To win the fight over the future of our country, Donald Trump does not need every American, or even a majority of them, to support him. He needs enough of the pro-democracy coalition to become exhausted, decide their votes won’t matter and stay home. I understand how that feels. During my years-long fight against MAGA, there have been days when the lies and cowardice felt impossible to overcome. But each time, this community and Americans everywhere have picked ourselves up and kept fighting.

Now, when I look at how many of us are turning out to vote in recent primaries, I am feeling real hope that change is coming.

Last Tuesday, nearly 800,000 Democrats voted in Wisconsin’s primary for governor, the state’s highest midterm-primary turnout in more than 20 years. David Crowley won a close race, a result that is already becoming old news. The turnout should not be. There was no presidential candidate on the ballot and no national convention waiting at the end. It was the kind of election Americans usually ignore. This time, they showed up.

The same thing is happening across the country. More than 1.5 million Democrats voted in Michigan, a state record for a midterm primary. Georgia drew just over a million voters to its Democratic governor’s primary, while about 2.3 million Texans voted in the Democratic Senate primary. Both states recorded their highest Democratic midterm-primary turnout rates since at least 2002.

In Minnesota, Democratic turnout roughly matched 2018; those two years now stand as the state’s strongest Democratic midterm primaries of this century. By June, Democratic turnout was higher than in 2022 in nearly 93 percent of House primaries where more than one Democrat ran.

Republican turnout has not risen the same way. In Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP participation remained near its usual level for a midterm primary. That was true in Michigan even though Republicans had a competitive race for governor. Republican voters may still come out this fall, but so far the surge is happening on the Democratic side.

I want to be careful here because primary turnout doesn’t necessarily predict who will win a general election. Competitive races give people an extra reason to vote, Republican groups have more money to spend, and Donald Trump will do everything he can to drag his voters to the polls. Democrats are also running on a House map that Republicans spent the past year rewriting in their own favor.

That said, the numbers tell us something important about the country’s state of mind. For years, Americans worried about Trump have waited for somebody else to stop him: prosecutors, judges, military leaders or a band of heroic Republicans who would finally tell him no. I understand the impulse. I spent too long hoping more of my Republican colleagues would reach a red line, and I learned that waiting for rescue is a good way to surrender your own power. Liz Cheney and I could help uncover the truth about January 6. We could not choose the next Congress. That’s what citizens do.

That is why I find these primaries hopeful, including the messy fights between moderates and progressives. Michigan Democrats argued over Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens. Wisconsin Democrats had a close contest between Crowley and Hong. Those disagreements will not disappear after a unity breakfast, and pretending otherwise would be foolish. But millions of people entered the argument, listened to the candidates, made a choice and accepted the count. The loser now gets behind the winner or makes the case for something different next time.

After Trump won in 2016, a lot of Americans were shaken and unsure whether any of their efforts would matter. Then they organized, attended town halls, volunteered in special elections and voted. In 2018, 53 percent of the voting-age population participated, the highest midterm turnout in four decades. Democrats gained 41 House seats. That year is remembered as a blue wave, but its real force came from millions of individual decisions by people who refused to stay home.

What followed mattered. The House majority elected in 2018 conducted serious oversight and built a public record around Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine into helping his reelection. It impeached him. I voted no, a decision I now regret. I was wrong on that vote, but the House did its job—and eventually I had to admit that I had not done mine.

Voters preserved a Democratic House majority in 2020, which made the January 6 committee possible. I served on that committee, and I saw how much evidence would have remained buried without Congress using its constitutional authority. We interviewed more than a thousand witnesses and reviewed more than a million documents. That work did not begin in our committee room. It began when people voted in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Texas.

This year has the potential to be as strong for pro-democracy forces as 2018 was. If Democrats win the House, it will be even more impressive in one important respect. Trump urged Republican states to redraw their congressional districts in the middle of the decade specifically to protect his party’s majority. Republicans enacted advantageous maps in eight states; Democrats countered in two, but the new lines could give the GOP a net gain of about 10 seats. They tried to reduce the number of competitive districts before a single 2026 ballot was cast.

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There are Democrats on the ballot whose politics I disagree with, sometimes by a lot. But our disagreements about policy pale in comparison to what is really at stake in the midterms. The central question this November is whether Congress will finally keep the president in check.

If Republicans keep control, Trump can expect two more years of a Congress that never tells him no. A Democratic House could subpoena administration officials, question them under oath in public hearings, investigate corruption and abuse, and reject bills or spending requests that give Trump more power. It could make him deal with an equal branch of government again.

The people who care most are often the most worn down, because they keep paying attention. Trump benefits when that exhaustion sends us home. Bad days are inevitable; what matters is coming back and doing the next useful thing, even before we feel optimistic again. A victory this November would show what happens when enough people refuse to let their worst days decide what they do next.

These primary voters have given us a reason to believe November can be different, but only if they return and persuade others to join them. Republicans changed the maps because they understand that voters still possess power. They spent a year protecting their majority on paper. Voters can still take it away in a day.

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Our top story today: the President’s hyped-up war on fraud just got exposed as a fraud itself. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the White House’s fraud squad is a mess, with its own officials saying that the numbers are fake and pointing fingers at one other. And instead of chasing real fraud, they’re chasing ice cream trucks in Democratic states while the biggest self-dealing in modern history is happening right in the Oval Office.

We’ll also get into a Trump-appointed regulator approving a Trump family bank, the strange power of White House aide Natalie Harp, the President siding with Kim Jong Un over a long time ally, and some good news for the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, amidst Trump’s claims that they aren’t dong enough.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump's Fraud Squad Fakes Its Own Numbers

You may remember that Vice President JD Vance took it upon himself to launch a National Fraud Enforcement Division at the Justice Department, promising to hunt down waste and cheating. And they talked so tough. Their top fraud prosecutor put out a message to the fraudsters of America, quote, “our team is getting bigger, our resolve is getting stronger and your time is getting shorter.”

Well, the Wall Street Journal just pulled back the curtain on the operation, and to nobody’s surprise, it’s a complete mess. Inside the department, this so-called fraud squad keeps fighting with each other. They’re in a turf war over which office even gets to use the word “fraud” in its name. That’s a real thing they’re fighting about. And it gets worse. DOJ officials in the task force are accusing each other of completely making up their numbers, inflating their stats to make the effort look way more successful than it actually is. A fraud unit... doing fraud?

Court records show that many of the cases this division bragged about were charged long before the unit even existed. Some of them even before Trump was sworn in. They stood at podiums holding press conferences, taking credit for convictions that were already finished.

And the craziest part of this is that reporting shows they’re not going after Wall Street or major criminal fraudsters. They’re going after small businesses, even ice cream trucks, over relatively tiny amounts of fraud. That’s all they’re able to get. And where are they focusing their operations geographically? In Democratic states like Minnesota.

If this were a serious anti-fraud effort, they would be following the money to the biggest thieves no matter who or where they are. This one chases ice cream trucks in states the President doesn’t like and brags with numbers its own people say are fake. That’s not fighting fraud. That’s trying to use fraud as a weapon and doing a clumsy job at it.

All of this is an act. They know the most fraud is coming right out of the White House, and this is an attempt to try and deflect that by doing meaningless work and attacking ice cream trucks. Which, funnily enough, brings us to our next story.

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2. Trump's Crypto Company Gets Its Own Bank Charter

On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal regulator granted preliminary approval for the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, to become a bank. That’s another first for a sitting president’s family, and it’s the latest expansion of the most profitable side business in presidential history. Last year alone, the President’s crypto ventures earned him more than a billion dollars. Even some of his longtime supporters, like Joe Rogan, are getting suspicious:

And a bank license would take their whole operation to another level. World Liberty’s digital dollar is currently issued by an outside company, which also holds four billion dollars in cash and Treasury bonds to back it. But now, the Trump family’s company could mint the coins, hold the reserves, and settle the payments itself, all under one federal license. No middleman taking a cut.

So the President appoints a regulator, that regulator approves a banking charter for the President’s family, and the President gets richer. There was a time when arrangements like this were unthinkable. Because of Trump, that time is over.

In the meantime, your rent is still high. Your groceries didn’t get cheaper. Your gas is still four dollars. And that’s because the only operation in this administration that’s running smoothly is the one that lines their pockets. Not yours.

3. Ossoff Exposes Trump's Closest Aide, Natalie Harp

At a rally in Atlanta this weekend, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia gave a blistering speech about the President that took off online almost instantly. Ossoff, who’s been on a roll lately as he’s seeking re-election in Georgia, had a specifically good moment that’s going viral. Take a look:

Did you hear that? Ossoff finished landing that punch by naming a specific person. He said the President would rather travel with, “Natalie on his flying palace”. And within hours, the name Natalie was trending on X, with the whole country asking the same question. Who is Natalie Harp?

Harp is a 35-year-old White House aide, and apparently the most constant presence in Donald Trump’s orbit. Staff nicknamed her a “human printer” because she follows him everywhere with a portable printer, feeding him documents and typing and posting his social media messages for him. Look at how she did this during the 2024 election cycle:

And it wouldn’t be something about this administration if there wasn’t a deeply disturbing twist in the story. According to reporting from the New York Times and others, Harp has left the President handwritten letters in his private spaces that are jaw- dropping. In them she’s written things like, quote, “you are all that matters to me”, and called him her guardian and protector in this life. Trump, for his part, has reportedly boasted that she’ll never leave him. Harp’s own brother has publicly called the relationship, in his words, “very unhealthy.”

I have no idea what’s going on there. With this President, given everything we already know about how he treats women, I doubt it’s something normal.

The cherry on top is that Harp was one of the handful of people Trump pulled into that catering truck during his secret plane swap out of Turkey, the stunt we covered last week. So somebody almost no one had heard of, with no traditional national security role, is in the President’s most protected inner circle at the most sensitive moments.

Credit to Ossoff for bringing up this woman’s name. It shows that Democratic candidates really have a chance to hurt this President if they get their hands a little dirty. But the bottom line is that someone with this much influence on the President should have been in the public eye before a political opponent was forced to bring it up. I wonder how many more skeletons Trump has in his closet. He must be running out of space in there.

4. Trump Scales Back South Korea Drills To Please Kim Jong Un

Yesterday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he’s substantially reducing our joint military drills with South Korea, just hours before exercises were set to begin. He wrote that the exercises are “totally inappropriate and hostile to North Korea.” He called the North Korean regime “unthreatening and respectful,” citing his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”

Remember, this is the same Kim Jong Un that Trump once threatened with “fire and fury” and mocked as “Little Rocket Man.” But then Kim started sending Trump flattering letters, and everything changed. Because for this President, the test was never whether a dictator threatens America. It’s whether he likes Trump. Listen to him back in April:

And what has all that flattery bought Kim? Everything. He kept his nuclear weapons. He kept his prison camps. He’s supplying Russia with missiles and soldiers to use against Ukraine. And even after he threatened to respond to these joint drills with “the most powerful and overwhelming force,” they get scrapped anyway. Meanwhile, the party that screams communist at every Democrat says nothing about their leader embracing an actual communist dictator.

But that’s not even the worst of it. In the same announcement, Trump complained that South Korea refused to join his war against Iran. So this is not only capitulation to our enemies, it’s retaliation against our own allies. Simply because they stayed out of the mess that Trump started.

Everything that has kept us safe since World War II rests on allies believing that when it counts, America shows up. Pull back from South Korea to flatter Kim Jong Un, and our friends across Asia will start asking whether they need their own nuclear weapons. And honestly, I wouldn’t blame them. This is generational damage to America’s reputation, and someday our kids will pay the price.

5. Trump Says Sailors' Deployment "Not Nearly Long Enough"

Here’s some good news about the USS Lincoln, the ship we told you guys about last week. Sailors spent months on the Lincoln in terrible conditions– facing malnourishment, mold outbreaks, and a mental health crisis that has sent men overboard.

After 260 days, the Navy is finally sending relief. Another carrier, the USS George Washington, is steaming toward the Middle East to take the Lincoln’s place.

But listen to what the President said when reporters asked him about the concerns those families have been raising. Asked if the Lincoln’s nearly nine-month deployment had gone on too long, here’s his answer:

“Not nearly long enough.” And he flatly denied that the families had any concerns at all, even as those very families shared conversations about the conditions their kids faced.

I wore the uniform. And the deal is that the people who send our kids into harm’s way have to treat that sacrifice as something holy. When a father tells the country his kid is breaking down at sea in atrocious conditions, the Commander in Chief’s job is to say, “I hear you, we’re doing something about it”. Instead, we have a draft- evading President with “bone spurs” claiming that our troops aren’t doing enough.

That relief ship is coming only because the public is outraged with the administration’s indifference towards the people sacrificing everything to further Trump’s war with Iran. Not because the President cared. Remember that. Change happens when the people stand up for it, not when the man at the top grows a conscience.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• OpenAI signed a 20-year lease this week for a massive data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, with Nvidia backing up to $105 billion of the financing. The site sits on a decommissioned federal uranium enrichment plant and will eventually run on 10 gigawatts of new power generation, enough for millions of homes. OpenAI and Nvidia are framing this as proof of real demand, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly insisting it isn’t circular financing because “OpenAI will pay the lease.” But OpenAI still doesn’t turn a profit, which is exactly why it needed Nvidia’s guarantee to make the deal bankable in the first place. This follows a pattern across the industry, where the same handful of companies keep investing in, financing, and buying from each other to build out AI infrastructure at a scale nobody has tried before.

• A new Financial Times poll released this week found that more than 53 percent of registered voters say they’re financially worse off since Trump returned to office, including nearly a quarter of Republicans and 57 percent of independents. The White House has leaned on the argument that inflation is cooling and that the economy just needs more time. But the numbers tell a rougher story: nearly two-thirds of voters say the economy is headed in the wrong direction, and for the first time in years, voters trust Democrats over Republicans on jobs and the economy. That erosion is showing up in places like Iowa, a state Trump has carried comfortably three times, where Republicans are now trailing in a top statewide race as tariffs, stagnant grain prices, and the fallout from the Iran war squeeze rural voters. Trump’s own net approval among Republicans dropped eight points in a single month. And look, you can’t tariff your way to lower prices and then act surprised when the people who trusted you feel it in their wallet.

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On Monday morning, roughly 18,000 South Korean troops began an exercise built around the dangers they may actually face: drones crossing the border, GPS signals disappearing and cyberattacks disrupting military communications. North Korean soldiers have returned from Russia’s war against Ukraine with battlefield experience in these methods. Yet as Ulchi Freedom Shield got underway, the order from Washington was to scale it back—not because the threat had faded, but because South Korea declined to join Donald Trump’s war against Iran.

Trump made the connection himself. He said he had asked South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to participate in the “denuclearization” of Iran and Seoul replied, “No thanks!” Trump then ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the exercise, while describing Kim Jong Un’s regime as “unthreatening and respectful.” In other words, a democratic ally refused the president’s request to enter an unrelated war, and as a result the president weakened a military exercise meant to protect the ally from a nuclear-armed dictatorship.

I cannot read Trump’s explanation without getting angry. He is risking the readiness of American and South Korean troops because another president had the nerve to tell him no. South Korea’s president has his own country to answer to, and disagreement does not release America from its promises. Trump is behaving as though this alliance belongs to him personally.

As an Air Force pilot, I trained for missions I hoped I would never have to fly. Training exposes failures while there is still time to fix them. It shows whether people from different units can communicate under pressure and whether plans will work outside the briefing room. When two countries may have to fight together, that preparation matters even more. American and South Korean forces cannot learn to fight together after the missiles start flying.

The military understands this. United States Forces Korea describes these exercises as a way to test combined readiness and improve coordination under realistic conditions. Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, put it plainly after a recent exercise: “There is no substitute for training, there is no excuse for not being ready.” Trump is gambling with the lives of American and South Korean troops because Seoul hurt his feelings.

His excuse about burden-sharing is especially dishonest. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised South Korea in May for increasing its defense spending and assuming greater responsibility for security on the peninsula. Hegseth said Seoul’s example was one that “all of America’s partners would do well to follow.” A few months later, the president is using military preparedness to punish the same ally because it wouldn’t join his failed war against Iran.

To be clear, South Korea was under no obligation to do so. The mutual-defense treaty signed after the Korean War does not require Seoul to support every military campaign launched by an American president. And an ally should never have to join a war out of fear that Washington will punish it for saying no.

Trump judges democratic partners by whether they flatter him and authoritarian adversaries by whether they make him feel important. Kim Jong Un understands this. He knows that a warm letter, a photograph and a few compliments have more influence on Trump than treaty commitments or the judgment of American commanders.

I was in Congress when Trump made this mistake the first time. After meeting Kim in Singapore in 2018, he adopted North Korea’s description of the exercises as “provocative” and announced that he would suspend them. American and South Korean officials were caught by surprise. Trump gave Kim something he had wanted for years and received no enforceable plan for denuclearization in return.

The diplomacy eventually collapsed. The exercises resumed, and North Korea continued expanding its missile and nuclear capabilities. Earlier this month, it launched two more ballistic missiles. Trump has responded by praising Kim’s behavior and repeating the concession that failed eight years ago, except this time he has added a grievance against South Korea that has nothing to do with security on the peninsula.

Trump is telling South Korea, Japan and every other American ally that they may not be able to count on us. If military cooperation can be reduced because a partner refuses to join an unrelated war, governments will begin preparing for the possibility that America will abandon them when they need us most. South Korea already has broad public support for building its own nuclear arsenal. If our allies decide they need nuclear weapons because they no longer trust Washington, our children will live with the consequences long after Trump is gone.

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Kim is less likely to attack if he believes American and South Korean forces are ready to respond together. Trump has just given him a reason to doubt it. Kim does not need to defeat the American alliance if the American president is willing to weaken it over a personal slight.

Sen. Mark Kelly, another veteran pilot, was right when he said that “hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake.” Congress should demand to know exactly what was cut, which commanders were consulted and how the decision affects readiness.

I served with Republicans who built entire careers around supporting our troops and confronting dictators. They know military training cannot be switched on and off to satisfy a president’s grudges. Their silence now is reprehensible and impossible to excuse.

The alliance with South Korea grew out of a war that killed more than 36,000 Americans and devastated the Korean Peninsula. It helped prevent another invasion while South Korea became a prosperous democracy. For more than 70 years, Americans and South Koreans have kept that commitment through dictatorship and political upheaval.

I still believe America can keep its word after a president betrays it. Our commitment to South Korea belongs to the country, not Donald Trump. It should not be weakened because he can’t take no for an answer.

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Hey everyone, happy Sunday. Are you ready for some good news?

For a lot of years now, we’ve been told that the lines between us are permanent. That you are a Republican or a Democrat, red or blue, one tribe or the other, and that the space in the middle where people used to actually solve problems has been paved over for good. Most days, the news gives you every reason to believe it.

But then, this week something happened in Arizona, and you remember it doesn’t have to be that way.

Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, named her running mate for November. She picked John Giles, who spent eleven years as the Republican mayor of Mesa, the third-largest city in the state. A lifelong Republican who left the party because, in his words, extremists shouldn’t stand in the way of getting things done. For the first time in Arizona’s history, voters will elect a governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket, and Hobbs decided the first thing she wanted in a partner was somebody who put the state ahead of the party. So she reached across the aisle and found one.

To be perfectly honest, Hobbs’ decision really hit home for me.

I spent my whole life as a Republican. Twelve years in Congress with an R next to my name. Walking away from it was the hardest professional decision of my life. It cost me friendships, a career, and a place in a movement I’d given years to. I did it because I couldn’t look my son in the eye someday and tell him I stayed silent when it counted.

So when I see a guy like John Giles do a version of the same thing, I feel it in my gut. He didn’t leave the Republican Party because he suddenly became a liberal. He left because the party left people like him. And instead of going quiet, instead of just fading into retirement and letting someone else carry the weight, he’s putting his name on a ballot next to a Democrat and saying that his state matters more than his tribe. That takes something. I know exactly what it takes, because I’ve stood roughly where he’s standing.

Here’s why this is bigger than one race in one state.

The fight we’re in right now is not, at its heart, a fight between the left and the right. It never was. It’s a fight between people who believe in democracy and people who have decided democracy is only good when they win. And the only way you win a fight like that is with a coalition broad enough to hold people who disagree about plenty but agree on the thing that matters most. You need the progressive and the moderate. You need the lifelong Democrat and the disillusioned Republican. You need the independent who’s tired of all of it. You need people willing to stand next to someone they’d have argued with a decade ago, because the alternative is worse than any argument.

Katie Hobbs understands that. Alongside the Giles announcement, she rolled out something she’s calling the Arizona Over Party coalition, more than fifty Republicans and independents backing her over the Trump-aligned nominee. And Giles agreeing to be the face of it, a Mormon Republican in a state where that means something real, is her telling conservative-leaning Arizonans a simple thing. There’s room for you here. You don’t have to agree with everything to agree on this.

I don’t know how the Arizona race turns out. It’s going to be a fight. Hobbs is considered one of the most vulnerable governors in the country, and her opponent is a hard-line ally of the president. But the outcome in November is almost separate from the point I’m making today. Whether or not this specific ticket wins, the model it represents is the one that beats Trumpism. Not a narrow, angry, us-versus-them politics that mirrors what we’re fighting against. A generous one. One that assumes the best of people and gives them a door to walk through instead of a wall to run into.

That’s the thing the loudest voices in our politics have forgotten. You do not build a majority by telling half the country they’re the enemy. You build it by making room. By recognizing that the retired Republican mayor and the Democratic governor and the independent who can’t stand either party all have a stake in the same country, and all deserve a place at the same table.

John Giles and I stopped marching in lockstep with our party. But neither of us stopped loving the country those parties are supposed to serve. If anything, our actions made that love clearer, because it stripped away everything except the thing underneath. And what I’ve found, over and over, is that there are a lot more of us out here than the cable shows would have you believe. People who are tired of the fighting for its own sake. People who would take a competent, decent, boring government over a thrilling and cruel one any day of the week.

Two people in Arizona just decided their state mattered more than their parties. It may seem like a small thing. But small things, when enough of them happen at once, are how a country finds its way back. That’s good news. And on a week that gave us plenty of the other kind, I’ll take it.

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Our top story today: a federal judge tossed the Trump administration’s big lawsuit against Harvard, the one claiming that the school wasn’t protecting Jewish students. The President was using the lawsuit to claw back a billion dollars and bend the university to his will, and the judge saw this case for exactly what it was.

We’ll also get into a heartbreaking crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where sailors have been forced to be stuck at sea for a record 250 days because of Trump’s endless war, and the Trump-picked Kennedy Center board voting to shut the place down and slap Trump’s name on the front. Also today, newly revealed documents showing Homeland Security spying on peaceful left-leaning groups in Minnesota, and a genuinely nice story to end on, the mayor of New York handing thousands of free Broadway tickets to city kids.

Let’s get to it.

1. Deemed Retaliation, Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit against Harvard

On Thursday, a judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Harvard. The suit accused Harvard of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment after the October 7th attacks.

But that’s not actually what this lawsuit was really about for the administration. Look at what they wanted the court to do: to claw back nearly a billion dollars in federal research grants, money for cancer studies and science labs, and to block Harvard from ever receiving federal funding again. That’s not something that would protect students, it’s a blatant attempt to wound the entire institution. Indeed, protecting students would look like increasing mental health funding, or creating support groups. Not destroying the institutions they rely on.

The judge, of course, saw right through that. He ruled that the incidents the government pointed to were, quote “too isolated and episodic” to prove that Harvard was breaking federal civil rights laws. He noted the government’s complaint leaned almost entirely on events from two years ago. In plain terms, the administration didn’t bring this case to fix a problem. Instead, they used a horrifying situation and twisted it as a pretext for their true intentions. Harvard’s lawyers called it exactly that, a retaliation campaign for refusing to hand the federal government control over what it teaches and who it hires.

Any kind of discrimination— whether on racial, ideological, or sexist lines— is unacceptable, and that’s exactly why it’s so insulting to see it used as an excuse. And in this case, by using antisemitism as a facade to attack academic institutions, the administration is taking credibility away from Jewish Americans that actually experience it. All they’re doing is proving that the concern was never real in the first place.

2. Kennedy Center Board Votes to Shut Down Building, Adorn it With Trump’s Name.

On Thursday, the board of the Kennedy Center, our national performing arts center here in Washington, voted to shut down its main building for what it’s calling a two-year, 250 million dollar renovation. And conveniently, the Trump-picked board also threw in a line about putting President Trump’s name back on the front of the building, describing it as a project “restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

As you probably know, there’s plenty of backstory here. A federal judge blocked the last time they tried to close the building, saying the board members didn’t have nearly enough information to justify shutting the doors. A separate judge ruled that adding Trump’s name to the building was flat-out unlawful. And for months now, his name has been sitting under a tarp on the front of the building because of that.

I was on CNN last night where Laura Coates, one of their anchors, asked me about this:

The place used to offer free performances 365 days a year. Now, they want to shutter it like so many other things around town. If you’ve walked around downtown D.C. recently, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s one large construction zone and is depressing to look at.

Like I mentioned on CNN, this is all a perfect little window into the mindset of this administration. Take a beloved public institution, one that belongs to the American people, shut it down and carve your own name into the front while a court is literally telling you that you can’t. The ballroom, the Smithsonian, the Reflecting Pool, even the ridiculous arch the President wants to build himself. It’s the same impulse every time. It was never about the art or the country. It’s about whose name is on the building.

3. Deplorable Conditions on the USS Lincoln, Hegseth Claims Misinformation.

Last November, more than 5,000 sailors and Marines left San Diego aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on what was supposed to be a routine deployment. But since the ship got redirected to join the war in Iran, it has been at sea for more than 250 days. With only a couple of brief stops, the ship has set a modern record for consecutive days without a real port call.

The strain on that crew has become a genuine crisis. Sailors’ families describe deteriorating conditions on board. Contaminated water. Plumbing failures. Shortages of basic supplies like soap and toothpaste. And a crew that is being pushed past its breaking point. Parents, speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation, say their kids have lost 15 pounds or more since deploying, and that they can hear the exhaustion in their voices.

Then came August 3rd. That day a sailor went overboard in what the Navy is treating as a mental health episode. Thankfully, he was rescued within the hour and taken for care. But families of this crew say he was not the only one who reached that point.

Confronted with reports of this harsh reality, take a look at how the Secretary of Defense responded:

“Completely misrepresented”, he says. This administration is so desperate to downplay the failures of this war that they can’t acknowledge a crew in crisis. Admitting the Lincoln has been out there too long means admitting the war has no plan and no end. So instead, they call the families liars. And if you’re a sailor on that ship, what you’re hearing is that public image is more important than your wellbeing.

By the way, I wrote a lot more about this story in this morning’s column, and I hope you’ll take a minute to read it. These brave sailors have earned that minute.

4. Covert Spying Operations By DHS on…Bicycle Repair Shops.

Newly released court documents reveal that during the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security secretly spied on peaceful, left-leaning groups. We’re talking about labor unions, a climate change organization, even a small bicycle repair collective. Groups that were never accused of any crime.

And the tactics are chilling. Undercover agents attended community meetings in church basements. They infiltrated private group chats. They ran license plates to build lists of who attended. They used subpoenas to pull years of financial records. They even made a PowerPoint slide titled ‘The Conspiracy,’ connecting 18 organizations including the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the country. Real tinfoil hat stuff.

And here’s the thing: they knew it was nonsense. One undercover agent, sitting in on a climate organization’s meeting, reported back that the group was focused on peaceful protests. Their own spy told them these people were peaceful. They kept spying anyway.

The very first of these investigations, called Operation Puppet Master, was opened just days after immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti. Think about the choice made there. When a government nurse was killed on camera, the target of the investigation was not the agents who pulled the trigger. It was the protesters.

Look, I’m writing this as a Republican who spent years defending law enforcement and our intelligence agencies. There is difference between investigating a crime and investigating a perspective. Spying on a labor union or a climate group because you don’t like their politics, pulling their bank records when they’ve committed no crime, that is a police state. That’s the stuff we used to condemn other countries for. Now, it’s us.

5. The City Skyline is Alive with the Sound of Music.

Finally, something positive. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and the Theater Development Fund announced a program to hand out more than 2,000 free Broadway tickets to city high school students, along with thousands more at a discount.

Kids across all five boroughs can enter a lottery for tickets to shows ranging from In the Heights to The Great Gatsby. Something for everybody, unless you’re looking for a show about competent White House governance. That one’s still off- Broadway.

And every single student who enters, win or lose, gets a free two-month membership to a program that unlocks discounted theater tickets and free entry to museums all over the city.

Here’s Mamdani sharing the good news:

Here’s a nice detail. Much unlike the administration’s recent programs, this didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime for the tickets. The Broadway shows themselves donated them. While my policy preferences don’t always align with Mayor Mamdani’s, this serves as an important reminder that you don’t have to love a politician to support their truly good acts.

Look, here’s why I wanted to end with this story. For the rest of this show, we talk about people using power to punish, intimidate, and put their name on a building. And here’s a small, simple example of the opposite. Using power to give something to kids who could never afford it, and asking for nothing back.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump signed a national security memorandum yesterday directing the Navy to tear out the electromagnetic catapult system on future Ford-class aircraft carriers and go back to steam, a reversal that will likely cost billions of dollars. The White House says the decision will produce carriers powered by battle-tested steam and hydraulic systems that are more resilient than the newer technology. But the electromagnetic system launches aircraft at faster speeds, is easier to maintain, requires fewer sailors, and takes up less space aboard the ship. Navy leaders have resisted this idea since Trump first floated it in 2017, after a sailor praised steam during a ship visit in his first term. Meanwhile, China’s newest carriers use electromagnetic catapults, and France plans to put them on its next carrier too.

• Michael Boren, the Agriculture undersecretary who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, asked agency staff last month to escalate the number of aircraft fighting a seven-acre fire near his mega-ranch in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest, according to two Forest Service officials. A department spokesman called it a non-story, saying that Boren never pressured leadership or ordered more resources. But the record says otherwise. Nine aircraft converged on the Cabin Creek Fire, including helicopters, air tankers, and a Black Hawk, while a nearly identical 21-acre fire in June got just three aircraft for about 13 minutes. The response cost roughly $115,000 in federal funds, on a day when 44 large uncontained fires were burning nationwide and aircraft had to be pulled from other fires in Idaho to do it. A 38-year Forest Service veteran said he couldn’t recall ever seeing a response like that for a fire so small.

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There is a date every deployed service member carries in their head. It’s the day you’re supposed to come home. You don’t write it on a wall or say it out loud too often, because that feels like tempting fate. But it’s there. You count toward it in the quiet moments. Your spouse counts toward it. Your kids circle it on a calendar in the kitchen and cross off the days one at a time.

I know what that date meant to me on my own deployments. And I know what it felt like when it moved. You think you’re leaving on a Sunday, and then word comes down that it’s been pushed a week, and I promise you, even that lands like a punch to the gut. Because even the toughest soldier or sailor is still human, and because many have been running on empty for a long time, and that date was the thing they were holding onto. When it slides, something inside you sinks.

My deployments were shorter than what the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are living through right now. And I still remember the weight of a single week’s delay. With that in mind, I want you to really think about what these men and women are enduring.

The Lincoln left San Diego last November on what was supposed to be a routine deployment. It got rerouted to the Middle East to support Trump’s war with Iran, and it has been out there ever since. That’s more than 260 days at sea. Over 200 of those without a real port call, which is a modern-day record. The crew has set foot on land twice in all that time. Once in Guam, where many weren’t even allowed off the ship. Once in Oman, where the sailors who could leave were penned inside a secured compound in the port. That’s it. Two days of dry land in the better part of a year.

The reporting on conditions aboard that ship should make every American angry. Families describe moldy showers, food shortages, sailors running out of soap, toothpaste, deodorant. These are the most basic things a person needs to feel like a person.

There are reports of plumbing that doesn’t work. Mail from home rarely seems to make it. And worst of all, a mental health crisis that has reportedly led multiple sailors to try to go overboard. One did on August 3rd, wearing a life vest, pulled from rough seas by a rescue helicopter and treated as a mental health episode.

And before any internet tough guy starts working on an insult, know that these are not soft people. These are some of the most capable and dedicated Americans we have, sustaining combat operations on the far side of the planet, and they are breaking under a burden nobody should have to carry.

There is no clear end date. That is the part that cuts to the bone. Their families told reporters there is no indication of when their loved ones are coming home. The deployment has already been extended more than once. For a crew that has given everything, the one thing they cannot see is a path back to their families.

A few days ago, I shared a post about what’s happening on the Lincoln. Later, I asked people to scroll down and read the comments.

A lot of the replies were some version of the same thing. This is what they signed up for. Man up. Stop complaining. They said it about sailors who have been at sea for nine months. They said it about kids who haven’t touched grass since last winter. They said it about people so exhausted their own families are afraid the strain will get someone killed.

I’ll be blunt: the keyboard warriors are pathetic. The people typing that have never experienced anything remotely resembling a deployment, much less this deployment.

They have never watched a homecoming date get erased and rewritten while a spouse and children waited at home.

They have never spent a single night doing the hard, dangerous, grinding work these sailors do every single day.

And yet they feel qualified to sit in judgment of the toughness of men and women who are doing exactly that in service to a country whose internet macho men are questioning their grit from the comfort of the couch.

It’s cruel. And more than that, it’s ungrateful, which to me is just as bad. This is the moment those sailors deserve our sympathy, our concern, and our loudest advocacy. The last thing anyone stateside owes them is a lecture about manning up.

Let me say something plainly to anyone still tempted to tell a service member to toughen up. Sacrifice is not a competition, and it is certainly not a thing you get to referee if you have never done it. All human beings have a breaking point. Saying so is not an insult to the uniform, but rather the most basic form of respect for the person inside it. The toughest people I ever served with were also honest about the cost, because they had personally paid it.

Here’s the thing that makes me angriest, though. The suffering on that ship is not some unavoidable act of God. It is the direct result of choices. Namely, a war that Trump’s ego started and keeps extending with no clear objective and no end in sight.

The Navy is now reportedly moving another carrier in to take the Lincoln’s place. Good. But it is far too late. It should have happened a long time ago.

We ask an enormous amount of the people who wear the uniform. They accept that. They know the deal when they raise their right hand. But the deal runs both ways. When we send them out there, we owe them a plan to bring them home, the basic supplies to live with dignity while they serve, and leaders who treat their lives as something more precious than a talking point. Right now, on the Lincoln, we are failing that obligation.

So no, this is not what they signed up for. They signed up to serve their country. They did not sign up to be forgotten by it. The least the rest of us can do is refuse to look away and refuse to let anyone tell them their pain is weakness.

Bring them home. And until they’re home, at the very least, honor them enough to care.

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Our top story today: Karoline Leavitt is officially stepping down as White House press secretary at the end of the month. She has been the face of this administration’s shameless spin operation for over a year and a half, and now she’s out the door. And the names floating around to replace her sound as dubious, if not worse.

Here’s what we cover today: A military exercise in Germany exposes American brigade weakness’ against Ukrainian drones; Pete Hegseth shuts Democrats out of classified Pentagon briefings as he pleads with Congress for one and a half trillion dollars; the record-breaking sale of the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger, and the election deniers who just won Republican nominations in swing states.

If you get something out of this show, like it, share it, and subscribe. It genuinely helps us grow and continue our mission of independent journalism.

Let’s get to it.

1. The Youngest Press Secretary in History Is Out

And for some reason, President Trump took it upon himself to announce it on Truth Social. Karoline Leavitt, who is twenty eight years old, will leave the White House at the end of August. Trump said she is vacating the role to spend more time with her family. It’s worth noting she had a baby in May and came back from maternity leave about a month ago. Trump added that she will become one of his top outside advisers, whatever that means.

Leavitt confirmed it herself, writing that she, “cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary.”

Being a parent is hard and deserves respect. But we also have to be honest about what that podium was used for on her watch. This was a briefing room of lies and of limiting the freedom of the press. And day after day, she stood there and sold it. And before doing so, she had the gall to pray with her entire staff as if her actions were morally justifiable.

Take a look at one of those prayer circles before she strutted out there and helped further the Epstein cover up for twenty minutes:

Thou shalt not lie, indeed.

And let’s not forget how weird Trump was whenever he referred to her. Clearly he was so amazed with her constant spin jobs that he couldn’t help himself. Take a look at the way he talked about her on a regular basis:

As for who comes next, there is no announcement yet. But the New York Post reports the early names include Alina Habba, deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, Katie Miller, and Kari Lake.

Karoline Leavitt’s job was to protect Trump from the truth, and whoever he picks next will probably be smoother at it. But don’t assume anything will change. Trump will always demand personal loyalty as the first, last, and only requirement for any job in his administration. So definitely do not expect this White House’s relationship with truth to change. That never will.

2. Ukraine Dominates U.S. in Drone-Based Military Exercise

This is a Wall Street Journal exclusive. During an exercise called Combined Resolve this spring, U.S. Army troops went head to head with Ukrainian drone operators, and it wasn’t close.

The Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted the American armored vehicles almost immediately. The dust plumes those vehicles kicked up made them easy to find from the air, and once they were found, the attack drones moved in to simulate kills. The Journal reported that the U.S. vehicles were eliminated so quickly that some had to be respawned just to keep the war game running.

To their credit, U.S. troops did adjust in later rounds. They dispersed, improved their camouflage, and leaned on electronic warfare.

This is a good thing that we’re doing. Ukraine is the leader in drone warfare and we could learn a thing or two from them. But it’s the hypocrisy of this administration that bothers me. Trump has treated Ukraine terribly, from publicly berating President Zelensky in the Oval Office, to holding up an appropriations package, to not wanting to sign a drone deal with them.

To be absolutely embarrassed in a simulated battle by the very drones we’re hesitating to buy, all because Trump knows his MAGA base hates supporting Ukraine, is humiliating. And, in the end, compromises our safety.

3. Hegseth Iced Democrats Out of Classified Briefings

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly excluded Democrats from at least two recent classified briefings on Capitol Hill, including one explaining the administration’s one and a half trillion dollar defense budget. That request is built around replenishing weapons stockpiles and investing in artificial intelligence to compete with China. Real threats and real money, but half the Senate is locked out of the room. Democrats were also shut out of classified briefings on the Caribbean boat strikes and decoy Air Force One flight. Even the routine bipartisan committee staff briefings, the kind that have been standard on the Hill for decades, have stopped.

Let’s be clear about how unusual this is. Classified access in Congress has never run on party. Democrats and Republicans on Armed Services get briefed together, and the most sensitive intelligence goes to the Gang of Eight, which is bipartisan by law and by design. And even Republican senators are calling it out: Mike Rounds says “the Democrat members need to be brought up to speed,” and Thom Tillis told Hegseth “you got to engage.” They are right. But this is exactly what they signed up for when they confirmed him, so forgive me if I hold the applause.

Hegseth and the White House are pushing Republicans to use reconciliation, the party line budget process, to fund the Iran war and much of the Pentagon increase without a single Democratic vote. But that can only carry so much. The rest of next year’s defense budget has to pass the regular way, with sixty votes, and Democrats have vowed to boycott those funding bills. Let’s hope they keep that fighting spirit.

Look, congressional oversight is not a courtesy, it is how a military stays accountable to the country that pays for it. A Pentagon that briefs only its friends is not stronger. It is weaker, less accountable, and less trusted, and it only hurts the troops who serve and the Americans who pay.

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4. A Kushner Buys The Lakers. Yes, those Lakers.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Lakers were sold to Josh Kushner, the younger brother of Jared, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger for twelve and a half billion dollars. That is the most expensive purchase of an American sports franchise ever.

Now, you may remember the younger Kushner from another story we covered two weeks ago. He was the money behind FIFA’s plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup’s commercial rights, the deal that collapsed within days after European soccer threatened a boycott and Infantino’s own people quit over it, with Trump’s shadow hanging over the whole thing.

So the World Cup deal blew up in his face, and he pivoted to the most famous franchise in basketball instead. Just a little consolation prize.

And for any Lakers fan wondering how Kushner conducts his business, it seems like he follows the Trump family tradition of grifting. Back in 2021, a Maryland judge found that the real estate company he owned with his brother repeatedly violated the state’s consumer protection laws. Collecting debts without licenses. Hitting tenants with fees the law did not allow. Telling people apartments were in better shape than they were. Just last month, they were ordered to pay more than four million dollars to over seventeen thousand tenants who were charged illegal late fees.

But that’s the thing about this family. They always seem to avoid consequences. The judgments get paid, the deals get replaced, and the money keeps coming. For everyone else in this country, breaking the law has a price. For the Trumps, and in this case, the Kushners, it’s just part of business.

5. The Media is Focused on Democrat Primaries While GOP Election Deniers Are on the Ballot

Let’s talk about one of the biggest threats to democracy in the upcoming midterms: Election deniers running for positions that will eventually count votes and oversee our elections. This week, Tom Tiffany won the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin, and will be facing Democratic nominee David Crowley in November.

He has also been one of loudest advocates against validating the 2020 election. On January 6th, hours after the Capital insurrection, he voted against certifying results in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and he has said he would have voted to throw out Wisconsin’s results too. Here’s Tiffany stating that he’d discard his own constituents’ votes.

If Tiffany wins in November, he’ll have the power to appoint the state’s top election officials, meaning the people that actually run Wisconsin’s elections. Put an election denier in the governor’s mansion, and there are real concerns beyond him overturning an election outright. He just has to cast doubt in the system or allow others to get away with things they otherwise wouldn’t. And it’s not just Wisconsin. In Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, Republicans have nominated an election denier for governor, secretary of state, or both.

The good news is that an actual stolen election remains very unlikely. The real threat is the unnoticed, and extremely concerning, fear-mongering and complacency in the Republican officials. I was in the Capitol on January 6th. That was a real threat to the safety of our government, in reaction to an unfounded theory meant to scare people. And currently, there are 161 election deniers as sitting members of Congress.

Having free and fair elections is a pillar of democracy in America, and there are 143 congressional races with election deniers on the ballot. Pay attention to who’s running in your states, not just who’s running for president. Ask them one question– did Joe Biden win in 2020? The people representing you can either make your vote count, or discard it.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump was sued in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday over Truth API, a service from his own media company that sells advance access to his Truth Social posts to paying subscribers, some paying up to $100,000 a month. More than a dozen customers, mostly high-frequency trading firms, have already signed up to get his market-moving posts milliseconds before the public does. The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who brought the suit, call the scheme “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional,” arguing the president is profiting personally from selling access to government information. That comes just hours after a senior adviser to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard publicly called on Congress to investigate Trump, his family, and aides including Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff over alleged war-related insider trading. Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, posted a $238 million net loss last quarter, and Trump remains its largest shareholder.

• The Department of Homeland Security spent $464 million last fall on a no-bid contract to buy 10 used airplanes, saying they were urgently needed for deportation flights. Nearly a year later, seven of those planes, aging Boeing 737s, are still parked at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and three luxury jets from the same deal have mostly gone to other uses, including one leased out for FBI Director Kash Patel’s travel. DHS justified skipping competitive bidding by citing “unusual and compelling urgency,” the same authority it has used to award more than $29 billion in contracts without a bid. An internal government document says the department simply doesn’t have enough staff to fly the planes it bought, and the contract went to a Virginia firm with no prior federal experience whose chairman had donated to a political committee backing then-Secretary Kristi Noem.

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Donald Trump spent the aftermath of the 2020 election searching for ways to change a result he didn’t like. Six years later, he is starting much earlier.

Rather than waiting until November 3 to decide whether he trusts the midterm elections, he is trying to change who controls them before any votes are cast.

Yesterday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to fully implement an executive order that would give the executive branch an extraordinary role in running elections. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create a “State Citizenship List” of people the federal government considers eligible to vote. It tells the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute election officials who issue ballots to people the administration deems ineligible. It also tells the Postal Service not to transmit mail ballots unless voters appear on an approved list.

This can sound technical because it involves databases, voter lists and mail-ballot rules. But this is what it’s all about: Trump wants more control over the midterm elections and he’s trying to find ways to get it.

He wants the federal government to decide who is eligible to receive a mail ballot. And if state election officials disagree, his administration wants the power to investigate them and possibly prosecute them.

Changing How You Read the News: Here’s Why It Matters

Americans aren’t just disagreeing; we’re being shown completely different stories.

Every day, news outlets decide what to publish. In polarized media environments, audience demographics can split coverage. If you rely on only one side of the media spectrum, you could miss stories entirely, not because it isn’t credible, but because it doesn’t align with certain editorial priorities.

That’s why I’m often asked where I go to do research for my reporting. One of the main research tools I use is called Ground News. Ground News shows me how stories are being covered from different political perspectives, and it highlights “blindspots” where only left-wing or right-wing media is covering a story.

That kind of visibility is rare right now, and it changes how you understand the news. I’ve worked out a deal with them; if you want that level of insight every day, head to GroundNews.com/AdamK and subscribe to get 40% off the Vantage plan, the one I use.

Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias. By subscribing, you support both our channel and their independent team working to keep the media transparent.

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States normally run elections, including registering voters and distributing and counting ballots. Congress can pass national election laws, but the president can’t make the rules on his own.

Congress has considered some of the election rules Trump wants. The House passed the SAVE America Act, which would impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements and tighter rules on mail voting, but the Senate hasn’t. Trump is now trying to get through executive action what he hasn’t been able to get through Congress.

Trump has been unusually candid about this. In February, he told Dan Bongino, “We should take over the voting, the voting, in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” In an earlier Truth Social post, he claimed states are merely “an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government” in counting votes and “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them” to do.

I was in the Capitol on January 6, and one thing has become clearer with time: January 6 didn’t begin when the mob arrived. It began when Trump decided that election results certified by the states were legitimate only if they declared him the winner.

After losing in 2020, he pressured state officials to change the outcome. On January 2, 2021, he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” exactly enough to reverse his loss there. His allies organized competing slates of electors claiming Trump had won states that had certified Biden as the winner. Trump pressured the Justice Department and Mike Pence, looking for some way to use federal power to undo decisions the states had already made.

What Trump attempted after the 2020 election, he is now attempting before the 2026 election. Then, he looked for ways to use federal power to overturn state-certified results. Now he wants the federal government to have a say in deciding who can vote and to put pressure on the people who run elections.

The administration says it is trying to stop noncitizens from voting. Trump is using a very small problem to justify a much larger federal role in elections. Reuters examined federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting and found only 129 people charged since Congress made it a crime in 1996. None of those cases involved an alleged coordinated scheme to influence an election. Many resulted from confusion, administrative mistakes or bad information from government employees.

But that hasn’t stopped the administration from pushing deeper into state election systems. The Justice Department has sued more than two dozen states for detailed voter rolls containing information such as birth dates and partial Social Security numbers. As of last week, it had lost 21 straight cases. The administration has threatened to withhold some disaster funds from states that refuse to use a federal citizenship database, and Justice Department officials have warned election administrators they could face criminal charges if they knowingly allow noncitizens to remain on voter rolls.

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There’s a problem when you give the federal government too much power over elections: It makes mistakes. One of the federal systems Trump wants states to rely on has mistakenly labeled some naturalized American citizens as noncitizens. If the states act on bad information, lawful voters could be removed from the rolls.

Even if Trump loses this case, the effort could still help him politically. If Republicans lose the House or Senate in November, he can point to months of investigations and fights with the states and say the election had been troubled all along. He can point to all of this as “proof” that the elections were somehow tainted and that he had been right to warn us about them ahead of time.

So far, Trump has been losing in court. A federal judge blocked Trump’s order, and an appeals court has kept that block in place. The administration has also failed repeatedly to make states turn over voter information. In June, the Supreme Court rejected another effort to set a national rule for mail ballots.

There is good reason to think Trump may not get everything he wants. State officials have refused to hand over some of the voter information Trump wants and have challenged his demands in court. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have blocked parts of his plan. Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune rejected Trump’s call to nationalize voting.

The lesson Trump seems to have taken from 2020 is not that he went too far. It is that he started too late. After the 2020 election, Trump searched frantically for officials who would help him undo his loss. This time, he is trying to get his own administration into the election process before voters have even decided the outcome.

I watched our system come dangerously close to breaking after the 2020 election. It held because enough people in positions of responsibility eventually said no. Trump is testing those same boundaries again before the midterms. The answer has to be no again.

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Our top story today: the fallout from the Air Force One decoy operation. The President finally faced questions about using his own staff and the press corps as decoys, and his answer, of course, made everything worse.

I was on CNN yesterday where I talked about this, take a look:

It really is all lies. Constantly and about everything.

Also today: Trump flirts with declaring a national emergency so he can take over the midterm elections; the White House pushes the Justice Department to prosecute a 67 year old Olympian over the Reflecting Pool for a second time; the Treasury tells American companies they can go back to hiding who owns them; and Wisconsin Democrats pick their nominee for governor in a nail-biter with a message for the whole party.

Do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. The Air Force One Decoy Story Only Looks Worse Today

If you read yesterday’s newsletter, you know the gist of what happened. Facing a credible Iranian assassination threat leaving Turkey last month, Trump boarded the old Air Force One in front of the cameras, snuck out the other side into an airport catering truck, and took it to a small unmarked military jet. Air Force One then took off as a decoy, carrying reporters and White House staff oblivious to the danger they faced. If you haven’t seen the footage yet, take a look:

The backlash has been fierce, and the new details keep making it worse. CBS News reported that the only people in the catering truck with Trump were three of his most loyal personal aides, and that the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, flew out on the secret plane with him. The Secretary of State and the Treasury Secretary rode the decoy, but unlike the reporters sitting near them, they knew exactly which plane the President was on.

The reporters who served as the literal human shields are furious. One of them told The Post that defending the president is a staffer’s job, then drew the line: “That’s not my job. I cover the president.”

MAGA world came roaring back with one talking point: Bill Clinton did the same thing flying into Pakistan in 2000. And yes, a decoy was involved. But guess what? The Post ended up digging in and found a key difference. Clinton’s team briefed the press ahead of time. His press secretary, Joe Lockhart, put it this way: “There was no attempt to hide anything, much less lie about it later.”

And when reporters finally asked Trump why it was too dangerous for him to fly on Air Force One but fine for them, here’s what he came up with:

So the plane he escaped on was actually at greater risk, “because that would be the plane they would be more likely to go for.” Nobody on earth believes that, and I doubt he does either.

Of course, Presidents need protection, because the stability of this country depends on it. But we’ve seen Presidents do this before without duping and endangering their staff. Doing that is plain dishonesty. He told everyone that he wanted the military to see the old plane, and that was why he was supposedly flying it back. In reality, he was just sending the White House Press Corps and some of his own staff out as human shields for him.

2. Trump Is Openly Flirting With Using an Emergency to Run the Midterms

Late Monday night, Trump sat for an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a conspiracy theorist on Real America’s Voice and one of his favorite media personalities.

Root had a pitch ready. Since Senate Republicans lack the votes to pass Trump’s election overhaul bill, Root said Trump should simply declare a national emergency over elections and impose it himself. Photo ID, proof of citizenship, limits on mail voting, no Congress required. Listen to how Trump responded:

Well that’s a disturbing thing to hear. He didn’t say no.

The law on this is clear. The Constitution exclusively gives states and Congress the power to run elections, not the president. No president in our history has declared an emergency to run, change, or cancel a vote.

Well, the GOP has a problem with elections, but it has nothing to do with fraud. Mike Lindell, carrying Trump’s complete and total endorsement, lost Minnesota’s Republican primary for governor by eleven points. He is still refusing to concede. He says his team is investigating “anomalies.” Asked if he’d accept the AP calling the race, he answered, “Why would I listen to the AP?” The fraud is there when they lose, gone when they win.

I also tackled this on CNN yesterday. Take a look:

I still don’t think an emergency declaration is the most likely outcome, but I’m more worried than I was a month ago. It matters either way though, because even me having to talk about this corrodes people’s faith that their vote counts, and that’s what the President is trying to do. When citizens stop believing their voice matters, that is how democracies actually die.

3. A Judge Threw Out the Reflecting Pool Case. Trump Wants It Brought Back.

After Trump’s fourteen million dollar renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool started cracking and peeling this summer, the administration went looking for someone to blame. Prosecutors charged David Hearn, a 67 year old former Olympic canoeist, with a felony for allegedly slashing the pool’s new liner. The guy says he briefly touched a loose piece of sealant, nothing more.

Then, the case collapsed. On July 31, the U.S. Attorney for Washington Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the case, telling the court the damage came from a rushed, botched installation and that it was difficult to attribute any of it to vandalism. A judge threw the case out last week.

That should have been the end of it, right? Wrong! Instead, Trump has raged about the dismissal ever since. Watch how he talks about his own hand-picked prosecutor:

Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that White House officials have asked the Justice Department to consider charging Hearn all over again, potentially on a new misdemeanor count.

This President doesn’t know when to accept defeat. Trust me, I know a thing or two about that. The government’s own findings cleared Hearn, and the prosecutors said so in writing. And the White House wants him charged anyway, because the President is completely embarrassed over his pool. That is what a weaponized Justice Department looks like, and this time it’s pointed at one private citizen in hopes of soothing the president’s wounded ego.

4. The Rule to Stop Shell-Company Money Laundering Is Gone

Yesterday, the Treasury Department permanently repealed the rule requiring American companies to reveal their major shareholders. The rule, designed to stop criminals from hiding behind shell companies, was originally passed over Trump’s veto at the end of his first term.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the repeal “a victory for common sense and American small businesses.” But small business owners say the forms took less than 10 minutes of their time, and presented no burden to their companies. So what’s the real reason?

Well, look at who benefits. This database was never public. It was a confidential record for investigators, so that a company existing only on paper couldn’t move millions through the US on behalf of people nobody could name. Those are the people getting their anonymity back. Foreign fortunes parked in Trump-branded real estate. Overseas billionaires piling into the family crypto ventures. If any of the President’s business partners registered their identities with Treasury, that record is now headed for the shredder.

5. Wisconsin Democrats Sent a Message About the Future of the Party In Last Night’s Primary

Just days ago, polls showed State Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, leading the Democratic primary by double digits. But last night she lost to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in a race that came down to less than half of a percentage point. So what happened?

In July, Crowley was struggling so badly that he suspended his campaign, until jumping back in days later with the support of Governor Tony Evers. His endorsement was well-timed, because Hong’s surge came with a lot of baggage, including one old tweet urging America to “cancel Thanksgiving.” That’s not exactly the message Democrats need in a swing state like Wisconsin, especially with election denier Tom Tiffany waiting in November.

Ultimately, that move allowed voters to rally behind someone with an actual chance in the general election. And with Crowley as their new opponent, it’s clear that Republicans are worried about their odds:

Because of races like these, the media has said a lot about socialism taking over the Democratic Party. But I think they’re getting the story backwards. What Democratic voters keep demanding is a fighter. For a while Hong looked like the fighter in this race, and she surged. Once it became clear that she couldn’t win in the general, those voters pivoted fast. It’s not about left versus middle, it’s about beating Trumpism.

Still, Democratic leaders should understand what these latest primaries mean. I watched Republican voters decide their establishment wasn’t meeting the moment, and I watched what they replaced it with. If the establishment keeps playing it safe while their voters demand a fight, those voters will find fighters on their own.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• The Trump administration is now set to spend at least 900 million dollars on construction at the White House. That number, reported Wednesday by the Washington Post, is far larger than anything disclosed before, and it centers on the President’s massive new ballroom and a related underground military complex. Here’s the part that should get your attention. Rather than ask Congress for the money, the administration has been quietly gathering funds from other federal agencies and private donors and routing them into an account normally used for basic White House upkeep. The ballroom started as a 200 million dollar project the President said he’d pay for himself. It’s now quadrupled, some donors were kept secret, and the Post says taxpayers will cover most of it.

• ICE is planning to outfit its officers with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks. According to a Homeland Security notice reported by the Associated Press, the agency intends to spend up to 20 million dollars on thousands of these devices by next March, through a no-bid contract. The official pitch is that they’re for, quote, de-escalation, a tool to gain compliance from combative people. But read the fine print. Even the manufacturer warns the gloves shouldn’t be used as punishment, or on someone who’s merely mouthing off, or on children, pregnant women, or the elderly, and the ACLU points out the people getting shocked may get no warning at all.

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In the video above, I talk about the red line I finally reached with Donald Trump. For me, it was January 6.

Trump had already crossed plenty of lines. I criticized him publicly and often voted against him, but I remained a Republican member of Congress who believed that eventually there would be a point when enough Republicans would finally say: That’s too much. We can’t defend this anymore.

I didn’t realize soon enough that every time Trump crossed a line, Republicans would simply draw a new one.

After the 2020 election, Trump claimed an election he had lost was stolen. Bill Barr, Trump’s own attorney general, said the Justice Department had found no fraud that could have changed the result. Republican officials in the states certified Biden’s victory, and members of Congress knew Trump had lost. Some still tried to help him overturn the election, while others admitted privately that he had lost but refused to say so publicly.

On the night of January 6, after we returned to the Capitol, 147 Republicans still voted against certifying the election results. Nobody started out by saying that Trump should be able to stay in office if he yelled loudly enough about nonexistent fraud. They excused lies because they liked Trump’s judges or because they were scared of a primary. When confronted with one of Trump’s outrageous tweets, they could easily dismiss it as just a tweet. They could say the press was exaggerating, or that Democrats were worse. They got there one excuse at a time.

By January 6, breaking with Trump also meant admitting that you had defended things you shouldn’t have defended. For Republicans in Congress, it could also mean a primary challenge or the end of your career. That was when another excuse became easiest to make.

Which brings me to the point of today’s Believe, Fight, Win piece: Decide where your lines are now, before keeping them in place costs you something.

And I am not going to just talk at you here. I want you to really think about this and write them down.

Pick a few red lines and actually memorialize them on a piece of paper or on your computer, before there’s a candidate you feel obligated to defend or an old argument you feel compelled to explain away.

If you’re a Democrat, it’s easy to list things Donald Trump could do that would outrage you. Instead, think about a Democratic president you voted for and wanted to succeed. Decide what would make you stop defending that president, at least on that specific matter. Republicans should do (and should have done a long time ago) the same with a Republican president.

You may wonder what picking your red lines for your own side has to do with the Believe, Fight, Win series. Well, I’m glad you asked. The short answer is that I saw Republicans win a lot of elections and then immediately lose their integrity once they took office. Trump is the obvious example, but it happened for years, starting with embracing Fox News and the scam artists who sprung up during and after the Tea Party wave. Put another way, what’s the point of winning elections if you lose your soul?

Kevin McCarthy drew a clear line after January 6, then moved it almost immediately. After January 6, he said Trump “bears responsibility” for what happened at the Capitol. Less than three weeks later, McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago posing for a photograph with him. Mitch McConnell said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the attack. Three years later, he endorsed Trump for president.

I don’t think either man suddenly decided January 6 didn’t matter. They just realized that sticking to what they had said about Trump could hurt them politically. They didn’t have to admit all at once that they had been wrong. They just had to come up with one more reason to stay with Trump.

Most of us don’t have a seat in Congress to lose, but we can make the same kinds of excuses. Maybe you’ve defended a politician for years and hate the idea of admitting that the friend you argued with had a point.

Having a red line doesn’t mean you should never change your mind. I changed mine about Trump, and I’m glad I did. If the facts prove you wrong about a politician, admit it. Don’t keep defending him by lowering the standard you once held him to.

And decide in advance what crossing that line will cost him. Next to each line, write down what you’ll do if your candidate crosses it.

Maybe you stop donating. Sometimes it may mean voting for somebody whose views on taxes or immigration you dislike because the person you normally support crossed a line you said mattered.

Otherwise, it isn’t much of a red line.

One of the things that frustrated me most in Congress was hearing Republicans say privately what they refused to say publicly. They knew Trump had lost. They just weren’t willing to risk the backlash that came with saying so publicly.

You can decide now, before a candidate you support crosses the line. Decide what you won’t excuse from a president you support. Then decide what you’ll do if he or she does it anyway. Because you don’t actually win if your side abandons every promise and principle that you once stood for once you take power.

After your side crosses the line is the worst possible time to decide where you meant to put it.

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Our top story today is one of the wildest things I’ve read in a long time. Back in July, facing a threat from Iran, the President was forced to sneak off Air Force One inside a catering truck, switched to a different plane, and flew home in disguise, while reporters and staff were left on the original jet as a decoy. We’ll get to all the juicy details momentarily.

Also today: Trump’s media company lost a quarter of a billion dollars; he signed an order to reduce the vaccines we give our kids, where he fell asleep while he did it; the White House is still quietly protecting an accused abuser to keep him on the ballot; and the DOJ released a memo that could protect Trump from congressional scrutiny.

Please do me a favor: like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Fled Iranian Assassination Threat Threat in a Catering Truck

You’ll remember back in July, we covered something really strange. Trump flew to the NATO summit in Turkey on his shiny new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, and then decided to fly home on the old one. At the time, he said it was just for old time’s sake and we called BS.

Well, The Washington Post and The New York Times just revealed what actually happened, and it’s wild. There was a credible Iranian assassination threat, so security officials cooked up a full deception operation. Here are the details on it.

Trump walked up the stairs of the old Air Force One in front of the cameras, waving, making it look like he was flying home on it. Then once he got on the plane he slipped out of the other side and climbed into an airport catering truck. That truck then drove him to a plain military jet parked nearby which he boarded. Take a look at the video from The Washington Post of that happening:

Then the old Air Force One took off as a decoy, with its transponder switched off, and still using the presidential call sign even though the President wasn’t on it. Who was actually on it? Reporters and White House staff. Most of them had no idea Trump wasn’t on the plane, and all they were told was to keep their window shades shut the whole flight.

And somehow, when Air Force One landed in Britain, Trump met it there and just hopped back on it, so that he could emerge from it and make it look as if he was inside the entire time.

So at the time, Trump stood on that plane, talked about the threat, and literally told the reporters, “I go, you go.” Almost like that scene from Titanic. But he had already made sure that if a missile found that plane, he wouldn’t be on it, but they would be. That’s not so much like Titanic.

Having to protect the president is legitimate. Every country does it. But slinking off and then turning your own journalists and staff into unwitting human shields, and then looking them in the eye and saying we’re in this together is not leadership. It’s total cowardice. Now that this story is out, expect real backlash. But you never know with this Republican Party.

2. Trump's Media Company Just Lost a Quarter of a Billion Dollars

Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, reported that it lost more than 238 million dollars in just three months.

In those same three months, the entire company brought in about $1.7 million in actual revenue. This is a public company worth billions on paper, and it sells less than two million dollars of anything. Most of the loss came from a big bet on cryptocurrency that tanked when crypto prices fell. Truth Social’s traffic is also dropping sharply.

So how are they trying to make money now? They’ve launched something called Truth API. For up to $100,000 a month, it gives Wall Street trading firms lightning-fast access to posts on Truth Social. And who is the only poster that matters on that platform? The President of the United States, who can move entire markets or the price of oil with a single post.

So for the right price, high-speed traders get a head start on the words of the President. His own company literally confirmed most of the early customers are high-frequency trading firms.

This presidency has been turned into a subscription service. Trump makes policy on that platform, and his private company sells rich people early access to it. Like we’ve talked about before, every previous president put their business in a blind trust to avoid even the appearance of this. But Trump doesn’t even want to hide it. He knows he doesn’t have to. This is the stuff that doesn’t make the headlines as much as Iran, tariffs, and cleaning cart getaways, but it still matters. It’s blatant and unapologetic corruption.

3. Trump Signed an Order Gutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule

Trump signed an executive order to dramatically scale back the vaccines recommended for American children. It cuts the number of diseases we routinely vaccinate kids against from 18 down to 11. Shots for things like hepatitis B, the flu, and COVID would no longer be recommended for all children. And the order wants to split the measles vaccine, the MMR, into three separate shots spread over many months.

And of course, doctors are alarmed over this. There is no sound medical evidence for any of these decisions. Spreading shots out over more visits just leaves kids unprotected longer, and it assumes every family can even make five separate trips to the doctor. And by the way, this is all happening while measles is at a 35-year high in this country.

Listen to how the President himself explained the science behind it:

He talked about a vaccine dose the size of a soda bottle being poured into a little child. That’s not how any of this works. And when a reporter asked him about his claim that the measles vaccine is, quote, quite lethal, watch this:

That’s the standard now. Somebody said it so it’s true. It was probably RFK. And we all know that if RFK says it, it’s true.

And this is supposed to be an important meeting, right? Soda cans being poured into children is terrible. Well here’s exactly how important the president deemed this meeting to be:

We’ve beaten these diseases. Measles was gone from this country. Real doctors spent an entire century figuring out this schedule to keep children alive, and it works. But Donald Trump showed up and had to mess it up. This will get kids hurt. Some will die of diseases we already defeated. This is a terrifying reality we’re in, where everything from science to authority just gets automatically rejected. It’s dangerous, and the person signing it all off couldn’t even stay awake for it.

4. The White House Stepped In to Keep an Accused Child Abuser on the Ballot

Yesterday was the deadline for Ohio Republican Max Miller to drop out of his congressional race, as he faces allegations of abuse against his ex-wife and their two-year-old daughter. A number of Republicans came out against him as the deadline approached, including his former father-in-law Bernie Moreno. But Miller refused to budge.

And now we know why. Politico reported yesterday that when Ohio Republicans tried to schedule a meeting to find a replacement and pressure Miller out of the race, the White House stepped in and told them to stand down. One said that “they basically told us to back off and let the voters decide.” Even Moreno, the grandfather of that little girl, is now saying he’s done talking about it.

So the party wasn’t helpless. They just fell in line, while the White House actively protected an alleged abuser. And if you listen to the way Trump talks about Miller, it’s easy to understand why:

Remember when Kevin McCarthy bragged on Fox News about how Republicans walk away from their bad candidates? Well, the Democrat he was gloating over, Graham Platner, has been out of his race for a month. Meanwhile, the President won’t even let his party walk away from a man accused of breaking his two year old’s collarbone. So much for family values.

5. Trump's New DOJ Just Handed Him a Way to Hide From Congress

Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that executive privilege can cover communications with “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” Members of the public. State officials. Even people who work for Congress or the courts.

And the timing couldn’t be more convenient. If Democrats win the House in November, their investigators will ask for these exact conversations, the ones between Trump and his donors, his business partners, and the outside allies he actually listens to. Now, the White House can meet every one of those subpoenas with a privilege claim and this memo to back it up.

The DOJ released the opinion two days after the Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche to lead the department. The deciding vote came from Bill Cassidy, who said this on the floor before casting it:

That was Cassidy’s pitch: the President’s former defense lawyer was precisely the man to confront him with hard truths. Just two days later, Blanche’s department decided to shield Trump’s conversations from investigators. Not exactly the pushback Cassidy promised, but this isn’t the first time he’s totally embarrassed himself.

Look, when I sat on the January 6th Committee, Trump and his allies threw privilege claims at everything they could. He fought us all the way to the Supreme Court to keep his White House records secret and lost, eight to one. Steve Bannon used the same excuse to defy our subpoena, before a jury sent him to federal prison. Now that theory is the official position of the Department of Justice, run by the man approved by Republican senators. And it just makes you wonder what exactly they’re trying to hide.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• President Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, a Project 2025 author and Trump loyalist, to run the Interior Department’s inspector general office on Friday. Kirk previously worked inside the intelligence community’s watchdog office while advising Tulsi Gabbard, then the Director of National Intelligence, as that office investigated the Signal chat scandal. He now takes over the watchdog assigned to review the botched Reflecting Pool renovation. Trump insists vandals did the damage, even after his $16 million refurbishment left the water green and the lining cracked. But his own U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, couldn’t make that case stick, and her review ended up faulting the construction itself.

• The Trump administration has awarded a no-bid contract of up to $244 million to represent unaccompanied migrant children to Our Rescue, the anti-trafficking group that inspired the QAnon-linked film Sound of Freedom. The group’s founder, former ICE agent Tim Ballard, resigned in 2023 amid misconduct claims, and women later sued him alleging he sexually assaulted and trafficked them during the group’s sting operations. The contract comes after the administration let a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice expire because it refused new terms demanding confidential data about the children it serves, information those lawyers say is privileged. The network went unpaid starting in November, leaving about 26,000 kids in limbo, and a federal judge just ordered the government to hand over the $65 million it owed. Days earlier, a separate $150 million no-bid deal went to a small Texas law firm founded by a former Trump appointee, with just two immigration lawyers on staff.
  

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One year ago today, Donald Trump walked into the White House briefing room and announced that he was sending hundreds of National Guard troops into Washington. He called it “Liberation Day in D.C.” and promised to restore “law, order and public safety” to a city he described as plagued by “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.” Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi went further: “Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today.”

A year later, thousands of Guard troops remain in Washington, and Trump plans to keep them there for the rest of his presidency. Their deployment is now scheduled to last until January 20, 2029, the day he leaves office. Apparently, “today” lasts three and a half years.

It’s true that crime has fallen. Total reported crime has fallen 20 percent so far this year, and homicides are down about 31 percent. But Trump sent in the Guard after Washington had already experienced a substantial drop in crime. It’s fine if the administration wants to give the troops some of the credit. That still doesn’t explain why they need to remain in the city for another two and a half years.

The Pentagon says the mission will continue until January 20, 2029, “or until terminated by the President.” More than 4,600 military personnel from D.C. and 24 states and territories were still deployed as of last week. Keeping the troops in Washington through 2029 is expected to cost about $1.4 billion. The Pentagon is planning for a long stay: the administration signed a $292 million contract to move Guard members from hotels into apartments around Washington. If this deployment is really about crime, it should end when the crime emergency ends. Instead, it is scheduled to end when Trump leaves office.

I spent 20 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard, and one reason this personally upsets me is that Guardsmen aren’t a reserve pool of federal employees for a president to use whenever he wants. They have military jobs to train for, not to mention civilian careers and families they leave behind when they are activated. Calling them up for a genuine emergency is part of the bargain. Keeping them in Washington for years to patrol neighborhoods, shovel snow and perform routine city work is absolutely not the mission they signed up for.

I’m sure some of their work was useful to the city, but that’s what makes the situation so easy to get used to. Their deployment, which at first seemed outrageous, now seems almost boring.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic purposes, and for good reason. Civilian police and the military do different jobs and have different relationships to the citizens they serve. People stop noticing when the lines between the two blue over months and years.

Trump has been doing his best to expand his use of the Guard for years. During the protests in 2020, he wanted as many as 10,000 troops deployed in the Washington area. Early in his second term, he has tried to send Guard troops into several Democratic-led cities, with some deployments blocked or limited by courts.

Here’s the run with the current situation: Washington is easier because D.C. is not a state. The president directly controls the D.C. National Guard, and Congress has a lot of control over the city.

That’s why Trump can do things with the National Guard in Washington that he cannot do in a state. Not only does he directly control the D.C. Guard, but the 700,000 people who live there have no governor who can tell him no. A federal judge ruled last November that the deployment was unlawful, but an appeals court let it continue and said Trump was likely to prevail because presidents have more control over the National Guard in D.C. than in the states. Even if the courts decide Trump has this power, that doesn’t mean he should use it this way.

Dwight Eisenhower also sent troops into an American city, but for a clearly defined purpose. In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called up the Arkansas National Guard and ordered it to keep nine black students out of Little Rock Central High School. After Faubus withdrew the Guard and a segregationist mob threatened the students, Eisenhower intervened.

He took control of the same Arkansas National Guard, put it under federal command and reversed its mission. He also sent troops from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the students and enforce the federal court’s desegregation order. He also made clear when the troops could leave: if resistance to the court orders stopped, “the further presence of Federal troops will be unnecessary.”

Trump has done the opposite. Crime in Washington has fallen, but the Guard remains. Troops who were sent in to deal with crime were eventually tasked with shoveling snow and working on beautification projects. And, for reasons that Trump has yet to explain, the deployment is scheduled to end not when some public-safety goal is met, but when Trump leaves office.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the phrase “imperial presidency” in his 1973 book of that name. He was concerned about presidents acquiring power during a crisis and how that power sticks around, especially when Congress fails to exert its constitutional role.

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Trump has accelerated that habit. According to the Associated Press, 30 of his first 150 executive orders in his second term invoked some form of emergency authority, far outpacing recent presidents. Under Trump, everything is deemed an emergency, whether it’s trade, immigration, or crime in Washington. These so-called “emergencies” are useful pretexts for him to expand his power.

What makes this particularly alarming is that the Guard is scheduled to remain in Washington through the 2028 presidential election. I am not predicting that Trump will order troops to interfere with it. But I did serve on the committee that investigated January 6. We learned what happens when a president decides that losing power is unacceptable and refuses to accept defeat.

The country learned, in real time, that many of our safeguards depended on people behaving better than the law required. Normalizing thousands of troops in the capital through another presidential election and transfer of power is a bad arrangement even if the troops never do anything improper.

The good news is that Americans do not have to accept this as normal. If and when Democrats take back Congress, they can limit how long the president can keep troops in the capital without congressional approval, and the public can keep asking a simple question that Trump won’t answer: What are these troops still doing here? Bad precedents become lasting ones only when everyone decides to live with them. We don’t have to.

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Our top story today: just over a week ago, the President stood up and announced a historic breakthrough for peace in Gaza. Again, taking a victory lap before anything was final. And on Sunday, the Prime Minister of Israel, supposedly one of Trump’s closest allies, went in front of his own cabinet and rejected the entire thing.

We’ll also get into the President souring on yet another one of his own Cabinet secretaries, a heartbreaking update on Joe Biden’s health, bulldozers tearing through one of America’s most beloved national parks, and the President’s mysterious new head of hair that has the whole internet talking.

Do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Let’s get to it.

1. Trump Got Played by Netanyahu in Front of the Whole World

About a week and a half ago, Donald Trump really happily announced that his self-dubbed Board of Peace had reached a “historic agreement.” A 15-point plan to finally end the war in Gaza. Hamas would fully disarm, Israel would withdraw its troops in phases, and Trump would get to claim he did what no one else could.

You could practically see him measuring his mantle for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Then, on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got in front of his cabinet and said, “Israel rejects the 15-point document.”

He even repeated it, on purpose, saying he’d heard people claim he hadn’t said it. He declared that Israeli forces will not withdraw one inch until Hamas is genuinely disarmed.

To understand why this embarrassing moment for Trump happened, you have to follow the politics. Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life at home. Israeli elections are in October and his coalition is on the ropes. Standing up to the American president and looking tough plays well for him right now. In other words, embarrassing Donald Trump was good for Netanyahu’s campaign. So he did it.

The lesson here is one this President will never learn. He thinks foreign policy is only about flattery and personal favors, and that if some leader calls him brilliant and hands him a shiny prize, they’re lovers for life. But world leaders don’t act on flattery. They act on their own interests, and if they’re good leaders, their countries’ interests.

Netanyahu just used Trump for the photo op and then dumped the plan when it stopped being useful for his own politics. Trump calls himself the greatest dealmaker on Earth, but he just played by a top ally in front of the world.

2. Trump Is Already Turning on His Own DHS Secretary

The Wall Street Journal and Axios both report that Trump is getting more and more frustrated with his Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. Mullin is the former Oklahoma senator Trump installed back in March, after the firing of Kristi Noem, the most disastrous DHS Secretary in modern history.

But that’s why Mullin is caught in an impossible spot. He tried to clean up the agency’s image after all of Noem’s terrible choices, and he floated some mild immigration reform, even acknowledging out loud that not every immigrant is stealing an American job and that some industries actually need the labor.

But of course, for that, the MAGA base came after him with torches. Steve Bannon called him the, quote, wrong guy at the wrong time. They’re accusing him of being soft, of going squishy, of caring what the media thinks.

You’ll remember a few weeks ago, Mullin paused ICE vehicle stops after those shootings. Trump publicly overruled him within a day, and Mullin had to reverse himself. Now Trump reportedly wants his enforcement numbers higher, and the knives are out.

I’m not here to shed a tear for Markwayne Mullin, because he still defends this President to the hilt. But this is what happens when the only thing you value is loyalty and cruelty. Nothing anybody can do is ever enough unless they are completely and utterly spineless and blind. The moment one of his people shows a flicker of basic common sense, which we know Trump is allergic to, they become the next name on the chopping block. Trump doesn’t want to build a team. Instead, he wants a line of people waiting to be thrown overboard, each one more spineless and blind than the last.

3. Hunter Biden Says His Father's Cancer Has Gotten Worse

On Friday, in an emotional interview with the BBC, Hunter Biden gave a painful update on his father. Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer last year, and his son says it has gotten worse.

Whatever you think of Joe Biden’s politics, this is a moment for basic human compassion. A family is watching a father and a grandfather suffer. Your politics shouldn’t affect how you feel that news. And Biden himself is a good man, who peacefully transferred power to a president that belittled him and insulted his sons and family countless times during the 2024 election cycle.

When Biden’s diagnosis was first announced, this is what Donald Trump chose to say about a decent man fighting cancer:

I know we expect much from this guy. But for all the young folks watching, when anyone’s father is dying of cancer, there is exactly one decent thing to say. I’m praying for him and his family. That’s it. Guess what Biden said after the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania?

“I’m grateful to hear he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally as we await further information. Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There is no place for this kind of violence in America.”

It’s a sign of how much Trump has corrupted our politics that just hearing gracious words from a President feels almost foreign. Trump couldn’t manage a statement like that if he tried, because cruelty is his whole brand. We all have to be better than that, and remember that electing somebody with kindness and human compassion is important too. This is about basic human decency, and it’s part of the job.

4. They're Bulldozing Big Bend for a Wall Nobody on the Border Wants

Texas’s beloved Big Bend National Park is an American treasure: desert, forest, rivers and canyons, all in one park. The night skies are among the darkest in the country. Half a million people visit every year.

But last week, the bulldozers showed up:

That is Trump’s border wall construction, inside a national park. Seventeen miles of barriers, access roads, and lighting. In June, DHS waived dozens of environmental laws to clear the way, the first time that had ever been done for a national park. And to make that construction easier, hundreds of thousands of acres of American land are being left on the Mexico side.

But there’s just one problem. There is no border crisis in Big Bend. Every local sheriff along this stretch of border, Republican and Democrat, says a wall here is pointless. They already have what one of them calls a “God-made barrier,” canyon cliffs dropping fifteen hundred feet to the river, and a hundred miles of desert above them.

So why is this happening? Well, just follow the money.

The Big Bend wall has been carved up into contracts and handed out piece by piece. Nearly two billion dollars of that work went to Barnard Construction, a Montana firm that has collected more than 5.6 billion dollars in border contracts under this administration. Their single largest award, 1.6 billion dollars for construction in New Mexico, was handed out with no competitive bidding at all. And how did they get so lucky? Naturally, Barnard’s chairman and his wife gave a million dollars to Trump’s campaign in 2024.

Look, corruption has cost this country plenty already. It has wrecked our institutions, our credibility, our trust in each other. And now they are taking its beauty. It will take time, but those agencies can be rebuilt. The credibility can be earned back. But it will be much harder, maybe impossible, to restore a place like Big Bend.

5. The Biggest Mystery in Politics Was Sitting on Top of Trump's Head

Last week, Trump showed up to an event in Las Vegas, with one notable difference in his appearance. His hair. It was, suddenly, fuller. Fluffier. Taller. A whole new lustrous head of hair, appearing out of nowhere on an 80-year-old man.

A day or two later, the magnificent mane was gone, back to the usual style, before puffing back up again at another event.

And the memes did not stop all weekend. Here are just a few of my favorite:

1. Here’s Trump and his mom. The resemblance is uncanny.

2. The “Hair Force One.” I know that Qatar jet came with a lot of luxurious upgrades, but this one’s new.

3. The “Straits of Hairmousse,” with Trump’s Cabinet all wearing the same wigs.

You laugh, but if Trump asked, I could actually see them going along with it.

And what was the official White House explanation? Lighting. Right. The lighting.

Look, I’ll be honest, this isn’t earth shattering news. But it is just plain fun. And amidst the bad news, we can all use the laugh.

But the metaphor is serious. While this President obsesses over how he looks on camera, the real stuff, the war, the economy, the actual governing, is falling apart in the background. But hey, at least the lighting was good.

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Some other stories that caught my eye:

• The Trump administration is offering up to $300 million to as many as four cities for aggressive police enforcement surges, but the money comes with strings attached. Cities seeking the grants would have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, adopt tougher policies on homelessness and public disorder, and potentially repay the government for future federal law-enforcement interventions. The Justice Department says the program is designed to produce the kind of public-safety gains officials say they have seen in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, and calls it part of the administration’s “Make America Safe Again” mission. The grants would run for three years, and the program is funded through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some city leaders have already rejected the offer, with one mayor calling it a quick fix rather than an investment in the causes of crime.

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has revoked the security clearance of former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, accusing him of leaking classified information about the Qatari jet being used as Air Force One. The Pentagon says Kendall disclosed classified information about the aircraft’s capabilities to the media, but Kendall says he has no idea what information he supposedly revealed and insists he was careful not to discuss anything classified. Kendall was quoted in a New York Times story about concerns that the Qatari aircraft lacked some of the defensive capabilities of the traditional presidential jets, and he was also quoted by The Wall Street Journal. The controversy comes after the Justice Department subpoenaed several Times reporters over their reporting on the plane, only to withdraw the subpoenas less than two weeks later.

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Thank you being a part of this community. You’re the reason I can keep speaking the truth about what is happening in our country.

-Adam

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