadcaster reported explosions in three cities near the strait, and a U.S. official said that the U.S. airstrikes on Saturday were more expansive in scope than those of the day before.

The United States and Iran have ramped up their rhetoric in recent days, accusing each other of violating the cease-fire.

On Saturday, President Trump said in a bellicose message on social media that the United States would annihilate Iran if it were forced to return to war.

The Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on Sunday that American bases in the region “will be experiencing hell during these days.” Earlier, Iran’s state broadcaster reported explosions in the coastal cities of Sirik, Kong and Bandar-e Lengeh near the Strait of Hormuz, an area that has been targeted in previous attacks. The official state news agency, IRNA, characterized the strikes in its news bulletin as a “violation of the cease-fire.”

It is unclear whether days of back-and-forth attacks will halt talks to reach a final peace agreement. Each side seems to be testing each other’s red lines and threats, analysts say, but neither seems eager to return to a full-blown war.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Strait of Hormuz: Strikes on ships are likely to deter vessels from passing through the waterway, which Iran had agreed to fully reopen as part of the cease-fire with the United States. Read more ›
• Lebanon deal: Reaction to the preliminary agreement the country’s leaders signed with Israel on Friday was sharply divided. Supporters of the U.S.-brokered deal said it would curtail Iranian influence in Lebanon. Others, including the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, called it a capitulation to Israeli and American demands. Read more ›+

Robert Reich, Why Won't the Media Call This for What it Is? Robert Reich, right, June 27, 2026. Trump’s war with Iran is continuing. Today, Iran launched attack drones at Bahrain — which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, a major logistical base for U.S. military operations. Iran also struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, its second attack on a ship since Thursday.

Those attacks came after the United States carried out overnight airstrikes on Iranian missile and drone sites, in retaliation for Iran firing drones at a container ship on Thursday as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz.

The continuing hostilities are exposing the mind-numbing extent of Trump’s lies about “ending” his war — that he’s achieved a lasting peace in the Middle East, that Iran no longer has any capacity to fire missiles and drones, that the Strait of Hormuz is reopen to cargo traffic, that Iran is committed to reducing its stockpile of nuclear material and won’t seek a nuclear bomb, and that, overall, the war he launched on February 28 has made America stronger and safer than we were before he launched it.

These lies aren’t on par with his big lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was undertaken by peaceful, patriotic Americans. But his lies about the so-called “end” of his war with Iran could have equally large consequences, because they’re leading many Americans to believe that an end of the war is within sight and that America is stronger and safer as a result of it.

Yet the mainstream media refuse to call him out on his Iran lies.

The New York Times terms what’s now happening a “flare-up of in hostilities” that threatens “to unravel” ongoing “talks to reach a final peace agreement,” and that “neither side seems eager to return to a full-blown war.”

Well, they may not want to return to a “full-blown war” but they’ve returned to hostilities that are blocking the strait and destroying whatever shred of trust diplomacy depends on. And not a word about Trump’s lies.

The Washington Post calls it “the latest threat to a ceasefire and ongoing talks toward a broader peace” — which of course assumes there has been a real ceasefire, and that the talks now underway will result in a “broader peace,” whatever that means. Also not a word about Trump’s lies.

The Wall Street Journal says the hostilities have “added to pressure on a preliminary peace deal already under stress from continued fighting in Lebanon and disagreements over nuclear inspections.” But that assumes there’s already a preliminary peace deal. Has anyone actually read it? And the disagreements are hardly confined to nuclear inspections. What about free passage through the strait? Oh, and here again, no word about Trump’s blatant lies.

My expectations for the mainstream press were already low. From the outset of this war, the public has received half-baked and inconsistent reports. And although the media knows better than to rely on any words emanating from Trump’s mouth, why have they given up holding him to account for what he says about the war? 

Trump’s war with Iran was a disaster from the start, and it’s so-called “end” is a debacle that Americans needs to know about. Trump wants the war to go away, but it won’t because he has strengthened Iran’s resolve, which in turn has strengthened its hand.  

Meidas Touch Podcast, Trump’s HEALTH COLLAPSES as he ESCALATES WAR!!! Ben Meiselas, right, June 28, 2026. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s health collapsing as he escalates the disastrous war in Iran and rips to shreds the MOU.

Reports, Commentaries On Trump DC Makeovers, MAGA Celebrations

Everyone is entitled to my own opinion, Commentary: Donny’s ‘Freedom 250’ sucks, and no one is showing up for it, Jeff Tiedrich, right, June 28, 2026. Try not to laugh. 

Let’s just cut right to the chase: ‘Freedom 250’ — Preznit's sleazy, for-profit attempt to hijack America’s 250th birthday and make it all about himself — is quickly turning into a huge, stinky pile. See this below:

WASHINGTON – The Great American State Fair is underway at the National Mall to mark the United States’ 250th birthday. But not everything is off to such a great start.

The event has quickly faced problems including power outages, melting ice cream – and a lack of representation from states that declined to send delegations.

Frankly, I’m shocked — shocked! — to learn that the guy who turned the simple resurfacing of the Reflecting Pool into a weeks-long, as-yet-unfinished cluster____ of epic proportions has managed turn America’s birthday into a five-alarm.....

Besides empty booths, the event has also been troubled by electricity problems. On Thursday, June 25, attendees reported issues with the generator, forcing the Ferris wheel, one of the fair's main attractions, to shut down for roughly two hours. A day later, workers in the food hall were still waiting for a shipment of ice cream after their entire selection melted due to ongoing electrical problems.

There are any number of reputable businesses that specialize in putting on actual state fairs. Did Donny hire any of them, or did this end up being this another one of those cushy contracts that went to some cartoonish crony whom Donny ran into at his tacky Florida golf motel?

Any other president — nay, any other world leader — would have made this celebration about their country, out of a sense of patriotism, and national pride.

But not Dear Leader. he sees everything through the filter of ‘How do I get my cut?’

America’s 250th birthday celebration wasn’t supposed to play out like this. in 2016, when Obama was president, Congress created a bipartisan commission to coordinate a series of government-sponsored events for the Summer of 2026 — you know, like a normal, functioning government is supposed to. They called it "America 250."

But when Donny wormed his way back into power, he cordially invited America 250 to go _ itself, sidelined them, and created his own, for-profit group called Freedom 250 to put on partisan, pro-MAGA events — and he’s hoping no one understands the difference.

in fact, loyal media outlets like Fox News are working overtime to make sure nobody understand the difference.

See that? They’re calling the ___fest currently playing out on the Mall ‘America 250.’ It’s not, it’s ‘Freedom 250.’

Imagine that a President Kamala Harris had handed America’s 250th birthday celebrations over to a corrupt cabal of cronies, and that she was getting a taste of the action.

The entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex would have spontaneously bled from the eyeballs. But when Dear Leader does it, all we get from his enablers in the media is crickets.

Speaking of Donny’s enablers in the media — pour one out for Fox News. "We’re celebrating at the great American state fair. we’ve got thousands of people celebrating with us.”

Oh, Fox News, you’re adorable. Don’t ever change.

You have to wonder if all those thousands of people are in the room with Fox News right now — because they sure weren’t on the National Mall.

Do you see ‘thousands of people’ in that photo [above]? I don’t. 

It’s not like anyone couldn’t have predicted this. Remember that emotional support military parade that Donny threw for himself last year? Remember how he promised it was going to be a great military parade — a military parade like few thought possible? Maybe the greatest parade of all time?

In real life: there were so few people in attendance that you could hear the squeaking of the tank treads as they rolled past the mostly-empty stands. Oof. how embarrassing.

No one showed up because no one wants any part of what Donny’s peddling. 

Donny spent 45 million dollars on that. Where did all that money go? Has anyone checked Donny’s bank account?

How much of this Freedom 250 grift is going straight into Donny’s pockets? Will we ever find out?

Hey, remember how Freedom 250 originally had a whole bunch of musical acts booked to perform, and once they found out they were playing at some MAGA s____, they all canceled, and how pretty much the only performer remaining on the bill was Vanilla Ice?

Yeah, well — guess what:

Vanilla Ice was set to take the stage as part of the Great American State Fair's 'I Love the 90s!' event on Friday, June 26, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Less than two hours before showtime, organizers pulled the plug as heavy rainfall came down on Trump's Freedom 250 festival.

In the absence of Vanilla Ice, the main musical attraction at Donny’s shitfest was some MAGA perv who, ahem, allegedly dropped trou and started strumming on the old banjo.

"A MAGA live-streamer dressed as Uncle Sam has been arrested at President Donald Trump‘s Great American State Fair after multiple witnesses reported him to police. Gian Rachtelli, 54, above in a Daily Mail collage, was taken into custody on Thursday afternoon and charged with lewd, indecent or obscene acts after three people independently described what they believed was a sexual act taking place during a Cirque Mechanics performance."

* * *

Empty booths, deserted mallways, melted ice cream, a broken ferris wheel, canceled performances, corruption and grifting, and some dude fisting his trouser trout. July 4th is less than a week away. Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants has six days to get his shit together for the main event. Do you think he will?

Of course he won’t. this is Dear Leader we’re talking about. Everything he touches, dies — because he’s an incompetent imbecile who acts first and thinks never. And Donny couldn’t commit a patriotism if his life depended on it.

 President Trump, shown escorting Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman in a file photo by Getty Images, has changed the approach to the White House West Wing by swapping out the longstanding gray and brown pavers for a black granite walkway, The swap affects the West Wing Colonnade, the walking path from the executive residence to the Oval Office past portraits of former presidents that Trump has installed with captions denoting his praise, insults and other opinions of their presidencies.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 27, 2026 [Another Trump White House Construction Boondoggle?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 28, 2026. Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.

But a report by Michael Scherer of The Atlantic about Trump’s remodeling of the West Colonnade is perhaps an even better representation of the Trump presidency. In March, Trump tore up the light brown Tennessee flagstone that paved the walkway in the West Colonnade that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office and replaced it with polished black African granite carved in Italy. When a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the remodeling, Trump answered: “Paid for by me.”

But, as Scherer discovered, that was a lie. He examined National Park Service budget documents showing that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, all part of a $1.3 million project that includes new hardware for nearby doors. Last year, Scherer reports, the National Park Service spent $347,503 to replace the stucco on the colonnade wall so Trump could hang pictures of the U.S. presidents alongside plaques featuring his own opinions of them. Documents say the project was a “Rush project at request of POTUS.”

Scherer explains that Trump has redirected taxpayer money from national parks around the country to his own projects, leaving the parks unable to make needed repairs or hire staff. Expected funding for more than 900 Park Service projects never arrived—including $424,000 to replace a guardrail on the edge of a cliff in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park that National Park Service employees identified as “a significant safety hazard for visitors.” For some parks, nearly 70% of approved funds have been pulled back.

Trump has also pulled National Park Service staff to Washington, D.C., for his Freedom 250 events, a crisis because the Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office. In his 2027 budget, Trump calls for cutting staff by another 3,967 full-time employees, or 31%.

That budget also asked for another $10 billion to beautify Washington, a sum that Scherer notes is nearly eight times as large as all the money spent on National Park Service projects in 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee stripped that request out of its marked-up version of the president’s budget.

The administration appears eager to keep what’s happening in the national parks out of sight. Early this year, the Department of the Interior instructed its employees that they could not share information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands, instead redirecting all such information through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Communications.

As outdoors writer Wes Siler reports in his Wes Siler’s Newsletter, the Interior Department “manages the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those agencies are responsible for about 20 percent of all land area in the United States, hundreds of millions of annual visitors, and spend annually $88.6 billion taxpayer dollars.”

As Jake Spring reported in the Washington Post, more than 300 million people visit America’s national parks each year, and about 350 of them die (not always from accidents). In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, warning others from the area. Now the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it.

It did not release the information that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12 of this year. NPS employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of extreme heat on the same trail.

The profligate use of our tax dollars for whatever Trump and his cronies want while the American people suffer is at least as representative of Trump’s reign as is the peeling, algae-filled, militarily guarded Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

This president and administration are turning the extraordinary resources of the American people—the things we the people have created over decades with our effort and our tax dollars—to their own ends. We are paying for their theft with a significantly diminished country, and even with our lives.

On May 29, 2026, the administration proposed dramatic changes to the awarding of federal research grants. Rather than continue awarding research grants on the basis of a merit system established through rigorous peer review, the administration proposes to base federal research grants on approval by political appointees.

It refers to an executive order Trump signed in May 2025 that said previous governments had “politicized” science with their response to the Covid-19 pandemic, concern about climate change, and incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion in scientific studies and called for a return to “a gold standard” of scientific research.

The lead driver of the proposed change is the Office of Management and Budget, directed by Christian nationalist Russell Vought. Vought, shown below right, was a key author of Project 2025, and the plan will empower his team in the executive branch to divert tax dollars to channels he approves, rather than those scientists support. The proposed changes limit foreign collaboration, and if the government decides a grant is failing to “effectuate program goals, Federal agency priorities, or the national interest,” the OMB can yank the grant.

Americans created world-class research universities and institutions during and after World War II as it became clear that it was more cost effective for the federal government to award grants to those researchers doing work their peers recognized as the best in the country, rather than trying to create such labs for the government. Relying on businesses, they realized, would limit scientific and medical research to avenues that promised to produce short-term profits. So they developed a web of universities and scientific institutions where tax dollars could be allocated only to those doing superior work in areas that offered long-term scientific and medical advances.

In the process of doing that work, university researchers share their discoveries with each other and train the next generation of scientists, creating an extensive network of scientific advances that generate new products and new treatments, and that has made the United States a world leader.

The American people paid for that system with their work and their money. Now Trump’s hand-picked loyalists want to dismantle it to advance their own ideology. As economist Paul Krugman noted in February in his newsletter, destroying faith in science and experts leaves people open to the idea that they should reject “the establishment” and instead follow right-wing leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Krugman also notes that, according to McKinsey, spending on wellness in the U.S. alone amounts to about $500 billion a year. Americans paid close to $70 billion for nutritional supplements alone.

And as the administration tears up the system, people die. An ardent supporter of Secretary Kennedy, Dr. Joseph Mercola, has urged parents to be skeptical of Vitamin K shots for newborns, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since 1961. Right-wing figures pushed those concerns, and Kennedy has refused to recommend the shots, which prevent catastrophic bleeding in newborns.

In May, Duaa Eldeib of ProPublica reported that parents increasingly are refusing the shots and that newborn deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding are on the rise. Mercola has now publicly and strongly changed his previous stance.

It’s not just babies at risk. After World War I the so-called Spanish Flu decimated U.S. soldiers coming home from the war, and as Cristina Stassis of Air Force Times reports, since the 1950s the military has required that service members be vaccinated against the flu. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the requirement “overly broad and not rational” and complained that it would “weaken our warfighting capabilities.”

Just two months later, more than 220 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas came down with the flu. One sick trainee died of a medical emergency; an investigation of the cause of his medical emergency is underway.

When Hegseth changed the requirement, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), an Air Force veteran, noted that “[t]he reason it was mandatory was to enhance readiness.” Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), who represents the district where Lackland is located, posted that Hegseth’s ending of flu vaccinations “was a reckless decision that put troops in harm’s way and undermined our military readiness.”

Greg Jaffe and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that after the outbreak, the Air Force required vaccines for all the recruits at Lackland.

Just as administration officials are tearing up the scientific research Americans have built over the last 80 years, Hegseth is also tearing up the U.S. military, which Americans have built with their blood and treasure since 1775.

Filip Timotija of The Hill noted that since he took over at the Pentagon last year, Hegseth has gotten rid of more than two dozen senior military leaders with little or no explanation. Those include General C.Q. Brown Jr., the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s chief of naval operations; Admiral Linda Fagan, the commandant of the Coast Guard; General Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff; and General James Mingus, the vice chief of staff of the Army.

Last week, Hegseth added General Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, to that list. Donahue has had a storied career and commands wide bipartisan support in Congress. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) called the firing “yet another unforced error from a Secretary leading the Pentagon with bro-culture bravado rather than restraint, humility and careful stewardship of the finest fighting force in the world.” Hegseth “is more interested in purging people he perceives as insufficiently loyal than empowering proven patriots who can actually lead,” Tillis wrote. “It’s sophomoric. It’s unserious. And it’s bringing great harm to our Department of Defense.”

That lack of seriousness has given us Trump’s debacle in Iran, where the U.S. and Iran are trading strikes again over Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. Benoit Faucon, Summer Said, Costas Paris, and Robbie Grammar of the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Iran expects a payoff of $40 billion a year in payments for security, safety, and environmental services from vessels crossing the strait, leaving Iran stronger after Trump’s war than before it.

Tonight, Trump made apocalyptic threats against Iran, posting that “United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN! It is very possible that they will never learn! There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Administration officials and their cronies are turning the country we worked so hard to build into a vehicle for building their own power and their own wealth, and Republicans in Congress have steadfastly refused to stop the looting or even to investigate. So lax have they been that last month, Emily Davies of the Washington Post reported that White House lawyers had begun private briefings for administration officials on how to prepare for congressional oversight in case Democrats win the midterms.

Yesterday House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), a Trump loyalist, warned a crowd at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C.: “If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats—y’all, impeachment’s not even the big concern. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, and friends—half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you. Ok, we’re gonna win. We’re gonna win the midterms.”

More Global News

Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, is shown in an April portrait in Caracas, Venezuela (New York Times photo by Frances Robles).

New York Times, Venezuela Government Accused of Politicizing Quake Relief, Frances Robles, June 28, 2026. Critics say the country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, is trying to exploit the tragedy for her political benefit. Her supporters accuse the opposition of doing the same.

The Venezuelan opposition party led by the exiled former legislator and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado mobilized volunteers throughout the nation last week to collect donations for homeless earthquake survivors, but it encountered an unexpected obstacle: the National Police.

On Thursday, Heidy Loicett, a leader of the opposition party, Vente, stood under a blue tarp on a sidewalk in Portuguesa, a state some 275 miles from the disaster zone, as people came by with a variety of items like diapers, bottled water and used clothing. The police came by, too, she said.

Several Venezuelan National Police officers and officials from the federal Civil Protection agency tried to shut down the charity drive, she explained in a telephone interview after the encounter, adding that she was told that all donations had to be channeled through the federal government.

“They said we couldn’t have a donation center, that the only authorized donation drop-off center was Civil Protection and the government,” Ms. Loicett said. “That was political persecution.”

The clash over who gets to take credit for the humanitarian relief effort for the earthquake-shattered nation highlights a much larger, high-stakes battle for political survival in a fractured Venezuela.

Last week Venezuela suffered two devastating earthquakes that killed more than 1,400 people, just six months after the U.S. military raided the country and seized the country’s former leader, Nicolás Maduro. Critics say they fear that Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, will politicize the tragedy, using the disaster response to establish her legitimacy at a critical inflection point.

New York Times, Kazakhstan’s Leader Deepens U.S. Ties, Saying Trump Was ‘Sent by Heaven,’ Paul Sonne, June 28, 2026. The Central Asian nation is aggressively courting President Trump’s Washington to counterbalance its powerful neighbors, Russia and China.

The skyline of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, is a physical reflection of the Central Asian nation’s approach to foreign affairs.

A sign reading “Moscow” sits atop a Kazakh-Russian business center. Beside it is a pagoda-crowned luxury hotel owned by the Chinese state oil company. Nearby is a gleaming hotel tower and shopping mall, emblazoned with the American brand Ritz-Carlton.

And they all exist in the shadow of Abu Dhabi Plaza, the city’s biggest skyscraper, developed by a real estate firm from the United Arab Emirates.

It is the product of what Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, calls a “multivector” foreign policy.

In pursuit of greater independence and security, Mr. Tokayev’s landlocked nation of 21 million people, bordered by Russia and China, has tried to counterbalance the neighboring superpowers by inviting investment from countries farther afield. They include the United States; European nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland; South Korea; Turkey; and several in the Middle East.ImageA narrow, very tall skyscraper dominates a city skyline on a cloudy day.Abu Dhabi Plaza towers over Astana’s skyline.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

A desire to emulate the Gulf states is palpable at the headquarters of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk Kazyna, which is named for a magical bird from Kazakh folklore that lays a golden egg atop the Tree of Life. Kazakhstan’s tightly controlled political system, its multinational quest for investment and its natural-resource-fueled development offer parallels to nations like the U.A.E. and Qatar.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China, Kazakhstan and Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“We are driven by a pragmatic approach,” Nurlan Zhakupov, the head of the fund, said in an interview atop a skyscraper overlooking a newly built part of Astana. “If we see merit in working with the U.S., the E.U., a Chinese, Russian, Korean, German, Emirati or whatever company, we assess it on a relative performance basis and we choose what is the best for us.”

Lately, there has been a particular focus on the United States.

Kazakhstan is a junior partner to Russia in a NATO-like military alliance and a European Union-like trade bloc. But that hasn’t stopped its leaders from aggressively courting Washington under President Trump, prompting a slew of business deals, a series of high-level meetings and a frenzy of engagement with American companies.Editors’ PicksThe Little Rituals That Prepare You for SleepI Thought Divorce Meant Walking Away From the PastDon’t Send Checks Through the Mail. Just Don’t.

In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Central Asian governments have drawn closer together as a bloc, while welcoming Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy. They are seeking opportunities to reduce their reliance on Moscow, even as they tread lightly so as not to cross the Kremlin or antagonize China.

“For the business relationship, it has never been better,” said Jeff Erlich, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan, who has worked in and around the region since the late 1990s. “In my experience, that is clear.”

In Washington, Mr. Trump has dispensed with America’s traditional talk of human rights and democracy in connection with foreign policy. He has instead embraced a mercantilist approach, judging countries like Kazakhstan by what deals they can offer. A top priority has been securing access to Kazakhstan’s large supply of critical minerals and ensuring that they can be exported via the Middle Corridor, a route that crosses the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus to avoid Russia.

Mr. Tokayev’s authoritarian ways — he recently changed Kazakhstan’s Constitution to strengthen his power — once hindered his country’s relationship with the United States. But under the second Trump administration, which dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development programs working on human rights issues in Kazakhstan, such concerns are no longer an irritant for Washington.

The Kazakh leader has joined Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace. He signed up to the Abraham Accords even though Kazakhstan already had diplomatic relations with Israel. And he led a high-level delegation of Central Asian leaders to Washington last year, during which the Kazakh state mining firm signed a tungsten deal with a U.S. company that was later revealed to be backed by Mr. Trump’s sons.ImageMen in suits sit at a dinner table.President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan, second from right, during a dinner with other Central Asian leaders hosted by President Trump at the White House in November.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

It was just one of 29 pacts that Kazakhstan signed with U.S. companies, worth over $17 billion. They included a deal with Amazon’s Leo satellite internet service and an agreement with Nvidia, the U.S. chipmaker, and Firebird, an American cloud computing company, to build an A.I. data hub. Kazakhstan also agreed to a $4.2 billion deal to buy 300 rail cars from the American firm Wabtec.

During the trip to Washington, Mr. Tokayev proclaimed that Mr. Trump had been “sent by heaven.”

Leaning too aggressively into the relationship with Mr. Trump could carry risks for Kazakhstan if the political winds change in Washington. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, while campaigning for re-election, has said that if Democrats take power in Congress, people will be questioned under oath about the involvement of Mr. Trump’s sons in the Kazakh tungsten deal.

Some Western investors have worried that Russian and Chinese leverage over Kazakhstan could jeopardize supplies of critical resources to Western nations, should Moscow or Beijing decide to intervene. But so far, Kazakhstan been a reliable supplier, even as relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated over Ukraine. 

Geo Network, Putin Is Ending Belarus As Lukashenko Loses Control... Ukraine SEALS The North, Staff Report, June 28, 2026. As Vladimir Putin orchestrates the total takeover of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko has officially surrendered to a devastating Ukrainian ultimatum.

Terrified by Ukraine's threat to annihilate Belarusian oil refineries, Lukashenko backed down—only to face intense energy and financial blackmail from Moscow.

Now, Russia is secretly constructing massive military logistics, fuel bases, and roads from Kobrin to Gomel, preparing to open a catastrophic Northern Front. In response, Ukraine has transformed its 1,000km border into a heavily mined "Death Trap," with the new Unmanned Systems Forces already locking onto 500 strategic targets inside Belarus.

Discover how Putin's ruthless blackmail is ending Belarus and pushing Eastern Europe toward a massive new escalation. 

U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

1968 Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shown speaking at the Ambassador Hotel's ballroom in Los Angeles just after he won the California primary in June -- and minutes before he was fatally shot leaving the ballroom in an assassination that changed American history and still prompts intense controversy.

Mobology, Investigatve Commentary: The tragic suicide of Greg Stone, Dan E. Moldea, right, June 28, 2026. The world's expert on the 1968 murder of Senator Robert Kennedy took his own life. This is the first time that this updated story has been offered to Mobology subscribers.

During the summer of 1985—while temporarily living in Los Angeles and working on my third book, Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob (Viking Press)—I met Greg Stone, an ex‑aide to the late U.S. Representative Allard Lowenstein (D-New York), and Greg’s associate, Dr. Philip Melanson, a political science professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University.[1] Greg and Phil were in the midst of a public crusade to reopen the murder investigation of Senator Robert Kennedy of New York.

And they were looking for a veteran investigative journalist to help their cause.

At that time, no civilian researcher had spent more time on the case or knew more about it than Greg. His personal files contained an enormous amount of evidence, and he was a walking encyclopedia of the case minutiae.

From the outset, Stone, shown above, and Melanson told me that the only hope for learning the full truth was to expand responsible, independent investigative efforts. And they wanted me to try to break new ground in the case, hoping that I could help force the city of Los Angeles to release all of its files in the RFK case, which had been locked up for nearly twenty years.The RFK files are released

After the 1986 publication of Dark Victory and with Greg Stone’s guidance, I went to work on the RFK case.

Regardie’s magazine published the results of my preliminary investigation in its June 1987 edition, in which I made a strong argument for the release of all LAPD files related to the case.

To Greg’s delight, my article received unexpected support from the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, both of which published excellent reviews of my work and expressed overall support for full disclosure.]

Then, suddenly, on June 26—while my Regardie’s article (with the magazine cover shown at left) was still on the newsstands—the city of Los Angeles reversed the LAPD’s long-standing position and ordered the immediate release of the entire RFK murder case file.

Boxloads of documents were transported to the California State Archives in Sacramento, where the declassification process commenced under the leadership of the respected state archivist, John Burns.Greg continues his fight

By the time the state archives released the processed files in April 1988, I was immersed in work on my fourth book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (William Morrow), with a tight deadline.

Consequently, I did not play much of a role in the debate over the LAPD’s destruction of potentially valuable evidence and records. Once again, the indefatigable Greg Stone and his sidekick, Dr. Melanson, led the charge against the police, alleging that a cover-up was still in progress.

To Greg, this crime had become an obsession. He spent most of his career trying to solve it, casting aside any semblance of a personal life while rejecting academic positions that would have allowed him to escape this world of conflicting conspiracy theories, real and imagined.

Greg, who never married and had no children, left his Ph.D studies to work on the RFK case. He never received his doctorate. To many in academia, that made him a bottom-feeder.

In contrast, Dr. Melanson, left, who had a devoted wife and two sons, was a tenured professor at a university. That made him respectable.

Even though I had no intention of returning to the Kennedy case after the publication of Interference in July 1989, Stone dragged me back into the fray, kicking and screaming. Providing me with a grant from his Inquiry and Accountability Foundation to sweeten the arrangement, he convinced me that newly available records in the state archives were worth exploring.[3]Phil goes solo

Unknown to Greg, Phil Melanson had quietly sought and received a contract to write and publish a book ("Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: New Revelations" in 1991)  about the RFK case under his solo byline.

Greg was deeply hurt. He told me that they should have written the book together.

Meantime, I had my own problems. As a result of a false and misleading review of Interference, I was in the midst of fighting for my own professional survival in a very bitter public dispute that led to my highly publicized libel case, Moldea v. New York Times, which my attorney filed in August 1990.

The sitdown, the peace

On November 8, 1990, Greg Stone, Phil Melanson, and I participated in a symposium at Southeastern Massachusetts University, where Melanson [an author of 15 books in total, who died in 2006] taught political science.

Even though there was still tension among the three of us, especially between Greg and Phil, we went out to dinner after the program.

During our conversation at the restaurant, we lightened up and made peace with each other. . . . Everything was cool. All was forgiven.

Stone continued to send me his memoranda about the RFK case and drafts of his proposal to the district attorney’s office, in which he requested a grand jury hearing to investigate police procedures during the RFK case. Also, he asked me to execute my third sworn affidavit in his Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI.

As usual, we exchanged Christmas cards and talked occasionally on the telephone.

An unexpected call

Late on the evening of January 28, 1991, Greg called me at my home in Washington for the second time that week. He had no specific agenda, no particular subject he wanted to discuss. He seemed perfectly normal but sounded a little tired.

I remember advising him to take a vacation. “Go sit on a beach, get a tan, chase women,” I told him.

The following night at 10:45 P.M., I received a call from Phil Melanson who told me that he had just spoken to a man who identified himself as an investigator with the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office.

The investigator told Melanson that Greg Stone had committed suicide.

Melanson seemed to think that the call was a cruel joke. Taking it more seriously, I asked Melanson whether he had tried calling Greg. He replied that he had not.

Immediately, I telephoned Stone at his home in East Hollywood. When he didn’t answer, I left a message on his answering machine, demanding that he call me as soon as he received it.

After failing to reach Greg, I called his next‑door neighbor, Floyd Nelson, who worked nights. I also left a desperate message on Floyd’s answering machine.

Then, I called the county coroner’s office. The same investigator who had spoken to Melanson confirmed that Stone was dead. He had killed himself in the Fern Dell section of Griffith Park about a mile from Greg’s home.

Specifically, the investigator said that between 3:00 and 4:00 that afternoon the 41‑year‑old Stone had sat down under a tree in the park, placed a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

A nearby park employee found Greg just seconds after he heard the shot—while the blood was still streaming from Greg’s head.Greg’s played-out plan

Two LAPD officers responded to the dead-body call.

According to the coroner’s investigator, the officers found a note in Stone’s pocket, directing them to his red Volkswagen, parked in a nearby lot.

When the police located his car, they discovered another note. This one provided the names of several people Greg wanted notified, including his sister and their uncle, his personal attorney, a mortician, Phil Melanson, and Floyd Nelson. The police also found a psychiatrist’s business card in his possession.

The coroner’s investigator told me that he interviewed Stone’s psychiatrist, who said that Greg was as depressed as anyone he had ever seen. He added that his suicide came as no surprise—that Greg had threatened to kill himself on several occasions during the past couple of weeks.

Stunned by this news, I told the investigator that I had no clue that Stone was in so much pain and had sought professional help, even though I had spoken to him twice in the past few days.

At 3:00 A.M.—midnight in Los Angeles—I called Floyd Nelson again. This time, he answered the phone.

Overwhelmed with grief, Floyd said that he had heard about Stone’s death from a friend at work who had taken the message from the coroner’s investigator. When Floyd arrived home, he took the key Stone gave him and went into his apartment.

On Stone’s desk was a file folder marked “Post Mortem,” which contained numerous personal documents and specific instructions.

Stone had handwritten and signed a suicide note, stating:

This is my own decision and came out of my own problems and shortcomings. It is not the fault at all of my family, friends or the people I’ve worked with.

I’m sorry to have let my family and so many others down.

Several days later, after returning to Washington from a funeral home in Otway, a rural village in southern Ohio, to pay my respects to Stone and his family, I was looking through my mail when I noticed a letter addressed to me in Greg’s handwriting.

My hands were shaking as I opened it.

Inside, the signed, handwritten note simply said: “Sorry about this, Dan. Stay a survivor.”

Two months later, Melanson’s book about the RFK case—with his solo byline—was released. . . . He dedicated it to Greg.

More On U.S. Media, High Tech, Propaganda, Religion, Culture

New York Times, Chaos Came to CBS News. What’s in Store for CNN? Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, June 27, 2026. The tech scion David Ellison is close to completing a merger that would put the legacy broadcaster and the 24-hour cable news network under the same roof.

Over nearly five decades, CNN has survived multiple owners, ratings ups and downs, and attacks by President Trump.

Now, its journalists are bracing for its most dramatic transformation yet: a corporate merger that would put the 24-hour cable network under the same ownership as CBS News.

David Ellison, the technology heir who controls Paramount, the owner of CBS, is poised to complete a $111 billion purchase of CNN’s parent company as soon as next month.

Mr. Ellison has not publicly detailed what he has in store for CNN. But the network’s newsroom is wary of his conspicuous coziness with Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may assign some oversight of CNN to Bari Weiss, his pick to run CBS News after he bought Paramount last year.

Ms. Weiss, who had virtually no broadcasting experience before taking over in October, has reshaped CBS News in occasionally chaotic ways, recently firing the leadership of the network’s flagship, “60 Minutes.” Several on-air correspondents who were fired later accused her of editorial interference, which she has denied.

Mr. Ellison and his deputies are weighing whether to put Ms. Weiss in charge of CNN, which is far larger than CBS News and is a major profit center, two people familiar with their thinking said. He has remained supportive of Ms. Weiss, despite grumbling from journalists.

Anderson Cooper, the channel’s biggest star, has told colleagues at CNN that he does not want to work for Ms. Weiss, two people familiar with his remarks said. Mr. Cooper, who overlapped with Ms. Weiss at CBS as a correspondent at “60 Minutes,” left that show this spring after 20 years.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics

New York Times, Colorado’s Primary for Governor Pivots to Trump and Who Will Fight Him, Jack Healy, June 28, 2026. The Democratic primary on Tuesday is likely to decide the next governor, and Senator Michael Bennet, once seen as a shoo-in, is in a dogfight with Attorney General Phil Weiser.

A year ago, Senator Michael Bennet looked like a lock to become Colorado’s next governor, with piles of campaign money, big-name supporters and a 30-percentage-point lead for the Democratic nomination.

That all changed in the 12 months leading to Tuesday’s Democratic primary, when President Trump took a battering ram to the Democratic state. Mr. Trump cut off federal money, dismantled a leading climate research center, removed the U.S. Space Command headquarters and vetoed a water pipeline for drought-stricken farmers.

Now, the Democratic race for governor has turned into a referendum on who will fight back, in pointed contrast to the accommodations of Colorado’s retiring Democratic governor, Jared Polis. And many Democrats are rallying behind Mr. Bennet’s rival, Phil Weiser, who is running as a scrappy counterpuncher who has sued the president 66 times as Colorado’s attorney general.

Mr. Bennet’s lead has evaporated, and Tuesday’s primary has turned into a dogfight that both campaigns say is now a tossup. The race will reveal a lot about which kind of leader Democrats frustrated with the political establishment want after two terms of Trumpism: a staid problem-solver or a revved-up fighter.

Despite growing voter disenchantment with Democrats, who have overseen spiraling housing prices, a rampant rise in homelessness and an economy that is now shedding jobs, whoever becomes the Democratic nominee is heavily favored to win.

Colorado has not elected a Republican governor in more than 20 years, and the Republicans vying to become governor include a state legislator who has warned of a pedophile ring in the State Capitol, and a pastor who claims he was forced to murder a man at age 7.

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular in the state. Judy Cunningham, 78, a retired teacher, expressed a common refrain one afternoon when Mr. Weiser knocked on her door in the Denver suburb of Arvada and asked what was most important to her.

Voters were angry with high gas prices and the war in Iran, and said they were fed up with the administration’s actions against Colorado. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education took aim at the school district in Arvada, accusing it of allowing male athletes on girls’ sports teams. The district, which is state’s second-largest, said the male names on the rosters actually belonged to managers, trainers and mascots, not athletes.

June 27

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Live Updates: Mideast Hostilities Flare, Testing Fragile U.S.-Iran Truce, Aaron Boxerman, Euan Ward and Ismaeel Naar, June 27, 2026. Bahrain said it had been targeted by Iranian drones, an apparent retaliation after U.S. strikes on Iranian military sites overnight. A ship came under attack in the Strait of Hormuz for the second time in recent days. Here’s the latest.

News Roundups

• Meidas Touch Network, News and Comment: Saturday Afternoon Update: Trump's Great American Fiasco, Ben Meiselas, right, June 27, 2026. Strait of Hormuz strikes continue, Lebanon deal undercuts Trump's own Iran framework, and the 250th anniversary celebration is somehow getting more embarrassing by the day. Top stories we’re following:
• The Parnas Perspective, Friday Evening News and Comment: GOP Warns of Trump Investigations, Park Service Employees Fired for Trump's Marble, Buttigieg Swatted, Aaron Parnas, right, June 27, 2026. There is major Epstein-related news as members of Congress from both parties have finally subpoenaed Leon Black, one of the people closest to Jeffrey Epstein, for a deposition under oath after he refused to answer questions. The United States launched new strikes on Iran. The National Park Service reportedly cut employees so the Trump administration could pay for African marble at the White House. Mike Johnson and other Republicans are warning of impeachment efforts and sweeping investigations if they lose the House. Trump passports are rolling out. And much more.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 26, Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 27, 2026. Wednesday night, after President Donald J. Trump refused to sign a landmark bipartisan housing bill into law and melted down at a midday lunch at which he shouted at senators, Senate Republicans appeared to try to mollify him by voting against advancing a war powers resolution the Senate passed the day before.

More On U.S. Law, Courts, Governance, Rights

• Washington Post, Opinion: The Supreme Court errs in this immigration ruling, George F. Will, right, June 26, 2026. The justices get it wrong on temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.
• New York Times, Pete Buttigieg Says He Was Separated From His Children After ‘Swatting’ Tip, Emily Davies, June 27, 2026 (print ed.). The former transportation secretary recounted being kept away from his 4-year-old twins overnight after an anonymous report accused him of posing a threat to them. The police said the report was false.
• New York Times, Prosecutors in Washington Say Citations Have Been Issued at Reflecting Pool, Clarence Williams, June 27, 2026 (print ed.). A spokesman provided no further details, saying those who received the citations were ordered to appear in court at a later date. No records are available.

More On U.S. Politics

• PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Evangelical Christians Humiliated As Trump Falls Asleep On Them, Jason Easley, right, June 26-27, 2026. Trump was meeting with evangelical leaders in the Oval Office as they talked about how he fought for them, but Donald Trump was completely asleep. 
• Public Notice, Opinion: Joanne Freeman on why Trump is an affront to the Founders, Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson, June 27, 2026. "This presidency is beyond anything the founding folk could have conceived of."
• MS Now, Opinion: JD Vance’s Watergate comments weren’t an observation — he was boasting, Paul Waldman, June 26, 2026. There’s a reason Donald Trump’s allies take issue with the exposing of rot in a presidential administration.
• Soul of the Party, Opinion: Bad News for Trump, Steve Rosenthal (former AFL-CIO union political director, June 27, 2026. New York primary results indicate deep public distrust of the corporate establishment. 
• PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump's Failed Great American State Fair Rally Is Really Upsetting Him, Jason Easley, right,June 27, 2026. Donald Trump's rally attendance was estimated to be in the thousands, but by Saturday, the declining president fantasized about 45,000 people showing up.

More On U.S. Foreign Policy

• New York Times, News Analysis: Israelis See Their Friendship With the U.S. Slipping Away, David M. Halbfinger, June 27, 2026. Criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, anger over the Iran war and election results in New York all suggest Israel’s solid support from Washington may be on borrowed time.
• New York Times, Venezuela Was on the Cusp of Rebirth. Then Disaster Struck, Again, Simon Romero and Emma Bubola, June 27, 2026. Expectations are now rising over the role the United States will play in helping Venezuela, which had already been laid low by decades of misrule.

U.S. Energy, Climate, Weather

• White House Chronicle, Opinion: Air Conditioning Costs Threaten Summer of Sun Belt Catastrophe, Llewellyn King, June 27, 2026. The summer of our discontent is at hand. When I asked a professional weather forecaster what we might expect this season, he said, “Hades.”

Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

President Trump's nominee to become U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, is shown at right in a file photo showcasing his previous role in defending Trump from fraud charges before the convictions were voided because of the president's reelection.  

• Lance's Substack, Opinion: A Friend Asks, Why Won’t The MAGA Influencers Drop The Epstein Scandal? Lance F Rosen, right, June 27, 2026. What caused, and continues to cause, Trump followers to be stuck on the Epstein files? When Trump broke his promise on releasing the files, it was more than just another politician breaking their word on a campaign issue. He had been assigned near messianic status as the leader of their own conspiracy, anointed by God to smite the evildoers. When he blocked the files, it came out that he was in them all over the place. This was the equivalent of a bunker-buster bomb dropped on their heads, their homes, and their churches.
• Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Epstein Left Them $2 Million. New Mexico Hasn't Asked Them Anything, Jana,right, June 27, 2026. The people who ran Jeffrey Epstein's ranch were among the last he thought to provide for. The commission investigating that ranch hasn't thought to ask them a single question.
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Katie Phang Just Made Jeffrey Epstein Central to Todd Blanche’s Bid for Confirmation, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 27, 2026. Almost four weeks after Trump fired Pam Bondi, leaving his personal attorney Todd Blanche in charge of DOJ, Katie Phang challenged Blanche’s failures to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act. Hers was not a FOIA lawsuit. Rather, it argued Blanche’s refusal to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act was harming her ability to do journalism on it.

U.S. Religion, Culture, Media, Education

• Letters From Leo / the American Pope & US Politics, Opinion: Trump Tried to Turn America Against Pope Leo XIV. It Didn’t Work, Christopher Hale, June 27, 2026. A new Pew survey gives Leo 84% favorability among Catholic Democrats and 72% among Catholic Republicans — the widest partisan gap of his papacy, more than double a year ago. Where he lost ground, it was the MAGA core choosing the president over the pope.
• New York Times, Chaos Came to CBS News. What’s in Store for CNN? Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, June 27, 2026. The tech scion David Ellison is close to completing a merger that would put the legacy broadcaster and the 24-hour cable news network under the same roof.
• Robert Reich, Why Won't the Media Call This for What it Is? Robert Reich, right, June 27, 2026. Trump’s war with Iran is continuing. Today, Iran launched attack drones at Bahrain — which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, a major logistical base for U.S. military operations. Iran also struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, its second attack on a ship since Thursday.
• Paul Krugman via Substack, Opinion: On Holding Elon Musk Accountable, Paul Krugman, right, June 27, 2026. Why aren't we talking more about DOGE?

Top Stories

New York Times, Live Updates: Mideast Hostilities Flare, Testing Fragile U.S.-Iran Truce, Aaron Boxerman, Euan Ward and Ismaeel Naar, June 27, 2026. Bahrain said it had been targeted by Iranian drones, an apparent retaliation after U.S. strikes on Iranian military sites overnight. A ship came under attack in the Strait of Hormuz for the second time in recent days. Here’s the latest.

Bahrain said it had been targeted early Saturday by Iranian drones in an apparent retaliation after the United States launched strikes on Iranian military sites overnight, a flaring of hostilities that showed the limits of the truce between Washington and Tehran.

Hours later, a shipping monitor run by the British Navy reported that a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz had been struck by an unidentified projectile, the second such incident since Thursday. The strikes could further deter ships that had hoped to pass through the waterway, which Iran had agreed to reopen as part of the cease-fire with the United States.

The attacks on Saturday came after the U.S. military said it had attacked Iranian missile drones and coastal radar sites in response to Iran firing drones at a container ship a day earlier. President Trump said on Friday that Iran had “foolishly” violated the cease-fire with its attack in the strait.

There were no immediate reports of damage in Bahrain, which accused Tehran of “destabilizing security, exporting chaos and undermining regional stability.” Before the cease-fire, Iran regularly launched strikes against neighboring Gulf states in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli attacks.

The Iranian government did not immediately comment on the attacks. Iran’s foreign ministry accused the United States on Saturday of violating the cease-fire and vowed that the Iranian military would “defend the country’s sovereignty, security, and national interests with all its strength.”

Before the overnight clashes, the deal between the United States and Iran signed earlier this month had led to relative calm in the region, with an uptick in vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz and signs of an emerging agreement, backed by the Trump administration, to wind down the war’s second front in Lebanon.

Both the United States and Iran have sought to demonstrate that they have emerged victorious from the conflict, which is leading them to test one another’s red lines, analysts say. For now, neither side seems interested in a return to full-blown war.

The war began in late February with a massive joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that drew in much of the Middle East and sent global energy prices skyrocketing. It also ignited a war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, an armed group backed by Iran.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• U.S. strikes: The U.S. strikes against Iranian missile and drone targets on Friday lasted about 90 minutes, a U.S. official said. Six fighter jets struck four Iranian sites along the Strait of Hormuz and on Qeshm Island, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the operation.
• 60-day talks: The preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement delayed discussion of many of the thornier questions, like the future of Iran’s nuclear programs, to a 60-day negotiation period that began last week in Switzerland.
• Lebanon: The Trump administration announced a rare agreement between Israel and Lebanon on Friday that U.S. officials hope could help end the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants there. The deal stipulates that Israeli forces withdraw from a small portion of the territory they occupy in southern Lebanon, making way for Lebanon’s army to take control. Hezbollah quickly rejected the agreement.
• Global energy: Oil prices had risen after the Iranian attack on Thursday but eased on Friday, falling to levels last seen before the war. The U.S. strikes on Iran came after markets had closed for the weekend.

News Roundups

Meidas Touch Network, News and Comment: Saturday Afternoon Update: Trump's Great American Fiasco, Ben Meiselas, right, June 27, 2026. Strait of Hormuzstrikes continue, Lebanon deal undercuts Trump's own Iran framework, and the 250th anniversary celebration is somehow getting more embarrassing by the day. 

Top stories we’re following:

• Iran has struck another tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran-linked drones have hit targets in Bahrain following new U.S. strikes
• A new U.S.-brokered framework between Israel and Lebanon appears to directly contradict the existing Iran MOU, and that may not be an accident
• Trump’s 250th anniversary celebrations continue to flop, from empty National Malls to a “Great American State Fair” with nowhere to sit
• Trump’s response to all of this chaos is retruthing approval polls and posting AI images of himself holding up the globe
• Katie Phang just won a major court victory in the Epstein files case, and the DOJ is already crying foul
• Trump’s showcases new U.S. passports with his own portrait in them, and still manages to mess them up
• Iran’s World Cup run ends in heartbreak, mistreatment, and one of the more moving statements you’ll read from a national team this year

Iran Strikes Again in the Strait of Hormuz Following U.S. Attacks

Iran has hit yet another vessel trying to leave the Strait of Hormuz without going through the route Iran has designated as the only safe passage. This is not a one-off. This is the second tanker hit since Thursday, and it is happening because the Trump regime keeps trying to tell ships to use a different route than the one Iran has laid out, and Iran keeps following through on its warning that it will not guarantee the safety of any vessel that ignores it. And that’s just the start. Other clashes today show that the war is very much active, despite the so-called ceasefire and MOU. More on that in just a moment.

And let me just say, if Iran controls the actual shipping lanes right now, today, in real time, what does that say about how this war is actually going? I’ll get into the satellite imagery in a moment, and it is not what the Trump regime wants you to see.

UKMTO, that’s the UK Maritime Trade Operations center, put out an advisory early Saturday morning saying a tanker had been struck by an unidentified projectile, with damage to the bridge. We’ve since learned more. The vessel was the Kiku, a Greek-registered, Panama-flagged VLCC carrying Qatar Energy oil, reportedly sailing with its AIS transponder switched off. It was using the route the United States has been pushing ships to take, the so-called security lane closer to Oman, rather than the route Iran has designated as safe.

Iran’s position, going back to the Memorandum of Understanding, is that administration of the Strait of Hormuz belongs to Iran and Oman, not Washington. Iran has told shipping companies again and again that vessels using the U.S.-promoted route do so at their own risk. This is now the second tanker to get hit after ignoring that warning, following Thursday’s attack on the vessel Ever Lovely.

Take a look at the satellite imagery from the Strait of Hormuz right now and you’ll see something the administration really does not want you to notice. The U.S.-backed lane near Oman is basically empty. There is almost no traffic running through it. Meanwhile, ship after ship, including a French-owned cargo vessel, the CMA CGM Galapagos, is now running through the Iranian-designated route instead. More are following, according to people tracking the satellite data. Ships are voting with their rudders, and they are choosing Iran’s terms over America’s.

When the Trump regime struck Iranian missile, drone, and radar sites late Friday, right after the markets closed (of course they waited until after the close), Iran responded almost immediately with drone strikes targeting Bahrain, where the U.S. has a significant military footprint, and Bahrain itself confirmed the attack and called it a clear violation of its sovereignty. UKMTO has now raised the risk rating in the region from moderate to substantial. People who track this stuff closely are warning that we should expect more U.S. strikes on targets like Bandar Abbas in the coming hours, and more retaliatory attacks against Gulf states from Iran. The cycle is not slowing down, but accelerating.The Lebanon Deal That Undercuts Trump’s Own Iran Framework

While all of that is happening, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was over in the Middle East brokering a separate framework, this one between Israel and Lebanon, with the United States as the broker. Something does not add up here, and I don’t think it’s an accident.

The Iran MOU, the one Trump’s own administration negotiated, says pretty plainly that Israel needs to get out of Lebanon and that there needs to be a full, permanent ceasefire there. Now look at what Rubio just signed. The new Israel-Lebanon framework allows Israeli forces to remain inside a so-called security zone in southern Lebanon indefinitely, with any further withdrawal tied to Hezbollah fully disarming first, something Hezbollah has not agreed to and was not even a party to in these negotiations. Netanyahu is calling it a major achievement. Israel’s ambassador said directly that Iran is out and Hezbollah is out.

This isn’t a matter of opinion. The Iran MOU and the new Lebanon deal pull in opposite directions, regardless of whether you support either one. And if you read the actual language of the Lebanon framework, there’s a line committing both countries to cease “all hostile or adverse actions in international political or legal fora.” That is diplomatic language for steering clear of international courts, which happens to be very convenient for Netanyahu, right, given the scrutiny he continues to face over the devastation in Beirut.

So you have one U.S.-brokered document telling Israel to leave Lebanon, and another U.S.-brokered document, signed days later by the same administration, effectively legitimizing an indefinite Israeli presence there. Whether you think the original Iran MOU was a good deal or a bad one is a separate conversation entirely. But you cannot tell me with a straight face that an administration this allegedly committed to peace just happened to sign two contradictory frameworks within the same week. This was Rubio’s actual goal. Undermine the Iran deal while pretending to broker peace in Lebanon. Mission accomplished.Trump’s Great American Fiasco

Let’s talk about the 250th anniversary celebrations some more.

This was supposed to be the easiest win of the year. A built-in moment of national pride, an anniversary nobody could screw up, practically a layup. And yet here we are.

The so-called Great American State Fair is underway and video from the National Mall on Saturday showed crowds so sparse that commentators pointed out an average summer day usually draws more people than this supposedly historic celebration did. I have a little personal history in this space, since I spent years litigating consumer fraud cases before my work with MeidasTouch, including leading the class action against the infamous Fyre Festival. I know a disastrous event when I see one, and this qualifies. Photos from the food court showed families sitting on the ground to eat lunch because there was nowhere else to sit. Someone online dubbed it the “Great American Fyre Festival.”

Meanwhile, National Guard troops were out patrolling the fenced-off Reflecting Pool in the rain, where a surveillance system was recorded telling them to stop loitering and proceed to a designated location. I don’t think I need to spell out how dystopian that sounds. It’s 1984 come to life, right here in the United States.

Here’s the thing that really gets me. Imagine what this celebration could have looked like under different leadership. Literally any other president. Concerts with the nation’s best performers, foreign dignitaries, a real year-long buildup to a unified national moment. Instead we got a highly politicized, bizarre spectacle that pales in comparison to any basic state fair.

DOJ Rushes to Appeal After Katie Phang’s Court Victory on the Epstein Files

A big update here. As you probably know by now, our own Katie Phang, right, just won a major court victory in her lawsuit pushing for transparency on the Epstein files. Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in her favor, and the Trump DOJ is already racing to appeal.

The DOJ’s official statement is as insane as you’d expect. They’re calling Sullivan’s ruling “perverse” and falsely claiming the judge is ordering them to release victims’ names, while insisting they’ve already turned over everything required and vowing to appeal “with confidence.”

Except that’s not actually what the ruling says. Sullivan’s decision doesn’t order any victim names released. It requires the Trump regime to justify its redactions, review and produce more records, and publish the redaction log the law already requires them to publish. The DOJ is manufacturing outrage over a ruling that simply asks them to follow the rules. Congratulations again to Katie. We’ll of course keep following this closely. Remember to follow Katie Phang on YouTube for more updates as well.

Trump’s Passport Fail

The White House unveiled a limited-edition "Patriot Passport" for the country's 250th anniversary, featuring a portrait of Trump set against the text of the Declaration of Independence, with his signature in gold underneath; it marks the first time a sitting president's face has appeared inside Americans' passports. Trump shared the design himself on Truth Social, says the new passports say, "Welcome, but be good!"

The caption drew immediate mockery online, since, well…U.S. passports are used by American citizens.

Iran’s World Cup Statement Worth Reading

I want to close with something away from the politics for a moment, and move to a story about basic humanity.

Iran’s World Cup run ended in heartbreak against Egypt, with a controversial offside call that, in my view, robbed them of a result they earned. Forward Mehdi Taremi didn’t hide his frustration afterward, calling it a rough tournament. The team had hoped to spend the night resting in Seattle but instead was forced onto a midnight flight back to Tijuana by the federal government. Analyst Sina Toossi argued the team had been mistreated from the start, citing what he called petty U.S. travel restrictions layered on top of officiating failures throughout the tournament.

But what struck me most was the note Iran’s players left behind in their locker room in Seattle, following a similar note they left in Los Angeles. It thanked the city for its hospitality and spoke about honor, fairness, and standing tall regardless of the result. Moments like this put a lot of the noise around this World Cup in perspective. These athletes showed up, played with heart, dealt with restrictions and bad calls they had no control over, and still left a message about grace. It’s another reminder that we are all better than our leaders who seem to only lead us into conflict.

The Parnas Perspective, Friday Evening News and Comment: GOP Warns of Trump Investigations, Park Service Employees Fired for Trump's Marble, Buttigieg Swatted, Aaron Parnas, right, June 27, 2026. There is major Epstein-related news as members of Congress from both parties have finally subpoenaed Leon Black, one of the people closest to Jeffrey Epstein, for a deposition under oath after he refused to answer questions.

The United States launched new strikes on Iran. The National Park Service reportedly cut employees so the Trump administration could pay for African marble at the White House. Mike Johnson and other Republicans are warning of impeachment efforts and sweeping investigations if they lose the House. Trump passports are rolling out. And much more.

Before I go further: if you believe in independent journalism that refuses to look away, now is the time to help power it. I believe in this community. I believe that as long as we stay engaged, stay informed, and stay committed to the truth, we will keep moving forward.

It’s okay to feel angry about injustice. It’s okay to feel tired. But don’t let anyone take your hope. Don’t let them take your empathy, your curiosity, or your belief that tomorrow can be better than today. We will get through this together.

Here’s the news:

House Oversight Chair James Comer said the committee will subpoena billionaire investor Leon Black, right, for a deposition and records related to non-disclosure agreements as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The move came after Black declined to answer numerous questions during a closed-door interview, including about whether Epstein was involved in NDAs with women or related payments. Black denied wrongdoing in opening remarks, saying he never abused women, had sex with minors, engaged in sex trafficking, paid Epstein for access to women, or knew about Epstein’s crimes. His attorney called the subpoenas a political stunt, while lawmakers said Black’s refusal to answer key questions showed why formal depositions may be necessary.

The Trump Justice Department is appealing after a federal judge ruled in favor of MeidasTouch host Katie Phang, below, in her lawsuit seeking greater transparency about the government’s handling of the Epstein files. The DOJ criticized the ruling as “perverse,” claiming it would require the release of victims’ names, but the decision does not order that. Instead, Judge Emmet Sullivan directed the administration to justify its redactions, review and produce additional responsive records, and release the legally required redaction log. The Justice Department maintains it has already produced all responsive documents and says it will appeal the ruling.

The United States launched airstrikes against Iranian missile and drone storage sites, as well as coastal radar installations, after accusing Iran of violating last week's ceasefire agreement by attacking commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump said Iranian forces launched four drones at ships in the waterway, one of which struck the Singapore-flagged cargo ship Ever Lovely, while U.S. forces intercepted the other three. U.S. Central Command said the strikes were intended to respond to what it called an unprovoked attack on international shipping and a threat to freedom of navigation. The escalation comes despite the recent ceasefire agreement, which was intended to ensure safe passage for commercial vessels through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Israel and Lebanon have signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement that both sides described as a first step toward a broader peace agreement. The framework is intended to restore security, reduce hostilities, and eventually normalize relations, though officials released few details and emphasized that more negotiations are needed. Hezbollah was not involved in the talks, and key issues, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah, remain unresolved. Both Israeli and Lebanese officials described the agreement as an initial step rather than a final peace deal.

An investigation by The Atlantic reports that taxpayer money originally intended for National Park projects has been redirected toward President Trump’s White House renovation and Washington, D.C., beautification efforts. The report says the National Park Service spent nearly $690,000 replacing the White House walkway and hundreds of thousands more on other White House projects, despite Trump’s public claim that he personally paid for some of the upgrades. Internal budget documents reportedly show funding for parks outside Washington has been sharply reduced, delaying hundreds of maintenance projects and shifting staff from parks nationwide to support the capital’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The Interior Department defended the spending, saying it is investing in both Washington and national parks, while critics argue the administration is prioritizing White House and D.C. projects over long-standing maintenance needs across the national park system.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, argued that if Republicans lose control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats would use their committee majorities to aggressively investigate President Trump and those around him. Johnson said he is less concerned about impeachment than about congressional investigations targeting Trump’s family, Cabinet members, political donors, and associates. His comments framed continued Republican control of the House as a way to shield the administration from what he characterized as politically motivated oversight.

Thomas Massie: "I think it's ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and the White House, and we're yelling 'election fraud'? I mean, we won all the damn elections."

Donald Trump announced an American passport that will be paid for by you and your taxpayer dollars with his face on it:

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, right, said he was the target of a false, anonymous report that prompted Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services to investigate whether he posed a danger to his four-year-old twins. Authorities determined the allegations were unfounded, but Buttigieg said he was instructed not to be alone with his children until investigators completed forensic interviews, forcing him to spend a night away from them. Police later told him they believed the report was politically motivated and would not be referred for prosecution. Buttigieg called the experience one of the darkest moments of his life and said it reflected an escalation in politically motivated harassment targeting public officials.

During an Oval Office event, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said the phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing a religion, and Thomas Jefferson later described this principle as creating a "wall of separation between Church & State."

Trump further declared today that communism was the greatest threat to America since its founding 250 years ago:

Photos from President Trump's "Great American State Fair" on the National Mall appeared to show sparse attendance despite expectations of large crowds, prompting criticism from opponents and media outlets. The event, organized as part of the Freedom 250 celebration marking the nation's 250th anniversary, runs through July 10. The Daily Beast reported that the fairgrounds looked largely empty during the opening day and cited visitors who described the event as underwhelming. The article argues that the low turnout contrasts with the administration's efforts to promote the fair as a major patriotic celebration.

A statement from the manufacturer involved in the National Mall Reflecting Pool rehabilitation appears to conflict with President Trump's claim that the damage was caused by a saboteur using a box cutter. Rhino Linings said the issue involved "localized areas of finish coat separation" that affected only the surface layer and did not compromise the waterproofing membrane, making no mention of vandalism or criminal activity. The company said corrective measures had already been identified and described the problem as a coating issue rather than intentional damage. While its statement does not definitively disprove Trump's allegation, it offers a different explanation for the pool's condition.

The Texas State Board of Education voted to require K-12 public school students to read a state-mandated list of literary works that includes Bible stories and passages alongside classic literature and historic American texts. Supporters argue the changes will give students important historical and literary context, while opponents say the curriculum improperly favors Christianity, infringes on parental rights, and could violate the separation of church and state. The curriculum, which would take effect beginning in 2030, is also paired with proposed changes that place greater emphasis on Texas and U.S. history while reducing instruction on some global history topics. Critics also warn that requiring specific Bible translations and mandating the readings could pressure teachers and students from different religious backgrounds.

Pope Leo XIV is reportedly preparing new guidance on Catholic teaching regarding when war can be morally justified, a move that comes after Vice President JD Vance suggested he was better positioned than the pope to discuss the issue. The Daily Beast frames the effort as a direct response to Vance's recent comments criticizing the pontiff's views on war and foreign policy. According to the report, the new guidelines would reaffirm the Vatican's authority on Catholic doctrine and just war principles. The article portrays the development as the latest chapter in the ongoing public disagreement between Vance and Pope Leo over moral and political issues.

Iran's World Cup match against Egypt has taken on added geopolitical significance after the U.S. launched strikes against Iran earlier in the day over an alleged ceasefire violation in the Strait of Hormuz. The outcome of the match could determine whether Iran plays its next games in Canada or returns to the United States, where the Trump administration has imposed special travel restrictions on the Iranian team. Iranian officials say visa limitations and restrictions on support staff have complicated the team's tournament preparations, though some rules were recently eased. One possible knockout-round scenario could even set up a July 6 World Cup match between the United States and Iran, adding another layer of tension to the ongoing conflict.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to uphold its policy requiring many undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for years to remain in mandatory ICE detention without bond hearings while their deportation cases proceed. The policy has been rejected in thousands of lower court rulings, with many judges finding it violates federal law and constitutional due process protections, though federal appeals courts are split on the issue. The administration argues the Supreme Court should resolve the disagreement quickly because the policy affects millions of people and has generated thousands of lawsuits nationwide. A ruling could significantly reshape the government's detention authority and define the due process rights of immigrants facing deportation.

Venezuela's interim government says the death toll from this week's devastating earthquakes has climbed to 920, with nearly 3,000 people injured as rescue crews continue searching for survivors. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez vowed to save "as many people as possible" and said international rescue teams have begun arriving, but survivors and volunteers criticized what they described as a slow and inadequate government response. Many residents reported digging through rubble with their bare hands because of a lack of equipment and emergency personnel, exposing years of deteriorating infrastructure and underfunded public services. The United States and several other countries have deployed aid and rescue teams as concerns grow that limited resources and weakened institutions could further increase the death toll.

The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights is calling for independent investigations into deaths in U.S. immigration detention, citing growing concerns over fatalities, the use of solitary confinement, and conditions inside ICE facilities. The statement comes as the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has opened investigations into deaths in ICE custody and allegations of excessive force, while a recent Human Rights Watch report alleged systemic failures and possible violations of international human rights standards. According to the article, deaths in ICE custody have risen during the Trump administration as immigration arrests and detention have expanded, though the Department of Homeland Security disputes that there has been a spike and says detainees receive appropriate care. The U.N. also urged the U.S. to strengthen independent oversight of immigration detention and said those responsible for any legal violations should be held accountable.

Trump announced a massive airshow for the 4th of July that will be funded by taxpayer dollars:

A consumer advocacy group has sued prediction market platform Polymarket, alleging it used deceptive social media campaigns and undisclosed paid influencers to promote its services to U.S. consumers. The lawsuit cites reports that hundreds of influencers praised Polymarket without revealing they were paid, while other viral videos allegedly showed fake betting activity designed to attract users. Polymarket says it is reviewing its marketing practices to ensure compliance with disclosure rules but declined to comment on the lawsuit itself. The legal challenge comes as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is conducting an investigation into the company following its return to the U.S. market.

A Michigan couple has been charged with second-degree murder, child abuse, and torture after their 7-year-old son, Casper O'Brien, died weighing 255 pounds. Prosecutors allege the parents failed to provide proper nutrition, exercise, medical care, or a safe living environment, leaving the child immobile and suffering from severe bedsores, rashes, and other health complications. An autopsy determined that extreme morbid obesity caused the boy's death, leading prosecutors to file upgraded charges. The couple also faces child abuse charges related to their 5-year-old daughter, who investigators say was also neglected.

About 100 people marched in Senatobia, Mississippi, demanding answers after a police officer fatally shot 1-year-old Kohen Wiley during an encounter outside a Walmart earlier this month. Protesters and the child's family dispute the official account that the vehicle nearly struck an officer and are calling for the release of body camera and surveillance footage, while state investigators continue to review the shooting. Demonstrators criticized the heavy police presence during the march and said authorities have failed to provide transparency about what happened. Kohen's family says he was sitting on his mother's lap when he was shot, and community members have continued organizing protests and public events demanding accountability.

Environmental groups, immigrant-rights advocates, and members of Florida's Miccosukee Tribe are calling for an independent investigation into the environmental impact of the now-closed "Alligator Alcatraz" immigration detention center in the Everglades. They argue the facility caused significant ecological damage through construction, lighting, and waste disposal, while also criticizing the treatment of detainees, citing allegations of poor sanitation and harsh conditions. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the facility, saying it was designed to minimize environmental impacts and highlighting its role in deporting more than 21,000 people during its year of operation. Advocates say the closure should not end scrutiny, urging accountability for both the environmental consequences and the conditions inside the detention center.

Nicholas Rossi, the man accused of faking his own death and fleeing to Scotland to avoid rape charges in the United States, has died at age 38 while serving a prison sentence in Utah. Prison officials said he died from complications of an existing medical condition after choosing to discontinue treatment. Rossi became the subject of an international manhunt after an obituary falsely claimed he died in 2020, but he was later identified in Scotland, extradited to the U.S., and convicted in two Utah sexual assault cases. During his extradition fight, Rossi repeatedly denied his identity, claiming he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight.

A federal judge declared a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, who is accused of starting the 2025 Palisades Fire that devastated parts of Los Angeles. Prosecutors alleged Rinderknecht intentionally set an earlier New Year's Day fire that smoldered for days before igniting the catastrophic wildfire, while the defense argued there was no physical evidence linking him to the blaze and suggested fireworks were the true cause. The judge ordered Rinderknecht to remain in custody, and prosecutors have already announced they will retry the case. A new trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 19.

A Utah judge found prosecutor Christopher Ballard in civil contempt for violating court rules after he publicly stated that prosecutors had enough evidence to prove Tyler Robinson guilty in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The judge ordered steps to protect the fairness of any future trial but declined the defense's request to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty. Robinson is accused of fatally shooting Kirk during a public event at Utah Valley University in September 2025 and has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors continue to pursue the death penalty if Robinson is convicted.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 26, Heather Cox Richardson, right,June 27, 2026. Wednesday night, after President Donald J. Trump refused to sign a landmark bipartisan housing bill into law and melted down at a midday lunch at which he shouted at senators, Senate Republicans appeared to try to mollify him by voting against advancing a war powers resolution the Senate passed the day before.

The Republican senators’ apology for their brief flash of independence was not enough for House MAGA loyalists. Trump said he would not sign any more legislation until the Senate passed the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE or SAVE America Act, to limit voting before the 2026 election. According to Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), members of the far-right Freedom Caucus said that if Trump wasn’t going to sign any measures into law, there was no reason to debate any more. They voted against procedural measures to enable the House to conduct business. Unable to accomplish anything, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent House members home on Thursday.

Stansbury noted: “[N]obody has ever seen a Congress like this before. It is truly a bizarre time here in Washington, DC…. This is not good. This is not good for our country. It is not good for our communities. It’s not good for our democracy. It’s not good, just for basic common sense and basic human dignity. Like, these guys need to get it together.”

The turmoil in Washington, D.C., reflects the changing world of American politics as the Republicans become a far-right party that embraces white nationalism while those Americans standing firm on the nation’s historic democratic principles jockey to create a political system that will represent their movement.

On June 25 the Supreme Court allowed Trump and his administration to end the legal status of more than 350,000 people who are in the United States under temporary protected status, or TPS, after fleeing wars and violence in Syria and Haiti. The six right-wing justices cited procedural reasons for their decision, but Trump loyalists read it as an endorsement of their white nationalism.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “This country doesn’t have a future if we don’t end birthright citizenship…. One way or another, this nation has to end birthright citizenship.”

Yesterday, at a Faith and Freedom Coalition town hall in Washington, D.C., Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), the third-ranking Republican in the House, made the white nationalism of the Republican Party clear. He said: “Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe…. You know what? I would argue that I never did care, but I’m done being careful, even the least bit careful…. [Somalis] don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”

Eric Henderson of CBS News notes that Emmer has moved dramatically rightward in the past decade. In 2016, Emmer told NPR that the Somali community in Minnesota was among “the fastest-assimilating populations that we’ve had.” “I’m going to say it out loud,” he said, “when you move to a community, as long as you are here legally, I am very sorry, but you don’t get to slam the gate behind you and tell nobody else that they’re welcome. That’s not the way this country works.”

The once grand Republican Party has become a party of radical extremists, coalescing around white nationalism.

Meanwhile, voters in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in New York rejected two established Democrats in favor of newcomers with more progressive policies. In response, as Isaac Arnsdorf and Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported, Trump is trying out midterm messaging that calls Democrats “hard core, godless communists.” “They’re animals,” Trump said of his political opponents today in a speech to Christian conservatives at a convention of the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington. “We have to stop this, this horrible thread of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”

Trump’s rhetoric shows just how far to the right American politics have slid.

Communism is a political ideology that calls for public ownership of major resources as well as the means of production, so that the state, rather than private individuals or corporations, owns factories, farms, mines, and so on. In theory, although seldom in practice, the state then redistributes wealth according to need.

Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.

Unlike communism, the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced from 1933 to 1981 was very popular, and those opposed to the Trump administration appear to be starting to demand such a government again.

Their views are a response to the extremes of wealth in today’s United States. Mary Cunningham of CBS News reported in January that the third quarter of 2025 showed the top 1% of households in the U.S. owning 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. That’s the highest share they’ve had since the Federal Reserve started tracking household wealth in 1989. That means the wealthiest 1% held roughly as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion.

At the same time, according to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, fewer than half of Americans say they can afford health care. Since the Republicans cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds in last July’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 4.7 million Americans have lost food assistance, about 11% of those previously enrolled in the program.

“People are really unhappy,” former senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is running for the Senate seat J.D. Vance vacated when he became vice president, told Scott MacFarlane of MacFarlane News today. “They believe the system’s rigged. They see corporations making more and more money,… corporate executives taking more and more of those dollars for themselves, stock buybacks, bonuses, compensation of all kinds. They know they’re working harder than ever…and they know that…more money’s going out than coming in.”

A Brennan Center survey released in early June showed that 92% of Americans worry about corruption in government. That number includes 90% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats, and 93% of Independents. Seventy-nine percent of those polled want a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections. Sixty-six percent of Americans think the government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care versus 33% who say it does not.

The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality through regulation and taxation, and operates the segments of society that people need to survive, like transportation, utilities, and health care.

Across the country we are seeing Democratic candidates calling for an end to government corruption; the breaking up of monopolies that hurt workers, farmers, and consumers and shut entrepreneurs out of markets; protection for workers and consumers; universal health care; and an end to big money in politics. These policy demands are not radical; they are firmly within the political tradition not just of the Democrats, but also of the Republicans.

In 1956 the Republican Party platform approvingly quoted “the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln” that “[t]he legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”

The platform went on to affirm the party’s determination “that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.”

It called for “unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government.” Honesty was “an indispensable requirement of public service,” party officials said.

The Republicans of 1956 also said they were “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance—improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”

They called for helping foreign countries strengthen their economies and supported “U.S. participation in an international fund for economic development.” “We shall continue,” they said, “vigorously to support the United Nations” and to maintain U.S. military strength “as a deterrent to aggression and as a guardian of the peace…for these objectives only.”

Then the Republican Party platform addressed the needs of workers. Quoting President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it said: “Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.”

The platform noted that Republicans had worked to raise the minimum wage and to expand Social Security and unemployment, workers’ compensation, and retirement benefits. They supported the growth of labor unions, and collective bargaining.

They would, they said, “continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will: [s]timulate improved job safety of our workers; [c]ontinue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;...improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;...[a]ssure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;” extend minimum wage laws; [c]ontinue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;” and “[p]rovide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment.”

“The Republican Party believes that the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people is as important as their economic health,” the platform said. “It will continue to support this conviction with vigorous action.”

More On U.S. Law, Courts, Governance, Rights

Washington Post, Opinion: The Supreme Court errs in this immigration ruling, George F. Will, right, June 26, 2026. The justices get it wrong on temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants.

The pungent odor of Kristi Noem lingers in Washington. Nearly four months after she was fired as homeland security secretary, a facet of her tenure produced a Supreme Court case, decided on Thursday.

Her behavior egregiously violated the pertinent law, but was shielded from judicial rebuke by the court majority’s too-mechanical textualism about the secretary’s “determination,” meaning decision. And by a blinkered nonrecognition of the animus behind Noem’s action.

A 1990 statute allows the DHS secretary to grant temporary protected status shielding aliens in America from having to return to nations afflicted by natural disasters, wars or persecuting regimes. When the Trump administration moved to end TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, five of the former and seven of the latter sued, charging that procedural requirements had not been followed, and that the TPS denial was tainted by racism.

The court ruled 6-3 for the Trump administration, with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined in the judgment by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. The majority noted that the 1990 statute shields the DHS secretary’s “determination” from judicial review. And that the plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail regarding racism, because the Trump administration’s denial of TPS renewal was facially “race-neutral”: The administration has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined in dissent by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, agrees that the TPS statute prevents judicial review of the DHS secretary’s final decision about TPS, but does allow judicial review of whether the secretary, in reaching that decision, “adhered to the procedures it mandates.” And Kagan noted that although previous DHS secretaries had “repeatedly” found Haiti and Syria “too dangerous to permit safe return,” Noem declared them safe without complying with specific statutory procedures that deny the DHS secretary “unfettered discretion.”

In February, this column noted: The law required Noem to review conditions in Haiti AFTER consulting with appropriate government agencies (note the plural). Instead, she made her decision, THEN conducted a make-believe “consultation.” A Noem staffer sent a two-sentence email to a State Department staffer who, 53 minutes later, sent a comparably brief judgment that Noem’s policy triggered no foreign policy concerns.

Kagan, however, noted the irrelevance of this: The law requires consultation not about foreign policy implications but about whether conditions are safe in the pertinent country. And Kagan refuted the majority’s claim to see “no evidence that race played ANY role in the Haiti decision.”

Noem was implementing the president’s proclaimed animus even against immigrants who are in America legally, but whom he considers icky. Kagan says prior court rulings establish that the Haitians needed to show only that “a racially discriminatory purpose” was “A motivating factor” (emphasis added) in the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation. Well.

Noem’s former employer has said Haitians were eating Ohio pets (see below). He has said migrants such as they are “poisoning the blood” of America and Haitians “probably have AIDS.” Was race on the president’s mind? Donald Trump has clarified this: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like Haiti and Somalia? “Why can’t we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?” Kagan: “Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.)”

Three days after Noem terminated TPS for Haitians and Syrians, she recommended “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies” who “slaughter our heroes” and “suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars.” She refrained from echoing Trump’s assertion about kitten-cooking Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. This marks her as a MAGA moderate. JD Vance spread the pet-eating fiction because he said creating “stories” (his word) makes the media notice Americans’ suffering.

Surely justices are not required to ignore such rhetoric? And although thoughtful people disagree about whether, or how much, justices should consider the downstream consequences of their rulings, Kagan writes:

----One of the Haitian plaintiffs, an Alzheimer’s researcher, has Type 1 diabetes, which can be easily treated in America but can be a “death sentence” in Haiti “given that country’s collapsed health-care infrastructure.” And a Syrian plaintiff will have to return with her 17-year-old daughter, who has lived here most of her life and “will have no future in Syria because she speaks little Arabic.”

Time and freshening breezes will cleanse Washington, dissipating the legacies of appointees like Noem, and of the president who chose them. The court’s mistaken ruling she provoked will be more lasting.

New York Times, Pete Buttigieg Says He Was Separated From His Children After ‘Swatting’ Tip, Emily Davies, June 27, 2026 (print ed.). The former transportation secretary recounted being kept away from his 4-year-old twins overnight after an anonymous report accused him of posing a threat to them. The police said the report was false.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Friday that he and his husband had been separated from their 4-year-old twins after an anonymous report falsely accused Mr. Buttigieg of posing a threat to their children.

The separation lasted for 24 hours and required their children to sit for interviews with Children’s Protective Services, Mr. Buttigieg said.

The Michigan State Police and C.P.S. determined the report was false, a spokeswoman for the state police said in a statement, adding that “false reports are dangerous.”

“I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war,” Mr. Buttigieg, a military veteran, wrote in a Substack post titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.” “But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”

Mr. Buttigieg noted that the incident occurred soon after the Buttigiegs shared images of their family for Father’s Day, and also during Pride Month.

Mr. Buttigieg, a Democrat, ran for president in 2020, was the first openly gay cabinet secretary and is widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender. He has long weathered attacks over his sexual orientation.

Incidents known as “swatting,” or false emergency calls intended to draw a heavy police response, have been on the rise as the political landscape has become increasingly volatile and polarized. While the attacks typically involve dispatching the police to private homes under false pretenses, the targeting of Mr. Buttigieg’s family with false claims related to child abuse appeared to introduce a new dimension to the harassment.

Mr. Buttigieg said he learned of the allegation this week, when a police officer and a Children’s Protective Services worker showed up to the family’s house in Michigan.

That night, the twins slept at their grandparents’ house. The authorities required them to sit alone for the interviews with the C.P.S. workers, as is common during such investigations. 

New York Times, Prosecutors in Washington Say Citations Have Been Issued at Reflecting Pool, Clarence Williams, June 27, 2026 (print ed.). A spokesman provided no further details, saying those who received the citations were ordered to appear in court at a later date. No records are available.

Federal prosecutors in Washington said Friday that citations have been issued by the U.S. Park Police this month at the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, which has filled with algae and peeling paint since its $16 million makeover. But no records are available, and it remains unclear exactly what those citations were for, or how many people received them.

President Trump, who ordered the makeover ahead of July 4 celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary, has blamed the problems on vandals. In a social media post on Tuesday, he said without evidence that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.” He also said fertilizer dumped into the pool had caused the algae.

No records of arrests or citations have been produced by the administration or law enforcement officials to support the president’s claims. On Friday, after several days of inquiries, the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington, which is responsible for both federal and local prosecutions in the city, responded briefly to questions about Mr. Trump’s posts.

“We are aware of citations being issued” by the U.S. Park Police, wrote Timothy Lauer, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office, in a statement. He did not provide specifics on the number of people cited or what they were accused of doing, saying that anyone issued a citation would have been released with instructions to appear in court at a later date.

“Please note that a public docket will not be generated until the court appearance,” he said, explaining the lack of any arrests records or other documentation related to the citations.

The U.S. Park Police and its parent agency, the Interior Department, have not responded to requests for details. But David Carter Hearn, 67, who represented the United States in three Olympics as a canoeist, said in an interview that he is among those cited at the reflecting pool.

His lawyer, Norman Eisen, said that Mr. Hearn was charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of federal property after he reached into the reflecting pool to touch a piece of its detached blue coating floating in the water. Mr. Eisen said his client had not torn or removed any of the coating.

He said Mr. Hearn would seek to take the case to trial, adding, “It is not a crime in America to touch water.”

More On U.S. Politics

PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Evangelical Christians Humiliated As Trump Falls Asleep On Them, Jason Easley, right, June 26, 2026. Trump was meeting with evangelical leaders in the Oval Office as they talked about how he fought for them, but Donald Trump was completely asleep. 

Trump has reportedly been mocking his evangelical supporters for years behind closed doors. In 2020, Michael Cohen wrote in his book Disloyal what Trump really thought of his evangelical supporters:

In Disloyal, published today, Cohen (right) shows how Trump is a master deceiver. He quotes Trump calling Christianity and its religious practices “bullshit,” then soon after masterfully posing as a fervent believer.

In truth, Cohen writes, Trump’s religion is unbridled lust for money and power at any cost to others.

Cohen’s insider stories add significant depth to my own documentation of Trump’s repeated and public denouncements of Christians as “fools,” “idiots” and “schmucks.”Trump views evangelical pastors as scammers whom he admires. Trump has no faith anywhere in his body, and these performative displays by evangelical right-wing Christians bore him.America finally got to see what Trump really thinks of his evangelical supporters at the White House on Friday.

Evangelicals formed their circle around Trump, who was seated at his desk in the Oval Office, and they sang his praises in the most godly of terms. Evangelicals like Trump’s “spiritual adviser,” Paula Reid, were met with total humiliation.

Reid said, “ The rejection, the pain, the trauma that was caused simply because of faith. And it is just inconceivable that no one has stood up like you have stood up to fight for faith, which gives us meaning and purpose and hope and an ability to continue to be our better selves.”

While Reid claimed that Trump stood up for them, the president was seated at his desk fast asleep:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said, “A  phrase that's not in the Constitution, and that phrase is separation of church and state. The left has used that one phrase that was one line out of one of hundreds of letters by Thomas Jefferson to batter and hammer people of faith for the last 70 to 80 years. And this report will speak very clearly that we want to be sure Americans understand that they cannot be attacked by that phrase any longer. So we have s- 12 recommendations. I'll read the first six.”Patrick could have had a list of 12,000 recommendations, and Trump would have had no idea, because he was asleep.Video of Patrick:

Evangelicals betrayed their faith when they climbed into bed with the godless Trump. Trump made it very clear that he thinks no god is above him when he posted himself as AI Jesus healing the sick. Evangelicals don’t care that Trump is an enemy of their faith.

All they care about is a political agenda. Trump understood this and knew that these people would sell out their faith for political power. Now that Trump no longer needs them or their votes, he doesn’t have to pretend anymore and can humiliate them by sleeping as they speak. 

Public Notice, Opinion: Joanne Freeman on why Trump is an affront to the Founders, Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson, June 27, 2026. "This presidency is beyond anything the founding folk could have conceived of."

On Wednesday, the Trump regime kicked off celebrations of America’s 250th birthday with a dismal event in Washington DC in which the president did his familiar rating and raving, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy railed against “libtards.”

Instead of bringing people together to celebrate the laudable things about America, the sad spectacle reminded us of how MAGA is an affront to the very values our nation was founded upon.

To gain some expert insight on what America’s Founding Fathers would have to say about the current president, we connected with Dr. Joanne Freeman, professor of history at Yale University, who we spoke with last year about the Declaration of Independence’s warning for would-be autocrats like Trump.The Declaration of Independence's warning for TrumpThe Declaration of Independence's warning for TrumpAaron Rupar and Thor Benson·April 18, 2025Read full story

“It’s a pretty terrifying time to be a political historian,” Freeman told us in our latest conversation.

“The people who were framing and founding the government believed that what made this government different from a monarchy was the degree to which it was grounded in public opinion,” she added. “But now, the president is openly profiting off the office while destroying and misusing the physical White House as though he owns it, even though it belongs to us. I am angry, because what we’re watching right now isn’t what a president is supposed to be.“

A transcript of Freeman’s chat with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for clarity, follows. If you’d like to read all of it and aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. This newsletter (and my work in general) is entirely funded by readers, and paid subscribers are the only reason I’m able to keep everything we publish Monday through Friday free for everyone. 

MS Now, Opinion: JD Vance’s Watergate comments weren’t an observation — he was boasting, Paul Waldman, June 26, 2026. There’s a reason Donald Trump’s allies take issue with the exposing of rot in a presidential administration.

For half a century, Watergate has been the quintessential American scandal, so much so that we frequently affix “-gate” to new episodes of official wrongdoing in an attempt to make it sound significant and sinister.

But what if, asked Vice President JD Vance (shown above during an appearance on ABC's "The View") we consider Watergate no big deal? Or even better, why not decide that former President Richard Nixon, our pre-Trump model of corruption and abuse of office, was not the perpetrator of Watergate but its victim?

“I’m actually fascinated by Nixon as a character in history,” Vance said at an appearance this week at the Nixon Library in California. “I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

Rewriting history is a longtime hobby of American conservatives.

Vance continued: “And by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration. There is a parallel.”

Rewriting history is a longtime hobby of American conservatives, both to absolve them of their sins and reshape the American mind to align with their values. For instance, the “Lost Cause” counternarrative of the Civil War, which portrays the Confederacy’s treasonous slavery advocates into noble men simply defending their homes, continues to this day, with the Trump administration renaming military bases and erecting statues to honor those traitors. And Trump has convinced much of his party to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the Jan. 6 insurrection was merely a largely peaceful protest carried out by true patriots.

Watergate has been part of this revisionist project since the day Nixon resigned the presidency. Nixon’s legal arguments against having to hand over Oval Office tapes to investigators, though unsuccessful at the time, became crucial to the development of the unitary executive theory, championed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Roberts court’s conservative majority holds. Most recently, prominent figures on the right, including Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Christopher Rufo, have argued that Watergate was all a set-up by the “deep state” to frame Nixon, who was innocent. Vance has now joined their number. ‘30 Watergates happening weekly’: Rep. Ansari blasts ‘corrupt’ Trump White HouseJune 26, 2026 / 08:49

Remember: Watergate was far more than just a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Washington office/apartment complex that gave the scandal its name. The burglary merely led to the exposure of the rot within the Nixon administration: a mountain of criminal acts from money laundering to obstruction of justice to multiple additional break-ins to a shocking abuse of government power.

At one point, White House counsel John Dean, who later located his conscience and told the public what he had seen and done, penned a memo for other White House officials exploring “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The White House tapes recorded Nixon personally committing criminal acts, including making a plan to order the CIA to quash the FBI’s investigation of the break-in at the Watergate (the so-called “smoking gun” recording).

In the end, dozens of people in Nixon’s administration and political orbit pled guilty or were convicted of crimes. Those sent to prison included the attorney general, the White House chief of staff and the president’s chief domestic policy adviser.

We’ll need a raft of post-Trump reforms beyond even what Congress passed after Nixon slinked away in disgrace.

In a twisted sense, Vance is almost right about the “deep state,” since he and other MAGA figures use that term to refer to civil servants who are loyal to the country rather than to whatever corrupt scheme President Donald Trump wants to recruit them for. But they didn’t frame Nixon; they exposed him. During Watergate, the president and his top aides pressed multiple government officials, including some appointed by Nixon himself, to do things they knew were illegal or unethical. Those officials simply refused; some, like Dean, went public.

That is similar to what happened in Trump’s first administration: Again and again, officials refused to go along with his corrupt schemes; some of them testified before Congress in his first impeachment or before the Jan. 6 committee. But in Trump’s second administration, the president and his closest advisers have ensured that no one with any integrity will be around to object.

Congress passed a raft of post-Watergate laws and set up new systems intended to restrain the presidency and make government more transparent, less corrupt and more accountable. Trump has systematically set out to destroy them, firing inspectors general, weakening civil service protections, defying the laws he doesn’t like and turning the Department of Justice into his personal machine of political revenge. WH CRIME? JD Vance’s UNHINGED Trump defense embraces NIXON’S illegal WATERGATE?! June 26, 2026 / 08:49

After Watergate, we were told that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” It wasn’t actually true — the cover-up was appalling, but it was preceded by a whole series of atrocious crimes. Trump, however, decided not to even bother with the cover-up. If you don’t try to hide your corruption, lawmakers won’t be as shocked. And if your own party controls Congress, they’ll be too terrified of your voters to hold you accountable.

So when Vance says Watergate would be a one-day story today, he isn’t just observing; he’s boasting. He’s saying: Look what MAGA has done to American politics and media. Look how we have normalized corruption and degraded systems of accountability. We can do whatever we want.

For now, they can. Which is why we’ll need a raft of post-Trump reforms beyond even what Congress passed after Nixon slinked away in disgrace. The most corrupt president in history and his contemptible cronies are trying to justify their own misdeeds by rehabilitating the image of the second-most corrupt president in history. We can’t allow it to succeed. 

Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office (White House photo). Trump shocked MAGA supporters and reporters by describing New York City's new mayor, a Democratic Socialist, in favorable terms after the meeting.

Soul of the Party, Opinion: Bad News for Trump, Steve Rosenthal (former AFL-CIO union political director, June 27, 2026. New York primary results indicate deep public distrust of the corporate establishment.

Bad news for Trump, who is hailing the New York primary results as proof that Democrats are embracing communism — a label he routinely applies to policies that ask the wealthy and powerful to pay more or expand the role of government.

Bad news as well for much of the mainstream media, which is eager to portray these outcomes as merely another left-versus-right battle within the Democratic Party.

And especially bad news for the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party: large majorities of American voters support many of the policies commonly associated with democratic socialism.

Candidates such as Zohran Mamdani, along with Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander, prevailed because they embraced a populist economic agenda that speaks directly to the concerns of working people. Their victories reflect growing support for policies that address the economic challenges Americans face every day.

Public polling over the past year helps explain why these candidates are finding success. Seventy-six percent of voters identify the cost of living as their biggest economic concern. Sixty-six percent support guaranteeing health care for all. Seventy-eight percent believe housing is a fundamental human right, and 74% support government investment in building and subsidizing homes for low-income families. Sixty-nine percent say the cost of prescription drugs is a major concern.

The same pattern appears on workplace issues. Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of labor unions, 66% believe it should be easier for workers to join a union, and 77% support policies that strengthen workers’ bargaining power.

The public is equally clear about the role of money in politics. Seventy-three percent of American voters want to reduce the influence of billionaires on the political process. Seventy-two percent support strict limits on campaign spending by individuals and organizations, and eight in 10 believe political donors, lobbyists, and special interests wield too much influence in government. Sixty-five percent support raising taxes on corporations and billionaires to ensure they pay their fair share.

Far from being politically fringe, the positions championed by these candidates align with the views of broad majorities of the American public—not only Democrats, but Independents and, on many of these issues, significant numbers of Republicans as well

This is not simply a battle between the political left and right. It is increasingly a battle over class and economic power. For years, Trump and the MAGA movement have appealed to working-class voters by channeling frustration with political and economic elites. But many of those voters are beginning to ask a more fundamental question: Am I better off? For millions struggling with the high cost of housing, health care, groceries, childcare, and prescription drugs, the answer is increasingly no.

PoliticusUSA, News and Comment: Trump's Failed Great American State Fair Rally Is Really Upsetting Him, Jason Easley, right, June 27, 2026. Donald Trump's rally attendance was estimated to be in the thousands, but by Saturday, the declining president fantasized about 45,000 people showing up.

Trump’s Great American State Fair has been a disaster. The State Fair seems to be misnamed, as there is nothing about the event that resembles a fair. If you were expecting a cross between a World’s Fair and your local county or state fair, you’d be mistaken. The fair has one major ride, which was broken when The Washingtonian visited. There weren’t any reported fair foods or games. The whole fair was described as “bleak.”

After almost all of the musical acts dropped out, Trump announced that he would headline the opening of the Great American State Fair himself.

NBC News reported that the attendance for Trump’s Great American State Fair rally was poor:

Merchandise tables sold red “America Is Back” baseball caps, in the style of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats, and an assortment of Freedom 250 shirts, scarves and knickknacks. Concessionaires sold snacks and soft drinks. More than one attendee expressed disappointment after walking into a stand advertising beer and being informed no alcohol was available.

More On U.S. Foreign Policy

New York Times, News Analysis: Israelis See Their Friendship With the U.S. Slipping Away, David M. Halbfinger, June 27, 2026. Criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, anger over the Iran war and election results in New York all suggest Israel’s solid support from Washington may be on borrowed time.

For weeks, the Israeli news media has been obsessing about the once-ironclad U.S.-Israeli relationship.

President Trump’s pursuit of a peace deal with Iran, which many Israelis see as a betrayal, and his repeated berating of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have raised doubts about whether they can still call Mr. Trump the best friend in the White House that Israel has ever had.

Then came Tuesday’s election results in New York City. Three pro-Palestinian candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a harsh critic of Israel, defeated moderates in hotly contested Democratic congressional primaries.

No one in Israel is suggesting a pivot to China or Russia quite yet. But those who have studied or steered the U.S.-Israel relationship say that the strains and tensions are fast becoming worrisome for Israel.

“I’m extremely concerned,” said Asaf Zamir, a deputy mayor of Tel Aviv who was Israel’s consul general in New York from 2021 to 2023. All three candidates had made fierce criticism of Israel central to their campaigns and political identities. “And they say it out loud in the most Jewish city in the world, after Jerusalem.”

Experts on the relationship warn that Israel may not be able to count on solid support from Washington for much longer — whether in concrete assistance like billions of dollars in yearly military aid, in symbolic backing like reliable vetoes of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations or even in tax exemptions for U.S. charities benefiting Israeli causes.

“There’s a cliff, and we’re heading towards it,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.

Some pro-Israel moderates also won House primaries in New York on Tuesday. But the victories by the candidates Mr. Mamdani aided — Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, who accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza; and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who has questioned Israel’s right to exist and, like Ms. Valdez, calls it an apartheid state — landed like bold new dots on a scatter chart revealing a clear trend of rising American hostility to Israel.

Mr. Zamir, the Tel Aviv deputy mayor, said, “I’m waking up and hearing that we’re ‘genocidal’ and ‘apartheid.’”

“I’m a left wing, two-state, pro-peace Israeli, but I’m not blind or crazy,” he added. “I know what the situation in Israel is, and we’re not those things we’re being called. And yet, more and more Americans are buying into and voting on those grounds. That troubles me.”

New York Times, Venezuela Was on the Cusp of Rebirth. Then Disaster Struck, Again, Simon Romero and Emma Bubola, June 27, 2026. Expectations are now rising over the role the United States will play in helping Venezuela, which had already been laid low by decades of misrule.

The blows just keep coming.

Venezuela’s economy began crumbling so badly more than a decade ago that hospitals were hollowed out, blackouts were everywhere and even the most basic goods disappeared from store shelves.

Soon, millions of Venezuelans fled the country, often on foot, scattering across the hemisphere and beyond. Faced with the nation’s steep decline, Venezuela’s already repressive government clamped down even harder, stealing an election and people’s hopes for change.

Next came American military strikes on boats off the nation’s coasts, a partial blockade of its oil and a stunning intervention: The Trump administration raided the capital, seized Venezuela’s authoritarian leader and declared that the United States would run the country, effectively turning it into a vassal state.

After all the head-spinning crises, Venezuela finally appeared to be on the cusp of an economic rebirth this year. Oil was flowing again, its leaders were mending ties with global lenders and energy executives were flocking to Caracas, the capital, to explore potential deals.

Then, the twin earthquakes this week upended everything.

The cash-strapped Venezuelan government, already struggling to tame the world’s highest inflation rate, must now somehow muster an enormous disaster response: clearing vast amounts of rubble; finding and caring for countless, newly-homeless survivors; and restoring basic services to a nation in crisis.

“This is a country that already had massive reconstruction needs,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a prominent Venezuelan economist. “Now, on top of that, they need to rebuild without having ready access to resources.”

The tragedy is likely to raise the expectations on the United States, especially since the Trump administration took control of Venezuela’s oil industry after seizing Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.

President Trump has portrayed Venezuela’s transformation into a resource-rich client state led by Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s Washington-picked successor, as a tremendous success. But even before the earthquakes struck, frustration was mounting in the country over the lack of improvement in living conditions under the new American regime.

New York Times, Venezuela Live Updates: Rescuers Search for Quake Survivors as Leader Calls to ‘Militarize’ Area, Fabiola Ferrero, Julie Turkewitz, Genevieve Glatsky, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Alan Yuhas, June 27, 2026 (print ed.). A Venezuelan official said that two powerful earthquakes on Wednesday had killed 920 people and left more than 3,000 injured. The United States and Mexico were among the latest to send support, as hundreds remained missing or trapped under rubble.

Survivors heaved mountains of bricks and cement with their bare hands across Venezuela’s earthquake-shattered north on Friday, hushing each other to listen for whispers of life and praying for help in reaching people still trapped under the ruins.

At a small hospital in La Guaira, the worst-hit state, Juan David Arsia, 17, said he had spent 21 hours under rubble. “I was there with my mom and I could hear her screaming,” he said. “I would yell to her, ‘Don’t give up, mom, have faith — don’t give up!’”

From under the wreckage, his tibia and fibula fractured, he could hear neighbors calling for help, he said, until the sounds stopped in the middle of the night. Hours later, he again heard people moving above the rubble and began shouting, leading neighbors to find and pull him and his mother free.

As feared, though, the death toll sharply rose on Friday. At least 920 people have died, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the National Assembly, said in a televised address, and at least 3,300 more people were injured. He added that about 1,400 buildings have been damaged, including 13 hospitals.

U.S. Energy, Climate, Weather

White House Chronicle, Opinion: Air Conditioning Costs Threaten Summer of Sun Belt Catastrophe, Llewellyn King, above, June 27, 2026. The summer of our discontent is at hand. When I asked a professional weather forecaster what we might expect this season, he said, “Hades.”

That was as disturbing as everything else in this disturbing year.

America has a summer culture. You could say the whole of the Northern Hemisphere has one, but there is a special reverence, a profound intimacy that Americans have with summer. It is a happy place for healing hurts, meeting old friends, making new ones, and the extraordinary joy of just basking, even romancing.

The British usually make jokes about summer. One goes, “I missed summer. I went to a movie and when I came out, it was over.”

Clearly, they aren’t making jokes like that this summer when temperatures have set records and forced people to do extreme things to cool off. Untold deaths have resulted.

The French have always had their own reverence for summer and, as a nation, down tools in August and head to the beach, often in the South.

They, like the British, are suffering in the current heat wave because there isn’t a lot of air conditioning — almost none in homes and a limited amount in public buildings. Only one in five British homes has air conditioning. In France, there is more in the south, but not in the north around Paris. It was never needed.

I have been in London when it is hot, but not as hot as it has been so far this summer. Sitting in a theater in London in summer was excruciating, made the more so because Britain is humid.

Anyone who lives in America’s coastal regions, especially the South, knows the awful combo of heat and humidity.

Deaths from heat in Europe are widespread and are still being reported.

Air conditioning has shaped America for the last seven decades. It has made living with year-round comfort possible in the South, the Southwest and the West.

If it weren’t for our ability — with enough electricity — to reverse the climate in places like Florida, Texas and Arizona, the migration from the north wouldn’t have happened. Once there was air conditioning, people felt they could live comfortably anywhere in the nation.

Even so, all isn’t well. Indeed, this may be the summer of catastrophe, and deaths from heat and uncontrolled fires. The prognosis isn’t good.

The impending social pushback was pointed up by my colleague Herman K. Trabish, writing in Utility Dive. He was attending the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Las Vegas in early June, and wrote in a brief, “Protesters shouting affordability claims and chanting slogans interrupted a speech by NV Energy President and CEO Brandon Barkhuff.”

Trabish continued, “The confrontation shows the extent to which rising energy costs have stoked public anger, raising pressure on utilities and their regulators.”

The protests were directed at a demand charge approved by the utility commission that wouldn’t take effect until next year, but it opened deep anxiety in southern Nevada about the cost of electricity in weather that is getting hotter and hotter.

Protest leader Leslie Vega said, after the protesters were escorted out of the meeting, “In Las Vegas, one of the fastest-warming cities in the country, you cannot live without electricity.”

Vega’s remarks might well reflect a truth for the whole of the South, Texas and the Southwest. Cheap electricity has been a factor in the migration of tens of millions from the northern states. It was never mentioned; it was just there.

Now the price of electricity is rising inexorably as temperatures appear to rise with equal, threatening vigor.

The natural response from those facing disaster in the heat zones will be to blame the electric utilities and the ubiquitous data centers. There will be calls to nationalize investor-owned utilities like NV Energy, and calls will go out to curb utilities that are already publicly owned, including rural electric cooperatives and those owned by towns and cities.

Additionally, residents in many states with wildfire exposure will, from time to time, have their power cut off entirely for periods to reduce the risk of new fires caused by sparks from line shorting. That will cause new anger.

Most of the world accepts that extreme weather, now common, is associated with global climate change, which is blamed in part on greenhouse gas emissions. That isn’t accepted by the Trump administration, which favors further use of greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels. The president has said that global warming is a “hoax.”

Hot people have short tempers. They can be expected to have something to say as they suffer, and death tolls rise.

Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

Jeffrey Epstein's fellow sex trafficker and teen rapist Ghislaine Maxwell, left, is shown attending a social gathering with her friends Donald Trump and the onetime model and party girl Melania Knauss, right, the future First Lady Melania Trump.

Lance's Substack, Opinion: A Friend Asks, Why Won’t The MAGA Influencers Drop The Epstein Scandal? Lance F Rosen, right, June 27, 2026. What caused, and continues to cause, Trump followers to be stuck on the Epstein files?

• I know the release of the files was a campaign promise. Is it that he went back on his word? Would his followers have been satisfied if he’d released the files regardless of what they contained?
• Is it the alarming revelations from those groomed and abused?
• What keeps the majority of the MAGAs demanding that these files be released?

My Reply:

For most relatively normal and grounded individuals, it is out of concern for the victims and desire to see justice done, including seeing the perpetrators exposed and appropriately punished.

Also, not to be glossed over, is that a majority of people who oppose Trump and might have given up on politics or other constitutional pathways for removing him any time soon, are hoping and praying the Epstein investigation will do the job for us. However, as with everything else, hard core MAGA’s version of “normal” already left the station and then derailed a long time ago, and their motives for pushing the scandal are different from ours.

Let’s start with a refresher on QAnon.

I think that many people have made the mistake of dismissing QAnon as a small fringey conspiracy cult of Tin Foil hat types. They are actually a mass based movement.

Think about the whole “Pizzagate Affair” and what you know about the theory behind it. The duped idiots who jumped on that bandwagon joined with Trump because they equate the liberal Democratic establishment with the “Deep State,” the shadowy elite who are taking away their jobs and giving them to illegal immigrants, taxing them to death, trying to turn their kids gay, aborting all the white babies, and trying to take their guns.

Supposedly, they believed this group is a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles bankrolled by rich liberal Jews like George Soros and the Rothschilds, leading a global child trafficking and murder ring.

The Pizzagate theory was that this pedophile network was run out of their HQ which was the basement of a DC Pizza shop where the kidnapped children were taken to be raped and cannibalized by these wealthy powerful elites. That’s “Pizzagate,” in a nutshell. That was the birth of QAnon, right there.

That theory was popularized by MAGA anti-semite, far-right provocateur and “ratfucker” Jack Posobiec, who later became OANN’s White House correspondent. (FYI, last year he wrote and published a book attacking liberals and socialists, titled “Unhuman.” Literally, the same word used by Hitler to describe his targeted enemies, in German, “Untermensch.” Posobiec’s book was published with a foreword by J. D. Vance a year ago.)

So, when the Epstein second round of indictments first hit, then with him dying in jail under suspicious circumstances, that made the whole theory valid in their minds. Here they had it, a real live Jewish billionaire, sponsored by other Jewish billionaires and people with Israeli intelligence ties, apparently running a child trafficking and murder ring. These conspirophiles were in hog heaven, acting like they hit the Lotto because now everyone knew they weren’t crazy and thus was validated their paranoia, so they thought.

Bill Clinton was tied to Epstein, as was Bill Richardson, Bill Gates, Alan Dershowitz, each of whom known as liberals. Though Dershowitz later underwent a religious conversion to Trump fascism in order to defend him legally, mainly to get his backing in keeping his own role in enabling Epstein (or worse, his alleged sexual abuse of Epstein’s victims) out of any courtroom. The plan was to make Epstein into a scandal which served to expose and land on the Democrats, and if all the files came out, each of these liberal boogeyman were supposed to disappear like magic.

Trump was anointed by the leading QAnon influencers as their avenger, the Christian crusader riding in on a white horse who would bring these supposed satanic liberal Democratic pedophiles to justice and pull the Deep State out by the roots. (QAnon influencer and possibly founder Jim Watkins, a “spooky” ex-military guy, operated the first QAnon channel on Christopher Poole’s 4Chan out of the Phillipines. He was there because he made his money by file-sharing illegal uncensored porn into Japan, and later used it to found his own platform called 8Chan. However many sources believe “Q” is likely not a person, but an amalgam of a loosely affiliated network)

QAnon is a quasi-religious cult, created as a psy-op by military intelligence circles to mislead an online army of paranoid victimized rageballs into a rabbit hole in order to capture and neutralize them. These adepts were groomed to be anti-goverment extremists.

QAnon recruited heavily out of the fascist wing of the Catholic church with the help of various renegade Bishops like Joseph Strickland of Tyler Texas, (removed by Pope Francis) retired General Michael Flynn, Ginni Thomas, and excommunicated former DC Archbishop Jose Maria Viganó. Throw in the pseudo-Catholic Hollywood QAnon-linked anti-semites around actor Mel Gibson and his protege Jim Caveziel. (Star of Gibson’s explicitly anti-semitic Christian snuff film, “The Passion Of Christ,” and more recently the “Sound Of Freedom,” a fake film bio of so-called Christian tracker of missing children Tim Ballard, which was used as a QAnon propaganda film)

Also the Trump evangelical advisors such as Pastors Mark Burns and Mark Taylor, along with several figures in his White House team, including Mark Meadows, who were actively involved in spreading the QAnon conspiracy.

QAnon followers were a major bloc of the J-6 rioters, and they were instrumental in setting up groups like “Moms For Liberty” as vehicles for importing their conspiracy nonsense into school boards and local elections. The themes of “grooming” children for sexual exploitation by LGBTQ persons through books and literature in school libraries, (launching a book banning campaign) and compelling kids to go through what they called “Nazi style medical experiments via forced genital mutilation” became the talking points for MFL activists at school board meetings and campaign events.

This movement, which went under the slogan “Save The Children,” was a bloodthirsty rabble in their mindsets, who wanted scapegoats to blame for what they called “an attack on their religious values and way of life.”

So when Trump broke his promise on releasing the files, it was more than just another politician breaking their word on a campaign issue.

He had been assigned near messianic status as the leader of their own conspiracy, anointed by God to smite the evildoers.

When he blocked the files, it came out that he was in them all over the place. This was the equivalent of a bunker-buster bomb dropped on their heads, their homes, and their churches.

That is when many of these QAnon Trumpers realized they were conned. Their continuing obsession with Epstein now and getting everything out is in part about the victims for some of them, yes, especially some of the MAGA women like Nancy Mace and MTG. But it is also a heavy overlay of vengeance-seeking by people who feel betrayed by the man in whom they placed their faith, who they previously fought for and would have died for.

In reality, the demented pathological rapist Trump, screwed himself in the end by issuing death threats and bringing out heavy leverage against some of his best political allies to suppress and redact the files, which has backfired and made these former supporters even more determined to not let the truth be buried.

Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Epstein Left Them $2 Million. New Mexico Hasn't Asked Them Anything, Jana, left, June 27, 2026. The people who ran Jeffrey Epstein's ranch were among the last he thought to provide for. The commission investigating that ranch hasn't thought to ask them a single question.

The New Mexico Truth Commission has issued 23 subpoenas. None of them have gone to Brice or Karen Gordon, the couple from New Zealand who managed Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch for years, then vanished after he died. The Commission says it's working methodically, institutions before individuals. But the paper trail on the Gordons doesn't need a subpoena to unlock. It's already public, and has been public since the DOJ released the EFTA archive.The Payment Structure

Instead of paychecks, the Gordons got monthly wire transfers, to a shell company Brice controlled.

The vehicle was Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC: a New Mexico limited liability company registered by Brice Gordon. Every month, from at least 2016 through May 2019, $16,666.67 moved from Epstein’s accounts to a Wells Fargo account belonging to Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC. That is $200,000 per year, paid in clean monthly installments, paid in clean monthly installments, never touching a payroll system.

The source accounts were LSJE LLC and Zorro Management LLC, the corporate entities Epstein used to manage Little Saint James and Zorro Ranch. Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas processed the transfers. It's all in the bank statements, more than two years of them.

EFTA00609951, an internal payroll table from Zorro Development Corp tracks the Gordons going back to 2009, raises approved by Epstein himself, bonuses, moving costs, sick days, vacation time logged on his personal calendar. All the language of employment. But the money never moved like a paycheck. It moved as a consulting fee, to an LLC that exists nowhere outside Epstein's own financial world.Brice Asks For A Breakdown

On January 2, 2019, Brice Gordon emailed Una Pascal, Epstein’s administrator, and copied Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant. He asked for a breakdown of what Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC had been paid in 2018.

He ran his own pay through his own LLC and still couldn't tell you what he'd been paid without asking Epstein's accountant. | EFTA02607701

This wasn't unusual. Epstein built his whole financial network this way: shell on top of shell, Cypress Inc., Laurel Inc., Maple Inc., the Haze Trust, each one making the next harder to trace. The people who ran his properties weren't exempt from that.The Bank Confirms It

A month after Epstein died, Deutsche Bank walked federal prosecutors through his entire financial network. Exhibit S of that presentation is a table classifying every entity. Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC is on it. Next to it: "Brice Gordon-Controlled Business Entity." Not an allegation. A bank's own classification, delivered to the SDNY. The Truth Commission has never asked for it.

Deutsche Bank's own classification, delivered to federal prosecutors.The Corporate Trail

Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC was registered in New Mexico, with Brice Gordon listed as registered agent at 49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley NM, the Epstein ranch address itself.

A second Gordon connected entity, Cactus 3 Development LLC, was filed by Karen Gordon in April 2023. The registered agent on Karen’s LLC is Jody Lyn Stewart, a former New Zealand Army logistics officer who disappeared from corporate records for decades before surfacing on this single filing. She appears on no other New Mexico entity.

NZ Government Gazette Issue 27, February 26, 1987 / Issue 107, June 22, 1989

The Gordons’ last known addresses span three states: Tubac, Arizona, where Cactus 3 Development LLC purchased property at 1509 Golden Gate Way; Half Moon Bay, California, where Karen listed her personal mailing address on the Cactus 3 formation documents; and the Zorro Ranch Road address still attached to Brice’s LLC as of December 2024. As of June 2026, no subpoena has been issued to any of these addresses. The New Mexico Truth Commission’s July 31 interim report deadline is approaching.Who They Were

Brice and Karen Gordon were New Zealand nationals. Brice had a background in the New Zealand Defence Force. They were hired to manage Zorro Ranch, the 8,000 acre Epstein compound in the San Cristobal highlands of New Mexico, roughly 40 miles southwest of Santa Fe.

The ranch was operational infrastructure. It had a private airstrip, a guest residence, a main house, a 26,700 square foot “educational building” that Epstein told local officials was for scientific conferences, a fully equipped spa, underground structures, and a private microwave communications link to Sandia Crest Tower documented in FCC licenses WQXY316 and WQXY300.

The Gordons managed all of it.

Karen’s email signature, “Warmest regards Karen — Lee McKenzie Consultants LLC”, appears across years of internal correspondence. Vacation requests went to Lesley Groff, Epstein’s personal assistant, to be placed on his calendar. Sick leave was tracked. The ranch ran as a managed operation, and the Gordons ran it.

Brice Gordon told the FBI in 2007 that massage therapists at the ranch were sourced through a Santa Fe spa called Ten Thousand Waves. That interview was terminated by a phone call from Epstein’s New York office before Karen could be questioned.

EFTA00269599 documents the visit; the interview notes were not retained in the file as produced. You can read our full piece on the spa that supplied the girls here.

In October 2018, Richard Kahn forwarded to Epstein an accusation that Brice Gordon had been taking kickbacks.bNo record of any follow up action has surfaced in the public DOJ files. | EFTA01021257–58.

Two days before Epstein signed the 1953 Trust, the will executed two days before his death, he signed a separate document leaving Brice and Karen Gordon $2 million. They were among the last people he thought to provide for.After

Epstein died on August 10, 2019. Zorro Ranch was eventually sold. The Gordons have not given public statements. They have not appeared before the Truth Commission, nor have they been subpoenaed by it.

The New Mexico Truth Commission was established to investigate Epstein’s operations in New Mexico and their relationship to state institutions. It has subpoenaed the University of New Mexico Foundation, the Santa Fe Institute, state officials, and a range of institutional actors. Twenty three subpoenas as of June 23, 2026. None of them have targeted the people who lived on the property, ran the day to day operations, managed the staff, and were compensated through an LLC that a Deutsche Bank forensic presentation independently classified as a controlled business entity of one of them.

The Commission says it is working methodically: institutions first, then individuals, building foundational knowledge before moving to people.

Except the foundational knowledge on the Gordons is already built. It is sitting in the public record. An independent journalist with no subpoena power, no staff, and no $2.5 million budget found it using a government search bar.

The interim report is due July 31. The paper trail on the Gordons’ money has been complete for longer than the Commission has existed.

Roughly half of those in Wednesday’s crowd of more than 1,000 wore Trump’s slogans or likeness on their clothes. For them, America’s 250th birthday was secondary to an opportunity to see the president.

Trump has spent days trying to claim that 45,000 people were in attendance.

The caption drew immediate mockery online, since, well…U.S. passports are used by American citizens.Iran’s World Cup Statement Worth Reading

I want to close with something away from the politics for a moment, and move to a story about basic humanity.

Iran’s World Cup run ended in heartbreak against Egypt, with a controversial offside call that, in my view, robbed them of a result they earned. Forward Mehdi Taremi didn’t hide his frustration afterward, calling it a rough tournament. The team had hoped to spend the night resting in Seattle but instead was forced onto a midnight flight back to Tijuana by the federal government. Analyst Sina Toossi argued the team had been mistreated from the start, citing what he called petty U.S. travel restrictions layered on top of officiating failures throughout the tournament.

But what struck me most was the note Iran’s players left behind in their locker room in Seattle, following a similar note they left in Los Angeles. It thanked the city for its hospitality and spoke about honor, fairness, and standing tall regardless of the result. Moments like this put a lot of the noise around this World Cup in perspective. These athletes showed up, played with heart, dealt with restrictions and bad calls they had no control over, and still left a message about grace. It’s another reminder that we are all better than our leaders who seem to only lead us into conflict.

That’s the rundown for this Saturday afternoon. There’s a lot moving right now between the Gulf, Lebanon, the courts, and our own backyard, and we’ll keep tracking all of it for you. Thanks for being here.

President Trump's nominee to become U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, is shown at right in a file photo showcasing his previous role in defending Trump from fraud charges before the convictions were voided because of the president's reelection. 

Emptywheel, Analysis: Katie Phang Just Made Jeffrey Epstein Central to Todd Blanche’s Bid for Confirmation, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 27, 2026. Almost four weeks after Trump fired Pam Bondi, leaving his personal attorney Todd Blanche in charge of DOJ, Katie Phang challenged Blanche’s failures to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act. Hers was not a FOIA lawsuit. Rather, it argued Blanche’s refusal to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act was harming her ability to do journalism on it.

In response, Blanche did nothing.

A month after that, Phang asked for a preliminary injunction. Her ask was, on its face, fairly simple: First, to immediately do two things required by law: review the foreign language Epstein files for release and submit a privilege log explaining each individual redaction. And also to either unredact the names in several sets of documents or explain why he was refusing to do so.

Those documents are:

The names of Epstein’s interlocutors on eight particularly incendiary emails (included as exhibits starting at page 9 and shown above).The names of potential co-conspirators in the more expansive draft indictment SDFL did before Epstein got his sweetheart deal (the indictment starts at page 28).The backup files to the allegations made by a woman who claimed she was raped by Trump (Phang includes the discovery log for Ghislaine to prove they exist and the 302s, which start at 151).

To repeat: Phang’s key ask didn’t demand these documents be unredacted; it offered DOJ the opportunity to simply explain that the files were redacted to protect victims’ names.

Judge Emmet Sullivan set immediate (and admittedly tight) deadlines, with a hearing scheduled on June 16. In response, AUSA Saifuddin Kalolwala finally filed a notice of appearance, and immediately asked to reschedule the hearing based on a religious conflict (to the AUSA’s credit, they were ready to do the hearing before the observance). On June 2, Sullivan rescheduled the hearing for June 30.

On June 3, Trump announced he was going to nominate Blanche for the full time AG job. On June 8, he did so.

In between, DOJ filed its response and Phang her reply.

The vast majority of DOJ’s response, submitted on June 5, argued that Phang had no business using an APA challenge to make Blanche comply with the ETA. Probably because DOJ spent almost their entire brief making that argument, they didn’t respond to the substance of Phang’s argument that Blanche had failed to comply with the law. Instead, they claimed Phang had another remedy: To FOIA the files.

[T]he Court lacks jurisdiction because Plaintiff cannot invoke the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). Where an adequate remedy at law exists, the APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply—and the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) provides exactly that remedy here.

[snip]

Read in pari materia, the Epstein Act and FOIA must be construed as a whole and, indeed, they operate in harmony. The Epstein Act supplements FOIA by imposing additional disclosure obligations with respect to a specific set of records; it does not supplant FOIA or create a parallel enforcement framework. Permitting Plaintiff to circumvent the remedial scheme established by Congress by recasting her claim under the APA would disrupt that harmony and run counter to established precedent.

Here, Plaintiff alleges that the Department’s public disclosures violated the law by failing to produce required records, improperly withholding information, and neglecting to provide adequate justification for any redactions applied. See generally Compl. To that end, FOIA’s remedial scheme is not merely adequate, but is substantively identical to the relief Plaintiff seeks. See CREW, 846 F.3d at 1245-46. Moreover, the “EFTA-FOIA” Crosswalk published by the Department’s Office of Information Policy maps each withholding category under the Epstein Act directly to its corresponding FOIA exemption—further supporting that the redactions and withholding decisions Plaintiff challenges align with FOIA’s exemption framework.1

1 Department of Justice, Off. Of Info. Pol’y, EFTA-FOIA Crosswalk (2026) (available at:

Having failed to contest Phang’s claim that Blanche had not complied with the law, DOJ closed its response by asking Sullivan to stay any injunction he imposed. 60 days should do it, DOJ said, which would put it long past the time when Blanche’s confirmation would be settled.

Finally, to the extent the Court issues any injunctive relief, Defendants respectfully request that such relief be stayed for a period of sixty days so that the Solicitor General has time to consider whether further appellate review is warranted. Alternatively, at a minimum, any such relief should be stayed for a period of seven days to allow the United States to determine whether to seek emergency appellate review.

In her response (filed the same day Trump formally nominated Blanche, June 8), Phang addressed the APA standing argument DOJ had exclusively argued. But from the start, she also noted that DOJ had not contested, at all, that Blanche had not complied with the law.

Acting Attorney General Blanche’s opposition brief, ECF No. 12 (“Blanch Br.”), runs 22 pages. Yet Blanche does not defend his efforts to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act on a single one. Blanche does not defend redacting the names of Epstein’s associates in salacious emails. Blanche does not defend redacting the names of potential co-conspirators in Department of Justice documents. Blanche does not defend withholding documents containing allegations against President Trump. Blanche does not defend his decision to grant himself an exemption from reviewing and producing foreign-language documents. And Blanche does not defend his failure to publish a redaction log, now more than six months overdue and counting.

[snip]

Turning from standing to the substantive merits, Phang is likely to prove that Blanche has violated the Epstein Act in many respects. Phang’s opening brief devoted twelve pages to showing those violations. Phang Br. 22–34. Blanche devotes not one word to responding. Accordingly, for purposes of the instant motion Blanche has conceded that he is violating the Act. Texas v. United States, 798 F.3d 1108, 1110 (D.C. Cir. 2015). And for purposes of any appeal, Blanche has likewise forfeited the issue.

She also laid out, across four pages, the reasons why FOIA was not a sufficient remedy to her injuries, going through the items requested in her motion for an injunction, one by one, to show they would be excluded under FOIA exemptions, laying out the differences between FOIA and ETA, then ultimately mocking DOJ’s claim FOIA and ETA were parallel statutes.

First, under FOIA, Phang would be very unlikely to obtain the unredacted Epstein associate emails, which could be redacted under FOIA exemption 6 (personal privacy) and 7 (law enforcement records). Under the Epstein Act, by contrast, her entitlement to have the emails unredacted is so clear that Blanche has not bothered contested it.

[snip]

As the above exercise illustrates, the difference between the Epstein Act and FOIA are legion. To name a few more: The Epstein Act mandates disclosure to the public at large, see Act § 2(a); FOIA generally mandates disclosure only to requestors, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A); The Epstein Act mandates production of all material satisfying any of nine express criteria, see Act § 2(a)(1)–(9); FOIA generally mandates production of material only upon request, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A). The Epstein Act mandates that production conclude by a date certain (December 19, 2025), see Act § 2(a); FOIA establishes a variety of rolling deadlines tied to the date of the request, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(a). The Epstein Act has only five exemptions, see Act § 2(c)(1)(A)–(E); FOIA has nine, see 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1)–(9). And so on. Quite simply, FOIA is not an “adequate remedy,” Blanche Br. 11, as Defendant claims, because Phang could never get the full range of documents through FOIA that should can under the Epstein Act.

[snip]

Ultimately, the Epstein Act is the most uncompromising disclosure statute ever enacted in American history. It is very different in scope, structure, and kind from FOIA. And “in pari materia” is not a magical incantation that allows Blanche to make such differences—or their effects on Phang’s available remedies—vanish in a puff of smoke.

That’s where things might have stood until a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday. But then Phang filed a notice of supplemental authority, basically showing DOJ blowing off FOIA requests for Epstein material because (they claim) everything subject to FOIA has been released.

Judge Sullivan, who has little patience for government obstruction, ordered DOJ to respond by midday. They did not.

MINUTE ORDER. In view of 14 Notice of Supplemental Materials, Defendant is ORDERED to file a response, without repeating arguments previously made, by no later than 1:00 pm today, June 25, 2026.

He must have had his opinion mostly written already (indeed, it relies heavily on Phang’s rebuttal of DOJ’s FOIA argument, though it does cite the supplement submitted the day before), because by end of day, Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of Phang and denied DOJ’s request for a stay.

In Phang’s original motion, submitted before Trump officially nominated Blanche, she laid out evidence that the Epstein release had already been a factor in mid-term elections.

The Trump-related materials Phang seeks, see supra § I.B.3, are time-sensitive, among other reasons, because of the ongoing midterm elections. Many candidates have highlighted the Epstein Files as part of their campaigns. Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, for instance, made the administration’s handling of the Epstein Files a central plank of his recent primary campaign.43 Massie argued to voters that he “led the charge to expose a bunch of rich and powerful and politically connected men in the Epstein files.”44 But the files at issue in this motion were not available before the primary election, which deprived voters of the opportunity to consider them when assessing Massie’s candidacy. Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has likewise referred to an “Epstein class,” calling out by name some of the elites who appear in the files.45 And Representative Nancy Mace, who is seeking the Republican nomination for South Carolina governor, has focused in particular on the Department’s broad redactions, arguing that they have deprived “the American people” of “information about co-conspirators.”46

In this context, allegations that Trump and others in his orbit participated in Epstein’s crimes are highly salient. So, too, is pertinent new information, whether it supports or debunks such allegations. But that salience will fade swiftly after the midterms.

DOJ barely addressed that claim. But Sullivan did, dinging DOJ for trying to misstate Phang’s concern (in part by quoting her out of context), but mostly arguing that Phang is being harmed because DOJ is withholding material to which she and the public are entitled under ETA.

Finally, the Attorney General argues that Ms. Phang’s argument regarding public interest fading after the upcoming mid-term elections is speculative. Id. However, “the nondisclosure of information to which a plaintiff is entitled, under certain circumstances itself constitutes an irreparable harm; specifically, where the information is highly relevant to an ongoing and highly public matter.”

[snip]

Here, the current high level of interest in the Epstein Files combined with the upcoming mid-term elections amounts to a circumstance that itself constitutes irreparable harm, especially where the Attorney General has not disputed that he is in violation of the Epstein Act.

Sullivan returned to Blanche’s failure to address his noncompliance with the law in refusing a stay.

The Attorney General requests a stay of seven days to determine whether to seek emergency appellate review. Opp’n, ECF No. 12 at 30. The Attorney General also requests a stay of sixty days to determine whether further appellate review is warranted. Id. The Court will not issue a stay for the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion. The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act. Ms. Phang is not requesting the immediate production of documents, but rather that the Attorney General show cause if he declines to do so.

Stan Woodward, who has never shied away from doing outrageous things to protect his bosses, filed a notice of appearance; DOJ told Politico they will appeal. In an apparently anonymous statement to Politico, a spox misstated the clear posture of the case, denying that Blanche had conceded (or more accurately, forfeited) any claim to have complied with the statute and falsely claiming that the injunction would require revealing victims names; it would require only that DOJ identify redacted names as redactions of victims.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said Blanche “has not conceded anything.”

“Judge Sullivan’s perverse interpretation appears to be focused on driving misleading headlines. This judge is suggesting DOJ violate the law by un-redacting victim names, who as the Department has always explained, sadly became co-conspirators. DOJ has produced all responsive documents and will appeal this decision with confidence,” the spokesperson said.

An attorney for Phang, Brendan Ballou, said the ruling Thursday was the logical result of DOJ’s cavalier response to the suit.

“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” Ballou said. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”

In truth, depending on the panel at the DC Circuit — and certainly at SCOTUS — DOJ might be right about Phang’s APA argument.

But in the short term this arrogance has fucked Todd Blanche, who is due for a confirmation hearing in mid-July.

In DOJ’s filing balancing interests relevant to an injunction, DOJ argued there’s not much public interest in setting aside DOJ’s other priorities to actually comply with the law.

True, there is public interest in transparency and the disclosure of the information concerning Epstein. Those interests, however, are not served by compelling the Department to redirect personnel and resources away from competing public interest and safety priorities to address Plaintiff’s preference for expedited treatment. The public equally has an interest in the orderly administration of government. Those interests would be undermined—not advanced—by the extraordinary relief Plaintiff seeks.

Effectively, DOJ said that Blanche couldn’t be bothered to step away from his day job prosecuting Trump’s adversaries to comply with a law passed via unanimous consent in the Senate. And now, Blanche is preparing to argue that he can’t even identify which redactions in the twenty-or-so documents Blanche must now release are redacted as victims, and to do so in an attempt to stall the further release of documents that definitely pertain to allegations against Trump.

I have no doubt Phang filed this to force DOJ to comply with the law. This process did not start as an attempt to hold embarrass Blanche for his sex trafficking cover-up as he bids for the full-time job. She didn’t force DOJ to respond in such arrogant fashion, thereby making Blanche’s continued cover-up a key news issue in the lead up to his confirmation hearing.

It just worked out that way.

U.S. Religion, Culture, Media, Education

Letters From Leo / the American Pope & US Politics, Opinion: Trump Tried to Turn America Against Pope Leo XIV. It Didn’t Work, Christopher Hale, above, June 27, 2026. A new Pew survey gives Leo 84% favorability among Catholic Democrats and 72% among Catholic Republicans — the widest partisan gap of his papacy, more than double a year ago. Where he lost ground, it was the MAGA core choosing the president over the pope.

Pew Research released a survey on June 18, and the figure at the heart of it is one most politicians will never see in a lifetime of campaigning: 78 percent of American Catholics view Pope Leo XIV favorably.

That result comes from a poll of 1,848 Catholics conducted between May 26 and June 1. It arrives after weeks in which the president of the United States used the largest megaphone on earth to attack the first American pope by name.

Set Leo’s 78 percent beside the men who have held the Oval Office. The last president to command anything near it was George W. Bush, whose approval reached 90 percent in the weeks after September 11 — the highest figure Gallup has ever recorded. No president has reached that air since. Leo breathes it now, in the middle of a fight the White House picked with him.

The fuller picture lives in the partisan breakdown. Catholic Democrats give Leo an 84 percent favorable rating. Among Republican Catholics, it falls to 72 percent. When Pew first measured opinion of the new pope last August, the two camps stood five points apart; the distance between them has since grown to twelve, more than double in a single year.

Seventy-two percent is no one’s idea of a collapse. Any politician in the country would give almost anything for approval that high, and Leo earns it from Republicans and Democrats alike. The slippage is real, though, and it moves in one direction: the share of Republican Catholics who view Leo unfavorably has climbed from 6 percent last summer to 22 percent today.

What pulled those numbers apart is no secret. In April, Leo spoke against the war the United States was waging in Iran and warned the world about the “delusion of omnipotence” that drives powerful men toward it.

Trump answered on social media, branding the pope “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” and insisting that Leo owed his election to Trump sitting in the White House.

Every blow traveled in one direction. Leo returned none of them. He stood on the papal plane and told reporters, “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.” Then he went back to preaching what he had preached before the president ever learned his name.

American Catholics saw clearly who threw the first punch. In the Pew survey, 51 percent say Trump has been too critical of Leo, against just 4 percent who say he has not been critical enough. 70 percent of Catholic Democrats place the blame on Trump. Republican Catholics are split, and a 39 percent plurality actually faults the pope for being too hard on the president, outnumbering the 32 percent who fault Trump. 

New York Times, Chaos Came to CBS News. What’s in Store for CNN? Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, June 27, 2026. The tech scion David Ellison is close to completing a merger that would put the legacy broadcaster and the 24-hour cable news network under the same roof.

Over nearly five decades, CNN has survived multiple owners, ratings ups and downs, and attacks by President Trump.

Now, its journalists are bracing for its most dramatic transformation yet: a corporate merger that would put the 24-hour cable network under the same ownership as CBS News.

David Ellison, the technology heir who controls Paramount, the owner of CBS, is poised to complete a $111 billion purchase of CNN’s parent company as soon as next month.

Mr. Ellison has not publicly detailed what he has in store for CNN. But the network’s newsroom is wary of his conspicuous coziness with Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may assign some oversight of CNN to Bari Weiss, his pick to run CBS News after he bought Paramount last year.

Ms. Weiss, who had virtually no broadcasting experience before taking over in October, has reshaped CBS News in occasionally chaotic ways, recently firing the leadership of the network’s flagship, “60 Minutes.” Several on-air correspondents who were fired later accused her of editorial interference, which she has denied.

Mr. Ellison and his deputies are weighing whether to put Ms. Weiss in charge of CNN, which is far larger than CBS News and is a major profit center, two people familiar with their thinking said. He has remained supportive of Ms. Weiss, despite grumbling from journalists.

Anderson Cooper, the channel’s biggest star, has told colleagues at CNN that he does not want to work for Ms. Weiss, two people familiar with his remarks said. Mr. Cooper, who overlapped with Ms. Weiss at CBS as a correspondent at “60 Minutes,” left that show this spring after 20 years.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cooper declined to comment.

One option under consideration by Mr. Ellison would be to pair Ms. Weiss with a more experienced TV executive who could handle the technical and financial aspects of the network, two people briefed on internal discussions said.

Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, has not yet heard from Mr. Ellison's team about what role he will play after the merger, two people briefed on discussions between the companies said. He recently told Paramount officials that he would not share oversight of CNN with another executive, the people said. He declined to comment.

Paramount is merging with Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN and other properties, including HBO. A combination of CBS News, home to “Face the Nation” as well as “60 Minutes,” with CNN, a pioneer of 24-hour cable news that is on track to generate $650 million in profit this year, would be one of the largest consolidations in news gathering in decades. David Ellison, wearing a dark sport coat over a dark T-shirt, gestures with his right hand while speaking. His left thumb is in his jeans pocket.Paramount’s leader, David Ellison, has vowed to maintain CNN’s editorial independence.Credit...Caroline Brehman/Reuters

Mr. Ellison has said in interviews that he wants his news networks to appeal to the middle “70 percent” of Americans, and he said recently that CNN’s “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained.”

But Mr. Ellison has made repeated overtures to Mr. Trump as he has amassed his corporate empire. He hosted a dinner in Washington in April in the president’s honor, as the Trump administration was deciding whether to object to Mr. Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery; he also attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout with the president at the White House this month. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, said in March that he was excited about CNN’s prospective new ownership, adding, “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Mr. Ellison’s relationship with Mr. Trump has raised alarms at CNN, according to interviews with network correspondents and employees.

As the merger approaches, the 18th-floor Manhattan office of Amy Entelis, the CNN executive in charge of on-air talent, has turned into something of a psychiatrist’s couch for anchors and correspondents, who often drop in to air their anxieties about the looming changes.

Jake Tapper, CNN’s lead Washington anchor, met with Mr. Ellison this spring in Los Angeles, two people familiar with his travel plans said. Their representatives declined to say what the men had discussed.ImageBari Weiss sits in a white upholstered chair and holds notes in her hands while moderating an event.Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, is under consideration to oversee CNN.Credit...Michele Crowe/CBS News, via Getty Images

The tech journalist Kara Swisher, who is a regular presence on CNN in addition to her podcasting ventures, said she would not continue to work for the TV network if Mr. Ellison installed someone to replace Mr. Thompson as its top leader.

In an interview, Ms. Swisher pointed to the unfolding situation at CBS News as a rationale. “So far, there’s nothing I’ve seen that indicates that they’re serious about creating a modern digital news organization,” she said.

The agita about CNN’s future surfaced when employees gathered in Atlanta this month to mourn Ted Turner, the CNN founder, who died in May.

Toward the end of the memorial service, Mr. Turner’s grandson John R. Seydel III took the stage. He said Mr. Turner would not have stayed quiet amid “larger and larger acquisitions” in the media industry and the “hollowing out” of venerable news programs like “60 Minutes.”

“He’d be the first to speak up,” Mr. Seydel said, “especially now, as the very network he built and the leaders that are in those positions these days are facing similar threats.”

Robert Reich, Why Won't the Media Call This for What it Is? Robert Reich, right, June 27, 2026. Trump’s war with Iran is continuing. Today, Iran launched attack drones at Bahrain — which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, a major logistical base for U.S. military operations. Iran also struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, its second attack on a ship since Thursday.

Those attacks came after the United States carried out overnight airstrikes on Iranian missile and drone sites, in retaliation for Iran firing drones at a container ship on Thursday as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz.

The continuing hostilities are exposing the mind-numbing extent of Trump’s lies about “ending” his war — that he’s achieved a lasting peace in the Middle East, that Iran no longer has any capacity to fire missiles and drones, that the Strait of Hormuz is reopen to cargo traffic, that Iran is committed to reducing its stockpile of nuclear material and won’t seek a nuclear bomb, and that, overall, the war he launched on February 28 has made America stronger and safer than we were before he launched it.

These lies aren’t on par with his big lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was undertaken by peaceful, patriotic Americans. But his lies about the so-called “end” of his war with Iran could have equally large consequences, because they’re leading many Americans to believe that an end of the war is within sight and that America is stronger and safer as a result of it.

Yet the mainstream media refuse to call him out on his Iran lies.

The New York Times terms what’s now happening a “flare-up of in hostilities” that threatens “to unravel” ongoing “talks to reach a final peace agreement,” and that “neither side seems eager to return to a full-blown war.”

Well, they may not want to return to a “full-blown war” but they’ve returned to hostilities that are blocking the strait and destroying whatever shred of trust diplomacy depends on. And not a word about Trump’s lies.

The Washington Post calls it “the latest threat to a ceasefire and ongoing talks toward a broader peace” — which of course assumes there has been a real ceasefire, and that the talks now underway will result in a “broader peace,” whatever that means. Also not a word about Trump’s lies.

The Wall Street Journal says the hostilities have “added to pressure on a preliminary peace deal already under stress from continued fighting in Lebanon and disagreements over nuclear inspections.” But that assumes there’s already a preliminary peace deal. Has anyone actually read it? And the disagreements are hardly confined to nuclear inspections. What about free passage through the strait? Oh, and here again, no word about Trump’s blatant lies.

My expectations for the mainstream press were already low. From the outset of this war, the public has received half-baked and inconsistent reports. And although the media knows better than to rely on any words emanating from Trump’s mouth, why have they given up holding him to account for what he says about the war? 

Trump’s war with Iran was a disaster from the start, and it’s so-called “end” is a debacle that Americans needs to know about. Trump wants the war to go away, but it won’t because he has strengthened Iran’s resolve, which in turn has strengthened its hand.

June 26

Top Headlines

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 26, 2026. Springfield, Ohio meets MAGA cruelty with humanitarian dignity.

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Important Friday Morning News Update, Aaron Parnas, right, June 26, 2026. Lots of news to cover today, including new reporting alleging President Trump has an unusually close relationship with an aide nearly 50 years younger than him, Republicans split over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s firing of a top general, JD Vance suggesting that if Watergate happened today it would barely register in the news cycle, the latest on the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, and much more.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• New York Times, Analysis: How Trump’s Political Agenda Is Shaped by His Own Obsessions, Tyler Pager, June 26, 2026. President Trump’s priorities seem increasingly detached from the concerns of voters and his party.

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice

• The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Six Unelected Justices Just Gave Trump the Power to Ignore Congress and Every American Should Be Terrified, Thom Hartmann, right, June 26, 2026. Congress passed the laws. Previous presidents signed them. The Supreme Court has now declared they can be ignored whenever this particular president chooses (but not Biden)...Something happened inside the Supreme Court chamber on Thursday that almost never happens: Justice Sonia Sotomayor was so disgusted by what the six radical, on-the-take Republican appointees had just done that she read her dissent aloud from the bench, and Justice Samuel Alito, who’d written the majority opinion, snapped back at her in real time, a breach of the Court’s normally stage-managed decorum that left veteran reporters in the room visibly startled in slack-jawed amazement.
• Public Notice, Trump's lawless witch hunt of Tim Walz crashes and burns,It's a remarkable setback for the DOJ, Lisa Needham, One thing that is becoming increasingly clear as President Trump’s second term grinds on is that the lower courts have had enough and aren’t interested in entertaining the administration’s persistent lawlessness.

Trump Free Speech Crackdowns On Public

• New York Times, Prosecutors in Washington Say Citations Have Been Issued at Reflecting Pool, Clarence Williams, June 26, 2026. A spokesman provided no further details, saying those who received the citations were ordered to appear in court at a later date. No records are available.
• New York Times, Trump Administration: D.C. Settles Suit With Protester Arrested After Playing ‘Star Wars’ Song Near Deployed Troops, Chris Cameron, June 26, 2026. Sam O’Hara was playing “Imperial March,” the theme of the film series villains, while protesting the presence of National Guard troops in the capital when he was handcuffed by city police officers.

More Global News  

• New York Times, Venezuela Live Updates: Rescuers Search for Quake Survivors as Leader Calls to ‘Militarize’ Area, Fabiola Ferrero, Julie Turkewitz, Genevieve Glatsky, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Alan Yuhas, June 26, 2026. A Venezuelan official said that two powerful earthquakes on Wednesday had killed 920 people and left more than 3,000 injured. The United States and Mexico were among the latest to send support, as hundreds remained missing or trapped under rubble.
• The Geo Network, The Northern Gates SEALED... Ukraine ERASES 11 Bridges To Starve Putin's Army, Staff Report, June 26, 2026. Crimea is officially an island. In just 17 days, Ukraine has completely sealed the northern gates, executing precision strikes that erased 11 critical bridges and severed Putin's only logistical bloodlines.
• New York Times, Ukrainian Attacks Spur State of Emergency Declaration in Crimea, Ivan Nechepurenko and Nataliya Vasilyeva, June 26, 2026. Weeks of intense strikes by Ukraine have rattled everyday life in Crimea to an extent unseen since Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.
• New York Times, Zelensky Steps Up Threats Against Belarus for Aiding Drone Attacks, Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko, June 26, 2026. Ukrainian officials say their northern neighbor is allowing its radio relay stations to be used to guide Russian attack drones more precisely.

More On Iran-Lebanon War 

• New York Times, Trump Says Iran Attack on Cargo Ship Violated the Cease-fire, Euan Ward and Jenny Gross, June 26, 2026. The president did not say how or whether he would respond, a day after Iran fired on a container ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz, an act Mr. Trump called “foolish.”
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Guy with Crusader Tats Suffers Humiliating Defeat at Hands of Islamic Republic, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right,), June 26, 2026. It’s a testament to the dysfunctionality of the Trump regime that his defense secretary — a guy who plastered his body with Crusader tattoos — lost in humiliating fashion to Iran’s Islamic Republic. Yet has not been fired.

More On U.S. National Security, Military, Intelligence 

• New York Times, John Bolton, Former Trump Adviser, Pleads Guilty in Classified Information Case, Aishvarya Kavi and Devlin Barrett, June 26, 2026. Mr. Bolton, shown above in a file photo, admitted to mishandling classified information and could face time in prison, in an inquiry that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations.
• The Steady State, Tulsi’s Final Intelligence Failure, James P Petrila, June 26, 2026. When truth and propaganda can occupy the same briefing. As she was being pushed out the door by her temporary replacement, the eminently unqualified William Pulte, Tulsi Gabbard,right, rescinded a flawed intelligence product that had turned a blind eye to Russian attacks on US government officials, then pivoted to resurrect a Russian information operation that falsely claimed the US was supporting the development of bioweapons in Ukraine.

More On U.S. Immigration Law, Deportations, Rights 

• New York Times, Immigration Hard-Liners Repeatedly Lost in Court Before Justices Ruled in Their Favor, Hamed Aleaziz, June 26, 2026. “This is a victory 10 years in the making,” a White House official said after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could end deportation protections for some migrants.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Adding Ingratitude to Injury, William Kristol, right, June 26, 2026. America today has lots of hard-working immigrants, and plenty of native-born citizens who accept and respect them. But there are also plenty of Americans these days who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
• New York Times, News Analysis: Justices Clash on Whether Race Played a Role in Trump’s Bid to Deport Haitians, Adam Liptak, June 25, 2026. The split mirrored one that has long divided Americans: how seriously to take the president’s loose, provocative and sometimes ugly remarks.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Forward Together, Backward by Order, Jim Swift, June 26, 2026. What organizers had hoped would be an evening of celebration was instead an interfaith prayer service. Ministers, immigration lawyers, community organizers, Haitian families, and hundreds of their neighbors gathered in front of Springfield City Hall beneath the city’s motto, “Forward Together,” alternating between English and Creole as they decried the Supreme Court’s decision and prepared for what many fear could become mass deportations.

U.S. Anniversary, Culture, Media, Religion

• New York Times, MAGA Groups Help Trump Push Cultural Change in Schools, Michael C. Bender, June 26, 2026. One nonprofit, Defending Education, initiated nearly a dozen civil rights investigations targeting diversity programs and transgender policies.losing millions of dollars in federal funding.
• The New Republic, Analysis: Trump’s America 250 Fair Running Into Major Issues After Just One Day, Edith Olmsted, June 25, 2026. The “Great American State Fair” is already facing major problems—and it’s not only because states are pulling out. 

American History Worth Remembering 

• Doomesday Scenario, Analysis: JD Vance and the Latest Nixon Cover-Up, Garrett M. Graff, June 26, 2026. The vice president is utterly wrong about Watergate—but correct about its legacy.share on facebookshare on twittershare on threadsshare on linkedin.
• New York Times, Opinion: The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember, Jesse Wegman, June 26, 2026. George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay — these are the most famous men associated with the American founding, yet, according to research by William Ewald, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, none appear to have uttered the Declaration’s preamble aloud in public after 1776. Not “created equal,” not “self-evident,” not “pursuit of happiness,” not “unalienable.”
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 25, 2026 [Custer's Last Stand], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 26, 2026. Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who led the 7th Cavalry, lost his entire command to Lakota warriors after falling on them unexpectedly in their own territory. The only army survivor of the battle was a horse, Comanche, who became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot, trotted out draped in ceremonial black for years after the event itself.

Top Headlines

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger andJim Swift, June 26, 2026. Springfield, Ohio meets MAGA cruelty with humanitarian dignity.

All this time later, the Epstein story still isn’t going away as quickly as the White House would like: Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had “conceded” the Justice Department remains in violation of the Epstein Transparency Act.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction that—per Politico—“gives Blanche a week to release certain names and other information redacted by DOJ from the millions of pages of the Epstein files, or provide a more detailed explanation for withholding them.” Happy Friday.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Important Friday Morning News Update, Aaron Parnas, right, June 26, 2026. Lots of news to cover today, including new reporting alleging President Trump has an unusually close relationship with an aide nearly 50 years younger than him, Republicans split over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s firing of a top general, JD Vance suggesting that if Watergate happened today it would barely register in the news cycle, the latest on the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, and much more.

Many of you have been asking when the Supreme Court will release its next opinions. The Court will issue decisions on Monday. There are still eight cases remaining, and Monday will not be the final opinion day of the term, so the birthright citizenship case may not be among those released.

Domestic news:

Donald Trump is being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with one of his aides who happens to be fifty years younger than him. According to Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Natalie Harp became one of Donald Trump's closest aides after joining his orbit in 2022, earning the nickname "the human printer" because she constantly follows him with a portable printer to provide paper copies of emails, articles, and other materials. The book says Harp left highly personal notes for Trump in his private spaces, including one that reportedly read, "You are all that matters to me," which unsettled future White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Regime Change also reports that Trump viewed Harp as uniquely loyal, telling aides she was "the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids" and saying, "She'll never leave me." The book portrays Harp as one of Trump's most devoted aides and describes her unusually close working relationship with the president.

Republican lawmakers are split over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's decision to force the retirement of Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and a widely respected Army officer. Several Republicans, including Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Michael McCaul, criticized the move, arguing Donahue's removal weakens military leadership and reflects a broader pattern of dismissing experienced officers without explanation. Other GOP lawmakers urged caution, saying the Pentagon should be given the opportunity to explain its decision before drawing conclusions. Donahue's ouster is the latest in a series of senior military leadership shakeups under Hegseth that have fueled bipartisan concerns about transparency and the politicization of the armed forces.

JD Vance on Richard Nixon:

“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story. If you look at how the deep state took down Nixon, it’s not dissimilar from what they tried to do to Trump.”

Nixon resigned after the Watergate scandal, which involved a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters and a subsequent cover-up by his administration.

Asked why he titled a chapter "More Money, More Problems," JD Vance joked that the phrase came from "the great Christian theologian P. Diddy," adding that the quip would likely end up in a future attack ad before pivoting to his actual answer.

Asked whether the Trump administration expects to deport people who lose Temporary Protected Status following the Supreme Court's ruling, Stephen Miller's response was one word: "Of course."

The lengthy prison sentences imposed on anti-ICE protesters convicted in connection with a Fourth of July demonstration at the Prairieland ICE detention center have sparked alarm from civil liberties advocates and legal experts, who say the punishments are unusually severe. Eight protesters received sentences ranging from 50 to 100 years, while a ninth person was sentenced to 30 years for moving boxes of political literature after a phone call with his wife, one of the defendants. First Amendment groups argue the case criminalizes political dissent, while sentencing experts say stacking multiple convictions to produce such lengthy prison terms is uncommon in federal court. The defendants are expected to appeal their convictions and sentences, and critics warn the case could have a chilling effect on future protest activity.

Senate Republicans are struggling to find a path to pass President Trump’s SAVE America Act and billions of dollars in emergency defense funding before the midterm elections. Trump urged GOP senators to find a way around the Senate filibuster, including by using the budget reconciliation process, but several Republicans remain skeptical that the strategy is legally or politically viable. The party is also divided over whether to attach the election bill to other legislation, and some GOP senators warn Trump’s preferred version still lacks enough Republican votes to pass. Democrats, meanwhile, oppose additional defense funding without congressional authorization for military action against Iran, leaving Republican leaders searching for a legislative strategy.

New York City's Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze rents for roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments for two years, fulfilling a central campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The freeze applies to eligible apartments beginning Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027, and was celebrated by tenant advocates as a major affordability victory. Mamdani said the decision would help keep the city affordable while he continues pursuing additional housing and tenant protections. The vote comes just days after several Mamdani-backed progressive candidates defeated Democratic incumbents, highlighting his growing political influence within New York politics.

House Democrats are demanding that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin release a full list of contracts he has canceled or modified after promising to review spending approved under former Secretary Kristi Noem. Lawmakers say they have yet to receive details despite Mullin’s earlier commitment and are seeking an accounting of contracts tied to allegations of wasteful spending, including luxury jet purchases, self-promotional advertising, and costly warehouse acquisitions. Democrats argue the department should independently investigate questionable contracts rather than relying solely on inspectors general to identify misconduct. The request comes as DHS plans to sell or give away several expensive warehouses purchased under Noem that were originally intended to be used as detention centers.

Sen. Bernie Sanders released internal HHS emails that he says show Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured the CDC to alter vaccine messaging, restrict vaccine access, and cancel public flu vaccination campaigns. The emails also suggest Kennedy's office required political approval for major CDC decisions, and Sanders argues former CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after refusing to endorse recommendations from the agency's vaccine advisory panel. Sanders has called for a bipartisan investigation into Monarez's dismissal and is urging Congress to hold hearings on Kennedy's handling of vaccine policy. HHS had not responded to the allegations at the time of publication.

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one count of retaining national security information after previously pleading not guilty to multiple classified information charges. According to the plea agreement, Bolton acknowledged retaining an electronic diary entry containing national security information that he shared with two family members, and he reportedly agreed to pay $2.25 million in restitution. He now faces a potential sentence ranging from probation to up to five years in prison, with sentencing expected within 90 days. Bolton's attorney has maintained that the material came from his personal diaries and argued that the underlying facts had already been investigated years earlier.

Sen. Maggie Hassan is demanding answers from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over reports that a "well-connected" individual received exclusive access to the experimental weight loss drug retatrutide through the FDA's compassionate use program. Hassan questioned whether the recipient was President Trump or someone closely tied to his administration, arguing that the program is intended for patients with serious or life-threatening conditions who have no other treatment options. She accused the administration of potentially bending federal rules to provide preferential treatment while millions of Americans struggle to access weight loss medications. The White House has denied that Trump was the recipient, and Hassan is seeking information about who approved the special access request.

New York Knicks owner James Dolan said the team has accepted an invitation to visit the White House after winning the NBA championship, though details are still being finalized. Finals MVP Jalen Brunson said to reporters that the players have not yet discussed the visit as a team and declined to say whether he plans to attend. Dolan, a longtime friend of President Trump, said he was "very proud" to bring the team to the White House and had previously invited Trump to attend a Finals game. The visit comes as some championship teams have declined White House invitations during Trump's presidencies, often citing political disagreements or scheduling conflicts.

Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the 1992 murder of his wife, making him the oldest person executed in the state's modern history. Spencer was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife after previously threatening to kill her and assaulting her teenage son during the attack. The execution was carried out by lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, which argued that his age and health conditions made the execution unconstitutional. Florida is scheduled to execute another 74-year-old inmate next month, continuing a record pace of executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing a national wealth tax after opposing a separate California ballot measure that would impose a one-time tax on the state’s billionaires. His plan would require billionaires and individuals worth at least $100 million to pay a minimum tax, close tax loopholes for the ultra-wealthy, and create a national public equity fund that would give Americans a financial stake in the AI industry. Newsom argues that growing wealth inequality and the concentration of economic power among the richest Americans are undermining democracy and leaving working families behind. He also says the AI fund would help ensure Americans benefit financially as artificial intelligence transforms the economy and displaces jobs.

International news:

At least 589 people have been killed and nearly 3,000 injured after twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela, with rescuers racing to find survivors before the critical 72-hour rescue window closes. The hardest-hit areas include Caracas and La Guaira, where more than 100 buildings have collapsed, leaving thousands homeless and many people still trapped beneath the rubble. International rescue teams and aid have begun arriving as emergency workers continue searching for survivors and restoring essential services.

Experts say decades of corruption, aging infrastructure, and poor enforcement of building codes likely contributed to the widespread destruction, with many vulnerable buildings dating back to the 1950s and 1960s or constructed without modern seismic standards. Human rights organizations are also urging Venezuelan authorities to allow political prisoners to contact their families and ensure detention centers are safe in the earthquake’s aftermath. Officials expect the death toll to continue rising as search operations continue across the devastated region.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a series of weapons tests and called for the military to strengthen its "deadly and destructive offensive posture" as the country continues expanding both its nuclear and conventional capabilities. The tests included a tactical ballistic missile with a "special mission" warhead, an upgraded multiple rocket launcher, and extended-range artillery designed to improve North Korea's ability to strike targets in South Korea, including U.S. military bases. The exercises came just days after North Korea commissioned its first 5,000-ton destroyer, reflecting Kim's broader military modernization campaign. North Korea continues to reject renewed negotiations with the United States and South Korea unless Washington abandons its demand for denuclearization.

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone attacks of the war, with Russia claiming its air defenses intercepted 660 drones across 12 regions, occupied Crimea, and surrounding waters. The strike came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had ordered a "40-day influence operation" aimed at increasing pressure on Russia following stalled peace efforts. Ukrainian long-range drone attacks have increasingly targeted Russian energy infrastructure and military logistics, with the goal of disrupting fuel supplies, slowing battlefield operations, and forcing Moscow toward negotiations. Russia reported limited damage and one injury, while Ukraine said it also intercepted most of the 189 Russian drones launched overnight, though several ballistic missiles struck civilian infrastructure.

Russian-installed authorities in occupied Crimea have declared a state of economic emergency following repeated Ukrainian attacks that have disrupted fuel supplies and tourism. Officials have suspended tourism, children's summer camps, and all civilian fuel sales as they respond to worsening shortages, rising fuel prices, and long lines at gas stations. The emergency declaration is intended to speed government decision-making to maintain essential services, though authorities have not explained what additional measures it will include. Ukraine has increasingly targeted energy and logistical infrastructure in Crimea as part of its broader effort to weaken Russia's military capabilities and isolate the occupied peninsula.

Senior European officials are warning that pro-Russian groups are deliberately trying to manipulate popular AI chatbots by flooding the internet with propaganda designed to influence how AI systems respond to users. They say the effort is intended to get chatbots to repeat Kremlin talking points, creating a new avenue for foreign disinformation ahead of the U.S. midterm elections and other democratic votes. Officials argue that, unlike traditional social media campaigns, AI-generated responses could quietly shape public opinion by presenting propaganda as neutral information. They are calling for democracies to work together to counter these influence operations before they become even more widespread.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates briefly issued an incoming missile alert for Dubai on Friday before sounding an all-clear just minutes later without explaining the cause. The alert came amid heightened regional tensions after a suspected Iranian drone attack on a commercial tanker off the coast of Oman the previous day. Iran has increasingly challenged U.S. and allied maritime operations in and around the Strait of Hormuz despite an interim agreement aimed at reducing hostilities. Officials have not yet said whether the alert was linked to any confirmed threat.

Myanmar authorities destroyed more than 50 tons of seized heroin, methamphetamine, ketamine, marijuana, and other illegal drugs with an estimated street value of $600 million as part of events marking the U.N.'s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Officials said the value of drugs destroyed this year was more than double last year's total, reflecting the growing scale of the country's illicit drug trade. Experts say Myanmar's ongoing civil war and political instability since the 2021 military coup have fueled increased drug production, with some armed groups financing their operations through narcotics trafficking. The military government says it is continuing to target drug production sites, though trafficking remains widespread in parts of the country outside its control.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Analysis: How Trump’s Political Agenda Is Shaped by His Own Obsessions, Tyler Pager, June 26, 2026. President Trump’s priorities seem increasingly detached from the concerns of voters and his party

President Trump says he doesn’t care about the midterm elections. He says he doesn’t think much about Americans’ economic hardship resulting from the war in Iran. And now he is brushing off a landmark, bipartisan bill to lower housing costs in the United States, characterizing the legislation as a matter of “minor importance.”

At a moment of political peril for the president and Republicans, Mr. Trump’s priorities seem increasingly detached from the concerns of voters and his party. His focus is trained on his own obsessions and pet projects, including his expansive and costly renovations at the White House and around the nation’s capital, a topic that he returns to again and again.

“The thing I do best in life is build,” Mr. Trump said last month, as he summoned reporters to the White House to show off progress on his $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which is being erected on the site of the now-demolished East Wing.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has been especially animated about issues with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which he ordered painted blue but has since been plagued by blooms of green algae and peeling polyurethane.

Perhaps the most telling example came on Wednesday, when Mr. Trump refused to sign the housing bill until Republicans passed legislation that he cared about more: the SAVE America Act. Mr. Trump contends the bill would address his claims of widespread election fraud, which have repeatedly been debunked.ImageMr. Trump with Senator John Thune, the majority leader. White House officials dispute the notion that the president has hindered Republicans’ political agenda.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Mr. Trump has exhorted his party to change Senate rules to pass the legislation, but Republicans say they do not have the votes to do that.

The episode has left many Republicans privately seething, in part because all the president had to do was show up and sign the housing bill, which they hoped would help prove to voters they were trying to bring down costs.

The stage had been set in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall for the signing ceremony, and the White House had already started its victory lap. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called the bill “another promise made, promise kept.” James Blair, a top political adviser to the president, said the legislation fulfilled “a signature commitment.”

But less than 90 minutes before Mr. Trump was supposed to arrive on Capitol Hill, he canceled “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”

He also said the housing bill was of “minor importance” compared with his other goals.

For much of his professional life, Mr. Trump has acted on impulse, and even his allies lament that he could benefit from more discipline and long-term planning. Most Republicans hesitate to publicly criticize the president, fearful his wrath will end their political careers. But as they work to keep control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, Republicans running for re-election privately acknowledge that the president’s political agenda is often out of step with theirs.

“President Trump has had limited legislative wins in his first two years, and this bipartisan housing bill addresses an important issue for many families and directly addresses their affordability concerns,” Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in Texas, wrote in a text message. “If he had substantive problems with the bill, they should have been communicated before the House and Senate passed it overwhelmingly.”

He added, “Congressional Republicans want to take the win and talk about it back home, but as of now he’s not letting them.”ImageNothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.  

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice

The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Six Unelected Justices Just Gave Trump the Power to Ignore Congress and Every American Should Be Terrified, Thom Hartmann, right, June 26, 2026. Congress passed the laws. Previous presidents signed them. The Supreme Court has now declared they can be ignored whenever this particular president chooses (but not Biden)...

Something happened inside the Supreme Court chamber on Thursday that almost never happens: Justice Sonia Sotomayor was so disgusted by what the six radical, on-the-take Republican appointees had just done that she read her dissent aloud from the bench, and Justice Samuel Alito, who’d written the majority opinion, snapped back at her in real time, a breach of the Court’s normally stage-managed decorum that left veteran reporters in the room visibly startled in slack-jawed amazement.

On the surface they were fighting about asylum seekers. But Sotomayor understood, as Alito surely did, that the real question wasn’t who gets to cross the border: it was whether the laws Congress writes still mean anything once a neofascist, imperial president (like Alito and his peers want) decides he’d rather not follow them because he’s above the law.

To understand this — and why it’s so insanely radical — look carefully at what the Court actually did in the two 6-3 all-Republican immigration rulings it handed down yesterday morning.

Back in 1980, a bipartisan Congress passed the Refugee Act to bring American law in line with our promise not to send the persecuted back to be killed, and it laid out a specific, mandatory set of steps.

Under the law Congress wrote that year, a noncitizen who reaches our border and says she fears persecution gets referred for an asylum interview to determine the legitimacy of her fear of violence or death in her home country or the country she’s fleeing. The word Congress chose to write into the law was the administration “shall,” not “may,” hold that hearing and a judge “shall” make that determination.

On Thursday the Republicans on the Court, however, ruled that Trump can erase or effectively ignore that law by simply ordering border agents to physically block people on the Mexican (or, presumably, Canadian or at an airport arrival) side of the line, so they never technically “arrive in the United States” and the law never kicks in.

Sotomayor called the reasoning illogical, because it is. A person standing at the threshold of a port of entry has plainly arrived. The Republican Trump toadies on the Court, however, pretended otherwise so Trump’s racial enforcers could essentially ignore both the intention and the letter of the law that elected members from both parties in Congress wrote.

The second ruling is even worse, albeit quieter.

Congress (whose job is to write laws for the United States) created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 1990 for people who can’t safely go home, and it built in court review of whether an administration followed the required procedures before yanking that status away.

The Trump administration recently tried to strip TPS protections from hundreds of thousands of Black Haitians and brown-skinned Syrians as part of its “Make America White Again” program, and multiple lower courts found it had ignored those procedures the law requires, noting that Trump’s Haiti decision, in particular, was tainted by racial animus (hate of Black people from what Trump calls “shithole countries”).

As Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog wrote about Justice Elana Kagan’s reaction:

“Kagan called it ‘plain to see’ that race played a role in the decision to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti. ‘The evidence’ that the Haiti TPS beneficiaries ‘have offered,’ she stressed, ‘includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.’ But those ‘statements fairly shout,’ she said, ‘in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.’”

The Republican majority didn’t even bother to say if the Trump regime had or had not complied with the plain letter and clear intent of the law Congress passed. Instead, the six corrupt Republicans on the Court declared that no court anywhere in America is allowed to even ask if Trump, et al, are breaking that particular law (an oversight process by a court called “judicial review”).

As the American Immigration Council pointed out, that means even an openly illegal decision is now insulated from any review by any judge in the country, closing the courthouse door in a way that, in my opinion, even the most conservative of the Founders would have found astonishing and plainly unconstitutional.

Congress, in other words, wrote a law that told the courts to check the legitimacy of asylum seekers claims to determine if they can or cannot stay here and apply for legal status; writing such laws is what the Constitution requires of an elected Congress.

But the six radical justices that rightwing billlionaires have spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to get on the Supreme Court told all the rest of the courts in America to simply look away and ignore the law. They’re not allowed to enforce it any more, even though Congress passed it and a president signed it.

Robert Reich put his finger on it yesterday afternoon, noting in his excellent newsletter that:

“[A] majority of the current Supreme Court — the abominable Roberts Court — has bent over backwards to ignore those laws.

“This must be seen for what it really is — a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.

“If there was any doubt before, there should be none now: The Supreme Court is part of the anti-democracy movement led by Trump and the billionaires behind him.”

This agreement with Trump’s racist efforts to purge America of Black and brown refugees aren’t only losses for those would-be immigrants. As Reich points out, these decisions are stripping power from Congress, from the basic idea that the people’s elected representatives get to write laws that the Constitution requires a president to obey.

The Court’s defenders will tell you I’m being unfair in that assessment, claiming that the justices are just neutral umpires reading statutes as written. But that’s a lie, and recent history proves it.

Back in 2021, this very same Court struck down Joe Biden's pandemic eviction moratorium, the one keeping millions of struggling families in their homes during a deadly COVID surge, ruling that his CDC had reached “past what Congress allowed” and declaring that if such a moratorium were going to continue, Congress, and not the president, would have to specifically authorize it.

Just a few years later, the same conservative bloc reasoned its way to blocking Joe Biden’s student debt relief, insisting Congress would never hand a president that kind of authority without saying so in unmistakable language.

When a Democratic president acts, in other words, they read laws Congress has passed with a magnifying glass and demand crystal-clear permissions. But when Trump (or, presumably, future Republican presidents) wants to shred the asylum process or wants his immigration purges of nonwhite people placed beyond the reach of any judge, the magnifying glass disappears and the words suddenly bend whichever way Trump wants.

These six lawyers in robes started from the outcome that today’s captured hard-right MAGA Republican Party and its white supremacist Dear Leader wants and reverse-engineered their reasoning to reach it, and the reasoning changes from case to case because the only thing that has to stay fixed is who wins.

As Sotomayer wrote, pointing to that magnifying glass in her dissent to yesterday’s Mullin v. Al Otro Lado decision:

“The Court’s illogical interpretation [of Congress’ written law] is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: ‘in.’”

And the consequences of these decisions aren’t merely academic: people will die because of the actions these corrupt Republicans just took allowing the President and his whiteness enforcers to ignore the statutes that Congress wrote, both parties passed, and presidents signed into law. As Sotomayor also wrote in her dissent:

“One woman who had fled Honduras after receiving death threats from gang members was beaten, cut, and knocked unconscious by an unknown man after being turned back from a port of entry. Another asylum seeker who was turned back at a port three times was later raped in the presence of her child.

“Those living in migrant camps were subjected to break-ins, robberies, and assaults, ‘fac[ing] serious harm at the hands of criminal organizations, including kidnapping, extortion, physical violence, and sexual assault.’ Some were ‘murdered in Mexico while waiting for an opportunity to be processed by U. S. officials.’

“Desperate to flee these conditions and secure the opportunity to apply for asylum, ‘[s]ome attempted to reach U. S. soil by other means,’ including by attempting to cross the border between ports of entry by trekking through deserts or swimming across the Rio Grande. Often, these efforts had tragic ends.

“One couple that grew discouraged after a month of waiting in a camp near the border decided to cross the river and ask for asylum once they reached U. S. soil, but they were caught in a swift current and drowned. Another woman also drowned, along with her 2-year-old son, after she gave up waiting in a tent camp and attempted to swim across the river. Hundreds of others have met a similar fate, and many more died crossing the desert along the southern border, all making 2020 and 2021 some of the ‘deadliest year[s] for migrant crossings’ in various regions of the southern border.”

I lived and worked in Germany in the 1980s, and you couldn’t be there in those years without feeling how the entire postwar refugee framework — in America and across postwar Europe — grew out of one unbearable lesson, that turning desperate people away at the door and sending them back to die is something decent nations swore they’d never do again.

In 1939, the United States turned away the St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Nazi Germany purge of all “non-Aryan” people. The ship returned to Europe where the Nazis seized its passengers, ultimately murdering 254 of them in the “detention centers” Germany ran in occupied countries.

Americans were horrified and humiliated as the story became known well after the war, and the Refugee Act of 1980 was our nation writing the promise that we’d never repeat such a horror into law; it passed with broad bipartisan support.

On Thursday of this week five unelected men and one unelected woman in robes decided that promise is now optional for a president who welcomes white South African “refugees” but wants to purge American of people whose skin is darker than his.

I’ve argued for years, including in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, that Republicans on this Court long ago seized powers the Framers never gave it, and have — since Nixon flipped the court to the right and appointed Lewis Powell (of Powell Memo infamy) in 1972 — spent the last fifty years using them on behalf of the morbidly rich and the party that serves them.

From Buckley in 1976 and Bellotti (written by Powell himself in 1978) through Citizens United in 2010, this generation’s Republican justices — each carefully placed on the Court by big money interests since the 1980s — rewrote our democracy and turned it into an auction; earlier this term they even gutted what was left of the Voting Rights Act to help solidify raw GOP political power.

Now they’re telling Congress its laws are merely suggestions whenever a Republican president disagrees.

Justice Louis Brandeis warned us a century ago that, “[W]e can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can’t have both.” The morbidly rich men who put these justices on the Court made their choice, and the justices are delivering for them, tearing another bite out of our democracy with every decision.

The good news is that the branch the Court just tried to sideline is the one closest to you. Ahilan Arulanantham, who argued the Syrian case, urged Congress to act to overrule the Court, and he’s right, because Congress can restore judicial review, can rewrite these statutes in language even Sam Alito can’t twist, can expand and rebalance the Court itself, and can be made to do all of it if enough of us demand it.

Call your senators and representative at 202-224-3121 and tell them a Court declaring Congress irrelevant is a five-alarm constitutional emergency: we need a judicial code of ethics for SCOTUS so they have the follow the same laws as all other federal judges must; impeachment hearings for Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts; 18-year term limits; and a rapid expansion of the Court to at least 13 members to bring it into line with previous, historic ratios to other senior courts.

None of this changes unless ordinary people refuse to let it stand. So get loud, stay in it, and if this piece helped you understand what really happened yesterday, share it and send people to hartmannreport.com so more of us understand exactly what we’re up against, exactly who to hold responsible, and how. 

Public Notice, Trump's lawless witch hunt of Tim Walz crashes and burns,It's a remarkable setback for the DOJ, Lisa Needham, One thing that is becoming increasingly clear as President Trump’s second term grinds on is that the lower courts have had enough and aren’t interested in entertaining the administration’s persistent lawlessness.

In a truly remarkable setback for the Department of Justice, the chief judge of the United States District Court in Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, quashed six grand jury subpoenas targeting state and local elected officials, saying they “were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”

The DOJ’s attempt to force Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and both the Ramsey and Hennepin County Boards of Commissioners to provide vast amounts of documents relating to immigration enforcement could not have failed more miserably.

Judge Schiltz’s order is low-key furious, a masterclass in politely simmering rage, unspooling the myriad ways the administration laid siege to Minnesota and how those subpoenas fit in. But before digging into Schiltz’s recap of Operation Metro Surge, a little bit of a detour is required in order to understand how rarely this happens.The law is not on DOJ’s side

When it comes to grand jury subpoenas, the government enjoys a remarkable amount of deference from the courts. Those subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable, and a party challenging them has the burden of overcoming that presumption of regularity. Additionally, unlike search warrants, grand jury subpoenas don’t require a showing of probable cause.

Because of this, it’s very hard to get out from under a grand jury subpoena. Courts can quash them if “compliance would be unreasonable or oppressive.” This usually involves an overbroad demand, where the government asks for tons of records that have no meaningful relevance to the case. Courts can also quash a subpoena if the “dominant” purpose of it is improper. Investigations initiated out of malice or with the intent to harass fall into this category.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that these subpoenas managed to run afoul of both of these.

But the evidence showing that the subpoenas were issued “as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so” was so strong that the court quashed the subpoenas for that reason alone.

It’s tough to remember that in the beginning, Operation Metro Surge was ostensibly about stopping fraud at daycare centers, an explanation that made so little sense that the administration didn’t even bother to keep up the fiction for very long. After the state filed a lawsuit challenging Operation Metro Surge on January 12, Trump went on social media the next day and threatened to cut off all federal funding to Minnesota and other sanctuary states, making clear what this was really all about.How Hennepin County unwound an ICE agent's web of liesHow Hennepin County unwound an ICE agent's web of liesLisa Needham·May 21Read full story

By January 16, the White House was warning Minnesota that “‘Sanctuary’ Defiance Has Consequences,” and blaming state and local officials for refusing to “partner” with the administration and help with federal immigration enforcement. Trump threatened “RETRIBUTION” while Blanche went on TV to say Walz and Frey may have committed federal crimes. On January 20, the administration served the six subpoenas.

Here’s where the combination of arrogance and stupidity that is the hallmark of this administration tripped them up.

First, as Judge Schiltz noted, the subpoenas demanded all records related to federal immigration enforcement dating back to January 1, 2025, nearly one year before Operation Metro Surge began. Investigating the alleged federal crimes of Walz and Frey during the surge doesn’t allow the government to reach back in time and scour state and local communications in the hopes of turning something up.

Put another way, if one takes the government at its word that this was a good-faith investigation into whether the actions of Minnesota officials during the surge constituted a crime, documents from well before the surge that merely discussed federal immigration could not help prove that. Well, unless you believe that the mere act of discussing immigration policy and expressing displeasure with the federal government is a crime, which the DOJ kind of actually does.The investigation is the coverupThe investigation is the coverupLiz Dye·Jan 28Read full story

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the federal government is entitled to records dating back that far. There’s still the issue of what crime, exactly, Walz, Frey, and other state and local elected officials are alleged to have committed.

Here are the things the DOJ thinks are crimes:

A proposed “Separation Ordinance” introduced by a Minneapolis City Council member requiring any city official who becomes aware of ICE activity to report it to the city council.

A Minneapolis City Council member’s public advocacy for an eviction moratorium, saying no family should have to choose between a roof over their heads and risking being kidnapped by ICE.

Internal guidance issued by Ramsey County saying “no data or document should be provided to the ICE agent, regardless of warrant or subpoena.”

Training materials from Hennepin County on how to respond to ICE agents, including instructing staff, if presented with a warrant, to ask for a few minutes to contact leadership. If ICE demands to apprehend someone, staff were instructed to provide no information, refuse entry, and escalate to a supervisor. If an ICE agent threatened to use force or did use force, staff were instructed not to obstruct the agent.”

First, if you are as eagle-eyed as Judge Schiltz, you’ll note that the first two alleged crimes were committed by Minneapolis City Council members — an entity that was not subpoenaed. So, citing those things as support for sweeping subpoenas of different government entities doesn’t work. Nor are either of those things crimes, which is kind of a big problem.

Additionally, as much as the federal government would like it to be otherwise, it is very much not illegal to observe and record law enforcement agents, nor is it illegal to disseminate information about those agents.

As far as the terrible crime of issuing guidance to staff on how to deal with ICE, Judge Schiltz noted that “none of this is itself unlawful, nor does any of this encourage unlawful behavior.” Further, the government’s attempt to say that those benign policies actually show a violation of 18 U.S.C. 111 also fell apart. That statute makes it a crime to forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, or interfere with federal agents, and the big operative word here is “forcibly.”Why Delia Ramirez thinks DHS needs to be dismantledWhy Delia Ramirez thinks DHS needs to be dismantledNoah Berlatsky·Feb 6Read full story

Only actual physical contact or a display of physical aggression that would inspire fear of pain or death in an ICE agent violates this statute. So, instructions to staff to not impede or interfere with federal agents don’t really fit the bill.

Nor is it a violation of 8 U.S.C. 1324, criminalizing the “harboring” of undocumented aliens, to tell employees that if a law enforcement officer shows up with a subpoena, that should be escalated to supervisors or legal counsel, said Judge Schiltz, who must have the patience of a saint to keep unpacking this incredibly obvious, self-evident point for federal prosecutors who should not have any trouble whatsoever grasping this.

Judge Schiltz’s order also hearkens back to when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the quiet part extremely out loud, sending a letter to Gov. Walz on the same day ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti laying bare the tradeoff the federal government was demanding in exchange for ICE agents stopping their murderous rampage: (1) give the administration all of the state’s Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service data; (2) give the administration all of the state’s voter data; (3) repeal all sanctuary policies.Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comBondi: "Why this has happened in Minneapolis is because you have a mayor and governor who have declared Minneapolis a sanctuary city ... these are all the illegals that Joe Biden was letting into our country, and they were all going to Minneapolis because the mayor, governor, AG was protecting them"Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:25:32 GMTView on Bluesky

With all of this, this wasn’t even a close call for Judge Schiltz, who agreed with the Minnesota officials that the subpoenas were issued as “part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so”

Here’s the problem the administration cannot get around, legally, so it keeps trying to get around it illegally: the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states.

That’s the basis for the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, which prevents the federal government from making states use their own resources to administer or enforce federal law. That’s the reason sanctuary policies are perfectly legal and have been upheld multiple times. In fact, the same day that Judge Schiltz unsealed his order quashing the subpoena, a federal court in Los Angeles threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit over the city’s sanctuary policy.Don Moynihan on "Purge, Merge, and Surge"Don Moynihan on "Purge, Merge, and Surge"Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson·November 8, 2025Read full story

At its root, all a sanctuary policy says is “we will not be forced to use our state resources to help the federal government on a wholly federal issue.” In the case of the subpoenas, Judge Schiltz said that under the anti-commandeering rule, the federal government cannot coerce or retaliate against the state to compel it to enforce federal immigration law.

But that’s exactly what the federal government was doing here.

With that, as Judge Schiltz noted, the subpoenas were self-evidently issued for an improper reason, and therefore must be quashed:

“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take-is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand-jury process.”

Add to that the fact that what the subpoenas purported to investigate was conduct that was perfectly legal, and the subpoenas were done for.

Judge Schiltz’s order was undoubtedly in the works long before the DOJ charged 15 anti-ICE protestors in Minnesota earlier this month. However, it’s impossible not to read this order as in some way speaking to those charges. As is the case here, those charges attempt to criminalize constitutionally-protected activity, such as talking about ICE, observing ICE, and vowing to resist ICE.

The now-quashed subpoenas were an attack on elected officials who dare to maintain sanctuary policies, which are entirely legal, and the charges against protesters are an attack on people who dared to resist ICE, which is entirely legal. Yes, it’s possible that sanctuary policies or resistance efforts could somehow lead to violent actions against federal agents, but in and of themselves, those things are simply not crimes.

But the federal government really, really wants them to be crimes, and that’s what both the subpoenas and the indictments are about.This is a crisis of democracy. What will Dems do about it?This is a crisis of democracy. What will Dems do about it?Paul Waldman·May 11Read full story

That became starkly, awfully clear one day after Judge Schiltz’s order, when eight defendants in the Prairieland trial in Texas were sentenced to decades in prison. Several of the defendants did not even help plan the anti-ICE protest and left when asked by guards. But in the federal government’s framing, everyone was part of “antifa,” and playing any minor role, even distributing zines, was material support for terrorism.

As Melissa Gira Grant wrote over at the New Republic, these sentences are a national emergency: “The Prairieland cases should be understood as the government’s effort to heroize ICE in the face of community defense efforts to stop mass deportations, and to shift the blame for political violence from federal officers to the left.”

That’s exactly what the federal government was trying to do with these now-quashed subpoenas — to make the mere act of resisting ICE and their violent depredations a crime and, conversely, to make all of ICE’s actions, no matter how murderous, seen as courageous and legal. It’s the same with the recent indictments in Minnesota. It’s the same with the now-collapsed Broadview 6 case. The administration can’t win in court, so it resorts to violence and coercion. It’s not going to stop, but neither are we.

We’re in the right. We know it. Judge Schiltz certainly knows it. Even the administration knows it. But they’re scared to death of their own people, of those who will put their bodies on the line to do what’s right. And they should be. That’s more powerful, more noble, more heroic, than anything the administration will ever have to offer.

New York Times, Prosecutors in Washington Say Citations Have Been Issued at Reflecting Pool, Clarence Williams, June 26, 2026. A spokesman provided no further details, saying those who received the citations were ordered to appear in court at a later date. No records are available.

Federal prosecutors in Washington said Friday that citations have been issued by the U.S. Park Police this month at the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, which has filled with algae and peeling paint since its $16 million makeover. But no records are available, and it remains unclear exactly what those citations were for, or how many people received them.

President Trump, who ordered the makeover ahead of July 4 celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary, has blamed the problems on vandals. In a social media post on Tuesday, he said without evidence that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.” He also said fertilizer dumped into the pool had caused the algae.

No records of arrests or citations have been produced by the administration or law enforcement officials to support the president’s claims. On Friday, after several days of inquiries, the United States Attorney’s Office in Washington, which is responsible for both federal and local prosecutions in the city, responded briefly to questions about Mr. Trump’s posts.

“We are aware of citations being issued” by the U.S. Park Police, wrote Timothy Lauer, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office, in a statement. He did not provide specifics on the number of people cited or what they were accused of doing, saying that anyone issued a citation would have been released with instructions to appear in court at a later date.

“Please note that a public docket will not be generated until the court appearance,” he said, explaining the lack of any arrests records or other documentation related to the citations.

The U.S. Park Police and its parent agency, the Interior Department, have not responded to requests for details. But David Carter Hearn, 67, who represented the United States in three Olympics as a canoeist, said in an interview that he is among those cited at the reflecting pool.

His lawyer, Norman Eisen, said that Mr. Hearn was charged with a misdemeanor count of destruction of federal property after he reached into the reflecting pool to touch a piece of its detached blue coating floating in the water. Mr. Eisen said his client had not torn or removed any of the coating.

He said Mr. Hearn would seek to take the case to trial, adding, “It is not a crime in America to touch water.”

New York Times, Trump Administration: D.C. Settles Suit With Protester Arrested After Playing ‘Star Wars’ Song Near Deployed Troops, Chris Cameron, June 26, 2026. Sam O’Hara was playing “Imperial March,” the theme of the film series villains, while protesting the presence of National Guard troops in the capital when he was handcuffed by city police officers.

The District of Columbia agreed on Thursday to pay a resident to settle a lawsuit in which he accused city police officers of wrongfully arresting him as he protested the deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital last year.

The chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington filed a notice in federal court saying that city officials had agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the plaintiff, Sam O’Hara, in exchange for being released from the lawsuit. Scott Michelman, the legal director of the A.C.L.U. chapter, said that the settlement “was a significant amount Mr. O’Hara is pleased with but that we are not disclosing to respect Mr. O’Hara’s privacy.”

“Our right to free speech grants us the freedom to criticize the government,” Mr. Michelman added. “Government officials don’t have to like it, but they can’t punish someone for their speech.”

The district attorney general’s office, which represents the city in court, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. O’Hara, 35, was protesting by filming National Guard troops at a distance and playing “Imperial March,” also known as the theme song for Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers. By the time of Mr. O’Hara’s arrest, videos of his protest had been seen by millions on TikTok. As of last week, Mr. O’Hara had engaged in these demonstrations continually for nearly 10 months.

On Sept. 11, Mr. O’Hara, 35, played the song as several Guard members, including Sgt. Devon Beck of the Ohio National Guard, were patrolling in a Washington neighborhood. Sergeant Beck threatened to call the police to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he continued and followed through on his promise. City police officers put Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs to prevent him from continuing his protest, according to the lawsuit. The police eventually released Mr. O’Hara without charges.

The Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that “the incident was referred to M.P.D.’s Internal Affairs Bureau,” but it is unclear whether the officers named in the suit — Tiffany Brown, Edward Reyes-Benigno and Alfonso Lopez Martinez — were disciplined for their roles. The statement also said that the settlement did not require any change in department policy.

“M.P.D. recognizes the importance of upholding First Amendment rights of individuals to peacefully express their views and is dedicated to facilitating lawful demonstrations while maintaining public safety and order,” the statement said.

Mr. O’Hara and city officials had reached “a settlement agreement in principle” in February, according to a court filing, and the case against the police officers was granted a partial stay while details of the agreement were being finalized.

Mr. O’Hara’s case against Sergeant Beck, who is being defended in the case by Justice Department lawyers, continues.

More Global News  

New York Times, Venezuela Live Updates: Rescuers Search for Quake Survivors as Leader Calls to ‘Militarize’ Area, Fabiola Ferrero, Julie Turkewitz, Genevieve Glatsky, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Alan Yuhas, June 26, 2026. A Venezuelan official said that two powerful earthquakes on Wednesday had killed 920 people and left more than 3,000 injured. The United States and Mexico were among the latest to send support, as hundreds remained missing or trapped under rubble.

Survivors heaved mountains of bricks and cement with their bare hands across Venezuela’s earthquake-shattered north on Friday, hushing each other to listen for whispers of life and praying for help in reaching people still trapped under the ruins.

At a small hospital in La Guaira, the worst-hit state, Juan David Arsia, 17, said he had spent 21 hours under rubble. “I was there with my mom and I could hear her screaming,” he said. “I would yell to her, ‘Don’t give up, mom, have faith — don’t give up!’”

From under the wreckage, his tibia and fibula fractured, he could hear neighbors calling for help, he said, until the sounds stopped in the middle of the night. Hours later, he again heard people moving above the rubble and began shouting, leading neighbors to find and pull him and his mother free.

As feared, though, the death toll sharply rose on Friday. At least 920 people have died, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the National Assembly, said in a televised address, and at least 3,300 more people were injured. He added that about 1,400 buildings have been damaged, including 13 hospitals.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• U.S. effort: The disaster will test the new alliance between the United States and Ms. Rodríguez’s interim government, formed since the U.S. military raid in January that removed Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s long-ruling autocrat. The State Department said that it would provide $150 million to aid groups in Venezuela, and the U.S. military said it was surging available forces in the region, including aircraft and an amphibious transport ship, to support relief operations.
• Rescue window: Dr. Jarone Lee, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said the first 24 to 48 hours after an earthquake were crucial for finding survivors, although it was possible for people to survive longer. Other experts say that there is a 72-hour “golden” window during which the most lives can be saved. Read more ›
• Destructive factors: Scientists said several factors amplified the quakes’ power. They came in quick succession — a rare “doublet” — and struck in a valley full of loose sediments, which causes more destructive shaking. Read more › 

The Geo Network, The Northern Gates SEALED... Ukraine ERASES 11 Bridges To Starve Putin's Army, Staff Report, June 26, 2026. Crimea is officially an island. In just 17 days, Ukraine has completely sealed the northern gates, executing precision strikes that erased 11 critical bridges and severed Putin's only logistical bloodlines.

Now, the Russian army is trapped on a "Road of Death" with no escape. With advanced AI naval drones shooting down Russian Su-30SM jets and brutal double-tap ambushes destroying repair crews, Kyiv's new digital warfare strategy is deliberately starving Putin's forces. Discover how this relentless drone campaign is dismantling the S-400 defense shield and collapsing Russia's southern front from the inside out.

New York Times, Ukrainian Attacks Spur State of Emergency Declaration in Crimea, Ivan Nechepurenko and Nataliya Vasilyeva, June 26, 2026. Weeks of intense strikes by Ukraine have rattled everyday life in Crimea to an extent unseen since Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The authorities in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula controlled by Russia, declared a state of emergency on Friday after weeks of intense air attacks by Ukraine, including a wave of drone strikes overnight that appears to have been one of the largest since the war began.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that its air defenses had intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones overnight. Crimea and about a dozen other regions were targeted, according to the ministry, which said nothing about damage or casualties. Later on Friday, the ministry said 46 additional Ukrainian drones had been destroyed that morning.

Advances in Ukrainian drone and missile production have enabled Kyiv to launch bigger attacks, farther away from the front, that can more easily overwhelm Russia’s air defenses. Over the past several months, Ukraine has carried out increasingly heavy air attacks on Crimea and parts of Russia, puncturing the peace that Russian civilians had largely enjoyed during the four-year-old war.

The assaults have sharply eroded President Vladimir V. Putin’s ability to isolate Russian society from the impacts of the war. In Kyiv, they have reinforced a growing sense of confidence that it could force Mr. Putin to the negotiating table, even as Russia continues to hammer Ukraine with missiles and drones, exploiting its air defense shortage.

Last week, Ukraine carried out its largest drone strike on the Moscow region since the war began, which forced the suspension of flights at the capital’s four international airports, severely damaged a major oil refinery, injured at least 17 people and killed an 8-year-old girl. Russia’s defense ministry said it had downed 992 drones across the country in that attack, the largest number in a single assault and a significant increase from previous onslaughts.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ukraine’s assaults on Crimea, meant to isolate the strategic Black Sea peninsula, have rattled everyday life there to an extent unseen since Russia illegally annexed the region in 2014. Gas stations in Crimea have run out of fuel, with local officials banning sales last Sunday. Summer camps have been canceled and children have been evacuated. Rolling power outages have crippled the territory, disrupting water supplies that rely on electric pumps.

Many Russians who had planned to spend their summer vacations in Crimea, a favorite holiday destination, changed their plans. Bookings in Crimea for July and August fell by over 30 percent compared to a year ago, and by 43 percent in Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city, according to the Russian business daily Kommersant.

Tourists who had already arrived in Crimea were leaving. On Friday, thousands of cars were lined up on the Crimean side of the bridge linking it to the Russian mainland, with none on the other side waiting to enter, officials said.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed leader of Crimea, announced the state of emergency in a video statement released on Friday, saying it was meant to “streamline financial, monetary, credit and contractual relations.” Later in the day, he sought to reassure Crimeans that the state of emergency would not entail “any restrictions on citizens” such as curfew.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, the head of Sevastopol, which is a separate administrative region, issued a similar statement.

Legally, the state of emergency gives local officials additional powers, including the authority to coordinate civilian evacuations and to fast-track emergency spending by forgoing public tenders. The regional state of emergency that was declared in Crimea is one notch away from the federal state of emergency that would allow an even more robust response.

Mr. Putin has described the largely bloodless seizure of Crimea as one of the key achievements of his rule, saying that Crimea was as crucial for Russia’s identity as the Temple Mount is for Jews.

Thee Russian president has kept a low profile since the Ukrainian attacks intensified. In a vague comment earlier this week, he dismissed the devastating drone strikes as Ukraine’s attempt to “rattle” Russian society.

A growing dissatisfaction with the perceived helplessness of the Kremlin in the face of Ukrainian attacks has sent Mr. Putin’s approval ratings falling, even according to Russian state-affiliated pollsters. A survey by the pollster FOM, published on Friday, found the Russian leader’s approval hitting its lowest level since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Even as its drone arsenal has become much more effective, Ukraine is still vastly outmatched by Russia in ballistic missiles, the biggest source of military pressure on Ukraine. Such missiles, which have underpinned Moscow’s most devastating air attacks, carry much larger explosive payloads than drones, and their speed makes them hard to intercept.

Russia’s barrages of ballistic missiles have repeatedly overwhelmed Ukraine’s air defenses, and they ravaged the country’s energy grid during the brutally cold winter. Conscious of the disadvantage, Ukrainian officials have said in recent weeks that the country is pushing hard to develop ballistic missiles domestically.

Separately on Friday, Ukraine and Russia held a prisoner swap, involving a total of 320 soldiers. The exchange was held in Belarus, near a point where the three countries meet, according to the Russian and Ukrainian commissioners for human rights.

New York Times, Zelensky Steps Up Threats Against Belarus for Aiding Drone Attacks, Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko, June 26, 2026. Ukrainian officials say their northern neighbor is allowing its radio relay stations to be used to guide Russian attack drones more precisely.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, partly from the territory of Belarus, Ukraine has handled relations with its northern neighbor cautiously. It did not sever diplomatic relations and kept open lines of communication with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, Belarus’s longtime autocrat.

But since the beginning of this year, after a string of devastating Russian drone strikes in northwestern Ukraine near the border with Belarus, President Volodymyr Zelensky has taken a more confrontational approach.

He ordered strikes early in the year against four signal relay stations in Belarus that, he says, are being used by Russia to direct drone attacks on Ukraine. In May he invited Belarus’s exiled opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, to open an office in Kyiv. And last week he threatened publicly to attack the relay stations in Belarus again.

“Let him take down this equipment,” Mr. Zelensky said of Mr. Lukashenko. “Because right now, every day, our civilians are dying and children are being injured because of this. If he doesn’t do it, we will.”

On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said the relay stations had been turned off, for now.

Western diplomats and analysts have interpreted Mr. Zelensky’s threats as part of a more aggressive attitude toward his neighbor, bolstered by the success of Ukraine’s campaign of long-range attacks on Russia’s oil industry.

“The current dynamics are more an evolution of Kyiv’s emerging regional posture than a response to an immediate military threat from Belarus,” Balazs Jarabik, a former Slovak diplomat, wrote in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

But Ukrainian officials and analysts said Mr. Zelensky was motivated by ongoing attacks from Russian drones, which were directed by relay stations, known as repeaters, in Belarus, severely stretching Ukraine air defenses as the war escalates on several fronts.

More On Iran-Lebanon War 

New York Times, Trump Says Iran Attack on Cargo Ship Violated the Cease-fire, Euan Ward and Jenny Gross, June 26, 2026. The president did not say how or whether he would respond, a day after Iran fired on a container ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz, an act Mr. Trump called “foolish.”

President Trump said on Friday that Iran’s attack on a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz a day earlier was a “foolish violation” of the fragile cease-fire between the two countries, though he did not say how or whether he would respond.

In a post on social media, Mr. Trump said Iran had launched at least four one-way-attack drones, one of which hit the upper deck of a “of a large and very expensive Cargo Carrying Ship,” adding that the United States had knocked down three other drones. He added that the ship, though damaged, was able to continue on its way.

Mr. Trump’s comments came after Iran reaffirmed its claim to being a central authority in managing marine traffic through the strait.

The strike on the vessel, the Ever Lovely, a container ship that was passing near the Omani side of the strait, appeared to be the first known Iranian attack on a commercial vessel since the signing of a preliminary peace agreement between Tehran and Washington last week. It laid bare the challenges to restoring prewar levels of traffic through the strait, a crucial conduit for oil and gas shipping.

Although the United States and Iran have agreed to restore access to the strait — with President Trump declaring the waterway open to unrestricted navigation — the preliminary accord does not stipulate exactly how that should happen.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday, carried on state media, that the strait lay within Iranian and Omani waters, and cited a section of the U.S.-Iran deal that Tehran says allows it to manage marine traffic in the strait.

The agreement says that Iran would “make arrangements using its best efforts” for the safe passage of commercial vessels. That wording is vague, leaving room for differing interpretations, according to Jakob Larsen, chief security officer at BIMCO, a global shipping association.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Guy with Crusader Tats Suffers Humiliating Defeat at Hands of Islamic Republic, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right,), June 26, 2026. It’s a testament to the dysfunctionality of the Trump regime that his defense secretary — a guy who plastered his body with Crusader tattoos — lost in humiliating fashion to Iran’s Islamic Republic.

Yet has not been fired.

The causes of America’s defeat in Iran are well-known:

The idiots running the war simply assumed they would win so quickly that Iran wouldn’t succeed in doing what every war-gaming scenario said they would, close the Strait of Hormuz.In part because Whiskey Pete Hegseth had literally shot America’s wad last year in an attempt to subdue the Houthis, and in part because he knows little other approach than shooting his wad, the US faces an acute shortage of munitions (a widely-known fact that Whiskey Pete aggressively and corruptly attempts to suppress); that shortage limited US ability to sustain the war.DOD mounted ineffective defense of its bases, and as a result, American bases around the Middle East were badly damaged.

WSJ has an updated report on the latter issue, focused on the damage to the US Navy base in Bahrain.

The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers—damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.

The military said no one was killed at the base, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, and that the strikes didn’t significantly impact operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel but has kept a small staff on the ground.

Over the course of the war, “Centcom rightfully prioritized the protection of people over buildings, and our strategy of protecting people worked. Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two hits resulted in U.S. fatalities,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East. Hawkins also said the U.S. military inflicted far more damage to Iran than it received, with the U.S. striking more than 13,500 targets.

The extensive damage done to America’s sole naval base in the Middle East—along with hits to at least 20 U.S. sites across the region, including military installations and diplomatic facilities—has the U.S. re-evaluating its entire footprint in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

[snip]

The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations.

[snip]

“We defended our installations admirably, but the munitions that got through hit infrastructure required for us to conduct operations,” said Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. “This is the byproduct of 10 years of Iran adapting its strike technologies for greater range and accuracy.”

The decisions the U.S. makes now—what to reconstruct, what to abandon, how far to pull back—will define its presence in the Middle East for a generation.

Donald Trump’s invasion of Iran, led by Crusader Pete Hegseth, may force the US to withdraw from the Middle East or perhaps just retreat to Israel, with all the symbolism that would entail.

And we’re not talking about how the Crusader dude, who defines his fragile identity via a construction of superiority not just to Muslims, but to brown and female Americans of Christian faith, got his ass handed to him by a country led by Shia clerics. We’re not even talking about what a catastrophic leader he has been, and instead leave him in place chipping away at the actually competent people.

The reasons why Whiskey Pete has not been held accountable for his disastrous failure are the same reasons Trump is failing more generally. Whiskey Pete is, by profession, a propagandist with a history of suspect management behavior. And so, faced with the reality that his own decisions have led to serious problems, Hegseth has ratcheted up an increasingly authoritarian propaganda machine that, while it has delayed some of the reporting on his failures (the WSJ reminds how Hegseth demanded private satellite companies suppress evidence of his failures for months), it has not fully prevented that reporting — in part, as Mark Kelly pointed out when Whiskey Pete tried to criminalize him for telling the truth — thanks to Hegseth’s own big mouth.

More importantly, Hegseth’s fondness for lies perfectly suits Trump’s pathological need to be lied to. The old Fox propagandist will keep doing as he was trained, repeating that he won, repeating that he won thanks to Donald Trump’s brilliant leadership (the same leadership that didn’t take foundational warnings about the Strait of Hormuz seriously).

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

The two men are locked in a tight homosocial embrace of mutually assured deception about their own superiority.

Such relationships are the only thing that sustain Trump as he experiences a series of Narcissistic injuries.

So Trump won’t replace Whiskey Pete.

He will, instead, double down on the propaganda. Trump will try to reprogram his cult to believe that the people who, just two years ago, attempted to solicit contract killers to assassinate him…

Pamela Bondi, United States Attorney General; Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; and James C. Barnacle, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the verdict.

“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” said Attorney General Bondi. “The Department of Justice will remain ever-vigilant to protect Americans, prosecute terrorists, and halt acts of terrorism before they happen.”

“Iran’s terrorist regime sent Asif Merchant here to sow mayhem and murder,” stated United States Attorney Nocella. “Thanks to the vigilance of our law enforcement partners, his scheme ended in failure. Today, with Merchant’s conviction, that failure is complete. Our Office will always remain vigilant in our mission to protect the United States from foreign terrorist adversaries.”

Mr. Nocella expressed his appreciation to the FBI’s Field Offices in Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago and Albany for their partnership on this case. Mr. Nocella also expressed his appreciation to the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, the New York City Police Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for their assistance.

“At the direction of the Iranian regime, Asif Merchant plotted to assassinate a United States politician or government official on American soil,” stated FBI Assistant Director in Charge Barnacle. “This foiled scheme motivated by vengeance for U.S. actions against the Iranian regime sought to strike at the heart of our democracy. May today’s conviction illustrate the FBI’s resolute commitment to protect the homeland from the Iranian regime’s craven efforts to wage terror on the American people.”

Are really just super smart.

[A]s the Trump administration has defended its preliminary peace deal, a different perspective has been taking hold in parts of the American right: Iran as a pragmatic country that the United States can, and must, learn to live with.

The stark shift has been led by President Trump, who called Iran’s leaders “strong people, smart people” last week, but it goes well beyond him.

It helps, I suppose, that journalists can spend 1,300 words writing about that attempt to reprogram the cult without mentioning the assassination plot.

Anyway, things may about to get interesting.

The other day, DOD submitted its supplemental request for the illegal war they refused to brief Congress on.

Per Jake Sherman, the ask includes almost three times what DOD said the war cost, just for DOD, more bribes for the farmers Trump has destroyed, payments to State for diplomacy even though Trump’s developer buddies are doing the so-called diplomacy here, money to fund Ebola response to replace the Ebola prevention Elon Musk cut last year, and an attempt to bigfoot Trump’s name onto Penn Station.

THE SUPPLEMENTAL IS OUT highlights:

• $67B for DOD
• $11B for farmers
• $40M for FBI for “Operation Epic Fury” and other classified programs.
• $672M for NNSA $95.5M for DOE for Epic Fury
• $36M for Treasury
• $600M for GSA
• $2B for Coast Guard re Epic Fury
• $13M for DHS classified request
• $500M for Park Service
• $1B for DOL for pensions
• $1.5B for State for diplomatic programs
• $300M for embassy security and construction for restoring facilities in Bahrain, Dubai, Karachi, Lahore, Riyadh etc
• $1.4B for Ebola
• $1B for “modernized Penn Station”

In short, self-imagined supremacist Pete Hegseth loaded up this request with a bunch of shit, and that’s before a bunch of classified programs that likely involve domestic repression and international war crimes.

And it can only pass Congress with the help of Democrats in the Senate, as well as people, like Thom Tillis, who stupidly made a last ditch attempt to win Trump’s support by confirming the Fox News host, as well as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who both opposed his confirmation and the latter of whom, especially, Hegseth has disdained.

Whiskey Pete Hegseth is about to go to Capitol Hill with hat in hand, asking Congress to reward him for getting his ass handed to him by Iran.

Which makes it an exceptionally good time to point out that the guy with the Crusader tattoos invaded an Islamic state and lost. Badly. In significant part because of those Crusader tattoos. 

More On U.S. National Security, Military, Intelligence 

New York Times, John Bolton, Former Trump Adviser, Pleads Guilty in Classified Information Case, Aishvarya Kavi and Devlin Barrett, June 26, 2026. Mr. Bolton, shown above in a file photo, admitted to mishandling classified information and could face time in prison, in an inquiry that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations.

John R. Bolton, a former top adviser to President Trump who became one of his most outspoken critics, pleaded guilty on Friday morning to mishandling classified information in a case that could send him to prison.

Mr. Bolton, appeared in Federal District Court in Greenbelt, Md., and admitted to a single charge of illegal retention of classified information over notes he compiled for a book that excoriated Mr. Trump.

“I’m sorry for it,” he told Judge Theodore Chuang, who said he would sentence Mr. Bolton in October.

Under the plea deal, Mr. Bolton could be incarcerated for up to five years, according to the terms of the plea deal described in court. The deal also includes a fine of $2.25 million. If Mr. Bolton had gone to trial and lost, he could have faced decades in prison.

When he was first indicted, Mr. Bolton sought to frame the case against him as part of a push by the president to misuse the Justice Department to punish his perceived political enemies. The case against Mr. Bolton, however, began in the first Trump administration and gained momentum during the Biden administration, as investigators gathered additional evidence.

The original 18-count indictment against Mr. Bolton accused him of using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of notes, which included national defense information, with two family members who did not have security clearances.

The accusations against Mr. Bolton center on his notes for “The Room Where It Happened,” his 2020 memoir about his time as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. Those relatives were Mr. Bolton’s wife and daughter, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details of the case that were not in court filings.

According to the indictment, Mr. Bolton’s notes revealed that he understood that he was documenting intelligence secrets. One entry began, “The intel briefer said,” while another read, “While in the Situation Room, I learned.”

The first Trump administration fought unsuccessfully to prevent the publication of Mr. Bolton’s book, but the criminal investigation ultimately focused not on what was in the published manuscript, but instead on what Mr. Bolton wrote in private notes and correspondence. 

Unlike some other investigations involving classified information, including charges filed in 2023 against Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolton was not accused of retaining the secret documents themselves, but rather of keeping diaries and sending emails that mentioned details of his daily work in national security.

Mr. Bolton’s emails, however, were later hacked by someone associated with the government of Iran, the indictment said.

“A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in or about July 2021,” according to the filing, “but did not tell the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information, including classified information, that Bolton had placed in the account from his time as national security adviser.”

One section of the indictment described Mr. Bolton apparently being taunted by his hacker. A message on July 25, 2021, warned, “I do not think you would be interested in the F.B.I. being aware of the leaked content of John’s email (some of which have been attached).”

The email went on to declare: “This could be the biggest scandal since Hillary’s emails were leaked, but this time on the G.O.P. side! Contact me before it’s too late.”

A representative for Mr. Bolton forwarded the email to the F.B.I.

The Steady State, Tulsi’s Final Intelligence Failure, James P Petrila, June 26, 2026. When truth and propaganda can occupy the same briefing.

As she was being pushed out the door by her temporary replacement, the eminently unqualified William Pulte, Tulsi Gabbard,right,  rescinded a flawed intelligence product that had turned a blind eye to Russian attacks on US government officials, then pivoted to resurrect a Russian information operation that falsely claimed the US was supporting the development of bioweapons in Ukraine.

From the time the Senate confirmed Tulsi as Director of National Intelligence, she committed to get to the bottom of the Havana Syndrome. While the original Intelligence Community Assessment was significantly flawed in many ways, the refusal to acknowledge even the possibility that the Russians were responsible for these attacks was a glaring omission. As she left office, Tulsi half-delivered by rescinding the Assessment. At the same time, she declassified several documents related to US biolab assistance to governments that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the breathless announcement from her Office claimed that Tulsi was revealing a secret program, this program has existed since 1991 and has seen remarkable successes over the past three-plus decades in helping to dismantle the remnants of the Soviet Union’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program scattered throughout the former Soviet Union.

First, one cheer. For once, Tulsi seemed to play it straight, identifying five specific ways in which the Assessment failed to meet analytic standards. The Assessment represented a significant institutional failure; its failings included selective exclusion of evidence, mischaracterization of sources to suppress alternative analyses, reliance on a medical study that was ethically flawed, and limiting collection of additional evidence in support of an analytic approach that focused on the absence of a smoking gun and seems not to have explored the likelihood of state (specifically Russian) involvement. The allegations in the ODNI memo are consistent with the excellent reporting over the years by 60 Minutes and The Insider.

The rescission of the Assessment is an important first step in allowing a fresh look at the Havana Syndrome. The second step will only be successful if it accepts that the victims have suffered real damage from these attacks. By waiting until her last days, Tulsi does not need to worry about the next step, which likely will result in a conclusion that Russia is the source of these attacks. Given the significant injuries that a number of US officers have incurred, and the failure of the Government to provide timely medical care, it is critical that an outside group of experts pay this issue the attention it demands. In normal times, this could be done by an interagency effort led by the National Security Council. Unfortunately, these are not normal times.

While the now-gone DNI deserves credit for rescinding the flawed Assessment, Tulsi’s final gambit on biolabs is a muddled mess. Her “revelations” include four documents, only one of which appears to have been classified. The classified document is an Intelligence Community Analysis that focuses on a veterinary research facility in Kharkiv that is an ongoing target of Russian misinformation operations and possible attack (Russia, after all, has been bombing civilian targets throughout Ukraine, to include Kharkiv, since its February 2022 invasion, and has failed in a number of attempts to capture Kharkiv). It is in the context of possible damage by Russian bombing that it is important to note that the virology building has a basement, even though the presence of basements is always good for conspiracy theorists.

The other documents appear to have been created by the ODNI, and they are unclassified. The final slide in her presentation is titled Ukraine Labs: Web of Connections to U.S. BW Defense Industry. And who are the members of this sinister Web? The United States Department of Agriculture. The University of Florida. The US Navy Medical Research Center. Kansas State University. The University of New Mexico. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville. That hardly seems to be a group of radical deep state bioterrorists. It does seem to be a respectable assembly of universities with excellent agricultural schools.

The fourth document highlights the fact that the US Government paid Ukrainian scientists to study the genome of the “highly pathogenic avian flu.” Avian flu afflicts Ukrainian as well as US poultry farmers. The most recent outbreak in the United States cost US agriculture nearly one and a half billion dollars. Bioweapons are no laughing matter, but neither is cooperating with Ukraine to develop ways to fight avian flu.

The sad fact is that Tulsi is resurrecting old conspiracy charges that date back to 2022. When she made them at that time, the Republican Party vigorously criticized her for parroting Russian propaganda and disinformation.

So Tulsi, farewell. Thanks for highlighting the bureaucratic failure that was the Intelligence Community Assessment. Unfortunately, your last step was yet another win for the Russian disinformation machine. 

James Petrila spent over thirty years as a lawyer in the Intelligence Community, working at the National Security Agency and, for most of his career, at the Central Intelligence Agency. He has taught courses on counterterrorism law and legal issues at the CIA at the George Washington University School of Law. He is currently a senior advisor to the Institute for the Study of States of Exception and is a member of The Steady State.

More On U.S. Immigration Law, Deportations, Rights 

New York Times, Immigration Hard-Liners Repeatedly Lost in Court Before Justices Ruled in Their Favor, Hamed Aleaziz, June 26, 2026. “This is a victory 10 years in the making,” a White House official said after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could end deportation protections for some migrants.

The Supreme Court decision that will allow deportation of Haitians and Syrians protected under a federal humanitarian program was the culmination of a long campaign by conservatives whose efforts to dismantle it had been blocked by lower courts.

“This is a victory 10 years in the making,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, told Fox News on Thursday. “We can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants from the United States.”

Immigration hard-liners in the Trump administration have long railed against the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, and have accused previous administrations of abusing it. They say the program allowed some migrants to stay in the United States for years even though the protections, as the name implies, were meant to be temporary.

Now the administration can unwind the status, not only for the nearly 350,000 Haitians and hundreds of Syrians directly affected by the ruling, but also nationals from several other countries in the coming months, including El Salvador and Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with valid status could soon be vulnerable to expulsion, handing the administration a large new pool to target in its mass deportation plan.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in the Caribbean, Central America and Eastern Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Thousands of people protected from immigration detention and deportation are now vulnerable to it,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, one of the attorneys involved in the T.P.S. litigation. “At their next check-in, or if they encounter an ICE officer on the street, they could be detained and deported.”

Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Court gives the White House wide latitude to end a program that officials have blamed for holding back their efforts to tighten up immigration laws and expel undesirable groups.

“It’s an affirmation that the rule of law actually applies here,” Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security during the first Trump administration, said of the Supreme Court decision. Mr. Wolf said the ruling also affirmed that “this program is supposed to be temporary in nature.”

T.P.S. extended protections to certain nationalities whose countries were deemed by the U.S. government to have unsafe conditions, like wars and natural disasters. For instance, Haiti received T.P.S. status after the 2010 earthquake devastated the country; the status was extended several times, and the number of people allowed to apply for it ballooned during the Biden administration after the country fell into conflict in 2021. Efforts by the Trump administration to end the protections for Haitians nearly a decade ago were blocked by the courts.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, did not respond to questions about how it planned to respond to the ruling.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement had previously considered an enforcement operation earlier this year in anticipation of Haitians losing the protections, according to two people with knowledge of the plans. After lower-court decisions blocked the administration from undoing T.P.S. for certain countries, immigration officers received guidance instructing them to hold back on enforcement against citizens of those countries, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The guidance said that Haitians with T.P.S. “may not be removed despite having an administratively final removal order” and that they “may not be detained on the basis of their immigration status alone.”

Practical realities remain because the administration would have to find ways to ramp up deportations to countries where doing so may be difficult, including Haiti, where there is ongoing conflict. Since early last year, just over 2,000 Haitians have been deported, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the data.

The Supreme Court ruling comes after months of criticism by Trump administration officials directed at courts, which they contended had overstepped in blocking their efforts to strip groups of their protected status. Mr. Miller, an architect of some of Mr. Trump’s most aggressive immigration policies, was particularly incensed.

“When courts stepped in, they were violating explicit language that Congress had enacted,” he asserted just weeks after a judge had stymied their effort to strip the deportation protections from Venezuelans.

“We are living under judicial tyranny,” Mr. Miller said a few months later on social media, after a judge again blocked the termination of the program, this time for immigrants from Honduras, Nepal and other countries.

On Thursday, after the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Miller was in a better mood.

When asked by reporters outside the White House whether immigrants who lose T.P.S. would be vulnerable to deportation, he was blunt: “Well, of course, if you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”

Mr. Miller was unmoved when asked whether the administration considered Haiti a safe place.

“Haitians live in Haiti,” he said. “I mean, it would be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Adding Ingratitude to Injury, William Kristol, right, June 26, 2026. America today has lots of hard-working immigrants, and plenty of native-born citizens who accept and respect them. But there are also plenty of Americans these days who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

I hasten to say there’s no fault in being born on third base. Indeed, all of us, whether rich or poor, who were born in today’s America might be said, in the grand historical scheme of things, to have been born on third base. A healthy American patriotism begins with acknowledgment of our good fortune, and with gratitude for what our forebears—most of whom were not born on third base—did to make our privileged lives today possible.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with also taking pride in what we and our contemporaries have accomplished. And if we sometimes overestimate our own achievements and underrate those of our predecessors—and therefore underrate our simple good fortune in being born here—well, that’s human nature, and it’s probably not worth getting all worked up about.

But what is worth getting worked up about is those who have no sympathy for others who didn’t happen to enjoy good fortune. What’s worth getting worked up about is those who have contempt for and who revel in cruelty toward the less fortunate.

There are lots of those people in America today. They include our president. They include many in his administration. They include many in the world of MAGA.

And they include Megyn Kelly, who was so proud of what she said on her show yesterday after the Supreme Court’s TPS decision that she then posted the clip on X:

Megyn sends a message to the Haitians who lost their TPS today:

“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us . . . GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”

Kelly thinks that “we” made America great with “our work ethic, culture, and values.” But most Americans of Kelly’s generation—and, to be clear, of mine—have had to do little in the way of heavy lifting to make America great. And is it clear that today’s culture and values are so exceptionally wonderful?

It was our forebears who made America great. Many of them were immigrants and refugees, whom earlier generations of nativists treated with hostility, bigotry, and cruelty.

The rhetoric of yesterday’s Court ruling is not itself bigoted or cruel. But the policies it permits are bigoted and cruel. They are the policies of people who found themselves, mostly by good fortune, standing on third base. Many of them aren’t particularly good hitters or fast runners. But they’ve decided to protect their status by making sure no one else—especially no one else of a different skin color or background—will have a chance to get up to bat. 

New York Times, News Analysis: Justices Clash on Whether Race Played a Role in Trump’s Bid to Deport Haitians, Adam Liptak, June 25, 2026. The split mirrored one that has long divided Americans: how seriously to take the president’s loose, provocative and sometimes ugly remarks.

The Supreme Court on Thursday confronted two questions that have also confounded many Americans for the past decade: How seriously should people take President Trump’s wild, coarse and ugly statements? And are some of them marred by racial animus?

Like the country itself, the court was deeply divided on both.

In ruling that President Trump could deport some 350,000 Haitians, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority first had to determine whether race had played a role in his decision to remove the humanitarian protections that had shielded them. If discrimination was “a motivating factor” in Mr. Trump’s determination, the leading precedent said, it would violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. concluded that Mr. Trump’s many statements about Haitians were not “overtly racial,” and that it was unlikely that race had been a motivating factor in the administration’s decision to end the protections. He was joined by the court’s five other Republican appointees.

What Justice Alito did not do was set out a single example of those statements.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan was incredulous.

“The statements fairly shout,” she wrote, “in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”

The clash was a vivid example of what critics say has been the court’s tendency to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt, interpreting even his most extreme remarks charitably.

The case concerned the Temporary Protected Status program, which was created by Congress in 1990 to allow people whose home countries are deemed unsafe because of war, natural disasters or other crises to live and work in the United States. Mr. Trump has long questioned the program.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.

Thursday’s decision concerned people from Haiti and Syria, though only the Haitian plaintiffs challenged the termination of their status on equal protection grounds. Other aspects of the decision will most likely allow the administration to withdraw protections from even more immigrants.

The most telling aspect of Justice Alito’s majority opinion, Justice Kagan said, was that he could not bring himself to quote a single example of Mr. Trump’s statements about Haiti and Haitians. Mr. Trump’s remarks were “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print,” she wrote.

She filled the gap by setting down a litany of statements by Mr. Trump about Haiti and its people.

Her list included these comments from Mr. Trump: Haitians in Ohio were “eating the pets” of their neighbors. Haitians “probably have AIDS.” Haiti is a “shithole country,” which is “filthy, dirty, disgusting.” Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

Justice Kagan said those comments were more than sufficient evidence of racial animus. “The references — of filth, disease and primitiveness — are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes,” she wrote.ImageJustice Elena Kagan, writing for the minority, said Mr. Trump’s statements about Haitians were more than sufficient evidence of racial animus.Credit...Nic Coury for The New York Times

Mr. Trump, she added, seemed to have no problem with some immigration. “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?” he once asked.

“Haitians are Black,” wrote Justice Kagan, who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “(Norwegians and Swedes not so much.)”

The court’s conservative majority has a history of interpreting Mr. Trump’s remarks generously. In 2018, in upholding his ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recounted Mr. Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Got a news tip about the courts? If you have information to share about the Supreme Court or other federal courts, please contact us.See how to send a secure message at nytimes.com/tips

But the chief justice said Mr. Trump’s comments had to be balanced against the powers of the president to conduct the national security affairs of the nation.

“The issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”

In Thursday’s opinion, too, Justice Alito said there were neutral reasons for lifting the Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitians.

“One may oppose T.P.S. and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race,” he wrote. “And a person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with T.P.S. designations.”

He allowed that “political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago.” But he concluded that the administration opposed immigration generally and had not used racial criteria in its decisions.

Justice Alito wrote that the temporary protections had been lifted in more than a dozen countries, including Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Cameroon, Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela.

“Most would regard this as a racially diverse group of countries,” he wrote. The plaintiffs contended that they were all “nonwhite.”

When the case was argued in April, Justice Alito suggested that “nonwhite” was not a meaningful category.

“Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a lineup, do you think you could say those people, that all of them, are they all nonwhite?” he asked.

After an extended back-and-forth with a lawyer for the Haitian plaintiffs, Justice Alito said, “I don’t like dividing the people of the world into these groups.”

In his opinion on Thursday, the justice wrote that “only the termination of a T.P.S. designation for a Nordic or Germanic country” would satisfy critics who said that Mr. Trump’s determinations were tainted by race discrimination.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Forward Together, Backward by Order, Jim Swift, June 26, 2026. What organizers had hoped would be an evening of celebration was instead an interfaith prayer service. Ministers, immigration lawyers, community organizers, Haitian families, and hundreds of their neighbors gathered in front of Springfield City Hall beneath the city’s motto, “Forward Together,” alternating between English and Creole as they decried the Supreme Court’s decision and prepared for what many fear could become mass deportations.

Thursday morning, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for Haitians, the people who helped revive Springfield, Ohio, were trying to figure out how long they could keep their jobs and their driver’s licenses, and whether they should start preparing for deportation. Pastor Carl Ruby captured the mood: “We had hoped this would become a time of celebration . . . but it has become a time of lament.”

Fleeing gang violence and what has become a de facto civil war, thousands of Haitians have helped reverse decades of decline in Springfield since 2010. They filled factory jobs, opened businesses, started churches, and helped stabilize the city’s population after years of shrinkage. But that growth stopped after JD Vance amplified a pernicious lie about Haitians in Springfield eating dogs and cats.

Now the Trump administration is set on removing many of the very people who helped bring Springfield back.

Yesterday’s 6–3 ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS, meaning that although litigation may continue, many Haitians here in Ohio and all across America under TPS are subject to deportation immediately.

On a live zoom press conference earlier yesterday held by Springfield G92, a volunteer-led group of churches and faith advocates that focus on immigrant rights and mutual aid, Geoff Pipoly, a lead attorney on the TPS case, Mullin v. Doe, explained that while they’re reviewing what’s left of the case to determine whether any further legal appeals from his plaintiffs were tenable, the situation for Haitians here varies by their status.

Haitians here under TPS could consider filing asylum claims—if they can find an immigration lawyer to help them. The immigration court system is, to put it mildly, a shitshow right now. Donald Trump is purging judges who don’t deport a lot of people, the New York Times reported this week.

The data say the purge is having its desired effect: In Fiscal Year 2025, the denial rate for asylum claims more than doubled—from 14.3 percent to 30.8 percent—while the grant rate fell from 12.0 percent to 9.9 percent, its lowest level since 2017.

Those here under TPS alone are facing a lot: Their state-issued driver’s licenses are set to expire on July 6, as Ohio provided them with temporary extensions due to the uncertainty of their TPS status. Before the stay, Haitians were unable to renew their driver’s licenses because DHS made it clear that Trump wanted to end their protected status. Their expiry in ten days will make driving illegal, not that many are going to be venturing out due to the chance that ICE could stop them and deport them. And, unless they have another legal basis to remain, they won’t have jobs to drive to: the end of TPS will mean the end of their work authorization.

Biassou Pierre, a community organizer from Haiti, told the crowd: assembled in front of city hall, “Today many people call me asking, ‘How will I feed my children if I lose my job? What will happen to my family if I get detained by ICE?’ Unfortunately, we don’t have a good answer.”

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But even if one had the money and could find an immigration lawyer with availability to take up their case, that doesn’t mean a quick return to work. “People who have pending asylum applications may be eligible to apply for a work permit after their application has been pending for 180 days,” Katie Kersh, a senior attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton, told reporters. “But the administration is trying to extend the required waiting period to one year.”

At the rally last night, Kersh put this avoidable tragedy in these terms: “These individuals followed the law. They followed the law and applied for TPS, and often asylum. The law abandoned them.”

There is some hope in Congress in the form of H.R. 1689, which would extend TPS until the end of the Trump administration. By some small miracle, it passed the House in April on a bipartisan basis, with ten Republicans, including Ohio’s Mike Carey and Mike Turner (who represents Springfield), supporting it. But Haitians here now have to depend on the Senate, and Ohio’s senators are notably silent.

Sens. Moreno, an immigrant himself, and Jon Husted, who is up for election this fall, having been appointed to fill Vance’s seat, do not have a position on the bill. Outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine, who grew up in the area and has done charitable work in Haiti with his wife, has supported extending TPS and called Thursday’s ruling a mistake that was “not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”

This has the potential to become a big campaign issue for both Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, the controversial Republican candidate for governor. As Jonathan Cohn reported in these pages earlier this week, Haitian immigrants are a bedrock in multiple industries around the country, most notably healthcare.

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, running against Husted, has been vocal in his support for the Haitian community, calling on both Husted and Moreno to support an extension of TPS for Haiti. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been more careful in her wording, saying: “Law enforcement should be keeping people safe by going after dangerous criminals, not terrorizing communities.”

Viles Dorsainvil is a Haitian pastor and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center, which has been helping with utility bills, rent assistance, legal services, and transportation for Haitians who have been looking over their shoulder since Trump and Vance propagated heinous lies about them.

“Everything has changed in the community” Dorsainvil told reporters early Thursday, “And the worst thing now is that the employers will terminate workers immediately. . . . It was predictable that our community will be in trouble and that the decision will amplify the humanitarian crisis that we’ve already had here. That’s the reality. So as a center, we’ll continue to do our best, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to survive.”Viles Dorsainvil (L) and Carl Ruby (R) talk to the press after the rally. (Photo by Jim Swift)

What awaits these Haitians in Springfield? Pastor Ruby, who welcomed me into Springfield Central Christian in February to talk and show me the preparations they had made to provide this community sanctuary, said, “We have had to think about issues of civil disobedience. We’ve had to think about the issue of providing sanctuary, and when there’s a conflict between man’s laws and God’s laws, we have an obligation to side with God’s laws.”

The situation in Haiti remains bleak. The State Department doesn’t advise Americans to travel there, as it’s one of the “most dangerous places on earth right now” Ruby says. He recounts a conversation with a young boy, about his life before coming to America:

I was talking with a 12-year-old boy . . . we were talking about farm animals. And he started talking about seeing huge pigs. . . . I said, “What were the huge pigs doing?” And he said, “The huge hog was eating bodies.”

He added:

So that’s what Haitian children have observed. They’ve all been traumatized. This is gonna re-traumatize them. I can’t imagine the fear that they’re experiencing right now.  There’s another person in our church . . . the decapitated body of a friend was left in front of his house. That’s what Haiti is like right now, and our justices knew that.

Springfield residents console each other. (Photo by Jim Swift)

Dorsainvil, for his part, is appreciative of the support his center has gotten from around the country. “We are grateful for people who’ve been standing in solidarity with us . . . because you understand our struggle . . . We will continue to count on you to stand in solidarity with our community here in Springfield.”

“I am no different from other folks.” he told reporters, “I just have a pending asylum. . . . Everything is in limbo now. I don’t know how that will be.”

Pierre, speaking to an audience beyond those assembled in front of him, pleaded: “We are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and members of your church.”

“Please don’t forget us.”

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Trump’s Friend in Poland Is Doing Putin a Huge Favor… Polish President Karol Nawrocki is the reason for the recent row with Ukraine, writes DALIBOR ROHAC.
• The Supreme Court Says It’s Neutral. It’s Not… Some of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions rely on the idea of neutrality. But its appeals to neutrality misunderstand the concept and mask a grasping approach to the law, argues ERIC SCARFFE.
• Trump Court Deals Blow to Sperm-Obsessed MAHA Crowd… The Supreme Court’s ruling in Monsanto v. Durnell was a victory for Roundup. It could become a political loss for the president, observes ILYSE HOGUE.
• The Increasing Entanglements of Hollywood and AI… On The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, BEN FRITZ of the Wall Street Journal joins SONNY BUNCH to discuss the tech industry’s increasing impact on filmmaking.

Quick Hits

HORMUZ DANGER LINGERS: The White House’s biggest concessions to Iran won’t go into effect until a full peace deal is signed, but already they’ve given up quite a bit on the front end, waiving sanctions on Iranian oil and lifting our military naval blockade of its ports. But that’s okay, because Iran’s given us plenty of reason to believe that they’ve finally seen the error of their ways, dedicated themselves to the straight and narrow, and—wait, what do you mean they just attacked another commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz? Here’s the Wall Street Journal:

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked a Singapore-flagged cargo ship Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, according to two senior U.S. officials, testing the deal signed last week by the U.S. and Iran to end the fighting and reopen the vital shipping lane.

A one-way attack drone maneuvered to the west side of the ship before it struck the vessel, according to one of the officials, an indication that the attack was deliberate. The attack damaged the ship’s bridge but left no casualties, according to U.K. Maritime Trade Operations.

The attack came just days after the United Nations launched an effort to coordinate the transit of stranded vessels out of the strait in coordination with Iran and Oman, an effort now on hold after Iran’s attack. The vessel attacked hadn’t followed the group’s evacuation framework, but it’s hardly in keeping with Iran’s pledge to do its best to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels through the strait for them to be actively attacking those ships.

MORE TROUBLE FOR MAGA B-LISTER: Trumpworld enfant terrible Ryan Fournier has been arrested yet again, cuffed by Washington, D.C. police on Thursday morning at his luxury apartment. The Students for Trump founder’s latest arrest comes just twelve days after he last spent a night in jail after violating a court order in a domestic violence case—and just a week after The Bulwark reported on allegations that Fournier posed as a member of the Trump administration, complete with a friend acting like his (fake) Secret Service agent.

This time, Fournier was arrested on a misdemeanor possession of cocaine charge. Police officers arrived at Fournier’s apartment around 6 a.m. to carry out a search warrant for a “firearm investigation,” only to discover a “purple zip containing white powder substance,” according to a police incident report.

It’s not clear what “firearm investigation” the report is referencing. Fournier’s friend, Jordan Daley, who was arrested alongside Fournier earlier this month and has been charged with posing as a Secret Service agent, allegedly possessed a replica handgun in Fournier’s home at one point. The pair had also discussed using a fake Secret Service badge to bring guns to the UFC fight at the White House, according to Daley’s arrest warrant.

Fournier, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, is building up quite a rap sheet. In late May, he was arrested after allegedly punching his girlfriend in a drunken rage. In 2023, he was arrested for allegedly pistol-whipping another woman. And in college, Fournier launched a fake law firm with his Students for Trump co-founder, bilking clients out of thousands of dollars.

—Will Sommer

TELEPORTATION TROUBLE: When a reporter asked him back in April about a top FEMA official who had once claimed he had been miraculously teleported to a Waffle House, Donald Trump seemed vaguely surprised: “What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?” Now CNN reports that that official, Gregg Phillips, is out at the agency:

White House officials installed Phillips at FEMA in December, despite his history of promoting election conspiracy theories, particularly in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He came under national scrutiny in March after CNN reported on a cache of outlandish comments from his appearances on right-wing podcasts, including the teleportation claim.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, confirmed Thursday that Phillips is leaving the agency, saying he is taking leave for personal reasons. But sources tell CNN the departure was not voluntary: New DHS leadership had grown weary of the embarrassment surrounding Phillips and of his periodic clashes with agency leaders over their agenda.

U.S. Anniversary, Culture, Media, Religion

The New Republic, Analysis: Trump’s America 250 Fair Running Into Major Issues After Just One Day, Edith Olmsted, June 25, 2026. The “Great American State Fair” is already facing major problems—and it’s not only because states are pulling out.Alaska exhibit at the Great American State Fair (there's nothing in there, just a sign that says Alaska) with some eagles and mountainsAl Drago/Getty Images

Somehow President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair keeps getting worse.

As temperatures topped 80 degrees Thursday, the festival’s food hall lost power, causing all the ice cream to melt, according to Fox 5 DC reporter Homa Bash.

The food hall wasn’t the only attraction affected by power outages. The much-hyped Ferris Wheel temporarily stopped running Thursday due to generator issues.

New York Times, MAGA Groups Help Trump Push Cultural Change in Schools, Michael C. Bender, June 26, 2026. One nonprofit, Defending Education, initiated nearly a dozen civil rights investigations targeting diversity programs and transgender policies.

The complaint that prompted a federal civil rights investigation into gender policies at Smith College was not filed by a student, graduate or anyone affiliated with the 151-year-old women’s college.

The grievance originated from Defending Education, a conservative parents’ rights group. The organization’s senior attorney said she targeted Smith after learning that one of the school’s graduation speakers last year was Dr. Rachel Levine, a physician and retired four-star admiral who is transgender.

“I saw Levine was speaking and thought that was a curious choice for an all-women’s institution, so I decided to take a look at the college’s policies,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said in an interview.

What resulted from Ms. Perry’s scrutiny was a formal investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which in May accused Smith of discriminating against female applicants by allowing transgender women to enroll, a policy that had been in place for more than a decade. The investigation also involves determining whether the college violated civil rights law with gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms. Smith, which has an unknown number of transgender students, now risks losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

The origins of the Smith investigation highlight the catalytic role that Defending Education and other nonprofit groups have played in President Trump’s bid to reshape policy at the nation’s K-12 schools and universities, and to pressure the country to bow to his ideological and cultural agenda. MAGA Groups Help Trump Push Cultural Change in Schools

One nonprofit, Defending Education, initiated nearly a dozen civil rights investigations targeting diversity programs and transgender policies.

The complaint that prompted a federal civil rights investigation into gender policies at Smith College was not filed by a student, graduate or anyone affiliated with the 151-year-old women’s college.

The grievance originated from Defending Education, a conservative parents’ rights group. The organization’s senior attorney said she targeted Smith after learning that one of the school’s graduation speakers last year was Dr. Rachel Levine, a physician and retired four-star admiral who is transgender.

“I saw Levine was speaking and thought that was a curious choice for an all-women’s institution, so I decided to take a look at the college’s policies,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said in an interview.

What resulted from Ms. Perry’s scrutiny was a formal investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which in May accused Smith of discriminating against female applicants by allowing transgender women to enroll, a policy that had been in place for more than a decade. The investigation also involves determining whether the college violated civil rights law with gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms. Smith, which has an unknown number of transgender students, now risks losing millions of dollars in federal funding.

American History Worth Remembering 

Doomesday Scenario, Analysis: JD Vance and the Latest Nixon Cover-Up, Garrett M. Graff, June 26, 2026. The vice president is utterly wrong about Watergate—but correct about its legacy.share on facebookshare on twittershare on threadsshare on linkedin.

Welcome back to Doomsday Scenario, my regular column on national security, geopolitics, history, and—unfortunately—the fight for democracy in the Trump era. Thanks for being a paid supporter!Upgrade

JD Vance is apparently in his Nixon-maxxing moment. The vice president is on what has to be one of the world’s worst book tours right now, promoting his new faith memoir Communion through a series of appearances that have only made headlines for his utter lack of charisma, timing, or sense of humor. (“Good to see you,” he told his … wife … while appearing on her podcast.)

Yesterday, the tour brought him to Yorba Linda, where he spoke Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and said: “I think Nixon’s historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so. I joked that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a twelve-hour news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.”

It’s a fascinating comment for more reasons than might appear initially, and as someone who, as many of you know, wrote a book about the full scope and sweep of Watergate — (It’s a good one too! Don’t take my word for it — the Pulitzer Prize committee called it “a comprehensive analysis of the country’s best-known political crime, a finely-crafted synthesis of multiple sources into a comprehensive account that is engaging, humanizing and funny”!) — I wanted to take some time today to explain why he’s fascinatingly on-trend, so wrong, and also right at the same time.

It’s also a very funny comment to make in the week where this administration’s own lower-case w “water-gate” is playing out, as Donald Trump is being driven insane by the algae blooms in the Lincoln Memorial reflection pool and the government is erecting fencing around the pool and launching a nationwide manhunt for the “vandals” who sabotaged it. It’s a literal “water-gate”!

Anyway — onto the historical analysis:Why Vance is on-trend on Nixon:

As ChatGPT might say in its wooden rhetorical way, JD Vance’s reflection on Nixon and Watergate didn’t come from nowhere. In fact, I spoke with an LA reporter a couple weeks ago about how the Nixon Foundation is in the midst of creating a social media renaissance for the 37th president. The Foundation — which is privately funded and technically separate from the taxpayer-supported presidential library run by the National Archives — has embraced a very Gen Z-forward social media strategy, doubling its Instagram followers with what reporter Tomo Chien called “a steady churn of viral content — sleek, sexy edits of archival footage set to trending music — that looks more like promo material for a hip-hop artist than a disgraced, long-dead president.” The Foundation even sold out of a limited-run “Nixon maxxing” hat:

Along the way, the Foundation has been promoting a series of clips and speaker appearances at the Nixon Library that embrace 1980s and 1990s conspiracy theories that Watergate was a “set up” by what we would now call the “Deep State.” (Many of these “distinguished” speakers are basically exactly who you’d imagine them to be: Like Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist whose jihad against Critical Race Theory and gender issues has upended all levels of American education in recent years, and who in one clip shared by the Foundation said, “If you look at the history of Watergate, you see that it was a set up from start to finish… In time, I think we’re going to see Nixon vindicated and the history around Nixon will be changed.” It’s basically the JD Vance line!)

Throughout the clips — and an increasingly concerted effort by the Foundation and Nixon backers — you see an attempt to launder Nixon’s reputation and culpability for Watergate for a new generation who never knew him.

A big part of this false, revisionist theory is that Watergate is basically what the Hollywood version of “All the President’s Men” makes it out to be: There was a cover-up of a minor burglary that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein personally uncovered, that, in turn, was weaponized by the Deep State to force Nixon from office. No part of the preceding sentence is true. (The Woodward-and-Bernstein mythology is particularly fascinating to untangle: They mattered, but not in the way we think they did.)

JD Vance’s comment was in keeping with this new spirit and entirely on-brand and on-message.

But it’s also a shockingly a-historical and immature understanding of what Watergate was and wasn’t. If you don’t know the story — or think you do because you watched “All the President’s Men” — buckle up:UpgradeWhy Vance is wrong about Watergate:

Vance — and many of the Foundation speakers highlighted on social media — appear to be either (a) ignorant, (b) willfully misleading, or (c) both in their facile and reductive understanding of what Watergate really was, hand-waving it away as just the simple burglary and bugging operation at the DNC offices on June 17, 1972.

What I tried to do more than anything in my book is reframe Watergate from an “event” into a “mindset.” Instead, the Watergate burglary was really the loose thread that, once pulled, began the unraveling of ultimately a dozen or more other separate, specific, and distinct-but-related scandals with overlapping players, some of which we didn’t fully understand until the 2010s (and some of which weren’t placed in context until my book in 2022). As I list them in the book, the distinct scandals included: The Chennault Affair, the Huston plan, the Kissinger wiretaps and the illegal bombing of Cambodia, the Pentagon Papers, ITT and the Dita Beard memo, the Vesco donation, milk-price fixing, campaign “rat-fucking,” Spiro Agnew’s bribery case, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations, plus a little bit of presidential tax fraud. You could even add in some others — like illegal campaign donations from the CIA-funded Greek military junta in ’68.

The “story of Watergate” isn’t about a burglary — it’s about the paranoid and conspiratorial mindset that Richard Nixon brought to the White House and that, in turn, slowly poisoned his presidency as it permeated his whole administration. The challenge was that by the summer of 1972 that there were so many separate crimes and conspiracies underway inside the Nixon White House that no one could safely disentangle the Watergate break-in and bungling burglars — which was ironic, of course, because there really is no evidence to believe that Nixon knew about that particular crime in advance.

But to think that the Watergate break-in was some odd, discreet, and minor scandal is to ignore its origins as we now understand them: Nixon couldn’t cut the burglars loose in 1972 because they’d been part of the 1971 planning for a burglary that Nixon is actually on the White House tapes personally ordering — the 1971 firebombing of the Brookings Institution! — which, in turn, Nixon wanted in hopes of covering-up his 1968 participation in the still opaque Chennault Affair, which represents one of the only instances of credible treason allegations in US history, as he and his campaign manager John Mitchell stalled and interfered with the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War to help his presidential campaign.

I became convinced in my research that the Watergate-era mantra “The cover-up is worse than the crime,” the belief that it was Nixon’s bungling efforts to cover-up this minor break-in that forced his impeachment and resignation, is actually completely wrong. The crimes were worse than the cover-up; Nixon’s crimes were the worst we’ve ever seen by a president until the present era. Sure, there are some legitimate questions and evidence that we don’t still understand the full motives and knowledge about the burglary itself, but the accumulated crimes of Nixon’s presidency by 1972 were shocking.

(Trust me — the full story is even more wild than this! If you haven’t read it and don’t know it, read the full book!)

White House photographer Robert L. Knudsen captured Nixon’s instantly iconic “V-sign” as he boarded Army One for the last time after resigning on August 9, 1974. (White House photo)Why Vance is right about Watergate:

But here’s where we get to the one true statement of JD Vance’s comment: “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a twelve-hour news story.”

The question I get most often when speaking about Watergate is a version of “what would happen if Watergate happened today with Fox News?” And my answer is always very simple: Nixon would have survived. Not because he didn’t deserve to be forced from office, or because there was a Deep State campaign against him, but because today (a) the conservative noise machine would have defended Nixon and undermined the investigation and (b) because there’s no longer any Republicans left who act for the country over the party.

This latter switch is one of my regular themes: Republicans in the House and Senate during Watergate, from 1972 to 1974, were good-faith participants in an investigation of the presidency, understanding that they had an important constitutional responsibility, as legislators and members of a coequal branch, to hold the executive branch to account for abuses of power.

That sense of constitutional responsibility and country-over-party is long-gone.

This truth — and the result — is self-evident.

There is no Donald Trump without the right-wing media machinery that protects him, amplifies his lies, and slanders those who attempt to investigate him or hold him accountable. And today the entire GOP congressional leadership has led us not into a “constitutional crisis” but a “constitutional crash,” where they simply refuse to uphold their basic constitutional responsibilities.

The result is, well, all of this.

I’ve documented multiple times in the last year where sometimes in single news-cycles we’ve seen scandals as big as Nixon’s Watergate speed-run by the corrupt administration of Donald Trump, Washington shrugs, the media obfuscates, and the whole country moves onward.

The information environment is so poisoned and the political environment so polarized and insulated that we’ve lost any effort at accountability.

Exactly “how” this happened is its own fascinating story: There were really two separate political efforts that came out of Watergate — Democrats launched a major effort to reform government and secure better transparency, accountability, and oversight of the executive branch and intelligence agencies; Republicans launched an all-out campaign — one that continues to this day through efforts like the Instagram campaigns of the Nixon Foundation — to ensure that no Republican president would ever be forced from office again. (Vanderbilt historian Nicole Hemmer is at work on a new book, “Impunity,” about this very topic and I could not be more excited for it! Stay tuned!)

It turns out that, sadly, we are as a country indeed “Nixon-maxxing,” much to the detriment of our democracy.

GMG

PS: A final thought: One of the things that bothers me about the Nixon Foundation’s attempts to white-wash Watergate is that there is so much else to celebrate about Richard Nixon — he was truly one of the few presidential giants of the 20th century and you could spend plenty of time and effort highlighting all his actual accomplishments. You want to tell a Nixon story to Gen Z that would excite them? How about the fact that Richard Nixon actually tried to launch a “universal basic income” as president?!?!!

I took a stab at the positive case for Nixon in my book as follows:

“Richard Nixon was one of the most consequential political figures of the 20th Century. As a young congressman, he helped fuel the Red Scare and give life to McCarthyism, turning ‘Communist’ into a career-ending slur. Later, over the twenty years from 1952 to 1972, he was on the Republican Party’s national ticket five times; he shaped, escalated, prolonged, and eventually wound down the Vietnam War as it roiled the nation; he signed the Clean Air Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Occupation Safety and Health Act, transformed the Post Office into a quasi-private government enterprise, hiked Social Security payments, declared war on cancer, signed Title IX to give women opportunities in academia and on athletic playing fields, transformed the military by ending the draft and creating an all-volunteer force, and helped push forward civil rights. He tried to position his government at the forefront of equal opportunity, hiring a presidential staff assistant focused solely on bringing more qualified women into government who helped triple the number of women in policy-making roles and recruited 1,000 women into previously male middle-management roles; he brought the first-ever female military aides into the White House. He even, wrestled momentarily, with the idea of providing a conservative-style universal basic income to lift Americans from poverty. He averted a larger war in the Middle East amid the conflagration of the Yom Kippur War; he calmed the Cold War and signed arms control treaties with the Soviet Union; and he reopened diplomatic relations with China. He was the first president to visit a Communist country, the first to visit Peking, the first to stand in Moscow. Judged on paper and resume alone, Nixon would stand among the giants who occupied the White House through the American century, from Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ and Ronald Reagan. ‘The Nixon presidency was an intense one—hardworking, determined, wide-ranging, organized, and creative,’ concluded his close advisor and one-time Cabinet secretary Maurice Stans. ‘I don’t believe any man could have been more determined to do the best possible job as president than Richard Nixon.’”

That’s a story that would be fun to tell — and you don’t have to get down in the gutter with conspiracists about Watergate as a Deep State plot to undermine Nixon. Like

New York Times, Opinion: The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember, Jesse Wegman, June 26, 2026. Mr. Wegman, right, a contributing Opinion writer and a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, is the author of “The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.” 

On a cool Monday morning in October 1779, three years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, an armed mob of militiamen set out in search of Philadelphia’s elite.

The war against Britain had dragged on for more than four years, and ordinary Philadelphians were suffering from the skyrocketing costs of bread, flour, salt, sugar and other necessities. Pennsylvania’s leaders had failed to impose price controls. By fall the militias were ready to act.

“We have arms in our hands and know the use of them,” one member said in a statement printed in The Pennsylvania Packet that summer. “We will no longer be trampled upon.”

By 10 a.m. on Oct. 4, a large crowd had gathered at Burns’s Tavern on 10th Street. The people were hungry, angry and out of patience. On their list of targets were some of Philadelphia’s wealthiest residents, including James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and one of the young nation’s leading lawyers.

Wilson and his family lived in a grand, four-story brick townhouse on the corner of Walnut and Third Streets. It would have stood out for its extravagance at any time, but especially at a moment of citywide desperation.

Wilson’s wealth wasn’t the only source of the radicals’ suspicion of him. In 1776 he had delayed voting in favor of independence, then strongly opposed passage of the state’s constitution, which was by far the most democratic of the founding era. More recently he had defended Loyalists who had been accused of treason after the British occupation of Philadelphia.

In all these instances there were good explanations for Wilson’s behavior, but those were irrelevant as the mob, numbering as many as 200, marched down Arch Street, playing “The Rogue’s March” on drums and fife. Wilson had gotten word that the militia was coming, and he rounded up about 30 men to protect his house.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

The mob soon arrived, and when one of the men holed up inside the house, Capt. Robert Campbell, stuck his head out a window and told the crowd to move along, he was struck immediately by a bullet. His wounds were fatal, and the fight erupted.

Inside the house, Wilson and the others were gathered in an upstairs room, according to one account, as “a number of desperate-looking men in their shirt sleeves” moved toward them “armed with bars of iron, and large hammers.” One attacker swung a sledgehammer against the front door, and the men entered, only to be met by gunshots from the top of the stairs. Other men dragged one of Wilson’s defenders down the stairs by his hair and bayoneted him, while Wilson’s crew barricaded the door.Editors’ PicksFrench Fishnets for an Unplanned Stay in San FranciscoWhat Happened to Broadway’s New Musicals? This Year, They Vanished.‘Supergirl’ Review: This Glass Ceiling Is Made of Kryptonite

Whether Wilson could have held out much longer is doubtful; the militia had sent for reinforcements, and a cannon was being hauled over from the arsenal. Before it could be loaded, the City Light Horse Cavalry showed up, scattering the crowd. When it was all over, seven people were dead, including a young Black boy who had been standing nearby and was caught in the crossfire. At least 17 were wounded.

The Fort Wilson Riot, as it came to be known, would echo through Philadelphia society and across the states, shaking the nation’s leaders, many of whom saw in it the shadow of disorder and mob violence that lurks behind democracy. In the hours after the attack, Henry Laurens, a former president of the Continental Congress, wrote to John Adams, “We are at this moment on the brink of a precipice, and what I have long dreaded and often intimated to my friends seems to be breaking forth —­ a convulsion among the people.”

More than anyone else, Wilson would be forgiven for sharing these fears, and yet only eight years later, he led the fight to devise a constitution that gave much more direct power to regular citizens than any of his peers wanted to, a document he drafted explicitly in the name of “we the people,” and then helped ensure was ratified by special state conventions, not sitting legislatures, to emphasize the idea of popular sovereignty.

In fact, Wilson, who was born into a poor farming family in Scotland before immigrating to America as a young man, had long argued for placing more power in the hands of the people. Throughout his life, he held to that ideal. To him, America’s founding documents were inextricably linked.

The Declaration’s soaring preamble — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — and the Constitution’s opening phrase — “We the People”— are the Genesis of our civic scripture, repeated today with such frequency and familiarity that many Americans forget which one goes with which document. But these words did not resonate in the same way with most of the country’s founders.

George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay — these are the most famous men associated with the American founding, yet, according to research by William Ewald, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, none appear to have uttered the Declaration’s preamble aloud in public after 1776. Not “created equal,” not “self-evident,” not “pursuit of happiness,” not “unalienable.”

But one founder did: James Wilson. He quoted from the Declaration constantly, including one day on the floor of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. In notes Madison recorded that day, Wilson pulled out a copy of the Declaration and read aloud from it, arguing that it proved that the states had declared their independence “not individually but unitedly.”

Wilson’s insistent focus on one, united people was the natural consequence of his commitment to popular sovereignty: the idea that the people are, as he put it, “the legitimate source of all authority.” In other words, the people, not the states, are the ultimate fount of power in government.

This was the essence of the Declaration, as he saw it, and he did what he could to make it the essence of the Constitution, too. When he was assigned to a committee tasked with drafting the Constitution in the middle of the summer of 1787, he opened it with the words, “We the people,” to tie that document to the Declaration and to remove any doubt about who this government was being built for.

So why does almost no one today know Wilson’s name? Only a few years after the Constitution was ratified in 1788, he succumbed to malaria while hiding out in the back room of a tavern in North Carolina. He had been there for the better part of a year, absconding from his Philadelphia townhouse and from the Supreme Court, to which he had been appointed by George Washington. He had already been jailed twice for unpaid debts, a result of his compulsive and reckless speculation in lands; his modern anonymity is a result of his ignominious death.

The irony is that Wilson’s fellow founders were well aware of his prominence. “His mind, while he spoke, was one blaze of light,” Benjamin Rush, Wilson’s friend and a fellow signer of the Declaration, wrote. And what Wilson spoke about more than anything else were the radical egalitarian ideals behind the Declaration.

When I think about James Wilson, as I have fairly constantly over the seven years that I have spent researching and writing his biography, I keep coming back to the Fort Wilson Riot, and his reaction to it. It’s easy to imagine him returning to his ransacked study after that brutal attack, betrayed and furious, and resolving to give up on his commitment to “the people” and the idea of popular sovereignty. He might have joined with Adams, whose own analysis of history convinced him that “tumults arise in all governments, but they are certainly most remediless and certainly most fatal in a simple democracy.”

Instead, within hours of escaping the violence, Wilson was looking to get home, despite warnings from his friend the financier Robert Morris. “As the ferment is particularly high against you, it may be best to keep out of the way for a day or two,” Morris wrote. Wilson responded that he wanted to return as soon as possible: “My absence, I’m afraid, only makes matters worse.”

Wilson’s choice is a central part of what fascinates me about his life. I wanted to understand how a man could be so committed to the principle of popular self-rule that he doubled down on it even after an armed mob broke down his front door and tried to kill him.

At first, I thought my inquiries would be limited to libraries and historical archives, but in the middle of working on my book proposal, Jan. 6 happened. Thousands of angry marchers, some of them armed, stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

Suddenly I felt the question I was asking about Wilson was being turned back on me, on all of us: The People’s House was under attack, and we were all targets. As I watched the mob break through Capitol windows, pepper-spray police officers and defile the seat of our government, I wondered about my own commitment to popular sovereignty. Was it really preferable to the alternatives? Was I just a fair-weather democrat?

The answer, I came to believe, could be found in Wilson’s defiant response to the attack on his own home. Democracy, after all, is a constant practice, not a state of being. At the time of the American Revolution, most humans had lived in a state of perpetual war for thousands of years. The democratic vision embraced by Wilson and (to a lesser extent) his fellow founders rejected “the iron laws of the world,” as Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s right-hand man, put it this year: the resolution of all conflict through strength, force and power.

In place of this “might makes right” view of humanity, democracy offered a set of principles about how to get along — a society based on the rule of law, one in which everyone has an equal say and disputes are resolved through reason and deliberation, not weapons. It was a radical idea at the time, and it remains a radical idea today. Viewed from the perspective of human history, the democratic faith in the ability of regular people to live together and govern themselves in peace is nothing short of miraculous.

What Wilson illustrated in his post-attack commitment to popular sovereignty is that it is most necessary to keep this faith not during times of calm and contentment, but when the tenuous bonds that hold us together threaten to break. To be meaningful, democratic principles have to be something we can count on when the house is stormed.

This isn’t to say that democracy as a practice always leads to perfectly democratic outcomes. Obviously it does not. Here in the United States, those currently in charge of the federal government are seeking to destroy the very things that make us a democracy. They may yet prevail.

But the true value of democracy is not in one specific election or policy; it is in the fact that we, the people, always retain the opportunity — and the power — to fix our mistakes. Bad decisions are less permanent because of democracy. One might say the solution to a bad guy with a vote is a good guy with a vote.

In the face of those who are both armed and intent on undermining these principles, holding onto them can feel naïve or even dangerous. But James Wilson managed to do it; the question for us today is, can we?

Jesse Wegman, a contributing Opinion writer, ​is a former member of The New York Times editorial board​, a senior fellow at the Kohlberg Center at the Brennan Center for Justice and the author of the forthcoming “The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.” 

The Battle of Little Big Horn in South Dakota, as portrayed in a 1903 lithograph some called "The Custer Fight," by Charles Marion Russell.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 25, 2026 [Custer's Last Stand], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 26, 2026. Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who led the 7th Cavalry, lost his entire command to Lakota warriors after falling on them unexpectedly in their own territory. The only army survivor of the battle was a horse, Comanche, who became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot, trotted out draped in ceremonial black for years after the event itself.

The road to the Little Bighorn started during the Civil War. In 1862, Santee warriors in Minnesota rose up against settlers there after the U.S. government, financially strapped by the Civil War, stopped providing the food promised to the Santees by treaty. Soldiers put down the “Santee Uprising”—now known as the Dakota War—brutally, and terrified survivors fled west to what is now Montana to take shelter with their relatives, the Teton Lakotas.

The Tetons welcomed their eastern relatives but discounted their horrific tales of the revenge enacted on the Santee insurgents (although the army had, in fact, hanged 38 Santees in December 1862 in the largest mass execution in American history). The Tetons rarely saw an American, and they could not believe the lone traders who passed through their territory were a threat.

Teton nonchalance ended abruptly in November 1864, when Northern Cheyennes, their allies to the south, straggled into Teton villages with even worse stories than the Santees had told: stories of the massacre of women and children at Colorado’s Sand Creek, where drunken soldiers first killed surrendering Cheyennes and then mutilated their bodies, taking human remains as trophies. By 1864, American miners were pushing into Teton territory over the new Bozeman Trail that stretched from the old Oregon Trail up to the Montana gold fields. Stories of the Sand Creek Massacre convinced the Tetons that the interlopers must be resisted.

By 1865 the conflicts, now known as the Lakota War, had escalated to the point that after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, army leaders transferred General William Tecumseh Sherman from the southern battlefields to the Plains. To his intense frustration, he found it impossible to protect both the Union Pacific Railroad, which stretched across the middle of the country, and the Bozeman Trail, which went north, from Lakota attacks.

Caught between these two necessities, the government chose to protect the railroad. In 1868 it abandoned the Bozeman Trail, allowing the Lakotas to control what became known as the Great Sioux Reservation. This reservation covered most of the land from the Missouri River that runs through the center of what is now South Dakota west to the Big Horn Mountains. The treaty each side signed guaranteed that land to the Lakota forever.

Forever turned out to be short.

Rising Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse vowed to keep Americans off their land, but miners wanted gold and businessmen wanted railroads. By 1874, army officers decided to build a fort in the Black Hills to intimidate the warriors skirmishing with intruders. In 1875 they sent out the Boy General, George Armstrong Custer, left, along with a thousand soldiers, teamsters, scouts, and reporters, to find a place to build. Custer brought back ideas for a fort, but more importantly, he also brought back news of gold in the hills—hills that belonged to the Lakotas.

Within months, prospectors in the Black Hills had thrown up boomtowns like Deadwood, which attracted about twenty thousand people in its first year. The government tried to buy the Black Hills, but Lakota leaders refused. “We want no white men here,” Sitting Bull said. “The Black Hills belong to me. If the whites try to take them, I will fight.”

Government officials interpreted Lakota refusal to sell as hostility. In December 1875, authorities told Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other “hostiles” to report to agencies more than 250 miles away on the eastern side of the reservation by the end of January, or to expect war. For their part, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who had never frequented the agencies, made no attempt to set off on a long journey in the brutal cold of a Dakota winter. It’s not clear they even got the message.

So on February 1, 1876, the War Department commanded the army to subdue the “hostile” Lakotas. A month later, General George Crook led 800 men into Lakota territory, hoping to fight the Indigenous Americans while their ponies were still weak from the winter. In mid-March, half of Crook’s men attacked a camp of Cheyennes on the Powder River, mistaking it for a village of Crazy Horse’s men. Cheyenne survivors took refuge with Sitting Bull, who had had enough. “We are an island of Indians in a lake of whites,” he told his people. “We must stand together, or they will rub us out separately. These soldiers have come shooting; they want war. All right, we’ll give it to them.”

Sitting Bull sent runners across the reservation, calling men who wanted to fight to meet at the Rosebud River to stand against the soldiers. By spring 1876, thousands of men had rallied to him. In early summer 1876, Sitting Bull’s camp was the largest in Lakota history; there were at least 1,400 lodges, with individual men sleeping on their own or as guests in others’ tepees.

Badly underestimating the number of warriors he faced, Crook planned a three-pronged attack. Columns from west, east, and south would converge where the Lakota were hunting. Crook’s plan was crippled on June 17, when his own column, moving up from the south, crossed Lakota warriors near the Rosebud River. In a confusing battle obscured by dust and gunpowder, the Lakotas managed to knock Crook’s men out of the campaign for the next six weeks.

Those weeks would prove crucial. As the other two columns continued their march, Indigenous Americans celebrating the outcome of the Battle of the Rosebud continued to pour into Sitting Bull’s camp, bringing the numbers up to about 7,000 people, 1,800 of whom were warriors. In the vibrant atmosphere, families visited, couples courted, and warriors danced. The numbers meant that the Lakotas and their allies had to keep moving to provide enough food for the horses. By June 24, they had settled on the river they called the Greasy Grass, the one soldiers knew as the Little Bighorn.

Unaware of the two columns approaching, the Lakotas were watching Crook’s soldiers but knew his battered troops were hunkered down. On June 25, a hot, buggy day, the Lakotas were lazing, the women digging wild turnips and the men swimming and lying about in the heat, when Custer’s troops fell on one end of their mile-long encampment. The soldiers cut down some women and children, but the Lakotas mounted their horses quickly.

Custer had divided his men into three battalions. He had sent one under Captain Frederick Benteen up the valley and out of action, and sent one under Major Marcus Reno to attack the camp. Recovering from their initial surprise, the Lakotas chased Reno and his men into the bluffs on the other side of the river. Then Custer’s battalion entered the fight. Custer ordered his men to dismount. The Lakotas promptly stampeded the army horses. Then, surrounding the desperate troops, the Lakotas killed the soldiers to a man. The U.S. Army lost 263 men that day, the Lakotas about 40.

“I feel sorry that too many were killed on each side,” Sitting Bull said, “but when Indians must fight, they must.”

June 25

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Appeals Panel Rejects Trump’s Effort to Gather Voting Data From States, Nick Corasaniti, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). The ruling of a three-judge appeals panel in Michigan was the most significant rebuke yet to the Department of Justice’s effort to find ineligible voters in state voter rolls.
• New York Times, Postmaster General Confirms Plan to Hold Back Mail Ballots Under Proposed Rule, Adam Sella, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). The postmaster general, David Steiner, said on Wednesday that under a proposed rule, his agency would not deliver mail ballots in states that decline to hand over voter data.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Won’t Rest Until He Runs Our Elections, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 25, 2026. Who cares about your rent—there are votes to suppress!
• New York Times, Iran Strikes Ship in Strait of Hormuz, Undermining Efforts to Restore Traffic, Peter Eavis, Farnaz Fassihi, Jenny Gross and Euan Ward, June 25, 2026 The attack, confirmed by U.S. and Iranian officials, came after Tehran threatened to disrupt shipping in the waterway and as Washington sought regional support for its peace agreement.
• New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump End Deportation Protection for Haitians and Syrians, Ann E. Marimow, June 25, 2026. President Trump has pushed to rescind Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people from countries convulsed by humanitarian crises.
• New York Times, Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border, Ann E. Marimow, June 25, 2026. A policy of turning back asylum seekers at the border was rescinded in 2021, but the Trump administration wants the flexibility to reinstate it as a tool for border control.
• New York Times, Live Updates: Britain Breaks June Temperature Record as Deadly Heat Stifles Europe, Lynsey Chutel, Nazaneen Ghaffar, Aurelien Breeden and Zane Irwin, June 25, 2026. A Spanish monitoring agency said an estimated 212 deaths could be attributed to the heat wave since Sunday. Five people in Italy have died from heat exposure this week, the country’s main news agency said.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Wants Only One Thing: To Control Our Elections, William Kristol, right, June 25, 2026. A couple of days ago, I wrote that “we’re entering a period of maximum authoritarian threat, one that makes Watergate look like child’s play. And we’ll be in that era of threat for the next two and a half years.”
• Democracy Docket, ICE agents confront New York poll worker during voting, as state prosecutors review incident, Jacob Knutson, June 25, 2026. Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents confronted a poll worker at a voting site in Syracuse, New York, as she was helping carry out the state’s recent primary elections.

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Comment: Court Orders Immediate Release of More Epstein Files, RFK Jr. Caught on Tape Bribing, MAHA Blasts Trump as "Treasonous" as MAJOR Supreme Court Rulings ENGULF America, Aaron Parnas, right, June 25, 2026. Today delivered a series of major developments. A federal judge handed down a landmark victory in the fight to release the Epstein files, ruling that the Department of Justice has failed to comply with the law and ordering it to move forward with additional public disclosure.
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Obama Blasts Trump, Devastating Earthquakes, Supporters Leave Trump's Speech Early, USPS Voter Suppression, Aaron Parnas, right,June 25, 2026. President Obama is criticizing Donald Trump in ways we have not heard from him before. Many people left Trump’s speech early last night. 

The DC Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Boondoggle

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as of June 15, 2026 (New York Times Photo).

• Public Notice, Opinion: American cesspool: Green algae, blue shards, and a red-faced megalomaniac, Tom Schaller, June 25, 2026. The  color palette transition is perfect: green algae turned blue paint into a red-faced president. Vandals damaging pool's new blue undercoating identified: video and photos of Presidential inspection motorcase via Tom Hoefling

More On Iran War

• New York Times, Lesson Learned From Iran War: Reduce Reliance on Strait of Hormuz, Peter Eavis, June 25, 2026. Increased stockpiles, more pipelines and other tactics could loosen the waterway’s stranglehold on the global economy.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Rights, Justice

• New York Times, Support Builds on the Right for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions, Caroline Kitchener, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). Sentiment is shifting amid frustration in the antiabortion movement that more abortions are happening now than when Roe v. Wade fell.
• New York Times, Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Alleging Roundup Weedkiller Caused Cancer, Abbie VanSickle, June 25, 2026. The court’s decision is likely to determine the future of thousands of lawsuits against Bayer, which manufactures the weedkiller, over similar claims.
• New York Times, Supreme Court Overturns Hawaii Gun Law, Abbie VanSickle, June 25, 2026. The case involved a Second Amendment challenge to a Hawaii law that barred carrying concealed weapons without permission onto private property open to the public.
• New York Times, Complaint Seeks Disclosure of Pentagon’s Agreement With Scouting America, Helene Cooper, June 25, 2026. The Pentagon and the organization have given contradictory accounts of an agreement reached in February.
• New York Times, The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026, Ann E. Marimow, Abbie VanSickle and Alicia Parlapiano, Updated June 24, 2026. The Supreme Court term that began in October was once again dominated by President Trump’s boundary-pushing policies.
• New York Times, As Blockbusters Loom, Monkey Business at the Supreme Court, Adam Liptak, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). An unlikely trio of justices issued a slashing critique of plea bargains that included several references to orangutans.

U.S. Media, High Tech, Culture

• New York Times, Texas Public School Students May Soon Be Required to Read the Bible, Sarah Mervosh, June 25, 2026. Texas is set to pass what may be the first state-mandated book list for public school students. It focuses on classic literature and includes Bible excerpts.
• New York Times, A Wikipedia Founder Is Barred From Editing Articles on the Site, Adeel Hassan, June 25, 2026. A vote to bar Larry Sanger indefinitely from the volunteer community of Wikipedia came days after he submitted a proposal on “intellectual diversity.”
• Al.com, Opinion: Response to Karl Rove's WSJ opinion piece, Don Siegelman (Gov. of Alabama, 1999-2003), June 25, 2026. In Karl Rove’s WSJ opinion piece, June 10th, “Scott Pelley’s Idea of Journalism — Why Would Anyone Think ‘60 Minutes’ Is Biased? Consider What Happened to Me”, Karl criticizes CBS 60 Minute veteran journalist Scott Pelley for not doing his due diligence.

More On U.S. Governance, Trump Administration

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion  Trump Shoots Another Legislative Hostage, Andrew Egger, right, June 25, 2026. Who cares about your rent—there are votes to suppress!
• New York Times, Why These Affordable Homes Face a 31% Rent Increase, Mihir Zaveri and Dana Rubinstein, June 25, 2026. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised relief for rent-stabilized tenants. But thousands of apartments under a separate city program are subject to increases, creating an awkward contrast.

Fear Of U.S. Oligarchs, Tech Titans, Repression

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?, Paul Krugman, right, June 25, 2026. It’s the fear, the enshittification, datacenter hostility, and the tech broligarchy.
• Heather Delaney Reese, Opinion: Nobody wants to live in Trump's fake paradise anymore, Heather Delaney Reese, right, June 24-25, 2026. At 10:26 this morning, while House Republican leaders stood at a press conference celebrating the most significant bipartisan achievement of this Congress, a housing bill that had passed the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32, the President of the United States posted 39 words on Truth Social and ended it all. He would not sign the bill. Not today. Not until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, a voting bill that his own party leaders have told him repeatedly does not have the votes to pass. No one saw it coming, either.
• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump changed the rules for Park Police. Now an innocent man is dead, Judd Legum, right, June 25, 2026. It was played for laughs during an August 2025 cabinet meeting. Since then, things have turned deadly.

More Global News

• New York Times, Live Updates: Spain Warns of High Death Toll in Heat Wave, Lynsey Chutel and Zane Irwin, June 25, 2026. The health ministry said about 200 people may have died since Sunday. The forecast across Europe was set to remain sharply above normal on Thursday.
• New York Times, Death Toll Rises After Two Powerful Quakes in Venezuela: 188 Reported Dead So Far, María Victoria Fermín and Anatoly Kurmanaev, June 25, 2026. The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes left at least 164 dead and hundreds missing, the authorities said, but the full scale of the damage was not immediately clear.
• New York Times, To Escape Record Heat, the French Are Taking to Water. Both Have Been Deadly, Mark Landler and Ségolène Le Stradic, June 25, 2026. Crowds are filling the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, as temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Forty people drowned while swimming in other waterways.

More On U.S. Election Results 

• New York Times, Opinion: Democrats Are Done With Caution, Michelle Goldberg, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). Of the three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the weakest.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: The NYC Democratic Party Is No Monolith, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 25, 2026. Two contests, two political styles.

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs

• New York Times, U.S. Inflation Problems Are Far From Over, Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, June 25, 2026. The Federal Reserve’s new chairman has vowed to deliver price stability, but officials are at odds over whether that will require higher borrowing costs.

More News Roundups

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 24, 2026 [Iran's Leverage Over USA], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 25, 2026.Today, strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien gave a comprehensive review of the events and outcomes of Trump’s war on Iran. In his Phillips’s Newsletter, O’Brien noted that “the USA is now negotiating without much, if any, leverage. That really is extraordinary. The Trump administration has put itself in a position where it cannot go back to the use of military force, cannot put much if any real pressure on Iran, and therefore will have to concede most of the main points to the Iranians.

Top Headlines

New York Times, Appeals Panel Rejects Trump’s Effort to Gather Voting Data From States, Nick Corasaniti, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). The ruling of a three-judge appeals panel in Michigan was the most significant rebuke yet to the Department of Justice’s effort to find ineligible voters in state voter rolls.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected an effort by the Department of Justice to force Michigan to turn over its voter rolls, including sensitive voter information — the most significant rebuke yet by courts of the federal government’s effort to obtain private data.

The decision deals a major blow to the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain such information from every state as it seeks to compile the largest set of national voter roll data ever collected.

That effort is part of an administration-wide push by President Trump and his allies to find evidence of voter fraud. So far, they have not found anything substantial, and critics say the effort is yet another attempt by the president to sow distrust in elections and erect new barriers to voting.

Since the department began demanding voter rolls last year, more than half of all states have refused to comply. The department has since sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., to try to force them to hand over the data.

That has not been successful. The Justice Department has lost nine of the lawsuits so far in federal court, including one in Maryland last Thursday, and has won none of them. Wednesday’s decision marked the first time an appeals court had weighed in, setting the stage for a potential escalation to the Supreme Court.

In its decision on Wednesday, a panel of appellate judges took issue with the government’s use of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 to justify the demand for voter data. The judges found that the law did not require states to turn over any material, and took issue with the government’s description of the creation of state voter lists.

Additionally, the court noted that the federal government was using a law intended to protect the right to vote for “an inverse purpose — to ensure that some people have not voted.”

The panel ruled, 2-1, against the government, with Judge Andre Mathis writing the majority opinion. Judge Mathis, who was appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was joined by Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton. Judge John B. Nalbandian, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in his first term, dissented, arguing that the Civil Rights Act did, in fact, give the government the right to demand the voter files.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The decision comes as President Trump has renewed his push to pass new federal legislation that would impose fresh voting restrictions, such as requiring those seeking to register to vote to provide proof of citizenship first. The president on Thursday canceled the signing of a celebrated bipartisan housing measure, demanding that Republicans pass the SAVE America Act first.

The ruling from the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a lower-court decision in February in which Judge Hala Y. Jarbou, who was appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, rejected the administration’s argument that it was entitled to know Michigan voters’ personal information to “prevent the inclusion of ineligible voters” and to combat what it called “voter fraud.”

Judge Jarbou found that neither the Help America Vote Act nor the National Voter Registration Act required disclosure of the records, and that the text of the Civil Rights Act did not apply to “a statewide computerized voter list.”

Across the country, the Justice Department has been running into significant headwinds — and stern rebukes — regarding its effort to force states to turn over unredacted voter rolls. The rejections have come from judges appointed by presidents of both parties, and five of the nine federal judges who have rejected the Justice Department’s efforts were appointed by Mr. Trump.

On Thursday In Maryland, Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term, wrote that “this Court joins every court to have addressed this issue in concluding that” a private, unredacted state voter list “is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States” under the Civil Rights Act.

Some of the rulings have been more sweeping. In February, Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, a Biden appointee, wrote that public statements and actions by the Justice Department forfeited the trust courts had traditionally granted to federal law enforcement.

The presumption that the department “could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds,” Judge Kasubhai wrote. He added that when the department claimed “that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary.”

New York Times, Postmaster General Confirms Plan to Hold Back Mail Ballots Under Proposed Rule, Adam Sella, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). The postmaster general, David Steiner, said on Wednesday that under a proposed rule, his agency would not deliver mail ballots in states that decline to hand over voter data.

Postmaster General David Steiner said at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that under a new proposed rule, the Postal Service would not deliver mail-in ballots in states that decline to hand over sensitive data about voters to the federal government.

The Postal Service’s proposed rule was released this month and is in line with President Trump’s March executive order intended to restrict voting by mail. That order, which faces multiple court challenges, seeks to create state-by-state lists of citizens to help determine who is eligible to vote and calls on the Postal Service not to distribute mail ballots to those not on state lists.

Earlier this year, Mr. Steiner told The New York Times that the Postal Service would defer to the courts on the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order and that the service would “absolutely” continue to deliver mail-in ballots.

But in his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, Mr. Steiner said that the proposed rule would in effect halt the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that do not comply with Mr. Trump’s demands.

He was asked by Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat: “If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal rule?”

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Mr. Steiner responded

Mr. Steiner reaffirmed at the hearing that the Postal Service would follow any court orders governing voting by mail.

Withholding some mail services in states where voters rely heavily on mail balloting could affect millions of Americans.

Mr. Trump has tried repeatedly to assert federal control over voting and fiercely opposes voting by mail. He has repeatedly made baseless claims that mail-in ballots allow for widespread election fraud favoring Democrats.

The Postal Service’s proposed rule appears to establish broad authority for the agency to intervene in the vote-by-mail process. It proposes that Postal Service employees screen mail-in ballots for eligibility using lists of voters provided by the states, and it requires states to adhere to new design rules for the ballots.Editors’ PicksSandwiches, Brownies, Icy Punch: This Is the Picnic Spread of Your DreamsAnother Spirit of ’76: George Washington’s WhiskeyTiny Love Stories: ‘She Was Married; I Had a Girlfriend’

Democrats and voting-rights groups have argued that the proposed rule is clear evidence that the Trump administration is trying to intrude on elections, which the Constitution gives the states the power to administer.

Democrats fear that the president is using his push to assert control to try to give Republicans an electoral advantage, something Mr. Trump has not denied. At the Senate hearing on Wednesday, they repeatedly accused Mr. Steiner of doing Mr. Trump’s bidding.

“Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook,” said Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan. “The Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don’t taint it with the obsession of this one man.”

The regulation is currently in a 30-day public-comment period that started earlier this month. The executive order calls on the Postal Service to issue a final rule by the end of July. 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Comment: Court Orders Immediate Release of More Epstein Files, RFK Jr. Caught on Tape Bribing, MAHA Blasts Trump as "Treasonous" as MAJOR Supreme Court Rulings ENGULF America, Aaron Parnas, June 25, 2026. Today delivered a series of major developments. A federal judge handed down a landmark victory in the fight to release the Epstein files, ruling that the Department of Justice has failed to comply with the law and ordering it to move forward with additional public 

At the same time, the MAHA movement is openly turning on Donald Trump, with some of his own supporters calling his administration’s actions a betrayal after major Supreme Court rulings. We’ll also cover how the Trump administration is moving to accelerate deportations following new Supreme Court decisions, the explosive report that RFK Jr. was caught on tape urging a political candidate to drop out while suggesting a potential deal, and much more.

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Here’s the news:

Epstein news:

A federal judge handed Katie Phang a significant legal victory by granting her motion for a preliminary injunction, requiring the Trump administration to move forward with additional public disclosures in the Epstein files case. The ruling orders the Justice Department to produce more records, explain millions of redactions, release the legally required disclosure log, and publicly disclose additional Epstein-related materials beginning as early as July 2. Judge Emmet Sullivan found that the lack of transparency causes ongoing harm and that Congress specifically intended for these records to be made public. While the administration can appeal, the order immediately compels compliance unless a higher court intervenes.

The decision is notable because it is not limited to Katie Phang’s lawsuit—it directs the government to release information to the public, making it a broader transparency ruling rather than a private records dispute. According to reporting and statements from Phang’s legal team, the disclosures include additional co-conspirator names, foreign-language documents, and detailed explanations for withheld material. Judge Sullivan emphasized that transparency itself is a legally protected public interest under the statute. If implemented, the ruling could substantially expand public access to Epstein-related government records.

This is one of the most consequential court rulings yet involving the Epstein files because it places the Justice Department under judicial supervision regarding its handling of the records. The court found that the government must justify its withholding decisions instead of relying on broad redactions, increasing accountability over how the files are released. The ruling also strengthens the legal argument that the Epstein Files Transparency Act creates enforceable obligations rather than leaving disclosure entirely to executive discretion. Although the litigation is not over and appeals are expected, the decision represents a major step toward greater public disclosure of the Epstein investigation files.

Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Bayer, the maker of Roundup, is shielded from thousands of state lawsuits alleging it failed to warn users that glyphosate could cause cancer, holding that federal pesticide labeling law preempts additional state warning requirements. The decision is a major legal victory for Bayer and the Trump administration, which supported the company, but environmental groups and plaintiffs’ attorneys say it closes the courthouse doors to many cancer victims. The ruling also deepens a growing rift between President Trump and the MAHA movement, whose activists condemned the administration for siding with Bayer and accused it of abandoning its promises to prioritize public health over the interests of the chemical industry.

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is increasingly accusing President Trump of betraying its core promises after his administration backed Monsanto in a Supreme Court case involving Roundup and supported policies promoting increased glyphosate production. Many MAHA activists argue the administration has sided with “Big Chemical” over public health, calling the move a direct contradiction of Trump’s campaign promises and the movement’s mission. Some supporters described the decision as a “stab” at Americans’ freedoms and health, with critics saying the administration’s actions amount to a betrayal of the movement that helped elect Trump. The growing backlash has become one of the most visible rifts between Trump and a key part of his political coalition.

Several prominent MAHA voices warned that the fallout could have major political consequences, with some supporters saying they may stay home rather than vote in the midterms if the administration continues backing chemical manufacturers. Others said “angry moms” within the movement are preparing to organize politically, arguing Trump has prioritized corporate interests over children’s health. Even Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a central figure in MAHA, has faced criticism from supporters after defending the administration’s glyphosate policy, though many still stop short of abandoning him. While the White House insists it remains committed to the MAHA agenda, the dispute highlights growing accusations within the movement that Trump has broken faith with one of his most loyal constituencies.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Trump administration may block asylum seekers from entering U.S. soil at ports of entry, allowing it to revive its "metering" policy that turns migrants back before they can formally request asylum. The majority held that asylum protections apply only after a person has entered the United States, while the dissent argued the decision undermines U.S. asylum law and could leave vulnerable migrants at risk of persecution or death. Immigration advocates warned the ruling could trigger another humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and significantly reshape how asylum claims are handled.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Hawaii’s law restricting firearms in many public places and on private property without the owner’s permission is unconstitutional, finding it violated the Second Amendment. The majority said the law improperly limited the right to carry firearms for self-defense, while dissenting justices and gun-control advocates warned the decision weakens public safety and property owners’ rights. The ruling also casts doubt on similar gun restrictions in states including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and California, continuing the court’s expansion of gun rights following its 2022 Bruen decision.

Venezuela news:

Venezuela was struck by two powerful earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude, causing widespread destruction across Caracas, La Guaira, and surrounding areas. At least 188 people have been confirmed dead, more than 1,520 have been injured, and officials expect the death toll to rise significantly as rescue efforts continue. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates fatalities could reach into the thousands due to the extensive damage and vulnerable building infrastructure. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez declared a state of emergency, closing airports, suspending public transportation, and canceling school while emergency crews search for survivors.

Rescue operations are ongoing but have been complicated by over 100 aftershocks, collapsed buildings, damaged roads, and limited equipment for first responders. Survivors described scenes of panic, buildings collapsing around them, and spending the night in cars because they feared additional quakes. Hospitals have become overcrowded, while many families continue searching for missing loved ones through hospitals, shelters, and online groups. Humanitarian organizations have identified urgent needs including medical care, emergency shelter, clean water, sanitation, and psychological support.

International governments and aid organizations have pledged significant assistance to Venezuela following the disaster. The United States is deploying search-and-rescue teams, medical resources, and humanitarian aid, while countries including Mexico, Spain, El Salvador, China, and Germany, along with organizations such as the United Nations, World Central Kitchen, Project HOPE, and the Red Cross, are mobilizing support. Airlines have suspended flights to Caracas because of airport damage, and internet outages have further complicated rescue and communication efforts. Officials continue urging unity as recovery begins, warning that the full scale of the disaster will not be known until search operations are complete.

Other news:

Florida has officially closed its controversial Everglades immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” with Gov. Ron DeSantis saying the temporary facility had fulfilled its purpose after federal officials secured additional detention capacity. The center, which processed about 21,000 deportations, was praised by the Trump administration as a key immigration enforcement tool but drew widespread criticism from immigrant advocates over alleged inhumane conditions, including poor sanitation, inadequate medical care, and limited access to attorneys. Although detainees have been transferred to other facilities, environmental groups and civil rights organizations say they will continue pursuing lawsuits over the site’s construction, environmental impact, and treatment of migrants.

A new report from The Washington Post says Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. personally urged Libertarian congressional candidates in Iowa to drop out of competitive House races to help Republicans keep control of Congress. According to an audio recording and interviews, Kennedy described himself as acting as a White House “liaison,” warned that a Democratic House would derail President Trump’s agenda, and suggested he could help candidates who agreed to leave the race, prompting ethics experts to question whether his actions were improper or potentially violated federal law. Kennedy declined to comment, and the Libertarian candidates said they rejected his request, but the episode highlights growing Republican concern over protecting their narrow House majority ahead of the midterm elections. Here is the recording:

Texas is poised to become the first state to require a statewide reading list for all public school students, mandating that millions of children read a common set of books that includes Bible excerpts beginning in elementary school. Supporters say the list emphasizes classic literature and the Bible’s historical and literary significance, while critics argue it advances a Christian agenda, limits teachers’ flexibility, and underrepresents diverse authors and contemporary works. If approved, the reading list would affect more than five million public school students and be fully implemented by the 2030 school year, making it one of the most sweeping curriculum changes in the state’s history.

Newly released emails obtained by The Guardian raise new questions about whether Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave misleading testimony to the Senate when he claimed his 2019 trip to Samoa "had nothing to do with vaccines." The emails from a former colleague describe the visit as a vaccine-related "mission" to analyze Samoa's medical records following a drop in vaccination rates, directly contradicting Kennedy's repeated statements during his confirmation hearings. The reporting has renewed scrutiny of Kennedy's role before Samoa's deadly 2019 measles outbreak, prompted Democratic lawmakers to accuse him of misleading Congress, and intensified calls for accountability over his past anti-vaccine activism.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr accused Disney-owned ABC of running a "campaign of misinformation" after the network urged viewers to submit public comments opposing two FCC investigations involving The View and ABC's local broadcast licenses. More than 90,000 public comments have been filed, with Carr insisting the FCC is simply enforcing federal communications law, while ABC and Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez argue the investigations are being used to pressure the network over its coverage of the Trump administration. The dispute has become a high-profile fight over media regulation, free speech, and whether the FCC is using its licensing authority to influence editorial decisions at one of the nation's largest television networks.

The National Park Service disclosed, without any evidence, that the liner of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was intentionally cut with a sharp knife or razor in June, damaging the newly installed $16 million renovation and prompting a federal investigation. The Trump administration has blamed vandalism for the pool's problems, while Democrats are demanding investigations into the costly renovation, citing peeling liner, algae growth, and questions about contracts awarded to companies with ties to Trump.

A mother and her 22-year-old son were identified as two of the three sets of skeletal remains discovered inside a Connecticut home that had recently been purchased through a foreclosure auction. The remains were identified as Sally Ann Cash, 54, and Brian Cash, while investigators are still working to identify the third person. Authorities said there is currently no indication of foul play or criminal activity, and the causes of death remain pending as the medical examiner continues the investigation. The remains were discovered by the home's new owner after the property was bought "as is" at auction earlier this month.

Police in Mechanicville, New York, are investigating the deaths of a 64-year-old woman, her 44-year-old daughter, and the daughter's four children after they were found deceased in an apartment during a welfare check. Investigators believe the grandmother may have been responsible, citing a handwritten note and evidence suggesting intentional poisoning, while one child is also believed to have suffered fatal sharp-force injuries. Authorities emphasized that the causes and manners of death have not yet been officially determined and are awaiting toxicology and medical examiner results. Police said there is currently no evidence that anyone outside the family was involved, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Parenting influencer Jamal Morton, known online as J’Amore, announced that his 2-year-old daughter, Sadé Rose, died after accidentally drowning in the family’s swimming pool in Georgia. He said she left the house on her own, entered the pool believing she could swim, and described losing a child as unimaginable, while local authorities said the death appears to have been accidental. Morton has since deleted many of his tribute posts, and his management team announced they will handle his social media while he and his family grieve. In a now-removed GoFundMe, Morton also shared that the family plans to move because they cannot bear to remain in the home where the tragedy occurred.

New York Times, Iran Strikes Ship in Strait of Hormuz, Undermining Efforts to Restore Traffic, Peter Eavis, Farnaz Fassihi, Jenny Gross and Euan Ward, June 25, 2026 The attack, confirmed by U.S. and Iranian officials, came after Tehran threatened to disrupt shipping in the waterway and as Washington sought regional support for its peace agreement.

Iran’s armed forces struck a container ship that was passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, according to U.S. and Iranian officials, undermining efforts to restore shipping traffic through the crucial waterway.

The attack came hours after Iran, demonstrating its hold over the strait, had warned ships that the only route through the vital pathway for oil and natural gas was through its waters. Many ships had been using a route on the southern side of the strait, hugging the Omani coast.

The strike halted traffic through the crucial waterway, contradicting President Trump’s claim that Iran did not control the strait and his assurances that it was open once again to shipping. Oil prices jumped after the attack, with the cost of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rising over 2 percent to about $75 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, also rose over 2 percent, to around $72 a barrel.

A U.S. official, who spoke anonymously in order to share details of the strike, said the vessel had been hit by a drone. The attack prompted the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, to suspend its plan to evacuate seafarers from hundreds of ships that had been stranded in the Persian Gulf.

It was not clear how the strike would affect the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran over control of the strait and over Iran’s nuclear program. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met on Thursday with Gulf Arab leaders in Bahrain to try to allay their security concerns.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had warned ships earlier on Thursday that they must coordinate with its navy and that they should not take an alternative route, in an apparent reference to Omani territorial waters. The threats came just as shipping in the waterway was surging this week after months of near-paralysis.

“This route is unacceptable and extremely dangerous,” the Revolutionary Guards’ Navy said early on Thursday in a statement carried by Tasnim, an Iranian news agency tied to the Guards. “We warn all vessels to strictly refrain from any movement outside the designated routes,” it added, warning that action would be taken against vessels that did not heed its instructions.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Won’t Rest Until He Runs Our Elections, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 25, 2026. Who cares about your rent—there are votes to suppress!

Yesterday was an enormous day for earthquakes. Seismic activity rocked Japan and Northern California, but nowhere was hit harder than Venezuela, which suffered a devastating pair of quakes that leveled buildings and struck terror throughout the capital of Caracas and beyond. At least 164 people died in the quake, acting President Delcy Rodríguez said, and at least 971 more were injured.

In a grim way, Venezuela has one thing to be thankful for: After seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last year and handing power over to Rodríguez, President Donald Trump has moved Venezuela from his “enemies” to his “friends” list, and he is therefore in a giving mood. “The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help!” Trump wrote on Truth Social last night. “I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly. We will be there for our new and great friends.” Happy Thursday.

New York Times, Supreme Court Lets Trump End Deportation Protection for Haitians and Syrians, Ann E. Marimow, June 25, 2026.President Trump has pushed to rescind Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people from countries convulsed by humanitarian crises.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections that have permitted hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Syria to live and work legally in the United States.

President Trump has pushed to terminate the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, as part of his broader crack down on immigration. The program was created by Congress with bipartisan support in 1990 to provide temporary legal status to people whose home countries were deemed unsafe because of war, natural disasters or other crises.

The court’s 6-to-3 decision on Thursday, divided along ideological lines, clears a path for the potential deportation of 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, and it is likely to have implications for T.P.S. holders from about a dozen other countries.

The three liberal justices dissented.Sign up for the Docket newsletter. Adam Liptak helps you make sense of legal developments in a turbulent time. Get it sent to your inbox.

Since Mr. Trump returned to office last year, his administration has attempted to end T.P.S. for people from 13 out of 17 countries with the designation when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left office. The administration has separately halted the resettlement of refugees and has dramatically slowed the consideration of asylum claims. The changes collectively have made it far more difficult for people who come from troubled or war-torn nations to find refuge in the United States.

The homeland security secretary determines when T.P.S. should be available to migrants from any specific country, and the designation can last from six to 18 months. There is no limit to how many times a designation for a particular country can be extended.

The law allows the secretary to periodically review such protections, terminating or extending them for certain countries. But the law requires the secretary to consult with relevant federal agencies, including the State Department, about conditions in a country and then make a decision based on those assessments before initiating a change.

The program had been repeatedly extended, becoming all but permanent for recipients from Haiti, Syria and several other nations where crises have spanned many years. Last year, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary at the time, moved to withdraw the protections from various countries.

Both sides in the case before the court agreed that the law allows the administration to periodically remove countries from the T.P.S. program and that once terminated, beneficiaries lose legal protections and have to leave the United States.

But immigrant rights advocates said Homeland Security Department officials failed to properly assess country conditions as required by the law. In the case of Haitians, they said the administration was motivated by anti-Black and anti-Haitian prejudice in violation of constitutional prohibitions against discriminatory government actions.

Class-action lawsuits were filed by T.P.S. holders, including engineers, students, doctors and caregivers, who want to continue to work and live in the United States because, their lawyers say, they could be killed if they were forced to return to Syria or Haiti.

During oral arguments in April, the court’s liberal justices pressed the administration’s lawyer about whether the decision to end the program for Haitians was racially motivated. The justices cited the president’s false accusations during the 2024 campaign that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, ate their neighbors’ pets and Mr. Trump’s comments in December about Haitian immigrants being undesirable because they come from a “filthy, dirty, disgusting” country.

D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said those statements were “unilluminating” and were references to poverty and crime rather than race. Federal law, he said, makes clear that courts cannot second-guess the government’s decision to extend or to end the protections.

The text of the statute prohibits “judicial review of any determination” of the secretary “with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation.”

Lower court judges, however, sided with the Haitians and Syrians, finding that the secretary’s process was subject to court review and that her decisions had been preordained and not based on meaningful analysis. The judges postponed the terminations, prompting the government’s lawyers to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

The justices fast-tracked the two cases, scheduling them for the final day of arguments for the term.

In a separate case, the Supreme Court last year allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to lift protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans who had been living in the United States. The justices ruled twice in that case in emergency orders, providing technically temporary authorization to revoke the protected status while the case went through the courts.

New York Times, Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border, Ann E. Marimow, June 25, 2026. A policy of turning back asylum seekers at the border was rescinded in 2021, but the Trump administration wants the flexibility to reinstate it as a tool for border control.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration can turn away migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border by physically preventing them from crossing into the United States as they seek protection from persecution.

The administration had asked the court to permit the government to revive a policy, first used in 2016, as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Under that so-called turn-back policy, the government had stopped asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law would have entitled them to try to claim asylum and receive protections.

The statute at issue says any noncitizen who is “physically present in the United States” or “arrives in the United States” can apply for asylum. Migrants who announce their intention to seek protection are then referred for an interview to evaluate their claims.

A major question in the case was what it meant to “arrive” in the United States. In its 6-to-3 ruling, the court said noncitizens must fully cross the border to gain the right to apply for asylum. The court’s conservative majority said migrants standing in Mexico do not “arrive” by “attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country.”

The three liberal justices disagreed, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor reading a summary of her dissent from the bench.

The Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the asylum process for migrants more broadly and told the Supreme Court it wanted the flexibility to reinstitute the policy if needed to address a surge of migrants at the border. In separate cases, a judge in Rhode Island this month rejected the government’s indefinite hold on asylum applications and an appeals court in Washington said in April that the administration could not categorically deny asylum claims from people crossing from Mexico into the United States.Sign up for the Docket newsletter. Adam Liptak helps you make sense of legal developments in a turbulent time. Get it sent to your inbox.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has generally been receptive to the Trump administration’s assertions of presidential power and has issued a series of temporary orders allowing Mr. Trump to carry out his policies while litigation proceeds in the lower courts.

But there have been exceptions. The court refused to allow the president to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials.

For decades, the government has interpreted the asylum law as providing migrants a right to seek protections at border crossings if they fear persecution because of their race, religion, nationality or political views. With fewer legal pathways to enter the United States, such claims have proliferated in recent years, with backlogs now totaling almost four million cases and lengthy wait times for hearings.

A surge of Haitians at the southern border near San Diego in 2016 first prompted the Obama administration to meter the flow of migrants allowed to cross into the country.

New York Times, Live Updates: Britain Breaks June Temperature Record as Deadly Heat Stifles Europe, Lynsey Chutel, Nazaneen Ghaffar, Aurelien Breeden and Zane Irwin, June 25, 2026. A Spanish monitoring agency said an estimated 212 deaths could be attributed to the heat wave since Sunday. Five people in Italy have died from heat exposure this week, the country’s main news agency said.

Here’s the latest.

As Europe broiled under record-shattering temperatures that are testing the continent’s ability to adapt to extreme weather, Spain on Thursday warned of a possible spike in heat-related deaths.

The stifling heat wave — the second in two months — has disrupted education, transportation and other aspects of daily life for millions of people, with officials warning that older people or those who work outdoors, like on construction sites, are most vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat.

The heat has also proved deadly.

In Spain, where temperatures soared past 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, over several days, government statistical models suggest more than 200 deaths ultimately could be attributed to the heat wave. The institute cautioned that the figures were estimates but officials and experts say there is a clear correlation between extreme temperatures and serious health issues.

In Italy, five people have died from heat exposure this week, according to the country’s main news agency, ANSA. Several of the victims died while they were working outside, and a homeless man died in Naples, highlighting the vulnerability of those who had little choice but to be outside. In France, at least 40 people have drowned since the latest heat wave began in the middle of last week, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised areas.

Across much of Western Europe, temperatures remained in the high 30s to low 40s Celsius, or around 100 Fahrenheit, on Thursday afternoon. Paris reached 39.6 Celsius, or 103.3 Fahrenheit, and was forecast to reach 42 Celsius later in the day. Temperatures in Britain broke records that were set just yesterday, with 36.4 degrees, or 97.5 Fahrenheit, recorded in southwest England by the early afternoon, with that number expected to climb.

More than a dozen countries were under high-level heat warnings on Thursday, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Sweden.

New York Times, Complaint Seeks Disclosure of Pentagon’s Agreement With Scouting America, Helene Cooper, June 25, 2026. The Pentagon and the organization have given contradictory accounts of an agreement reached in February.

A gay rights activist has sued the Pentagon to obtain the text of an agreement that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says bars Scouting America from promoting diversity policies.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, cites the Freedom of Information Act in an effort to compel the Pentagon to publicly disclose the final, signed memorandum of understanding between the Defense Department and Scouting America reached in February. The two organizations have given contradictory accounts of their agreement.

Mr. Hegseth, who has made a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies the hallmark of his tenure as defense secretary, said that Scouting America was banning transgender people from openly participating in the group. But Scouting America said it had not changed its policies on transgender members.

“Scouting America will continue to welcome all youth into our programs, and we remain committed to creating an environment where all youth feel valued and respected,” the organization said in a statement sent to The New York Times.

“Both accounts cannot be true, and the stakes are of profound public importance,” the complaint, filed by activist James Dale, said. Mr. Dale said in an interview that he had tried for months to get the Pentagon to show him the agreement, and that the department had not done so.

Mr. Dale was the plaintiff in a 2000 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled, 5 to 4, that the Boy Scouts of America was exempt from a state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The organization changed its name to Scouting America in 2024.

Asked for comment on the lawsuit, the acting Pentagon press secretary, Joel Valdez, referred a Feb. 27 video on social media in which Mr. Hegseth announced the agreement. He declined a request for a copy of the agreement because, he said, “this is now a matter of active litigation.”

In his announcement, Mr. Hegseth attacked Scouting America and the changes the organization had made in recent years to become more inclusive. He complained that the Boy Scouts had “lost their way.”

“Girls were accepted,” he said. “Scouting became an organization that no longer celebrated boys.”

“They even welcomed the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism,” Mr. Hegseth said.Editors’ PicksSandwiches, Brownies, Icy Punch: This Is the Picnic Spread of Your DreamsAnother Spirit of ’76: George Washington’s WhiskeyTiny Love Stories: ‘She Was Married; I Had a Girlfriend’

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, above, is a Democrat who served from 1999-2003 but who was then framed on corruption charges and imprisoned in a plot orchestrated by then-White House advisor Karl Rove and implemented by the Bush Administration's U.S. Department of Justice, according to Justice Integrity Project in-depth reporting congruent with a 2008 CBS "60 Minutes" segment anchored by correspondent Scott Pelley.

Al.com, Opinion: Response to Karl Rove's WSJ opinion piece, Don Siegelman (Gov. of Alabama, 1999-2003), June 25, 2026. In Karl Rove’s WSJ opinion piece, June 10th, “Scott Pelley’s Idea of Journalism — Why Would Anyone Think ‘60 Minutes’ Is Biased? Consider What Happened to Me”, Karl criticizes CBS 60 Minute veteran journalist Scott Pelley for not doing his due diligence.

As an example, Rove, right, focuses on a 60 Minutes story “The Prosecution of Don Siegelman” (02/24/08), in which Pelley interviews Republican Jill Simpson about whether politics had influenced my prosecution.

Mr. Rove argues that 60 Minutes failed to substantiate Ms. Simpson’s allegations. However, Karl does not mention that Ms. Simpson had given sworn testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee linking Rove and his Alabama business partner, Bill Canary, to political and prosecutorial efforts directed against me.

Bill Canary was not merely Karl Rove’s political associate. He was also the husband of my prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Laura Canary. Ms. Canary was vetted by Mr. Rove and appointed by President George W. Bush.

According to Ms. Simpson’s sworn testimony, Bill Canary stated during a 2002 conference call Republicans didn’t need to worry about Don Siegelman because his wife and another U.S. Attorney would “take care of Siegelman.”

While Simpson gave sworn testimony to Congress, subject to criminal penalties, notably Rove refused to testify under oath; and then, when asked directly if he was involved in my prosecution, refused to answer. (This Week, ABC News (Mar. 25, 2002))

There was additional context that 60 Minutes could not ignore.

On March 28, 2001, The Kiplinger Letter (White House 2004: Early Look at Democrats) identified me as a “dark horse” candidate for president in 2004, adding, all I needed to do was win reelection in 2002. At that time, the last two Democrats elected had been Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, by implication, I too could break the Republican hold on Southern electoral votes.

It was then the forces of Karl Rove became animated.

$20 million of Indian casino money had been laundered into Alabama by Karl Rove’s fellow College Republican, Jack Abramoff, both to defeat me and my proposed State lottery initiative dedicated to public education. (See “Capitol Punishment” by Jack Abramoff, 2012; also see Atticus v. The Architect, the political assassination of Governor Don Siegelman.)

Bill Canary’s wife, the United States Attorney, accelerated the federal investigation.

Alabama’s Attorney General, a political ally and client of Mr. Rove, pursued a parallel state investigation leading into my 2002 reelection campaign.

While I was under investigation by Bill Canary's wife, he was being paid by one Republican candidate seeking to defeat me. Later, Bill Canary helped run my opponent's campaign in 2002.

The Bush Department of Justice concluded there was “no actual conflict.” (Department of Justice memorandum, May 15, 2002, at 3; David Beiler, Campaigns & Elections, June 2003.)

The night of the 2002 election, after all counties had reported, I was declared the winner. Overnight more than 6,000 of my votes disappeared from Baldwin County, a Republican dominated county.

My demand for a hand count of the ballots was blocked by Karl Rove’s client, the State Attorney General. I then walked away and said I’d run again in 2006.

One month before my reelection date in 2006, I was brought to trial and convicted of bribery. Even though I wasn’t accused of benefiting personally, a campaign contribution to a State lottery referendum was used to support a bribery charge.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote about the 2002 election in Chapter 28, “Stuffed” in “Tales of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits” by Greg Palast, 2012.

“The faux bribery charge received national attention, but not this story of the theft of Siegelman’s 2002 election.”

Kennedy gave credit for electronic vote-switching to Karl Rove’s Deputy and President Bush’s Southern Political Director, saying that Republicans gave her the credit for “finding the votes that delivered the election” to my opponent. Kennedy says it was Karl Rove’s political client, the State’s Attorney General who seized all of the ballots and blocked a hand recount, and “threatened to jail anyone who attempted to count the ballots.” (pp 229-231; See also Professor James H. Gundlach, Auburn University, “Statistical Analysis of Possible Electronic Ballot Stuffing,” April 11, 2003.)

Questions about the prosecution were not limited to the media:

David Margolis, the Justice Department’s longest-serving Associate Deputy Attorney General, (praised by James Comey for being “The Department of Justice”...NPR, July 13, 2016) observed:

“The way DOJ managed this case, if brought to light, would do real harm to the reputation of the department.”(Washington Spectator, March 8, 2016.)

Ironically, while the Department of Justice denied political motivation,it acknowledged that its lead corruption prosecutor had been in email contact with my Republican opponent’s son. (Ronald Welch, Assistant Attorney General, Letter to House Committee on the Judiciary, June 3, 2010, at 3.)

As you have read, many of the claims examined by Scott Pelley in that 60 Minutes broadcast about my prosecution were supported by sworn testimony, government records, contemporaneous reporting, published books, academic analysis, and statements from officials across the political spectrum.

Journalism is not the avoidance of controversy; it is the examination of evidence. Journalists are supposed to investigate serious allegations involving powerful public officials and present the facts to the American people.

Don Siegelman served as Governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003 and previously served as Alabama Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Lieutenant Governor. He is the only person in Alabama history elected to the State's top four constitutional offices. He may be contacted here. Mr. Rove’s WSJ Opinion piece is available at the above link, or on Apple News

New York Times, Why These Affordable Homes Face a 31% Rent Increase, Mihir Zaveri and Dana Rubinstein, June 25, 2026. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promised relief for rent-stabilized tenants. But thousands of apartments under a separate city program are subject to increases, creating an awkward contrast.

For many New York City tenants, this week is likely to deliver a reprieve, with a New York City panel expected on Thursday to approve freezing rents on almost one million rent-stabilized apartments. At the same time, a majority of residents in one vast affordable housing complex are confronting a possible rent increase of more than 30 percent over four years.

That such wildly disparate outcomes could arise under Zohran Mamdani, a mayor who has pledged to “freeze the rent,” is in part because the complex, Tracey Towers in the Bronx, is governed by a different program than rent stabilization.

But the juxtaposition is posing a political problem.

On Thursday, hours before the panel’s meeting, six elected officials — including the City Council speaker, Julie Menin; the Bronx borough president, Vanessa Gibson; and U.S. Representative Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who just lost a re-election bid against a candidate backed by the mayor — sent a letter to Mr. Mamdani arguing that he has “the authority and tools necessary to reduce or avoid a rent increase of this magnitude,” and urging him to act on that authority.

The City Council plans to hold a hearing on the matter in July.

Jean Hill, a retired bookkeeper who serves as president of the tenant association at Tracey Towers, said the proposed rent increase might make apartments so expensive that some tenants could lose their homes.

“That is not the platform the mayor ran on,” she said.

Matthew Rauschenbach, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, said the administration would make “critical investments” in developments like Tracey Towers. He said that state law required the city to back the rent increase.

“Our responsibility is not only to preserve affordable housing, but to stand with the New Yorkers who call it home,” he added.

The situation at Tracey Towers represents a decades-long predicament. Completed in 1974, the complex of 871 units represents a small share of the roughly 45,000 such homes remaining in New York City’s Mitchell-Lama program, which dates to the 1950s. The program secured affordable rents for New Yorkers by providing tax breaks and low-interest loans to developers.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Wants Only One Thing: To Control Our Elections, William Kristol, right, June 25, 2026. A couple of days ago, I wrote that “we’re entering a period of maximum authoritarian threat, one that makes Watergate look like child’s play. And we’ll be in that era of threat for the next two and a half years.”

Today I just want to add a pretty obvious point: November 3, 2026 is key. It’s likely to be the crucial moment, the potential inflection point, in shaping the course of these next two and a half years. If Democrats win control of both chambers of Congress, or even of one or even both , there’s at least a decent chance of success in checking to some degree Trump’s assault on our civil and political liberties.

The good news is that the public is holding firm in its disapproval of Trump and its desire to check him. Democrats are very likely to do well in free and fair elections this fall.

But Trump knows that. And he and his henchmen know how damaging a loss in November would be. Just yesterday, we had several reminders of the lengths to which the administration may go to try to prevent such a defeat.

The first data point was Trump’s dramatic refusal, described by Andrew above, to sign a bipartisan housing bill in an attempt to pressure Republican senators to advance his federal voter suppression agenda. Trump said he wouldn’t sign the legislation “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”

Trump’s willingness to take any hostage available to pressure recalcitrant Republican senators to help subvert the 2026 elections is striking. It seems for now that Republican senators will continue to resist this part of Trump’s authoritarian agenda. But might they bow to this pressure, as they have in so many other areas?

And what if they don’t? Trump’s invocation yesterday of a “national emergency” was ominous. He and his apparatchiks have used the language of “emergency” to claim unprecedented executive powers in a variety of areas. If his election subversion legislation can’t pass in the Senate, are we confident Trump won’t try to implement it on his own?

I’m not.

Another data point: In testimony yesterday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Trump’s postmaster general, David Steiner, defended a new rule proposed by the administration under which the Postal Service can refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t turn over their voting lists to the federal executive branch. Courts around the nation have found this federal demand for state lists unjustified by any law or the Constitution. But the Trump administration intends to try to move ahead using its executive authority.

The Trump administration is all-in on tilting the playing field so as not to lose this November.

Will other players step up to save the day? Will judges allow themselves to see the broader implications of the Trump administration’s acts, abandoning a presumption of regularity by the executive branch and approaching cases with a presumption of suspicion?

Will senior officials cashiered from the military speak out about what’s happening at Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department? Will public servants still in government do what they can, peacefully and lawfully, to challenge and impede their political masters’ authoritarian schemes? Will activists continue and even redouble their admirable efforts at mobilizing public resistance around the nation?

Above all, will Democrats in Congress fight over the next months in every way and on every front—including fighting every funding increase—to stop the Trump administration from amassing even more power?

Trump claims it’s an emergency. But the true emergency is that his authoritarian project is in his full swing. Can the defenders of democracy rise to the occasion? 

Democracy Docket, ICE agents confront New York poll worker during voting, as state prosecutors review incident, Jacob Knutson, June 25, 2026. Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents confronted a poll worker at a voting site in Syracuse, New York, as she was helping carry out the state’s recent primary elections.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) told Democracy Docket it’s reviewing a report on the alarming incident, which again raises the specter of federal agents interfering in active elections.

PaigeLynne Gonyea, who was working at a voting site at a public library Tuesday, said on social media that the agents came to warn her to remove a social media account that they claimed broke federal law by threatening federal law enforcement agents.

In fact, Gonyea appears to have only shared information about an ICE agent involved in a fatal Minnesota shooting that had been previously published online and reported in the press.

The incident comes as prominent figures on the far right have called on President Donald Trump to deploy ICE agents and troops to polling places in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections as part of a clear effort to intimidate voters and election workers.

Federal and state laws largely bar the deployment of law enforcement to polling places. However, the Trump administration has never definitively ruled out the tactic, while senior Department of Justice officials — including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — have endorsed it.

Dustin Czarny, a Democratic elections commissioner in Onondaga County, told Democracy Docket that he and other county election officials flagged the incident to New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office.

Gonyea did not respond to Democracy Docket’s request for comment. ICE also did not respond to a request.

Czarny said the confrontation did not affect voters and did not disrupt voting procedures at the site. However, the elections commissioner expressed concern that it will heighten fears of federal law enforcement interference in the upcoming midterms.

“People are scared,” Czarny said. “I want to assure the public, especially in my county, that we’re going to do everything we can to make sure polling operations are safe and secure in every election we hold.”

Gonyea, who often criticizes the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration operations on her Instagram account, said she believes the federal agents were specifically referring to a January post in which she cited a news report that identified Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.

“BREAKING: The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!” her post read.

If she didn’t remove her account, Gonyea could face “both federal and state prosecution,” according to a document she received during the confrontation. She said the agents asked her to sign the document to acknowledge she received the warning, but she refused.

The document also directed the ICE agents who served the notice to add their signatures, but that portion was blank in the image of the document Gonyea shared.

In a separate post, Gonyea said the agents first went to her home and spoke with her husband, who gave them her number. In a phone conversation, she invited the agents to the Onondaga County Central Library, a polling site in the state’s primary elections this week.

“They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in,” Gonyea said.

Despite Gonyea’s invitation, Czarny said state election law only allows specific people to enter a polling place, such as voters, state and local election officials, election workers and authorized poll watchers.

“We’ve always said that if law enforcement or fire safety personnel were there for emergency reasons, of course, they would be allowed in,” he said. “But that does not seem to be the case in this incident.”

Under federal law, it is a crime to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place unless “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”

New York law also explicitly protects against voter interference at polling sites by prohibiting immigration authorities from accessing the non-public areas of any state-owned or operated facility — which includes polling locations — without a judicial warrant.

Gonyea said she felt intimidated by the experience and that she was speaking out because “I believe it’s important that election workers are able to do their jobs without feeling pressured or afraid. It’s also important for the protection of freedom of speech and civil liberties.”

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Obama Blasts Trump, Devastating Earthquakes, Supporters Leave Trump's Speech Early, USPS Voter Suppression, Aaron Parnas, right, June 25, 2026. President Obama is criticizing Donald Trump in ways we have not heard from him before. Many people left Trump’s speech early last night.

Meanwhile, devastating earthquakes in Venezuela have left thousands feared dead, while additional quakes struck California and Japan. The USPS is also moving forward with a proposal that critics say could disenfranchise millions of voters while creating a massive database of personal information.

Here’s the news:

Former President Barack Obama joked that he occupies “a suite” in President Donald Trump’s head, suggesting Trump remains overly focused on him years after he left office. Speaking on the All The Smoke podcast, Obama said effective leaders should concentrate on governing rather than dwelling on predecessors, arguing that constant attention to political rivals reflects misplaced priorities. He contrasted that approach with his own experience in office, saying he was too focused on the responsibilities of the presidency to worry about former leaders.

Obama said Trump’s tough rhetoric changes when they are face-to-face, arguing that Trump “knows better” than to speak the same way in person.

President Donald Trump is meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson to try to break a legislative deadlock in Congress. A group of conservative Republicans has blocked House business, insisting that the Senate first pass a voter ID bill known as the Save America Act. The standoff has created tensions between the White House, House Republicans, and Senate leadership, especially after the Senate recessed without advancing the measure. If no agreement is reached, the House could also recess without making progress on key parts of Trump’s legislative agenda.

Many people left Donald Trump’s speech early last night:

The U.S. Postal Service is considering a rule that would require states to provide voter and absentee-ballot request data before mail-in ballots are processed. Under the proposal, states that do not provide the requested information could face restrictions on USPS handling of election mail. Critics argue the rule could interfere with state control of elections and make voting by mail more difficult, while supporters say it is intended to improve election oversight and security. The proposal is likely to face legal and political challenges before it can take effect.

U.S. inflation rose to 4.1% in May, its highest level in three years, largely driven by elevated gasoline prices, while core inflation (excluding food and energy) increased more modestly to 3.4%. Despite the headline increase, consumer spending, incomes, and savings all showed resilience, suggesting the broader economy remains relatively strong. With inflation still above the Federal Reserve’s target, markets are increasingly expecting interest-rate hikes rather than cuts later this year. Economists say future inflation trends will depend heavily on whether energy prices continue to decline, though housing, healthcare, and electricity costs remain persistent sources of price pressure.

Apple raised prices across its MacBook and iPad lineup due to a reported memory shortage, with the MacBook Air increasing from $1,099 to $1,299, MacBook Pro from $1,699 to $1,999, MacBook Neo from $599 to $699, iPad Air from $599 to $749, and iPad Pro from $999 to $1,199.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf sharply rejected President Donald Trump’s characterization of a reported agreement, sarcastically dismissing claims that unfrozen Iranian assets would be spent on U.S. agricultural products. Ghalibaf said the real legacy of U.S.-Iran relations is decades of mistrust created by American policies, adding that while Iran’s “harvest” is mistrust, America exports “broken promises and trash talks.” The remarks highlight continuing tensions between the two countries despite discussions surrounding sanctions relief and frozen assets.

President Donald Trump appeared to boast publicly about a heated confrontation with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy after the senator questioned the administration’s handling of the conflict with Iran. The clash took place during a closed-door Senate Republican meeting, where both men acknowledged raising their voices during the exchange. Trump later highlighted a Senate vote that aligned with his position, portraying it as a political victory after the dispute. The episode reflected tensions within the Republican Party over foreign policy and congressional oversight of military action.

Venezuela earthquakes:

Two powerful earthquakes (magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5) struck Venezuela within seconds of each other, causing widespread destruction across Caracas and nearby regions. The disaster has killed at least 164 people and injured nearly 1,000, with officials warning that the toll will likely rise. More than 100 aftershocks have been reported, further complicating rescue efforts. Authorities described some of the hardest-hit areas as disaster zones, with apartment buildings, roads, and critical infrastructure severely damaged.

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, declared a state of emergency and ordered major public service shutdowns. Caracas’ international airport was closed because of extensive structural damage, while metro and rail services were suspended to support rescue and recovery operations. Schools across affected areas were also closed for the remainder of the week. The government announced a $200 million reconstruction fund and called for national unity as emergency teams continue searching through rubble.

International aid and support began arriving quickly from around the world. The United States, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pledged search-and-rescue teams, medical resources, and humanitarian assistance, while President Donald Trump promised a rapid government response. Other countries, including Germany, Brazil, China, and El Salvador, also offered assistance, equipment, personnel, or logistical support. International organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union activated emergency resources to aid recovery efforts.

The earthquakes struck during a national holiday, meaning many residents were at home when the shaking began. Survivors described scenes of panic and devastation, comparing the aftermath to a horror movie as buildings collapsed and neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. The U.S. Geological Survey issued a rare red alert, warning that casualties and economic losses could be extremely high and estimating a significant risk that deaths could eventually exceed 10,000. Rescue operations remain ongoing, with authorities and aid groups racing to locate survivors and assess the full scale of the disaster.

Other earthquakes:

A powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off northern Japan’s coast near Iwate Prefecture, causing tremors across the region and as far as Tokyo, but authorities reported no tsunami risk, no significant damage, and no immediate injuries. Safety inspections temporarily halted some train services, schools closed in a few affected areas, and officials urged residents to remain alert for aftershocks. Nuclear facilities, including Fukushima Daiichi, reported no abnormalities, while the government continued monitoring the situation and preparing emergency response measures if needed.

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck near Redwood Valley in Northern California, causing noticeable shaking across a wide area from Eureka to Sacramento but resulting in no major reported damage. About 7,400 homes and businesses in Mendocino County temporarily lost power, while the U.S. Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert system successfully warned roughly 650,000 people before the shaking reached them. Several aftershocks followed the initial quake, and seismologists continue monitoring the area for additional seismic activity.

Other news:

Singer Alexis Wilkins, who is dating FBI Director Kash Patel (shown above together on an Instagram photo), faced criticism and a lukewarm reception after being announced as a performer at President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair event in Washington. Some attendees and online commenters questioned her selection, with critics suggesting her relationship with Patel may have influenced the opportunity. Wilkins rejected those claims, saying she was invited independently, was not being paid, and had earned the role through her own music and media career. The controversy added to broader attention on the event, which reportedly dealt with artist withdrawals and lower-than-expected attendance.

Europe is experiencing a severe and potentially record-breaking heat wave, with countries including France, the UK, and Spain reporting some of their hottest June temperatures ever recorded. The extreme heat has disrupted transportation, forced school closures, caused power outages, and led to the temporary closure of major attractions. Authorities say the heat has already been deadly, with hundreds of heat-related deaths reported in Spain and additional fatalities in France and Italy. While temperatures are expected to ease in some western European countries by the weekend, the heat is forecast to shift eastward, bringing dangerous conditions to countries such as Germany, Poland, and Croatia.

A 3-year-old giraffe named Gracie escaped from her enclosure at a Texas Hill Country ranch nearly two weeks ago and remains missing despite helicopter searches, reported sightings, and a $5,000 reward. Ranch owner Vic Jones believes she wandered through rugged terrain and exited through the wrong side of a gate. Authorities say Gracie poses little danger to people because she is in a remote, heavily wooded area with abundant vegetation. Local officials and residents continue searching, though leads have often arrived days after she moved on, making recovery difficult.

Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that major corporate mergers approved during the Trump administration—including the proposed combination of major media companies under the Ellison family—could face legal challenges or even be reversed by future administrations. She argued that growing public anger over corporate concentration may trigger stronger antitrust enforcement after 2028, expressing concern that consolidation could reduce competition, increase corporate power, and potentially influence the independence of major news organizations.

Renters across the U.S. are pushing for stronger federal rules to limit “junk fees” and other mandatory charges that significantly increase housing costs beyond advertised rent. Hundreds of public comments submitted to the Federal Trade Commission support regulation, arguing that tenants often have little bargaining power and face confusing or unfair fees for applications, utilities, and other services. Property owners and industry groups contend that such fees are necessary for operating rental communities and warn that stricter regulations could raise base rents or reduce services. The debate has gained momentum following major FTC settlements with large landlords and growing calls for transparency through “all-in” pricing that requires landlords to disclose the full cost of renting upfront.

According to The Guardian, new federal student loan caps taking effect July 1 are raising concerns among aspiring physician assistants (PAs), who may no longer be able to borrow enough through federal programs to cover the cost of their education. Advocacy groups argue that the annual loan limit of about $20,500 is far below the typical cost of PA programs, which often exceed $100,000, forcing students to rely on private loans with stricter approval requirements and potentially higher interest rates. Critics say the policy could discourage people from entering the profession at a time when physician assistants are increasingly needed to address healthcare shortages, particularly in rural areas. Several healthcare organizations and state officials have challenged the changes in court, arguing they could reduce access to training for future healthcare providers.

Randy Smith, the longtime sheriff of Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, retired after pleading guilty to battering local podcaster Bobby Couvillion, who had frequently criticized him. Prosecutors said Smith attacked Couvillion at a restaurant, allegedly placing him in a chokehold, throwing him to the ground, and striking him, leaving the victim with a concussion and dental injuries. As part of a plea agreement, Smith resigned from office and accepted probation, bringing an end to a policing career that spanned more than four decades. Local officials said the case demonstrated that public officials would be held accountable under the law regardless of their position.

The DC Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Boondoggle

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as of June 15, 2026 (New York Times Photo).

Vandals damaging pool's new blue undercoating identified: video and photos of Presidential inspection motorcase via Tom Hoeflin.

Public Notice, Opinion: American cesspool: Green algae, blue shards, and a red-faced megalomaniac, Tom Schaller, June 25, 2026. The  color palette transition is perfect: green algae turned blue paint into a red-faced president.

Welcome to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga, a perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s laughable-were-it-not-catastrophic second presidential term.In the pantheon of Trumpian sight gags, the reflecting pool fiasco is at best a pratfall. And, boy oh boy, are Americans having gallons of fun at Trump’s expense, creating everything from green algae-colored craft cocktails to Creature from the Green Lagoon swamp memes.

What’s serious about this otherwise comical episode is how it reveals so many of Trump’s myriad flaws: His tendency to overpromise but underdeliver; his flaunting of scientific expertise in favor of gut decision making; his penchant for ignoring contracting protocols in favor of transparent graft; his corrosive, showy patriotism designed to glorify himself and “own” the libs; his wanton destruction of cherished federal symbols; and, of course, after the project quickly went south, his inevitable blame-shifting onto anyone — Barack Obama, especially — but himself.

The pool on the National Mall may not reflect blue as Donald Trump fervently hoped. But the renovation fiasco perfectly reflects the ignorant, bloviated patriotism of Trump 2.0.Bungled boondoggling.

Let’s start with the incompetence, graft, and crony capitalism, the holy trinity of Trump’s pre-presidential business model and current governing practices.Trump is a bad businessman and dealmaker, but a worse public official. He knows little and cares even less about policy. He loves to make huge promises (“we’re signing a healthcare plan within two weeks”) and never follow through. And far too many of his decisions are guided by self-interest, immodesty, and his inveterate belief that his own genius transcends science and logic.

Little surprise, then, that Trump was confident that draining and painting the bottom of the reflecting pool “American flag blue” would magically make the water appear blue. He boasted that the new coating was thick, strong, flexible. Trump’s uncle taught at MIT, so clearly he understands science by dint of his superior genetics. Trump quickly took credit for the new pool, boasting on June 6 that the renovations were complete.Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comCNN put together a supercut of Trump gassing up the reflecting pool in recent weeks, before it turned into a catastrophe

But as he failed to learn during the covid pandemic — one day the virus would just “go away” the Epidemiologist in Chief declared at least 40 times — biology and chemistry do not bend to his petty, misinformed whims. Algae blooms, accelerated by a hot Washington summer and the heat-absorbing blue polymer he installed, revolted. The water quickly turned green; crews scrambled to pump slimy water from the pool into the Washington sewer system.

Pouring hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill the algae — another brilliant idea — only shredded the blue polymer on the reflecting pool’s bottom, turning the renovation into a catastrophe.

Within two weeks of Trump’s June 6 victory-lapping, almost all of the blue paint had peeled off the pool bottom.Trump’s overconfidence and incompetence were magnified by another Trumpian signature: his rampant, naked cronyism.

Trump forced the Department of Interior to give a $14.7 million, no-bid contract to Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which has worked on pools at Trump’s properties, to apply the blue sealant. Because Trump repeatedly stated that he personally chose AIC for the job, to blame the contractor would be to blame himself.Meanwhile, another $1.7 million slice of the contract to install a “nano-bubble” purification filtering system was awarded to — you can’t make this up — an Ohio-based company called Green Water Solutions.

The firm is owned by John J. Cafaro, a West Palm Beach Trump neighbor who looks like one of the mid-‘70s Philadelphia capos who strong-armed Rocky into making his weekly collections. The $1.7 million no-bid contract to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool went to a company ultimately owned by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, who previously pleaded guilty in separate federal cases involving bribery and campaign finance violations.

The company's name? Greenwater Services.

Cafaro was convicted of violating Ohio campaign finance law and once tried unsuccessfully to bribe former Rep. James Traficante. And here comes the entirely predictable twist: Cafaro donated a quarter-million dollars in 2020 to the Trump Victory committee.

“The pool is the latest in a string of cases where Mr. Trump’s government invoked special powers to shut down required competition, and then handed contracts directly to the president’s preferred vendors,” New York Times White House reporters David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater wrote a month ago.

Compensatory patriotism

The reflecting pool disaster also marries two of Trump’s other grating tendencies: his insatiable need for what the kids today might call “legacy-maxxing,” and his transparent attempts to exploit the most superficial forms of patriotism.The pool is the latest but surely not the last of Trump’s vanity projects. As we previously chronicled here at Public Notice, that list includes plastering his name, face, or signature on National Park passes, American currency, and US passports.

Draining and painting the pool basin “American flag blue” is merely his latest gimmick to project his patriotism despite having never served in uniform. Like Trump’s other diversions, the pool project was designed to glorify himself and deflect Americans’ attention away from his failed tariff policies and the memorandum-of-surrender he signed to end the Iran war. (The MOU collapsed faster than the re-emergence of the reflecting pool’s green algae.)Trump also sold the pool renovation project as a testament to his unique ingenuity and problem-solving ability relative to the failures of his predecessors, especially Obama, with whom the thin-skinned president remains completely obsessed.

Unlike under Obama and [Joe] Biden, the National Park Service is actually maintaining the beautifully completed Reflecting Pool,” a Department of Interior spokesperson said, parroting the president’s premature victory-lapping and critiques of his Democratic predecessors. Oops.

Blame-shifting

Trump’s obsession with the reflecting pool project perhaps ranks behind only his White House ballroom fixation. In the four weeks between May 26 and June 21 Trump posted on his Truth Social platform at least 29 times, either touting the reflecting pool project or later, once the water turned green and the paint peeled, to blame others for his own bungling.

Trump wanted all the credit for himself, of course. So when the renovation failed, he predictably began to lie and blame-shift, claiming imaginary vandals sabotaged the project. “[Vandals] destroyed the grass outside of the Pool, they’ve also done everything possible to hurt the inside surface that was just installed,” he falsely claimed in one post. “No different than the chemicals that were used on the National Mall, they used something similar in the Reflecting Pool to try to destroy and demean our beautiful work.”

Yes, a few people tore off portions of blue paint as souvenirs. But that was after the paint had already peeled away into fan-like shards. They didn’t rip up or vandalize the pool; some combination of the algae and hydrogen peroxide did that.

In his rush to blame anyone but himself, Trump invented a very specific fabrication that directly contradicts an earlier lie: He claimed a curiously unidentified vandal used a knife to cut a 250-foot “gash” in the pool liner. Apparently Trump forgot that he had boasted only a few weeks earlier that the polymer was so strong that “if you had a knife you can’t even cut it — so strong, so powerful.”

The Washington Post investigated Trump’s claim about the 250-foot gash but “could not immediately verify Trump’s allegations, and reporters at the pool Sunday could not spot a gash fitting that description. At least eight officers patrolling the site, when asked about Trump’s allegation, could not point it out.”

Nonetheless, Trump later doubled down on the bogus “gash” claim, even increasing the size of it from 250 feet to 350 feet. And fencing was evening installed around the reflecting pool to protect it from imaginary vandals.

None of the transparently desperate lies prevented Trump’s most die-hard media lackeys — including CNN’s Scott Jennings — from repeating these excuses. But amplifying Trump’s BS only created a “Streisand effect” that generated further coverage of this most embarrassing episode.

The pool that reflects incompetence

Designed to reflect the image of the Washington Monument westward toward the Lincoln Memorial, and vice versa — a viewpoint partially obfuscated by the 2004 completion of the World War II monument in between — the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is perhaps most famously memorialized as the foreground to Martin Luther King’s famed 1963 “I Have a Dream Speech.” (And, of course, the fictional mid-pond reunion of Forrest Gump and his childhood friend Jenny, which social media satirists have also parodied.)A more secure ballroom will not stop the madness

Trump has now torn down the East Wing of the White House, desecrated passports and park passes by affixing his face to them, and spoiled the Reflecting Pool. All of these acts, he claims, are in service to beautification of the nation’s capital in advance of next week’s 250th celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But in fact they were done to satisfy his own massive ego.

In fairness to Trump and the National Park Service, since it opened in 1922 the reflecting pool has been plagued by a century’s-worth of leaks, algae blooms, and assorted problems. It was hardly Trump’s worst idea to repair and clean it in time for the 250th anniversary celebrations. Had Trump simply ordered the National Park Service a year ago to produce a report on how best to fix the pool’s longstanding problems, initiated an open bidding process for firms to compete for the contracts to fix it, and refrained from victory-lapping, the ensuing controversy could have been mostly if not entirely avoided.

But Donald “I alone can fix it” Trump could not help himself. He promised the renovated pool would be amazing, an achievement all those loser presidents who served before him — especially the black one — could neither conceive nor execute. He, of course, deserved all the credit.

So Trump can whine and blame-shift until he’s blue — or green, or red — in the face. But if he demanded all the credit a few weeks ago, he deserves all the blame now.

More On Iran War

New York Times, Lesson Learned From Iran War: Reduce Reliance on Strait of Hormuz, Peter Eavis, June 25, 2026. Increased stockpiles, more pipelines and other tactics could loosen the waterway’s stranglehold on the global economy.

When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz during its war with the United States and Israel, countries and companies responded in ways that stopped the price of oil from reaching stratospheric levels and shielded most economies from major shocks.

More oil was pumped through pipelines, and nations around the world released their oil reserves, mitigating a global shortage. Countries in Asia, which were hardest hit by the war, took steps to consume less fossil fuel and increase their use of green energy sources. In recent weeks, the U.S. military helped tankers pass through the waterway.

Some experts now believe those measures can be built upon to make the world much less vulnerable to any effort by Iran to close the strait in the future.

“The Strait of Hormuz is no longer going to remain as critical a choke point as it was before this war,” said Vidya Mani, an associate professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on supply chains.

Iran gained an early advantage in the war by attacking commercial ships. This deterred shipping companies from passing through the strait, cutting off a large share of the world’s oil.

But the blow was not as big as it might have been. The price of oil, which closed at $73.74 a barrel on Wednesday, soared but never reached the levels that could have led to a global recession. 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Support Builds on the Right for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions, Caroline Kitchener, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). Sentiment is shifting amid frustration in the antiabortion movement that more abortions are happening now than when Roe v. Wade fell.

In its quest to outlaw abortion across the country, the antiabortion movement has been largely unified around a core idea: Women who get the procedure should be spared punishment, while doctors and others who make it available should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But a growing number of conservative leaders are starting to argue that the only way to stop women from ending their pregnancies could be to arrest them.

The shift is coming as activists express frustration that the number of abortions happening now is higher than when Roe v. Wade was overturned, largely because of the growing availability of abortion pills even in states where the procedure is banned.

Today, the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, a group of more than 60 conservative influencers, antiabortion leaders, and pastors signed a petition to remove the “legal immunities” that have protected women who get abortions from prosecution.

That follows a vote earlier this month by delegates to the Texas Republican Party’s state convention to endorse repealing the legal protections that exempt women who get abortions from criminal penalties, a move solidified by a thunderous voice vote on the convention floor.

At the same time, the largest antiabortion group in Texas is formulating an idea to test the political waters on the issue. It is proposing to target a narrow slice of women, those with medical licenses, by threatening to revoke their licenses if they are caught taking abortion pills.

“In the last four years, our attitude has lightened a little bit because we are looking at the scope of the problem,” said John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, the group floating the idea to target patients with medical licenses. “I want for it not to be taboo to ask, ‘What is the accountability for these women?’”

So far, the shift has been mostly rhetorical, with few indications that Republican leaders in any of the roughly two dozen states that have banned all or most abortions are prepared to roll back provisions that protect women from prosecution. Recent legislative efforts to impose criminal penalties for women have failed to advance in multiple states, including Texas.

Nonetheless, the brewing debate is exposing divisions among conservatives and creating a dilemma for some G.O.P. candidates in this year’s midterms. Many Republicans are under pressure from antiabortion activists to address the issue of abortion pills, but supporting the prosecution of women who get abortions could stir a backlash from the broader electorate.

New York Times, Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Alleging Roundup Weedkiller Caused Cancer, Abbie VanSickle, June 25, 2026. The court’s decision is likely to determine the future of thousands of lawsuits against Bayer, which manufactures the weedkiller, over similar claims.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, overturning a jury award for a Missouri man who claimed the widely used herbicide caused cancer in a decision that could have sweeping impacts on thousands of other Americans who similarly claim the product sickened them.

In the 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the majority found that a federal law that regulates pesticides barred the Missouri man’s lawsuit.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Missouri case would “require a cancer warning on Roundup’s label,” which would directly conflict with the label required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this conflict, he wrote, federal law “expressly pre-empts” the Missouri man’s claim.

The dispute focused on a single case, a $1.25 million award for John Durnell, a gardener in St. Louis who had used Roundup for decades and claimed that years of exposure to the product led him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. Mr. Durnell claimed that the company had failed to warn consumers of the dangers of the product.

The ramifications of the decision could be enormous, potentially jeopardizing thousands of lawsuits pending in state and federal courts against Bayer, the German company that acquired Roundup’s original maker, Monsanto, in 2018.

The legal question before the justices focused on a narrow slice of the broader litigation: whether Bayer can be sued in state-level courts given that a federal agency decided not to issue a warning label for the weedkiller.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is in charge of labeling pesticides throughout the country, has determined Roundup is safe. Bayer claims that the finding, which allows Roundup to be sold without a warning label, should override claims by Mr. Durnell and others that under state laws, they were injured by the product.

The Trump administration joined the case on Bayer’s side, reversing the position taken by the Biden administration. The Trump administration’s support for the Roundup manufacturer has been controversial among the Make America Healthy Again movement, whose activists had largely supported the president’s political rise.

Government lawyers asserted that once the E.P.A. determined Roundup was safe, Bayer was in fact required to abide by the agency’s decision in its product labeling.

New York Times, Supreme Court Overturns Hawaii Gun Law, Abbie VanSickle, June 25, 2026. The case involved a Second Amendment challenge to a Hawaii law that barred carrying concealed weapons without permission onto private property open to the public.

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law that required gun owners to get permission before carrying a firearm onto private property like grocery stores, coffee shops and gas stations that are otherwise open to the public.

The case is the latest victory for gun rights advocates before the court since the justices decided in the 2022 landmark Second Amendment ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that Americans have a broad right to arm themselves in public.

In a 6-to-3 decision, split along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority held that Hawaii’s gun restriction violated the Second Amendment’s protections.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. explained that “the Hawaii law at issue here violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

The decision is the second time in recent weeks that the justices have sided with gun owners who argued that laws restricting firearms violated the Second Amendment. On June 18, the justices voted unanimously in favor of a Texas marijuana user who argued that gun owners should not be automatically stripped of their rights because of illegal drug use.

In the Bruen case, the court’s conservative majority laid out a new test for gun control laws, finding that courts should analyze whether they align with the country’s “history and tradition” to determine if they met constitutional muster.

In response to that ruling, lawmakers in Hawaii revisited state gun laws, quickly passing a number of new restrictions on concealed carrying of handguns. Among them was a ban on weapons in so-called sensitive places such as schools, parks and beaches.

That law also required people to get explicit permission from owners before carrying weapons onto private property otherwise open to the public. It was that portion of the state’s law at issue before the Supreme Court. 

New York Times, The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026, Ann E. Marimow, Abbie VanSickle and Alicia Parlapiano, Updated June 24, 2026. The Supreme Court term that began in October was once again dominated by President Trump’s boundary-pushing policies.

The court will next release opinions Thursday at 10 a.m. Over the next several days, the justices will decide major tests of presidential power in cases involving the administration that could have generational consequences.

New York Times, As Blockbusters Loom, Monkey Business at the Supreme Court, Adam Liptak, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). An unlikely trio of justices issued a slashing critique of plea bargains that included several references to orangutans.

The Supreme Court has a dozen cases left to decide and only a few days left in its term. Almost every remaining case is a blockbuster, as our handy tracker shows.

Starting on Thursday, we’ll learn whether President Trump can do away with birthright citizenship, fire the leaders of independent agencies on a whim and undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve. We’ll also get major decisions on voting by mail and money in politics. And we’ll hear whether transgender athletes can compete in school sports and whether some protections for refugees can be withdrawn.

In other words, by the middle of next week, the justices may rebalance the separation of powers, rewire the machinery of democracy and reduce protections for more than a million immigrants.

Then they will rise for their summer break, one that extends to the first Monday in October.

“Only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off,” a young lawyer in the Reagan White House observed in 1983. He added that there is an upside to the long break: “We know that the Constitution is safe for the summer.”

That lawyer, John Roberts, would go on to be chief justice of the United States.Monkey Business in Plea Deals

In the last weeks of the Supreme Court’s term, as the bombshells explode, quirky but important decisions can get overlooked. One of them, issued last week, featured eight references to orangutans and a caustic assessment of plea bargaining from an unlikely trio: Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, joined by the court’s two most liberal members.

The question in the case was whether prosecutors can use the threat of a long prison sentence to extract not only guilty pleas but also promises not to appeal any aspect of the resulting punishment. Such “appeal waivers,” Justice Gorsuch said when the case was argued in March, would forbid challenges even if the judge “let an orangutan pick a sentence out of a hat.”

The case concerned Munson Hunter, who, to hear the government tell it, used fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers to open 14 bank accounts, acquire at least 18 credit cards and apply for loans from the Small Business Administration, costing financial institutions nearly half a million dollars.

He pleaded guilty in 2024 to a wire fraud charge and waived his right to appeal.

His sentence turned out to include an order to take any mental health medications prescribed to him, a command that he later said violated his constitutional rights.

Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion said appeal waivers can be challenged when judges impose sentences marred by “egregious errors.” She gave a few examples: imposing a longer sentence than the law allows, taking account of the defendant’s race in meting out a sentence or imposing one “without ‘some minimum of civilized procedure’ as in, yes, the ‘12 orangutans’ case.”

She was referring to a 1985 decision by Judge Richard Posner of the federal appeals court in Chicago, in which he posited that “if the parties stipulated to trial by 12 orangutans, the defendant’s conviction would be invalid.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday sent Hunter’s case back to an appeals court to decide whether he could clear Justice Kagan’s new test, what she called a “high bar” requiring proof of “a miscarriage of justice.”

In his concurring opinion, Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, set out a broader critique of plea bargains, which have almost entirely supplanted the criminal trials contemplated by the Constitution.

Media, High Tech, Culture

New York Times, Texas Public School Students May Soon Be Required to Read the Bible, Sarah Mervosh, June 25, 2026. Texas is set to pass what may be the first state-mandated book list for public school students. It focuses on classic literature and includes Bible excerpts.

Texas is on the verge of passing a sweeping, new state book list, which will establish for the first time a common set of books that millions of students across the state must read, including excerpts from the Bible.

It is highly unusual — perhaps unprecedented — for a state, rather than a school or a teacher, to mandate a reading list for every grade level for all public school students.

If approved, the list will shape what a generation of Texas students grows up reading. The state is home to more than five million public school students, 11 percent of the total U.S. public school population.

The list was being debated by the Texas State Board of Education this week. It is expected to be approved on Friday. While the specific texts were still being edited and finalized, the list is expected to reflect the priorities of the state board, which has a 10-to-5 Republican majority.

The proposal being considered put a focus on classic literature, with books like “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White (third grade), “Night” by Elie Wiesel (eighth grade) and “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare (12th grade).

At least one Bible excerpt is included in most grade levels, starting in late elementary school, which has spurred fierce debate.

Texas education officials say the Bible is an essential piece of literature and important for understanding America’s founding and culture. Critics argue that including it in English class violates separation of church and state, and is part of a broader effort to infuse Christianity in Texas public schools.

“The government of Texas, let alone any American government body, should never be in the business of imposing one religion on everyone,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has challenged a law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms.

The new Texas list is also an effort to raise the level of rigor and get more students reading. Fewer students are reading full books in English class or at home, and U.S. reading scores are in a decade-long slump. Some education leaders and policymakers believe emphasizing whole books is increasingly essential for combating the rise of tech, specifically A.I.

New York Times, A Wikipedia Founder Is Barred From Editing Articles on the Site, Adeel Hassan, June 25, 2026. A vote to bar Larry Sanger indefinitely from the volunteer community of Wikipedia came days after he submitted a proposal on “intellectual diversity.”

A founder of Wikipedia who calls himself the “ex-founder of Wikipedia” and has been a critic of the site since he left it over 20 years ago has been barred from editing its articles.

Wikipedia can be edited by nearly anyone, but the changes are then vetted by others. The site’s editors formed a consensus this week to restrict the access of the co-founder, Larry Sanger.

The reason given was not any of Mr. Sanger’s broadsides against Wikipedia, which he has long criticized over what he sees as a left-wing bias, but something procedural. He had been canvassing an outside audience to sway internal policy votes, a Wikipedia Foundation press officer said on Wednesday.

Days before the decision was voted on, Mr. Sanger submitted a proposal called “WikiProject Intellectual Diversity.” His goal, he said, was to have more diversity in viewpoints on the site.

Mr. Sanger publicized his project to his 93,000 followers on X, and this was ruled a violation of canvassing guidelines. He was declared “not here to build an encyclopedia,” another serious violation.

Mr. Sanger went back to X after the punishment, writing, “There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law.”

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Mr. Sanger and Jimmy Wales, and it has always operated as a nonprofit with a decentralized system of editing by mostly anonymous volunteers from around the world.

Those volunteers develop and enforce policies “through open, transparent discussions and consensus-based decision-making,” a press officer said on Wednesday. “These policies apply uniformly to all contributors, regardless of their affiliation or history with Wikipedia.”

Mr. Sanger left Wikipedia in 2002, and last June he called the website “one of the most effective organs of Establishment propaganda in history.” He then returned last fall “with the aim of helping Wikipedia in various ways to reform,” he said.

Wikipedia exists in nearly 300 languages, and each language version has its own rules, according to Dariusz Jemielniak, who wrote “Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia.”

The English-language site has long allowed its volunteer administrators to remain anonymous, said Professor Jemielniak, of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

“He has been very against anonymity,” Professor Jemielniak said of Mr. Sanger. “People in power should identity themselves, he believes.”

“When you’ve done enough edits, you can become an administrator,” said Professor Jemielniak, who gave a firsthand account of the community in his book and later served on the Wikimedia Foundation’s board of trustees for a decade. “After a couple hundred edits, you’re there to create Wikipedia.”

“What I find surprising is when he came back, he wasn’t editing, he just started to boss around,” he said.

Mr. Sanger did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

It is common for Wikipedia to block users from editing in certain circumstances “to prevent damage or disruption.” “Blocks are used chiefly to deal with immediate problems,” according to its policy.

But a site ban, which is what was imposed on Mr. Sanger, is a formal retraction of editing privileges on all of Wikipedia.

On multiple occasions, people or groups have been barred from using Wikipedia for public relations, self-promotion or whitewashing a personal or corporate narrative.

One of them was Roger Bamkin, a Wikimedia U.K. board member who was revealed to be using his status to promote the government of Gibraltar via Wikipedia’s “Did You Know” home-page feature while being paid by Gibraltar’s tourism board. He resigned from the board in 2012.

A blanket bar was issued in 2009 of all I.P. addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology after it was found to be using internal computers to aggressively rewrite articles about Scientology, its critics and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to reflect its preferred doctrine.

Still, nearly 250,000 volunteer editors contribute to Wikipedia every month without much in the way of controversy.

More On U.S. Governance, Trump Administration

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion  Trump Shoots Another Legislative Hostage, Andrew Egger, right, June 25, 2026. Who cares about your rent—there are votes to suppress!

Donald Trump has been flogging it for only about six months, but the Save America Act already has a chance to go down in history as the most consequential piece of legislation never passed. Faced with the cold reality that Senate Republicans just don’t have the votes for his elections wishlist bill, Trump has responded the only way he knows how: by squeezing harder.

Threatening to primary senators who won’t do what he wants is his go-to move, but lately he’s been doing even more—taking important bills hostage until the Save America Act reaches his desk.

As of yesterday, however, the president isn’t just blocking bills Congress wants passed. He’s even targeting bills that, at least on paper, are his own legislative priorities.

We’ve written a few times this year about the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill that took a number of reasonable steps toward addressing America’s ongoing acute housing shortage through a combination of incentives and deregulation for builders, along with a basically pointless but extremely popular provision restricting big financial firms from speculating in the real-estate market. It’s a good bill that had wide bipartisan buy-in and the blessing of the White House. Moreover, it only improved as it was moving through the legislative sausage-making process. Republicans wanted to show they were taking steps on affordability. Democrats wanted to show that, despite their relative lack of power in the minority, they were scoring wins to rein in big corporations. Everybody wins!

Politics used to be, well, not this bad. We think it can be again. That’s why we built the best pro-democracy community on the internet. Join Bulwark+ to be a part of it.Subscribed

Until yesterday, that is. That’s when Trump suddenly announced he was derailing the bill his administration had helped build and shepherd through Congress just minutes before the ceremony at which he was to sign it into law. The chairs and podium were already set up in Statuary Hall and lawmakers were already starting to assemble for the victory party when Trump fired up Truth Social: “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Don’t say the guy’s lost his flair for the dramatic. The scene was almost Shakespearean: a sudden, shocking betrayal at the very last moment, leaving lawmakers aghast and ashen-faced. Some made hopeful noises that Trump would reconsider once he was reminded how many of his own legislative priorities were in the bill. Others started brainstorming about whether they might be able to carve a piece or two out of the Save America Act that could pass the Senate and, in theory, placate the president.

In fact, if you’d followed the president’s housing statements closely, you might have been a bit less surprised. Although the White House had been heavily involved with creating the ROAD to Housing Act, Trump himself wasn’t so sure he wanted to see housing affordability improve. “I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting in January. “And they can be assured that’s what’s going to happen.”

The only part of the bill Trump really liked, funnily enough, was its slopulist ban on institutional investors buying single-family homes. Other legislators had seen that provision as the candy coating to make their otherwise boring but useful pro-housing bill easier to pitch. Trump wanted nothing but the candy coating. And ultimately, he didn’t want it so much that he wasn’t willing to sacrifice it on the altar of the Save America Act.

Trump’s sudden reversal is yet another self-inflicted wound, the latest demonstration of his inability to form a useful theory of mind for the electorate: He simply cannot get it through his head that voters really care more about their cost of living than they do about his grasping attempts to avoid losing an election at all costs. And he’s robbing the Republicans—who, unlike him, actually need to win an election this year—of one of their most potent affordability arguments as a result.

For these lawmakers, Trump couldn’t be making it plainer: If you’re not ready to burn down everything in service of what he tells you to do, he’s not interested in working with you on anything, period. It’s the “bomb the bridges and power plants” strategy applied to Congress: If you make people hurt enough, Trump is pretty sure, eventually they’ll do what you want. That theory didn’t work on Iran. How far it will work on Senate Republicans remains to be seen. 

AROUND THE BULWARK

• What Happens When the Country Loses a General… It takes a long time to build up a leader, observes MARK HERTLING.
• Elon Musk’s Race War Hobby… He doesn’t like brown people and he isn’t trying to hide it, writes CATHY YOUNG.
• The Reflecting Pool Is a Symbol of Trump’s Failure… On The Illegal News, ANDREW WEISSMANN joins SARAH LONGWELL to unpack Trump’s claimed Iran “win,” the new revelations about JD Vance in Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman’s book, Trump’s habit of comparing himself to history’s worst tyrants, and a DOJ legal theory that could weaken Americans’ right to sue polluters.
• Hope and Determination on Ukraine’s Front Lines… The war isn’t won. It may not be won. But these soldiers won’t stop fighting, reports FRANCIS FARRELL of the Kyiv Independent.
• The Democratic Tea Party Isn’t Here—Yet… Maybe keep the fine china in storage for now, says PETER ROTHPLETZ.
• ‘Supergirl’ Is a Tremendous Slog of a Film… SONNY BUNCH has the review.

Quick Hits

THE CONSTITUTION SAYS I CAN DO WHAT I WANT: Donald Trump’s first executive order about elections last year included language attempting to require people to prove their citizenship to vote. Lacking the power to change federal election law by fiat, the administration had tried instead to strong-arm states to comply with a host of standards not present in law by threatening to cut off federal money to any that refused. A federal judge temporarily blocked that order last year, and this week she made her decision permanent, ruling that the order would have unconstitutionally usurped congressional powers.

“While the Constitution vests the President with ‘executive power’ and commands him to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Judge Denise Casper wrote, “it does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”

It wasn’t the president’s only legal setback on elections yesterday. The courts have consistently stymied Trump’s efforts to seize various swing states’ voter rolls, and on Wednesday, a three-judge panel gave the president another L on that front, affirming the dismissal of a Justice Department lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

GENERAL DOWN: Another day, another top general apparently purged by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Washington Post reports:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stonewalled a behind-the-scenes effort within the Army and on Capitol Hill to extend the career of an influential general, people familiar with the matter said, leading to that officer submitting retirement paperwork and preparing to step down.

Gen. Christopher Donahue, head of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, will leave his role on July 2 after an unusually brief 18-month tenure, these people said, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Hegseth’s move has exasperated some Army officials, considering Donahue’s background as a highly regarded Special Operations commander and the secretary’s stated focus on making the military more lethal.

“He’s singularly our best warfighter at every level,” one retired senior Army officer said of Donahue.

Read the whole thing. Mark Hertling, who once held the command Donahue is now leaving, described how valuable an officer Donahue is on “Command Post” yesterday, and has an article on the homepage today about how much it hurts the military and the country when accomplished leaders are forced out.

WHEN IN DOUBT, BLAME BIG OIL: Donald Trump took a page out of Joe Biden’s inflation-survival playbook this week, fuming in a Truth Social post late Tuesday night that gasoline prices remained elevated despite the cost of oil falling amid his peace negotiations with Iran.

“Customers are being ‘gouged,’” Trump wrote. “I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!”

It was a twist on a move more often practiced by Democrats: Be mad at the corporations, not at us. But of course it was also uniquely Trumpian: Biden’s attempts to blame price-gouging corporations for bad economic conditions never included vague and ominous threats of criminal investigation. And they also rarely came on the back of months of presidential cheerleading over how much money the greedy corporations were making: Throughout the Hormuz crisis, Trump routinely argued that the energy shock was good for America, since so much of the rest of the world was forced to import so much American oil.

Fear Of U.S. Oligarchs, Tech Titans, Repression

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Why Does Everyone Hate AI?, Paul Krugman, right, June 25, 2026. It’s the fear, the enshittification, datacenter hostility, and the tech broligarchy.

Many readers are probably aware of the scene in the video above: Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, recently gave a commencement speech in which he heralded the coming of AI — and was loudly booed by the students. This was not an outlier. There have been a number of similar incidents lately, evidence that many people now really hate AI.

Are we talking about a vocal but unrepresentative minority? No. A recent Pew survey found that American adults believe by a wide margin that AI will be negative for society and, by a smaller margin, that it will be bad for them personally:

But doesn’t the public always feel that way in the face of innovation? Pew’s writeup of its findings implied as much, declaring that:

New technology is often met with a degree of curiosity as well as skepticism. As more Americans incorporate AI into their lives, there are broad concerns about its impact, its speed and whether the government can properly regulate it.

However, Pew’s own past surveys suggest that historically most Americans have welcomed advances in information technology. A 1999 survey of attitudes toward the still-novel internet found extremely positive views about computers and technology, especially among internet users:

And in 2015, when social media was still relatively new, Pew found that 71 percent of the public said that tech companies “have a positive impact on the way things are going in this country,” with only 17 percent expressing a negative view.

The fact is that in the past Americans generally greeted emerging technologies with optimism. So what accounts for the current hostility against AI? Let me offer several, not mutually exclusive, explanations.

First, we fear that AI will do terrible things because the companies selling it told us it would do terrible things. Last year, for example, Anthropic CEO Darius Amodei declared in an interview with Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and drive overall unemployment as high as 20 percent within 1 to 5 years.

More recently Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have tried to walk back their predictions of a “jobs apocalypse”. But why were they so willing to promote apocalyptic visions in the first place? The answer is money. They pushed the idea that they had a technology that would quickly and utterly transform the economy partly to dazzle Wall Street and secure financing, and partly to scare businesses into rushing into AI adoption for fear of being left behind.

Only belatedly did they realize that declaring that your technology will wreak devastation would lead to a public backlash, and that this backlash would be a serious problem. Indeed, it’s not just the general public that is lashing out against companies that use threats of an apocalypse as a marketing strategy. Even major corporations are saying that they’ve had enough. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who has been noticeably unwilling to engage in AI fanaticism, recently told the Wall Street Journal:

You can’t say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon and we will use all the power to build data centers.

Second, many ordinary people view AI negatively because they feel that it is being forced on them.

It’s true that many people are voluntarily using large language models for personal convenience or as a business productivity tool. But a significant part of AI use isn’t voluntary. This Wall Street Journal headline from February says it all:

Why are companies doing this? Presumably they believe that AI will raise productivity. But just as importantly, they’re responding to pressure from financial markets, which are rewarding companies for quickly adopting AI, apparently without regard to demonstrated results.

And while Americans workers are being dragooned into using AI, American consumers are being force-fed AI whether they want it or not. Most dramatically, Google has replaced its search engine with AI, without offering the option to opt out. One has to turn to obscure workarounds or third-party sites to get traditional search results.

So many people feel, rightly, that they aren’t being allowed to choose whether to use AI — not using AI has become hard both as a worker and as a consumer.

Third, datacenters are a highly visible reminder of AI’s costs. Datacenters occupy huge tracts of land — one proposed site in Utah will be twice the size of Manhattan. They guzzle electricity and water. When they generate some of their own power, they create major local pollution. Not surprisingly, there is intense opposition to datacenter construction. According to a Reuters Ipsos poll, 57 percent of Americans — two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans — would oppose a datacenter in their neighborhood. Only 14 percent would support one.

Fourth, even before the advent of AI, tech companies had lost the public’s trust. Over the years Pew has regularly surveyed the public for its views on technology companies, asking whether they have a positive or a negative effect “on the way things are going.” In 2015 public opinion of tech companies was overwhelmingly positive. By 2022, the year ChatGPT was released, that goodwill had evaporated.

Why have Americans turned on tech companies? While it surely reflects growing awareness of the psychological and societal harm done by social media, much of it also reflects the enshittification of tech products.

Finally, AI is tightly linked in the public mind with the tech oligarchs who are pushing it. There is widespread awareness of the growing concentration of wealth and power at the top and how this is distorting our politics and harming our society. Aside from the MAGA faithful, Americans overwhelmingly favor government policies to reduce wealth inequality:And AI is widely perceived, for good reason, as a technology that will increase the concentration of wealth at the top. Indeed, as I said, the AI companies themselves have already told us that the technology will have extremely negative effects on workers.

There are, then, multiple, mutually reinforcing reasons the public views AI negatively. And no, this isn’t normal skepticism about change. This intense backlash is special.

And the backlash is already having major political consequences. True, the AI industry, true to form, has been throwing money at elections in an effort to boost friendly politicians and defeat critics. But most of these efforts have failed. Indeed, accepting AI money or being associated with tech in general is beginning to look politically toxic.

There’s a strong element of poetic justice in this turn of events. The AI industry deliberately made itself look menacing as a financial strategy, believing that the markets would reward the appearance of being “edgy.” In so doing, however, tech made itself highly unpopular. And even in an era in which money all too often buys power, public opinion matters.

Heather Delaney Reese, Opinion: Nobody wants to live in Trump's fake paradise anymore, Heather Delaney Reese, right, June 24-25, 2026. At 10:26 this morning, while House Republican leaders stood at a press conference celebrating the most significant bipartisan achievement of this Congress, a housing bill that had passed the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32, the President of the United States posted 39 words on Truth Social and ended it all.

He would not sign the bill. Not today. Not until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, a voting bill that his own party leaders have told him repeatedly does not have the votes to pass.No one saw it coming, either. Speaker Mike Johnson had spoken with Trump for 20 minutes that morning and left the call believing the signing was still on. Senator Susan Collins called it a complete surprise. And while Republican senators prepared to sit down for lunch with the very man who had just humiliated them, something we haven’t seen from the Republican Party in a very long time began to unfold.

Inside that closed-door lunch, Senator Bill Cassidy stood up and began yelling at the President of the United States. Trump told him to sit down. He refused. Trump called him a lunatic. Cassidy called him brother. Trump told him he was not his brother. And still, the shouting continued, until the senators sitting beside Cassidy quietly urged him to sit down. What had been sold to the press as a unity meeting became something no one could spin: the sound of a party continuing to fracture under the weight of Donald Trump’s impulsiveness, as even some of the people who helped build his political movement have decided they can’t keep living in Trump’s pretend paradise.Inside the United States Capitol’s Statuary Hall, a stage had already been set for him. A podium stood at the center. A signing desk bore the presidential seal, with a dozen American flags flanking it on both sides. The ceremony was scheduled for noon. And while senators walked to the lunch where the shouting was about to begin, workers in Statuary Hall began taking the stage apart.

The bill Trump refused to sign is called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. It is the most comprehensive housing legislation in decades. It limits institutional investors from buying up single-family homes. It loosens building regulations to increase supply. It lowers costs for first-time homebuyers, renters, seniors, and families that are growing and cannot find a place to live. It passed with margins this Congress has not seen on anything else. Both parties voted for it, and both parties celebrated it. And Trump called it “of minor importance” and walked away from it, because he wanted something else, something he has been told over and over he cannot have.

It is one thing to betray our allies. He has done that. It is one thing to betray our adversaries. He has done that too. But today was different. Today, Donald Trump publicly undercut his own party on the single piece of legislation they had spent months building and desperately wanted to campaign on heading into the midterms. He didn’t just embarrass them. He reminded every Republican on Capitol Hill that any promise he makes exists only until he decides it no longer serves him. There is no deal too important, no victory too valuable, and no ally too loyal to be sacrificed if it means satisfying his immediate political demands.

The bill he is demanding in exchange, the SAVE America Act, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, impose strict photo identification requirements, and practically ban most mail-in voting in federal elections. He has also demanded that lawmakers attach provisions banning transgender women from women’s sports and blocking gender-affirming surgeries for minors, neither of which has anything to do with voting or housing. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has told Trump repeatedly that the votes are not there. Senator Lisa Murkowski said it to his face: “If you don’t have the votes, sir, you don’t have the votes.” And Murkowski went even further, saying she now believes the SAVE Act is not even the real demand. “It causes me to wonder if we were to pass the SAVE Act tomorrow,” she said, “if he wouldn’t find yet another reason for what I think he really is seeking, which is for us to blow up the filibuster.”

The SAVE Act is not about election security. It is about survival. Trump knows midterm history. He has said it himself many times that the party holding the presidency almost always loses seats. He knows his approval rating sits at 37 percent. He knows that on his own network, Fox News, 68 percent of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy and only 31 percent approve. He knows November is coming. And he knows he cannot win it on the merits, so he is trying to change who gets to vote.

Desperate people do desperate things. And Donald Trump is desperate. He cannot win in November on the economy. He cannot win it on the war. So he is trying to win it by making sure the people who would vote against him are not allowed to vote at all.

Proof-of-citizenship requirements sound reasonable until you understand what they actually do. Millions of Americans, disproportionately women who have changed their names through marriage or divorce, do not carry documents with matching names. Elderly voters who were born before modern birth certificate systems may not have proof of citizenship at all. A mail-in ballot ban would gut access for rural communities, disabled voters, and anyone who cannot afford to take a day off work to stand in a line. This is not about catching noncitizen voters. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and extremely rare. This is about making it harder for the people most likely to vote against him to vote at all.

And nine minutes before he canceled the housing bill, at 10:17 this morning, he posted something else on Truth Social. In all capital letters, he wrote: “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN. THANK YOU!!! President DJT.” Nine minutes. Between declaring his popularity had never been higher and sabotaging the one piece of legislation that might have actually helped the people he claims love him most. That is the distance between Trump’s reality and the one the rest of us are living in.

The eruption in the Senate lunch was not an isolated moment. It was the product of weeks of mounting frustration, and it was not just Cassidy. Trump went after Senator Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania for missing Tuesday’s war powers vote, the same vote that passed 50 to 48 as a bipartisan rebuke of Trump’s Iran war. The detail that makes this absurd is that McCormick missed the vote because he was in Pennsylvania with Trump, at Trump’s own rally. He was being yelled at for being loyal. Senator John Kennedy told reporters afterward that Trump was “mad as a murder hornet.” Senator John Cornyn, who recently lost his own primary to a Trump-backed challenger, offered a dry summary of the meeting that was supposed to demonstrate party unity: “That was quite a unity message.” When a reporter asked if he was being sarcastic, Cornyn stepped into an elevator and let the doors close. He later told a colleague, “The president closed by preaching unity, but he spent the entire hour talking about things which were not exactly unified.”

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Hours later, Trump attended the Freedom 250 rally, an event that was sold as a celebration of America’s 250th birthday. But Freedom 250 is not the organization Congress created for this moment. In 2016, Congress established America250, a bipartisan, nonpartisan commission to plan the country’s semiquincentennial. Trump, in essence, replaced it with his own operation. Freedom 250 is a nonprofit he created, with himself as chairman, Vice President Vance as vice chairman, and corporate partners including Exxon Mobil, Northrop Grumman, and John Deere. It does not have to disclose its donors. What was supposed to be a national moment, with concerts, cultural performances, and all 50 states represented, became something else entirely. Almost every musician pulled out after learning the event had become a partisan operation. Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, Young MC, Morris Day and The Time, and the Commodores all walked away. At least seven states declined to participate. And when he could not fill the stage, Trump declared himself the headliner, posting that all the event needed was “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.”

So there he stood tonight, behind bulletproof glass on the National Mall, with the Washington Monument behind him and a plywood replica of the 250-foot “Triumphal Arch” he wants to build near Arlington National Cemetery sitting across the fairgrounds. The U.S. Marine Band accompanied the little-known country singer Alexis Wilkins, whose claim to fame is being the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, as she performed the national anthem. And in the warm-up speech, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a sitting member of the President’s Cabinet, stood on a stage that was supposed to celebrate 250 years of American history and called the artists who had walked away “libtards.” That is the word he used, on the National Mall, to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday.

The crowd was estimated at just over a thousand people, and Trump’s speech lasted just under 30 minutes, one of the shortest rally addresses of Trump’s entire political career. He declared a golden age. He said nobody is laughing at us anymore. He said America was a dead country before he came back, and that now we are the hottest country in the world. He mentioned the reflecting pool, and he blamed the damage on vandals, saying “thugs” had “gruesomely” damaged it. Environmental experts continue to say the peeling was likely caused by the hydrogen peroxide Trump’s own workers poured into the pool to treat the algae, which is a known paint-removal agent.

And while he stood on that stage telling a thousand people that America has never been better, something else was happening back at the Capitol. The Senate held a second vote on Iran. This one was different. The Kaine resolution would have carried the force of law, would have required Trump’s signature, and would have directed him to withdraw forces from hostilities against Iran unless Congress authorized the war. And this time, the vote failed, 47 to 50. Rand Paul, who had voted yes the day before, voted present, saying hostilities “seem to be over.” And Bill Cassidy, the man who had stood in that lunch room just hours earlier and shouted at the president, who had refused to sit down, who had called him brother and been told he was not, voted against the resolution. He told reporters he had intended to vote for it. But then he was summoned to the White House. Vice President Vance and special envoy Witkoff briefed him in the Situation Room. And when he came out, his vote had changed.

That is how fascist regimes work. You push back in the morning, and by nightfall, you are brought into a room and reminded of something. Maybe it is information. Maybe it is a promise. Maybe it is a threat. We do not know what happened behind those doors, and we may never know. But we know the pattern. We know that senators who show courage in public somehow find reasons to retreat in private. And we know that whatever leverage is being applied, it is strong enough to reverse a vote within hours, on a matter of war and peace. That should concern all of us.

And yet. The exodus is real. We can hold both of those truths at the same time. The Trump machine is still working, and it is also still losing people faster than it can pull them back. Every artist who chose not to perform made a choice. Every state that declined to participate made a choice. And every single day that we talk about what is happening, when we share the truth and don’t let his propaganda scare us into silence, we are making a choice too. One that says we are never giving up and we will take back our country in November. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump changed the rules for Park Police. Now an innocent man is dead, Judd Legum, right, June 25, 2026. It was played for laughs during an August 2025 cabinet meeting. Since then, things have turned deadly.

In a cabinet meeting at the White House on August 26, 2025, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised President Trump for spearheading a rule change for the U.S. Park Police, allowing them to freely engage in vehicle pursuits.

Burgum said he was “shocked” to find out that Park Police were not able to pursue vehicles in all circumstances. The prior rules limited police chases to incidents involving violent crimes. But, Burgum announced, “we got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump’s leadership.”

According to Burgum, “the next night” the Park Police had “so much fun” chasing “bad guys.” Trump and other cabinet officials laughed. He also characterized the new policy as “a lighter note.”

The Park Police union, linking to Burgum’s remarks, joined in on the fun on X.

10 months later, an innocent bystander — 46-year-old delivery driver Nolberto Meza — is dead. Meza died when his moped was struck by a vehicle being chased by Park Police. The chase would not have been permissible before the policy change because police were not pursuing suspects engaged in a violent crime.

Meza is at least the second fatality directly related to Trump and Burgum’s policy. In March, a Park Police chase resulted in the death of 18-year-old Josue Chavez when a vehicle “struck a tree and burst into flames.”

The policy change for Park Police vehicle pursuits was purportedly a temporary measure related to President Trump’s August 11, 2025 executive order “Declaring a Crime Emergency In The District Of Columbia,” which expired in 30 days. (In 2024, crime in DC was actually “the lowest it has been in over 30 years.”) But the new vehicle pursuit policy, formally issued on August 14, 2025, has never been rescinded or replaced.

In a September 24, 2025, letter to Burgum and Park Police Chief Scott Brecht, Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) said they had learned Park Police “personnel have nevertheless continued engaging in these high-speed pursuits.” Huffman and Ansari wrote that “it remains unclear what legal authority, if any, currently authorizes the USPP to conduct these dangerous chases, other than presidential fiat.”The extreme danger of police chases

While Burgum played up police chases for laughs, the acute danger of police vehicle pursuits has been well-established. A report of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 1990 described vehicles as “the deadliest weapon in the police arsenal.”

According to a study published by the American Medical Association, there were approximately 4,415 fatalities resulting from police vehicle pursuits between 2017 and 2021. Most of these pursuits were related to minor offenses. A 2023 report by the DOJ and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) found that “more than 90 percent of pursuits are initiated because of traffic violations.”

Police vehicle pursuits are extremely dangerous. According to the PERF report, “crashes occur in at least 30 percent of vehicle pursuits, and injuries or fatalities occur in 5 to 17 percent of pursuits.” Worse, more than 20% of serious injuries are inflicted on “persons not involved in the pursuit.”

The recommendation of the PERF report is that pursuits should occur only when both “a violent crime has been committed” and “the suspect poses an imminent threat to commit another violent crime.” This is close to the standard that existed for Park Police before Trump pushed for a change. Notably, a 2021 study in Virginia “found no evidence suggesting that reducing the likelihood of pursuits generates an increase in criminal activity.”

In light of this data, there has “been a several decadeslong trend in tightening pursuit policies.” The Trump administration’s policy allowing for more police chases is an aberration.

Suspects released from custody without charges

Initially, the 24-year-old driver of the car that killed Meza was charged with second-degree murder and the two passengers, a 19-year-old and a juvenile, were charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle. The car, a Honda Accord, had allegedly been stolen.

But the charges against the two adult men were dropped and they were both released from custody. (The status of the charge against the juvenile is unclear.) The U.S. Attorney’s office said it did not yet have enough information to make a charging decision. It is possible that charges against the men could be refiled later.

“[Nolberto] left here with dreams, goals, not for his life to be taken away in that way because I feel like this is not fair,” Marlin Meza, Nolberto’s sister, said. “I want justice for my brother.”

More Global News

New York Times, Live Updates: Spain Warns of High Death Toll in Heat Wave, Lynsey Chutel and Zane Irwin, June 25, 2026. The health ministry said about 200 people may have died since Sunday. The forecast across Europe was set to remain sharply above normal on Thursday.

More than 200 people may have died in Spain as a heat wave scorched Europe, the country’s health ministry said on Thursday. The heat wave, the continent’s second in two months of unusually high temperatures, is shattering records and test​ing Europe’s ability to adapt to extreme weather.

The stifling heat has disrupted education, transportation and other aspects of daily life for millions of people, with officials warning that older people or those who work outdoors, like on construction sites, are most vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat.

The heat has also proved deadly. In Spain, temperatures soared past 38 degrees Celsius, or 100 Fahrenheit, over several days, and regional governments said as many as 212 people may have died. In France, at least 40 people in France have drowned since the latest heat wave began in the middle of last week, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised areas.

More than a dozen countries were under high-level heat warnings on Thursday, including Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia and Sweden. Temperatures were forecast to remain around 10 degrees Celsius, or 18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, ranging from high 30s to low 40s Celsius.

Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and severe because of climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels, experts say. And Europe is warming faster than any other continent.

Since France began tracking heat waves in 1947, half of them occurred after 2010. Wednesday was the hottest day ever recorded in France since records began, with the average daytime and nighttime temperature across all its weather stations reaching 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), Météo-France, the country’s national weather service, said.

Even as average temperatures are rising the fastest in European nations, these countries are also some of the least accustomed to extreme heat. In Britain and France, for instance, many buildings don’t just lack air conditioning, they are also designed to retain heat.

The heat is also testing infrastructure. At one point on Tuesday, nearly 120,000 homes lost electricity in France as the nation’s power grid struggled to meet demand, the national network, RTE, said on social media. In southwest France, the authorities shut down a nuclear plant because the water temperature in the river, used to cool its reactor, was dangerously hot.

Forecasters said temperatures were expected to gradually cool down across western Europe starting on Friday.

Other parts of the world are also feeling the hazards of extraordinarily high temperatures. In May, a city in Pakistan set a new heat record of 51.5 degrees Celsius, or 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures in some parts of northern India approached 50 degrees Celsius in May, forcing millions of workers to choose between falling sick and getting paid.

Globally, it was the second-hottest May in 177 years of record-keeping, after 2024, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

New York Times, Death Toll Rises After Two Powerful Quakes in Venezuela, María Victoria Fermín and Anatoly Kurmanaev, June 25, 2026. The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes left at least 164 dead and hundreds missing, the authorities said, but the full scale of the damage was not immediately clear.

Rescue crews intensified their search for survivors on Thursday as Venezuelans began to grapple with the scale of the devastation caused by the worst earthquakes to hit the country in nearly six decades.

The Venezuelan government said that at least 164 people had been killed and nearly 1,000 injured in the twin quakes on Wednesday, which struck the country’s populous northern states. The toll was virtually certain to rise as rescuers began to reach the worst-affected areas.

Videos posted on social media show collapsed residential towers in the capital, Caracas, and in the nearby port city of La Guaira, suggesting extensive damage even to relatively well-built buildings. There were growing fears about the toll in nearby shantytowns, where many people live in precarious homes built on hillsides.

Venezuela is rich in oil and other resources, but is still trying to emerge from a decade-long depression that wiped out most of its economic production and led millions to flee the country. Its rescue services have been hollowed out, infrastructure has been left to rot and inflation has reached record highs, compounding the challenges of the recovery.

The disaster comes at a decisive moment in Venezuela’s modern history, less than six months after the U.S. military raid that removed the long-ruling autocrat, Nicolás Maduro. His arrest by U.S. forces in January has transformed the country from a U.S. adversary into an effective satellite state.

The earthquakes are expected to be the worst humanitarian disaster in Venezuela in decades. The hard-hit port of La Guaira is still scarred by devastating landslides in 1999 that are estimated to have killed at least 15,000.

The earthquakes are likely to scramble the complex tussle for power and fortune that has followed Mr. Maduro’s downfall. His former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, took over as president with Washington’s blessing but has faced growing popular discontent — and is resisting calls for new elections.

In the hours after the quakes, Ms. Rodríguez called for national unity and pointed to the promises of international aid received by her government, including from President Trump. Her handling of the disaster, however, will be scrutinized by Venezuelan voters hungry for political change, as well as the emboldened opposition.

Venezuela, in recent months, has become an arena for investors scrambling to profit from Ms. Rodríguez’s campaign to open up the oil and mining industries to Western capital and restructure its pile of public debt, one of the world’s largest. Many foreign companies had cited the poor state of the country’s infrastructure as an investment obstacle, a problem that will be exacerbated by the earthquakes.

New York Times, To Escape Record Heat, the French Are Taking to Water. Both Have Been Deadly, Mark Landler and Ségolène Le Stradic, June 25, 2026. Crowds are filling the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, as temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Forty people drowned while swimming in other waterways.

Perched on the cobblestone bank of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, watching his children whoop and shout as they splashed in the murky water, Stéphane Guillaume looked like a rare Parisian who’d beaten the heat. But in the new normal of scorching-hot Paris summers, he said, any victory would be fleeting.

“It’s going to get worse every year,” said Mr. Guillaume, a 44-year-old computer engineer. “It’s very worrying because we’re already at the limit of what’s bearable.”

With temperatures across France soaring to the highest levels ever recorded in June — more than 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit — thousands of people are turning to extreme measures: jumping into canals, rivers and other waterways for relief. It can be a deadly choice. Forty people have drowned in heat wave-related accidents between June 18 and June 23, according to the French government.

Many in France still recall the summer of 2003, when nearly 15,000 people in the country, most of them older, died in a freak heat wave. That prompted recurring debates about how to weatherproof French society. The Ecologists, a green party, is proposing paid time off for those most exposed to climate disruptions, while decades of cultural resistance to air conditioning seems finally to be on the wane.

Yet the mismatch between tropical heat and northern European infrastructure remains stark. In Paris, the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower announced they would close early on several days this week. Near Toulouse, in southwest France, the authorities shut down a nuclear plant because the water temperature in the River Garonne, used to cool its reactor, was dangerously hot.

While swimming in the Canal Saint-Martin is off limits, except for a short stretch that is roped off and patrolled by lifeguards, locals and visitors are taking matters into their own hands. Whether it is leaping off its cast-iron bridges or cavorting with brightly colored floats, they have turned much of this three-mile waterway into an urban oasis, not to mention a symbol of mild insurrection.

More On U.S. Election Results 

New York Times, Opinion: Democrats Are Done With Caution, Michelle Goldberg, June 25, 2026 (print ed.). Of the three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the weakest.

A sociology Ph.D. student and doctrinaire leftist who has never held elected office, she was running against Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He’d built an uptown political machine known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem and parts of the Bronx. Many of the area’s neighborhoods are reliably progressive but not known for their radicalism. After all, in the last presidential election, Donald Trump improved his margin in the Bronx by double digits, one of the largest swings in the country, in part because of voter angst about crime and migration.

Last week, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, a group of veteran journalists who question local political and civic leaders, Avila Chevalier said she opposed all deportations, even those of violent criminals. A prison abolitionist, she either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer repeated questions about whether murderers should be incarcerated. Both she and Espaillat are Dominican, and on the morning of the election, she walked off a popular Spanish-language radio show after she was asked about old tweets, including some that seemed to disdain Dominican nationalism. (In other since-deleted tweets, Avila Chevalier cursed at Kamala Harris, called Joe Biden a “rapist,” and derided his support for Ukraine as “bullying Russia.”) Her name was notably absent from a get-out-the-vote message that Bernie Sanders posted for other progressives on Tuesday.

But in the end, Avila Chevalier won, carried to a narrow victory by the left-wing tsunami that created landslides for the other congressional candidates Mamdani endorsed, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She will almost certainly become the most left-wing member of Congress, and Republicans are sure to try to make her the face of the Democratic Party.

Many Democratic primary voters, however, are in no mood for defensiveness. As they see it, they’ve been failed by a cautious, compromising establishment, and they’re going to overthrow it. The Democratic version of the Tea Party is here, with dramatic implications for the midterms and possibly the next presidential election. As Mamdani said at a rally at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater last week, people are asking when the race for 2028 begins. “It starts now,” he said.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

New York’s primary demonstrated the astonishing political power of the mayor and of the Democratic Socialists of America, the organization that he, Avila Chevalier and Valdez are all members of. It suggests that Democratic voters have been radicalized by the horrors of Donald Trump’s second presidency and infuriated by their leaders’ failure to contain him. And it’s a sign that after the savagery of the war on Gaza, support for Israel has become toxic among large parts of the party’s base. Avila Chevalier was an organizer of the anti-Israel protest encampments at Columbia, whereas the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured money into a super PAC supporting Espaillat.

The city, of course, is not particularly representative of the rest of the country. New York’s electorate is more progressive, and Mamdani, who has brought a joyful, dynamic energy to the city’s governance, has a unique clout. The same night that his slate dominated in New York, AIPAC’s preferred candidate, Adrian Boafo, won a congressional primary in Maryland.

Still, progressive outsider candidates are surging in many parts of America. There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist just won the primary to become mayor of Washington. In Maine, Graham Platner — who, like Avila Chevalier, had a vituperative social media history — easily defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose a progressive, Matt Dunlap, to run for the House seat of an outgoing moderate Democrat, Jared Golden, defeating Joe Baldacci, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This leftist momentum is a bullish sign for progressives in other Democratic primaries, like Abdul El-Sayed, running for Senate in Michigan, and Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, running for governor in Wisconsin. Both are either ahead or competitive in recent polls.Editors’ PicksPlays, Musicals and Theater Festivals Worth Traveling to This SummerImmersive New Historical Fiction‘Supergirl’ Review: This Glass Ceiling Is Made of Kryptonite

That means the 2026 midterms could end up being a giant national experiment that tests the populist left’s theory of victory. For years, it has argued that Democrats have failed because, in thrall to corporate interests, they let themselves become the party of the status quo. Unable or unwilling to galvanize voters with an economically progressive alternative to the right, they’ve offered only timid, business-friendly incrementalism. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, the organization that recruited Avila Chevalier to run for Congress, told me that too often, the Democratic Party “tries to stymie big and bold ideas” in favor of technocratic pragmatism. “I think what voters have really made clear, particularly this past year, is that they are desperate for bold, visionary leadership,” he said.

This spring, I met Hong, a member of the Wisconsin Assembly from Madison, when she was visiting New York. She argued that winning the general election would require motivating voters who feel “disenfranchised or angry at the Democratic Party” with an anti-establishment, working-class campaign. Electability, said Hong, is subjective. “We have to take a step back and look at the current political moment and where voters are at and what they care about,” she said. “Who is the candidate that actually responds with a solution that they believe? Who is the candidate that presents a vision that they will see themselves in?”

Hong is right that many voters can’t be mapped onto a neat left-right spectrum. They judge candidates on a whole range of axes — whether they seem like normal people or career politicians, insiders or outsiders, populists or elitists. That’s why there are voters who went from Sanders to Trump, or Trump to Mamdani.

Still, as someone who desperately wants to see Republicans beaten, I’ll admit I’m anxious watching Democrats stake so much on a strategy of left-wing audacity. After all, progressive overreach has backfired in the past.

The D.S.A., remember, also surged during Trump’s first presidency. In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a D.S.A. member recruited by Justice Democrats, stunned the political world with her upset victory over the longtime Democratic congressman Joseph Crowley, and was joined in the House by a fellow D.S.A. member, Rashida Tlaib, and the like-minded progressive Ilhan Omar. Other D.S.A. members won local offices nationwide.

Mainstream Democrats rushed to ally themselves with the left’s insurgent energy. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker signed onto Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. When the Black Lives Matter protests exploded in the summer of 2020, Harris sent out a fund-raising appeal to bail out people who were arrested protesting in Minnesota. Though Joe Biden beat out Sanders for the presidential nomination, once elected, he worked closely with progressives, adopting ambitious climate policies, expanding the safety net and welcoming migrants. Before the war in Gaza made him a villain to many on the left, he was hailed as the most progressive president in a generation.

Then came collapse. During the Biden administration, the D.S.A. hemorrhaged members amid sectarian infighting, especially over Palestine. In 2021, some factions tried to expel the recently elected representative Jamaal Bowman for being insufficiently anti-Israel, and the national D.S.A. unendorsed Ocasio-Cortez.

At the same time, centrists swung against a left that had indulged its purist tendencies. Bowman would go on to lose a primary fight to a more moderate challenger, as would Representative Cori Bush, the former Black Lives Matter activist who’d been endorsed by the D.S.A. In the 2024 election, the vast majority of American counties shifted right.

Andrabi attributes Democratic failure to Harris’s uninspiring centrism, and there were certainly people who declined to vote for her out of disgust with Biden’s unstinting support for Israel. But as Blueprint Research has found, swing voters who backed Trump overwhelmingly saw Harris as soft on crime and the border, and “too focused on identity politics.” She was weighed down in part by positions she took amid the frothy left-wing ascendence of 2020.

Maybe this time will be different. The electorate is furious, and now it’s the right that represents a hated status quo. Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself feckless; a candidate as flawed as Avila Chevalier could win only against a complacent political machine that’s lost touch with the people it’s supposed to represent. Calls to abolish ICE were once seen as fringe, but since Trump has turned the agency into something akin to a personal militia, in most recent surveys, a plurality of voters want to scrap it.

All that gives the left a renewed opportunity to wield power. The question is what lessons leftists have learned from the past dismal decade. As both candidate and mayor, Mamdani has usually embodied a practical, optimistic sort of left politics — a sewer socialism — laser focused on New Yorkers’ material concerns. Avila Chevalier represents something different, an academic leftism rigid in its refusal to accept trade-offs or make concessions to ordinary people’s moral intuitions. One approach is a recipe for

The Contrarian, Opinion: The NYC Democratic Party Is No Monolith, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 25, 2026. Two contests, two political styles.

The New York Democratic congressional primary contests in Manhattan on Tuesday certainly affirmed the city is every bit as left-leaning and anti-establishment as it was when it elevated Zohran Mamdani to mayor, giving him a national platform to battle billionaires, tackle affordability, score points at FIFA’s expense, keep ICE at bay, and consistently outfox the orange ogre of American politics. Mamdani, of course, had a huge night; prevailing with three endorsements in contests against the party establishment.

But the New York City elections carried multiple messages. Two of the most hotly contested races were as much about what sort of Democrat is needed to safeguard democracy and secure MAGA’s defeat as they were about left vs. center-left politics — and the toxic image AIPAC has acquired.

Brad Lander and Micah Lasher

NY-10

Former city controller Brad Lander cruised to a 30+ point victory in the 10th New York congressional district over Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Though he is regarded as a progressive Democrat who is frequently critical of Israel’s policies and Trump, Goldman nevertheless found himself on the wrong side of a sea change in attitudes in progressive circles toward AIPAC and U.S-Israel relations.

Lander is not a one-note anti-Israel antagonist (and at times voiced distress over the turn in vicious intra-party rhetoric, even from a Poetica coffee shop). Quite frankly, Lander’s political instincts, as much as his ideology, were responsible for his victory.

He earned Mamdani’s loyalty when he took the bold move last year of cross- endorsing the future mayor. Goldman, who never endorsed Mamdani or accepted the mayor’s efforts to mend fences with the New York Jewish establishment community, paid the price for keeping him at arm’s length.

Lander has cultivated a reputation as a pugilist, albeit one with a winning smile and a penchant for quoting Mr. Rogers. He made headlines last year for being arrested by ICE agents at a federal courthouse on charges he was “obstructing” their operations. He was recently tried and acquitted, delivering a fortuitous bump in pre-election publicity.

Though he knows his way around government, Lander pitched himself to voters not as a quiet behind-the-scenes operator or skilled committee inquisitor (as Goldman plainly is), but as an aggressive and progressive voice willing to change the tone and tactics of politics. “It is time for the Democratic Party to walk away from dark money — from PACs funded by crypto, Wall Street, A.I. and AIPAC,” he said on election night. “People can see through this. They have seen through it for a long time.”

And despite his sometimes vicious tone about Israel in the race, Lander clearly sees an opportunity to mend fences and move to higher ground. “I will be one of the Jewish members of Congress most willing to stand up for Palestinian human rights. And I will stand firmly against bigotry aimed at Jews. Those are not two different jobs. They are the same job,” Lander said. “There is so much trauma here. So much grief, so much fear. We hold onto all of it so tightly, and fear so rarely brings out our best selves.”

The bottom line: The race in the 10th confirmed what we already knew about progressive New York politics (e.g., Mamdani is a political powerhouse, incumbency gets you nothing, AIPAC has made its support of Israel toxic in a large segment of the Democratic Party). But it also reminded us that political foresight and loyalty matter, and that Democratic voters are eager for champions who have proven they are fearless about confronting MAGA goons.

NY-12

Meanwhile, more media attention was showered on two high-profile candidates seeking to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler in the N.Y. 12th: JFK, Jr. grandson Jack Kennedy Schlossberg; and Donald Trump nemesis, pundit, lawyer, and ex-Republican George Conway, who collectively wound up with less than 17 percent of the vote than the winner or runner-up. No one should be surprised that media fame in Manhattan does not get you that far.

Upper West Siders tend not to be overly impressed with celebrities who are a dime a dozen in their swanky neighborhoods. In this election, they never warmed to Kennedy, a thirty-three-year old political dilettante/social media influencer battered by unfavorable news coverage. The Kennedy name has perhaps outlasted its usefulness in electoral politics. When most voters hear “Kennedy” these days, they no doubt think of the crackpot, anti-science HHS secretary.

By contrast, the ever-amusing TV talking head Conway might be so engaging in that role that voters found little reason to see him relocate from TV cable panel shows to the C-SPAN-televised hearings. Voters did not have to send him to Congress to keep up with brilliant analysis and vicious skewering of Donald Trump.

Put differently, voters did not seem to find a reason why either of these two figures had to occupy a coveted House seat. Instead, the upscale 12th district electorate chose a nominee much the way they would, say, a doctor, college prep coach, or money manager. Who does he know? What circles has he traveled in? Is he a professional who enjoys his peers’ respect and exudes quiet competence?

By those standards, Nadler protégé Micah Lasher, an Upper West Side assemblyman and decades-long political associate of elite New York politics (e.g., Gov. Kathy Hochul and former mayor Michael Bloomberg) was the unsurprising pick in a district where Democratic movers and shakers are ready to invest big dollars to elect an impactful committee chairman and likely member of party leadership.

Despite a vigorous and extremely expensive AI-centered challenge from Alex Bores, Lasher gambled and won “by running a staid, old-fashioned campaign based on his résumé and government expertise at a moment when Democrats across the country are furious at the party establishment and hungry for pugnacious new stars,” the New York Times reported.

From a distance, the Upper West Side and the Lower East Side are both progressive, wealthy enclaves, but Tuesday’s contests also reaffirmed that neighborhood identity and personality matter — and that a candidate’s particular skillset is often the difference between winning and losing.

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs

New York Times, U.S. Inflation Problems Are Far From Over, Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, June 25, 2026. The Federal Reserve’s new chairman has vowed to deliver price stability, but officials are at odds over whether that will require higher borrowing costs.

If a preliminary deal to end the war with Iran holds, the worst of the inflation surge that has followed in its wake could soon be over. Oil prices have dropped significantly since the announcement of a truce this month. Gasoline costs have, in turn, begun to fall, and airfares and shipping fees are poised to follow.

But despite this reprieve, the U.S. inflation problem is far from fixed. Measures of underlying inflation were already showing little progress before the war began several months ago. The trend has only worsened as the fighting and other forces, like the boom in artificial intelligence, have stoked prices.

On Thursday, data from the Commerce Department is expected to show that the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, accelerated again in May. Overall prices are forecast to have jumped 0.5 percent during the month, or 4.1 percent from a year earlier. Once food and energy prices are stripped out, “core” inflation is expected to notch a 3.4 percent annual pace, a fresh high since 2023.

It is possible that, if the war with Iran has indeed ended, May or June data will mark the peak of the recent run-up in inflation, said Alan Detmeister, who worked at the Fed before joining UBS. The impact of President Trump’s tariffs on prices has finally begun to fade. Housing-related inflation has firmed in recent months but is expected to resume decelerating over time. Wage growth has stayed muted despite the recent stabilization of the labor market. And higher productivity from the proliferation of A.I., if sustained, could eventually help tame prices.

Yet even if these forecasts pan out, Mr. Detmeister reckoned, it will take two more years for the Fed to reach its 2 percent target, having already overshot it for half a decade. The risks to inflation, he added, are also all pointing up.

The question that Fed officials are now grappling with is just how patient they can afford to be in waiting for underlying price pressures to ease. How that is best measured is also up for debate. The issue has come to define the divisions dominating the central bank as it weighs the need to raise rates to make good on a pledge to deliver price stability — something Kevin M. Warsh, the new chairman, has repeatedly vowed to do. He has not indicated, however, what it may take to achieve this, reflecting his opposition to the Fed’s sending explicit signals about the path forward for policy.building, the other for backlash. The danger is that a movement flush with success may think it doesn’t have to choose.

More News Roundups

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 24, 2026 [Iran's Leverage Over USA], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 25, 2026. Today, strategic studies scholar Phillips P. O’Brien gave a comprehensive review of the events and outcomes of Trump’s war on Iran.

In his Phillips’s Newsletter, O’Brien noted that “the USA is now negotiating without much, if any, leverage. That really is extraordinary. The Trump administration has put itself in a position where it cannot go back to the use of military force, cannot put much if any real pressure on Iran, and therefore will have to concede most of the main points to the Iranians.”

“Personally,” he adds, “I have never seen the US in such a position of weakness.”

O’Brien notes that “[b]ecause the U.S. has no significant leverage over Iran, the Trump administration…will simply have to dissemble about non-existent Iranian concessions to try and make it seem that they have not been completely routed.” They have been lying for months now, but as the magnitude of the loss becomes clearer, the lies will likely grow larger.

O’Brien adds that the Trump administration “seems utterly uninterested in achieving anything of substance and, instead, is desperately hunting around to win the narrative struggle in the USA itself.”

As if in illustration, Trump last night reacted to the Senate passage of a war powers resolution prohibiting him from further military action against Iran by posting: “So, I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, and the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote, telling the Number One Sponser [sic] of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort [to] the Enemy. Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, ‘what does that all mean?’ These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!”

Illustrating the degree to which Trump’s botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has come to represent his botched war on Iran, as well as the degree to which Americans have turned against both, social media users have taken to calling the algae-choked reflecting pool the “Strait of Warm Ooze.” (The strait the Iranians have taken control of is called the Strait of Hormuz.) Yesterday the administration put fencing up around it to keep people away.

Last night’s primary results in New York, in which voters ousted established Democrats in favor of progressive candidates, is creating concern among Republicans about the upcoming midterm elections. The growing groundswell of support for a major reset of our political system suggests that maybe even Republicans’ unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to favor Republicans may not cement control of Congress.

Trump is clearly panicked.

Just after midnight this morning, he posted that the “big Oil Companies” are not dropping gas prices as quickly as they should and accused them of price gouging. He said he had told the Justice Department to “start looking into this” and warned that “[g]asoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!”

At 2:38 AM he posted: “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”

On Monday the Senate overwhelmingly passed a landmark bipartisan bill directed at making housing cheaper by boosting the national housing supply and homeownership and by stopping private equity from buying up single-family homes. By a similarly overwhelming vote, the House passed the measure yesterday. It was expected to cruise to Trump’s desk for a signature.

But this morning at 9:49, Trump suddenly announced he will not sign the bill into law until Congress passes the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE or SAVE America Act, that he keeps pushing. There are various versions of that measure, but by requiring proof of citizenship—a birth certificate or a passport—to vote, along with requiring states to hand their voting rolls over to the federal government, it is expected to stop many legal voters from casting ballots.

At 10:17, Trump posted: “MY REAL POLL NUMBERS ARE THE HIGHEST THEY HAVE EVER BEEN. THANK YOU!!!”

Then, at 10:26, he posted: “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

That language is important. Since retaking office in 2025, Trump has used official emergency declarations at an unprecedented rate in order to claim emergency powers under which he can ignore laws. Although the Republicans hold a majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning Trump could work with Congress to pass legislation, he and his advisors appear to be applying the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt.

Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that in a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law, power belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who himself almost certainly has not read Schmitt—asserted this view in August of last year when he said: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Alex Kaplan of Media Matters notes that since Trump took office in 2025, his loyalists have urged him simply to declare a national emergency in order to justify dictating new voting and election rules to the states.

The U.S. Constitution gives to the states the authority to conduct elections, but the Trump administration wants state voter lists, at least in part so it can run them through a tool designed to find noncitizens who might have applied for benefits for which they’re ineligible. That system, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements and, confusingly, also abbreviated as SAVE, is not designed for voter rolls, and as Liz Dye explained today in Public Notice, it explicitly did not cover U.S. citizens.

But, Dye explains, between last April and last August, employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration linked the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements to the master file from Social Security, called NUMIDENT. Then they reprogrammed SAVE to upload voter rolls for mass citizenship screening.

Certain Republican-dominated states, like Texas, handed over their voter rolls. An investigation by Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and the Texas Tribune in February showed that when used to try to identify noncitizen voters, the system had an error rate of at least 14%, misidentifying legal voters as illegal ones.

In addition to the system’s inaccuracy, the uploading of the files, Dye notes, was “a gross violation of the Privacy Act of 1974,” which prohibits the government from repurposing an individual’s data for a new use without notice and without providing for 30 days of public comment.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., ruled that the administration could not use the SAVE system to check state voting rolls, saying: “[T]he federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

The Trump administration has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to get their voter rolls. Courts have struck down Trump’s attempts to get his hands on those rolls in all nine of the cases on which there has been a ruling, and today the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the administration’s suit against Michigan. Also today, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston permanently blocked much of Trump’s March 2025 executive order trying to gain power over elections.

Undeterred, Trump is trying other ways to rig the vote. Over bipartisan objections, he installed loyalist William Pulte as acting director of national intelligence, turning the agencies responsible for keeping Americans safe away from international threats and directing them instead at Trump’s domestic opponents. As Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Jack Cocchiarella on Sunday, Pulte can simply claim that there’s a threat against the country and use that argument to place troops or immigration agents at the polls or to shut down the election.

And today, testifying at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing today, Postmaster General David Steiner told senators that under a new rule proposed by the Trump administration, the United States Postal Service will not deliver election mail in states that refuse to turn over their voting lists to the federal government.

Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) clarified: “So the proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to these new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail.”

Trump’s obvious panic at the idea that voters might take away the Republicans’ congressional majority raises a question: Why is he so worried? Journalist David Rothkopf noted that “his desperation about losing in November is at such a high level that it is revealing. He is petrified of being held accountable by a Democrat-controlled Congress, of investigations, of his crimes being revealed. He’s obsessed with his fear of losing.”

Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), who frequently records short videos explaining what’s happening at the Capitol, posted from Statuary Hall about today’s “completely bizarre chapter.” She explained as people began to take their places on the stage set up for the signing of the landmark housing bill, “[t]he president tweeted he wasn’t coming because he’s having a temper tantrum that the Senate, and especially Senate Republicans, will not pass his voter ID law, which is basically designed to override state voting laws.”

“And so,” she observed, “in less than an hour we went from the signing of a historic housing bill to stop private equity from buying houses, and investing in housing infrastructure, and actually doing something good for the people of this country, and a ceremony that should have happened right here to…the president is not signing the bill.”

One senior Republican told NOTUS, “He’s having a f*cking tantrum.”

June 24

Top Headlines

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Pentagon in Turmoil, Hegseth Forces Top General Out, Service Members Call Out Army, and Trump Calls Some Republicans Traitors, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. There is deepening turmoil inside the Pentagon right now as service members and their families accuse Pete Hegseth of downplaying serious injuries suffered by U.S. troops. At the same time, Hegseth is forcing out one of the military’s most respected senior commanders amid growing reports of a broader purge of experienced leadership
• New York Times, Trump Stokes Chaos in Congress as He Huddles With the G.O.P., Carl Hulse and Michael Gold, June 24, 2026. Hours before visiting the Capitol, the president scrapped plans to sign a major housing bill, condemning “bad Republicans” for resisting his demands to ram through new voting restrictions.
• PoliticusUSA, News and Comment, Trump Threatens To Tank The Midterm For Republicans If They Won't Pass The SAVE Act, Jason Easley, right, June 24, 2026.∙During a meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump threatened that voters would not show up in November, if Republicans did not pass his SAVE America Act.
• New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President Cancels Plans to Sign Housing Bill, Michael Gold, Tony Romm and Tyler Pager, June 24, 2026. What We’re Covering Today. 
• New York Times, Trump’s Pick for Top I.R.S. Lawyer Works at Firm That Represents Him, Andrew Duehren, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). James R. Gadwood, the president’s nominee for chief counsel at the Internal Revenue Service, works at Miller & Chevalier, which has represented Mr. Trump in tax matters.

More News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, News and Comment, Republicans Scream at Trump as Senate Erupts, Musk No Long Trillionaire, White House Seeks to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. Republicans are turning on Trump as tensions erupt in the Senate, Elon Musk is no longer a trillionaire, the White House is pursuing policies that disability advocates warn could push more disabled Americans into institutional settings, and the DOJ is quietly giving Todd Blanche sweeping authority over prison placements.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President Finds His Happy Place, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 24, 2026. A smaller and smaller slice of the voting public is still all-in with him.
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Pentagon in Turmoil, Hegseth Forces Top General Out, Service Members Call Out Army, and Trump Calls Some Republicans Traitors, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. Continued from above: Iran negotiations.

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice  

U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey whom the Trump Administration has indicted on a hoked-up charge of assault while she and other officials sought to inspect a federal detention center following massive complaints regarding abusive conditions (New York Times photo by Andres Kudacki).   

• New York Times, Pregnant and Running for Re-election, a Democrat Faces U.S. Prosecution, Tracey Tully, June 24, 2026. Representative LaMonica McIver was charged with assault after an altercation with immigration agents that resulted in no injuries. She faces up to 17 years in prison. 
• New York Times, Protesters Accused of Antifa Ties Sentenced to Up to 100 Years in ICE Attack, Alan Feuer and Krista Torralva, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). The penalties, issued in an attack where a police officer was shot, dwarfed those given to Jan. 6 rioters and appeared to signal that at least some courts will deal aggressively with ICE protesters
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Daniel Rosen Hid the Far-Right Agitators at the Core of His Anti-ICE Indictment, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 24, 2026. I’m still working on my very long post unpacking the Minnesota anti-ICE indictment. But I want to make a discrete point: in the indictment, DOJ hid the far-right extremists behind some of the activism in the charging document.

Trump Team Threats To U.S. Elections 

“I probably won all 50 states if we had an honest count,”

-- President Trump (at an Oval Office event three weeks ago).

• Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Mob-Boss Mandates: Inside Trump’s $1B Threat to State Elections, Frank Figliuzzi, June 24, 2026. The administration’s plot to leverage Homeland Security grants is part of a dangerous playbook for November.
• Public Notice, Trump's disenfranchisement machine is besieging the courts, Liz Dye, June 24, 2026. They're holding strong — so far.

More On Iran-Lebanon War

• New York Times, Trump Is Making Big Claims About the Iran Talks. Iran Keeps Contradicting Him, David E. Sanger and Yeganeh Torbati, Updated June 24, 2026. President Trump appears to be describing his preferences as fully negotiated deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians in. The question is whether a succession of such disputes will sink the whole venture.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Don’t Let Them Memory Hole the Iran Debacle, William Kristol, right, June 24, 2026. “If you’re a Republican, yeah, for God’s sakes, no one wants to talk about Iran.” In sum: Keep on talking about Iran. Keep on wrapping Trump’s Iran fiasco around Republicans’ necks. 

Iran: Cultural Perception, Image-Making Changes In Iran, U.S.

A pro-government demonstration in Tehran last month where some of the women were partially veiled and some dressed more conservatively (Photo by Arash Khamooshi via Polaris for The New York Times).  

• New York Times, Iran’s Loyalists Promote a Wider Nationalism, Unveiled Women Included, Erika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi,June 24, 2026. Government supporters are showing off new ties with alleged former dissidents in a bid to show that they can withstand enemies at home as well as abroad. 
• New York Times, From Terrible People’ to ‘Smart People’: The Trump-Led Right Rethinks Iran, Anton Troianovski, June 24, 2026. For decades, the idea that Iran’s regime represented the worst of the world’s worst stood as a pillar of Republican foreign policy. The president has sought to recast the Iranian government as he pursues a peace deal. But there are signs that a softening on Iran in the Republican Party goes well beyond him.

More U.S. Politics 

• MS Now, Opinion: Tucker Carlson says he’s abandoning the GOP. That should terrify Trump, Zeeshan Aleem, June 24, 2026. Israel is becoming a wedge issue on the right. Carlson says Trump is on the wrong side of it.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: America’s Best Kept Secret: Progressiveness Is Popular, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 24, 2026. Republicans, not Dems, should be in a defensive crouch.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Old Man Yells at Crowd, Andrew Egger, right, une 24, 2026. It’s interesting, the things that jump out at you watching your eight millionth¹ Trump rally.
• Politico, It could have been a peace summit. Instead, Trump clashed with senators inside ‘intense’ meeting, Jordain Carney and Calen Razor, June 24, 2026. The president arrived determined to prosecute his grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him.John Thune and Donald Trump walk through the U.S. Capitol.
• MeidasTouch Podcast, All HELL BREAKS LOOSE in Capitol as Trump SCREAMS AT GOP!!  Ben Meiselas, June 24, 2026. Donald Trump shows up to the Capitol Building to scream at the GOP and force a shut down of Congress.
• The Wrap, Trump Attacks Female Reporter for Questioning Cost of Iran War vs. ‘Financially Struggling’ Americans, Jacob Bryant, June 23, 2026. “Not a very good group! Not doing very well,” the president says of Hannah Brandt’s outlet, NewsNation. 

More On U.S. Election Results

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is shown being sworn into office in the unusual setting of a city subway station in January, as his wife looks on at right and New York's Attorney General administers the office oath (New York Times photo).

• New York Times, Mamdani Emerges as Kingmaker, Pushing His Slate to a Primary Sweep, Nicholas Fandos, June 24, 2026. MayorZohran Mamdani shook the Democratic establishment by helping drive three progressive candidates to victory.
• New York Times, Victories by Pro-Palestinian Democrats Show the Party’s Shift on Israel, Jennifer Medina and Reid J. EpsteinJune 24, 2026. Three Democrats who have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel won primaries in New York on Tuesday, signaling their party’s new skepticism of the country and its actions.
• New York Times, Fired Navy Admiral Wins Democratic Runoff in South Carolina’s 1st District, Nick Corasaniti, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). Democrats expect Nancy Lacore to run a competitive general election despite the district’s Republican leaning.
• New York Times, Trump-Backed Sticker Magnate Wins House Primary in New York, Grace Ashford, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). Anthony Constantino defeated Assemblyman Robert Smullen, the state Republican Party’s chosen candidate, in a right-leaning upstate district.

U.S. Governance Roundups 

The reflecting pool, seen from the Washington Monument, with workers attempting to contain the algae on Sunday, June 21, 2026. New York Times photo by Doug Mills). 

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Reflecting Trump Chaos], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 24, 2026. Trump continues frantically to insist that the problems with the Reflecting Pool are the acts of vandals.

U.S. Markets, Inflation, Economy, Jobs

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Chips Are Down, Paul Krugman, right, June 24, 2026.  What, if anything, are the markets telling us?

More Global News 

• New York Times, Western Europe, Sweltering Under Record Heat, Braces for More, Nazaneen Ghaffar, Lynsey Chutel and Amelia Nierenberg, June 24, 2026. More than a dozen countries have issued urgent heat warnings. France saw its highest average temperature ever on Tuesday.

Top Stories

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Pentagon in Turmoil, Hegseth Forces Top General Out, Service Members Call Out Army, and Trump Calls Some Republicans Traitors, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. There is deepening turmoil inside the Pentagon right now as service members and their families accuse Pete Hegseth of downplaying serious injuries suffered by U.S. troops. At the same time, Hegseth is forcing out one of the military’s most respected senior commanders amid growing reports of a broader purge of experienced leadership.

Meanwhile, Trump is attacking oil companies for not lowering gas prices fast enough and is now calling Republican senators who voted against him traitors. One quick note, our paid subscribe live will be tomorrow at 7:45 PM EST. Link forthcoming!

Something crazy happened yesterday. Within the span of an hour, a 19-year-old and a 67-year-old both told me the same thing: they never paid attention to the news until they found my page.

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Here’s the news:

The turmoil inside the Trump administration is deepening as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ongoing purge of senior military leadership claims another high-profile casualty. Gen. Chris Donahue, one of the Army’s most decorated combat commanders and the officer remembered as the last American service member to leave Afghanistan, is retiring after reportedly being pushed out by Pentagon leadership. Donahue had been widely viewed as a future Army chief and was responsible for overseeing U.S. military operations across Europe and Africa while helping coordinate support for Ukraine.

His departure adds to a growing list of experienced generals and admirals forced from their posts since Trump returned to office. Critics say the administration is replacing battle-tested military leaders with officials chosen primarily for political loyalty, creating instability at the highest levels of the Pentagon during a period of global conflict and rising security threats. The shakeup comes as fractures within Trump’s coalition become increasingly public. Senate Republicans are openly rebelling against parts of the president’s agenda, House Republicans are criticizing his military funding strategy, and even longtime conservative allies such as Tucker Carlson have broken with the administration.

Taken together, the developments paint a picture of an administration facing mounting internal chaos, growing resistance from within its own party, and an unprecedented reshaping of both the military and federal government.

According to CBS, a Trump-linked lobbying firm founded by former Trump campaign and administration officials has entered the growing business of seeking presidential pardons, earning $500,000 from its first known client, a Virginia-based law firm seeking help with immigration and clemency cases. The firm, Mo Strategies, says it is advising clients on how the pardon process works and which cases may appeal to the Trump White House, while lobbying disclosures show it has contacted both the White House and Justice Department. The report highlights a broader boom in pardon-related lobbying during Trump’s second term, as well-connected consultants, lawyers, and political operatives seek clemency for clients with criminal convictions. The arrangement is likely to draw additional scrutiny from Democrats, who are already investigating whether some recent Trump pardons were influenced by money, lobbying, or political connections.

Trump is meeting with Senate Republicans today to push for the SAVE America Act, an election bill that would impose stricter voter registration and ballot requirements but currently lacks enough support to pass the Senate. Several Republican senators, including Thom Tillis, have openly acknowledged that the bill does not have the votes needed to overcome a filibuster, creating tension between Trump and GOP leadership. Trump has repeatedly pressured Republicans to prioritize the legislation, even threatening to withhold support for other measures unless it advances. The dispute highlights growing friction between the White House and Senate Republicans, who increasingly argue that political reality and vote counts make the bill effectively dead in the current Congress.

Upcoming Epstein-related deposition dates that have been publicly confirmed:

• Leon Black — June 26
• Doug Band — June 30
• Kathy Ruemmler — July 15
• Alan Dershowitz — July 20
• Jes Staley — July 23

These depositions are expected to be closely watched because of the individuals’ connections to Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing litigation surrounding his network, finances, and associates. Several of the witnesses have previously denied wrongdoing or have already provided statements in related proceedings, but the scheduled depositions could generate new testimony and documents.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has removed 51 personnel from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including six staff who were fired and 45 who were returned to their home intelligence agencies. The moves continue a broader downsizing effort that began under former DNI Tulsi Gabbard and follows President Donald Trump’s call for further reductions at the agency. Supporters argue the ODNI has become overly bureaucratic and has grown beyond its original post-9/11 mission, while critics warn that additional cuts could weaken intelligence coordination and national security. The personnel changes have intensified congressional scrutiny of Pulte, whose appointment has drawn criticism due to his lack of intelligence experience and the ongoing dispute over renewing key surveillance authorities.

New York Times, Trump Stokes Chaos in Congress as He Huddles With the G.O.P., Carl Hulse and Michael Gold, June 24, 2026. Hours before visiting the Capitol, the president scrapped plans to sign a major housing bill, condemning “bad Republicans” for resisting his demands to ram through new voting restrictions.

President Trump plunged Congress into chaos on Wednesday as he abruptly canceled the signing of a celebrated bipartisan housing measure and issued new demands that Republicans pass legislation imposing voting restrictions despite their protests that the votes don’t exist to do so.

Just hours before an explosive closed-door session in which he angrily confronted Senate Republicans, Mr. Trump again blindsided his allies on Capitol Hill by declaring that he would not sign a housing measure at the center of congressional efforts to rein in costs, even as the stage for the ceremony was being erected in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

The bill signing had been intended to project the image of a unified Republican Party working to address Americans’ concerns over high costs ahead of the midterm elections, an issue that polls show to be top of mind for voters.

But in summarily dismissing his party’s heralded domestic achievement as “of minor importance,” as he put it in a social media post, the president emboldened right-wingers in the House who had been seething over the housing measure. Not long after the president’s post, they essentially shut down the floor in protest of the Senate’s failure to approve the voting bill, leaving the Republican agenda stalled in advance of a Fourth of July recess.

Mr. Trump’s decision further inflamed weeks of tumult that have marked an increasingly bitter relationship between the president and prominent members of his own party in the Senate, particularly Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader.

Wednesday’s meeting was already expected to be fraught, as Mr. Trump has been in a simmering feud with Mr. Thune over his refusal to weaken the filibuster to pass the election overhaul bill, which would require proof of citizenship to register and substantially reduce the opportunity for voting by mail.

As he scuttled the housing ceremony, Mr. Trump once again urged Mr. Thune to eliminate the filibuster and to “get the bad Republicans to approve” his voting legislation, known as the SAVE America Act. But Mr. Thune has said repeatedly that there is not enough support among Republicans to do so, a reality that has been demonstrated in test votes.

Lawmakers from both parties were shocked by the president’s decision to call off the housing ceremony. Many of them regarded it as the latest move by Mr. Trump to undermine the efforts of his own party to protect its congressional majorities in the November elections.

At the moment that Mr. Trump sent his social media post, House Republican leaders were celebrating their legislative success and Mr. Thune was on the Senate floor. As he left for his office, he appeared almost dazed, telling reporters he had little to say about the president’s announcement.

Hours later, Mr. Thune said that the decision to cancel the bill signing was the president’s call, but noted that “it’s an affordability issue, and eventually I hope he’ll find his way to sign it.”

Still, when Mr. Trump arrived at the Capitol, he and Mr. Thune tried to appear harmonious, chatting cordially. The president ignored a shouted question about their relationship, instead telling reporters that the war in Iran — which he has said is over — was “going very well” and then criticizing Democrats for “pushing communists” as election candidates.

The facade of unity quickly dissolved behind closed doors. Those participating in the private meeting said that Mr. Trump arrived in an angry mood and launched into a “harangue” over the Senate’s vote a day earlier to challenge his authority to wage the war in Iran as he attacked some Republicans for joining Democrats in the vote.

That, those attending said, led to a shouting match between the president and Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who recently lost his primary after the president endorsed an opponent. In the meeting, Mr. Trump referred to Mr. Cassidy as a “loser.”

Those attending said the president made a series of highly personal attacks against other Republican senators who have bucked him, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is currently hospitalized and did not attend.

Mr. Trump also reiterated his frequent demands to gut the filibuster and eliminate Senate “blue slips” that give senators veto power over certain judicial and law enforcement posts, and he lamented his own indictment before being returned to office. Participants said that there was little exchange over policy and little engagement with Mr. Thune, and that the session mainly appeared to be an opportunity for Mr. Trump to express his grievances.

PoliticusUSA, News and Comment, Trump Threatens To Tank The Midterm For Republicans If They Won't Pass The SAVE Act, Jason Easley, right, June 24, 2026.∙During a meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump threatened that voters would not show up in November, if Republicans did not pass his SAVE America Act.

By all accounts, Trump’s meeting on Capitol Hill with Senate Republicans was a total disaster. The meeting was supposed to be about mending fences and easing tensions, but Trump showed up and proceeded to rant about all of his grievances.

Some Republicans have believed for at least the last month or so that the president is trying to lose the Senate for his party. It is a growing concern among Republicans that Trump is trying to sink his own party.

The idea is crazy because common sense dictates that a Democratic victory in November will make Trump a lame duck and his presidency will be virtually over, but for a president who is desperate not to let go of the spotlight, could it be that he is so desperate to be the only Republican game in town that he would be happy to see the House and Senate majorities gone?

If Republicans lose the House and Senate, Trump will be his party’s center of attention. It is the attention that he has craved for decades and is refusing to let go of ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections.

Trump apparently is willing to go so far that he would threaten his own party with election defeat if they do not do what he wants.

David Sivak of The Washington Examiner posted on X:

- First off, Trump dominated the meeting, and I’m told GOP senators were barely able to get a word in edge-wise (Thune didn’t speak)

- There was the fight with Cassidy, with one source telling me the two men yelled at each other to “sit down”

- Trump also fumed over his two impeachments, and much of the meeting was an airing of “grievances”

- Trump brought up the Republicans who voted to convict him, his “perfect” call with Volodymyr Zelensky, and the “87 indictments” against him

- The SAVE Act did come up, but only at the beginning when Rick Scott opened the meeting and at the end, when Trump delivered a “parting message”

- On SAVE, Trump warned that voters wouldn’t show up if the bill doesn’t pass

Trump knows that Republican voters won’t show up because he will do everything in his power to make sure that they don’t show up. Trump has discouraged Republicans from voting by mail in the past, and it would be in character for him to discourage Republicans from voting in the midterm election.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said that what Trump wants goes deeper than the SAVE America Act, “If you don't have the votes, sir, you don't have the votes. It causes me to wonder if we were to pass the Save Act tomorrow, if he wouldn't find yet another reason for what I think he really is seeking, which is for us to blow up the filibuster, and I'm certainly not giving my consent to that.”

Trump wants Republicans to give him control of the Senate by nuking the filibuster. Because Senate Republicans refuse to give up their power, Trump is threatening to tank the midterm election.

New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President Cancels Plans to Sign Housing Bill, Michael Gold, Tony Romm and Tyler Pager, June 24, 2026. What We’re Covering Today

• Housing Bill: President Trump abruptly canceled his plans to sign a bipartisan housing bill on Wednesday, one that Republicans and Democrats had been eager to promote on the campaign trail as evidence they were working to bring down costs for voters. Mr. Trump said he would not sign it until lawmakers passed a law imposing new restrictions on voter identification and mail-in ballots, although it could become law without his signature. Read more ›
• NATO Meeting: Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, at the White House. Mr. Trump has criticized the alliance for not supporting his war in Iran, and the U.S. military plans to pull a third of the fighter jets it provides to NATO in an emergency.
• Iran: Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday at the start of a trip to the Middle East, as he seeks to reassure Persian Gulf allies about the preliminary deal the United States reached with Iran that could pave the way to a lasting peace agreement. Read more ›

President Trump abruptly canceled his plans on Wednesday to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at improving housing affordability, one that Democrats and Republicans alike had been eager to promote on the campaign trail as evidence they were working to try to bring down costs.

Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would not sign the bill until Congress passed a law that would impose new restrictions on voter identification and mail-in voting, known as the Save America Act. But Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, has said that Republicans did not have the votes required.

Though the president said he would not sign the housing bill, it can still become law without his signature. If Congress is in session, legislation can generally become law 10 days after a bill is enrolled and presented to the president.

The president’s announcement came at the same moment that the House Republican leadership was championing the legislation during a weekly news conference.

“House Republicans are going to be the party that governs and delivers,” said Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No 3. House Republican, seemingly unaware of Mr. Trump’s social media post.

Even the White House had said it supported the bill — the first major piece of housing legislation to be adopted in decades — and had shared an equally supportive statement about its components on Tuesday night.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump described the bill as “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates,” and called it “Warren centric,” using a racial slur to refer to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Mr. Trump focused on Ms. Warren’s involvement in the bill, the measure cleared both chambers with overwhelming support this week, a rarity in hyperpartisan Washington. It ws the culmination of a long negotiation process involving Ms. Warren and others including Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina and chair of the Banking Committee, and Representative French Hill, an Arkansas Republican who chairs a similar panel in the House.

The measure aims to lower housing costs by making it easier and cheaper to construct new homes. Spanning roughly 380 pages, the so-called 21st Century Road to Housing Act reduces a bevy of federal regulations and seeks to incentivize more development at the local level, adopting an approach that generally won broad support among economists and housing experts.

The measure even includes some of Mr. Trump’s own priorities, such as a new prohibition on large investors that snap up single-family homes, which the president tried to tackle in a limited executive order earlier this year.

Both parties had celebrated the bill as a way to make housing more affordable. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, accused Mr. Trump on Wednesday morning of “running away from one of the very few accomplishments that could actually help the American people.”

He’s covering up an invasion of his state by extremist agitators, including one whose alleged assault of cops Trump has rewarded, to selectively criminalize the left.

New York Times, Trump’s Pick for Top I.R.S. Lawyer Works at Firm That Represents Him, Andrew Duehren, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). James R. Gadwood, the president’s nominee for chief counsel at the Internal Revenue Service, works at Miller & Chevalier, which has represented Mr. Trump in tax matters.

President Trump has nominated a lawyer from a firm that worked on his taxes to become the top attorney at the Internal Revenue Service, an arrangement that could add to the scrutiny that the nomination was already likely to face after the administration granted the president protection from tax audits last month.

The White House said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump was nominating James R. Gadwood, a tax lawyer at Miller & Chevalier, to be the chief counsel of the I.R.S. Miller & Chevalier represents DJT Holdings LLC, Mr. Trump’s holding company, in tax matters, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Gadwood, who says on his law firm profile that he has represented large corporations and the wealthy in I.R.S. audits, did not immediately respond to a question about whether he had participated in his firm’s work for Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump and his holding company have repeatedly faced I.R.S. audits; the agency’s procedure had been to audit the president’s tax return every year.

A focus in Mr. Gadwood’s confirmation process will probably be the Trump administration’s apparently unprecedented move to stop I.R.S. audits of Mr. Trump, his family and their affiliates. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, ordered that protection, which covers tax returns already filed, as part of the resolution to a lawsuit Mr. Trump brought against the I.R.S. at the start of the year.

The Trump administration has stood by the tax immunity even as it backed away from creating a $1.8 billion fund that was intended to compensate self-proclaimed victims of federal overreach. The fund was part of a deal to end Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S., which argued that the agency should have stopped the leak of Mr. Trump’s tax returns during his first term. 

More News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, News and Comment, Republicans Scream at Trump as Senate Erupts, Musk No Long Trillionaire, White House Seeks to Institutionalize Disabled Americans, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. Republicans are turning on Trump as tensions erupt in the Senate, Elon Musk is no longer a trillionaire, the White House is pursuing policies that disability advocates warn could push more disabled Americans into institutional settings, and the DOJ is quietly giving Todd Blanche sweeping authority over prison placements.

The implications are serious. Critics argue that political allies could receive favorable treatment, while opponents face harsher consequences. We’ll break it all down.

Here’s the news:

Tensions reportedly flared during President Trump's lunch with Senate Republicans, with Sen. Bill Cassidy confronting Trump over the Iran memorandum of understanding and, according to a source familiar with the meeting, raising his voice during the exchange. Trump also reportedly criticized Sen. Dave McCormick for missing the Senate's Iran war powers vote, despite McCormick having accompanied Trump at a Pennsylvania rally that day. The president additionally pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune to secure enough votes for the SAVE America Act, urging him to be more aggressive in advancing the legislation. According to sources, Trump even suggested using a talking filibuster strategy if necessary to move the bill forward.

According to multiple people in the room, Sen. Bill Cassidy aggressively challenged President Trump during the Senate GOP lunch, at one point reportedly dropping the formal "Mr. President" and addressing him simply as "brother." The exchange underscored growing tensions within the Republican conference over the administration's recent actions. Trump reiterated his public demands that Republicans pass the SAVE America Act, criticized the Senate filibuster, and defended his decision to hold up the bipartisan housing bill. Despite the president's forceful comments, attendees reportedly did not push back on his remarks during the meeting.

Fox News confirmed that Trump’s support concerning his economic policy is slipping quickly:

Asked about the bombing of a girls' school in Iran, President Trump responded, “I don't think it was us,” despite multiple public reports attributing the strike to U.S. forces. The comment is likely to draw further scrutiny given the widespread reporting and assessments that have linked the attack to the U.S. military campaign. Trump did not provide evidence for his claim or elaborate on who he believed was responsible. The remark comes as lawmakers in both parties continue pressing the administration for more transparency about the conduct and scope of the Iran war.

The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to institutionalize more disabled Americans, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The report says White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pushed for a Justice Department legal opinion that would allow states to move away from decades of disability-rights protections that prioritize community-based care over institutional settings.

The June DOJ memo argues that states may disregard long-standing interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act that stem from the Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead, which held that people with disabilities should not be unnecessarily segregated in institutions. Disability-rights advocates warn the move could make it easier for states to place people with disabilities and mental illnesses into institutions rather than providing services that allow them to live in their communities.

According to Bloomberg, officials familiar with the matter said Miller was frustrated that the Justice Department continued reaching agreements requiring states to move people out of institutions and into community settings. The White House and DOJ deny that Miller played any role in drafting the memo, but critics argue the administration is attempting to dismantle one of the most significant disability-rights protections of the last quarter century.

Senators Cory Booker and Bill Cassidy have sent a bipartisan letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche raising concerns about the settlement that created the $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization fund" and granted President Trump immunity from future IRS audits. The senators described the immunity provisions as "deeply concerning" and "extraordinary in breadth," arguing that the language appears broad enough to potentially extend beyond tax-related matters. They are seeking details about how the agreement was negotiated, its legal basis, and the scope of the immunity provided. Booker and Cassidy requested answers by July 14, one day before Blanche is scheduled to begin his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.

President Donald Trump abruptly canceled plans to sign a major bipartisan housing bill, saying he would withhold action until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election reform measure that would impose new voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements. The housing bill, which passed with broad bipartisan support, aims to lower housing costs by encouraging home construction and limiting large investors' purchases of single-family homes. Trump's move created tension with congressional Republicans, many of whom view the housing package as a key achievement ahead of the midterm elections and acknowledge they currently lack the votes to pass the SAVE America Act. The decision also prompted criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans, who warned that delaying a popular housing measure for unrelated election legislation could hurt the party politically.

Trump cancelled the housing bill signing ceremony as Republicans, including many of his own allies, spoke at a press conference:

Asked about high housing costs and why he is refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill, Trump immediately pivoted to attacking "communists," declaring that "this country is not going to have communists"—underscoring that his push for the SAVE America Act has taken priority over addressing housing affordability.

Residents and patrons at Trump International Golf Club Dubai expressed frustration with President Trump's handling of the Iran conflict, telling The Washington Post that the war has damaged confidence in his leadership and economic promises. Many cited rising energy prices, regional instability, and harm to Dubai's tourism industry as reasons for their disappointment. Several residents said they had supported Trump's pledge to be a "no war president" but now feel he miscalculated by escalating tensions with Iran. The criticism comes as polling shows broad public support for ending the conflict, with many Americans believing the war has created more problems than it has solved.

Elon Musk has lost his brief status as the world’s first trillionaire after a sharp selloff in technology stocks pushed his net worth below $1 trillion. The decline was driven by falling shares of both Tesla and SpaceX amid broader market concerns about rising interest rates and a potential AI investment bubble. Musk’s fortune, which peaked after SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO earlier this month, was estimated by Forbes at about $970 billion by Wednesday’s market close. Despite the drop, he remains the world’s richest person by a wide margin and could regain trillionaire status if Tesla or SpaceX shares rebound.

Former DOJ Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer argues that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche must explain why convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred from a low-security federal prison to a minimum-security prison camp, a move she says violates longstanding Bureau of Prisons policies for sex offenders. According to Oyer, federal rules generally require convicted sex offenders to remain in at least low-security facilities because of public safety concerns, making Maxwell’s placement highly unusual. She disputes the Bureau of Prisons’ claim that the transfer was made independently for safety reasons, arguing that existing procedures already provide protective custody options and that minimum-security camps offer less security, not more. Oyer also points to a recent policy change that appears to expand the attorney general’s authority over prisoner placements, suggesting it could have been designed to legitimize extraordinary interventions like Maxwell’s transfer.

A new report found that spending by ICE and Customs and Border Protection on surveillance technology has surged under Trump’s second term, rising to a record $513 million in 2026, with major contracts going to companies such as Palantir and Anduril. The report says immigration agencies are increasingly using AI-powered tools, facial recognition, social media monitoring, drones, data brokers, and phone-hacking technologies to identify, track, and monitor migrants. Researchers also argue that the Department of Homeland Security is not only purchasing surveillance technology but actively funding and helping develop new tools through federal grant and startup programs. Civil liberties advocates warn that the rapid expansion of these technologies, combined with limited oversight, could create an unprecedented domestic surveillance apparatus with broad implications for privacy and civil rights.

The Trump administration has informed key Republican lawmakers that it plans to request roughly $80 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran war by the end of the week. The money would largely be used to replenish missile stockpiles and cover military operations in the Middle East. The request is expected to face resistance from Democrats, many of whom oppose the war and argue it was launched without congressional authorization. House Republicans are also concerned that a supplemental funding bill could complicate their efforts to pass another major GOP reconciliation package, while Senate lawmakers may seek to add disaster relief, farm aid, and other non-military spending to the measure.

According to Politico, the leaders of several major House Democratic caucuses, including the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Hispanic Caucus, unveiled a resolution calling for major judicial and Senate reforms following the Supreme Court's recent decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act. The proposal calls for expanding the Supreme Court, imposing term limits and a binding ethics code for justices, and eliminating the Senate's 60-vote filibuster. Supporters argue the Court's conservative majority has weakened voting rights protections and could obstruct future efforts to strengthen civil rights and democratic reforms. While the resolution is unlikely to advance, it reflects growing pressure from progressive Democrats to pursue structural changes to the judiciary and Congress.

A federal judge permanently blocked most of President Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul election rules, including a requirement that voters provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering. U.S. District Judge Denise Casper ruled that the Constitution gives authority over elections to states and Congress, not the president, and said the order violated the separation of powers. The ruling is the latest legal setback for Trump’s election agenda, which has faced multiple court challenges over voting rules and mail ballots. The decision comes as Trump continues to push Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a proof-of-citizenship voting bill that has stalled in the Senate.

Ships have begun transiting the Strait of Hormuz under a new evacuation and navigation plan coordinated by the International Maritime Organization, allowing vessels stranded by the recent Iran conflict to leave the Gulf safely. The program is expected to help hundreds of ships and roughly 11,000 seafarers who had been unable to transit one of the world’s most important shipping routes. The initiative became possible after the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire framework, with vessels directed through designated routes via Iranian waters and waters coordinated by Oman and the United States. The reopening of traffic through the strait is a significant step toward restoring global trade flows and reducing concerns about disruptions to energy and shipping markets.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is demanding answers about the troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after algae blooms and peeling paint appeared shortly after completion of the $14 million-plus project. Garcia sent letters to the two contractors that received no-bid federal contracts, questioning whether taxpayer money was wasted and whether political connections influenced the awards. The inquiry comes as President Donald Trump continues to blame vandalism for the damage, though Democrats have called for the administration to release surveillance footage and other evidence supporting those claims. The contractors maintain that the problems are limited and repairable, while the White House insists the project has been successful and that the Reflecting Pool is functioning as intended.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Justice Department from obtaining medical records of transgender patients treated at New York hospitals, ruling that the subpoenas likely violated constitutional protections. Judge Katherine Polk Failla sharply criticized the government's actions, saying they appeared to be part of an effort to "demonize and eradicate" transgender people and improperly target a vulnerable population. The Justice Department had sought the records as part of an investigation into the alleged misbranding of drugs used in gender-affirming care, but plaintiffs argued the subpoenas threatened patient privacy and medical confidentiality. The ruling grants temporary relief to transgender patients and their families while the court considers whether to issue a longer-term injunction blocking the records request.

The United States has provided doses of an experimental Ebola treatment developed by Mapp Biopharmaceutical for use in clinical trials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, marking a shift from its previous policy of reserving the drug primarily for Americans. The treatment, known as MBP134, will be tested as health officials respond to a rapidly growing outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which has caused more than 1,000 cases and over 250 deaths. The trials, coordinated by the World Health Organization and international partners, will also evaluate antiviral drugs from Gilead Sciences. Researchers hope the studies will determine whether the experimental therapies can safely and effectively treat or prevent Ebola, while also advancing potential regulatory approval for future use.

A former Las Vegas youth pastor has been charged with murder and insurance fraud nearly 20 years after his wife, Bernadette Vander Meer, fell 1,200 feet to her death while hiking at Zion National Park in 2006. Authorities reopened the case in 2025 after new witnesses came forward, including the pastor who supervised Vander Meer and a former youth group member who said he told her the only way they could be together was if his wife were dead. Investigators also found that Vander Meer had dramatically increased life insurance coverage before the trip and later collected more than $567,000 after her death. Prosecutors now allege the fall was not an accident, and Vander Meer was arrested this week by U.S. Marshals in Las Vegas.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The President Finds His Happy Place, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 24, 2026. A smaller and smaller slice of the voting public is still all-in with him.

The Democratic party is leaderless, unpopular, and up for grabs, and in last night’s New York elections, the Democratic socialists showed they’re the faction with momentum in it.

“Fresh off sweeping victories across New York City that showcased the growing power of the anti-establishment progressive left inside the Democratic Party,” Politico reports this morning, “Democratic Socialists of America leaders, eager to capitalize on their momentum, are already plotting their next act: making sure one of their own is on the presidential primary debate stage, whether the party wants them or not.”

Isn’t it exciting, living in one interesting time after another? Happy Wednesday.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Pentagon in Turmoil, Hegseth Forces Top General Out, Service Members Call Out Army, and Trump Calls Some Republicans Traitors, Aaron Parnas, right, June 24, 2026. Continued from above.

Iran negotiations:

Trump sharply criticized senators who voted for a War Powers Act resolution related to Iran, accusing them of giving "aid and comfort" to America's enemies and invoking language traditionally associated with treason. His comments targeted both Democrats and several Republicans who supported congressional limits on military action. Trump also claimed that Iran was prepared to "take the fall" for the conflict after receiving billions of dollars from previous U.S. policies, a characterization disputed by critics who argue it misrepresents the history and outcome of U.S.-Iran relations. The remarks reflect growing tensions within the Republican Party over Trump's handling of Iran and Congress's role in authorizing military action.

CBS has confirmed that several wounded U.S. soldiers and their families are accusing the Army and Pentagon of downplaying the severity of injuries sustained during a deadly Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six American service members. Families say they were initially told loved ones were "not seriously injured" and had returned to duty, only to later learn they suffered traumatic brain injuries, shrapnel wounds, hearing and vision loss, lung damage, and other serious conditions. The Army denies minimizing the injuries, arguing that "not seriously injured" is a technical classification based on whether a soldier's life is at immediate risk, not the long-term impact of the wounds. The report also renews scrutiny of the March attack itself, with survivors alleging inadequate preparation, insufficient medical resources, and ignored warnings before what became the deadliest attack on U.S. troops since 2021.

Trump accused major oil companies of price gouging and said he has directed the Justice Department to investigate why gas prices have not fallen faster despite a sharp decline in oil prices. Trump argued that energy companies are not passing savings on to consumers after oil markets stabilized following progress in U.S.-Iran negotiations and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices have fallen significantly from recent highs, but remain above year-ago levels, leaving many Americans still paying substantially more at the pump. The issue has become politically important ahead of the midterm elections, as Trump seeks to reassure voters that costs are declining while warning oil companies to lower prices more quickly.

Election results:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani strengthened the influence of the democratic socialist movement by helping several endorsed candidates win key Democratic congressional primaries in New York. Victories by candidates including Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier signaled growing support for progressive policies such as Medicare for All, housing reform, and stronger criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The races highlighted an ongoing struggle within the Democratic Party between established leaders and a newer generation of left-wing candidates seeking to redefine the party’s direction. Republicans argued the results show Democrats moving further toward the party’s socialist wing, while supporters viewed the wins as evidence of momentum for a more progressive agenda.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore easily won the Democratic primary for a second term, clearing an early hurdle as speculation continues about a possible 2028 presidential run. Although Moore has repeatedly said he is focused on governing Maryland and not running for president, his national profile, fundraising, and appearances in key political states have fueled discussion about his future ambitions.

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson won his Democratic primary despite facing criticism over his stance on congressional redistricting and a challenge from activist and Army veteran Bobby LaPin. Ferguson campaigned on his legislative accomplishments, including funding for Baltimore schools and sponsoring Maryland’s digital advertising tax, while LaPin portrayed him as disconnected from local concerns. A major issue in the race was Ferguson’s opposition to efforts by some Democrats to redraw Maryland’s congressional map to create an 8–0 Democratic advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Although Ferguson resisted redistricting efforts last year, he has recently indicated openness to revisiting the issue following a Supreme Court decision that could reshape congressional maps nationwide.

Alan Wilson won the Republican nomination for governor of South Carolina after defeating Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette in a runoff election. The race drew attention because President Donald Trump initially endorsed Evette before later endorsing both candidates ahead of the runoff. Wilson enters the general election as the favorite in a state that has consistently elected Republican governors for more than two decades. The result comes after several recent setbacks for Trump-endorsed candidates in other gubernatorial primaries, including races in Iowa and Georgia.

Micah Lasher won the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District, emerging from a crowded field that included Alex Bores, Jack Schlossberg, and George Conway. The race attracted national attention because millions of dollars poured in from competing AI industry groups battling over the future of artificial intelligence regulation. Lasher benefited from endorsements from prominent Democrats, including Kathy Hochul, Michael Bloomberg, and retiring Representative Jerry Nadler. He is now heavily favored to win the general election in the strongly Democratic Manhattan-based district.

Adrian Boafo won the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Representative Steny Hoyer in Maryland's 5th Congressional District. His campaign benefited from roughly $11 million in outside spending from pro-Israel and cryptocurrency-aligned groups, making the race a flashpoint in the Democratic Party's debate over the influence of major outside donors. Boafo, Hoyer's former campaign manager and preferred successor, defeated a crowded 24-candidate field despite criticism from rivals who accused outside groups of attempting to buy the seat. With backing from prominent Maryland Democrats and the district's strong Democratic lean, Boafo is expected to be heavily favored in the general election.

Former Representative Ben McAdams won the Democratic primary in Utah’s newly created 1st Congressional District, defeating a progressive challenger backed by Bernie Sanders. McAdams, a centrist Democrat and former congressman, benefited from a significant fundraising advantage and strong support from national Democrats who view the district as a key pickup opportunity. The race became one of Utah’s most expensive congressional contests, with candidates and outside groups spending roughly $4.6 million. McAdams will now face Republican nominee Riley Owen in what is expected to be one of the state’s most competitive House races.

Other news:

Congress passed the bipartisan "21st Century Road to Housing Act," the largest federal housing affordability package in a generation, and President Trump is expected to sign it into law. The bill aims to increase housing supply by encouraging new construction, easing zoning and permitting restrictions, expanding support for manufactured and modular homes, and providing incentives for local governments to approve more housing development. It also includes a first-of-its-kind restriction on large institutional investors by preventing firms that already own hundreds of single-family homes from purchasing more. Supporters say the legislation is a major step toward lowering housing costs and increasing homeownership opportunities, though experts note that additional reforms may still be needed to address labor shortages and construction costs.

Meta has paused an internal program that collected employees’ keystrokes, mouse movements, screen activity, and other computer-use data to help train its AI models after more than 1,600 workers signed a petition raising privacy concerns. Employees argued that the tool, known as the Model Capability Initiative, undermined trust and could expose sensitive information, while reports indicated that some of the collected data may have been broadly accessible within the company. Meta says it is investigating the program and has found no evidence that the data was improperly accessed, but halted the effort while reviewing its safeguards. The controversy comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues an aggressive push into artificial intelligence, with the company spending heavily on AI infrastructure and new products.

A Guardian investigation found that tenants at apartment complexes operated by Greystar, the nation’s largest apartment manager, are often charged dozens of additional fees beyond rent, including boiler management, lifestyle, pest control, trash collection, billing, and amenity fees. Renters and multiple lawsuits allege many of these charges are inflated, confusing, or unfair, while Greystar denies wrongdoing and says all fees are disclosed in lease agreements. The report found at least 125 different named fees across Greystar properties, with some tenants paying hundreds of dollars per month on top of advertised rent and, in some cases, facing eviction when they could not keep up with the added costs. The investigation also highlights prior settlements involving Greystar over hidden fees and price-fixing allegations, as well as growing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over so-called “junk fees” in the rental housing market.

Farm workers in the American Southwest are facing increased risks from the growing New World screwworm outbreak because they work closely with livestock, where most infections have been detected. Health experts warn that many agricultural workers have limited access to healthcare due to long work hours, remote living conditions, language barriers, lack of insurance, and fears related to immigration enforcement, making it harder to detect and contain potential human cases. While no human infections have been reported and the primary threat remains to livestock and the meat industry, workers are being urged to take precautions such as covering wounds, wearing protective clothing, and using insect repellent. Public health officials and industry groups are also pushing for stronger outreach and surveillance efforts to prevent the outbreak from spreading further.

Frank Carone, the former chief of staff to ex-New York City Mayor Eric Adams, was arrested along with three others as part of a federal investigation into an alleged bribery scheme involving a New York City contract. Prosecutors have not yet publicly released details of the charges, but indictments are expected to be unsealed. Carone’s attorney dismissed the case as weak and based on circumstantial evidence, while a spokesperson for Adams described Carone as a longtime public servant and said the former mayor’s thoughts are with his family. The arrests mark a significant development in a long-running federal corruption investigation tied to New York City government.

Federal investigators executed search warrants at locations connected to current and former NYPD officials as part of an ongoing criminal investigation. The probe is reportedly linked to former NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, who resigned in 2024 after allegations that he exchanged overtime opportunities and other benefits for sexual favors. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the investigation reflects her commitment to holding department members accountable and maintaining integrity within the force. The investigation is being led by the NYPD, FBI, and federal prosecutors, with additional details expected to emerge.

An 18-year-old California man, Bradley Scott Sayer, is facing murder charges after allegedly carrying out a shooting at a library in Chico that killed two people and injured a child. Investigators say the suspect was inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, wore a shirt referencing one of the Columbine shooters, and had immersed himself in online communities focused on school shootings. Authorities say he entered the library with a shotgun, targeted victims inside, and was quickly apprehended by police, a response officials credit with preventing a larger massacre. The case has renewed concerns about online extremism, mass-shooting copycats, and access to firearms by young adults.

Camp Mystic has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy nearly a year after the devastating 2025 Texas floods that killed 25 campers, two counselors, and camp director Dick Eastland. Court filings show the camp has more than $10 million in debt and could face claims from between 1,000 and 5,000 unsecured creditors. The bankruptcy comes days after investigators concluded that Camp Mystic lacked a compliant written emergency plan, failed to adequately prepare for the storm, and did not evacuate campers despite having opportunities to do so. The findings have intensified scrutiny of the camp’s leadership and emergency response as families continue to seek accountability for one of the deadliest disasters in recent Texas history.

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice 

U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey whom the Trump Administration has indicted on a hoked-up charge of assault while she and other officials sought to inspect a federal detention center following massive complaints regarding abusive conditions (New York Times photo by Andres Kudacki).   

New York Times, Pregnant and Running for Re-election, a Democrat Faces U.S. Prosecution, Tracey Tully, June 24, 2026. Representative LaMonica McIver was charged with assault after an altercation with immigration agents that resulted in no injuries. She faces up to 17 years in prison. 

The legal face-off between the Justice Department and Representative LaMonica McIver continued on Wednesday in federal court as a panel of appellate judges heard arguments about whether Ms. McIver, who was accused more than a year ago of assaulting immigration agents outside a detention center, should have the charges against her dismissed.

The stakes are high. To Ms. McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, the prosecution holds personal and political peril: up to 17 years in prison and an estimated $1 million in legal fees, just as she is running for a second term. To Justice Department prosecutors, the case offers an opportunity to limit the bounds of congressional immunity.

And to a bipartisan group of former Congress members, the charges represent an existential showdown between the executive and legislative branches.

“If the Department of Justice is allowed to proceed with this prosecution, it would create a perverse incentive for Executive Branch officials to act in a more chaotic and unsafe fashion, and create new, unprecedented tools to block legitimate legislative oversight,” lawyers for the 20 former members — 17 Republicans and three Democrats — wrote in an April filing in support of Ms. McIver’s effort to persuade the judges to dismiss the three-count indictment against her.

Ms. McIver, an outspoken critic of President Trump, is accused of using her forearms to assault, resist, impede and intimidate two federal immigration agents outside Delaney Hall, a large and troubled migrant detention center in Newark. She was there with two of her Democratic House colleagues for an oversight inspection.

Her lawyers have noted that no one was injured and argued that she was being selectively prosecuted because of her politics, citing the pardons the Republican president granted to his supporters after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, where many officers were harmed.

“She wouldn’t have drawn a flagrant foul in a Knicks-Spurs game,” Paul J. Fishman, one of Ms. McIver’s lawyers, told the panel of judges in Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday in a reference to the N.B.A. championship games earlier this month.

The congresswoman’s lawyers have also said that she was precluded from criminal liability by a constitutional protection known as the speech-or-debate clause, which shields members of Congress from being prosecuted on charges tied to their work as legislators.

“The whole visit,” Mr. Fishman said, “was a manifestly legislative act.”

Last year, a trial judge, Jamel K. Semper of U.S. District Court in New Jersey, rejected both arguments.Editors’ PicksThis Backyard A.D.U. Is Multigenerational by DesignHe’s an ‘Old Gay.’ Gather Round.The Wearable Data Your Doctor Actually Wants

Ms. McIver, who is 40 and pregnant with her second child, appealed, putting the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit at a time when Mr. Trump continues to show a willingness to use the Justice Department to retaliate against political adversaries.

Mark E. Coyne, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, argued on Wednesday that assault never qualifies for legislative immunity.

“Interfering with an arrest is never a legislative act,” Mr. Coyne said. “That is our through line.”

The constitution, he stressed in a legal filing, does not prohibit inquiry into “illegal conduct simply because it has some nexus to legislative functions.”

The limits of the speech-or-debate clause are at the heart of the legal dispute, even though there is consensus on many of the facts surrounding the brief but volatile clash outside Delaney Hall on May 9, 2025.

The confrontation lasted just 68 seconds and began after agents rushed out from behind the gates of the detention center to arrest Ras J. Baraka, the city’s mayor, on a trespassing charge. Mr. Baraka, a Democrat, was running for governor at the time. And his arrest had been ordered by phone by Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, whom Mr. Trump has since nominated to lead the Justice Department, according to body-worn camera footage released as part of the proceeding.Video0:26Body camera footage shows the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New Jersey explaining that Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark was being arrested at the direction of the deputy attorney general.

Minutes after the alleged assault, Ms. McIver was invited back into the detention center to complete the oversight inspection that she had arrived there to conduct.

Less than two weeks later, Alina Habba, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer who at the time was serving as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney, disclosed that she was dropping the trespassing charge against Mr. Baraka. In the same news release, however, she announced plans to charge Ms. McIver with assault.

Prosecutors have acknowledged that others were also pushing as a crowd of roughly 40 protesters, lawmakers and reporters moved toward Delaney’s front gate alongside masked agents.

“Other protesters pushed other agents, and one agent shoved McIver; she shoved him back,” Mr. Coyne, the federal prosecutor, wrote in a legal brief.

On Wednesday, the judges lingered on the skirmish and challenged Ms. McIver’s lawyer, Mr. Fishman, on why the congresswoman should be exempt from prosecution for her actions outside the gates of the detention center.

Judge Stephanos Bibas posed a hypothetical question: If, during a congressional oversight visit, a lawmaker groped a detainee, would that qualify for legislative immunity?

“Isn’t this at least as weak a case as the one that I’ve hypothesized?” the judge asked.

Mr. Fishman drew a sharp distinction between what he has called incidental contact with an immigration agent and sexual assault.

Judge Thomas L. Ambro appeared most interested in Ms. McIver’s argument that she was being unfairly singled out because of her opposition to the president’s policies. “Is there any case that you know of where anybody else has ever been indicted for something like this?” Judge Ambro asked Mr. Coyne.

He also pressed Mr. Coyne on what might stop the government from charging other lawmakers with similar crimes for no reason other than wanting to “see them under the pressure” of having to defend themselves.

Mr. Coyne, noting his decades in public service, said he would never do that.

“I’m not saying you,” Judge Ambro said pointedly.ImageLaMonica McIver stands next to two people who are seated in front of three flags.“Trump and his administration want us scared and silent,” Ms. McIver, a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said last week during a hearing in Newark.Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times

Ms. McIver was joined on Wednesday in court by her husband, grandmother and aunt. She did not address the court, but spoke with reporters outside after the hearing ended.

“This is about weaponizing the Department of Justice to do their personal, vendetta bidding against people that they don’t like,” Ms. McIver said. “And I’m one of those people on that list.”

“It’s exhausting, and it’s tiring,” she added.

New York Times, Protesters Accused of Antifa Ties Sentenced to Up to 100 Years in ICE Attack, Alan Feuer and Krista Torralva, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). The penalties, issued in an attack where a police officer was shot, dwarfed those given to Jan. 6 rioters and appeared to signal that at least some courts will deal aggressively with ICE protesters

The leader of a group of protesters accused of being members of the far-left movement antifa was sentenced on Tuesday to 100 years in prison after a jury found him and seven other demonstrators guilty of supporting terrorism while taking part in an armed assault last summer against an immigration facility in Alvarado, Texas.

The extraordinary sentence against the protester, Benjamin Song, was only one of the harsh penalties meted out in the case during separate hearings in Federal District Court in Fort Worth by two judges who castigated the defendants for using violence and attacking the democratic process during the protest.

Nine young demonstrators, including Mr. Song, were found guilty in March of an array of charges stemming from the attack on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, which resulted in a police officer being shot in the neck.

Six of the defendants who were convicted of terrorism charges along with Mr. Song were sentenced to between 50 and 70 years in prison. Another, who was found guilty of lesser crimes and was not even present at the protest, was given a term of 30 years in prison. A final defendant is scheduled to be sentenced next month. 

Trump planned a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.8 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists (some shown above).

The remarkably stiff penalties, issued by Judge Mark T. Pittman and Judge Reed O’Connor, were significantly longer than the lengthiest sentence handed down to any of the more than 1,500 rioters who were prosecuted — and then given clemency — for joining in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (portrayed above). The most severe sentence faced by a Jan. 6 defendant was the 22-year term given to Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys.

The sentencings in Fort Worth appeared to be a clear signal that, at least in Texas, the courts would deal aggressively with ICE protesters — especially those accused of adhering to the leftist ideology of antifa, a contraction of the word “antifascist.” Activists who have demonstrated against ICE have faced a concerted crackdown from the Trump administration, including 15 people said to be affiliated with two Minnesota antifa groups who were indicted last week on charges of conspiring to impede federal agents during immigration sweeps in the state over the winter.

Both Judge Pittman, who was appointed by President Trump, and Judge O’Connor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, have reputations as staunchly conservative jurists. Judge Pittman oversaw the trial of Mr. Song and his co-defendants, which was the first time terrorism charges had been brought against purported members of antifa. Judge O’Connor was brought in after the verdicts were returned to help with sentencings.

While the jurors who heard evidence during the trial clearly believed the prosecution’s theory that most of the defendants had supported an act of terrorism when they took part in the attack on the ICE facility, five of the government’s own cooperating witnesses — people who were part of the supposed antifa cell — denied under oath that they or their compatriots thought of themselves as belonging to antifa. The far-left movement has no central structure or formal membership.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche celebrated the sentences in a post on social media, saying that “violent extremism has no place in our country.”

“The sentences handed down today make clear that antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” Mr. Blanche said.

But the relatives of some of the defendants assailed the sentences as overly punitive at a news conference outside the courthouse.

“In the face of this grotesque distortion of anything that could ever have called itself a process, I am livid,” said Lydia Koza, the wife of one of the defendants, Autumn Hill.

Hope Song, Mr. Song’s mother, said her son would never accept responsibility for what she described as “a government lie made to prosecute innocent people in order to get political persecutions.”

Mr. Trump has long prioritized bringing criminal charges against antifa activists and other left-wing demonstrators who have protested his immigration raids in cities across the country. In September, he issued an executive order declaring antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not actually exist under U.S. law.

He also issued a sweeping directive known as National Security Presidential Memo 7, which ordered a whole-of-government approach to going after antifascist groups. The memo greatly expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include a list of political beliefs traditionally protected by the First Amendment — among them “anticapitalism,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and even “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.”

The episode in Alvarado unfolded after nightfall on Independence Day last year, when a group of about a dozen people arrived dressed in black at the ICE facility, known as the Prairieland Detention Center. Some began to vandalize the property, spray-painting graffiti on a guard shed and a car, and damaging a surveillance camera, prosecutors said. Others set off fireworks in what they later described as a “noise demonstration,” hoping that the immigrants detained inside would be encouraged by the spectacle.

Mr. Song, a former Marine reservist, stood at a distance with an AR-15-style rifle. And when Lt. Thomas Gross of the Alvarado Police Department responded to a call for help at the facility, Mr. Song yelled, “Get to the rifles!” and opened fire, prosecutors said. Lieutenant Gross was struck by a bullet above his collarbone as the rest of the group fled. He was treated for his wounds and eventually released from the hospital.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Daniel Rosen Hid the Far-Right Agitators at the Core of His Anti-ICE Indictment, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 24, 2026. I’m still working on my very long post unpacking the Minnesota anti-ICE indictment. But I want to make a discrete point: in the indictment, DOJ hid the far-right extremists behind some of the activism in the charging document.

As I described here, the indictment was likely inevitable from the time DOJ arrested someone who is flamboyantly Antifa, Kyle Wagner, for allegedly stalking a far right extremist who had come to Minnesota to rile things up, Jayden Scott. What appears to have happened is that Scott whined to DOJ, which led them to focus on Wagner, which led to Wagner’s arrest on dodgy charges while deferring charging on statements that more closely meet truth threat standards targeting ICE.

As I’ll show, virtually all of the focus on Antifa in the MN indictment (as opposed to anarchists or garden variety activists) is tied to Wagner, and much of that comes from his social media posts.

But in introducing Wagner, the indictment hides how DOJ was alerted to Wagner: By far right extremists who have friends at DOJ. Indeed, they literally edit out the import of Jake Lang, who is the quintessential extremist outside agitator.

The first social media post in the MI complaint against Wagner is dated January 8, in the immediate aftermath of the Renee Good murder. By contrast, the first post cited in the MN indictment is one that appears in both charging documents, dated January 17 or 18.

On or about January 18, 2026, WAGNER posted a video on his Instagram account “kaos. follows,” which was captioned, “I’m fundraising for other mutual aid networks and spending my resources fighting back and organizing the direct action that’s getting us results…If you can’t be here and want to see us take the fight to them – give me your support and help us Stop ICE now. My link is in my bio – fund community protection and anti-ICE: direct action. #vivalaresistance.”

But the citation of the post in the MN indictment edits out something included in the screen cap from the MI one: A reference to the fundraising Jake Lang did before coming to Minnesota “bring[ing] hate to our streets.”

The complaint also describes an earlier post, which describes a street conflict at which Wagner let Jake Lang go,

I want to make one thing very clear and this is going to be directly to all of the rest of the Nazis that were around for this, okay? You’ll see in this video I was right there, and I let Jake Lang go.

Lang was among the earliest people arrested for January 6, charged with rioting and multiple counts of assaulting cops.

Lang managed to stall his trial for years, largely by constant juggling of legal representation, but ultimately by invoking his expected clemency by Trump. Along the way, Lang tried over and over to get Carl Nichols to release him, but each time DOJ successfully argued he was too dangerous to release.

Since these conflicts in MN, Lang has been arrested multiple times — for threatening a cop in DC, threatening another cop in Texas, drunk driving in PA, driving-related crimes in MI. He’s an attention-seeker that even right wingers hate. Yet he is also someone who, by dint of his violent extremism in the service of Donald Trump on January 6, has had impunity from DOJ, even though he does precisely the kinds of things alleged here, only to serve the far right.

The video makes it clear Wagner connected his own fundraising, which DOJ relies on to establish a conspiracy in the MN indictment, to the invasion of MN by outside agitators.

Yet DOJ omits the reference to Lang, where Wagner said, “They raised $1m for lang to come,” the first Wagner social media post in the indictment.

The result creates the appearance that Wagner was raising money for a January 23 operation Wagner was invited to join just a day or so earlier, rather than as a response to the invasion of MN not just by ICE, but also by outside agitators with a direct line to DOJ.

DOJ already has a selective prosecution problem with this indictment. On January 15 — likely one of the conflicts Wagner was referencing — Scott was cited for obstruction after ignoring orders and “incit[ing] other demonstrators to follow,” similar conduct for which Wagner was charged with a felony. But instead, DOJ dismissed the citation against Scott in May.

US Attorney Daniel Rosen is literally editing out the role that outside agitators played in his own state, in an attempt to paint broad swaths of activism on the part of Minnesotans with an Antifa brand. 

Trump Team Threats To U.S. Elections 

Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Mob-Boss Mandates: Inside Trump’s $1B Threat to State Elections, Frank Figliuzzi, June 24, 2026. The administration’s plot to leverage Homeland Security grants is part of a dangerous playbook for November.

Exclusive reporting by CNN on Monday exposed a threat by President Trump to pull millions of dollars in federal funds from states who refuse to comply with his demands to change how we conduct elections.

The mob-boss style threat is a variation on a worn-out Trump theme – bend to my will or pay the price. This time, Trump’s demand comes with a double danger. It not only undermines the security of upcoming midterm elections but erodes the safety of our communities by yanking over $1 billion in Homeland Security grants used by towns and counties to prepare for disasters, protect infrastructure, and counter terrorism. It seems like a sinister scheme of an increasingly desperate president to either rig the midterms or claim massive fraud if he fails.

Already, a federal court has balked at a portion of Trump’s plot – but now we know what he’s up to.

The CNN report is based on inside documents and multiple sources pointing to Trump’s plan to insert the federal government into running elections like never before. Trump will assert that his initiative is all about countering voter fraud – that the states can’t be trusted to safeguard the sanctity of the elections. Only Trump can fix it.

Never mind that there is no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to impact election outcomes. Trump’s move isn’t about facts or evidence, it’s about planting the seed of doubt, nurturing that seed, then harvesting the corrupted crop if his party takes a beating in November.

The states can tell him to go pound sand. They can, and will likely, convince the courts that a President does not have the authority to withdraw homeland security funds already allocated by Congress. It doesn’t matter. Trump thinks he wins simply by planting the sinister seed. He’ll insist that the states that refused his largely unconstitutional demands did so because they wanted to fix the midterms.

The courts that rule in favor of those states – and the Constitution, are merely out to get him. Trump the loser is Trump the victim. The MAGA core will swallow the sad fiction. Most Americans will reject it, but November could be a mess – which is part of Trump’s plan.

The rundown of Trump’s list of demands reads like an extortionist’s dream. In fact, Trump’s threat to officially withhold funds from states who refuse his unconstitutional demands sounds a lot like a quid pro quo under federal bribery statutes. If only we had a Justice Department that cared. Among Trump’s demands are new homeland security grant requirements that states rid themselves of some electronic voting systems and adopt hand-marked paper ballots. That sounds innocent – though still an improper federal influence, but that’s the least of the concerns. Trump wants states to submit their voter registration into a citizenship verification database run by his Department of Homeland Security.

On Monday, as the CNN exclusive was circulating, we learned that a federal judge found the DHS database an unlawful tool when used to determine who gets to vote. U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan didn’t hold back in her 75-page ruling:

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Undoubtedly, Trump will instruct his DOJ to appeal Sooknanan’s ruling. Several states already use the DHS SAVE database to confirm citizenship of their voters. Now, with this finding, many of those states may rethink their use of what was already a controversial tool. Monday’s ruling also jeopardizes the Justice Department’s lawsuits against 30 states who refused to supply Trump with their voter lists.

The fight for state control of our elections is in its first round. Trump will continue to push for hand-marked paper ballots, despite his propensity to whine about fraud whenever ballot counting takes too long. And he’ll continue to lob threats toward any state that stands up to him.

On Monday, I interviewed former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy Juliette Kayyem, on my Substack show for Lincoln Square. Kayyem had a lead role in administering DHS funds to the states – the very same funds Trump is threatening to withhold. Kayyem, who is also a lawyer, didn’t hesitate in her assessment of of Trump’s threats:

“I can say with total confidence that this is illegal.”

It’s clear now that Trump will pull out all the stops to interfere with a free and fair election in November. So far, the courts have held to the rule of law and the Constitution. The key questions that remain include the degree to which a certain segment of our population will fall for his charade, potentially act out violently in response to Trump’s claim of a rigged election, and feed right into Trump’s desire for chaos and confusion around the midterms.

This week, we got another glimpse into the Trump playbook. He’s telling us what his offense looks like. Just remember – it’s defense that wins games.

Frank Figliuzzi hosts The Frank Figliuzzi Show on Lincoln Square. He is an FBI Assistant Director (retired); 25-year veteran Special Agent; and author of the national bestseller, The FBI Way, and Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers.

“I probably won all 50 states if we had an honest count,”

-- President Trump (at an Oval Office event three weeks ago).

Public Notice, Trump's disenfranchisement machine is besieging the courts, Liz Dye, June 24, 2026. They're holding strong — so far.

The lie that American elections are riddled with fraud has become a right-wing shibboleth, despite years of Republican-led investigations which only wind up proving how vanishingly rare it is.

But the election fraud myth undergirds two vital Republican projects: undermining faith in elections generally, and building support for “solutions” that will wind up disenfranchising millions of people, most of whom vote for Democrats.

Trump has been trying to ram these “solutions” through Congress since he got back into office, even blowing up the deal to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by insisting that Republicans include his SAVE America Act, which includes a voter ID mandate and a national voter registry (and, bizarrely, “no transgender mutilization of our children”).

The Republicans agreed with Dumocrats to remove very fair, and talented, William Pulte, from serving as Acting DNI in return for getting FISA approved by the Dumocrats. However, the Republicans moved so fast with the hearings of the Great Jay Clayton, current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, that Pulte would be gone before the Dumocrats would vote on FISA. Now, the Dumocrats are saying they will vote against FISA — So, the Republicans wound up having fulfilled their commitment, but Dumocrats broke the Deal. In addition, the newly nominated U.S. Attorney, Jamie McDonald, must be confirmed and blue slipped. Because of the ridiculous views of Republicans on blue slipping (Dumocrats are often willing to nix it), I may not be able to get the extraordinary Sullivan & Cromwell Partner, Jamie, approved, and I don’t want to take Jay Clayton away from the great job he is doing until Jamie is in place. Therefore, to add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it. Not complicated, actually, the Republicans fell into a trap.

Regarding the approval of our Great Patriot, Jay Clayton, we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today, and will not be going forward until Jamie McDonald is approved to be U.S. Attorney. In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as the Acting Director of National Intelligence.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

President DONALD J. TRUMP

Congress could indeed enact these reforms. The Constitution’s Elections Clause states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” But as Senate Majority Leader John Thune has admitted, even blowing up the filibuster wouldn’t get the SAVE America Act through, since it doesn’t have 50 votes.

And so Trump has been trying to will his disenfranchisement machine into existence by executive fiat.

In March 2025, he signed Executive Order 14,248, requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote (which was immediately blocked) and directing DHS and DOJ to build a system to bulk-verify state voter rolls for citizenship status. A year later, when it became clear that the SAVE America Act was DOA, he signed Executive Order 14,399, instructing DHS to coordinate with the Social Security Administration to compile a national voter registry and ordering the Post Office to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots to anyone who isn’t on it.

Trump is using the entire executive branch to disenfranchise millions of voters — or at least he’s trying to. So far, the courts have largely blocked him.

The first step in this plan was to compile a database of all registered voters. Toward that end, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sent letters to election officials across the country demanding their states’ complete, unredacted voter rolls, including full names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and Social Security numbers.

The letters invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which requires local election officials to retain all documents received from voters and produce them to the DOJ on request. It’s a gross perversion of the statute, which was designed to prevent local registrars from throwing Black voters’ registrations in the trash, not to allow the federal government to seize and then cull state voter rolls. It also violates state electoral privacy laws, designed to protect the secrecy of the ballot

Many (but not all) red states complied anyway, handing over their residents’ data.

The Justice Department’s Civil Division sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for failing to turn over their complete voter rolls. So far, all nine courts to weigh in have told the DOJ to pound sand. Some judges excoriated the government for its craven exploitation of a law meant to protect voters. Some said that a voter roll is compiled by the registrar, and is thus not a document which “come into the possession” of election officials within the meaning of the 1960 statute. Some said that the DOJ had failed to articulate a reasonable purpose for its demand. None said that there was legal basis for the government’s demand.

Last week, Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland spent just 10 pages disposing of the DOJ’s argument, much of which consisted of block quotes from other courts. The government has appealed these adverse rulings, but, as of now, the national voter database does not exist.Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Trump had tasked Musk’s DOGE bros with hacking the Social Security database to set up the nationwide voter “verification” system, once again by perverting an extant program for a wholly unintended purpose.

The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program (another SAVE!) was created by Congress in 1986 to allow nearly 4,000 federal and state agencies to search federal records to determine whether non-citizens were eligible for benefits. It wasn’t designed for bulk queries, and it explicitly did not cover US citizens. And yet, between April and August of last year, DHS, SSA, and DOGE overhauled SAVE into a centralized database linked to SSA’s master NUMIDENT file, which contains every Social Security number issued since 1936. They reprogrammed it to enable bulk uploads of entire voter rolls for mass citizenship screening and started dumping voter rolls in from cooperative red states.

If you don’t know anything about Social Security data, you might intuit that this is an excellent way to determine who is a citizen. And the DOGE kids definitely did not know anything about the dataset they were screwing around with — that’s why they breathlessly claimed to have found millions of dead centenarians receiving befits. Nope!

But people inside DHS and SSA did understand the problem, as evidenced by an internal “Privacy Threshold Analysis” produced by DHS last year which acknowledged “shortfalls in data accuracy” in SSA citizenship data that “could cause incomplete or false results.” That’s because non-citizens routinely secure SSNs, and they have no obligation to update SSA if and when they become citizens.

When Texas dumped records on its 18 million voters into SAVE, the system flagged 97 potential non-citizen voters in Travis County. But according to a brief filed by county officials, 65 of those voters had already presented documentary proof of citizenship, either when they registered to vote or when they got a state drivers license. An SSA Inspector General audit estimated that 3.3 million US citizens are listed as non-citizens in SSA’s own database, suggesting that at least one percent of voters might be flagged as ineligible and unable to cast a ballot if this plan is allowed to go into effect.

And compiling the information itself was a gross violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, which was enacted as a rebuke to proposals in the 1960s to create just such a centralized database aggregating information on individuals tied to SSNs. The law prevents the repurposing of an individual’s data for a new use without notice and 30 days of public comment. DHS and SSA published their notices months after the system was already running and made clear the changes would take effect immediately regardless of what commenters said.Judge steps up to block ICE's kidnapping of Guatemalan kidsJudge steps up to block ICE's kidnapping of Guatemalan kidsLiz Dye·September 4, 2025Read full story

And so on Monday Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in DC blocked DHS and SSA from using the SAVE system to screen voters for citizenship using SSN databases.

“They haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable. Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” she wrote. “All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

The last leg of this cursed stool enlists the mailman to suppress the vote.

Trump’s second EO directs the United States Postal Service to initiate rulemaking to create a “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List” — constructed from stolen state voter rolls fed into the illegal SAVE database — and prohibit delivery of ballots to anyone who’s not on it.

Lawsuits followed within days. On May 28, Judge Carl Nichols denied a request for a preliminary injunction because the administration had done nothing yet to operationalize the EO. Although he left open the possibility of future challenges, he reasoned that the citizenship lists didn’t exist and USPS hadn’t issued a proposed rule, and thus the case wasn’t ripe. In fact, as NOTUS reported on May 14, White House officials had been meeting with DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon, USPS CEO David Steiner, and Heather Honey — a DHS “election integrity” official whose prior research fueled Trump’s 2020 election challenges — to coordinate implementation of the order.

On June 2, just five days after Judge Nichols’s order, USPS published the proposed rule in the Federal Register. It would require states to register every mail ballot recipient through a new federal portal, with each envelope bearing a unique serialized barcode tied to the voter's name and address, effectively creating a federal registry of everyone who votes by mail. Ballots sent to voters not on the list would be returned undelivered.

The comment period closes July 2, and a final rule is due July 29. That would leave just three months for states to overhaul their ballot mail systems to ensure compliance by Election Day — something election administrators across the country have said cannot be done.

It’s not clear whether Judge Nichols will revise his stance in light of this new rule, but in Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani found that the issue is certainly ripe for court review, at least with respect to the November 3 election.

“With an ever-narrowing window of time in which review is appropriate and practicable, and where that review may well require timely involvement by the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court … the court finds that the legality of the EO as to the November 3, 2026 election (and earlier elections) is both ripe and fit for review,” she wrote last week.

That’s a strong signal that the judge intends to move expeditiously on the claims by the League of Women Voters and 23 states that the proposed rule violates the separation of powers, the Tenth Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act, while enlisting the Post Office to do something it’s not allowed to do by law.

So far, courts have managed to head off this plan for mass disenfranchisement. It seems almost certain that Judge Talwani will issue a preliminary injunction blocking the USPS rule change for mail-in ballots, likely ensuring that it cannot be put into effect for the midterms. But that won’t be the end of the matter. Trump and his cronies will fight tooth and nail to attack the right to vote by wrenching control of elections away from the states. Every single battle matters.

“The taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop,” California Judge David Carter wrote in January when he rebuffed the DOJ’s attempt to seize the state’s voter rolls. “It is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left.” 

More On Iran-Lebanon War

New York Times, Trump Is Making Big Claims About the Iran Talks. Iran Keeps Contradicting Him, David E. Sanger and Yeganeh Torbati, Updated June 24, 2026. President Trump appears to be describing his preferences as fully negotiated deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians in. The question is whether a succession of such disputes will sink the whole venture.

President Trump was eager on Tuesday morning to announce the latest concession that he says his negotiators extracted from Iran, writing on social media that the country had agreed to allow the “highest level Nuclear Inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!).”

But he omitted the fact that as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran is required to allow in international inspectors. And his statement came after the Iranians had insisted that there were no plans to allow inspectors into the three major nuclear sites the United States bombed a year ago — and where just about all the nation’s enriched uranium is stored.

The previous day, Vice President JD Vance, leaving the negotiating site at a Swiss resort, said Iran had agreed that if Iranian assets were unfrozen, the United States and Qatari officials would oversee the process and the money would be used to buy American farm products. The Iranians denied that, too, saying that the 14-point memorandum of understanding they had signed with the Americans did not require them to do so.

Negotiating with Iran has always been an extraordinary challenge. But until recently, one rule of diplomatic bargaining has usually held: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” That is how the United States and Iran traditionally have left themselves some trading space, and fine-tuned wording to satisfy the many critics at home who will have to be sold on any agreement. In 2015, when details of the inner-sanctum negotiations leaked, American officials complained bitterly, saying that the news reports were making it harder to get to a final deal.

But in this negotiation the leaks are replaced by official, if fragmentary, announcements — usually from the American side. Mr. Trump’s style is often to describe his preferred outcomes as fully negotiated side deals, in hopes of locking the Iranians into each element of any eventual agreement.

The Iranians seem to have caught on. And they have a spin strategy of their own: deny the American statements immediately and publicly to avoid getting cornered, even if there is an element of truth to Mr. Trump’s pronouncements. It is the kind of public dynamic that can easily undermine a high-stakes negotiation.

Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran and the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s leading think tanks, said that both “Washington and Tehran are engaged in a public battle to shape the narrative and advance their preferred outcome on specific elements of the negotiations.”

The public divergence, she added, “highlights how little has actually been agreed upon yet and what an enormous gap has to be addressed in a short period of time.”

In fact, there were elements of truth in both what Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance were arguing, and in the Iranian rebuttal. And dissecting the differences helps explain why this negotiation is likely to be painful — and long.Editors’ PicksPlays, Musicals and Theater Festivals Worth Traveling to This SummerWhy Are Dress Sneakers Everywhere?Why Is It So Bad to Let A.I. Do My Thinking for Me?

Despite Iranian denials, inspections were a topic of discussion at the negotiations in Switzerland over the weekend, two officials familiar with the talks said. The idea under consideration would grant the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear inspection arm, broad powers to inspect just about any suspect site on short notice. It revives ideas that were being discussed in February, in Geneva, when the Iranians and the Americans were meeting Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, before the negotiations broke off when Mr. Trump ordered the attack on Iran.

At the Swiss resort this past weekend, the secretary general of the I.A.E.A., Rafael Mariano Grossi, was in the hallways and negotiating rooms talking to each side, describing what kind of access his inspection teams would need to assure no nuclear fuel was being diverted to weapons projects, according to diplomats who were familiar with the discussions. The Iranians appeared to agree to the concept, but did not want to agree to dates or details until other parts of the accord — including when they would have access to billions of dollars in frozen funds — were worked out.

So when Mr. Vance declared on Monday that Tehran had agreed to allow I.A.E.A. inspectors into the sites, calling it “the first step” toward ensuring that Iran did not obtain a nuclear weapon, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, immediately pushed back, saying that there were no plans to allow inspectors access to facilities at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo, all of which the United States bombed a year ago. And, in fact, there is no imminent plan.

That prompted Mr. Trump to say on Tuesday that if there were no inspections, there was no accord. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a little more careful.

“I don’t know why they have to say the things they say,” Mr. Rubio told reporters in Abu Dhabi, where he was beginning a tour of the Gulf states, trying to drum up support for the deal with Iran. He noted the complexity of Iran’s internal politics and said: “I guess they’ll navigate it. But we know what they agreed to do, and now they’ll either do it or they won’t.” Mr. Trump, he said, “will have some decisions to make.”

Richard Nephew, who was the lead sanctions expert on the U.S. negotiating team that reached the 2015 nuclear accord, said of the current talks, “They’re trying to do this all very quickly and it still feels a bit slapdash.” That haste, he said, comes from the urgency to reopen shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the risk of Mr. Trump growing impatient with his envoys if they do not deliver tangible progress fast enough.

The open contradictions are a sign that the two sides “fundamentally disagree with each other and they’re trying to paper over it,” said Mr. Nephew, now a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a former official in the Obama and Biden administrations.

Posturing is all part of the process, of course. But the question here is whether a succession of such public disputes will ultimately sink the whole venture — which would be fine with many in the United States and Tehran who have criticized the deal.

Iranian diplomats face a treacherous domestic terrain, with hard-line factions who oppose any engagement with the United States, and a supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has stated that he did not agree with signing the initial deal with the United States. For that reason, they have an incentive to downplay or deny any concessions claimed by the American side.

But Mr. Vance has also made claims that are difficult to verify or that go beyond the text of the signed agreement.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Don’t Let Them Memory Hole the Iran Debacle, William Kristol, right, June 24, 2026. “If you’re a Republican, yeah, for God’s sakes, no one wants to talk about Iran.”

That’s Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who worked in Trump’s State Department in his first term. He’s providing good advice to Democrats: Make Republicans—from the Trump administration to members of Congress to House and Senate candidates—talk about Iran. Make them defend their misbegotten and failed war.

This shouldn’t be hard.

The war was, after all, costly. We lost thirteen American service members; we had tens of billions of dollars in direct military expenditures and lost much more indirectly in higher gas prices and other economic effects; we gave up an advantageous strategic position against Iran, as well as the end of the principle of free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz; we did great damage to our alliances; we lost standing and respect in the eyes of friends and foes alike. We gained nothing.

As Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) of Louisiana, put it: “Right now, Iran is ending up stronger than they started, and we’ve achieved none of the objectives originally laid out, so you might say that’s disappointing.”

This was not a bipartisan effort gone awry. This was distinctively Trump’s war. It was never authorized by Congress, and Trump resisted efforts at oversight. And it was also the Republican party’s war. Republicans in Congress voted over and over again to support it even as Democrats voted to end it.

And the American people understand that Trump’s war was a failure. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted June 18–22, 52 percent of Americans believe our military action in Iran wasn’t worth it, with only 24 percent saying it was, and 22 percent unsure. This same poll has Trump’s approval-disapproval among registered voters at 37 percent vs. 62 percent, with only 18 percent strongly approving while 50 percent strongly disapprove. The war didn’t help Trump, and the deal to end it hasn’t helped Trump.

And it’s hard to see how the next few months of negotiations with Iran will help. The talks have already provided plenty of embarrassing moments for the administration, as they try to defend Trump’s ugly deal, and as even Trump-friendly commentators call them out on their labored efforts.

The Trump administration is now going to be requesting an additional $80 billion in taxpayer money from Congress to cover the costs of this unauthorized, unwise, and unsuccessful war. The amount being sought is far higher than the $29 billion estimate of war costs that Hegseth gave Congress during his testimony last month. This funding request will provide further occasions for Democrats to demand information and insist on hearings on the conduct of the war and on the concessions to the Iranian regime that mark its conclusion.

Speaking to reporters in Pennsylvania yesterday, Trump acknowledged, in his way, the need for continued discussion of the war: “Anybody that’s been critical of it has to be educated.”

Good. Let’s have an educational process. Let’s keep on educating Americans about the administration’s reckless decision to go to war. Let’s keep on reminding Americans about all the empty boasts and outright lies the administration told during the war. Let’s keep on exposing Trump’s defeat, and the bad deal his administration is now defending.

Iran: Cultural Image-Making Changes In Iran, U.S.

A pro-government demonstration in Tehran last month where some of the women were partially veiled and some dressed more conservatively (Photo by Arash Khamooshi via Polaris for The New York Times).  

New York Times, Iran’s Loyalists Promote a Wider Nationalism, Unveiled Women Included, Erika Solomon and Sanam Mahoozi,June 24, 2026. Government supporters are showing off new ties with alleged former dissidents in a bid to show that they can withstand enemies at home as well as abroad.

Dressed in a pink top and acid-washed jeans, the young woman in the video hardly looked the part of a pious loyalist to Iran’s clerical rulers, standing alongside a crowd of women draped in black from head to toe. That was exactly the point.

Letting her curls spill onto her shoulders, the woman offered an on-camera testimony.

“I was not a supporter of the Islamic Republic, nor the supreme leader,” she told a pro-government filmmaker, Hossein Shamaghdari, who posted their exchange online. After the United States and Israel attacked in February, she said, she began to admire Iran’s hard-line forces, as they battled two of the world’s most powerful militaries.

“If the Revolutionary Guards and Basijis were not fighting, we would not still be here,” she said, holding back tears, and praising the very forces that had once cracked down on unveiled women and protesters. “I am remembering the start of the war, and rethinking my views about the Islamic Republic.”

The woman is never identified in the video, and it is unclear who she is — let alone whether she has indeed changed her mind on Iran’s autocratic government. What is unmistakable about the video, though, is a new kind of nationalism that Iran’s government and its supporters are formulating — one that embraces those who once rebelled against it.

By not only surviving the war, but emerging with a strong hand in ongoing peace talks, Iran’s government feels emboldened. Still, a national reckoning lies ahead, as the country sinks deeper into economic crisis and its population remains deeply divided after antigovernment protests that swept the country shortly before the war.

To head off those challenges, Iran’s government is tapping into popular outrage about the attack on the country by outside powers. The state and its supporters are projecting a sense of unity they believe can reach constituencies far beyond a hard-core base.

Their message is that loyalists and dissenters can find common ground in a fight against foreign aggression. And they aim to present a friendlier, more inclusive face of the regime — even as that regime continues to crack down on critics, seizing their properties and executing people at the highest rate in decades, according to human rights activists.

For weeks, supporters of the government have been posting videos online that claim to show former protesters arguing that, after the war, there is “no alternative” to the Islamic Republic. Others show hipsters with piercings — once disparaged by Iran’s theocratic government — expressing their admiration for the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.

It is impossible to know how genuine those sentiments are but there is little sign in the videos that their appearances are coerced, and many liberal Iranians have voiced staunch opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Perhaps most surprising among this genre of videos are those made by Mr. Shamaghdari that feature unveiled women, often portrayed as the epitome of defiance against the regime.

The hijab is still a legal requirement for women in Iran, and women can be arrested or whipped for shirking it. Last week, an Iranian singer, Parastoo Ahmadi, was sentenced to 74 lashes for performing unveiled at a concert in 2024, according to a human rights group.

Many now openly flout the rule, however, and unveiled women have become a common sight on the streets of Tehran and rural towns. But never in state-backed media, until now.

“For decades, mandatory hijab has been one of the deepest fault lines between supporters of the Islamic Republic and its opponents,” said Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank focused on the Middle East.

In the past, Iranians’ stance on compulsory hijab often reflected their views on social freedoms, he said, but now loyalists are willing to look past such differences among those standing with them against the war.

“After the war, the country’s main political and social fault line changed,” Mr. Memarian said.

This messaging stands in stark contrast to imagery of women that was prevalent during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Mr. Memarian said, when veiled women were meant to idealize piety and revolutionary sacrifice.

During the most recent war, state television has shown women’s military parades, featuring pink guns and pink jeeps.

Even more ubiquitous have been the images of unveiled women at pro-government rallies. Some loyalists have highlighted their presence as a sign of national reconciliation after the bloody crackdown on January’s protests that left thousands dead.

“We have been unfair to these very people,” Amir Taha Hussein Khan, a pro-government commentator, wrote in a social media post alongside images of unveiled women at pro-government rallies. “Today, these same people, with all their being, selflessly stand against the enemy.”

Some Iranians interviewed by The Times were skeptical that everyone going to the rallies was there out of genuine conviction, arguing that free meals and money were sometimes offered in exchange for attendance. Those claims could not be independently verified.

Either way, critics say the images smack of government hypocrisy.

“They want to use the lack of hijab to their advantage,” said Maryam, a Tehran resident who asked not to be identified by her full name for fear of retribution. “All of a sudden, in the face of war, the regime says we are all Iranians.”

Some critics have posted images online showing unveiled women at recent rallies alongside photographs of a partly-veiled Mahsa Amini, the young woman who died in police custody in 2022 over charges of improper dress. Her death kindled the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, when women ripped off their veils and took to the streets in mass protest.

The government has occasionally promoted images of unveiled women in the past, usually at state rallies after periods of dissent, said Shima Tadris, who studies Iranian women’s rights movements at the Gerda Henkel Foundation, a research institute in Germany.

That happened after the January protests, she added, and became widespread during the war because it projected an image of broad-based support for the government.

New York Times, From Terrible People’ to ‘Smart People’: The Trump-Led Right Rethinks Iran, Anton Troianovski, June 24, 2026. For decades, the idea that Iran’s regime represented the worst of the world’s worst stood as a pillar of Republican foreign policy.

The president has sought to recast the Iranian government as he pursues a peace deal. But there are signs that a softening on Iran in the Republican Party goes well beyond him.

But in recent months, and especially as the Trump administration has defended its preliminary peace deal, a different perspective has been taking hold in parts of the American right: Iran as a pragmatic country that the United States can, and must, learn to live with.

The stark shift has been led by President Trump, who called Iran’s leaders “strong people, smart people” last week, but it goes well beyond him. Vice President JD Vance has emerged as its main proponent. Conservatives who long had an isolationist streak have been energized. Even some longtime hawks have changed their tone.

It is too soon to say whether the change will last. Many Republicans have retained their hard-line stance, and Mr. Trump has periodically threatened to restart the war. Some of the shifting language among Republicans could be the familiar Trump-era scramble to stay aligned with a mercurial president.

But interviews show that the right-wing pivot away from traditional Republican hawkishness on Iran is driven by factors that go beyond Mr. Trump’s desire to disentangle himself from the fighting. There is a generational shift in the party away from uncompromising support for Iran’s archenemy, Israel, and even some grudging admiration for the Iranian regime’s ability to withstand weeks of fierce bombardment.

It is a domestic political dynamic with global implications — stakes made plain by the Iran war’s consequences for the energy supply of Europe and Asia and the security of the Arab countries on the Persian Gulf.

“Iran stood up for itself. Good for Iran,” said Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative, channeling what he described as Mr. Trump’s message to Americans. “And that means the U.S. is only so interested in taking these guys down a peg.”

Mr. Mills, 35, runs a magazine founded by one of modern conservatism’s original isolationists, Patrick J. Buchanan. He has long endorsed foreign-policy restraint, a view that polls show is shared by many younger Republicans, who came of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Expressing opposition to fighting Iran on the right is getting less and less taboo,” Mr. Mills said.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former senior Trump aide, described the president as a “deal maker and a pragmatist” who now knows “he is not having a surrender ceremony on the battleship Missouri in the harbor at Bandar Abbas,” the Iranian port. Mr. Bannon evoked ancient Persia’s wars against Greece and Rome to explain Mr. Trump’s struggle to defeat Iran.Editors’ PicksThis Backyard A.D.U. Is Multigenerational by DesignHe’s an ‘Old Gay.’ Gather Round.The Wearable Data Your Doctor Actually Wants

“They go to ground and dig in hard,” Mr. Bannon said in a text message.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said that the Iran war had “successfully demolished” much of the country’s military, and that negotiators were now “working to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities for good.”

“The president doesn’t make these important national security decisions to appease podcasters or think tank armchair quarterbacks,” Ms. Kelly said. “His only priority is what is best for the American people.”

More U.S. Politics 

MS Now, Opinion: Tucker Carlson says he’s abandoning the GOP. That should terrify Trump, Zeeshan Aleem, June 24, 2026. Israel is becoming a wedge issue on the right. Carlson says Trump is on the wrong side of it.

Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson says that because of his fury over President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, he won’t vote for the Republican Party in the midterm elections. Trump should be terrified: Carlson’s defection from the party is precisely the kind of intra-MAGA blow that could demobilize Republican voters ahead of November.

In an interview with the “Can’t be Censored” podcast that aired Thursday, Carlson said, “There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party” this fall because he cannot back “a political party that’s not loyal to the United States, that puts the interest of a foreign country above those of its own citizens.” The country Carlson is referring to is Israel. And while his argument is not accurate, it taps into a narrative that has a lot of potency on the right.

Carlson’s increasingly hostile position toward the GOP is dangerous for the party’s midterm prospects.

As I explained last month, Carlson is the most prominent commentator on the right who promotes the idea that Israel has made the U.S. into a “slave” and has manipulated Trump and the U.S. into a war with Iran. That argument stems from ethnonationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that suggest Israel (and, it is implied, the Jewish community more broadly) is puppeteering the U.S. This position allows Carlson to simultaneously encourage ethnic chauvinism at home and argue for isolationist foreign policy — in this case, cutting off ties to Israel as a way to end warmaking. As always with right-wing nationalists, society’s problems lie with groups deemed insidious “outsiders” rather than systems or ideologies at home.

The truth, of course, is that Israel has no power to force the U.S. to do anything it doesn’t want to do. A war between the U.S. and Iran has long been a possibility — one that Trump has fantasized about for nearly 40 years. And his withdrawal from the Obama administration’s deal with Iran in his first term set the stage for this war. The U.S. and Israel started this war together over perceived shared interests.

Reality notwithstanding, Carlson’s increasingly hostile position toward the GOP is dangerous for the party’s midterm prospects. Polls show increasingly negative attitudes toward Israel on the right, particularly among young Republicans; support for Israel is evolving into a wedge issue within the GOP. Now Carlson is not just disagreeing with Trump’s pro-Israel, pro-war position. He is treating Trump’s stance as an unforgivable offense. “I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican party,” Carlson said. “There’s no defending this, because it’s immoral, and it’s exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters.”

Regardless of where Republicans land on Israel policy, the war in Iran is not considered widely successful among Republicans, and Trump’s approval ratings have fallen as the war has increased energy prices. Now the most influential right-wing commentator on America is saying that the war is such a terrible misdeed that it’s worth shunning the party over it.

Carlson knows he has persuasive power. “I’m out, and if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out,” he said during the interview. His position isn’t necessarily enough to get people to drop their registration with the party. But it certainly could hurt enthusiasm. That in turn could mean lower turnout and a rougher midterm outcome for the president and his party.

Politico, It could have been a peace summit. Instead, Trump clashed with senators inside ‘intense’ meeting, Jordain Carney and Calen Razor, June 24, 2026. The president arrived determined to prosecute his grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him.John Thune and Donald Trump walk through the U.S. Capitol.

Senate Republicans hoped to use a closed-door lunch to clear the air with President Donald Trump. Instead, the president vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente.

The meeting came at an explosive moment, with GOP lawmakers increasingly frustrated by Trump’s mercurial treatment of congressional Republican priorities. Just hours before arriving on Capitol Hill, Trump delivered his latest rug-pull — announcing he would refuse to sign a major housing bill that leaders were already touting after big bipartisan majorities passed it this week.

But senators said Trump arrived determined to prosecute his internal grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him at times — particularly those who have expressed misgivings about the Iran war and who are refusing to comply with the president’s demands for swift passage of a controversial elections bill.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) described Trump as “mad as a murder hornet” about the Iran vote, while Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) described the scene as “very much like a hospital board meeting, when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other.”

Another GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the lunch “very intense.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), deploying some go-to congressional lingo for heated encounters, called it “spirited,” “frank” and “candid.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters Trump ended on a unifying note but only after spending an hour “talking about things which were not exactly unifying.”

Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) sparred at length over the Iran war, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private interaction.

MeidasTouch Podcast, All HELL BREAKS LOOSE in Capitol as Trump SCREAMS AT GOP!!  Ben Meiselas, June 24, 2026. Donald Trump shows up to the Capitol Building to scream at the GOP and force a shut down of Congress.

The president has sought to recast the Iranian government as he pursues a peace deal. But there are signs that a softening on Iran in the Republican Party goes well beyond him.

The Wrap, Trump Attacks Female Reporter for Questioning Cost of Iran War vs. ‘Financially Struggling’ Americans, Jacob Bryantm June 23, 2026. “Not a very good group! Not doing very well,” the president says of Hannah Brandt’s outlet, NewsNation. 

Donald Trump snapped at a NewsNation reporter for asking questions about the rising price tag for the war with Iran while Americans struggle financially on the homefront.

On Tuesday, before the president took off to speak in Pennsylvania, he took a round of questions from gathered reporters. NewNation’s Hannah Brandt confronted Trump about the latest $80 billion ask by the Department of War to continue funding the war in Iran. Trump clearly did not like the question and lashed out at the reporter.

“Mr. President, your Department of War is asking for 80 billion more dollars for the Iran War,” Brandt said. “Do you think Americans support this at a time when so many are financially struggling?”

Trump was quick to question Brandt’s outlet and then shut her down.

“Who are you with,” he asked. “Not a very good group! Not doing very well. Not only do they support it, not only do they support, they demand it because they won’t allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. You want to see trouble, let them have a nuclear weapon.”

He added: “We’re doing very well with Iran, they’ve been decimated and we’re making a deal with them and we’ll see how that all goes.”

The president has been getting largely dragged for the terms laid out in Memorandum of Understanding with Iran to finally end the war after months. In the meantime, Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth has made the rounds on Capitol Hill requesting another boost to the funding for Trump’s war. The White House has also requested a staggering $1.5 trillion from the Pentagon.

The Contrarian, Opinion: America’s Best Kept Secret: Progressiveness Is Popular, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 24, 2026. Republicans, not Dems, should be in a defensive crouch.

Legacy media pumps out a constant stream of polling, analysis, and “hot takes” — not to mention “Still Loyal to Trump in Coal Country Diner” interviews — that insist Americans have lost our democratic bearings and cannot agree upon a common set of values, let alone facts. Seething with resentment over DEI, we have supposedly become a bunch of Mini-Me Stephen Millers, mesmerized by vulgar, crass culture and all-too ready to yuck it up over crude insults. Meanwhile, progressives routinely stand accused of ceding patriotism to the right.

As we approach America’s 250th birthday, many Americans feel despondent, even ashamed about this dismal portrait. But does this gloomy narrative correspond to reality?

If you examine a broad range of polling, election returns, and recent political developments (e.g., huge Democratic turnout, mass peaceful demonstrations) since the 2024 election, a different conclusion about Americans’ values and outlook emerges. It’s not the first time that legacy media’s obsession with leveling the playing field has produced a narrative that happened to fuel progressive angst, while giving false solace to a MAGA audience that billionaire-owned media outlets are desperate to attract.

But a recent PRRI survey of over 5,400 Americans confirms that they are deeply attached to democracy. An impressive 68 percent think that “we are in real danger of losing important democratic rights and freedoms we have had in this country,” and a stunning 59 percent, including 66 percent of independents, think Trump is “a potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.” Legacy media talking heads should stop feigning surprise when Democratic politicians say Trump is an existential threat to democracy, since that accurately encapsulates the view of a supermajority of Americans.

Moreover, a high percentage of Americans reject the imposition of monolithic white Christian nationalism. “Most Americans (64%) prefer the U.S. to be a nation made up of people belonging to a wide variety of religions rather than one primarily made up of people who follow the Christian faith (34%),” the survey found. “Most Americans (77%) prefer the U.S. to be a nation made up of people from all over the world rather than one primarily made up of people of Western European heritage (20%).”

An astoundingly high percentage of Americans also embrace the cornerstones of political liberalism and pluralistic democracy — the very institutions and values MAGA has been attacking. Asked what makes us “truly” American, the top responses are: belief in individual freedoms (93%), the Constitution (91%), and the Declaration of Independence (88%); accepting diverse backgrounds (89%); and respecting American political institutions and laws (88%). This suggests Americans have embraced a healthy, pro-democracy, progressive consensus.

Taking a step back, dozens of polls (ranging from generic midterm polling to anti-ICE sentiment and Iran war opposition) and elections reveal consistent Democratic overperformance, a significant shift in midterm enthusiasm and turnout in Democrats’ favor, ongoing civic progressive engagement, and surging support for institutional guardians of democracy, such as unions and late-night comedians. Such activism casts serious doubt on the perspectives proposed by MAGA-friendly legacy media.Subscribed

Collectively, the hard data should inform Democrats as they seek to transform political consensus into electoral results. First and foremost, the cliché that we are a “divided” country is a dodge to avoid recognizing how badly MAGA is faring. In a country of more than 330M, calling us “divided” is platitudinous nonsense. The issue is whether we are irretrievably divided, i.e. paralyzed, when it comes to finding consensus on democratic values. That is not the case. Democrats turn out to be precisely aligned with a supermajority of Americans on democracy, diversity, inclusion, and personal freedom.

In a country as large and varied as ours, there will always be enough fodder for endless “fresh takes” (and handwringing Democratic consultants’ podcasts) to dwell on the millions of Americans in the roughly 30 percent of the population who don’t adhere to democratic values. However, that misses — or intends to conceal — the magnitude of the shift in momentum in favor of pluralistic democracy, or the outpouring of joyful anti-authoritarian engagement.

Democrats, therefore, would be wise to engage vigorously on the ground of shared progressive political values. The vast majority of Americans agree with Democrats on defense of the rule of law, respect for other Americans, and the right to dissent. Republicans’ compulsive reliance on mean, schoolboy taunts about transgender Americans, for example, does not mean they have the public behind them; it means they increasingly have nothing else to offer.

Democrats such as Texas Senate nominee James Talarico have it exactly right: Confront the small, dumb tactics as being beneath voters, and refocus on serious topics, while doubling down on our commitment to human decency.

The Interfaith Alliance’s Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons in March explained:

Talarico’s message is not about moderating progressive commitments to win over religious conservatives. It is about courage. It is about saying plainly that support for LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive freedom, public education and church-state separation can flow directly from Christian faith. He’s openly Christian and firmly pluralistic.

That does more than close a messaging gap: Talarico and those like him can change the terrain. When leaders speak about faith with confidence instead of defensiveness, they show that democracy and devotion are not in conflict.

Whether Democrats respond in religious or secular terms, they have a once-in-a-generation opening, thanks to Trump’s triggered backlash. It turns out Americans don’t like it when politicians mess with our democracy and try to impose a theocratic regime on our diverse and irreverent society. (They really do not react well when the government kills fellow Americans in the streets and then withholds the truth about what actually happened.)

Voters should have no confusion about which party reflects their deeply held principles, and which is desperate to conceal its own demise. The louder MAGA dead-enders screech, and the more they struggle to blame others and hide their expanding waste dumps, the more confident Democrats and the larger pro-democracy coalition will become.

If they want to prevail in 2026 and 2028, and more importantly, in the battle to secure democracy’s future, Democrats should not apologize for the progressive principles they hold, shy away from confronting authoritarian bullies, or fall into a defensive crouch. As the Lincoln Project puts it, “Stop with the self-doubt.” Democrats are winning the valiant battle for democracy — and must make certain Americans know which party stands with them on the right side of history. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Old Man Yells at Crowd, Andrew Egger, right, une 24, 2026. It’s interesting, the things that jump out at you watching your eight millionth¹ Trump rally.

For instance: Did you know the president is perhaps the sole person on earth who uses the words “won” and “love” as synonyms? “Hello, Pennsylvania,” he said as he arrived on stage Tuesday afternoon to the usual soaring strains of “God Bless the USA.” “I won this place so much.”

Trump hasn’t been doing so much winning lately. Islamist regimes abroad and single-celled organisms at home keep disobeying his extremely clear instructions, no matter how many bombs or gallon jugs of hydrogen peroxide he sends their way. Rogue judges keep ordering his name off of buildings, no matter how much he deserves to put it up and how nice it looks once it’s up there. Even his most reliable whipping boys, the Republicans of the United States Congress, have begun to flash a sudden and alarming new modicum of self-respect, with a small but significant number of them voting against his wars and scuttling his slush funds.

Yeah, D.C. sort of sucks lately; what Trump needed was a rally. So yesterday he schlepped out to a Mack Trucks factory in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to get one. These rallies have always been a tonic for Trump; this one felt more like a lifeline. Every stupid threadbare brag line, every completely invented cockamamie anecdote and scripted attack on the “Dumocrats”—the crowd, as usual, ate it up with a spoon. “There’s so much love in the room,” Trump said. “There’s so much unbelievable love.”

We could spend far more time and space than this newsletter permits ticking through the president’s usual parade of whoppers. It seems, for instance, that he intends to try to sell a return to the status quo² in the Strait of Hormuz as one of those Wonderful, Magnificent Deals Only Trump Could Ever Get You: “Yesterday, 19 million barrels of oil flowed out of the Strait of Hormuz, a very beautiful place,” he said. “That’s the most oil in the history of the strait.” (In reality, it’s still a bit subpar—last year an average of 20 million barrels passed through the waterway daily.)

It also appears that Trump, having failed once again to deliver the manufacturing boom he has spent a decade promising, is now using America’s data center buildout as a way to fudge the numbers and pretend he’s delivered on that front too. “Right now, we have more factories being built—and I mean car factories, AI factories, factories of every type—than we’ve ever had in the history of our country, by three times,” he bragged. “That’s because they didn’t want to pay the tariff. How don’t you pay a tariff? You build the factory here and you hire American workers.”

Building a data center in America rather than in Bangladesh, of course, has zero to do with tariffs and lots to do with latency, infrastructure, grid stability, and so on—companies want to keep their data centers as close to their actual users as possible. And a data center, unlike a factory, doesn’t bring with it a whole bundle of blue-collar manufacturing jobs of the sort Trump keeps promising to bring back.

But at a Trump rally, none of that matters. It is a space apart from space and a time apart from time, where the possibilities remain endless and the achievements remain unsurpassed. These people really do think, after all this time, that Trump is giving them the straight, honest truth when he brings out that old canard: “A short time ago, we were a dead country,” but now “we’re the hottest country in the world by a lot.”

The problem is that it’s growing clearer—even to increasingly panicky Republican strategists outside the building—that all this is an illusion. Trump might find these rallies both soothing and invigorating, but the people who show up in that room have never been further from a durable political majority: Trump is still nineteen points underwater in Silver Bulletin’s polling average, and the strong approvers—the rallygoing types—are utterly swamped out by the strong disapprovers: 22.6 percent of Americans say “hell yes,” 48 percent say “hell no.”

We’re building a better kind of politics, based on a community dedicated to good faith and democracy. There’s nothing else like it on the internet. Join us.Subscribed

Trump might think that the vast majority of Real Americans approve of him. He might think, when he heads out for one of those rallies, that that’s who’s showing up. He might think the polls really are cooked, that the vote totals really are rigged, that he’s sitting on the people-pleasing side of a whole bundle of—as he likes to say—“99–1” issues.

But if he does, he’s sleepwalking into a bruising wakeup call. The MAGA throng—that 22.6 percent—will be showing up at the polls in November. But that 48 percent of Americans, the group he tends to dismiss as polling phantasms or phony ballots or paid agitators, they’ll be showing up too.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Why the Trump Administration Is Telling Us So Much About UFOs… YANIV REGEV on how populists weaponize the language of transparency against our institutions.
• Trump’s Affront to the Founding… The president besmirches the highest principles of the Declaration of Independence while embodying the tyrannical rule it sought to overthrow, writes JOHN PITNEY.
• Trump’s Coalition of the Aggrieved… On the flagship podcast, JOHN GANZ joins TIM MILLER to explain why the era of hell we’re living through may have been ordained by angry GOP voters in the ’90s.

Quick Hits

WAR POWERS REBUKE: The Senate on Tuesday passed a war powers resolution ordering Donald Trump to end the war in Iran or seek congressional approval to continue it—the latest sign of small but growing Republican willingness to defy the White House on the Hill.

The 50–48 vote, which comes three weeks after the House approved the same resolution, saw four Republicans join with nearly all Democrats to pass the resolution, with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) the lone Democrat to oppose it. (Two other Republicans who would have opposed the resolution were absent: Sen. Mitch McConnell was hospitalized last week and has not returned to the Senate, and Sen. Dave McCormick was campaigning in his home state of Pennsylvania with Trump at the time.)

The New York Times notes that what happens next is unclear:

The measure was a concurrent resolution, a vehicle that does not need a presidential signature to take effect but also does not become law. In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that to have legal effect outside of Congress, legislative actions generally must pass both chambers and be presented to the president for signature or veto.

But supporters of the resolution say war powers measures are different because the Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress alone. The issue has never been definitively tested before the Supreme Court.

Regardless, it was the latest rebuke from an increasingly testy Congress over its being frozen out of the decision-making process for an increasingly unpopular war.

HOLY SHITSNA: By now most people know about the big Washington Post story about how former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was in thrall to a cult leader for large parts of her career—up to, possibly, the present. The Bulwark’s Sam Stein spoke with Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner about this, and his concerns extended beyond Gabbard to the Post itself:

The unfortunate thing is, Sam, you know not at the level of detail of the story, because it had literally receipts, but we were aware that she was part of this cult. And you know my friend, Sen. [Brian] Schatz from Hawaii, you know, was very familiar with this.

She never denied it. It was part of her public record. So we went at that. People are understandably reluctant to appear to be attacking someone’s faith, but this goes so far beyond her personal faith—and particularly since the leader of this cult was still communicating or having his agents communicate with the director of national intelligence on a, you know, regular, almost daily basis. It’s again, pretty chilling.

I’ve got so many questions. You know, it appeared the Washington Post had that story for some time, one of the reporters literally left a couple months ago. Why [didn’t they] publish it beforehand? Is this again, the new ownership in [Jeff] Bezos kowtowing to the administration? Was this the reason [the reporter] left? We’ve got a lot of questions.

I’ve talked to a couple of my colleagues about how we can pursue this. Again, this was a case where there was a lot of trepidation on the Republican side about her in the first place. We got very close to not having her confirmed. But a lot of Republicans held their nose and voted for her. But we warned ahead of time that this kind of stuff could happen.

There’s a lot more where that came from. Watch the whole thing.

WHACKING THE PRESS: This White House is in a constant cold war against journalists, but things are heating up: Multiple outlets reported this week that the Justice Department had sought to compel grand jury testimony in a national security matter from reporters for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. DOJ ultimately backed off after both papers fought the subpoenas in court. The Post has the story:

The grand jury subpoena to Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima this spring was related to sensitive reporting about a national security matter, [a Justice Department official] said. The Justice Department also issued subpoenas to appear before a grand jury to three Wall Street Journal journalists, who also reported on national security issues. . . .

The purpose and scope of the investigations that triggered the subpoenas are not clear, but the person familiar said they relate to national security matters. While the journalists are no longer scheduled to appear before a grand jury, the Justice Department’s action reflected a new front in the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics toward the media as it attempts to crack down on government leaks to the press and content that administration officials think is unfair to the president.

Read the whole thing.

FISHBACK HAS TO PAY BACK: Florida governor hopeful James Fishback has been running a wildly racist Republican primary campaign against Trump-endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds—and he’s been enjoying a disconcerting amount of success in the polls. But now he has a mammoth legal bill to pay.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in New York ruled that Fishback owes his former hedge fund employer $1.3 million in legal expenses and fees incurred as part of a lawsuit over various forms of mischief that Fishback perpetrated against his old bosses. That’s actually $600,000 less than Fishback’s foes initially asked for, thanks to a generous haircut the judge put on the fund’s legal fees from white-shoe law firm Akin Gump. Still, it’s likely far more than the marginally employed candidate can cover—he already has creditors tracking down his Teslas and luxury Cartier watch.

Combined with an earlier loan Fishback took out from the hedge fund while still working there, Tuesday’s ruling means Fishback is now on the hook for roughly $1.5 million, not including other possible creditors.

More On U.S. Election Results

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is shown being sworn into office in the unusual setting of a city subway station in January, as his wife looks on at right and New York's Attorney General administers the office oath (New York Times photo).

New York Times, Mamdani Emerges as Kingmaker, Pushing His Slate to a Primary Sweep, Nicholas Fandos, June 24, 2026. MayorZohran Mamdani shook the Democratic establishment by helping drive three progressive candidates to victory.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies swept a series of congressional primaries in New York City on Tuesday in a remarkable show of strength for the insurgent left that sent shock waves through the Democratic Party.

Mr. Mamdani’s candidates toppled a pair of incumbents backed by the city’s political establishment, including major labor unions and the House Democratic leader. Another candidate backed by the mayor won an open House seat, and a handful of democratic socialist challengers he supported were winning down the ballot.

For months, Mr. Mamdani threw himself and his energized political organization into the three marquee congressional contests, campaigning late into the night in the race’s final days and calling the election a referendum on the direction of the party.

All the winning candidates share Mr. Mamdani’s progressive economic platform, and they each ran campaigns that focused intently on ending American support for Israel, a sign of how far public opinion has shifted on the issue, even in New York.

Late Tuesday night, the mayor stood beaming at a victory party in Brooklyn, where supporters chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “D.S.A.” After embracing many of the same advisers who led his own successful campaign last year, he declared “a new chapter in our party’s history.”

“A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement,” he said. “It was the beginning.”

Mr. Mamdani’s deep involvement amounted to an audacious gamble for a brand-new mayor trying to lead an already fractious city. He alienated key allies along the way, but the payoffs were far-reaching.

At home, the outcome will now cement him as the unquestioned political kingmaker of the nation’s cultural and financial capital and the Democratic Socialists of America as a formidable force.The results also shook the foundations of the Democratic Party far beyond the five boroughs. When they are certified, Mr. Mamdani, 34, and his movement will be on track to double the number of socialists in Congress from two to four. The outcome will also force a Democratic Party, already searching for its identity, to reckon with its ascendant, unapologetic left.

“It’s seismic,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a Democratic consultant who was a top adviser to the city’s last progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio.

The races do not necessarily suggest Mr. Mamdani has expanded his appeal. Each of the contests in which he endorsed took place in areas where the mayor won comfortably in last year’s election and remains deeply popular.

But Tuesday’s results showed two things about his young mayoralty. Mr. Mamdani has a high tolerance for political risk-taking, well beyond that of any of his modern predecessors. And, at least for now, he has the ability to transfer his high-wattage political brand onto other candidates in a way that only a few politicians in any office have been able to.

Brad Lander, 56, a close ally whom Mr. Mamdani urged to run for Congress, ran up a staggering 30-point margin in the affluent 10th District in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. He defeated Representative Daniel Goldman, a wealthy Levi Strauss heir who had opposed the mayor in last year’s elections and had close ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby.

Claire Valdez, 36, a little-known state assemblywoman also recruited by Mr. Mamdani to run, ran up larger than expected margins for the open seat in the Seventh District in a gentrifying swath of Brooklyn and Queens so far left it has been nicknamed the “Commie Corridor.”

She defeated Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, who had far deeper roots in the district and the support of the popular congresswoman, Representative Nydia Velázquez, who is retiring; the left-leaning Working Families Party; and nearly every major labor union in the city.

And Mr. Mamdani’s allies even won in the predominantly Black and Dominican 13th District in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. In perhaps the night’s most surprising victory, Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, another democratic socialist who entered the race as a political unknown, narrowly knocked off Representative Adriano Espaillat, the influential chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Letitia James, the state’s progressive attorney general, who supported Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral campaign but ended up opposed to him on Tuesday.

“Obviously, there’s some hurt feelings tonight, particular in communities of color,” she said, adding, “What we have to do is sit down and work with the left-leaning part of the party and see if we can come to some sort of understanding going forward.”

Where previous mayors have taken a wide berth around intraparty primaries, Mr. Mamdani dove in. Before he even clinched his own mayoral win, he began recruiting candidates to run for seats he felt were ripe for leftist wins. He headlined fund-raisers, appeared in ads and dispatched his top political advisers to run two of the campaigns.

In the race’s final days, Mr. Mamdani exhausted himself shuttling between events with Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier, who were in the closest races. Wherever the mayor went, large crowds seemed to materialize.

Mr. Mamdani’s aggressive interventions were not without collateral damage. His positions on some of the races put him at odds with the Working Families Party, prominent Black and Latino Democrats, major labor unions and members of the City Council, all of whom had supported his campaign for mayor and are now involved in his governing agenda.

He infuriated Ms. Velázquez, Mr. Mamdani’s first supporter in Congress, who believed the mayor should have deferred to her wishes about a successor. She came to accuse the D.S.A. in particular of trying to erase the contributions she and other progressives had made to pushing the city leftward for decades.

Others, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, were even more upset when Mr. Mamdani decided in May to endorse Ms. Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist activist and Ph.D. student, and break with Mr. Espaillat.

Mr. Espaillat did not back Mr. Mamdani in last year’s primary, but afterward, he quickly endorsed him and brought along Latino support. Mr. Mamdani had privately assured Mr. Espaillat at the time that he would reciprocate if he ever needed it.

The mayor never explained his change of heart in detail, but his advisers said he watched Ms. Avila Chevalier’s momentum and believed he could make a difference in the race. Supporters of Mr. Espaillat were furious, and said they could no longer trust Mr. Mamdani’s word.

The outcome on Tuesday could pose particular problems for Mr. Jeffries, the New Yorker in line to become speaker if Democrats reclaim control of the House this year. Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier have not committed to supporting Mr. Jeffries’s leadership bid and could become persistent thorns in his side.

Democrats aligned with Mr. Jeffries, who fought hard to defeat Ms. Avila Chevalier, have privately raised concerns about her victory in particular. They fear that Republicans will weaponize a trove of her inflammatory old social media posts, including her saying that “all deportations are wrong” and using crude language about Kamala Harris, against more moderate Democrats running in swing districts that will decide the fate of the House this fall.

Mr. Jeffries repeatedly sidestepped the issue during an interview on NY1 Tuesday night as the results came in. Others were less reluctant to register concerns.New York Times,

New York Times, Victories by Pro-Palestinian Democrats Show the Party’s Shift on Israel, Jennifer Medina and Reid J. EpsteinJune 24, 2026. Three Democrats who have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel won primaries in New York on Tuesday, signaling their party’s new skepticism of the country and its actions.

Three Democrats who made criticism of Israel central to their political identities swept to victory in House primary races in New York City on Tuesday, signaling a new era of skepticism in their party toward the Jewish state and its actions.

The striking results reflected a fast-moving shift in liberal politics. Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel and its government than they are to be supportive, according to several recent polls, a monumental change in American sentiment.

And while many Democratic officials remain supportive of Israel, next year’s class of congressional Democrats is on track to be more wary about America’s relationship with Israel than at any other moment since the Jewish state was established after World War II.

The primary triumphs in deep-blue districts of Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier came after each was endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, whose advocacy for the Palestinian cause has been integral to his rapid political rise. At a rally for the candidates last week, he called the nation’s leading pro-Israel organization part of a group of “monsters” that he said were too powerful in American politics.

At Ms. Avila Chevalier’s victory party on Tuesday night in Harlem, supporters chanted “free Palestine” while she pushed her campaign’s “babies, not bombs” slogan. She suggested in her victory speech that her win represented a shift in how Democrats in New York would operate.

“Today, we make it clear: The politics of the past ends today,” she said.

Super PACs allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group, have spent huge amounts of money on this year’s midterm elections to try to turn the tide in voter opinion. The organization has had some victories, saying in a statement on Tuesday night that 180 Democrats and Republicans it had endorsed had advanced to the November election. The group congratulated a Maryland House candidate its allied super PAC spent millions backing and said this would “ensure this seat remains represented by pro-Israel leadership.”

But despite those successes, AIPAC has largely been on the defensive.

Polls show that support for Israel among Democrats has sharply and steadily eroded since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent destruction of most of Gaza. A New York Times/Siena survey this spring found that 60 percent of Democratic supporters said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, compared with 15 percent who were more supportive of Israel.

“You’re seeing more and more Democrats making it clear that we should provide no U.S. taxpayer support to the government of Israel,” Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in an interview on Tuesday. Next year, he added, “I hope we will see a Congress that doesn’t provide reflexive unconditional support to the government of Israel.”

Perhaps the most significant of the New York races pitted Representative Dan Goldman, a two-term Democrat from Brooklyn, against Mr. Lander, the former New York City comptroller, who staked his campaign on opposing Mr. Goldman for being insufficiently critical of Israel.The race between the two men, Jews who both describe themselves as liberal Zionists, symbolized how Democratic voters, especially younger ones, have shifted away from support for Israel.

New York Times, Fired Navy Admiral Wins Democratic Runoff in South Carolina’s 1st District, Nick Corasaniti, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). Democrats expect Nancy Lacore to run a competitive general election despite the district’s Republican leaning.

Nancy Lacore, a former Navy admiral who was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, won the Democratic nomination for the First Congressional District of South Carolina, according to The Associated Press.

Ms. Lacore defeated Mac Deford, a Coast Guard veteran who was previously the general counsel for the town of Hilton Head Island.

Now, Ms. Lacore faces a difficult task: flipping a seat currently held by a Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, who ran unsuccessfully for governor instead of seeking re-election. The coastal district was redrawn in 2021 to be more reliably Republican. Ms. Mace won re-election by double-digit percentages in each of her past two elections.

But Democrats, who view Ms. Lacore’s military biography as a potentially game-changing asset, are still eyeing the seat despite how difficult it may be to flip. House Majority PAC, the main House Democratic super PAC, has reserved $2.1 million in the district for the fall, according to AdImpact, a media tracking platform.

“We look forward to supporting the Democratic candidate in SC-01,” said CJ Warnke, a spokesman for House Majority PAC.

Ms. Lacore has a higher-than-average profile for a political newcomer. Last August, Mr. Hegseth fired her after 35 years in the Navy. She has said she was given no cause for the firing, which came at a time when Mr. Hegseth was removing military officials who had delivered intelligence assessments that angered President Trump.

Her national profile has helped her become a successful fund-raiser. She raised $500,000 in her first two weeks as a candidate and raised more than $1.6 million through late June, according to federal campaign finance records.

She also has the backing of several outside groups. VoteVets, the liberal political action committee known for supporting veterans running for office, spent about $100,000 on ads supporting Ms. Lacore during the primary.

The Bench, a group led by longtime Democratic strategists that recruits and advises candidates in both traditional battleground districts and contests that are seen as harder to win, spent about $65,000 in support of Ms. Lacore during the primary. Both are indications that the well-funded groups may continue to back Ms. Lacore in the general election.

New York Times, Trump-Backed Sticker Magnate Wins House Primary in New York, Grace Ashford, June 24, 2026 (print ed.). Anthony Constantino defeated Assemblyman Robert Smullen, the state Republican Party’s chosen candidate, in a right-leaning upstate district.

Anthony Constantino, the sticker magnate who erected a 12-foot-high “VOTE FOR TRUMP” sign atop his company’s headquarters, won the Republican nomination for an open House seat in New York’s North Country, according to The Associated Press.

His victory is a major blow to the state’s Republican Party, which had taken the unusual step of endorsing his opponent, Robert Smullen, a state assemblyman and former Marine. With 78 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Constantino was 18 percentage points ahead of Mr. Smullen.

An amateur rapper and onetime boxer who developed his company, Sticker Mule, into a multimillion-dollar operation, Mr. Constantino, 43, is not the average upstate Republican.

In his self-funded campaign, he has emphasized his similarities, and fealty, to President Trump, who endorsed him. In an interview after his victory speech, Mr. Constantino indicated he would not soften his stances, and said he would take on the general election like a boxing match.

“I became a professional boxer, and I see a lot of similarities between boxing and politics as well,” he said, “because you have the one-on-one thing, right?”

He promised “to get in the ring and fight,” before noting that “in politics you fight with words.”

New York’s 21st Congressional District was previously represented by Elise Stefanik, another Trump ally, and is among the most conservative in the state. Mr. Trump won the district by 24 points in 2024. But while the district’s preponderance of registered Republicans would seem to provide Mr. Constantino a clear lane come November, victory is by no means assured.

In his short time in the public eye, Mr. Constantino has made enemies of many local Republicans and other party leaders. He is embroiled in a lawsuit with Gerard Kassar, the leader of the state Conservative Party, who Mr. Constantino says threatened to kill him.

The Conservative Party has provided its backing and ballot line to Mr. Smullen, potentially splitting the Republican vote come November.

Mr. Smullen has attacked Mr. Constantino, calling him unfit to hold office, and vowed to continue his campaign through the general election. 

U.S. Governance Roundups 

The reflecting pool, seen from the Washington Monument, with workers attempting to contain the algae on Sunday, June 21, 2026. New York Times photo by Doug Mills). 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Reflecting Trump Chaos], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 24, 2026. Trump continues frantically to insist that the problems with the Reflecting Pool are the acts of vandals.

As Rachel Kahn of The New Republic reported, Trump insisted on Saturday that the pool had “worked perfectly” before vandals attacked, putting “a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work.” By Monday, the “gash” was 300 feet. By Tuesday it was 350 feet, according to Trump. There is, of course, no evidence of any such sabotage, and there are cameras on the Reflecting Pool.

Trump’s stories have gotten more and more elaborate, about how vandals used “a very sharp knife or razors,” “probably in the dark of night,” then added “chemicals.” He warned there could be a “10-year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things.” Asked for evidence, he claimed “we have pictures.” He told reporter Ed O’Keefe of CBS News: “[A]t the right time you’ll see it. You’ll see it in court. You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the Parks Department, call the Department of Interior.” Tonight the Interior Department began to place fencing around the Reflecting Pool.

The Reflecting Pool is not the only thing that’s falling apart.

This morning, Trump announced that “Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long in the future (Infinity!!!).... If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!” Iran disagreed, saying it had made “no new commitments” on nuclear inspections although it would continue to work with the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, as it has for years under a system less stringent than the one that operated under the JCPOA.

Today, after a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that only 23% of Americans thought the Iran war had made the U.S. stronger, the Senate passed a war powers resolution requiring Trump to get congressional approval to continue military actions against Iran. Four Republicans joined all Democrats but one to pass the measure. The House passed the measure earlier this month. It is unclear if Trump will honor the resolution, but its passage shows growing discontent with the president.

“Trump’s historic blunder in Iran will go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made, or any country has ever made,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said today. “The American people have seen skyrocketing gas prices, soaring costs, and, tragically, the loss of 13 service members, and the wounding of hundreds more, and meanwhile, Iran took Trump to the cleaners.”

Holly Baxter of The Independent noted that when Trump is stressed out, he throws a campaign-style rally in front of a friendly crowd. Today, after a poll from the American Research Group showed that 66% of Americans disapprove of his job performance while only 30% approve, he went to a factory in Pennsylvania to bolster his confidence. He did his usual greatest hits, claiming he won by a landslide in 2024 and calling Democrats communists. He even made it clearer than ever that he thought people applying for political asylum in the United States had been released from “mental institutions.” He flitted from subject to subject and after an hour and a half, audience enthusiasm seemed under control.

William Kristol of The Bulwark noted today that a “sense of impending mortality seems to be making our president even more unhinged than ever.” But, Kristol noted, there are “young men with a lean and hungry look in positions of authority and power in the executive branch who are committed to making his dream of power without limits a reality.”

Those lean and hungry men include Bill Pulte, now acting director of national intelligence, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, FBI director Kash Patel, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, and acting attorney general Todd Blanche.

And, of course, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is next in line should Trump become unable to perform the duties of the office of the presidency.

As Trump crumbles, it appears there is in the administration a drive to create unlimited power in the executive branch that will survive no matter who is in charge. That drive includes silencing political opponents while rewarding loyalists.

Last September, Trump announced he would designate “antifa”—a word that is short for “antifascists”—as a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” calling it a “SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.” On September 22 he did so, claiming that protesters standing against administration policies are trying to “overthrow…the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” They are, the executive order said, working in coordination to riot, assault ICE agents and other law enforcement officers, and to dox “political figures and activists.”

Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center notes that even if antifa were a real group—which both Trump-appointed FBI director Chris Wray and the Congressional Research Office have denied—Trump has authority only to designate foreign terrorist organizations. Patel writes that he “has no authority to designate groups as domestic terrorist organizations, as is obvious from the failure to cite any statute or constitutional provision in support of the president’s action. There is none, and the purported designation has no legal effect.” Patel notes that the ability to formally assign the label of terrorists to political opponents would enable it to crush political opposition.

Nonetheless, three days later, Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” that called for a National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate Americans engaging in protest and ordered the attorney general to prosecute protest as a federal crime to the maximum extent permissible by law.

After a protest against ICE at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, last July 4 led to a protester shooting a police officer in the shoulder, the government prosecuted nine of the protesters, some of whom did not know each other and one of whom was not at the protest, as part of an antifa cell engaging in terrorism. In March all nine were found guilty in what observers saw as a test of the administration’s power to use broad antiterrorism laws to prosecute protesters.

U.S. Markets, Inflation, Economy, Jobs

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The Chips Are Down, Paul Krugman, right, June 24, 2026.  What, if anything, are the markets telling us?

People might want some reaction to the carnage that’s been going on, at least in part of the tech sector and stock markets around the world, which has been pretty remarkable.

It’s really tempting to say that it’s deeply meaningful. But in general, you want to be very cautious about putting too much stake in stock market events. I’ll come back to that in a minute. But it is striking enough that it does seem to be worth commenting on.

So what’s happened? There’s been a fall in tech stocks very much concentrated in semiconductors. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was down almost 8%. on Tuesday. The KOSPI Korean Index, which is largely a semiconductor index, was down just about 10% sort of the previous day or the same day, you know, time zones. And there was a 2.2% fall in the NASDAQ. We’ve seen a lot of decline in tech stocks, things related above all to chips. What’s going on there?

Part of the answer is that trying to understand why the market does what it does is, generally speaking, a mug’s game. In this case, however, it does seem that part of what’s happening, probably a large part of what’s happening, is that the tone, the rhetoric surrounding use of AI, and hence the demand for compute, has really shifted quite a lot just very recently.

All of a sudden, we have a spate of studies that seem to show that, yeah, AI models allow people to churn out a lot more stuff, but the actual payoff to that stuff is much, much smaller than the volume of stuff that they’re churning out, most obviously lines of code, but just in general. AI lets you do much more, but how productive that is in terms of the ultimate goals of a business, let alone economic growth and quality of life is much more doubtful.

On top of that you have a rather abrupt, jarring turn in business strategy. Up until just the other day a lot of businesses were more or less whipping their workers into using AI — you know, we’re going to judge you on how much you’re using AI whether or not you really want to whether or not you yourself think it’s valuable. We’re actually going to score you, we’re going to require that you do tokenmaxxing.

And then, with compute getting scarce and with the price of chips having gone through the roof, suddenly the AI companies began charging and the marginal cost of using a lot of tokens became really, really very high. And suddenly companies were saying, oh wait, stop. We want you to economize on your use of tokens and hence to ultimately reduce the demand for compute. And that’s a sudden U-turn.

This is part of a broader phenomenon, which I’m going to write about very soon, which is that there is a kind of lack of organicness to the AI boom.

There are people who are using it because it looks great. They’re using it because it’s fun. I have colleagues who are just mucking around with Claude and finding some uses for it. But there’s also a large amount of Corporate America that thinks that this is the way it has to go. Fear of missing out, not by the individual investor, but by the corporate bureaucracy. And then pressure from the financial markets, saying, you know, your company better be on the cutting edge of AI or else. All of which is very fragile. It’s a kind of a bubble, but not in the normal sort of asset price form. It’s more of a kind of fad, almost a social delusion. And that, it seems likely, certainly got ahead of itself.

Now, I’m reading way too much into these stock prices. And so let me give you a little bit of a caution on all of that. So yeah, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index was down 8% in a day, which is one hell of a drop. But it was up 157% over the past year.

So you want to have some perspective here. This is a stunning setback, but the fact of the matter is that over the course of a year, these stocks have been incredibly high-performing. The KOSPI, the Korean index, was down 10%, strictly speaking, 9.99%. But anyway, it was down 10%.

But after that 10% fall, it was up 172% over the year. So we’re not talking about a catastrophe. We’re not yet talking about, we aren’t even talking about a Bitcoin level of disappointment for investors. But okay, it’s a break in the trend.

The other thing we should say: the famous old line by my teacher and colleague, Paul Samuelson, was that the stock market had predicted nine of the last five recessions. There’s many more than that now. In fact, just over the course of the past year and a half, we’ve had two major stock market declines that turned out to be false alarms.

There was a big decline in April of 2025 after Liberation Day, the Trump tariffs, because there was a lot of people just sort of, it’s chaos, terrible things may happen. While the tariffs have been a bad thing, they did not cause an economic catastrophe and stocks recovered the losses that they experienced then.

And then there was another round of major stock declines associated with the Iran war. Of course, the Iran war has been a complete debacle and a disaster, and we’ll be paying a price for that for a very long time. But the consequences for short-run macroeconomics were more modest than many people, myself included, expected. And it appears that the Strait of Hormuz is going to gradually open because the United States basically said, okay, you win. It won’t literally say that, but in practice, that’s what we’re doing. So that is going to be over.

So it’s not that uncommon for the markets to react as if something terrible is about to happen and be wrong.

And so you really don’t want to assume — there’s a real temptation to assume — that because there’s so much money involved, a big decline in markets must be signaling that something is really very much amiss in the fundamentals, that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And sometimes, no, there’s just smoke, no fire.

So this might not be that big a deal. But it comes at a moment when the rhetoric really has shifted. You can see that there’s just a kind of a walking back.

There was a really striking interview just the other day with Satya Nadella of Microsoft. Microsoft is actually a consumer of AI, rather than a producer. They have tools you can use within Microsoft products, but I think they run basically off OpenAI.

And Nadella was pretty scathing about saying, you know, we can’t give all of this power and all this money to the big AI companies, and we should be using cheaper models. And hinted that Microsoft may start making use of DeepSeek, the Chinese model, which is less comprehensive. In general, the Chinese models are less comprehensive, but immensely cheaper, and among other things, just do a lot less computation. That’s kind of the core of why they’re cheaper.

And in that case, the picture changes a lot.

What bearing does all of this have on AI and the future of the economy and AI and the future of humanity? Well, part of what we’re seeing may not be so much disappointment in what AI can do as realizing that this extremely compute-intensive AI is not essential.

And maybe you can still get whatever the big productivity benefits are and still possibly the big labor-displacing effects without quite so much compute. But it’s not entirely separate either. I think we need to be saying that this is what a quasi-bubble quasi-bursting might look like.

More Global News 

New York Times, Western Europe, Sweltering Under Record Heat, Braces for More, Nazaneen Ghaffar, Lynsey Chutel and Amelia Nierenberg, June 24, 2026. More than a dozen countries have issued urgent heat warnings. France saw its highest average temperature ever on Tuesday.

The second severe, and unusually early, heat wave in just two months held Europe in its oppressive grip on Wednesday, putting power grids under strain and testing the resources of countries unaccustomed to extreme heat.

Urgent heat warnings were in effect in more than a dozen countries, including France, which on Tuesday experienced its highest average temperature on record — not just for June, but for any time of year. Power grid failures there have left more than 60,000 homes without electricity. On Wednesday, Britain’s weather service said in a provisional assessment that temperatures in a county outside London had reached 35.7 degrees Celsius, or 96.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be the highest temperature ever recorded in the country in June.

As global temperatures rise, Europe has been warming faster than any other continent, and officials have scrambled to react to heat waves that are increasingly intense and happen earlier in the year. Making matters worse, in much of Europe most buildings are not equipped with air-conditioning, and schools are no exception.

“We’ve got a typical London flat that just gets boiling inside,” said Julie Green, 39, who was playing in a North London park on Monday with her infant son, Roman. It was stiflingly hot, but less so in the shade.

The problem, Ms. Green said, is much bigger than just one building — it’s London itself. “The buildings, they’re just not built for hot climates,” she said.

As of Wednesday, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland were all under high-level heat warnings.

In France, temperatures were expected to keep reaching “exceptionally high levels” on Wednesday and Thursday, with highs climbing above 40 Celsius, or 104 Fahrenheit, said the French weather agency, Météo-France. On Tuesday, the average temperature across France’s 30 weather stations reached a record 29.8 degrees Celsius, or about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the agency said.

Some 68,000 French homes were without electricity on Wednesday after power grids failed, the national network, RTE, said on social media. During heat waves, every degree hotter leads to one megawatt more of electricity consumption because of air-conditioning needs, the company said.

June 23

Top Headlines

• New York Times, As Vance Leads Iran Negotiations, Trump Creates Disruptions in His Path, Tyler Pager, Updated June 23, 2026. Vice President JD Vance is in a politically precarious spot.As Vice President JD Vance entered the fifth hour of negotiations with Iranian leaders over the weekend, President Trump weighed in with an ill-timed threat to start bombing again.
• Democracy Docket, Advocacy: ‘Desperate’ Trump wants to blackmail states to purge voters, Andrew Wyrich, June 23, 2026. Democratic officials are condemning President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to exert control over elections, with one elections chief telling Democracy Docket the scheme “endangers American lives and democracy itself.” Meanwhile, in an epilogue to the president’s gerrymandering war, reporter Jen Rice notes the battles have likely changed our political reality forever.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Old Dictator and His Young Henchmen, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Catherine Rampell, June 23, 2026. The president is aging and ailing, but his lieutenants are hale and hungry.

More News Roundups

• MeidasTouch Network, Tuesday Afternoon News Updates: Iran Calls Out Trump's Lies, Ben Meiselas, right, June 23, 2026. Here’s what we’re tracking today. It’s a lot, so buckle up:
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Threatens to Sue Media Over Reflecting Pool, SpaceX Stock Tanks, Bill Pulte Begins Mass Firings, Bad Actors Go After Me, Aaron Parnas, right, June 23, 2026. More dead ducks have been found near the Reflecting Pool as problems continue to mount with Trump’s renovation project, and his own past comments are now coming back to haunt him.

More On Iran-Lebanon War

• New York Times, Iran Makes Moves to Assert Control Over the Strait of Hormuz, Ephrat Livni, June 23, 2026. After Iran weaponized the waterway by making it too dangerous for businesses, experts say, the country is now looking to charge fees to vessels seeking to transit the vital water.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: Trump Loses Senate Iran War Powers Vote. The Rebukes, Losses, Humiliations Just Keep Coming, Simon Rosenberg,right,June 23, 2026. In the midst of his clown show negotiations with Iran, Trump lost a major war powers vote in the Senate this afternoon. Here’s how the Washington Post described what happened:

U.S. Foreign Policy, Military, National Security

• The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 23, 2026. MAGA pols and dark money groups have no business defining who is ‘pro-Israel.’

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice

• New York Times, Major Supreme Court Decisions Testing Trump’s Policies Remain, Ann E. Marimow, June 23, 2026. Over the next two weeks, the justices will release more than a dozen final opinions, including high-profile decisions on birthright citizenship, the Federal Reserve and transgender athletes.
• New York Times, Protesters Accused of Antifa Ties Sentenced to Up to 100 Years in ICE Attack, Alan Feuer and Krista Torralva, June 23, 2026. The penalties, issued in an attack where a police officer was shot.
• Politico, Justice Department attempted to force national security reporters to testify before grand jury, Emilio Perez Ibarguen, June 23, 2026. The department subpoenaed journalists at The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal before reportedly reversing course.
• New York Times, Federal Citizenship Data Tool Cannot Be Used to Screen Voters, Judge Rules, Zach Montague, June 23, 2026 (print ed.). A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s providing federal data to states to check and purge their voter rolls violated several laws prohibiting the disclosure.
• New York Times, The State Trooper Who Became a Double Murder Suspect, Tracey Tully, Updated June 23, 2026. Lt. Ricardo Santos of the New Jersey State Police had faced questions about his judgment and conduct before he became the primary suspect in a double murder-suicide.
• New York Times, Supreme Court Bars Lawsuit After Prison Guards Shaved Inmate’s Dreadlocks, Ann E. Marimow, June 23, 2026. Damon Landor, a Rastafarian, tried to sue Louisiana prison officials for violating his religious rights.
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Hate Map: Will Abbe Lowell Cross-Examine Stephen Miller at the SPLC Trial? Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 23, 2026. A bunch of extremist organizations wailed to Stephen Miller that SPLC’s efforts to track hate groups like theirs constitutes fraud, and that’s what led DOJ to reopen a long-closed tax investigation to trump up a fraud prosecution against the Civil Rights organization.
• New York Times, New Book: The Women Who Saw Something Fishy in the J.F.K. Assassination, James Wolcott, June 23, 2026. In “The Housewives Underground,” the Atlantic writer Kaitlyn Tiffany salutes a loose network of skeptics who questioned the findings of the Warren Report.

More Global News

• New York Times, News Analysis: ‘A Terrible Inheritance’: Could Andy Burnham Succeed Where Starmer Failed? Michael D. Shear, June 23, 2026. The likely successor to Prime Minister Keir Starmer will inherit the same challenges of economic stagnation and ascendant populism. Will a divided nation be prepared to give him time?
• New York Times, The Extraordinary Embezzlement Case That Rocked Scottish Politics, Stephen Castle, June 23, 2026. Peter Murrell, the husband of the former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon, was sentenced on Tuesday after he admitted to buying a bizarre range of items with the Scottish National Party’s money.

U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• New York Times, Election Live Updates: New York Primaries Will Set Stage for November Battles, Nicholas Fandos, June 23, 2026. Tuesday’s contests could test the power of progressive Democrats as New Yorkers pick nominees for a half-dozen coveted House seats. There are also closely watched races in Utah, Maryland and South Carolina.
• New York Times Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene Say They Are Done With the G.O.P., Emily Davies, June 23, 2026. Their split with the Republican Party represents an expansion of a feud with President Trump that could further complicate the party’s midterm prospects.
• Lawfare, Legal Analysis: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fauci Files Don’t Prove What She Says They Prove, Renée DiResta, right, June 23, 2026. Gabbard’s declassification theater is a case study in politicizing intelligence.
• New York Times, Congress Clears Housing Bill, Cementing a Rare Bipartisan Feat, Ronda Kaysen, June 23, 2026. A lopsided House vote cleared the measure for President Trump’s signature after a lengthy back and forth and several nearly fatal blows to the legislation.
• PoliticusUSA, Trump Fantasizes About Muscle Men In Pennsylvania As Republicans Crash And Burn, Jason Easley, right, June 23, 2026. The Republican Party is crashing and burning hard in Pennsylvania, so Donald Trump showed up in the Keystone State to ignore the economy and fantasize about muscle men. 

Trump Administration 

The reflecting pool, seen from the Washington Monument, with workers attempting to contain the algae on Sunday, June 21, 2026. New York Times photo by Doug Mills). 

• New York Times, Trump Says Vandals Hit the Reflecting Pool. Internal Records Tell a More Complex Story, Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold, June 23, 2026. The documents do not indicate that the peeling blue coating and algae blooms were caused intentionally.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Dictatorial Dementia, William Kristol, right, June 23, 2026. Donald Trump is 80 years old. He’s lost a step. He’s even more willful and erratic than he once was. His self-indulgence and narcissism are even more out of control.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 22, 2026 [Mired In Mistakes], Heather Cox Richardson, right,June 23, 2026. It appears to be more and more clear that the Trump administration is mired in its own mistakes.
• Heather Delaney Reese, Commentary, Trump loyalists are jumping off the sinking ship, Heather Delaney Reese, aboveright, June 23, 2026. Last Thursday, one of the loudest voices in American right-wing media sat down for an interview on a little-known political podcast in Canada, and said something that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

U.S. Markets, Inflation, Gas Prices, Economy 

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Will Surrendering to Iran Relieve Trump’s Gas Pains? Paul Krugman, right, June 23, 2026. Capitulation probably won’t pay off at the polls in November. 
• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Gas stations are using AI to inflate prices, new lawsuit alleges, Judd Legum, right, June 23, 2026. A new federal lawsuit alleges that gas station companies across California are engaged in an illegal conspiracy, powered by AI software, to raise prices.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: We’re Still Living in Alan Greenspan’s World, Catherine Rampell, right, June 23, 2026. As Fed chair, Greenspan guided the economy through several bumpy patches, and presided over the longest economic expansion in American history. This record, plus his almost mythological dialect and musical background, helped earn him the nickname “Maestro.”

High Tech, Oligarchs, Social Media, Propaganda 

• Fortune Magazine: Son of pro-crypto New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand raises $30 million to launch a derivatives exchange, Ben Weiss, June 18, 2026. The 22-year-old son of a crypto-friendly senator plans to launch his own exchange for a type of derivative popularized by digital asset traders.
• The Intercept, Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show, Sam Biddle, June 18, 2026. Company records reviewed by The Intercept show Israel urged Facebook and Instagram to take down posts supportive of Iran.

Epstein Files, Coverup

• Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Just FYI: The SDNY Got Evidence of What Epstein Did to a Five Year Old and Responded With Two Words, Jana, right, June 23, 2026. A five year old child was sexually abused at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. Her lawyers gave the Southern District of New York photographs, names, and phone numbers. The federal response is two words.

Top Stories

New York Times, As Vance Leads Iran Negotiations, Trump Creates Disruptions in His Path, Tyler Pager, Updated June 23, 2026. Vice President JD Vance is in a politically precarious spot.As Vice President JD Vance entered the fifth hour of negotiations with Iranian leaders over the weekend, President Trump weighed in with an ill-timed threat to start bombing again.

If the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump told a Fox News reporter, the negotiators talking to Mr. Vance would never make it back to their country — in fact, they would have no country to return to at all.

For Mr. Vance, this was the latest example of his increasingly tricky role as the frontman in the U.S. negotiations with Iran, as Mr. Trump repeatedly creates disruptions in his path.

On Monday, Mr. Vance said the first round of talks had laid “a successful foundation” for peace. But now, Mr. Vance will have to find a way to end a war that he opposed at the start, while navigating his boss’s whims and an adversary that has proved itself, at least in part, immune to Mr. Trump’s threats.

“What we told the Iranians yesterday is when you guys engage in what us millennials might call trash talk, you can’t expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record,” he said on Monday at a news conference. “So when they say things that aren’t true, the president is going to respond to it.”

Both sides have signed a memorandum of understanding to end hostilities and are now trying to strike a lasting nuclear deal in 60 days. But for Mr. Vance, the presumptive favorite for the 2028 Republican nomination, the situation remains politically precarious.

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Mr. Trump said of the peace deal last week. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

Mr. Vance has said the president was joking, but Mr. Trump has never shied away from deflecting blame onto others — and how Mr. Vance handles the future of the negotiations will factor into Republicans’ performance in the midterm elections and his future as a potential successor to Mr. Trump.Editors’ PicksWeek 3: Host a ’90s-Style HangoutI’m Worried My Friends’ Son May Harm Them. What Should I Do?Plays, Musicals and Theater Festivals Worth Traveling to This SummerImageMr. Vance during negotiations in Switzerland on Sunday. Almost immediately after he left the country, the foundation he outlined for a possible longer-term deal started showing cracks.Credit...Pool photo by Urs Flueeler

Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Mr. Vance was in a risky spot. He could get credit for ending an unpopular war, Mr. Sadjadpour said. Or he may end up being “viewed as the architect of an American humiliation and a deal that concedes billions of dollars to a committed U.S. adversary.”

Making the situation even more difficult, the vice president must depend on the cooperation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders.

“That’s not an auspicious position for any American politician, let alone an aspiring president,” Mr. Sadjadpour said.

And even as Americans are clamoring for the Trump administration to stop the fighting and bring down energy costs, Mr. Sadjadpour argued that Americans seem to care more about how wars end. He pointed out that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. nose-dived in the polls after the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, during which 13 U.S. service members were killed.

“Americans dislike wars, but they dislike defeats even more,” he said.

Almost immediately after Mr. Vance left Switzerland, the foundation he outlined for a possible longer-term deal started showing cracks. The vice president said Iran had agreed to invite U.N. nuclear inspectors into the country, but the Iranians said they had made “no new commitments.”

Mr. Vance also described a potential funding scheme in which Qatar would unfreeze assets for the Iranians to use to buy American soy, corn and wheat. Hours later, Mr. Trump repeated that idea in the Oval Office and said food for the Iranian population was “going to be bought exclusively through the United States from our farmers.” Iranian officials rejected that idea and have said in the past that the money will be going toward rebuilding its infrastructure.

Conflicting narratives about the state of the negotiations have become commonplace in recent weeks as American and Iranian officials try to appease their domestic audiences and bring an end to the conflict.

Mr. Vance tried to downplay the public disagreements.

“I would just encourage the media: Mistrust a little bit what you see coming out of Iranian social media,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force Two to return to Washington. “They can be confusing negotiators, but we feel like we’re making progress.”

It was a markedly different tone than Mr. Vance’s last face-to-face meeting with the Iranians when he spent 21 hours in Pakistan and left with “bad news” and said they were not “able to make headway.” As Mr. Vance works to balance the negotiations and his own political future, Mr. Trump has been quizzing aides and allies over the last several months about whether they think Mr. Vance has what it takes to win the presidency.

He often compares him to Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and he will have another opportunity to size up the two men this week when Mr. Rubio heads to the Persian Gulf to discuss the Iran deal with allies.

When asked how Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio were doing, Mr. Trump said on Monday that they were doing a “fantastic job.” 

Democracy Docket, Advocacy: ‘Desperate’ Trump wants to blackmail states to purge voters, Andrew Wyrich, June 23, 2026. Democratic officials are condemning President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to exert control over elections, with one elections chief telling Democracy Docket the scheme “endangers American lives and democracy itself.” Meanwhile, in an epilogue to the president’s gerrymandering war, reporter Jen Rice notes the battles have likely changed our political reality forever.

Inside Trump’s ‘desperate’ plan to blackmail states into purging voters Secretaries of state are condemning the Trump administration’s latest attempt to exert control over elections by withholding homeland security funds from states unless they adopt draconian changes to their election procedures.

“Trump is trying to meddle in how states run American elections because he’s terrified of losing power after the 2026 midterms,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said.

GOP lawmakers and Elon Musk launch racist attack on judge who blocked Trump’s voter purge scheme: Republican elected officials and the richest man in the world were among those who embraced rank nativism following a federal district judge’s decision to block the Trump administration’s dangerous scheme to purge suspected noncitizens from voting rolls.

Remarks attacking the judge, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, by Musk, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and others were echoed by MAGA influencers.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Old Dictator and His Young Henchmen, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Catherine Rampell, June 23, 2026. The president is aging and ailing, but his lieutenants are hale and hungry.

The tarps on the Kennedy Center, erected to hide the shame of a building that no longer bears Donald Trump’s name, are still in place, but we now know two things about them.

One, as pictures taken from behind the tarp show, Trump’s name is now definitely, 100 percent gone. Two, Trump’s guys at the Kennedy Center are hilariously claiming that the tarps “will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels.” (This is somewhat true: Trump needs the marble and soffit panels to remain obscured from view, as it would be embarrassing if they weren’t.) Happy Tuesday.

More News Roundups

MeidasTouch Network, Tuesday Afternoon News Updates: Iran Calls Out Trump's Lies, Ben Meiselas, right, June 23, 2026. Here’s what we’re tracking today. It’s a lot, so buckle up:

• Iran publicly contradicting Trump on nuclear inspections, sanctions money, and the terms of the MOU
• Trump’s “19 million barrels” claim is actually below average, and gas prices are spiking anyway
• Even the New York Post is mocking him now
• Pakistan’s prime minister praising Iran’s “ballistic missiles” stance and Khamenei in the same breath
• The Pentagon is demanding another $80 billion because the Iran war is nowhere close to done
• That F-15 pilot’s account of “jellyfish” drone swarms over Isfahan has people at Defense rattled
• Marco Rubio dusting off the old Cuba playbook
• North Korea’s Kim Jong Un says he’s expanding his nuclear arsenal, blaming the US and South Korea
• A brand new poll shows Trump underwater by 37 points nationally, and North Carolina numbers that should terrify the GOP
• A wild story out of Australia about how much Trump is helping China’s polling numbers, just by existing
• A federal judge in Minnesota just quashed subpoenas tied to Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown
• Another federal judge blocked Trump’s sketchy new voter roll purge database nationwide
• The 7th Circuit just told the DOJ to slow down on Wisconsin’s voter rolls
• The DC Circuit is reviving contempt proceedings against the administration in the Boasberg case
• New Epstein files lawsuit timed right before Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing, plus a 69-page bar complaint against Blanche himself
• A bizarre STAT News report raising real questions about whether Trump secretly got an experimental obesity drug
• Trump’s $1.776 billion “slush fund” lawsuit is moving forward because DOJ still wouldn’t even put its own claims in writing
• Protests in Albania are spiraling into a full political crisis over a Kushner-Ivanka development deal
• The National Park Service will apparently void your parks pass if you put a sticker over Trump’s face on it
• And a viral hoax about the FBI raiding an “Antifa chemical weapons lab” got picked up and spread by MAGA influencers like it was real
• And Trump, somehow, still lying about the Reflecting Pool

Let’s get into it.

Iran Has Trump Boxed In, and Everyone Can See It

Donald Trump is scrambling following the latest development in the war with Iran. He signed a memorandum of understanding that he clearly didn’t read closely, and now Iran is boxing him in with his own paperwork. Iran’s message is basically: stop misrepresenting (lying about) the terms of this MOU, or you’re going to manufacture a breach, and then we shut down the Strait of Hormuz ourselves.

Let’s be clear about a few things. Iran has not agreed to let IAEA inspectors into its nuclear facilities. Iran has not agreed to buy American soybeans or corn or anything else with the unfrozen funds, somewhere close to $12 billion. And Iran has zero restrictions on what it does with the oil it’s now shipping out, since the sanctions on its tankers got lifted too.

So while Trump is out there trying to spin this as a win, Iran is quietly making billions of dollars a day. That’s the actual data.

And here’s where it gets good, because I want you to see exactly what Trump posted this morning before I tell you what’s actually happening in the rest of the world.

Trump posted on Truth Social that, despite what he calls “false statements” from Iran and the “fake news,” Iran has fully and completely agreed to the highest level of nuclear inspections, “long into the future,” and then, he added “(Infinity!!!)” He claims this guarantees nuclear honesty, that if Iran hadn’t agreed there would be no further negotiations, and that because of this and other “major concessions,” he’s letting the Strait of Hormuz stay open with no naval blockade, although he insists ships are staying in place just in case. He also claims the money being released by Treasury is going into an escrow account “controlled by the USA,” to be spent exclusively on American food and medical supplies, including corn, wheat, and soybeans from American farmers.

None of that is true. Not one part of it.

That language isn’t in the agreement. It isn’t in the Treasury Department’s sanctions waiver. And Iran is not doing any of it.

Here’s another one from this morning. Trump wrote that 19 million barrels of oil flowed out of the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, calling it an “all time RECORD,” and claiming oil prices are tumbling and the world is safer.

Donald, the average flow through the Strait last year was 20 million barrels a day. Nineteen million isn’t a record. It’s below average. And maybe, while you’re patting yourself on the back, you could mention who’s actually shipping that oil. It’s mostly Iranian crude headed to Asia. Iran is the one cashing in here, not us.

And maybe you could also mention that gas prices are going up right now in this country while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve keeps getting drained. Ohio hit $3.99 a gallon today. Florida hit $3.89. Michigan hit $4.29. The Reserve dropped another 9 million barrels, down to 331.2 million, the lowest it’s been since 1983. We are approaching what’s basically functional tank bottom, which means you are negotiating from the weakest possible position, and everybody can see it. Even the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s own paper, ran a cover mocking him: “Iran getting $10 billion oil boost from US — before signing a full nuclear deal.” When you’ve lost Murdoch’s tabloid…Iran Is Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

Iran’s own statements have been pretty clear about why none of Trump’s claims hold up. Their position is that the effectiveness of these talks depends entirely on full commitment to whatever was actually agreed to, and that statements made outside the agreed text don’t help anything move forward. Translation: we’re writing everything down because we know you’ll lie about it otherwise, and the public is going to see the receipts. At this point, it’s not a matter of whether we should believe the U.S. government or Iran. Everything is laid out right now in writing. We can see the terms for ourselves. And we see that it’s Trump, Vance, and others in the U.S. who are blatantly lying about the MOU they signed.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a press conference that decisions about the released funds will be made however best serves Iran’s interests, with no restrictions, and that Iran is not buying American corn, supplies, or produce. The spokesperson also said there are no plans to let the IAEA inspect the nuclear facilities that were damaged during the war, and that there’s been no meeting at all with the IAEA’s director general.

If the IAEA were actually involved in inspections like Trump and Vance keep claiming, wouldn’t the director general have said something? Wouldn’t that person be at the table? The IAEA wasn’t even invited to the technical talks in Switzerland.Iran’s Diplomatic Tour

While all this was unfolding, Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi was making moves. He went to Muscat, Oman, where Iran and Oman issued a joint statement agreeing to negotiate joint administration of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, including costs and services. Basically, Tehran is looking to convert its wartime leverage into long-term regional arrangements, and the MOU itself allows for exactly that kind of joint administration and cost-sharing. Meanwhile, dozens of tankers full of Iranian crude are already steaming east now that the U.S. blockade is over. Iran wasted no time.

Then Iran’s president headed to Pakistan, where Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, acting as mediator in this whole mess, said there cannot be a double standard where some countries get to have ballistic missiles and Iran doesn’t, and that nobody should have to “digest this kind of duplicity.” He also warned there are “spoilers all over the world” trying to scuttle the peace deal, a clear shot at Israel, and made a point of saying ballistic missiles were never even on the table in this MOU. He thanked Iran’s leadership for trusting Pakistan, sent his condolences for the thousands of Iranians killed in the war, and passed along his regards to Iran’s Supreme Leader.

And how does Trump’s regime respond to all this? By getting state-friendly media to run damage control. A U.S. official told Fox that Iran will “say what they have to say for their domestic audience,” insisting the real story is that we’ve reached a milestone toward ending Iran’s nuclear program. That’s projection, plain and simple. Trump is the one saying whatever he needs to say for his domestic audience, misrepresenting the actual agreement to the American public while Iran’s own officials, on the record, contradict him point by point.The Pentagon Is Bleeding Money, and There’s a Wild Drone Story Out There

Speaking of money problems, the Department of Defense is somehow running low despite record high budgets. Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg told congressional appropriators the Pentagon now needs $80 billion in supplemental funding just to cover the cost of the Iran war. Remember when they told us this would cost $20 billion? We’re talking hundreds of billions now, possibly into the trillions once everything is tallied.

There’s also a wild story circulating, and I want to flag it as currently unverified, about the American F-15 Strike Eagle pilot shot down over Iran near Isfahan back in April. According to sources who spoke to CNN, the pilot described Iranian drones moving together in the air in a formation that looked like a jellyfish, smaller drones underneath the larger ones like legs. One source called it “real alien shit.” Another called it a minefield of drones. It’s apparently got people inside the Defense Department rattled.North Korea Wants In on This Too

While Iran and the US are sorting out the wreckage of one nuclear standoff, Kim Jong Un decided this was a good time to remind everyone he’s not giving up his own nuclear weapons. He’s calling the expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal the “most correct” response to what he describes as growing global instability, and he’s blaming the US and South Korea for escalating tensions. So that’s where we are. Maybe he wants Trump to get him $300 billion too.Rubio’s Already Moving on to Cuba

With Iran turning into a mess for the Trump regime, Rubio is busy lining up the next target. He put out another statement going after Cuba’s government, calling it a “corrupt, brutal and anti-American Communist regime” and accusing the military-controlled conglomerate GAESA of stealing the island’s resources for repression instead of letting them go toward schools and basic infrastructure.

Here’s what doesn’t get said enough: the U.S. blockade on Cuba has been one of the biggest drivers of suffering for the Cuban people for decades. You can have plenty of criticism for Cuba’s leadership and still recognize that starving an entire population through sanctions isn’t some noble policy.The Polls Are Brutal

Let’s talk numbers, because they’re not pretty for Trump. A new national poll has him underwater badly, with 67% disapproving of his job performance and only 30% approving.

Zoom into North Carolina and it gets worse for Republicans specifically. In the Senate race, Cooper is leading Whatley 48% to 34%, with 18% undecided. In the state Supreme Court race, Earls leads Stevens 40% to 35%. On the generic legislative ballot, Democrats are ahead too. And on job approval, Trump is at minus 13 in North Carolina while Democratic Governor Stein is sitting at a healthy plus 26.

And here’s another data point. New polling out of Australia shows people there souring on the US and warming slightly toward China, even though China’s actual behavior hasn’t changed much at all. The most likely explanation, according to the analysis, is that this is really about distrust of Trump bleeding over into how Australians view the broader US-China relationship. In other words, Trump is so unpopular globally that he’s accidentally doing PR work for Beijing.Federal Courts Keep Slapping This Administration Down

This is a big one. A federal judge in Minnesota, a Bush appointee and former Scalia clerk by the way, just quashed six grand jury subpoenas connected to the administration’s immigration enforcement investigation. Those subpoenas had gone out to the offices of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. A conservative-appointed judge looked at this and said no.

Then there’s the voter roll purge story. A federal judge blocked the administration’s new voter roll database after finding that federal agencies had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans,” including citizenship data the government itself knew was unreliable. States were actually using this garbage data to remove real, eligible American citizens from voter rolls. The judge didn’t pull punches, writing that the federal government has “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” and adding that the court “cannot stand idly by while that happens.” That ruling temporarily halts the whole rollout.

On a related note, the 7th Circuit just denied the administration’s request to fast-track its appeal over access to Wisconsin’s voter rolls, even though DOJ claimed urgency with elections approaching. Groups like Common Cause and the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans are intervening in that case, and for now, the DOJ doesn’t get its expedited path.

And in the Alien Enemies Act case, the DC Circuit agreed to revive contempt proceedings against the administration for defying Judge Boasberg’s orders. Full court arguments are set for September, and notably, 174 former federal judges filed briefs supporting that move.Epstein Files, Todd Blanche, and a 69-Page Bar Complaint

The Epstein files saga isn’t going away. A watchdog group, American Oversight, is now suing the DOJ for records related to the Epstein files and Jack Smith’s special counsel report, timed right before Todd Blanche’s Senate confirmation hearing next month. Remember, Blanche was Trump’s personal defense attorney in two separate federal felony cases and led his defense in the New York hush money trial that ended in 34 felony convictions. This is the guy now up for a permanent post after serving as Acting Attorney General.

And as if that weren’t enough, a 69-page bar complaint was just filed against Blanche by the Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and 101 former judges. They’re asking New York’s Attorney Grievance Committee to investigate him for violations of professional conduct rules.A Big, Fat Scoop from STAT

STAT News dropped a report worth your attention. A 79-year-old man was granted compassionate use access to Eli Lilly’s experimental obesity drug retatrutide back in April, through an application arranged by a top NIH physician and approved by the FDA. STAT noticed the application was unusual, it didn’t list disease conditions or eligibility criteria the way these things normally do, and asked the White House point blank whether the patient was Trump, who turned 80 a week before the article ran. The White House did not give a direct answer. For context, Trump received a similar experimental treatment, the Regeneron antibody, through this same compassionate-use pathway after his COVID diagnosis back in 2020. Eighteen bioethicists and specialists called this particular application unusual.The $1.776 Billion Slush Fund Lawsuit Keeps Moving

Remember Trump’s $1.776 billion fund? Yeah, we’re not letting this one fade out of the news cycle. A federal judge in Virginia just scheduled a July 8th status conference in that case. The DOJ was ordered by the judge to put its claim in writing that the fund “is not moving forward,” and DOJ declined to do that. When the government won’t even commit its own talking point to paper under a judge’s order, that tells you the fund is very much still alive. Discovery in that case runs through November.Albania Protests Turning Into a Political Crisis

Over in Albania, protests are continue to escalate fast, with demonstrators now calling for the resignation of the entire government. These protests have now been underway for weeks. What started as opposition to a luxury development project tied to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has snowballed into a much bigger political crisis.MAGA Keeps Spreading Deranged Lies

Here’s one that tells you everything about the current information environment. An account calling itself “John McAfee News” posted a hoax that the FBI raided an Antifa storage unit in DC and found a full chemical weapons lab, complete with photos of green liquid bags and a grow light setup, describing things like “aggressive algae” and “paint-stripping peptides.” Far-right personality Juanita Broaddrick amplified it without checking a single fact.

It never happened. Even X’s own Community Notes had to step in and confirm the claim originated from satirical content, not a real event.

The reason I am flagging this is because this is what the MAGA media ecosystem does constantly. Something fake and inflammatory gets posted, influential accounts share it without verifying anything because it confirms what they already want to believe, and it spreads to millions of people before anyone bothers to check if it’s real. This is their operating model. Their goal isn’t to find out the truth. It’s to pump out their lies as quickly as possible, no matter how deranged they are. No matter how big or small the issue they are lying about is. Anything to help Dear Leader.And Yes, Trump Is Still Lying About the Reflecting Pool

After of course, Trump found time this morning to post more lies about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as well. He claims six people have been arrested and seven cited, describing a “350 foot gash” (this number keeps changing everytime he tells the lie) made by “a very sharp knife or razors,” then immediately revises that to “numerous slashes” over that same length, insisting it was done “purposefully and criminally,” probably in the dark of night.

This is a man who, last month, said you couldn’t even cut the Reflecting Pool with a knife because it’s “so strong.” Now suddenly it’s been slashed apart by knives and razors in a late-night criminal operation. Here are Trump’s comments from last month:

Meanwhile the actual explanation is of course that Trump is to blame. It was a botched repair job from the start, with a motorcade then driving over fresh work, a filtration system installed wrong, and water still being pulled from the same dirty Potomac source that caused the algae problem in the first place. Basic facts and basic science did this. It’s the same pattern with everything Trump touches. It fails, he lies about why, and then he blames everyone but himself.

There’s a lot more to come. Stay tuned for Ron Filipkowski’s daily bulletin later, as well as more takes from me on YouTube. And remember to add the MeidasTouch Podcast on audio platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify today — it really helps grow the network!

Thanks and see you soon. Shoutout to the Meidas Mighty!

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Threatens to Sue Media Over Reflecting Pool, SpaceX Stock Tanks, Bill Pulte Begins Mass Firings, Bad Actors Go After Me, Aaron Parnas, right, June 23, 2026. More dead ducks have been found near the Reflecting Pool as problems continue to mount with Trump’s renovation project, and his own past comments are now coming back to haunt him.

At the same time, mass firings have begun across the intelligence community under Bill Pulte, new questions are emerging about the Iran deal, Trump’s name has been removed from the Kennedy Center, and we now have photos, plus much more.

Many of you have reached out after seeing accounts sharing an image that appears to show me and my daughter. The image is fake. It was generated using AI, and it is deeply disturbing.I am working hard to get accounts removed when they use my likeness or my daughter’s image, but it can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as one account disappears, another pops up. Still, seeing this only reinforces that the work we are doing matters. Bad actors across the internet would not be targeting us if our reporting and analysis were not having an impact.

Here’s the news:

According to the Washington Post, three dead ducks have now been found near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool shortly after the recently renovated pool developed algae problems and began shedding paint. Wildlife experts say it is unclear what caused the deaths, but they are investigating possible exposure to toxic algae, environmental stress, or chemicals associated with the renovation. Two of the ducks recovered from nearby Constitution Gardens will undergo necropsies, while D.C. officials have launched an investigation and may test additional carcasses for disease and contaminants. Wildlife groups have also reported a noticeable decline in the local duck population and expressed concern that ongoing construction and maintenance activities are disrupting habitat in the area.

MS Now has confirmed that mass firings have begun at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after President Donald Trump ordered acting DNI Bill Pulte to significantly shrink the agency. Reports indicate that hundreds of employees could be terminated or placed on leave as part of the downsizing effort, which aims to reduce the size of the office and shift personnel back to other intelligence agencies. Democratic leaders on the congressional intelligence committees warned that the cuts could undermine the agency’s core mission of coordinating intelligence across the government and protecting national security. They also questioned whether such sweeping changes should be carried out by an acting official without congressional oversight or approval.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals deliberately cut a large gash into the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and said the damage may require the pool to be drained and repaired again. However, neither the White House nor federal agencies have publicly released evidence supporting the vandalism claim, despite Trump saying photographs exist. Trump’s claim is also undermined by his own words as last month, when touting the reflecting pool: “If you had a knife, you can't even cut the Reflecting Pool. So strong. Powerful rubber.”

The allegation comes as the $14 million-plus renovation faces scrutiny over peeling blue paint, heavy algae growth, and arrests of visitors accused of damaging the site. Critics argue the problems may stem from the rushed renovation itself, while federal officials say an investigation into the reported damage is underway. Now, the reflecting pool has turned into a surveillance state:

Trump suggested that the media should be more focused on Obama:

The first image of the Kennedy Center without Donald Trump’s name has officially been released by the Washington Post:

In their new book Regime Change, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan argue that major decisions in Trump’s White House were controlled by a small inner circle of roughly five or six advisers plus the president, with key officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and then–Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reportedly excluded from planning meetings before the Iran war. Speaking on MSNBC, Swan said the administration was far more secretive than its public claims of transparency suggested. The book describes a final pre-war meeting attended by Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other close advisers, where participants largely backed Trump’s decision to proceed.

First Lady Melania Trump objected when Elon Musk asked to stay overnight at the White House, but President Donald Trump overruled her and allowed Musk to spend several nights in the Lincoln Bedroom. The book also describes other tensions between the Trumps, including separate bedrooms and disputes over décor in Trump’s personal White House living space. Musk later publicly confirmed that he had stayed at the White House multiple times, saying Trump invited him to stay over and gave him a tour of the residence. The reported sleepovers occurred during Musk’s tenure leading DOGE before his later public falling-out with Trump.

CBS News is reportedly facing significant ratings declines across both its morning and evening news programs following a series of management and editorial changes. Viewership for the morning show dropped sharply after the dismissal of a longtime journalist, including a particularly steep decline among the key 25–54 advertising demographic. The network’s morning program is on pace for one of its weakest months and has already posted record-low quarterly performance. Some media observers believe ongoing leadership controversies and changes to programming have alienated longtime viewers, raising concerns about advertising revenue and the network’s broader brand strength.

Iran update:

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived in Pakistan for talks as U.S. and Iranian negotiators continue working on a permanent agreement to end the Middle East war. The discussions follow high-level meetings in Switzerland involving U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf. Pakistan and Qatar are acting as mediators in the diplomatic process. The negotiations are part of a 60-day effort aimed at reaching a lasting settlement.

Despite reports of progress, disagreements remain over key parts of the proposed deal. Iran denied that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had been scheduled to visit U.S.-bombed nuclear sites, contradicting earlier statements by Vance. Trump suggested that a record amount of oil was flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. His claim was false:

Trump defended ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations in a Truth Social post, claiming Iran had agreed to extensive future nuclear inspections and announcing that the U.S. would suspend its naval blockade while keeping forces in place as a precaution. However, Iranian officials publicly disputed claims that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would be granted access to bombed nuclear facilities. Trump also said any released Iranian funds would be held in escrow and used to purchase American food and medical supplies. The comments came as peace talks entered a new phase, with negotiations focusing on sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, the Strait of Hormuz, and broader efforts to formalize an end to the conflict.

Fox News pressed the United States Ambassador to the United Nations on the lack of conditions in the Memorandum of Understanding:

Negotiators have established working groups focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction, maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, and conflict management in Lebanon. A proposed “de-confliction cell” would involve the Lebanese government and seek to prevent renewed fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. The U.S. also wants assurances that the Strait of Hormuz remains open for global oil shipments. Iran has emphasized that all parties must fully implement whatever commitments are ultimately agreed upon.

The diplomatic effort faces challenges from renewed violence in Lebanon and uncertainty about Israel’s role. Israeli troops reportedly killed two people in southern Lebanon after a brief ceasefire had brought two days of calm. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel retains freedom to act militarily against perceived threats, raising questions about the durability of the truce. Meanwhile, Lebanon and Israel planned another round of direct talks in Washington focused on a possible Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Other news:

SpaceX shares have now officially crashed below their $150 IPO launch price:

New York Democrats are voting in a series of closely watched primary elections that will help shape both the party’s ideological direction and its strategy for winning control of the U.S. House in November. Progressive allies of Zohran Mamdani are challenging more centrist Democratic incumbents and establishment-backed candidates, creating a test of the party’s left wing against its traditional leadership. Several races have also become flashpoints over issues such as Israel and Gaza, generational change, and the growing influence of the AI industry in politics. Beyond New York City, Democrats are focused on competitive congressional districts where they hope favorable political conditions and dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump will help them regain a majority in the House of Representatives.

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging Los Angeles’ sanctuary city ordinance, ruling that the policy regulates the actions of city employees rather than the federal government. The city argued that limiting local cooperation with immigration enforcement helps ensure that immigrants feel safe reporting crimes and working with police regardless of their legal status. The administration had claimed the ordinance unlawfully interfered with federal immigration enforcement, but the judge rejected that argument while allowing officials to file a revised complaint. The decision marks another legal setback for administration efforts to overturn sanctuary policies, following similar dismissals in cases involving Boston and Chicago.

A gunman armed with a long gun opened fire near a hotel in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood, killing a police officer and a civilian before being shot and killed by responding officers. Another officer was seriously injured but was reported in stable condition. Police said the attack began after a report of a person displaying a firearm from a hotel window, and investigators are still determining the suspect’s motive and whether the civilian was killed by the gunman or during the exchange of fire. Authorities ruled out terrorism, while officials across Canada expressed shock at the incident, which marked the first line-of-duty death of a Montreal police officer in 24 years.

A new climate-risk study found that nearly 80% of the world’s datacenter markets face significant exposure to threats such as flooding, wildfires, extreme winds, heat, and drought, raising concerns about service disruptions, higher operating costs, and infrastructure damage. Researchers warn that many rapidly expanding datacenter hubs—including northern Virginia, the Carolinas, Atlanta, and parts of Asia—are being built in areas with increasing climate vulnerability. The report argues that traditional planning models rely too heavily on historical weather patterns and underestimate future climate risks. It also highlights a feedback loop in which AI-driven datacenter growth increases energy and water consumption while the facilities themselves become more vulnerable to the climate impacts associated with rising greenhouse-gas emissions.

Investigators examining the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, are reportedly reviewing ransom notes that claim she died shortly after being kidnapped and that her captors did not intend to kill her. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the contents of the notes, and the FBI, local law enforcement, and the Guthrie family have declined to comment. Investigators believe Guthrie was abducted from her Arizona home after discovering blood near her doorstep and releasing surveillance footage of a masked individual at the property. Despite extensive searches by volunteers and law enforcement, she has not been found, and the case remains under investigation.

More On Iran-Lebanon War

New York Times, Iran Makes Moves to Assert Control Over the Strait of Hormuz, Ephrat Livni, June 23, 2026. After Iran weaponized the waterway by making it too dangerous for businesses, experts say, the country is now looking to charge fees to vessels seeking to transit the vital water.

Iran is taking steps to cement its control over the Strait of Hormuz and to generate revenue from the waterway through new entities and procedures, experts say. The moves come even as negotiations with the United States and Iran’s neighbors over managing the vital waterway are taking place.

The head of Iran’s primary insurance regulator, Mousa Rezaei, said on Sunday that a new insurance company had been established that was dedicated solely to the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media reported. And late last week, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which was created by Iran in May, demanded that vessels register and sign up for a new mandatory Iranian insurance policy — free of charge for now.

Shipping experts see these steps as an attempt to assert Iranian control over the whole waterway, which it shares with Oman. They appear to be a prelude to Iran’s demanding payments from vessels that once transited without fees or need of its assent, the experts say.

The Iranian requirements could set a dangerous precedent for global shipping, experts say, and they are already making a confusing situation in the strait much more so.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Richard Meade, editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, a shipping news service, in an interview on Monday.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in the Middle East and Northern Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The Persian Gulf Strait Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

The insurance demands emerged after the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz last week. That agreement left discussion of difficult issues — including management of the strait — to further talks. And Oman, Iran and other Gulf nations “will figure out a proper security framework for the straits in the future,” Vice President JD Vance said last week.

But the Iranian demands try to legitimize the authority of the new entity as those broader negotiations are underway, said Salvatore Mercogliano, a maritime historian and former merchant marine who hosts the YouTube show “What’s Going On With Shipping?”

The free insurance period passes after 60 days, which is the length of the initial cease-fire agreement between Tehran and Washington and the period that the initial deal guarantees free passage. After that Iran could then demand vessels pay for insurance through its new dedicated strait insurance company, Mr. Mercogliano said, collecting payment for risks that did not exist until Iran began attacking ships.

The new insurance that Iran is offering protects against things like risk of attack and the detention of mariners, issues that experts say Iran created after the United States and Israel attacked the country in February and it retaliated by striking commercial vessels.

Iran weaponized the waterway by making it too dangerous for businesses, experts say.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: Trump Loses Senate Iran War Powers Vote. The Rebukes, Losses, Humiliations Just Keep Coming, Simon Rosenberg,right,June 23, 2026. In the midst of his clown show negotiations with Iran, Trump lost a major war powers vote in the Senate this afternoon. Here’s how the Washington Post described what happened:

The Senate voted Tuesday to block President Donald Trump from resuming the war with Iran, setting up a potentially contentious fight with the White House.

The Senate passed the resolution 50-48, with four Republicans joining Democrats to support the measure. Two Republican senators — Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania) — missed the vote, allowing the measure to pass.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) voted for the resolution. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against it.

The vote marks one of the biggest fissures between Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate during his second term. It comes days after the Trump administration reached an agreement with the Iranian government to end the war, which several Republican senators strongly criticized for lifting sanctions on Iranian oil and taking steps toward setting up a $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran.

“It’s a big deal,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has spearheaded Democrats’ repeated attempts to rein in the president’s use of the military, said of the vote.

Kaine argued that the agreement to end the conflict does not make the resolution any less urgent because Trump could decide to strike Iran again at any time. Trump threatened Sunday to “hit Iran very hard again” if Tehran does not restrain its proxies in Lebanon.

“Both houses have now said this war is illegal without our authorization,” Kaine said.

“The president ought to take the off-ramp we’re giving him,” he added.

The measure, which passed the House earlier this month, cannot be vetoed, but Democrats and Republicans disagree on whether it has the force of law.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 — the law that Democrats used to force the vote — states that the president must remove U.S. forces engaged in hostilities abroad without congressional authorization if Congress passes such a resolution.

The Trump administration has said that it believes that the law is unconstitutional and that the provision allowing Congress to pass a war powers resolution without giving the president veto authority is on even shakier legal ground. 

U.S. Foreign Policy, Military, National Security

The Contrarian, Opinion: Words & Phrases, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 23, 2026. MAGA pols and dark money groups have no business defining who is ‘pro-Israel.’

Rightwing Christian Evangelists, including those who have yearned for a 21st century Crusader and Islamophobe like Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, have argued that criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is effectively “anti-Israel” — or worse, if you are said to be holding Israel to a higher/double standard than other nations, “anti-Semitic.” This has fed MAGA partisan claptrap that, since only the Republican Party extends unconditional support for Netanyahu’s coalition government, no matter how reprehensible their conduct, it is the only “pro-Israel” American political party.

The specious reasoning that you cannot criticize Israel’s current government and still be “pro-Israel” would be debunked under ordinary circumstances. But now the Republicans are in a fix: Donald Trump, humiliated by his widely panned deal, has not only agreed to a deal infinitely weaker than the JCPOA, but has also railed at the Netanyahu government in terms no Democrat administration would ever have dared utter. Surely, Trump and his Republican flunkies shouldn’t be able to retain the pretense that they are “pro-Israel”? Here is where it gets interesting.

Under unceasing criticism for its lousy Iran deal, Trump went from saying U.S. Jews should get their “heads examined” and were “disloyal” if they did not back him to denouncing Netanyahu as “crazy” in persisting with attacks on Lebanon while peace talks continued. Trump, who routinely excoriated former President Barack Obama for criticizing Netanyahu, effectively told Netanyahu to shut up and do what he is told.

At the G-7, Trump went even further, as Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz wrote:

Using the language of Israel’s bitterest critics, [Trump] charged that “Israel is fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed.” Elaborating, he snapped that “you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses. And they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.”

Vice President JD Vance followed by unleashing one of the harshest tirades ever delivered from a U.S. administration against Israel. “My message to them would be twofold. ​No 1: Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world ‌who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this ‌moment in time,” he sneered. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left ‌in the entire world.” He continued: “You can’t just kill your way out of solving every problem.” (Too bad Trump failed to grasp the futility of killing his way out of the Middle East before launching his disastrous war.)

What does all this mean for two critical rightwing voices who think they can dictate “pro-Israel” bona fides?Subscribed

First, so much for Trump’s boast that he was the most “pro-Israel” president ever. To the contrary, no president has done more to shred the U.S.-Israel relationship, imperil both U.S. and Israel’s security (by giving Iran unprecedented leverage to control the Strait of Hormuz), or been so unconstrained about insulting an Israeli leader.

Don’t take it from me. The rightwing English-language newspaper Israel Hayom, founded by Republican donor and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, slammed Trump:

You made a colossal mistake. You failed by signing a surrender agreement with a murderous and cruel terror regime. You severely harmed American interests and the democratic and human values of the enlightened world, and you turned over the hourglass toward the next war, which your successors will have to deal with in the years to come. . . . You did all this in violation of every promise you made, in contradiction to the path you had followed until now, and against the values of America, which was supposed to return to greatness and has now been humiliated into the dust.

All of the rightwing U.S. and Israel apologists for Donald Trump who trusted he was Israel’s “best friend” (or had some coherent vision that aligned with Israel’s interests) blew it. Legacy Jewish organizations, such as the American Jewish Committee and AIPAC, also piled on criticism of Trump, though their tone was wimpy and nowhere near the sort of condemnation we heard about Obama during the JCPOA fight.

Trump’s lackeys should have remembered that he has no friends or guiding philosophy — only an unquenchable thirst for self-enrichment and ego gratification.

Second, no group has more ferociously claimed the right to police who gets a “pro-Israel” moniker than AIPAC. It has targeted those who rebuke Netanyahu and his coalition partners for human rights abuses, question its reckless military strategy, or propose limits on U.S. missile sales that do nothing more than force Israel to comply with U.S. law. In making an unconditional defense of Trump-Netanyahu policies the benchmark for “pro-Israel” credentials, AIPAC messed up big time.

The self-appointed referee in judging pro-Israel bona fides has now become “both a victim and a cause of the unraveling consensus on Israel,” Jonathan Maher recently wrote for the New York Times. In rejecting virtually all criticism of Israel (e.g., denying responsibility for starvation in Gaza) and adhering to grotesque positions on candidate endorsements (Jan. 6 election deniers are welcome…but not thoughtful critics of Israel’s policy!), AIPAC has abandoned the mainstream, become a pariah to many Democrats, and undermined bipartisan support for Israel. As J Street president and frequent guest of The Contrarian Jeremy Ben Ami told Maher: “AIPAC is playing with fire and runs the risk of burning our whole house down.”

In sum, the bickering over “pro-Israel” never made much sense. It seemed to apply solely to one country, and worse, was designed to obliterate nuance. (Can you be pro-France but object to its nuclear power policy?) Especially now, however, no country deserves unconditional support when its policies endanger U.S. interests and offend our values.

Trump, his white Christian Nationalist allies, and AIPAC have no right to lecture anyone about what it means to be “pro-Israel.” They have done incalculable harm to Middle East stability, Israel’s security, and the U.S.-Israel relationship. The sooner the trio cedes center stage, the sooner we can have a reasoned debate about an appropriately nuanced U.S.-Israel policy that rests on shared interests and values.

U.S. Law, Courts, Crime, Rights, Justice

New York Times, Major Supreme Court Decisions Testing Trump’s Policies Remain, Ann E. Marimow, June 23, 2026. Over the next two weeks, the justices will release more than a dozen final opinions, including high-profile decisions on birthright citizenship, the Federal Reserve and transgender athletes.

The Supreme Court is in the homestretch of its term and expected to announce more than a dozen remaining opinions over the next two weeks, starting Tuesday morning. They include major cases that will decide the fate of key aspects of President Trump’s agenda.

Before the justices take their annual summer break, they will resolve a series of high-profile cases testing the administration’s policies to expand presidential power and reshape the federal bureaucracy.

Significant decisions still to come will determine whether Mr. Trump can end the longstanding guarantee of birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of undocumented immigrants and fire Lisa D. Cook, a leader at the influential and independent Federal Reserve.

Already in February, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and two justices who were nominated by Mr. Trump during his first term joined the court’s three Democratic nominees to invalidate the president’s sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every major U.S. trading partner.

Mr. Trump was furious about that ruling. He has repeatedly criticized the opinion and the justices who ruled against him, calling them “fools and lap dogs.”

In recent weeks, he has appeared to be bracing for another setback in the birthright citizenship case. In April, Mr. Trump attended oral arguments in the matter, a first for a sitting president. He later bemoaned on social media what he called “nasty, one sided questions” from the justices “on the country destroying subject of Birthright Citizenship.”

On the flip side, Mr. Trump seems more likely to prevail in his efforts to oust independent government regulators. In a case that involves Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the justices are being asked to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that has limited the ability of presidents to fire top agency officials without cause and solely over policy disagreements.

In the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court issued a series of quick-turn orders that overwhelmingly allowed the president to implement his policies while litigation continued in the lower courts. The court, for instance, permitted the administration to terminate deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.

But that decision, like other wins in 2025 for Mr. Trump, came in an emergency order that the justices issued without providing detailed reasoning. It did not examine whether homeland security officials followed the procedures outlined in federal law for ending the program. Now the justices are deciding whether the administration can immediately end humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants who have been living and working legally in the United States. A resolution of that matter, too, is expected in coming days.After Tuesday, the justices are expected to release additional decisions on Thursday morning and are likely to take to the bench at least once more before the July 4 holiday, until they release decisions in all of the cases they have heard since their term began in October. 

New York Times, Protesters Accused of Antifa Ties Sentenced to Up to 100 Years in ICE Attack, Alan Feuer and Krista Torralva, June 23, 2026. The penalties, issued in an attack where a police officer was shot, dwarfed those given to Jan. 6 rioters and appeared to signal that at least some courts will deal aggressively with ICE protesters

The leader of a group of protesters accused of being members of the far-left movement antifa was sentenced on Tuesday to 100 years in prison after a jury found him and seven other demonstrators guilty of supporting terrorism while taking part in an armed assault last summer against an immigration facility in Alvarado, Texas.

The extraordinary sentence against the protester, Benjamin Song, was only one of the harsh penalties meted out in the case during separate hearings in Federal District Court in Fort Worth by two judges who castigated the defendants for using violence and attacking the democratic process during the protest.

Nine young demonstrators, including Mr. Song, were found guilty in March of an array of charges stemming from the attack on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, which resulted in a police officer being shot in the neck.

Six of the defendants who were convicted of terrorism charges along with Mr. Song were sentenced to between 50 and 70 years in prison. Another, who was found guilty of lesser crimes and was not even present at the protest, was given a term of 30 years in prison. A final defendant is scheduled to be sentenced next month. 

Trump planned a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.8 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists (some shown above).

The remarkably stiff penalties, issued by Judge Mark T. Pittman and Judge Reed O’Connor, were significantly longer than the lengthiest sentence handed down to any of the more than 1,500 rioters who were prosecuted — and then given clemency — for joining in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (portrayed above). The most severe sentence faced by a Jan. 6 defendant was the 22-year term given to Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys.

The sentencings in Fort Worth appeared to be a clear signal that, at least in Texas, the courts would deal aggressively with ICE protesters — especially those accused of adhering to the leftist ideology of antifa, a contraction of the word “antifascist.” Activists who have demonstrated against ICE have faced a concerted crackdown from the Trump administration, including 15 people said to be affiliated with two Minnesota antifa groups who were indicted last week on charges of conspiring to impede federal agents during immigration sweeps in the state over the winter.

Both Judge Pittman, who was appointed by President Trump, and Judge O’Connor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, have reputations as staunchly conservative jurists. Judge Pittman oversaw the trial of Mr. Song and his co-defendants, which was the first time terrorism charges had been brought against purported members of antifa. Judge O’Connor was brought in after the verdicts were returned to help with sentencings.

While the jurors who heard evidence during the trial clearly believed the prosecution’s theory that most of the defendants had supported an act of terrorism when they took part in the attack on the ICE facility, five of the government’s own cooperating witnesses — people who were part of the supposed antifa cell — denied under oath that they or their compatriots thought of themselves as belonging to antifa. The far-left movement has no central structure or formal membership.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche celebrated the sentences in a post on social media, saying that “violent extremism has no place in our country.”

“The sentences handed down today make clear that antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” Mr. Blanche said.

But the relatives of some of the defendants assailed the sentences as overly punitive at a news conference outside the courthouse.

“In the face of this grotesque distortion of anything that could ever have called itself a process, I am livid,” said Lydia Koza, the wife of one of the defendants, Autumn Hill.

Hope Song, Mr. Song’s mother, said her son would never accept responsibility for what she described as “a government lie made to prosecute innocent people in order to get political persecutions.”

Mr. Trump has long prioritized bringing criminal charges against antifa activists and other left-wing demonstrators who have protested his immigration raids in cities across the country. In September, he issued an executive order declaring antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” — a designation that does not actually exist under U.S. law.

He also issued a sweeping directive known as National Security Presidential Memo 7, which ordered a whole-of-government approach to going after antifascist groups. The memo greatly expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include a list of political beliefs traditionally protected by the First Amendment — among them “anticapitalism,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and even “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.”

The episode in Alvarado unfolded after nightfall on Independence Day last year, when a group of about a dozen people arrived dressed in black at the ICE facility, known as the Prairieland Detention Center. Some began to vandalize the property, spray-painting graffiti on a guard shed and a car, and damaging a surveillance camera, prosecutors said. Others set off fireworks in what they later described as a “noise demonstration,” hoping that the immigrants detained inside would be encouraged by the spectacle.

Mr. Song, a former Marine reservist, stood at a distance with an AR-15-style rifle. And when Lt. Thomas Gross of the Alvarado Police Department responded to a call for help at the facility, Mr. Song yelled, “Get to the rifles!” and opened fire, prosecutors said. Lieutenant Gross was struck by a bullet above his collarbone as the rest of the group fled. He was treated for his wounds and eventually released from the hospital.

Politico, Justice Department attempted to force national security reporters to testify before grand jury, Emilio Perez Ibarguen, June 23, 2026. The department subpoenaed journalists at The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal before reportedly reversing course.

The Justice Department attempted to force journalists who have reported on national security to testify before a federal grand jury before reportedly reversing course, an escalation of the Trump administration’s pressure on media outlets.

In a public statement Tuesday, Olivia Petersen, a spokesperson for The Washington Post, confirmed that reporter Ellen Nakashima was subpoenaed, characterizing the move as an unwarranted violation of press freedom and “another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations.”

The Washington Post also reported Tuesday that DOJ sought to compel three reporters at The Wall Street Journal to testify regarding their work reporting on national security matters. The Post reported that both news companies fought the subpoenas in court, and DOJ reversed its decision earlier this month.

POLITICO has not independently confirmed the scope of the investigation, which remains under seal, or the details surrounding the Journal reporters’ subpoenas. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Petersen declined to comment further beyond the Post’s public statement, noting that the litigation is under seal.

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, which owns the Journal, declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that its reporters received subpoenas for records regarding reporting around the Iran war, but did not report at the time that federal officials were seeking to force their testimony.

“The government’s subpoenas to The Wall Street Journal and our reporters represent an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering,” Ashok Sinha, the chief communications officer of Dow Jones, said at the time. “We will vigorously oppose this effort to stifle and intimidate essential reporting.”

President Donald Trump has long vilified news media, denigrating organizations and reporters he believes cover him dishonestly and mislead the public. His administration has used a variety of bureaucratic tools to impede the press during his second term, including the FBI executing a search warrant on a different Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor retaining classified documents and barring reporters from using workspaces at the Pentagon.

Trump has also sued a variety of news organizations and publishers, including the Journal, though some critics have said those efforts are aimed at causing financial pain rather than proving journalistic malpractice.

That strategy has appeared to work in some cases. ABC and CBS’s parent companies both ponied up multi-million dollars sums to settle lawsuits with Trump, with ABC agreeing to apologize in its defamation suit.

New York Times,  Federal Citizenship Data Tool Cannot Be Used to Screen Voters, Judge Rules, Zach Montague, June 23, 2026 (print ed.). A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s providing federal data to states to check and purge their voter rolls violated several laws prohibiting the disclosure.

A federal judge on Monday barred the Trump administration from letting states query a centralized national database of citizens built for checking immigration status to screen their voter rolls, finding that the repurposing of the federal data to monitor voting violated at least three laws.

In a sharply worded ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the Homeland Security Department to stop permitting states to search the data, which also incorporates Social Security records.

President Trump had ordered several agencies last year to pool data that states could use to verify citizenship. The combined data set allows state and local election officials to search immigration records stored by the Department of Homeland Security about migrants, as well as a much larger database of information maintained by the Social Security Administration.

Judge Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, wrote that the executive order had resulted in a rush by agencies to “haphazardly” adopt a system that they knew was flawed and that would flag eligible voters along with those who might have registered illegally. She warned that states were already “actively” using it to potentially purge eligible voters ahead of an election.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” she wrote. “This court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

Repurposing the immigration database — known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system — into a tool to check voter eligibility unlawfully abused sensitive data stored by the government for other purposes, Judge Sooknanan wrote. She added that federal agencies were joining to together over the last year to “create a centralized federal database that contains the private information of United States citizens, including Social Security numbers, citizenship status and other sensitive data” that violated protections Congress had intended to guard personal data.

Judge Sooknanan wrote that evidence presented in the case showed Homeland Security Department officials acknowledged in internal communications that the infrastructure it had built violated federal privacy law and could incorrectly flag eligible voters as noncitizens. She wrote, for instance, that the database included outdated information that could result in naturalized citizens who had been assigned Social Security numbers long ago incorrectly appearing as ineligible to vote.

James Percival, the general counsel for the Homeland Security Department, responded to the ruling on social media, calling it the “latest example” of “how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist.”

At Mr. Trump’s direction, the federal government has intensified efforts this year to intervene in state administration of elections, as he pushes discredited theories about voter fraud and claims that undocumented immigrants and others who are ineligible to vote can be found on state rolls.

The Justice Department has also contributed to efforts to build a national voter database, suing a number of Democratic-led states that resisted the push to obtain their records.

Earlier on Monday, a federal judge in Maryland dismissed a lawsuit by the department seeking the state’s voter records, the latest of more than half a dozen decisions that have gone against the Trump administration. 911 call or his relationship with Lieutenant Santos.

New York Times, The State Trooper Who Became a Double Murder Suspect, Tracey Tully, Updated June 23, 2026. Lt. Ricardo Santos of the New Jersey State Police had faced questions about his judgment and conduct before he became the primary suspect in a double murder-suicide.

Lauren Semanchik did not know who had keyed her car, but she could think of only one person who might want to do so: Lt. Ricardo J. Santos of the New Jersey State Police.

He was her ex-boyfriend. Dr. Semanchik, a veterinarian, reported the vandalism to the local police, telling an investigating officer that Lieutenant Santos “did not take the breakup well,” according to a police report.

The officer noted that he called Lieutenant Santos at 8 p.m. that night and “apprised him of the situation.”

“I advised Ricardo that in the future he should avoid all contact with Lauren as to not escalate the situation any further,” the officer wrote. “Ricardo stated that he understood.”

Seventy-four days later, on Aug. 1, 2025, Dr. Semanchik and her new boyfriend, Tyler Webb, were shot to death outside her home in rural Pittstown, N.J. Lieutenant Santos, who was found dead shortly afterward in an apparent suicide, is the only suspect in the murders, prosecutors say.

It was the first time an off-duty trooper had been at the center of a double murder in the history of the century-old force. The killings shocked the region and increased scrutiny of the law enforcement community in which Lieutenant Santos, 45, had made his living for two decades.

New York Times, Supreme Court Bars Lawsuit After Prison Guards Shaved Inmate’s Dreadlocks, Ann E. Marimow, June 23, 2026. Damon Landor, a Rastafarian, tried to sue Louisiana prison officials for violating his religious rights.

The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that a Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards could not sue state officials for money.

In a 6-to-3 vote dividing the court along ideological lines, the majority said federal law did not allow the prisoner, Damon Landor, to sue individual officers in their private capacity for violating his religious beliefs.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. The three liberal justices dissented.

The decision was a departure from a series of Supreme Court rulings in recent years that have repeatedly bolstered religious rights. In 2022, the court sided with a Texas death row inmate who wanted his pastor to touch him and pray aloud at the time of his execution. That same year, the court said a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.

The Trump administration and lawyers for the former inmate, Mr. Landor, had urged the Supreme Court to allow his lawsuit to proceed.

When Mr. Landor reported for a five-month sentence for drug possession in Louisiana, he had not cut his hair for almost two decades, in keeping with his faith. His dreadlocks fell nearly to his knees.

 White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Hate Map: Will Abbe Lowell Cross-Examine Stephen Miller at the SPLC Trial? Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 23, 2026. A bunch of extremist organizations wailed to Stephen Miller that SPLC’s efforts to track hate groups like theirs constitutes fraud, and that’s what led DOJ to reopen a long-closed tax investigation to trump up a fraud prosecution against the Civil Rights organization.

That’s the claim SPLC made in its reply motion in its vindictive prosecution claim (motion to dismiss, response).

According to the filing, the IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit opened an investigation during Trump’s first term into the informant program (CBS reported that that happened in 2019). During the first year of the Biden Administration — probably around the time SPLC clarified its ownership of the accounts at issue on September 9, 2021 — DOJ closed the investigation. Then, according to SPLC’s new filing, “It was suddenly reopened during the Trump Administration at least as early as September 2025.”

It points to an incident report documenting the predication of the investigation, dated October 24, 2025 (in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder and Trump’s targeting of groups like SPLC in the aftermath), and compares the language from that report to an undated letter to Stephen Miller that appears to have been provided in discovery, which Kirk was still alive to sign.

AUSA Kevin Davidson, who is prosecuting this case, appears to have just cut-and-pasted from a letter sent to Miller, raising big questions about how that letter got into his hands and with what instructions.

SPLC describes that, while DOJ never asked SPLC to explain the Hate Map at the core of the complaint to Miller, it did, “interview[] leaders of some of the referenced organizations and collected documents from them,” showing that DOJ took steps to substantiate the claims in the letter and in the incident report, that the HateMap was (citing Nathan Robinson) “‘an outright fraud’ and ‘a willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC’.” It did not take obvious steps to test SPLC’s claims that these groups had acted in a way it claimed they had, but it did, having not tested the basis for SPLC’s own public claims, open an investigation and start getting warrants.

Alliance Defending Freedom was one of the letter signers; their Senior Vice President Ryan Bangert testified at a Jim Jordan hearing earlier this month, raising questions whether the entire point of the hearing was an attempt to support a fraud claim DOJ already rejected. The Superseding Indictment, released days before the hearing, added a new reference to the Hate Map that does not, in any way, support DOJ’s claims of fraud or even the informants program.

Much of the rest of SPLC’s reply addresses a narrow legal question: whether vindictive prosecution claims only apply if DOJ retaliates for a protected right exercised during litigation, or whether it applies when, as here, DOJ is retaliating against SPLC for exercising its First Amendment rights. Kilmar Abrego’s successful vindictive prosecution claim, which DOJ appealed yesterday, was central to the discussion.

Because it is not directly pertinent to this court filing, the reply doesn’t address another issue suggested by the filing. Possibly based on that letter to Miller and without consultation to SPLC on methodology, DOJ treated SPLC’s claims that organizations like Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA are hate groups as fraudulent, a fraudulent means to raise money. It apparently abandoned that claim for a much more tortured claim of fraud, that SPLC bilked its donors by paying the informants it used to infiltrate extremist organizations. As such, it implicates a larger effort Trump has rolled out, his Fraud Task Force, which shifted DOJ’s White Collar investigative efforts to instead chase fraud by brown people in blue states.

Lifelong fraudster Donald Trump is attempting to use claims of fraud, many with no basis, as a means to delegitimize Democratic and democratic opposition. This prosecution demonstrates the tortured logic that requires.

But this case, like Trump’s other attempts to criminalize his (and Stephen Miller’s) enemies, comes with a cost. Thus far, judges are still enforcing discovery rules, meaning that defendants get some insight into where a criminal case comes from. And in an administration that has (with some basis) treated conversations with Stephen Miller — and therefore his role in targeting protestors — as privileged, DOJ just handed SPLC, represented by Abbe Lowell, with a document intimating that Stephen Miller had a role in this case, that Stephen Miller’s grievance about being exposed as an extremist somehow led a prosecutor to test a theory whether pointing that out is itself inherently fraudulent.

While it in no way guarantees this vindictive prosecution claim will work (which remains unlikely), it does raise the chances that Stephen Miller will have to answer for his own involvement in Trump’s weaponization of DOJ.

New York Times, New Book: The Women Who Saw Something Fishy in the J.F.K. Assassination, James Wolcott, June 23, 2026. In “The Housewives Underground,” the Atlantic writer Kaitlyn Tiffany salutes a loose network of skeptics who questioned the findings of the Warren Report.

In the epilogue to Kaitlyn Tiffany’s “The Housewives Underground,” a journey through the world of early John F. Kennedy assassination skeptics, the author makes a pilgrimage to a former boardinghouse in Dallas that has been preserved as a tacky shrine.

This carefully curated dump was the temporary lodging of Lee Harvey Oswald, the forever disputed lone assassin of President Kennedy. “

Tiffany is a journalist for The Atlantic, and her previous work includes “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It,” a pop sociology dive into the community of women whose lives revolved around the boy band One Direction.

In “The Housewives Underground,” which focuses on an equally loose and enthusiastic sorority, she has written a social history of novelistic propulsion with fanatical documentation and a sympathetic understanding of what drives the driven. Her book tracks the lives of three very different, but equally zealous women as they evolved into members of an informal detective agency dedicated to investigating the murder of J.F.K.

The trio comprises the Beverly Hills socialite Maggie Field; the Hominy, Okla., housewife Shirley Martin; and Sylvia Meagher, an ardent Mets fan and researcher for the World Health Organization who converted her small apartment in Greenwich Village into an archive center where she took upon herself the monumental task of indexing the entire 26 volumes of the Warren Commission report. It needed to be done and if she didn’t do it, who would?

Meagher’s fervor was rooted in her experiences at the W.H.O. during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s. When the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security subpoenaed her colleagues for alleged un-American activity, Meagher refused to fink. Many of her co-workers pleaded the Fifth and, she believed, were fired without justification. Senator Joe McCarthy’s crusade eventually lost steam and Meagher kept her job, but, Tiffany writes, “for the rest of her life, she would be suspicious of talk about patriotism and loyalty.”

That suspicion led her to doubt the official narrative of the Kennedy assassination, which suggested that Oswald had been motivated by far-left radicalism. Though reclusive by nature, in October 1965 Meagher hosted the first gathering of what came to be known as the Warrenologists, or more simply the “critics.” The meeting turned ornery, a sign of discord to come, but a network took shape. Soon, Warrenologists were airing out their findings on late-night talk radio.

More Global News

New York Times, News Analysis: ‘A Terrible Inheritance’: Could Andy Burnham Succeed Where Starmer Failed? Michael D. Shear, June 23, 2026. The likely successor to Prime Minister Keir Starmer will inherit the same challenges of economic stagnation and ascendant populism. Will a divided nation be prepared to give him time?

When Andy Burnham,right, arrived in Parliament on Monday as the Labour Party’s great hope for political redemption, the only thing missing was the white steed.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester swept into the chamber for his swearing-in with the flourish and charisma that his fellow party members are praying will deliver them from electoral disaster. He took a selfie with hundreds of his new colleagues behind him, everyone beaming at the change they hope is coming.

It now appears almost certain that Mr. Burnham will succeed Prime Minister Keir Starmer after other potential rivals stood down and endorsed him on Monday. In Westminster, the home of Parliament, Mr. Burnham is already being treated as the prime minister apparent.

But if Mr. Burnham is that successor, he will soon preside over a government that faces all the same challenges that prematurely ended Mr. Starmer’s premiership after less than two politically grueling years. They include a sagging economy, chronically underinvested public services, an increasingly powerful populist movement and the never-ending challenge of dealing with President Trump.

“There are no good choices being faced by this incoming government — it’s a terrible inheritance,” said Luke Sullivan, who was Mr. Starmer’s political director before he became prime minister.

“The major structural problems that face the U.K., the major global and international security headlines that face the U.K., aren’t going to change,” Mr. Sullivan said. “He’s got a chance. But the path he’s going to have to tread, and the needle he’s going to have to thread to deliver — it is incredible.”

Notably, Mr. Starmer’s resignation came the day before Tuesday’s 10-year anniversary of the divisive Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016, when a slim majority of Britons voted to leave the European Union. 

New York Times, The Extraordinary Embezzlement Case That Rocked Scottish Politics, Stephen Castle, June 23, 2026. Peter Murrell, the husband of the former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon, was sentenced on Tuesday after he admitted to buying a bizarre range of items with the Scottish National Party’s money.

A robotic lawn mower. A silver wine coaster. A Jaguar car. A motor home costing six figures.

The list of items bought with cash embezzled from Scotland’s governing political party ranges from the banal to the ostentatious. But the theft in total of more than 400,000 pounds, or over $500,000, from the Scottish National Party over 12 years has created the biggest scandal to hit the country’s politics in decades.

That is because the perpetrator, Peter Murrell, was not just the party’s chief executive but was the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s former leader and an ex-Scottish first minister, once seen as one of Britain’s most formidable political figures. They are now estranged.

On Tuesday, Mr. Murrell was sentenced to five years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement.

When Mr. Murrell appeared in court during hearings, he said nothing by way of explanation for a crime that has stunned many in Scotland. However, his lawyer, John Scullion, told the judge on Tuesday, “The accused is now an individual overwhelmed by feelings of embarrassment and shame.”

James Mitchell, a professor of public policy at the University of Edinburgh, said the case was “without doubt the greatest scandal” since Scotland’s modern-day Parliament began meeting in 1999.

“To be honest, like most people, I’m still trying to make sense of it all,” Professor Mitchell added.

Ms. Sturgeon unexpectedly announced her resignation as first minister in 2023, and was later arrested as part of the police investigation into Mr. Murrell but never charged. She has denied any knowledge of her estranged husband’s crimes.

U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Election Live Updates: New York Primaries Will Set Stage for November Battles, Nicholas Fandos, June 23, 2026. Tuesday’s contests could test the power of progressive Democrats as New Yorkers pick nominees for a half-dozen coveted House seats. There are also closely watched races in Utah, Maryland and South Carolina.

Here’s the latest.

After months of a raucous campaign by candidates, New Yorkers headed to the polls on Tuesday to decide a packed slate of congressional primaries that feature ascendant democratic socialists, rival A.I. giants and a Kennedy scion.

The races across the state, and in other Democratic primaries taking place in Utah and Maryland, promised to help shape a broader struggle over the party’s direction as the midterm primary season accelerates. Among the biggest story lines in New York was a major gamble by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is trying to parlay his popularity to expand his leftist movement. In his sights: two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom the left views as too friendly to corporate interests and to Israel, as well as a third seat being vacated by Representative Nydia Velázquez.

But there were other important and attention-grabbing contests that had nothing to do with the mayor.

In the suburbs north of the city, Democrats are picking their nominee to challenge Representative Mike Lawler, one of Republicans’ most vulnerable incumbents, in November.

And in the heart of Manhattan, voters will select a Democrat to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler in a high-powered district that is home to Broadway, the Democratic donor class and more Fortune 500 companies than any other. Its star-studded field of competitors includes the grandson of John F. Kennedy and has prompted nearly $40 million in super PAC spending by the A.I. industry and the former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Here’s what else to know:

How to vote: Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. in New York. Data from the city’s early-voting period suggests the electorate is on track to be much smaller and about a decade older than last year, when Mr. Mamdani drove young voters to the polls last year in record numbers. It may be a concerning sign for the mayor’s preferred candidates.

Elsewhere in New York: In the North Country, a Republican primary fight to replace Representative Elise Stefanik has gotten ugly — and is fueling Democrats’ dreams of flipping the district this fall. New Yorkers will also decide whether to keep their state comptroller of two decades, or ditch him for a more progressive alternative.

Maryland House primaries: Pro-Israel and pro-crypto super PACs have spent millions to back Adrian Boafo, a moderate state delegate, in a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination to succeed the retiring Representative Steny Hoyer. In another district, former Representative David Trone is seeking to oust the woman he endorsed to succeed him in Congress, Representative April McClain Delaney, in one of the country’s most expensive House primaries.

Utah House primary: Court-ordered redistricting in Utah led to the creation of a deep-blue congressional district in Salt Lake City, meaning Utah is likely to elect a Democrat to Congress this fall for the first time since 2018. Ben McAdams, a moderate former congressman who won that 2018 race, is the front-runner in the Democratic primary. He faces three progressive challengers, including Nate Blouin, a state senator backed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Lawfare, Legal Analysis: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fauci Files Don’t Prove What She Says They Prove, Renée DiResta, right, June 23, 2026. Gabbard’s declassification theater is a case study in politicizing intelligence.

In her final act as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a collection of declassified documents about COVID-19’s origins and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The headline claim was explosive: “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID.” Her press release and accompanying five-minute long video monologue went further, accusing Fauci of manipulating intelligence assessments and lying to Congress.

But the documents don’t show anything of the sort.

The origins of COVID-19 remain uncertain. A lab-associated incident is plausible; so is natural spillover. China’s obstruction has made the truth harder to establish, and scientific opinions vary. There are legitimate questions to ask, in general, about biosafety and U.S.-funded research abroad. But Gabbard isn’t asking those questions. Her press release implies that the debate is over—that the definitive answer is a lab leak—and then uses the assumed conclusion as the foundation for a far more sweeping allegation: that Fauci “sparked COVID” and covered it up.

Gabbard’s “Fauci Files" follow the same playbook as her past document drops: Put the desired conclusion in the headline. Use “declassification” as a credibility signal. Present a large, mixed dump of documents as if they were a prosecutor’s exhibit. Convert ordinary government processes—expert consultation, grant oversight, whistleblower routing, intelligence disagreement—into evidence of conspiracy. Then push the accusation on social media, where few people will read the underlying documents closely enough to notice the gulf between the documents and the claims.

Gabbard played this game of innuendo and accusation with her so-called “Russiagate” declassifications, accusing President Barack Obama of a "treasonous conspiracy” and “coup” (he has yet to be charged). A few weeks ago she followed the playbook with a document dump on biolabs, reframing biological threat reduction work, much of which was already public, as nefarious. In each case, the underlying materials contain some facts, but they are often decontextualized, and the framing asks readers to take a much larger conspiratorial leap.

In her final drop, Gabbard makes four specific assertions: First, that Fauci funded dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that “sparked COVID.” Second, that he manipulated intelligence assessments to conceal his role. Third, that he lied to Congress. Fourth, that he used a “deep state playbook” of “lies, disinformation, and censorship” to punish or marginalize dissent.

These are not small claims. They are accusations of grave misconduct by a named public official. So the question is simple: Do Gabbard’s documents prove them?

Let’s take the allegations claim by claim, with references to specific documents in the drop that the reader can go and examine for themselves.

Did Fauci Fund Gain-of-Function Research That “Sparked COVID”?

It is now well established that U.S. money flowed through EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that studied emerging infectious diseases, to coronavirus research involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is also true that there has been intense public debate over whether some of that work should be described as gain-of-function research (a broad term for experiments in which a virus or pathogen is altered to become more potent, virulent, or infectious for the purpose of studying risk or develop countermeasures.).

But the existence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research at or involving WIV does not establish that U.S.-funded work created SARS-CoV-2, produced its progenitor, or caused the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has explicitly denied that viruses studied under the research it funded could have evolved into SARS-CoV-2.

Nothing in Gabbard’s documents supplies the missing causal link; even media outlets friendly to the release pointed out that much of the content had been in the public record for years. The documents contain grant materials, scientific papers, intelligence discussions, congressional correspondence, press clips, and whistleblower-related materials. They do not contain an intelligence assessment concluding that Fauci-funded research “sparked COVID.” They do not identify an NIH-funded virus that became SARS-CoV-2. They do not establish that EcoHealth-funded work at WIV caused the pandemic. Nothing in them establishes Gabbard’s banner claim.

Gabbard also claims that Fauci funded coronavirus research “linked to big pharma and the pursuit of ‘universal vaccines’ worth trillions of dollars.” But the released materials do not substantiate that motive assertion. They do not show Fauci acting on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, holding vaccine patents, or helping anyone make money. Mentions of vaccines in the documents primarily concern ordinary infectious-disease research and, in one case, EcoHealth’s interest in developing a vaccine for bats.

“Linked to” is doing heavy lifting. The phrase is often used to insinuate an association that a claimant can’t assert outright; anything tangentially related to anything else can be said to be “linked to” it. Here, the phrase lets Gabbard imply corruption without having to clarify who benefited, what decision Fauci made for that purpose, or how any of it connects to the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

The documents support a narrow and long-established predicate: U.S. funding touched coronavirus research involving WIV. They do not support the accusation built on top of it: that Fauci funded research that caused COVID.

Did Fauci Manipulate Intelligence Assessments?

Gabbard’s second major claim is that Fauci pushed the intelligence community (IC) “to endorse a natural, animal origin to hide his dangerous research.” In her telling, Fauci “hand-picked [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]-funded scientists” to advise the IC. She alleges the existence of emails showing that it “almost always” incorporated Fauci’s recommendations, and ignored “experts who might dissent from Fauci’s narratives”; Fauci’s purportedly manipulative behavior shaped the official assessments that were then publicly cited as scientific consensus to dismiss the lab-leak theory.

That is a serious accusation. Her documents once again don’t prove it.

What they show is narrow: Fauci participated in a February 2020 expert meeting about data needs for assessing the virus’s origins; he received a documented June 2021 intelligence briefing on COVID origins; and he recommended scientists the IC might consult. The documents do not show him steering an intelligence assessment. During a pandemic, intelligence agencies would naturally consult leading infectious-disease experts and virologists. Fauci was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a senior adviser in the Trump administration’s COVID response. His presence in the conversation was a predictable result of his job.

To support her claim, Gabbard declassified a readout from a June 4, 2021 virtual briefing (Doc 7/47) in which CIA and other officials presented COVID-origins analysis to Fauci. The notes show that Fauci expressed concern that Beijing’s rapid cleanup of the Huanan Seafood market could have destroyed key evidence. He asked about WIV research involving pangolins, discussed reports of sick WIV researchers, pointed to a paper he thought supported natural origins, and recommended scientists whose views he believed the IC should consider.

But a subsequent July 14 internal email (Doc 6) shows analysts treating the recommendations with caution. One official questioned “whether to take a policymaker’s recommendations on who we should consult as part of an IC study--particularly given the various strong views on the subject and statements regarding their own conclusions.” Another email chain (Doc 25) about possible reviewers for the origins assessment paper is even more damaging for Gabbard’s story: It shows that officials considered Fauci as a possible outsider reviewer, but rejected him because he would be seen as conflicted.

In other words, the record shows the IC keeping Fauci at arm's length where the formal origins assessment is concerned.

Gabbard’s release also includes a transcript of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) talking to Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo. Paul alleges that Fauci was visiting the CIA in early 2020 and implies that Fauci got CIA superiors to overrule CIA scientists in their COVID origins assessment (Doc 10/45). But the internal CIA email addressing the allegation says that the relevant office had “no record of Dr. Fauci coming to CIA headquarters to discuss the origins of COVID-19” (Doc 44). The same email describes Fauci’s involvement as consisting of the June 2021 virtual briefing where—in the CIA official’s words—he “offered thoughts” and “recommended contacting a group of US scientists…including some the office had already met with or planned to meet with.” (The documents also show Rand Paul fundraising on a “FIRE FAUCI” message.)

So the document Gabbard uses to suggest secret influence says the opposite: no record of a CIA headquarters visit, no evidence of an early-2020 Fauci pressure campaign, and no indication that his recommendations controlled the analysis. The inclusion of several documents is frankly baffling; they make one wonder whether Gabbard actually read them, because they so thoroughly undermine her.

The documents show IC officials acknowledging uncertainty, debating the evidence, and consulting experts across the spectrum. After a contentious 2021 briefing with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), one ODNI official wrote that Republican lawmakers accused the IC of ignoring lab-leak-friendly experts and rattled off names they believed had been excluded. The official’s declassified internal read-out was blunt: “It’s actually kind of laughable, because every expert they named was consulted by the IC.” (Doc 46)

This directly contradicts Gabbard: Her documents reveal that the IC actively consulted experts with views opposing Fauci’s, even though they refused to disclose their names publicly.

One of the most revealing documents in the packet is not from 2020 but from 2026. In a March 2026 forward of a 2020 email thread, the sender adds an editorial gloss: “The IC took direction straight from NIH.” (Doc 26/56) But the thread shows diligent analysts weighing competing technical claims, asking for evidence, consulting experts, and warning against building an intelligence assessment on a single thin report. There is no indication that they were taking orders from NIH at all.

New York Times, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene Say They Are Done With the G.O.P., Emily Davies, June 23, 2026. Their split with the Republican Party represents an expansion of a feud with President Trump that could further complicate the party’s midterm prospects.

Tucker Carlson, the conservative media giant, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand former member of Congress, said they had formally broken with the Republican Party.

The split expands the two conservative luminaries’ feud with President Trump into a broader repudiation of the party they once helped shape. Although both said they would not support Democrats, their break from the G.O.P. could exacerbate party turmoil that threatens to suppress enthusiasm, and participation, in the fall midterms.

“I have been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party,” Mr. Carlson said during a guest appearance on the “Can’t Be Censored” podcast that aired Thursday. “If I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”

Ms. Greene followed up with a social media post saying much the same.

“Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party,” she said Monday on X. “There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country.”

Mr. Carlson, a former Fox News host, and Ms. Greene, a former congresswoman from Georgia, have been outspoken critics of Mr. Trump’s second term, most notably over the war with Iran and their view that he is neglecting such domestic issues as inflation at a time when prices continue to rise faster than wages.

Their evolution, from fixtures inside of Trump’s orbit to unvarnished critics, reflects growing discord within the G.O.P. at a critical moment, as the president’s low approval ratings test the party’s ability to retain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement that “oil and gas prices — and thus overall inflation — will rapidly drop as soon as the Iran situation is resolved.”

Mr. Carlson and Ms. Greene have embraced their new roles as disillusioned critics. Mr. Carlson, long an opponent of foreign interventions, said his break with the party had been driven by an abandonment of “America first” principles. He has blamed Israel for pushing the White House into the war with Iran — a focus that, along with his interview of the white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, has drawn accusations of antisemitism, which he has denied.

“It’s not enough to say, Well, I changed my mind — or like, Oh, this is bad, I’m out,” Mr. Carlson said in an episode of his podcast released in April. “It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” he continued, “and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”Editors’ PicksWhy Is It So Bad to Let A.I. Do My Thinking for Me?French Fishnets for an Unplanned Stay in San FranciscoThe Picnic Mistakes You’re Making (and the Recipes That Fix Them)

Ms. Greene resigned from Congress in January after a series of ruptures with the president.

“If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans,” Ms. Greene said in a statement announcing her departure, “then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.”

Mr. Trump earlier this month dismissed an inflation report that showed prices climbing thanks in part to oil and gas costs that had soared as a result of the war in Iran. He promised that any hit to the U.S. economy would reverse quickly once the war ended, though economists are less confident.

“No, I love it, the numbers were great,” the president told reporters. “I love the inflation.”

New York Times, Congress Clears Housing Bill, Cementing a Rare Bipartisan Feat, Ronda Kaysen, June 23, 2026. A lopsided House vote cleared the measure for President Trump’s signature after a lengthy back and forth and several nearly fatal blows to the legislation.

The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a landmark housing bill, notching a rare bipartisan accomplishment ahead of the midterm elections and clearing the way for President Trump to sign the most significant piece of housing legislation in 36 years.

The bill’s passage, by a lopsided 358-to-32 vote, ended months of sparring between the House and the Senate over a sprawling measure that aims to tackle the housing crisis by boosting supply in a country facing an acute shortage of new homes. The Senate passed its version of the same bill Monday, by a vote of 85 to 5.

Mr. Trump was expected to sign the bill into law quickly, securing a much-needed achievement for his party months before midterm elections in which their congressional majorities are at stake. Voters have been particularly critical of the president’s handling of the economy, with only 33 percent approving of it, according to a New York Times/Siena poll last month.

The success of the bill, which almost collapsed several times amid Republican infighting over the past few months, reflected an appetite among lawmakers in both parties to address a crucial affordability issue months before they face voters.

With dozens of provisions, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to touch communities across the country, addressing rural and urban needs as part of a strategy to eventually bring down housing costs. It loosens federal regulations, making it easier, faster and cheaper to build; eases lending rules; rewards communities that build; delivers aid to communities reeling from disasters; and, in a policy that proved to be one of the biggest flash points but was favored by Mr. Trump, sets new limits on the role institutional investors can play in the market.

“It is the most important and most comprehensive housing bill of this century,” said Shaun Donovan, president of Enterprise Community Partners and a former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. “It contains dozens of provisions that, taken together, go directly at the most important housing challenge of this moment, which is our housing supply.”

What is less clear is how quickly those moves will begin to have an impact on voters facing high mortgage rates, rents and prices. Among the biggest economic concerns facing Americans is the high cost of housing, invariably a household’s biggest expense. Existing home prices are up 54 percent since 2020, and homes cost nearly five times the median income, well above historic norms, according to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies.Editors’ PicksWhy Is It So Bad to Let A.I. Do My Thinking for Me?French Fishnets for an Unplanned Stay in San FranciscoThe Picnic Mistakes You’re Making (and the Recipes That Fix Them)

PoliticusUSA, Trump Fantasizes About Muscle Men In Pennsylvania As Republicans Crash And Burn, Jason Easley, right, June 23, 2026. The Republican Party is crashing and burning hard in Pennsylvania, so Donald Trump showed up in the Keystone State to ignore the economy and fantasize about muscle men.

According to those who have known him for decades, Donald Trump has always been, among other more dangerous things, strange.

Given that the words "normal" and "Donald Trump" have never kept company, it makes sense that as this president ages, he is getting even stranger.

Republicans are counting on Trump to save them in the midterm election, so he made a rare trip to Pennsylvania to talk about the economy, but what he walked into in the Keystone State made it clear that it isn’t 2024 anymore.

A Franklin and Marshall College Poll of Pennsylvania voters recently found:

Fewer voters believe President Trump is doing an “excellent” or “good” job (29%) as president than believe he is doing a “fair” or “poor” job (71%), which is a sizable decline since our March poll when his positive approval rating was 39%. His positive approval ratings declined within every partisan group. Two in three Republicans, one in seven independents, and only one in twenty Democrats rate the president’s job performance as “excellent” or “good.” The president’s approval ratings for his specific policy actions around immigration, foreign affairs, and inflation have all declined since October. His administration’s handling of inflation fell from 31% positive in October to 17% positive today.

Democrats currently lead Republicans by 12 points, 47% to 35%, in voters’ preferences for the US House of Representatives.

Trump came to Pennsylvania and didn’t talk about inflation or affordability, or any of the economic concerns that people have.Instead, he talked about men with muscles.

Trump said: 

The typical 401, as you know, is up almost $30,000 in, uh, it was 12 months, it was 13 months. It's up 44%. Think of that, up 44%. Because, you know, as goes the stock market, so goes a lot of your own wealth.

And I tell about this police officer. I met a police officer, first time, similar thing, but now the numbers are even more. I met... I was in New York, I met a great police officer, a New York finest, and he said, "Sir, I want to thank you." I said, "For what?" He said, "My wife didn't think much of me, very much. We were having marital difficulty, actually. She thought I was nothing. I'm a police officer. I'm a tough guy."

I looked at him, the muscles were all over the place. He didn't suffer from that, but she thought maybe that muscle wasn't so good because he was always losing money in the stock market. And he said, "Sir, in the last year and a half, my 401is up 74%, sir, and she thinks I'm Warren Buffett. She thinks I'm a super genius." I said, "How are you getting along with her?" He said, "Well, I'm not so sure I like her anymore." But that's, I- I won't tell you that. I refuse to say that. He's getting along just fine. But a lot of people have come up to me, Dave, and they thanked us.

The average 401(k) balance is $40,000-$90,000, so people’s accounts haven’t grown by $30,000. Due to Trump’s policies, 401(k) growth is averaging 4%-9% this year, which is below the recent historical average, so Trump was making up numbers.

The other thing that was made up was Trump’s story about the cop. People are having trouble affording life essentials and healthcare, so does anyone really believe for a second that Donald Trump saved a man’s marriage with 401(k) growth?

Trump has become obsessed with talking about big muscular men. This, along with his love for the song YMCA, raises some questions.

Republicans are trailing Democrats by 12 points in Pennsylvania, and Trump comes to the state with the message that muscular men are thanking him.

The underlying point to every Trump story is that the declining president is stronger than even muscle men.

If Trump is going to be the Republican face of the midterm election, Democrats should have a very good night when the votes are counted in November.

Trump Administration 

The reflecting pool, seen from the Washington Monument, with workers attempting to contain the algae on Sunday, June 21, 2026. New York Times photo by Doug Mills). 

New York Times, Trump Says Vandals Hit the Reflecting Pool. Internal Records Tell a More Complex Story, Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold, June 23, 2026. The documents do not indicate that the peeling blue coating and algae blooms were caused intentionally.

President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”

But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.

Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine.

The pool had been drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5. Four days later, Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.

The cause of the cuts was unclear. While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as “razor blade slashes” made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion. The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.

By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.

The workers had also discovered that some devices installed to kill algae were not working as intended, according to the documents. And enormous algae blooms had turned portions of the pool bright green instead of dark blue.

But on June 15, Mr. Trump was still declaring the renovation a success, telling reporters that “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

The Reflecting Pool is a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s attempts to remake the capital in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday. The pool has been plagued by leaks and algae for decades; Mr. Trump boasted that he had repaired it quickly and affordably, but both problems have returned in force.Editors’ PicksIs Your Vibe ‘High-Signal’ or ‘Anti-Signal’?How a Security Guard Lives on $46,000 a Year in the East BronxDo You Know These Legendary Libraries From Around the World?

Work to fix the problems may not be finished until after July 4 — a setback for the president, who wanted the renovation to be completed before then.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump acknowledged the pool would have to be at least partially drained for more work. On Tuesday, the president said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested. They did share the Park Police incident report, which said any suspect or suspects were unknown. The report also did not mention any damage to the pool’s blue sealant, nor did it describe any vandals dumping fertilizer. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Dictatorial Dementia, William Kristol, right, June 23, 2026. Donald Trump is 80 years old. He’s lost a step. He’s even more willful and erratic than he once was. His self-indulgence and narcissism are even more out of control.

And it’s only getting worse. This may be in part because, to adapt Andrew Marvell’s famous lines a bit,

At his back he always hears / Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.

A sense of impending mortality seems to be making our president even more unhinged than ever.

So you look at him, and you try to reassure yourself: He doesn’t really have the patience to carry out a thoroughgoing subversion of the rule of law, of our political and civil liberties, or of our elections. He doesn’t really have the ability to execute a full-scale authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt he would like to see such a takeover.

And he does have young men with a lean and hungry look in positions of authority and power in the executive branch who are committed to making his dream of power without limits a reality.

Some of the men running the key national security agencies in the U.S. government are more competent than others. But they all have lots of energy. They’re all young men in a hurry to reshape our government and our country.

Bill Pulte, the new acting director of national intelligence, is 38. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are all 46. OMB Director Russell Vought is 50. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is 51.

They’re young, but they’re as determined as the old man they work for not to hand their positions over to anyone other than fellow loyalists after their terms in office, if they intend to leave office at all. They’re as determined as the old man they work for not to step aside from their powers and allow political opponents to look into what they have done. And like the old man they work for, they aren’t committed to the peaceful and democratic transfer of power after an election, or to the political norms or lawful procedures of a liberal democracy.

None of these men should be in a position of power and authority in the government of the United States. Yet here they are, hiring and firing at will, abusing their authority and politicizing their agencies in unprecedented ways.

To respond to unprecedented threats, we have to come up with unprecedented solutions. That’s why The Bulwark has built the best pro-democracy community on the internet—and it’s still growing. Join us.Subscribed

Pulte is probably the least impressive of the bunch. But he is an eager henchman. And during her tenure as DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, 45, had already begun to lay the predicate for involving the intelligence community in our domestic elections under the excuse of possible foreign interference. During his tenure at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte had shown an eagerness to weaponize his access to government information to go after Trump’s critics inside and outside of the federal government. And now Trump has gone to a lot of trouble to get Pulte in the position he’s now in as quickly as possible.

Gabbard announced her resignation as DNI on May 22, saying in her resignation letter that her last day would be June 30.

Trump announced Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence on June 2. When there was criticism even from Republicans of his lack of qualifications for the job, Trump tried two days later to reassure everyone that “It’s an acting position. It’s not permanent.” But the next day, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the fact that Pulte would be acting director would leave him “less shackled” than someone who would have to go through Senate confirmation for the position.

Then on June 9, Trump announced Gabbard would be leaving and that Pulte would be taking over sooner than expected, on June 19. This led to another wave of criticism, which Trump tried to damp down by announcing on June 11 that he intended to nominate the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, for the job. The Senate moved to quickly schedule a confirmation hearing for Clayton on June 17, intending to prevent Pulte from ever serving as acting DNI. But Trump blew up that plan hours before the scheduled hearing, citing various improbable reasons why he wanted to postpone Clayton’s nomination. His true motivation was clear: Trump wanted to make sure Pulte had the job, at least for a while.

And so Pulte officially became acting director of national intelligence last Friday, June 19. Yesterday, June 22, as one source told CNN, “The deep state firings have begun.”

And so Pulte has begun to follow in the footsteps of what Hegseth has been doing at the Pentagon, and Blanche at Justice, and Patel at the FBI. Looking at their purges along with the mass hirings at ICE, one sees that we’re entering a period of maximum authoritarian threat, one that makes Watergate look like child’s play. And we’ll be in that era of threat for the next two and a half years.

Democrats in Congress aren’t happy. In a letter to Pulte yesterday, the top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, wrote that they were “concerned” by the reports of mass firings, that “it is difficult to imagine” that the director could yet have fully informed views on his subordinates, and that this “is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity, let alone without consultation with Congress.”

These sentiments are correct. But maybe a tone of a little more alarm, a little more anger, a little more urgency would be good?

These Democratic solons might be reminded that they are allowed to be alarmed and angry and outraged about the Trump administration’s plot against our free government. And they should be bold and resolute about using all means at their power—such as blocking unrelated legislation and balking at usually routine appropriations and encouraging dissent and whistleblowing from within the executive—to thwart the pernicious schemes of the old autocrat and his younger henchmen.Subscribed

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 22, 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 23, 2026. It appears to be more and more clear that the Trump administration is mired in its own mistakes.

There is no way to spin the memorandum of understanding Trump signed last Friday at Versailles to advance peace talks with Iran as a win. Trump deliberately shut off both Congress and allies from the decision to go to war, making the conflict his own. That means the MOU, which achieves none of the goals Trump claimed while at the same time giving Iran access to hundreds of billions of dollars, belongs to Trump, too.

A wide range of U.S. commentators are calling the MOU a “disaster” and saying the United States lost the war. As Isaac Arnsdorf and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post reported, right-wing hardliner on Iran Mark Dubowitz said: “The actual MOU is deeply flawed. The administration needs to stop defending it beyond stating the truth: It’s a stopgap measure to resupply energy markets, lower gas prices, and help Republicans in the midterms.”

Today, after a quick trip to Switzerland for talks with Iranian negotiators, Vice President J.D. Vance told reporters that Iran had agreed to allow international observers periodically to inspect its nuclear program. Vance called it a “major milestone for the American people, and the first step in permanently denuclearizing or permanently ending a nuclear weapons program in Iran,” and Trump heralded the plan.

In fact, such inspections were part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 under the Obama administration, the agreement that Trump tore up in 2018, and they continued at some sites until Trump ordered military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, 2025, a year ago today. After that, Iran refused inspections of the bombed sites. Inspections are good, but they basically just get us back to where we were before Trump took over.

The administration today also waived sanctions on Iranian oil for the period covered by the MOU as that document laid out, increasing the value of Iranian oil exports.

Meanwhile, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the problems with the Reflecting Pool are the product of vandalism by “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE,” and administration officials have stationed National Guard personnel around the Reflecting Pool. They appear to be handing out citations to individuals who touch the water.

A friendly media figure at the White House today noted that in April Trump said he was going to fix the Reflecting Pool “in a week for about a million dollars,” and wanted to know what was going on two months and sixteen and a half million dollars later. Trump answered: “Ok, ready? Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him?” Trump went on to lambaste what he said were Obama’s botched repairs to the pool.

Officials are now trying to silence both those calling attention to their failures and political opponents.

Trump has reacted with fury at media stories that expose his failures in Iran. In response to a New York Times story saying analysts did not see that the war had accomplished much, Trump called the paper’s reporters “corrupt and unethical cowards” and appeared to object to the First Amendment, writing: “The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS.’ I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”

Trump is doing more than threatening media figures. He is increasing his effort to use the government against political opponents. In the face of bipartisan opposition, Trump has shoved loyalist William Pulte into position as acting director of national intelligence, overseeing the intelligence gathered by the nation’s eighteen intelligence agencies. Pulte officially took office on Friday.

Pulte has no experience in intelligence, although such experience is a requirement for the position. What he does have is demonstrated willingness to use the power of the federal government to attack Trump’s political opponents: it’s Pulte who came up with the idea of harassing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, New York attorney general Letitia James, and U.S. senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) by accusing them of criminal mortgage fraud. He also pushed the ouster of then–Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell by claiming Powell had lied to Congress about renovations to Federal Reserve office buildings.

Last year, Gina Heeb, Josh Dawsey, and Rebecca Ballhous of the Wall Street Journal reported that Pulte’s nickname in the administration is “Little Trump,” and when big Trump announced he would install Pulte as DNI, members of both parties balked. So Trump said he would instead nominate U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, who helped slow walk the release of the Epstein Files, for the position. Despite Clayton’s lack of intelligence experience, the Senate Intelligence Committee scheduled confirmation hearings for June 17 to rush him into office before Pulte could step in.

Then, as The Guardian recounted, on June 17, just hours before the confirmation hearing was about to start, Trump posted that “we are cancelling the Senate Hearing RE: DNI today.” This meant Pulte would indeed become the acting DNI. He showed up at the office the next day—a day early—and ordered staff to list about 300 people to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center.

This follows cuts under former DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who said in August 2025 she would cut 40% of the staff of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Gabbard herself is under increased scrutiny today after an in-depth story yesterday by Jon Swaine of the Washington Post explored her ties to a religious leader of what observers describe as a cult. Swaine tracked the many parallels between what appear to be orders directed at her in conversations sent by email and her official acts when she was in Congress. In one 2015 memo, Swaine writes, the advisor told “TG” “that ‘your position in general’ should be to offer an alternative to other candidates in the ‘dishonest Democratic party.’”

On Friday, Erin Banco, Phil Stewart, and Jonathan Landay of Reuters reported that the ODNI is sitting on a report that identifies vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting machines. The machines’ software is outdated, leaving vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Gabbard began the report in order to investigate Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged, but the investigation turned up no evidence of such action. Neither did a second report by a government contractor, Mojave Research, which investigated voting machines in Puerto Rico. That report, too, recommended immediate updates to software systems, but it appears those plans have not been implemented.

The administration appears to be trying to intimidate voting rights groups. On June 11, 100 FBI agents and other federal officers raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group encouraging voter participation, especially by voters from groups that have historically been disenfranchised. Then the agents went to the homes of board members, staff, and volunteers, where they seized computers and phones, took documents, and questioned the people they found.

The search warrant said they were looking for voter fraud. As the Brennan Center—along with many others—has established, a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. It is vanishingly rare.

Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, which protects voting rights, notes that Project 2025, the right-wing plan for taking over the country after Trump took office, called for using the Justice Department to go after state election officials and voter registration groups to push the myth of voter fraud and make people afraid to vote.

Waldman explained that the leading voter registration group in Ohio is the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. In 2024, he says, it registered 100,000 voters, and it works to stop partisan gerrymandering in the state.

Republicans are working to undermine their opponents with subterfuge, too. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that a network of super PACs that claim to be progressive and are spending millions in Democratic primaries are actually funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance. New documents from the Federal Election Commission identify all of the funding for Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC as coming from Conservative Americans PAC, which is funded by the right-wing American Prosperity Alliance.

But the American people are pushing back on the administration, and it seems wobbly.

Outrage over the Iran deal has risen to such a fever pitch on the right that, as Josephine Walker of Axios reported, on Thursday, right-wing commenter Tucker Carlson announced on a podcast that he was leaving the Republican Party, adding: “And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.” Carlson said he will not support the Democrats either, suggesting he is testing out whether MAGA voters, especially the antisemitic ones who embrace his attacks on Israel, will follow him if he splits from Trump.

Most people don’t seem to be buying Trump’s excuses about the Reflecting Pool, either. Social media is flooded with jokes about “Sealant Team 6” and images of the reflecting pool as the Dead Marshes from the Lord of the Rings films or with the Creature from the Black Lagoon emerging from it. Upon hearing of the arrest of former Olympian David Hearn for destruction of government property after he touched the detached liner of the pool “but didn’t destroy or break or peel anything,” conservative commentator David Frum wrote: “If destruction of government property is a crime, I wonder what they’ll do to the man who tore down the East Wing without a permit.”

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted: “There is a 24/7 camera that shows the reflecting pool. If someone went into the pool and made a 250 foot gash, it would have been seen. trump is lying again. Everyone knows it, but the people at [the Justice Department] are randomly going after people to soothe trump’s fragile ego.”

And today the courts struck back at Trump’s attempts to rig the 2026 vote. The Trump administration has tried to force states to turn over their voting rolls in order to run them through a query system that checks federal databases to make sure no immigrants are collecting benefits for which they’re not eligible. Confusingly, that system—the one used to make sure noncitizens don’t collect benefits for which they’re not eligible—is called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), making it hard to distinguish from the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (also SAVE) that Trump keeps pushing.

An investigation by Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and the Texas Tribune in February showed that when used to try to identify noncitizen voters, the system had an error rate of at least 14%, misidentifying legal voters as illegal ones.

Today U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington, D.C., ruled that the administration could not use the SAVE system to check state voting rolls, saying: “The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

Tonight Trump posted a picture of a person dressed in a pink inflatable frog costume with the word “AMPHIFA” written across the belly, carrying a sign that reads: “FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE ALGAE.” Trump called the activist “a crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor.”

“Who’s paying team algae?” social media poster The Volatile Mermaid retorted. “George Sporos?”

Heather Delaney Reese, Commentary, Trump loyalists are jumping off the sinking ship, Heather Delaney Reese, aboveright, June 23, 2026. Last Thursday, one of the loudest voices in American right-wing media sat down for an interview on a little-known political podcast in Canada, and said something that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

Almost nobody noticed.

The conversation came and went without headlines, outrage, and without much attention at all. It sat there for four days, buried beneath the endless chaos and manufactured crisis coming out of the Trump regime. Then this morning, the Associated Press picked it up, and within hours, Republicans, conservative media figures, and political operatives were scrambling to respond to what had been said. Because buried inside that otherwise forgettable interview was something few people expected to hear: Tucker Carlson declared he was leaving the party he spent years helping build.

Here is what he said, in his own words. “I would not support the Republican Party, there’s no chance. Not gonna support the Democratic Party. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He went on: “How could I or any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States. That puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens. It’s not possible to vote for people like that, and I’m not going to.” And then came the line that got everyone’s attention: “I voted Republican my entire life, I worked at Fox News. I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party, but there’s no defending this because it’s immoral. I’m out. And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”

We can’t pretend Tucker Carlson is some profile in courage. He isn’t a hero or a truth-teller. And he doesn’t get credit for finally noticing something the rest of us have been watching for years. He played a large role in getting us here. He campaigned for Donald Trump in 2024. Not just during the first term, when some could still claim ignorance about what Trump would become. Carlson endorsed him the second time around, after the insurrection, the indictments, classified documents, fraud conviction, and after the jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. He knew exactly who Donald Trump was, because the whole world knew by then. And he chose to stand next to him anyway. He did not just quietly vote for him. He used his platform to persuade millions of other Americans to do the same.

And it goes deeper than that. During the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, Carlson’s own private text messages were released to the public. They showed us who he really was behind the camera. After January 6th, while he was still defending Trump on air every single night, he wrote privately to colleagues that he hated Trump “passionately” and called him “demonic.” He admitted, in writing, that the election fraud claims were baseless. “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest,” he wrote. “But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”

He knew. He always knew. And he said it anyway, night after night, to millions of people who trusted him, because it was profitable to pretend. The only thing that has changed between then and now is that pretending is no longer profitable.

Carlson is framing his departure as a matter of principle, specifically his opposition to the Iran war and what he describes as the Republican Party prioritizing Israel over the United States. He apologized to his audience in April, saying, “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, that’s all I’ll say.” He called Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure “vile on every level” and “a war crime.” He suggested Trump might be the “Antichrist,” though he later denied using those exact words despite footage suggesting otherwise.

What we are watching is not an awakening. It is people jumping on lifeboats to save themselves. Tucker Carlson is not the first, and he will not be the last. More than thirty House Republicans have already announced they will not seek reelection. Marjorie Taylor Greene has posted publicly that she is “DONE with the America LAST Republican Party.” The influencers who helped brainwash a generation of young men into believing Trump was some kind of hero are walking it back, one by one, as the numbers turn against them.

This is exactly what happens when authoritarian coalitions begin to fail. We have seen this pattern before. When Mussolini’s own Grand Council of Fascism voted to remove him in July of 1943, it was not because those men had suddenly developed moral clarity about twenty years of fascism. It was because the war was being lost, and they wanted to survive what was coming. They had been complicit in everything. They had enabled the violence, the propaganda, the destruction of democratic institutions. And when it became clear that the project was collapsing, they turned on the man they had propped up for two decades, not to save their country, but to save themselves. The coalition does not fracture because the people inside it wake up to the evil. It fractures because the people inside it realize the evil is about to cost them personally.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.Subscribed

And there is a real danger in what comes next. Carlson did not just leave the party. He left a door open. He said he would not support Democrats and that he did not know what he would do. He did not cross the aisle. He stepped away from the wreckage while keeping his options open. And the talk about his own political ambitions is ramping up. People who follow this closely have been watching him position himself for months, not as a commentator, but as a candidate. If Tucker Carlson runs for president, we need to understand what that actually means. He pushed the Great Replacement Theory to millions of viewers. He mainstreamed white nationalist talking points. He platformed Nick Fuentes and only expressed regret when it became politically inconvenient. He helped sow distrust in elections, vaccines, and in democratic institutions themselves. Long before Donald Trump became the face of the movement, Tucker Carlson was helping create the intellectual framework that made Trumpism possible. And unlike Trump, who stumbles through speeches and drifts from grievance to grievance, Carlson is articulate, strategic, and disciplined. He knows how to make extremism sound reasonable because that has been his job for twenty years. If Trump is the wrecking ball, Carlson is the architect who knows how to build something permanent on the rubble. A Carlson presidency would not be Trumpism falling apart. It would be Trumpism growing up.

But there is another side to this story, and for us, it matters. Movements like this rarely collapse all at once. They crack, splinter, and turn on each other. The people who once marched in lockstep start looking for exits, and the people who built their careers defending the movement start calculating how to survive what comes next. That is what makes moments like this important. Not because Tucker Carlson is suddenly on our side. He isn’t. Not because he deserves credit. He doesn’t. But because every public break weakens the illusion that this movement is united.

And that could matter a great deal in 2026. Elections are often decided at the margins. If even a small percentage of Republican voters decide to stay home, vote third party, or simply disengage because trusted voices are telling them the party has lost its way, that changes the landscape. It creates opportunities in races that might otherwise be out of reach. It gives us a wider path to taking back Congress and restoring some measure of accountability.

What happens after that is a different question. The same forces that could weaken Republicans in 2026 could produce something far more organized by 2028. If Carlson truly has political ambitions, he will not spend the next two years telling people to become Democrats. He will spend them trying to build something new. Something that carries forward the grievances, conspiracies, and the authoritarian instincts of Trumpism while packaging them in a more disciplined and articulate form. That is why we should not confuse today’s fracture with a final victory. It may help us in the short term. But in the long term, it may simply be the beginning of the next phase of the same movement.

And watching all of this unfold today made me think about something else. Not Tucker Carlson or the pundits and politicians suddenly looking for an exit. I found myself thinking about the people who got this right years ago.

I thought about those who have been here since the beginning. The ones who were called alarmists. The ones who were told they were overreacting. The ones who sat through uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinners and tense conversations with friends because they refused to pretend everything was normal when it clearly wasn’t. The ones who shared these posts knowing there would be consequences. Knowing they might lose friends and relationships. Knowing they would be mocked for saying what so many people were still afraid to admit.

I remember walking into my husband Pete’s office before I ever wrote my first post and telling him I needed to start using my voice again, this time to fight for our country. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what it might cost our family. I just knew I couldn’t keep watching what was happening and stay silent. And so many of you made that same choice in your own lives, knowing that speaking out was not popular, and not always safe, and long before people like Tucker Carlson decided there was a benefit to speaking up. That is the difference.

U.S. Markets, Inflation, Gas Prices, Economy 

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Will Surrendering to Iran Relieve Trump’s Gas Pains? Paul Krugman, right, June 23, 2026. Capitulation probably won’t pay off at the polls in November. 

Trump Makes Panicked Move as Affordability Crisis Shatters His Polls

Note: Readers might want to check out my discussion from last week with Greg Sargent of The New Republic. Podcast and transcript here.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric on Iran oscillates wildly from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. But Trump has run out of military options that don’t involve huge war crimes, so we seem to be heading for a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s terms. And that includes the imposition of de facto tolls, whatever they are called.

There is no mystery about Trump’s surrender: He’s desperate to end the war because he is paying a steep political price for high gasoline prices, and the midterms are only 4 ½ months away.

But can Trump rehabilitate his standing with American voters by throwing in the towel? Probably not, for both economic and political reasons. I would argue that there are four points of slippage between Trump’s political goals and what is likely to happen.

The state of the Strait: Even if the war is truly over, it will take time to return world oil supplies to normal levels. First, there has been substantial damage to the Persian Gulf’s infrastructure, which will take months, if not years, to repair. Second, many oil tankers are now in the wrong place and it will take weeks or months to move them. Third, some shipping channels are at risk from stray mines. Lastly, the world met the Hormuz crisis in part by running down oil inventories, which will now need to be rebuilt.

It’s true that a surge in Iranian oil exports has begun thanks to the lifting of the U.S. blockade. This will add to global oil supplies but will also strengthen the regime. But despite this surge of Iranian shipments, prices of oil futures — promises to buy or sell oil on specified dates — indicate that the oil markets expect oil prices to decline at only a slow rate for the rest of this year:

Rockets and feathers: There is a well-documented pattern to how the price of gasoline responds to changes in the price of crude oil. When there is a global shock that causes the price of crude oil to soar, gasoline prices rise like a rocket. But when the crisis is over and crude prices plunge, the price of gas declines only gradually ­— it drifts down like feathers.

Will that happen this time? Gasoline and, to a lesser extent, diesel, have fallen considerably in price from their peak:

They are, however, still well above their prewar levels, and by more than you would expect given the commonly used rule of thumb:

$10 on price of crude = $0.25 on price of gasoline

Crude oil prices are $10-$15 a barrel higher than they were prewar, which would point to gasoline prices $0.25-$0.37 higher per gallon. Yet gasoline is currently almost $1 a gallon higher than it was before the war.

So if the “rockets and feathers” pattern continues to apply, gasoline prices will be elevated for months to come, thwarting Trumpist hopes of quick political relief from capitulating to Iran.

Prices beyond gasoline: As you can see in the chart above, the war on Iran sent the price of diesel fuel soaring by significantly more than the price of gasoline. Unlike gasoline, which is mainly purchased by consumers, diesel is mainly used by businesses, for trucking and industrial uses. So the surge in diesel prices led to a surge in business costs rather than a direct burden on consumers.

True, businesses do eventually pass higher costs on to consumers. The key word, however, is “eventually.” This means that there is probably substantial Iran war-induced inflation still in the pipeline.

Nor were soaring prices of diesel the only cost the war imposed on businesses. The Persian Gulf is normally a key supplier of many chemicals, whose prices soared when the Strait of Hormuz was closed. For example, the price of urea, a key fertilizer with industrial uses as well, temporarily rose by 75 percent when the Strait was closed. Again, some of the effect of these cost shocks still hasn’t hit consumer prices.

Moreover, the economy is delivering inflationary shocks independent of the war. Notably, the AI/datacenter boom has driven a rapid rise in electricity prices and huge increases in the prices of memory chips, which are used in almost all consumer electronics, from smartphones to laptops to game consoles. The AI boom has also pushed up interest rates on mortgages and consumer loans. Oh, and Trump’s cuts to Obamacare subsidies are causing many Americans’ health insurance costs to soar.

So while consumers are getting some relief at the gas pump, they’re facing persistent sticker shock on many other goods. It’s safe to predict that consumers won’t be in a celebratory mood on D-I [defeat by Iran] Day. Instead, they are likely to feel that any claims of victory are Pyrrhic at best.

The cost of broken promises: We have just endured the second big gasoline price shock of the past five years. The previous shock, during the Biden years, briefly sent average prices of gasoline above $5 a gallon. Like the recent price spike, the 2022 run-up in gas prices was largely caused by a war — the war between Russia and Ukraine. That wasn’t a war that the U.S. president launched on a whim. Regardless, the price of gasoline fell rapidly after June 2022:

Inflation also fell rapidly, especially if you exclude the price of shelter, which as measured tends, for technical reasons, to lag far behind market prices:So what did cheaper gas and rapid disinflation without a recession do for perceptions about President Biden’s handling of the economy? Almost nothing. The Roper Center published an analysis of trends in Biden’s economic approval rating, and found hardly any improvement when gas prices and overall inflation plunged:

You may argue that this was unfair because Biden was punished for a global inflation shock that wasn’t his fault. Furthermore, his overall economic management was in fact very good. In fact, that’s what I have argued, and a majority of Americans now say that the economy was better under Biden than under Trump. However, that argument is beside the point for analyzing the effect of the Trump surrender. The point, instead, is that once a leader has lost the public’s economic trust, that trust doesn’t come back just because gasoline prices have receded.

I would add that it may be especially hard for the Trumpists to make the case that things have turned around when they were never willing to admit that anything was wrong in the first place, insisting even as prices soared that we were living in a “golden age.”

So will Trump’s surrender to Iran rescue him and his party from a blue wave in November? It’s very unlikely. I suggest they find themselves some lifejackets.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Gas stations are using AI to inflate prices, new lawsuit alleges, Judd Legum, right, June 23, 2026. A new federal lawsuit alleges that gas station companies across California are engaged in an illegal conspiracy, powered by AI software, to raise prices.

The class action lawsuit claims the corporate owners of over 1,700 California gas stations — including Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart, and Circle K — are using Kalibrate, an AI-powered platform, as part of “a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition.” Kalibrate, the complaint argues, “relies on the data of competing gas stations to coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers throughout the state.”

According to the complaint, gas stations that use Kalibrate software charge between 6 cents and 30 cents more per gallon. In California, “a single cent increase at the pump will drain a whopping $134 million from California drivers’ wallets every year across the state.”

As the lawsuit notes, gas stations traditionally “competed for customers by aggressively undercutting one another’s retail prices.” Independent operators “chase one another’s prices down as far as they were able (taking account of their costs), in the hope of convincing more drivers to fuel at their pumps.”

Kalibrate encourages gas station owners to abandon this system and allow their AI software to automatically determine prices. The software, known as Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, connects directly to gas station signs and pumps. “Kalibrate promises that if gas stations surrender their pricing decisions and competitively sensitive cost and volume data to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, the software will enable them to avoid competing with other area stations and to charge higher prices to consumers,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit quotes extensively from Kalibrate’s interface and marketing materials. In one striking example, the plaintiffs highlight a feature that allows gas stations to coordinate a “restoration,” which the complaint describes as “a phenomenon where nearly all gas stations in an area raise their prices contemporaneously and by a large amount.” Kalibrate’s software “includes a feature that allows customers to initiate or join these market-wide price hikes.”

Kalibrate’s marketing materials warn gas station owners that when faced with “falling oil prices… it’s critical to avoid a race to the bottom.” The company advises gas stations to avoid “sacrificing margin” to increase their volume of sales.

Prospective customers, according to the lawsuit, are told that using Kalibrate will give them “complete visibility on your competitors.” The company’s marketing materials also warn gas station owners that lowering prices could trigger “a downward spiral and has negative implications for everyone operating in that market.”

Notably, the lawsuit claims “Kalibrate also has shown potential customers the confidential, non-public, competitively sensitive information of competing gas stations—including non-public, competitively sensitive fuel sales volumes—that Kalibrate would make available to them.”

Kalibrate touts that its software will help operators “squeeze out profits” by selling fewer gallons of gas at higher prices. In one example highlighted by the company, a station using Kalibrate’s software sees its volume of sales decrease by 2.2% but its profits increase by $587 per week.

Although the lawsuit is focused on California, “Kalibrate Fuel Pricing is widely used in the United States.” Kalibrate claims that it “sets fuel prices for ‘8 of the top 10 fuel retailers in the USA,’ and for 14 of the top 20 convenience store chains.”The new law at the heart of the lawsuit

The lawsuit against Kalibrate and its customers is based on AB 325, an amendment to California’s antitrust laws that went into effect on January 1, 2026. Under AB 325, it is “unlawful for a person to use or distribute a common pricing algorithm as part of a contract, combination in the form of a trust, or conspiracy to restrain trade or commerce in violation of this chapter.” A “common pricing algorithm” is defined broadly as “any methodology, including a computer, software, or other technology, used by two or more persons, that uses competitor data to recommend, align, stabilize, set, or otherwise influence a price or commercial term.”

“Kalibrate Fuel Pricing is software used by two or more persons that uses competitor data to recommend, align, stabilize, set, and influence gasoline prices,” the complaint alleges.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that AB 325 “was enacted to make clear that companies cannot evade liability for fixing prices by delegating their illegal trusts to an algorithm.” In other words, just because AI allows gas stations to avoid meeting in the proverbial “smoke-filled room” to fix prices, it doesn’t make their conduct permissible.

The new law was passed in response to companies like RealPage, which uses an AI-powered algorithm to set rents in apartment buildings. A lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2024 accused RealPage of selling “software to landlords that collects nonpublic information from competing landlords and uses that combined information to make pricing recommendations.” RealPage allegedly cost renters $3.8 billion in 2023, according to a 2024 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Under the Trump administration, the DOJ settled its case against RealPage in exchange for some modest reforms on how the software operates. 10 states, however, are continuing their litigation against the company. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: We’re Still Living in Alan Greenspan’s World, Catherine Rampell, right, June 23, 2026. As Fed chair, Greenspan guided the economy through several bumpy patches, and presided over the longest economic expansion in American history. This record, plus his almost mythological dialect and musical background, helped earn him the nickname “Maestro.”

But his actual economic legacy is a bit messier than the name might imply.

That “Great Moderation” he oversaw also masked enormous market bubbles, an extremely laissez-faire approach to bank oversight, and of course a brewing global financial crisis that boiled over within a year after Greenspan’s departure from the Fed.

And thank God, in retrospect, for the timing of that particular changing of the guard.

After all, Greenspan was succeeded by Ben Bernanke, a scholar of financial crises who wrote his dissertation on the Great Depression. Relative to Greenspan, Bernanke favored more muscular monetary policy interventions that almost certainly rescued us from plunging into another global depression.

Bernanke also set the Fed on a path toward more open and more frequent public communication. He declared that the days of the dictum “Never explain, never excuse”—a line attributed to a pre-World War II Bank of England governor—were over. The logic was that increased visibility into the Fed’s actions and aims improves the central bank’s accountability, effectiveness, and (perhaps most critically) its speed.

“Ambiguity has its uses, but mostly in noncooperative games like poker,” Bernanke explained to his Fed colleagues a few years before getting the top job, while Greenspan was still chair. “Monetary policy is a cooperative game. The whole point is to get financial markets on our side and for them to do some of our work for us.” . . .

Over the past decade or so, Warsh has called for a rollback of Bernanke’s changes and a return to Greenspanian levels of evasiveness. When Warsh was sworn in as chair last month, Greenspan was the only former Fed chair to whom Warsh paid homage by name. Bernanke, the chair whom Warsh actually served under, was neither mentioned nor even on the guest list.

Last week, days before the Maestro passed, Warsh gave a taste of what this Greenspanian throwback might look like.

In his first Fed meeting as chair, Warsh slashed the length of the official Fed statement on interest rates, and punted on most reporter questions. (He declared that a future “task force” would resolve whatever issue they asked about.) He also announced that he had not participated in Fed officials’ standard practice of forecasting the path of interest rates, via an anonymized chart known as the “dot plot.”

This approach is consistent with Warsh’s stated preference for opacity—but also, conveniently, allows him to avoid publicly acknowledging that interest rates are going up, not down, contrary to Donald Trump’s demands.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Still Radical, Still American… Gordon Wood chronicled America’s rambunctious democratic culture. It’s giving way to a new deference to authority, writes JOSHUA ZEITZ.
• TMZ D.C. Knows It’s Not Above What It Covers… The gossip site’s early success in the capital shows that readers and audiences are hungry for political journalism that is as cynical as they are, observes KAIVAN SCHROFF.
• Call the Pool Police… On the flagship pod, BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER to discuss why Trump is so embarrassed by his own personal vandalism of the Reflecting Pool that he’s got the Justice Department investigating his latest conspiracy about bad guys that don’t exist.

Quick Hits

CASH-4-FARMERS, IRAN EDITION: Speaking to reporters in Switzerland yesterday, Vice President JD Vance test-launched a new argument to get the administration’s Iran-hawk critics off their backs about the unfreezing of Iranian funds: Iran won’t get a penny until we’re sure they are willing to play nice from now on, and when they do get the money, we’ll make them use it to buy American farm products. Win win!

“Jared Kushner actually came up with a very interesting solution,” Vance said. “If there is any frozen Iranian assets that are unfrozen, then we have approval over that process, the Qataris have approval over that process, and then the money would actually go to buy American soy, American corn, and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”

Unfortunately, overnight, Iranian Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf denied both points: In his telling, the United States agreed last night to release $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets at once, with “no obligation to buy agricultural products from the United States.” A bummer, but not to worry: We’re sure Jared has some more bangers up his sleeve. Maybe they’ll release the funds only after the money is converted into Trump crypto?

MISFIRES OF THE BRAIN: By now we’re all pretty used to the wild fantasyland of Donald Trump’s febrile imagination, which as president of the United States he gets to force us all to commute to every day. Even so, we’ve rarely seen—in terms of sheer surreal strangeness—a moment like Trump’s conversation with reporters yesterday at the White House about the sad state of his Reflecting Pool renovation. Trump continued to claim to have proof of a whole host of facts utterly unsupported by material reality: Specifically, that vile Dumocrat vandals had carved a football-field-length gash in the pool basin.

“We have a 290-, 300-foot slit right through it. Probably a knife of some kind,” Trump said. Later he revised his opinion: “I think it’s 350, not 250. A 350-foot slit from one end to the other.”¹

But Mr. Trump, the bemused reporters replied, people have been down there checking the reflecting pool out. Some of the blue paint is peeling up, sure. But there’s no slit to be seen.²

“All you have to do is see the Parks Department. They’ll show it to you,” Trump insisted. “But I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently.” The president tried to continue, but was interrupted at this point by orderlies who suddenly burst into the room and bundled him into a padded van. (Just kidding! He’s still in charge as we speak!)

AMERICA GOES UNSAVED: Senate Republicans want Donald Trump to come down to their lunch tomorrow to hear some bad news: They’re not passing the SAVE America Act, and it’s time for him to stop commanding them to. Politico has more:

Donald Trump is about to come face to face with one of his frequent punching bags: Senate Republicans.

They might just be in a mood to punch back.

The president was invited to GOP senators’ Wednesday lunch to push for his No. 1 priority, the GOP election bill known as the SAVE America Act. But several outgoing Republicans who have clashed with Trump said Monday they will be there to deliver a reality check: The bill isn’t passing, and it’s time to move on.

“I’m going to be there front and center,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “It will be important if it actually is a constructive exchange of different opinions, and hopefully we can all get on the same page. Right now, we’re not in a great place.”

We’ll believe it when we see it. Read the whole thing.

High Tech, Oligarchs, Social Media, Propaganda 

Fortune Magazine: Son of pro-crypto New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand raises $30 million to launch a derivatives exchange, Ben Weiss, June 18, 2026. The 22-year-old son of a crypto-friendly senator plans to launch his own exchange for a type of derivative popularized by digital asset traders.

Theodore Gillibrand, whose mother is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), has drummed up $30 million in a fundraise led by the venture firm Lux Capital, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The deal valued Theodore's startup at $300 million, said the sources, who asked for anonymity to discuss private business dealings.

Dubbed American Perpetuals Exchange Corp., or APEC, the trading platform aims to list perpetual futures, or "perps," a form of futures contracts that allow traders to bet on the price of assets without holding the assets themselves. As opposed to standard futures, these derivatives don't have a set expiration date.

Theodore's startup plans to apply for a license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list perpetuals for equities and stock indices, not cryptocurrencies, according to a presentation filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A spokesperson for Lux Capital confirmed that it led the fundraise.

"It is clear that the future of these markets is not in offshore and unregulated foreign entities but rather in a regulated and institutional American company," said Theodore in a statement, confirming details of the round.Rise of 'perps'

Perpetual futures have long been popular on digital asset exchanges. But over the past year, the derivatives have become one of the buzziest assets in the broader world of finance. The decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, which initially specialized in perpetuals, is one of the most profitable protocols in crypto, and other startups focused on the derivatives have raised significant chunks of change from top-flight venture capitalists.

More recently, perpetual futures, which trade 24/7 on Hyperliquid and similar venues, became popular among traders during the U.S.'s war with Iran, as speculators traded oil index perps on the protocol while traditional exchanges weren't open for business.

The financial instruments have also won favor from U.S. regulators. In May, the prediction market Kalshi became the first U.S. company to add perpetual futures for its traders after it received approval from the CFTC to list contracts for Bitcoin.

The Intercept, Israel Asked Facebook to Censor Iran War Content, Internal Documents Show, Sam Biddle, June 18, 2026. Company records reviewed by The Intercept show Israel urged Facebook and Instagram to take down posts supportive of Iran.

Israel’s government asked Meta to censor social media content about its ongoing war against Iran, according to internal documents viewed by The Intercept.

Company records show that Israel petitioned Meta to take down Facebook and Instagram posts expressing support for Iran, opposition to Israel, and even depictions of Iranian missile impacts.

The government flagged a variety of materials related to the war, including posts mourning the death of Ayatollah Khamenei following his assassination by the U.S. and Israel on the opening day of the conflict, content supportive of Iran’s retaliatory attacks, and Iranian accounts that shared military analysis and propaganda sympathetic to the Iranian regime’s perspective.

“Governments wanting to suppress speech that is critical of their war efforts is as old as time.”

In some cases, Meta complied with the censorship requests, the records show, though it is unclear on what grounds. Meta maintains that it only removes content as required by law or materials that violate its speech policies.

When asked how many Iran-related takedown requests had been granted to date since the war began, the company did not answer. The Israeli Ministry of Justice, which submits takedown requests to social media platforms, did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s social media lobbying is not new; for years the nation has leaned on its close relationship with Meta to push for targeted enforcement of the company’s content moderation rulebook.

Israel’s Office of the State Attorney routinely lodges complaints to social media platforms on behalf of state security agencies about content deemed illegal or said to promote “terrorism,” according to its website. In the documents reviewed by The Intercept, the office in some cases made no claim that the social media content violated Israeli law. Instead, the office asked that posts or accounts should be removed because they were in violation of Meta’s content moderation rulebook.

Meta, for instance, designates Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “Dangerous Organization,” and prohibits users from engaging in many forms of positive speech about its actions. This means posts supportive of retaliatory missile launches by the IRGC, for instance, could run afoul of the company’s rules. No such prohibition exists for users who post favorably about the U.S. or Israeli militaries.

Meta did not respond to questions about the Iran war requests, but spokesperson Daniel Roberts provided a statement to The Intercept. “Anyone is able to report content they think violates our rules. Regardless of who or how a piece of content is flagged, we assess it based on our policies, which govern what is and isn’t allowed on our platform. It is wrong and irresponsible to imply that these requests are in any way unusual or improper.”

A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.

Meta has faced scrutiny, specifically in the Middle East, for removing content that doesn’t violate the company’s rules. A 2022 audit commissioned by the company itself found discrepancies in its content moderation practices between Arabic and Hebrew content. “Arabic content had greater over-enforcement (e.g., erroneously removing Palestinian voice) on a per user basis.” the company found. A 2023 report by the company’s inhouse Oversight Board described the “over-enforcement” of the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals blacklist, disproportionately composed of Muslim and Middle Eastern entities.

Meta has long claimed that as an American company, it is legally required to sometimes remove content pertaining to certain entities sanctioned by the U.S., such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But legal scholars say that has little to no precedent or basis in existing sanctions law, which focus on matters of material support rather than political speech. It’s a policy that has created an immense ideological slant: A company headquartered in California can determine what is or is not permissible speech for billions of users across the world, only a fraction of whom are American.

Further adding to the imbalance when it comes to Middle East crises is the fact that Meta has granted Israel privileged access to its content moderation policy teams. In 2024, The Intercept reported how Meta employee Jordana Cutler, a former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, served as a dedicated liaison to the Israeli government, advocating for the country’s interests and helping facilitate the removal of unwanted speech. Few other countries in the world have a dedicated representative within Meta — in 2020, a similar policy head for India market resigned after revelations she had lobbied for rule enforcement that favored India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party. Asked if Cutler has had a role in facilitating Israeli takedown requests of content relating to the war, Meta did not respond.

Epstein Files, Coverup

Future President Trump, above right, with his onetime best friend Jeffrey Epstein, left, along with Trump's now-notorious birhday greeting to Epstein.

Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Just FYI: The SDNY Got Evidence of What Epstein Did to a Five Year Old and Responded With Two Words, Jana, left, June 23, 2026. A five year old child was sexually abused at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. Her lawyers gave the Southern District of New York photographs, names, and phone numbers. The federal response is two words.

Trigger warning:This piece describes child sexual abuse, trafficking, and threats made against a survivor. Some of it is hard to read. We have kept the detail to what is necessary to understand what happened and what the government did with that information. If you or someone you know needs support, SafeEscape.org offers confidential help for survivors of trafficking and abuse.

Her name is not in this piece. She is not a case number to us either. She is a person who was a small child once, in a room with a blue couch, in a house that should never have let her in the door.

This is what the documents say happened to her and what the United States government did after they knew.What Happened

In October 2019, ten weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody, attorneys at the Marsh Law Firm wrote to the Southern District of New York. They were writing about a client. An Israeli citizen. A woman who had been trafficked for decades, across Israel, the United States, and Canada.

The letter named her traffickers. Her uncle, described as a powerful figure in a well known Russian crime family. A Greek Orthodox Church priest, reportedly known for abusing children. Others, not yet named publicly.

The full letter is in the federal record. EFTA00078209–12.

Among the evidence her lawyers gave the SDNY was a photograph showing her being abused. She is approximately five years old, the year is approximately 1997. Part of a man is visible and the room has a blue couch and a window facing the street.

Lawyers compared that window to the upper floors of Epstein’s Manhattan mansion at 9 East 71st Street. The view was consistent with looking out across the street at the Frick Museum.

She remembered more than the photograph showed. She said the house was big and that it belonged to a rich man. She gave the address as 9, 71. She described a large arched front door with a carved face above it and two more faces on either side. She described a large adult doll hanging from a chandelier inside the home. She described many bedrooms, and said the older girls were kept in different ones than she was.

She remembered names. Jeffrey. Joseph Karo. Yoav Gil. A woman she and other children knew as Lane, who showed them how to use oil for massages, and told them what would be expected of them afterward with the men.

This is the same architecture other survivors have described in sworn testimony elsewhere in the Epstein files. A house, a routine, a woman giving instructions, men waiting. She was only five. The instructions were the same.

Her lawyers told the SDNY they needed help. They asked for emergency travel documents to bring her into the United States so she could hand over what she had directly to law enforcement. They had photographs of her current injuries, they had the names of perpetrators who appeared in some of the photographs, and they had phone numbers those perpetrators had used to contact her.

They were specific about the danger. They wrote that they were afraid the Russian crime family would find her, and would go after anyone who had helped her.

Her communications with her traffickers were in Hebrew. Her phone records traced to Ukrainian numbers, later confirmed by the anti-trafficking organization DeliverFund.

In August 2019, two months before this letter was sent, she received a message. It contained a photo of a mutilated woman and the Hebrew text said ‘this is what will happen to you if you talk, so be quiet.’

She did not stop. A year later, in November 2020, the Marsh Law Firm wrote again. This time the letter ran nine pages and went directly to Audrey Strauss, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It included expert psychological evaluation. It included photographs comparing the mansion’s exterior to the Frick Museum across the street, side by side. It included a family photograph taken on an El Al flight, used to document her injuries.

EFTA00078196–208.What Federal Prosecutors Did

This was not the first time this exact pattern happened to an Epstein victim. In 1996, an artist named Maria Farmer called the FBI to report that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had assaulted her, and that they were running a child trafficking operation. She has said an agent hung up on her. Nothing happened for almost thirty years. Farmer has since sued the federal government over that silence.

“If the FBI had acted, they could have saved thousands of victims and nearly 30 years of trauma,” Marsh Law Firm partner Helene Weiss said publicly, after Farmer’s 1996 report was finally released as part of the DOJ’s file production.

Twenty three years later, the same shape. Somewhere inside the Southern District of New York, that nine page letter was logged, forwarded, and answered.

The internal routing email is also in the federal record. Here it is in full.

The original iteration of this ended up going through. See the attached thread. Among other issues, her counsel apparently advised a year ago that she was not in a position to be interviewed at the time, though it looks like it was referred it to FBI in any event.

Just FYI. — EFTA00078207–08.

That is the entire response on file. A photograph of a child being sexually assaulted, a living witness, named perpetrators, phone numbers. A federal prosecutor’s office acknowledged it, noted that an interview had not happened, mentioned an FBI referral with no detail attached, and closed the loop with two words that mean nothing more than ‘I saw this.’

Fourteen months had passed since the first letter. Ghislaine Maxwell had already been arrested. The SDNY had an active, high-profile prosecution running. This was not a cold tip mailed in by a stranger. It was a sworn legal filing from a known firm, with photographic evidence, sent directly to the U.S. Attorney.

The pattern is not one bad afternoon in one office. It is the same shape twice, twenty three years apart. A credible report arrives, sits, and nothing is done. The survivor is left to wonder if anyone read it.Where This Stands Now

As of this writing, there is no public record that this report was ever investigated. No charges have been filed against the uncle, the priest, or anyone else named in either letter. There is no public indication anyone from law enforcement ever interviewed her.

In the years since, money has moved through the Epstein case. The original victims’ compensation fund paid out roughly $125 million before it closed in 2021. In February 2026, Epstein’s estate agreed to a settlement of up to $35 million for survivors who missed that earlier window. In March 2026, Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle claims it ignored warning signs in Epstein’s accounts. JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank settled for hundreds of millions of dollars before that.

We searched for any reference to this letter in connection with any of these settlements, any later court filing, or any news report published after November 2020. We found nothing. As far as the public record shows, the SDNY’s response in this file remains the last documented action taken on her case by anyone in government.

In January 2026, after the DOJ released millions of pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked whether the new material would lead to further charges. He said the files contained “a lot of horrible photographs,” but that photographs and emails alone do not, in his words, “allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody.”

We are not asking readers to find her. We are asking you not to try. She has already been threatened into silence once. The documents that name her abusers are not an invitation.

We have one question, aimed at one office.

The Southern District of New York received a credible report of a child being sexually abused, with photographic evidence, named suspects, and an offer of full cooperation from a living witness. Someone logged that letter, someone forwarded it, someone typed two words and considered it handled.

Who was it? What did they do with the FBI referral? Why is “Just FYI” the last entry in this file.

These are not rhetorical questions. They have answers. People inside that office know what happened to this case, and they have not said so publicly.

We are not asking. We are on record demanding they do.

June 22 

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: U.S. Eases Sanctions as Vance Says Iran Agrees to Resume Nuclear Inspections, Staff Reports, June 22, 2026. If confirmed, the provisions would be in line with an Obama-era deal President Trump tore up in 2018. Vice President JD Vance hailed the latest round of talks as a “foundation” for lasting peace. Here’s the latest.
• New York Times, News Analysis: First Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Ends With High Hopes and Big Challenges, Jim Tankersley, June 22, 2026. Mediators reported progress toward reaching a final deal within 60 days. They also said that negotiators had dwelled on issues that were supposed to be settled.
• Medias Touch Network, Monday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Caves to Iran While Draining a Stinking Swamp of His Own Making, Ben Meiselas, right, June 22, 2026..Today’s top stories we’re tracking. 
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: The Clown Show Moves To Switzerland, Ukraine Gains in Crimea, Simon Rosenberg, right,June 22, 2026. A new CBS poll shows how badly Trump has lost the argument on his failed war. Only 21% of voters think the war has solved more problems than it has created.
• New York Times, U.K. Live Updates: Starmer Announces Resignation; Burnham Wins Key Endorsement, Michael D. Shear, June 22, 2026. Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepped down as leader of the governing Labour Party. Andy Burnham, right,the party’s most popular politician, said he would seek the prime minister’s job and secured the support of a potential rival.
• New York Times, Who Is Andy Burnham, the Man Who Could Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister? Stephen Castle, Updated June 22, 2026. Charismatic, northern and exuding a relaxed optimism, Mr. Burnham is a contrast to Keir Starmer. His allies hope he could mend Labour’s relationship with voters.

Blunt Talk From Trump's Conservative Italian Erstwhile 'Friends' 

• The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Italy Called Trump an "Asshole;"  Why Won’t America’s Media be Similarly Candid? Thom Hartmann, right, June 22, 2026. A conservative Italian newspaper used the blunt type of word American journalists keep avoiding, and exposed how far our press will go to normalize the abnormal...

This weekend, the right-wing Italian daily Libero, a major conservative newspaper that shares a fair amount of Donald Trump’s politics, ran a one-word verdict on the President of the United States across its front page. The Italian word is coglione. The polite translation is “idiot.” The translation that George Conway and half of social media reached for, and the one the paper plainlyintended, is a good deal blunter than that and more dictionary accurate: “asshole.” What set the newspaper off wasn’t the war, or the self-dealing, or the cruelty toward immigrants: it was Trump’s lie about a photograph. He pathetically told an Italian network that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had “begged” him repeatedly for a picture at the G7 in Évian, that she’d wanted it so badly he “felt sorry for her” and went along.

News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Administration Suffers Court Losses Across America, Protests at Home and Abroad, Reflecting Pool Issues Ramp Up, Aaron Parnas, right, June 22, 2026. Trump Judges REBUKE Administration as Mass Protests Spread GLOBAL, Horrible Day for Trump!
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: America’s Kiddie-Pool Authoritarian, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 22, 2026. He can’t control the Reflecting Pool or the Strait of Hormuz, but he can arrest people for nothing.
• The Parnas Perspective, Monday Update: Mass Arrests at Reflecting Pool, Trump Seeks Greenland -- for All You Can Eat Shrimp?, Starmer Resigns, Iran Talks Progress: Aaron Parnas, right, June 22, 2026. Keir Starmer has officially resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Five people have now been arrested at the Reflecting Pool and five more have been cited, with some in MAGA even suggesting I should be arrested for visiting the site and touching the algae-filled water. Talks between the United States and Iran are showing signs of progress after a turbulent day in Switzerland. Trump is reportedly pursuing Greenland, partly tied to a proposal to bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster. And much more.

Trump Tantrums, Governance, Grievances

U.S. President Donald Trump clutches Indian leader Narendra Modi’s arm for support while trying to scale a stair at the Group of 7 (G7) Summit in Europe as others look on (Evelyn Hockstein photo via Getty Images).

• Public Notice, Accountability Journalism: What if we covered Trump's age the way we covered Biden's? Paul Waldman, right, June 22, 2026.  His rapid decline is obvious. Why not give it the attention it deserves? 
• The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Italy Called Trump an "Asshole;"  Why Won’t America’s Media be Similarly Candid? Thom Hartmann, right, June 22, 2026. A conservative Italian newspaper used the blunt type of word American journalists keep avoiding, and exposed how far our press will go to normalize the abnormal...
• Heather Delaney Reese, Opinion: Donald Trump is out of control, and there's no one left to tell him no, Heather Delaney Reese, June 22, 2026. On a warm June Sunday, while Americans were gathering with family to celebrate Father’s Day, the President of the United States spent the better part of his day hiding away at Camp David, posting erratic threats on social media. Instead of reflecting on his children or remembering his own father, he posted concerning rants on Truth Social and found twenty minutes to give a telephone interview with a Fox News reporter, threatening to end the lives of foreign dignitaries and erase an entire country from the planet. 
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Straight to Jail, Right Away, Andrew Egger, right, June 22, 2026. Until now, Donald Trump’s shambolic attempts to renovate the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool have been just a silly, funny sideshow. But this weekend, the story took a more sinister turn.
• PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Trump Melts Down When Reporters Challenge His Reflecting Pool Vandalism Story, Jason Easley, June 22, 2026. Donald Trump kept claiming it was vandals when reporters started asking questions about the damage done to the Reflecting Pool, but the president's story made no sense. 

More On U.S.-Israeli Wars,  Militiary, Foreign Policy

President Trump addresses about 800 U.S. generals and admirals in a political-rally-style speech at Quantico, VA on Sept. 30, 2025, preceded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, below, a former National Guard officer who prefers to call himself "Secretary of War" instead of the congressionally mandated term "Secretary of Defense." 

Senior military leaders look on at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia.

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: How MAGA Undermined the Military, Paul Krugman, right,June 22, 2026. Ideology, bigotry and cronyism have endangered national security.
• New York Times, Mona Khalil, Defender of Sea Turtles, Killed in an Israeli Strike in Lebanon, Ishani Desai, June 21, 2026 (print ed.). For a quarter century, Ms. Khalil ran a guesthouse and worked to protect endangered sea turtles who every summer lay their eggs on a stretch of beach near Tyre, Lebanon.

High-Tech Political, Economic, Workplaces Controls: In Case You Missed It

• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary:The techno-fascist plot to end democracy around the world, Wayne Madsen,right,, June 21, 2026. The diabolical scheme by Thiel, Musk, Epstein, and political Zionists to fix elections, collect personal data, and create a global techno-fascist dictatorship powered by a network of data centers.
• Crust News, Exclusive: Oracle is Forcing Employees to Hand Over Their Face, Staff Report, Updated June 14, 2026. The tech giant is rolling out mandatory facial biometric authentication for its U.S. staff and contractors, using a vendor with an active biometric privacy lawsuit on its record.
• Gothamist, powered by WNYC, Artificial intelligence firms are feasting on Manhattan office space, Angela Weiss, June 22, 2026. Earlier this month, the artificial intelligence company Altana signed a lease for 62,000 square feet of office space in Midtown, tripling its current Williamsburg office space. 

More News Roundups 

U.S. Vice President JD Vance listens to U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as they attend a quadrilateral meeting between the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar at the Lake Lucerne Summit, aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict near Stansstad, Switzerland, June 21, 2026 (Pool photo by Nathan Howard of Reuters).

• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Blows Up Peace Talks with Iran, Ben Meiselas,right, June 21 2026. He just can't help himself. 
• The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: MAGA Questions Trump's Health, Iran Negotiations Erupt, Vance Embarrassed, Duckling Dies at Reflecting Pool, Aaron Parnas, right, June 21, 2026. Donald Trump has completely derailed the peace process between the United States and Iran and J.D. Vance has been embarrassed in Geneva on the world stage in a historic, historic embarrassment to the United States of America.

U.S. Law, Crime, Rights, Courts, Justice: In Case You Missed It 

• All Rise News, Analysis: Scrutinizing Trump DOJ's No. 3, Adam Klasfeld, above right, June 21, 2026. Stan Woodward's ex-clients could benefit from Trump's slush fund. That's a conflict of interest, a bar complaint alleges.
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Andrew Boutros’ Secret Walkaway Conspiracy, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 22, 2026. The other day, Judge April Perry released the redacted versions of the grand jury transcripts in the Broadview 6 case. 
• New York Times, Trump Administration Shuttered a Criminal Probe Into Fraudster’s Clemency, Kenneth P. Vogel, Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum, June 22, 2026 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors had been examining the circumstances behind the commutation of David Gentile’s sentence. He was aided by a Catholic priest friendly with the president.
• Emptywheel, Analysis:The Reflecting Pool Arrests Are an Attempt to Cover Up Trump’s Corruption, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 21-22, 2026. As green algae blooms in the reflecting pool in DC and the purportedly protective layer starts peeling off in sheets, Donald Trump has demanded and gotten arrests — most notably a former Olympic canoeist who claims all he did was touch the undercoat that is peeling off, while others claim they received citations for merely sticking their hand in the pool — serving his false claim that sabotage, rather than his own incompetence, led to the failure of his reflecting pool project.

U.S. Economy, Inflation, Markets, Jobs

• New York Times, Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman Through Prosperity and Crisis, Dies at 100, Richard W. Stevenson, June 22, 2026. The pre-eminent economic policymaker of his time and a skilled political operator, he favored market-friendly stances that would later come to be associated with destructive financial forces.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance  

Michelle and Barack Obama at the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago last week. (Barack Obama Presidential Center photo).

• The Contrarian, Opinion: You Can See Why Trump Hates Obama, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 22, 2026. Obama is everything Trump could never be.
• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: UPDATE: The money behind a network of sham “progressive” super PACs, Judd Legum, right, June 22, 2026. A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA).
• New York Times, The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s, Michael H. Keller, Eli Murray, Danielle Ivory and Irineo Cabreros, June 22, 2026 (print ed.). For decades, American roads were steadily getting safer for pedestrians. But around 2009, the trend reversed. Since then, the number of pedestrians killed each year has risen by about 75 percent.
• Axios, Raging on D.C.'s doorstepInbox, Hans Nichols, Andrew Solender, June 22, 2026. A pair of largely overlooked U.S. House races in D.C.'s Maryland suburbs are racing up the leaderboard of the most expensive congressional primaries in U.S. history.
• Drop Site News, In Maryland District, a Last-Minute Scramble to Stop “AIPAC Adrian” Boafo, Ryan Grim and Lily Franks, A powerful local figure is switching sides to back Quincy Bareebe in hopes of blocking an Oracle lobbyist from taking over the seat being vacated by AIPAC stalwart Steny Hoyer.

More Global News

• New York Times, Who Is Andy Burnham, the Man Who Could Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister? Stephen Castle, Updated June 22, 2026. Charismatic, northern and exuding a relaxed optimism, Mr. Burnham is a contrast to Keir Starmer. His allies hope he could mend Labour’s relationship with voters.
• New York Times, Thousands Are Fleeing Ukraine’s Donbas Strongholds as Russia Pushes Closer, Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko, June 22, 2026. While Kyiv’s fortunes have brightened in other ways in the war, Moscow’s forces are raining bombs and drones on “fortress belt” cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Happy Globalist Independence Day! William Kristol, right, June 22, 2026. Ten years ago, on June 23, 2016, the people of Great Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. This morning, Keir Starmer, Britain’s fifth post-Brexit prime minister, announced his resignation. Brexit hasn’t made Britain great again, and most Britons now regret the decision to exit the EU.

U.S. Culture, Media, Religion, Education

• Letters from an American, Cultural Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Ode To Fathers], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 22, 2026.

Top Headlines

New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: U.S. Eases Sanctions as Vance Says Iran Agrees to Resume Nuclear Inspections, Yan Zhuang, Ephrat Livni, and other Staff Reports, June 22, 2026. If confirmed, the provisions would be in line with an Obama-era deal President Trump tore up in 2018. Vice President JD Vance hailed the latest round of talks as a “foundation” for lasting peace. Here’s the latest.

The Trump administration temporarily lifted oil sanctions against Iran on Monday and announced that Tehran had agreed to invite United Nations inspectors back to Iran’s nuclear sites, as it sought to cast the latest U.S.-Iran negotiations as a positive step toward a lasting peace agreement.

The return of International Atomic Energy Agency personnel to Iran, if confirmed by Tehran, and the lifting of sanctions echo key parts of an Obama-era nuclear accord that President Trump tore up in 2018 — a turning back of the clock that underscored the challenges ahead.

Speaking in Switzerland, where the first round of talks ended early Monday, Vice President JD Vance declared the negotiations a “very good foundation” for a final deal to end the war the United States and Israel began in February.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Iranian officials did not immediately publicly respond to Mr. Vance’s comments.

Iran began limiting inspections of its nuclear facilities after Mr. Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal — which he as recently as April called “one of the Worst Deals ever” — and all but ended them last year after some of the sites were hit by U.S. and Israeli attacks. Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

After pulling out of the 2015 deal, Mr. Trump also reimposed sanctions on Iran’s oil industry to cut off Tehran’s economic lifeline. But on Monday, the Treasury Department issued a 60-day license allowing the production, delivery and sale of Iranian oil as part of the preliminary deal that the United States and Iran signed last week.

The leaders of the delegations — Mr. Vance and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament — were leaving after the marathon negotiating session that began on Sunday, mediated by Qatari and Pakistani officials. The mediators said Monday that the initial talks had ended with “encouraging progress.”

Mr. Vance described new lines of communication established to de-escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and in Lebanon, where Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, appear to have eased their attacks on each other. Those two issues have complicated the delicate cease-fire between the United States and Iran.

“This is a work in progress,” Mr. Vance said. The new process in Lebanon, he added, would help “ensure it doesn’t spiral out of control in the future.”

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Frozen assets: Mr. Vance outlined a proposal for potentially unfreezing Iranian assets at a later date, a core demand of Tehran in the negotiations. Iran’s central bank governor said earlier that “necessary memoranda were signed” to initiate the release of assets, according to an interview published by Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, but Mr. Vance suggested there was no final agreement on the complex issue.
• Strait of Hormuz: Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased over the weekend, but remained far below prewar levels, according to marine traffic monitoring firms. Mr. Vance insisted on Monday that the strait “is open” to commercial shipping, despite some confusion after Iran claimed on Saturday that it was again closing the waterway over the fighting in Lebanon.
• Nuclear program: The most difficult issue in the U.S.-Iran talks — what to do about Iran’s nuclear program and stockpile of uranium — has been left for later. So far, Iran has only reiterated its longstanding promise not to develop nuclear weapons, and the country’s president, Mr. Pezeshkian, said on Sunday that Iran would “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium.

New York Times, News Analysis: First Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Ends With High Hopes and Big Challenges, Jim Tankersley, June 22, 2026. Mediators reported progress toward reaching a final deal within 60 days. They also said that negotiators had dwelled on issues that were supposed to be settled.

The morning after the first overnight session of renewed talks between the United States and Iran, aimed at turning an incomplete truce into a lasting peace deal, the vibes were as warm as the heat wave currently washing over Switzerland.

Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar said early on Monday that Vice President JD Vance and his Iranian counterparts had made “encouraging progress” toward the goal of cementing a final peace agreement within 60 days. Swiss officials called the outcome “constructive.”

All parties welcomed the creation, in the talks, of two communication mechanisms aimed at resolving a pair of issues that are currently clouding the peace process: fighting in Lebanon in spite of a cease-fire and barriers to navigation for ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Yesterday was a very, very good day,” Mr. Vance told reporters on Monday afternoon. “We made a lot of good progress. We did exactly what we wanted to do.”

He added that Iran had promised to readmit nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, though Iran did not immediately confirm that.

But other details that emerged from the luxury Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne suggested that the discussions over the next two months could still prove difficult and that efforts to reach a deal could proceed in fits and starts.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.

Tehran’s delegation, headed by the speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, walked away from the table on Sunday to protest a social media post from President Trump that threatened to resume American attacks on Iran if a deal did not come together. They eventually returned.

And in a negotiation that was supposed to resolve even thornier issues, the sides seemed to spend a lot of time working on topics that were meant to be behind them.ImageIranian officials in suits walk along a carpeted corridor.The Iranian delegation, including Mohammad Ghalibaf, second from right, at the talks on Sunday.Credit...Pool photo by Urs Flueeler

The 60-day window, which was established by the initial memorandum of understanding that Mr. Trump and Iran’s president signed last week, was meant to be a period for Tehran and Washington to solve crucial issues left out of that first-step deal. Most notably, that includes Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The memorandum says that Iran will dilute its existing stockpile of near-weapons-grade nuclear material but does not clarify how that will happen or whether the country will be barred from producing such material in the future.

Those issues were not center stage, aside from Mr. Vance’s mention of the I.A.E.A. inspectors, whose return would still be far from a solution to the nuclear question.

Instead, the first talks focused largely on two topics that were supposed to be settled: How to enforce a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and how to ensure shipping traffic, including oil tankers, flows freely again through the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel launched the war on Iran alongside the United States in February and was not party to last week’s initial deal. Despite the deal’s call for a cease-fire, both Israel and Hezbollah have continued to carry out attacks on each other. Iran protested Israel’s attacks over the weekend by saying that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz — which has been clogged throughout the war, sending global oil prices skyward — though American officials said that ships were still passing through.

Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan, who joined Iranian and American officials at Lake Lucerne, said Monday morning that discussions would continue through this week.'

Some analysts warned on Monday against an overly optimistic takeaway.ImageOn a rooftop, people are positioned with camera equipment under a dark tent. Behind them are a forested hill and a white building displaying a sign that says "PALACE HOTEL.”Security officers on a rooftop on Sunday as the talks between officials from the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar continued.Credit...Nathan Howard/Reuters

Financial markets had reacted to Mr. Trump’s initial agreement with Iran “with a classic show of irrational exuberance,” Carl B. Weinberg, the chief economist for High Frequency Economics, an American analysis firm, wrote in a research note on Monday morning. “This week should bring a reality check,” he noted.

Mr. Weinberg added that he believed Iran was likely to string out the talks for much longer than 60 days — all the way until January 2029, when the next American president will take office.

The stop-start nature of the negotiations has heightened the uncertainty.

Mr. Vance had been scheduled to fly to Switzerland on Thursday night, but canceled the trip at the last minute after Iran pulled out in protest, diplomats said, at continuing Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

Nothing in the statements from the mediators, or from Iranian officials, suggested that the negotiations were barreling toward the sort of quick capitulation that Mr. Trump has intimated would be the endgame for the talks. For example, Mr. Ghalibaf wrote on social media that Iran’s “armed forces are prepared to respond” if Mr. Trump attacked Iran again — raising the possibility of more war.

Still, the releases from the mediators and hosts conveyed, at the very least, a sense that the talks had succeeded in starting the gears of a more traditional diplomatic process.

Qatar and Pakistan said that the discussions had led to “the creation of a mechanism for further technical talks.” The Swiss authorities said that the parties had agreed to “a road map aimed at reaching a final agreement within 60 days.”

“Our aim,” Swiss officials wrote, “is that our diplomacy contributes to de-escalation, stability and peace.” 

Medias Touch Network, Monday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Caves to Iran While Draining a Stinking Swamp of His Own Making, Ben Meiselas, right, June 22, 2026..Today’s top stories we’re tracking:

• Treasury issues a 60-day sanctions waiver allowing Iran to sell oil globally, including to the U.S., in dollars
• The Lake Lucerne Summit in Switzerland concludes with a joint statement despite a day of chaos and threats
• Israel says it isn’t going anywhere in Lebanon, with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir doubling down
• Tankers are already moving Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz in massive volumes
• The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool drama escalates, complete with a foul smell and Trump blaming “vandals” for his failure
• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigns, with Andy Burnham positioning to replace him
• Rubio skips the real negotiations in Switzerland for a Gulf trip instead
• Bank of America now expects three Fed rate hikes this year as inflation worsens

Now let’s get into it.

Trump Talks Tough, Then Folds on Iran Sanctions

Donald Trump spent yesterday threatening to kill Iranian negotiators. He nearly blew up the talks with his rhetoric, before cooler heads prevailed on the ground. Then, this morning, his administration issued a full general license and sanctions waiver letting Iran sell its oil, petrochemicals, and other natural resources to the rest of the world, using U.S. dollars to do it.

Here’s what actually happened, and I will show you the actual document released by the Treasury Department to show you the extent of Trump’s capitulation in the administration’s own words. It is truly mind-blowing to read this official government document for yourself.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a 60-day waiver suspending sanctions on Iranian crude oil, petroleum, and petrochemical products, running through August 21, 2026. The general license also authorizes the banking, insurance, and shipping transactions needed to make those sales happen, with carve-outs for Cuba, North Korea, and Russian-occupied Ukraine (but no restrictions on Russia).

Based on my read of the law, something like this, especially given its connection to Iran’s nuclear program, should require congressional approval. But Trump doesn’t bother with that anymore, and Mike Johnson has turned the House into something resembling a rubber-stamp body rather than an actual check on executive power.

Energy journalist Javier Blas has been tracking this closely, and his analysis is worth highlighting: the license doesn’t just let buyers pay Iran, including through previously sanctioned entities, it lets them pay in U.S. dollars. For the first time in decades, Tehran is back in the dollar club, repatriating petrodollars under a policy that effectively unwinds 40-plus years of American oil sanctions on Iran.

This is going to make Iran rich, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, and it’s already happening. Tankers, plenty of them Iranian and Chinese-linked, are pouring out through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s top energy official, who was part of the negotiating team in Switzerland, said as of yesterday Iran had already moved more than 25 million barrels out through the Strait. I expect that number to climb toward 40 million.

And while Iran’s oil is flowing freely again, our own Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in rough shape. New numbers out today show the SPR dropped another 9 million barrels, down to 331.2 million barrels total, the lowest level since July of 1983.

What Actually Came Out of Switzerland

U.S. Vice President JD Vance listens to U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as they attend a quadrilateral meeting between the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar at the Lake Lucerne Summit, aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict near Stansstad, Switzerland, June 21, 2026 (Pool photo by Nathan Howard of Reuters).

Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi called the Lake Lucerne talks a major win, but he’s been careful to note that Iran’s obligations to the U.S. only kick in down the line, specifically once Israel actually leaves Lebanon and there’s a genuine ceasefire. The way Iran structured this, the U.S. has to go first on a series of commitments, and only later does Iran unlock anything resembling reciprocal benefits. It’s essentially the JCPOA framework all over again: IAEA inspectors back in, uranium enrichment continuing but down-blended below weapons grade. The same deal that existed under Obama, only worse for the U.S. and now we got there after a catastrophic and unnecessary war we never should have fought.

I think Iran’s calculus is pretty straightforward. They suspect Israel is never actually leaving Lebanon and that Trump won’t hold up his end of any deal anyway, so why not grab the financial benefits now while they can? Eventually Israel breaches (as they already have), Trump breaches (as he already has), and Iran will have already banked the money. I hope for peace, genuinely, I want this to work. But that’s the read of where things stand.

And here’s a wrinkle worth flagging. Iran’s Fars News Agency is now disputing the U.S. characterization of the deal entirely. An informed source told Fars that JD Vance’s claims about IAEA inspectors returning to Iran are false, and that there was no discussion whatsoever in the Swiss negotiations about inspectors being present in the country. So while Vance was out there talking about “foundations” and “houses,” Iran’s own state media is saying the inspector piece, arguably the single most important nonproliferation component of any deal like this, was never even on the table.

And Israel didn’t exactly do much to ease that suspicion this morning. Netanyahu posted a message making clear nothing has changed. Israeli forces in southern Lebanon retain full freedom of action, and Israel intends to stay in what it calls the “security zone” for as long as it deems necessary. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went further, saying the cost of bowing to international pressure is too high and that instead of a ceasefire, Israel should be attacking Beirut.

So Israel’s message to Washington is pretty clear: no deconfliction, no de-escalation, we’re staying.

JD Vance’s Idea of Jokes

JD Vance held a press conference this morning addressing Trump’s continued threats against Iranian negotiators, and decided the moment called for comedy. His framing was something like: Iran talks trash, so of course Trump talks trash back, by threatening to kill them and seize the Strait of Hormuz. He chalked it up to millennial humor. Just jokes!!! Haha! Get it? No? Me neither.

Then Vance said his team tried calling nuclear inspectors at 2 a.m. last night and, shockingly, nobody picked up. Another laugh line, apparently.

And on the substance, Vance described the talks as laying a foundation for a house that hasn’t been built yet.

I’d compare it to the Trump reflecting pool. You paint it blue, declare there’s no algae problem, and then when there obviously is one, you blame vandals and Antifa.

Vance also offered the line that a ceasefire doesn’t really mean a ceasefire, it just means…less fire.

The Reflecting Pool Saga Continues

Speaking of the reflecting pool, this morning brought a heavy law enforcement presence around the site Trump began draining the pool. Journalist Matt Viser reported peeling sealant and a few stranded ducks as the water level dropped. Joe Flood confirmed what people on the ground are saying: it smells terrible. Witnesses are describing a mix of algae, hydrogen peroxide, and pool lining chemicals producing an odor bad enough to make people nauseous nearby.

Trump, again, took to Truth Social to blame vandals, describing a “300 foot long gash,” illegally placed chemicals, and a “86 47” carved into the grass that he suggested was inspired by James Comey. He warned there’s a ten-year prison sentence for destruction of federal property and that it will be “fully enforced.”His attempt to deflect from his own failures is objectively pathetic. 

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: The Clown Show Moves To Switzerland, Ukraine Gains in Crimea, Simon Rosenberg, right, June 22, 2026. A new CBS poll, shown above, shows how badly Trump has lost the argument on his failed war. Only 21% of voters think the war has solved more problems than it has created.

Meanwhile the Iranian fiasco has moved to a “Summit” in Switzerland where talks apparently are underway (after Trump blew them up yesterday). Look at this idiotic backdrop the US has created: elevating Iran into a place equal to the United States (Qatar and Pakistan too), calling it a “Summit” when there are no heads of government there to meet:

US, Iran start talks on peace deal in Switzerland: Listen to JD Vance in this clip saying “this is not a deal the US is imposing on the region” -- Didn’t we just go to war to impose a new reality on Iran? OMG what a clown show!!!!!!!!! --  and that the Middle East “has been a basket case for a long time.” OMG squared!!!!!!

Utter ongoing, humiliation for the US in every moment of this ongoing fiasco….Let’s review the other fiascos Trump, aided by his Laurel and Hardy (Witkoff and Kushner) negotiating team, has brought us:

• The Board of Peace/Gaza
• Trump’s bowing to Xi in China
• Seizing Greenland
• Whatever the f-ck is happening with Venezuela
• Backing Putin over Zelenskyy

Dr. Phillips O’Brien has a very good new analysis up this morning on the consequential advances Ukraine is now making in Crimea:

The last few days have given some concrete evidence about both the situation for the Russian occupiers of Crimea and Ukrainian plans for the peninsula. The Ukrainian strategy of isolating the peninsula seems to be both accelerating and having concrete results. If the Russians do not have the ability to counter soon, Crimea could be isolated, with pretty dire strategic results for them.

The best piece of concrete evidence for the isolation of Crimea is that the peninsula is running out of fuel. Yesterday, the Russian governor was forced to take the dramatic step of forbidding fuel sales to civilians. According to a BBC story:

Governor Sergey Aksyonov said individuals and businesses would be turned away from petrol stations, and fuel would only be sold to government agencies ensuring Crimea’s “functioning and security”.

It is hard to overstate how serious the fuel situation must be on Crimea for such a draconian restriction to be imposed on civilians. Putin has always maintained the fiction that Crimea is some happy and functioning part of the Russian state. No more.

The global humiliation grows for Putin daily, too. 

Also, newly filed reports with the Federal Election Commission have confirmed that Republicans are behind fake progressive PACs meddling in Democratic House primaries. Here’s Politico today:

A Republican-linked group was the sole funded of two pop-up super PACs that spent more than $4.3 million across a swath of Democratic congressional primaries to support candidates seen as less electable.

Democrats had speculated that the two groups, Real Change PAC and Lead Left, were Republican meddling as they spent heavily across Democratic primary races in Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska and Maine in recent months.

Here’s new reporting from Judd Legum, right:

A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA).

Newly filed FEC documents reveal that three PACs that claim to oppose Trump and Republican policies — Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC — are wholly funded by Conservative Americans PAC, another super PAC. Conservative Americans PAC, in turn, received all of its funding this cycle, over $30 million, from the APA.

…………..

A fourth sham PAC, Progressive Champions PAC, has spent $1.5 million attacking Cait Conley, a Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Progressive Champions PAC’s ads claim that Conley is “not progressive” and tie her to President Trump.

Progressive Champions PAC is so new that it has not yet had to disclose its funders. But there is little doubt it is part of the same GOP network. On Saturday, Progressive Champions PAC and the other three sham PACs filed their FEC reports in the same 32 second window — all using the same Republican compliance software, Crimson Filer. 

New York Times, U.K. Live Updates: Starmer Announces Resignation; Burnham Wins Key Endorsement, Michael D. Shear, June 22, 2026.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer stepped down as leader of the governing Labour Party. Andy Burnham, the party’s most popular politician, said he would seek the prime minister’s job and secured the support of a potential rival.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain announced his resignation on Monday, bowing to a mutiny inside his party and the threat of a direct challenge to his leadership of the country.

Mr. Starmer said he would remain as prime minister until a new party leader is selected, by September, rather than fight to remain in the job he won almost two years ago. His decision clears the way for Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, extending a period of political turmoil for the country since it voted to leave the European Union in 2016.

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” Mr. Starmer said in brief remarks in front of No. 10 Downing Street, his voice breaking with emotion at times.

“I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace,” he said. “That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.”

The most likely replacement for Mr. Starmer is Andy Burnham, right, whose resounding victory last week in a special election energized his bid to oust the prime minister. Mr. Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester and one of Labour’s most popular politicians, received almost 55 percent of the vote in the Makerfield district.

It was not immediately clear when Mr. Starmer might leave Downing Street. He said he wanted nominations to replace him to open on July 9 and close when Parliament takes its summer break. A new Labour leader would then be elected by September and become prime minister. But if Mr. Burnham is the only candidate, he could take over as early as July.

Mr. Starmer’s tenure as prime minister began in 2024 when Labour won a large parliamentary majority and put an end to 14 years of Conservative Party government. But Labour earned a record-low vote share of 34 percent in that election, prompting analysts to call the victory a “loveless landslide.”

Mr. Starmer’s political standing was deeply damaged this year by revelations about his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite Mr. Mandelson’s close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender. But it was Labour’s devastating losses in elections to municipal councils in England and to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, in May, that were the final straws for many members of his party.

In recent weeks, Mr. Starmer had repeatedly vowed to fight any challenge to his position.

But in the end, he appeared to accept the political reality that came with being one of the least popular prime ministers in modern British history. He struggled with a sagging economy and criticism from his adversaries that he often backtracked on policies.

New York Times, Who Is Andy Burnham, the Man Who Could Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister? Stephen Castle, Updated June 22, 2026. Charismatic, northern and exuding a relaxed optimism, Mr. Burnham is a contrast to Keir Starmer. His allies hope he could mend Labour’s relationship with voters.

Andy Burnham has twice run unsuccessfully for the leadership of Britain’s governing Labour Party. Now his decisive victory in a special parliamentary election puts him within reach not just of that goal, but of entering Downing Street as prime minister. More details below in Global News.

Blunt Talk From Trump's Conservative Italian Erstwhile 'Friends'

The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Italy Called Trump an "Asshole;"  Why Won’t America’s Media be Similarly Candid? Thom Hartmann, right, June 22, 2026. A conservative Italian newspaper used the blunt type of word American journalists keep avoiding, and exposed how far our press will go to normalize the abnormal...

This weekend, the right-wing Italian daily Libero, a major conservative newspaper that shares a fair amount of Donald Trump’s politics, ran a one-word verdict on the President of the United States across its front page. The Italian word is coglione. The polite translation is “idiot.” The translation that George Conway and half of social media reached for, and the one the paper plainlyintended, is a good deal blunter than that and more dictionary accurate: “asshole.” 

What set the newspaper off wasn’t the war, or the self-dealing, or the cruelty toward immigrants: it was Trump’s lie about a photograph. He pathetically told an Italian network that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had “begged” him repeatedly for a picture at the G7 in Évian, that she’d wanted it so badly he “felt sorry for her” and went along.

Meloni, who until a week ago was Trump’s closest ally in Europe (and the only one who came to his inauguration), called the story “completely fabricated” and said neither she nor Italy ever begs. Her foreign minister cancelled his trip to Washington in protest.

And a conservative Italian newspaper looked at the most powerful man on Earth inventing a petty, humiliating story about a friendly head of state for no reason anyone could name but his own wretched, needy, emotionally-stunted ego and decided that therefore there was exactly one accurate word for him.

A newspaper in Milan, run by people who’d probably vote for him if they had the chance, will say in a banner headline what our own press, knowing far more about this man than they do, still treats as unspeakable.

So let’s do what our major papers won’t, and lay the record out in plain English:

— A jury in Manhattan found Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll, and the federal judge who presided, Lewis Kaplan, wrote in his own ruling that what the jury concluded Trump did amounts to “rape as ordinary people understand the word,” even if it didn’t fit New York’s narrow penal statute.

— We have him on tape, in his own voice, bragging that his fame lets him grab women by the genitals. And continuously trash-talking female reporters.

— We have the Eric Trump Foundation, set up to raise money for children dying of cancer at St. Jude, quietly paying hundreds of thousands of those donated dollars to his father’s golf courses and steering more than half a million to other groups tied to Trump interests, while donors believed every dollar was going to sick kids.

— We have a “university” that wasn’t a university, shut down after he paid twenty-five million dollars to settle fraud claims from the students it fleeced.

— We have a memecoin he launched days before his inauguration that enriched his family and a handful of insiders by hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, even as the small-dollar believers who bought in on the strength of his name watched the thing collapse by more than ninety percent.

— And we have a shooting war against Iran that began in February, with American bombs and a dead Iranian Supreme Leader, that Congress never voted on and that the Brennan Center for Justice called flatly unconstitutional.

Every one of those facts has been reported, sourced, litigated, and confirmed, and they’re really just the tip of the corruption and criminality iceberg which also includes 34 felony convictions and the apparent sale of pardons. And yet pick up the average front page on any given morning and you’ll find the man at the center of all of it described as “controversial,” or “polarizing,” or “unconventional.”

You’ll read that he “made claims” or “stoked tensions” or “broke with norms.”

Press critic Margaret Sullivan and journalist Aaron Rupar gave this habit a name a couple of years back: they call it “sanewashing,” the steady translation of genuinely deranged, asinine conduct into the calm, gray vocabulary of normal politics, and the Columbia Journalism Review has documented how reporters keep reaching for euphemism precisely when the moment calls for the plain word.

Why do they do it?

— Part of it is the old religion of objectivity, the conviction that a serious reporter never uses a sharp word about a politician no matter what that politician does, as though neutrality between an arsonist and a fire department were the height of professionalism.

— Part of it is fear. Like Putin in his early days, Trump sues, and the corporations that own our biggest networks and newspapers would rather write him a check than fight him in court even when they’d likely win, and every settlement teaches the next editor to soften the next headline. Scholars who study democratic collapse have watched this dynamic up close, and they’ll tell you that newsrooms grow reluctant to use the accurate word for a man precisely as the accurate word becomes most necessary.

— And part of it tracks back a half-century to RNC Chairman Rich Bond telling Republicans to scream “liberal bias” every time a newspaper or reporter told a true story that reflected poorly on Republicans. “Work the refs” was his instruction.

I lived in Germany for a stretch in the 1980s, and one of the things I noticed reading the papers there was how brutally unafraid European journalists were to call a powerful person a fool or a liar to his face, in print, right there in the headline. It wasn’t recklessness. It was memory.

Germans of that generation knew exactly what happens when a press decides that the polite thing, the cautious thing, the access-preserving thing — as had happened there in the 1930s — is to keep describing a dangerous man in reasonable language, until the day comes when it’s too late to describe him any other way.

But today in America, a handful of giant corporations and rightwing billionaires have came to own most of what Americans read and watch, and that concentration now quietly shapes the boundaries of what those outlets will say about the powerful people they both report on and often fear.

The Italians still have a mainstream press scrappy enough, and independent enough, to call a spade a spade. We used to.

The Founders didn’t protect the press in the First Amendment so it could practice stenography. They gave it that protection so it would tell the country the truth, bluntly, when the powerful would rather it didn’t, and so it would be the thing that warned us before the danger arrived rather than after.

A free press that won’t name what’s in front of its own eyes isn’t being fair. It’s failing at the one job the Constitution set aside for it.

So here’s where you come in, because the press won’t fix itself and the politicians won’t fix it for us. Cancel the subscription to any outlet that keeps calling a documented fraud “unconventional,” and put that money toward independent journalism that uses real words.

Make sure you’re registered and ready at vote.org, and look up exactly who represents you at the state level at openstates.org, because the people who’ll decide whether your vote even counts in 2026 are sitting in your statehouse right now.

And if this piece said something you think more people need to hear in plain language, then do the thing the Italian editors did. Don’t soften it. Share it, forward it, post it, and send folks to hartmannreport.com so we can keep telling the truth here without a billionaire owner deciding which words I’m allowed to use.

The morbidly rich and GOP are counting on our politeness. Let’s disappoint these, as the Italians would say, “assholes.”

News Roundups 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Administration Suffers Court Losses Across America, Protests at Home and Abroad, Reflecting Pool Issues Ramp Up, Aaron Parnas, right, June 22, 2026. Trump Judges REBUKE Administration as Mass Protests Spread GLOBAL, Horrible Day for Trump!

Judges across the country handed down rulings against the Trump administration as more Trump-appointed judges appear increasingly willing to rule against the president who appointed them. At the same time, mass protests in Albania continue to grow over a Trump-linked development project, while demonstrations are taking place across Washington, D.C. here at home.

Meanwhile, the Reflecting Pool controversy is escalating, with surveillance towers installed, plans to pump out the water, and Trump claiming that additional people are now under investigation. Some critics even became upset enough to suggest I should be arrested for touching the water. And that is just the beginning.

Here’s the news:

Courts rebuke the Administration:

A new analysis has shown that federal judges across the country issued dozens of unusually sharp rulings criticizing actions taken by the Trump administration, warning that constitutional limits, judicial authority, and fundamental legal protections were being challenged. Judges expressed concern about executive overreach, threats to free speech, and efforts by President Trump and his administration to expand presidential power beyond legal boundaries. Several opinions described government actions as unlawful, irrational, retaliatory, or harmful to civil liberties. The criticism came from judges appointed by presidents of both political parties, including some appointed by Trump himself. Legal experts characterized the volume and consistency of these warnings as highly unusual.

The rulings repeatedly raised concerns about three broad patterns: abuse of power, bad-faith conduct, and retaliation. Judges accused the Trump administration of exceeding its legal authority, disregarding statutory obligations, misleading courts, obstructing due process, and, in some cases, failing to comply with court orders. Some opinions suggested that administration actions were motivated by political, ideological, or discriminatory objectives. Several judges argued that constitutional protections cannot be suspended or ignored to achieve policy goals. A number of rulings combined all three criticisms in the same case.

Immigration enforcement, free speech disputes, and questions of executive authority were the issues most frequently challenged in court during Trump’s second term. Legal challenges increased significantly as the administration expanded immigration enforcement operations, leading to a surge of critical rulings. At the same time, tensions between Trump and the judiciary intensified, with Trump publicly attacking judges and criticizing court decisions while courts continued to scrutinize administration policies. Retired judges and legal scholars warned that respect for judicial independence and court rulings is essential to maintaining the rule of law. Many argued that growing conflict between the White House and the courts represented a significant test of constitutional checks and balances.

Court rulings today:

A federal judge blocked the Trump Justice Department from enforcing subpoenas against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other Democratic officials, ruling that the effort was unconstitutional and appeared intended to harass political opponents. Judge Patrick Schiltz found that the DOJ was using the grand jury process not for a legitimate criminal investigation but to pressure Minnesota officials into cooperating with the administration’s immigration enforcement policies. The subpoenas sought records related to Democratic officials’ opposition to a large-scale immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests and widespread protests in Minnesota. Walz and other officials praised the ruling, while the Justice Department said it would continue investigating what it considers obstruction of federal law enforcement operations.

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President Trump’s appeal of the $5 million E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse and defamation verdict has been stalled at the Supreme Court, where the case has been repeatedly rescheduled without explanation for seven months. Trump argues that trial errors, including the admission of testimony from other women and the “Access Hollywood” tape, unfairly influenced the jury, while lower courts have consistently upheld the verdict. The delay has benefited Trump by postponing a final resolution and payment of the judgment, which now exceeds $100 million when combined with a separate $83 million defamation award. Legal experts say the unusual number of delays has raised questions about whether the Court is waiting for related appeals or giving special consideration to a case involving a sitting president.

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by expanding a citizenship-verification database with Social Security and other government data to help identify noncitizens on voter rolls. The judge blocked the program’s expanded use, finding that the administration knowingly bypassed privacy protections in an effort to carry out Trump’s directive for large-scale voter verification. Critics argued the system could wrongly flag eligible citizens as noncitizens, potentially leading to voter disenfranchisement. The ruling is a significant setback for Trump’s election-security agenda and could affect broader federal efforts to use government data to review state voter rolls.

A federal judge in New York ruled that the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department generally cannot bar the public from attending immigration court proceedings. The judge found that immigration courts must remain open to public observation in most cases and that blanket restrictions on access are not permitted. The ruling also states that observers cannot be prohibited from quietly communicating with people in court about legal assistance, religious support, or similar services. The decision is a setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to limit public oversight of immigration proceedings and expands protections for transparency in immigration courts.

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Anti-Trump and anti-corruption demonstrations grow:

Thousands of Albanians have protested for weeks against plans for a luxury coastal resort backed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, arguing that the project threatens a protected natural area and reflects broader government corruption. What began as opposition to the development has grown into one of the largest anti-government protest movements in Albania since the fall of communism, with demonstrators accusing Prime Minister Edi Rama of a lack of transparency and favoritism toward politically connected investors.

Reporting indicates the project involves a network of international investors, including Qatar-based businessmen with ties to both Qatar and Washington, and could feature luxury hotels, villas, a golf course, and a casino. While the Albanian government argues the resort would boost tourism and economic growth, critics say there was little public consultation and that early work has already caused environmental damage, making the project a symbol of wider concerns about corruption, accountability, and foreign influence. Protesters in Albania also tore down parts of a construction site linked to a luxury resort backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

In Washington, D.C., Trump faced protests across the city as an activist group put up swamp creature displays throughout Washington, D.C.:

Reflecting pool:

Authorities have increased security around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool amid ongoing controversy over the renovation project. National Guardsmen, surveillance equipment, and other law enforcement personnel were deployed after President Trump claimed that vandals were damaging the site by removing pieces of the pool’s peeling blue lining and possibly pouring chemicals into the water. Trump said several people had been arrested, though details about the alleged vandalism remain limited. The administration has also been working to address algae problems and other defects, with continued repairs and maintenance underway as scrutiny of the project intensifies. This video is from Jon Michael Raasch:

In addition, reports from on the ground suggest there is a foul odor coming from the pool today:

Trump denied that contractors were responsible for problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation. Instead, he blamed vandalism, claiming that people damaged the new lining by cutting it with knives and interfering with the site. His comments shift responsibility away from the construction work and toward alleged acts of sabotage.

Trump pushed back on reporters’ skepticism about his vandalism claims at the Reflecting Pool, arguing that a reported 350-foot cut in the pool lining was evidence of deliberate damage. When pressed on the fact that reporters had inspected the site and found no evidence of such a slit, Trump responded that the National Park Service could show them the damage. The exchange highlighted a dispute between the administration’s claims of vandalism and journalists’ observations at the site. No independent evidence was presented during the exchange to substantiate the alleged 350-foot slit.

Other news:

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he no longer supports the Republican Party, citing what he views as the party’s failure to act in the interests of the United States. Carlson, who had long been a Republican supporter and was previously aligned with President Donald Trump, said his break with the party intensified after the administration’s military actions involving Iran. He stated that he will not vote for Republican candidates going forward and suggested that other voters may feel similarly disillusioned. The comments mark a significant public split between Carlson and the broader Republican establishment.

According to Politico, House Republicans are criticizing the Trump administration for relying on a future party-line reconciliation bill to fund key military programs instead of including those funds in the regular defense budget. In a report accompanying the House defense appropriations bill, GOP appropriators called the strategy “risky and uncoordinated,” warning that critical Pentagon priorities could be jeopardized if the reconciliation package fails to pass. Lawmakers specifically objected to the administration splitting funding for the F-35 Lightning II between the normal appropriations process and a separate reconciliation bill. The criticism reflects growing concern among congressional Republicans that there may not be enough support to pass another major party-line spending package this year.

More than 5 million people lost Medicaid or Affordable Care Act coverage over the past year, according to a new report, with advocates and health experts pointing to Trump’s Medicaid cuts and the expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies as major causes. Medicaid and CHIP enrollment fell by about 3.8 million people, while ACA enrollment dropped by roughly 1.2 million as premiums rose sharply after subsidy expiration. Experts warn that the declines could accelerate when new Medicaid work requirements take effect in more states, potentially leaving millions more uninsured. Critics argue the coverage losses will lead people to delay medical care, worsen health outcomes, and increase long-term costs for taxpayers and the health care system.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged major long-range attacks overnight, with a Russian drone strike in the Ukrainian city of Sumy killing three members of the same family, including a 13-year-old boy. Ukraine responded with a strike on an industrial plant in Russia’s Voronezh region that killed five people and reportedly targeted a factory producing components for Russian missiles and air-defense systems. The fighting comes as civilian casualties in Ukraine have reached their highest monthly levels in four years, according to the United Nations, while U.S.-led peace efforts have failed to halt the war. Both sides reported intercepting hundreds of incoming drones as the conflict increasingly extends deep into each country’s territory.

SpaceX shares fell 16% on Monday and are now down about 23% from their post-IPO peak just 10 days after the company’s record-breaking public debut. The stock closed below its opening-day price, wiping out most gains for investors who bought shares after trading began. The selloff came amid a broader decline in technology stocks and reports that SpaceX is seeking to raise at least $20 billion through a bond offering, raising concerns about the cost of funding its ambitious AI and technology investments. Despite the sharp drop, SpaceX remains one of the world’s most valuable companies with a market capitalization of roughly $2 trillion.

Three people, including the suspected gunman, were killed in a shooting in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood on Monday. The victims included a police officer and a civilian, while another officer and at least one bystander were injured. Police initially warned residents to shelter in place as they searched for an armed and dangerous suspect, who was later shot and killed by authorities. Investigators recovered a rifle at the scene and are continuing to search for additional victims while the motive remains unclear.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: America’s Kiddie-Pool Authoritarian, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 22, 2026. Trump can’t control the Reflecting Pool or the Strait of Hormuz, but he can arrest people for nothing.

Vice President JD Vance emerged from a weekend of peace talks in Switzerland with Iran to announce the first significant nuclear concession Tehran has yet made: International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, he said, will be allowed back into Iran as a condition of the deal. More on the negotiations below. Happy Monday.

The Parnas Perspective, Monday Update: Mass Arrests at Reflecting Pool, Trump Seeks Greenland for All You Can Eat Shrimp, Starmer Resigns, Iran Talks Progress: Aaron Parnas, right, June 22, 2026. Keir Starmer has officially resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Five people have now been arrested at the Reflecting Pool and five more have been cited, with some in MAGA even suggesting I should be arrested for visiting the site and touching the algae-filled water. Talks between the United States and Iran are showing signs of progress after a turbulent day in Switzerland. Trump is reportedly pursuing Greenland, partly tied to a proposal to bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster. And much more.

Here’s what the week looks like: We are expecting Supreme Court opinions tomorrow and Thursday morning, and Congress returns to session tomorrow. Our next paid subscriber live event is Wednesday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m. ET. I’m also working on another deep dive for you.Today is also the first day for my first full-time employee, Tyler! We are growing quickly because of your support, and this work is only possible because of you.

Here’s the news:

• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he will step down after mounting pressure from Labour MPs, less than two years after leading Labour to a historic election victory. His resignation clears the way for Andy Burnham, who is expected to become both Labour leader and prime minister, with strong backing from senior party figures including Wes Streeting. Starmer said he accepted that many in his parliamentary party no longer believed he was the best person to lead Labour into the next general election and pledged to support his successor. His departure follows months of declining popularity, electoral setbacks, cabinet resignations, and criticism over key policy decisions and appointments. Burnham is expected to oversee a rapid leadership transition while preparing to address economic challenges and Labour’s growing competition from Reform UK.

• The United Kingdom will now have its seventh Prime Minister in the past decade or so as continued turbulence and tumult mars the nation:

• According to reporting by The New Yorker, one factor driving the push to acquire Greenland was to bring back Red Lobster’s all-you-can-eat shrimp promotion.

• Five people were reportedly arrested and five others cited in connection with alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., according to a U.S. administration official cited by CBS News. The pool has recently faced problems including algae growth and peeling paint following renovation work tied to upcoming America 250 celebrations. President Donald Trump said he personally inspected the damage and announced that repairs would begin immediately, possibly requiring the pool to be drained. However, details about the alleged vandalism remain unclear, and some of those detained dispute the accusations. One of those arrested, Olympian David Hearn, told reporters he was simply examining a loose piece of peeling paint when he was charged with a misdemeanor offense. The National Guard remains stationed at the reflecting pool today:

• The current state of the reflecting pool:

• Trump confirms his DOJ will pursue 10-year prison sentences:

• Talks between the United States and Iran showed signs of progress after a tense start in Switzerland, with both sides agreeing to work toward a final agreement within 60 days. Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar announced plans for continued technical negotiations, focusing on issues including Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, and security in the Strait of Hormuz and Lebanon. Iran welcomed proposed economic measures, including temporary sanctions waivers and access to some frozen assets, which could help ease its economic pressures. Despite disagreements and sharp rhetoric from President Donald Trump, negotiations continued, with both sides signaling a willingness to pursue further diplomatic progress. A major remaining challenge is reducing tensions in Lebanon, which both parties described as a key test of the broader agreement.

• Vice President JD Vance defended President Donald Trump’s sharp rhetoric toward Iran, saying U.S. negotiators told Iranian officials that “trash talk” from Tehran should be expected to draw a response from the president—even after Trump reportedly threatened to target or assassinate Iran’s negotiators during escalating tensions over ongoing talks.

• Ukraine has intensified its strategy of striking targets inside Russia and occupied Crimea, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declaring that Ukraine will increasingly “bring the war back to Russia.” Recent Ukrainian drone attacks disrupted Moscow airports and targeted key fuel and transport infrastructure in Crimea, aiming to raise the cost of Russia’s occupation and weaken military supply lines. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy condemned continued Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian civilians and called for greater international pressure on Moscow.

• House Republicans are racing to advance a third reconciliation package before the August recess, with only a few legislative days available before the July 4 break. GOP leaders are still negotiating key details, including which policies to include and how to pay for them, and some conservatives remain dissatisfied with the proposals. The effort is competing with other priorities, such as briefings on President Donald Trump’s Iran deal and a major housing package. While some lawmakers believe the Senate could support the plan if crafted carefully, significant disagreements and a tight timeline threaten its chances.Tulsi Gabbard

:• A Washington Post investigation reports that hundreds of confidential memos from former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s congressional years appear to show extensive political guidance being provided by people connected to her longtime spiritual community, the Science of Identity Foundation. The documents suggest that talking points, policy positions, media strategies, and even social media responses were frequently coordinated and, in many cases, later echoed almost verbatim by Gabbard.• Former members of the group claim the guidance originated with Gabbard’s spiritual mentor, Chris Butler, although longtime adviser Sunil Khemaney disputes that characterization and says much of the advice came from him and other political advisers. The report found numerous parallels between the memos and Gabbard’s public statements, legislative proposals, and media appearances during her time in Congress.

• Gabbard and representatives of the foundation rejected the allegations, describing the reporting as an attack on her Hindu faith and questioning the motives of the former insider who provided the documents. The investigation also alleges that members of the group operated coordinated anonymous social media accounts to promote and defend Gabbard online, though questions remain about who directed those efforts and the extent of Gabbard’s involvement.Other news

:• Senate Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking a federal court to unseal additional portions of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents investigation involving Donald Trump. The request comes as the committee prepares to call Smith to testify about his investigations before the end of the current Congress. Democrats argue that greater transparency is needed, while Republicans have continued investigating Smith’s work, claiming it represented political targeting of Trump.

• Protests in Albania against luxury resorts backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have evolved into a broader movement against corruption, inequality, and the country’s political establishment. Demonstrators are particularly opposed to plans for large-scale developments on Sazan Island and the nearby protected Vjosa-Narta Protected Area, arguing that they threaten sensitive ecosystems and public access to natural areas.

• The movement, dubbed the “flamingo revolution,” has attracted thousands of protesters, including members of Albania’s diaspora, who accuse Prime Minister Edi Rama of prioritizing wealthy investors over local communities. Supporters of the projects argue that the investments could create jobs, boost tourism, and strengthen Albania’s economy as it seeks closer integration with the European Union. The controversy has also drawn attention from the European Parliament, which has urged Albania to halt construction in protected environmental zones while concerns over transparency and environmental impacts are addressed.

• Alan Greenspan, the influential economist who led the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, has died at the age of 100 from complications related to Parkinson’s disease. Serving under four presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush—he was widely credited with guiding the U.S. economy through a long period of growth and stability. However, his legacy was later complicated by criticism that his support for financial deregulation contributed to the conditions that led to the 2008 financial crisis. Greenspan later acknowledged mistakes in trusting banks to regulate themselves but argued that economic models could not fully predict speculative bubbles and financial panics. He remained active in public economic debates after retirement and was remembered by his wife, journalist Andrea Mitchell, as both brilliant and kind.

• According to Politico, Democrat Josh Turek holds a narrow 47%–45% lead over Republican Ashley Hinson in a new internal poll, despite Iowa’s strong Republican lean. The survey found that likely voters favored Donald Trump by nine points in the 2024 election and that Republicans enjoy a ten-point voter registration advantage statewide. However, Trump’s current favorability ratings are underwater, particularly among independent voters, creating a potential opening for Democrats. Pollsters argue that Turek is outperforming the state’s underlying partisan makeup, benefiting from stronger personal favorability ratings and an ability to attract voters beyond the Democratic base. His campaign has focused heavily on economic issues, including trade and tariffs, while criticizing Hinson as out of touch with working-class Iowans and emphasizing support for farmers and middle-class families.

• Darializa Avila Chevalier, a progressive Democrat endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is challenging longtime Congressman Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th Congressional District. She argues that the district has not improved under Espaillat’s leadership and is campaigning on policies such as universal healthcare, stronger tenant protections, campaign finance reform, banning congressional stock trading, and abolishing ICE. A public defense investigator and PhD student, Avila Chevalier has a background in labor organizing, immigrant rights, and criminal justice advocacy. Backed by groups including the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats, she represents a growing progressive movement seeking to challenge established Democratic incumbents. Recent polling suggests the race has become competitive, reflecting broader debates within the Democratic Party over its future direction.

• A severe heatwave is affecting much of Western Europe, with temperatures expected to reach as high as 44°C (111°F) in parts of Spain and over 40°C across large areas of France. French authorities have placed nearly half the country on their highest heat alert level, citing risks to life and reporting several heat-related deaths among elderly residents. The extreme temperatures have disrupted daily life, leading to school closures, rail service reductions, and cancellations of sporting and public events in countries including Belgium, Germany, and Spain. Authorities are urging people to stay hydrated, avoid strenuous outdoor activity, and check on vulnerable individuals as unusually high daytime and nighttime temperatures persist. Scientists warn that climate change is making such heatwaves more frequent, intense, and prolonged across Europe.

Trump Tantrums, Governance, Grievances

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Straight to Jail, Right Away, Andrew Egger, right, June 22, 2026. Until now, Donald Trump’s shambolic attempts to renovate the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool have been just a silly, funny sideshow. But this weekend, the story took a more sinister turn.

As news spread that the new “American Flag Blue” coating was already sloughing off the bottom of the pool, Trump went looking for somebody to blame—and predictably went with the most authoritarian available option.

“The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations [sic] magnificent Reflecting Pool,” Trump posted on Saturday night. “These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail!”

Nothing had been wrong with the pool coating itself, the president insisted: “Ours worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish . . . the Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago.” But alas, some theatrical villains had come along and ruined it for everybody: “They took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”

Who could have done such a thing? Who would have dared poor gallons of harsh chemicals into the Reflecting Pool? . . . Oh, right, it was the pool company Trump hand-picked to “fix” it.

These villains, it seems, were so cunning, so devastatingly dastardly, that they managed to pull off this shocking act of national blasphemy without once being visible on the cameras embedded in the Washington Monument that transmit a 24/7 public livestream of the Reflecting Pool. Plainly, we are looking at some serious criminals here. But rest assured that Trump is on the case: Many people, he claimed, have already been arrested.

Is that true? Who knows! At least one arrested person has already been identified, however: former U.S. Olympian David Hearn, who told ABC News he was arrested Friday after heading to the Reflecting Pool to see it for himself and touching a piece of the blue coating that had come partially loose. “I did not remove, I did not damage, I did not rip, tear, break, destroy, or harm any part of the Reflecting Pool,” Hearn insisted.

Last week, I argued that the Reflecting Pool renovation boondoggle was “a striking metaphor for the failures of Trump’s second term” that had failed in the same way Trump projects these days often fail.¹ Trump’s attempts to spin the failure have been typical, as well: He first tried to insist the problems were invented or imagined; then, when they became too obvious for even his fans to ignore, he pivoted to denouncing them as deliberate sabotage from his enemies.

All this is still, I suppose, pretty funny. But it’s worth reflecting on the fact that it’s only America’s remaining free institutions that allow it to remain so. It is extraordinarily unlikely that David Hearn or anyone else will actually face legal repercussions for touching the failing pool bottom. But that’s no thanks to Trump, who would absolutely give a few wrong-place, wrong-time bystanders “years of jail” to pass the blame if he actually had the sweeping authoritarian powers he claims and craves.

High-Tech Political, Economic, Workplaces Controls: In Case You Missed It

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary:The techno-fascist plot to end democracy around the world, Wayne Madsen, left, June 21, 2026. The diabolical scheme by Thiel, Musk, Epstein, and political Zionists to fix elections, collect personal data, and create a global techno-fascist dictatorship powered by a network of data centers.

Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, along with longtime Musk collaborator Peter Thiel, the ultra-Zionist government of Israel, and the remnants of Jeffrey Epstein’s global blackmail and intelligence-gathering network are poised to end democracy around the world and substitute for it a techno-fascist total surveillance panopticon overseen by a select few elite “tech bros.” A panopticon is an institutional building designed in the 18th century by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. A panopticon, whether a penitentiary or a general society, permits total surveillance without the subjects of such monitoring being aware of it.

In order to destroy popular elections of governments, the techno-fascists have, over a period of ten years, relied on powerful computer programs designed to manipulate vote counts and throw elections in order to benefit far-right candidates and political parties answering only to the techno elites. The end-game of the techno-fascists is to replace democratic governance with artificial intelligence. The push for massive data centers to power state-network governance is backed by a multi-billionaire alliance of Musk, Thiel, and other techno-fascists.

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Among the chief components of the techno-fascist plot to seize control of the world is Black Cube, a private Israeli intelligence firm founded by ex‑Mossad officers. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was closely associated with the Epstein network and Black Cube.

Creating a techno-fascist state has long been the dream of the moneyed class. The Technate was the political‑economic system proposed by the 1930s movement Technocracy Inc., led by Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert. The Technate was to replace politicians, markets, and money with engineers, scientists, systems analysts, and energy‑based accounting (“energy certificates”). The key feature of the Technate is that there would be no elections or representative government. Also eliminated would be private ownership of major industry and money. All production and consumption measured in joules and society run like a giant industrial control system.

Today, the Technate has evolved into Silicon Valley’s “solutionism,” AI‑managed society concepts, accelerationist techno‑governance, and crypto‑technocracy / network states. Musk’s maternal grandfather, Dr. Joshua Norman Haldeman was the leader of the Canadian branch of Technocracy Inc. in the 1930s–40s. Musk’s worldview echoes several Technate principles, including the belief that engineers should run society. Musk has repeatedly said that “politicians are useless” and “engineers build the future.”

Thiel is even closer to the Technate’s political logic. Thiel believes that democracy is inefficient. He has said, “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” To that end, Thiel has funded seasteading, charter cities, and “startup societies.” Thiel and Larry Ellison believe in total‑information integration, which resembles technocratic planning tools. Their Palantir and Oracle technologies advance, respectively, the movement toward a panopticon society. Replacing democratic governance with a techno-fascist state also requires total dominance over sources of information. That is the real reason behind the acquisition of two major news networks, CBS and CNN, by Larry Ellison’s nepo-son, David Ellison. His portfolio also includes Paramount, HBO. Warner Brothers, and a 15% stake in TikTok.

In many respects, the U.S. government signed its own death warrant by providing the seed money for surveillance giants like Oracle, Google, and Palantir to form. In‑Q‑Tel, the CIA‑funded venture arm that invests in surveillance and monitoring technologies, provided capital for Oracle, Google, Palantir, Anduril (manufactures autonomous towers, border surveillance, and drone swarms), Univercells (big‑data platform used for intelligence fusion and analytics), ANELLO Photonics (navigation‑grade optical sensors), Matroid (computer‑vision platform for real‑time video surveillance), Sayari (global data intelligence used for tracking networks and entities), Advanced Navigation (autonomous navigation for drones/vehicles), and Skydio (AI‑guided surveillance drones used by police and military). The massive data centers being constructed around the United States are not intended to enhance the public’s AI experience but to spy on each and every citizen of the United States. Most of the surveillance suites being funded by the CIA and the U.S. military — around 400 in total — are AI-driven and that means the mega data centers have a singular purpose: surveillance of the citizenry. And the empty warehouses being commandeered by the Homeland Security Department are not merely for incarcerating immigrants — legal and otherwise — but U.S. dissidents opposed to the Trump administration and its techno-fascist successors. Dismantling Detention | Indivisible

Oracle and Palantir now operate as strategic partners providing joint AI and surveillance‑grade cloud services to governments. Simply stated, Oracle provides the omni-surveillance infrastructure, Palantir provides the intelligence platforms to conduct the surveillance. Elon Musk’s major goal in running Trump’s Department of Government Effiency (DOGE) was to eliminate as many humans responsible for governance, provision of social services, and decision-making as possible. DOGE eliminated thousands of federal positions, but the exact number is not fully published because the Trump White House classified it. DOGE’s stated goal was a 75% federal workforce reduction. The degradation of U.S. government services is a direct result of the move to replace human-directed government with an AI-driven techno-fascist state.

Thiel’s interest in “exit” from democratic systems mirrors Technocracy Inc.’s desire to bypass politics entirely. To that end, Thiel’s secret society, Dialog, appears to be an effort to enlist Big Tech and high finance movers and shakers with, ironically, a few politicians, to being about the goal of hobbling, then replacing, democratic governance. Dialog, with its annual closed‑door gatherings, lack of a public membership list, and no published proceedings, mirrors other such secret societies, from the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, the Bilderberg Group, and Epstein’s ad hoc gatherings on Little Saint James island and other locations.

Epstein’s social‑political access group was built around elite universities, philanthropy, finance, political donors, scientists and technologists, intelligence‑adjacent figures, and social leverage and kompromat dynamics. The network operated through salons, private dinners, “scientific advisory” gatherings, private travel, donor networks, and introductions and matchmaking. More than 200 of the world's elites ...

Thiel’s Dialog group, founded in 2012, has an upper membership of 150 individuals consisting of tech founders, hedge‑fund managers, political operatives, AI researchers, and defense/intelligence‑adjacent figures. Dialog is slightly different from the Epstein network in that it concerns itself with “civilizational risk” and long‑term governance. Tier 1 of Thiel’s Dialog includes his two apprentices, Vice President JD Vance (who is also non-Catholic Thiel’s “eyes and ears” into the operations of the right-wing Catholic Opus Dei sect); failed Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters; Managing director of Thiel Capital Eric Weinstein; Netscape founder Marc Andreessen; and Palantir senior leadership figures Alex Karp, Shyam Sankar, andRyan Taylor. Tier 2 of Dialog includes Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens, Anduril founder Palmer Lucky (brother-in-law of disgraced former U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz), Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, and former Coinbase CIO and “network-state” theorist Balaji Srinivasan.

Vance’s conversion to the Opus Dei sect of Catholicism represents Thiel taking direct aim at the Roman Catholic Church and Vatican City under the progressive leadership of Pope Leo XIV and his predecessor, Pope Francis I.

Tier 3 of Dialog consists of political and strategic operatives. They include the Thiel-funded culture‑war strategist Chris Rufo. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a board member at New College of Florida, where he has carried out the dismantling of the college’s liberal arts education program. Other Tier 3 members of Dialog are Charles Johnson, a right-wing operative with long‑standing ties to Thiel’s political ecosystem; Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), a neo-reactionary theorist who has been invited to multiple Thiel salons; and Nate Fischer of New Founding.

One troubling aspect of Dialog is its strong AI‑governance component. These Tier 4 AI advocates include David Sacks, PayPal co-founder and the Trump administration’s AI & Cryptocurrency Czar; Michael Kratsios, the former chief information officer of the United States under Trump; and Hoan Ton‑That of Clearview AI.

Tier 5 political influence associates of Dialog include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker.

Thiel had direct and repeated contact with Epstein. Thiel attended Epstein-hosted gatherings in Manhattan and shared dinners with Epstein, Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn founder Hoffman (a member of the “PayPal mafia, along with Thiel and Musk), former director of the M.I.T. Media Lab Joichi Ito, and other techno- elites. According to released Department of Justice Epstein files, Epstein’s staff prepared for Thiel’s visits to various Epstein properties, including Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This fact is derived from dietary requirements for Thiel sent to island staff. Thiel co‑organized the off‑the‑record “Dialog 2014” retreat at Sundance Resort in Utah. Epstein was explicitly invited to the Thiel‑run event.

Epstein discussed with Thiel in a recorded conversation the placing of Ehud Barak into a senior role at Palantir, the deep data mining and total information surveillance company founded by Thiel. Thiel is a central hub connecting Epstein to Palantir and Black Cube.

Palantir’s links to the Trump administration via Thiel and Musk’s DOGE has resulted in several countries canceling contracts with Palantir. Switzerland halted its use of Palantir, explicitly citing data sovereignty risks and the inability to fully mitigate foreign‑jurisdiction control over critical systems. France’s domestic intelligence agency DGSI is dropping Palantir and replace it with a French-built platform from ChapsVision. This shift is explicitly framed as a move toward digital and AI sovereignty. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated that France “cannot depend on foreign powers for our digital tools.”

Germany is pulling back sharply from Palantir — not canceling an existing contract (because none is active), but refusing to award new ones and signaling that Palantir is not acceptable for national‑security data systems. Germany’s top military cyber official, Thomas Daum, stated that the Bundeswehr will not award contracts to Palantir “for now.” He told Handelsblatt that granting Palantir access to national military databases is “inconceivable at the moment.” Daum’s statement is considered as one of the strongest public rejections of Palantir by any NATO military.

The United Kingdom is formally reviewing whether to trigger a break clause next year to end its £330M National Health Service (NHS) Federated Data Platform contract. A parliamentary committee urged the government to terminate the contract. Political pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan has already blocked a separate £50M police contract with Palantir. Should Labor newly-elected MP Andy Burnham replace Starmer, pressure will mount on forcing Palantir out of government contracts in the UK.

The Dutch government is pursuing a “two‑track policy to reduce dependency” and develop a European alternative, following parliamentary pressure to end Palantir use. While not yet a formal cancellation, the government has signaled intent to phase out Palantir systems. Denmark is actively seeking domestic replacements for Palantir software, part of a broader European trend to reduce reliance on U.S. defense‑tech platforms.

It is more than noteworthy that Epstein explicitly referenced Palantir as a potential job placement for Ehud Barak. The former Israeli prime minister and Epstein confidante appears to be a key liaison between the techno-fascists and Israeli influence operation firms that include Black Cube, BlackCore, NSO Group, Psy-Group, and others that have operated under the direction of Israeli Defense Force units responsible for waging campaigns online to “influence public consciousness.” Israeli military training manuals state that such campaigns involve “the distribution and promotion of illegitimate content using technological tools and solutions — a route that bypasses Facebook and Google.”

The cancellation of business relationships by European countries with Palantir is evidence that their intelligence services are aware of the plans by Thiel, Musk, and others to strangle democracy along with the EU. These agencies need not look any further than London and Washington to see how effective the techno-fascists were at creating the sort of governmental chaos that fascists regard as priming the pump and setting the table for the rise of techno-fascist states. Thiel’s placement of JD Vance in the vice presidency of the United States is but one example of the techno-fascists’ successes. This is matched by the coming to power of several “libertarian”-minded fascists in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador, and other Latin American nations.

BlackCore is a private‑intelligence / cyber‑ops contractor that sits in the same ecosystem as Black Cube, Palantir, Thiel’s networks, and Epstein’s tech‑elite social circles. BlackCore has been linked to such democracy-destroying firms as Black Cube, NSO Group, Psy-Group, and Cambridge Analytica. The latter, which was overseen by Steve Bannon, cooperated with Russian intelligence agencies to fix the 2016 Brexit referendum in favor of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and the 2016 U.S. presidential election that saw Donald Trump moving into the White House.

These and similar firms associated with Epstein, Musk, Thiel, and Israel are key players in the “gray‑zone intelligence” market of covert influence, digital ops, HUMINT (human intelligence), and corporate/political investigations, Black Cube and BlackCore are both Israeli‑linked private intelligence outfits. They recruit ex‑IDF, ex‑8200 (Israel’s chief signals intelligence agency), and ex‑Mossad personnel. Both appear in the same contractor ecosystem used by oligarchs, political campaigns, and high‑net‑worth individuals and both have been referenced in the same legal filings and OSINT (open source intelligence) contractor directories. Palantir and BlackCore have served the Gulf states, European interior ministries, U.S. corporate security divisions, and litigation‑support firms.

Another major player in the Israel-connected high-tech surveillance eco-sphere is Larry Ellison of Oracle. Larry Ellison was also closely connected to the Epstein circle that also included Bill Gates of Microsoft, Musk, Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Ito, and Sergey Brin of Google. Ellison and Thiel are both part of the Silicon Valley billionaire class that Epstein cultivated. Ellison and Thiel both appear in the tech‑elite segment of the Epstein files. Brin appears in multiple documents, emails, and references in the DOJ Epstein archive.

Microsoft executive Steven Sinofksy hired Epstein as a paid “exit negotiator” from Microsoft. Epstein coached Sinofsky on how to extract maximum severance and charged a $1 million fee, which Sinofsky accepted without hesitation. Epstein also instructed Sinofsky to demand $20 million in stock vesting. Epstein was no mere power broker for Silicon Valley executives but a central cog in a military and industrial espionage network. Sinofsky forwarded internal Microsoft communications about the failing Surface RT launch. Emails included sales data, projections, and executive discussions.

After joining the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, Sinofsky fed Epstein information on venture deal flows, conversations with Tim Cook of Apple, information about Bill Gates, and analysis of WeWork, a firm that provides co-working spaces in some 600 buildings in 125 cities.

Just weeks before Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Epstein prepared a list of influential contacts for Steve Bannon. They included Sinofsky, Gates, Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton

With Sinofsky’s name appearing in 1,996 DOJ‑released documents from the Epstein files, how many others in Epstein’s circle of big-tech and financial executives were turning over corporate secrets to Epstein? More importantly, was blackmail by Epstein their incentive to pass on secrets?

One invasive private investigations company, Black Cube, was closely connected to Epstein. Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s legal team hired Black Cube extensively to track and intimidate accusers and journalists. Some of the same intermediaries worked for Epstein. Epstein’s close colleague Ehud Barak had consulting relationships with Black Cube’s Mossad intelligence veterans. Epstein also relied on the services of former Psy-Group operatives.

Psy-Group, an Israeli firm, was involved in running political influence campaigns from 2014 to 2018 on behalf of right-wing candidates, parties, and referenda initiatives. These operations included online influence campaigns, covert persona creation, psychological operations (“psyops”), opposition research, social‑media manipulation, and “perception management.” In 2016, Psy‑Group CEO Joel Zamel met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower. The firm proposed a covert social‑media influence campaign to help Trump. Key elements of the campaign were fake online personas, targeted messaging, and influence operations in swing states. Other Black Cube operations included discrediting the Obama adminstration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated the meeting. A new trove of leaked emails from ...

The Slovenian intelligence agency SOVA discovered that Black Cube-connected operatives entered Slovenia in 2026 before the general election. Targets included political figures and individuals connected to the ruling center-left coalition. The operatives secretly recorded conversations and later leaked them online just days before voting commenced. Righr-wing candidate Janez Janša (SDS), a supporter of Trump and Israel, admitted contact with a consultant linked to Black Cube, while denying any wrongdoing. Janša, a European Union skeptic, later formed a government and announced that Slovenia was withdrawing its recognition of Palestine as a state.

Psy‑Group conducted covert influence campaigns in at least one Eastern European election, Ukraine, as well as in Cyprus, using fake social‑media accounts, targeted propaganda, and psychological profiling. FBI scrutiny of Psy-Group resulted in its dissolution in 2018. Ex-Black Cube operatives formed a new company, BlackCore. BlackCore is essentially Black Cube 2.0 but more discreet. BlackCore provides many of the same “services” offered by Black Cube. These include undercover personas, social‑engineering, HUMINT infiltration, covert recordings, influence campaigns, and litigation support ops.

There is a nexus between Psy-Group, Black Cube, and BlackCore and NSO Group, the maker of Pegasus spyware. The operation called “CatalanGate” saw Pegasus targeting Catalan politicians, members of the Catalan independence movement, lawyers, activists, and election strategists. In Poland, from 2019 to 2020, Pegasus was used to hack Civic Platform opposition politician Krzysztof Brejza, his campaign staff, and his communications during the parliamentary election. Brejza’s hacked messages were later broadcast on state media. In Hungary, Pegasus was used by the Viktor Orban government to target investigative journalists, lawyers, opposition‑linked businesspeople, and civil‑society actors.

In India, the Narendra Modi right-wing Hindu nationalist government used Pegasus against opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, election consultants, journalists covering elections, and activists involved in political campaigns. In Mexico, Pegasus targeted opposition politicians, anti‑corruption investigators, journalists covering political scandals, and activists involved in election‑related issues. Pegasus was also used against political and other targets in El Salvador, Togo, Rwanda, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

Tools such as Pegasus, Palantir, and Oracle’s “Public Safety Suite” (the latter used in Brazil, Japan, Spain, UK, Canada, and Mexico) are being deployed to destroy democratic governance in order to replace it with techno-fascist control with the concurrent abolishment of national currency and its replacement with techno-oligarch controlled cryptocurrency. To bring about this dystopian future, the large data centers being forced on urban, suburban, and rural will be the true governing mechanism in that it will direct policy, surveillance and security, finances, and the media.

There is evidence that U.S.‑based political influence operations have been directed at Alberta to increase support for the province’s referendum for secession from Canada. The tactics employed by the operatives employ many of the disruptive efforts seen in the 2014 Scotland independence referendum, 2016 Brexit, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm spun out of SCL Group and linked to Steve Bannon, harvested up to 87 million Facebook profiles using a personality‑quiz app called “This Is Your Digital Life,” built by researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Facebook’s Open Graph API allowed the app to collect data from all their friends, including likes, locations, political views, and more. CA combined this with voter files and commercial data to build psychographic profiles using the OCEAN personality model. The data misuse and micro‑targeting strategy, with or without the Facebook-provided tools were employed to ensure the defeat of the Scottish independence referendum, withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, and Trump’s 2016 election victory. The UK Parliament identified several elections that CA and its parent company interfered with. These include votes in Australia; Brazil; Czech Republic; France; Gabon; Gambia; Germany; Ghana (2013); Guyana; India; Indonesia; Italy; Kenya (Uhuru Kenyatta campaigns of 2013 and 2017); Kosovo; Latvia; Lithuania; Malaysia; Malta, Mexico; Moldova, Mongolia; Nepal; Niger; Nigeria; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Romania; Slovakia; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; South Africa; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; the UK; and Zambia. Others included the mayoral election campaign in Buenos Aires in 2015 for Mauricio Macri and the Bogotá mayoral race of 2011. CA’s political dirty tricks operations have been linked to Israeli intelligence operatives. Although CA and SCL dissolved, some of their principals continue to do business as Emerdata.

The racist right-wing profile of CA is exemplified by its former chief, Alexander Nix, referring to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Information Minister Lucille Moe as “niggers.” That sums up the disdain that the techno-fascists, including Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and South Africa apartheid fans Musk, Thiel, and David Sacks have for non-whites. Cambridge Analytica's effectiveness ...

Bannon has used the electoral success of his neo-fascist cronies in Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and other countries to expand the influence of his Fascist International. Bannon and Vance have been active in attempts to undermine the papacy of Pope Leo. In Vance’s case, his subterfuge has been on behalf of Opus Dei.

The targets of Israeli-founded surveillance and election manipulation technology make sense. One of the world’s oldest democracies, the United States, and the most populous democracy, India, came under control of neo-fascist leaders bent on establishing techno-dictatorships. The 2016 UK Brexit referendum also proved to be a success for techno-fascist voting interference and triggered a hoped-for domino effect in other European Union member states. Emergent democracies with large populations and global influence — Brazil, Mexico, Poland, and Hungary — have proven to be Petri dishes for techno-fascist manipulation, although recent elections in Hungary and Mexico gave the promoters of techno-fascism a lesson on the limits of their current operations targeting pro-democratic political parties.

But efforts to ensure election integrity may be short-lived. Some credentialed election experts now believe that the models used by CA and other election influence operatives in the past have now been rendered obsolete. They believe that AI, with the financial backing of techno-fascists like Musk and Thiel, can merely covertly change vote counts. Some election specialists, after having closely examined the 2024 election results in the United States, believe that Kamala Harris won the election, having carried the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

Election influence operations have not disappeared. They are working in tandem with efforts to manpulate vote counts prior to, during, and after elections. One such malevolent influence operation appeared on SubStack after the U.S. Senate Tecas primary victory of James Talarico. A page for “James Talerico,” a misspelling of Talarico, was obviously designed to lure unsuspecting potential voters to a disingenuous web page.

The combination of exploding data‑center capacity, persistent high incarceration rates, and total‑information surveillance architectures is pushing the U.S. toward a system where behavior is continuously tracked, stored, analyzed, and used to shape outcomes — from policing to sentencing to social services. The U.S. continues to maintain one of the world’s largest incarceration systems and with the acquisition of huge warehouses to house internees, that number is on an upward swing.

The Yarvin model (embraced by Thiel, Musk, Vance, and Blake Masters) is to abolish democracy and replace it with a technocrat‑led monarchy. His proposals include retiring all government employees (a goal shared by Musk), ignoring court orders (carried out by the Trump administration on an almost-daily basis), censoring the press, defunding universities and NGOs, and centralizing authority under a single executive. Thiel funded Yarvin’s startup Tlön and elevated him as a political philosopher within the “Thielverse,” which meets annually as part of Thiel’s Dialog secret group. Should America be a Monarchy? - Curtis ...

Yarvin wants to “virtualizing” undesirable populations by permanent solitary confinement with virtual reality interfaces. Yarvin believes that this wojuld be a “humane alternative to genocide” that removes people from society without killing them. For the record it is important to note that Yarvin’s paternal grandparents were Jewish communists. Some of the Israeli heirs of Jewish Communists from Europe and America are currently carrying out brutal genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, and on the West Bank.

It cannot be stressed enough that those who are killed and maimed by ICE on the streets of the United States, Palestinians and Lebanese being slaughtered by the IDF, and Ukrainians being killed by Russian invaders have the same enemies in the personages of Trump, Vance, Musk, Thiel, and the other techno-fascists seeking to replace democratic rule with a techno-fascist global state. It is well past time for the lambs being led to slaughter unite to defeat the beasts of Trump, Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin and their fascist flying monkeys

Illustrative graphic by Crust News..

Crust News, Exclusive: Oracle is Forcing Employees to Hand Over Their Face, Staff Report, Updated June 14, 2026. The tech giant is rolling out mandatory facial biometric authentication for its U.S. staff and contractors, using a vendor with an active biometric privacy lawsuit on its record.

Oracle is requiring its U.S. employees and contractors to submit their face to a biometric authentication system as a condition of accessing their own workspaces, according to multiple Oracle staff members. The program, called Identity Assurance, will become mandatory in July 2026 through a phased rollout covering their U.S. workforce. Oracle declined to comment when we reached out to them.

We've seen the internal email and the enrollment screen, and what Oracle puts in front of its workers when they log in is a checkbox asking them to consent to something they have no meaningful power to refuse.Mandatory “Consent”

The Identity Assurance enrollment screen presents employees with a terms-and-conditions box and a single checkbox: “I consent to Oracle’s use of my facial biometric data to periodically validate my identity.”

• Beneath it, a button reads: “Agree and continue.”
• Beneath that: “Skip enrollment.”Oracle’s staff can only accept the new terms

The skip option exists for now. As of July, it won’t. The internal email sent to U.S. staff under the organisation of Clay Magouyrk, Oracle’s co-CEO states: “Enrollment will become mandatory through a phased rollout, beginning in July through the end of the year.”

This is what is known as coerced consent. Oracle has constructed a system in which workers tick a box affirming their voluntary agreement to something that may cost them their jobs if they refuse. Oracle are offering the concept of consent, without presenting the opportunity in reality.What employees are actually agreeing to

The program has two components. First, employees must submit a government-issued identity document: a passport, driver’s license, or state ID.Oracle employees shared the internal email with us

After the ID is validated, employees are enrolled in facial biometrics via a live camera scan. That biometric template is then used for “periodic checks” during Oracle’s single sign-on process, meaning Oracle is not simply verifying identity at login. It is conducting ongoing surveillance of who is accessing its systems, and when.

The enrollment screen directs employees to Mitek’s biometric data policy for more information. That policy is the same company’s, and the same data practices, that a federal appeals court refused to help shield from a class action lawsuit.The litigation chasing Oracle’s chosen company

Oracle did not build Identity Assurance alone. The identity verification layer, the part that scans your government ID and matches your face to it, is handled by a third-party vendor Oracle selected for the purpose. That vendor is Mitek, a San Diego-based identity verification company. It is worth knowing something about them.

Mitek has faced a federal class action over exactly the kind of biometric data collection it is now being asked to perform for Oracle. In December 2021, an Illinois man named Joshua Johnson sued the company under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, BIPA, after Mitek scanned his selfie and driver’s licence as part of an identity verification process for a car rental platform called HyreCar.

Johnson alleged that Mitek had created a biometric template of his facial geometry without obtaining his informed consent, and without providing the notifications BIPA requires. Oracle has since solved for that problem by making consent mandatory.

Mitek tried twice to force the case into arbitration, failing both times. A U.S. District Court rejected the first attempt. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling by Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, rejected the second.

The court found there was no basis to conclude Johnson had ever agreed to arbitrate with Mitek at all. The case, which was remanded to state court following the Seventh Circuit ruling, remains unresolved. Oracle has since contracted Mitek to handle the biometric data of its entire U.S. workforce.Exemptions reveal Oracle’s legal anxiety

The enrollment screen includes a link: “Learn if you qualify for an exemption.”

Oracle has not said publicly what qualifies someone for one. What we know, from sources with knowledge of the rollout, is that employees based in Colorado and Texas are exempt. The reason has not been communicated internally.

Both states have biometric privacy protections. Texas enacted the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, CUBI, in 2009, one of the earliest such laws in the country.

Colorado amended its Privacy Act in July 2025 to require explicit employer consent before collecting employee biometric data. An exemption carved out for those two states, and apparently not for Illinois, the state with the most plaintiff-friendly biometric privacy law in the nation and the one under which Mitek is already being sued, is a decision that is sure to interest lawyers.

Illinois is the state with the strongest laws on biometrics. Its biometric privacy law, BIPA, lets any resident sue a company directly for collecting their biometric data without proper consent, no proof of harm required. It is the law that cost Facebook $650 million, TikTok $92 million, and Google $100 million. Oracle has significant Illinois-based staff, has not exempted them, and has chosen a vendor already facing a BIPA suit.No union to step in

Oracle’s U.S. workforce is not unionized. There is no collective mechanism to push back, no shop steward to file a grievance, no bargaining unit to negotiate over the terms of biometric data collection.

What there is, according to sources with direct knowledge of the workforce's response, is fear. No one is planning to protest or refuse. According to our sources, people are quietly looking for other jobs, but some don't feel safe enough to act on it.

There was no grace period for employee feedback before this was announced. Oracle, per sources, treated the optional window as the feedback mechanism. Employees were informed of a decision already made and given time to comply before compliance became compulsory.

According to the same sources, this new biometric login applies to contractors as well as direct employees. The scope of the program is the full U.S.-based workforce, with the exemptions mentioned earlier.Oracle declines comment

We sent Oracle a list of questions about the program, including its legal basis, the scope of the rollout, the selection of Mitek, data retention practices, the criteria for exemptions, and its obligations under state and federal biometric privacy law.

Oracle public relations replied within hours. The response was three words: “Oracle declines comment.”

They did not deny a single fact, and crucially, did not outline the scope of the program. We were specifically interested in whether this extends beyond the U.S. border. For employees in the EU, GDPR would present a significant legal obstacle to mandatory biometric collection. Oracle declined to address it.What this is

The people inside Oracle’s U.S. workforce have no union, no recourse, and no real choice. By July, handing over their face will be the price of keeping their job. Their biometric data will sit with a vendor that has already been sued for mishandling exactly this kind of information, contracted by one of the most powerful technology companies on earth, which had eight chances to explain itself and took none of them.

Oracle sells its cloud infrastructure to governments, hospitals, and banks. It now also surveils the faces of everyone who works for it. The employees who told us about this did so at personal risk. 

Gothamist, powered by WNYC, Artificial intelligence firms are feasting on Manhattan office space, Angela Weiss, June 22, 2026. Earlier this month, the artificial intelligence company Altana signed a lease for 62,000 square feet of office space in Midtown, tripling its current Williamsburg office space. Weeks earlier, another AI company, Sierra, signed a lease for a 94,000 square foot space on East 26th Street, not long after AI video company Synthesia closed on 50,000 square feet of space in the Flatiron District.

The companies are part of a surge of AI companies taking over prime real estate in Manhattan, a trend that analysts said was only likely to grow. In the first quarter of 2026, AI firms took out 1 million square feet of New York City office space – by comparison, the Chrysler Building holds 1.2 million square feet of office space – already exceeding the total leased in 2025, said Reed Hatcher, a senior manager at Cushman & Wakefield’s research arm.

“It's gone from a niche trend to a real demand driver,” said Hatcher.

Real estate analysts and experts who study AI said New York City is quickly consolidating its role as one of the three centers of global AI activity, behind the San Francisco Bay Area and ahead of London, with consulting firm PWC estimating the technology could generate $15.7 trillion in economic activity by 2030.

The scramble for AI space in Manhattan is injecting fresh investment into the city’s real estate market, analysts said, particularly in the Midtown core, where the pandemic and a now-receding work-from-home push helped drive up office building vacancies.

The recent growth, while also heralding a boost in high-paying jobs and new revenues for city coffers, also comes in the wake of concerns raised in a May report by city Comptroller Mark Levine, who said the AI push could mean economic growth for the city but also carries substantial risks, including that the boom could quickly go bust.

New York City, at least for the time being, serves as an attractive base for AI firms in part because of its large pool of talent, according to experts who study the industry. The city additionally benefits from a supply of AI research labs, including ones operated by Google, Columbia University, CornellTech and JPMorgan, according to a May report by JLL, a global real estate services company headquartered in Chicago. The company estimated that nearly 1,100 AI start-ups operate in New York City, compared to 2,655 in the Bay Area, and that the median advertised salary is $155,000 here.

By Cushman’s estimate, more than 1,500 AI companies are located in the city. These include Harvey AI and Palantir, which lease 219,000 square feet and 206,000 square feet, respectively, making them the largest occupiers of office space in the city, according to Cushman.

U.S. President Donald Trump clutches Indian leader Narendra Modi’s arm for support while trying to scale a stair at the Group of 7 (G7) Summit in Europe as others look on (Evelyn Hockstein photo via Getty Images).

Public Notice, Accountability Journalism: What if we covered Trump's age the way we covered Biden's? Paul Waldman, right, June 22, 2026.  His rapid decline is obvious. Why not give it the attention it deserves? 

Anyone with an elderly parent or grandparent has seen how it goes: With the passage of years, rest becomes a struggle, as they sleep fitfully overnight, then nod off repeatedly over the course of the day.

This is President Trump’s pattern now. He goes on social media binges until the wee hours of the morning, sending out strings of angry messages while the rest of the country slumbers. Then when he finds himself sitting in a comfortable chair while others are momentarily the center of the action — in cabinet meetings, at a basketball game, even amid the spraying sweat and blood of a UFC fight on the White House lawn — his eyes close, his chin lowers, and he grabs a few moments of blissful slumber before returning to consciousness.Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comTrump struggles to clasp the Medal of Honor to Major Nicholas Dockery -- and then ties it?Thu, 18 Jun 2026 21:20:26 GMTView on Bluesky

Trump’s habit of making frequent brief visits to dreamland is less a problem in itself than an illustration of something deeper; in fairness, anyone who had to listen to Lee Zeldin drone on about how great they are might put their head down for a nap, too. And most of the time, Trump does appear more spry than many 80-year-olds.

But only once before has America had a president this old — and that time, we held an extended and furious debate about whether age had rendered the octogenarian unable to do his job. By comparison, discussion of Trump’s age has been quiet and infrequent.

But it’s a subject we can no longer avoid. And if we’re going to confront it, we have to distinguish what is solely a matter of appearance from the things that really matter — exactly what we didn’t do when Joe Biden was the one growing old before our eyes.

More unhinged and disinhibited than ever

We are neither psychiatrist nor gerontologists and therefore make no specific diagnosis of Trump’s mental or physical state. But we are all doing what those with aging relatives do: watching the signs of increasing mental and physical infirmity, asking what’s normal and what might require intervention, and wondering when we ought to be worried.

Some of those signs have little or no effect on his job performance, like the gruesome bruising on his hand or the swollenankles.

Even the sleeping, one could argue, doesn’t matter all that much — it’s not as though genuine business is being conducted at those cabinet meetings and he needs to stay sharp for it.

But disinhibition is often associated with certain kinds of dementia, and Trump seems less inhibited than ever — even for someone who wasn’t particularly inhibited to begin with.

Every candidate and president makes “gaffes,” statements that when taken out of context can be used against them. But lately Trump has been making gaffes so obviously damaging that they would be too stupid for a politician on their first run for city council, let alone one who has spent a lifetime talking to reporters.

It isn’t just his increasing propensity to say inappropriate things — like asking a child “You think you could take me in a fight?” The ones that show how Trump is declining are the ones that do him deep political damage.

For example, when asked how much Americans’ financial situation played into his thinking about Iran, he responded, “Not even a little bit … I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody.”

Democrats couldn’t believe their luck.

Even if his point — that he was focused on making sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon — was legitimate, the phrasing was a remarkable own-goal, handing his opponents a quote they could repeat endlessly. But that paled in comparison to what he said a month later when government data revealed a disturbing rise in inflation.

“I love it,” he said when asked about it. “The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comQ: Are you concerned about the latest inflation numbers that came out this morning? TRUMP: No, I love it. I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over -- do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? You know who doesn't know? Iran until right now.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:08:03 GMTView on Bluesky

Aides scrambled to explain that he meant that what he loves is that inflation will come down. That’s absurd — if your oncologist said, “You know what I really love? I love the fact that you have cancer, because eventually it’ll go away,” you’d get a new oncologist.

Nevertheless, any politician who would utter the words “I love the inflation” to a room full of reporters with cameras running, especially after we all saw how damaging the inflation of 2022 was, is one with an unsound mind.

Trump is not aging in the same way Joe Biden did.

Biden looked increasingly frail in his last year in office — his voice became quieter and raspier, he acquired a shuffling gait, and he sometimes got a confused look on his face. Though he didn’t mix up names or dates any more often than Trump does today, Biden could sound tentative where Trump speaks loudly and with complete confidence, which gives the appearance of more vigor.

But more importantly for the question of presidential aging, there was never much evidence that Biden’s aging had affected his decision-making in problematic ways. That isn’t to say it wouldn’t have had he gone through another term in office, but there isn’t anything we could point to and say “a younger Biden would never have decided to do that.”Mark Jacob on how the press ignores the biggest Trump story Mark Jacob on how the press ignores the biggest Trump story

And it’s not as though reporters didn’t look hard enough. This is a key difference in how the two presidents have been treated: While there are occasional articles analyzing Trump’s aging, the mainstream media — especially the most important agenda-setting outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal — treated Biden’s age as one of the most important stories in politics, a four-alarm fire that demanded every ounce of attention they could give it.

To cover the question, they assigned teams of journalists, then gave them the time to interview as many people as they could to explore the subject from every possible angle. What do people inside the White House say about Biden’s age? What do voters think about Biden’s age? How is Biden’s age being portrayed on the internet? What do doctors say about Biden’s age?

The fruit of that reporting was long articles with multiple bylines that were splashed on the front pages in story after lengthy story (see here, here, and here), from whence the discussion spread to every other outlet in every medium. They kept reporting on it even after the election was over; Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote an entire book about Biden’s age and “its cover-up,” which got a huge amount of coverage from those same news outlets when it was released in 2025.

None of this is to say it was ever wrong to ask when a president is too old; I myself wrote about Biden’s age many times, the first of which was in 2019. And one could argue that in Biden’s case there was a practical question at hand, of whether he would run for reelection in 2024 (a question that was effectively answered by his catastrophic performance in his first debate with Trump). Part of the difference, furthermore, is that reporters love to give Democrats advice and scold them when they don’t take it, while they treat Republicans more like a weather pattern they have no way to influence.Trump's cognitive impairment endangers us all Trump's cognitive impairment endangers us allJustin Glawe · Jun 6Read full story

But while Trump’s voice may still be relatively strong, there are lots of reasons to worry about how his advancing age is affecting his judgment, and the consequences are profound. Would a younger Trump have literally threatened genocide (“A whole civilization will die tonight”) against a people he claimed to be trying to help, or picked a fight with the Pope, then posted an AI image of himself as Jesus?

Would a younger Trump with his political skills and understanding of the attention economy spend so much time drawing attention to the catastrophe of his reflecting pool renovation? Would a younger and less addled Trump have decided that invading Iran was a great idea, and taken so long to get out?

There’s no way to know for sure. But the nature of Trump’s personalist presidency, in which the entire government is organized around turning his whims into reality and the barest hint of dissent is swiftly punished, makes the question of his age even more important than it was with Biden, who was surrounded by competent people who could run the government even when the president was less engaged than he ought to have been.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found that 61 percent of Americans said Trump has grown more erratic with age. They’re absolutely right — and the news media have an obligation to spend as much time as necessary exploring and explaining what the consequences could be. Because it’s only going to get worse.

PoliticusUSA, News and Opinion: Trump Melts Down When Reporters Challenge His Reflecting Pool Vandalism Story, Jason Easley, June 22, 2026. Donald Trump kept claiming it was vandals when reporters started asking questions about the damage done to the Reflecting Pool, but the president's story made no sense.

It was supposed to be an event for Trump to sign two executive orders on quantum computing, but it turned into a new episode of Declining President Theater.

While taking questions from reporters, Trump was asked, “Are the contractors who did the initial work with the reflecting pool, are they to blame for the current condition or is it the vandals who-”

Trump interrupted like an elder who is certain that someone is breaking into their home and moving their car keys, “No, no. We have vandals.”

The president continued, “No. Vandals. You know, we have 100 and... We have a, I think, 290, 300-foot slit right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. Or we had people lifting up the basic, uh, some of the ba- It's, it's not a lot of damage, but it's, we'll probably have to let the water out and re-fix it. They went in there and five people are under investigation right now, and it's a sad thing.”

Trump sounds more out of his mind than any president in history. Even Nixon at the height of his Watergate paranoia didn’t sound this bad.

The president was just getting warmed up as things were about to get even more weird.

Trump then lost it because somebody put “86-47” on the grass as a form of protest:

“In addition to that, they, you know, we put brand-new beautiful grass all around. They put these massive letters on the grass. Uh, you probably know about that, right? And, uh, they said 86 47. They probably got that from the dirty cop Comey. You know he’s a dirty cop, don’t you? Dirty cop. He’s a crooked guy. Uh, they destroyed the grass. So, uh, that’s a big thing, but we’re gonna get it back very soon. National Guard and police have been all over the Mall.”

Video:

Reporters were skeptical about Trump’s tale of gangs of Reflecting Pool vandals and asked the president for proof, “How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? See- Do you have any proof of a slit? “

Trump responded with gibberish, “I mean, we didn’t have, we didn’t have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?”

The president was again asked for proof, “But do you have proof of that, that they, that they took a knife? “

Trump answered, “Yeah, yeah. We have proof.”

It was clear where this was going as the next logical question came, “Do you have photos or videos?”

Trump gave an answer that can only be interpreted as no, “Well, let’s put it this way. When you have a 350, I think it’s 350, not 250, a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that’s proof? You think that’s proof?”

The questions kept coming: “But the, the reporters have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned, and there’s no evidence of it.”

Trump was certain it was vandals, “Well, just, all you’d have to do is see the Parks Department. They’ll show it to you. Or see, see, uh, the secretary. But I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor. They cut it, and then they lifted it. They pulled it, and that’s what it is.”

Here is how the vandalism happened according to experts. When Trump made algae great again in the Reflecting Pool by painting the bottom a dark blue, his administration responded by dumping peroxide and other chemicals into the pool to kill the algae. The chemicals didn’t kill the algae, but they did cause the paint to peel.

If the administration had evidence of people vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, it would be all over the media. The fact that they have released nothing means that they have nothing.

It was good to see reporters ask Trump for proof to support his claims, and when Trump could not offer any, it was all the evidence that America should need that the vandals exist only in Donald Trump’s mind.

President Trump issues many posts a week such as the above informing his followers that he is all-powerful, often invoking such code phrases as "Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming," which is an alert to hooligans, election-deniers and insurrectionists in the QAnon cult that elections, courts and other traditional guardrails of democracy cannot withstand his extraordinary powers  and genius.

Heather Delaney Reese, Opinion: Donald Trump is out of control, and there's no one left to tell him no, Heather Delaney Reese,above right, June 22, 2026. On a warm June Sunday, while Americans were gathering with family to celebrate Father’s Day, the President of the United States spent the better part of his day hiding away at Camp David, posting erratic threats on social media. Instead of reflecting on his children or remembering his own father, he posted concerning rants on Truth Social and found twenty minutes to give a telephone interview with a Fox News reporter, threatening to end the lives of foreign dignitaries and erase an entire country from the planet.

During the interview, Trump reportedly warned that if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would “blow the sh*t out of them.” He reportedly floated taking over the strait itself, collecting tolls from international shipping, and told Iranian officials, “You won’t have a country” if they did not back down. Then he escalated even further. According to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, Trump warned, “You won’t even make it back to your f------ country.”

These were the words of the President of the United States during what was supposed to be a diplomatic process to end a war and bring peace to an entire region. And the more Donald Trump spirals about Iran, the clearer the situation has become: Trump has lost all control. Not just self-control or impulse control, but control over his government and control over this war. There are no guardrails remaining. No safe adults left in the room.

The most disturbing part wasn’t the profanity. It wasn’t even the threats. It was how casually he made them. When Yingst told Trump that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had stated Iran would not give up its right to enrich uranium, Trump responded that Pezeshkian better “watch his mouth” and “shape up or we’ll take over the rest of the country.” He described the memorandum of understanding, the very agreement he signed just days ago to end the war, as “just an option,” adding, “I can do whatever I want after that option.” He then floated the idea of the United States seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz permanently and collecting twenty percent of all oil that passes through it, describing America as the “guardian angel” of the Middle East. This is not a strategy. It was a man fantasizing about colonial extraction on a telephone with a reporter while his vice president was physically in Switzerland trying to negotiate peace on his behalf.

And Trump did not stop at the phone call. At 9:30 this morning, he posted on Truth Social: “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.” That post was shared around the time that Vice President J.D. Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner were sitting inside the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland, waiting to begin the first round of talks under the memorandum of understanding Trump himself had signed. The agreement explicitly prohibits the use of threats or force between the two nations. Trump violated his own peace deal on social media, while his own delegation sat in the room where the deal was supposed to be implemented. He undermined his own talks.

The Iranian delegation responded exactly the way anyone paying attention would have expected. According to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, Iranian chief negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi refused to participate in the planned group photograph with the American delegation, calling it an American “media show.” They then walked out of the venue in protest. Before they left, footage from the resort showed Araghchi pointedly ignoring Vance, instead embracing Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif while the Vice President of the United States stood right beside them trying to greet them. It was extremely awkward and another embarrassing moment for the United States. News footage also captured the Iranian team leaving, followed by Vance scrambling to hold a side conversation with the Pakistani prime minister as the first day of negotiations collapsed around him.

After what happened, we have to wonder if Trump set Vance up to fail. He sent his vice president halfway around the world to negotiate this fragile peace deal, then posted threats on social media that guaranteed the other side would walk out before the conversation even started. Trump likes to humiliate the people around him. He likes to make them lose, and he likes to be the center of every moment, even if it means torching a diplomatic process the entire world is watching. But this was not just a power play or an ego trip. This was the President of the United States actively sabotaging peace talks during a war that has killed thousands of people, cratered global oil markets, and brought the Middle East closer to regional collapse than at any point in decades.

What today made undeniable is that Trump has lost control of this war. Not just the narrative or the diplomacy. The war itself. In a single 24-hour period, he signed off on sending his vice president to begin negotiations, then publicly threatened to restart bombing before those negotiations began. He described his own signed agreement as “just an option” and said he could “do whatever I want” once it expires. He threatened to obliterate the country he is supposed to be making peace with, threatened to seize a sovereign waterway, threatened to assassinate the diplomats sitting across the table from his own delegation, and floated a permanent military occupation of a nation he told the American people just last week he wanted to stop fighting. These are the actions of a man who has lost control on every level and has no strategy. His own statements contradict each other from hour to hour. He cannot hold a position from morning to afternoon. The war is now being driven by his impulses rather than any coherent objective, and there is no one left around him willing to stop it.

Then came Lindsey Graham. On CBS’s “Face the Nation” this morning, the South Carolina senator spoke about war, occupation, and the seizure of a sovereign waterway with a confidence that suggested these conversations are already happening behind closed doors. “I spent four and a half hours with President Trump on Friday,” Graham said. “Here’s what I think is going to happen. If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz. We’ll charge a fee for all those who go through to pay for the operation, and we’re going to expand the Abraham Accords in calendar year 2026.” And then Graham put into words what Trump himself had been hinting at all day: “If Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them.”

Graham’s comments revealed something bigger than his own recklessness. They revealed what has happened to everyone around Trump. The people around Trump are no longer acting as guardrails. They have moved into full-blown enablers. Graham’s performance today is proof that there is no one left in Trump’s inner circle who is willing to say no, pump the brakes, or even express concern about what this trajectory means for the world. The enablers are not just tolerating the madness anymore. They are participating in it.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.

J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio could stop this. Right now. Today. Vance could invoke the 25th Amendment. He could rally members of the Cabinet behind the scenes. He could call for what the Constitution provides when a president is no longer fit to carry out the duties of the office. Trump cannot remove him. Vance’s position is constitutionally protected. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing this. And Rubio, the Secretary of State, the man whose entire job is to manage the diplomatic relationships Trump is destroying, could stand beside him. Together, they could bring the Cabinet with them. They could end this before it goes any further. Because if this keeps going, if Trump keeps threatening to obliterate sovereign nations between rounds of golf, keeps sabotaging his own agreements, and keeps contradicting himself from one post to the next while the military tries to figure out which version of his orders to follow, we are very close to another war the likes we haven’t seen in nearly 80 years. Because the early moments have already begun brewing in the background. Vance knows this. Rubio knows this. Every single person in this administration who has sat across the table from Trump and watched the lights go out behind his eyes knows this. And yet they keep clearing the room, keep covering for him, and keep pretending everything is fine. At some point, maybe Vance and Rubio will try to claim they went along with all of this to mitigate the damage. But they could stop it right now. And they are choosing not to.

Meanwhile, at 7:41 this morning, Trump posted his Father’s Day message on Truth Social:

“Happy Father’s Day! Our Country is doing GREAT. Record Jobs Numbers and Stock Market, BEST ECONOMY EVER! Greatest Military in the World, by far. We are WINNING on all fronts, WINNING LIKE NEVER BEFORE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Not one word of it is true. According to data released by the Department of Education this past week, 9.16 million student loan borrowers are now in default. That is roughly one in five Americans carrying federal student debt. The number has surged from 7.7 million in December and six million last August. Another three million borrowers are at least ninety days behind on their payments. And those figures are from April. The real number today is almost certainly worse.

Borrowers are being hit from every direction, squeezed by a Trump administration that continues to make life more expensive for working Americans. They have driven inflation higher, increased the cost of everyday necessities through tariffs that function as taxes on American consumers, resumed student loan collections, reinstated credit score penalties, and are preparing to begin garnishing wages. Some people are being forced to choose between their mortgage and their student loans. Others are choosing neither because they can no longer afford either.

Gasoline prices have risen roughly forty percent since the Iran war began in February. Inflation reached 4.2 percent in the most recent reading, its highest level since April 2023. That is what economic pain looks like. And while millions of Americans are struggling to keep up, the President of the United States is posting Father’s Day messages on social media pretending everything is fine.

By evening, Trump had moved on to attacking the New York Times. In a post at 4:57, he called the paper “Corrupt and Failing” for running a headline that read, “What Changed After Almost 4 Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much.” He raged against the premise, insisting Iran’s military is “DONE,” its navy “GONE,” its economy “BROKEN,” and that “THE OIL IS GUSHING.” By 8:28, he had escalated further, calling the Times’ reporting “FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’” and, in his words, “TREASONOUS.” He announced he would be adding their coverage to his “multi Billion Dollar lawsuit” against them. Then at 8:36, he shared a post from Lindsey Graham backing him up, with Graham calling the Times’ analysis an “insult to our men and women in uniform.” The New York Times is reporting based on facts. They are being journalists. They are doing the work they are supposed to do. This is the oldest play in Trump’s book: discredit the truth so the propaganda is louder. Call reality treason and threaten lawsuits to silence accountability. And enlist loyalists like Graham to amplify the message that asking questions about a war is somehow an attack on the troops.

What we are watching is a president in full decompensation. Not just politically or even strategically. Personally. Every authoritarian leader in modern history has followed the same pattern when the walls begin to close in. They do not retreat or reflect. They escalate. They lash out, and they create chaos to cover their decline. Mussolini’s final months were defined by increasingly erratic orders and a refusal to accept the reality on the ground. Saddam Hussein spent his last years in power issuing contradictory commands, threatening allies, and micromanaging military operations he no longer understood. And in every case, the people around them, the ones who could have stopped it, chose silence because they had too much to lose being so close to power and too much to gain from the financial benefits that proximity gives them. That is where we are tonight. The president is raging, threatening, and spiraling, and the people who swore an oath to the Constitution are watching it happen and doing nothing.

Today is Father’s Day. And in a world full of men who are protecting and covering up what may be the largest trafficking ring in modern history, who are enabling the authoritarian takeover of our country, and who are systematically propping up someone with seemingly severe physical and mental decline, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the fathers who are on the right side of this. The ones who put in the work to actually protect children. The ones who wake up every day and try to make the world safer, kinder, and more just than the one they inherited. This world needs you. Thank you for being the polar opposite of the men trying to destroy it.

And a special thank you to my own husband, Pete, who many of you have started to get to know. He has been my editor, my producer, and the person helping keep all of this moving so I can focus on writing these posts each night. Recently, he has taken on an even larger role as the co-host of our new podcast, Rational Response. He is stepping further into this fight ahead of the midterms because, as a father, he cannot sit back knowing there is more he could do to help protect the country his children will inherit.

So thank you to him, and all of the dads who are on the right side of history. The ones who take seriously their responsibility to protect children, stand up to corruption, and leave the world better than they found it. The ones teaching courage by example, showing up when it matters, and refusing to look away when others are being harmed. Thank you. Your voices, your actions, and your example matter more than you know.

The President of the United States spent Father’s Day threatening to obliterate a country, sabotaging his own peace deal, and lying to the American people about the state of their economy. He is not in control. The people around him know he is not in control, and it is our job to document what is happening.

Because we are building the record. The record that future generations will use to understand how this happened, who enabled it, who opposed it, and who found the courage to speak up when it mattered. The record that will help ensure this chapter of American history is never repeated.

Every day brings us closer to the midterms that will determine whether this man continues to wield unchecked power or whether we begin the work of reclaiming our country. And everywhere I look, I see more people paying attention, speaking up, organizing, and refusing to accept this as normal. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

More On U.S.-Israeli Wars,  Militiary, Foreign Policy

President Trump addresses about 800 U.S. generals and admirals in a political-rally-style speech at Quantico, VA on Sept. 30, 2025, preceded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard officer who prefers to call himself "Secretary of War" instead of the congressionally mandated term "Secretary of Defense." 

Senior military leaders look on at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: How MAGA Undermined the Military, Paul Krugman, right, June 22, 2026. Ideology, bigotry and cronyism have endangered national security.

When Donald Trump promised to make America great again, he clearly wanted among other things to start throwing our military weight around. As Timothy Snyder says,

The attack on Iran began with a longing -- a subjective sense that violence is pleasurable and can bring a utopia in which desires become reality. In the statements of President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth, such a utopia of violence is palpable.

Such a longing is always destructive even when, like Trump and Hegseth, one has inherited control of a powerful military. That military may not have been as powerful as many people imagined: Phillips O’Brien argues that what he calls the “rot” in America’s armed forces began before Trump II. Still, America’s military was an impressive institution.

And under Trump that institution is suffering rapid degradation.

Hegseth, reflecting attitudes widely held on the far right, came in asserting that wokeness had made the military weak, that the pursuit of diversity had led to the promotion of incompetent officers and that concern for liberal pieties had undermined the “warrior spirit” and focus on “lethality” that, he imagined, bring strength.

With these people, however, every accusation is a confession. The Trumpists, it turns out, have prioritized their “anti-woke” ideology over military effectiveness. They have given free rein to bigotry, rejecting distinguished, highly regarded Black and female officers in favor of politically loyal white men. Cronyism has also played a destructive role, as I’ll explain shortly.

Let’s look at the three axes of military degradation: Ideology, bigotry and corruption/cronyism.

Ideology: Last week the New York Times reported a major health crisis at an Air Force base:

A major flu outbreak has sickened nearly 160 troops at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas less than two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. troops would no longer be required to be vaccinated for the flu, defense officials said.

I wrote about the end of the vaccination requirement when it was announced. It was obviously terrible policy: Vaccination shouldn’t be a matter of individual choice when spreading infections can impair military effectiveness. And you know who understood that? George Washington, who made smallpox inoculations mandatory in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

Vaccination, however, has become a front in the culture war. And Hegseth evidently considered being politically correct, MAGA style, more important than national security.

Bigotry: Harry Truman desegregated the U.S. military in 1948. Over the years the military has come to be seen as a model for overcoming racial barriers, arguably one of our greatest national success stories in that regard. Three years ago the Pentagon commemorated the 75th anniversary of Truman’s decision. The press release was titled “U.S. military integration spawned peerless fighting force.”

Hegseth, however, judges officers not by the content of their character but by the color of their skin or their gender.

As the Times has reported, Hegseth has fired or sidelined more than two dozen generals and admirals, disproportionately Black or female. As the Times reports, these high-profile actions are part of a larger story. Decisions about promotions within the military are normally made by serving officers:

By law, one-star and two-star officers are chosen by promotion selection boards made up of senior military officers. The meetings are so confidential that board members are not permitted to tell others that they are part of the process.

But Hegseth has been intervening in the promotion process. He has claimed that his new promotion system is focused on “warfighting ability,” but as the Times notes,

In practice, though, his approach has made it harder for Black and female officers to get promoted to senior ranks, even when their records are exemplary.

Furthermore, promotions have been denied to officers who have spoken favorably about diversity or vaccines, even though those comments were made as part of then-current military policy.

How much has this environment pushed competent officers out of the military? To what extent has it turned the officers that remain into yes-men — and I do mean men — unwilling to offer critical feedback on politically motivated decisions?

Cronyism: On Monday the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence chief claimed that Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot “enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.” Did that include the missile strikes that killed 120 schoolchildren on the first day of the war?

The Pentagon made this statement as the Trump administration is trying to protect xAI, which runs Grok (and has now been folded into SpaceX) from a lawsuit alleging that its Memphis datacenter is illegally polluting the air.

So wait: Grok is running the war? By all accounts, Grok is greatly inferior to rival large language models operated by Anthropic and OpenAI. Indeed, federal agencies, when given a choice, have overwhelmingly rejected Grok. Reuters reports that of more than 400 reported government uses of AI that named a vendor, only 3 involved xAI or Grok.

Not incidentally, Musk has made great efforts to train Grok not to give what he considers woke answers — efforts that led the model to spew racist and antisemitic content.

So why is the U.S. military using Grok — not just in some ordinary application, but to run a war? Officials claim that Grok has unique capabilities, but this surely looks like an attempt to promote the business of a Trump supporter and comrade in bigotry. And if Grok is inferior to available alternatives, which it probably is, this favoritism is directly endangering national security.

Not surprisingly, a war that both Trump and Hegseth declared would last a few short weeks has now turned into a military disaster with no clear end in sight other than a humiliating retreat. They ignored clear indicators that such a war was unwinnable because there was no plausible way to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, let alone force regime change in Iran. But even if we account for the epic idiocy of this war, U.S. forces have performed far worse than expected. Despite plenty of advance warning of the perils of drone warfare from the war in Ukraine, the U.S. military was caught flatfooted by the Iranian drone menace. As a result, it suffered massive destruction at our bases and heavy aircraft losses.

The American military needs to have a reckoning with what has gone so badly wrong in the Iran war. But that won’t happen under the current commander-in-chief. Trump and Hegseth, who call themselves patriots, have subordinated national security to their personal prejudice, egoism and corruption. And from their point of view the loss of military professionalism, meritocracy and honor, along with the devastating loss of America’s reputation, is acceptable collateral damage.

Mona Khalil in Mansuri, Lebanon, in 2004 (Joseph Barrak photo via Agence France-Presse and Getty Images).

New York Times, Mona Khalil, Defender of Sea Turtles, Killed in an Israeli Strike in Lebanon, Ishani Desai, June 21, 2026 (print ed.). For a quarter century, Ms. Khalil ran a guesthouse and worked to protect endangered sea turtles who every summer lay their eggs on a stretch of beach near Tyre, Lebanon

For more than two decades, Mona Khalil protected the endangered sea turtles that laid their eggs on a beach near her bed-and-breakfast in Lebanon and kept predators away from the vulnerable hatchlings running to the Mediterranean Sea.

Her efforts to spotlight the plight of the turtles, bringing together often opposing interests, earned her respect among conservationists. She remained unflinching in her mission even as periodic war erupted around her in southern Lebanon.

On June 4, the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that has taken so many civilian lives in recent months caught up to her. She was wounded in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, and on Friday, she died of her injuries at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, a close friend, Fadia Jomaa, said.

Her sister, Amal Khalil, remembered Mona Khalil, who was 76, as “a well-rounded person — extremely tough, extremely kind.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and Lebanon? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Inside, I am angry,” Amal Khalil said.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in the most recent round of fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon. The fighting has threatened to upend a fragile peace agreement between the United States and Iran.

Ms. Khalil was born to Lebanese parents in Lagos, Nigeria. She later moved to the Netherlands, where she lived for more than a decade, working for a time as a porcelain restorer.

In the 1990s, Ms. Khalil returned to Lebanon to visit her family’s seaside home between Tyre and Naqoura, which had been built by her grandfather in the 1970s but abandoned during the civil war in the 1980s. It was dangerously close to a zone the Israelis occupied at the time. One night, she was walking on the Hima Qoleileh–Mansouri beach when she spotted a turtle squirming across sand.

“The first time I saw them, it was completely by accident,” Ms. Khalil said to a reporter for a 2006 Times article. “I suddenly heard a noise. It was a turtle creeping through the sand, coming to lay her eggs.”

Ms. Khalil learned that two species of sea turtle who nested there — the loggerhead and the green turtle — had been declared critically endangered by the World Conservation Union.

More News Roundups

U.S. Vice President JD Vance listens to U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as they attend a quadrilateral meeting between the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar at the Lake Lucerne Summit, aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict near Stansstad, Switzerland, June 21, 2026 (Pool photo by Nathan Howard of Reuters).

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Blows Up Peace Talks with Iran, Ben Meiselas, right, June 21 2026. He just can't help himself. 

Here’s what we’re tracking today:

• Trump threatens Iranian negotiators and the Strait of Hormuz right as talks begin in Switzerland
• Iran formally protests, refuses photo-ops, reportedly walks out (though a U.S. diplomat denies this)
• Iran says the nuclear file isn’t even on the table this round, but Lebanon and sanctions relief are
• Lindsey Graham predicts the MOU will fail and says the U.S. will “take the strait over by force”
• Israel and Netanyahu say they’re not leaving Lebanon, no matter what the MOU says
• JD Vance claims victory on Hormuz and the nuclear program while both remain unresolved
• The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga continues, with Jeanine Pirro threatening more charges to soothe Trump’s fragile ego
• And Trump posts a cryptic “great daughter” tribute to a New York socialite in the middle of a global crisis

Trump Blows Up the Room Before Anyone Sits Down

Donald Trump managed to sabotage these peace talks in Switzerland before they even got going. What just happened is stunning. I’ll also get this this a bit further down, but we’ve solved the mystery one one of Trump’s weirdest posts to date.

But first, the talks. While the actual diplomats were supposed to be sitting down to negotiate, Trump was on social media and talking to reporters threatening the Iranian leadership directly, telling them he’d make sure they didn’t make it back to their own country alive if they closed the Strait of Hormuz. He then announced the United States would simply take over the strait and start charging tolls to use it.

This is the same man who insists he’s the great dealmaker. You don’t get there by threatening to kill the people sitting across the table from you before the meeting starts.

Naturally, this caused the Iranian delegation to lodge a formal protest. And it gets worse for Trump’s side: Iran made clear they’re not even discussing the nuclear file in these talks at all. According to Iran, that conversation only happens once the U.S. implements the parts of the Memorandum of Understanding dealing with a full ceasefire in Lebanon and the lifting of sanctions. Worth noting, the head of the IAEA wasn’t even in the room for any of this.

Lindsey Graham, Doing What Lindsey Graham Does

Right behind Trump came Lindsey Graham, dispatched to the Sunday shows to repeat the threats. Graham told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation that he expects the MOU to fail, and that when it does, Trump will simply take the Strait of Hormuz by force and start charging a toll to anyone who wants to pass through. He also turned to the people of Lebanon and said, “help is on the way,” the exact same phrase that Trump used right before bombing Iran back in January.

Meanwhile, here’s the reality on the ground: the Strait of Hormuz is closed right now. Not because of some abstract future threat, but because it’s closed. Iran has shut it down. Iran has still managed to move oil out through Kharg Island, somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 million barrels, while the strait stays closed to the United States and everyone else.

Iran Won’t Give Trump His Photo-Op

Part of what makes the optics so bad for the U.S. is what happened with the cameras. JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner were all there in Switzerland, reportedly eager for the photo opportunity with the Iranian delegation. Begging, as Trump would say. The Iranians said no. They wouldn’t pose. They wouldn’t shake hands. The U.S. delegation was sitting in the room first, waiting, which in any negotiation is read as a position of weakness.

Image Screen grab shows Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi entering the meeting room with Vice President JD Vance before quickly moving out of view of the television cameras. Iranian officials declined to stand alongside the U.S., Pakistani, and Qatari delegations for the customary photo opportunity.

I have never seen the United States look this weak and this pathetic on the world stage.

In response to Trump’s threats against him and his entire negotiating team, Iranian official Ghalibaf put out a statement essentially shrugging off the threats entirely, saying Iran doesn’t take American threats into account and that their armed forces are ready to respond in a different way if needed. U.S.

Ghalibaf’s post: “Don’t they think to themselves that if their threats had any result, they wouldn’t have reached today’s desperation? We do not take the Americans’ threats into account at all. It would be better for them to watch their statements carefully. Our armed forces are ready to respond to them in a different way. No matter how much they talk, it is we who act.”

The line that stuck with me: no matter how much the U.S. talks, it is Iran that acts. That’s the position Trump’s bluster has put us in.

Why the Strait Is Actually Closed

Let’s be clear about why none of this oil is moving. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut because Israel continues striking inside Lebanon, where more than a hundred people have been killed, many of them women, children, and other civilians. Netanyahu has said outright that Israel has no intention of ever leaving Lebanon. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz has confirmed it too: no withdrawal from what Israel calls its security zone, full stop.

So while Trump postures about taking over the strait by force, Israel is the one actively continuing the invasion of Lebanon that the Memorandum of Understanding was supposed to stop. Israel’s message to Trump, in effect, is that we don’t care about your MOU, we’re moving forward regardless.

The Receipts: What Trump Actually Posted and Said

Let’s go to the actual statements

Trump posted that Iran needs to immediately stop its proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble, or the U.S. will, in his words, hit Iran very hard again, “only harder.” He posted this exact message while negotiations were supposed to be getting underway in Switzerland. If your goal is to wreck a peace process and tip the global economy into a depression, this is how you’d do it.

Then Trump called into Fox and told a correspondent that if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, Iran isn’t going to have a country left. He talked about bombing them, about blowing things up. At one point he described the MOU itself as not really a binding deal at all, just an option, and suggested that after 60 days he might simply go back to military action.

On the nuclear specifics, Trump and his team seem confused about their own agreement. The MOU does not actually require Iran to give up enrichment entirely. Paragraph eight covers down-blending of enriched material, a provision that echoes language from the old Obama-era nuclear deal, though that earlier agreement had actual enforcement mechanisms attached to it. So when Iran’s president says Iran isn’t giving up its right to enrich, he’s not violating anything. He’s describing what the MOU itself allows. Someone might want to walk Trump, Kushner, and Vance through how nuclear material actually works before they go negotiating deals about it.

JD Vance’s Public Humiliation

While all this was unfolding, JD Vance got in front of cameras and declared that the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the end of Iran’s nuclear program had “already been accomplished.” Said with a straight face, apparently, despite the strait being closed and Iran’s enrichment program continuing under terms the MOU itself permits.

Vance also said he feels great about where things stand in Lebanon. Great about what, exactly? Roughly 150 people have died since Friday. Israel has expanded the territory inside Lebanon it claims as its own security zone, in direct tension with Article 1 of the MOU, which calls for an immediate ceasefire and guarantees Lebanon’s sovereignty. Vance’s own delegation is sitting on a violation of the agreement he’s praising.

Vance closed by describing the day as the start of “technical negotiations” meant to set up structure for future talks. Here’s the honest version: these negotiations are happening on Iran’s terms because Iran came out of this war in the stronger position, and everyone in that room knows it. Iran is asking for sanctions relief and waivers, and may eventually let some tankers move, but Iran controls the strait right now. Trump himself has said the country is on the edge of a global economic depression. That’s the actual leverage situation, dressed up by Vance as diplomatic momentum.

And Then There’s the Reflecting Pool

The algae-infested Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga continues. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for DC, went on Fox and threatened serious charges if anyone puts more “products” into the pool to supposedly worsen the algae problem. She also addressed Trump’s accusation against ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who Trump claimed tried to rip rubber off the pool’s surface with his bare hand, saying anyone caught vandalizing the pool will face prosecution.

Trump posted a lengthy, deranged defense of his renovation, blaming vandals with knives and corrosive chemicals for the pool’s condition rather than acknowledging the algae problem experts warned about from the start. He says he may now have to drain it entirely to do repairs. It’s the same pattern every time: something goes wrong, and someone else gets blamed.

And while yes, his post is ridiculous and silly, I do wanted to highlight the serious aspect of his delusions. Trump is having his government arrest people to blame them for the algae infestation he caused, all to soothe his fragile ego. And his lackeys like Pirro are going along with it.Well This Was Weird…

In the middle of all this, Trump found time late Saturday night to post an old photo of a woman reclining on a couch with the caption “Great daughter. My Honor!!!”

We looked into it. The woman appears to be Margo Catsimatidis, above, wife of billionaire John Catsimatidis. Her daughter is Andrea Catsimatidis, below, a prominent figure in New York City Republican politics who has referred to herself as something like the “bikini leader” of the city’s GOP. So that’s apparently who Trump meant.

While the country deals with the very real prospect of a deepening economic crisis, and while people are struggling to afford basic necessities, this is what occupied a slice of the president’s attention during an active international crisis. Even commenters on Truth Social thought it was weird.

That’s where we are right now. We’ll keep tracking every part of this as it develops. Stay tuned for Ron’s weekend bulletin later with all the latest updates.

The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: MAGA Questions Trump's Health, Iran Negotiations Erupt, Vance Embarrassed, Duckling Dies at Reflecting Pool, Aaron Parnas, right, June 21, 2026. Donald Trump has completely derailed the peace process between the United States and Iran and J.D. Vance has been embarrassed in Geneva on the world stage in a historic, historic embarrassment to the United States of America.

J.D. Vance was left hanging without a photo op that he requested with the Iranians.Donald Trump's words about occupying all of Iran. Well, now Iran has literally walked out of the room where negotiations were set to continue today on this memorandum of understanding. A crazy morning. I have all the latest.

Like, comment, share. And if you can, this Father's Day, subscribe to my Substack link below to support my work.

Let's keep building independent media I'm going to begin by saying kind of the biggest part, the quietest part out loud. Donald Trump doesn't seem like someone who wants peace. And his words are constantly getting in the way. He has to just stay quiet. If he stays quiet, this peace deal goes through. He can't stay quiet. And today,he decided to go on Fox News, talk to Trey Yings, who is a really good reporter, by the way, on the ground in war zones across the world, and tell Trey Yings that essentially he is planning on taking over and occupying all of Iran, that the Iranian leaders may not actually ever make it back to Iran,and more if Iran ever dared to do anything with the Strait of Bormuz. Take a listen.

Here’s the news:

Iran negotiations erupt: President Donald Trump’s preliminary agreement with Iran is facing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue it gives Iran major economic benefits before securing firm limits on its nuclear program. Critics including John Cornyn, Susan Rice, and Cory Booker say the deal releases funds and eases sanctions without enough guarantees. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance said direct U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland had already made significant progress and expressed optimism about further negotiations. Trump has also warned that the U.S. could resume military action if Iran does not cooperate or restrain its ally Hezbollah.

Trump threatened Iran with military occupation, telling Fox News he warned Iranian officials: “You close the strait and you won’t have a country,” and adding, “You won’t even make it back to your fking country ... we’ll take over the rest of the country.”**

The Switzerland talks were portrayed as a diplomatic embarrassment for the United States, with Iran appearing to control the timing, optics, and protocol of the meeting.

The U.S. delegation arrived first and waited — In diplomatic settings, the side perceived as having greater leverage typically does not appear to be waiting for the other side.

JD Vance entered while the press was present — Publicly entering before the Iranian delegation allowed cameras to capture the U.S. side appearing ready and waiting for talks to begin.

Iranian officials controlled their entrance — Key Iranian representatives reportedly avoided entering while the press was inside, limiting images that could suggest they were accommodating the meeting on American terms.

The Iranian foreign minister entered last — Arriving after the U.S. delegation reinforced the perception that Iran was dictating the pace and protocol of the encounter.

No handshake took place — The absence of a handshake denied the U.S. a traditional image of mutual engagement and conveyed distance or defiance.

The optics suggested unequal eagerness — The sequence of arrivals and public appearances created the impression that Washington was seeking negotiations more urgently than Tehran.

The walkout amplified the symbolism — Iran’s delegation leaving the venue shortly after the talks reinforced the perception that it was willing to suspend discussions on its own terms.

The overall visual narrative favored Iran — Regardless of what was said in negotiations, the public images projected confidence and control on the Iranian side while making the U.S. appear reactive and constrained.

Other news:

Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that vandalism damaged the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and said the pool may need to be drained for repairs. The $14 million renovation has faced criticism after algae rapidly spread through the water and blue coating material on the pool’s bottom began peeling. Authorities reported several vandalism-related arrests and citations, though at least one person arrested says he was only inspecting a loose section of material and denies causing damage. The troubled project has become a political flashpoint, with supporters praising the cleanup effort and critics calling it an embarrassing waste of taxpayer money.

A baby duck has now died at the reflecting pool. This image was shared with me in the past hour by someone who visited the reflecting pool. It is unclear what the cause of death is.

After the baby duck was found, Trump said he personally inspected the reflecting pool and fixes will soon begin:

A group has now displayed videos of Trump and Epstein on the side of the tarp at the Kennedy Center:

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce a timetable for stepping down, potentially leaving office by the autumn after mounting pressure from senior Labour figures. The move would likely clear the way for Andy Burnham to become prime minister, possibly without a formal leadership contest. Starmer reportedly lost support from several cabinet ministers following Labour's recent political setbacks, despite previously pledging to fight any challenge. Some Labour members still favor a leadership election, but Burnham is increasingly viewed as the frontrunner to succeed him. Trump made the announcement undercutting Starmer:

Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles as firefighters continue battling a massive warehouse fire in the Boyle Heights neighborhood that has been burning since Wednesday. The blaze has been difficult to extinguish because of hazardous conditions, including a ruptured ammonia line and burning materials inside a 500,000-square-foot cold-storage facility. Smoke has spread across the region, prompting shelter-in-place orders, the opening of relief centers, and the distribution of masks, air purifiers, and bottled water. Once the fire is under control, officials will face the challenge of safely removing about 85 million pounds of spoiled frozen food from the warehouse.

Colombians are voting in a presidential runoff between progressive candidate Iván Cepeda and conservative outsider Abelardo de la Espriella. Both candidates are focused on addressing rising violence, but Cepeda favors negotiations with armed groups while de la Espriella supports a tougher law-and-order approach. The election also centers on issues such as healthcare, public debt, and corruption amid growing political polarization. Many voters hope the result will be accepted peacefully as Colombia continues to struggle with renewed violence despite a 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

A 51-year-old man died after falling from a balcony during a concert by the rock band Goose at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Police responded to the venue Saturday night and found the man unconscious after what they described as a fall from an elevated position. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities are investigating the incident, while Goose expressed sadness and condolences to everyone affected.

Parts of Europe are experiencing an intense heat wave, with temperatures reaching around 40°C (104°F) in France, Spain, and Italy, prompting widespread emergency measures. France has closed hundreds of schools, canceled some events and train services, set up cooling stations, and restricted public alcohol consumption in high-risk areas to reduce strain on emergency services. Authorities across Europe are reporting heat-related dangers, including drownings as people seek relief in water, while health officials warn that extreme heat has already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in recent years. Scientists and international agencies link the increasing frequency and severity of these heat waves to human-caused climate change, with forecasts suggesting even more record-breaking temperatures in the coming years.

U.S. Law, Crime, Rights, Courts, Justice

All Rise News, Analysis: Scrutinizing Trump DOJ's No. 3, Adam Klasfeld, above right,June 21, 2026. Stan Woodward's ex-clients could benefit from Trump's slush fund. That's a conflict of interest, a bar complaint alleges.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, shown above left, the third most powerful official in the Trump Justice Department, has taken the lead in key cases involving Donald Trump’s now-blocked $1.776 billion slush fund.

Woodward represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the classified documents case, along with multiple witnesses who appeared before the grand jury, including Kashyap Patel before his FBI director tenure. Woodward was also a go-to attorney on the Jan. 6 docket. He represented Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro over their defiance of Jan. 6th Committee subpoenas and several high-profile rioters, including Oath Keepers Kelly and Connie Meggs, former State Department official Federico Klein, and Ryan Samsel, who was believed to be the first to breach the barricades at the U.S. Capitol.

That’s a conflict of interest because many of those former clients stand to be enriched by the fund, according to a bar complaint filed by the Campaign for Accountability.

“This is not merely a case in which a former advocate later happened to agree with a prior client’s legal arguments,” the complaint to the D.C. Bar states. “Rather, as the sole signatory to the agreement, Mr. Woodward personally exercised governmental authority in a substantially related matter to validate and institutionalize positions he had previously developed and advanced while representing private clients in closely connected proceedings.”

In a video interview, the Campaign for Accountability’s president Michelle Kuppersmith quipped that Woodward is a “Forrest Gump”-like figure of the MAGA bar, whose firm has collected $1.4 million from Trump’s political action committee Save America.

“If you're getting 10 times what your annual DOJ salary is from a PAC, then you know that's going to happen probably when you're out of government as well,” she noted.

Kuppersmith’s description of her new complaint leads off this week’s “Saturday Rewind,” a compilation of videos from the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF.

In other interviews:

Investigative journalist Phil Williams digs deeper behind a salacious New York Post headline to discuss how a Southern Poverty Law Center informant exposed the financial secrets of a neo-Nazi group.

Former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discusses the special counsel probe requested in the Broadview Six case.

June 22

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, above, is the Trump-nominated Justice Department official supervising Chicago-area civil litigation in the Northern District of illinois. He has been frantically seeking to cover-up gross misconduct by his staff, most notably Assistant U.S. attorneys Sheri Mecklenburg, William Hogan and Matthew Skiba, as they have seriously violated legal standards in seeking to prosecute six protesters, now known as "The Broadview Six, against the Trump's heavy-handed immigration enforcement program, according to critics citing documentation of misconduct recently ordered released by a federal judge investigating the cases.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Andrew Boutros’ Secret Walkaway Conspiracy, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 22, 2026. The other day, Judge April Perry released the redacted versions of the grand jury transcripts in the Broadview 6 case:

• October 9 redacted transcript
• October 16 redacted transcript
• October 23 redacted transcript

We can compare those with the already released transcripts to see precisely what prosecutors redacted back in April:

• October 9 unredacted transcript
• October 9 FBI testimony
• October 16 unredacted transcript
• October 23 unredacted transcript

And sure enough, the redactions hide a good deal of misconduct.

The October 9 redaction starts just before Sheri Mecklenburg uses Matthew Skiba to vouch for her. It serves to hide how Mecklenburg (shown at right on the occasion of winning a community service award earlier in her career) pushed back on a grand juror’s observation that the ICE goon chose to drive into protestors (which leads the grand juror to call their own question bad). It hides FBI Agent Evan Hylton’s descriptions that make it clear this investigation focused on Kat Abughazaleh’s public activities on social media, such as how he IDed another defendant based on Abughazaleh’s like of a video or how he thought of Andre Martin as Abughazaleh’s staffer — though Hylton’s focus on Abughazaleh is not misconduct Perry identified. The redactions end just before Mecklenburg starts explaining conspiracy law, including where she explains (inadequately, Judge Perry opined) how conspiracies can form spontaneously.

The October 16 redaction hides Mecklenburg’s explanation that she “did not do [her] job” by explaining the alleged crime well enough to get an indictment, but then ends for Skiba’s description of the charges. The redaction starts again before a grand juror calls the case a crock of shit, but then ends before Skiba resumes a discussion of the law, including the Third Circuit precedent on spontaneous conspiracies (as well as where he likens the Broadview 6 protestors to the Trump Train that almost ran a Joe Biden bus off the road). The redaction resumes shortly before a grand juror says they don’t think they can vote, a redaction of just a few pages. A very short unredacted bit shows Mecklenburg explaining that grand jurors can vote to indict some defendants but not others. But then the redaction begins again before Mecklenburg scolds grand jurors for leaving before hearing from the purported victim. The redaction starts again for the colloquy where prosecutors attempted to show where each of the defendants appeared in video, which has the effect of hiding Mecklenburg’s false claim (witting or not) that there was no law enforcement bodycam footage — though that’s another thing that Perry did not list among the misconduct she observed. Because the purported victim’s testimony is not included, the way the session ends suddenly after he is asked why he didn’t turn on his lights doesn’t appear.

The October 23 transcript starts with Mecklenburg stating that she won’t ask grand jurors whether they can keep an open mind, but then redacts where she tells them to leave if they cannot, and similarly redacts where she puts her ex parte conversations with grand jurors on the record. But then the redaction ends in time for Skiba’s discussion of the law. The redaction resumes where Mecklenburg and Skiba attempt to point out each defendant. That’s a weird redaction (and I’ll come back to it), because it ends while they’re still pointing out the defendants, thereby making Mecklenburg’s claim that, “We charged only people who were actually doing things,” accessible when Judge Perry first reviewed it, as well as Mecklenburg’s explanation that, “if somebody is also in front of the vehicle in the crowd preventing the car from — standing in front of the car from it going, then they can be part of the conspiracy.” Then the redaction starts again just before a grand juror points out that Cat Sharp actually isn’t doing what prosecutors claim she was — but eventually the prosecutors and other grand jurors convince the skeptic of what they are seeing. The same redaction hides where Mecklenburg again addresses whether grand jurors who feel too strongly can deliberate (this redaction is also one of the ones where redacted page numbers make it especially hard to see how many pages have been taken out).

It all looks damning as hell when you know what’s under the redactions.

But for the most part, all the presentation of the law remains unredacted. That was the excuse AUSA William Hogan — who appears to have done them — offered for all the redactions. He was just trying to follow Judge Perry’s instructions to show how prosecutors instructed grand jurors on the conspiracy charge, by providing only those instructions, he insinuated.

MR. HOGAN: I’d like to address that. The direction was to give the Court the law on 372 charge and there was a lot of other discussion in the grand jury. And the missing pages also account for the testimony of at least two witnesses. We just didn’t turn over the testimony of one of the agents, for example, or both of the agents, I think.

[snip]

MR. HOGAN: I’ll tell you how because that was with respect to the motion to dismiss with prejudice. It had nothing to do with the grand jury minutes at all. Entirely different issue.

Hogan’s excuse is actually consistent with the defendants’ request for “only disclosure of those transcripts detailing the presentment of the law on the §372 conspiracy charge and any related exchange” (though defendants asked Perry to review the entire transcripts).

Nevertheless, there are several problems with Hogan’s self-exoneration.

First, the redactions hide one critical bit of instruction, which intersects importantly with Skiba’s serial explanation that spontaneous action can be a conspiracy. In the October 23 appearance — the same one in which Mecklenburg claims they were only charging people who were “actually doing things” but could also charge people if they were standing in front of a car to prevent it from going — Mecklenburg responds to an observation from a grand juror that several of the defendants walked away from the Agent’s vehicle by stating that if you walk away from the conspiracy you were still part of it.

GRAND JUROR: — Michael Rabbitt no longer appears in the frame. And neither Kat or either Kat appears to be anywhere near the front of the truck again. I’m just wondering about that. So I don’t — I’m struggling to locate them.

MS. MECKLENBURG: You — they don’t have — they can step away. You can do it that — you can impede for some time, and then you can decide that you’re going to stop. That doesn’t change the fact that you have impeded for some time. And they could be going — and we don’t know where they are here. They could be going and doing something else to the car or something else. We just don’t know.

GRAND JUROR: Okay.

MS. MECKLENBURG: So I — what’s — the probable cause comes from when you do see them on the video, not from when you don’t.

That’s largely true for a premeditated conspiracy. But in the case of a spontaneous conspiracy purportedly formed in response to an ICE goon choosing to drive his SUV into a crowd of protestors, walking away is a choice not to join in that spontaneous conspiracy.

You are part of a conspiracy, Mecklenburg said, even if your response to having a large SUV drive into you is to, fairly quickly, walk away.

AUSA Hogan chose to redact that legal instruction.

That’s particularly damning because, what that grand juror observed on October 23, is what Abughazaleh (shown above, a Democratic candidate for a U.S. House seat at the time) laid out in her reply bid toget a Bill of Particulars submitted in February. Video evidence (including bodyworn camera from the cops that Mecklenburg had falsely claimed were not present) showed that several charged defendants, including Abughazaleh, stepped away from the vehicle after it turned into them.

With megaphone in hand, and acting contrary to the purported goals of the alleged conspiracy, Ms. Abughazaleh’s first words toward the crowd were, “that’s private property back there, come back[.]” Then, speaking directly to the Broadview police officer standing next to her, Ms. Abughazaleh exclaimed, “you just let him run us over! …. He literally just ran over my foot!” The image below captures these moments in the immediate aftermath of the SUV turning into the crowd, and also shows Agent A’s SUV (within the red circle), some distance from the intersection where Ms. Abughazaleh had retreated, which is also where she and other protestors had been marching for hours that morning:

Similarly, additional video footage shows that, like Ms. Abughazaleh, Defendants Joselyn Walsh, Andre Martin, Michael Rabbitt, and Catherine Sharp all independently moved away from the SUV within seconds after they found themselves in its path. As shown below, Ms. Walsh (in the red circle) can be seen with her guitar under her right arm, standing next to a Broadview police officer while the SUV was already driving away from her toward the Broadview Facility:

The image below shows Mr. Martin (in the red circle and standing next to Ms. Abughazaleh with her back turned) back at the intersection and at a distance far behind the vehicle as it proceeded toward the facility:

The next image shows Mr. Rabbitt (in the red circle) turning away from the vehicle and crowd of protestors, while additional footage produced in discovery establishes that Mr. Rabbitt is no longer present as the vehicle proceeded toward the detention facility:

Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the vehicle turning into the crowd, Catherine Sharp (in the red circle) can be seen observing the vehicle with a phone in hand, as it moved towards the facility.2

2 The first and second images are from the recently produced Broadview police BWC footage, while the third and fourth images are from a video that was previously produced in discovery and that was also linkedto in the DOJ’s press release announcing the indictment. See https://tinyurl.com/yftt6nus (last visited Feb. 22, 2026). The fifth image is from a different video which was also previously produced.

Having already seen this argument, Hogan chose to redact a Mecklenburg legal instruction that goes directly to the issue of whether peaceful protestors whom an ICE goon chooses to drive into immediately become part of a conspiracy even if they move away from blocking the vehicle.

So while Hogan claimed he redacted the transcript just to focus on the things Perry said she would review, he didn’t share all the legal instruction with Perry. On the contrary, he specifically hid one instruction that went to the core of the First Amendment concerns about this case.

Hogan also erred by commission in one instance, an instance that goes to the core of the exonerees’ demand for a Special Counsel investigation.

in the hearing where all this blew up, as part of his effort to look really responsible even while cheerleading the prosecutors who had made these redactions, Andrew Boutros claimed that he addressed the problem of asking grand jurors to leave in real time.

With respect to the excusing of grand jurors that took place, which was the second time that the prosecutor sought to return an indictment, that is an issue that I was aware of in realtime. And once I became aware of it, I immediately called off that grand jury session.

Weeks later, amid chatter that there was a reference to the US Attorney appearing before the grand jury, Boutros even revealed that he had addressed the grand jury (all the grand juries, he claims), to ask grand jurors to raise their hand if there were any case on which they could not be fair.

[S]etting aside your emotions, setting aside your personal views, beliefs and biases. And just simply as I like to say, calling balls and strikes. You’re the umpire and you can’t come in and be an umpire in favor of particular team. You gotta call balls and strikes and that’s all we ask.

But we also recognize that these are trying times, these are emotional times. You can’t help but turn on the news, read the newspapers, or for those of you who use TikTok and Instagram, and there’s stuff in there all the time.

So my question to you, and again, I’m gonna do this in all the grand juries, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If there’s anyone here who is struggling with a certain type of cases, such as the immigration cases or other cases where they do not believe that they can set aside their personal, their personal emotions, that they cannot listen and deliberate honestly and objectively, I would ask that you raise your hand and identify yourself, because we have a different procedure for that. And so is there anyone here who thinks that he or she cannot—and this is no, by the way, no different than if we were actually in a jury and we were picking a jury. The judge would engage in this type of colloquially with every single juror to make sure that the person, both the government as well as the defendant has a fair juror. Fairness is the key to the operation of our system.

So is there anyone here who thinks that he or she cannot be fair, cannot be openminded, cannot receive evidence, cannot set aside their personal feelings on any case, immigration or otherwise, child exploitation, immigration, whatever it is. Anyone who thinks they can’t do it, please raise your hand.

Okay. Seeing none, thank you for your service.

This was his idea of addressing the problem created in the prior grand jury appearance when Mecklenburg told grand jurors who called the case a crock of shit to leave (and of course all this is premised on the claim that the only reason grand jurors would oppose this case would be because of personal feelings about immigration and not that the so-called victim drove his car into protestors).

Except the very first redaction in that transcript (shown above, italicized below) was not — as Hogan claimed — to excise anything that was not instruction on the law. On the contrary, Hogan left some (the exculpatory language) but redacted other (the inculpatory language) discussion about asking grand jurors to leave.

I’m not going to ask you today if you can keep an open mind and deliberate fairly and apply the law to these facts.

Instead, I’d like you all to stay and hear our evidence and our — our law and our testimony.

I’m bringing back Professor Skiba, who last time did a great job. But we’re going to start over, because some people weren’t here, and I think it was valuable to learn the law.

So I’m not going to ask you whether you can or can’t. What I am going to ask is that you’re all here. You all stay. You all listen, and then when your — it is your time to deliberate, that you be honest with your fellow Grand Jurors. If you still feel like you are operating from feelings that prevent you from deliberating fairly with your fellow Grand Jurors and from applying the facts — the law to the facts here, then tell your fellow Grand Jurors that you can’t deliberate.

After showing Mecklenburg say, “I have some things I want to say first,” the transcript purportedly redacted of everything but legal instruction leaves intact where the prosecutor says, “I’m not going to ask you today if you can keep an open mind and deliberate fairly.” Leaving that language in there makes it look like she addressed the misconduct she committed a week earlier, asking grand jurors to leave, the same thing Boutros claimed to be trying to do. But that assertion disavowing asking whether jurors can keep an open mind? Andrew Boutros just asked that question!!! Worse still, the redaction hides that Mecklenburg actually does, once again, invite those who hate the case to leave in the very next line and once again at the end of the presentment.

A key prong of the exonerees’ request for Judge Perry to conduct an investigation into this misconduct or appoint a Special Counsel focuses on this Bloomberg report that Todd Blanche’s fixer, Aakash Singh, encouraged prosecutors to do just what happened here: ousting grand jurors who refuse to indict those arrested for protesting ICE.

As set forth in more detail in Defendants’ Motion for the Court to Conduct a Hearing on the Prosecutorial Misconduct and for Targeted Discovery In Advance Thereof, there is now good reason to suspect that a high-ranking attorney at the Department of Justice, Mr. Aakash Singh, had involvement with the decision to pursue this case, including potentially how to deal with grand jurors who opposed returning true bills in these types of cases. Indeed, publicly available reporting indicates that Mr. Singh has played a central role in guiding the prosecution of “top administration targets such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, James Comey, and Don Lemon” and, of particular note here, in seeking “to dismiss [grand] jurors who presented hurdles” when “grand juries refused to indict . . . following mass street arrests.” Ben Penn, In-Your-Face DOJ Aide Rides Prosecutors for ‘Chief Client’ Trump, Bloomberg Law, Feb. 19, 2026, (emphasis added). In addition, a recent court opinion copiously documented the fact that Mr. Singh engaged in numerous substantive communications directly with the local U.S. Attorney’s prosecution team in the Abrego-Garcia case. See Ex. A, Court Order in Case No. 25-cr-115, M.D. Tenn. (Dkt. #312) (identifying numerous specific communications to and from Mr. Singh and the assigned prosecutor related to that prosecution, as well as Mr. Singh’s involvement, oversight, and direction to the prosecution team, at pp. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, and 32) [emphasis original]

Effectively, by redacting two instances showing Mecklenburg trying to do just that, but leaving the one instance where she claimed not to be, the redactions cover up that the intent to rid the grand jury of those who had a problem with ICE goons driving into protestors continued after Boutros purportedly identified it as a problem and addressed it.

Hogan might have argued that he redacted Mecklenburg’s badgering of skeptics in an effort to deliver only legal instruction. But he left in the one place where she disavowed her earlier attempts to do just that.

Hogan left in false exoneration that was in no way a legal instruction, and precisely the kind of thing that goes to the core of one kind of suspected interference from Main DOJ (the other people the selective targeting of Democrats generally and Abughazelah specifically).

This redaction didn’t serve to protect Mecklenburg’s misconduct alone. It protected the misconduct of DOJ generally.

The U.S. Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC.

New York Times, Trump Administration Shuttered a Criminal Probe Into Fraudster’s Clemency, Kenneth P. Vogel, Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum, June 21, 2026. Federal prosecutors had been examining the circumstances behind the commutation of David Gentile’s sentence. He was aided by a Catholic priest friendly with the president.

President Trump’s political appointees quashed an early-stage criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his clemency grant to a convicted fraudster, according to five people with knowledge of the events.

The investigation, which has not been previously reported, had begun examining whether improper payments were made to help facilitate the commutation awarded to David Gentile, left, a private equity executive who was convicted in a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of mostly mom-and-pop investors, some of whom lost their retirement savings.

The clemency grant freed Mr. Gentile last November less than two weeks into a seven-year prison sentence, and wiped away the possibility of forfeiting more than $15.5 million to the government.

Within a few months, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, where Mr. Gentile’s conviction had been secured, opened an investigation into how the commutation came about.

Among the evidence they gathered was information about jailhouse communications in which Mr. Gentile discussed making payments of $2.5 million or more to people or companies to help facilitate his clemency, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it.

One of the people who came under scrutiny by investigators was the Rev. Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens who is friends with Mr. Trump. In an email sent to The New York Times, Father Mann denied having anything to do with the clemency. But people with knowledge of the prison communications say that the priest corresponded with Mr. Gentile about lobbying the president on his behalf.

Emptywheel, Analysis:The Reflecting Pool Arrests Are an Attempt to Cover Up Trump’s Corruption, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 21, 2026. As green algae blooms in the reflecting pool in DC and the purportedly protective layer starts peeling off in sheets, Donald Trump has demanded and gotten arrests — most notably a former Olympic canoeist who claims all he did was touch the undercoat that is peeling off, while others claim they received citations for merely sticking their hand in the pool — serving his false claim that sabotage, rather than his own incompetence, led to the failure of his reflecting pool project.

The arrests are being carried out by cops from OK and TX (who, according to Amanda Moore, have been deputized by the US Marshals for the 250th celebration) and National Guard, who’ve been deployed to guard the pool. Finally, the troops Trump has sicced on DC have something to do: to prevent taxpayers from getting close enough to the reflecting pool to witness evidence of Trump’s own failure.

Trump demanded the arrests after he started blaming on vandals the failures of a project he has obsessed about for months (I’ve linked his Truth Social posts from just the last month, averaging one a day); that includes blaming vandals for pouring corrosive chemicals into the pool, when his own workmen poured hydrogen peroxide in an inadequate attempt to kill the algae.

The heavy-handed arrests themselves have gotten a lot of attention. Good luck to Jeanine Pirro attempting to prosecute these cases, not least because doing so would require calculating the value of a painted cover that degraded before the defendants came along. Prosecuting these cases would necessitate addressing whether Trump’s repairs did what they were supposed to, an inquiry Pirro will be loathe to do.

But if you go back even just the last month of Trump’s obsessive posts about the reflecting pool, his demand for arrests is an attempt to do more than distract from his own humiliating failures.

First, there’s the extent Trump has built a psychologically needy narrative around this fucking pool. Amid a series of purported before and after comparisons on a range of topics — many integrating AI slop or outright lies — of his own Administration with what came before, he has made the project an explicit attempt to wipe out the work of Barack Obama (which is why I’ve included his AI slop portrayals of Obama’s library as trash).

Among the lies Trump told along the way were exaggerations of the cost of Obama’s repairs and his claim that the pool only got worse, both really awkward claims now that his own costs keep snowballing and his “fix” made things far worse.

You cannot separate this obsession with erasing Obama, redoing the reflecting pool repairs, from Trump’s attack on Iran, where he’s also lying about what he accomplished as compared to Obama. Trump is using the presidency not so much to govern, but to attempt to erase the contributions of Black Americans, all in an attempt to feed his narcissistic pathologies.

Of course, he’s also using it to enrich himself and his associates. And that’s why this attempt to claim sabotage, rather thanaddress his own failures, is so toxic.

There are two levels of contracting behind this project, and two levels of graft. The first was for the paint job. Trump decided, for unknown reasons, that he needed a layer of Rhino epoxy underneath the blue paint, which limited the number of contractors available. Trump’s Administration awarded the contract, without competitive bidding, to a company with uncertain ties to his own golf courses, a detail Trump tried to obscure as bubbles started appearing in May.

Interior Department staff members have raised concerns about the quality and speed of the repair work that a contractor is performing on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, according to government documents seen by The New York Times.

The staff members said that bubbles and small holes had appeared in one of the layers meant to waterproof the iconic pool. And uneven application of the tinted waterproofing left the pool mottled in varying shades of blue, the documents indicate.

[snip]

Last month, the Interior Department hired a Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to repair, resurface and paint the pool. President Trump said publicly that he had recommended the firm because of good work it did on the swimming pools at one of his golf clubs.

However, Mr. Trump did an about-face early Tuesday, distancing himself from the company. “I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Asked to explain Mr. Trump’s reversal, a White House official said that the president did not have a personal relationship with this contractor, but that as a private citizen and builder, he was familiar with the company’s previous work. The official asked not to be named to describe the president’s relationship with the company.

The Times has been unable to independently confirm that the company previously did work for any of Mr. Trump’s clubs.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment this week. Last week, one of the company’s owners, Curtis E. Wood, who goes by Eddie, said he was not at liberty to discuss the contract.

[snip]

Atlantic Industrial Coatings had never previously held a federal contract, according to a public database of federal awards. The firm was given a no-bid contract to waterproof and paint the pool last month. The government closed off all other competition for that work by invoking a power that can only be used in urgent situations, when delay would bring “serious injury” to the government.

Another thing Trump chose was the color, out of some belief that it would affect the reflecting properties of the pool. Instead, people warned, it would lead the pool to heat up more quickly, making a conducive environment for algae to flourish.

The other no-bid contract known to have been awarded went to a Trump buddy with a place in Mar-a-Lago and a bribery conviction to replace the water filter installed under Obama.

A business tied to a longtime supporter of President Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this spring.

Now that work is coming under scrutiny after algae blooms have come back and turned the iconic pool in Washington a vibrant shade of green rather than the American-flag blue Mr. Trump says he chose.

The contract shows that the National Park Service bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio.

John J. Cafaro in 2002. He leads an investment trust that is the ultimate owner of the company hired to install a water-purification system for the Reflecting Pool.Credit…Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Federal contracting records show that firm’s ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by John J. Cafaro, a donor to Mr. Trump and a neighbor to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. The water treatment company also listed Mr. Cafaro’s Palm Beach mansion as its address in Florida corporate records, and listed his investment trust’s phone number and email in Ohio lobbying records.

Mr. Cafaro, a longtime Republican donor whom Mr. Trump has described as a “fantastic man,” was once involved in a high-profile bribery scandal.

It’s not yet clear if one of these no-bid contracts explains the problems with the reflecting pool — to some degree, Trump’s quick fix didn’t address any of the known underlying problems that Trump wants to solve.

But without an investigation, we’re not going to get answers for what caused the problems. Certainly, the Interior Department’s claims that the algae bloom was simply residual algae left in the pumps has been debunked by the persistence of the problem.

Instead of an investigation into whether his graft caused the reflecting pool to become more like a swamp, Trump is rolling out high profile arrests of those who observe the lies at the core of Trump’s claims about the reflecting pool.

In his latest grievance post, Trump insisted that the reflecting pool had worked perfectly at first, “perfectly reflecting” the monuments around it.

As with his confession of “unconditional surrender” on Iran, Trump may be committing accidental truth with that claim.

Trump’s obsession with this monument is a damn good reflection of what he has made Washington DC. Much of what he has said about it is AI slop, pure invention, often built off rage at rivals and especially his predecessors. As noted, this particular obsession aims to replace Obama and with it his manufactured image of crime. This project eschews science, common sense, and the kind of competition that might ensure success.

And in the end it is a disaster, setting off a new cycle of Trump attempting to use his power to erase a Narcissist injury.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, and sure enough, he’s doing so, for a second time.

But the metaphorical swamp grows strong as he enriches his friends as they make everything worse

A month of Trump’s Truth Social obsessions about the reflecting pool

This list only goes back a month and is — with the caveat that I’ve included three attacks on the Obama library — otherwise underinclusive (I did not check videos or RTs, for example).

May 26, 1:10AM: Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers May 26, 12:19PM: Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers May 28, 4:55AM: AI picture of blue reflecting pool May 28, 6:10PM: Steve Guest talking about one quote in this WaPo piece May 30, 1:29AM: 418-word rebuttal of this NYT article, plus 6 posts from Doug Burgum (right) May 30, 5:09PM: This is the CRAP that OBAMA had in the Reflecting “Pool” May 30, 5:12PM: Three part explainer of reflecting pool work, including multiple lies about Biden and Obama and cost May 30, 6:03PM: AI slop likening Obama’s library to a trash can June 1, 8:10PM: AI slop purporting to compare the reflecting pool under Obama and Trump June 2, 2:23AM: Repost of Steve Guest post June 4, 6:57PM: Repost of Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers June 4, 7:10PM: Picture of vehicles in reflecting pool June 4, 7:10PM: Picture of workers who worked on reflecting pool June 4, 10:28PM: Video of water being released into reflecting pool June 4, 10:28PM: AI slop of Trump refilling reflecting pool June 5, 4:26PM: Post rebutting WaPo, boasting an OK company did work on reflecting pool, and boasting he won OK 3X June 6, 6:48PM: Picture of golf cart on reflecting pool, claiming work is doing June 6, 6:49PM: Different AI slop likening Obama’s library to trash June 10, 11:20AM: RT of sycophantic Howard Lutnick post lying about how many people were at pool June 12, 5:08PM: Two pictures of workers working on pool, one picture of reflection at night June 13, 5:47PM: Repost of second AI slop likening Obama library to trash June 13, 11:42PM: Very old picture of Trump, over which he ties the Wollman Skating Rink to the reflecting pool, and invokes crime June 15, 11:34AM: Announcement that July 4 celebration, which will take place at the reflecting pool, will be a Trump rally June 15, 2:10PM: Link to June 3 WashEx post about Trump’s dumb reflecting pool-skyscraper comparison June 15, 2:10PM: Link to sycophantic Breitbart post, consisting mostly of posts on the reflecting pool June 19, 12:08PM: Repost of AI slop of Trump refilling reflecting pool June 20, 2:59AM: Long post situating reflecting pool among other DC clean-up, blaming problems on vandals and Jonathan Karl June 20, 11:18PM: Post blaming failure of pool on vandals, announcing work to fix it will begin June 21, 1:36AM: Longer post blaming failures on vandals, full of lies

U.S. Economy, Inflation, Markets, Jobs

New York Times, Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman Through Prosperity and Crisis, Dies at 100, Richard W. Stevenson, June 22, 2026. The pre-eminent economic policymaker of his time and a skilled political operator, he favored market-friendly stances that would later come to be associated with destructive financial forces.

Alan Greenspan, right,who in nearly two decades as chairman of the Federal Reserve nurtured a long run of prosperity, navigated crises and was a powerful and polarizing force in shaping market-friendly policies, died on Monday at his home in Washington. He was 100.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Andrea Mitchell, the chief Washington correspondent for NBC News (and shown with him in a file photo below), said in a statement.

The pre-eminent economic policymaker of his time and arguably the most recognizable economist of any era, Mr. Greenspan led the central bank under four presidents of both parties from 1987 to 2006.

Much of his tenure coincided with a streak of affluence in which he stood as the embodiment of a triumphant, post-Cold War strain of American capitalism: optimistic, faithful in the power of markets to improve living standards, captivated by the power of technology and averse to regulation.

But the ideological stamp he put on policymaking came to be associated as well with the destructive consequences of forces that emerged on his watch, including deregulation of banking and Wall Street, the loss of American jobs to free trade and persistent concerns about bubbles in stock and housing prices.

Even as Mr. Greenspan skillfully managed interest rates in a way that kept the economy humming along, he remained leery of confronting a danger he well recognized: that the low-inflation, easy-money environment he had helped create was putting the United States at risk by fueling unsustainable investment booms. And he remained reluctant to act as banks and investment firms adopted complex new trading techniques that would come to wreak great damage.ImageA large group of traders on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, waving their hands and appearing to shout. Mr. Greenspan can be seen on a large television screen testifying to Congress.Traders at the Chicago Board of Trade in June 2005. Mr. Greenspan left office as Federal Reserve chairman early the next year and spent much of his time afterward defending his legacy. Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

At the Fed, he was remarkably successful at what he considered the central banker’s primary task of holding down inflation. He also helped the United States deal with periodic shocks, including a stock market crash just weeks after he took office, the near-meltdown of Asian financial markets a decade later and the aftereffects of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Only after he stepped down in early 2006 — and especially following the crisis on Wall Street in 2008, the near-collapse of the mortgage market and the ensuing deep recession — were his legacy and philosophy challenged in a concerted way.

By that point, one group of critics blamed him for not heading off a housing bubble by pushing interest rates higher. Another accused him of promoting a corrosive free-market fundamentalism that left the financial system to operate unchecked as it adopted increasingly risky practices.

After overseeing a period of immense wealth creation, he was often portrayed as among those responsible for the 2008 crisis and the economic and political shocks that followed it.

At the Fed, he was remarkably successful at what he considered the central banker’s primary task of holding down inflation. He also helped the United States deal with periodic shocks, including a stock market crash just weeks after he took office, the near-meltdown of Asian financial markets a decade later and the aftereffects of the 2001 terrorist attacks.ImageA portrait of a young Mr. Greenspan in the same black glasses.Mr. Greenspan’s record — and the degree to which he deserves either the praise or the blame heaped on him — remains a subject of intense debate. Credit...Wally McNamee/Corbis, via Getty Images

His failure to put greater focus on keeping the financial system stable once he had shown he could keep inflation in check “was Greenspan’s most consequential error, one that he did not have to make,” his biographer, Sebastian Mallaby, concluded.

His record — and the degree to which he deserves either the praise or the blame heaped on him — remains a subject of intense debate. There is no doubt that he was a pivotal figure during a period of immense ferment in the economy and deep ideological divides over how to manage it.

At the peak of his fame, as the economy boomed in the late 1990s, his merest phrase could send the markets sharply up or down, and his face, behind his thick glasses, was as familiar as any movie star’s.

In public, he often spoke in an elliptical jargon that even his fellow economists had trouble deciphering.

Behind the scenes in Washington, Mr. Greenspan was a master of the political power game. Schooled by his experiences as a policy adviser to Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and his role as President Gerald R. Ford’s chief economist, he developed into a wily operator who skillfully protected the Fed’s independence while shaping the agendas of successive presidents and steering legislation on Capitol Hill.EHis predecessor, Paul A. Volcker, had established that the central bank could hold off political pressure for lower interest rates with a tight-money strategy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the process, Mr. Volcker gave the Fed tremendous credibility in the financial markets and bequeathed to Mr. Greenspan plenty of room to shape policy in Washington.

Mr. Greenspan used his influence shrewdly on issues that, strictly speaking, went beyond his mandate at the Fed, weighing in regularly to shape policy on taxes, the budget deficit and trade policy. A Republican with strong libertarian leanings — in his younger days he was an acolyte of Ayn Rand, and he was appointed to the Fed by President Ronald Reagan — he nonetheless managed to infuriate Republicans as well as Democrats even as he won reappointment from presidents of both parties.

Allies of President George Bush blamed Mr. Greenspan in part for Mr. Bush’s loss of the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992, saying Mr. Greenspan had kept interest rates too high as the economy was coming out of recession. Mr. Greenspan built close ties to Mr. Clinton and his team, helping to infuse the Democratic administration with a distinctly market-friendly stance on financial regulation and encouraging Mr. Clinton early on to embrace deficit reduction, over the objections of liberals.

But in 2001, when Mr. Greenspan backed President George W. Bush’s big income-tax-cut package, Democrats howled that he had sold out his deficit-reduction beliefs to curry favor with the new Republican administration.The Washington Life

Alan Greenspan worked all the angles, cultivating allies across the aisle and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Ever-present in social Washington, he was a genial if reserved figure as he mingled at parties with Supreme Court justices, cabinet secretaries and journalists, sporting an amused smile and offering a soft handshake.

He dated Barbara Walters of ABC News in the late 1970s (“I’m not threatened by a powerful woman,” he wrote in his autobiography). In 1997, he married Ms. Mitchell, who by his account never entirely forgave him for discussing antitrust policy on their first date many earlier; their wedding was presided over by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She survives him.

“He was a giant of a man who helped shape the U.S. economy for decades under presidents of both parties but was always honest in acknowledging his mistakes,” Ms. Mitchell said in her statement. “To me he was my husband, who shaped my life from our very first date in 1984.”

He was an avid tennis player, picking the game up in earnest on the White House court while serving in the Ford administration and pursuing it in spirited competition well into his 80s against a succession of Treasury secretaries and senior officials from both parties.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

Michelle and Barack Obama at the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago last week. (Barack Obama Presidential Center photo).

The Contrarian, Opinion: You Can See Why Trump Hates Obama, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 22, 2026. Obama is everything Trump could never be.

On Thursday, Americans could see the stark contrast between two presidents, two visions of America, and two codes of behavior. Rarely has a split screen been so informative.

On one side, Donald Trump, a fetid figure in irreversible decline, lumbered around Versailles and signed a deal capitulating to an Iranian regime he had vowed to overthrow. By Saturday, Iran flaunted the extent of its diplomatic triumph, reclosing the Strait of Hormuz on the grounds that the United States failed to stop Israel from violating the ceasefire in Lebanon.

The extent of his catastrophe — the product of his noxious vision of “might makes right,” genocidal fury, and constitutional nihilism — was in full view. (“The humiliation is the point,” wrote Graeme Wood. “Iran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation.”) Unsurprisingly, Trump stuck Vice President JD Vance (whose own career may be another casualty of the war) with the job of defending the indefensible.

On the other side of the split screen, former President Barack Obama, looking trim and vigorous, delivered remarks opening his presidential center. Reminding us how presidents should behave, he disparaged no group of Americans, rewrote no history, recited no election results, and ridiculed no predecessors (instead, he praised the three on stage with him). Michelle and Barack Obama at the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago last week. (Barack Obama Presidential Center photo)

It’s easy to see why Trump loathes Obama, whose intellectual and verbal acuity, graciousness, class, and real accomplishments Trump could never match. As the unfavorable comparison to a Black man whose presidency the rabidly racist Trump tried to delegitimize becomes starker, it is no surprise Trump’s unhinged meltdowns become more frequent.

Obama addressed the key question before us: Can our democracy survive? That largely depends, Obama said, on our commitment to the “shared values that make democracy possible” (each of which Trump has savaged, not coincidentally):

A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party, but to the people and our Constitution.

A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100% of the time.

And a belief that qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor, those things matter in our public dealings, just as they do in our private lives.

Obama reiterated that these are values “we can all share, regardless of party, values every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold, values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did.” Only Trump stands apart, hostile to American values and contemptuous of those who embrace them. (Yes, I still find it unfathomable the same country could elect both Trump and Obama.)

Declining to minimize the extent of our democratic crisis (“It’s a lot…. I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt”), Obama acknowledged that our anxiety and social isolation gets heightened by “a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts.” Obama nevertheless cautioned against giving in “to cynicism, and even despair.”

Obama made a rather compelling empirical argument that democracy is on the rebound. “In cities that have worked together to reclaim their streets from crime, in rural communities that have rebuilt their economy, in businesses that are finding new ways to make housing affordable, and those ordinary people in the Twin Cities, who brave frigid temperatures, risk their own safety, standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors, and sometimes look out for strangers, because they knew that was the right thing to do,” Americans are rising to the occasion.

Though the mere mention of Minnesota was enough to trigger goosebumps, stirring memories of resilience and courage in the face of intolerable lawlessness and brutality, we have seen plenty of green shoots of democracy spring up. Chicagoans protected their migrant neighbors, grand jurors refused to rubber stamp absurd indictments, a post-Callais civil rights movement staved off re-redistricting in South Carolina and Georgia, and millions turned out in No Kings peaceful protests.

MAGA cultists desperately want Americans to trade pluralistic democracy for autocratically imposed white Christian supremacy, but they have few takers. MAGA dead-enders are left to gaze on the White House squalor after the gladiator games and soothe their white resentment by reinstalling Confederate names on military bases and blocking Black and female military officers’ promotions. Increasingly, we see MAGA has nothing but Lost Cause political stunts and DEI for incompetent white males — a formula for political extinction.

As Obama told us, “America’s story isn’t frozen in the past. It has chapters yet to be written, not by one person or a few people … but by all of us” (unless you are cocooned in a dying cult with no positive agenda or compelling leader).

It’s no coincidence that the Obama center focuses heavily on ordinary citizens who helped him make change and on future leaders who will continue his life’s work. The foundation’s mission statement is not an exercise in false modesty but rather a calculated bet that lifting up regular people and developing engaged, committed citizens is the best way to ensure that Obama’s legacy continues and democracy prevails.

Like the 19th-century abolitionists who steeled themselves against serial setbacks to “stay true to our better selves and true to one another, and to keep fighting, to fulfill the promise of this nation,” we have every reason to eschew defeatism, Obama argued. We too can retain “a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together.”

Of late, I find plenty of evidence to support Obama’s view that Americans truly “want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away.” The fight to define America will be won not by embittered, decaying bullies frantically racing to rewrite the past and savage other Americans. It will be won by a multi-generational movement dedicated to constructing the most inclusive, values-based democracy possible. The future belongs to Chicago and Minnesota, not to Versailles and Mar-a-Lago.

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: UPDATE: The money behind a network of sham “progressive” super PACs, Judd Legum, right, June 22, 2026. A network of purportedly progressive super PACs, spending millions in Democratic primaries across the country, is funded by a Republican dark money group, the American Prosperity Alliance (APA).

Newly filed FEC documents reveal that three PACs that claim to oppose Trump and Republican policies — Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC — are wholly funded by Conservative Americans PAC, another super PAC. Conservative Americans PAC, in turn, received all of its funding this cycle, over $30 million, from the APA. The APA is a key part of the GOP financial infrastructure. It was established in 2022 and received $5.5 million in seed funding from the American Action Network, a non-profit associated with the House Republican super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund. Brian Walsh, a top aide to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), is a senior advisor to the APA, according to a 2024 report in NBC News. Walsh was a founder and former president of the Congressional Leadership Fund and former president of the American Action Network.

Since 2022, the APA has raised over $100 million from undisclosed sources. Millions of dollars were routed from the APA, usually through intermediaries, to the Congressional Leadership Fund and its sister organization, the Senate Leadership Fund. The APA has also funneled cash to MAGA Inc, President Trump’s super PAC, the Republican Convention, and a host of other Republican groups. The APA does not have to disclose its donors because it is organized as a 501(c)(4) non-profit group.

Earlier this month, Popular Information connected Lead Left PAC, Real Change PAC, and California Blue PAC to the Congressional Leadership Fund through shared vendors, personnel, and addresses. Lead Left, for example, listed its address as a mailbox at a Staples at 2241 North Monroe Street in Tallahassee, Florida. Of the roughly 48,500 distinct political committees that have filed with the FEC since 2016, only two others share an address with Lead Left. Both of those committees are connected to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, the political compliance firm founded by Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund.

The money trail, however, removes any remaining doubt about the true motivations of Lead Left and the other sham PACs. They have sought to bolster Democratic candidates that Republicans believe will be weaker in the general election, including fringe candidates with repugnant views.

In Texas’ 35th District, for example, Lead Left spent over $1 million supporting Maureen Galindo in the Democratic primary. Galindo, a sex therapist, pledged to transform ICE detention centers into a “prison for American Zionists” and a “castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Galindo’s campaign raised less than $11,000, of which $4,100 was a contribution from the candidate.

Galindo lost to Democrat Johnny Garcia in the May runoff. But in Maine, Real Change PAC spent $500,000 boosting Matt Dunlap, who won the primary in Maine’s 2nd District. Dunlap is not a fringe candidate; he currently serves as Maine's state auditor. But establishment Democrats supported his chief opponent, state Senator Joe Baldacci (D). Republicans are betting that Dunlap, a more progressive candidate endorsed by Our Revolution, the group founded by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), will be easier to defeat in November.

Popular Information previously reported that Real Change PAC sent a message to supporters from a cavalryllc.com email address — the domain of one of DC’s top Republican communications shops. The CLF spent over $10 million in the 2024 cycle buying digital ads through Cavalry LLC.

A fourth sham PAC, Progressive Champions PAC, has spent $1.5 million attacking Cait Conley, a Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Progressive Champions PAC’s ads claim that Conley is “not progressive” and tie her to President Trump.

Progressive Champions PAC is so new that it has not yet had to disclose its funders. But there is little doubt it is part of the same GOP network. On Saturday, Progressive Champions PAC and the other three sham PACs filed their FEC reports in the same 32 second window — all using the same Republican compliance software, Crimson Filer.

New York Times, The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s, Michael H. Keller, Eli Murray, Danielle Ivory and Irineo Cabreros, June 22, 2026 (print ed.). For decades, American roads were steadily getting safer for pedestrians. But around 2009, the trend reversed. Since then, the number of pedestrians killed each year has risen by about 75 percent.

The surge in pedestrian deaths has baffled researchers. Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story.

Other likely causes of deadly crashes, such as drunken and distracted driving, have attracted immense attention from the public and policymakers. But the trend toward ever-larger vehicles has received much less scrutiny, even after federal researchers in 2022 cautioned regulators that it was endangering pedestrians.

After analyzing federal and industry records, including never-before-examined data on vehicle dimensions, we found that the rise of large pickups and S.U.V.s is an important factor.

Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century. That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.

There are two reasons bigger vehicles are deadlier: They have taller hoods. And they tend to have larger blind zones.

Axios, Raging on D.C.'s doorstepInbox, Hans Nichols, Andrew Solender, June 22, 2026. A pair of largely overlooked U.S. House races in D.C.'s Maryland suburbs are racing up the leaderboard of the most expensive congressional primaries in U.S. history.

Why it matters: The volume of cash pervading the Democratic primary for Maryland's 5th and 6th congressional districts has some candidates raising the possibility that there is such a thing as too much spending for a favored candidate.

Voters "see the frequency of the ads, and now they're asking questions," said Wala Blegay, a Prince George's County Council member running in Maryland's 5th District. Said former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, another candidate in the 5th District who's a darling of the liberal grassroots and endorsed by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): "It's tough to square, like, why is someone donating this much money?"

Driving the news: Outside groups — most notably the pro-crypto super PAC Protect Progress and AIPAC's United Democracy Project — had spent a combined $12.5 million in Maryland's 5th District as of today, according to FEC filings.

The candidates in the Democratic primary to succeed former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have spent a combined $10.5 million as of June 3. On the other side of D.C.'s suburbs in the 6th Congressional District, Rep. April McClain Delaney (D-Md.) has loaned her campaign $7.4 million as she tries to withstand the staggering $25 million that her predecessor, David Trone, has loaned his campaign.

By the numbers: Super PAC spending in the 5th District has almost all favored state Del. Adrian Boafo, who is backed by Hoyer, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks.

Hoyer's AmeriPAC, Congressional Black Caucus-aligned Rolling Sea Action Fund and the American Bridge-affiliated Project 218 have also spent six-figure sums supporting Boafo. Just one group — Servant-Leader Fund, which supports Democratic veterans running for office — has spent for another candidate, putting down $135,000 to support former state Del. Rushern Baker.

What they're saying: Dunn, an unusally tall man show at right with U.S. Rep.Jamie Raskin, D-MD, said of the outside spending in an interview with us, "I've been one of the top fundraisers in the country, and I can't compete with that. It's tough to overcome."

"The entire experience has been so frustrating because almost none of the ads that people have seen on TV have said, 'Adrian Boafo for Congress,'" said Blegay. "People are seeing them about every hour," she added. "It doesn't take $12 million to win this race, and that's just how much money they've put in." Boafo's campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

The intrigue: McClain Delaney and Trone are both considered moderate, establishment-aligned Democrats.

Other Democrats in the 6th District primary have raised paltry sums by comparison, such as progressive former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official Alexis Goldstein. McClain Delaney and Trone have been running ads playing up their progressive bona fides and whacking each other as insufficiently anti-Trump, anti-ICE or pro-abortion rights.

Drop Site News, In Maryland District, a Last-Minute Scramble to Stop “AIPAC Adrian” Boafo, Ryan Grim and Lily Franks, A powerful local figure is switching sides to back Quincy Bareebe in hopes of blocking an Oracle lobbyist from taking over the seat being vacated by AIPAC stalwart Steny Hoyer

In a last-minute bid to prevent an AIPAC-backed Oracle lobbyist from seizing a congressional seat on Tuesday, Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy is dropping her endorsement of a fellow local county commissioner in the hopes of consolidating around Quincy Bareebe, whom many now consider the most competitive challenger to Oracle’s Adrian Boafo. Maryland’s primary will be held on Tuesday, June 23.

While national focus has been on the pro-Israel money being spent in New York’s primary contests, AIPAC and crypto interests have combined to drop some $12 million so far backing Boafo, a spending binge highlighted Sunday morning by the Washington Post in an article that could prove damaging. Bareebe also has the support of former Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who was ousted after AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups spent a then-record-breaking amount of money against him, at least $23 million in a single race.Upgrade to paid

Dubbed “AIPAC Adrian” in a rap song released recently in the district by Progressive Maryland, Boafo is a former aide to Rep. Steny Hoyer, who for decades was one of Israel’s most outspoken advocates in Congress and the lead organizer of a biannual congressional delegation to the country, funded by AIPAC.

Oracle was founded by Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world and the owner, along with his son, of CBS, CNN, TikTok, and many other media properties. While Hoyer aide Boafo went on to work for Ellison, another longtime lieutenant, Brian Romick, has become a prominent figure in the pro-Israel advocacy world. After nearly three decades on Hoyer’s staff he became president and CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which is backing Boafo.

Prince George’s County makes up a major chunk of the 5th congressional district, and Braveboy was Councilwoman Wala Blegay’s most prominent local backer. (She is also backed by Rep. Ro Khanna of California.) Braveboy called Blegay Sunday to break the news to her, two sources familiar with the call told Drop Site. The call, to put it mildly, went poorly. A second call from Braveboy went better, and led to a meeting between Blegay’s staff and Braveboy’s staff on Monday, focused on the possibility of Blegay dropping out and consolidating behind Bareebe. While the loss of Braveboy’s support effectively ends her campaign, Blegay has yet to do so.

“Special interests are trying to turn elections into auctions, but I can’t be bought,” said Bareebe in a statement announcing Braveboy’s support. “I’m honored to have the County Executive’s support and I’m confident that in the end, the voters will heed the warning of Senator [Chris] Van Hollen and reject the mountains of cash outside interests are dropping across the District.” Van Hollen has been critical of Boafo’s reliance on AIPAC and crypto money, but hasn’t made an endorsement in the race.

Blegay, who raised less than $400,000, led the push for a Gaza ceasefire resolution in the county, but her campaign never attracted the kind of funding or outside support needed to challenge Boafo’s millions in the crowded field. Rushern Baker III, a former county executive who also served in the Maryland General Assembly, told Drop Site he has no plans to drop out. “We feel really good about where we are in the race,” he said.

Bareebe, meanwhile, was able to self-fund her campaign. The founder of a local home health care company, which serves the elderly and children with chronic conditions, she loaned her campaign nearly $6 million, according to the most recent financial disclosures. Beyond her own money, she has raised less than $200,000. Bareebe has said the “Block the Bombs Act,” which restricts some weapons shipments to Israel, would be among the first she would co-sponsor as a member of Congress.

Braveboy’s decision came after new internal polling showed Bareebe ahead by 3 points over Boafo in Prince George’s County, which makes up roughly half the district. Boafo was raised in the county, and Blegay serves as an at-large county councilwoman, meaning she represents the entire county. A poll done by the Bareebe campaign a month ago showed Bareebe down by 10 before she began spending to boost her name recognition and link Boafo to AIPAC and crypto interests. The ads appear to have worked to turn the campaign around.

Hoyer was first elected in 1981—13 years before Boafo was even born—and his long tenure bottled up political ambitions in the southern Maryland district for decades. His retirement uncorked an absurdly crowded race of 24 competitors, many of them credible public officials and several of them with progressive bona fides that made consolidation behind a single candidate difficult.

Many progressive organizations as a result stayed out of the race or didn’t spend much money. The Working Families Party got behind Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his service on January 6th and became an MSNBC celebrity for the public criticism he leveled at Republicans for siding with the rioters. Dunn lost a congressional race in a nearby district in 2024, with AIPAC spending millions to beat him, despite Dunn having no record one way or the other on Israel-Palestine issues. 

“Harry believes we must hold all America’s allies, including Israel, to the same standards, and doesn’t believe we should hold particular allies to unique thresholds,” a spokesperson for Dunn’s campaign told Drop Site News when asked if he supported conditioning aid to Israel. The campaign did not answer follow-up questions seeking clarification.

During his long tenure, Hoyer opposed efforts to restrict the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel, supported Trump’s 2018 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, praised Trump’s attack last year on Iran’s nuclear sites, and generally has been among Israel’s most reliable allies in Congress.

More Global News

New York Times, Who Is Andy Burnham, the Man Who Could Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister? Stephen Castle, Updated June 22, 2026. Charismatic, northern and exuding a relaxed optimism, Mr. Burnham is a contrast to Keir Starmer. His allies hope he could mend Labour’s relationship with voters.

Andy Burnham, right, has twice run unsuccessfully for the leadership of Britain’s governing Labour Party. Now his decisive victory in a special parliamentary election puts him within reach not just of that goal, but of entering Downing Street as prime minister.

A fluent communicator known for his bonhomie and charisma, Mr. Burnham has for nine years been mayor of Greater Manchester, where he cultivated an image of optimism, activism and the type of authentic plain speaking characteristic of northern England.

With a seat in Parliament representing Makerfield, in northwest England, Mr. Burnham will need the support of 81 fellow Labour lawmakers to mount a leadership challenge to the country’s unpopular prime minister, Keir Starmer.

Supporters see Mr. Burnham — who in Manchester won the nickname “king of the North” for his defense of the area during the Covid-19 pandemic — as Labour’s potential savior against the populist right-wing Reform U.K. party, led by Nigel Farage. Critics portray Mr. Burnham as a political chameleon who would face the same economic constraints that have stymied Mr. Starmer’s lackluster government, and the same restless, impatient electorate.

Either way, he would be a different kind of leader from the one he wants to replace.

New York Times, Thousands Are Fleeing Ukraine’s Donbas Strongholds as Russia Pushes Closer, Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko, June 22, 2026. While Kyiv’s fortunes have brightened in other ways in the war, Moscow’s forces are raining bombs and drones on “fortress belt” cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Nadiya Trofimchuk, 79, had lived in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk her whole life and never thought about leaving, even as war raged for years not 20 miles away. Yet there she was one recent morning at a makeshift evacuation center, sitting next to a small folding table with water and tea but touching neither, just focused on leaving.

“We had a strike,” she explained, eyebrows raised over purple and gold cat-eye glasses. “A very, very, very big strike.”

In that April attack, Russia dropped a 3,000-pound bomb in the middle of the city, wiping out almost an entire block. It was a grim omen for Sloviansk and the rest of the Donetsk region, the Kremlin’s most coveted prize. Ukrainian forces have spent years fortifying and defending the strategic territory at immense cost, and it is now under an onslaught that residents fear is the beginning of the end.

The sense of foreboding in Donetsk is a sobering development for Ukraine at a moment when it has otherwise received a boost from a campaign of longer-range strikes and the stalling of Russian forces along most of the front.ImageA mound of broken bricks and debris fills the foreground. In the background, there is a multistory building with boarded-up windows and a damaged roofline.The scene after a 3,000-pound Russian bomb exploded in Sloviansk.Credit...Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Russia still has superior numbers and firepower. And after years of grinding warfare in the region, its forces have been concentrating on the “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka, part of the roughly 20 percent of Donetsk that Ukraine still controls.

Russian troops have fought their way into Kostiantynivka. Druzhkivka is a wasteland. That leaves Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as Ukraine’s last real strongholds in Donetsk.

The two cities are not in imminent danger of falling. But Moscow’s forces have advanced close enough to batter them with growing numbers of glide bombs and exploding drones. Thousands of civilians have fled as life has become more untenable.

Russia’s deployment of the 3,000-pound bomb in Sloviansk prompted worries that it would increasingly turn to even more brutal tactics. Moscow has used such weapons to level and clear out other Ukrainian cities, leaving soldiers to fight for control of smoking rubble. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Happy Globalist Independence Day! William Kristol, right, June 22, 2026. Ten years ago, on June 23, 2016, the people of Great Britain voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. This morning, Keir Starmer, Britain’s fifth post-Brexit prime minister, announced his resignation. Brexit hasn’t made Britain great again, and most Britons now regret the decision to exit the EU.

Nor are the most fervent Brexiteers happy. They got what they wanted, but it hasn’t worked out as they envisioned. Populist victories don’t lead to populist happiness. A good chunk of the country turns against them, but the populist movement doesn’t learn any lessons. It just gets more radicalized as its hopes aren’t realized. So ten years on, the British Right is more nativist, more xenophobic, and more bitter about the state of their country than ever.

Brexit’s victory was followed less than five months later by Donald Trump’s win here. Brexit was more than a harbinger of Trump, it was a help to him. It gave Trumpism the sense of having a wind at its back; it helped make nationalist populism seem like the next big thing. People like to think they’re part of a bigger movement, that they’re riding a wave of the future. And so the wish was father to the thought. And here we are.

I feel that I’ve seen this before, from the other side. I remember how Thatcher’s victory in 1979 encouraged us young conservatives to think we could win in 1980—that we weren’t just standing athwart history but had a chance to make it. I remember how during the 1980s, we Reaganites would look abroad, and see Thatcher and Pope John XXIII, and think we had the wind at our backs.

Politics can produce very unlikely leaders. The first female British prime minister, the first non-Italian pope in centuries, the oldest American ever to be elected president—together, they changed history.

If you want to be cheered up, think about being told the day after the Brexit vote that a decade later, a possible international revival of liberalism would be led by three inspiring leaders you’d never heard of: a Ukrainian comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky; a minor figure in of Viktor Orbán’s government, Péter Magyar; and the recently appointed bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, Robert Prevost. Who would have believed it?

The course of human events is often unpredictable.

Which brings us to the 250th anniversary of our revolution.

A few months ago, I was worried that Trump would succeed in hijacking our 250th birthday celebration. He’s certainly tried, but I now think we can say that his efforts to shape how we think about our country and its history have fallen flat.

Is anyone still talking about the cage match a week ago on the White House’s South Lawn? I don’t think so. Will people pay attention to Trump’s speech this Wednesday, June 24, kicking off the “Great American State Fair” on the Mall? I doubt it. If they take a look, it will probably be because they’re curious for an update on the Reflecting Pool.

I know that early that evening I’ll be home watching the World Cup on TV, as little Scotland, backed by its Tartan Army, takes on mighty Brazil. Can Scotland progress for the first time beyond the group stage at a World Cup and reach the knockout rounds?²

I will say that the World Cup has been a godsend as an alternative, a counterpoint, to Trump’s bicentennial. The high spirits of the tournament, the healthy enjoyment at hosting this—dare I say—globalist event, the examples it’s provided of good-natured and liberal national pride as opposed to narrow-minded and nasty nationalism: These have all been reminders of a better kind of patriotism. Of the best kind of American patriotism.

Of course the semiquincentennial will culminate on July Fourth. Trump has boasted on Truth Social that the day’s super-sized events in Washington, D.C. will be “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.” But most Americans will ignore that rally. They will be enjoying a normal July Fourth, not an authoritarian one. For some of us, part of that enjoyment will be taking in the first two knockout matches in the World Cup round of sixteen that day.

How great would it be if Scotland or Cape Verde or Curaçao made it to at least the first knockout round? They have a chance. And let’s not forget the Knicks. They went all the way. It all gives me hope—even some confidence!—that though the next two and half years will be rough, the American experiment in self-government has a chance to prevail.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Swing Voters Are Still Mad at Republicans About Abortion… In tight elections, that might make all the difference, observes SARAH LONGWELL.
• Iran Showed Us the Future of Asymmetric Warfare… America’s enemies will attack our political cohesion, our alliances, and our will, warns MARK HERTLING.
• JD Vance’s Ideas Will Never Work… Postliberalism has been tried before, to ruinous results, writes MATT JOHNSON.
• Trump Bombed Iran—Then Gave It Everything It Wanted… On The Mona Charen Show, MONA welcomes military analyst ANDREW FOX for a conversation on Trump’s Iran ceasefire.
• ​​Rising Antisemitism Is a Dark Omen for Society… On Shield of the Republic, DEBORAH LIPSTADT joins ELIOT COHEN to discuss her work as special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism from 2022 to 2025.

Quick Hits

PEACE PROCESS: Iran has been playing hardball in peace negotiations, canceling the first day of planned talks Friday and announcing yet again the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, both in supposed retaliation for the ongoing fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. (This was only a partial closure; non-Iranian ships immediately stopped transiting again, while Iranian ships, against which America is no longer enforcing its blockade, kept sailing through.)

Still, some progress appears to be taking place at the talks in Switzerland. Early this morning, mediators Qatar and Pakistan said in a statement that the sides had agreed on “a roadmap towards reaching a final deal within 60 days” and on “the creation of a mechanism for further technical talks,” including a “de-confliction cell” aimed at bringing the fighting to Lebanon to a close. In other words, more agreements to agree on things later and more of the United States agreeing to put pressure on Israel in the hope of further softening up Iran.

Meanwhile, back in D.C., Trump was doing his own freelance negotiation, apparently back in an Israel-sympathetic mood: “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble,” he posted Sunday morning on Truth Social. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”

And I remember when he said only “stupid people” would call for more bombing of Iran.

MUSCOVITE HAYHEM: After the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a nearly 1,000-year-old monastery in the heart of Kyiv, was damaged in the early morning hours of June 15 in a blaze set off by Russian bombs, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was asked what he could say to Vladimir Putin. “We’ll say it,” Zelensky laconically replied. The answer has come in an unprecedented wave of drone strikes targeting oil refineries on the outskirts of Moscow on Thursday. The images were apocalyptic: pillars of black and gray smoke rising and billowing over the city with bright orange flames visible through the smoke clouds. While some of the drones were intercepted by air defense, many got through—and in some cases, air defense missile hits resulted in damage from debris and even fires below. Altogether, seventeen people were injured, and the wreckage included an open-air market gutted by fire. The dramatic image of a roof being blown off an exploding fuel storage tank launched a thousand memes.

More strikes came this morning. The extent of the damage is unknown, but the city’s airports were shut down and traffic on a main roadway was temporarily closed off to deploy air defense systems.

So far, most residents of the city of Moscow itself have not been directly affected. But there is no question that such attacks are making it harder and harder for Russians in the privileged capital to pretend that the war doesn’t affect them. Given the Russian public’s state of learned helplessness that has set in over the last fifteen years or so, it’s hard to imagine this insecurity translating into popular discontent. But will the elites get fed up? As the fortunes of war look worse and worse for the Kremlin, we may be about to find out.

—Cathy Young

U.S. Culture, Media, Religion, Education

Letters from an American, Cultural Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Ode To Fathers], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 22, 2026.

I spent so much time in my friend Mike’s house growing up that I knew his parents as Mama and Papa. His father, Kenneth Edward Nyboe, was born in 1924 in New York City but spent his summers in Maine, where he knew my mother and my aunt and where he met, and secretly married, my aunt’s friend Helen Bryant just before he shipped overseas to be in the tank corps with Patton’s Third Army in World War II.

Papa’s war was not an easy one, although he came home without visible wounds. After the war, he went to the University of Maine on the GI Bill, spurred by Helen, who had never been to college herself but made it clear she expected him to live up to her faith in him by making it through school.

After college, he went to work for the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., insisting on the simplest solutions—the ones that worked—even when the rest of the team scoffed that they were too easy. For years, while Helen and their two sons were in Maine for the summer, he commuted between there and Washington, driving back and forth on the weekends because even though it was a 12-hour drive, nothing mattered more than driving down Carter’s Lane at the end of it.

Papa was away a lot, but when he was home, he always had time for us kids. He taught me how to shingle a roof and to sand a deck and to wire lights and to spell out the NATO phonetic alphabet and to count hours in military time and what to do if you cut an artery (which came in surprisingly handy after a kitchen accident many years later).

He took all of us out to the islands in his boat for hiking and picnics. On one special, brutally hot August day, when everyone else had gone somewhere and the tide was way too low to swim, he took me out into the sound to find deep, cold water so I could jump in. The heat made things waver; we saw mirages among the islands that day.

Papa Ken had a huge heart. He could whistle “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof loud enough to hear all the way across the harbor. And he always said there was nothing anyone couldn’t work out, so long as they talked to each other honestly.

Papa had a wonderful voice, a resonant baritone. When Helen was in the hospital after giving birth to one of their sons—these were the days when you stayed in the hospital for a week—she got lonely and scared. She called Papa in tears. “Say something,” she begged. “Just say something to me. I need to hear your voice.”

And in the middle of the night, Papa didn’t even say hello. He took a deep breath. “Four score and seven years ago,” he began, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal….”

And he recited the Gettysburg Address until she could sleep.

Happy Father’s Day to dads and to those who fill the role.

June 21

Top Headlines 

• Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ten Horrific New Revelations About Trump’s Surrender to Iran at Versailles, Seth Abramson, right, June 20-21, 2026. By the time of Trump’s Monday DocuSign of America’s surrender to Iran and his formal surrender at Versailles Wednesday, we knew the Iran War would live in infamy. But over 72 hours, it got far worse.
• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: New Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Set to Start in Switzerland, Aurelien Breeden and Yan Zhuang, June 21, 2026. Vice President JD Vance was expected to talk with Iranian negotiators. But the conflict in Lebanon threatens efforts to reach a broader peace and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Blows Up Peace Talks with Iran, Ben Meiselas, right, June 21 2026. He just can't help himself. 
• The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: MAGA Questions Trump's Health, Iran Negotiations Erupt, Vance Embarrassed, Duckling Dies at Reflecting Pool, Aaron Parnas, right,June 21, 2026. Donald Trump has completely derailed the peace process between the United States and Iran and J.D. Vance has been embarrassed in Geneva on the world stage in a historic, historic embarrassment to the United States of America.

U.S. Law, Crime, Rights, Corruption, Courts, Justice 

• All Rise News, Analysis: Scrutinizing Trump DOJ's No. 3, Adam Klasfeld, above right,June 21, 2026. Stan Woodward's ex-clients could benefit from Trump's slush fund. That's a conflict of interest, a bar complaint alleges.
• New York Times, Trump Administration Shuttered a Criminal Probe Into Fraudster’s Clemency, Kenneth P. Vogel, Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum, June 21, 2026. Federal prosecutors had been examining the circumstances behind the commutation of David Gentile’s sentence. He was aided by a Catholic priest friendly with the president.
• New York Times, Opinion: A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice, David French, right, June 21, 2026. An unusual tweet caught my eye last week. It said this: “NEW: Trump admin takes rare step to quell controversy over prosecutorial misconduct in dropped criminal case against Chicago-area anti-ICE protesters. Feds won’t fight defense demand to pay bill for activists’ legal fees.” Here’s why it’s so notable. In our legal system, prosecutors rarely pay a criminal defendant’s legal fees..
• Emptywheel, Analysis:The Reflecting Pool Arrests Are an Attempt to Cover Up Trump’s Corruption, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 21, 2026. As green algae blooms in the reflecting pool in DC and the purportedly protective layer starts peeling off in sheets, Donald Trump has demanded and gotten arrests — most notably a former Olympic canoeist who claims all he did was touch the undercoat that is peeling off, while others claim they received citations for merely sticking their hand in the pool — serving his false claim that sabotage, rather than his own incompetence, led to the failure of his reflecting pool project.

Trump Administration, Allies

• New York Times, Trump, Claiming Vandalism, Says Reflecting Pool Will Likely Need to Be Drained, Minho Kim, June 21, 2026 (print ed.). The pool has taken on clouds of algae after a hasty renovation. A three-time Olympian was charged with destroying government property after he says he touched one of the strands of blue paint peeling off the pool’s bottom.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Reflection On Trump Administration], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 21, 2026.The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become a metaphor for the Trump presidency.
• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary:The techno-fascist plot to end democracy around the world, Wayne Madsen, right, June 21, 2026. The diabolical scheme by Thiel, Musk, Epstein, and political Zionists to fix elections, collect personal data, and create a global techno-fascist dictatorship powered by a network of data centers.

News Roundup

• The Parnas Perspective, Saturday News Update and Commentary: Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. From Italy’s leader publicly calling out Donald Trump in a way we rarely see from a close American ally, to Trump demanding jail time for people he says interfered with his Reflecting Pool project, including an Olympian arrested today. Meanwhile, Iran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz as negotiations continue to face obstacles. And much more.

More On Iran War

• New York Times, News analysis: What Changed After Almost Four Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much, Neil MacFarquhar, June 21, 2026. Neither the war nor the agreement terminated the main threats emanating from Iran, many analysts said.
• Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ten Horrific New Revelations About Trump’s Surrender to Iran at Versailles, Seth Abramson, right,June 20-21, 2026. By the time of Trump’s Monday DocuSign of America’s surrender to Iran and his formal surrender at Versailles Wednesday, we knew the Iran War would live in infamy. But over 72 hours, it got far worse.

U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• New York Times, Mamdani Burns Allies in Making a Big Bet for Congress and the Left, Nicholas Fandos and Sally GoldenbergJune 21, 2026. The strength of the mayor’s political brand will be tested on Tuesday, when his slate of leftist congressional candidates takes aim at Democratic incumbents.
• New Jersey Globe, The relationship between the New York Times and the Kean family goes back over 175 years, David Wildstein, June 21, 2026. The relationship between the New York Times and the Kean family goes back over 175 years. The founder of the New York Times was a Republican politician from New York who was a close personal friend and political ally of Col. John Kean of New Jersey.

More Global News

• New York Times, While the World Scrambles for Oil, China Sits on Full Tanks, Keith Bradsher, June 21, 2026. The possible reopening of the Strait of Hormuz may not prompt China to return quickly to prewar levels of oil purchases from the Persian Gulf.
• New York Times, Trump-Backed Outsider Appears to Win in Colombian Presidential Race, Annie Correal, June 21, 2026. A victory for Abelardo De La Espriella, a lawyer with no previous political experience, would be a rebuke to the left and another win for the right in Latin America.

U.S. Culture, Religion, Media 

Vice President JD Vance, center, faced tough questions from the co-hosts of ABC-TV's "The View," shown above, as he undertook a tour for his self-promotion book "Communion" while extolling the Trump Administration and the concept of Christian "grace."

• MS Now, JD Vance’s book ‘Communion’ reveals he hasn’t changed as much as he says he has, Anthea Butler, June 21, 2026. As he promotes his new book about his conversion, Vance seems confused about what Catholicism is, and he doesn’t seem to understand that Christian beliefs aren’t the same as a list of conservative talking points.‘He thinks he’s smarter than the POPE?
• WhoWhatWhy, Saturday Hashtag, Sean Ogen, June 20, 2026. Fake charities have expanded rapidly in recent years, increasingly blending humanitarian branding with coordinated digital infrastructure designed to simulate legitimacy and attract donations.
• The Contrarian, Publisher's Roundup: Behind the Scenes at the Obama Presidential Center Opening, Norman Eisen, right, June 20, 2026. A Real Celebration of America at 250. 
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: The US Men's Soccer Team Wins, Inspires, And Brings Our Embattled Nation Together, Simon Rosenberg, right, June 20, 2026. "What has prevailed is that sense of community — a rebuttal of the divided, isolated world in which authoritarian voices delight."

Top Stories

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ten Horrific New Revelations About Trump’s Surrender to Iran at Versailles, Seth Abramson, right, June 20-21, 2026. By the time of Trump’s Monday DocuSign of America’s surrender to Iran and his formal surrender at Versailles Wednesday, we knew the Iran War would live in infamy. But over 72 hours, it got far worse.

Introduction

While he was lying about Barack Obama’s faith and birthplace in the mid-2010s, to include repeatedly referencing President Obama’s middle name as supposed proof that the nation’s first Black president was a crypto-Muslimintent on destroying the United States from within — easily the most racist course of political rhetoric in America since the Civil War — Trump was also obscenely accusing Obama of actively “supporting” the terror group al-Qaeda in Iraq, being a proud “co-founder” of the would-be terror caliphate ISIS, and gifting Iran “$100 billion to fund terrorism.”

Of course, as the MAGA Maxim goes, “every accusation is a confession.”

Obama was not doing any of those things. But Trump’s very good friend Benjamin Netanyahu — who illegally interfered in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf on the understanding that Trump would support the Israeli regime’s handling of Middle Eastern geopolitics — was, it turns out, as part of that very “handling,” actively funding the same Hamas terrorists who would attack Israel in the horrifying October 7 invasion.

That’s right: Donald Trump himself was in bed with secret funders of terror as he was falsely accusing President Obama of the very same thing. You can read all about this in the Israeli press and even certain outlets here in the United States, from The Times of Israel (link) to the New York Times (link), from CNN (link) to The Jerusalem Post (link), from Haaretz (link) to The Week (link).

So yes, Trump appears to be fine with funding terrorism, as long as it’s a white man like him doing it, not some “stupid son of a bitch” who is (not at all coincidentally) a Black man (yes, has Trump recently continued his decades-long habit of specifically singling out Black people as supposedly of below-average intelligence, just one of literally hundreds of examples of him being an open and unapologetic lifelong racist).

Donald Trump also, of course, has all but accused Obama’s vice president Joe Biden of Treason and Murder for doing his level best, one Biden became president himself, to execute the—and this is my shorthand—the “Flee For Your Lives!” non-exit strategy from Afghanistan Trump deviously negotiated before leaving office to hamstring and try to maim the political prospective of any Democratic politician who might succeed him. For that matter, Trump spent years falsely trying to convince U.S. voters that he knew better than his leading Republican presidential punching-bag—George W. Bush—on the Second Iraq War, swearing he opposed it when (no surprise) he supported it.

I mention all the foregoing because humankind has a longstanding trope relating to hypocrites, which usually involves them being struck to death by lightning or burned alive where they stand by a vengeful deity. But the New Testament merely sees Jesus of Nazareth preach that hypocrites will be “condemned to hell”—a fate that Donald Trump therefore presumably fears above all others because he is, in the annals of U.S. history, one of the biggest and most shameless hypocrites who ever walked on a stage as an aspiring U.S. politician. (Of course, as it happens—and apropos of the “MAGA Maxim” and Trump’s false claims that Obama is hiding his true religion—Trump is a crypto-atheist who privately despises Christianity; consequently, he doesn’t believe in Hell and doesn’t deem himself destined for it.)

All of which is to say that Donald Trump DocuSigning a surrender to Iran on Monday, then wet-signing the same document at Versailles on Wednesday (shown above in a White House photo with Secretary of State Marco Rubio looking on) — with the latter event being widely called the Versailles Surrender (calling to mind the unconditional surrender of onetime global superpower Germany at Versailles following World War I) — and in doing so (a) promising years, possibly decades of funding to Earth’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and (b) surrendering in yet another ill-advised war he blames everyone but himself for is the sort of thing that would commit Mr. Trump to eternal hellfire and agony if you believe in that sort of thing. Which, again, Trump does not.

So as morning dawned in America on Thursday, it seemed things couldn’t get worse.

America’s worst-ever president had signed America’s worst-ever terms of surrender.

He had done this after demanding America’s biggest-ever military budget, a demand which itself came hot on the heels of Trump overseeing the work of his biggest mega-donor (the neo-Nazi Elon Musk) as the latter authoritarian executed the biggest-ever cut in U.S. foreign aid.

You know, “foreign aid”: the money that America spends to save lives rather than take them abroad, in so doing making friends and allies around the world in the hope that doing so will prevent the sort of wars Trump claims to hate (while either dodging them illegally, as with the Vietnam War, supporting them vocally until they go bad, as with the Second Gulf War, personally ensuring they turn into a disaster, as in the War in Afghanistan, or, as with Iran, changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, then immediately starting a war, then losing it about as badly as one can).

But as Thursday arrived with disgusting algae blooms in the D.C. Reflecting Pool that Trump claimed would have no algae blooms, and as the sun began shining on the tarp Trump put on the Kennedy Center to hide the name of another Democratic president he detests (largely because a court said he couldn’t put his name beside that of John F. Kennedy on a memorial Congress had set aside explicitly for President Kennedy only), and as Americans learned—via the New York Times—that the Trump-destroyed White House East Wing (soon to be a vanity ballroom with a deeply foreboding Führerbunker beneath it) isn’t going to be a construction project free to U.S. taxpayers as Trump had promised but has in fact already cost us $357 million in quietly redirected Secret Service funds (ironically, funds for training agents, a topic Trump is oddly cavalier about for a man who says he’s been targeted by assassins at least four times recently)…

…it became clear that Trump’s shameless Versailles Surrender is worse even than what this publication has already detailed.

Which would have seemed impossible just two days ago.

But here we are.

Yet before we dive into what happened on Thursday—which itself demands an entire report on the historic incompetence of the administration generally and this president specifically—we must wrestle with even more recent events. In just the past 24 hours, the Versailles Surrender has collapsed.

See below for: Ten Brand New, Horrific Revelations About Donald Trump’s Unprecedented Surrender to Iran at Versailles

Seth Abramson, founder and editor of the investigative platform "Proof," is an attorney, former journalism professor and best-selling author of investigative books, including that shown above, about Donald Trump.

New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: New Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Set to Start in Switzerland, Aurelien Breeden and Yan Zhuang, June 21, 2026. Vice President JD Vance was expected to talk with Iranian negotiators. But the conflict in Lebanon threatens efforts to reach a broader peace and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

Diplomats huddled at a lakeside resort in Switzerland on Sunday before a new round of U.S.-Iranian talks, even as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the status of the Strait of Hormuz loomed over efforts to reach a broader peace deal.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, conferred with his Swiss counterpart, and the Iranian delegation was also scheduled to meet Pakistani and Qatari officials, who have acted as mediators. The American delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan.

The flurry of bilateral discussions came ahead of what was expected to be the centerpiece of the talks, at the Swiss resort at Bürgenstock: a four-way meeting between delegations from the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar.

One of the most urgent issues is the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. That conflict flared up on Saturday despite a new cease-fire, but it appeared to ease on Sunday after the Israeli government directed the military to restrict itself to defensive actions.

Another key issue is the passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. An initial U.S.-Iran agreement, signed last week, established a 60-day cease-fire during which the United States promised to end its blockade of Iranian ports, and Iran promised to let shipping flow freely through the strait, a vital waterway for transporting oil and gas.

But the status of the strait was thrown into confusion on Saturday after Iran claimed it was closing the waterway over the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military said that marine traffic in the strait continued to flow and asserted that Iran “does not control” the strait.

The most difficult issue in the U.S.-Iran negotiations — what to do about Iran’s nuclear program and stockpile of uranium — has been left for the next round of talks. So far, Iran has only reiterated its longstanding promise not to develop nuclear weapons, and promised at a minimum to dilute its stockpile of near-bomb grade uranium as part of a final deal.

Before Mr. Vance boarded his plane, he told reporters that he hoped to make progress on the “nuclear issue” and the “Lebanon cease-fire issue.”

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Nuclear program: Iran will “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium, and the United States “will ultimately have to accept this,” President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said at a conference in Tehran on Sunday, state-controlled Iranian media reported.
• Lebanon strikes: There were no reports of Israeli attacks on Lebanon or Hezbollah strikes on Israelis by midday local time on Sunday. Still, it was not clear whether the new Israeli directive announced late Saturday would resolve the friction that led to deadly clashes on Friday and Saturday and threatened to derail the preliminary U.S.-Iran deal.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance listens to U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as they attend a quadrilateral meeting between the U.S., Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar at the Lake Lucerne Summit, aimed at advancing a deal to end the Middle East conflict near Stansstad, Switzerland, June 21, 2026 (Pool photo by Nathan Howard of Reuters).

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Trump Blows Up Peace Talks with Iran, Ben Meiselas, right, June 21 2026. He just can't help himself. 

Here’s what we’re tracking today:

• Trump threatens Iranian negotiators and the Strait of Hormuz right as talks begin in Switzerland
• Iran formally protests, refuses photo-ops, reportedly walks out (though a U.S. diplomat denies this)
• Iran says the nuclear file isn’t even on the table this round, but Lebanon and sanctions relief are
• Lindsey Graham predicts the MOU will fail and says the U.S. will “take the strait over by force”
• Israel and Netanyahu say they’re not leaving Lebanon, no matter what the MOU says
• JD Vance claims victory on Hormuz and the nuclear program while both remain unresolved
• The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga continues, with Jeanine Pirro threatening more charges to soothe Trump’s fragile ego
• And Trump posts a cryptic “great daughter” tribute to a New York socialite in the middle of a global crisis

Trump Blows Up the Room Before Anyone Sits Down

Donald Trump managed to sabotage these peace talks in Switzerland before they even got going. What just happened is stunning. I’ll also get this this a bit further down, but we’ve solved the mystery one one of Trump’s weirdest posts to date.

But first, the talks. While the actual diplomats were supposed to be sitting down to negotiate, Trump was on social media and talking to reporters threatening the Iranian leadership directly, telling them he’d make sure they didn’t make it back to their own country alive if they closed the Strait of Hormuz. He then announced the United States would simply take over the strait and start charging tolls to use it.

This is the same man who insists he’s the great dealmaker. You don’t get there by threatening to kill the people sitting across the table from you before the meeting starts.

Naturally, this caused the Iranian delegation to lodge a formal protest. And it gets worse for Trump’s side: Iran made clear they’re not even discussing the nuclear file in these talks at all. According to Iran, that conversation only happens once the U.S. implements the parts of the Memorandum of Understanding dealing with a full ceasefire in Lebanon and the lifting of sanctions. Worth noting, the head of the IAEA wasn’t even in the room for any of this.

Lindsey Graham, Doing What Lindsey Graham Does

Right behind Trump came Lindsey Graham, dispatched to the Sunday shows to repeat the threats. Graham told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation that he expects the MOU to fail, and that when it does, Trump will simply take the Strait of Hormuz by force and start charging a toll to anyone who wants to pass through. He also turned to the people of Lebanon and said, “help is on the way,” the exact same phrase that Trump used right before bombing Iran back in January.

Meanwhile, here’s the reality on the ground: the Strait of Hormuz is closed right now. Not because of some abstract future threat, but because it’s closed. Iran has shut it down. Iran has still managed to move oil out through Kharg Island, somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 million barrels, while the strait stays closed to the United States and everyone else.

Iran Won’t Give Trump His Photo-Op

Part of what makes the optics so bad for the U.S. is what happened with the cameras. JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner were all there in Switzerland, reportedly eager for the photo opportunity with the Iranian delegation. Begging, as Trump would say. The Iranians said no. They wouldn’t pose. They wouldn’t shake hands. The U.S. delegation was sitting in the room first, waiting, which in any negotiation is read as a position of weakness.

Image Screen grab shows Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi entering the meeting room with Vice President JD Vance before quickly moving out of view of the television cameras. Iranian officials declined to stand alongside the U.S., Pakistani, and Qatari delegations for the customary photo opportunity.

I have never seen the United States look this weak and this pathetic on the world stage.

In response to Trump’s threats against him and his entire negotiating team, Iranian official Ghalibaf put out a statement essentially shrugging off the threats entirely, saying Iran doesn’t take American threats into account and that their armed forces are ready to respond in a different way if needed. U.S.

Ghalibaf’s post: “Don’t they think to themselves that if their threats had any result, they wouldn’t have reached today’s desperation? We do not take the Americans’ threats into account at all. It would be better for them to watch their statements carefully. Our armed forces are ready to respond to them in a different way. No matter how much they talk, it is we who act.”

The line that stuck with me: no matter how much the U.S. talks, it is Iran that acts. That’s the position Trump’s bluster has put us in.

Why the Strait Is Actually Closed

Let’s be clear about why none of this oil is moving. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut because Israel continues striking inside Lebanon, where more than a hundred people have been killed, many of them women, children, and other civilians. Netanyahu has said outright that Israel has no intention of ever leaving Lebanon. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz has confirmed it too: no withdrawal from what Israel calls its security zone, full stop.

So while Trump postures about taking over the strait by force, Israel is the one actively continuing the invasion of Lebanon that the Memorandum of Understanding was supposed to stop. Israel’s message to Trump, in effect, is that we don’t care about your MOU, we’re moving forward regardless.

The Receipts: What Trump Actually Posted and Said

Let’s go to the actual statements

Trump posted that Iran needs to immediately stop its proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble, or the U.S. will, in his words, hit Iran very hard again, “only harder.” He posted this exact message while negotiations were supposed to be getting underway in Switzerland. If your goal is to wreck a peace process and tip the global economy into a depression, this is how you’d do it.

Then Trump called into Fox and told a correspondent that if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, Iran isn’t going to have a country left. He talked about bombing them, about blowing things up. At one point he described the MOU itself as not really a binding deal at all, just an option, and suggested that after 60 days he might simply go back to military action.

On the nuclear specifics, Trump and his team seem confused about their own agreement. The MOU does not actually require Iran to give up enrichment entirely. Paragraph eight covers down-blending of enriched material, a provision that echoes language from the old Obama-era nuclear deal, though that earlier agreement had actual enforcement mechanisms attached to it. So when Iran’s president says Iran isn’t giving up its right to enrich, he’s not violating anything. He’s describing what the MOU itself allows. Someone might want to walk Trump, Kushner, and Vance through how nuclear material actually works before they go negotiating deals about it.

JD Vance’s Public Humiliation

While all this was unfolding, JD Vance got in front of cameras and declared that the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the end of Iran’s nuclear program had “already been accomplished.” Said with a straight face, apparently, despite the strait being closed and Iran’s enrichment program continuing under terms the MOU itself permits.

Vance also said he feels great about where things stand in Lebanon. Great about what, exactly? Roughly 150 people have died since Friday. Israel has expanded the territory inside Lebanon it claims as its own security zone, in direct tension with Article 1 of the MOU, which calls for an immediate ceasefire and guarantees Lebanon’s sovereignty. Vance’s own delegation is sitting on a violation of the agreement he’s praising.

Vance closed by describing the day as the start of “technical negotiations” meant to set up structure for future talks. Here’s the honest version: these negotiations are happening on Iran’s terms because Iran came out of this war in the stronger position, and everyone in that room knows it. Iran is asking for sanctions relief and waivers, and may eventually let some tankers move, but Iran controls the strait right now. Trump himself has said the country is on the edge of a global economic depression. That’s the actual leverage situation, dressed up by Vance as diplomatic momentum.

And Then There’s the Reflecting Pool

The algae-infested Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool saga continues. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for DC, went on Fox and threatened serious charges if anyone puts more “products” into the pool to supposedly worsen the algae problem. She also addressed Trump’s accusation against ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who Trump claimed tried to rip rubber off the pool’s surface with his bare hand, saying anyone caught vandalizing the pool will face prosecution.

Trump posted a lengthy, deranged defense of his renovation, blaming vandals with knives and corrosive chemicals for the pool’s condition rather than acknowledging the algae problem experts warned about from the start. He says he may now have to drain it entirely to do repairs. It’s the same pattern every time: something goes wrong, and someone else gets blamed.

And while yes, his post is ridiculous and silly, I do wanted to highlight the serious aspect of his delusions. Trump is having his government arrest people to blame them for the algae infestation he caused, all to soothe his fragile ego. And his lackeys like Pirro are going along with it.Well This Was Weird…

In the middle of all this, Trump found time late Saturday night to post an old photo of a woman reclining on a couch with the caption “Great daughter. My Honor!!!”

We looked into it. The woman appears to be Margo Catsimatidis, above, wife of billionaire John Catsimatidis. Her daughter is Andrea Catsimatidis, below, a prominent figure in New York City Republican politics who has referred to herself as something like the “bikini leader” of the city’s GOP. So that’s apparently who Trump meant.

While the country deals with the very real prospect of a deepening economic crisis, and while people are struggling to afford basic necessities, this is what occupied a slice of the president’s attention during an active international crisis. Even commenters on Truth Social thought it was weird.

That’s where we are right now. We’ll keep tracking every part of this as it develops. Stay tuned for Ron’s weekend bulletin later with all the latest updates.

The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: MAGA Questions Trump's Health, Iran Negotiations Erupt, Vance Embarrassed, Duckling Dies at Reflecting Pool, Aaron Parnas, right, June 21, 2026. Donald Trump has completely derailed the peace process between the United States and Iran and J.D. Vance has been embarrassed in Geneva on the world stage in a historic, historic embarrassment to the United States of America.

J.D. Vance was left hanging without a photo op that he requested with the Iranians.Donald Trump's words about occupying all of Iran. Well, now Iran has literally walked out of the room where negotiations were set to continue today on this memorandum of understanding. A crazy morning. I have all the latest.

Like, comment, share. And if you can, this Father's Day, subscribe to my Substack link below to support my work.

Let's keep building independent media I'm going to begin by saying kind of the biggest part, the quietest part out loud. Donald Trump doesn't seem like someone who wants peace. And his words are constantly getting in the way. He has to just stay quiet. If he stays quiet, this peace deal goes through. He can't stay quiet. And today,he decided to go on Fox News, talk to Trey Yings, who is a really good reporter, by the way, on the ground in war zones across the world, and tell Trey Yings that essentially he is planning on taking over and occupying all of Iran, that the Iranian leaders may not actually ever make it back to Iran,and more if Iran ever dared to do anything with the Strait of Bormuz. Take a listen.

Here’s the news:

Iran negotiations erupt: President Donald Trump’s preliminary agreement with Iran is facing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, who argue it gives Iran major economic benefits before securing firm limits on its nuclear program. Critics including John Cornyn, Susan Rice, and Cory Booker say the deal releases funds and eases sanctions without enough guarantees. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance said direct U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland had already made significant progress and expressed optimism about further negotiations. Trump has also warned that the U.S. could resume military action if Iran does not cooperate or restrain its ally Hezbollah.

Trump threatened Iran with military occupation, telling Fox News he warned Iranian officials: “You close the strait and you won’t have a country,” and adding, “You won’t even make it back to your fking country ... we’ll take over the rest of the country.”**

The Switzerland talks were portrayed as a diplomatic embarrassment for the United States, with Iran appearing to control the timing, optics, and protocol of the meeting.

The U.S. delegation arrived first and waited — In diplomatic settings, the side perceived as having greater leverage typically does not appear to be waiting for the other side.

JD Vance entered while the press was present — Publicly entering before the Iranian delegation allowed cameras to capture the U.S. side appearing ready and waiting for talks to begin.

Iranian officials controlled their entrance — Key Iranian representatives reportedly avoided entering while the press was inside, limiting images that could suggest they were accommodating the meeting on American terms.

The Iranian foreign minister entered last — Arriving after the U.S. delegation reinforced the perception that Iran was dictating the pace and protocol of the encounter.

No handshake took place — The absence of a handshake denied the U.S. a traditional image of mutual engagement and conveyed distance or defiance.

The optics suggested unequal eagerness — The sequence of arrivals and public appearances created the impression that Washington was seeking negotiations more urgently than Tehran.

The walkout amplified the symbolism — Iran’s delegation leaving the venue shortly after the talks reinforced the perception that it was willing to suspend discussions on its own terms.

The overall visual narrative favored Iran — Regardless of what was said in negotiations, the public images projected confidence and control on the Iranian side while making the U.S. appear reactive and constrained.

Other news:

Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that vandalism damaged the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and said the pool may need to be drained for repairs. The $14 million renovation has faced criticism after algae rapidly spread through the water and blue coating material on the pool’s bottom began peeling. Authorities reported several vandalism-related arrests and citations, though at least one person arrested says he was only inspecting a loose section of material and denies causing damage. The troubled project has become a political flashpoint, with supporters praising the cleanup effort and critics calling it an embarrassing waste of taxpayer money.

A baby duck has now died at the reflecting pool. This image was shared with me in the past hour by someone who visited the reflecting pool. It is unclear what the cause of death is.

After the baby duck was found, Trump said he personally inspected the reflecting pool and fixes will soon begin:

A group has now displayed videos of Trump and Epstein on the side of the tarp at the Kennedy Center:

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to announce a timetable for stepping down, potentially leaving office by the autumn after mounting pressure from senior Labour figures. The move would likely clear the way for Andy Burnham to become prime minister, possibly without a formal leadership contest. Starmer reportedly lost support from several cabinet ministers following Labour's recent political setbacks, despite previously pledging to fight any challenge. Some Labour members still favor a leadership election, but Burnham is increasingly viewed as the frontrunner to succeed him. Trump made the announcement undercutting Starmer:

Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles as firefighters continue battling a massive warehouse fire in the Boyle Heights neighborhood that has been burning since Wednesday. The blaze has been difficult to extinguish because of hazardous conditions, including a ruptured ammonia line and burning materials inside a 500,000-square-foot cold-storage facility. Smoke has spread across the region, prompting shelter-in-place orders, the opening of relief centers, and the distribution of masks, air purifiers, and bottled water. Once the fire is under control, officials will face the challenge of safely removing about 85 million pounds of spoiled frozen food from the warehouse.

Colombians are voting in a presidential runoff between progressive candidate Iván Cepeda and conservative outsider Abelardo de la Espriella. Both candidates are focused on addressing rising violence, but Cepeda favors negotiations with armed groups while de la Espriella supports a tougher law-and-order approach. The election also centers on issues such as healthcare, public debt, and corruption amid growing political polarization. Many voters hope the result will be accepted peacefully as Colombia continues to struggle with renewed violence despite a 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

A 51-year-old man died after falling from a balcony during a concert by the rock band Goose at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Police responded to the venue Saturday night and found the man unconscious after what they described as a fall from an elevated position. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities are investigating the incident, while Goose expressed sadness and condolences to everyone affected.

Parts of Europe are experiencing an intense heat wave, with temperatures reaching around 40°C (104°F) in France, Spain, and Italy, prompting widespread emergency measures. France has closed hundreds of schools, canceled some events and train services, set up cooling stations, and restricted public alcohol consumption in high-risk areas to reduce strain on emergency services. Authorities across Europe are reporting heat-related dangers, including drownings as people seek relief in water, while health officials warn that extreme heat has already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in recent years. Scientists and international agencies link the increasing frequency and severity of these heat waves to human-caused climate change, with forecasts suggesting even more record-breaking temperatures in the coming years.

U.S. Law, Crime, Rights, Courts, Justice

All Rise News, Analysis: Scrutinizing Trump DOJ's No. 3, Adam Klasfeld, above right,June 21, 2026. Stan Woodward's ex-clients could benefit from Trump's slush fund. That's a conflict of interest, a bar complaint alleges.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, shown above left, the third most powerful official in the Trump Justice Department, has taken the lead in key cases involving Donald Trump’s now-blocked $1.776 billion slush fund.

Woodward represented Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in the classified documents case, along with multiple witnesses who appeared before the grand jury, including Kashyap Patel before his FBI director tenure. Woodward was also a go-to attorney on the Jan. 6 docket. He represented Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro over their defiance of Jan. 6th Committee subpoenas and several high-profile rioters, including Oath Keepers Kelly and Connie Meggs, former State Department official Federico Klein, and Ryan Samsel, who was believed to be the first to breach the barricades at the U.S. Capitol.

That’s a conflict of interest because many of those former clients stand to be enriched by the fund, according to a bar complaint filed by the Campaign for Accountability.

“This is not merely a case in which a former advocate later happened to agree with a prior client’s legal arguments,” the complaint to the D.C. Bar states. “Rather, as the sole signatory to the agreement, Mr. Woodward personally exercised governmental authority in a substantially related matter to validate and institutionalize positions he had previously developed and advanced while representing private clients in closely connected proceedings.”

In a video interview, the Campaign for Accountability’s president Michelle Kuppersmith quipped that Woodward is a “Forrest Gump”-like figure of the MAGA bar, whose firm has collected $1.4 million from Trump’s political action committee Save America.

“If you're getting 10 times what your annual DOJ salary is from a PAC, then you know that's going to happen probably when you're out of government as well,” she noted.

Kuppersmith’s description of her new complaint leads off this week’s “Saturday Rewind,” a compilation of videos from the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF.

In other interviews:

Investigative journalist Phil Williams digs deeper behind a salacious New York Post headline to discuss how a Southern Poverty Law Center informant exposed the financial secrets of a neo-Nazi group.

Former federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discusses the special counsel probe requested in the Broadview Six case.

The U.S. Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC.

New York Times, Trump Administration Shuttered a Criminal Probe Into Fraudster’s Clemency, Kenneth P. Vogel, Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum, June 21, 2026. Federal prosecutors had been examining the circumstances behind the commutation of David Gentile’s sentence. He was aided by a Catholic priest friendly with the president.

President Trump’s political appointees quashed an early-stage criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his clemency grant to a convicted fraudster, according to five people with knowledge of the events.

The investigation, which has not been previously reported, had begun examining whether improper payments were made to help facilitate the commutation awarded to David Gentile, left, a private equity executive who was convicted in a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of mostly mom-and-pop investors, some of whom lost their retirement savings.

The clemency grant freed Mr. Gentile last November less than two weeks into a seven-year prison sentence, and wiped away the possibility of forfeiting more than $15.5 million to the government.

Within a few months, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, where Mr. Gentile’s conviction had been secured, opened an investigation into how the commutation came about.

Among the evidence they gathered was information about jailhouse communications in which Mr. Gentile discussed making payments of $2.5 million or more to people or companies to help facilitate his clemency, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who were not authorized to discuss it.

One of the people who came under scrutiny by investigators was the Rev. Frank Mann, a retired Catholic priest from Queens who is friends with Mr. Trump. In an email sent to The New York Times, Father Mann denied having anything to do with the clemency. But people with knowledge of the prison communications say that the priest corresponded with Mr. Gentile about lobbying the president on his behalf.

Emptywheel, Analysis:The Reflecting Pool Arrests Are an Attempt to Cover Up Trump’s Corruption, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 21, 2026. As green algae blooms in the reflecting pool in DC and the purportedly protective layer starts peeling off in sheets, Donald Trump has demanded and gotten arrests — most notably a former Olympic canoeist who claims all he did was touch the undercoat that is peeling off, while others claim they received citations for merely sticking their hand in the pool — serving his false claim that sabotage, rather than his own incompetence, led to the failure of his reflecting pool project.

The arrests are being carried out by cops from OK and TX (who, according to Amanda Moore, have been deputized by the US Marshals for the 250th celebration) and National Guard, who’ve been deployed to guard the pool. Finally, the troops Trump has sicced on DC have something to do: to prevent taxpayers from getting close enough to the reflecting pool to witness evidence of Trump’s own failure.

Trump demanded the arrests after he started blaming on vandals the failures of a project he has obsessed about for months (I’ve linked his Truth Social posts from just the last month, averaging one a day); that includes blaming vandals for pouring corrosive chemicals into the pool, when his own workmen poured hydrogen peroxide in an inadequate attempt to kill the algae.

The heavy-handed arrests themselves have gotten a lot of attention. Good luck to Jeanine Pirro attempting to prosecute these cases, not least because doing so would require calculating the value of a painted cover that degraded before the defendants came along. Prosecuting these cases would necessitate addressing whether Trump’s repairs did what they were supposed to, an inquiry Pirro will be loathe to do.

But if you go back even just the last month of Trump’s obsessive posts about the reflecting pool, his demand for arrests is an attempt to do more than distract from his own humiliating failures.

First, there’s the extent Trump has built a psychologically needy narrative around this fucking pool. Amid a series of purported before and after comparisons on a range of topics — many integrating AI slop or outright lies — of his own Administration with what came before, he has made the project an explicit attempt to wipe out the work of Barack Obama (which is why I’ve included his AI slop portrayals of Obama’s library as trash).

Among the lies Trump told along the way were exaggerations of the cost of Obama’s repairs and his claim that the pool only got worse, both really awkward claims now that his own costs keep snowballing and his “fix” made things far worse.

You cannot separate this obsession with erasing Obama, redoing the reflecting pool repairs, from Trump’s attack on Iran, where he’s also lying about what he accomplished as compared to Obama. Trump is using the presidency not so much to govern, but to attempt to erase the contributions of Black Americans, all in an attempt to feed his narcissistic pathologies.

Of course, he’s also using it to enrich himself and his associates. And that’s why this attempt to claim sabotage, rather thanaddress his own failures, is so toxic.

There are two levels of contracting behind this project, and two levels of graft. The first was for the paint job. Trump decided, for unknown reasons, that he needed a layer of Rhino epoxy underneath the blue paint, which limited the number of contractors available. Trump’s Administration awarded the contract, without competitive bidding, to a company with uncertain ties to his own golf courses, a detail Trump tried to obscure as bubbles started appearing in May.

Interior Department staff members have raised concerns about the quality and speed of the repair work that a contractor is performing on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, according to government documents seen by The New York Times.

The staff members said that bubbles and small holes had appeared in one of the layers meant to waterproof the iconic pool. And uneven application of the tinted waterproofing left the pool mottled in varying shades of blue, the documents indicate.

[snip]

Last month, the Interior Department hired a Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to repair, resurface and paint the pool. President Trump said publicly that he had recommended the firm because of good work it did on the swimming pools at one of his golf clubs.

However, Mr. Trump did an about-face early Tuesday, distancing himself from the company. “I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Asked to explain Mr. Trump’s reversal, a White House official said that the president did not have a personal relationship with this contractor, but that as a private citizen and builder, he was familiar with the company’s previous work. The official asked not to be named to describe the president’s relationship with the company.

The Times has been unable to independently confirm that the company previously did work for any of Mr. Trump’s clubs.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment this week. Last week, one of the company’s owners, Curtis E. Wood, who goes by Eddie, said he was not at liberty to discuss the contract.

[snip]

Atlantic Industrial Coatings had never previously held a federal contract, according to a public database of federal awards. The firm was given a no-bid contract to waterproof and paint the pool last month. The government closed off all other competition for that work by invoking a power that can only be used in urgent situations, when delay would bring “serious injury” to the government.

Another thing Trump chose was the color, out of some belief that it would affect the reflecting properties of the pool. Instead, people warned, it would lead the pool to heat up more quickly, making a conducive environment for algae to flourish.

The other no-bid contract known to have been awarded went to a Trump buddy with a place in Mar-a-Lago and a bribery conviction to replace the water filter installed under Obama.

A business tied to a longtime supporter of President Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this spring.

Now that work is coming under scrutiny after algae blooms have come back and turned the iconic pool in Washington a vibrant shade of green rather than the American-flag blue Mr. Trump says he chose.

The contract shows that the National Park Service bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio.

John J. Cafaro in 2002. He leads an investment trust that is the ultimate owner of the company hired to install a water-purification system for the Reflecting Pool.Credit…Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Federal contracting records show that firm’s ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by John J. Cafaro, a donor to Mr. Trump and a neighbor to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. The water treatment company also listed Mr. Cafaro’s Palm Beach mansion as its address in Florida corporate records, and listed his investment trust’s phone number and email in Ohio lobbying records.

Mr. Cafaro, a longtime Republican donor whom Mr. Trump has described as a “fantastic man,” was once involved in a high-profile bribery scandal.

It’s not yet clear if one of these no-bid contracts explains the problems with the reflecting pool — to some degree, Trump’s quick fix didn’t address any of the known underlying problems that Trump wants to solve.

But without an investigation, we’re not going to get answers for what caused the problems. Certainly, the Interior Department’s claims that the algae bloom was simply residual algae left in the pumps has been debunked by the persistence of the problem.

Instead of an investigation into whether his graft caused the reflecting pool to become more like a swamp, Trump is rolling out high profile arrests of those who observe the lies at the core of Trump’s claims about the reflecting pool.

In his latest grievance post, Trump insisted that the reflecting pool had worked perfectly at first, “perfectly reflecting” the monuments around it.

As with his confession of “unconditional surrender” on Iran, Trump may be committing accidental truth with that claim.

Trump’s obsession with this monument is a damn good reflection of what he has made Washington DC. Much of what he has said about it is AI slop, pure invention, often built off rage at rivals and especially his predecessors. As noted, this particular obsession aims to replace Obama and with it his manufactured image of crime. This project eschews science, common sense, and the kind of competition that might ensure success.

And in the end it is a disaster, setting off a new cycle of Trump attempting to use his power to erase a Narcissist injury.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, and sure enough, he’s doing so, for a second time.

But the metaphorical swamp grows strong as he enriches his friends as they make everything worse

A month of Trump’s Truth Social obsessions about the reflecting pool

This list only goes back a month and is — with the caveat that I’ve included three attacks on the Obama library — otherwise underinclusive (I did not check videos or RTs, for example).

May 26, 1:10AM: Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers May 26, 12:19PM: Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers May 28, 4:55AM: AI picture of blue reflecting pool May 28, 6:10PM: Steve Guest talking about one quote in this WaPo piece May 30, 1:29AM: 418-word rebuttal of this NYT article, plus 6 posts from Doug Burgum (right) May 30, 5:09PM: This is the CRAP that OBAMA had in the Reflecting “Pool” May 30, 5:12PM: Three part explainer of reflecting pool work, including multiple lies about Biden and Obama and cost May 30, 6:03PM: AI slop likening Obama’s library to a trash can June 1, 8:10PM: AI slop purporting to compare the reflecting pool under Obama and Trump June 2, 2:23AM: Repost of Steve Guest post June 4, 6:57PM: Repost of Our pool is bigger than skyscrapers June 4, 7:10PM: Picture of vehicles in reflecting pool June 4, 7:10PM: Picture of workers who worked on reflecting pool June 4, 10:28PM: Video of water being released into reflecting pool June 4, 10:28PM: AI slop of Trump refilling reflecting pool June 5, 4:26PM: Post rebutting WaPo, boasting an OK company did work on reflecting pool, and boasting he won OK 3X June 6, 6:48PM: Picture of golf cart on reflecting pool, claiming work is doing June 6, 6:49PM: Different AI slop likening Obama’s library to trash June 10, 11:20AM: RT of sycophantic Howard Lutnick post lying about how many people were at pool June 12, 5:08PM: Two pictures of workers working on pool, one picture of reflection at night June 13, 5:47PM: Repost of second AI slop likening Obama library to trash June 13, 11:42PM: Very old picture of Trump, over which he ties the Wollman Skating Rink to the reflecting pool, and invokes crime June 15, 11:34AM: Announcement that July 4 celebration, which will take place at the reflecting pool, will be a Trump rally June 15, 2:10PM: Link to June 3 WashEx post about Trump’s dumb reflecting pool-skyscraper comparison June 15, 2:10PM: Link to sycophantic Breitbart post, consisting mostly of posts on the reflecting pool June 19, 12:08PM: Repost of AI slop of Trump refilling reflecting pool June 20, 2:59AM: Long post situating reflecting pool among other DC clean-up, blaming problems on vandals and Jonathan Karl June 20, 11:18PM: Post blaming failure of pool on vandals, announcing work to fix it will begin June 21, 1:36AM: Longer post blaming failures on vandals, full of lies

Trump Administration, Allies

New York Times, Trump, Claiming Vandalism, Says Reflecting Pool Will Likely Need to Be Drained, Minho Kim, June 21, 2026 (print ed.). The pool has taken on clouds of algae after a hasty renovation. A three-time Olympian was charged with destroying government property after he says he touched one of the strands of blue paint peeling off the pool’s bottom.

President Trump said on Saturday that “multiple individuals” had been arrested for vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and that problems with a more than $14 million renovation project had become so severe that the pool would likely have to be at least partly drained for “necessary repairs.”

The president’s announcement late Saturday, made on social media, was his starkest acknowledgment of the pool’s rapid deterioration in recent days. The water this week became covered by clouds of blooming algae, which were obscuring a floor that had just been painted a shade that Mr. Trump has called “American flag blue.” The paint then began to peel off, making it a tourist destination for unusual reasons.

Among those accused of vandalism was David Carter Hearn, 67, a cyclist and three-time Olympian as a canoeist who says he stopped at the site on Friday just to have a look, then reached down to touch a strip of peeling blue paint mixed with the algae.

The U.S. Park Police arrested Mr. Hearn shortly after, accusing him of destroying government property, a crime that can carry up to a 10-year prison sentence. Mr. Hearn denies the charge.

“I was just a curious, concerned citizen,” he said in an interview. “I guess I was there at the wrong place, wrong time.”

The administration has not released the names of others accused of vandalizing the pool, a crime that Mr. Trump said on Saturday could lead to “years in jail.” In a later post, he said without evidence that vandals had “poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”

The project, one of many Mr. Trump is undertaking around the capital as the United States nears its 250th birthday, has faced intense scrutiny, including from engineers and other experts who warned that the hastily undertaken project was unlikely to undo the problems that have plagued the pool for decades. A construction company tied to Mr. Trump was awarded a no-bid contract and painted the bottom of the pool.

Mr. Trump said on Saturday that he had met with contractors earlier in the day to discuss the state of the pool.

The Interior Department said this week that agency workers had “killed the algae” that had expanded with heat and humidity. But on Friday afternoon, the water was stained by clumps of algae where National Park Service staff members had scrubbed away bright green blooms along the bottom of the basin. The pool’s new coating was also missing large sections, including a gap roughly the size of a park bench. Underneath appeared to be the original concrete basin.

Mr. Hearn, of Bethesda, Md., said that he was on a 50-mile bike ride before stopping at the pool, and that Park Police officers detained him for more than four hours on Friday at a facility south of the National Mall without allowing a phone call. They also did not say more about why he had been arrested, he added. The White House and Park Police did not respond to requests for comment.

Late Friday, Mr. Trump claimed on social media that the “inside surface that was just installed” had been damaged by vandals.

Mr. Hearn said that he had “reached into the water to feel the characteristics” of a dislodged paint piece “still attached to the bottom.” He compared his actions to those of Jonathan Karl, an ABC News reporter who lifted a detached piece of paint at the pool on Thursday in a video the news organization published.

“I didn’t remove anything,” Mr. Hearn said. “I was bending and feeling this two-millimeter-thick, rubbery flap.”

Until his retirement 18 months ago, Mr. Hearn ran a company selling special materials for building canoes. That, he said, made him particularly interested in the materials contractors had used before the paint at the base of the pool began peeling.

Mr. Hearn said that he had already received offers of pro bono representation following his arrest.

“I’m getting a lot of support from my community,” he added.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 20, 2026 [Reflection On Trump Administration], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 21, 2026. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has become a metaphor for the Trump presidency.

Beginning in early April, Trump boasted he was going to fix the reflecting pool after what he claimed was gross neglect by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He claimed the repairs, including sealing the pool and painting it “American flag blue,” would cost about $1.8 million and that it would all be finished by July 4, 2026, in time for the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Repeatedly, he bashed his predecessors over the pool, insisting that his skills would enable him to make it better than ever at minimal cost and that the repairs “could last for 100 years.”

The government declared the pool renovations complete on June 6, and water began flowing back into it. Trump immediately claimed it was a triumph. “Thank you President Trump,” he wrote on social media.

But the story was not over. David A. Fahrenthold of the New York Times reported that the repairs had, in fact, run far over budget, to at least $14.2 million. The administration had awarded a no-bid contract to a company Trump first said he had chosen and then said he didn’t know, and had agreed to a 20% profit margin, although a National Park Service analysis found that margin “inflated.”

And then, just a day after the reservoir filled with water, algae began to bloom in it. A spokesperson for the Interior Department said the algae were “residual” and a normal part of the process of refilling the pool. “President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who has fixed the Reflecting Pool for good unlike the failed and extremely costly attempt by Obama and Biden,” she said in a statement.

Experts disagreed, saying that the darker bottom and the sealed seams meant the water would heat up faster than it had before and thus support more algae. By June 16, crews from the National Park Service were pouring hydrogen peroxide into the water to kill the algae that had turned the pool bright green even as Trump insisted the pool was perfect.

By Thursday, June 18, the new blue epoxy at the bottom of the pool was peeling off and floating in the vivid green pool. Fahrenthold reported in the New York Times that the National Park Service contracted not only the coating and painting of the pool under a no-bid contract, but also an additional $1.7 million contract for a water purification system.

That no-bid contract went to a firm whose ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by Trump donor John J. Cafaro, whose wife chaired the 2017 International Red Cross Ball at Mar-a-Lago and who lives near Mar-a-Lago at a mansion that is listed as the water treatment company’s address in Florida corporate records. The name of the firm is Greenwater Services.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department said the White House was not involved in the choice of Greenwater Services and the department did not know of Cafaro’s political support for Trump when it awarded the contract.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.”

On Friday, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, stopped by the pool on a 52-mile bike ride and reached into the water to feel what the detached material looked like. U.S. Park Police officers arrested him for destruction of government property, a misdemeanor. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told David J. Lynch and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country,” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool.” By this evening, he was blaming “multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Poll [sic]. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”

Until his second term in office, Trump has always been protected from the fallout from his own actions, and it appears he has become accustomed to simply describing his fantasy world and expecting that others will agree they see it. If his “fix” for the reflecting pool failed, someone else must be responsible, and they must pay for it.

The pattern Walz identified with regard to the pool applies also to Trump’s debacle in Iran. And not only is the reflecting pool defying his narrative, so are Iran and Israel.

Israel has said it does not consider itself bound by the memorandum of understanding Trump signed at Versailles on Friday. That MOU said the U.S. and Iran “and their allies in the current war” would immediately and permanently stop military operations “on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Israel has been attacking what it says are Hezbollah camps in southern Lebanon and has occupied parts of the region as a “security zone.”

On Friday, Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times reported that a recent U.S. intelligence report assessed that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to continue striking Hezbollah despite the MOU. Hezbollah is funded by Iran and is continuing to strike northern Israel. David M. Halbfinger of the New York Times reported on Thursday that Israel was “stunned” by the U.S.-Iran MOU and sees it as “a cataclysmic disaster.”

Israel has continued to strike Lebanon, and after additional strikes last night, Iranian officials today announced that in the wake of these breaches of the MOU, they had, once again, closed the Strait of Hormuz.

This afternoon, Vice President J.D. Vance left for Switzerland to join the negotiations, but already Iran has indicated it intends to charge “insurance fees” for the ships going through the strait.

Trump appeared to try to pressure Iran by threatening to impose U.S. tolls on the strait if an agreement falls through. “There will be NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days during the Cease Fire Period, and there will be NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired, unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America, should the deal not be completed, for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs.”

That Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, right, is also refusing to go along with Trump’s narrative shows how Trump’s power is crumbling. A former ally, Meloni is now publicly contradicting Trump.

Earlier this week, Trump told an Italian television host that Meloni had “begged” for a picture with him at the G7 conference and that he “felt sorry for her.” Meloni said his comments were entirely “made up,” and the Italian foreign minister cancelled a trip to the United States over the flap.

Meloni highlighted the damage Trump has done to our alliances and indicated allies are done pretending his behavior is okay. “I don’t know why the US president behaves this way towards allies,” she wrote on Instagram. “I can only say it is regrettable he does not show the same determination towards the enemies of the West and towards the enemies of the US—[enemies] whose leaders he instead appears to be far more accommodating with. But there is one thing he needs to remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.”

But Trump couldn’t let it go. This morning, he posted: “Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni asked, over and over, for a picture with me during the G-7 meeting in France. She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon (But so did NATO, for that matter!). She wouldn’t even let us use Italy’s landing strips or runways, a great logistical inconvenience, and this despite the fact the U.S. contributes hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year to protect Italy, and other “so-called” NATO Allies. Now, after the United States defeated Iran militarily, she wants to be friends again in order to get her “numbers up.” No thanks!!!”

Using a vulgar colloquialism, the headline on the front page of the Italian newspaper Libero today translated to “Trump is an a**hole.”

Today it appeared that the National Guard is patrolling the area around the reflecting pool. Tonight, Trump posted that “[m]any additional people have been arrested having to do with the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool.” The reflecting pool “worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish, perfectly reflecting the two Great Monuments, which it never had before! What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly.”

Although multiple cameras line the mall and no one has offered any proof either of additional arrests or of vandalism, and although we have all been able to see workers dumping chemicals into the pool to kill the algae, Trump claimed that vandals “took some form of a knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”

“The Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago, even going back to 1922 when it opened,” he wrote. “We are very proud of what we have done with this magnificent structure, and we will get it repaired, quickly, to an equal level of Beauty.”

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary:The techno-fascist plot to end democracy around the world, Wayne Madsen, left, June 21, 2026. The diabolical scheme by Thiel, Musk, Epstein, and political Zionists to fix elections, collect personal data, and create a global techno-fascist dictatorship powered by a network of data centers.

Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, along with longtime Musk collaborator Peter Thiel, the ultra-Zionist government of Israel, and the remnants of Jeffrey Epstein’s global blackmail and intelligence-gathering network are poised to end democracy around the world and substitute for it a techno-fascist total surveillance panopticon overseen by a select few elite “tech bros.” A panopticon is an institutional building designed in the 18th century by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. A panopticon, whether a penitentiary or a general society, permits total surveillance without the subjects of such monitoring being aware of it.

In order to destroy popular elections of governments, the techno-fascists have, over a period of ten years, relied on powerful computer programs designed to manipulate vote counts and throw elections in order to benefit far-right candidates and political parties answering only to the techno elites. The end-game of the techno-fascists is to replace democratic governance with artificial intelligence. The push for massive data centers to power state-network governance is backed by a multi-billionaire alliance of Musk, Thiel, and other techno-fascists.

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Among the chief components of the techno-fascist plot to seize control of the world is Black Cube, a private Israeli intelligence firm founded by ex‑Mossad officers. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was closely associated with the Epstein network and Black Cube.

Creating a techno-fascist state has long been the dream of the moneyed class. The Technate was the political‑economic system proposed by the 1930s movement Technocracy Inc., led by Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert. The Technate was to replace politicians, markets, and money with engineers, scientists, systems analysts, and energy‑based accounting (“energy certificates”). The key feature of the Technate is that there would be no elections or representative government. Also eliminated would be private ownership of major industry and money. All production and consumption measured in joules and society run like a giant industrial control system.

Today, the Technate has evolved into Silicon Valley’s “solutionism,” AI‑managed society concepts, accelerationist techno‑governance, and crypto‑technocracy / network states. Musk’s maternal grandfather, Dr. Joshua Norman Haldeman was the leader of the Canadian branch of Technocracy Inc. in the 1930s–40s. Musk’s worldview echoes several Technate principles, including the belief that engineers should run society. Musk has repeatedly said that “politicians are useless” and “engineers build the future.”

Thiel is even closer to the Technate’s political logic. Thiel believes that democracy is inefficient. He has said, “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” To that end, Thiel has funded seasteading, charter cities, and “startup societies.” Thiel and Larry Ellison believe in total‑information integration, which resembles technocratic planning tools. Their Palantir and Oracle technologies advance, respectively, the movement toward a panopticon society. Replacing democratic governance with a techno-fascist state also requires total dominance over sources of information. That is the real reason behind the acquisition of two major news networks, CBS and CNN, by Larry Ellison’s nepo-son, David Ellison. His portfolio also includes Paramount, HBO. Warner Brothers, and a 15% stake in TikTok.

In many respects, the U.S. government signed its own death warrant by providing the seed money for surveillance giants like Oracle, Google, and Palantir to form. In‑Q‑Tel, the CIA‑funded venture arm that invests in surveillance and monitoring technologies, provided capital for Oracle, Google, Palantir, Anduril (manufactures autonomous towers, border surveillance, and drone swarms), Univercells (big‑data platform used for intelligence fusion and analytics), ANELLO Photonics (navigation‑grade optical sensors), Matroid (computer‑vision platform for real‑time video surveillance), Sayari (global data intelligence used for tracking networks and entities), Advanced Navigation (autonomous navigation for drones/vehicles), and Skydio (AI‑guided surveillance drones used by police and military). The massive data centers being constructed around the United States are not intended to enhance the public’s AI experience but to spy on each and every citizen of the United States. Most of the surveillance suites being funded by the CIA and the U.S. military — around 400 in total — are AI-driven and that means the mega data centers have a singular purpose: surveillance of the citizenry. And the empty warehouses being commandeered by the Homeland Security Department are not merely for incarcerating immigrants — legal and otherwise — but U.S. dissidents opposed to the Trump administration and its techno-fascist successors. Dismantling Detention | Indivisible

Oracle and Palantir now operate as strategic partners providing joint AI and surveillance‑grade cloud services to governments. Simply stated, Oracle provides the omni-surveillance infrastructure, Palantir provides the intelligence platforms to conduct the surveillance. Elon Musk’s major goal in running Trump’s Department of Government Effiency (DOGE) was to eliminate as many humans responsible for governance, provision of social services, and decision-making as possible. DOGE eliminated thousands of federal positions, but the exact number is not fully published because the Trump White House classified it. DOGE’s stated goal was a 75% federal workforce reduction. The degradation of U.S. government services is a direct result of the move to replace human-directed government with an AI-driven techno-fascist state.

Thiel’s interest in “exit” from democratic systems mirrors Technocracy Inc.’s desire to bypass politics entirely. To that end, Thiel’s secret society, Dialog, appears to be an effort to enlist Big Tech and high finance movers and shakers with, ironically, a few politicians, to being about the goal of hobbling, then replacing, democratic governance. Dialog, with its annual closed‑door gatherings, lack of a public membership list, and no published proceedings, mirrors other such secret societies, from the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, the Bilderberg Group, and Epstein’s ad hoc gatherings on Little Saint James island and other locations.

Epstein’s social‑political access group was built around elite universities, philanthropy, finance, political donors, scientists and technologists, intelligence‑adjacent figures, and social leverage and kompromat dynamics. The network operated through salons, private dinners, “scientific advisory” gatherings, private travel, donor networks, and introductions and matchmaking. More than 200 of the world's elites ...

Thiel’s Dialog group, founded in 2012, has an upper membership of 150 individuals consisting of tech founders, hedge‑fund managers, political operatives, AI researchers, and defense/intelligence‑adjacent figures. Dialog is slightly different from the Epstein network in that it concerns itself with “civilizational risk” and long‑term governance. Tier 1 of Thiel’s Dialog includes his two apprentices, Vice President JD Vance (who is also non-Catholic Thiel’s “eyes and ears” into the operations of the right-wing Catholic Opus Dei sect); failed Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters; Managing director of Thiel Capital Eric Weinstein; Netscape founder Marc Andreessen; and Palantir senior leadership figures Alex Karp, Shyam Sankar, andRyan Taylor. Tier 2 of Dialog includes Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens, Anduril founder Palmer Lucky (brother-in-law of disgraced former U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz), Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin, and former Coinbase CIO and “network-state” theorist Balaji Srinivasan.

Vance’s conversion to the Opus Dei sect of Catholicism represents Thiel taking direct aim at the Roman Catholic Church and Vatican City under the progressive leadership of Pope Leo XIV and his predecessor, Pope Francis I.

Tier 3 of Dialog consists of political and strategic operatives. They include the Thiel-funded culture‑war strategist Chris Rufo. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a board member at New College of Florida, where he has carried out the dismantling of the college’s liberal arts education program. Other Tier 3 members of Dialog are Charles Johnson, a right-wing operative with long‑standing ties to Thiel’s political ecosystem; Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), a neo-reactionary theorist who has been invited to multiple Thiel salons; and Nate Fischer of New Founding.

One troubling aspect of Dialog is its strong AI‑governance component. These Tier 4 AI advocates include David Sacks, PayPal co-founder and the Trump administration’s AI & Cryptocurrency Czar; Michael Kratsios, the former chief information officer of the United States under Trump; and Hoan Ton‑That of Clearview AI.

Tier 5 political influence associates of Dialog include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker.

Thiel had direct and repeated contact with Epstein. Thiel attended Epstein-hosted gatherings in Manhattan and shared dinners with Epstein, Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn founder Hoffman (a member of the “PayPal mafia, along with Thiel and Musk), former director of the M.I.T. Media Lab Joichi Ito, and other techno- elites. According to released Department of Justice Epstein files, Epstein’s staff prepared for Thiel’s visits to various Epstein properties, including Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This fact is derived from dietary requirements for Thiel sent to island staff. Thiel co‑organized the off‑the‑record “Dialog 2014” retreat at Sundance Resort in Utah. Epstein was explicitly invited to the Thiel‑run event.

Epstein discussed with Thiel in a recorded conversation the placing of Ehud Barak into a senior role at Palantir, the deep data mining and total information surveillance company founded by Thiel. Thiel is a central hub connecting Epstein to Palantir and Black Cube.

Palantir’s links to the Trump administration via Thiel and Musk’s DOGE has resulted in several countries canceling contracts with Palantir. Switzerland halted its use of Palantir, explicitly citing data sovereignty risks and the inability to fully mitigate foreign‑jurisdiction control over critical systems. France’s domestic intelligence agency DGSI is dropping Palantir and replace it with a French-built platform from ChapsVision. This shift is explicitly framed as a move toward digital and AI sovereignty. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu stated that France “cannot depend on foreign powers for our digital tools.”

Germany is pulling back sharply from Palantir — not canceling an existing contract (because none is active), but refusing to award new ones and signaling that Palantir is not acceptable for national‑security data systems. Germany’s top military cyber official, Thomas Daum, stated that the Bundeswehr will not award contracts to Palantir “for now.” He told Handelsblatt that granting Palantir access to national military databases is “inconceivable at the moment.” Daum’s statement is considered as one of the strongest public rejections of Palantir by any NATO military.

The United Kingdom is formally reviewing whether to trigger a break clause next year to end its £330M National Health Service (NHS) Federated Data Platform contract. A parliamentary committee urged the government to terminate the contract. Political pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan has already blocked a separate £50M police contract with Palantir. Should Labor newly-elected MP Andy Burnham replace Starmer, pressure will mount on forcing Palantir out of government contracts in the UK.

The Dutch government is pursuing a “two‑track policy to reduce dependency” and develop a European alternative, following parliamentary pressure to end Palantir use. While not yet a formal cancellation, the government has signaled intent to phase out Palantir systems. Denmark is actively seeking domestic replacements for Palantir software, part of a broader European trend to reduce reliance on U.S. defense‑tech platforms.

It is more than noteworthy that Epstein explicitly referenced Palantir as a potential job placement for Ehud Barak. The former Israeli prime minister and Epstein confidante appears to be a key liaison between the techno-fascists and Israeli influence operation firms that include Black Cube, BlackCore, NSO Group, Psy-Group, and others that have operated under the direction of Israeli Defense Force units responsible for waging campaigns online to “influence public consciousness.” Israeli military training manuals state that such campaigns involve “the distribution and promotion of illegitimate content using technological tools and solutions — a route that bypasses Facebook and Google.”

The cancellation of business relationships by European countries with Palantir is evidence that their intelligence services are aware of the plans by Thiel, Musk, and others to strangle democracy along with the EU. These agencies need not look any further than London and Washington to see how effective the techno-fascists were at creating the sort of governmental chaos that fascists regard as priming the pump and setting the table for the rise of techno-fascist states. Thiel’s placement of JD Vance in the vice presidency of the United States is but one example of the techno-fascists’ successes. This is matched by the coming to power of several “libertarian”-minded fascists in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador, and other Latin American nations.

BlackCore is a private‑intelligence / cyber‑ops contractor that sits in the same ecosystem as Black Cube, Palantir, Thiel’s networks, and Epstein’s tech‑elite social circles. BlackCore has been linked to such democracy-destroying firms as Black Cube, NSO Group, Psy-Group, and Cambridge Analytica. The latter, which was overseen by Steve Bannon, cooperated with Russian intelligence agencies to fix the 2016 Brexit referendum in favor of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and the 2016 U.S. presidential election that saw Donald Trump moving into the White House.

These and similar firms associated with Epstein, Musk, Thiel, and Israel are key players in the “gray‑zone intelligence” market of covert influence, digital ops, HUMINT (human intelligence), and corporate/political investigations, Black Cube and BlackCore are both Israeli‑linked private intelligence outfits. They recruit ex‑IDF, ex‑8200 (Israel’s chief signals intelligence agency), and ex‑Mossad personnel. Both appear in the same contractor ecosystem used by oligarchs, political campaigns, and high‑net‑worth individuals and both have been referenced in the same legal filings and OSINT (open source intelligence) contractor directories. Palantir and BlackCore have served the Gulf states, European interior ministries, U.S. corporate security divisions, and litigation‑support firms.

Another major player in the Israel-connected high-tech surveillance eco-sphere is Larry Ellison of Oracle. Larry Ellison was also closely connected to the Epstein circle that also included Bill Gates of Microsoft, Musk, Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Ito, and Sergey Brin of Google. Ellison and Thiel are both part of the Silicon Valley billionaire class that Epstein cultivated. Ellison and Thiel both appear in the tech‑elite segment of the Epstein files. Brin appears in multiple documents, emails, and references in the DOJ Epstein archive.

Microsoft executive Steven Sinofksy hired Epstein as a paid “exit negotiator” from Microsoft. Epstein coached Sinofsky on how to extract maximum severance and charged a $1 million fee, which Sinofsky accepted without hesitation. Epstein also instructed Sinofsky to demand $20 million in stock vesting. Epstein was no mere power broker for Silicon Valley executives but a central cog in a military and industrial espionage network. Sinofsky forwarded internal Microsoft communications about the failing Surface RT launch. Emails included sales data, projections, and executive discussions.

After joining the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, Sinofsky fed Epstein information on venture deal flows, conversations with Tim Cook of Apple, information about Bill Gates, and analysis of WeWork, a firm that provides co-working spaces in some 600 buildings in 125 cities.

Just weeks before Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Epstein prepared a list of influential contacts for Steve Bannon. They included Sinofsky, Gates, Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton

With Sinofsky’s name appearing in 1,996 DOJ‑released documents from the Epstein files, how many others in Epstein’s circle of big-tech and financial executives were turning over corporate secrets to Epstein? More importantly, was blackmail by Epstein their incentive to pass on secrets?

One invasive private investigations company, Black Cube, was closely connected to Epstein. Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s legal team hired Black Cube extensively to track and intimidate accusers and journalists. Some of the same intermediaries worked for Epstein. Epstein’s close colleague Ehud Barak had consulting relationships with Black Cube’s Mossad intelligence veterans. Epstein also relied on the services of former Psy-Group operatives.

Psy-Group, an Israeli firm, was involved in running political influence campaigns from 2014 to 2018 on behalf of right-wing candidates, parties, and referenda initiatives. These operations included online influence campaigns, covert persona creation, psychological operations (“psyops”), opposition research, social‑media manipulation, and “perception management.” In 2016, Psy‑Group CEO Joel Zamel met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower. The firm proposed a covert social‑media influence campaign to help Trump. Key elements of the campaign were fake online personas, targeted messaging, and influence operations in swing states. Other Black Cube operations included discrediting the Obama adminstration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated the meeting. A new trove of leaked emails from ...

The Slovenian intelligence agency SOVA discovered that Black Cube-connected operatives entered Slovenia in 2026 before the general election. Targets included political figures and individuals connected to the ruling center-left coalition. The operatives secretly recorded conversations and later leaked them online just days before voting commenced. Righr-wing candidate Janez Janša (SDS), a supporter of Trump and Israel, admitted contact with a consultant linked to Black Cube, while denying any wrongdoing. Janša, a European Union skeptic, later formed a government and announced that Slovenia was withdrawing its recognition of Palestine as a state.

Psy‑Group conducted covert influence campaigns in at least one Eastern European election, Ukraine, as well as in Cyprus, using fake social‑media accounts, targeted propaganda, and psychological profiling. FBI scrutiny of Psy-Group resulted in its dissolution in 2018. Ex-Black Cube operatives formed a new company, BlackCore. BlackCore is essentially Black Cube 2.0 but more discreet. BlackCore provides many of the same “services” offered by Black Cube. These include undercover personas, social‑engineering, HUMINT infiltration, covert recordings, influence campaigns, and litigation support ops.

There is a nexus between Psy-Group, Black Cube, and BlackCore and NSO Group, the maker of Pegasus spyware. The operation called “CatalanGate” saw Pegasus targeting Catalan politicians, members of the Catalan independence movement, lawyers, activists, and election strategists. In Poland, from 2019 to 2020, Pegasus was used to hack Civic Platform opposition politician Krzysztof Brejza, his campaign staff, and his communications during the parliamentary election. Brejza’s hacked messages were later broadcast on state media. In Hungary, Pegasus was used by the Viktor Orban government to target investigative journalists, lawyers, opposition‑linked businesspeople, and civil‑society actors.

In India, the Narendra Modi right-wing Hindu nationalist government used Pegasus against opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, election consultants, journalists covering elections, and activists involved in political campaigns. In Mexico, Pegasus targeted opposition politicians, anti‑corruption investigators, journalists covering political scandals, and activists involved in election‑related issues. Pegasus was also used against political and other targets in El Salvador, Togo, Rwanda, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

Tools such as Pegasus, Palantir, and Oracle’s “Public Safety Suite” (the latter used in Brazil, Japan, Spain, UK, Canada, and Mexico) are being deployed to destroy democratic governance in order to replace it with techno-fascist control with the concurrent abolishment of national currency and its replacement with techno-oligarch controlled cryptocurrency. To bring about this dystopian future, the large data centers being forced on urban, suburban, and rural will be the true governing mechanism in that it will direct policy, surveillance and security, finances, and the media.

There is evidence that U.S.‑based political influence operations have been directed at Alberta to increase support for the province’s referendum for secession from Canada. The tactics employed by the operatives employ many of the disruptive efforts seen in the 2014 Scotland independence referendum, 2016 Brexit, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm spun out of SCL Group and linked to Steve Bannon, harvested up to 87 million Facebook profiles using a personality‑quiz app called “This Is Your Digital Life,” built by researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Facebook’s Open Graph API allowed the app to collect data from all their friends, including likes, locations, political views, and more. CA combined this with voter files and commercial data to build psychographic profiles using the OCEAN personality model. The data misuse and micro‑targeting strategy, with or without the Facebook-provided tools were employed to ensure the defeat of the Scottish independence referendum, withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, and Trump’s 2016 election victory. The UK Parliament identified several elections that CA and its parent company interfered with. These include votes in Australia; Brazil; Czech Republic; France; Gabon; Gambia; Germany; Ghana (2013); Guyana; India; Indonesia; Italy; Kenya (Uhuru Kenyatta campaigns of 2013 and 2017); Kosovo; Latvia; Lithuania; Malaysia; Malta, Mexico; Moldova, Mongolia; Nepal; Niger; Nigeria; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Romania; Slovakia; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Lucia; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; South Africa; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; the UK; and Zambia. Others included the mayoral election campaign in Buenos Aires in 2015 for Mauricio Macri and the Bogotá mayoral race of 2011. CA’s political dirty tricks operations have been linked to Israeli intelligence operatives. Although CA and SCL dissolved, some of their principals continue to do business as Emerdata.

The racist right-wing profile of CA is exemplified by its former chief, Alexander Nix, referring to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Information Minister Lucille Moe as “niggers.” That sums up the disdain that the techno-fascists, including Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and South Africa apartheid fans Musk, Thiel, and David Sacks have for non-whites. Cambridge Analytica's effectiveness ...

Bannon has used the electoral success of his neo-fascist cronies in Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic, and other countries to expand the influence of his Fascist International. Bannon and Vance have been active in attempts to undermine the papacy of Pope Leo. In Vance’s case, his subterfuge has been on behalf of Opus Dei.

The targets of Israeli-founded surveillance and election manipulation technology make sense. One of the world’s oldest democracies, the United States, and the most populous democracy, India, came under control of neo-fascist leaders bent on establishing techno-dictatorships. The 2016 UK Brexit referendum also proved to be a success for techno-fascist voting interference and triggered a hoped-for domino effect in other European Union member states. Emergent democracies with large populations and global influence — Brazil, Mexico, Poland, and Hungary — have proven to be Petri dishes for techno-fascist manipulation, although recent elections in Hungary and Mexico gave the promoters of techno-fascism a lesson on the limits of their current operations targeting pro-democratic political parties.

But efforts to ensure election integrity may be short-lived. Some credentialed election experts now believe that the models used by CA and other election influence operatives in the past have now been rendered obsolete. They believe that AI, with the financial backing of techno-fascists like Musk and Thiel, can merely covertly change vote counts. Some election specialists, after having closely examined the 2024 election results in the United States, believe that Kamala Harris won the election, having carried the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

Election influence operations have not disappeared. They are working in tandem with efforts to manpulate vote counts prior to, during, and after elections. One such malevolent influence operation appeared on SubStack after the U.S. Senate Tecas primary victory of James Talarico. A page for “James Talerico,” a misspelling of Talarico, was obviously designed to lure unsuspecting potential voters to a disingenuous web page.

The combination of exploding data‑center capacity, persistent high incarceration rates, and total‑information surveillance architectures is pushing the U.S. toward a system where behavior is continuously tracked, stored, analyzed, and used to shape outcomes — from policing to sentencing to social services. The U.S. continues to maintain one of the world’s largest incarceration systems and with the acquisition of huge warehouses to house internees, that number is on an upward swing.

The Yarvin model (embraced by Thiel, Musk, Vance, and Blake Masters) is to abolish democracy and replace it with a technocrat‑led monarchy. His proposals include retiring all government employees (a goal shared by Musk), ignoring court orders (carried out by the Trump administration on an almost-daily basis), censoring the press, defunding universities and NGOs, and centralizing authority under a single executive. Thiel funded Yarvin’s startup Tlön and elevated him as a political philosopher within the “Thielverse,” which meets annually as part of Thiel’s Dialog secret group. Should America be a Monarchy? - Curtis ...

Yarvin wants to “virtualizing” undesirable populations by permanent solitary confinement with virtual reality interfaces. Yarvin believes that this wojuld be a “humane alternative to genocide” that removes people from society without killing them. For the record it is important to note that Yarvin’s paternal grandparents were Jewish communists. Some of the Israeli heirs of Jewish Communists from Europe and America are currently carrying out brutal genocide in Gaza, Lebanon, and on the West Bank.

It cannot be stressed enough that those who are killed and maimed by ICE on the streets of the United States, Palestinians and Lebanese being slaughtered by the IDF, and Ukrainians being killed by Russian invaders have the same enemies in the personages of Trump, Vance, Musk, Thiel, and the other techno-fascists seeking to replace democratic rule with a techno-fascist global state. It is well past time for the lambs being led to slaughter unite to defeat the beasts of Trump, Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin and their fascist flying monkeysviolence of decades past, when rebel groups laid bombs and kidnapped people even on the busy streets of the capital, Bogotá. 

New York Times, Opinion: A Malicious Chapter in the History of American Justice, David French, right, une 21, 2026. An unusual tweet caught my eye last week.

It was from Josh Gerstein, Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter, and it said this: “NEW: Trump admin takes rare step to quell controversy over prosecutorial misconduct in dropped criminal case against Chicago-area anti-ICE protesters. Feds won’t fight defense demand to pay bill for activists’ legal fees.”

Here’s why it’s so notable. In our legal system, prosecutors rarely pay a criminal defendant’s legal fees, even when the government loses its case. Defendants tend to be reimbursed only when they can prove serious prosecutorial misconduct. It’s even rarer for prosecutors to agree to pay those fees. Experienced lawyers will read that tweet and know a single, simple truth.

Something very bad went down in Illinois.

Why, you might wonder, would I write about a criminal case in Chicagoland when the world is convulsed by so many seismic events? Last week alone, Trump capitulated to Iran, the United States cut some of its defense commitments to Europe, and Ukraine hit Moscow with what appears to be its largest drone attack of the war.

We’re living in a moment when every week seems to bring a new development of global importance.

But the Chicago case is indicative of the fight for justice in the Trump administration. For every high-profile case that goes to the Supreme Court, there are dozens of other, smaller cases in federal courts across the country in which the Trump administration lies, bends the rules, slanders innocent citizens and otherwise abuses the legal system to persecute its political opponents.

And that brings us to the story of the Broadview Six.

On Oct. 23, 2025, a federal grand jury indicted a group of six protesters, including current and former Democratic public officials, charging them with conspiring to “injure” a federal officer “in his person or property.” The indictment claimed that they, among other things, “banged aggressively on the Government Vehicle’s side and back windows, hood and other vehicle body parts; crowded together in the front and side of the Government Vehicle and pushed against the vehicle to hinder and impede its movement.”

The indictment also claims the defendants scratched the word “PIG” on the government vehicle.

The indictment was important enough that Todd Blanche, right, then the deputy attorney general, announced the charges, and they fit perfectly with a MAGA narrative that the real problem on the streets wasn’t with rogue federal officers but with out-of-control leftist activists — the all-powerful antifa of right-wing fever dreams.

To put this indictment in context, it was announced around the same time that the administration was debating whether to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military to crush anti-immigration protests.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

In fact, the same day that Blanche announced the charges, Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, wrote his boss, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, warning against using the Insurrection Act. And it was just a few months later, in January, that the vice president, JD Vance, urged invoking the Insurrection Act after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

But then, in March, the strangest thing happened in Illinois. The government dismissed its own case.

The government dropped charges against two of the defendants, and the Broadview Six became the Broadview Four. The government also dropped the felony charges against the remaining defendants.

Here’s where things get really interesting (and a little complicated). As Eric Columbus explained in an excellent rundown of the case in Lawfare, the defense attorneys filed a motion asking the court for permission to see the grand jury transcripts in the case, to make sure that the grand jury had been properly instructed about the law before it issued its indictment.

The prosecutors, it turns out, had already handed the judge a redacted copy of the transcripts. In other words, they had blacked out key portions of the proceedings. This prompted the federal judge in the case, April Perry, to require the government to produce unredacted copies and to require any prosecutor “who participated in the decision to redact portions of the grand jury transcripts” to appear before her in person.

The unredacted transcripts were damning. The judge found that federal prosecutors had behaved improperly in at least three ways. They’d engaged in the forbidden practice of “vouching,” in which prosecutors essentially tell grand jurors to trust them, that the case is stronger than it seems. Vouching implies the existence of secret proof. But grand juries are supposed to make decisions based on the evidence put before them, not their personal trust in prosecutors.

Prosecutors had also impermissibly spoken to grand jurors outside the jury room, an act that could place additional pressure on grand jurors to yield to the prosecution’s version of events.

And finally, prosecutors had dismissed from deliberations those grand jurors who had disagreed with the government’s case. Once again, the prosecution was improperly placing its thumb on the scales of justice.

To make matters worse, prosecutors had redacted all this evidence. There was an obvious cover-up. The judge declared herself “incredibly shocked” and said that she had “never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”

She then said words no lawyer wants to hear. She raised the possibility of “sanctions for prosecutorial misconduct and for potential ethical violations, including lack of candor to the court.”

Moments later, after a brief recess, the government moved to dismiss the case against the remaining defendants, with prejudice (meaning that the government can’t charge them again for the same offense). The court immediately granted the motion — and a malicious chapter in the history of American justice came to a righteous end.

Don’t think for a moment that the Trump administration’s corruption and incompetence were confined to that case alone.

The Chicago Sun-Times maintains a database of criminal charges related to Operation Midway Blitz, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago, and it’s astounding. Out of more than 30 cases filed so far, two resulted in guilty pleas, five resulted in deferred prosecution agreements (slaps on the wrist), and two are still pending. Twenty-four other cases have failed. Twenty were dismissed. Grand juries refused to indict in at least three, and one resulted in acquittal.

This is a terrible record in court, and the facts of the cases are sometimes egregious. In the most notorious case, a federal agent shot a woman five times, and the administration publicly accused her of being a domestic terrorist, then charged her with assault — only to dismiss the case after an overwhelming amount of evidence (including body camera footage) contradicted the government’s account.

The Chicago cases are collapsing just as the federal government is announcing a new round of criminal indictments, this time against protesters in Minnesota. Last Tuesday, for example, the Department of Justice announced that it had charged 15 members of a group called Direct Action Minnesota with, among other things, assaulting federal officers, interstate stalking and interstate threats.

We don’t yet know enough to evaluate those cases, but one thing is clear: The federal government has lost the benefit of the doubt. Or, as Judge Perry said in Chicago, “I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing. That trust has been broken.”

But there is a silver lining in the dark cloud. In Chicago, the Trump administration has blinked. It’s not just refusing to contest the payment of attorneys’ fees; U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros — the same person who presided over these corrupt prosecutions — has changed his tune.

In May, he announced a series of “sweeping reforms” to his office’s grand jury procedures as part of a “remediation plan” to prevent future misconduct.

When I’m in my more optimistic moments, I think we’ll look back at last year as the high-water mark of Trumpism, when the combination of arrogance after Trump’s victory and the inherent authoritarianism of the Trumpist project led to a unique period of state violence and legal corruption.

And now, my optimistic self says, the justice system is reasserting itself. The combination of personal courage, legal persistence and judicial independence is preserving due process and the American system of justice.

But optimism is no cause for complacency. Federal prosecutors in Illinois may be chastened, but Todd Blanche, the man who announced the bogus prosecution of the Broadview Six in the first place, is Trump’s nominee to replace Pam Bondi as the attorney general of the United States.

If he is confirmed, expect more vindictive prosecutions. Expect more prosecutorial misconduct. And expect more federal judges (and more American citizens) to say, along with Judge Perry in Illinois, that their trust is broken.

Why? Because the Trump administration is the nation’s chief threat to the rule of law.

News Roundup

The Parnas Perspective, Saturday News Update and Commentary: Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. From Italy’s leader publicly calling out Donald Trump in a way we rarely see from a close American ally, to Trump demanding jail time for people he says interfered with his Reflecting Pool project, including an Olympian arrested today. Meanwhile, Iran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz as negotiations continue to face obstacles. And much more.

As I mentioned earlier, tomorrow’s Good News Update is still coming as scheduled. After that, I’ll likely take most of the day off to celebrate my first Father’s Day.

I recently learned that over the past year, we reached more than 80 million Americans. That is roughly one in four people in the country. None of that happens without you.

Here’s what you missed:

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni fired back after Trump doubled down on his attacks, telling him that his “constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless” and rejecting his claims about her popularity and Italy’s military cooperation with the United States. “Italy remains a sovereign nation,” Meloni wrote, before ending with a pointed message to Trump: “My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.”

This came in response to Donald Trump doubling down on the notion that Meloni begged him to take a picture with her:

Iran announced that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil-shipping routes, claiming that continued Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon violated the terms of a recent U.S.-Iran peace agreement. Iran warned ships to stay away from the waterway, although U.S. Central Command said dozens of merchant vessels were still transiting the strait and that American forces remained in place to help enforce the deal.

The crisis stems from Israeli strikes in Lebanon that reportedly killed dozens of people after a ceasefire was announced. Israel says it acted in response to attacks by the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, while Hezbollah denies violating the ceasefire and accuses Israel of trying to undermine the agreement.

Despite Iran’s declaration, U.S. Central Command said dozens of commercial ships were still transiting the strait and that American forces remained in the area to help enforce the agreement. The dispute centers on Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, which Israel says were a response to attacks by Hezbollah, while Hezbollah denies violating the ceasefire and accuses Israel of undermining the deal. The renewed fighting threatens broader U.S.-Iran negotiations over issues including Iran’s nuclear program, with talks expected to continue in Switzerland and with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan. The situation has also exposed tensions between the administration of President Donald Trump and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to handle the conflict in Lebanon.

At the same time, Trump was polling his followers on Truth Social about whether they prefer “Dumocrat” or “Dumbocrat” as a nickname for Democrats:

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least six people on Saturday, including two young sisters, ages 4 and 14, and an Al Jazeera cameraman, according to Palestinian officials. One strike hit a Gaza City apartment building overnight, while later strikes targeted a refugee camp and a tent encampment, causing additional deaths and injuries. The Israeli military said it was investigating the strike that killed the children and stated that the Al Jazeera cameraman, Ahmed Wishah, was killed in a targeted attack because it alleged he was affiliated with Hamas, a claim reported by Israel and disputed by his employer. 

Trump planned a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.776 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists (some shown above).

The 35 retired federal judges escalate challenge against Trump $1.7 billion slush fund and IRS deal. They say Trump Admin's latest filing "underscores the need to investigate whether the parties have perpetrated a fraud on this Court & corrupted the integrity of the judicial process."

Trump acknowledged problems with the recently renovated Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, including an algae bloom and peeling blue paint after a $14.2 million makeover. Trump blamed the issues on alleged vandalism and claimed, without presenting evidence, that chemicals had been used to damage the pool and surrounding grounds. The renovation was part of a broader effort to refurbish monuments in Washington, D.C., and included plans to make the pool “American flag blue” ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. Critics have questioned both the effectiveness of the project and the contracting process, while National Park Service workers continue efforts to remove algae and improve water quality.

David Hearn, a three-time Olympian, was arrested at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and charged with destruction of government property after police alleged he damaged the pool’s newly installed liner. Hearn denies vandalizing anything, saying he only touched a section of liner that was already peeling and never removed or damaged it. His arrest became a political flashpoint after President Donald Trump and allies blamed opponents for problems with the recently refurbished pool, including peeling material and algae growth. Hearn was detained for nearly five hours before being released and is scheduled to appear in court on July 9.

Trump called for jail sentences for those who he believes vandalize the pool:

A forthcoming book by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan claims that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately compared President Donald Trump to billionaire investor George Soros, right, reportedly saying that the two men are “the same animal.” The comparison is notable because Soros is a frequent target of criticism and conspiracy theories among many conservatives, including Trump himself. Bessent previously worked for Soros for many years, helping manage major investment strategies that generated billions of dollars in profits. The article notes that neither the White House nor the Treasury Department immediately commented on the reported remarks, which come from an advance excerpt of the upcoming book.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to step down after a report claimed he may announce his resignation timeline as early as Monday. The speculation intensified after political rival Andy Burnham won a seat in Parliament, giving him the ability to formally challenge Starmer’s leadership. According to the report, more than 100 Labour lawmakers have publicly called for Starmer to resign or set a departure date. However, a government source denied that a resignation decision had been made, saying Starmer remains focused on governing and intends to fight any leadership challenge.

Thousands of people attended a UFC watch party on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday at the White House grounds, leaving large sections of the Ellipse park badly damaged. Aerial photographs showed extensive destruction of the grass after the event, prompting criticism online. The damage came shortly after separate controversy over problems with the renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, including algae growth and peeling paint. The UFC and Scotts Miracle-Gro have pledged to pay for repairs to the South Lawn, though it is unclear whether the Ellipse will also be restored. Despite the criticism, Trump praised his administration’s efforts to beautify Washington, D.C., in a social media post.

Trump unexpectedly endorsed both South Carolina Republican gubernatorial runoff candidates, Pamela Evette and Alan Wilson, after initially backing only Evette. The move comes after several Trump-endorsed candidates recently lost key Republican governor primaries in Iowa and Georgia, raising questions about the strength of his endorsements. Although Evette led the first round of voting, Wilson has gained momentum with endorsements from prominent Republicans, including Tim Scott. By endorsing both candidates ahead of the runoff, Trump effectively ensures that the eventual winner can claim his support, reducing the political risk of another endorsement loss.

A report by Pogo Investigates alleges that a political action committee linked to Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, right, received $250,000 in undisclosed “dark money” from The GEO Group, a major ICE detention contractor that has benefited from expanded immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. Critics argue the donation raises potential conflict-of-interest concerns because GEO Group derives substantial revenue from federal immigration detention contracts and reportedly saw profits increase significantly after new immigration funding and contracts were approved.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced that he will revoke Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s highest Polish state honor, the Order of the White Eagle, because Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a nationalist force accused in Poland of massacring tens of thousands of Poles during World War II. Ukrainian officials strongly condemned the move, arguing it benefits Russia by creating tensions between Ukraine and one of its key allies. Nawrocki insisted that the decision does not change Poland’s support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged both sides to avoid escalating the dispute, warning that such divisions please Russian President Vladimir Putin and concern Western allies. The controversy comes despite recent progress between Poland and Ukraine on addressing historical grievances and improving reconciliation over wartime atrocities.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has been ordered to stand trial on corruption-related charges and is barred from leaving Spain while the case proceeds. Prosecutors allege that she used her position as the prime minister’s spouse to help secure business contracts; Gómez denies the accusations and notes that the case was initiated by far-right groups. Investigating judge Juan Carlos Peinado required her to surrender her passport and report to court twice monthly.

A Louisiana pastor, Terry Reed, was sentenced to 80 years in prison after being convicted of raping and molesting two boys whomhe had taken into his home after gaining their families’ trust. Prosecutors said Reed used his position as a religious leader and cited scripture to manipulate the victims into believing the abuse was normal. The case marked Reed’s third conviction involving sexual crimes against minors, following guilty pleas in 1997 and 2017 for similar offenses. During sentencing, the mother of one victim described feeling profoundly betrayed and called Reed “an utter failure and a sorry excuse for a man,” while the judge imposed the maximum sentence for the molestation convictions.

An 85-year-old Florida man, William Bosworth, was arrested after deputies said he was racing a sports car at speeds exceeding 100 mph late at night in Leesburg. Authorities alleged that Bosworth was driving a gray Nissan sports car at about 110 mph while a red Corvette involved in the incident reached roughly 125 mph. When questioned by police, Bosworth denied racing, claiming he sped up to get away from another driver and was simply “having a little ride in my favorite car.” Body-camera footage reportedly showed him smoking a cigarillo during the traffic stop. He was charged with street racing and excessive speeding.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, shown in a file photo, declared a local emergency due to a stubborn commercial fire that has been burning since Wednesday at a cold-storage facility in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. The fire has repeatedly flared up, produced significant smoke, and affected air quality across the area, prompting officials to seek additional state resources. Authorities are also concerned that large quantities of frozen meat and bread stored at the facility could decompose, creating unpleasant odors and potential biohazard risks. Fire officials say hazardous refrigerants such as ammonia have already been removed, but crews continue to monitor conditions and fight the blaze. Temporary shelters have been opened for residents affected by the ongoing emergency.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, above, announced that he will take a two-month break from hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! and will be replaced by a rotating lineup of guest hosts. The guest hosts will include Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, Jelly Roll, and Rosie O’Donnell. Kimmel joked that O’Donnell’s appearance was a special gift for President Donald Trump, with whom she has had a long-running public feud. The announcement also referenced Kimmel’s brief suspension in 2025 after controversial comments following the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Kimmel said he is taking the break voluntarily and urged viewers to keep watching while he is away

More On Iran War

New York Times, News analysis: What Changed After Almost Four Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much, Neil MacFarquhar, June 21, 2026. Neither the war nor the agreement terminated the main threats emanating from Iran, many analysts said.

In igniting a war against Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump billed the U.S. campaign as an unprecedented step toward transforming the Middle East and terminating the threat from what he called a “wicked, radical dictatorship.”

Roughly 100 days later, as the United States and Iran have reached a somewhat vague memorandum of understanding to end the war, skeptics are expressing bafflement over what exactly has transformed.

Neither the war nor the agreement ended what U.S. and Israeli officials regard as the main threats emanating from Iran. The country’s nuclear program, while heavily damaged, was not eliminated — its fate punted to future negotiation.

The same goes for its ballistic missiles, which the deal does not address. Iran’s authoritarian regime endured, albeit with new leaders. Its proxies remain a threat to the region. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, persisted in attacking each other.

By Saturday, even the most significant immediate result of the deal — Iran’s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Mr. Trump had identified as essential — seemed at risk. Iran’s military said it was closing the waterway again, because the United States had failed to stop the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military contested that, saying the strait remained open as the agreement stipulated.

“This is not a document the United States agreed to because the war demonstrated a new U.S. military superiority,” said Caitlin Talmadge, a professor at M.I.T. who specializes in Persian Gulf security issues. “I think it’s a document that has resulted from the fact that the United States bit off more than it could chew and doesn’t want to escalate.”

That’s a worthy goal, she said. “But it really raises the question of what was achieved here, especially in comparison to the original Iran nuclear deal.”

For its part, the Islamic Republic is set to receive potentially substantial financial rewards. That is one substantive change, although not necessarily one in the United States’ favor.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ten Horrific New Revelations About Trump’s Surrender to Iran at Versailles, Seth Abramson, right, June 20-21, 2026. By the time of Trump’s Monday DocuSign of America’s surrender to Iran and his formal surrender at Versailles Wednesday, we knew the Iran War would live in infamy. But over 72 hours, it got far worse. (Continued  from above)

Ten Brand New, Horrific Revelations About Donald Trump’s Unprecedented Surrender to Iran at Versailles

(1) The amount of Iranian money Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are “unfreezing” and “un-restricting” is more than we thought… by a factor of hundreds.

Yes, hundreds.

If unfreezing and un-restricting $1.7 billion in Iranian funds constitutes funding international terrorism and betraying the United States, what are we to call the “hundreds” of millions Vance now admits he and Trump are going to give Iran?

To be sure, this is not merely a racially motivated rhetorical about-face; it is Trump and his political allies having long since repeatedly gone on record to categorically state that unfreezing Iranian funds is akin to a crime against the United States and the international community and then themselves committing that crime at a level 150 to 300 times worse. And their only defense appears to be that they are white men and thus entitled to the benefit of the doubt—a presumption of patriotism—whereas Barack Obama is Black and therefore should be presumed to be a Muslim, a foreign-born alien, a Communist, a traitor to America, and of low intelligence. No other attempts to explain this historic about-face can be made, or for that matter have been.

(2) Untold hundreds of millions in unfrozen and unrestricted funds aside, yes, you as a taxpayer will be paying much—or all—of the entirely separate $300 billion (“billion” with a “b”) in war restitution that Donald Trump has already promised Iran.

Even as senior Republicans in Congress falsely assure taxpayers that they will not be paying any of the $300 billion in restitution—again, a totally separate amount from the unfrozen and unrestricted funds referenced above—the administration is refusing to make that assurance. Or any assurances on this topic at all.

And given recent events, that’s as good as a confession that American taxpayers will be paying most or all of this amount.

Why does Proof write this? Well, the New York Times just revealed that after telling voters in 2025 that they would not pay a single penny for Trump’s then-$200 million ballroom and new in-the-event-of-the-Insurrection-Act-being-invoked Fürherbunker, Trump in fact secretly agreed in 2026 to put American taxpayers on the hook for $357 million of the now-$600 million those luxury vanity items will cost. Except that that $357 million number has already been superseded; ABC News reports that it is at least $397 million, or two-thirds the cost of a project Trump began without legal authority and with the promise it would be free to American taxpayers. He even gave $50 billion in new contracts to the companies and mega-donors he claimed at the time were the ones paying for the ballroom; now that we know they’re not, it’s time to ask, where did all that money go? Why were those entities given these massive new contracts? How much is Trump himself pocketing in all of this? Tens of millions? Hundreds? Billions?

The trend here is unmistakable: an administration that steals taxpayer money while insisting it isn’t; that signs up for bad no-bid contracts laden with kickbacks (witness the $14 million Trump paid to have the Reflecting Pool ruined—possibly irreparably—after saying he would only spend $1.7 million to have it permanently fixed; that hires incompetent non-experts to do complex jobs badly and often illegally (e.g., DOGE); and explains it all away with racist dog-whistles that imply it couldn’t possibly be doing anything as badly as Barack Obama did it because, after all, Obama is Black.

So the only way to take Vance now being unwilling, per CNN, to assure taxpayers that they won’t be paying any of the $300 billion in restitution the Iranians will receive for defeating the United States is that it’s a concession that we’ll be paying most or all of it.

In the context of an administration that already has no problem claiming expensive things are free—e.g. the hundreds of millions in bribes Trump took from Qatar by agreeing to receive a luxury jumbo jet from it for his personal use, doing so just before agreeing to go to war in Iran for Qatar—there’s no other way to read Mr. Vance’s studied silence.

But even if one didn’t seek guidance from historical trend-lines, the simple fact would remain that the other parties who could potentially pay into this absurd $300 billion restitution fund aren’t actually parties to the Versailles Surrender. In other words, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Egypt and Kuwait and Qatar and Israel don’t officially have any skin in the game with respect to the recent Trump-Iran MOU, and therefore can’t in any way be said to be bound by it or obligated by it.

Put more bluntly, even if Trump and Vance were able to convince one or more of these countries to contribute to the $300 billion fund, the countries in question would only be doing so because American taxpayers will soon give them money in another way.

For instance, Trump might again unilaterally send tens of billions in taxpayer dollars to the Saudis in the form of weapons—weapons that will be used by the Saudis to commit more war crimes in Yemen—only to gleefully announce a month or two later that approximately that amount of money has been “contributed” by the Saudis to the restitution fund. As with Trump’s wholly fraudulent Gaza-oriented “Board of Peace,” this is merely a bait-and-switch. And it’s one that not only implicates U.S. taxpayers in war crimes, but ends up paying money to the Iranians in a way that the homicidal and extremely dangerous Saudi government will be given credit for, instead. So our money is being stolen from under our noses… and we don’t even get a “thank you.” We get told, instead, that the money wasn’t stolen at all. And that the Saudis are heroes.

(3) We now know that the Versailles Surrender is significantly worse than even what we understood it to be when Trump signed it, as Vance has now conceded that there are numberless “side agreements” to the Surrender—some of them even reduced to writing—that are currently being hidden from Americans and even from Congress.

There’s no element of either Trump or Vance’s personal or political history that would suggest they would ever hide aspects of a deal that they deem favorable to the United States, so at least as a “theory of the case,” researchers, investigators, and investigative journalists must and will assume, understandably, that all these side agreements are being hidden even from Republicans in Congress because they would expand the public’s opposition to the Versailles Surrender exponentially.

In Rumsfeldian terms, these many side agreements are now a “known unknown”—so Americans will have to view all future interactions between Trump and Iran (and even Trump and our Middle Eastern partners) as potential evidence of secret assignations and accords we’ll never learn of. And given Trump’s history of Bribery and Fraud and Theft and seeking to Without Authorization Distribute Classified Documents, we can have no way of knowing how many of these side agreements are illegal, and/or how many otherwise inexplicable public policy positions Trump takes are part of a bribe.

In constitutional terms—given that Bribery is one of the only specifically enumerated impeachable offenses in the U.S. Constitution, the casual revelation by Vance that Trump and his agents have signed or verbally assented to an unknown number of side agreements with America’s enemies (Iran) and “frenemies” (all the other nations named above) puts President Trump in a perpetually illicitly compromised position.

That is, we can’t know if anything he’s doing now is an impeachable offense or not.

(4) The Israelis have now seen the surrender terms Trump attempted to affix to them, and they have rejected them. They have rejected them explicitly and in words, implicitly and in actions, and in ways both clandestine and overt. For the first time in any of our lifetimes, a supposed ally—indeed, a U.S. ally whose very existence America ensures—is working in secret and in the open to try to harm us materially.

This isn’t merely an academic matter. It means both that the bombing of Beirut will continue—as it already has, whatever new, hours-long fake “ceasefires” either side may announce; Lucy has already pulled that football away too many times for any one of us to think Israel will stop bombing Lebanon anytime soon—and that the illegal IDF annexation of lands in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza will continue, and that the Netanyahu regime’s war crimes and Crimes Against Humanity will continue, and that therefore Iran can exit anything it agreed to with the United States as part of Trump’s Versailles Surrender if it feels like it because the MOU Trump signed is effectively null and void.

Indeed, by the MOU’s fraudulent claim to exert control over the Israeli government and its military, which is unambiguously the long con Trump played at by attempting to obligate those entities to contractual terms without even revealing the terms to those entities, it’s become clear that Trump’s Versailles Surrender was merely an attempt to avoid a global economic collapse of the president and his team’s own making.

Trump admitted in his recent incoherent press conference that because America only has four weeks of oil reserves left, he perceived himself—just prior to agreeing to surrender to Iran—to be on the cusp of “becoming Herbert Hoover,” meaning that he perceived that a Second Great Depression was about to hit the United States. (It goes without saying that this analogy is historically inapt, as Hoover didn’t unilaterally cause the Great Depression—but if the Iran War caused a Second Great Depression, you wouldn’t be able to find one historian who’d assign blame to anyone but Trump.)

In his presser, Trump also spoke at length—as he always does, when discussing the unrelated topic of American national security—of Wall Street, an American financial institution in which he personally has many billions of dollars in investments at stake.

In other words, even Trump’s Hoover talk may merely be a smokescreen for a war being fought for Trump’s financial interests and then ended… for those same interests.

All this raises the probability that the Versailles Surrender was a scam—and that Mr. Trump knows it. It makes far more sense to think he had no intention of obligating Israel to the MOU’s terms than that he didn’t understand he had no means to do so; even a man as ill-bred, ill-mannered, ill-educated, and ill-prepared for leadership as Trump would have known that, despite the terms of his surrender to Iran, there was no way for him or any document he signed to prevent the continuation of Israel’s crimes. All the document could do was desperately seek to forestall a global financial collapse until after the midterm elections in America. And if this scam meant that Iran would be able to start enriching uranium and moving toward a bomb whenever it wanted to—because the Versailles Surrender terms were bound to be quickly violated—what of it? Trump has always put his own finances and personal political survival ahead of America’s national interests, and indeed if something akin to World War III breaks out in the Middle East this year or next it will make him and Vance invoking the Insurrection Act in the United States and ending our democracy that much easier.

Even in light of the foregoing, don’t expect Iran to declare the terms of the Versailles Surrender conclusively violated unless it absolutely has to.

It’s much more to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s benefit to start enriching uranium in secret while saying nothing about whether it deems the Versailles Surrender’s terms to have been violated. Why make such a declaration when it knows that it will be able to accurately claim before the international community—and its own allies in Russia and China and elsewhere—that it was perfectly within its rights not to honor the Surrender from the get-go, because Israel violated the MOU within a matter of hours?

This puts Tehran permanently in the driver’s seat as to racing toward a nuclear weapon....

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U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, Mamdani Burns Allies in Making a Big Bet for Congress and the Left, Nicholas Fandos and Sally GoldenbergJune 21, 2026. The strength of the mayor’s political brand will be tested on Tuesday, when his slate of leftist congressional candidates takes aim at Democratic incumbents.

A year ago this week, Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in the Democratic primary for mayor upended New York politics.

Now, in the closing days of another primary season, he has thrown himself back onto the campaign trail, this time risking his political capital in a high-stakes bid to catapult fellow leftists to primary victories against the old Democratic guard.

Mr. Mamdani and allies are attempting to unseat two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom they view as too friendly to corporate donors and Israel. They want to lay claim to a third House seat. And down the ballot, they have designs on expanding the socialist block in Albany.

If he prevails on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani, 34, will go a long way toward establishing socialists as a major faction in New York City politics and himself as a kingmaker capable of vaulting relatively unknown candidates to victory and sidelining erstwhile power brokers.

But a string of losses could be disastrous, weakening the mayor’s political standing just six months into his term, empowering political opponents and creating new ones.

His involvement has already alienated Black and Latino progressives, powerful labor unions and the left-leaning Working Families Party, all of which helped him get to City Hall and partnered with him as mayor. Some, like Representative Nydia Velázquez, have taken the rare step of publicly declaring they have lost trust in him.

New York Times founder and Republican political leader Henry Jarvis Raymond. (Photo: Library of Congress). New York Times founder Henry Jarvis Raymond was a Republican insider and officeholder while serving as the newspaper’s editor. 

New Jersey Globe, The relationship between the New York Times and the Kean family goes back over 175 years, David Wildstein, June 21, 2026. The relationship between the New York Times and the Kean family goes back over 175 years. The Kean family remains in the news. The New Jersey congressman Thomas Kean Jr., right, son of a two-term governor, Thomas Kean Sr., is scheduled to appear in public at the end of this month for the first time following a months-long disappearance in which neither constituents nor fellow Republican House members report knowing where or what he has been doing.] 

The founder of the New York Times was a Republican politician from New York who was a close personal friend and political ally of Col. John Kean of New Jersey.

Henry Jarvis Raymond founded the New York Times in 1851 while serving as a New York assemblyman and served as its editor until he died in 1869.

Raymond and Jarvis together played an integral role in founding the Republican Party in 1856.

While serving as the New York Times editor, Raymond was the lieutenant governor of New York, the Republican National Chairman – he was Abraham Lincoln’s pick when he sought re-election in 1864 – and a GOP congressman.

The connection between Raymond and the Kean family was even deeper. Kean’s sister, Jula, was married to Hamilton Fish, a New York Republican and one of Raymond’s best friends. Fish served as a congressman, governor, U.S. Senator, and later, after Raymond’s death, as U.S. Secretary of State.

Kean is the great-great-grandfather of Rep. Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield). His title of Colonel, which he used for decades, was an honorific one awarded by Gov. William Pennington after Kean served as his secretary, a post now known as chief of staff.

Kean was an insider’s insider. He was the grandson of John Kean, who served in the Continental Congress, and was the great-great-nephew of New Jersey’s first governor, William Livingston.

He was a shareholder in railroads in Camden, Middlesex, Union, and Somerset counties, and the owner of a bank and gas and water utility companies. He owned three water-powered mills on the Elizabeth River. Two of his sons became U.S. Senators.

In the 1860 presidential election, New Jersey backed a favorite son for the Republican nomination, with former U.S. Senator William Dayton receiving 14 votes from New Jersey GOP delegates on the first ballot.

Kean was supposed to deliver New Jersey’s delegates to New York Senator William Seward on the second ballot, but he wound up cutting a deal with Lincoln.

He lost four New Jersey delegates to Lincoln on the second ballot. On the third ballot, New Jersey gave Lincoln eight votes, with five going to William Seward and just one going to Dayton. Lincoln won the nomination on the third ballot.

Five weeks into the Lincoln presidency, the Civil War began. Kean received a no-bid contract from the War Department to manufacture gun parts for the Union Army.

That’s where the first conflict between Kean and the family of future Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) began.

The Secretary of War who approved the Kean contract was Simon Cameron, a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and the great-great-grandfather of Malinowski’s stepfather, Blair Clark.

During the first year of Lincoln’s presidency, Kean had a conflict with Cameron. At one point, he was forced to take a train to Washington to see Lincoln and complain that Cameron was too slow at paying invoices to the Union Army. Lincoln wound up replacing Cameron with Edwin Stanton a couple of months later.

Raymond left Congress after one term after the New York Times’ support of President Andrew Johnson led to criticism and loss of readership during Reconstruction.

More Global News

New York Times, While the World Scrambles for Oil, China Sits on Full Tanks, Keith Bradsher, June 21, 2026. The possible reopening of the Strait of Hormuz may not prompt China to return quickly to prewar levels of oil purchases from the Persian Gulf.

While the United States and Iran haggle over reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restoring oil exports from the Persian Gulf, China, the world’s largest oil importer, is not expected to quickly ramp up purchases from the region.

If normal traffic through the strait fully resumes in the coming weeks, numerous tankers carrying oil bound for China that have been stranded in the Persian Gulf during the war would be on the move again. Their eventual arrival at Chinese ports is likely to produce a temporary surge in deliveries.

China finds itself in a very different position from much of the world, which is emerging from the war in Iran with depleted oil supplies.

The crude stockpiles held by the country’s state-owned energy companies remain nearly full. Beijing appears not to have tapped its vast strategic reserves, and storage tanks at Chinese refineries are brimming with gasoline, diesel and other refined products.

China cut its daily oil imports by roughly a third during the war. The pullback, driven largely by higher prices, helped ease some of the upward pressure on global oil markets caused by the almost complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

China was able to reduce imports so sharply in part because it had been buying more oil than it needed before the war. For years, it accumulated inventories whenever prices were low as part of a broader push to strengthen national self-reliance and improve its ability to withstand supply disruptions.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China and Iran? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

China also imported additional oil to reduce its trade surplus. In recent years, Beijing has increasingly parked excess foreign exchange earnings in stockpiles of commodities such as oil rather than overseas bank deposits or Treasury bonds, after watching Western governments freeze Russia’s foreign assets following its invasion of Ukraine four years ago. 

New York Times, Trump-Backed Outsider Appears to Win in Colombian Presidential Race, Annie Correal, June 21, 2026. A victory for Abelardo De La Espriella, a lawyer with no previous political experience, would be a rebuke to the left and another win for the right in Latin America.

Abelardo De La Espriella, a criminal defense lawyer with no previous political experience, appeared headed for a razor-thin victory on Sunday in Colombia’s presidential election, in what would be a win for his fervent supporters, the global right and President Trump, who had endorsed him.

Mr. De La Espriella — who transformed himself from sharply dressed Miami lawyer to populist in a soccer jersey and a straw hat — won nearly 49.7 percent of the vote with more than 99 percent of the votes counted, according to preliminary results from the agency overseeing the election. Iván Cepeda, a leftist senator and a longtime human rights advocate received nearly 48.7 percent.

His victory would return Colombia to conservative rule after four years under Gustavo Petro, the country’s first leftist president. It also advances Latin America’s broader shift to the right in Mr. Trump’s second term.

As word of the results spread, Bogotá, the capital, exploded with the din of cheers, car horns and vuvuzelas. People rushed into the streets. President Gustavo Petro said online that the results were preliminary and that there was “no president” until the votes had been scrutinized, which is the usual process — but cries of “Out with Petro” filled the air.

Mr. De La Espriella, 47, ran a high-voltage campaign complete with machine-generated flames; A.I. videos of tigers, his mascot; and pounding anti-Petro chants that made him something like a celebrity.

He also vowed to “disembowel” the left in Colombia and has asked the Trump administration to target his political opponents, leading critics to call him an autocrat in the making.

The results, which were announced by the agency, revealed the highest voter turnout since Colombia put in place a two-round voting system more than three decades ago, and the closest margin between two candidates.ImageA dense crowd of people, some holding up phones. In the foreground, Mr. De La Espriella wears a yellow shirt and straw hat, and takes a selfie.Abelardo De La Espriella casting his vote on Sunday.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times

Mr. De La Espriella ran on a platform now popular among right-wing leaders across the region: He vowed to restore security amid crime concerns, rescue the country from what he portrayed as economic ruin created by the left, and crack down on corruption.

His campaign was stridently nationalistic, claiming the flag, the Colombian national soccer jersey and the patriotic slogan “Firme por la patria!” — “Standing firm for the homeland!”

It nevertheless borrowed ideas, and a deft social media strategy, from the iron-fisted leader of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and from Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, two hugely popular figures in Latin America.

Like those leaders, Mr. De La Espriella adopted an aggressive tone. He promised to build megaprisons and to claw back the country from progressive politics and “gender ideology,” putting God and family first.

His vow to hunt down criminals and crush Colombia’s “narcoterrorists”— a term borrowed from Mr. Trump — resonated deeply with supporters while alarming those who opposed him, raising the specter of more bloodshed and authoritarianism.

“It sounds like a military regime,” said Andro Giovanny Camelo, a 44-year-old taxi driver in Bogotá.Editors’ PicksI’m Worried My Friends’ Son May Harm Them. What Should I Do?Is Your Vibe ‘High-Signal’ or ‘Anti-Signal’?My Nephew’s Comedy Routine Skewers His Grandma. Should the Adults Be Laughing?

Much of Mr. De La Espriella’s support came from the cities, not the remote rural areas where armed groups are fighting over cocaine-trafficking routes and illegal gold mines. But the candidate seized on fears of a return to the acute

U.S. Culture, Religion, Media 

Vice President JD Vance, center, faced tough questions from the co-hosts of ABC-TV's "The View," shown above, as he undertook a tour for his self-promotion book "Communion" while extolling the Trump Administration and the concept of Christian "grace."

MS Now, JD Vance’s book ‘Communion’ reveals he hasn’t changed as much as he says he has, Anthea Butler, June 21, 2026. As he promotes his new book about his conversion, Vance seems confused about what Catholicism is, and he doesn’t seem to understand that Christian beliefs aren’t the same as a list of conservative talking points.‘He thinks he’s smarter than the POPE?

Vice President JD Vance’s new book, “Communion,” is not only his story of his conversion to Catholicism in 2019, it’s also his pitch to Republicans, especially religious ones, about why he has the mettle to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. Writing a book has become a prerequisite for a presidential run, but as a professor who has read some awful writing, I find that Vance’s new book ranks among the worst things I’ve read. As has been reported, there’s a United Methodist Church on the cover of this book about converting to Catholicism, and that choice of illustration serves as a metaphor for the ignorance and inauthenticity found within.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study, 35% of American adults were raised in a different religious tradition than the one they practice.

Vance’s account of his conversion from evangelism to atheism and then to Catholicism is familiar to those of us who study religious switching in America. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 35% of American adults were raised in a different religious tradition than the one they practice.

But on his promotional book tour, Vance is proving himself to be woefully inept about his faith. For example, on his Tuesday appearance on ABC’s “The View,” he couldn’t answer questions about how he squares his recently found faith with the Trump administration’s policies. He seems confused about what Catholicism is and doesn’t seem to understand that Christian beliefs aren’t the same as a list of conservative talking points.

Thus, in “Communion” we get his disjointed story about how he was attracted to the Catholic Church despite his divergent views from its teachings. If nothing else, “Communion” confirms what was already obvious: Vance is not the theologian he thinks he is, and indeed, he knows very little about the Catholic faith. Despite his lack of knowledge, in his short time as vice president, he has had the temerity to question Pope Francis’ motivations for criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies and to lecture Pope Leo XIV on when war is morally justified.John Thune, visible from his shoulders up, in profile.Eugene Robinson: ‘It is so arrogant of Vance to claim to school the pope on theology’July 17, 2024 / 04:50

The one clear teaching of the church he seems to enthusiastically embrace, perhaps as a holdover from his time as an evangelical, is its opposition to abortion. But what he writes about economics and immigration, among other topics, shows a limited knowledge of the theological underpinnings of the Catholic Church.

Vance appears to be bringing some of his evangelical upbringing and theology to his Catholic faith. This is not uncommon. For instance, Vance’s understanding of ordo amoris, a concept that places love of family above love of one’s neighbors and the rest of the world, prompted the letter from Francis to the U.S. bishops correcting Vance’s framing. (Notably, he leaves his rhapsodizing about ordo amoris out of “Communion,” but he writes about Saints Augustine and Aquinas as though he knows their works well.)

That’s why, despite his conversion to Catholicism, Vance still comes across like an evangelical. His willingness to argue Catholic theology, despite his limited knowledge, speaks to his Protestant upbringing, including the doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers,” which gives more value to the voices of Christians who are not in positions of leadership.

Despite his conversion to Catholicism, Vance still comes across like an evangelical. 

WhoWhatWhy, Saturday Hashtag, Sean Ogen, June 20, 2026. Fake charities have expanded rapidly in recent years, increasingly blending humanitarian branding with coordinated digital infrastructure designed to simulate legitimacy and attract donations.

A recent investigation by Haaretz and Libération found that “Sadaqah Palestine,” a now-scrubbed Gaza charity, was a fabricated donation platform used for illicit fundraising and data harvesting, as well as identifying pro-Palestinian figures. The report also linked its digital infrastructure to the Israeli influence firm BlackCore, which is currently under investigation in Europe for alleged election interference.

The operation presented itself as a humanitarian fund for Palestinian families in Gaza affected by the war, complete with a website, a credit-card donation system, active X, Instagram, and Facebook accounts, and paid Meta advertising designed to simulate legitimacy and reach donors.

But there is no real organization behind it; Sadaqah Palestine is not in any United Kingdom, United States, European Union, or Israeli charity registries and has no verifiable legal status, no leadership, and no institutional footprint — only a shiny digital shell.

According to the investigation, the audience appears largely inauthentic: Of 221 followers, about one-third are bots, and at least 59 percent are fake, with none verified. The follower base includes clusters of Russian-language accounts, generic Western personas, and empty bios consistent with mass-generated profiles, with engagement similarly engineered.

On X, coordinated bursts of replies came from recently created accounts, split between American-style “fitness coach” personas with motivational slogans and misspelled US locations, and Vietnamese-named accounts posting repetitive phrases like “Done helping” and “Just did my part.” Activity spiked rapidly after the launch of Saddaquah Palestine in early 2025, then collapsed, consistent with short-term bot amplification rather than organic support.

Behind the humanitarian framing, the site functioned as a digital “honeypot” operation, soliciting donations and capturing user data through credit card forms, without transparency, governance, or audit structure typical of legitimate nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

The key finding is that Sadaqah Palestine and electric-marinade.com were repeatedly listed together in dozens of Let’s Encrypt certificates issued between March 2025 and March 2026.

Let’s Encrypt issues these certificates only when domains are jointly verified for encryption. The paired listing with electric-marinade.com suggests the two domains were likely managed within the same underlying infrastructure, including shared website and email systems. This is evidence of shared infrastructure, but it does not by itself prove common ownership or control.

Electric-marinade.com is part of a suspected infrastructure cluster involving tools used to generate fake identities and coordinate social media activity.

Those tools include:

Avatar generators: software for creating fake profile images or personas Agent-maker systems: tools for managing multiple fake or automated accounts (“sock puppets”) Facebook search/monitoring tools: systems for tracking or analyzing social media activity Campaign dashboards: interfaces for coordinating or organizing large-scale posting or engagement

The infrastructure evidence points toward the Israeli firm BlackCore, which is under investigation by French authorities for alleged interference, targeting left-wing candidates in France’s 2026 municipal elections.

Before scrubbing its online presence, BlackCore described itself as an “elite influence, cyber and technology” firm. It now has no active public-facing website and has not publicly responded to the allegations against it.

This pattern is stark: a nonexistent humanitarian organization, artificially manufactured audiences, coordinated bot engagement, and technical links to a firm under legal scrutiny in Europe, pointing to exploitation of humanitarian trust for fundraising, data harvesting, and coordinated influence operations.

Fraudulent charity campaigns often imitate legitimate NGOs by copying names, branding, and messaging, making them hard to distinguish from real aid organizations.

Red flags include poor site quality, spelling errors, lack of financial transparency, and requests for nonstandard payments such as crypto, gift cards, or direct transfers.

Scam operators also tend to avoid clear answers about how donations are used, unlike legitimate charities that provide accountability and reporting. Even formal registration can be misleading, as some deceptive operations still function under valid legal status.

Taken together, these patterns suggest such sites may not be isolated scams but part of a broader, coordinated infrastructure used for influence, deception, and data collection.

From Fortune: “There is no clear data about how common nonprofit fraud is or how prevalent it is compared to corporate fraud or acts of fraud by people employed by government agencies. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that companies and nonprofits lose approximately 5% of their annual revenue to fraud, according to a 2024 report.”

France Accuses Israeli Firm of Interfering in Scottish Elections and Targeting SNP

The author writes, “France’s cybersecurity agency has accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney. The disinformation detection agency Viginum said BlackCore had this year used proxy social media accounts to target Swinney, the Scottish National party, and the Scottish government on four occasions. Viginum said BlackCore had focused its operations on municipal elections in France but had also targeted the mayoral elections in New York, won by Zohran Mamdani, and other countries such as Togo and Angola.”

Several Firms May Have Been Involved in Interference During French Local Elections

From Le Monde: “French authorities point to the involvement of the Israeli firm BlackCore. Other companies may also have been involved, according to Le Monde’s sources. A web of subcontractors is complicating efforts to identify the sponsor.”

Why Nonprofits Are Becoming Prime Targets for Cyberattacks

From Nonprofit Pro: “When people think about cyberattacks, they often picture banks, large enterprises, or government agencies as the primary targets. Yet, one of the most attacked sectors today is one many people least expect: nonprofits — particularly humanitarian organizations.”

Zakat Report: Hundreds of Millions in Fake, Wasted and Hoarded Donations

The author writes, “This report focuses on 17 organizations that collect international zakat, reporting a total revenue of $924 million. Of that amount, $493 million does not exist; it is phantom revenue resulting from a discredited accounting tool.” The New Republic, Analysis:

Former President Barack Obama and Former First Lady Michelle Obama were joined by three other former presidents and their wives for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side near where Michelle Obama grew up and she and her husband later worked..

The Contrarian, Publisher's Roundup: Behind the Scenes at the Obama Presidential Center Opening, Norman Eisen, right, June 20, 2026. A Real Celebration of America at 250: 

This week, MSNow host Nicolle Wallace asked me what my favorite exhibit was at the new Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago. I was there to participate in the opening celebrations and to see longtime friends, above all my law school classmate and former boss Barack Obama.

As I told Nicolle, the artifact that hit me the hardest was the center’s original print of the Declaration of Independence.X avatar for @NormEisen Norm Eisen@NormEisenVisited the Obama Presidential Center yesterday and spent hours taking it all in It reminded me that the arc of American history has never been straight -- but we've always resumed the path toward our promise 

That founding document kicks off the displays — spanning five floors — telling the story of the Obama presidency in the context of the past 250 years. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all … would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Obama presidency felt like a huge payment on that note, and the past 17 months like a massive debit. But the two-and-a-half century story the center tells is a reminder that together we can overcome this moment and restart progress. Or as Barack put it in his remarks at the opening on Thursday, quoting one of his and Dr. King’s favorite sayings, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

Wednesday morning, I got to spend a few minutes with President Obama, shown above, at the center at a gathering for administration veterans in the Sky Room at the pinnacle of the building. We caught up a little bit, reminisced about friends present and departed, and talked democracy.

Obama was trailed by his White House photographer, Pete Souza. We have gotten to be buddies over the years, and I turned the tables on him by taking a selfie of the two of us.

Like countless people I talked to in Chicago, Pete thanked me for the Kennedy Center case, the slush fund case, and the over 300 other pro-democracy litigation matters you help make possible through your paid subscriptions, Contrarians.Subscribed

After meeting with Barack, we were invited to spend the day exploring the center and talking to the people who helped create it. It was like a day-long house party (in an exceptionally fancy and large house). Here I am, still in the Sky Room, with the artist Idris Khan. He covered the ceiling in thousands of hand-stamped words from Obama’s Selma speech, layered and ascending toward a skylight — as if the words themselves are rising up to the heavens.

As I strolled the building, I also met Nicola Green, a British artist who has made art about Obama and what his rise meant to the U.S. and the world. The remarkable story of her work with him will be a subject of her book coming out in August — we will have her on The Contrarian to tell the tale! Three of her silkscreens from the series “In Seven Days...” are on display on the first floor of the center. They are inspired by thousands of drawings, photographs, and notes she gathered during the 2008 campaign.

I also got to visit with the great American artist Carrie Mae Weems, whose “The Cool Blue Wind” is a photographic collage on silver and gold metallic paper, washed in blue, with an original jazz soundtrack playing above.

The images and music evoke Obama’s 2008 campaign — I was there, and I can tell you that like a jazz ensemble, there were elements of improvisation and of everyone coming together in beautiful unison. She also reminded me that artists are foundational to resistance, a lesson (as she and I discussed) that I also learned from Vaclav Havel.

Speaking of resistance, the official opening ceremony the next day was a fascinating study in repudiating Donald Trump — without ever mentioning his name.

That began with every living presidential couple taking the stage, save one. (You can’t see Hillary and Bill, they were behind Sasha and Malia from my angle, but take my word for it — they were there!) The absence of that presence was loud.

Then there were the musical acts. Again, they never uttered the name of the current president — I’m sure they were asked to keep it classy. But it was a lineup of musical performers Trump could only dream of for his coming 250 event, and one that exemplified the talent, joy, and diversity that are his antithesis. This was the grand finale, with Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Common, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and Eddie Vedder:

Finally, the Obamas’ remarks were a moving affirmation of our American story and their role in it. But they did not pull punches on where we are now. Take this from Michelle:

I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here…you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together…. And I know that can be hard to grasp right now, when everything feels so upside down, when fact and fiction run together, when folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history, when our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage.

I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while. I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country’s greatest change.

Barack’s challenge to Trump came when he celebrated our democracy, as he had said he would at our Wednesday morning gathering — including talking about that copy of the Declaration that had struck me so powerfully on my center walk-through:

Over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests, marches and strikes, moral appeals from the pulpit and conversations at the family dinner table, men and women from all walks of life of every color, every faith, every region took up the cause of democracy and made it their own, until “We the people” came to include not just some of us, but all of us.

And that’s why the story we tell in this building begins not with Michelle’s origins or my origins, but with our nation’s, with the founding era print of the Declaration of Independence, and a pen and ink stand used by Frederick Douglas, Lincoln’s bible and a pamphlet by Ida B. Wells, suffragists’ buttons and a hard hat worn by FDR’s labor secretary, Frances Perkins.

And it’s why the exhibits here focus not just on policies but on the shared values that make democracy possible. A belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people, and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection. A belief in checks and balances in our government and an accountability that comes with an independent judiciary and a robust, free press. A belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party but to the people and our Constitution. A belief in the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections, recognizing that in a large, complicated society like ours, no group or faction gets its way 100% of the time. And a belief that qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor, those things matter in our public dealings, just as they do in our private lives.

These are the values and traditions I believe in, and they are not Republican or Democratic values. They’re American values we can all share, regardless of party, values every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold, values that John MacCain and Mitt Romney believed in, no less than I did.

It is our greatest inheritance, the story of America at its best, because it reflects a basic faith in the decency of our fellow citizens and the possibility that despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together.

Like a nesting doll, Obama’s words surround the petty evil of the current regime with the greatness of his presidency, embedded within the vastness of America’s past 250 years — and our next 250. Those remarks and my time at the center give hope.

When I traded notes with some of those sitting around me after the speech, they tended to agree. Here I am with a holy Trinity of late night — and a Jedi knight:

The U.S. World Cup Mens Starting Team.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: The US Men's Soccer Team Wins, Inspires, And Brings Our Embattled Nation Together, Simon Rosenberg, right, June 20, 2026. "What has prevailed is that sense of community — a rebuttal of the divided, isolated world in which authoritarian voices delight."

Happy Saturday everyone. The 2026 US Men’s National Soccer Team is now officially our best since 1930. With our 2-0 win over Australia last night (without our best player Christian Pulisic) we’ve won our first two games, and two games in a row, for the first time in 96 years. We have now won our group and will advance to the knock out round of 32 teams in San Francisco on July 1st (after playing this Thursday night at 10pm ET against Turkiye). We’ve been playing very, very good soccer - ambitious, mature, selfless - and listen to the crowd yesterday in Seattle serenading our heroes after the match. Sound up peeps!!!!!!! Something magical is happening now:

Our friend Leon Krauze has a wonderful new essay in the Washington Post about this World Cup (gift link):

Here’s how Leon closes his essay:

Mexico itself has been transformed. Before the opening whistle, commentators fretted that the country’s various maladies — from poverty to violence and corruption — would mar the festivities. The country’s problems have of course not vanished. But the tournament has brought to the surface that other Mexico so often buried beneath the ugly headlines: a Mexico that is colorful, hospitable, generous and musical — chaotic in the best sense of the word. A Mexican fan (unsuccessfully) helping someone cross a gigantic puddle, Koreans and Mexicans dancing together inside a taqueria, a duck (named Merlin) wearing the team’s national colors — this is the Mexico I’m happy the world can glimpse.

Equivalent scenes have unfolded across all three host countries. The Scots took over the streets of Boston — and embraced a police officer who juggled a soccer ball a few times in front of them. The Brazilians painted Times Square yellow, days before the French turned it blue. The orange tide of the Dutch marched on Arlington, Texas, behind its double-decker bus; the Japanese fans, as they always do, stayed after the final whistle to tidy the stands. What has prevailed is that sense of community — a rebuttal of the divided, isolated world in which authoritarian voices delight.

The World Cup does not stop wars or end political cruelty. It does not make the world more democratic. It does not redeem governments or erase injustice. The ancient Ekecheiria [Olympic truce in ancient Greece] did not do that either. Its beauty lay precisely in its limits: It carved out a fragile space in which enemies could remember, however briefly, that they belonged to something larger than their quarrels. It was a truce that helped people see their better selves.

There is about a month left to hold on to that feeling. May it outlast the tournament itself.

The reason Trump has worked so hard to ignore the World Cup and the historic success of our remarkable team is what Leon tells us in his essay: "What has prevailed is that sense of community — a rebuttal of the divided, isolated world in which authoritarian voices delight."

June 20

Top Headlines

Recent bombing victims in Lebanon reported (Details below).

• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: Iranian Forces Say They Closed Strait of Hormuz, Abdi Latif Dahir and Julian Barnes, June 20, 2026. Iran’s military command blamed the U.S., saying it failed to prevent Israel from violating the cease-fire in Lebanon. Mediators in Pakistan said “technical talks” between the U.S. and Iran to end the war would be held on Sunday.

News Roundups

• MeidasTouch Network, Saturday News Updates: Iran Says the Strait Is Closed, Ben Meiselas, right, June 20, 2026. Top stories we’re tracking today: Iran has announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, citing U.S. and Israeli violations of the Memorandum of Understanding; CENTCOM claims the Strait remains open and “safe;” An Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf and including top officials from diplomacy, security, banking, and energy, has departed for talks in Switzerland.

U.S. Law, Elections, Rights, Courts, Justice

• Lev Remembers, Commentary, Trump’s Election Takeover Has Begun — And Five States Are Finally Fighting Back, Lev Parnas,right, June 20, 2026. California, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are building the first firewall against federal election interference. Every state should be watching.

More On Trump Administration 

• New York Times, Book Preview: A President Using Super Glue and Irked About Epstein: Takeaways From a New Trump Book, Tim Balk, June 18, 2026. The book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times, “Regime Change,” reveals a host of details and surprising exchanges as President Trump pushed to drastically expand his power.
• MS NOW Daily, Why Trump's spectacles keep backfiring, Michael Steele, right, June 20, 2026. Trump keeps celebrating himself. Americans have other ideas.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup 

Future President Trump, above right, with his onetime best friend Jeffrey Epstein, left, along with Trump's now-notorious birhday greeting to Epstein.

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Important Epstein Deep Dive: Investigations Ramp Up as Accountability is Coming, Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. As promised, I wanted to take a deep dive into the Epstein files and the question of accountability. With so much attention on the document releases, it has become easy to lose sight of what has actually happened as a result. After speaking with survivors, members of Congress, and others involved in this issue, I have compiled a detailed list of individuals who have faced real consequences.

More On Iran-Lebanon Wars

• New York Times, News Analysis: Lebanon Emerges as Weak Link in U.S.-Iran Deal to End War, Euan Ward and Christina Goldbaum, June 20, 2026 (print ed.). The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, once seen as a secondary front to the American-Israeli war on Iran, has become one of the main obstacles to ending it.
• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: Fighting Persists in Lebanon, Complicating Iran Peace Talks, John Yoon, Abdi Latif Dahir and Julian Barnes, June 20, 2026. Here’s the latest. The Israeli military said it had exchanged fire with Hezbollah overnight, hours after a new cease-fire came into effect. Clashes in Lebanon derailed U.S.-Iran peace talks planned for Friday.
• New York Times, Mines, Logistics and Deep Uncertainty Threaten a Middle East Oil Rebound, Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott, June 20, 2026. More oil is getting out of the Persian Gulf, but the region’s producers are looking for signs that it is safe as they ramp up plans for alternative routes.

More On U.S. Governance, Politics, Elections 

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 19, 2026 [Celebrating Juneteenth Announcement That U.S. Slaves Were Free], Heather Cox Richardson, right,June 20, 2026. June 19 is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
• PoliticusUSA, Opinion: Trump's Iran Deal Implodes And Sinks JD Vance, Jason Easley, right, June 20, 2026. Trump made JD Vance the face of the Iran deal, and when the deal imploded after less than 72 hours, it took the vice president down with it.
• MS NOW Daily, Elon Musk’s right-wing cheerleaders are deeply offended by criticism of his trillionaire status, Anthony L. Fisher, June 20, 2026. Musk’s superfans insult the working class, while posing as “anti-elites.”

U.S. Education, Culture, History, Media

• New York Times, Disability Groups Fear RFK Jr.’s New Special Education Role, Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, June 20, 2026. Alienated by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims about autism, advocates for disabled students are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration's shifting special education programs to his department. 
• New York Times, ‘A Literal Coverup’: What Is the Kennedy Center Hiding Behind Those Tarps? Elizabeth Williamson, June 19, 2026. The arts center says it pulled President Trump’s name from the building front. But the result remains hidden by tarps, prompting questions and speculation.
• New York Times, Disability Groups Fear RFK Jr.’s New Special Education Role, Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, June 20, 2026. Alienated by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims about autism, advocates for disabled students are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration's shifting special education programs to his department.

More News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Saturday News Update and Commentary: Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. From Italy’s leader publicly calling out Donald Trump in a way we rarely see from a close American ally, to Trump demanding jail time for people he says interfered with his Reflecting Pool project, including an Olympian arrested today. Meanwhile, Iran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz as negotiations continue to face obstacles. And much more.

More On Trump Foreign Policy

• New York Times, The Unquiet American: Charles Kushner Brings Trump Diplomacy to France, Mark Landler, June 20, 2026. The U.S. envoy to Paris has emerged as the embodiment of combative diplomacy in the age of President Trump, riling the French establishment notably with his accusations of antisemitism.

Top Stories

New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: Iranian Forces Say They Closed Strait of Hormuz, Abdi Latif Dahir and Julian Barnes, June 20, 2026. Iran’s military command blamed the U.S., saying it failed to prevent Israel from violating the cease-fire in Lebanon. Mediators in Pakistan said “technical talks” between the U.S. and Iran to end the war would be held on Sunday.

Here’s the latest.

Iran’s military said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed to maritime traffic, citing what it called a “clear breach” of U.S. commitments to implement a preliminary deal to end the war, according to a statement carried by state media.

The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, a central military command, cited the killing and the displacement of Lebanese residents from southern Lebanon, along with Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the region, as factors for closing the strait.

The deal between the United States and Iran stipulated an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon.

The announcement on the strait came as delayed talks between the United States and Iran appeared ready to restart. Pakistan, which has served as an intermediary in negotiations to end the war, said in a statement that “technical talks” between Washington and Tehran would begin Sunday in Switzerland.

Vice President JD Vance, right, told Fox News earlier on Saturday that Steve Witkoff, above right, and Jared Kushner, above left, who serve as envoys for President Trump, were in Switzerland and ready to negotiate, and a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said that an Iranian delegation was on its way.

The United States has not yet commented on the Iranian military statement on the strait. There had been an uptick in the number of ships passing through the waterway in recent days, after a deal between the United States and Iran was announced. Iran had closed the strait, a vital waterway for oil and gas shipping, in the early days of the war, rattling the global economy.

Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah exchanged fire on Saturday, just a day after a cease-fire had raised hopes of easing their conflict and smoothing a path toward an end to the U.S.-Iran war.

The truce, agreed to on Friday afternoon, had appeared to largely hold, but early Saturday, Lebanese state media reported Israeli airstrikes on towns and cities in southern Lebanon. Lebanese health authorities said that at least seven people had been killed and 13 others wounded in the strikes.

The Israeli military said that Hezbollah had fired more than 50 projectiles at Israeli forces in southern Lebanon overnight, prompting Israeli strikes on what the military described as Hezbollah targets in the region.

In a statement on Saturday, Hezbollah said that it was adhering to the cease-fire, but accused Israel of attempting to advance overnight toward Ali al-Taher, a strategic ridge overlooking the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon, and said its fighters had ambushed an Israeli infantry force.

The conflict in Lebanon, once seen as a secondary front to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, has become one of the main obstacles to ending it.

The United States and Iran agreed to a preliminary deal earlier this week, which stipulated an end to the fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon, and set the stage for more negotiations that had been set to begin Friday in Switzerland.

Iran pulled out of those talks after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, three diplomats said on Friday. Vice President JD Vance was expected to be part of the talks in Switzerland but the White House said late Thursday that his visit had been postponed.

Switzerland’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that it was continuing to provide a “discreet and reliable setting” for the talks, adding, without naming them, that diplomats from several countries remained engaged in efforts to keep the dialogue going.

Here’s what else we’re covering.

• Lebanon strikes: The diplomatic breakdown on Friday was the second time in recent weeks that the conflict in Lebanon has upended talks between the United States and Iran.
• Supreme leader: Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, distanced himself from the agreement with the United States.
• Economic repercussions: If the deal holds, billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets could be released. 

News Roundups

MeidasTouch Network, Saturday News Updates: Iran Says the Strait Is Closed, Ben Meiselas, right, June 20, 2026. Top stories we’re tracking today:

• Iran has announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, citing U.S. and Israeli violations of the Memorandum of Understanding
• CENTCOM claims the Strait remains open and “safe”
• An Iranian delegation, led by Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf and including top officials from diplomacy, security, banking, and energy, has departed for talks in Switzerland
• Israel continues its assault on southern Lebanon, with dozens killed overnight and the civilian death toll climbing past 4,000 since March
• Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz openly says Israel is “destroying” Lebanese villages so residents “will never see them standing” again
• Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who fired back defending Italy’s sovereignty
• JD Vance hit the airwaves to defend the administration’s Iran and Lebanon policy
• Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert accused his own country, in Haaretz, of conducting “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank
• Trump continues posting about Fauci, polls on calling Democrats “Dumbocrats,” and Netanyahu’s “shaky reelection chances”

Now let’s get into it.

Iran Announces the Closure of the Strait

Let’s start with the big one. Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is closing again. Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters announced the closure, and the reasoning they gave is pretty straightforward. They say the United States failed to live up to the first clause of the Memorandum of Understanding that Trump himself signed at Versailles, and that Israel has continued bombing southern Lebanon in open violation of the ceasefire. We have some more striking details to report on this that we’ll get to in a moment — plus the actual audio of Iran announcing the closure of the Strait. It is quite something to hear if for yourself.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson noted the first clause of that MOU, ending the war on all fronts including Lebanon, was supposed to be the most important pillar of the whole agreement. Iran says it held up its end. The United States, according to Tehran, was supposed to get Israel to stop. Israel didn’t stop. So now Iran says the entire memorandum, which it describes as a single package, is in jeopardy.

The IRGC Navy broadcast a warning to all vessels in the Strait that their safety could not be guaranteed. CENTCOM, naturally, put out a statement insisting the Strait remains wide open, that 55 commercial vessels moved through carrying more than 17 million barrels of oil, and that U.S. forces remain present to make sure everything stays “adhered to, obeyed, and in full force and effect.” I’d love to know how much of that oil moving through is actually Iranian oil now that the naval blockade was supposedly lifted, versus some kind of messaging exercise aimed at calming down the markets and the oil industry before Monday.

Here’s the audio from the IRGC Navy broadcast. Listen for yourself.

As all of this is unfolding, Donald Trump is posting a poll on social media asking whether people prefer the spelling “Dumocrat” or “Dumbocrat.”

He also posted that Democrats are somehow wrong to point out Iran is in a stronger negotiating position now than three months ago, despite what he calls their “military defeat” and again claimed they have no navy left. Except Iran’s navy is the same navy the Wall Street Journal and outlets all over the world reported turned back tankers trying to cross the Strait this week. And all objective analysis shows that the U.S. lost this war.

Meanwhile, Trump also found time this morning to revive attacks on Dr. Fauci. Anything to distract from his failures.

Iran’s Two-Track Strategy

Iran appears to be running a dual-track approach. On one hand, they’re choking off the Strait of Hormuz as leverage. On the other, they’re still sending a delegation to Switzerland to keep talking.

And look at who’s reportedly on that delegation. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Deputy Supreme National Security Council head Ali Bagheri Kani, Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, two deputy foreign ministers, and a deputy oil minister. That’s diplomacy, national security, sanctions relief, banking, and energy all represented at the senior level. As Iran analyst Babak Vahdad put it, this doesn’t look like a routine negotiating team, but like a delegation prepared to actually implement something.

Trump-appointed U.S. negotiators Jared Kushner, left, the president's son-in-law-and Trump golfing partner and fellow New York City real estate devloper Steve Witkoff during Iran War negotiations in Islamabad (Pool photo).

So who is the United States sending to match that? Steve Witkoff. A real estate guy. And reportedly Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, the same Kushner who nearly went bankrupt on his 666 Fifth Avenue tower and had to get bailed out by foreign investment during Trump’s first term. JD Vance might show up too. You know who isn’t there? Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I’m no fan of his, but isn’t representing American diplomacy at moments like this supposed to be his entire job?

Lebanon Keeps Burning

While all of this plays out over the Strait, Israel’s bombardment of southern Lebanon has not let up for a single day (as shown in the photo collage above of Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the past week or so). Overnight, roughly 20 more people were killed. Two days before that, around 50. The Lebanese health ministry’s running tally now sits above 4,000 killed since March 2, with thousands more wounded. Drop Site News reported at least 30 civilians killed since midnight in a fresh wave of strikes hitting more than 25 residential sites, with the town of Nabatieh bearing the brunt of it. 

Clause one of the ceasefire agreement is supposed to mean exactly what it says: a complete and total stop to Israeli attacks on Lebanon. That is not what’s happening.

And it’s not like Israeli officials are even hiding their intentions. Defense Minister Israel Katz said outright that the entire first line of Lebanese villages has been destroyed, that Israel is leveling homes, and that residents will never see them standing again. I showed you yesterday the horrifying statement from Itamar Ben-Gvir about wanting Lebanese mothers to weep and declaring that “all Lebanon must burn.” That is the kind of language being used by people in power right now, and it is grotesque.

Then you have Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Leiter insisting Israel has “no territorial ambitions” in Lebanon and seeks to live “side by side” with its neighbors behind secure and recognized borders. But let’s parse the language. Israel is currently inside Lebanese territory. That is the literal opposite of behind the border. The “secure and recognized borders” Israel is referring to are territory it is claiming control over inside Lebanon. They are refusing to leave, and now the Strait of Hormuz is closed again partly as a consequence of that refusal. It is apparently more important to expand the territory currently occupied than to comply with the very agreement the U.S. brokered and that Israel claims to honor as an ally.

I think about the photos coming out of Lebanon right now. Mothers, fathers, children, killed in just the last 48 hours. I have a young daughter myself, and looking at images of little girls who didn’t survive these strikes is something I can’t get used to, and shouldn’t have to.

On top of all that, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert published a piece in Haaretz this week accusing his own country’s government and military establishment of conducting, in his words, a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the West Bank. As journalist Mehdi Hasan pointed out, if virtually any other public figure in the U.S., UK, Germany, or France wrote that headline, their career would likely be over and they’d be smeared as antisemitic. The author here is a former Israeli prime minister. I will always be appalled by what happened on October 7th and the brutal treatment of hostages that followed. That does not excuse these actions levied against so many innocent civilians.

Trump Ramps Up His Fight with Italy

U.S. President Trump Donald and two prime ministers, Japan's Sanae Takaichi, center, and Italy's Giorgia Meloni, right at the Group of Seven ("G7") leadership conference in France this week.

As if there weren’t enough fires burning, Trump decided this was also the moment to torch the relationship with one of America’s closest European allies. As I reported yesterday, Trump claimed Giorgia Meloni “begged” for a photo with him at the G7 in France and is now only acting friendly again because her domestic popularity is suffering and she wants her “numbers up.” He tied her unpopularity to her refusing to let the U.S. use Italian airstrips and to her not backing some unspecified action against Iran’s nuclear program, conveniently ignoring that NATO as a whole took the same position.

Here’s the actual fact check. Trump’s favorability in Italy sits at around 7 percent, with 86 percent unfavorable. So the idea that cozying up to him would help Meloni’s numbers is backwards. If anything, standing up to him is what’s helping her politically at home.

And Meloni didn’t take it quietly. Yesterday she called out Trump for completely making the whole story up. This morning, after Trump doubled down, Meloni responded directly again, saying his “constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless,” that her popularity has never depended on her relationship with him, and that it certainly hasn’t been helped by being associated with him. She made clear that American use of Italian military bases is governed by existing agreements that Italy has always honored, and that those agreements cannot be unilaterally rewritten. “Italy remains a sovereign nation,” she said, before closing with this: her popularity is none of his concern, and he should focus on his own.

Let me remind everyone that Meloni is a right-wing nationalist, exactly the kind of European leader you’d expect Trump to get along with. Instead he’s manufacturing a diplomatic crisis with her at the exact moment Italy’s foreign minister has already cancelled a planned trip to Washington over his behavior. This is happening while the U.S. is more isolated internationally than it’s been in a long time, in the middle of a war Trump himself started without even informing our allies.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and the Larger Mess Trump Has Left Behind

An aerial view shows crews dismantling the UFC fighting venue on the South Lawn of the White House. The grass on the Ellipse has been completely destroyed following the UFC viewing party(REUTERS image by Aaron Schwartz June 19, 2026. )

One more thing before I let you go. As I’ve said, this has become the perfect visual metaphor for this entire administration. Trump blamed the fact that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned green following his renovations on “vandals” in the Democratic Party. He said the algae is “75 percent gone” and blamed the whole mess on “Radical Left Lunatics.” What a clown show.

And by the way, the Reflecting Pool is not the only thing falling apart on the National Mall right now. The grass on the Ellipse is destroyed after the UFC viewing event Trump held there. Crews are out there right now dismantling that fighting venue from the South Lawn.

It appears the paint or whatever the Trump regime used to cover the large “86 47” etched into the lawn near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has worn away, and the numbers are once again visible .(REUTERS image by Aaron Schwartz June 19, 2026.)

And if you look at aerial photos of the area near the Reflecting Pool, you can still make out “86 47” etched into the lawn, the paint or whatever they used to cover it up has worn away, and the numbers are visible again. More visible than ever, in fact. The East Wing grounds have of course been bulldozed too. Image An aerial view shows crews dismantling the UFC fighting venue on the South Lawn of the White House.

The grass on the Ellipse has been completely destroyed following the UFC viewing party. 

Even the ground beneath his own feet in Washington is falling apart, and he still can’t take responsibility for any of it.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

Future President Trump, above right, with his onetime best friend Jeffrey Epstein, left, along with Trump's now-notorious birhday greeting to Epstein.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Important Epstein Deep Dive: Investigations Ramp Up as Accountability is Coming, Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. As promised, I wanted to take a deep dive into the Epstein files and the question of accountability. With so much attention on the document releases, it has become easy to lose sight of what has actually happened as a result. After speaking with survivors, members of Congress, and others involved in this issue, I have compiled a detailed list of individuals who have faced real consequences.

TikTok has completely censored my content today and nothing will post, so I figured we start the day with some Epstein news.

I also want to walk through the investigations that are currently underway, the depositions that are scheduled, and what may come next. It is important that we keep the Epstein files at the forefront of the public conversation, because this story is far from over.

This work is only possible because of your support. Many platforms are reluctant to amplify this information, but people deserve to know where things stand, where the investigations are headed, and who has actually been held accountable.

Investigations

Borge Brende

Position: Former Foreign Minister of Norway; President and CEO of the World Economic Forum. Brende, above, resigned as president and CEO of the World Economic Forum in February 2026. His departure followed disclosures that he remained in contact with Epstein long after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting a minor. The revelations raised questions about his judgment and associations while leading one of the world’s most influential international organizations.

Peter Mandelson

Position: British Ambassador to the United States, right; Labour Party politician; member of the House of Lords. Mandelson was arrested by British police, released on bail, and remained under investigation. He had already lost his position as ambassador after scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein intensified. He was also forced to resign from the Labour Party and the House of Lords. His case involved both legal scrutiny and the loss of multiple high-profile political positions.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (Prince Andrew)

Then-Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts, later Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001.

Position: British royal family member; former British trade envoy. Prince Andrew was arrested and later released while an investigation continued. Prior disclosures had already resulted in the loss of his royal titles and removal from his royal residence. Authorities were investigating allegations that he shared confidential information with Epstein while serving as a trade envoy. The consequences included legal scrutiny as well as the loss of royal status and privileges.

Thorbjørn Jagland

Position: Former Prime Minister of Norway; former Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Jagland, right, was criminally charged with “gross corruption” by Norwegian authorities. Investigators examined whether gifts, travel, and loans connected to Epstein were linked to his public positions. Released communications showed extensive contact between the two men. He faced one of the most severe forms of accountability: formal criminal charges.

Mona Juul

Position: Norwegian Ambassador to Jordan and Iraq. Juul was suspended from her diplomatic post before resigning. Norwegian police subsequently announced a corruption investigation involving her and her husband over financial dealings connected to Epstein. The fallout cost her a senior diplomatic role and exposed her to possible legal consequences. The investigation remained ongoing at the time of publication.

Terje Rød-Larsen

Position: President and CEO of the International Peace Institute; diplomat involved in the Oslo peace process. Rød-Larsen became the subject of a Norwegian police investigation after reports concerning financial benefits connected to Epstein. Years earlier, he had resigned from the International Peace Institute after revelations involving donations and a personal loan from Epstein. The renewed investigation brought additional scrutiny to conduct that had already ended one major leadership career.

Jack Lang

Position: Former French Minister of Culture; President of the Arab World Institute. Lang, shown above left with Epstein in a file photo, resigned as head of the Arab World Institute after French authorities began investigating reports of financial ties between his family and Epstein. The resignation followed growing public scrutiny surrounding the allegations. Although no charges had been announced, the investigation led to the loss of a prestigious leadership position.

Morgan McSweeney

Position: Chief of Staff to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. McSweeney resigned under political pressure because of his role in appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. McSweeney has no known ties to Epstein. Nevertheless, he became caught up in the broader fallout resulting from the controversy.

Joanna Rubinstein

Position: Chair of Sweden for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. Rubinstein resigned after documents revealed that she and her family had visited Epstein’s private island. The disclosures generated public scrutiny and questions about her judgment. She subsequently left a prominent international humanitarian position. Her accountability came in the form of resignation rather than legal action.

Miroslav Lajčák

Position: National Security Adviser to Slovakia’s Prime Minister; former Slovak Foreign Minister. Lajčák stepped down after emails surfaced showing exchanges with Epstein that appeared to joke about young women. The communications triggered political controversy and damaged confidence in his role. He resigned from one of the most sensitive positions in the Slovak government. The consequence was the loss of public office.Academia

Leon Botstein

Position: President of Bard College. Botstein announced his retirement after files showed years of messages and visits involving Epstein. Bard College commissioned an independent review that criticized aspects of his leadership but found no illegal conduct. Nevertheless, the controversy contributed to his decision to step down.

Joichi Ito

Position: Former Director of the MIT Media Lab; technology entrepreneur. Ito resigned from a Japanese government technology initiative after renewed attention to his ties with Epstein. Earlier disclosures had already led to his resignation from MIT’s Media Lab, several corporate boards, and academic positions. The consequences accumulated over multiple years and institutions. His case represents one of the most extensive examples of professional fallout in academia.

Larry Summers

Position: Former President of Harvard University; former U.S. Treasury Secretary. Summers announced he would stop teaching at Harvard and resigned from university leadership roles. Earlier fallout had already included resignations from think tanks, the board of OpenAI, and the loss of a New York Times contributor position. Newly disclosed emails showed ongoing contact with Epstein after serious allegations had emerged.

Richard Axel

Position: Nobel Prize-winning scientist; Columbia University professor. Axel resigned as co-director of a Columbia neuroscience institute and stepped down from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Documents portrayed him as a frequent guest at Epstein’s residence and an intermediary with university officials. The disclosures generated intense scrutiny within the academic community.

Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn

Position: Vice Dean, Columbia University College of Dental Medicine. Columbia University stripped Moss-Salentijn of her vice dean title after documents suggested she helped develop a customized academic plan for Epstein’s girlfriend. She retained her tenured faculty position but lost her administrative authority. The university’s action reflected concerns about her conduct in an admissions-related matter.

Dr. Thomas Magnani

Position: Columbia University Dental School affiliate; dentist. Columbia University severed all remaining ties with Magnani after disclosures connected him to efforts to secure admission for Epstein’s girlfriend. The university removed him from admissions and volunteer leadership roles. Although he had not taught there for several years, the institution formally ended its association with him.

David A. Ross

Position: Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts; museum executive. Ross resigned as department chair after emails revealed a friendship with Epstein spanning decades. The disclosures generated public criticism and pressure within the arts community. He subsequently stepped down from his academic leadership role.

Elisa New

Position: Former Harvard professor; host of PBS’s Poetry in America. Arizona State University ended its relationship with New, and PBS canceled her television program. The actions followed revelations that Epstein had helped develop and fund the project. She lost both a university affiliation and a nationally distributed media platform.

Business

Casey Wasserman

Position: Founder of Wasserman talent agency; sports and entertainment executive. Wasserman’s company removed his name from the agency and began seeking a buyer after numerous clients left. The departures followed the release of emails involving Ghislaine Maxwell.

Dr. Bernard Kruger

Position: Concierge medicine physician. Kruger stepped away from positions at two concierge medical practices after details of his relationship with Epstein became public. The disclosures led to questions about his professional judgment and associations. He subsequently relinquished leadership and professional roles.

Bob Kerrey

Position: Former U.S. Senator from Nebraska; Chairman of a clean-energy company. Kerrey resigned as chairman of a clean-energy company after documents showed continued contact with Epstein following Epstein’s plea deal. The disclosures generated criticism regarding his decision to maintain the relationship. He subsequently stepped down from his corporate leadership role.

Dr. Peter Attia

Position: Physician, author, and CBS News contributor. Attia resigned as a CBS News contributor and had previously stepped down from a corporate science position. Documents described close contact with Epstein, including visits and correspondence over several years. Public backlash followed publication of those details. The result was the loss of multiple professional affiliations.

Thomas J. Pritzker

Position: Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Pritzker stepped down as executive chairman of Hyatt after files revealed continuing contact with Epstein after Epstein’s plea deal. The disclosures prompted scrutiny of his judgment and associations. He relinquished one of the most important leadership roles in the hospitality industry.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem

Position: Chairman and CEO of DP World. Bin Sulayem resigned from leadership of the global ports company DP World. Documents suggested efforts to arrange business opportunities with Epstein and contained exchanges concerning women. After his identity became public, pressure mounted rapidly. The consequence was the loss of leadership of a major international corporation.

James E. "Jes" Staley

Position: Chief Executive Officer of Barclays. Staley,  shown above right with Epstein in file photos, resigned as CEO of Barclays in 2021 amid scrutiny of his ties to Epstein. Evidence showed that he maintained contact with Epstein after Epstein’s plea agreement and visited him during his sentence. Regulatory and public pressure intensified over time.

Leon Black

Position: Co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management; Chairman of the Museum of Modern Art. Black, shown above left in a collage with Epstein, stepped down from all leadership positions at Apollo Global Management and later from the Museum of Modern Art. Investigations highlighted extensive business and social ties to Epstein, including large payments for advisory services. The disclosures generated sustained public and investor scrutiny.U.S. Politics

George J. Mitchell

Position: Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader; diplomat and peace negotiator. Mitchell resigned from the Mitchell Institute and saw institutions remove his name from programs, awards, and honors. Queen’s University Belfast removed a bust of him and renamed a research institute that bore his name. Other organizations also distanced themselves from his legacy.

Alexander Acosta

Position: U.S. Secretary of Labor; former federal prosecutor. Acosta, right, resigned as labor secretary in 2019 after criticism of his handling of Epstein’s 2008 plea deal while serving as a federal prosecutor. Critics argued that the agreement was overly lenient given the allegations. The controversy became politically untenable and ultimately ended his Cabinet tenure.

Law

Kathryn Ruemmler

Position: General Counsel of Goldman Sachs; former White House Counsel. Ruemmler announced she would leave Goldman Sachs after emails revealed a long-running friendship with Epstein. The correspondence showed personal and professional interactions spanning many years. Public scrutiny intensified after the communications became public.

Brad Karp

Position: Chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Karp resigned as chairman of one of the nation’s most influential law firms after emails suggested a deeper relationship with Epstein than previously understood. The disclosures included legal advice he offered regarding Epstein’s earlier plea agreement. Although he remained at the firm, he relinquished its top leadership role. His accountability was the loss of the chairmanship.

Here are the pending investigations:

• New Mexico Criminal: The state of New Mexico has launched an active criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s activities at Zorro Ranch, his sprawling property outside Santa Fe, while a separate legislative “Truth Commission” is conducting a survivor-centered inquiry into what occurred there and whether institutions failed to act. In recent months, investigators from the New Mexico Department of Justice executed a search of Zorro Ranch and issued preservation orders to major companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Google, and PayPal, directing them to retain any records related to Epstein.
• New Mexico Truth Commission: One of the most significant developments in the Epstein case is New Mexico's newly established Truth Commission, a legislative investigative body tasked with examining Jeffrey Epstein's activities in the state, particularly at his Zorro Ranch property outside Santa Fe. The commission has already begun issuing subpoenas to state agencies, law enforcement offices, government officials, and private organizations in an effort to uncover records related to Epstein's operations, financial dealings, and relationships in New Mexico. Among the records being sought are communications involving former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, documents related to Zorro Ranch, law enforcement files, and information about donations made by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Commissioners have described the effort as a survivor-centered investigation focused on establishing a full public record of what occurred in New Mexico, identifying institutional failures, and ensuring accountability for anyone who may have enabled or concealed Epstein's activities.
• Overseas Investigations: The release of millions of pages of Epstein-related documents has triggered a wave of investigations outside the United States, with authorities in at least eight countries and the European Union opening probes into individuals, financial networks, and possible misconduct connected to Epstein's global network. In the United Kingdom, investigators arrested both Prince Andrew and former British Ambassador Peter Mandelson, while British authorities continue examining allegations uncovered through the files. Norway has launched some of the most aggressive actions, including criminal charges against former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland and investigations involving other current and former officials. Authorities in France, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Turkey, and Slovakia are also reviewing ties revealed in the documents, while the European Union's anti-fraud office has opened its own investigation into Mandelson. These inquiries range from allegations of corruption and abuse of office to questions surrounding financial relationships, trafficking networks, and whether powerful individuals received benefits or provided assistance through their connections to Epstein.

Upcoming Key Dates: House Oversight Committee Testimony

• June 26, 2026 — Leon Black, co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management, is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee.
• July 9, 2026 — Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein’s former attorney. Requested
• July 15, 2026 — Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House Counsel and former General Counsel of Goldman Sachs, is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee.
• July 23, 2026 — Jes Staley, former CEO of Barclays, is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

These hearings are expected to provide lawmakers with additional information about relationships, communications, and decision-making involving Jeffrey Epstein and his network, and could shape the direction of future investigations.

Epstein Survivor Stories:

Finally, I wanted to share the voices of those most directly affected by Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. Over the course of this investigation, me and other journalists have sat down with multiple survivors and advocates who have spent years fighting for accountability and transparency. Their stories provide a powerful reminder that this is not simply a story about documents, investigations, or powerful people. It is a story about real victims whose lives were forever changed.

Below, you’ll hear from:

• Jess Michaels:
• Marina Lacerda and Andrea Sterling:
• Sky and Amanda Roberts:
• Danielle Bensky:

All of these survivors offer a unique perspective on the lasting impact of Epstein’s abuse, the pursuit of justice, and why the fight for accountability continues today.

More On Trump Administration New York Times, Book Preview: A President Using Super Glue and Irked About Epstein: Takeaways From a New Trump Book, Tim Balk, June 18, 2026. The book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times, “Regime Change,” reveals a host of details and surprising exchanges as President Trump pushed to drastically expand his power.

A hunger for vengeance. A lack of restraints. A fixation on interior decorating and a drive to leave lasting marks on his office.

That is the portrait of President Trump in his second term that emerges from “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” a new book by two New York Times reporters, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

The 464-page book, set to be released on Tuesday, describes Mr. Trump’s relentless, norm-shattering efforts to bend the federal government, cultural institutions and news cycles to his will. It draws on extensive interviews conducted on the condition of anonymity to recount internal discussions and sensitive issues. Throughout the reporting process, the authors write, they made extensive efforts to contact the people named in the book and to give them ample opportunity to offer their perspective.

A group of formerly enslaved people at a wharf during the American Civil War.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

“Regime Change” describes the “most powerful president of our lifetimes” — a leader operating on “grievances and instincts” who could be found, on at least one occasion, decorating the White House with a tube of super glue.ImageA book cover with the title, subtitle and authors' names on a gold, textured backgroundCredit...Simon & Schuster

Here are 11 takeaways from the book. lTrump relished watching Zuckerberg and Bezos try to ingratiate themselves with him.

After Mr. Trump won the 2024 election, the book says, he reveled in the ways that tech leaders who had once scorned him were now “kissing my ass.”

He especially enjoyed the outreach from Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, who had barred Mr. Trump from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.ImageFrom left, Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai standing together before President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.The book details how tech executives including Mark Zuckerberg, left, and Jeff Bezos, center alongside Lauren Sánchez, now his wife, sought to ingratiate themselves with Mr. Trump.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

At Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump would tell visitors about texts he had received from the titans of tech companies, the book says. In one instance, he showed guests a photo of a letter from one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s children, who had written that they eagerly awaited “the golden age of America” arriving with Mr. Trump’s return, according to the book. In another, he showed a text from Jeff Bezos with a smiling selfie of the Amazon founder and Lauren Sánchez, now his wife.

At a dinner after the 2024 election, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bezos commiserated, according to the book, over a source of shared frustration: The Washington Post, Mr. Bezos’s newspaper, whose coverage had long irritated Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bezos, who bought The Post in 2013, complained that the newspaper had been his worst investment, the book says.

“The people there are terrible,” Mr. Bezos said of the news organization’s business side, according to the book. “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen.”

At another point, Mr. Trump seemed to marvel at his new reception in the tech world.

“They hated me,” he told Elon Musk, referring to Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Bezos, the book recounts. He added, “And look at them now.”

MS NOW Daily, Why Trump's spectacles keep backfiring, Michael Steele, right, June 20, 2026. Trump keeps celebrating himself. Americans have other ideas.

After winning a cage match in front of the White House last weekend, UFC fighter Josh Hokit paused his postfight interview to take a vulgar swipe at former first lady Michelle Obama. In the days that followed, Obama began trending across social media — not because of the insult, but because Americans responded by celebrating her, sharing elegant portraits, highlighting her accomplishments and praising the grace and dignity she brought to public life.

It is a familiar pattern in the Trump era. First comes the clumsy effort to glorify the president and demean his perceived opponents. Then comes the public reaction that elevates the very people and values he is trying to diminish. President Donald Trump wanted Americans to celebrate his birthday with a big UFC fight. Instead, he reminded Americans of everything they appreciated about the Obamas.

Trump wants love, but he doesn’t know how to win it. He wants respect, but he doesn’t know how to earn it. He wants to be feared, but he doesn’t know how to inspire it. Frustrated, he turns to forced displays of loyalty and empty threats. And Americans respond with ridicule or something he may find worse: indifference.

U.S. Law, Elections, Rights, Courts

Lev Remembers, Commentary, Trump’s Election Takeover Has Begun — And Five States Are Finally Fighting Back, Lev Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. California, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are building the first firewall against federal election interference. Every state should be watching.

For more than a year, I have been warning about this moment.

From the first day Donald Trump returned to office, I have said the same thing: he is not planning on leaving. This was never only about winning another election, punishing his enemies, relitigating the past, or repeating the same lies about fraud. Those were always symptoms of something larger.

This was about control.

Control of the Justice Department. Control of the FBI. Control of the intelligence community. Control of the courts. Control of the states. And, ultimately, control of the one thing that can still stop him: the election itself.Subscribed

Now, finally, states are beginning to understand the danger.

California, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are already moving to put protections in place against federal interference in their elections. These states are not overreacting. They are not playing politics. They are recognizing the seriousness of the moment and taking steps before the crisis arrives at their doorstep.

California has acted to protect ballots, voter data, election technology, election workers, and the chain of custody of votes. Other states are moving to restrict federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement activity around polling places. Virginia has moved to limit National Guard interference with voting. Washington is working to protect voters and election workers from intimidation.

These actions matter because the Constitution does not give Donald Trump the power to take over state elections simply because he distrusts the result, dislikes the outcome, or manufactures a claim of fraud. But we have learned by now that the absence of legal authority has never stopped him from trying to seize power. His method is always the same. Create pressure. Create confusion. Create a crisis. Then step forward and claim that only he has the authority to restore order.

That is the pattern.

And that is what states must prepare for now.

I have been speaking with officials across the country. I have been warning people who need to hear this directly. What I have said privately is the same thing I have said publicly on this platform: do not wait until federal agents are standing near polling places. Do not wait until ballots are challenged, seized, or treated as evidence. Do not wait until voter rolls are demanded. Do not wait until election workers are intimidated and state officials are forced into a confrontation with Washington.

By then, the crisis has already begun.

This is how democratic systems are weakened. It does not always happen in one dramatic moment. It happens through a series of claims, pressures, investigations, legal theories, emergency powers, and manufactured threats. They say they are protecting elections. They say they are investigating fraud. They say they are securing the vote. They say they are defending the country.

And then, before people fully understand what has happened, the federal government is inside the machinery of a state election. Local officials are afraid. Voters are uncertain. Election workers become targets. Ballots become the subject of federal claims. The president, who should be restrained by the system, begins claiming authority over the system itself.

That is why these state laws matter.

They are not symbolic. They are a firewall.

They are an early recognition that free elections cannot be protected after the fact. They must be protected before the abuse begins. They must be defended before the pretext is created. They must be secured before the machinery is tested by people who do not believe the law applies to them.

But five states are not enough.

Every state that still believes in free elections needs to act now. Governors need to act. Secretaries of state need to act. Attorneys general need to act. State legislatures need to act. County election officials need to act. Judges need to be ready. And the public needs to understand what is happening before the chaos begins.

The 2026 election is not just another midterm.

It is the election that determines whether there is still a functioning check on Donald Trump’s power. It determines whether Congress can investigate him. Whether subpoenas can be issued. Whether cover-ups can be exposed. Whether the money trails can be followed. Whether the files and records that have been hidden from the American people can finally see daylight.

That is why this election matters so much.

That is why he fears it.

And that is why the preparations we are seeing now should concern every American, regardless of party. Election protection is not a side issue. It is the issue. Because if the election can be controlled, everything that follows can be controlled.

This is where I need you to pay close attention to the names and the pattern.

Joe DiGenova. Todd Blanche. Bill Pulte. DNI. Southern Florida. The federal courts. The intelligence apparatus. The election machinery.

You may not have heard Joe DiGenova’s name in the center of this yet. But you will. And when you do, remember this warning.

What I am hearing from sources is that these moves are not isolated. They are connected. The activity around the Justice Department, the activity around DNI, the activity in southern Florida, the loyalty tests, the firings, the pressure campaigns, the effort to clean house — all of it fits into a broader strategy to create the legal, intelligence, and political justification Trump needs.

Todd Blanche was not brought into Trump’s orbit by accident. He was Trump’s personal attorney, and Trump has positioned him at the center of the Justice Department. Bill Pulte did not appear out of nowhere. The moves around DNI matter. The effort to come in immediately, clean house, remove people, replace people, and reshape agencies around Trump’s personal demands matters.

On day one, they were not thinking about governing in the traditional sense. They were thinking about control.

Who needs to be removed? Who needs to be replaced? Which agencies need to be reshaped? Which investigations need to be opened? Which enemies need to be targeted? Which loyalists need to be installed?

Now connect that to elections.

If Trump can create the appearance of fraud, if he can manufacture a “national security” concern, if he can use DOJ, DNI, FBI, or a friendly courtroom to claim that certain states cannot be trusted to run their own elections, then he has the pretext he needs to try to expand federal power into the election process.

That is the danger.

This is not only about stealing votes. It is about stealing the authority to decide who gets to count them, who gets to certify them, who gets to challenge them, and who gets to control the narrative when the results do not go his way.

That is why the laws being passed in California, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are so important. These states are recognizing that the first defense against authoritarian power is preparation. They are building protections before the machinery is tested. They are drawing lines before those lines are crossed.

The broader strategy is becoming clearer.

Use the federal government to create pressure. Use claims of fraud as the excuse. Use national security as the cover. Use loyalists inside agencies to create justification. Use friendly courts to legitimize the move. Use confusion to frighten the public. Then present federal intervention as the only solution.

I have seen how this kind of operation works. I was inside Trump’s world. I saw how pressure campaigns are built. I saw how back channels become policy. I saw how lies are turned into official actions. I saw how a phrase like “just asking questions” can become a weapon. I saw how loyalty is used to replace law.

And I am telling you now: elections are the next front.

They are the final wall.

If that wall falls, everything else falls with it.

More On U.S. Governance, Politics, Elections 

Shown above: A group of formerly enslaved people at a wharf during the American Civil War (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images).

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 19, 2026 [Celebrating Juneteenth Announcement That U.S. Slaves Were Free], Heather Cox Richardson, right, June 20, 2026. June 19 is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.

That announcement came as late as it did because while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”

Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.

But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.

In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.

Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the anniversary of the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.

By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.

Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.

Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.

In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.

Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.

But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy requires skewing the vote toward the wealthy and white men. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.

Today, those voices are, once again, gaining traction. One hundred and sixty-one years after Juneteenth was established, we are in danger of losing the new nation that it celebrated—one that would honor the equality of all Americans.

PoliticusUSA, Opinion: Trump's Iran Deal Implodes And Sinks JD Vance, Jason Easley, right, June 20, 2026. Trump made JD Vance the face of the Iran deal, and when the deal imploded after less than 72 hours, it took the vice president down with it.

We have previously discussed how Donald Trump uses his vice president, JD Vance, as a human shield. Vance is so ambitious and so badly wants to be the next president that he has willingly allowed himself to be the fall guy for Trump’s failure.

Trump made Vance the lead negotiator on the Iran deal. Trump has put Vance front and center in the media to defend this deal, and Vance ate it all up. Vance did the White House press briefing on Thursday, and it was a complete failure.

On Saturday, Vance, right, went on one of the biggest Trump-friendly shows on all of media, Fox and Friends, and said:

 Jared and Steve have been on the ground now for a few hours dealing with some of the technical elements of this negotiation. As you guys know, one of the things the president has set us out to do as a high priority is to open the straits. That's now happened.

We actually got 16 million barrels of oil out of the Straits of Hormuz yesterday. That is a record going back to even before the conflict started. So you're seeing those ships move.

Vance is out there selling the heck out of this peace deal. The problem is that the deal has imploded thanks to Netanyahu.

The administration was warned by the intelligence community that Netanyahu was going to try to sabotage the Iran deal, and the Israeli leader wasted no time in trying to wreck the deal by continuing his attacks on Israel.

NBC News reported:

Iran said Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, citing ceasefire violations after Israel continued deadly strikes in southern Lebanon overnight.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy warned ships not to approach the waterway, which Iran had committed to reopening under the interim peace deal signed this week. It said in a statement that vessels’ safety would be at risk if they did so.

Iran’s top joint military command said the ⁠closure was the “first step” in response to what were described as ‌breaches of ⁠commitments by the U.S. and Israel, according to Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency.

The administration has responded by pretending that the deal is still moving forward, even though it has imploded.

As we previously discussed, the memorandum of understanding was not a final agreement. The MOU was an agreement to set the parameters for future negotiations.

Those negotiations have collapsed, but the White House is pretending that everything is fine.

US CENTCOM released a statement saying:

Commercial ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz increased June 20 as U.S. forces continued operating in the general area to support freedom of navigation.

Safe passage through the international waterway remained intact today as 55 merchant ships transited, moving large amounts of cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets.

Iran claims CENTCOM is lying. The administration claims that Iran doesn’t control the Strait of Hormuz. However, according to the MOU, Iran does control the straits.

The negotiations are chaotic, and it has all been thrown onto JD Vance, who, along with Trump, is the face of the Iran war loss and failed negotiations.

The whole pile of rubble is taking down Vance.JD Vance made himself the face of the Iran deal, and it could doom him as a 2028 presidential candidate.

MS NOW Daily, Elon Musk’s right-wing cheerleaders are deeply offended by criticism of his trillionaire status, Anthony L. Fisher, June 20, 2026. Musk’s superfans insult the working class, while posing as “anti-elites.”

Elon Musk’s new status as the world’s first trillionaire has unsurprisingly generated strong criticism, much to the horror of his loudest fans, who view pretty much any criticism of Musk as an attack on freedom and prosperity.

Some Musk detractors lamented the very existence of a trillionaire as an obscenity, when millions of Americans live one broken bone or illness away from financial ruin. Surely if a rising tide lifts all boats, then one man becoming a trillionaire — roughly tripling his net worth since bankrolling President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — ought to mean there’s enough wealth to trickle down to provide basic social services for the tens of millions of Americans struggling to make rent every month? Perhaps if one man’s businesses have been subsidized for years by billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, and whose net worth exceeds the GDP of all but 19 countries, then maybe there’s enough left over for average Americans to receive the kind of basic health coverage that’s a staple of every Western capitalist democracy but our own?

No! That’s just jealous, parasitic commie talk from people who hate “the accomplishments of great men,” say Musk’s right-wing fans — who are often beneficiaries of billionaires’ largesse themselves.

U.S. Education, Culture, History, Media 

New York Times, Disability Groups Fear RFK Jr.’s New Special Education Role, Michael C. Bender and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, June 20, 2026. Alienated by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims about autism, advocates for disabled students are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration's shifting special education programs to his department.

'The Trump administration’s decision this week to put Heath Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in charge of special education programs has sparked a sharp backlash from advocates for students with disabilities, who say the move will hurt children and that his views on autism make him unfit for the job.

Mr. Kennedy, below, said earlier this year that children with autism would never hold a job, play baseball or go on a date. He quickly walked back the remarks, saying he was only speaking about the most severe cases — only to insist the next day that special education should be moved into his department. “They’re health-related programs rather than particularly educated programs,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Advocates for students with disabilities said that Mr. Kennedy’s comments show how the change puts disabled students at risk of being viewed as medical conditions to be treated instead of as boys and girls to be educated.

“It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of who kids with disabilities are, how they can be successful in school and how their futures can be very bright,” said Katy Neas, chief executive officer of The Arc, a national support group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The move is part of an extraordinary effort from the Trump administration to dismantle the Education Department, which supporters have said would improve government efficiency, lead to better results for students and satisfy a decades-long promise from Republicans to shutter the agency.

Closing the department entirely requires approval from Congress, which has focused on other matters this term. In the meantime, the Trump administration has transferred tens of billions in Education Department programs to the six different federal executive agencies, which includes health and human services.

Courtney Parella Spencer, the health department’s top spokeswoman, said Mr. Kennedy “strongly agrees” with the idea that “a child’s disability isn’t viewed as a medical condition that needs to be treated.” She said health department experts had “significant accumulated knowledge serving individuals with disabilities,” and would pool their expertise across programs to ensure that students’ needs are met.

“This partnership is about making federal support systems work better for children and families,” Ms. Spencer said, “while fully preserving the legal protections and educational rights guaranteed under federal law.”

At the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, federal workers are shown trying limit algae that blossomed after a $14 million renovation masterminded by the Trump administration promptly triggered far more algae growth than previously because the pool bottom was painted blue, attracting more heat, and the filtration system was not fixed.

New York Times, The Reflecting Pool Appears to Be Rejecting Its Makeover, Aishvarya Kavi, June 20, 2026 (print ed.). As National Park Service crews try to clean the algae that turned the water bright green, another problem has developed: The “American flag blue” coating is coming off.

First, the new paint job appeared uneven. Then, an algae bloom turned the water an acid green. Now, large chunks of coating are peeling off the basin, creating islands of “American flag blue” alongside patches of pea green in a dark, murky soup.

The Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial seems to be rejecting its makeover.

President Trump’s project to reseal and paint the concrete basin of the century-old pool that stretches between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington was finished nearly two weeks ago, in time for the country’s 250th birthday, as he demanded. But it has been nothing but a headache for the administration since.

The Interior Department said on social media this week that its workers had “killed the algae” that had been hastened on by the heat and humidity. The water, it boasted, was now “crystal clear.” The posts were accompanied by images of the Washington Monument reflected in deep blue waters, an apparent rebuttal to criticism from experts who say the pool’s waters will not appear a brilliant blue until the government tackles the underlying problems that have stumped previous presidential administrations.

But on Friday afternoon, the murky water was stained by loose clumps of algae even where National Park Service staff members had scrubbed away the bright green blooms along the bottom of the basin. The new coating was also missing at least two large sections — one gap was about the size of a park bench, with a sheet several inches long flapping in the waves. Underneath appeared to be the original concrete basin.ImageA dislocated piece of coating sits in murky green water.A section of paint appears separated from the bottom of the pool amid an algae bloom.Credit...Alex Kent/The New York Times

Alex Hobe, 52, was standing at the pool’s edge, waving a small chip of paint. He had been making food deliveries in the area when he decided to see the pool renovations. When he spotted the chip floating in the water, he fished it out. It was semitransparent and rough to the touch.

Mr. Hobe called the pool renovation “a complete failure,” but expressed sympathy for 10 workers who were standing knee-deep in the green water and scrubbing away under the hot sun. “They’ve been out here for days,” he said.

On Friday night, Mr. Trump blamed at least some of the problems on “vandalism” by people who he said were out “to destroy and demean our beautiful work.”

“The algae is 75% gone, and the condition will soon be completely remedied, and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage, and will be fixed early next week,” he wrote on social media.The pool is plagued by multiple problems, including leaky and broken pipes that often leave it disconnected from its filtration system. Those issues were not addressed by the recent renovations. Workers have instead tried a series of temporary fixes, including adding hydrogen peroxide to the water this week in an attempt to kill the algae.

The cleanup effort was hard to miss on Friday. Sightseers stepped over pipes carrying acid-green water from the pool to nearby storm drains, and they raised their voices to speak over the whirring water filtration systems and fuel-guzzling water pumps.

Most workers at the pool had on National Park Service gear. It was unclear if the work was related to the installation of a water-purification system. The Times reported on Thursday that a business tied to a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a system earlier this spring.

The Trump Administration has been hiding the name of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as shown above by a Reuters photo, ever since a federal judge ordered workers to remove President Trump's name for the facility, which is required by law to be named after the late President Kennedy. Photographers have been seeking to showcase the spot where his name was removed, thus doubtless embarrassing Trump.

New York Times, ‘A Literal Coverup’: What Is the Kennedy Center Hiding Behind Those Tarps? Elizabeth Williamson, June 19, 2026. The arts center says it pulled President Trump’s name from the building front. But the result remains hidden by tarps, prompting questions and speculation.

In the early hours of June 13, in an action that turned out to be news around the world, workers hung massive tarps from scaffolding across the front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and under court order removed President Trump’s name from the marble facade.

Or did they?

True, the center’s operations chief, Matt Floca, filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed. And true, a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter “A” came off. Another photographer recorded evidence of the demise of a “D.”

But in a downer denouement for Mr. Trump’s critics, a week later the tarps are still there, prompting some to wonder whether at least some of the letters are, too. As of Friday evening, there was no visual evidence that the letters splashed across the building had been restored to “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Peering behind the tarps is impossible because they now lie tight against the building’s front.

“I don’t know if they took down the sign, because I can’t see it,” said Luna Woo, a violinist visiting from Portland, Ore., as part of the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. She and other young musicians in the program have been trying to see behind the tarps from a practice room overlooking them. No luck.

So when will the tarps come down?

A Kennedy Center spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, emailed a terse response:

“The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”

To the president’s supporters, the situation is “a lot of hoopla over nothing” as one theatergoer, who declined to give her name, said this week. To his opponents, the tarps are a towering symbol of Mr. Trump’s fragile ego.

“Donald Trump is embarrassed,” Representative Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement. An ex officio Kennedy Center board member, Ms. Beatty had sued to block the president’s takeover of the center, including the name change. “He lost in court, his name came down, and now he is trying to hide the result from the public.”

In a filing late Friday, Ms. Beatty asked the court overseeing the case to order the Kennedy Center to provide a sworn declaration explaining the tarps’ purpose and when they would come down. “A literal coverup, to add to all the others,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, wrote on social media.

“How vain can one man be? It’s petty. It’s absurd,” Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, chimed in on social media, calling the edit of Mr. Trump’s name “a huge win.”

Skeptics pointed out that the center’s many other maintenance projects had not been shielded by tarps, including repairs to the marble facade.

“I think it doesn’t take that long to preserve marble, but also what do I know about preserving marble?” said Tommy Gedrich, an actor appearing in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” at the center. The tarps block two backstage entrances, so the “Moulin Rouge” cast has to circumnavigate the center, two football fields wide, to reach its Opera House stage.

Mr. Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center’s board in February 2025, installing loyalists who in turn named him chairman. In December, the board voted to rename the Kennedy Center in Mr. Trump’s honor. A crew rolled a cherry picker up to the building’s facade and added “The Donald J. Trump and” atop the center’s original name.  

News Roundup

The Parnas Perspective, Saturday News Update and Commentary: Aaron Parnas, right, June 20, 2026. From Italy’s leader publicly calling out Donald Trump in a way we rarely see from a close American ally, to Trump demanding jail time for people he says interfered with his Reflecting Pool project, including an Olympian arrested today. Meanwhile, Iran has again closed the Strait of Hormuz as negotiations continue to face obstacles. And much more.

As I mentioned earlier, tomorrow’s Good News Update is still coming as scheduled. After that, I’ll likely take most of the day off to celebrate my first Father’s Day.

I recently learned that over the past year, we reached more than 80 million Americans. That is roughly one in four people in the country. None of that happens without you.

Here’s what you missed:

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni fired back after Trump doubled down on his attacks, telling him that his “constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless” and rejecting his claims about her popularity and Italy’s military cooperation with the United States. “Italy remains a sovereign nation,” Meloni wrote, before ending with a pointed message to Trump: “My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.”

This came in response to Donald Trump doubling down on the notion that Meloni begged him to take a picture with her:

Iran announced that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil-shipping routes, claiming that continued Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon violated the terms of a recent U.S.-Iran peace agreement. Iran warned ships to stay away from the waterway, although U.S. Central Command said dozens of merchant vessels were still transiting the strait and that American forces remained in place to help enforce the deal.

The crisis stems from Israeli strikes in Lebanon that reportedly killed dozens of people after a ceasefire was announced. Israel says it acted in response to attacks by the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, while Hezbollah denies violating the ceasefire and accuses Israel of trying to undermine the agreement.

Despite Iran’s declaration, U.S. Central Command said dozens of commercial ships were still transiting the strait and that American forces remained in the area to help enforce the agreement. The dispute centers on Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, which Israel says were a response to attacks by Hezbollah, while Hezbollah denies violating the ceasefire and accuses Israel of undermining the deal. The renewed fighting threatens broader U.S.-Iran negotiations over issues including Iran’s nuclear program, with talks expected to continue in Switzerland and with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan. The situation has also exposed tensions between the administration of President Donald Trump and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to handle the conflict in Lebanon.

At the same time, Trump was polling his followers on Truth Social about whether they prefer “Dumocrat” or “Dumbocrat” as a nickname for Democrats:

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least six people on Saturday, including two young sisters, ages 4 and 14, and an Al Jazeera cameraman, according to Palestinian officials. One strike hit a Gaza City apartment building overnight, while later strikes targeted a refugee camp and a tent encampment, causing additional deaths and injuries. The Israeli military said it was investigating the strike that killed the children and stated that the Al Jazeera cameraman, Ahmed Wishah, was killed in a targeted attack because it alleged he was affiliated with Hamas, a claim reported by Israel and disputed by his employer.

Trump planned a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.776 billion slush fund to reward his Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists (some shown above).

The 35 retired federal judges escalate challenge against Trump $1.7 billion slush fund and IRS deal. They say Trump Admin's latest filing "underscores the need to investigate whether the parties have perpetrated a fraud on this Court & corrupted the integrity of the judicial process."

Trump acknowledged problems with the recently renovated Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, including an algae bloom and peeling blue paint after a $14.2 million makeover. Trump blamed the issues on alleged vandalism and claimed, without presenting evidence, that chemicals had been used to damage the pool and surrounding grounds. The renovation was part of a broader effort to refurbish monuments in Washington, D.C., and included plans to make the pool “American flag blue” ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. Critics have questioned both the effectiveness of the project and the contracting process, while National Park Service workers continue efforts to remove algae and improve water quality.

David Hearn, a three-time Olympian, was arrested at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and charged with destruction of government property after police alleged he damaged the pool’s newly installed liner. Hearn denies vandalizing anything, saying he only touched a section of liner that was already peeling and never removed or damaged it. His arrest became a political flashpoint after President Donald Trump and allies blamed opponents for problems with the recently refurbished pool, including peeling material and algae growth. Hearn was detained for nearly five hours before being released and is scheduled to appear in court on July 9.

Trump called for jail sentences for those who he believes vandalize the pool:

A forthcoming book by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan claims that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately compared President Donald Trump to billionaire investor George Soros, right, reportedly saying that the two men are “the same animal.” The comparison is notable because Soros is a frequent target of criticism and conspiracy theories among many conservatives, including Trump himself. Bessent previously worked for Soros for many years, helping manage major investment strategies that generated billions of dollars in profits. The article notes that neither the White House nor the Treasury Department immediately commented on the reported remarks, which come from an advance excerpt of the upcoming book.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to step down after a report claimed he may announce his resignation timeline as early as Monday. The speculation intensified after political rival Andy Burnham won a seat in Parliament, giving him the ability to formally challenge Starmer’s leadership. According to the report, more than 100 Labour lawmakers have publicly called for Starmer to resign or set a departure date. However, a government source denied that a resignation decision had been made, saying Starmer remains focused on governing and intends to fight any leadership challenge.

Thousands of people attended a UFC watch party on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday at the White House grounds, leaving large sections of the Ellipse park badly damaged. Aerial photographs showed extensive destruction of the grass after the event, prompting criticism online. The damage came shortly after separate controversy over problems with the renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, including algae growth and peeling paint. The UFC and Scotts Miracle-Gro have pledged to pay for repairs to the South Lawn, though it is unclear whether the Ellipse will also be restored. Despite the criticism, Trump praised his administration’s efforts to beautify Washington, D.C., in a social media post.

Trump unexpectedly endorsed both South Carolina Republican gubernatorial runoff candidates, Pamela Evette and Alan Wilson, after initially backing only Evette. The move comes after several Trump-endorsed candidates recently lost key Republican governor primaries in Iowa and Georgia, raising questions about the strength of his endorsements. Although Evette led the first round of voting, Wilson has gained momentum with endorsements from prominent Republicans, including Tim Scott. By endorsing both candidates ahead of the runoff, Trump effectively ensures that the eventual winner can claim his support, reducing the political risk of another endorsement loss.

A report by Pogo Investigates alleges that a political action committee linked to Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, right, received $250,000 in undisclosed “dark money” from The GEO Group, a major ICE detention contractor that has benefited from expanded immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. Critics argue the donation raises potential conflict-of-interest concerns because GEO Group derives substantial revenue from federal immigration detention contracts and reportedly saw profits increase significantly after new immigration funding and contracts were approved.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced that he will revoke Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s highest Polish state honor, the Order of the White Eagle, because Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a nationalist force accused in Poland of massacring tens of thousands of Poles during World War II. Ukrainian officials strongly condemned the move, arguing it benefits Russia by creating tensions between Ukraine and one of its key allies. Nawrocki insisted that the decision does not change Poland’s support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk urged both sides to avoid escalating the dispute, warning that such divisions please Russian President Vladimir Putin and concern Western allies. The controversy comes despite recent progress between Poland and Ukraine on addressing historical grievances and improving reconciliation over wartime atrocities.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has been ordered to stand trial on corruption-related charges and is barred from leaving Spain while the case proceeds. Prosecutors allege that she used her position as the prime minister’s spouse to help secure business contracts; Gómez denies the accusations and notes that the case was initiated by far-right groups. Investigating judge Juan Carlos Peinado required her to surrender her passport and report to court twice monthly.

A Louisiana pastor, Terry Reed, was sentenced to 80 years in prison after being convicted of raping and molesting two boys whomhe had taken into his home after gaining their families’ trust. Prosecutors said Reed used his position as a religious leader and cited scripture to manipulate the victims into believing the abuse was normal. The case marked Reed’s third conviction involving sexual crimes against minors, following guilty pleas in 1997 and 2017 for similar offenses. During sentencing, the mother of one victim described feeling profoundly betrayed and called Reed “an utter failure and a sorry excuse for a man,” while the judge imposed the maximum sentence for the molestation convictions.

An 85-year-old Florida man, William Bosworth, was arrested after deputies said he was racing a sports car at speeds exceeding 100 mph late at night in Leesburg. Authorities alleged that Bosworth was driving a gray Nissan sports car at about 110 mph while a red Corvette involved in the incident reached roughly 125 mph. When questioned by police, Bosworth denied racing, claiming he sped up to get away from another driver and was simply “having a little ride in my favorite car.” Body-camera footage reportedly showed him smoking a cigarillo during the traffic stop. He was charged with street racing and excessive speeding.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, shown in a file photo, declared a local emergency due to a stubborn commercial fire that has been burning since Wednesday at a cold-storage facility in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. The fire has repeatedly flared up, produced significant smoke, and affected air quality across the area, prompting officials to seek additional state resources. Authorities are also concerned that large quantities of frozen meat and bread stored at the facility could decompose, creating unpleasant odors and potential biohazard risks. Fire officials say hazardous refrigerants such as ammonia have already been removed, but crews continue to monitor conditions and fight the blaze. Temporary shelters have been opened for residents affected by the ongoing emergency.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, above, announced that he will take a two-month break from hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! and will be replaced by a rotating lineup of guest hosts. The guest hosts will include Tiffany Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Ike Barinholtz, Colman Domingo, Jelly Roll, and Rosie O’Donnell. Kimmel joked that O’Donnell’s appearance was a special gift for President Donald Trump, with whom she has had a long-running public feud. The announcement also referenced Kimmel’s brief suspension in 2025 after controversial comments following the death of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Kimmel said he is taking the break voluntarily and urged viewers to keep watching while he is away

More On Trump Foreign Policy

New York Times, The Unquiet American: Charles Kushner Brings Trump Diplomacy to France, Mark Landler, June 20, 2026. The U.S. envoy to Paris has emerged as the embodiment of combative diplomacy in the age of President Trump, riling the French establishment notably with his accusations of antisemitism.

Four days before marking the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, Charles Kushner, President Trump’s ambassador to France, made a quieter pilgrimage to a military cemetery in eastern France. There, he recited the Kaddish prayer over the graves of five Jewish American soldiers killed in World War I.

It was a solemn act of commemoration for Mr. Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who puts his faith at the heart of his diplomacy. But it is his full-throated advocacy on behalf of Jews living in today’s France that has drawn more attention, and reproach, in Paris, where he has cut a Trumpian swath through its decorous salons.

Mr. Kushner, whose son Jared is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, clashed with his French hosts weeks after arriving last July when he accused them of not doing enough to combat antisemitism. Nearly a year later, he contends the problem has gotten worse — so much so that he has suggested the Trump administration grant refugee status to French Jews, even as it otherwise scales back asylum provision.

“It would be an objective of mine to have, for the Jewish population here, more options to go to America rather than the option of only going to Israel,” Mr. Kushner said in an interview last week in his baronial residence in Paris. “They live in fear and they feel abandoned by this government.”

Statements like that, which he first put in an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron last August, have burned his bridges with the French Foreign Ministry. Mr. Kushner, 72, has been summoned twice to be rebuked for interfering in France’s inter

In February, he was called in after the U.S. Embassy reposted State Department comments that raised concerns about the beating death of a young far-right activist by far-left gangs. Mr. Barrot rejected what he called efforts to politicize a tragedy, saying, “We have no lessons to learn from the reactionary international movement.”

Such clashes, which once would have raised doubts about Mr. Kushner’s suitability for a diplomatic post, mark him as a fitting emissary for the age of Trump. He is not merely an in-law given a plum job but also a faithful messenger of Mr. Trump’s hostility toward Europe, whether that means pushing the fight against antisemitism or meeting with far-right political leaders. Mr. Kushner is among the best connected of a corps of ambassadors who have cast aside diplomatic niceties to channel a disdainful president.

“You know, America and France disagree on a lot of issues,” Mr. Kushner said in our interview. “This is not Charlie Kushner versus Barrot or Macron. America has a lot of issues in the world now that they have a very different opinion on than Europe and France, in particular.”

Mr. Kushner — joined in the interview by his wife, Seryl, and his influential chief of staff, Gabriel Scheinmann — was unrepentant about refusing to report to the French Foreign Ministry. Being summoned, he said, was “disrespectful to me personally” and “disrespectful to the United States government.”

A billionaire real estate developer from New Jersey, Mr. Kushner served more than a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and witness tampering, having hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with investigators against him, and then sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister. He was later pardoned by Mr. Trump.

Regarding his post in Paris, Mr. Kushner conceded that he did not have the “natural ingredients for diplomacy.” But he said, “We’re very results-oriented, so if that shakes things up sometimes, maybe we shake them up.”

Mr. Kushner and Mr. Barrot have since talked by phone, and Mr. Kushner’s access to French officialdom appears intact. He met for breakfast recently with Mr. Macron, accompanying Tom Barrack, who is Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Iraq. Mr. Kushner said he had a constructive relationship with the economics minister, Roland Lescure, for whom he organized a round table with executives from American technology companies.

Mr. Lescure said in an interview that he appreciated that Mr. Kushner did not impose the White House’s views at that session. But he said he shared his colleagues’ dismay at some of Mr. Kushner’s public statements.

“I don’t know any real estate guy who has become an ambassador,” Mr. Lescure said. “I’m not sure he’s fully learned to behave like one.”

Mr. Macron’s top advisers still steer clear of one-on-one meetings with Mr. Kushner, current and former French diplomats said, because they viewed his letter to the president as a personal attack on their boss. The French officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The tensions with Mr. Barrot, according to a senior American official, began after he did not warn Mr. Kushner at their first meeting in July 2025 that Mr. Macron planned to announce that evening that France would recognize the state of Palestine. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

A spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said that there was no intention to conceal and that France’s movement toward recognition was well known. The ministry declined to comment more broadly on its relations with Mr. Kushner; Mr. Macron’s office did not answer requests for comment.

The Trump administration has voiced no misgivings about Mr. Kushner’s conduct. A spokesman for the State Department, Tommy Pigott, said, “From his leadership in commercial diplomacy to his strong advocacy against antisemitism, Ambassador Kushner is committed to advancing the ‘America First’ foreign policy vision.”

Few French officials dispute that Mr. Kushner has a point in warning about antisemitism in France. According to the French Interior Ministry, the number of violent acts against Jews rose sharply after Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, even if the rate dropped slightly last year.

Antisemitism is on the rise across Europe and in the United States. In France, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations, the debate is especially layered in history. In World War II, the Nazi-backed regime that controlled southern France helped to deport French Jews to concentration camps. More recently, France’s recognition of Palestine — which Mr. Kushner called “a gift to Hamas” — stirred questions about whether the move would fuel anti-Jewish feeling in the country.

Yet experts contend that Mr. Kushner is wrong to say that the French government is not doing anything to counter antisemitism. France, they say, possesses a stronger legal arsenal to combat antisemitism than almost any other country, and it has significantly reinforced security at Jewish institutions.

“The ambassador, who is right to take an interest in this issue and who hopes that France could improve its measures, should use more diplomatic language if he wants to be heard,” said Marc Knobel, a historian and expert on antisemitism in France. Mr. Kushner, he added, would be well advised “to also concern himself with the antisemitism taking place in his own country.”

Mr. Kushner granted that. “If you told me 10 years ago that we would have the antisemitism here today, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’” He said the difference was that Mr. Trump had taken robust action against it. The administration has sued institutions like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania on the contested claim that they tolerated antisemitism on their campuses — while, Mr. Kushner noted, France had not taken comparable steps against French universities.

Mr. Kushner’s strong words have made him a hero among some Jews on both sides of the Atlantic. Before the ceremony at the military cemetery, American Jews lined up to thank him for his advocacy.

“He didn’t say it like the French would have liked, and it wasn’t very diplomatic,” said Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, a former director of the Europe branch of the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group. “But to have a U.S. ambassador who says he clearly cares about it, and this is a No. 1 priority — that is very reassuring,” she added.

As a child of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kushner said that he deplored acts of hatred against any people of any religion. He said he had met with Catholic priests and Muslim clerics to discuss interfaith tensions. Hassen Chalghoumi, an imam in Paris known for his outreach to Jews, said that Mr. Kushner’s family ties to Mr. Trump gave his efforts greater impact.

“The ambassador is not just an ambassador,” Mr. Chalghoumi said. “He is directly linked to the president’s family.”

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Jared Kushner helped engineer the Abraham Accords, agreements under which several Arab countries normalized diplomatic relations with Israel. Unabashedly proud of his son’s achievement, the ambassador gives visitors signed copies of his son’s memoir, “Breaking History.” Mr. Kushner is cultivating Middle East ambassadors in Paris, he said, in the hope of persuading more countries to join the accords.

One of those envoys, Rabih El Chaer of Lebanon, said that Mr. Kushner had floated a meeting in the United States between Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, an old friend of Mr. Kushner’s. When Mr. El Chaer hesitated, he recalled Mr. Kushner telling him, “I am a man of deals.” Mr. El Chaer said he replied, “I come from the Middle East, where we don’t simply skip over history.”

For Mr. Kushner, too, history hangs over this assignment. Next month, he will celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence with a party at his residence, at which guests will be serenaded by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Mr. Kushner has renovated the building, an 18th-century villa that was once owned by the Rothschilds and requisitioned by the Nazis during their occupation of Paris.

To fund the repairs, Mr. Kushner said that he had raised $10 million, much of it from the chiefs of France’s largest companies, whom he asked to contribute $250,000. Other diplomats said that such high-dollar donations were unusual, at least before Mr. Trump became president. Mr. Kushner is, he joked, the project’s “site super.”

There is a measure of rehabilitation for Mr. Kushner himself.

“If somebody wrote my story,” he said of the twists that carried him from prison to Paris, “I’d probably be put in the fiction section of a store rather than nonfiction.”

Yet when asked whether he viewed his ambassadorial post as a chance to write a different ending, Mr. Kushner shook his head.

“This is not retribution for me,” he said.

June 19

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: Israel Commits to New Lebanon Cease-Fire, Ambassador Says, but Troops Will Remain, Abdi Latif Dahir, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Euan Ward, June 19, 2026. Here’s the latest.
• New York Times, Opinion: Trump Put His Own Interests Above All in the Iran Deal, Thomas L. Friedman, right, June 19, 2026, June 20, 2026 (print ed.). Surely something about this preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran must have felt familiar to America’s real-estate mogul president. After all, it reads like a real-estate bankruptcy filing — an act of financial capitulation.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: MAGA Hates This Holiday, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, June 19, 2026.  In their version of our history, everything was always perfect.

News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: National Guard Patrols Reflecting Pool as Project Fails, "8647" is Back on the Mall, DOJ Disregards Court Order, Qatari Jet, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, June 19, 2026. There is a lot to cover today, from the war in Iran to the National Park Service’s no-bid contract with Greenwater Services that has now gone sideways at the Reflecting Pool, the new Qatari jet serving as Air Force One, and the Justice Department’s refusal to comply with another court order, this time involving the January 6th slush fund. The National Guard is now patrolling the Reflecting Pool, “8647” is back after efforts to cover it up on the National Mall failed, and much more.
• Meidas Touch Network, Today in Politics, Bulletin 401, Ron Filipkowski, right, June 19, 2026. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni released a video denouncing Trump for lying about an encounter with her at the G7 summit, which has caused an uproar in Italy. An Italian delegation led by their foreign minister also cancelled an upcoming trip to the US over the incident. 
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: World Erupts with Iran Deal in Trouble and Italy Blasts Trump all While Trump Declares "I'm the President. You're Not," Aaron Parnas, right, June 19, 2026. The U.S.-Iran agreement appears to be unraveling, with fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continuing in Lebanon and planned talks in Switzerland now canceled. Meanwhile, Trump has sparked a diplomatic dispute with Italy and is facing direct criticism from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. His response to the growing backlash: “I’m the president and you’re not.”

DC Investigations

• Myranda, Investigation: Trump Mega Donor at Center of Reflecting Pool Scandal Registered as Water Lobbyist Years Prior to Contract, Connection to Epstein and Organized Crime, Staff report, June 19, 2026. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been a symbol of American history for generations.
• New York Times, The Reflecting Pool Appears to Be Rejecting Its Makeover, Aishvarya Kavi, June 19, 2026. As National Park Service crews try to clean the algae that turned the water bright green, another problem has developed: The “American flag blue” coating is coming off.
• New York Times, Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity, Greg Jaffe and Kate Kelly, June 19, 2026. A Black admiral fixed one of the Navy’s worst messes. Mr. Hegseth blocked his promotion anyway. 
• Meidas Touch Network, Opinion: Elon’s Trillion Dollar Trump-Enabled Fraud, Max from UNFTR.com, June 12, 2026. This article reflects the author's opinions, commentary, and analysis, published in the exercise of First Amendment rights. SpaceX just hit the Nasdaq at a $2+ trillion valuation, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. We need to unpack this word — VALUE — which has apparently lost all meaning. We also need to address what this company actually is, because it is not what you’re being told.
• Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Russian Woman Convicted of Lying About Spy Ties, Stalking Agent Gets Prison Time, Kevin J. Hall, June 12, 2026. Nomma Zarubina sentenced to 14 months in prison for lying to the FBI about her ties to Russian intelligence agency and for facilitating prostitution.

 U.S. Governance, Law, Military  

• Heather Delaney Reese via Substack, Opinion and Comment: Trump says "there are no limits" to his power in a shocking new interview, Heather Delaney Reese, above right, June 19-20, 2026. Sitting in the White House after a long night of travel from the G7 summit, a visibly worn-down President of the United States was asked a simple question: what had he learned about the limits of his power? His answer came immediately. “There are no limits.”
• New York Times, Trump’s Military Budget Hits Snags Amid Questions on Iran War Costs, Catie Edmondson, June 19, 2026. Republicans and Democrats alike are casting doubt on a push for the largest military budget in history as the administration declines to disclose the cost of the war with Iran.
• Geddry's Newsletter, Commentary: Trump went to Versailles for a tribute and signed a surrender, Mary Geddry, June 19-20, 2026. He couldn't tell the difference.

More On Iran War

• New York Times, The Costs of the Iran War: Thousands of Lives and Billions of Dollars, Edward Wong and Aruni Soni, June 19, 2026. The human toll and economic costs mounted rapidly after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.
• New York Times, Vance’s Defense of Iran Deal Rests on Vague and Misleading Claims, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Rebecca F. Elliott and Erica L. Green, June 19, 2026 (print ed.). The vice president said the United States had leverage to dictate the outcome of the next round of negotiations. But he claimed incorrectly that Iran got no new benefit from the lifting of oil sanctions.
• New York Times, After Deal to Reopen Strait of Hormuz, Ships Begin to Move Cautiously, Jenny Gross, June 19, 2026. Shipping companies hoping to get their stranded vessels out face complications like mines and the lack of clear coordination.
• New York Times, Mideast Early Friday Live Updates: Deadly Attacks in Lebanon and Delay in Talks Test U.S.-Iran Deal, Abdi Latif Dahir, Johnatan Reiss and Francesca Regalado, June 19, 2026. Israel said it targeted Hezbollah militants after four of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. Switzerland postponed U.S.-Iran talks that had been set for Friday.

Trump Team Waste, Grifting, Insider Deals

Trump-appointed U.S. negotiators Jared Kushner, left, the president's son-in-law-and Trump golfing partner and fellow New York City real estate devloper Steve Witkoff during Iran War negotiations in Islamabad (Pool photo).

• Emptywheel, Analysis: How Much Will Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff Profit Off the $300B Iranian Redevelopment Fund? Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), June 19, 2026. Here’s the 14-Point Memorandum of Understanding that Trump signed with Iran.
• New York Times, Investigation: Firm Tied to Trump Donor Got No-Bid Contract to Clean Reflecting Pool, David A.Fahrenthold, Updated June 19, 2026. A White House spokeswoman said the president was not involved in selecting Greenwater Services, the business owned by a trust led by John J. Cafaro.

More Global News

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: June 18, 2026 [Ukraine Hits Back Hard], Heather Cox Richardson, right,June 19, 2026. Overnight, Ukraine launched its biggest attack on Moscow, the capital of Russia, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Donald Trump, Champion of Renewable Energy, Paul Krugman, right, June 19, 2026. His humiliating defeat in Iran has sealed the deal.
• New York Times, U.K. Live Updates: Starmer Under Pressure After Labour Rival Wins Key Election, Michael D. Shear, June 19, 2026. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said he would not “walk away” from any leadership contest after a top rival in his party, Andy Burnham, decisively won a parliamentary seat.

More News Roundups

• Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy, The Iran Deal Wobbles, Obama's Library Opens, OMG The Reflecting Pool, Inspiration From Juneteenth, And Slava Ukraini!!!!!!! Simon Rosenberg, right, June 19, 2026. The US Men's soccer team plays Australia at 3pm ET today. Be sure to watch and cheer them on!
• The Parnas Perspective, Thursday Evening News and Commentary: Trump Lashes Out as Obama's Approvals are Higher and Library Opens, Historic GOP Rebuke on Iran, Paint Peels in Reflecting Pool, Aaron Parnas, right, June 18, 2026. The reflecting pool paint is already peeling as the algae problem continues to worsen. Meanwhile, the Obama Presidential Center officially opened in Chicago, delivering several notable political moments at a time when Barack Obama’s approval ratings continue to outpace Donald Trump’s.

U.S. Education, Culture, Media

• The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted, Jennifer Rubin, right, June 19, 2026. Conan Brien goes back to Harvard. Comedian Conan O’Brien’s recent Harvard commencement address was among the most insightful and moving (certainly the funniest) of the 2026 graduation speeches. 
• The Bulwark Podcast, Opionion: JD Vance. Ross Douthat. 'Nuff Said, Jonathan V. Last and Sarah Longwell, June 19, 2026. History's greatest monsters, together again. The Iran war deal is falling apart (already). Israel is turning on Trump. And the two most insipid trad-Cath poasters in America are podcasting together again.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Celebrate Juneteenth. Annoy MAGA, William Kristol, right, June 19, 2026. Today is Juneteenth, a holiday long celebrated, especially by black Americans, to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• News Center Maine, Winners announced in three key races following ranked choice voting tabulation, Phil Hirschkorn, June 19, 2026. Republican Bobby Charles and Democrat Hannah Pingree won the nominations for governor. Democrat Matt Dunlap won the nomination for CD2.
• News Center Maine, Maine has never seen a ranked-choice primary like this one, Matt Junker, June 18, 2026. For the first time, Maine has seen three statewide or congressional primary races move on to ranked-choice voting tabulation. The previous record was two in 2018.
• Politico, Matt Dunlap beats DCCC-backed candidate in primary for top Maine battleground, Jessica Piper, June 18, 2026. The seat has become a priority target for both parties following Democratic Rep. Jared Golden’s decision not to run for reelection.Matt Dunlap applauds during a May Day rally.

Top Stories

New York Times, Mideast Live Updates: Israel Commits to New Lebanon Cease-Fire, Ambassador Says, but Troops Will Remain, Abdi Latif Dahir, Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss and Euan Ward, June 19, 2026. Here’s the latest.

Israel committed to an immediate cease-fire and “halted all offensive operations” in Lebanon, the Israeli ambassador to the United States said on Friday, as diplomats sought to keep the fragile deal between Iran and the United States on track after days of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

The Israeli ambassador’s remarks were the first public confirmation of a truce, and he qualified his statement by suggesting that Israel would still act on what it perceived as violations or threats.

“If Hezbollah honors the agreement and ceases its hostilities, they will be met with quiet,” the ambassador, Yechiel Leiter, said on social media. He added that Israel, “like any normal country, will never compromise on our security."

He also said that Israeli forces were still operating in southern Lebanon “to rid the area of Hezbollah and dismantle its terror infrastructure,” adding, “We will remain there until that mission is accomplished.” There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

The U.S.-Iranian agreement calls for a cease-fire on all fronts, including Lebanon, and Iran has repeatedly warned that fighting there could jeopardize the deal. The fighting between Israel, a U.S. ally, and Hezbollah has delayed the next stage of talks between U.S. and Iranian officials.

Those negotiations had been set to take place in Switzerland, but earlier Friday, Swiss officials announced that they were postponed. Three diplomats said Iran had pulled out of the talks after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, without clarifying whether they were referring to strikes from Friday or earlier in the week.

Before the Israeli ambassador confirmed Israel’s stance, two diplomats and a U.S. official had said on Friday that the sides had agreed to a truce in Lebanon. President Trump also told NBC News in a phone call that he spoke with Israeli leadership and asked them to agree to a cease-fire with Hezbollah.

The fighting in Lebanon has strained relations between Washington and Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has indicated that he is not bound by the U.S.-Iran deal, and the White House has delivered rare rebukes of him and other Israeli leaders.

Israel’s latest strikes came after an attack on an Israeli tank crew in southern Lebanon early Friday killed four of its soldiers. In response, Israel said, its military had struck more than 80 targets belonging to Hezbollah militants. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that the overnight Israeli airstrikes had left at least 47 people dead and injured 97 others.

Mr. Netanyahu said that he had ordered the Israeli military to respond forcefully to the deaths of the tank crew, warning that Israel would “exact a very heavy price from Hezbollah for these attacks.” Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, called the Israeli attacks a “dangerous and reprehensible escalation.”

The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, condemned Israel’s operations in Lebanon and said that the United States bore “direct responsibility for the situation.” He added that Iran would take any measures “to safeguard its interests, security and the rights of itself and its allies.”

Some lawmakers in Israel and some Republicans in Congress have criticized the U.S.-Iran deal, which President Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran signed this week. Critics say it gives Iran significant economic relief while pushing tougher negotiations, including on Tehran’s nuclear program, to a later date.

Vice President JD Vance had been expected to fly to Switzerland for the talks with Iranian officials, but the White House said late Thursday that his trip would be delayed. The United States was looking forward “to beginning technical talks as soon as possible,” a White House statement said.

Here’s what else we’re covering.

• Swiss talks: The Swiss foreign ministry announced the postponement of the talks, though it said that preparations to host them were continuing at a resort on Lake Lucerne.
• Strait of Hormuz: Commercial transit out of the waterway has slowly picked up since Mr. Trump signed the agreement with Iran on Wednesday.
• Economic repercussions: If the deal holds, billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets could be released. 
• Oil prices: The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, wavered as cracks emerged in the deal.

New York Times, Opinion: Trump Put His Own Interests Above All in the Iran Deal, Thomas L. Friedman, right, June 19, 2026, June 20, 2026 (print ed.). Surely something about this preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran must have felt familiar to America’s real-estate mogul president. After all, it reads like a real-estate bankruptcy filing — an act of financial capitulation.

It is a measure of how much Iran had Trump over a barrel, and how thoroughly it cleaned his clock, that Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told Iranian state TV after the details were announced: “The agreement is a record of U.S. failure. People will see it and judge.”

You don’t need to be a foreign policy expert to see what happened here. You need to be a domestic policy expert. Trump sold out America’s ally in the war, Israel, and the Arab Gulf states for the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. Trump knew that the food inflation and high gasoline prices triggered by this war were a prescription for a Republican wipeout in the midterms. He had to stop the war now to get prices down by November, because if the Democrats take the House and Senate, Trump will be looking at endless investigations into how he has used the presidency to enrich himself and his family — and possibly even impeachment.

So, Trump did what he always does: He abandoned all principle and all allies and put his personal interests above all other considerations.

He even prepared the terrain to set up his vice president, JD Vance, for a fall. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.” People laughed — but nervously, because everyone knew it was a joke, but also not a joke. It was Trump’s inner voice speaking.

This was not a war I advocated, but once it started I was sure hoping Iran would lose. As such, I am shocked by the outcome so far — by the sheer cynicism with which Trump and Vance have gone from damning Iran, and telling its people to rise up because “help is on its way,” to praising its leaders, and how this deal has left Iran stronger and all its neighbors more vulnerable to Tehran’s whims.

I would have much more sympathy for Trump’s stress-filled handling of the wicked problem that is Iran if he had just once shown the same to President Obama or acknowledged that he couldn’t deliver now for the Iranian people as he promised. Instead, he just pretends that everything he did was perfect.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Let us count the ways it is not perfect. The deal not only puts off the question of the disposal of Iran’s near bomb-grade uranium to future negotiations — negotiations in which the Trump administration has already given up its military leverage — but also, most amazingly, it clearly leaves open the possibility that Iran will be able to charge a toll in the future to any ships that want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Just read the cease-fire agreement: Upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only …”Editors’ PicksDo You Know These U.S. History Books Adapted for the Screen?Could Lowering Inflammation Treat Depression?Matt Smith Goes Dark on ‘House of the Dragon’

After billions of dollars of bombs dropped on Iran, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner won from Tehran 60 days of toll-free passage through Hormuz. After that, oil tanker captains, bring your credit cards. Thank goodness we had these crack real-estate negotiators on the case, not wimpy diplomats.

The cease-fire deal not only is silent on any commitments by Iran to curb its development of long-range missiles and its support for proxies undermining the governments of Lebanon and Iraq, but it also makes the 60-day negotiation on Iran’s nuclear future contingent on Israel’s halting its military operations in Lebanon against Iran’s mercenary army there, Hezbollah. If Barack Obama had ever agreed to such a thing, Fox News would have interrupted its regular broadcasting to denounce it.

All of this is the result of the fact that Trump and Netanyahu never took seriously the idea that Iran would do the obvious: close the Strait of Hormuz in response to their attack. So in their attempt to stop Iran from developing a weapon of mass destruction that it was unlikely to ever use — since Israel would immediately use one on Iran — Trump and Netanyahu inspired Iran to develop a weapon of mass disruption, a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which it can use anytime it feels too much pressure from the United States or Israel.

The message to America’s Gulf Arab allies — the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait in particular — is that we are cutting and running, so you’d better make the best deals you can with Tehran to keep it at bay. This is the biggest geopolitical power shift in the Gulf since the start of the Iran-Iraq war. There is a new sheriff in town. Dial 1-800-Ayatollah.

In case they did not read that between the lines, Trump spelled it out in a news conference justifying why he did not try to curb Iran’s missile development: “What am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can’t have them?” he asked. “Doesn’t work that way, you know, it doesn’t work that way, and missiles aren’t the problem. Missiles, they hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”

If you are reading those words in Tel Aviv or Riyadh, a shiver just ran down your spine, along with the dawning awareness that the president of the United States no longer is playing with a full deck and you are home alone.

For all of these reasons, it is simply impossible to listen to Trump and Vance without being reminded of Nick Carraway’s famous observation about Tom and Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby”: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Indeed, shortly before Ghalibaf and his Iranian colleagues were boasting that they had imposed a “failure” on the United States, Trump was declaring the Iranian leaders to be “very rational people.” “They were nice to deal with, they were strong people, smart people,” he added. “They are not radicalized and they’re, you know, looking to help their country.” He called them “smarter” than past regime leaders.

Compare this also with how Trump and Vance talked to and about President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — the leader of a heroic democracy that has been resisting a Russian invasion for four years: “You don’t have the cards,” Trump told him, urging Zelensky to cut a filthy deal with Vladimir Putin.

That is how they talk about the leader of a people defending the frontier of freedom from its worst enemy. For Iranian leaders — part of a regime that just gunned down thousands of their own people who were seeking freedom — Trump says they are “nice.”