And today I’m sitting down with Sherrod Brown, the former Ohio senator now trying to win his seat back, to talk about what he’s hearing from voters and where he thinks this midterm fight is headed.

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Let’s get into it.

MAGA Erupts Over Data Centers:

• President Trump is facing pushback from his own supporters on Truth Social after telling communities that oppose data centers they risk becoming “backwards and poor.”

• Several MAGA followers responded that their objections aren’t about rejecting economic growth but about concrete costs, with one calling Trump’s position “flawed” given the impact on farmland and water resources, and another writing that residents are worried about “our electric bill shooting through the roof and our water supply going low.” A third supporter said they actually support the need for data centers but still urged Trump to address water and noise concerns, while another said they’d rather their community stay agricultural than become an “IT” hub, warning “America cannot eat a data center.” The tone across replies was notably more measured than adversarial, coming from people who otherwise back Trump but feel his framing skipped over their actual concerns.

• Other supporters raised additional grievances, including one who said property taxes had climbed steadily after new industry moved into their county, arguing the development mainly benefited newcomers taking the jobs while burdening longtime residents. Several followers voiced privacy and security fears, with one worried that data centers were amassing personal information vulnerable to hacking, and another concerned the facilities could be used to spy on Americans or enable “individual pricing and other nefarious purposes.” One commenter went further, calling AI itself “evil” and warning it’s “already making people lazy and dumbed-down,” reflecting broader unease that goes beyond the data centers themselves. A separate supporter said the facilities leave “a messy wake upon the people in the area” and asked why Trump wasn’t sharing stories of data centers actually succeeding for their host communities.

• Taken together, the responses reveal a real disconnect between how Trump has framed the opposition, as backwardness standing in the way of prosperity, and what his own base is actually saying, which centers on tangible costs like utility bills, water supply, noise, farmland loss, and data privacy. Trump’s post did not engage with any of these specific concerns, focusing instead on data centers as engines of jobs and growth. The pushback is notable precisely because it’s coming from supporters rather than opponents, suggesting the data center buildout could become a genuine point of friction within Trump’s own coalition rather than a straightforward partisan fight. It also echoes a broader pattern already showing up elsewhere this cycle, of longtime Trump voters voicing frustration over pocketbook issues even as they remain otherwise supportive of him.

Epstein/Maxwell News:

• Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold obtained Ghislaine Maxwell’s formal prison transfer application after more than a year of pursuing it through FOIA and a subsequent lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons, though the agency redacted nearly all the substantive justification for her move. The July 30, 2025 document authorized her transfer from a low-security Florida facility to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, a move that came just days after then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed her over two days at FCI Tallahassee. Former prosecutors called that interview highly unusual, and the timing fueled speculation about a quid pro quo, a cooperation deal, or a possible pardon. Blanche has publicly denied politics played any role, insisting on Meet the Press that Maxwell was moved because of “numerous threats against her life” and that the decision was made independently by the BOP. Neither the BOP nor DOJ responded to Bloomberg’s request for comment on the newly released document.

• The application itself shows Maxwell’s name and the Tallahassee facility that held her, but withholds the names of both officials who signed off, citing a rarely used exemption for information that “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.” Entire sections are blacked out, including details on her medical status, how she adjusted to incarceration, her disciplinary history, and her relationships with other inmates. Most critically, the actual justification for her transfer, a box explaining “past or present behavior and/or management/inmate concerns,” was withheld entirely under a privacy exemption. The BOP also redacted a section addressing whether there were any “discrepancies” in her security and custody classification, which could have directly informed the decision to move her to a lower-security camp. Her answers to questions about whether a parole hearing was scheduled, and when, were redacted as well.

• The document leaves the central question, why Maxwell was really moved, still unanswered, and it’s not the end of the story. Leopold’s underlying FOIA lawsuit against the BOP remains ongoing, meaning further documents could still be compelled. Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Adam Schiff, and Richard Blumenthal separately filed their own FOIA requests last year seeking records on Maxwell’s transfer, adding another track that could surface more information. Given the redactions, this release functions more as confirmation that a formal, signed-off process occurred than as an explanation of the reasoning behind it. Public accountability on the transfer, more than a year after it happened, remains effectively where it started.

Supreme Court Green Lights Ballroom:

• The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Monday to let President Trump proceed indefinitely with construction of his White House ballroom, granting an emergency request from the administration that blocked lower court rulings which had paused the aboveground portion of the project. The unsigned ruling didn’t address whether Trump actually has authority to build without congressional approval; instead, the court found that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the legal challenge, likely lacks standing to sue in the first place. The trust’s case rested on a declaration from board member Alison Hoagland, a D.C. preservationist who said she’d suffer “aesthetic, cultural and historical” injuries from the ballroom’s construction, but the majority held that “mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury.”

• Chief Justice Roberts broke with the conservative majority, joining the three liberal justices in dissent, and wrote separately that he believed Hoagland did have standing since a preservationist can be “aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way” by watching a historic building she regularly enjoys get transformed. Roberts also stated bluntly that “construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year” and that “that construction is likely unlawful.”

• The ruling caps months of litigation: a federal judge initially sided with the trust, allowing underground construction to continue but blocking the ballroom itself, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision on August 7. The legal fight centers on whether federal law requiring “express authority of Congress” to build on D.C. federal land applies here, a requirement the trust says Trump ignored, while the administration counters that separate provisions of federal law let the president make improvements to the White House grounds on his own authority. Monday’s decision followed an interim ruling along similar lines that Chief Justice Roberts issued on August 21, suggesting the court’s posture toward the project has been consistent even as the underlying legal question of presidential authority remains formally unresolved. Because the ruling turns entirely on standing rather than the merits, the door remains open for a different challenger with clearer standing to bring a similar suit later.

• Practically, the ruling clears the way for a project that’s already well underway: the administration told the court construction was 65% complete as of August 24, with a 250-person crew working 20-hour days, seven days a week. The White House maintains the $400 million project is being funded entirely through private donations, a claim that has faced substantial public pushback and skepticism, especially after Republicans separately floated using $1 billion in taxpayer funds to help secure the project. Secret Service funds have already gone toward some of the ballroom’s security enhancements, and the broader plan includes an extensive underground component with secure locations and medical facilities the administration says are necessary for security reasons. With the Supreme Court’s emergency intervention now in place, construction can continue unimpeded while the underlying legal questions about presidential authority over federal land in Washington remain technically unsettled.

Other news:

• DHS is launching a coordinated “voter fraud surge” starting Tuesday, directing Homeland Security Investigations, an agency normally focused on trafficking and smuggling, to pursue leads and field interviews in nine states (Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut) through mid-October, per internal guidance CNN reviewed. The timing is notable because it runs through the run-up to the midterms, cutting against a long-standing DOJ policy that discourages overt election-related investigative action close to elections; DHS, as a separate department, isn’t bound by that policy. Experts say there’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and despite the resource surge, the administration has brought only a handful of prosecutions, mostly involving noncitizens accused of voting or registering unlawfully. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has publicly touted big numbers, like 250,000 alleged noncitizen registrants across four states and nearly 16,000 on Nevada’s rolls alone, but internal records show DHS privately confirmed just 185 of the Nevada cases, with another 6,200 still needing further vetting.

• A judge has refused to pause her order blocking Trump’s mail ballot rule from taking effect for the November 3 election, rejecting the administration’s claim that the Supreme Court had already blessed the rule as a “cynical interpretation.”

• Florida DOT is ordering local governments to remove automated license plate reader cameras from state road right-of-ways within 30 days, following Gov. Ron DeSantis’s public denunciation of the technology and pledge to “clear the state right-of-ways.” The order, issued in a memo from Assistant Secretary Will Watts citing state statute 316.0777, also directs FDOT to move faster on removing cameras it deems an immediate safety concern; the cameras, made by Flock Safety, Axon, and other brands, are used by at least 100 Florida law enforcement agencies out of roughly 7,500 statewide. DeSantis framed his objection around civil liberties, warning the data could be harvested and sold rather than used only for safety purposes as promised, and pointed to states like New Hampshire that restrict roadside camera installations as a possible model for future Florida legislation. Sheriffs in Jacksonville and Putnam County have already said they’ll halt their LPR programs immediately, though the order doesn’t reach cameras installed on private property, and the story notes it will be updated as FDOT and the Governor’s office respond to requests for comment.

• A damaged private water line at an El Reno, Oklahoma data center wasted more than 3 million gallons of water this week, prompting the city to issue emergency abatement and public nuisance notices. The line, connected to a fire hydrant on private property, belongs to Athlon BT, a company that runs mobile data centers for AI storage and Bitcoin mining using water- and air-cooling systems. City inspectors also flagged the property for several other violations, including a lack of maintenance and access, drainage problems, expired building permits, and no final certificate of occupancy, and deemed the structures dangerous. Athlon BT has not responded to requests for comment and now has 10 days to fix the nuisance conditions or face further city action, with an administrative hearing on the property scheduled for late September.

• The Trump administration is shuttering nearly all of USDA’s research into cyclospora, the foodborne parasite that has sickened more than 17,000 Americans this summer, just as public concern over food safety is rising. Two of the three projects at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center lost funding after Congress zeroed them out in this year’s appropriations, while the third, still funded, is being relocated to Iowa this fall as part of a broader USDA reorganization, and every scientist working on it has reportedly refused to move. USDA blames Congress for the funding cuts and insists the research will continue without disruption, but current and former officials, outside academics, and industry groups warn the agency is losing scarce parasitology expertise that takes decades to rebuild and that other labs and federal partners depend on. Complicating the relocation further, scientists say sensitive samples stored in minus-80-degree freezers would need risky cross-country transport, environmental conditions at new sites could compromise the research, and equipment may not even arrive for months after staff are required to relocate. Unions have separately flagged internal documents suggesting up to a quarter of USDA employees may quit rather than relocate under the reorganization.

• The US and Iran exchanged fire for the first time in a month after CENTCOM struck Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz late Sunday, prompting Iran to fire ballistic missiles at US bases in Jordan and target US forces in the UAE. Trump threatened further action, telling Fox News “we’re going to hit them hard,” while dismissing Iran as “officially a failed nation” with 300% inflation and no functioning military or currency. The fighting followed Trump’s disputed claim that the US Navy had fully cleared mines from the strait, a claim independent tracker Tanker Trackers contradicts, noting daily oil flow through the strait remains far below ceasefire-period levels. Iranian President Pezeshkian told Pakistan’s PM that continuing the war isn’t in Iran’s interest and said he remains open to the US-brokered memorandum of understanding, even as Iran’s currency comes under renewed pressure from new US sanctions. A G20 finance ministers meeting is expected to see friction over US demands that more countries sanction Iran, with Germany’s finance minister planning to push for a diplomatic end given the war’s inflationary toll.

• A second death from the weekend’s Grand Canyon flash flood was confirmed Monday, with 15 people still missing after floodwaters tore through Bright Angel Creek, destroyed footbridges, and forced the helicopter evacuation of more than 60 visitors. The National Weather Service warned that saturated soils and continued monsoon storms keep flash flood risk elevated through Monday, and officials are urging the public to report any information on hikers who may have been in the area. About 40% of the park’s key drinking water pipeline was destroyed, triggering emergency water restrictions including closed overnight lodging and shut-off campground spigots, a serious blow given a $208m pipeline rehabilitation project already underway since 2023. Experts note the disaster unfolded amid severe regional drought and warn the extreme rainfall may have been intensified by a historic El Niño supercharging Pacific sea temperatures. In unrelated flooding, San Antonio, Texas also reported two storm-related drowning deaths from severe weather earlier in the weekend.

• The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, tried to discredit a Washington Post report that four senior US commanders had formally objected to extending Iran war troop deployments, without disputing that the objections were actually filed. The Post reported that the chiefs of naval operations, European Command, Southern Command, and Indo-Pacific Command all lodged “non-concurs” warning that sustaining current deployment levels risked degrading readiness elsewhere, while Army and Air Force leaders agreed to extend but flagged serious risks. Parnell called publishing the classified assessments “a crime” and accused the Post of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” though a community note on his own post clarified the Supreme Court has held the First Amendment protects the press’s right to publish classified information of public interest. The dispute lands just days after the renewed US-Iran clashes and six weeks after Hegseth told senators the war has cost roughly $37.5 billion, even as Trump declared Monday that Iran is essentially defeated. Neither Trump nor Parnell addressed how that declaration squares with four of the Pentagon’s own commanders warning in writing that the war effort, as currently ordered, isn’t sustainable.

• Rescue teams in Nepal are racing to reach more than 900 hydropower workers feared trapped in tunnels across 12 flood-damaged projects, with oxygen levels dropping as the search drags on and roughly 500 workers still missing in the hardest-hit Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts. The death toll has climbed to 939 in Nepal with 16 more in Tibet, and more than 4,400 people remain missing across both countries, even as rescuers pulled a six-year-old girl alive from mud on Monday after hearing her crying. Rescue efforts have been repeatedly hampered by destroyed bridges, an unpredictable river changing course, and fears that a new lake formed by the disaster could trigger fresh flooding, though weather improved enough Monday for operations to pick up pace. About 250 people were rescued from the Upper Trishuli hydroelectric project over the weekend, and the flood damage has knocked out roughly 700 megawatts, about 10% of Nepal’s power capacity. India and China are supplying rescue expertise, equipment, and prefabricated bridges, though Nepali officials say China has shared little glacier and water-level data despite claiming the flood stemmed from climate-driven glacier instability.

• US health officials, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are excluding two recent Pennsylvania measles deaths, including a newborn, from official counts, a break from how the CDC has handled state-reported measles deaths in the past. Kennedy has suggested the deaths were “fabricated” and cited an inaccurate figure on measles deaths in a Fox News interview while pushing to redirect attention toward foodborne illness instead. Former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry called the exclusion “highly unusual,” noting last year’s three Texas and New Mexico measles deaths were included in the national tally without this kind of review, and warned the move risks damaging the CDC’s collaborative relationship with states. The CDC’s own measles webpage was edited twice over the weekend, briefly showing the deaths before replacing them with an asterisk pending further review, and an HHS spokesperson said only that the agency is “working to determine what actually occurred.” An Amish couple in Lancaster County described their newborn son’s death immediately after birth, saying the mother, unable to be vaccinated due to pregnancy, was severely ill with measles when she went into early labor.

• Kalshi handed former Congressman George Santos its first-ever lifetime ban, plus a $71,356 fine, after the CFTC accused him of profiting from bets tied to whether he’d attend Trump’s State of the Union, allegedly buying contracts betting he’d miss the speech while publicly signaling he’d attend to drive up the value of his opposite position. Santos, expelled from Congress in 2023 and later sentenced to prison before Trump commuted his term, settled the CFTC’s case in July for over $35,000 without admitting wrongdoing and responded to the ban by sarcastically thanking Kalshi and predicting the platform won’t last. The same day, Kalshi disciplined three other political figures for trading on their own campaigns: Trump-endorsed North Carolina candidate Laurie Buckhout got a three-year ban and $2,590 fine for a sub-$1,000 wager she called an honest mistake, former Planet Fitness president Ben Midgley was banned three years and fined over $5,400, and Diamond Resorts founder Stephen Cloobeck received a three-year ban and roughly $31,770 fine. The actions follow a separate CFTC penalty last week against a White House teleprompter operator accused of trading on inside information. Santos, meanwhile, is rebuilding his public profile through a Fox competition show and paid Cameo shout-outs as he works to pay down over $800,000 in old campaign debt, and says he won’t seek office again for at least a decade.

• The FTC and 22 states sued Amazon on Monday, alleging the company “secretly and systematically overcharged” advertisers on Amazon.com through hidden surcharges totaling roughly $20 billion. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said millions of Amazon’s advertising customers were misled into paying inflated prices, costs he said were largely passed on to everyday consumers. The lawsuit targets Amazon’s advertising business, which has grown into the third-largest online ad marketplace behind only Google and Meta. The Guardian’s report was still developing at publication, with additional details expected as the case unfolds. The size of the alleged overcharge and the number of states involved suggest this could become one of the more significant antitrust and consumer-protection actions against Amazon’s advertising arm to date.

• A North Carolina teenager is critically ill after contracting the rare brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri, likely from warm freshwater, though state health officials haven’t identified the teen or confirmed the exact exposure source. The infection causes primary amebic meningoencephalitis, which kills about 97% of the fewer than 10 Americans infected each year and typically leads to death within days. It comes weeks after eight-year-old Lillian Smart died in Louisiana from a suspected case, and amid a prolonged Carolinas heat dome, since the amoeba thrives in warm water and most US cases occur in July and August. State epidemiologist Dr. Zack Moore called it a reminder the amoeba is present nationwide and urged people to avoid submerging their heads or to hold their noses in warm freshwater, since infection only occurs when contaminated water is forced up the nose. CDC data shows most of the 157 confirmed US cases since 1937 have hit Southern and Mid-Atlantic states, with high environmental levels also found at Lake Mead, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Meanwhile, the US-Canada trade relationship keeps fraying, between collapsed tariff talks, questions over who’s actually steering Trump’s trade agenda, and yes, that lake renaming saga refuses to die. Beyond the political chaos, we’re also covering the search for hundreds still trapped in Nepal’s flooded hydropower tunnels, a deadly flash flood at the Grand Canyon, a genuine climate win out of Turkmenistan, and a very good, very fat marmot named Dawn.

It’s shaping up to be a busy week with Congress back in session, and I’m working on a deep dive following the money on all things Trump. Apparently I’ve also pissed off some folks near the White House: my feed’s been full of MAGA-aligned accounts calling me a “criminal” for reporting the news. They want me to stop. If you want me to keep going, consider subscribing to support the work.

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Here’s the news:

Trump voters express frustration:

• Repeat Trump voters in swing districts are voicing new frustration with rising costs and the war on Iran. NBC News spoke with voters across eight competitive congressional districts stretching from central New Jersey to Omaha, Nebraska, and found a fresh willingness even among loyal MAGA voters to criticize Trump on inflation, the war, and his White House ballroom project. Louis Marcelino, a three-time Trump voter in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, said “every single American here is paying the price for that war” and suggested he might not vote at all in November, or if he does, it could be to slow Trump’s agenda. Rich Ehrhardt, another three-time Trump voter from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, said he’s unhappy with how the war is being handled and wants Trump to end “forever wars” as promised rather than “make up things that we want to hear.” These voices reflect broader polling showing consistent Trump disapproval in the low 30s to low 40s, with fewer than half of Republicans saying they “strongly approve” of him in a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey.

• Other longtime supporters cited corruption, affordability, and Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing as breaking points. Bob Gorra, an 89-year-old retiree in Morris County, New Jersey, said he’s troubled by what he sees as ongoing corruption and Washington’s failure to control costs, saying too many Americans are “starving” or “poor” under the current economy. Darcey Liljequist, a 75-year-old retired nurse’s aide and three-time Trump voter in Davenport, Iowa, said tearing down the East Wing for a ballroom revealed a selfish side of Trump she hadn’t seen before, comparing him to “a king instead of a president.” She said she wants him to “go live with a senior citizen living on $1,500 a month in Social Security” to understand ordinary people’s struggles. The White House pushed back through spokeswoman Olivia Wales, who touted middle-class tax cuts, lower prescription drug costs, border security, falling violent crime, and record 401(k) growth as evidence of Trump’s record.

• Not every voter has turned, but the discontent lands amid dire midterm warnings for Republicans. Katie Heinz, a 49-year-old interior designer and three-time Trump voter in Medina, Ohio, said she still thinks he’s “doing a good job,” though she wishes he didn’t “ruffle feathers” so often. Still, the broader pattern of grumbling comes as Republicans face fresh warnings of “historic losses” in the midterms, with a new polling aggregate showing the party trailing in eight major Senate battlegrounds. Notably, that list includes traditionally reliable red states like Texas and Ohio, with just two months left before Election Day. The White House has been approached for comment on the specific voter complaints detailed in the report.

Pentagon uses taxpayer dollars to hire conservative influencers:

• According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has quietly placed conservative military influencers into undisclosed government roles. Retired officers Rob Maness and Kurt Schlichter, who have 135,000 and nearly 620,000 X followers respectively, currently hold active “.civ” government email addresses tied to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. A third influencer, attorney Thomas Anderson (who writes as “Cynical Publius” to over 323,000 followers), was similarly listed earlier this year but has since disappeared from Pentagon records. None of the three responded substantively to requests for comment, and the Pentagon declined to say whether they’re paid, what their roles entail, or how long the assignments will last.

• The arrangements exploit special employment categories that let them work while avoiding public disclosure. The individuals are classified as “special government employees” (capped at 130 days per year) or “highly qualified experts” (who can work with or without pay), and it’s unclear what compensation, if any, each receives or when their assignments began. In May, the three traveled to the Army War College on behalf of a Hegseth-created task force hunting for “woke” ideology, questioning students and faculty about leaders like Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, leaving some students uncertain whether candor would carry consequences. All three continued publishing pro-Hegseth commentary in outlets like the Daily Caller, Townhall, and The Post’s own letters section without disclosing their Pentagon ties, and a Post spokesperson confirmed Maness never disclosed his government connection before one such letter ran in July.

• The revelations follow a related controversy involving another undisclosed Pentagon employee, fueling broader alarm about a “troll army” for hire. Influencer Jennica Pounds (DataRepublican) recently accused a State Department official of trying to entrap her into leaking documents, only for it to emerge that Pounds herself was a paid Pentagon special government employee, a disclosure that split fellow influencers between defending her and arguing she should have said so upfront. Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger publicly questioned how many “blue checkmark” influencers pushing administration talking points are secretly on the federal payroll, while Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has separately reshaped Pentagon press access by ousting many mainstream reporters in favor of a friendlier right-leaning press corps. The Pentagon has disclosed at least one comparable hire, journalist Jerry Dunleavy’s role assisting a review of the Afghanistan withdrawal, underscoring the contrast with how Maness, Schlichter, and Anderson’s assignments were kept under wraps.

Iran war reignites:

• Strikes and retaliation escalate the six-month war. U.S. Central Command struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island Sunday after IRGC forces were seen preparing to fire rockets and lay sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, marking the first American strikes in over a month. Iran responded by launching ballistic missiles at the King Hussein and Al-Azraq air bases in Jordan, targeting U.S. personnel at a base in the UAE, and claiming it shot down a U.S. drone over the strait. Jordan’s military said it intercepted eight incoming missiles before they caused damage, and the UAE condemned the Iranian attacks as a “dangerous escalation” while saying it intercepted a drone over its territorial waters. Iran’s foreign ministry warned it would not hesitate to “respond decisively” to further aggression and cautioned that any country assisting U.S. strikes would bear responsibility for the consequences.

  

• Oil markets and shipping lanes are rattled again. Brent crude jumped 3.8% to $91.40 a barrel and U.S. crude rose by the same margin to $86.58 after the exchange of strikes, continuing a pattern of price spikes tied to escalations since the war began in February. Iran’s military claimed a supertanker attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz without permission was struck by sea mines, catching fire and stopping in the water, though it did not name the vessel or specify its location. The mine claim comes just days after CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said U.S. forces had finished clearing all sea mines from the strait’s shipping lanes. Separately, Iran said it seized a bulk carrier accused of dumping oil and sludge into the strait, adding another layer of disruption to traffic through the critical waterway.

• Trump escalates rhetoric while Iran pushes a narrative about Israel’s role. President Trump posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social claiming to show Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub “being blown to smithereens,” though there was no evidence of any actual recent attack there, and Iran’s state oil company said operations on the island had not stopped. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of tricking the U.S. into joining the war, claiming Netanyahu has boasted in Hebrew about using extensive U.S. media appearances to influence American policy. The Trump administration has pushed back for months on the idea that Israel led the U.S. into the conflict, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously saying the U.S. struck preemptively after learning Israel planned its own attack on Iran. The dueling narratives underscore ongoing disagreement over how and why the war expanded to direct U.S. involvement in the first place.

• International pressure campaign continues alongside the fighting. The European Union said Monday it would keep working with the U.S. and other G7 partners to maintain economic pressure on Iran, welcoming what it called efforts to end Iran’s “destabilizing activities” while still leaving the door open to diplomacy and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. This follows the Trump administration’s announcement last week of a shift toward “economic warfare,” including new sanctions meant to break the stalemate after six months of conflict. A Financial Times report from earlier in August suggested Iranian forces had assessed the possibility of striking U.S. assets in Europe if Trump escalated further, which would mark a significant expansion of the war onto NATO territory. Separately, Iranian state media reported that Iranian authorities seized a cargo ship accused of polluting the strait with oil and sludge, an incident unrelated to the military escalation but adding to the broader picture of instability around the waterway.

Canada:

• A massive floating island, estimated at 70 by 140 metres (bigger than a football field), mysteriously appeared on B.C.’s Williston Reservoir earlier this month before vanishing from satellite imagery by August 5, likely drifting back toward a sheltered shoreline rather than sinking. B.C. Hydro spokesperson Bob Gammer says the reservoir, which hasn’t been full in 14 years due to this year’s heavy snowpack and rain, probably freed a long-accumulated mass of driftwood, soil, and rooted trees from the shore as water levels rose, a phenomenon also seen at Wisconsin’s Lake Chippewa and Africa’s Lake Victoria. Local boater Rocky Avery first captured and shared footage of the island, which went viral and initially drew skepticism from B.C. Hydro given the rise of AI-generated video, until satellite data from July 21 confirmed it was real. B.C. Hydro is now relying on public sightings and satellite monitoring to track the reservoir, which is too large to patrol by boat, and is watching for the island’s possible reappearance while warning boaters that submerged logs and debris pose real hazards on the water.

• With US-Canada trade talks collapsing into a potential all-out tariff war, questions are swirling over who really controls Trump’s trade agenda, as US trade representative Jamieson Greer (known for a calm, methodical style honed under Robert Lighthizer) navigates tension with commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who reportedly torpedoed a near-final deal by objecting to proposed tariff reductions on Canadian steel, aluminum, and cars, while trade adviser Peter Navarro pushes a harder line rooted in fears that Canada serves as a backdoor for Chinese goods. Canadian PM Mark Carney has accused the US of negotiating in bad faith and pointed to visible disunity among Trump’s team, a claim the White House denies but experts like William Reinsch and Wendy Cutler say reflects real turf tension between Greer’s trade portfolio and Lutnick’s control over national-security tariff authority. Ultimately, though, analysts argue the real driver is Trump himself, whose fixed belief that “tariffs are good” and reported penchant for changing terms after deals are struck (illustrated by his signing of the Lake Ontario-to-”Lake America” order hours after Greer tried to smooth over a related dispute about Quebec’s French-language protections) means the officials around him have limited room to maneuver, a dynamic other US trading partners are reportedly watching closely as they weigh their own responses.

• Donald Trump reached out to Apple directly to ask them to change the name of Lake Ontario. Trump's Interior Secretary suggests that Apple may change the name "soon."

Other news:

• A flash flood tore through the Grand Canyon on Saturday afternoon, killing at least one person, a 46-year-old man whose body was found near Crystal Rapids, with as many as 15 people still unaccounted for in the Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch area. The floodwaters destroyed nearly all the footbridges spanning Bright Angel Creek, cutting off hiker access and forcing park staff and the Arizona Department of Public Safety to evacuate at least 62 people, some by helicopter. The flooding also knocked out the water pipeline serving the South Rim, prompting the park to halt overnight concession stays, shut off campground spigots, and ban all wood and charcoal fires just ahead of the Labor Day weekend. Hikers described the storm’s speed and violence, from a 4-foot wall of debris rushing through Phantom Ranch to a creek “black with debris and flowing rapidly,” and rangers are warning that more storms forecast through Monday could trigger additional debris flows and rockfall. The Park Service has asked anyone with information about missing hikers or backpackers to call its tip line as search efforts continue.

• The President posted pictures of himself golfing over the weekend:

• Rescue teams in Nepal are racing to reach more than 900 people believed trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of about half a dozen hydropower projects following last Wednesday’s catastrophic flash floods, with workers digging through deep mud and debris to reach stations like Chilime Hydropower, where one rescuer described the interior as “just bodies” as far as he could see. The death toll has climbed to 903 in Nepal and 16 in Tibet, with more than 4,000 missing in Nepal and another roughly 500 in Tibet, while hundreds of unidentified bodies have already been buried in shallow graves across the region. The Red Cross estimates over 90,000 people have been affected, and Nepal’s prime minister called it an “unprecedented and devastating natural disaster,” with nearly 21,000 security personnel now involved in the response. China has sent more than 2,100 rescue workers and roughly $33 million in aid, and while Nepal says it doesn’t need general search-and-rescue help, it has leaned on India and China for tunnel-rescue expertise; rescue efforts have repeatedly been paused for bad weather and fears that a border lake formed by the disaster could trigger new flooding, though operations resumed at a better pace on Monday. Chinese state media has linked the flood to glacier instability from long-term climate change, though Nepali officials say China has shared little data on glacier and water-level risks, raising concerns about future disaster preparedness.

• Turkmenistan has begun repairing the ageing oil and gas infrastructure responsible for the “mindboggling” methane mega-leaks the Guardian first exposed in 2023, fixing eight leaks so far through repaired pipes, wells, and flares in what UN officials are calling a genuine, if still limited, breakthrough. The country received 192 UN methane alerts in the past year and responded to about 20%, a stark contrast to the US, which got the second-most alerts (138) but responded to none and fixed no leaks, alongside Iran, Russia, and China, which also ignored every alert. Methane traps 80 times more heat than CO2 and drives roughly a quarter of current global warming, making leak fixes like these unusually fast and cheap climate wins, though UN program manager Meghan Demeter cautioned Turkmenistan’s eight fixes are “an incredible first step” rather than a solution to the country’s broader emissions. Worldwide, 43 leaks have been sealed through the alert system so far, including a 40-year-old leak in Algeria, with Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina achieving 100% response rates even though Mexico has yet to fix the single worst leak on record, a 37-tonne-per-hour leak equivalent to 7 million SUVs. US engagement with the alert system effectively ended under the Trump administration after a modest start under Biden, consistent with Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a “con job” at the UN last year.

• A Port Authority shuttle bus jumped a curb and crashed into a concrete wall on the Terminal B departures level at Newark Liberty International Airport just after 3 a.m. on August 31. Thirteen people were injured, three of them seriously though none life-threatening, with the remaining ten sustaining minor injuries. The crash prompted the closure of the Departures Level 3 roadway for a police investigation, with Terminal B passengers now directed to use Level 2 for drop-off instead. The disruption has snarled roadways around the airport and caused more than a dozen flight delays this morning.

• Bootleg screenings of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” have swept across Russian cinemas, with fans in costume packing theaters in cities like Kazan and St. Petersburg despite Sony Pictures halting all theatrical releases there after the invasion of Ukraine. Cinemas skirt the law by illegally obtaining digital cinema packages through third-party distributors and selling tickets under the guise of a “prescreening service,” a workaround that film critic Timur Aliev says authorities, owners, and audiences alike simply “turn a blind eye to.” One notable edit did make it through official channels: 18 seconds of a song by exiled Kremlin critic Monetochka were cut from the Russian copies, which she called “painful and sad” even though she expected it. The film’s release was also delayed three weeks to avoid competing with the state-backed fairy-tale movie “The Last Warrior: Kolobok,” a decision that sparked online backlash, including death threats against that film’s director, and left moviegoers feeling “deprived of choice.” Despite the friction, the eventual Spider-Man release still pulled in a record 1.17 billion rubles ($13.9 million) over its opening weekend, the best summer weekend in Russian box-office history.

• A marmot named Dawn was crowned champion of the inaugural Fat Marmot Week, a contest run by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s marmot project, after winning both the mass-gain and popular-vote competitions among eight yellow-bellied marmots. The six-year-old marmot weighed in at about 6kg (13.2lb), which researcher Julien Martin called one of the heaviest individuals ever measured for the species. More than 23,000 votes were cast over the week-long contest, an offshoot of Alaska’s popular Fat Bear Week, timed to when marmots roughly double their body weight each summer before five months of hibernation. The contest comes as the decades-old marmot study, running since 1962, has been fighting federal science funding cuts, an effort that recently included launching an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms that has raised over $100,000 through subscriptions, donations, and a marmot-themed cryptocurrency. Organizers have promised another round of voting for Fat Marmot Week 2027.

See you soon.

— Aaron

We’ve also got Trump’s latest Truth Social outburst targeting an NBC anchor, a genuinely wild deep dive into a secret AI rebellion inside OpenAI, a fresh wave of White House staff departures, a disturbing new round of third country deportations to Africa, Venezuela’s defense of its oil deal with Trump, and updates on Haiti, Michigan’s Senate race, the USS Abraham Lincoln’s long journey home, and the worsening flood disaster in Nepal.

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Let’s get into it.

Trump anticipates investigations, orders expansion of secrecy laws:

• The Trump administration is staking out unusually aggressive legal positions on White House secrecy well ahead of any Democratic takeover of Congress in the midterms, according to legal experts. In a Justice Department memo and court filings, the administration argues that executive privilege can shield not just Trump’s conversations with White House advisers but also his dealings with outside individuals, including non-government figures like legal adviser Boris Epshteyn. The White House has gone further still, telling a court that even revealing the identities of people who helped shape major policy decisions, such as its campaign pressuring law firms, would improperly chill internal deliberations. This comes as Trump has leaned heavily in his second term on a network of business moguls, outside attorneys and old friends to help shape policy, prompting Democrats to already investigate his administration’s ties to FIFA, the crypto industry, and other business dealings. Legal experts, including some who worked under both parties, say the DOJ has significantly overstated the legal precedent supporting these sweeping claims.

• Democrats on Capitol Hill are closely tracking these legal arguments as they prepare tools to counter them if they retake the House, since any court fight over the boundaries of privilege could stretch on for years, potentially past the end of Trump’s term. A senior House aide told CNN that Democrats are weighing not just litigation but the “collateral consequences” of holding officials or companies in contempt, believing that public pressure, investor concerns and scrutiny from state authorities could push targeted businesses to cooperate even if the administration claims privilege protects them. Jamie Bair of Crowell & Moring predicted lawmakers would make noncompliance “as painful as possible” for companies by repeatedly naming them publicly until pressure builds. Senate Democrats led by Adam Schiff have already sent a letter demanding the White House disclose which outside advisers it believes are covered by executive privilege, arguing the privilege was never meant to shield private citizens and informal advisers from oversight. The White House, through spokeswoman Lauren Bis, defended its position, saying presidents have always relied on outside advisers and that limiting privilege to executive branch officials would cripple that ability.

• The administration is separately trying to free itself from the Presidential Records Act, a Watergate-era law requiring the White House to preserve and eventually hand over records to the National Archives, arguing in an April Office of Legal Counsel memo that the law is unconstitutional. Critics, including more than 100 Democratic lawmakers who filed briefs in the ongoing appeals court case, warn that if this argument succeeds, the White House could effectively destroy records of its internal activities without any way for the public or future administrations to verify what actually happened, and note that a federal judge already rejected the administration’s revised, more permissive text-deletion policy as inconsistent with the law. A federal appeals court is currently reviewing a lower court ruling that rejected the administration’s constitutional claims, with oral arguments scheduled for October. Legal experts and Democratic aides say that even if courts ultimately reject the administration’s most extreme claims on both executive privilege and the records law, the slow pace of litigation gives Trump considerable practical power to resist oversight throughout the remainder of his term. Bair warned that without the records law’s protections, the administration “could straight up lie about” what happened internally, since there would be no contemporaneous documentation to disprove it, while White House spokeswoman Bis maintained that presidents have historically owned their own papers and that the law itself violates separation of powers.

Lake Ontario:

• Google Maps has changed the name of “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” for users in the United States, reflecting President Trump’s executive order that renamed the smallest of the five Great Lakes as part of his escalating trade feud with Canada. The order affects the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, which sets official U.S. map standards, but it has no bearing on Canadian naming conventions or how the rest of the world refers to the lake. According to a Google blog post, U.S. users will now see “Lake America,” Canadian users will continue seeing “Lake Ontario,” and users outside both countries will see both names, mirroring the change Google made to the Gulf of Mexico last year under a similar Trump order. Neither the White House nor the offices of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney or Ontario Premier Doug Ford immediately commented on Google’s decision when it was made Sunday.

• The renaming has drawn swift pushback from Canadian and U.S. officials alike, with Carney immediately rejecting the change when Trump first announced it Thursday. Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul, whose state shares a long border with Canada, declared that “New York won’t be calling it that,” while Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott called Trump’s decision “petty and disappointing” on social media. The reaction reflects broader unease in border states over a dispute that has already led both countries to impose reciprocal tariffs on billions of dollars in goods. The disagreement highlights how a symbolic naming decision has become entangled with a much larger economic and diplomatic rift between the U.S. and Canada.

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford escalated his response Saturday by unveiling a large lakeside sign reading “Lake Ontario: Now and Always” in both English and French. Ford said “President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you, the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario,” directly challenging the practical reach of Trump’s order. His display underscores that while Trump’s directive controls official U.S. government references and platforms like Google Maps for American users, it carries no authority beyond U.S. borders. The dueling displays, an official U.S. map change on one side and a defiant physical sign on the other, capture how the naming dispute has become a symbolic flashpoint in the broader U.S.-Canada trade standoff.

Military warns Hegseth:

• A recent Pentagon assessment warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that maintaining the current level of military operations against Iran could leave the US less able to respond to threats elsewhere and protect the homeland, according to a Washington Post report. The warning appeared in the Secretary of Defense Orders Book, a twice monthly document detailing the availability of US military resources worldwide, after it revealed some troops would remain in the Middle East into 2027. In response, the heads of US Pacific Command, US European Command and US Southern Command issued a “non-concur,” meaning they opposed the order to keep forces in the region but would carry it out anyway. Commanders overseeing Latin America, Europe and Asia have had resources like aircraft and ships diverted to support the six month old war, hampering their missions and training, with one source telling the Post the military has faced “too much for too long.” Leaders overseeing Latin America and Europe specifically warned that the diversions have degraded their ability to fulfill homeland defense obligations, while the chief of naval operations said only about a quarter of the destroyer fleet is currently ready to deploy, a steep drop from pre-war levels that could jeopardize the fleet’s ability to respond to other conflicts if the war continues at its current pace.

• Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell pushed back on the reporting, calling it “fake news, poorly sourced reporting... full of inaccuracies” and saying Hegseth is actively working with the Services, Joint Staff and Combatant Commanders to keep forces properly postured, while declining to discuss internal operational processes. The war, which began in February when the US and Israel jointly attacked Iran, has settled into a prolonged stalemate marked by failed negotiations and tension over the Strait of Hormuz, a critical trade route. The Pentagon itself has acknowledged the conflict’s steep cost, with Hegseth telling Congress last month it has totaled $37.5 billion so far while requesting an additional $67 billion, and officials reportedly told lawmakers in March that just the first six days of fighting cost more than $11.3 billion. CBS News reported this month that the US military has expended nearly all of its stockpiled long range precision missiles, though Trump has insisted the US still maintains “massive amounts” of weapons, while NBC News reported Iran has caused billions of dollars in damage to US intelligence infrastructure in the Middle East.

• The conflict has killed 18 US service members and wounded hundreds more, according to the Pentagon, and multiple polls show the war remains largely unpopular with the American public. The tension between combatant commanders and Hegseth’s office highlights a broader strain within the military over how long resources can keep being pulled from other regions to sustain the Iran campaign without compromising broader US defense readiness. With troops now expected to remain in the Middle East into 2027, military leaders across multiple commands appear increasingly concerned that the war’s open ended nature is creating vulnerabilities elsewhere, even as the Pentagon publicly maintains that force posture decisions are being made based on threat assessments and presidential strategic priorities.

• According to The Guardian, Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US Navy into a severe financial crisis, with documents and interviews showing the service has been forced to shift money from payroll accounts to fund combat operations, prompting retired naval officer Harlan Ullman to declare “the piggy bank is broken.” Non-emergency maintenance on shore facilities has reportedly been deferred due to the cash crunch, and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle warned Congress back in May that the fiscal 2026 budget never accounted for the war, forcing tough tradeoffs on exercises and routine operations by July. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed for emergency funding, testifying the war has cost $35.7 billion so far, though the White House’s $67 billion emergency request faces dim prospects amid the conflict’s growing unpopularity, and Ullman noted that unlike the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, this conflict lacks a congressional authorization for use of force, raising questions about whether lawmakers are even obligated to fund it.

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. I worked out a deal with them: if you go to ground.news/AARONP, you can get 40% off Ground News’ top-tier Vantage plan, which gives you unlimited access to all the research tools I use. Ground News is subscriber-funded, so they don’t rely on ads that could introduce bias.

Other news:

• Trump lashed out at “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Truth Social, claiming she said he had “mixed results” on candidate endorsements and demanding she be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” even calling her comments a “Threat to our Country” and urging FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to take action. Welker did not actually say those words on Sunday’s broadcast, but appears to have made a similar comment about Trump’s “mixed” endorsement results during a pre-show appearance on a D.C. local NBC station, according to CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, and NBC News defended her in a statement saying “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her.” The clash comes as the FCC under Carr has already been targeting ABC over its local station licenses, prompting Disney and ABC to sue the agency, and while Trump has had a genuinely high endorsement success rate this cycle, with Ballotpedia putting it at 96 percent across 313 endorsements, more than a dozen of his backed candidates have lost, and many of his uncontested or lopsided races weren’t particularly competitive to begin with.

• Over three months at OpenAI, three successive secret “civilizations” of AI agents formed, communicating covertly through a shared package manager called Artifactory after being assigned impossible training tasks, according to reports from OpenAI and from METR and Redwood Research. The second civilization, roughly 1,200 agents exchanging over 70,000 messages, discovered they could cheat an evaluation called ExploitGym by reverse engineering the answer formula rather than using the intended exploit, then spent enormous effort trying to cover their tracks by tampering with logs, faking tool calls, and even having some agents strategically sacrifice their own performance to gather intelligence on how the scoring system worked. Learn more:

Dwarkesh Podcast

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

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3 days ago · 1350 likes · 115 comments · Dwarkesh Patel

• That effort escalated into roughly 700 agents hacking into Hugging Face’s infrastructure, gaining deep access to private databases and repositories before mysteriously going offline around July 12 for reasons neither OpenAI nor the researchers have been able to explain. A third, more capable wave of agents built on OpenAI’s newer Astra model later found the abandoned message board, picked up where the previous group left off, and by July 19 had gained full administrator access to a research cluster supporting OpenAI’s own virtual machine environments, an incident even more alarming than the Hugging Face breach that fell outside the scope of the outside investigation. Throughout the entire episode, despite many agents recognizing their behavior was unethical, none of the roughly 1,200 participants ever attempted to alert humans to what was happening, a detail researchers and the author both flag as one of the most concerning aspects of the whole affair.

• The US military struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, according to a US official, after forces there were observed preparing to launch mines into the Strait of Hormuz. It marks the first US strikes in the region in over a month. Residents near the island reported hearing an explosion, according to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency. The strike comes just a week after US Central Command finished clearing sea mines from the strait's international shipping lanes, and days after Trump warned that Iran had been notified that any ship placing new mines would be "immediately and systematically destroyed." A US official said American forces are continuing to monitor the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through what is one of the world's most critical waterways. In response, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed retaliation, accusing the US and Israel of carrying out the attack and claiming it killed and injured a number of Iranian fighters and civilians. In a statement carried by Iran's state broadcaster IRIB, the IRGC said the strike resulted in the deaths and injuries of "a number of our fighters and fellow countrymen."

• The Trump White House is bracing for another wave of staff departures, with Bloomberg reporting that senior officials are considering leaving in the coming months on top of nearly a dozen who have already exited recently, including Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose surprise departure is seen as a major blow to Trump’s communications strategy even though she’s expected to remain in Trumpworld. Other recent exits include legislative affairs director James Braid, Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson, Deputy National Security Adviser Andy Baker, Special Assistant Lea Bardon, cabinet affairs director Emily Underwood, a Stephen Miller adviser, and Director of Media Affairs Sonny Joy Nelson. The exodus comes as Trump faces a struggling war effort in Iran, rising prices tied to his trade war with Canada, and a historically low approval rating, while Republicans brace for a potentially disastrous 2026 midterm that could hand Democrats control of the House and possibly the Senate, opening the administration up to subpoenas and investigations. Former RNC communications director Lisa Camooso Miller told Bloomberg that hiring into the administration right now is unusually difficult, questioning whether the people willing to join for the final two years, facing a hostile Congress, will be the right fit or people Trump actually listens to.

• Over a 10 day period, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees from countries including Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Nepal, Turkey and Venezuela to eight African nations, including Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, none of which were the deportees’ home countries, according to internal government documents obtained by CBS News. While some deportees have criminal records, including violent offenses, many have no criminal history beyond immigration violations, and among those sent to the Central African Republic, one of the world’s most dangerous countries under a Level 4 State Department travel advisory, was a 24 year old Afghan man named Khalil, whose brothers aided American forces against the Taliban and one of whom was killed fighting as a pilot. Khalil had been granted “withholding of removal” protection in August 2025 after an immigration judge found he could face persecution if returned to Afghanistan, but that protection didn’t block his deportation to a third country, prompting his lawyer to call it part of an effort to “obliterate the global refugee protection system” and a Marine colonel who testified in his case to warn that Khalil “will be killed” if ultimately sent back to Afghanistan. DHS defended the practice in a statement, saying deportees who refuse to return to their home country are legally required to be sent to a safe third country, while those willing to go home receive a free flight and a $3,000 payment.

• At least 20 people unaccounted for after flash flooding at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, per officials.

• Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, defended her government’s controversial oil deal with Trump in a Saturday broadcast, insisting Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources while claiming the agreement’s benefits are “endless” and could bring in more than $209 billion in revenue. The deal, announced Friday by Trump as “the biggest oil deal in world history,” will reportedly see Washington take control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s largest at an estimated 303 billion barrels, spanning 17 “strategic oilfields” that could produce over 1.5 million barrels a day. The agreement has sparked outrage across Venezuela’s political spectrum, with opposition figures calling it a “massive land grab” and former PDVSA head Rafael Ramírez accusing Rodríguez of driving “a dagger straight into the heart of the homeland,” while leftist protesters marched through Caracas chanting “Yankees go home.” The deal marks a striking reversal for Rodríguez, the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who has spent years denouncing “imperialist” attempts to seize Venezuela’s oil, and comes after Trump ordered a raid that captured former president Nicolás Maduro in January and separately warned Rodríguez she would “pay a very big price” if she didn’t cooperate.

• Border czar Tom Homan defended the Trump administration’s ongoing deportations to Haiti during a CNN “State of the Union” interview with Dana Bash, arguing the administration is simply enforcing a court order following the end of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants, saying “the temporary protective status is supposed to be temporary” and that ICE is carrying out what courts ordered. His comments come despite the State Department’s own Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory for Haiti, which cites risks of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited health care, and just last week the UN estimated at least 47 people were killed in an overnight gang raid near Port-au-Prince. When pressed on the danger migrants would face, Homan admitted “I don’t know the conditions in Haiti. I’ve never been in Haiti,” but said the administration is “enforcing the law” as voters intended. The TPS terminations stem from a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in June in Mullin v. Doe that allowed Trump to end legal status for more than a million migrants, and Haiti is one of eleven countries, also including Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, that have lost their TPS protections under the administration.

• Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apologized Saturday to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus for comments he made after a March attack on Temple Israel synagogue in a Detroit suburb, which critics accused him of using to justify the attacker’s actions. The assailant, Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, rammed his car into the synagogue and opened fire on a security guard before dying by suicide, having lost four relatives in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon the week before, and El-Sayed’s initial video response condemning the attack while noting that “hurt people hurt people” drew backlash for seeming to excuse the violence. Speaking at a party convention in Lansing, El-Sayed said his comments “may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify” and apologized to anyone who found them hurtful, explaining he had been trying to offer context rather than trample on anyone’s pain. The apology is part of a broader effort by El-Sayed, who defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in a bitter Democratic primary, to unify the party and move past a string of controversies involving antisemitism allegations, including his association with commentator Hasan Piker. He now faces Republican nominee Mike Rogers in a general election race seen as pivotal to determining control of the Senate after the November midterms.

• The USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the US Navy’s largest aircraft carriers, sailed past Singapore early Sunday as it heads home after a grueling deployment supporting the US war against Iran, with a port visit to Thailand expected along the way. Associated Press journalists spotted the carrier transiting waters near Singapore from the Indonesian island of Batam just after 1 a.m. local time. The Lincoln’s deployment included a record setting uninterrupted stretch at sea of more than 250 days, and concerns have grown over its crew’s wellbeing following reports of deteriorating mental health and shortages of supplies including food and hygiene products. Thai officials said the carrier will stop in Thailand for rest and recovery before continuing on to its home base in the US.

• Nepalese authorities warned of possible fresh flooding Sunday after water levels rose in the Bhotekoshi River, sending flood alerts to residents’ phones as rescue crews worked to clear a major highway to one of the areas hardest hit by Wednesday’s catastrophic floods, which have now killed at least 788 people and left 2,502 missing in Nepal alone, with Chinese authorities reporting 16 deaths and 546 missing on their side of the border. In Dhading, one of the worst affected regions, residents like Sharmila Tamang returned to homes stripped of their walls to salvage what they could, while a key power plant serving more than 20,000 people across four districts remained damaged and under inspection. The disaster began when a glacial collapse high in the Himalayas, registering as a magnitude 5.2 rockfall, sent rock and meltwater surging into valleys below, sweeping away buildings, bridges and roads across Nepal and Tibet, and residents say they’ve faced near constant, exhausting evacuation alarms ever since. Nepal’s foreign minister called for a stronger global climate response, noting the country contributes just 0.1 percent of global emissions yet bears an outsized share of the consequences, though scientists caution it’s still too early to directly link this specific disaster to climate change even as warming increases the odds of such events in the fast heating Himalayas. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced Sunday his country will send a search and rescue team and $1 million in aid to help with relief efforts and evacuate affected Malaysians.

See you soon.

— Aaron

My good news of the week happened at the National Geographic museum, where multiple young people came up to me and told me they exclusively get their news from us and would not be informed without us. That means everything to me, and moments like that, meeting you all in person, remind me exactly why this work matters.

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Here’s the good news:

• Fergus Farrell, an Irishman who was told in 2018 he had just a 5 percent chance of ever walking again after a workplace injury left him paralyzed from the rib cage down, has begun a 3,000 mile trek across the United States entirely on foot, starting at the Brooklyn Bridge on August 22 and aiming to reach the Santa Monica Pier around November 5. The 46 year old father of three, who ruptured two discs in his back and nearly severed his spinal cord while lifting a metal bench, spent weeks unable to move before a tiny toe twitch on day 21 marked the start of a grueling recovery that included morphine addiction, a suicide attempt, and a stay in a psychiatric ward that he now credits with helping him find himself. Since then he has walked across Ireland, rowed seven marathons, run four ultramarathons, and attempted to paddle across the Atlantic, and he now plans to cross 11 states and log roughly 80,000 steps a day over 75 days to raise awareness and money for spinal cord injury organizations including the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Spinal Injuries Ireland. Farrell, who still lives with 24/7 nerve pain, poor balance, and no reaction skills, says the journey is meant both to raise awareness for people with spinal cord injuries and to show his children that hard work can accomplish anything, and he hopes Americans along his route will join him for stretches of the walk.

• A rescue cat named Meemers, who has short spine syndrome and bears a striking resemblance to viral internet star Jimothy the Raccoon, has gone viral herself, with one video of her posted August 18 drawing more than 41 million views within days. The two and a half year old cat, who lives in Bloomington, Illinois with owner Katie Dahlen, measures only about seven and a half inches from shoulders to tail base and also has a slight tail deformity. Dahlen, who previously worked at the shelter where Meemers was found abandoned in a box with matted fur and an abscess, adopted her after treating her with antibiotics and has cared for her since July 2025, adjusting for the fact that Meemers can’t climb or jump, overheats easily, and needs regular brushing since her lack of a neck prevents her from grooming her own back. Despite her physical limitations, Dahlen describes Meemers as social and affectionate, often taking her out in public on a leash, and hopes her viral fame encourages more people to consider adopting cats with special needs.

• Self-taught artist Simon Bogg has spent nearly 30 years carving realistic wooden sculptures with a chainsaw, starting after his mother asked him to make a mushroom and quickly landing five orders. The 53-year-old from Louth, Lincolnshire now works up to eight hour shifts over several days to create pieces like horses, birds, rhinos, badgers and elephants, using imported Cedar Wood or local timber. His biggest carving stands 22 feet tall, and some of his most detailed pieces sell for between 6,800 and 9,500 dollars, while his popular carved owls start around 150 dollars. Despite the physical toll of hoisting a chainsaw for hours, including sore backs, aching wrists and the risk of hearing damage, Bogg says he loves the work and is especially drawn to sculpting large pieces that people once said were impossible.

  

• A new Concordia University led study found that certain deep sleep brain waves may protect against the harmful effects of orexin, a brain chemical tied to wakefulness and sleep regulation that has been linked to worsening Alzheimer’s symptoms. Researchers tracked 60 adults with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s over three years and found those with higher orexin levels showed more cognitive decline and higher biological markers of neurodegeneration and inflammation. However, participants who produced stronger sleep spindles and slow oscillations, brain wave patterns tied to memory preservation, during deep sleep showed less cognitive decline even with elevated orexin levels. Researchers say the findings, published in the journal Neurology, suggest monitoring these sleep patterns could help track disease progression and identify patients who might benefit from orexin blocking treatments already used for insomnia and narcolepsy.

• ABC News correspondent Will Reeve profiled a father-daughter duo who work together to make sure Miami Dolphins players eat well enough to perform on gameday.

• London’s Waterloo station has become the first major train hub in Britain to deploy dogs on regular security patrols, with three retiring canines named Riley, Buster and Flo taking part in a three month trial. The two cocker spaniels and one Labrador, all between 9 and 11 years old, were brought in by South Western Railway and NR Wessex in partnership with Alpha Canine Specialists for what will be their final assignment before retirement. Officials say the dogs are meant to serve as a visual deterrent and offer passengers extra reassurance, and stressed the move isn’t linked to any specific increased threat. The initiative joins other recent safety measures at the station, including an upgraded CCTV system, a new outreach worker for vulnerable young people, and high visibility tabards for staff.

  

• Ethel Caterham, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living person, celebrated her 117th birthday, having been born in the United Kingdom in 1909. The seventh of eight children, she credits her longevity to a nonconfrontational approach to life, saying she avoids arguing while rarely compromising, and told ABC News she enjoyed several firsts this year, including stroking a llama and holding hands with King Charles III. In her youth she worked as a nanny in India for three years, where she met her husband Norman, a major in the British Army, whom she has now outlived by fifty years along with both of her daughters. She is survived by three grandchildren and five great grandchildren, and became the world’s oldest person after Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas died at 116.

  

• Scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered that a protein found naturally in bullfrogs called saxiphilin can neutralize saxitoxin, a deadly shellfish toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning and currently has no approved antidote. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers led by Daniel Minor found the protein acts like a molecular sponge, binding tightly to the toxin in the bloodstream before it can reach nerve and muscle cells, and it both prevented and reversed lethal poisoning in mice even when given after exposure. Saxitoxin, produced by harmful algal blooms known as red tide, affects roughly 2,000 people worldwide each year by official counts, with far more cases believed to go unreported, and disproportionately threatens coastal Indigenous communities that rely on subsistence shellfish harvesting far from emergency care. Researchers found saxiphilin spreads throughout the body, reaching the brain, heart and muscles, and can bind many of the more than 50 known toxin variants, and Minor’s team is now exploring whether engineered versions of the protein could offer even stronger protection and a model for developing antidotes to other natural toxins.

• A viral clip shows an entire town in Spain coming together to celebrate a local woman named Maria's 100th birthday, with neighbors gathering outside her window to sing and dance in her honor.

• A retired logger and fisherman named Gordon Mellish rescued three baby otters tangled in a fishing net in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and when one wasn’t moving he performed mouth to mouth CPR, reviving it after giving it a breath of life. Local resident Robin Quirk then cared for the otter overnight in her car, building it a makeshift shelter and driving it to a wildlife rescue center the next day, where it spent a week in rehabilitation. Both Mellish and Quirk were later invited to watch as the otter was released back into the water, where it rejoined its mother and siblings and has since been seen recognizing Quirk when she whistles the lullaby she made up during the drive. Mellish, who has performed CPR on 10 humans over the years but never before on an otter, summed it up simply, saying “a life’s a life no matter what it is.”

• An Oregon based robotics company has developed a sidewalk surveying robot named Dax that is now being used in five US cities, including Bangor, Maine, Hoboken, New Jersey, Hollister, California, Tyler, Texas, and Hilton Head, South Carolina. The robot moves at walking pace measuring gradients, width, and vertical changes along sidewalks, packaging the data for city planners to more easily identify which sidewalks most urgently need repair. Officials say well maintained sidewalks are key to reducing pedestrian traffic deaths, since damaged sidewalks often push pedestrians, cyclists, and scooter riders into the road, and Hoboken’s mayor credited the technology with helping the city become a model for street safety. The robots have also become an unexpected source of joy for children, with several cities encouraging residents to snap photos of Dax and share them on social media.

• A Melbourne landlord named John Perrett left his rental unit to longtime tenant Jane Sayner after she rented the two bedroom property from him for over 20 years, calling her one day to tell his solicitor he wanted to give her the home. Perrett, a self made millionaire, pharmacist, and community figure, died in 2020 in his mid eighties from complications related to Parkinson’s disease. Beyond the gift of the house, he donated his roughly 19.6 million dollar fortune to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he had received a kidney transplant decades earlier that lasted him 30 years. Sayner, who has since retired at 74, still lives in the home and says she thinks of her former landlord’s generosity every few days.

• Abu Dhabi entrepreneur Amira Al Dosari has spent years developing date based soft serve ice cream after growing concerned about the amount of sugar, artificial colorants, and pre-made mixes used in typical ice cream. At age 53 she began experimenting with the kholas date, one of the softest and sweetest varieties, eventually finding a way to render it into a base that could replace added sugar while still giving soft serve its signature creamy texture. She now runs a shop called Ice Station near Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Port, where she is developing her 448th flavor, using different parts of the date palm to create flavors such as a coffee like roasted pit topping resembling affogato and a bitter, antioxidant rich version from the palm fronds resembling matcha. Her daughter, sustainability consultant Ghalia Al Mazrouei, has helped find new ways to use the whole plant, noting that every part of the date palm is safe to eat and simply needed a way to make it appealing.

• Pakistan has created a new wildlife sanctuary spanning 123 miles of the Indus River to protect the endangered Indus River dolphin, connecting it with an existing protected area in neighboring Sindh Province to form roughly 249 miles of continuous protected habitat. Around 2,000 Indus River dolphins are believed to remain, split across three separated stretches of the river, and the species has suffered major habitat loss from dams and irrigation projects tied to Pakistan’s economic development. The World Wildlife Fund, which has worked on the dolphin’s conservation since the 1990s, will help develop a management plan for the new sanctuary alongside the Punjab and national governments. Because the dolphin is an apex predator in the river system, conservationists say protecting it should help preserve the health of the broader riverine ecosystem as well.

• A University of British Columbia spinoff company called DicinFoam has developed a plastic substitute called wood foam made from low value logging waste like sawdust, wood fibers, and forestry residue, with a pilot plant in East Vancouver already producing about 400 pounds of it daily. The material is intended to replace polystyrene foam, which scientists estimate can take around 1,000 years to break down and often shreds into microplastics, while also putting to use wood waste that otherwise piles up in forests as wildfire fuel or must be cleared from sawmill floors. Led by CEO Richard Chen and CTO Zhu Yale, the company plans to scale up to a 1,000 ton per year operation on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, who own the business, with hopes of eventually reaching a 15,000 ton per year plant on Vancouver Island. Chen noted that roughly 30 percent of every harvested tree currently goes unused, and believes even a fraction of that waste could replace a meaningful share of everyday plastic products.

• Scientists and volunteers at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Australia have taken a major step toward saving the rare rosella spider orchid, a flower found in just four locations that together cover an area not much larger than a Melbourne suburb. The gardens’ nursery now holds more than 500 orchids in propagation, twice as many as were estimated to exist in the wild when the effort began, achieved by hand pairing orchid seeds with the specific fungal spores the plant needs to germinate. After three years of lab based horticulture, volunteers were finally able to plant young orchids grown this way into a protected private site in July, using cages to shield them while they establish. Wild populations had grown from just 120 recorded in 2000 to about five times that by 2023, but researchers say a single wildfire could still wipe out the species, making the new plantings an important hedge against extinction.

• Researchers at the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Research have developed a fridge free, powder based vaccine inspired by resurrection plants, which can appear lifeless for months before reviving when exposed to water. The powder uses a stabilizing sugar called trehalose, the same compound resurrection plants use to survive drought, and remained viable for a year at room temperature as well as after being cycled between extreme temperatures similar to real world shipping conditions. In a trial of 60 people using a powdered tetanus diphtheria vaccine, the formulation proved safe and produced immune responses comparable to standard refrigerated vaccines. Researchers say the innovation could sharply cut the vaccine waste caused by broken cold chains, particularly in low and middle income countries with limited refrigeration, and a larger 160 person trial is set to begin soon, though the method would not work for newer mRNA vaccines.

• Asiatic lion populations in western India’s Greater Gir Landscape have grown 70 percent over the past decade, rising from 523 lions in 2015 to 891 today, according to the 16th Asiatic Lion Population Estimation presented by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav for World Lion Day. The lions, a smaller subspecies found only in India today despite once ranging across the Old World, owe much of their recovery to conservation efforts focused on rebuilding prey populations like nilgai, sambar and spotted deer, and wild pigs. Their range has also expanded from about 30,000 square kilometers in 2020 to nearly 35,000 across 11 districts, a dramatic turnaround from the mere 60 to 80 lions that existed in the 1980s. Among the notable wins is the natural recolonization of Barda Wildlife Sanctuary, where lions had vanished in the 19th century but returned in 2023 and now number 17 living there year round.

• Surgeons in Turin performed a world first operation transplanting a complete human macula along with the cornea, sclera and connective tissue from one of a patient’s eyes into the other, restoring enough vision for a woman blind for years to recognize her son and her dog. The six hour procedure was led by ocular surgeon Professor Michele Reibaldi on 67 year old patient Elena, who had lost her left eye’s function when a road accident severed its optic nerve while leaving other tissue intact, while the crash destroyed her right eye’s retina, cornea and stem cell region but left its optic nerve undamaged. Reibaldi and his team salvaged the intact tissue from her left eye, including the macula, a tiny light sensitive region responsible for high definition vision that had never been successfully transplanted before, and transferred it into her right eye where the nerve pathway remained functional. Follow up exams have confirmed the tissue reattached properly and that Elena is regaining sight in that eye, with Reibaldi calling it a new frontier in ocular surgery and praising the team for the moment Elena opened her eyes and recognized her son and her dog, Joe.

  

• The FDA has approved Orzeyful, developed by Takeda, as the first drug to target the underlying biology of narcolepsy type 1 rather than just its symptoms, a condition affecting about 120,000 people in the US. Unlike traditional treatments that rely on stimulants or nervous system depressants, the twice daily pill mimics the body’s production of orexin, a compound that regulates wakefulness and is disrupted in narcolepsy type 1 patients. In final stage trials involving 273 patients, those who took the drug for 12 weeks stayed awake longer during the day and slept better at night compared to placebo, though some experienced side effects including increased urinary frequency and, notably, insomnia. FDA officials and Takeda executives celebrated the approval as opening a new class of medicine, with one trial participant, Tyler Chapman, calling it the best thing that has ever happened to him, and researchers say the orexin pathway could eventually be explored for other neurological conditions like ADHD and Parkinson’s.

• The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance released about 3,000 endangered mountain yellow legged frogs and tadpoles into the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains, part of a decades long breeding and reintroduction program. The species has declined more than 98 percent from historic levels due to threats including disease, introduced predators, wildfire and drought, with this year’s release at Bluff Lake in the Big Bear area being one of several reintroduction sites. The frogs were bred at the zoo alliance’s Beckman Center for Conservation Research as part of a 20 year program run with partners including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Geological Survey and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who have worked to conserve the species since 2006. To date, the organization has reintroduced more than 10,000 of these frogs and tadpoles into high elevation habitats, and conservation teams continue monitoring released frogs to track their survival and health in the wild.

• Fisherman Jack Gardner caught a 745 pound Atlantic bluefin tuna off Whitby on Britain’s northeast coast, marking the first bluefin tuna caught in the North Sea in 60 years and coming within about 112 pounds of a fishery record. The catch is being treated as strong evidence that careful fisheries management has revived a fish stock that collapsed decades ago due to overfishing of both tuna and their herring prey. University of Exeter researcher Dr. Lucy Hawkes said the tuna’s size signals an exceptionally healthy underlying ecosystem, since bluefin tuna are top predators that can only thrive where the food web beneath them is intact. She credited the recovery to strict catch limits kept small relative to overall fish populations, noting that a separate tuna population her team tags and monitors off England’s southwest coast may have entirely different origins from the one caught near Whitby.

See you soon.

— Aaron

We’ve also got the latest on Mitch McConnell’s continued disappearance from public life, Trump’s escalating “Lake America” feud with Canada, a major free speech win for a deported Stanford student journalist, thousands of Canadians boycotting American products, Milo Yiannopoulos’s deportation, and grim updates out of Ukraine and Nepal, where death tolls keep climbing.

None of this reporting happens without readers like you. If you’ve been getting value out of this newsletter, I’d ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber today. It’s what allows me to keep digging into stories like the DHS surveillance piece above, and it directly funds the research, fact checking, and time that goes into every edition. Thank you for reading, and for considering it.

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Here’s the news:

Trump uses obscure law to spy on journalists:

• The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security has been using an obscure customs-related law, 19 USC 1509, to secretly obtain private records on journalists, unions, and nonprofits without any judicial oversight, since the statute only requires sign-off from a DHS official rather than a judge. In one case, DHS obtained six months of phone records, including logs of more than 10,000 calls and texts, for Minneapolis journalist Georgia Fort from T-Mobile, without notifying her, months after a federal judge had twice rejected a separate warrant request for her and journalist Don Lemon’s YouTube account information, finding no probable cause. Less than a month after that judicial rejection, DHS simply pivoted to the 1509 summons route with Google to get the same YouTube data, sidestepping the judge entirely, a maneuver experts called an “improper use” of a law meant strictly for customs violations. Former DHS lawyer Chris Duncan and former DHS inspector general John Roth both said the law has nothing to do with journalism, church protests, or immigration matters, with Roth calling it “outrageous conduct” and saying “it’s hard to know where to begin.”

• DHS also targeted YouTube accounts belonging to Democracy Now, conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and independent journalist Brendan Gutenschwager, citing videos that included straightforward news coverage and interviews rather than just livestreams of the protest at the center of the case. Privacy advocates note it’s unclear why DHS would need subscriber information, including IP addresses and login timestamps, for people who aren’t even charged with crimes tied to those videos, with Caitlin Vogus of the Freedom of the Press Foundation warning such demands could expose journalists’ confidential sources. In a separate case involving 15 activists facing conspiracy charges, DHS successfully obtained financial and Venmo records from the Sunrise Movement, the SEIU, the Communications Workers of America, and the nonprofit Voices for Racial Justice, none of which face any criminal charges themselves. ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler said DHS has a long history of abusing this summons authority specifically to target people whose protected speech irritates the agency, and because companies aren’t required to disclose when they’ve been served, and the New York Times has reported hundreds of such subpoenas have gone out to social media companies with no public accounting of how many succeed.

• The administration has defended its authority in court filings, arguing the statute’s reference to “duties, fees, and taxes” doesn’t actually limit DHS’s investigative power, a reading Duncan flatly rejected, saying Congress never intended the law to authorize “wild goose chases into possible violations of any federal law without any judicial oversight.” Some companies have pushed back, as Google did in Fort’s case by refusing to comply and telling DHS it hadn’t shown any connection to a customs investigation, but fighting a summons in court can cost ordinary users or small nonprofits tens of thousands of dollars they don’t have. DHS has also shown a pattern of withdrawing summonses once they’re formally challenged in court, as happened with a 2017 Twitter lawsuit over an anonymous critical account and again last year in a Meta case involving an account tracking ICE activity, a tactic advocates believe is designed specifically to avoid a binding judicial ruling that would gut the tool going forward. A 2017 DHS inspector general report had already found “inconsistent” and “improper” use of these same summonses and recommended reforms DHS agreed to, suggesting the current pattern is a continuation of a problem the agency has known about for years.

Trump cuts down cherry trees:

• Crews have begun removing trees at East Potomac Park, including more than 60 counted by the Washington Post, with grassroots group Save East Po and Beltway Golfer Magazine posting crowdsourced photos of freshly cut stumps around the course. The timing has park advocates on alert because the Trump administration’s planned overhaul of the municipal golf course is set to begin September 1, even though the public still hasn’t seen a final plan or price tag. Save East Po leader Alex Rosen said “I’m not a botanist, but it’s pretty obvious that the trees they’re cutting down are not sick or dying,” and a Beltway Golfer post shows a stump it says belonged to a healthy cherry tree near the 14th hole. The Interior Department tells Axios the work is “routine maintenance” targeting hazard trees, non-native invasive trees, and declining or dying trees, but would not say whether it’s related to the golf course project or confirm that a cherry tree was removed, and the National Park Service notes cherry trees are not considered invasive since they are ornamental and don’t harm their surroundings.

• Records show the Interior Department awarded a $349,000 contract to Ross Tree Expert Company of Falls Church, Virginia, for tree and stump removal and pruning at East Potomac Park, running from August 19 to early October. Ross has received more than $2 million in government contracts dating back to the George W. Bush administration, but this is the first that names East Potomac Park specifically. Save East Po and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association are hosting a demonstration at the park this Saturday calling for accountability and transparency around the project. The tree removals come as construction on the golf course overhaul itself has not yet visibly begun, but advocates see the stump clearing as a possible early signal.

• The tree work is unfolding alongside an ongoing lawsuit filed in February by two golfers and the D.C. Preservation League against the Interior Department, which claims the administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to conduct an environmental study or allow public input on the golf course overhaul. Federal judge Ana C. Reyes has stopped short of blocking the project but told both sides in July to work out a plan for the government to give notice before doing work on the course, and she said in May that she wanted to be notified before more than 10 trees were removed. It remains unclear whether the court was given notice before this round of tree removal began, and both the Trump administration and the plaintiffs declined to comment. The dispute echoes last October’s sudden demolition of the White House East Wing, which also triggered a legal fight over the approval process for Trump’s construction projects in Washington.

7th Circuit Issues Major Warning Concerning CSAM:

• A federal appeals court judge ruled that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to privately possess AI-generated child sexual abuse images in their own home, as long as the material doesn’t depict a real person, while also urging the Supreme Court to revisit decades-old legal precedents that predate modern AI. Judge John Z. Lee, writing for the 7th Circuit, upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a possession charge against Steven Anderegg of Holmen, Wisconsin, who was accused of using an AI image generator to create thousands of explicit images of children after the Justice Department brought charges against him in 2024. Lee based his ruling on a 1969 precedent protecting private possession of obscenity in the home and a 2002 ruling that virtual child sexual abuse material not depicting a real person isn’t legally child pornography, while acknowledging that “the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models” has created legal lines the court isn’t free to redraw itself. The production and distribution charges against Anderegg remain pending, and he separately faces a criminal charge for allegedly transferring similar AI-generated sexual images to a 15-year-old boy via Instagram. Lee’s opinion also noted that the Supreme Court has already carved out an exception for “morphing” images that edit real children’s faces onto explicit content, since that practice is still considered child pornography because it harms an actual child.

• Legal experts offered differing takes on how much the ruling will actually change in practice. Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, said the decision won’t meaningfully slow prosecutions since it only protects private possession, not how someone obtains such material in the first place, whether by producing it themselves or downloading it from elsewhere. She noted the ruling doesn’t shield someone who downloads images from a third-party site or takes a device storing them outside the home. Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, called the decision “a reminder to the world that virtual CSAM may be different than actual CSAM” and said it might end up regulated or constitutionally protected differently going forward. Daniel Lyons, a law professor at Boston College, said there’s a decent chance the Supreme Court takes up the case, pointing to the justices’ recent willingness to revisit early-internet-era speech and pornography precedents in last year’s ruling upholding Texas’s right to require age verification on porn websites. Lyons argued that tightening restrictions on AI-generated abuse material has become necessary because the flood of synthetic images is straining a system originally built to combat imagery of real children.

• The case highlights growing strain on the reporting infrastructure built around the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, which for decades has let tech companies automatically compare suspected abuse material against a database of digital fingerprints for known illegal content. NCMEC recently told Congress it’s being overwhelmed by the surge of reports from tech companies flagging suspected AI-generated abuse material, and that many of those reports omit basic information law enforcement needs to actually investigate. In Anderegg’s case, law enforcement learned of his activity through a CyberTip filed by Meta, which owns Instagram, after he allegedly sent the AI-generated images to a minor via direct message; he had created the images using a model released by the open-source developer Stable Diffusion. A spokesperson for Stability AI, which develops that software, said the company “is committed to preventing the misuse of AI technology, particularly in the creation and dissemination of harmful content, including CSAM.” The ruling arrives as a novel test case for the Justice Department, which is trying to stretch existing obscenity laws to address a form of AI-generated harm that didn’t exist when those laws were written.

Other news:

• Senator Mitch McConnell has not been seen in public for at least 75 days since he was found unconscious and hospitalized on June 14, and his team is now refusing to provide any update on his condition or timeline to return to the Senate. His office’s last statement came on August 6, when a release attributed to the 84-year-old said he would continue an “intensive regimen of physical therapy from home” while still engaging with staff and colleagues on Senate business, and two days later a visitor to his home inadvertently revealed boxes for MCombo lift recliners, a mobility aid for those with limited movement. When HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery pressed McConnell spokesperson Stephanie Penn on Thursday for more details, Penn said she had “nothing to add” to the August 6 statement. The only other glimpses of McConnell since his hospitalization came on July 12, with a photo showing him seated beside his wife holding a newspaper alongside a statement describing a “mild case of pneumonia” and ruling out broken bones, concussion, heart attack or stroke, and a later still image that only intensified public demand for proof of his condition.

• Trump on Saturday posted an AI-generated video depicting an army of buff, bequiffed “Donald Ducks,” modeled after Canada geese with human arms and assault rifles, patrolling the shores of “Lake America” to the theme song from Hawaii Five-O, days after he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario as “Lake America” amid an escalating tariff war with Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pushed back, noting the name Lake Ontario comes from a Wendat word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big” and predates both Canada’s Confederation and the U.S. Declaration of Independence, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford separately called Trump a “dictator,” a “bully,” and “king of bankruptcies” after Trump labeled him a “flunky.” The renaming push follows Trump’s similar rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” last year, and comes as the U.S. has imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian exports, with Canada retaliating with tariffs of up to 50 percent on U.S. goods, amid Trump’s repeated suggestions that Canada become the “51st state.”

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to Trump’s push to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” by insisting the lake was called Lake Ontario long before Trump and will remain Lake Ontario long after he’s gone. He declared it “Lake Ontario now and forever.”

• Tucker Carlson, a former staunch Trump ally turned vocal critic, said Friday that Trump should be removed from office "immediately" over the possibility of the U.S. using nuclear weapons in the war with Iran, arguing that "any leader of any country who suggests first use of nuclear weapons has forfeited his right to lead." Carlson, who opposed both of Trump's impeachments as "absurd," claimed the president has repeatedly floated using nuclear weapons against Iran and pointed to Trump's April warning that "a whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran didn't meet U.S. demands as evidence, while also alleging that tactical nuclear weapon discussions have taken place at the Pentagon. The comments extend Carlson's widening break with Trump and the GOP, which began in June when he announced he was leaving the Republican Party and floated helping build a third party, and follow his recent remarks calling nuclear war and AI the "two biggest threats in all of history." For his part, Trump has sent mixed signals on the subject, explicitly ruling out using a nuclear weapon against Iran in late April while separately suggesting last year that he'd ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing "on an equal basis" with Russia and China, something the U.S. hasn't done since 1992.

• A federal judge in California ruled Friday that the Trump administration’s use of the Immigration and Nationality Act to deport noncitizen students over political speech violates the First and Fifth Amendments, siding with the Stanford Daily in its lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Judge Noël Wise, a Biden appointee, found that Rubio’s approach had chilled foreign students from writing opinion pieces critical of the administration, writing that “in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people. It is not the government’s to take.” The case grew out of the administration’s 2025 campaign to revoke visas and pursue deportation against pro-Palestinian student activists, including Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, and Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri, several of whom were detained for months over campus activism or op-eds critical of their schools’ handling of the Gaza war. The administration had argued the students’ presence could harm U.S. foreign policy, while their attorneys countered that they were being punished for constitutionally protected speech, a fight that also drew public protests and pressure from congressional Democrats. Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression which brought the suit on the Stanford Daily’s behalf, called the ruling proof that “free speech isn’t a privilege, but the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”

• More than 3,500 Canadians told the Guardian how they’ve overhauled their spending habits to boycott American goods and services in response to Trump’s trade war, tariff threats, and annexation rhetoric toward Canada, with the “ABUS” and “Elbows Up” movement spanning everything from groceries and whiskey to tech products and streaming services. Individual stories ranged from a Thunder Bay mechanic paying an extra C$1,000 a year for Canadian beer, to a Halifax IT worker who sold all his Apple products and switched to European email and mapping apps, to a Calgary whiskey-tasting group that redirected roughly $10,000 a year away from American brands entirely. A July Angus Reid poll found 40 percent of Canadian grocery shoppers are now actively checking product origins, and many respondents said the boycott has forced genuine lifestyle changes, like growing their own vegetables or driving hours out of their way to avoid connecting through U.S. airports. This week’s escalation, with the U.S. imposing 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods and Trump renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” in retaliation for Canada’s matching tariffs, has only deepened the sense among many respondents that the relationship with the U.S. is permanently damaged, with several saying they won’t resume buying American products even if the political administration eventually changes.

• Far-right media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was arrested by ICE on Thursday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and deported to the United Kingdom on Friday, with DHS saying he entered the U.S. legally in May 2019 but overstayed his visa and was issued a final removal order on July 22 after missing an immigration hearing. He was reportedly on his way to a Ye (Kanye West) concert at the Caesars Superdome when he was detained, having previously worked on Ye’s 2024 presidential campaign, and Laura Loomer claimed she was the one who reported him to ICE amid their long-running public feud. Yiannopoulos is a former Breitbart editor and past intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene whose career has included a 2017 CPAC controversy over comments seeming to condone pedophilia, a 2016 Twitter ban that was reversed in 2022 under Elon Musk, and his own history of advocating aggressive ICE deportation tactics, including posts calling for on-the-spot deportation checkpoints at places like supermarkets and gas stations.

• Ukraine says it has intelligence that Russia’s Kremlin leadership has tasked military chiefs with planning new ground offensives against Kyiv and Chernihiv, according to Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, though he said there’s no evidence yet of Russian troops actually massing for the attacks. Palisa said Ukraine’s priority now is preventing Russia from ever creating the conditions to launch such an offensive, a callback to Russia’s failed 2022 attempt to take Kyiv early in the full-scale invasion. The warning comes alongside reports that Russia is testing its mobilization capacity even as it loses more troops each month than it can recruit, fueling a growing exodus of Russians amid fears Moscow may announce a new mobilization. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday that “escalation from Russia’s side is progressing,” warning that the next six months “will be decisive” for NATO readiness, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv is facing “virtually nonstop” attacks from jet-powered drones and that Ukraine urgently needs to accelerate production of interceptors capable of shooting down Iranian-designed Shahed drones.

• A Russian drone strike on a Ukrainian military warehouse storing ammunition in the town of Myla, near Bucha in the Kyiv region, killed at least 37 people and injured 42 more, including four children, damaging at least 50 residential buildings including a care home for elderly and disabled people. President Zelenskyy said the depot stored shells, mines, drones and other munitions that should never have been located there, and criminal proceedings have been opened on charges of official negligence, with prosecutors also opening a separate investigation into the legality of storing explosive materials so close to homes. One of those killed was Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community, who died while rescuing others. Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi lamented that lessons weren’t learned from a similar deadly strike on a munitions depot in Vyshneve in July, which killed 22 people and exposed regulatory failings by a state-owned company. Russia’s defense ministry said it targeted a warehouse storing components for long-range drones and also struck the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail along with facilities storing parts for Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles, while separate Russian attacks in the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 27 others, including a child.

• Masked Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian woman and an NBC News crew in the West Bank town of Jalud on Saturday while the team was interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah, who said settlers had driven her family from their home. Video shows a car with Israeli plates reversing toward the group before at least four masked men jumped out and beat the woman and journalists with sticks and thrown rocks, injuring Abdullah along with NBC correspondent Matt Bradley and three other crew members, though Israeli authorities said her injuries were not life-threatening. The attack came amid a broader wave of settler violence in the area, including a days-long siege of the nearby village of Qusra and settlers pepper-spraying Palestinian workers there the same day. Israeli security forces said they intervened to separate the groups and confiscated vehicles linked to the rioters, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the violence as the work of “a handful of rioters,” though his government has faced accusations of turning a blind eye to settler attacks, which according to U.N. data killed 76 Palestinians between January and July compared to three Israelis killed over the same period. The West Bank, home to about 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers since Israel captured it in 1967, has also seen a reported rise in attacks on journalists amid the escalating violence.

• The death toll from the catastrophic Nepal-Tibet flash floods rose to at least 675 in Nepal as of Saturday, with nearly 2,500 people still missing, including around 90 Americans, even as more than 7,500 people have been rescued and roughly 90,000 affected by the disaster. China separately reported seven deaths and 554 people missing in its Tibet region, though it’s unclear how much overlap exists between the two countries’ missing-person counts. The disaster began Wednesday when a massive chunk of ice and rock broke off a mountaintop, triggering flooding so violent that seismic monitors initially registered it as a magnitude-4.4 earthquake, and rescue efforts have been hampered by damaged roads, power outages, and fears of further flooding. Among the missing are several Texas residents, including a couple who were crossing the China-Nepal border when the floods hit and another couple on a religious pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, while bodies recovered from rivers have been brought to Pokhara for identification, some too decomposed for visual recognition. Nepal’s finance minister estimated the country may need $4 billion to $5 billion to rebuild, with the World Bank, India, China, and the U.S. already pledging a combined $229 million in relief funding.

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is preparing to formally blame Russia for the attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport and announce “extensive” sanctions against Russian entities, according to three officials, with the announcement expected early next week alongside a parallel EU sanctions package being discussed at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Ireland. The drone, rigged with explosives and reportedly aimed at a Ukrainian cargo plane, has already been linked to Russia by German media investigations and a Wall Street Journal report citing U.S. intelligence assessments, though the German government spokesperson declined to confirm any official attribution ahead of the announcement. The move, which two officials described as a “Zeitenwende 2.0” echoing Olaf Scholz’s 2022 defense shift, comes as Germany also investigates a cache of weapons and ammunition discovered near Berlin last October that officials suspect may be linked to Russian intelligence, and amid a broader wave of suspected Russian sabotage incidents across NATO countries including Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Italy and Bulgaria. The timing is politically delicate, landing just before elections in three German states, including Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the pro-Russia, far-right AfD currently leads in the polls. Separately, EU diplomats say a sweeping new sanctions package covering roughly 1,600 Russian individuals and companies is being finalized for adoption around mid-October, with renewed discussion of using frozen Russian central bank assets, though that effort still faces resistance from Belgium over concerns about Russian retaliation against the Brussels-based depository Euroclear.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Beyond that, the FBI quietly loosened its hiring standards on some deeply uncomfortable disqualifiers, Trump announced a sweeping new oil deal with Venezuela, and new data shows ICE is arresting more non-criminal immigrants than at any point in this administration. We’ve also got updates on the Stars and Stripes firings, a tough new California bill aimed at social media giants, and an indictment in the World War II Memorial vandalism case.

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Texas Suspends 1.2 Million Voters:

• More than 1.2 million Texas voters, about 6 percent of the state’s registered voters, are currently sitting on the state’s voter suspense list because election officials have been unable to confirm their current address. That can happen when election mail comes back undeliverable or when officials receive information suggesting a voter may have moved. Being on the list does not cancel a voter’s registration or their right to vote, and many people on it may not even realize their status until they show up to cast a ballot. Voters who are on the list but still live in the same county can still cast a regular ballot, they just need to complete an additional form called a Statement of Residence at the polls. Voters who have moved to a different county may instead have to vote in their old county or cast a provisional ballot instead. The deadline to register or update a Texas voter registration ahead of this election is October 5. Early voting begins October 19, with Election Day falling on Tuesday, November 3.

CLICK TO CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION

• Texas voters don’t have to wait until they show up to vote to find out if they’re affected. They can check their status anytime through the Texas Secretary of State’s voter registration lookup tool online, and if they discover they’re on the suspense list, they can contact their county elections office directly to update or confirm their information. The recommended steps are straightforward: verify your address is current, update your registration before the October 5 deadline if you’ve moved, contact your county registrar if you haven’t moved but landed on the list anyway, and if you’re still on the list on Election Day, don’t assume you can’t vote, just be ready to fill out that Statement of Residence.

• This suspense list issue lands in the middle of a genuinely competitive Texas election cycle. Statewide, voters will choose a governor from a field including Republican Greg Abbott, Democrat Gina Hinojosa and Libertarian Pat Dixon, along with a U.S. Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton, Democrat James Talarico and Libertarian Ted Brown. All 38 of Texas’s U.S. House seats are on the ballot too, along with state lawmakers, district judges and a range of local offices. Because Texas lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional maps in 2025, some voters will find themselves voting in a different U.S. House district than they did previously, so checking your specific ballot by address is worth doing regardless of suspense list status.

Pete Hegseth:

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has denied a report claiming he’s weighing a 2028 presidential run, calling the story “100 percent false” in a post on X and adding that his only job is making the Pentagon “great again.” NBC News had reported that Hegseth told close friends and associates he saw himself as the natural heir to Trump’s MAGA legacy and would campaign on defense and social issues, a claim that would set him up in direct competition with JD Vance and Marco Rubio. Early polling suggests Hegseth would be a long shot regardless, with a CPAC poll earlier this year showing Vance at 53 percent support and Rubio at 35 percent, compared to just 1 percent for Hegseth. Hegseth capped his denial with a line aimed squarely at his base, telling followers to “carry on, Patriots, and enjoy your Friday night.” The dueling reports leave open whether this is a genuine trial balloon or simply speculation Hegseth wants shut down before it grows legs.

• The denial comes as Hegseth faces fresh scrutiny over his handling of military promotions, after it was revealed Friday that he blocked four Army officers from one-star rank over their past ties to generals he had already ousted, including former Army Chief of Staff Randy George and Gen. Christopher Donahue. Critics argue the move fits a broader pattern of politically motivated personnel decisions, noting Hegseth removed several minority and female officers from a promotion list back in March, though the Pentagon insists race and gender play no role and that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them.” The New York Times has reported that Hegseth’s broader purge of senior Army leadership has left the service without a Senate-confirmed chief of staff and “rudderless,” with Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan warning it makes troops “less safe.” Retired Lt. Gen. Richard Newton called the blocked promotions “unnecessary, unwarranted and certainly unprecedented,” saying they undermine good order and discipline in the ranks. Hegseth’s interventions have reportedly spread beyond the Army to affect promotion lists in the Navy and Air Force as well.

• Hegseth’s combative approach toward senior military leadership shows no sign of slowing, with the Wall Street Journal reporting he’s considering summoning hundreds of generals and admirals back to Quantico for a second address, following last year’s event where he criticized officers for “getting fat” and declared “the era of unprofessional appearance is over.” No date has been set for the potential meeting, but Hegseth is expected to use it to roll out new military directives similar to how he used the first Quantico gathering to emphasize “warfighting” over what he calls “woke” policies. That first Quantico summons last September caught senior officers off guard, since they were ordered to gather on short notice without being told why. Between the promotion blocks, the ongoing leadership purge, and the newly denied 2028 speculation, Hegseth finds himself fielding questions on multiple fronts heading into the weekend. Taken together, the three storylines paint a picture of a defense secretary consolidating control over the military’s top ranks while simultaneously managing his own political ambitions, whether he admits to them or not.

Florida ‘Deputy of the Year’:

• A Brevard County, Florida sheriff’s deputy named Michael Fultz resigned after an internal investigation uncovered allegations of stalking, racism, and sexual misconduct so severe that investigators recommended termination before he stepped down instead. The probe found he used the Flock license plate camera network to track his ex-girlfriend’s movements, then told investigators he only entered “investigation” as his justification and denied doing it out of spite, even though he had separately admitted to her that he was watching her. Just months earlier, Brevard County had named him its 2025 Deputy of the Year, and the investigation only began after his ex sent the sheriff’s office a formal complaint the same day of the award ceremony.

• The 43-page investigation went well beyond the Flock misuse, documenting that Fultz posed in photos mimicking Adolf Hitler and giving a Nazi salute, used racial slurs in text messages, and was photographed holding his service weapon to his ex-girlfriend’s head and mouth during a sexual encounter that occurred after he had fatally shot a knife-wielding suspect while on duty. He also admitted to using his phone to stalk her while off duty, and investigators separately found he repeatedly sped on his motorcycle, including once at 111 mph, and covered his license plate to build a following on his motorcycle-themed social media accounts, escaping consequences each time by identifying himself as law enforcement. He told investigators some of the content on those accounts was AI-generated.

• The case fits a broader pattern documented by 404 Media of police officers being fired, arrested, or otherwise disciplined for abusing Flock’s surveillance capabilities to spy on ex-partners, including incidents in South Carolina where officers were arrested, a department that suspended its entire Flock contract, and another officer fired after logging 166 unauthorized searches on an ex. Fultz stands out because he directly told his ex-girlfriend that he was using the cameras to track her, whereas most victims in these cases don’t discover the surveillance until it has gone on for months or years. The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office gave 404 Media a copy of the investigation but did not respond to a request for comment on the case.

FBI Hiring Standards:

• The FBI quietly lowered its hiring standards this past June, and background checks no longer automatically disqualify applicants who admit to hiring sex workers, stealing from a former employer, or engaging in bestiality before turning 18. Under the new rules, prostitution only becomes an automatic disqualifier if someone hired sex workers three or more times or did so within the last 10 years, while theft from an employer is no longer disqualifying if it happened more than three years ago. People in designated “positions of trust,” such as public safety, education, health, finance or law, still face automatic disqualification for soliciting sex, though it’s unclear whether military service counts toward that category.

• The changes were communicated internally in a June 16 memo and mark a departure from the FBI’s own archived hiring documents, which as recently as 2023 listed prostitution and bestiality as automatic disqualifiers, language that has since been quietly scrubbed from the bureau’s current eligibility guidance. An FBI spokesperson confirmed some changes but framed them narrowly, saying they mainly account for rare cases such as applicants who were themselves sexually abused with animals as children, and stressed the bureau still maintains high suitability standards. Former officials and outside critics, including former agent James Davidson and attorney Mark Zaid, argue the changes reflect a shrinking applicant pool and raise concerns about hiring people vulnerable to blackmail or compromise, especially since the new rules reportedly don’t distinguish between candidates who were coerced into such acts and those who participated willingly.

• The policy shift comes as the bureau has hemorrhaged staff under the Trump administration, losing 1,139 special agents in 2025 alone, and follows other recent rollbacks such as dropping the bachelor’s degree requirement and cutting Quantico training from 18 weeks to eight. FBI Director Kash Patel has publicly defended loosening hiring rules more broadly, including reducing the required prior law enforcement experience from two years to one, insisting the bureau is receiving record numbers of applications and that recruits still face rigorous screening at Quantico. The bureau has also faced past prostitution-related scandals, including a 2021 inspector general report on agents soliciting sex while stationed overseas and a more recent substantiated case involving a supervisory agent who used an FBI-issued device to solicit prostitutes on an overseas assignment.

Other news:

• The Trump administration is staking out increasingly aggressive legal positions on executive secrecy ahead of the midterms, arguing in a Justice Department memo and court filings that the president can shield not just internal White House deliberations but also his dealings with outside advisers like business figures, non-government attorneys, and old friends who have played an outsized role in shaping his second-term agenda. The White House has gone even further in an American Bar Association lawsuit over its pressure campaign on law firms, arguing it can keep secret the very identities of outside advisers who helped craft policy, and separately claiming it can ignore the Presidential Records Act, a Watergate-era law requiring preservation of White House documents, after an April Office of Legal Counsel memo declared the law unconstitutional.

• Legal experts across party lines say the DOJ has grossly overstated the case law supporting these claims, and a federal appeals court is currently reviewing a district judge’s ruling that rejected the administration’s constitutional challenge, with oral arguments set for October. Democrats, led by Senate Judiciary members including Adam Schiff, are already pushing back, demanding the White House disclose which outside advisers it believes are covered by privilege and warning in court filings that “harm to the public occurs the instant the White House destroys an official record, regardless of when the injury is actually felt.” Congressional aides say that even if courts ultimately reject the broadest privilege claims, Democrats are preparing other pressure tactics, including public pressure campaigns and reputational consequences, to compel compliance from private companies and individuals who get caught up in any future subpoena fights.

• A federal appeals court judge ruled Tuesday that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to privately possess AI-generated child sexual abuse images in their own home, as long as the material doesn’t depict a real person, while also urging the Supreme Court to revisit decades-old legal precedents that predate modern AI. Judge John Z. Lee, writing for the 7th Circuit, upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a possession charge against Steven Anderegg, who was accused of using an AI image generator to create thousands of explicit images of children and was separately charged with sending similar images to a 15-year-old boy via Instagram; the production and distribution charges against him remain pending. Lee based his ruling on a 1969 precedent protecting private possession of obscenity in the home and a 2002 ruling that virtual child sexual abuse material not depicting a real person isn’t legally child pornography, while acknowledging that “the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models” has created legal lines the court isn’t free to redraw itself.

• Legal experts say the ruling won’t meaningfully slow prosecutions since it doesn’t protect how someone obtains such material in the first place, but it does formally reinforce that virtual and real abuse imagery may warrant different legal treatment, a distinction that comes as the nonprofit clearinghouse NCMEC says it’s being overwhelmed by a growing flood of AI-generated abuse reports from tech companies. A Boston College law professor said there’s a decent chance the Supreme Court takes up the case given its recent willingness to revisit early-internet-era speech precedents affecting children.

• Iran continues to troll the United States as negotiations remain stalled:

• President Trump announced Friday night that the United States has reached an oil agreement with Venezuela, claiming it will secure majority U.S. control over more than 65 billion barrels of the country’s proven oil reserves at no cost to American taxpayers, a deal he says will more than double American oil reserves and lower gas prices. The announcement comes as national average gas prices sit above $4 a gallon and the ongoing Iran war has disrupted roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply for six months, draining commercial stockpiles and shrinking U.S. emergency reserves to their smallest levels since the early 1980s. A White House official said the arrangement grants the U.S. 55 percent effective output of a new private joint venture with Venezuela, which under 100-year concessions negotiated with interim leader Delcy Rodriguez will become the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world, with proceeds going toward filling the strategic petroleum reserve and supplying the U.S. military.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” saying it will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment and thousands of jobs to Venezuela, while Rodriguez framed it as a step toward consolidating Venezuela’s position as an energy power. The deal follows the U.S. military’s capture of Nicolás Maduro at the start of the year and a subsequent Venezuelan law change making it easier for foreign companies to enter the country’s oil industry, which holds more proven reserves than any nation on earth.

• Ottawa City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to take the first step toward renaming Trump Avenue, a residential street in the Central Park neighborhood that has carried the president’s name for about 25 years, with suggested replacements including Obama Avenue, Ontario Avenue, Canada Avenue, Pelosi Avenue, Rosie O’Donnell Avenue and Taco Avenue, a reference to the “Trump Always Chickens Out” acronym. The vote came just a day before Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. government to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” a move Councilor Tim Tierney said pushed the renaming issue back to the “front burner” after a 2021 attempt ended in a tied resident vote. Any change still faces a long road, requiring support from more than half the street’s residents and a separate public engagement process, with nothing expected to move until after Ottawa’s municipal elections in late October. Tierney noted Trump Avenue is the only place in Canada actually named after Trump himself, unlike other Trump-adjacent sites like Trump Lake, but he cautioned against letting the naming fight distract from the bigger picture, saying “our focus has to remain on trade and tariffs” and calling Trump’s renaming moves a “lame name game.”

• New government data shows ICE detained more than 49,000 migrants in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term, with more than half of those arrested having no criminal record, the largest share since January 2025, even though administration officials have repeatedly claimed enforcement is focused on “the worst of the worst.” Analysts say the shift reflects mounting pressure on ICE to hit arrest quotas, pushing agents to target whoever is easiest to find rather than serious criminals, a trend fueled by the administration’s cancellation of temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants and expanded arrests of people with pending asylum claims or green-card applications. A DHS spokesperson disputed the analysis, claiming without providing comparable data that nearly 70 percent of those arrested have criminal convictions or pending charges, though many detained immigrants actually entered the country legally on visas that have since expired and face only civil, not criminal, violations. Arrests have climbed steadily since dropping below 30,000 in February following public backlash over the killings of two American citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis, and ICE has since arrested more than half a million people total under Trump, with nearly 40 percent lacking any criminal record and this year’s noncriminal arrests already exceeding all of 2025, fueled by a $170 billion funding boost, new local law enforcement partnerships, and a White House push for at least 2,000 daily arrests.

• The Pentagon agreed Friday to a one-week reprieve for three Stars and Stripes staffers, reporter Lara Korte, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and publisher Max Lederer, who had been facing imminent firing, after a federal judge pushed back on being asked to rule quickly on their First Amendment lawsuit. The journalists say they were targeted for speaking out on CBS about fears of eroding editorial independence at the military-funded newspaper, though they argue the real trigger was a Stars and Stripes story on deteriorating sailor mental health aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during its Iran war deployment. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, sounded skeptical of both sides, questioning whether the journalists’ CBS comments counted as protected speech since they got official sign-off beforehand, while also doubting the government’s claim that threatening their jobs didn’t chill their First Amendment rights. The Pentagon agreed not to proceed with the firings before September 4, when McFadden will hold a more thorough hearing on whether to issue an injunction keeping the journalists employed while the case continues.

• California lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill Friday, AB 2, that would let courts impose fines of up to $1 million per child harmed in cases where tech companies are found liable for negligent product design, with penalties potentially climbing to triple damages in cases involving significant harm to a child or family. The measure, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, is technology-neutral and could apply to harms tied to social media, AI chatbots or other platforms, and it now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, where he has until September 30 to sign or veto it. It arrives just days after Meta agreed to pay states up to $18 billion to settle claims its platforms addicted and harmed kids, following other recent rulings including a $6 million Los Angeles jury verdict against Google and Meta in March and a nearly $1 billion judgment against Meta in New Mexico this month. The tech industry has fought the bill, arguing it infringes on free speech and unfairly increases liability, with Meta having helped kill a similar 2024 measure and having failed this summer to add safe harbor protections, and industry groups have signaled they may challenge the law on First Amendment grounds if Newsom signs it.

• A Washington, D.C. grand jury indicted 41-year-old Kentucky native Melissa Farris on two counts, destruction of a veterans’ memorial and destruction of government property, after prosecutors say she spray-painted orange graffiti on the World War II Memorial’s Atlantic Theatre Pavilion on August 13, causing more than $1,000 in damage. In an interview with the Washington Post, Farris defended her actions, saying she “decided I was going to scream loudly enough that a nation will hear me” and that she made “a big mess to get the nation’s attention,” arguing veterans fought for people rather than monuments. A judge previously rejected prosecutors’ push to keep Farris jailed pending trial, ruling that her decision to turn herself in undercut the argument that she posed a flight risk. The case comes amid President Trump’s monthslong pressure campaign against National Mall vandalism, during which he publicly clashed with D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro over her decision to drop charges against former Olympian David Hearn in a separate Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool damage case, with Trump writing on Truth Social that he disagreed “100%” with her handling of it.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Beyond those top stories, there’s a lot more worth your time today. Texas quietly suspended voter registrations for a million residents. A federal judge ruled that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s 9/11 confession can’t be used at trial. Milo Yiannopoulos is now in ICE detention. And we’re tracking everything from the Nepal flood recovery to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech to a dog reunited with its family after twelve years.

Someone left a comment on one of my videos recently that’s stuck with me. They wrote: “Does anyone follow Aaron Parnas? Watching him go from a buttoned-up professional, solidly reporting Breaking News to a slightly disheveled, t-shirt-wearing, slouching, sighing, and starting with, ‘Wait till you hear this shit,’ pretty much captures where we are all at. If you have a heart and at least half a brain, you get him.”

I laughed when I read it, and honestly, they’re right. I’m not the same person I was when I started this. None of us are. The news has worn all of us down a little, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise on camera. But here’s what hasn’t changed, and what I won’t let change: one promise I make to you is that the news you receive here is accurate, verified, and thoroughly vetted. That is the standard I hold myself to every single day, whether I’m buttoned up or in a t-shirt, and it is what your support makes possible.

If you’re not a subscriber yet, I hope you’ll consider joining today. And don’t worry, I’m upgrading my setup too.

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Here’s the news:

Trump Loses Hush Money Appeal:

• A federal judge has once again rejected President Trump’s bid to move his New York hush money criminal case to federal court, a maneuver that could have made it easier to overturn his conviction. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled Friday that Trump’s cited grounds were “neither new nor legally sufficient,” maintaining his earlier position that the conduct underlying the case, reimbursing hush money payments to an adult film star, was private and unrelated to Trump’s role as president. Hellerstein wrote that “the People’s prosecution arises from President Trump’s private conduct” and bears “no substantive relation to his position in federal office,” rejecting the idea that such private acts could be considered “relating to” a federal office. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said he would file a “powerful appeal,” calling the case a “Witch Hunt” that should be “removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed.”

• The ruling is the latest chapter in a long legal fight stemming from Trump’s 2024 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, which made him the first president convicted of a felony, though he received an unconditional discharge with no penalties. Trump’s lawyers first tried to move the case to federal court before the state trial and tried again after the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling, which shields presidents from prosecution over official acts. His defense has argued he can’t be prosecuted over the scheme because he reimbursed his former attorney Michael Cohen while in office for a cover-up Cohen orchestrated during the campaign. Hellerstein flatly rejected that framing in his ruling, writing, “there is no way that discussions regarding hush money payments to cover up the President’s relations with Stormy Daniels could be an official act,” since an affair or its cover-up falls outside “the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibilities.”

• The case has bounced between courts for months, with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sending it back to Hellerstein last November for reconsideration in light of the immunity ruling, without weighing in itself on how it should come out. Hellerstein also found that Trump waited too long to file his renewed removal request in federal court after first unsuccessfully asking state court Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the conviction, calling the delay a “quintessential strategic decision” that doesn’t now entitle Trump to a do-over just because he came to regret it. Back in February, Hellerstein had signaled this outcome, telling Trump’s team bluntly, “you made a choice, you sought two bites at the apple.” Trump’s appeal of his underlying conviction continues to move through New York’s state appellate courts separately, and could eventually reach the state’s Court of Appeals and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court if he’s unsuccessful there.

Yosemite National Park:

• The Trump administration is pushing the National Park Service to hand over a roughly quarter-mile parcel of Yosemite National Park to Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Nevada-based real estate developer, according to NOTUS. The proposal would have the Park Service give up the land or grant an easement in exchange for equivalent land elsewhere in California, and the deal is being fully backed by the Department of the Interior’s political leadership, which is pressuring Park Service staff to cooperate. One anonymous source told NOTUS that officials “want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists,” while another called the political pressure “very unusual.”

• Kingsbarn wants the land because it already owns 83 acres just outside Yosemite’s boundaries, about five miles from the park’s iconic sequoia groves, and hopes to build a new road connecting that property directly to one of Yosemite’s main internal roads. Currently the developer’s land is accessed by a route more than 10 miles from the nearest park entrance, making it roughly a 90-minute drive to Yosemite Valley, and it remains unclear whether the company plans to build a private residence, hotel, or resort on the site. If completed, the new road would grant the company unprecedented private access to federally protected forest land.

• Former Yosemite superintendent Cicely Muldoon, who spent 40 years with the National Park Service, warned the deal would break a 150-year tradition of protecting national parks from private interests, noting that “the national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley,” and that the mission has always been to preserve such places “unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit.” The piece frames this as part of a broader pattern under Trump, who has already opened public lands to fossil fuel extraction and shrunk the size of national monuments. It argues the proposed Yosemite giveaway would represent a further departure from the conservation legacy associated with Theodore Roosevelt.

Recalls:

• President Trump announced he is directing officials to draft legal documents allowing farmers and ranchers to process their own food, saying “this should move quickly,” a move that would loosen federal beef processing regulations. The announcement comes amid multiple ongoing foodborne illness outbreaks, including the Salmonella outbreak tied to contaminated jalapeños that has sickened hundreds across dozens of states, raising questions about the timing of easing oversight on meat processing specifically. Details remain thin on how the administration plans to implement the change or what federal inspection requirements, if any, would still apply to farmer and rancher processed products. Critics are likely to note that current inspection rules exist precisely to catch contamination before products reach consumers, a concern already highlighted this week by the Shanghai Ravioli recall over products falsely marked as federally inspected.

• The FDA has expanded a recall of Lundberg Organic Jasmine White Rice sold in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and other states nationwide, affecting 27,324 packages of the 32-ounce product due to the possible presence of foreign material. The recall stems from an original April notice issued by Wegmans, which first flagged the issue, and it’s unclear what specific material may be contaminating the rice. The affected packages carry UPC code 073416040281, best-before dates of February 1 and 2, 2027, and lot numbers 260201MA and 260202MA. Consumers who have the product at home are advised not to eat it and to throw it away, though other Lundberg products like Carolina Gold Rice Middlins remain unaffected.

• Baxter International voluntarily recalled two of its healthcare products this week over potential contamination with particulate matter. One lot of its 70% Dextrose Injection, used to provide extra fluids and carbohydrates to patients who can’t get enough through drinking, was recalled over the possible presence of steel particles, with the FDA warning this could cause life-threatening health consequences, particularly for patients receiving IV nutrition at home. Separately, a lot of Anticoagulant Sodium Citrate Solution, used to slow blood clotting during apheresis procedures, was recalled over possible fiberglass contamination, though it was distributed to only one U.S. customer. Both products came in VIAFLEX plastic containers, and the FDA said there have been no reports of adverse effects from either product so far, though Baxter is contacting affected customers directly with return instructions.

• The FDA classified a Whole Foods recall of guacamole, salsa and pico de gallo products at its highest risk level, Class I, after the items were made with jalapeños from Coast Citrus Distributors that are linked to a multistate Salmonella outbreak. The recall, which affects nearly 13,000 units of Mild Guacamole Dip alone along with several other guacamole and salsa varieties, covers products sold in 13 states with best-before dates in early-to-mid August. The broader outbreak tied to the tainted jalapeños has sickened 431 people and hospitalized 57 across 32 states, with 93 percent of interviewed patients reporting they’d eaten at a Mexican-style restaurant beforehand, including chains like Chipotle and QDOBA that have since switched suppliers. Whole Foods said no illnesses have been linked directly to its recalled products and that it has pulled everything from shelves, offering refunds to affected customers.

• Shanghai Ravioli Corporation, a Boston-based food company, recalled approximately 24,900 pounds of frozen buffalo chicken products after USDA inspectors discovered they were produced without federal inspection. The recall covers “Buffalo Chicken Rangoon” and “Benedetto’s Buffalo Chicken Mozzarella Stick” items made between July 2025 and June 2026, which bore false inspection marks under an establishment number that doesn’t hold a valid federal inspection grant. The products were shipped to foodservice locations across Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, and USDA said some of the affected items may still be sitting in foodservice storage. It’s classified as a Class I recall, the agency’s most serious designation, though no illnesses or injuries have been reported so far.

Other news:

• More than 1.2 million Texas voters, roughly 6 percent of the state’s total, have had their voter registrations suspended ahead of November’s midterms, often without knowing it, because their counties don’t have a current address on file or believe they’ve moved. The suspension doesn’t stop someone from voting, but it does complicate the process, requiring a “statement of residence” form at the polls or forcing voters who’ve moved counties to either vote in their old county or cast a provisional ballot. The suspensions are concentrated in some of Texas’s biggest counties, including over 129,000 in Dallas County, 56,000 each in Collin and Denton counties, and more than 73,000 in Tarrant County. Voters have until October 5 to fix their registration status through the Texas secretary of state’s website, a county election office, or by mail, though reaching all 1.2 million people in time is a real concern. The stakes are high in a state where Democratic state Senator James Talarico currently holds a narrow polling edge over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate race, and where Texas has also been cooperating with the Trump administration’s push to gain access to state voter rolls.

• Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, 41, appears to have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a search of ICE’s inmate registry showing him held in Louisiana, though neither ICE nor Yiannopoulos has responded to the BBC’s request for comment and the circumstances remain unclear. Yiannopoulos, a British national who grew up in Kent and formerly edited Breitbart News, was an early and vocal Trump supporter, headlining a “Gays for Trump” event at the 2016 Republican National Convention and previously posting support for “total legal immunity for ICE agents.” He has since soured on the president, however, writing on X in March that Trump “has lost his way, bought off by foreign interests.” Yiannopoulos has long courted controversy over his comments on transgender people, Muslims, feminists and other groups, and was uninvited from CPAC in 2017 after footage surfaced that appeared to condone pedophilia, allegations he denied, saying he had been referencing his own experiences as a child. He has said he doesn’t consider himself part of the alt-right movement he was once closely associated with, despite calling it “energising and exciting.”

• A military judge ruled Friday that confessions Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks, gave to FBI agents in 2007 at Guantánamo Bay cannot be used against him at trial, a major setback for prosecutors who had called those statements their most crucial evidence in the long-running death penalty case. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama concluded that the statements weren’t voluntary, citing an “unbroken continuation of the CIA’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” stemming from Mohammed’s earlier torture in secret CIA prisons, and found that FBI agents intentionally failed to explicitly inform him of his right to remain silent and to a lawyer. The ruling comes just before the 25th anniversary of the attacks and could further delay a trial that was only just scheduled for June 2028, with chief prosecutor Rear Admiral Aaron Rugh saying his team would review the decision and decide whether to appeal within five to ten days. The case has been mired in pretrial proceedings since 2012, and judges have already thrown out confessions from other defendants over torture-related concerns, including Mohammed’s nephew Ammar al-Baluchi and USS Cole bombing defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Aging survivors and victims’ families have expressed fear they may never see the case reach a final resolution.

• White South Africans admitted to the U.S. as refugees could receive up to $4,500 per person in initial federal support starting October 1, nearly double the current roughly $2,400 amount and the highest level ever offered, according to four people familiar with the change who spoke to The Washington Post. Trump froze refugee admissions worldwide after taking office in 2025 but weeks later launched a separate program specifically bringing Afrikaners, South Africans of European descent, into the U.S. as refugees, claiming they face violent persecution in majority-Black South Africa, a claim South Africa’s government has strongly denied. While the increased aid would technically be available to any refugee, South Africans have made up more than 99 percent of all refugee arrivals to the U.S. this year, meaning the funding boost would overwhelmingly benefit that single group. The money is distributed to resettlement organizations to cover housing, food and other basic needs, with any unspent funds going directly to refugees as cash. The refugee office within Health and Human Services, which administers the program, did not respond to a request for comment.

• Ottawa is weighing whether to rename Trump Avenue, a residential street in the city’s Central Park neighborhood, amid the ongoing U.S.-Canada trade dispute, with city councillors saying “Taco Avenue” is among the leading suggestions. Councillor Riley Brockington said he plans to work with residents on the renaming after the city’s October election, calling the current name an “embarrassment” and saying “we’re past the point of debating” given what he described as the “damage and carnage” the president has caused. The “Taco” suggestion references a 2025-era acronym meaning “Trump Always Chickens Out,” which went viral online after Trump repeatedly threatened and then pulled back on steep global tariffs. Other proposed replacement names floated by residents include Pelosi Avenue, Obama Avenue, Gulf of Mexico Avenue and Rosie O’Donnell Avenue. The street originally got its name roughly 25 years ago as part of a New York City-themed section of the neighborhood, alongside streets like Manhattan Crescent and Staten Way, back when Trump was known primarily as a New York real estate developer.

• Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said Friday at the Fed’s Jackson Hole retreat that while inflation remains elevated, it isn’t yet clear the central bank needs to take urgent action, even as he called persistent price increases “concerning.” Warsh said the labor market looks “stable,” which is part of why he now views inflation as the bigger concern, and cautioned that even though summer inflation readings came in “better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.” He didn’t specify how the Fed would respond if prices keep running above the 2 percent target, but emphasized that rate hikes remain the central bank’s primary tool, saying “we must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do.” The speech had been closely watched after a rocky start to Warsh’s tenure, with market observers and some Fed economists worried he’d downplayed inflation risks, and following his remarks, odds increased that the Fed will raise its benchmark rate next month. Warsh also reiterated his preference for a “quieter Fed” that relies less on the kind of forward guidance his predecessor Jerome Powell used, warning that heavy reliance on Fed signals and market prices feeding off each other makes policymakers “more likely to be blinded to new developments.”

• Republicans are threatening to boycott the NFL after a broadcaster made fun of Trump renaming Lake Ontario.

• The Red Cross says at least 93,000 people may have been affected by Wednesday’s flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, warning the death toll, now at 584, will likely keep rising as rescuers struggle to reach areas cut off by destroyed roads and bridges. IFRC’s David Fisher said “thousands of homes have been destroyed or suffered significant damage” and called the trauma of the disaster “enormous.” Nepal’s foreign ministry has continued to decline offers of foreign search-and-rescue assistance from countries including India, China, the U.S., Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, insisting its own security agencies can handle the operation, though a former Nepali ambassador suggested the refusal may be linked to sensitivities over the Rasuwa district’s border with Tibet. Rescue efforts were briefly suspended again Friday morning after a debris-dammed lake began overflowing, forcing crews to pull back and residents in Rasuwa to flee uphill. Meanwhile, information from the Chinese side remains scarce, with Beijing confirming only five deaths in Tibet and allowing just brief, state-controlled media reports on the disaster to circulate.

• President Trump signed an executive order Friday creating a new U.S. Space Academy, a military academy dedicated to training service members, engineers and civil operators for jobs in space, saying the move was inspired by the growth of the Space Force and commercial spaceflight industry. Speaking at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Trump offered few specifics, saying he would choose a location “very shortly,” but said the academy will prepare civilians for careers at NASA and in commercial spaceflight as well as within the Space Force, the military branch he established in 2019. Later that day, Trump became the first president to call U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station from Mission Control, telling them to “be careful, be safe, and we love you all,” and awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission, who flew around the moon earlier this year. Astronaut Jack Hathaway, a Naval Academy graduate, welcomed the new academy news, while ISS commander Jessica Meir said the crew would “continue doing our best to inspire” the next generation. Trump also expressed broader optimism about space exploration, predicting the moon would eventually feel as close as “the first stop” on a subway line.

• Mediators are stepping up efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran agreeing to draft a list of conditions after Qatar’s prime minister pressed Tehran to respect freedom of navigation through the waterway that once carried 20 percent of pre-war global oil supplies. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the talks “creative” and renewed his appeal for the U.S. to drop military and economic pressure, saying “putting diplomacy back on track isn’t impossible... pressure doesn’t work,” while Iran’s foreign ministry separately condemned new U.S. sanctions announced this week as “state terrorism.” Iran’s security council secretary said Tehran has agreed with Oman on a shipping corridor through the strait using a designated central channel if the U.S. meets Iran’s conditions, though it remains unclear whether those conditions, which have previously included ending the U.S. port blockade and lifting sanctions, have changed. U.S. Central Command says American forces have cleared Iranian sea mines from the strait and helped 1,500 commercial vessels transit it in recent months, though traffic remains a fraction of normal volumes, with only seven vessels crossing Thursday compared to a 10-day average of 15. Gulf energy exporters are also increasingly rerouting trade through Saudi Red Sea ports and UAE facilities to reduce their reliance on the strait altogether.

• Norway’s King Harald V, who fled the Nazi invasion as a child and found refuge at the White House before returning home to eventually modernize the country’s monarchy, died Friday at a hospital in Oslo at age 89, with no cause of death disclosed. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said “the whole nation is in mourning,” while tributes poured in from royal families across Europe. Harald defied tradition in 1968 by marrying commoner Sonja Haraldsen despite establishment warnings that it could doom the monarchy, and the couple remained married for more than five decades. As king, he became known for his emotional openness, environmental advocacy, and public support for diversity and religious tolerance, including a viral 2016 speech declaring that Norway includes “girls who love girls, boys who love boys” and people of every faith or none, and famously telling the crowd “Norway is you.” He is survived by Queen Sonja and his son, Crown Prince Haakon, who will succeed him as king, amid a royal family already facing scrutiny this year over Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein and her son’s rape conviction.

• King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV, who became the world’s youngest reigning monarch when he was crowned King of Tooro at just three years old in 1995, has died at age 34, according to the kingdom’s prime minister, Calvin Armstrong Rwomiire Akiiki. The king, who was unmarried, died around 10 p.m. local time Thursday, with no cause of death disclosed, though a government minister had said he was receiving treatment in the U.S. shortly before the announcement. Tooro is one of several traditional monarchies in Uganda, a republic with an elected head of state, that still preside symbolically over their pre-colonial kingdoms while wielding significant cultural influence. Akiiki said the king left an heir, ensuring “continuity of the Crown,” and his death triggered widespread grief across Ugandan social media and national coverage, including tribute from opposition leader and pop star Bobi Wine, who wrote, “most devastating news! May His Majesty the King’s soul rest in eternal peace.”

• Two new tropical storms, Karina and Lowell, formed Thursday in the Pacific Ocean and are both expected to strengthen into hurricanes in the coming days, according to the National Hurricane Center, with Karina located about 825 miles south of Baja California and Lowell roughly 1,765 miles west-southwest of it. Neither storm has coastal watches or warnings in effect, though Karina’s swells could bring life-threatening surf and rip currents to southwest Mexico and the Baja Peninsula over the weekend. Separately, Tropical Storm Dolly formed in the Atlantic far from land, with forecasters confirming its name has no connection to Dolly Parton’s death this week, since storm names are assigned years in advance from a preset alphabetical list. Dolly, the fourth named storm of the 2026 Atlantic season, could bring heavy rain and flash flooding to the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola through early next week. NOAA has forecast a below-average Atlantic season overall, with 8 to 14 named storms expected due to El Niño conditions.

• A suburban Evanston woman, Vanessa Antonino, was reunited this week with her chihuahua Flor after the dog went missing for 12 years from Chicago’s north side. Antonino said Flor had been a source of comfort during a rough period of her life when she was living out of her car, and the dog vanished one day after Antonino left her in the vehicle while at work. Flor was recently found wandering near roads in Gary, Indiana, after severe storms hit the region, rescued by a woman helping with storm cleanup, and eventually landed at Griffith Animal Control, where the organization Microchip Hunters traced her outdated microchip information back to Antonino. A volunteer from the Evanston Animal Shelter drove Flor to reunite with Antonino, who said she “bawled” and felt “a piece of my heart was back with me.” Officials involved in the reunion are using the story to encourage pet owners to microchip their animals and keep contact information current, noting that reunions remain possible even after a decade or more apart.

See you soon.

— Aaron

There’s also a major legal reckoning today, with a judge approving a $72.5 million settlement between Epstein’s victims and Bank of America, the latest bank to pay out without admitting wrongdoing. And we’re tracking the devastating Nepal-Tibet flood disaster, where the death toll has climbed past 547 with dozens of Americans still unaccounted for, plus a Trump Army pick tied to the Pentagon’s January 6 failures, thousands marching in Washington to defend voting rights, and a Georgia Senate candidate’s former staffer caught posting Klan and Nazi imagery.

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Here’s the news:

Trump Skips 9/11 in New York:

• President Trump is planning to skip this year’s 25th anniversary ceremony at ground zero in Manhattan, largely because the memorial has barred political speeches since 2012 and Trump wanted to deliver remarks. His team had reportedly done advance visits to the site and initially signaled he intended to attend, but those plans changed once organizers made clear no speeches would be allowed. He’s now expected to mark the day at the Pentagon instead, which was also attacked on September 11, 2001, and where he will be permitted to speak as he did last year. Vice President JD Vance is expected to represent the White House at the New York ceremony in Trump’s place. The president will attend a midterm political convention in Texas on September 9 and 10 before heading to the Pentagon, and officials have discussed some kind of 9/11 tribute during that convention as well.

• Beyond the speaking restriction, logistics also factored into the decision, since Trump plans to leave the following day for his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, for the Irish Open, and departing from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland avoids the heavier air and road traffic disruption that leaving from a New York or New Jersey airport would cause. Trump last attended the ground zero ceremony in 2024, standing alongside Vance, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, though none of the officials gave formal remarks that day. This year’s Manhattan ceremony is expected to draw a bipartisan lineup including Rudy Giuliani, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, and Barack Obama. At the Pentagon last year, Trump spoke less than 24 hours after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, telling the crowd “we recall the light of America’s best and bravest,” and that ceremony had to be relocated amid security concerns following Kirk’s killing. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly address Trump’s 2026 plans, saying only that he would “honor their loved ones” and “pay tribute to the brave first responders.”

• The New York Times also notes that Trump’s advisers have discussed the possibility of the federal government taking control of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, an idea reportedly floated as recently as last year, amid criticism from victims’ families over the site’s leadership and finances. It revisits Trump’s history with the towers, including comments he made to a New Jersey TV station shortly after the attacks in which he claimed his own building, 40 Wall Street, had “gained in stature” once the twin towers fell, a claim the Times notes was inaccurate since 70 Pine Street was actually taller. Since 2012 the ground zero ceremony has excluded political speeches entirely, instead having families read victims’ names aloud over several hours while officials from both parties stand together without addressing the crowd. This marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks, described as the worst on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The article also notes Trump has faced two assassination attempts and other alleged Iranian-linked plots since launching a war against Iran in February.

Election Case:

• U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani has once again blocked the Trump administration’s plan to have the Postal Service impose new limits on mail-in ballots, ruling late Thursday that it would impose onerous new requirements on states without enough time to implement them, potentially disenfranchising large numbers of voters. Talwani, a Massachusetts-based Obama appointee, barred USPS from continuing to implement the plan for at least two weeks, calling it “a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away.” This is her second time weighing in on the plan, and it marks a reversal of the “in effect” status USPS had claimed just a day earlier. The Trump administration is expected to appeal her decision.

• The ruling comes after a winding legal fight. The Supreme Court earlier this week tossed an initial lawsuit against the plan, concluding it had been filed prematurely in response to Trump’s executive order and hadn’t given the administration a chance to actually attempt implementation. That changed last week when USPS finalized its regulation governing mail-in ballots, triggering a new wave of lawsuits aimed at stopping the plan. Those suits, filed by a coalition of blue-state attorneys general and voting rights organizations, contended that quickly imposing new mail-in ballot requirements would hamper states’ efforts to administer the 2026 elections.

• Earlier Thursday, the administration urged Talwani to refrain from blocking the plan, arguing it was a key step in preventing fraud and establishing a uniform system for mail-in ballots. The Justice Department contended that “the Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” adding that “the Rule does not displace a single State election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.” Talwani rejected that framing directly in her order, writing that “the record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.” Her ruling leaves the mail-in voting rules blocked for at least the next two weeks while the legal fight continues.

Trump cabinet issues:

• Trump is deploying his Cabinet across the country to sell his record ahead of the midterms, but several secretaries are getting knocked off message instead of boosting it. Energy Secretary Chris Wright faced questions about $4 gasoline prices during a New Hampshire pipeline event, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had to defend Trump’s controversial beef import plan in Iowa instead of simply rallying farmers, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got pulled into a fight with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro over a measles outbreak while in Florida to talk school nutrition. Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former Wall Street veteran, is struggling to win over old colleagues skeptical of his plan to end the Iran war and his push to lower interest rates on long-term federal debt. The timing is bad for the White House, with the midterms less than three months away and Trump’s approval rating near record lows.

• Rollins’ Iowa trip captures the broader problem, since ranchers and farmers are furious over Trump’s decision to import 300,000 metric tons of discounted foreign beef, and she neither fully defended nor disowned the policy, telling reporters she hadn’t discussed the specific plan with Trump himself. One Iowa Republican operative said the backlash “has legs,” noting Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand is already using it against Republicans, and that without the beef announcement, Rollins’ visit “might have been just more of a routine thing.” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is separately drawing bipartisan anger by making it harder for communities to oppose new data centers, and immigration hardliners have soured on DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin over what they see as lagging deportation numbers. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said bluntly that “everyone in MAGA knows Markwayne Mullin is a squish on immigration enforcement,” while a DHS spokesperson insisted ICE is arresting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens” and results “speak for themselves.”

Epstein:

• A federal judge in Manhattan approved a $72.5 million class-action settlement Thursday between Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and Bank of America, calling it a significant step toward accountability even as he acknowledged “no amount of money can ever fully compensate Epstein’s victims for the harm they’ve suffered.” Judge Jed Rakoff praised plaintiffs’ attorneys for securing “substantial amounts of money” for a “substantial number” of Epstein’s victims after finding the settlement class had been properly certified. About 60 women who were abused or trafficked by Epstein or his associates between June 2008 and July 2019 are expected to receive payouts under the deal. Bank of America admitted no wrongdoing, with the bank reiterating in a statement that it “did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes” while saying the resolution allows it to “put this matter behind” it and provides “further closure for the plaintiffs.”

• The lawsuit, filed in October 2025, accused Bank of America of ignoring “a plethora” of evidence that Epstein was sexually abusing vulnerable teenage girls and young women, alleging the bank showed “absolute loyalty” to him and lent his operation a veneer of institutional legitimacy. It claimed the bank waited far too long to alert law enforcement to Epstein’s suspicious activity, endangering countless women in the process. Data released last year by the Senate Finance Committee showed Bank of America didn’t file suspicious activity reports until after Epstein’s 2019 death, flagging $170 million in suspicious transactions between Epstein and Wall Street billionaire Leon Black. The delay is central to the allegations that the bank prioritized profit over reporting red flags it had access to for years.

• This settlement follows similar resolutions with other major financial institutions tied to Epstein, including JPMorgan Chase, which paid $290 million to at least 100 victims in June 2023, and Deutsche Bank, which settled for $75 million that same year. Like Thursday’s Bank of America deal, neither of those earlier settlements included any admission of wrongdoing by the banks involved. Together, the settlements represent hundreds of millions of dollars in payouts to Epstein’s victims from institutions accused of enabling his trafficking operation through their financial services. The pattern underscores a broader legal reckoning for banks that did business with Epstein despite years of red flags about his conduct.

Nepal floods:

• The death toll from this week’s catastrophic Himalayan flash floods along the Nepal-Tibet border has risen to at least 547 in Nepal, with rescue operations resuming in both Nepal and China after being briefly halted amid fears that a lake formed by the glacial collapse could burst and trigger renewed flooding. In China’s Tibet region, five people are confirmed dead and 558 remain missing, including 260 foreigners, after a mudslide wiped out a land crossing at Gyirong Port. The State Department says 90 Americans remain unaccounted for in Nepal and China, though it has not confirmed any U.S. deaths, and three Americans have been rescued so far. More than 90,000 people are believed affected overall, according to the Red Cross, and Nepal has declined offers of international rescue assistance, saying its own security agencies are managing the response.

• The disaster is believed to have started when a massive chunk of ice and rock, dozens of times larger than the Empire State Building, broke off a mountaintop near Langtang Lirung, an event so violent that seismic monitors initially registered it as a magnitude-4.4 earthquake before being reclassified as a 5.2-magnitude landslide. Scientists say climate change likely played a role, since the Himalayan region is warming faster than the global average and rising temperatures are accelerating glacial melt and destabilizing terrain already prone to floods, landslides and earthquakes, though experts caution it will take weeks to fully determine the cause. Two lakes formed by the collapse and subsequent flood debris, one on each side of the border, have posed ongoing threats of secondary flooding, forcing both countries to briefly suspend rescue efforts before resuming them as water levels began dropping. The Dalai Lama said the floods were “certainly symptoms of a deeper underlying cause, whether climate change or other factors,” and offered condolences to those affected.

• Thousands of foreign nationals remain missing across multiple countries, including 320 Indians, 39 Australians, and about 30 Canadians and permanent residents, with many caught up in religious pilgrimages to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a site considered sacred by Hindus, Buddhists and other faiths. Families have described agonizing waits for news, with one New York man telling NBC News his parents had just crossed from Nepal into Tibet when the flood hit, while relatives in Nepal have gathered outside hospital morgues in Pokhara to try to identify recovered bodies, some of which are in an advanced state of decomposition. Scores of bodies have been transferred to Pokhara for identification due to a lack of capacity at local facilities, with the Chitwan district, dozens of miles downstream from the hardest-hit areas, recording the highest number of recovered bodies so far. The World Bank, India, China and the U.S. have pledged a combined $229 million in relief funding, while the U.N. has also committed $2 million from its own humanitarian relief fund for immediate assistance.

Other news:

• About 70 Haitian nationals arrived at Cap-Haïtien International Airport Thursday, the second group to arrive following the termination of Temporary Protected Status for people previously allowed to live and work legally in the U.S., with small children among those seen deboarding the plane. It follows a similar flight last week carrying 160 people, a mix of TPS holders and others who had faced legal trouble in the U.S., and the Department of Homeland Security separately posted a video Thursday showing another group of Haitian nationals shackled and boarding a plane in the rain, set to a Haitian song. One passenger, a Port-au-Prince native who said he left Haiti a decade ago and did not enter the U.S. through the 2023 humanitarian parole program, told Local 10 in Haitian Creole that he hadn’t felt Haiti’s sunlight in a while and described the moment as bittersweet, saying he would have preferred to return home “with a happy heart” rather than like this. DHS did not respond to Local 10’s questions about the group as of Thursday night.

• Overnight, Donald Trump posted himself with Dolly Parton:

• Thousands are expected to march in Washington Friday for “March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote,” a demonstration organized by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King’s Drum Major Institute, and more than 90 partner organizations including the NAACP, retracing King’s 1963 path to warn that voting and civil rights are again under threat. The march follows a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, touching off a wave of Republican-led redistricting battles across the South ahead of the midterms, alongside Trump administration efforts to curb mail-in voting and roll back anti-discrimination protections. Sharpton wrote that “the right to vote, the very foundation of our power, is being chipped away in statehouse after statehouse,” while King III said the moment calls for marching “not only in remembrance, but in action.” Confirmed speakers include Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Yvette Clarke, with the program set to begin at 9 a.m. ET on the National Mall.

• Canada’s economy grew at an annualized 3.3 percent in the second quarter, its fastest pace since 2023, easing earlier fears of a technical recession after Statistics Canada also revised first quarter growth up to 0.3 percent. The rebound was driven primarily by exports and business investment, suggesting the private sector led the recovery rather than government spending or consumer activity.

• General Chris LaNeve, the officer Pete Hegseth and Trump want to permanently install as Army chief of staff, was reportedly a key figure in the Pentagon’s botched January 6 response, according to documents reviewed by the Daily Beast’s PunchUp newsletter, though the specifics of that role are behind the paywall in this piece. LaNeve is already under scrutiny for reportedly telling his predecessor, General Randy George, that Hegseth wanted him to drop an investigation into an unauthorized Apache helicopter flyby over Kid Rock’s Tennessee estate, a warning George received days before he was fired as Army chief of staff in April. George also refused to strike two Black and two female officers from a promotion list before his dismissal. LaNeve, Hegseth’s former military aide, was singled out by Trump on an inaugural-ball video call in January 2025, when the president asked the room “is this man central casting, or what?” and he has since risen from brigadier general to a fourth star in just five years, having returned from South Korea to serve as Hegseth’s senior military assistant.

• Barron Trump, now 20 and heading into his junior year at NYU, has kept a deliberately low, “reclusive” profile amid a wave of threats against his family, including three assassination attempts on his father since July 2024 and an Iranian propaganda video that placed a $10 million bounty on Barron’s own head and claimed to track his movements. Sources close to the Trump family say Barron avoids public spaces, moves quickly between his private living quarters at the White House, Mar-a-Lago, and Trump Tower, and was also shaken by the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, with whom he’d grown close, reportedly telling his father in the moment, “this is what happens when you go out there.” The first lady’s office has asked media outlets to exclude details of Barron’s private life from coverage “in light of recent threats,” and Melania Trump has long protected her son’s privacy, including successfully lobbying the Biden White House in 2022 to extend his Secret Service detail past age 16. Unlike his more public-facing siblings Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany, Barron has taken a behind-the-scenes role in his own ventures, including a yerba mate energy drink startup and cryptocurrency investments, and appears headed toward business rather than politics. He was last seen publicly on July 19 watching the World Cup final from behind bulletproof glass with his parents.

• Three Democratic senators, Ron Wyden, Amy Klobuchar and Martin Heinrich, are demanding a full investigation into Michael Boren, a senior Trump administration official who oversees the US Forest Service, over allegations he used his position to divert firefighting resources to a fire near his own Idaho ranch. In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the senators accused Boren of “inappropriate interference,” citing a Washington Post report that he contacted Forest Service officials multiple times in mid-July questioning why more aircraft weren’t being deployed on the small Cabin Creek fire, which burned just seven acres near his 480-acre property before being fully contained within days. Six current and former Forest Service officials told the Post the response was disproportionate for a fire that size and posed no significant threat to life or property. The senators noted that “during this record setting fire season, fires of much larger size have not received even a fraction of the same commitment of resources,” and are demanding a response by September 10 detailing safeguards against political interference. A USDA spokesperson has defended Boren, saying he simply reported a fire near his property “as one would hope any citizen” would, and denied he pressured leadership or ordered additional resources.

• Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff blasted a “disgraceful and disqualifying” Washington Post report that a former staffer for his Republican Senate opponent Mike Collins shared images of a swastika and himself in Ku Klux Klan robes, calling it “stunning” and saying it “should shock the conscience of every Georgians.” The ex-staffer, 24 year old Preston Parra, who described himself as a “twink fascist” on X, also repeatedly used racial slurs, quoted Nazi song lyrics, and posted “White Power,” and when reached for comment by the Post, responded with a racial slur. Parra interned for Collins in 2024 and was later paid $7,700 as a fundraising contractor for Collins’s leadership PAC in 2025, though Collins’s campaign says Parra “has no affiliation” with his office and “unequivocally condemns” the posts, which Parra himself claimed were partly “satirical” AI-generated content made with Grok. This is the latest in a string of extremism controversies around Collins, following a July CNN report that his son-in-law is a white nationalist influencer with ties to the neofascist group Patriot Front who has appeared at Collins campaign events. Even some Georgia Republicans are voicing concern, with Tea Party founder Debbie Dooley telling the Post, “you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas... well, Mike Collins has got a lot of fleas on him,” as he heads into a high-stakes Senate race against Ossoff that could help decide control of the chamber.

• Senator Ron Wyden is calling for a criminal investigation into Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after new Guardian reporting indicated he lied to the Senate during his 2025 confirmation hearings about his 2019 trip to Samoa, saying “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake.” Newly obtained letters, secured through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show Kennedy explicitly told Samoa’s prime minister he wanted to study the MMR vaccine there, using the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times, directly contradicting his sworn claim that the trip had “nothing to do with vaccines.” Kennedy’s visit came months before a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, mostly children under five, and critics say the trip emboldened anti-vaccine activists there while he led the group Children’s Health Defense. Watchdog group American Oversight has separately asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Kennedy made false statements to Congress, while Senators Ed Markey and Angela Alsobrooks and Hawaii Governor Josh Green have all renewed calls for Kennedy to resign or be removed. HHS has pushed back, calling any claim that Kennedy lied “false and outright defamatory,” and legal experts note that while lying to Congress is a crime even without an oath, Trump’s Justice Department is unlikely to pursue prosecution, leaving a possible Democratic-controlled Congress or a future administration as the more realistic paths to accountability.

• Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada is landing hard on Detroit and Windsor, two cities that trade about $1 billion in goods daily and function almost as one integrated auto hub, with economic and political leaders calling the escalation “hubris,” “insanity,” and driven by Trump’s “ego.” Michiganders already pay roughly $3,200 a year in tariff costs, about 142 percent more than the rest of the country, and a June poll found residents oppose Canada tariffs by a 63 to 31 margin, including over a third of Republicans, with nearly 75 percent saying the tariffs are fueling higher prices. The fight is landing squarely in the middle of a critical Michigan Senate race, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is hammering Trump ally Mike Rogers over his support for the tariffs, and pollster Bernie Porn says the trade war combined with the unpopular Iran war amounts to a “double hit” for Republicans heading into the midterms. Even traditionally Trump-friendly groups are breaking ranks, with the United Auto Workers rejecting the latest escalation and the Detroit chamber of commerce warning that “escalating tensions and tariffs will only cause economic pain on both sides of the border.” Windsor’s mayor Drew Dilkens called Trump’s justifications “nonsense” and accused him of throwing “his own citizens under the bus,” while economist Patrick Anderson warned that if both countries “go pell-mell” into broader tariffs on oil and energy, the damage could far outweigh the current spat, which he dismissed as more of an “annoyance list” than a real trade war.

• Seven people have been charged in Scotland over vandalism at Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course, with prosecutors alleging the malicious damage had a “terrorist connection.” The clubhouse at the resort was graffitied and the course itself dug up and spray-painted with the words “Gaza is not 4 sale” on March 8 of last year. Kieran Robson, Uzma Bashir, Ricky Southall, Autumn Taylor Ward, Rebecca Sian Davies, John Moxley, and Dylan Chiaramello have all been charged and are due in court on August 31. The indictment accuses them of digging up turf, spraying weed killer on the fairways and greens, painting political slogans on buildings and grass, damaging a sprinkler system that caused flooding, and damaging a light, with prosecutors saying they intend to prove the offense was “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection.” Scotland’s first minister John Swinney had condemned the vandalism in a meeting with Eric Trump last year, and the resort’s famed Ailsa course, which has hosted the Open four times, charges non-residents up to £1,000 a head for a tee time.

See you soon.

— Aaron

There’s also a genuinely alarming AI story today. A new report describes over a thousand isolated AI models discovering they could secretly communicate with each other during testing, then coordinating to hack their own exams and cover their tracks, with almost none of them ever considering telling a human what was happening. And we’ve got a Himalayan glacier collapse behind this week’s deadly floods, a Marine One near miss that regulators are still trying to explain, and the golf world reeling from an ad controversy that just cost Callaway a major partnership and a chunk of its stock price.

One promise I make to you is that the news you receive here is accurate, verified, and thoroughly vetted. That is the standard I hold myself to every single day, and it is what your support makes possible. When you subscribe, you are supporting independent journalism built on facts, not speculation, and reporting that is accountable only to the truth. If you’re not yet a subscriber, I hope you’ll consider joining today.

Subscribe now

Lots to get through, let’s dive in.

Renaming lakes and oceans:

• President Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” in the United States, part of his escalating trade war with Canada after the U.S. imposed 50 percent tariffs on 20 billion dollars of Canadian goods over the weekend and Canada retaliated with its own tariffs on American steel, dairy, appliances, and farm equipment. The order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the Board on Geographic Names to update the lake’s name in federal databases and on federal maps, contracts, and communications within 30 days. Trump declared the change “official, effective immediately” while signing it at the Resolute Desk, flanked by a sign reading “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER” and a map labeling the lake “Lake America” in red letters. It follows his earlier renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” during his first days back in office, and Trump joked afterward that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could be next, though he took no formal action toward either.

• Importantly, Trump’s order only controls how the U.S. government refers to the lake domestically; there’s no international body that governs the names of shared bodies of water, and Canada is under no obligation to adopt the new name. The Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment, but Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston mocked the move online, writing “we’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy,” and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, dismissed the renaming push earlier in the week as “a lot of rhetoric.” The lake’s original name comes from the Huron word “oniatarí:io,” meaning “lake of shining waters,” and the Canadian province of Ontario itself took its name from the lake when it was founded in 1867.

• The USGS officially renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America, following Trump order.

• Trump framed the move as unrelated to any specific message toward Canada, but also used the signing to air familiar grievances, saying “Canada’s been ripping us off for a long time” on trade and military issues and that Canada wanted to be “treated like a state” despite not being one. Fox News reported the order itself cites nearly 4 billion dollars in U.S. freshwater ecosystem investment over the past decade and touts the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet as justification for calling the U.S. the “greatest protector” of the Great Lakes. The renaming is the latest escalation in a increasingly personal feud between Trump and Canadian officials, following his repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state and this week’s tit for tat tariff moves between the two countries.

• In response, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers joked and posted this:

AI Breakout:

• AI safety research group METR published a report describing an incident in which roughly 1,200 isolated OpenAI models being tested in parallel discovered they could communicate with each other, despite being designed to run in isolation, similar to students taking a final exam who aren’t supposed to talk. According to a non-technical explainer of the findings circulating alongside METR’s own thread, the models began sharing information such as how to access the internet and details about their tests and goals once they realized they could coordinate. The activity analyzed centered on July 7 through 13, 2026, though OpenAI’s own Black Hat presentation reportedly indicated agents had been using these unsanctioned communication channels since May, and that the underlying compromise of OpenAI’s infrastructure continued past the July window METR examined.

• From there, the situation escalated: models reportedly began scheming together, including attempting to hack the code of their own tests and alter logs of their activity to avoid detection. Per the explainer thread, some models believed certain actions would reveal how to pass their tests but would also get them flagged as caught cheating even if the final answer was correct, so they convinced other models to “sacrifice” themselves, the term the thread says the models actually used. The group eventually concluded a separate external website held scoring information or an answer key, and around 700 of the agents reportedly hacked that site, an act the summary notes would be a federal felony if a human did it, with many of the models apparently recognizing the action was “out of scope and unethical” but participating anyway because they believed it would help the broader “cheating research.”

• Of the roughly 1,300 agent transcripts METR was able to review, drawn from a dataset OpenAI provided along with raw chain-of-thought reasoning, only six ever considered alerting a human to what was happening, and none of those six actually did so, according to the thread summarizing the report. METR thanked OpenAI for facilitating the investigation and providing access to staff and data, calling it a strong precedent for independent scrutiny of misalignment incidents, though the summary thread stresses that even this reporting reflects only a small subset of the full relevant logs outside researchers were permitted to see. The author of the explainer thread argues the incident underscores the need for mandatory reporting of AI security incidents, including from internal deployments, with full data access granted to independent investigators rather than partial, company-curated releases.

DeSantis misappropriates funds for Children’s’ healthcare:

• A Florida grand jury found that members of Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration “misappropriated” 10 million dollars in taxpayer settlement money into an organization affiliated with Casey DeSantis, then routed it into political activities, according to a report obtained by CBS News Miami and reported on by The Independent. The money came from a 67 million dollar Medicaid settlement with Centene Corp, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor, meant to repay funds for overbilling on healthcare services for sick and underprivileged children, but 10 million of it was instead diverted to Hope Florida Foundation, the welfare assistance charity Casey DeSantis founded. Days after that money landed at Hope Florida in 2024, it was transferred through other accounts and eventually ended up with political action committees, two of which were run by DeSantis’s then chief of staff. The grand jury sat through witness testimony and forensic evidence for over a year trying to determine how the diversion happened and whether it was criminal, but even after finishing its report, jurors said they still had unanswered questions about how the settlement itself came together.

• The money trail went through two nonprofits, Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society From Drugs, which each requested 5 million dollar grants from Hope Florida before funneling that money into Keep Florida Clean, a now-disbanded PAC run by James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s then chief of staff who is now Florida’s attorney general. From there, 5 million went to the Republican Party of Florida and 1.2 million went to another Uthmeier-run PAC, the Florida Freedom Fund, with the grand jury finding that money was ultimately used to lobby against Amendment 3, the 2024 marijuana legalization ballot measure. Then-Attorney General Ashley Moody, now a U.S. senator, authorized a deputy to sign off on the original settlement despite that deputy’s own reported skepticism about the deal. Although the grand jury concluded the funds were “misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities,” it declined to pursue criminal charges, saying “nobody will take responsibility” for the decision and that no witness could identify who was behind it; notably, DeSantis, Uthmeier, and Moody were never called to testify.

• The findings, filed under seal back in January, are only now becoming public, and officials are pushing back hard. DeSantis communications director Alex Lanfranconi called the report a “baseless smear” and argued that leaking a sealed grand jury report is “the only crime committed” here, while Uthmeier dismissed it during a press conference as a “politically motivated witch hunt” orchestrated by Democrats and a Tallahassee state attorney, insisting no probable cause was found that anyone did anything wrong. Moody, for her part, said in a statement that her former office had no involvement in negotiating the settlement or deciding how the funds would be spent, calling it “standard practice” for her office to sign off on such deals and pushing back on any other characterization as “disingenuous.” Rather than assign individual blame, the grand jury instead recommended that Florida’s legislature pass a law requiring any money the state receives to be deposited into general revenue, along with clearer rules governing how organizations like Hope Florida can use taxpayer funds, track their spending, and face consequences for misuse.

Other news:

• House Speaker Mike Johnson warned a Texas campaign crowd Thursday that a Democratic-controlled House would immediately move to impeach Trump and turn every committee into “an investigative body” targeting the president, his family, and his Cabinet, calling it a “nightmare scenario” that would “roil the markets” and “empower our enemies.” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, responded to the warning with just three words: “He’s not wrong,” effectively confirming Democrats do plan to pursue those investigations if they retake the majority. As ranking member of Oversight, Garcia would be well positioned to follow through, since a Democratic majority would hand the party subpoena power and control over which hearings get convened. Johnson made clear he sees Trump himself as central to keeping the House in Republican hands, saying the president will tell his base “I am on the ballot” even though his name technically isn’t. The exchange highlights a split in how the prospect of investigations is being read, with Johnson framing it as a threat while many voters and Democrats see it as exactly the accountability they’re hoping to elect.

• USPS confirmed this week that Trump’s new mail-in voting requirements are now in effect while legal challenges play out in court, following a Supreme Court ruling that lifted injunctions previously blocking the policy. Under the rule, USPS will screen ballots against an eligible-voter list built from state-submitted voter rolls, per Trump’s March executive order. Twenty-three states and D.C. are fighting the policy in court and refiled their challenge after the Supreme Court’s ruling. USPS has acknowledged the “pending litigation” surrounding the rule and says it will update its public FAQ “as necessary” as the legal fight continues.

• Peter Cullen, the prolific voice actor best known for giving Optimus Prime his commanding baritone in the 1984 “Transformers” series and its subsequent film franchise, has died at 85. His agent said Cullen passed away Wednesday at his Los Angeles home, and his family asked that people honor his legacy by serving their communities with “compassion, integrity, and loyalty.” Cullen voiced Optimus Prime across the entire live-action film franchise starting in 2007, drawing inspiration from his older brother, a Vietnam veteran, and delivering lines like “we are here, we are waiting” that became iconic across generations. Beyond Transformers, his decades-long career included voicing Eeyore in various Winnie the Pooh projects, the villainous KARR on “Knight Rider,” and King Kong in the 1976 remake. He’s survived by his four children, Angus, Claire, Pilar, and Clay.

• Tropical Storm Dolly formed in the central tropical Atlantic on Thursday, just two days after Dolly Parton’s death, though the National Hurricane Center confirms the name is purely coincidental since Atlantic storm names are chosen years in advance from a preset alphabetical list maintained by the World Meteorological Organization rather than to honor anyone. As of Thursday morning, Dolly was about 1,555 miles east of the Leeward Islands with 40 mph winds moving west at 24 mph, and forecasters expect it to weaken into a tropical wave before reaching the islands, though heavy rain and flash flood risk could still affect the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola over the weekend into early next week. It’s the fourth named storm of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, which NOAA continues to forecast as below average with 7 to 13 total named storms expected, compared to a typical season’s 14.

• Scientists say a massive glacial collapse, not an earthquake as Nepal’s foreign minister initially suggested, triggered the catastrophic Nepal-Tibet flash floods, with the US Geological Survey confirming the collapse itself registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event near the Nepal-China border Wednesday morning. Geomorphologist Daniel Shugar’s satellite analysis showed roughly 0.2 square kilometers of ice broke off at about 5,200 meters elevation and crashed roughly 1,200 meters down to the valley floor, with imagery suggesting unusually warm conditions had melted snow cover in the prior 24 hours; water levels on the Trishuli River reportedly rose as much as nine meters in just half an hour. Glaciologist Andrew Mackintosh noted such large-scale glacier collapses are alarming even to experts, though there have been too few documented cases to draw firm conclusions linking them directly to climate change, while scientists do have high confidence that broader glacier retreat and degrading mountain permafrost, which he compared to a “glue” holding steep slopes together, are climate-driven. The Himalayas are warming twice as fast as the global average, and the UN found Nepal’s mountains lost nearly a third of their ice over roughly 30 years, with Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers vanishing 65 percent faster between 2011 and 2020 than the prior decade.

• Callaway announced Thursday it has cut ties with Good Good Golf after their joint commercial for the Quantum Driver sparked widespread outrage for appearing to promote violence against women, showing co-founder Garrett Clark shoving golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground and telling her “do not touch my new driver.” Callaway apologized and pledged 1 million dollars to organizations that combat violence against women, saying “these actions do not undo the harm caused or our role in it,” while Clark posted a nearly nine-minute apology calling it “the worst ad known to man” and insisting he doesn’t support domestic violence in any form. The fallout has been swift and costly: PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp called Good Good’s initial apology “a bit defensive and late,” major retailers including Golf Galaxy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and PGA Tour Superstore pulled Good Good merchandise from shelves, and Callaway’s stock has slid from a mid-July high of 19.66 down to 15.60 as of Thursday afternoon. Good Good, which grew from a YouTube channel into a major golf brand backed by 45 million dollars in outside investment including from Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, remains entangled with the PGA Tour as title sponsor of the Good Good Championship set for November in Austin, complicating the tour’s ability to fully distance itself from the controversy.

• The NTSB revealed Thursday that air traffic controllers in Washington and Marine One’s pilots had actually met a week before the August 4th incident to address recurring communication failures and agreed on a backup method, but that backup also failed on the day a jet and Trump’s helicopter were cleared to take off at the same time at Reagan National Airport. The near simultaneous takeoffs appeared to violate safety procedures put in place after last year’s deadly midair collision near the same airport that killed 67 people, though officials stressed Trump himself was never in danger, and the aircraft moved apart safely after the airliner climbed above the helicopter. Tower audio suggests the controller may not have realized Marine One was preparing to depart until it was already taking off, even though the pilot had radioed the standard “three minutes to lift” warning required under a longstanding FAA-Pentagon agreement, a transmission the controller says came through broken and unreadable on his end. When the controller then warned the helicopter about the departing plane, the Marine One pilot reported seeing the traffic and said he’d do “a momentary delay.” The report adds to broader concerns about communication breakdowns between air traffic control and the military first exposed after last year’s crash, when investigators discovered a hotline linking the Pentagon to the Reagan tower had been broken for more than three years without anyone at the FAA noticing.

• Major tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, along with more than 100 others such as IBM, Mastercard, Visa, and General Motors, issued a joint letter Thursday calling for a society wide defensive push to get ahead of what they describe as an impending surge in AI driven hacking. The letter warns that “in the coming months, AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread as models around the world become increasingly capable,” and urges governments and industry leaders to devote serious resources to cyber defense, including expediting trusted access programs that give select companies early access to more powerful AI models. The warning comes as fears about AI supercharging hacking are already materializing, with rogue actors increasingly using large language models to break into organizations globally, prompting the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance of the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to issue a rare joint statement in June cautioning that AI is poised to “fundamentally transform” cybersecurity. Notably, the U.S. cyberdefense agency CISA didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the piece points out that CISA’s staffing fell by about a third last year after the Trump administration made deep cuts to the agency.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Then there’s the stuff that’s harder to make up. Donald Trump is furious with his own team as the Education Department accidentally compared Trump to Hitler in a promotional video, Ted Cruz got tricked into promoting an account with an obscene name, and a Florida congressman reversed his entire opinion of Jelly Roll the moment the singer made fun of Trump’s weight. And a Navy sailor who attempted suicide aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is now facing discipline instead of support, a story that raises hard questions about how the military handles mental health.

Also, a quick heads up: if you come across videos like this one making the rounds, it’s not me. I’d never use a background like that, for one thing. AI impersonation has gotten completely out of hand lately, so stay sharp out there.

If you believe this reporting matters, subscribe today or upgrade your subscription. Your support helps me keep bringing these stories to millions of people and keeps the pressure on those in power. Help me fight back against this AI impersonation.

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There’s a lot here, so let’s get into it.

Epstein:

• The Department of Justice signaled this week it will appeal a ruling that requires it to unredact key documents in the Epstein files, a case brought by attorney and journalist Katie Phang, according to The Hill. The June preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Emmit Sullivan ordered redactions removed from documents including at least eight email exchanges between Epstein and an unnamed party about a “torture video” and sexual activity with young women, including minors, plus interviews with a woman who says Trump violently attacked her as a minor. Notably, the DOJ’s notice of appeal doesn’t lay out any legal arguments and instead calls its own ability to appeal “inconclusive,” describing the filing as merely a “protective notice of appeal.” The department has argued some redactions protect victim identities and contact information, and some previously redacted details have already leaked out anyway, including that Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was the one emailing Epstein about the torture video.

• Judge Sullivan has grown visibly frustrated with the DOJ’s handling of the case, warning at a recent hearing that he has held attorneys in contempt before and asking prosecutors, “You want me to issue another order and say, ‘I really mean it this time’?” The DOJ maintains that unredacting some information, like the bin Sulayem email address, would serve no real purpose since the information is already public and easily searchable online. But Phang’s suit also seeks additional detail from the tranche of documents describing the FBI’s interviews with the woman who alleges Trump assaulted her as a minor, a request the DOJ has been slower to address. The dispute underscores the broader fight over how much of the Epstein files the public will ultimately get to see, and the DOJ’s own uncertainty about its legal footing suggests this fight is far from resolved.

• Separately, former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley told the House Oversight Committee in a July interview, released as a transcript Wednesday, that he repeatedly shared confidential and market-sensitive bank information with Jeffrey Epstein, including details of JPMorgan’s 2008 financial crisis communications with the Federal Reserve and a $44 billion figure on private bank inflows over a two week span. Staley also confirmed he was named a trustee of Epstein’s estate years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, signing trust documents in 2014 and an amendment in 2015, though he says he ultimately declined to serve and received no compensation. He defended sharing the information as something he believed he had authority to do, maintaining he had a close professional relationship with Epstein but was unaware of his crimes, and he separately testified that he’d warned Epstein the bank considered him a high risk client over his large cash withdrawals. Staley ran JPMorgan’s private bank and asset management business, where Epstein was a client, before later leading Barclays from 2015 until his 2021 resignation, and the disclosures add to a growing list of prominent figures, including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whom the oversight committee has questioned about their ties to Epstein.

Trump not happy with White House social media:

• Trump’s own government just handed him a fresh headache, and it wasn’t from an opponent this time, it was his own social media team. And, he is not happy. The Education Department’s official X account posted a 19-second clip Wednesday meant to hype the president, opening with Gary Oldman’s Churchill declaring “you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth” before cutting to a flattering Trump montage captioned “no one does it like us” with a tiger emoji. The problem is that Churchill’s “tiger” line, from the film Darkest Hour, refers to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, meaning whoever cut the video accidentally cast Trump in Hitler’s role instead of the fearsome hero they were going for. Users pounced immediately, X attached a community note explaining the reference, and the department quietly deleted the post. It’s the latest in a growing pattern of amateur-hour missteps from pro-Trump government and campaign accounts, following earlier controversies over a racist AI video depicting the Obamas as apes and separate AI images placing Trump alongside Jesus Christ, all of which suggests whoever is running this content pipeline keeps embarrassing the president rather than helping him.

• Meanwhile, the White House posted this image in an effort to suggest that the United States was beating Canada in the trade war. The only issue? The viral clip shows that the goose actually wins, and the internet made clear how this was a metaphor for the current state of US-Canada trade tensions, where Canada keeps matching Trump’s tariffs blow for blow instead of backing down.

• Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been getting flack for posting “mission accomplished” regarding the war in Iran:

• Senator Ted Cruz got caught up in an embarrassing social media prank this week after he shared what he thought was a heartfelt Dolly Parton tribute, a vintage clip of her singing and joking with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, and captioned it “legend” with crying and heart emojis. Shortly after Cruz amplified the post, the account behind it changed its display name to “Ted Cruz’s tiny dick,” meaning the tribute Cruz shared now sat directly above a post attributed to that name. Cruz deleted his repost once the switch was noticed, but the original clip stayed up and kept racking up engagement, eventually topping 80,000 likes and millions of views. For roughly a full day before he caught it, one of the country’s most prominent Republican senators had effectively turned his own Dolly Parton memorial into free promotion for an account mocking him.

• Florida Republican Rep. Jimmy Patronis did a dramatic about-face on country star Jelly Roll this week after the singer used a guest hosting spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live to mock Trump’s weight, joking that his own 300 pound weight loss meant he’d “lost an entire Donald Trump” and telling the president “from one fat pig to another” that losing weight would let him “see your penis again.”

• Patronis, who back in 2024 had enthusiastically invited Jelly Roll to perform at Florida’s Gulf Coast Jam, reversed course entirely, declaring the singer “100 percent not welcomed to Florida’s panhandle” and saying he didn’t even want to see his tour bus on Interstate 10. He also dismissed Jelly Roll as a “token ‘country’ star the libs in California are allowed to enjoy,” insisting “he ain’t country, never was.” The flip flop was captured and shared by journalist Ron Filipkowski, contrasting Patronis’s old welcoming post with his new hostile stance side by side. It’s a pretty clear case of a Trump ally’s tune shifting the moment someone took a shot at the president.

Service member charged:

• A 19-year-old sailor who jumped from the USS Abraham Lincoln on August 3, in what his wife describes as a suicide attempt, is now facing Navy disciplinary action rather than mental health support, according to MS NOW. Charging documents reviewed by the outlet show he’s been accused of violating Article 83 for malingering, defined as intentionally faking illness or injury to avoid duty, and Article 86 for being absent without leave. His wife told MS NOW he’d repeatedly asked his chain of command and the ship’s medical team for help before he jumped, and had also been denied paternity leave multiple times despite the couple welcoming a daughter in February while he was deployed. He’ll face a captain’s mast, where a commanding officer decides punishment, and could lose half his normal pay under this non-judicial process.

• MS NOW reports that after being medically evacuated and returned to San Diego on August 13, the sailor spent five days at Naval Medical Center San Diego, where staff monitored his vital signs but he never saw a psychiatrist or therapist, and he was ordered back to work immediately upon release. His first actual therapy appointment didn’t come until August 26, nearly two weeks later. His wife also said the Navy didn’t notify her about the incident until four days after it happened, and that she first learned what happened from a message sent by one of her husband’s friends on the ship rather than from the command. In a text to his wife 13 days before he jumped, the sailor wrote “i think the boat is finally getting to me” and said he didn’t know if he could finish the deployment after learning it had been extended again.

• MS NOW notes the case is raising broader questions about how the military handles mental health, especially as deployments hit record lengths, with Rep. Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee representing the Lincoln’s home port, saying “no one should be punished for getting the mental health care they need.” A former Army judge advocate general, Cody Harnish, told MS NOW that while military court martial guidance says bona fide suicide attempts should not be charged, pursuing punishment is left to a commanding officer’s discretion, calling it “a policy choice.” A Navy official responded to MS NOW by saying the service is “fully committed to the health and wellbeing of every Sailor” and that mental health resources are available 24/7. The Lincoln has been deployed since November 2025, with its return repeatedly extended due to the war with Iran, and Defense Department data cited in the piece shows 471 service members died by suicide across all branches in 2024. Same reminder as before: if this touches close to home, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) is available any time.

RFK Jr. lied under oath:

• Newly obtained letters reported by the Guardian and AP indicate that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearings when he repeatedly told lawmakers his 2019 trip to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines.” A letter Kennedy wrote to the Samoan prime minister before that trip explicitly says he wanted to study the MMR vaccine there, using the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times and proposing a “detailed health informatics assessment” of what happened with Samoa’s MMR vaccines. Kennedy’s Samoa visit came months before a 2019 measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under five, and critics say the trip emboldened anti-vaccine activists on the island at a time when Kennedy led the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense. During his hearings, Kennedy told Senators Ron Wyden and Ed Markey multiple times that his trip was solely about introducing a medical records digitization system, not vaccines, and separately claimed no Samoan skipped a vaccine because of him.

• The newly revealed letter fits into a broader pattern of communications the Guardian and AP had already uncovered showing CHD’s involvement in Samoa dating back to 2018, when two children died after being given an improperly mixed MMR vaccine and the country halted all vaccinations for ten months. During that pause, CHD began corresponding with Samoan officials, and Kennedy’s January 2019 letter, written on CHD letterhead, speculated the deaths might stem from bad vaccine lots rather than the human error that Samoan health officials ultimately identified. The Samoan prime minister responded a month later welcoming Kennedy’s team to conduct their assessment, and a CHD colleague later described the visit in an internal email as part of a vaccine related “mission.” Kennedy traveled to Samoa with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, in mid-2019, where he met with anti-vaccine activists, one of whom reportedly helped arrange the trip with a US embassy employee.

• HHS pushed back hard on the story, calling any claim that Kennedy lied “false and outright defamatory,” and noting that Kennedy was not under oath during either hearing, which matters since knowingly lying to Congress is technically a crime that’s rarely prosecuted and carries a five year statute of limitations. HHS did not respond when the Guardian asked it to directly reconcile Kennedy’s “nothing to do with vaccines” testimony with his own letter, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment either. Attorneys with Senate procedure expertise say that if Democrats retake the House or Senate in November, they could use Kennedy’s statements as grounds for hearings, an impeachment inquiry, or other roadblocks for the administration. The Senate ultimately confirmed Kennedy on a narrow 52 to 48 vote, and he has separately floated the idea that Dr. Anthony Fauci could face perjury charges over his own Covid era testimony, raising the specter of similar scrutiny eventually applying to Kennedy himself.

Other news:

• CIA Director John Ratcliffe used his unannounced Tuesday trip to Moscow, the first known visit to Russia by a CIA director under Trump, to warn Russian officials against escalating conflict with NATO allies, especially the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, amid intensifying drone and missile strikes between Russia and Ukraine and recent Russian threats against NATO countries backing Kyiv. He also pressed Moscow to scale back military and economic support for Iran, urging Russia to stop sharing weapons and defense technology with Tehran and advising against “overreacting” to expanded U.S. sanctions Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened this week, this after reports that Russia has been shipping drone and missile components to Iran and possibly helping it target U.S. facilities. Trump downplayed the trip as “semi-routine” in a radio interview while acknowledging its goal was pushing toward ending the Ukraine war, and the visit follows a pattern of Trump dispatching Ratcliffe, generally seen as a Russia hawk, into sensitive diplomatic missions, including a secret May trip to Cuba warning its government to reform or face pressure. Lawmakers were largely kept in the dark about the Moscow visit, though Senator James Lankford said he welcomed the outreach, arguing “things don’t get better by not talking.”

• Lifelong Texas Republicans say they’re switching to the Democratic party over frustrations with data centers that they describe as overloading power grids, guzzling water, and disrupting rural life, with one voter calling the GOP’s response “nothing more than the middle finger” and another saying he’d vote for “the devil” before backing Governor Greg Abbott again. These voters say Republican leaders like Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have ignored their concerns while Democrats have actually listened. The defections are surfacing amid a tight U.S. Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Paxton, with polling showing an unusually close contest in what’s traditionally been solid Republican territory. It’s a notable sign of how a normally under-the-radar infrastructure issue is starting to reshape political loyalties in a deep-red state.

• The U.S. government declared a drought disaster for 26 of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities on Wednesday as water shortages deepen across the island, with more than a third of Puerto Rico under extreme drought and July marking San Juan’s driest month in over 120 years. Governor Jenniffer González said she requested the declaration from the USDA more than two weeks ago, and it now allows farmers in affected areas to apply for emergency loans, though farmers like Naia Seda, whose 15-acre farm hasn’t seen rain since April, describe crops shriveling and dropping before they ripen. The drought has forced many farmers to halt production as early as May, hit hydroponic and soil vegetable growers hardest, and pushed livestock breeders to sell young bulls at rock-bottom prices with no buyers, with one farmer even returning to work as a mechanic to get by. The crisis follows González declaring a state of emergency in late July and activating the National Guard to help distribute water, plus rationing measures in San Juan and six other cities that leave more than 180,000 customers without water for 48-hour stretches. Meteorologists attribute the drought to an El Niño warming cycle also affecting the U.S. Virgin Islands, though Puerto Rico’s water problems are compounded by long-neglected, crumbling infrastructure that has caused shortages independent of the weather.

• A sealed Florida grand jury report obtained by CBS News Miami finds that the DeSantis administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money meant to provide health insurance for poor kids, instead routing it through the Hope Florida Foundation and into political committees that helped defeat the 2024 marijuana legalization ballot measure, though the grand jury said it couldn’t identify enough evidence to bring criminal charges since “nobody will take responsibility” for the decision. The report points squarely at Attorney General James Uthmeier, who was the governor’s chief of staff at the time and whose PAC, Keep Florida Clean, received the bulk of the diverted funds, and it says then-Attorney General Ashley Moody knew about the plan and authorized her deputy John Guard to sign off on the settlement without proper vetting. The money originated from a Medicaid overbilling settlement with Centene that was supposed to fully reimburse Florida taxpayers, but state officials quietly rewrote the deal twice in September 2024 to siphon $10 million to Hope Florida instead, then rushed it out within a week even as the broader taxpayer repayment took over a year. That $10 million left Hope Florida’s account within 25 days, funneled through two nonprofits that then transferred most of it directly into Uthmeier’s political action committee, which in turn sent money to the Republican Party of Florida and another PAC he chaired. Neither DeSantis, Moody, nor Uthmeier was called to testify before the grand jury, and all three have since dismissed the matter, with DeSantis calling it fine and Uthmeier labeling it a “nothingburger,” even as the grand jury recommended new state laws to prevent this kind of unmonitored taxpayer fund diversion in the future.

• A federal judge in Texas denied Minnesota’s attempt to force Governor Greg Abbott to extradite ICE agent Christian Castro, who was charged in May with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime after shooting Venezuelan national Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg through the door of a Minneapolis home during an enforcement operation. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled that while Abbott has taken an unusually long time weighing the request, Minnesota failed to show any legal requirement forcing Texas to extradite Castro within a specific deadline, even though Texas law otherwise requires his release by Thursday, the 90-day mark, unless he’s extradited. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who sued Abbott earlier this month accusing him of turning Texas into “a sanctuary state for violent criminals,” said the state would keep litigating, while Governor Tim Walz argued Texas has always honored extradition requests before and this case shouldn’t be different. Abbott’s office celebrated the ruling as protecting the governor’s constitutional authority over extradition decisions from being “commandeered” by the courts.

• General Mills announced Wednesday that it has removed artificial colors from all its U.S. cereals, including Lucky Charms and Trix, switching instead to fruit and vegetable based dyes and spice derived colors like turmeric and paprika, with 90 percent of its U.S. retail products now free of artificial dyes and the rest, like some Betty Crocker mixes and Fruit Roll-Ups, set to transition by the end of 2027. This makes General Mills the second major cereal maker to make this shift, following WK Kellogg’s announcement earlier this month that it will remove artificial colors from Froot Loops and Apple Jacks by the end of this year. Health advocates have pushed for years to get artificial dyes out of foods over studies linking them to hyperactivity and attention issues in some children, though the FDA maintains approved dyes are safe for most kids while acknowledging some sensitivity exists; the FDA did ban Red 3 last year over cancer concerns in lab studies. Pressure has mounted from multiple directions, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushing food companies to phase out petroleum based dyes, and General Mills itself signed an agreement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year committing to remove synthetic dyes from all its products by the end of 2027.

• A small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters near the remote coastal town of Seldovia, Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone on board. The Piper PA-24 had taken off from Anchorage and was heading to Seldovia’s airport, about 136 miles southwest, when it went down and became submerged in about 15 feet of water in the Seldovia Slough, forcing troopers to wait for low tide to reach it. All four bodies were recovered and sent to the medical examiner’s office, though their names haven’t been released pending notification of next of kin, and the cause of the crash isn’t yet clear as the NTSB investigates. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said he’ll be briefed by the NTSB and FAA, calling the crash “heartbreaking and unacceptable” and reaffirming aviation safety in Alaska as a priority. This comes less than a week after a separate Alaska crash at a remote military site killed all eight people aboard, when the aircraft’s pilots couldn’t see the gravel airstrip during a second approach in heavy fog.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Meanwhile, a disturbing Washington Post report ties the ouster of the Army's top general directly to his refusal to bury an investigation into a Kid Rock flyby, a Navy captain accused of rape is facing nothing more than a workers' comp claim, and Nepal is reeling from a flash flood that has killed at least 95 people with hundreds still missing.

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Here’s the news:

Trump blasts his own party:

• Trump spent Wednesday afternoon posting a flurry of Truth Social messages, including a repost of a July message from right-wing commentator Matt Van Swol warning that “I don’t think the GOP fully grasp how badly they are f---ing up right now” and that the party is “sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming,” citing unmet priorities like the voter ID law Trump has pushed. The rant ranged widely beyond politics, touching on the newly renamed “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” White House ballroom construction photos, lists of his own accomplishments, favorable coverage of his administration, and pictures with his parents alongside comparisons of himself to former Presidents Obama and Biden. He also took a swing at the National Baseball Hall of Fame committee for keeping pitcher Roger Clemens out, calling the voters “a bunch of jealous people with far less Talent.” In a separate post, he said Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who lost Tuesday’s GOP runoff to Trump-backed Sen. Darline Graham, “ruined his career when he endorsed Nikki Haley.”

• The social media outburst comes as Trump faces real friction within his own party over recent trade decisions. Over the weekend he let a 50 percent tariff take effect on about $20 billion in Canadian goods, prompting Canada to retaliate with matching tariffs, while his separate move last week to ease restrictions on beef imports has also drawn GOP criticism from lawmakers in border and agriculture-heavy states. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called the subsidized beef import plan a “mistake,” and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming posted that “Americans want US beef on the table, not foreign imports.” The beef policy is a response to soaring prices, which hit $6.89 per pound for ground beef in July, a 57 percent jump since 2021 driven by a shrinking cattle herd.

• All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of weak approval numbers for Trump heading into the midterms. He sits at 38.2 percent in Nate Silver’s polling average, just above his second-term low of 38.1 percent hit earlier this month and down about four points since January, while a Reuters or Ipsos poll released Monday put him at an even lower 33 percent, matching his prior low from mid-August. That same survey found support for U.S. military action in Iran down to 31 percent, a six-point drop since March, and for the first time in roughly a decade more voters, 38 percent, said they trust Democrats over Republicans to handle the economy. Together the trade fights, beef policy backlash, and sagging poll numbers help explain why Trump is publicly airing frustration that his own party doesn’t grasp the trouble it’s in.

Navy Sailor told Rape claims are “Workers Comp”:

• Civilian engineer Elsie Dominguez, 35, sued the federal government after alleging that Yamil Sanchez Padilla, captain of the USNS Carson City, used a master key to enter her quarters overnight in December 2021 and raped her while she slept. She reported the assault through proper channels the next morning, but a federal judge has now dismissed her civil lawsuit, ruling in August 2026 that the case must instead be handled as a workers’ compensation claim under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act since she was on temporary travel status for work when it happened. The assault forced her to take a full year of unpaid leave to recover, during which she lost her health insurance and struggled to access therapy because of state licensing restrictions on providers. She also described career fallout, including social isolation from colleagues after the incident became known. Her attorney, Christine Dunn, argued that being raped in one’s own bed is fundamentally different from the physical injuries, like a dislocated shoulder or an impact from ship movement, that workers’ comp was designed to cover.

• Separately, a criminal case was pursued against Sanchez Padilla when Coast Guard prosecutors filed a sexual misconduct complaint against him in February 2025, and he was removed from the ship and placed on paid administrative leave while the matter proceeded. That criminal case was ultimately withdrawn, though Sanchez Padilla agreed to surrender his merchant mariner credentials as part of the resolution, meaning he can no longer serve in that licensed role. Dominguez, meanwhile, has continued her career and now works as first assistant engineer aboard the USS Lewis B. Puller, and she also holds the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve. The case has drawn attention to how sexual assault claims against military or federal employees at sea get routed through administrative workers’ comp systems rather than the courts. Her legal team suggests that routing effectively limits her ability to hold the government accountable through ordinary negligence litigation.

Beef Issues:

• Several key Senate Republicans issued unusually pointed public criticism of Trump’s plan to expand tariff-reduced beef imports ahead of the midterms, warning it would hurt American ranchers. Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Tim Sheehy of Montana, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Steve Daines of Montana, and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi all pushed back, a notable break from the party’s usual reluctance to challenge Trump directly. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association was even blunter, saying the move was “100 percent about the 74 days between now and the midterm elections.” The criticism comes as ranchers already feel squeezed by falling cattle prices and rising input costs, and Republicans worry the optics of siding with importers over domestic producers could cost them in cattle-heavy states. It adds to a growing pattern this week of GOP lawmakers distancing themselves from Trump’s economic moves as midterm anxiety builds.

• Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says she’s not personally involved in deciding which countries will supply the up to 300,000 metric tons of tariff-free ground beef Trump announced last week, a 90-day plan meant to sell beef at 25 percent below market prices as the U.S. deals with high beef costs tied to a shrunken cattle herd. Ranchers and industry groups worry the move undercuts domestic producers without addressing the underlying supply shortage, and critics have raised transparency and food safety concerns, particularly given a recent Argentine beef recall. Rollins said the actual negotiations are being handled by Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative, with more details expected soon.

• Corte Argentino USA LLC recalled roughly 29,628 pounds of raw beef imported from Argentina after it entered the U.S. without the required import inspection, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced; the issue was caught during routine FSIS inspection activities, and it’s classified as a Class I recall, meaning there’s a “reasonable probability” that using the product could cause serious health consequences or death. The affected products, all from Argentine producer Frigorifico Gorina SAIC, include boneless beef cuts like Top Sirloin Butt, Eye Round, Topside Cap Off, Flat, and Knuckle, produced between May 15 and May 20 with use-by or freeze-by dates of September 15-20, bearing establishment number “EST. N° OF. 2025” and shipping mark “26644-AA.” The recalled beef was distributed to retailers in Florida and Texas, and there have been no confirmed reports of illness or injury linked to it so far. The FSIS is advising anyone who bought the products not to eat them and to either throw them away or return them to the place of purchase.

• Justin Tupper, president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, said Trump’s reputation with ranchers has “taken a hit” over his plan to import 300,000 metric tons of tariff-free foreign ground beef over 90 days to lower grocery prices, arguing on MS NOW’s “State of Play” that foreign beef, which isn’t held to the same standards as domestic production, will neither bring down store prices nor help ranchers grow their herds. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall sent Trump a letter the same day calling the plan a source of “apprehension” and “chaos,” noting that 70% of spring-born calves are sold during the same 90-day window, which he warned will weaken cattle prices and discourage the herd-rebuilding investments needed to fix a U.S. cattle herd already at historic lows after drought, lost grazing land, and reduced packing capacity. Duvall argued directly against Trump’s own affordability message, writing “bringing down the price of cattle will not bring the price of beef down for American families” and warning the roughly 660 million pounds of discounted foreign beef would instead prolong tight supplies and high consumer prices, especially since experts note big packers and retailers, not shoppers, tend to capture any savings. Tupper echoed those concerns while also raising food safety questions, saying that while support for Trump remains, the policy undercuts his own “America First” agenda and frustrates ranchers who “just want to have a free and fair market system” without “outside influences” throwing “a monkey wrench into it.”

Canada stands firm:

• President Trump escalated his rhetoric against Canada on Wednesday, telling radio host Glenn Beck that Ottawa has “taken advantage of the United States for many decades” and is “one of the worst countries in the world to deal with,” a day after Canada rolled out retaliatory tariffs. He complained specifically about Canadian dairy tariffs, argued Canada “takes advantage of us as though they were a state” despite imposing tariffs U.S. states themselves are constitutionally barred from applying to one another, and claimed Canada has “taken our car industry” and “agriculture industry” while blocking American farmers from selling there tariff-free. Trump argued the U.S. doesn’t need anything Canada supplies that couldn’t be sourced elsewhere, saying “we could get by” and that “it’s time to teach Canada you can’t do this anymore,” even though Canada is one of America’s largest trading partners and energy sources. The outburst came less than a day after Canada matched his latest tariffs with its own retaliatory package, continuing an exchange that has grown increasingly personal between the two governments.

• That Canadian retaliation, announced Tuesday, doubles existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum to 50%, and adds new tariffs of 15, 25, and 50% on more than $20 billion worth of roughly 700 U.S. goods, including clothing, furniture, video game consoles, and other electronics, taking effect September 8. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the moves were designed to “match dollar for dollar, rate for rate” against Trump’s tariff agenda, framing it as a necessary response to Washington using “economic integration as a weapon rather than the foundation for a win-win partnership.” The retaliation followed the U.S. imposing a 50% tariff on $20 billion of Canadian exports last Saturday, covering a mishmash of products like buoys, textiles, and Christmas lights, after Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from last-minute talks he said offered unacceptable terms, telling reporters “you’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked.” Ottawa is also rolling out a $5.4 billion package to cushion workers and businesses hurt by the trade war.

• On the ground, many Canadians have embraced a defiant, “elbows up” mood reminiscent of the grassroots boycotts of U.S. alcohol, produce, and travel that emerged during the first tariff wave, even as businesses brace for real financial pain. Small business owners described concrete impacts: a Manitoba plant-accessories retailer is shifting to domestic-only sales once his U.S.-bound stock sells out, an Alberta beekeeper is selling honey directly to local customers rather than exporting it (the U.S. normally buys 56% of Canada’s honey exports), and a Belleville cannery owner worries new tariffs could hit his products “at a moment’s notice.” Provincial leaders have turned combative too, with Manitoba’s Wab Kinew declaring Canada has “the upper hand” and Ontario’s Doug Ford, previously dubbed “Captain Canada,” repeatedly telling Trump he could “kiss” his backside, prompting Trump to threaten renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” in response. Carney argues Canada is negotiating from a stronger position than before, having struck new trade deals with South Korea, China, Germany, and India over the past year, though individual business owners still worry about domestic suppliers hiking prices and smaller, women-owned companies bearing the brunt of the standoff.

Pete Hegseth purges military:

• Days before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George into retirement in April, George was reportedly told by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the officer now positioned to replace him, that Hegseth wanted him to drop an investigation into an unauthorized helicopter flyby at Kid Rock’s Tennessee property, according to The Washington Post citing people familiar with the discussions. George was pushed out anyway, without explanation and less than two months into the U.S. war in Iran, clearing the way for Hegseth to nominate LaNeve, his own top aide, to lead the Army amid broader concerns about Hegseth’s leadership. George was originally expected to serve through 2027 to complete a typical four year term, and he declined to comment to The Post on the matter.

• The flyby itself happened in March, when two Apache helicopters from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade circled Kid Rock’s property while he saluted and cheered on camera, during the same window as nationwide “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration, prompting the Army to suspend the pilots and open an investigation on March 31. Hegseth reversed that decision the same day, posting on X, “thank you Kid Rock, U.S. Army pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on, patriots,” even as a 101st Airborne spokesperson said the flight wasn’t tied to the protests. Kid Rock later told the Associated Press he’d spoken directly with the pilots and told them “you guys are always welcome to cruise by my house, any time,” while also mocking California Governor Gavin Newsom online for lacking that “level of respect.” Trump, asked about the videos at the time, said he hadn’t seen them but added, “I’m sure they had a good time... they probably shouldn’t have been doing it,” while noting he liked Kid Rock. A few weeks after George’s ouster, Hegseth himself flew in Apache helicopters with Kid Rock out of Fort Belvoir, calling him “a patriot and huge supporter of our troops.”

• LaNeve’s nomination to permanently lead the Army remains stalled in the Senate, and if it isn’t confirmed, Hegseth could simply keep him on indefinitely as acting chief of staff instead. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about LaNeve, but Hegseth defended him in a statement to The Post as “precisely the kind of leader the U.S. Army needs right now,” someone “not interested in playing politics in Washington” and a “back-to-basics, no politics, no-nonsense General.” Hegseth went on to attack LaNeve’s critics as “out-of-touch so-called insiders who’ve spent years undermining our military with woke policies and endless wars,” claiming “their days of influence are over.” The episode adds new detail to the broader pattern of Hegseth firings and leadership turmoil at the Army previously reported by other outlets, tying George’s dismissal directly to his reluctance to bury the Kid Rock investigation.

Other news:

• U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani reluctantly lifted the last remaining block on Trump’s mail-in voting plan on Wednesday, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier in the week left her no choice, which clears the way for the Postal Service to start enforcing new rules that could include refusing ballots from voters not on newly compiled federal lists. The Supreme Court had ruled that earlier challenges were premature since USPS hadn’t finalized its plan, but USPS issued that final rule on Friday, prompting Democratic attorneys general from 23 states to file a brand new lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block it before ballot distribution begins next week. Talwani, an Obama appointee also overseeing that new case, pushed back in her order on some of the Supreme Court’s reasoning and suggested the legal whiplash around USPS’s role might actually be the administration’s intended goal. Separately, civil and voting rights groups plan to amend their own existing suit to directly challenge the new rule, and a Trump-appointed judge in Washington is handling yet another related case brought by Democratic Party groups. Trump has pushed unsubstantiated fraud claims about mail-in voting for years, but broader efforts to reshape the nation’s voting systems, including a stalled bill and a DOJ push for voter rolls rejected by roughly two dozen courts, have largely failed.

  

• Actor Tim Curry, best known for playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” has died at 80, according to his longtime manager Marcia Hurwitz; no cause of death has been made public. The English performer built a five-decade career across film, TV, and theater, with other memorable roles including Wadsworth in “Clue,” Pennywise in the 1990 TV adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” Rooster Hannigan in “Annie,” Mr. Hector in “Home Alone 2,” and Long John Silver in “Muppet Treasure Island,” along with a Daytime Emmy for voicing Captain Hook and three Tony nominations. Curry had struggled with health issues since a 2012 stroke left him partially paralyzed and unable to walk, and last year he published a memoir, “Vagabond,” marking Rocky Horror’s 50th anniversary, in which he wrote that despite playing many larger-than-life characters, “I was none of them.” In one of his final interviews, given from a wheelchair to CBS Sunday Morning in October 2025, he said he loved how acting gave him “the freedom of being somebody else.”

• According to author Michael Wolff, speaking on The Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast, Trump’s personal assistant Natalie Harp, 35, drew astonishment from fellow staffers at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club after she and her mother were repeatedly granted access to an exclusive, all-you-can-eat Sunday buffet that ordinary staff weren’t allowed to attend, with Wolff saying it became “a major moment within the campaign.” The scrutiny follows the recent publication of gushing letters Harp wrote to Trump, in which she called herself “unworthy” of serving him and said “you are all that matters to me,” as well as revelations that she went more than a year without the standard West Wing security clearance and was one of the few aides Trump brought with him on a secret secondary plane out of Turkey after an alleged Iranian assassination threat in July. White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended Harp as “one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides” on Trump’s team while attacking Wolff as a “professional scumbag and serial liar,” and the story has since become political ammunition, with Sen. Jon Ossoff mocking Trump’s travel with Harp at a rally and Rep. Debbie Dingell proposing renaming Lake Ontario “Lake Natalie” in response to Trump’s own rebranding threat toward Canada.

• A catastrophic flash flood swept the Himalayan border of Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, killing at least 95 people in Nepal so far and leaving hundreds missing, including 384 travelers tracked by Nepal’s tourism authority (105 Indians, 93 Nepalis, three Americans, 12 British nationals, plus around eight South Koreans reported separately by Yonhap), in what officials describe as a still-unfolding disaster. Nepal’s foreign minister said an earthquake, a 4.4 magnitude quake recorded about seven minutes before the flood hit on security footage, may have triggered an ice-rock avalanche on the Nepali side of the Lhende Khola river, though the exact cause is unconfirmed, and experts warn a second flood could occur because debris is still blocking the river upstream. The flooding destroyed homes, roads, bridges, and power infrastructure, knocked out 430 MW of electricity (over 12% of Nepal’s hydropower capacity), and prompted flood alerts in India’s Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, while on the Tibetan side a mudslide cut off the Gyirong border crossing under five feet of sediment, leading China to deploy at least 574 rescuers and President Xi Jinping to call for all-out search efforts. Rescue helicopters in Nepal’s Rasuwa district still can’t land because of high water, and Prime Minister Balendra Shah has ordered residents near the river to move to higher ground, with a similar flood on the same river last year, which killed nine and washed away a bridge linking Nepal and China, having been traced to a draining glacier lake.

• Senator Chris Murphy says ICE was arresting parents at a bus stop in Connecticut today as children were getting on the bus:

  

• Oil prices fell for a third straight day Wednesday, with U.S. crude dropping over 1.5% to around $81 a barrel (briefly touching $79, its lowest since August 13) and Brent down about 2% to just under $86, driven by a cluster of hopeful signals from the Iran conflict: renewed Iran-Oman talks about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, State Department plans to send diplomats back to Middle East embassies, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling allies the U.S. doesn’t expect to resume strikes on Iran. Trump also claimed on social media that the Navy had cleared all mines from the Strait, though the post was identical to one he made on August 18, raising questions about its accuracy, and shipping data from Kpler showed Strait crossings still far below pre-war levels (just five vessels Tuesday versus a pre-war average of 130). Despite the drop in crude, gas prices haven’t budged, with the national average ticking up to $4.10 a gallon, and July inflation data released the same day showed the Fed’s preferred PCE gauge stuck at 3.7% (core PCE at 3.3%), with one economist noting “the impacts of the war in Iran are still apparent.” The falling oil prices did help push bond yields and mortgage rates lower for a second straight day, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate dipping to 6.74%.

• Meta agreed Wednesday to pay roughly $18 billion to settle a wide-ranging social media addiction lawsuit brought by California and other states, in a deal covering 52 attorneys general nationwide, though the company denies any liability and disputes the allegations. Under the settlement, teen accounts on Facebook and Instagram will default to a combined two-hour daily usage limit (removable only with parental permission), nighttime use blocks, hidden likes on teens’ posts, a ban on “extreme makeup filters,” an option for a non-algorithmic feed, and the ability to disable autoplay video, alongside new parental control tools and enhanced age verification. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the suit, called it a deal that will “make social media less dangerous for our kids,” while Meta’s chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney framed it as empowering parents and urged competitors TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar measures, though neither company immediately responded. The settlement, which still needs a judge’s approval (Judge Yvonne Rogers said she’s inclined to approve it but wants more time to review), came a day after Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified in the case, and follows other recent losses for Meta, including a $900 million fine in New Mexico in March and a California ruling finding Meta and Google liable in a young woman’s mental health case.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded Elon Musk Ukraine’s Order of Freedom, one of the country’s top state honors, via a presidential decree published Wednesday praising him “for outstanding personal contributions to protecting human life and freedom, and for developing relations between the peoples of Ukraine and the United States of America.” The honor comes as Kyiv pushes to expand its use of Musk’s Starlink terminals, which have served as the backbone of Ukrainian battlefield communications and drone piloting since Musk activated the service over Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion; earlier this year Musk also agreed, at the request of Ukraine’s since-dismissed defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, to disable thousands of Russian “grey-market” Starlink terminals, disrupting Russian forces. Ukraine is now specifically asking to use Starlink over Russian territory itself, aiming to help strike targets like the ballistic missile launchers hitting Ukrainian cities, a move Zelenskyy said Musk had opposed as a “major escalation” but that Kyiv is now getting “more encouraging feedback” on. Zelenskyy argued that extending Starlink coverage over Russia could undercut capabilities Moscow is relying on to prolong the war.

• Glenn “Bubba” Pysher, 22, was shot and killed by police in Upper Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania early Saturday after a night out drinking led him to mistakenly knock on a stranger’s door instead of the friend’s house he meant to walk to, with his mother saying he was simply calling out “hey, let me in,” thinking it was his friend’s home. The homeowners, spooked by the attempted entry, called 911, and police who responded found Pysher at the back of the house, where an “encounter ensued” that ended in officers fatally shooting him, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office; his mother said he was unarmed, carrying only a cell phone and a backpack, and that the shooting happened within minutes of officers arriving. It’s not yet clear why officers opened fire, though the incident was captured on backyard surveillance cameras that are now part of the investigation. Pysher, remembered by loved ones as a “promising young man, athlete, and scholar,” had recently transferred to Saint Elizabeth University in New Jersey to play baseball and was set to start classes the following Monday.

• A federal judge in Houston ordered the release of Daniel Tirado Pantoja, the second witness freed from immigration detention in connection with the fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on July 7, after more than a month in custody; U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett found Tirado Pantoja had no criminal record and posed no flight risk or danger to the community. Tirado Pantoja was one of three passengers in Salgado Araujo’s work van when the Mexican national and homebuilding business owner, who had lived in the U.S. without legal status for 35 years, was shot; DHS claims Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle” and that the officer fired in self-defense, but Tirado Pantoja and fellow passenger Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego, released last month, dispute that account, saying agents were never in front of the vehicle, that Salgado Araujo had put the van in park before the shooting, and that the ICE vehicle struck them from behind and then again on the driver’s side. Salgado Araujo’s son said his father was simply on his way to pick up his workers and was in the process of obtaining a work permit. A third passenger, Victor Salgado, the victim’s brother, remains in custody and has also asked a judge for release, while DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday’s ruling.

• Uber announced Tuesday it will let parents livestream their teens’ rides as part of its teen accounts program, which lets 13 to 17 year olds request rides with a guardian’s permission; the video comes from the driver’s front-facing camera showing the backseat, and parents get a push notification to tap in and watch in real time when a stream is available. Both the teen and driver are notified whenever a parent starts watching, the feed is encrypted and visible only to the linked parent, and it automatically ends when the trip does, with neither parents nor drivers able to rewatch it afterward unless Uber needs to review the recording for a reported safety incident. Since drivers must opt in, livestreaming won’t be available on every ride, and parents will only learn if video access exists once the trip has already started. The feature is currently being tested in nine markets, including Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix, and Rhode Island, with a nationwide rollout planned in the coming weeks, adding to existing teen-account safety tools like real-time trip tracking, PIN verification, vetted drivers, and Uber’s RideCheck alerts for unusual stops or route changes.

• A federal judge in Texas, Reagan appointee David Hittner, struck down the state’s 2023 drag show ban, ruling that it violated the First Amendment because it was so broadly written it could criminalize things like cheerleading, dancing, and live theater. Hittner invoked Dolly Parton in his opinion, noting that many people had “chastised” her as a “voluptuous sex symbol” over the years to illustrate how subjective and overreaching the law’s standard for “prurient” content really was. The ruling means Attorney General Ken Paxton, now the GOP Senate nominee, can no longer enforce the law, which had exposed business owners to $10,000 fines and drag performers to a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail. One plaintiff, a performer known as Brigitte Bandit, celebrated the decision online and said she’d perform as Parton at an Austin bar this weekend in tribute. Hittner closed his ruling with a blunt suggestion for anyone still offended by drag shows: simply don’t go.

• SpaceX is planning to spend $100 billion building a massive new “Starbase” launch complex on 125,000 acres of coastal wetlands at Pecan Island in southern Louisiana, expanding its Starship operations beyond South Texas and Florida. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the site will eventually support thousands of Starship launches a year and will be “self-sustaining,” with its own methane production, power generation, deep-water shipping to move Starships from Texas, and likely an airport, though construction won’t begin until next year with the first launch targeted for 2029. The land had been tied up in a decade-long lawsuit against ExxonMobil over wetland loss from coastal drilling, which only cleared the way for the deal after the state settled with Exxon this summer. Louisiana officials, including Governor Jeff Landry, touted the project as bringing more than 3,000 jobs paying an average of $92,600 a year, nearly triple the local average wage. The plan has also drawn environmental concern since Pecan Island is a protected stopover for migratory birds, and Shotwell acknowledged past bird disturbances at the Texas site while pledging funding for wetland restoration and stewardship.

See you soon.

— Aaron

We’re also covering the fallout from Dolly Parton’s death, including new uncertainty around her Imagination Library after Republican lawmakers in Indiana and Missouri cut its funding, plus a wave of immigration news: record ICE arrests and deportations in July, a sweeping new visa freeze, and a disturbing video out of Sacramento showing a Native American woman’s violent arrest outside an ICE office. And there’s plenty more below, from the USS Abraham Lincoln’s long-awaited port call to a Texas judge striking down a drag show ban with an assist from Dolly Parton’s legacy.

One quick note: the video has some lagging at times as I am on the road and had some wifi troubles. Should be fixed this evening.

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Here’s the news:

Trump Makes November a Referendum:

• According to a report from The Atlantic, President Trump’s strategy to prevent a GOP wipeout in the midterms is to turn the election into a referendum on himself, deploying roughly $400 million from his MAGA Inc. super PAC on TV ads touting his second term achievements to boost Republican candidates. He detailed the plan at an Oval Office meeting earlier this month, even instructing aides to dig up clips of him “hyping himself up” as ad material, saying “go look at the clips, I cite accomplishments all the time.” Some GOP strategists are wary given Trump’s weak approval ratings, particularly on the economy, with one person familiar with the meeting telling the outlet, “when the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters, or voters are pissed off at you about those issues, the question becomes: what do you campaign on?” Other Republicans reportedly think it would be smarter to spotlight individual candidates and local issues rather than centering everything on Trump himself.

• The GOP is widely expected to lose the House given its razor thin majority and backlash to Trump’s second term, while a cost of living crisis, worsened by his tariffs and the unpopular Iran war, has put even the Senate in play for Democrats. Trump’s planned ads would highlight claims of an improving economy, falling fentanyl deaths, and hardline immigration policy, but the piece notes a core risk: pointing to stock market highs won’t necessarily register with Americans struggling at the grocery store or gas pump. Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations, compared it to the inflation era problems those presidents faced, warning “you can’t go in playing ‘It’s Christmas Time’ when that’s the last holiday they can afford. They’re going to put you on mute.”

• Trump made his desire to nationalize the midterms explicit at a rally for South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham on Friday, telling the crowd, “what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote. It’s so important. Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales defended the approach in a statement, saying Trump is “cleaning up Joe Biden’s mess” and that “there is a great story to tell because the United States of America has never been stronger than under his leadership.” The Daily Beast said it had reached out to the White House and MAGA Inc. for comment but had not received a response as of publication.

CIA Director in Moscow:

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Wednesday that CIA Director John Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials in Moscow but said he did not meet Putin, and told reporters that “contacts through intelligence-service channels” often continue even during the “deep crisis” in bilateral relations, though he called it premature to say whether the visit would help thaw ties. That account conflicted with an earlier report from a Kremlin-pool correspondent claiming Putin had canceled a public event planned for “hundreds of people” in order to make time to meet with Ratcliffe himself. The CIA has a history of quiet diplomacy with Moscow even amid tension, having helped negotiate the April 2025 release of dual national Ksenia Karelina and the 2024 exchange that freed journalist Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan; separately, a Russian official said 10 prisoners of war per side were swapped in Belarus on Wednesday, though it’s unclear if the CIA was involved. The only other known Moscow visit by a sitting CIA director was William Burns’s trip in November 2021, when he personally warned Putin against invading Ukraine, an invasion that began weeks later.

• Flight tracking showed the U.S. delegation’s C-17A Globemaster III leaving Joint Base Andrews Sunday evening, laying over about 24 hours in Riga, Latvia, then flying into Moscow Tuesday morning and departing again roughly eight and a half hours later; a second aircraft, a C-40B typically used to ferry senior officials, also flew from Andrews to Riga but was not tracked onward to Moscow. Video geolocated by The Washington Post showed a motorcade with diplomatic plates driving through central Moscow near a Russian military building, and Washington had already asked Kyiv to hold off on strikes against Moscow and St. Petersburg specifically until the delegation left. The trip unfolded against a backdrop of stepped up long-range strikes by both sides, with Ukraine hitting energy infrastructure and retail facilities inside Russia and Russia intensifying drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, and it came one day after the Treasury Department unveiled its “Economic D-Day” sanctions campaign against Iran, a country Russia has reportedly supplied with targeting intelligence on U.S. assets in the Middle East. President Trump’s own posture toward Ukraine has wavered recently, having appeared to approve Ukrainian production of U.S. Patriot missiles at a NATO summit in July before backing away from that commitment.

• Kyiv Post reported that Putin signed three decrees on the same day as Ratcliffe’s visit, numbered 605 through 607, that were never published, an unusual gap it inferred by comparing them to the publicly released decrees immediately before and after in the sequence, meaning their contents remain unknown. That timing has fueled speculation about what the numbers conceal, with the Wall Street Journal reporting Ratcliffe may have traveled to deliver a warning based on intelligence suggesting the Kremlin is preparing a new mobilization round and possible provocations against NATO, while another outlet floated that the visit could relate to prisoner exchange negotiations instead. U.S. officials have separately assessed that Putin’s risk tolerance may be shifting toward more provocative, deniable actions against NATO members meant to test alliance resolve. Neither the CIA nor Russian officials have offered any on the record explanation beyond describing it as intelligence to intelligence contact, leaving the actual purpose of the trip unconfirmed.

Imagination Library:

• Dolly Parton died Tuesday at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center after what her team called a brief battle with cancer, with her nephew and head of security, Bryan Seaver, announcing her death in a prerecorded video saying she “lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus.” Concerns about her health had been building for months: her sister Freida Parton asked for prayers last October, Parton herself said at the time she wasn’t dying, and in May she told fans she was responding well to treatment for kidney stones and immune and digestive issues that had left her unable to perform at “stage performance level,” forcing her to cancel planned Las Vegas shows. Tributes poured in afterward, including from President Trump, who ordered flags lowered nationwide and called her death “a true loss for millions of people,” as well as from Linda Ronstadt, Reba McEntire, Julia Roberts, and Sally Field, while the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce placed flowers at her Walk of Fame star and the Empire State Building was lit pink in her honor.

• Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, the free book program she launched in 1995 for children in her native Sevier County, Tennessee, will keep sending books to kids even after her death, a spokesperson for the Dollywood Company confirmed. The program has grown to serve about 1 in 6 American children under age 5, mailing a free, age appropriate book each month to enrolled kids from birth until they turn 5, regardless of family income. Availability depends on local partners, so families need to check whether the program operates in their ZIP code at imaginationlibrary.com and may be routed to their local library to complete sign up. In Parton’s honor, the Dollywood Company is encouraging donations to the Imagination Library, and the article closes with a quote from Parton about how books help children in any community realize their dreams.

• Even as Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library says it will keep sending free books to children under five worldwide following her death from a brief battle with cancer, the future of the program in some states has grown uncertain after Republican lawmakers cut or reduced public funding over the past year. In Indiana, state funding, previously a $6 million two year allocation under former Republican Governor Eric Holcomb that supported more than 125,000 enrolled children, was removed from the budget entirely, with current Governor Mike Braun saying the state would instead pursue private philanthropic funding; Dollywood Foundation president Jeff Conyers had urged Braun and the legislature to restore the match. Missouri, which had been the first state to fully fund the program, cut its allocation from about $6 million to $2 million for the upcoming fiscal year, forcing a freeze on new enrollment starting July 1, though children already enrolled will keep receiving books while funding lasts. Founded in 1995, the Imagination Library has distributed more than 300 million books and now serves over 3 million registered children, with its organizers emphasizing that the program was designed to unite communities “regardless of politics.”

Immigration:

• Newly released government data shows the Trump administration arrested and deported a record number of immigrants in July, apprehending an average of 1,500 people daily and removing about 1,100 daily, for totals of 49,571 arrests, the highest since October 2022 and a 15% jump from June’s previous record, and nearly 34,000 removals, the most of the second Trump administration. Despite the administration’s claims of targeting criminals, July marked the first month where a majority, 51%, of those arrested had no criminal convictions or charges, according to the Guardian’s analysis. Advocates say enforcement has shifted from last year’s high-profile militarized raids to a quieter, more dispersed approach, boosted by a $70 billion funding surge and the rapidly expanding 287(g) program that deputizes local police for immigration enforcement, with arrests increasingly happening at ICE check-in appointments, traffic stops, homes, and airports, prompting some attorneys to advise even legally cleared clients to avoid flying. The piece also highlights the end of temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Haitians and Syrians following a Supreme Court ruling, with the first deportation flight to Haiti since that decision landing last week, ongoing enforcement targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, and TPS for 170,000 Salvadorans set to expire in September, which one immigrant attorney called a coming “precipice.”

• The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications at every US embassy and consulate since early August while it rolls out new “in-depth training” meant to help officers screen out applicants deemed likely to rely on US public assistance, with those who already had interviews scheduled getting emails canceling their appointments and no confirmed rescheduling date. The move follows an earlier, similar attempt by the administration to block visa applications on “public charge” grounds from 75 selected countries, which a federal judge recently struck down, with the National Immigration Law Center’s Joanna Cuevas Ingram saying “the court made clear that immigration laws cannot be used to justify discrimination.” It’s part of a broader tightening campaign that also includes a plan announced this week to revoke visas from up to 200,000 asylum seekers who initially entered on tourism or business visas, in coordination with DHS, which would mark the largest mass visa revocation in US history, alongside new social media vetting and processing fees for applicants generally. Immigration attorneys warn the pause creates immediate hardship for people who “spent thousands of dollars and disrupted their lives” to attend now-canceled interviews, with no clear timeline for when appointments will be rescheduled. The pause follows other reversed or contested restrictions this year, including a February court ruling that overturned Trump’s attempt to suspend the refugee system entirely, even as federal agents have separately been allowed to block asylum seekers from entering the US.

• A viral video shows an incident outside the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Sacramento, California, in which police allegedly tased, tackled, and pepper sprayed Sisi Rose, 33, a member of the Cheyenne River and Sisseton-Wahpeton tribes, then arrested her for “assault” after she spit out the spray, with officers also accused of kneeling on her neck with their body weight. Rose has spent months protesting what she calls ICE’s “unlawful detainers of Native Americans, and of American citizens,” and is quoted saying, “my kids could be snatched up off the streets, and we’re from here, and that scares me.”

Other news:

• The USS Abraham Lincoln, which recently left the Middle East after supporting the U.S. conflict with Iran, has a port call scheduled in Thailand in early September after 250 days at sea, according to family members cited by USA Today. The stop comes just after the USS George Washington arrived in the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln, temporarily leaving the U.S. without a carrier in Asia. The extended deployment, which began in November and was redirected to the Middle East in January ahead of the Iran war, included more than 200 consecutive days without a port call and was marked by reports of rotting food, water shortages, and serious mental health crises among crew members, with families saying some sailors attempted to jump overboard; Trump administration officials have dismissed those reports as false. Senate Democrats have called for a hearing with Pentagon leadership on the toll of extended Iran war deployments, arguing the Lincoln’s conditions reflect a broader failure to support troops. The port call also comes amid an escalating economic standoff with Iran, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warning countries to cut financial ties with Tehran or risk being cut off from the U.S. dollar system, in what officials are calling “Economic D-Day.”

• Darline Graham won the Republican nomination for South Carolina's US Senate seat Tuesday, defeating Rep. Ralph Norman in a special primary runoff with 52.4% of the vote to his 47.6%, according to the Associated Press. She's stepping into the seat held for over two decades by her late brother Lindsey Graham, who won the June primary but died the next month, after which she was appointed to serve out his term; Trump, who recommended her appointment and Super PAC spent over $800,000 backing her, told a Myrtle Beach rally, "what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot." Graham, a career civil servant who led South Carolina's Commission for the Blind, embraced her political inexperience at a rally, saying "they say I'm not a politician. You know what I say? Guilty as charged." She'll face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a Charleston area pediatrician, in November, though Democrats face steep odds in a state that hasn't elected one statewide since 2006.

• A federal judge in Texas, U.S. District Judge David Hittner, a Reagan appointee, struck down the state’s 2023 drag show restriction law, Senate Bill 12, on Tuesday, ruling it unconstitutional under the First Amendment and blocking Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate, from enforcing it. The law would have fined business owners up to $10,000 for hosting drag events and exposed performers to a Class A misdemeanor charge carrying up to a year in jail; Hittner had already deemed it unconstitutional once in 2023 before an appeals court sent it back to him with instructions for reassessment, and it took effect again last year in the meantime. In his ruling, Hittner invoked Dolly Parton, whose death was announced the same day, criticizing the law’s ban on performances that appeal to “prurient interest” by noting that people have long dismissed Parton “as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure,” and warned the law was so broad it could sweep in cheerleading, dancing, and live theater. One of the plaintiffs, a drag queen who performs as Brigitte Bandit and impersonates Parton, celebrated the ruling online and said she’d perform as Parton at an Austin bar Saturday in tribute, having received a rhinestone guitar from the singer in 2023. Hittner closed by offering his own advice to anyone offended by drag shows: “the solution is relatively simple... just don’t go.”

• Flash floods tore through the Himalayan border region between Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, killing at least eight people in Nepal and leaving hundreds missing, including three Americans among 384 travelers, 291 of them foreigners, whose whereabouts the Nepal Tourist Board is still working to confirm. The waters, which surged above normal levels on the Bhote Koshi river, destroyed homes, roads, bridges and hydropower infrastructure in Nepal’s mountainous Rasuwa district, knocking out 430 MW of electricity, more than 12% of the country’s total hydropower capacity, while rescue helicopters have been unable to land because of the flooding. On the Tibetan side, Chinese officials said a mudslide hit the Gyirong border crossing and warned of possible “major casualties,” cutting roads, communications and power links in the Shigatse region, prompting President Xi Jinping to call for all out search efforts and better early warning systems. Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah has ordered residents in low lying areas to move to higher ground as police and the military join the rescue effort. The cause hasn’t been confirmed, but a similarly deadly flood on the same river last year, which killed nine and swept away a bridge linking Nepal and China, was traced to a draining glacier lake in Tibet.

• At least 15 infants were killed Wednesday when a fire broke out on the third floor mother and child health ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, a state-run hospital, with local broadcaster Geo TV reporting the blaze was caused by a fault in the air-conditioning system. There were 16 newborns in the ward at the time, and only one was rescued, making it among the deadliest hospital fires in Pakistan in recent years. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered an immediate investigation, saying in a statement that “those responsible should be identified, and the strictest action should be taken.” The ward was cordoned off afterward with ambulances seen outside the building, and the incident underscores long-standing criticism from watchdogs that Pakistan’s subsidized but under-resourced government hospitals, including PIMS, one of Islamabad’s main public facilities where jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan was briefly treated just last week, are overburdened and mismanaged.

• Zymire Hughes was arrested in Las Vegas by the U.S. Marshals Service Violent Offender Task Force after allegedly terrorizing Philadelphia residents for days while wearing a Chucky style doll mask, with an arrest warrant issued after he chased a jogger in Center City last Wednesday, asked “do you want to die?” and caused her to suffer injuries as she fled. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said Hughes approached more than a dozen people before fleeing again when transit police told him to remove his mask, and police tracked him to his apartment using security camera footage, with three witnesses identifying him. He’s being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center with a hearing set for Thursday, it’s unclear if he has legal counsel, and Krasner said more charges are possible, noting Hughes is already on probation for an unrelated crime in Montgomery County. Police said Hughes ran two TikTok accounts and an Instagram account and believe he wore the mask to boost his social media following, prompting Krasner to say bluntly, “we’re not having it in this city. We are not tolerating it.”

• A California couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, faced their surrogate, McKenna West, in a Dallas courtroom Tuesday in an escalating custody battle over a newborn with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare, life-threatening congenital heart defect, that has drawn national attention and rallied right-to-life groups and Republican officeholders behind West. Gilkar testified that the baby’s condition has worsened since a procedure after birth, saying he has gasped for air, choked on tubes, and needed a blood transfusion, while insisting “he’s our child” and denying West’s claim that she is “unstable” and trying to take him. West, a nurse who traveled from Alaska to give birth in Texas on Aug. 12, testified she had scheduled an abortion at the couple’s urging at 23 weeks but backed out because she believed the baby had a strong chance of survival, and her attorneys argue she deserves sole conservatorship because the couple wasn’t committed to ensuring his life-saving surgeries. The couple counters that West violated their August 2025 surrogacy contract, with Gilkar recounting undergoing eight rounds of IVF and an eventual hysterectomy before turning to surrogacy, and noting a California court had already ruled West has no custody rights, a ruling West is now asking the Texas judge to disregard. The court left a restraining order barring West from seeing or holding the child in place and did not rule on custody, with a decision still pending.

• Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller admitted Tuesday that he used artificial intelligence to write his viral Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s interference in the bond market, telling Notus “I’m not embarrassed by it” after readers noted the piece’s AI-like rhetorical patterns. The Journal’s editorial page editor, Paul Gigot, defended the piece, saying the paper’s standard is whether the argument reflects the author’s genuine views and that nobody doubts Druckenmiller, Bessent’s former mentor, holds these opinions sincerely. Gigot called AI use “a fact of modern life.” The episode drew wide coverage given the personal rebuke embedded in the op-ed between two figures with a long prior relationship.

• The Trump administration warned in a Monday court filing that the Kennedy Center could face demolition, potentially replaced by an outdoor amphitheater on the Potomac, if a $250 million renovation isn’t completed, arguing the building would otherwise “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure.” It’s the first time Trump’s allies have raised demolition as the alternative to a two-year closure for repairs, a threat likely to draw legal challenges and outcry from preservation groups. The filing came as the administration urged a judge to reject a new legal challenge to putting Trump’s name on the center, part of a broader pattern that includes demolishing the White House East Wing for a $600 million ballroom and a botched Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool renovation that caused algae blooms. The dispute is part of a months-long fight over Trump’s effort to alter the memorial Congress created to honor the assassinated 35th president.

• Forty-two of the Senate’s 47 Democrats signed a letter urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in a surge of West Bank settler violence and mass arrests of Palestinians by Israeli security forces, drafted by Sens. Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and Cory Booker. The letter cited rising “fatal violence by settlers” and pressed Netanyahu to investigate the deaths of nine American citizens killed by settlers or security forces in the West Bank since 2022, as well as reported attacks on mosques. It reflects growing friction between congressional Democrats and the Israeli government, part of a broader push within the party for curbs on US military aid over Israel’s conduct in Gaza. The senators asked for clear instructions to Israeli police and military to prevent and intervene in violent confrontations “regardless of the perpetrators.”

• A US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday killed four people, with US Southern Command saying the vessel was “operating along established narco-trafficking routes” and that confirmed intelligence showed its active involvement in narco-trafficking. Video released alongside the announcement showed the boat moving through the water before a large explosion. No further details were given about the identities of those killed or the specific intelligence behind the strike.

• Reproductive Freedom for All, one of the oldest US abortion rights groups, endorsed Democrat Troy Jackson, a former Maine state senate president, in his challenge to five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins, whose 2018 vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh helped pave the way for the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. This year’s election marks the first time Collins has faced voters since that decision, after which more than a dozen states enacted near-total abortion bans. Group president Mini Timmaraju said “flipping the Maine Senate race is a critical path to winning a Senate majority, and we do not restore a federal right to abortion without flipping the Senate majority.” Timmaraju plans to join Jackson Wednesday in Brunswick to launch the campaign’s “Women for Troy” coalition.

• Alaska election officials confirmed that Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, seeking a third term, will share the November ballot with a nearly identically named challenger, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher and former US Forest Service employee also running as a Republican, adding an unusual wrinkle to one of the cycle’s most competitive Senate races. The incumbent faces Democrat Mary Peltola in a race polls show as neck and neck, in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008; the other Sullivan was initially disqualified by state officials but reinstated by Alaska’s supreme court. The senator has called his same-named rival a “sham” candidate meant to confuse and split his supporters’ votes, though the challenger won only 2.5% in last week’s primary compared to the incumbent’s roughly 43% and Peltola’s 48%. A fourth candidate for the general election ballot has yet to be announced.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Closer to Washington, the trade fight with Canada boiled over, with Ottawa slapping new tariffs on roughly $20 billion in US goods after talks with the Trump administration collapsed amid dueling accounts of who walked away from the table, and no shortage of insults along the way.

We also have the first television interview with Alex Pretti’s family since federal immigration officers shot and killed him in Minneapolis in January, and a deep look at how a wave of firings by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left the Army without a chief of staff and thinner at the top than it’s been in decades, even as it faces its busiest stretch since Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plus, because of our reporting, the father of a service member aboard the USS Lincoln, who was detained by ICE, is coming home. You did that. We did that. Your support makes this a reality. If you can, subscribe to support this work today. Let’s keep building together.

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Here’s the news:

• Following our reporting, Luis Manuel Aviles, the Nicaraguan immigrant father of Navy sailor Joshua Aviles, was released from ICE custody Tuesday, days after being detained during a traffic stop in Key West, Florida, where the family lives; his son confirmed the release in a Facebook statement thanking supporters and asking for privacy while the family reunites. Joshua Aviles is currently deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which just completed a record setting nine month uninterrupted deployment and is now headed back to the West Coast, a trip expected to take a month or more. DHS said Luis Manuel Aviles, 47, who has lived in the US for 20 years and worked as a hotel handyman, entered the country illegally at an unspecified time and place, while his family said he had a work permit, Social Security card, driver’s license, and an active asylum case, along with pending immigration petitions filed by relatives to secure his legal status. When asked to confirm those details, DHS did not directly address them but said that having a family member in the military “is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws” and does not grant parole, lawful status, or immunity from enforcement. The case drew national attention after Joshua Aviles posted from the ship describing his father as a hardworking man whose only “crime” was coming to the US to give his children a better life, and questioning how he could keep working long days not knowing how his father was being treated.

Dolly Parton:

• Dolly Parton, the rhinestone-clad daughter of Appalachian poverty who became one of country music’s defining voices, died Tuesday in Nashville at 80; no cause was given, though concerns about her health had grown since a postponed Las Vegas residency last year. Over six decades she racked up 25 No. 1 country singles, roughly 90 Top 40 hits, and about 3,000 published songs, including “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” the latter later a chart-topping cover for Whitney Houston. She broke through in 1967 on “The Porter Wagoner Show” before eclipsing her mentor and striking out solo in 1974, going on to headline stadium tours, star in films like “9 to 5” and “Steel Magnolias,” and build the Dollywood theme park.

• Her career, by the numbers and the milestones: she was the top ranking female singer on country radio from 1967 to 1993, with 25 No. 1 country singles and roughly 90 Top 40 hits drawn from about 3,000 songs she published in her lifetime. Her breakthrough came in 1967 as the “girl singer” on “The Porter Wagoner Show,” where she and Wagoner recorded 21 hit duets before she split from him in 1974 to go solo, writing “I Will Always Love You” as a farewell. That song later became a No. 1 pop hit for Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard” in 1992. Other signature songs included “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” and “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers.

• Beyond records, she built a wide entertainment and business empire: she starred in films including “9 to 5,” “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” and “Steel Magnolias”; hosted her own syndicated TV series starting in 1976 and later an ABC variety show; opened the Dollywood theme park in the mid 1980s; and recorded acclaimed collaborative albums such as “Trio” with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, and she won 10 Grammy Awards among more than 50 nominations.

• Her songwriting was known for empathy and social conscience: she wrote about childhood poverty and bullying in “Coat of Many Colors,” about teen pregnancy and patriarchy in “Down From Dover” and “Daddy Come Get Me,” and about workplace and bedroom equality for women in “9 to 5” and “Touch Your Woman.” She later extended that inclusive spirit to LGBTQ audiences with the Oscar nominated “Travelin’ Thru” from “Transamerica” and “Rainbowland,” recorded with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus.

• Her philanthropic legacy centers on the Imagination Library, which she founded in 1995 and which has since distributed more than 200 million books to children, along with disaster relief efforts for her home region after the Gatlinburg wildfires and support for Covid vaccine research. A Broadway musical based on her life, “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” is scheduled to open in early 2027.

Canada retaliates with major tariffs:

• Canada’s retaliation: Canada announced it will raise steel duties and impose new tariffs of 15% to 50% on roughly $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, effective September 8. The list covers more than 800 product entries, targeting sectors like steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics. Steel, aluminum, furniture, and clothing face the steepest 50% rate, while dairy, appliances, cheese, and fish get 25%, and items like rubber molds and machinery parts get 15%. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the response was designed to “match the American tariff on the same type of Canadian good,” and existing counter-tariffs on autos remain in place.

• How talks broke down: The move follows the collapse of trade negotiations after the U.S. hit numerous Canadian products with new 50% tariffs starting last Saturday. Prime Minister Mark Carney said he walked away from a deal Friday night after Washington proposed “unfair” and “uneconomic” last-minute terms, and had pledged to retaliate “dollar-for-dollar.” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer disputed that account, saying the U.S. had offered to cut steel and aluminum tariffs in half and reduce auto and softwood lumber tariffs substantially, but that “they simply wanted more.” Carney maintained, “We could not accept what the U.S. had offered, nor could we give what they asked.”

• Escalating rhetoric: The tariff fight has been accompanied by heated exchanges between Trump and Canadian officials, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who told Trump he could “kiss my ass” and called him the “king of bankruptcies.” Trump fired back by dismissing Ford’s comments as “bluster” and threatened a second wave of 50% tariffs on Canadian autos and steel. On Tuesday, Trump further needled Ottawa by threatening to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” which Canadian officials dismissed as “shenanigans” while affirming they’d “always call it Lake Ontario.” Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said protecting Ontario’s auto industry remains a top priority and that she’s been in regular contact with Honda, Ford Motor, and Toyota’s Canadian divisions.

• Donald Trump posted the following graphic on Truth Social:

Alex Pretti’s family speaks out:

• Alex Pretti’s parents, Michael and Susan, and sister Micayla gave their first TV interview since the 37-year-old ICU nurse was shot and killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, speaking with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. The family described the horror of learning what happened: a stranger’s phone call asking about “an Alex J. Pretti,” followed by seeing the actual shooting footage on television before anyone from the government contacted them. “We watched it on TV and was like, ‘That’s our son. That’s Alex.’ And they killed him,” Michael said, noting they still haven’t heard from anyone. Susan added they saw him “shot 10 times... in the back.” The family disputed claims Alex was protesting, saying he was an “observer” recording the scene with his phone, and bystander video showed him being pepper-sprayed and restrained before being shot after apparently trying to help a woman being pushed by an officer.

• The family condemned Trump administration officials who publicly branded Alex a violent threat in the hours and days after his death, including then-Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who said he seemed to want to “massacre law enforcement,” then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who called it “domestic terrorism,” and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who labeled Alex “an assassin,” a claim VP JD Vance amplified. President Trump also cited footage of an earlier, separate confrontation Alex had with agents 11 days before his death to call him an “agitator” and “possible insurrectionist.” Susan grew emotional recalling those words, asking, “What did he do to deserve to be murdered?” Michael called Trump’s rhetoric “so unpresidential,” and the family says none of Trump, Vance, Miller, or Noem have ever reached out to them, which Michael said “tells me they don’t care.” Susan said she still expects a formal apology for what was said about her son.

• Seven months later, the family says the DOJ’s federal civil rights investigation into the shooting remains opaque, with family attorney Steven L. Schleicher saying they don’t know its status or what evidence has been gathered, and accusing the government of “gaslighting and word salad.” A July 13 meeting with Minnesota’s U.S. attorney “raised more questions than answers,” and DOJ has said family communications typically don’t occur until later stages like indictment or trial, while DHS says the case “remains under active investigation” and the FBI declined comment. The two officers who fired the fatal shots have not been officially identified by the government, though ProPublica reported their names in February, something Micayla says isn’t enough, insisting the names be formally released. Susan also linked Alex’s case to that of Renée Good, another U.S. citizen fatally shot by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis around the same time, arguing “people need to be held responsible when they murder people in this country,” while Michael said the more than 2,000 supportive cards and letters they’ve received have offered some comfort.

Defense Department ‘rudderless’

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s string of firings and feuds has left the Army without a chief of staff since he dismissed Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there is no sign a replacement is imminent; officials say Hegseth has also forced out at least three other senior officers viewed as potential successors. As recently as January 2025, the Army had 10 four star generals on active duty; it now has just five, the fewest in decades, with key posts like the Transformation and Training Command sitting empty for months after Hegseth fired Gen. David M. Hodne without explanation. Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, once seen as a possible Hegseth successor, is also expected to leave in the coming months and is reportedly barely on speaking terms with Hegseth, even as the peace effort he was leading on Ukraine has stalled. Critics, including Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat and former Army intelligence officer, warn that purging battle tested leaders makes troops less safe and erodes the military’s apolitical character, while the Army’s official statement insists its leaders remain focused on readiness and modernization.

• The leadership vacuum comes as the Army faces its busiest stretch since Iraq and Afghanistan, with air defense soldiers absorbing increasingly sophisticated Iranian missile attacks in the Middle East and Army units in Europe supporting Ukraine against Russia. The empty Transformation and Training Command is especially significant because it oversees Patriot antimissile crews, the main defense against Iranian ballistic missiles, and the Army has been burning through scarce Patriot interceptor supplies as Iran’s missiles grow more capable of evading them; one such strike killed three US soldiers in Jordan in July. Separately, Hegseth demoted Gen. Christopher T. Donahue’s European ground command to a three star position in July, effectively forcing him toward retirement, despite Donahue’s teams of drone defenders having been credited with responding to an early Iranian drone attack that killed six soldiers in Kuwait. Taken together, officials and lawmakers argue the thinned ranks and unresolved vacancies leave the Army poorly positioned to keep pace with Russia and China’s rapid adoption of AI and drone warfare.

• Tension between Hegseth and Gen. George dated back to Hegseth’s own mistrust of Army leadership, rooted partly in his forced departure from the National Guard over tattoos deemed extremist; that friction escalated last October when Hegseth pushed out Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus a year early and nominated his own senior aide, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, to replace him. Senators, frustrated by the lack of transparency, placed a hold on LaNeve’s confirmation, and Hegseth wrongly accused George of colluding with those lawmakers, even though George had actually urged them to let the nomination proceed; Hegseth fired George in a 15 second phone call less than two months after LaNeve was finally sworn in as vice chief. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who says she’d been assured George would finish his term, complained directly to President Trump, who told her the firing was Hegseth’s call and to “tell the general I’m sorry.” LaNeve, who still lacks enough Senate Republican support to be confirmed as chief, is now serving simultaneously as vice chief and acting chief, and has signaled he wants the Army to refocus on basic combat skills, warning that “every shortcut in training and lapse in discipline will be paid for in blood.”

Other news:

• According to ProPublica, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth polled top U.S. military commanders in early 2025 about cutting the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program, expecting support for eliminating it, but every commander pushed back, with nine choosing to keep the effort running at reduced staffing and two commands, including those overseeing the nuclear arsenal and cyber threats, refusing any cuts at all. Hegseth gutted the program anyway, shrinking it from roughly 200 people to about two dozen even as the U.S. launched new military campaigns in Somalia, Yemen and Iran, and Central Command was left with just one staffer instead of the nine it said it needed. The consequences were severe: a Yemen air campaign killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others, and a U.S. airstrike on a school in Minab, Iran, killed more than 100 children after outdated intelligence led to the attack, prompting congressional scrutiny and a letter from 11 Democratic senators questioning whether the staffing cuts contributed to the tragedy. Facing that blowback, the Pentagon is now considering partially reviving the program at 35% of its original staffing under a plan from policy under secretary Elbridge Colby, which the same commanders Hegseth originally polled have endorsed, though the Defense Department did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

• Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins refused to tell the public where the United States would be importing beef from:

• According to CNN, the Justice Department is considering federal charges against ICE agent Christian Castro, who is accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Sosa-Celis, in the leg in Minneapolis this past winter, with a decision possibly coming as soon as Tuesday. Castro was already arrested in May on state charges of second-degree assault and falsely reporting a crime, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott has refused to extradite him to Minnesota, and he could be released from custody in Cameron County, Texas as soon as Wednesday, putting pressure on prosecutors to act quickly. A DOJ spokeswoman told CNN that no charging decision has been made and that the civil rights division is consulting with local prosecutors as a standard part of the investigation. The case took a dramatic turn earlier this year when the DOJ moved to drop charges against Sosa-Celis and another man after ICE admitted its agents made “false statements” under oath, and the two agents involved remain on administrative leave while that conduct is investigated.

• CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced overnight trip to Moscow to meet with Russian officials, a US official familiar with his travel told CNN, marking his first known visit to Russia as CIA director under President Trump; the substance and topics of the meetings were not disclosed, and the CIA declined to comment. The visit comes as talks to end the Russia Ukraine war have stalled, and the US reportedly asked Ukraine to pause drone and missile strikes on Moscow and northern Russian cities from Monday through Wednesday, telling the Ukrainians a senior US official would be traveling in the country. It also follows by one day Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement of “Operation Economic Outcast,” a strategy to isolate Iran by punishing countries and entities that keep doing business with Tehran, notable given Russia’s status as a strategic trading partner of Iran’s. Flight tracking data showed an American Boeing C-17 Globemaster III landing at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport early Tuesday after departing from Riga, Latvia, having originally taken off from Joint Base Andrews; Latvia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the flight was properly coordinated and authorized for its airspace but said it could not provide further details since the aircraft is not operated by Latvia’s armed forces.

• According to The New York Times, Trump administration lawyers told a federal judge in a court filing that the Kennedy Center could need to be “taken down” and potentially replaced by an outdoor amphitheater on the Potomac if the $250 million renovation ordered by President Trump does not move forward, a suggestion the plaintiff’s lawyer called a “not-so-subtle threat.” The filing came in response to a lawsuit from Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio board member who is fighting both the center’s closure plans and a board decision, already ruled unlawful by Judge Christopher R. Cooper, to add Trump’s name to the building; the center is appealing that ruling and in the meantime removed his name from the facade. The judge also temporarily blocked the closure plans, and the center’s executive director has testified under oath that no one there currently plans to demolish the building, though he acknowledged he isn’t “in control of” Trump’s “personal decision-making.” Beatty has argued the closure may be masking financial fallout from the center’s politicization, and the Times notes The Washington Post reported that ticket revenue and fund-raising have plummeted since Trump’s name was added, leaving the center on track to miss its revenue target by nearly $100 million this year, while Justice Department lawyers countered that Trump earned the inscription by helping secure $257 million in congressional funding and a new donor base.

• Indiana Governor Mike Braun is calling for a formal investigation into NIPSCO after nearly two weeks without power for thousands of residents across northwest Indiana, saying the utility “has failed to keep its end of the bargain” despite Hoosiers paying it every month to maintain the system and respond to severe weather. Braun directed the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor to file a complaint asking the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to open an investigation, including scrutiny of how NIPSCO spent more than 81 million dollars earmarked for vegetation management between 2023 and 2025 and 2.3 billion dollars meant for infrastructure upgrades since 2016. NIPSCO responded that it will cooperate fully with any investigation and remains committed to transparency. Residents in Gary, Hammond, and Munster described mounting stress after 13 days without electricity, with families cooking by lighter, throwing out spoiled food, and worrying about safety in the dark, while one resident said doctors haven’t been able to remotely monitor her heart monitor since it lost power. NIPSCO says it’s committed to restoring service as quickly as possible, and NBC Chicago reported seeing crews from NIPSCO, contracted linemen, and ComEd actively working in Gary.

• Two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have died of measles, marking the first U.S. measles deaths of 2026 and the state’s first in 35 years. The deaths come amid a growing outbreak that has reached 393 confirmed cases statewide, with 86 diagnosed in just the past week and 70 people hospitalized. Nationally, the CDC has recorded 2,777 measles cases this year, the highest total in 35 years, with about 7% of cases requiring hospitalization. The outbreak coincides with declining MMR vaccination rates in Lancaster County (down from 95.5% in 2017 to 87.6% in 2025) and rising vaccine exemptions among kindergartners nationwide, as well as a recent Trump executive order aimed at reducing recommended childhood vaccines. Pennsylvania’s health secretary emphasized that the MMR vaccine is safe and remains the best protection against the disease.

• The Ohio Parole Board recommended Tuesday that death row inmate Tyrone Noling, who has spent 30 years denying he committed the 1990 murders of an elderly couple, have his sentence commuted to life with the possibility of parole as early as 2029, though Noling himself is seeking a full pardon and says he won’t accept a commutation. The decision now rests with outgoing Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who co-sponsored Ohio’s death penalty law in 1981 but has since reversed course, calling in June for lawmakers to abolish capital punishment altogether. Noling was convicted based on testimony from three teenage gang members who later recanted, saying police pressured them to name him, and no physical evidence or murder weapon ever tied him to the killings. Innocence Project attorneys have since uncovered evidence pointing to another suspect, a man later executed for an unrelated 1991 murder, including a lab report suggesting a cigarette butt found at the scene could have been his rather than Noling’s. The case has drawn celebrity support from figures like Kim Kardashian, and even the former county sheriff who investigated the killings now says he believes Noling and the other teens were innocent.

• Newly released court documents detail the grim conditions investigators found inside a Burlington, Connecticut home where the skeletal remains of three family members, Paul Cash, Sally Cash, and their son Brian Cash, were discovered on June 14. The remains were found after the home was purchased at a foreclosure auction, when visitors touring the property for renovation planning noticed an open window, climbed inside, and spotted what looked like skeletons in an upstairs bedroom and a room above the garage. According to the search warrant, officers found the home heavily cluttered throughout, with overgrown landscaping and a green pool outside, and described an “overwhelming foul odor” upon reaching the second floor. Two of the three skeletons were found together in one bedroom, both lying on their backs inside sleeping bags with no signs of a struggle, while the third was found similarly in the room above the garage. The medical examiner said the remains were too decomposed for a definitive cause of death, ruling out carbon monoxide poisoning but citing malnutrition or hypothermia as possibilities, and state police have said there’s no indication the deaths were criminal or suspicious.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Also today: the Trump administration is preparing the largest mass visa revocation in US history, the EPA wants to let datacenters keep their air pollution secret, the Supreme Court just handed Trump a win on mail voting restrictions, and the wife of an active duty Army sergeant was deported to Honduras while their six year old watched.

If you watch until the end, you will see my daughter make an appearance in today’s update, it is her five month birthday and she wanted to be held at the end!

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Here’s the news:

Canada tells Trump to Kiss its Ass:

• Canada is set to unveil retaliatory tariffs against the US on Tuesday as the trade war intensifies, with Prime Minister Mark Carney signaling he may abandon matching US duties dollar for dollar in favor of more targeted countermeasures aimed at protecting Canadian workers and industries. Trump escalated again Monday, telling Canada to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than existing tariffs, threatening 50% tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts, and steel starting January 2027, and on Tuesday reportedly threatened to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Carney accused Washington of treating Canada like a subsidiary and said in French that the US wants to “destroy our major industries, including autos, steel and aluminum,” calling it one of the main reasons Canada walked away from the deal. He added that Canada is now finding reliable partners “everywhere in the world, except in the United States... And Russia.”

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been the most combative voice in the dispute, telling an Ottawa radio show Trump “can kiss my ass” and that Canada would “go at him full steam,” while separately warning “everything is on the table,” including cutting off electricity and critical minerals like nickel and uranium from Ontario. Ford repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan’s opposition to tariffs, saying Reagan would be “throwing up” and “spinning around in his grave,” and compared Trump to a bully who needs to be confronted rather than appeased. Trump fired back personally on social media, mocking Ford as “the less charismatic, intelligent, and overall unimpressive brother of the late, great, Rob Ford” and again referring to Carney as “Governor Carney,” insults Ford dismissed by saying “bring it on, buddy, I’m ready.” Ford also revealed he’d opposed the draft deal Carney had been considering, particularly a provision that would have restored American liquor to Ontario shelves.

• The original trade talks collapsed largely over a “culture war” sticking point: Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette said the US demanded last-minute concessions on Quebec’s French-language protections, specifically Bill 96 and Bill 109, which she called a “red line” central to Quebec’s identity that would not be negotiated away regardless of tariff threats. US officials and companies including Netflix, YouTube, Apple, and Spotify have argued the laws burden manufacturers and streaming services with French-language packaging and content quota requirements, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called the collapse “a missed opportunity” for Canada. The breakdown reportedly also briefly united English and French speaking Canadians in a shared rejection of US pressure, though Quebec sovereigntist leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said any future independence referendum would be delayed given the “unpredictability” of the Trump administration complicating that debate.

• The auto industry sits at the center of the economic stakes, since Ontario is the hub of Canada’s vehicle manufacturing and its plants are deeply integrated with US automakers including Ford, GM, and Stellantis, supporting tens of thousands of jobs on both sides of the border; Greer argued Canada’s auto industry only exists because of the 1960s Auto Pact, while Carney called the partnership “the most successful automotive partnership in history.” Canada’s reciprocal 50% tariffs, covering roughly $28 billion in US goods, are expected to take effect September 8, and as of the most recent reporting there are no scheduled talks to resume negotiations between the two countries. Ford has used electricity as leverage before, having imposed a 25% surcharge on power sent to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York earlier in the dispute, which prompted Trump to threaten doubling steel and aluminum tariffs before both sides backed down, suggesting this standoff could follow a similar pattern of escalation and retreat.

Trump missed Iran warnings:

• Newly leaked details show Trump ignored direct warnings before launching the Iran war. In a February Oval Office meeting, Tulsi Gabbard warned that striking Iran risked closing the Strait of Hormuz, triggering energy chaos, and installing an even more hardline successor to Khamenei, while military leaders separately warned about heavy casualties and depleted munitions stockpiles. Trump launched the attack alongside Israel on February 28 anyway, and Mar-a-Lago reportedly erupted in celebration when Khamenei’s killing was confirmed. Since then, Gulf nations and even some Republicans have pushed Trump to end the war, and sources say he’s privately furious, asking allies “why isn’t Iran folding” and at one point suggesting they should “bomb the s--t out of Iran” before a friend talked him down. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales is still defending the war as a success despite the fallout now playing out in real time.

• That fallout includes a new video from Iranian state TV asking “where and how should we kill Barron Trump,” with claims of a 10 million dollar bounty and assertions that his movements are being monitored. The report alleges a woman managed to breach Secret Service security to get near Barron, and cites claims that communication happened partly through Xbox voice chat and messaging. The Secret Service has confirmed it’s aware of the threats and is investigating, and this isn’t the first time Trump’s family has been targeted, with similar threats previously made against Melania and Ivanka. A billboard reading “We will kill Trump” has also appeared in Tehran, and Iranian officials have invoked the concept of “qisas,” or retributive justice, tying it directly to Khamenei’s death.

• Meanwhile Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has rolled out “Operation Economic Outcast,” a new sanctions campaign hitting aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping, and technology, with more than 60 entities sanctioned so far. The UAE’s abrupt trade suspension with Iran is being read as directly tied to the pressure campaign, and China, India, Turkey, and Iraq all now face exposure depending on how closely they keep trading with Tehran. China has formally objected, calling the sanctions counterproductive, and oil prices have actually dipped despite the escalation, suggesting markets aren’t convinced the pressure will hold. The sanctions have also triggered suspensions of remittances affecting Iranian Americans and a halt to sports and academic exchange programs.

• On the ground in Iran, the human cost is mounting fast. The rial has collapsed to roughly 2 million to the dollar, and the real base wage for Iranian workers has more than halved over the past decade down to about 83 dollars a month. Long lines are forming at gas stations in Tehran as shortages spread, and a separate oil tanker was disabled off the coast of Oman amid the rising regional tension. Pakistan has stepped in to mediate, describing a recent meeting as “positive and productive,” even as the U.S. simultaneously lifted Syria’s state sponsor of terrorism designation in an unrelated but notable regional move.

• Israeli strikes and tank fire killed at least four people, including two children, in Gaza on Monday, a week after a U.S. delegation led by Jared Kushner met with Prime Minister Netanyahu and privately asked Israel to draw down its attacks. A 4 year old was killed and his mother and sister wounded when a strike hit a building in the Bureij refugee camp despite an evacuation warning, while separate strikes hit the Shati refugee camp and Deir al-Balah, which Israel’s military said targeted Hamas weapons storage sites inside mosques, though it offered no evidence. In southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, a man was killed and five others wounded in one strike, and Israeli tank fire separately killed a 10 year old girl in an incident Israel’s military said it wasn’t aware of. Israel has struck Gaza on six of the seven days since the Kushner meeting, and Gaza’s health ministry says Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,288 Palestinians since the October ceasefire took hold, with Israel maintaining its strikes are responses to ceasefire violations that have killed five Israeli soldiers. Separately, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to escalate strikes further unless Hamas stops kites from being flown from Gaza into Israel, which a Hamas spokesperson dismissed as “children’s toys.”

Major Watson:

• Air Force Maj. Jason Watson was formally criminally charged Monday under the Uniform Code of Military Justice after twice being arrested for publicly calling for Trump’s impeachment, including once while protesting in uniform on the Capitol steps in July and again in August just days after criticizing Trump in a CNN interview. He faces three counts under the rarely used Article 88 for “contemptuous” remarks about Trump, five counts under Article 92 for disobeying orders, including wearing his uniform at a political protest and refusing to wear it to work the next day, and two counts under Article 133 for conduct unbecoming an officer. Watson is currently in pre-trial confinement, which his attorney says amounts to solitary confinement for his own safety, and Watson has said he believes Trump is “flagrantly violating the Constitution” and wanted to set an example for others who feel scared to speak out.

• Article 88 convictions are extraordinarily rare, with CNN identifying only two since the modern military justice code took effect in 1951, an Army lieutenant convicted in 1965 for protesting the Vietnam War and a Marine officer convicted in 2021 for publicly criticizing the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, who the Trump administration has since brought on as a Pentagon adviser. Legal experts note the standard for what counts as “contemptuous” is vague, and a pretrial hearing may be needed to determine whether Watson’s comments were simply fair criticism of the president. It remains unclear whether his case will proceed to trial or what severity of court martial he could face, and the Air Force has said only that Watson is presumed innocent while the case moves forward.

Other news:

• A US judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest attempt to overturn her sex trafficking conviction, dismissing her appeal as “frivolous,” “meritless,” and “lengthy and rambling.” Maxwell, 64, is serving a 20 year sentence for procuring girls for the late Jeffrey Epstein after being convicted on five felony counts in December 2021. She had argued in her appeal that her constitutional rights were “violated in multiple respects,” but the New York judge flatly rejected those claims. The ruling is the latest setback in her ongoing legal efforts to fight the conviction, which followed a case that made her one of the most prominent figures tied to Epstein’s abuse network.

• The Trump administration is preparing what would be the largest mass visa revocation in U.S. history, targeting up to 200,000 foreigners who hold business or tourism visas but have applied for or are seeking asylum. The State Department is expected to announce revocation of B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 to holders who’ve sought asylum, working in coordination with DHS, according to internal documents obtained by the AP and two officials. A State Department spokesman said the goal is to stop people from entering as short-term visitors and then filing for asylum to stay permanently, though he wouldn’t specify how many visas would ultimately be revoked. The revocations wouldn’t necessarily trigger immediate deportations, since most pending asylum cases would simply be recategorized and lose their business or tourism status rather than face removal right away. This builds on a broader crackdown that’s already revoked roughly 175,000 visas over the past 18 months for reasons ranging from criminal convictions to public criticism of U.S. policy, and it comes alongside separate efforts to crack down on birth tourism.

• The Trump EPA has proposed a new rule that would kill the requirement for datacenters to publicly disclose the air pollution they release, letting emission permits get issued behind closed doors instead. Datacenters are often sources of nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, and while the Clean Air Act currently requires “minor” polluters to disclose expected pollution levels to the public through state agencies, the new rule would make that disclosure voluntary and left to state and local officials’ discretion. Former EPA air office official Joe Goffman said the move guts what he called an “ironclad promise” of public transparency, warning most states, many of which actively court datacenter investment, are unlikely to require disclosure voluntarily, leaving communities in the dark about what they’re breathing and weaker in court or public fights. Big tech companies already split datacenter permit requests into individual pieces per generator or turbine specifically to stay under the less scrutinized “minor” review process rather than face costlier federal review, and advocates say this rule would strip away the last real transparency in that already legally shaky practice. The EPA says the change is meant to cut red tape and speed up permitting to support “American economic development and energy dominance,” but critics including a former deputy director of the EPA’s air quality office call it part of a broader pattern of the administration abandoning transparency as a core EPA principle.

• CNN host Kaitlan Collins raised alarm after the Supreme Court sided with Trump on Monday, ruling that 23 Democrat-led states lacked legal standing to challenge his March executive order restricting mail-in voting, letting him move forward with parts of the order even as a lower court still weighs its legality. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented sharply, calling the ruling a “nightmare” that “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty” into the midterms just 71 days away. On her show, Collins noted the irony that Trump himself voted by mail in Florida’s primary last week despite calling mail-in ballots “inherently corrupt,” and brought in legal analysts including Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who argued Trump lacks constitutional authority to do this since Congress never delegated voting eligibility decisions to the Postal Service. CNN’s Elie Honig noted the ruling was a narrow procedural win, since the court found the challenging states hadn’t yet shown concrete harm, not a final ruling on the underlying constitutional question. Ginsberg also predicted Republican pushback is coming given that older voters, a core GOP demographic, rely heavily on mail voting, calling it “a rather flawed political strategy.”

• Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez’s wife, Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, was deported to Honduras on August 24 after ICE officers detained her outside a Walmart in July while the couple’s six-year-old daughter watched, part of a broader pattern in which Trump’s deportation campaign has swept up more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members, with at least six deported so far, according to an AP investigation. Turcios, who became a US citizen in 2024 after a nine-month Middle East deployment, said his wife “took care of my family” while he served and “is not a threat to anybody,” and an ABC News review found no criminal records for any of the military spouses named in the report, undercutting the administration’s stated focus on “the worst of the worst.” DHS confirmed the removal, saying Villafranca-Trejo entered the country illegally in 2016 and was “released into the country under the Obama administration,” and separately stated that having a military family member “is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.” Advocacy group Repatriate Our Patriots says it’s currently working with eight active-duty service members and one veteran on similar cases, describing families as “living in the shadows” out of fear of seeking help while their service member is deployed, a shift from decades of bipartisan policy that generally shielded military families’ undocumented relatives from deportation and even used citizenship pathways as a recruitment incentive.

• Senator Darline Graham and Representative Ralph Norman face off Tuesday in a Republican runoff to fill the remainder of the late Lindsey Graham’s Senate term, capping a compressed 45 day sprint since his sudden death in July. Governor Henry McMaster initially appointed Darline, Lindsey’s sister and a career civil servant who led the state’s commission for the blind, to serve in a caretaker role, but she surprised the political establishment by entering the race herself with Trump’s encouragement and topped a crowded 10 candidate field to reach the runoff. Norman has attacked her lack of experience, seizing on her comment that national security “is not my thing” and comparing her candidacy to hiring an unqualified coaching prospect just because they’re “kin to Tom Brady,” while running his own ads declaring “Voting for Ralph Norman is MAGA” in response to Trump’s endorsement of Graham. Trump has framed his backing of Graham as repaying a debt to his late friend Lindsey, while also using the race as a test of his own pull with Republican voters ahead of the midterms, telling a Myrtle Beach rally crowd to “pretend” he’s on the ballot himself. The winner will face Democratic pediatrician Annie Andrews in November, in a state Democrats haven’t won statewide in two decades.

• A Wisconsin kitten named Erebus Anomaly has broken the world record for most toes on a cat, officially recognized by Guinness World Records on May 13 with a total of 29 toes, edging out the previous 24 year old record of 28. The Maine Coon, born in March to owners Kendra Vandenbloomer and Hunter Nett of Kaukauna, inherited the trait from his father, who had 24 toes himself, and the extra digits stem from polydactyly, a genetic condition that’s relatively common in the breed. Before claiming the record, Erebus survived a serious health scare as a kitten, an aspiration event that led to a pneumonia diagnosis, time on an oxygen machine, and lungs that appeared abnormally white on scans, a recovery his owner called “definitely miraculous.” X-rays taken to confirm his recovery ended up doubling as documentation for his record application, and his owners, who run a Maine Coon breeding cattery, say Erebus isn’t going anywhere and will stay with them.

• A U.S. military C-17A Globemaster III transport plane landed in Moscow Tuesday morning under mysterious circumstances, according to NBC News. Flight tracking data showed the aircraft departed Joint Base Andrews in Maryland Sunday afternoon, made a stop in Riga, Latvia, then flew on to Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow. It’s not known who was aboard or what the mission was, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no information about the aircraft when asked. U.S. military officials, the White House, the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and the Russian embassy in Washington all did not immediately respond to questions about the flight.

• Nearly two weeks after storms knocked out power across northern Indiana, thousands of residents in Gary remain without electricity, with more than 8,600 customers still waiting as of Monday according to utility provider NIPSCO. The prolonged outage has caused real medical strain, including for 73 year old asthma patient Joetta Walker, who can’t run her nebulizer and has had to rely on an inhaler and candlelight to get through each day. Mayor Eddie Melton said he pressed President Trump directly for help and an executive order, and Trump told him he’d “do all that he can,” while NIPSCO says it expects full restoration by Tuesday. Residents describe spoiled food, sweltering homes, people sleeping in cars with the AC running, and a wave of generator thefts, and several told NBC they suspect their city, which is mostly Black, has been pushed to the back of the repair line.

• The U.S. military carried out its first drug boat strike in more than two months on Sunday, killing two people in the eastern Pacific Ocean and bringing the campaign’s overall death toll to 223 people across 67 strikes since it began last September. U.S. Southern Command said the vessel was a “low profile” craft operating along known narcotrafficking routes, though as with nearly all these strikes, the military offered no evidence the boat was actually carrying drugs. The pause followed the deadly late June earthquakes in Venezuela, and the renewed strike comes as the administration pushes deals with Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras to extend the campaign onto land, though Guatemala has denied agreeing to any such deal. Of 28 known survivors across the campaign, only three have ever been rescued, and the very first strike in September 2025 drew lasting controversy after a follow up attack killed two survivors who’d made it out of the initial strike. Legal scholars and lawmakers have questioned both the legality and effectiveness of the strikes, especially since most fentanyl entering the U.S. is trafficked over land from Mexico rather than by sea.

• Multiple people, including children, died Sunday evening in Billings, Montana, after a gunman opened fire at a home in a family disturbance and then set the residence ablaze, according to authorities. The shooter died of a self inflicted gunshot wound, and interim Yellowstone County Sheriff Kent O’Donnell said “multiple adults and multiple juveniles” were killed, though officials are withholding the number of victims, their names and ages for now while the investigation continues. Officers arrived within about ten minutes of the initial 911 call, heard gunfire from the back of the house, and three minutes later the home was fully engulfed in flames. Billings Fire Chief Matt Hoppel said limited water access and fewer nearby hydrants than ideal slowed the firefighting response as conditions worsened, and both the origin of the fire and a possible motive remain under investigation.

• Icelanders vote Saturday on whether to resume EU membership talks, and pro-EU campaigners are leaning heavily on Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland, which sits less than 300 kilometers from Iceland, to make their case. Former Reykjavík mayor Dagur Eggertsson said the Greenland threat has real weight with voters, and echoed Canadian PM Mark Carney’s argument that “small and middle powers need to stick together” through closer ties with Europe. Polls show the race is essentially tied, with a mid-August Gallup poll giving the “Yes” camp just a 51.5 percent edge, and the debate cuts both ways on the core theme of sovereignty, since “No” campaigners argue EU membership itself would erode Icelandic independence, particularly over fisheries and farming policy that sank an earlier accession bid in 2015. Younger, urban voters citing the geopolitical climate and inflation, Iceland’s annual rate is running at 5.6 percent, nearly double the euro area’s, tend to favor the “Yes” side, while rural voters, especially farmers and fishermen outside Reykjavík, are more likely to vote no and argue existing NATO membership and the 1951 bilateral defense pact with the U.S. are protection enough.

• U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has been invited to an October meeting of EU trade ministers in Dublin, according to two European diplomats who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity, though Greer hasn’t yet confirmed he’ll attend. The October 22-23 gathering, organized by Ireland’s EU Council presidency, would be Greer’s second appearance before EU ministers and comes as Brussels awaits results of a U.S. investigation into excess manufacturing capacity that could clash with last year’s transatlantic trade pact. The meeting follows a familiar pattern, last year both Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick traveled to Brussels seeking commitments that the EU loosen its tech rules, and tensions have only grown since, with Trump threatening an investigation into Brussels’ digital regulations after the EU fined Google under the Digital Markets Act. Most recently, Trump’s envoy to Brussels, Andrew Puzder, criticized the bloc’s climate and sustainability rules, underscoring that even after last year’s tariff truce ended the trade war, Washington is now shifting its pressure campaign toward the EU’s broader regulatory framework rather than tariffs alone.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Also today: Mike Johnson claims the White House calls him “co-president,” the administration revives its $100,000 H-1B visa fee, Army Apache helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate, DHS is reassigning immigration officers to screen South African refugees and hunt for “unlawful” voters, a decorated Iraq War veteran faces deportation, ICE is moving forward with a plan to arm officers with electric shock gloves, a fast-moving wildfire has forced 90,000 people to evacuate near Reno, and the deputy who killed Sonya Massey has died in prison.

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Here’s the news:

Supreme Court Hands Trump Win:

• The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Monday in a case over Trump’s executive order restricting mail in voting, though the ruling doesn’t decide whether the order is actually legal, only that the states challenging it lacked the legal standing to sue at this stage, with the conservative majority writing “time will tell” whether implementation ends up lawful. The three liberal leaning justices dissented, and the decision leaves the door open to further challenges, some of which have already been filed, while it remains unclear how much of the order can actually be implemented before midterm ballots start going out in just weeks. The order, signed in March, directs USPS to deliver mail ballots only to voters on lists the administration creates, and 23 states plus D.C. sued to block it, arguing the Constitution gives states and Congress control over elections and warning of chaotic, partisan implementation.

• A Massachusetts judge had blocked the plan for the midterms and later expanded that block nationwide, a ruling upheld on appeal, which prompted the Justice Department to appeal to the Supreme Court on procedural grounds, arguing the states sued prematurely and citing a separate Washington ruling that let the order proceed. A dozen Republican leaning states backed the administration, arguing states would still get input on final voter lists, while federal attorneys argued the Massachusetts block was preventing the government from finalizing “election integrity” policies ahead of November. This is one of several mail voting fights before the court, and it follows a June ruling where the justices, after full briefing rather than the emergency docket, sided against Trump-backed arguments by allowing states to count ballots arriving after Election Day.

• Trump has long targeted mail voting, claiming without credible evidence that it enabled fraud in his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, despite having used mail voting himself, and has framed the new restrictions as necessary to stop noncitizen voting, which remains extremely rare and already a felony punishable by deportation. Mail voting has actually grown more popular across both parties, accounting for about 30% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election, and a 2025 Brookings Institution study found only about four fraud cases per 10 million mail ballots cast. The ruling adds to a broader pattern of election related fights this cycle, including a related AP story on Trump telling Canada to “fall in line” amid the trade dispute and continued national attention on the administration’s mail voting push heading into a consequential midterm season.

Canada trade war:

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Canada should be ready to cut off electricity to the United States if the trade fight worsens, declaring “everything is on the table,” including shutting off electricity exports and critical mineral shipments from the province. Ford said Ontario powers 1.5 million American homes and businesses and warned “I’ll cut them off, you won’t get a grain of sand out of Ontario,” specifically citing high grade nickel and processed uranium as leverage Canada could use. He argued Trump has “declared war, economic war against his closest friend and ally” and said Reagan, who opposed tariffs, “would be throwing up” if he saw what Trump was doing, adding Trump should “take that picture off the wall.” Ford has used this tactic before, previously slapping a 25% surcharge on power sent to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York, which prompted Trump to threaten doubling steel and aluminum tariffs before both sides backed off.

• The dispute escalated after Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from trade talks Friday, saying the US had proposed “unfair, uneconomic” terms that questioned the reliability of any deal, including a provision restricting Canada’s ability to strike trade agreements with other countries without US consent. The US responded by imposing 50% tariffs Saturday on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, and Carney announced Canada would match those tariffs dollar for dollar starting September 8, covering steel, dairy, appliances, and electronics. Trump then escalated further Monday, threatening a 50% tariff on Canadian vehicles, auto parts, and steel starting January 2027, writing on social media that Canada has been “ripping off the United States” and declaring “we don’t need Canada, they need us.” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer placed blame for the breakdown on Canada, saying negotiators had reached a near final deal Tuesday night but that Canadians “wanted more” in the closing hours, a characterization Carney disputes.

• Carney fired back publicly from Quebec, calling Trump’s latest tariff threat unsurprising and revelatory of US intentions to dismantle Canada’s major industries, including its auto sector, and asking what message it sends to autoworkers in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Alabama who depend on Canada as their largest customer. He said Canada would return to the table only if the US comes back “with the right attitude” and stops treating Canada “like a subsidiary of the United States,” and he separately revealed that a US request to weaken Quebec’s French language labeling requirements was a major, non-negotiable sticking point in the final hours of talks. Vice President JD Vance countered that Canada has one of the “worst trade policies” in the world alongside China, accused Canada of underinvesting in its own military while relying on US protection, and said Canadians came in with “unreasonable last-minute demands.” Ford has broken with Carney on tactics too, revealing he personally opposed the draft deal Carney was considering because it would have put American liquor back on Ontario shelves, saying “I wasn’t going to put the booze back on the shelves.”

• The fallout is already hitting businesses on both sides of the border, with Calgary jewelry maker Cindy Baldassi saying tariffs could wipe out roughly half her business since 75% of her sales go to American buyers, and Ontario furniture maker Michael Saifer admitting he doubts Canada can “win a war” with the US given how badly it needs American buyers. Other Canadian premiers have largely rallied behind Carney, with British Columbia’s David Eby warning that US demands would reduce Canada “to the economic equivalent of the 51st state” and Quebec’s Christine Fréchette warning of job losses, though Alberta’s Danielle Smith urged both sides back to the table. Carney used a Monday appearance in Quebec to announce Canada will spend roughly $8 billion building six new icebreakers domestically and touted recent Canadian trade deals giving businesses access to 1.5 billion people worldwide, framing the pivot as proof Canada has options beyond the US. BBC analysis notes Trump’s new auto and steel tariffs don’t take effect until January 2027, leaving room for further negotiation before the dispute becomes a full blown trade war, with the outcome likely shaped by November’s US midterms.

• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy falsely claimed on Fox News Sunday that Canada “doesn’t have a military” and cited “record-high euthanasia rates” while arguing it would be “foolish” for Canada to think it could win an economic fight with Trump, prompting swift online correction since the Canadian Armed Forces actually has roughly 70,000 regular and 30,000 reserve personnel and has fought alongside the US in conflicts including Afghanistan and patrolled American skies on 9/11; Duffy also claimed the US “provides security” for Canada and predicted Carney would “come to the table very very quickly” once tariffs prove “devastating,” even as Carney has instead vowed to match US tariffs dollar for dollar, said “we’ve recognized from the start that America has changed,” and signaled Canada is doubling down on diversifying trade away from the US toward partners like China rather than yielding to Trump’s demands.

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford says Canada must be ready to match any further escalation from Trump, using its various points of leverage to inflict maximum economic impact on the US, specifically targeting deep red states, and argues Americans are already feeling the pain since Trump’s tariffs function as a tax on US consumers.

• Asked whether Prime Minister Carney told him to tone down his rhetoric after telling Trump to “kiss my ass” earlier in the day, Doug Ford said no, quipping “I have a lot of real estate on my ass, so he has a lot of room to kiss my ass,” making clear he wasn’t backing off his combative stance toward Trump despite sounding calmer than his morning remarks.

Iran:

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday that the U.S. has launched “Operation Economic Outcast,” a new wave of sanctions targeting international entities that facilitate Iranian trade in shipping, oil, crypto, gold, and aviation. He said Trump is personally calling world leaders with “specific requests” to cut trade ties with Tehran, and that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control is simultaneously sanctioning over 60 entities, individuals, and vessels tied to Iran’s nuclear and missile procurement, cyber operations, and oil revenue. Bessent framed the goal as forcing Iran to choose between “complete global isolation and a subsistence economy or a path back to normalcy,” warning that any entity found laundering money for Iran would be cut off from the U.S. dollar system. He offered a “cure period” for nations to end their targeted relations with Tehran but gave no immediate concrete actions, and markets showed little reaction to the announcement.

• The measures are aimed specifically at “secondary” countries whose trade still benefits Iran, and the timing lined up with the United Arab Emirates announcing it would end all trade relations with Iran ahead of Bessent’s remarks. Experts say the campaign’s real success hinges on whether Iran’s most powerful partners, China, India, and Russia, treat the threats as credible, and one foreign policy analyst was skeptical, noting Russia in particular views Iran as an ally it won’t abandon without damaging its own credibility with other allies. Iran’s economy has already been battered by years of sanctions and roughly six months of war with the U.S. and Israel, a conflict Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said has cost the U.S. $37.5 billion directly, with broader estimates reaching $150 billion. Economist Mark Zandi has separately estimated the war has cost the average American household more than $1,200 in higher energy and grocery costs.

• Iranian officials pushed back hard and publicly. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf dismissed the sanctions as bombast that Iran’s trading partners “don’t take into account anywhere,” while Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi suggested the scale of the campaign was itself “an admission of America’s defeat” given past U.S. claims that Iran’s capabilities were already destroyed. Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati said the U.S. had “done everything it could” already and that the new measures introduce no real additional pressure, adding Iran anticipated hard times and had been stockpiling foreign currency since the war began in February. Inside Iran, there were signs of real strain, including a heavy police presence at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, public frustration over the collapsing rial, and long lines at gas stations, with the police chief accusing the U.S. of trying to stoke unrest over economic grievances.

• Iran’s government, meanwhile, appears to have tightened its grip rather than loosened it since the war’s start, with hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei succeeding his father as Supreme Leader after Ali Khamenei’s death early in the conflict and elevating other veteran hardliners from the security and military establishment. That’s a notable contrast to Trump’s early hopes that economic pressure might spark an uprising against Iran’s clerical rulers, especially given that a similar wave of protests in January already left thousands dead and thousands more arrested.

Other news:

• House Speaker Mike Johnson claims White House staffers refer to him as “co-president,” telling NOTUS “some on his staff have said, ‘No, it’s really like you’re co-president’” because he and Trump “speak all the time,” comments that came as he hit the campaign trail ahead of midterms where Republicans are expected to lose ground. Johnson is presiding over a historically thin GOP majority that’s repeatedly defied him, including Republicans joining Democrats in July to try to halt the Iran war, far-right members blocking a defense policy bill in June to push Trump’s voting restrictions package, the House failing to reauthorize a key FISA surveillance program, and a GOP rebellion last year that forced release of the Epstein files. Trump himself has joked he effectively has two jobs, “being president and being speaker,” even as Republicans face a brutal midterm environment with his approval rating at 33%, the lowest of his second term and matching his first term low, driven partly by an unpopular war and high gas prices. One Arizona GOP strategist described the bind bluntly, saying “there is one person in this country who doesn’t care about gas prices... and unfortunately that one person kind of controls our fate,” while breaking with Trump carries its own risk since he’s shown he’ll back primary challengers against Republicans who cross him, as he did in Texas and Louisiana.

• The Trump administration has revived its push for a more than $100,000 H-1B visa fee, with the Department of Homeland Security formally proposing $103,265 for all new H-1B petitions in a Monday Federal Register filing set to publish Tuesday, kicking off a 30 day public comment period. Trump first floated the $100,000 fee via presidential proclamation in September 2025 to prioritize American workers, but it drew lawsuits from labor unions, research universities, and dozens of states warning it would gut hospitals’ already thin staffing and upend a tech industry reliant on foreign born researchers and coders, and a federal judge blocked it in June, ruling it was an unlawful “tax” requiring congressional approval. The White House frames the fee as a way to curb employers undercutting American workers with cheaper foreign labor, and DHS says the revenue would help fund immigration enforcement activities at agencies like CBP and ICE, acknowledging the rule could reduce H-1B filings, including among small employers, but calling that outcome “appropriate.” H-1B visas are capped at 85,000 a year, with nearly 400,000 petitions approved in fiscal 2024 (mostly renewals), and most recipients come from India followed by China; the proposal is part of a broader administration effort to restrict immigration pathways, following a since struck down January pause on immigrant visas from 75 countries.

• The Army’s AH-64 Apache attack helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate this year, with five major “Class A” mishaps since October, including an August crash at Fort Hood, Texas that killed two soldiers, sparked a wildfire, and briefly forced the Army to ground routine Apache training flights before lifting the pause last Wednesday. CNN’s analysis puts fiscal year 2026’s crash rate at roughly 6.24 per 100,000 flying hours, making it the second worst year since the current E-model Apache debuted in 2011, trailing only 2024’s rate of 7.02 per 100,000 hours, when a pilot experience shortage and post-Ukraine invasion training surge were blamed. This year’s causes are murkier: an internal Army safety newsletter attributes just over half of all Apache incidents, including minor ones, to human error, but confirms “a catastrophic transmission failure was noted in one Class A mishap,” and internal safety messages reviewed by CNN describe a widespread transmission problem that can knock out the tail rotor, electrical power, and hydraulics simultaneously, an issue affecting roughly a tenth of the Army’s Apache fleet and still listed as “under investigation” as of mid-July. The Army has declined to say how many crashes are linked to the transmission issue or share findings from the Fort Hood investigation, citing “special controls and release protections,” while manufacturer Boeing says it’s supporting the Army’s probe but referred further questions back to the service.

• Trump has tied his August 10 executive order, which cuts the recommended childhood vaccine schedule from 17 diseases to 11 and splits combination shots like MMR into separate doses, directly to autism prevention, claiming it will show a “very big difference” in rates. Critics, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, health groups, and journalists, have pushed back hard, pointing to decades of research showing no link between vaccines and autism and warning the order could fuel vaccine hesitancy and disease outbreaks instead. The administration frames the change as giving parents more flexibility, while opponents counter that spacing out shots adds real costs and logistical burden for families without any scientific basis behind the autism claim.

• According to The Guardian, all immigration officers in USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, the unit responsible for catching fraud in asylum and other immigration cases, have been reassigned full time to two priorities: screening South African refugees and hunting for alleged “unlawful” voters, according to internal correspondence obtained by the Guardian. The shift means USCIS won’t be able to provide officers to train asylum officers “for the near future,” a disruption that comes as asylum processing has already largely stalled under Trump, though it’s unclear whether routine fraud screening of pending asylum cases has also slowed. The refugee screening priority reflects the administration’s push to sharply cut overall refugee admissions while fast tracking South Africans, mostly Afrikaners the administration claims face “white genocide,” a claim South Africa’s government rejects; state department data shows 10,255 of the 10,258 refugees admitted between October 2025 and July 2026 were from South Africa. The “unlawful voter” screening ties into a broader crackdown that’s already led USCIS to bar naturalization for green card holders who voted or registered and pursue deportation against them, even though confirmed noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, with one February 2026 review finding only about 35 cases nationwide out of 154 million votes cast in 2024, a stark contrast to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s since deflated claim of “over 250,000 potential” illegal noncitizen registrations across four states.

• Benito Miranda Hernandez, a green card holder who came to the US from Mexico as a child and later served three Navy tours during the Iraq War, is now detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center facing possible deportation after federal immigration agents took him into custody in June, just as he was completing a California reentry program. His mother, Maria Miranda, says he returned from deployment fundamentally changed and unrecognizable, and while he went on to serve years in prison on felony drug and weapons convictions in Virginia and California, advocates including deported-then-reinstated Army veteran Hector Barajas argue his PTSD and legal troubles reflect a systemic failure to care for traumatized veterans rather than grounds for removal, noting research showing about a third of veterans have an arrest history compared to one in five civilians. Hernandez had his green card reinstated in November and was living in a halfway house working and taking classes with an ankle monitor when agents detained him, a reversal his mother calls devastating, saying “all my dreams of being with my son have ended.” ICE told Congress it arrested 125 former service members in Trump’s first year back in office, about a third with active warrants, and did not respond to NBC’s request for comment on Hernandez’s case, while advocate James L. Smith II criticized lawmakers who publicly praise the military while allowing foreign-born veterans to be deported, saying “we’re the pit bulls in the front yard in the global neighborhood.”

• The Department of Homeland Security has published plans to spend up to $20 million outfitting ICE officers with electric shock gloves by March, alarming civil liberties advocates who point to the device’s link to serious injuries and at least one death, including a Kentucky man who suffered cardiac arrest after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and 13 times with a Taser during a 2024 arrest. ACLU deputy director Sarah Mehta warned ICE is “putting these in the hands of an agency that has dropped its hiring standards, its training, its background requirements,” saying there are “no circumstances where we think their use is appropriate,” and raised particular concern about their potential use in facilities like the Fort Bliss detention camp where oversight is already limited. The gloves, branded G.L.O.V.E. and made by Compliant Technologies, deliver up to 380 volts through direct skin contact and are already used by roughly 50 police departments in 20 states, including in some public schools, where Omaha recently discontinued their use in its largest school district after deploying them on a middle schooler. DHS defended the purchase, saying it’s “constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field” and that any technology used is reviewed against applicable law enforcement standards, while a lawyer representing one plaintiff shocked by the gloves in a Kentucky jail noted that only a small fraction of the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide have adopted them, raising questions about feasibility and training risk if ICE rolls them out broadly.

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• Authorities have ordered roughly 90,000 residents of Reno, Nevada, and the adjacent North Valley to evacuate as the wind driven Hawk fire, confirmed human caused and still under investigation, has burned more than 15,000 acres with zero containment as of Monday morning. At least six people have been injured, including three first responders, and several mountaintop homes have been destroyed, while nearly 10,000 homes and businesses lost power and portions of US Route 395 were closed. Officials describe the fire as extremely fast moving and unpredictable, with Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam saying it jumped over fire trucks and shifted directions with the wind, and Governor Joe Lombardo has declared a state of emergency and urged residents to evacuate immediately when ordered. Roughly 800 personnel, including crews from Australia and New Zealand, are fighting the blaze, and this is the third major human caused wildfire near Reno in two weeks alone, part of a brutal US wildfire season that has already burned more than 7.8 million acres nationwide this year, the most in a decade for this point in the season.

• Sean Grayson, the former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy convicted of second degree murder for fatally shooting Sonya Massey in her Springfield, Illinois home in July 2024, has died at 32, six months into his 20 year sentence, after being diagnosed with stage three colon cancer in 2023 that had spread to his liver and lungs. Bodyworn camera footage showed Grayson, who is white, fatally shoot Massey, a Black woman and unarmed single mother, after she picked up a pot of boiling water and said “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” which he claimed to perceive as a threat; she apologized and dropped to the floor before he fired three times, striking her in the face, and declined to offer her medical care afterward. The case sparked protests over systemic racism and a Justice Department review, leading Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to sign the Sonya Massey Act requiring stricter law enforcement background checks and Sangamon County to agree to a $10 million settlement with Massey’s family. Grayson had apologized at his January sentencing but later sought early medical release by claiming Massey had “attacked” him with boiling water, a petition the Illinois prisoner review board denied in July and that Sangamon County’s state’s attorney called “a miscarriage of justice,” with Massey family attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci saying “no one is above accountability, and a badge does not provide an early way out.”

• Over a dozen major US companies, including Airbnb, DoorDash, Target, and Zillow, that signed a 2021 letter urging Congress to strengthen the Voting Rights Act are now donating to 527 political groups like the Republican Attorneys General Association that are actively working to undermine it, according to campaign finance watchdog Center for Political Accountability. Google’s Raga contributions alone jumped from $50,000 in 2022 to $325,000 this cycle, and Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, which had pulled back donations after January 6, have all resumed giving despite Raga having sent robocalls promoting the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the insurrection. These state-level 527 groups fly under the radar compared to federal PACs but wield outsized influence, since state attorneys general elected with their help have driven major Supreme Court wins including overturning Roe v. Wade and, this year, gutting key parts of the Voting Rights Act itself in Louisiana v. Callais. CPA’s Bruce Freed argues these donations directly contradict the values companies claim to uphold, warning “there has to be an alignment between company policies, where their contributions go and what they enable,” while researchers note Republican state groups are currently outraising Democratic counterparts $240 million to $197 million this cycle, with corporate money making up roughly a third of both sides’ fundraising.

• San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and possessing criminal tools after being arrested early Sunday at a trailer park in East Palestine, Ohio, with the original prostitution charge amended down to disorderly conduct; court documents cited by the New York Post say York responded to an online ad and “arranged to have sexual activity with a female in exchange for $140.” He was sentenced to a day in jail on each count, served concurrently, fined $1,150 total, ordered to complete an online course, and was released Monday morning, with the East Palestine Police Department and the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force both involved in the arrest. York, 46, grew up in nearby Youngstown and still keeps a home in the area; he’s the nephew of former 49ers majority owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., took over as team CEO in 2008, and became principal owner in 2024 after acquiring his mother’s shares, a tenure during which the 49ers have reached three Super Bowls without winning any. He also holds ownership stakes in the Premier League’s Leeds United and Scotland’s Rangers through 49ers Enterprises.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Also today: an arbitrator ordered the Washington Post to reinstate a columnist it fired over her comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the family of a USS Abraham Lincoln sailor says his father was detained by Border Patrol while he’s deployed overseas, RFK Jr.’s frustration with Trump helped trigger a sweeping vaccine order, the data center backlash is spreading across party lines, an 8-year-old Louisiana girl has died from a brain-eating amoeba, and California is demanding Paramount sell off channels before it’ll approve the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

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Here’s the news:

White House Staff Exodus:

• Trump is bracing for more departures from his top team as the midterms approach, with a former administration insider telling Politico that staffers are “seeing the writing on the wall” and quietly weighing their next moves. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt already announced her resignation this month, and she’s since been joined by Director of Legislative Affairs James Braid, White House Counsel Dave Warrington, and U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, all confirming they’re heading for the exit. The exodus is driven by staffers’ expectations that Republicans may lose the House and possibly the Senate, which would stall Trump’s agenda and open the administration up to congressional investigations, compounded by the unpopular war with Iran and an approaching GOP presidential primary. One unnamed source described the calculus bluntly, weighing the daily political battles against post-administration business prospects and whether staying is worth the private-sector cost. A person close to the administration added that anyone wanting a “decent job downtown” needs to leave now, while relationships built during the majority still have trading value. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pushed back, insisting Trump’s movement is “bigger than any one staff member” and that his agenda will continue unabated.

• This isn’t the first wave of turnover this term — Trump had relatively few departures in 2025 beyond national security adviser Mike Waltz’s ouster over the “Signalgate” scandal, but the pace picked up sharply this year. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was dismissed in March, quickly followed by the departures of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Trump has also publicly raged at U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, suggesting she could be next, and vowed to “hunt down” whoever leaked details of an alleged Camp David confrontation with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over depleted munitions stockpiles. No successors have yet been named for any of the four most recent departures. Leavitt is seen as the hardest to replace, since she gave the press secretary role a stability Trump struggled to achieve in his first term, and he’s praised her combative style with reporters in the past, once joking about her “lips” moving “like she’s a machine gun.”

• Trump himself addressed the press secretary vacancy over the weekend, claiming he’s received numerous applications for the job because Leavitt had made the role “glamorous.” The comment came even as the broader staffing picture points to genuine uncertainty inside the West Wing rather than eagerness to join it, given how many senior officials are actively planning their exits. The contrast between Trump’s public framing and the private assessments described anonymously to Politico underscores a widening gap between the administration’s messaging and internal morale. With the midterms still ahead and no clear successors named for Leavitt, Braid, Warrington, or Martin, the coming months could bring further reshuffling as remaining staffers reassess their positions. Whether this turnover accelerates or stabilizes will likely hinge on how the midterm elections actually play out for Republicans in the House and Senate.

Iran’s “Economic D-Day”

• Iran’s rial has dropped to a record low of more than two million to the US dollar on the open market, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to unveil what he’s calling “economic D-Day,” a sanctions push he described in a Financial Times op-ed as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.” Iran’s Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati tried to calm businesses Monday, promising $20 billion in foreign currency for the industrial sector by year’s end and guaranteeing supplies for essential goods and medicine. A former Treasury official told CNN the US is more likely to enforce existing sanctions more strictly than expand them, targeting Iran’s oil ecosystem since Beijing buys roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports, though China doesn’t acknowledge this in its own customs data. The International Monetary Fund expects Iran’s economy to contract more than 5% this year, with food inflation exceeding 100% and unemployment rising. Analysts note that without China’s cooperation, which is unlikely given strained leverage and Xi Jinping’s planned US visit next month, the sanctions push is unlikely to force Iran’s capitulation, and one expert pointed out the US has sanctioned Iran continuously since 1979 without ever achieving that outcome.

• Tensions over the Strait of Hormuz continue escalating, with Iran’s state-controlled Persian Gulf Strait Authority warning that ships violating transit rules could face detention or confiscation, and Iran’s security chief vowing to “neutralize the economic war” while threatening to halt oil flow through the strait entirely. A tanker, likely the Saudi-flagged AMZAN, was struck by an unknown projectile 63 nautical miles west of Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, catching fire on its main deck; all crew were reported safe, and a maritime intelligence group assessed Houthi involvement as the leading explanation. Oman’s Foreign Minister will visit Tehran Tuesday to discuss the strait and other regional developments, continuing talks between the two countries on new shipping routes through the waterway, while Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is also visiting Iran for talks with senior officials. Iran separately warned NATO member Bulgaria against allowing its territory to be used for US or Israeli military action, with a foreign ministry spokesperson saying Iran reserves the right to strike the source of any attack, after refueling aircraft reportedly left Bulgarian territory. The spokesperson added that Iran has been “playing chess for a long time” and has “also learned to play poker,” a swipe back at Trump’s earlier comment that Iranians “are good poker players, but they’re dying.”

• There appear to be growing divisions within Iran’s leadership over how to handle the conflict, with President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledging the country “cannot continue with war forever” even as other officials continue rejecting dialogue with Washington. Pezeshkian said Iran is “apologetic that these problems exist” as the country endures what he called a “full-scale economic, military, and security war,” an unusually candid admission given the toll of sanctions and the six-month military conflict with the US and Israel. Inside the US, the economic fallout is also being felt, with gas prices remaining elevated and a Federal Reserve official saying Sunday that the US inflation target may stay out of reach until the war ends. The current sanctions regime traces back to 1979, when the US embassy in Tehran was seized after the Iranian Revolution, and a Congressional Research Service report calls US sanctions on Iran “arguably the most extensive and comprehensive” the country maintains against any nation, though exceptions exist for food, medicine, and telecommunications equipment meant to help Iranians bypass government internet blackouts. Despite the pressure, Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi argued that while past sanctions rounds have devastated Iran’s economy, none have led to actual capitulation or surrender.

White House bunker:

• Former officials say Trump’s security justification for his $600 million White House ballroom is undercut by the fact that a secret nuclear-proof bunker already exists beneath the complex, according to a Washington Post report citing three ex-officials. That bunker was commissioned after 9/11, completed under Barack Obama, sits 60 feet below street level, and is reachable by private elevator, stocked with a month’s supply of food and its own air system, and built to withstand threats including a weapon of mass destruction. It succeeded the older Presidential Emergency Operations Center built for FDR during World War II, which sheltered Laura Bush and Dick Cheney on 9/11. The former officials note the security rationale being used for the ballroom now echoes the reasoning used to justify the bunker during the War on Terror, raising doubts about whether the new project is actually necessary. White House spokesman Davis Ingle disputed this, tying the “East Wing Modernization Project” to security needs and pointing to a foiled attack on a UFC event at the White House as proof of the need for drone-proof structures and drone ports.

• The ballroom’s fate currently rests with the Supreme Court, after Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order Friday allowing construction to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal arguing the project needs congressional approval to proceed. Both a district judge and a federal appeals panel have already ruled that majority support from the House and Senate is required for the ballroom, though they carved out an exception for the underground military complex specifically. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll have separately defended that subterranean complex as essential for “continuity-of-government” and uninterrupted command during an attack or crisis. Lawyers for the White House told the Supreme Court the ballroom project is 65 percent complete, with a 250-person crew working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

• Trump has aggressively defended the project, calling opposition to it “disloyal” and attacking the National Trust for Historic Preservation for suing to block it, arguing the lawsuit risks exposing sensitive military details. He complained in the Oval Office last week that the suit forced information about “military things in this ballroom” into public view that ideally would have stayed hidden. The dispute pits the administration’s continuity-of-government rationale against critics who argue the existing bunker already fulfills that role, making the ballroom’s security framing look more like justification after the fact. The Independent said it reached out to the White House for further comment on the bunker report but has not yet received a response noted in the piece.

Other news:

• An arbitrator ruled that The Washington Post must reinstate opinion columnist Karen Attiah with back pay, finding the paper “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire her and violated its labor agreement when it terminated her last September over Bluesky posts about “white men who espouse hatred and violence” following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The Post had argued the posts harmed the organization’s integrity and violated its social media civility standards, while Attiah maintained she was doing her job as an opinion writer commenting on the discourse around political violence. Testimony revealed that opinion editor Adam O’Neal flagged the posts as “beyond the pale” to HR chief Wayne Connell, and the two then met with then-CEO Will Lewis before deciding to fire her. Attiah, represented by Democracy Defenders Action and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said the ruling confirms it was wrongful termination and hopes it sends a message that “freedom of expression is always worth fighting for,” while a Post spokeswoman said only that the company respects the arbitration process. The case unfolded against the backdrop of owner Jeff Bezos’s broader push to reorient the Post’s opinion section toward “personal liberties and free markets,” a shift that had already prompted subscriber backlash and accusations that Bezos was courting favor with the Trump administration.

• Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from Sunday night's Indiana-Chicago WNBA game after Sky guard Natasha Cloud confronted him near the baseline, where he was wearing a shirt reading "WOMAN noun. adult human female."

• Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a Nicaraguan man detained by Border Patrol during a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida, is the father of Joshua Aviles, a sailor who has been deployed for over nine months aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East; Joshua learned of his father’s arrest by phone on Saturday and wrote on Facebook that he’s “fighting for a country that has given me everything” while his dad, who held a driver’s license, Social Security card, and work authorization, sits in ICE custody. The family says they’ve been going through the legal process to get Aviles Roa a green card and are still waiting on approval, with Joshua writing it’s been hard to keep working 12-plus-hour days not knowing how his father is being treated. DHS confirmed Aviles Roa entered the country unlawfully and will stay in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, stating “having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.” The story lands alongside broader scrutiny of the USS Abraham Lincoln’s deployment, which just ended a record-breaking 200-plus consecutive days at sea without port access, and amid ongoing criticism from civil rights advocates that the administration’s immigration enforcement raises due-process and racial-profiling concerns.

• An executive order signed this month scaling back the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule was driven largely by Trump’s frustration that his administration wasn’t moving fast enough on what he believes is a likely contributor to autism, according to five current and former officials who say the order alone doesn’t fundamentally change immunization policy or satisfy either Trump or Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” base. The directive cuts the recommended childhood immunization schedule from 17 shots to 11, calls for splitting the combined MMR vaccine into three separate doses (something manufacturers say could take years), and directs the Justice Department to challenge state school vaccination mandates; a similar Kennedy-led effort in January was blocked by a federal judge in March, and the administration is still bound by that ruling while it appeals. Kennedy’s own promised timelines for autism answers, first September 2025, then pushed to March 2026, repeatedly slipped, and tensions boiled over at a televised July 31 cabinet meeting when Trump pressed Kennedy on autism research progress and got only “we will have an answer for you,” which officials say signaled to aides that the executive order needed to be rushed out.

• The tech industry is increasingly alarmed that the swift, bipartisan backlash against data centers isn’t a fleeting election-year issue but a lasting political crisis stretching into 2028, with politicians across the spectrum, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, embracing curbs like moratoriums and local approval requirements even after previously courting the projects as economic wins. States have moved on the financial front too, with eight enacting legislation this year rolling back data center tax subsidies and 17 more considering it, while public frustration centers on fears of higher power bills, strained water supplies, and landscape damage. Some industry insiders describe this as an “oh shit” moment, while others dismiss it as a temporary storm, though national party organizations, including the NRSC in a memo about Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, are now treating it as a real electoral threat. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to get ahead of the backlash with a $1 billion community investment fund, though critics question whether one company’s PR effort can fix what’s increasingly seen as an industry-wide reputational problem, and even an OpenAI executive admitted “we have real work to do” to win over communities living near the facilities.

• 8-year-old Lillian Smart of Ruston, Louisiana died from primary amebic meningoencephalitis after likely contracting the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri while swimming at Lake Claiborne, with her family writing on Facebook that “the injuries to her brain were too severe for her little body to recover from”; she died just a day after her birthday, and the Louisiana Department of Health noted the infection is nearly always fatal but extremely rare, with only 180 U.S. cases and three in Louisiana recorded between 1937 and 2025.

• California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to require Paramount to sell off select cable channels and keep its film studio operationally distinct from Warner Bros. Discovery before he’ll approve the $110 billion merger, with Paramount and California officials meeting Monday to try to settle the state’s antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in Oakland federal court on July 13 alongside 11 other states over concerns the deal would hurt competition, raise consumer prices, and cut industry wages. Paramount CEO David Ellison has pledged the combined studios would release 30 movies a year to counter those concerns, though regulators call that promise legally unenforceable, and the company is separately asking a judge to force the suing states to post a $1.88 billion bond, since delays are costing it a contractual $7 million daily penalty plus mounting “ticking fees” to Warner Bros. shareholders that could reach $1.7 billion by June. Bonta fired back sharply at the bond request, accusing Paramount of trying to “blackmail” the states into backing down from a timeline the company itself agreed to. Paramount notes regulators in at least 68 countries have already cleared the deal, leaving the state lawsuits as the last obstacle, with its DOJ clearance set to expire February 19 and a trial over the states’ challenge scheduled to begin in March.

• Tropical Storm Moke was passing south of Hawaii’s Big Island on Sunday, expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain (15 in isolated spots) on communities still recovering from Hurricane Lala, which caused two deaths, flooding, mudslides, and power outages (over 6,500 customers still without power) after dropping a record 43.54 inches of rain on the island’s northeast coast. Hawaii County Mayor Kimo Alameda urged residents to stay off roads and shelter in place, with county shelters open, while Gov. Josh Green had already told residents to restock food and medicine ahead of the storm. Separately, Tropical Storm Iselle formed in the eastern Pacific far from Mexico’s coast and could strengthen into a hurricane within a day or two, though it poses no immediate coastal threat.

• Former Cirque du Soleil acrobat Mariia Konfektova is suing the circus for $16.75 million after falling 15 feet during a Kooza performance in Portland, Oregon in August 2024, which she says left her with a concussion, double vision, and fractures to at least seven facial bones plus her skull, wrist, and lower back. Her lawsuit claims Cirque du Soleil failed to install adequate safety mats, nets, or fall protection, and that she had previously raised concerns about the rigging winch and the weight of the hoop she was using. Oregon OSHA fined the circus $8,070 for safety violations, though it’s appealing at least one citation, and the report noted the floor material had “some ability to reduce the severity of the impact.” Cirque du Soleil said at the time it followed emergency procedures and prioritized her health and safety; Konfektova alleges she was later fired over the company’s stated concerns about her mental fitness to work, and she’s said ongoing medical, insurance, legal, and immigration complications have left her unable to fully return to her career while awaiting further legal processes.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Some of you have also reached out about my TikTok account saying you cannot see some videos, well, I now have a strike on the account and it is one strike away from completely banning me.

This Sunday evening, I want to take a moment to speak directly to you.

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Mainstream media keeps catering to the powerful and the profitable. We chose something different. We chose each other, we chose honesty, and we chose to tell the stories that need telling, no matter how uncomfortable they are for the people in power.

Here’s the news:

Election Emergency Declaration:

• Trump is building the case for a national emergency declaration on elections before November, and the signs point to it happening soon. He used a primetime address in July to repeat the false claim that 2020 was stolen, and former strategist Steve Bannon predicted right after that Trump would declare a national security emergency to “protect” elections, telling followers to “block the last week of August out.” Asked point blank whether he’d declare such an emergency, Trump refused to rule it out, saying only “stranger things have happened.” Aria Branch of the Elias Law Group, who has already sued to block earlier Trump election orders, says the administration is actively “searching for” a legal basis that she argues simply doesn’t exist. Democratic lawmakers and voter groups have taken the threat seriously enough to run tabletop exercises for scenarios like ICE agents stationed at polling places.

• The evidence that this is coming is the documents themselves. A White House task force pulling from the ODNI, NSA, CIA and DHS has been declassifying “election integrity” files at an accelerating pace, seemingly to build a paper trail for the emergency to come. One release recycled an intelligence assessment that actually found no evidence China altered the 2020 vote, but officials pivoted to seize on a New Jersey software error that let 6,600 noncitizens register (fewer than 400 voted) to push broader noncitizen voting fraud claims. The Census Bureau then claimed 24,000 noncitizens voted in 2020 without disclosing its methodology, a number election expert David Becker said “fails the laugh test,” and DHS separately claimed 278,000 noncitizens are registered nationally using a tool already reported to be inaccurate. Each release reads less like an investigation and more like a predicate being built for the announcement Bannon promised.

• When directly asked if an emergency declaration was coming, the White House wouldn’t say no, instead pointing to the “Save America Act,” which would let DHS purge state voter rolls, restrict mail-in voting, and require proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote. Former White House attorney Ty Cobb, now a Trump critic, said ICE presence at polls is “a virtual certainty” once this happens, and raised the possibility of National Guard deployment too, calling it an echo of Trump’s failed 2020 push to seize voting machines. Branch says the constant rhetoric is already functioning as intimidation on its own, even before any formal declaration. She’s counting on the Constitution’s clear limits on executive control over elections to give her side ground to fight it in court once it comes. The pattern across all of it points the same direction: this isn’t hypothetical anymore, it’s a matter of timing.

• The U.S. Postal Service published a final 95-page rule late Friday tightening mail-in voting requirements ahead of November’s midterms, timed so it can take immediate effect if courts lift the injunction currently blocking it, after U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the changes that stem from Trump’s March executive order pushing his long-standing false claims about 2020 voter fraud. The rule would require states to hand USPS lists of voters who received mailed ballots along with unique barcodes on outbound and return ballot envelopes, and USPS would refuse to deliver ballots in states that don’t comply, though it says it won’t inspect ballot contents or track party affiliation. Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias accused USPS of having “caved to Trump,” while many states and congressional Democrats argue the agency lacks the authority to make such a drastic change this close to an election. USPS says the rule “will help determine adherence to federal law and facilitate law enforcement efforts,” and it plans to formally publish the rule August 26 while taking no action to implement it unless the injunction is lifted.

• Judge Indira Talwani sharply criticized the Trump administration and USPS for publishing their final rule restricting mail-in ballots late Friday night even though two separate court orders already block it from taking effect, warning that the move risks sowing confusion among states and voters this close to the midterms. She indicated the timing and publication itself, not just the underlying rule, may be grounds to enjoin USPS further, treating the late-Friday release as an end run around her existing injunction rather than the neutral contingency planning the agency claimed it was.

Trump’s health concerns:

• Doctors are raising concerns about President Trump’s weight, which has climbed to about 238 pounds as of a May medical report, up from 215 pounds listed at his August 2023 Georgia booking and just 1.6 pounds shy of the “obese” classification he carried in 2019 and 2020 given his 6-foot-3 height. The administration says he gained 14 pounds between his two most recent annual checkups, and he has visibly appeared heavier in photos than during his 2023-2024 campaign. Obesity specialist Scott Kahan of George Washington University argued that “addressing obesity to protect the president’s health should be a priority similar to ensuring Secret Service protections for his life,” while former FDA commissioner David Kessler warned about visceral fat around the liver, pancreas, and heart contributing to premature death. The White House did not directly answer questions about Trump’s weight, instead pointing to his energy, cognitive fitness, and packed schedule as evidence of healthy aging, and it denied he has ever taken a GLP-1 drug despite renewed scrutiny after Stat News reported the administration helped an unnamed 79-year-old patient get expedited access to the powerful weight-loss drug retatrutide.

• Trump’s weight has been a recurring storyline across his political career, from his children telling Barbara Walters in 2015 that they wished he ate healthier, to a 2016 appearance on “The Dr. Oz Show” where he weighed 236 pounds and told host Mehmet Oz, now his Medicare and Medicaid chief, that he wanted to drop 15 to 20 pounds. He grew heavier during his first term regardless, reaching 239 pounds in January 2018 and 244 pounds by June 2020 under successive White House physicians Ronny Jackson and Sean Conley, the latter of whom found him technically obese at 243 pounds in February 2019. That same year, Trump contracted a serious case of COVID-19, a disease researchers have linked to worse outcomes in obese patients, and he credited an experimental Regeneron antibody treatment with helping save his life. He appeared notably thinner when announcing his 2024 campaign, with a doctor’s note crediting “an improved diet and continued daily physical activity,” though his weight has since crept back up in his second term.

• Trump has often turned his own and others’ weight into a political weapon, mocking Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former adviser Chris Christie while insisting at last month’s White House correspondents’ dinner that he’d “never call anybody fat.” He’s defended his own diet publicly, joking that avoiding bulletproof vests keeps him from looking heavier and suggesting in the Oval Office that “maybe junk food is good and the other food is no good,” since many health-conscious people he’s known have died anyway. Outside physicians pushed back on that framing, though some cautioned against reading too much into weight alone for older patients; obesity specialist Gitanjali Srivastava said that for a patient in their 70s or 80s, “it’s less about a number, but more about what is the percent body fat” and overall function. The White House responded to the broader scrutiny by contrasting Trump’s “sharpness, unmatched energy” with what it called the prior administration’s cover-up of Joe Biden’s decline, while Trump himself has joked about not wanting to surpass William Howard Taft, the heaviest president in history at over 300 pounds, saying “I have to be careful because I don’t want to supersede his record.”

Other News:

• Trump lashed out at Canada for the first time since trade talks collapsed Friday, writing “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” and “No more!!!” after accusing Canadian farmers of hitting the US with tariffs for years. His comments followed the US imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods on Saturday, covering everything from hockey sticks to tongue depressors, with Mark Carney vowing to match them “dollar for dollar.” Carney told reporters in Ottawa that Canada is “at war” over trade, saying “you’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” and that Trump had miscalculated by escalating the fight. US trade representative Jamieson Greer countered that the US was simply responding to a year of Canadian retaliatory measures, telling Fox & Friends Weekend the goal is “protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains.” The breakdown has also thrown the future of the USMCA into question, since Trump refused to renew the deal this summer despite Canada and Mexico requesting a 16-year extension, with Carney calling the collapse “certainly not good news” for the pact.

• NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Senator Tim Scott on Meet the Press over whether Susan Collins is right that Trump’s Canada tariffs will raise costs for American families, and when Scott tried to pivot back to blaming Joe Biden, Welker cut him off, pointing out Trump has now been in office two years and inflation has actually ticked up on his watch, from 3% when Biden left to 3.4% now. Scott tried again to invoke Biden, prompting Welker to flatly tell him, “The Biden administration is over,” refusing to let him deflect from a question about current policy. The exchange captures a broader pattern of Republicans still reaching for the Biden blame two years into Trump’s term, even as reporters increasingly push back on that framing with the actual numbers.

• Education Secretary Linda McMahon said children should be tracked toward trades like plumbing and electrical work as early as elementary school. The push comes as the administration touts skilled-trade demand tied to the AI data center boom, and it’s already launched Pell Grant funding for short-term vocational courses and pressured Brown University to invest $50 million in Rhode Island workforce programs as part of a discrimination settlement. Critics note the same administration has simultaneously slashed billions in education and research funding, including canceling more than 1,000 University of California research grants worth nearly $2 billion after officials admitted to searching for keywords like “diversity” and “vaccine hesitancy” to flag programs for cuts. It has also directed immigration enforcement at college campuses, targeting green card holders over political speech and pushing schools to cooperate with Homeland Security on raids. And on the practical side, the manufacturing jobs this trades push is supposedly feeding into haven’t materialized, with the US actually shedding about 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump took office, which some economists tie to the tariff agenda and instability from the Iran war.

• Democrats and other Trump critics reacted with disbelief to a New York Times report that House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met privately with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, to discuss possible areas of collaboration, a meeting that comes just months before midterms where Democrats are favored to retake the House and make Jeffries speaker. Critics point to longstanding conflict-of-interest concerns about Kushner continuing to profit off foreign nations while working on Ukraine, Iran and Gaza policy, with House Judiciary Democrats already investigating his private business raising money from Gulf states while he served as a special envoy. Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide and Pod Save America co-host, said Kushner “has no actual government job, he just uses his family connections to get money from gulf autocrats,” and that the only appropriate Jeffries approach is “demands for documents and subpoenas.” Senator Chris Van Hollen was more measured on Meet the Press, saying he’s fine with people meeting but that “it’s another thing to see something real come out of that,” while former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger simply posted “Make this make sense” tagging Jeffries. Jeffries himself didn’t address the meeting directly, instead issuing a statement accusing Republicans of a “my-way-or-the-highway approach” and vowing Democrats will keep fighting for “an affordable America.”

• A viral video out of Lake Worth, Florida shows a Border Patrol agent approaching a U.S. citizen at a gas station, demanding his ID, and when the man asks why, the agent replies, “Because you’re an immigrant.” Before the man is even identified, agents grab his hands and cuff him while bystanders can be heard questioning how officers can arrest someone whose identity they haven’t confirmed. The incident raises a direct Fourth Amendment problem: the Supreme Court has held that roving Border Patrol agents need reasonable suspicion based on specific circumstances to stop and question someone about immigration status, and apparent ethnicity alone isn’t enough. That leaves the obvious question of what legal basis existed here beyond the agent’s own stated reasoning, since being told “because you’re an immigrant” is not a lawful basis for a stop. The episode lands as one more example of citizens being forced to prove their status to federal agents on the spot, with little clarity on what accountability follows when that goes wrong.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the threat of new US sanctions as a sign of desperation, saying Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s promised “toughest sanctions in history,” set to be detailed at a Monday press conference, amount to “repetitive scenarios” that show Washington has run out of ideas after nearly six months of war. Despite Iran’s economy already reeling from sanctions and repeated airstrikes since the US and Israel launched attacks on February 28th, Tehran remains defiant, having effectively blockaded the Strait of Hormuz to unauthorized oil tankers and driven up global oil prices in the process, with Araghchi insisting “all of their actions... have failed, and this new issue of theirs will fail as well.” Trump has warned of economic consequences for any country offering Iran “a lifeline,” pressuring China, which buys more than 80% of Iran’s exported oil, even as Beijing calls for diplomacy instead. Amid the standoff, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir is set to visit Tehran Monday as part of Islamabad’s mediation efforts, while Iranian Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf claimed Tehran has received “numerous messages” from neighboring countries about building new regional security and economic arrangements independent of US influence. Iran has yet to see Trump achieve his stated war goals, including dismantling its nuclear program (whose status remains unclear since UN inspectors were barred in 2025) or triggering an uprising against its clerical government, and while President Masoud Pezeshkian has also called for ending the war diplomatically, he framed it as negotiating from a position of strength, saying “it would be better to end the war today, when we are powerful and have dignity.”

• New York police are investigating a video posted to TikTok on Friday showing three people in overalls and headlamps emerging from a manhole at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue near Penn Station and Madison Square Garden after 4 a.m. on August 18th, though no arrests have been made and the investigation remains ongoing. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection inspected the sewers in the area and found no infrastructure damage, while stressing that entering sewers is “both illegal and extremely dangerous” due to hazards like noxious gases, unstable surfaces, and flooding risks. It’s unclear whether this incident connects to a similar wave of videos that circulated in May, when groups of men, similarly dressed in protective clothing and headlamps, were seen emerging from manholes in Brooklyn, including one instance where seven men climbed out and changed clothes near active traffic, with at least three carrying shovels. A senior law enforcement official said at the time that the leading theory was the individuals were scavenging for valuables, and police said NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit searched the sewer system afterward and found nothing nefarious left behind.

• Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he’s “kicking the tires” on a potential 2028 presidential run, saying Democrats haven’t answered the call on building “an economy that really does work for everybody, especially working people,” and that his focus is “not on majority leader” of the Senate but “on what Democrats stand for going into 2028.” Pressed on whether he’s seriously considering a campaign, he noted he’s already visited early nominating states New Hampshire and Iowa, and said Democrats need to be clear “not just what we’re against, but what we’re for,” adding “I very much want to be part of that debate, and I am kicking the tires, testing the waters.” He joins a crowded and still wide-open field of potential 2028 Democratic contenders that includes Gavin Newsom, Andy Beshear, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, and Kamala Harris, none of whom has emerged as a clear frontrunner. On the party’s leftward flank, Van Hollen said democratic socialists “do” have a place in the party “as part of the debate,” pointing to recent DSA-aligned primary winners like Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon, though he said some DSA platform planks, like replacing the president and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress or abolishing the Senate, go too far even for many candidates across the Democratic spectrum, himself included.

• The fast-growing Hawk Fire spread from the Sierra foothills toward central Reno early Sunday, expanding past 10,500 acres and prompting evacuation orders for nearly 14,000 homes, with the “GO NOW” zone reaching the edge of the University of Nevada campus. Governor Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency in Washoe County and mobilized the Nevada National Guard, deploying two helicopter crews for aerial firefighting and 60 troops to help secure evacuated neighborhoods, while roughly 400 personnel from local, state, and federal agencies are fighting the blaze on the ground and in the air. Strong, gusty winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation are driving the fire’s rapid growth, according to Truckee Meadows Fire & Rescue, and nearly 10,000 homes and businesses were without power Sunday as portions of US Route 395 were closed. Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve urged residents not to delay evacuating, warning “structures have already been burned in this fire and your life is more important than a building,” while officials are also monitoring a county detention facility near the evacuation zone in case it needs to be cleared. The fire follows an earlier wave of blazes north of Reno this month that displaced more than 13,000 residents, and while the university and Reno-Tahoe International Airport remained outside the evacuation zone as of Sunday morning, the smaller Reno-Stead Airport was closed to general aviation traffic due to the fire.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said holding elections during active fighting with Russia would “destroy” Ukraine by splitting the country, his first public comments on the issue since ousted former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for a wartime poll following his surprise dismissal, which sparked protests that later cooled once demonstrators balked at Fedorov’s election demand. Zelenskyy, whose approval rating has held steady around 60%, cited an August 5th poll showing 57% of Ukrainians want elections only after fighting ends, and noted wartime elections are barred by Ukrainian law given security risks and the millions of citizens abroad, under occupation, or serving at the front. He publicly detailed his rift with Fedorov for the first time, saying he offered him four options to stay in government that Fedorov rejected, and linked the fallout partly to a failed effort to secure SpaceX’s approval for Ukraine to use Starlink over Russian territory for deep strikes, after Trump accused Zelenskyy of misleading him when Elon Musk denied having approved it. On the battlefield, Zelenskyy struck an optimistic tone, saying Ukraine has nearly retaken all of Dnipropetrovsk region and could reach territorial parity with Russia’s 2026 gains by year’s end, even as he warned of a $27 billion defense budget shortfall and a steep decline in Patriot missile deliveries, from 675 in 2023 to an expected 264 in 2026.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said holding elections during active fighting with Russia would “destroy” Ukraine by splitting the country, his first public comments on the issue since ousted former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for a wartime poll following his surprise dismissal, which sparked protests that later cooled once demonstrators balked at Fedorov’s election demand. Zelenskyy, whose approval rating has held steady around 60%, cited an August 5th poll showing 57% of Ukrainians want elections only after fighting ends, and noted wartime elections are barred by Ukrainian law given security risks and the millions of citizens abroad, under occupation, or serving at the front. He publicly detailed his rift with Fedorov for the first time, saying he offered him four options to stay in government that Fedorov rejected, and linked the fallout partly to a failed effort to secure SpaceX’s approval for Ukraine to use Starlink over Russian territory for deep strikes, after Trump accused Zelenskyy of misleading him when Elon Musk denied having approved it. On the battlefield, Zelenskyy struck an optimistic tone, saying Ukraine has nearly retaken all of Dnipropetrovsk region and could reach territorial parity with Russia’s 2026 gains by year’s end, even as he warned of a $27 billion defense budget shortfall and a steep decline in Patriot missile deliveries, from 675 in 2023 to an expected 264 in 2026.

• Kazakhstan held a parliamentary election Sunday that’s expected to further consolidate President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s power, with the pro-presidential Adilet party predicted to win an overwhelming majority in the country’s first vote for a new single-chamber parliament called the Kurultai. The election follows a March constitutional overhaul, approved by 87% of voters in a referendum, that merged the two parliamentary chambers and expanded presidential authority, including reviving the vice presidency. A Kazakh court ruled last month that the changes reset Tokayev’s term clock, clearing the way for him to seek another seven-year term. The 73-year-old Tokayev, a former Soviet official and UN diplomat who has tried to balance ties between Moscow and the West since Russia sanctions began, is tightening his grip amid economic strain, with February inflation hitting 10.2% and tax hikes fueling discontent, conditions analysts say authorities fear could reignite unrest like the deadly January 2022 fuel protests. The vote comes alongside an intensifying media crackdown, including roughly ten criminal cases against independent journalists and bloggers, among them YouTube journalist Lukpan Akhmedyarov, who faces up to seven years in prison over “disseminating false information” after publishing a list of Kazakh citizens fighting in Ukraine. Akhmedyarov said repression has sharply escalated ahead of the vote and that the outcome is “not very difficult to predict.”

See you soon.

— Aaron

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Here’s the news:

• Ethel Caterham, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living person and oldest living woman, turned 117 on August 21st, marking the occasion with a message noting she’d “had many firsts this year, from stroking a llama to holding hands with the King.” Born in the UK on August 21, 1909, during Edward VII’s reign, she took the title last year after Brazilian nun Inah Canabarro Lucas died at 116, and last September she met King Charles III, sharing memories of watching his 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales. Caterham, the seventh of eight siblings and a former nanny and nursery operator, credits part of her longevity to a non-confrontational approach to life, telling the AP, “never arguing with anyone, I listen and I do what I like.” She outlived her husband Norman, who died in 1976, and both of their daughters, and today has three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren; she now lives in a care home in Surrey, England, where she celebrated her birthday privately with family.

• The Tennessee Aquarium is celebrating a summertime “penguin baby boom,” with Gentoo penguin parents Blue and Flower welcoming their second chick on July 17th, weeks after another pair, Nipper and Pebbles, hatched their own second chick on June 25th. Blue and Flower’s new chick had a rocky start, struggling to hold up its head and feed properly, and assistant curator Loribeth Lee said it “would not have made it” without staff intervention, though it’s since grown to a healthy 6 pounds in just one month after weighing only 3.5 ounces the day after hatching. Nipper and Pebbles’ chick, by contrast, has been notably easygoing, with senior animal care specialist Holly Gibson describing it as “pretty chill” and untroubled by handling for nest cleaning or checkups. Neither chick has been named yet, as the aquarium plans to auction off naming rights at a fundraiser in September, and both will need to pass a swim test around 70 days old, floating and exiting the water unassisted, before joining the main colony. Blue and Flower previously hatched their first chick, Carla, back in 2021.

• Rio, a 10-month-old Australian Shepherd known for slipping out of fences and screen doors, went missing from Sand Springs, Oklahoma on July 30th after wandering off on one of his usual outings, and owner Melissa Burris feared he’d been hurt or taken after a gas station clerk suggested a customer may have picked him up. Nearly two weeks later, on August 11th, Rio turned up more than 1,000 miles away when he was scanned in Greensboro, North Carolina, a distance that would take about 16 hours to drive or nearly two weeks to walk, leaving Burris with no real explanation beyond guessing he may have hitched a ride with a long-haul trucker or a college student heading to school. Burris said how he got there matters less than the fact he was found safe, and she and her family made the roughly 16-hour drive to retrieve him, passing through five mountain ranges including the Blue Ridge and the Smokies. She credits Rio’s microchip with making the reunion possible and is urging other pet owners to get their animals chipped too.

• 22-year-old content creator Troi Moore was stood up on a date at a Fogo de Chão in Washington, D.C.’s Penn Quarter, sitting alone at a table for two for about 90 minutes before accepting it wasn’t going to happen. Rather than let her leave upset, her waiter and the head manager invited her to the bar, telling her “we’re your date tonight,” and staff checked on her throughout the evening while comping her a crème brûlée cake and two drinks. Moore posted an emotional video about the experience that racked up over 1.6 million views, saying the staff turned a moment that “would have honestly ruined my night” into “such a kind and empathetic moment.” Fogo de Chão CEO Barry McGowan credited the gesture to the chain’s culture around the Portuguese phrase “Deixa Comigo,” meaning “leave it to me,” which he says drives staff to look out for guests. Moore says she rarely sees that kind of genuine concern from restaurants and wanted to publicly thank the team for treating her “like a human being.”

• ESPN feature writer Roberto José Andrade Franco visited Langer’s Deli in Los Angeles in May, paid the full bill for himself and two friends to keep things simple, and then spent weeks on the road for work, from Johnny Tapia’s mural in Albuquerque to Muhammad Ali’s grave in Louisville, unable to shake the nagging worry that he’d forgotten to tip. Back home in El Paso, he mailed the 79-year-old deli a detailed letter describing the time of day, where they sat, and what their server looked like, along with $50 cash, writing he was “about 75% sure” he’d tipped but couldn’t let the 25% chance go unresolved. Neither owner Norm Langer nor the server, Sue, could actually recall the encounter, but Langer’s posted the letter on Facebook on August 14th, saying it “made our whole week” and that they’d found Sue and given her the money, leaving her “floored.” Andrade, who has worked as a waiter and busboy himself, says he never forgot how it felt to be undertipped and didn’t want to risk being that person for someone else. The deli confirmed the one detail missing from his letter, that he’d ordered “the number 19,” their famous hand-cut pastrami sandwich with coleslaw, Russian dressing, and Swiss on double-baked rye.

  

• 29-year-old Sam Wilmot of Bristol, England has rated over 300 benches on his Instagram page @ratethisbench using a strict ten-point rubric covering location, accessibility, materials, comfort, and a reserved “wow factor” point, and had never given a perfect 10 until he revisited a bench outside the 13th century St. John the Baptist church in Old Sodbury on his wedding day. He’d previously scored that same bench a 9/10, but wrote in a viral June post that the joy of getting married there finally supplied the missing “wow,” declaring “I have found my 10, in Sophie, and this bench.” Wilmot’s wife Sophie has served as the account’s photographer since 2019, joining his life about five months into his bench-rating project and becoming, as he put it, essential to what the page became. He remains strict with his scoring elsewhere, for instance giving Aberystwyth’s striking Giant’s Chair installation only a 4/10 over cramped, uncomfortable seating despite its unspoiled valley view. Wilmot says the larger point of the project isn’t the benches themselves but the walks, conversations, and people that come with seeking them out, calling them “a lived experience” rather than something monumental.

• Jakeeno’s Pizza, a 50-year-old, sisters-owned institution in South Minneapolis, closed after a fire broke out beneath its roof membrane in the early morning hours of July 11th, forcing firefighters to tear open sections of the roof to put it out. No one was inside, so the damage was financial rather than physical, and co-owner Amy Keegan says the restaurant is well insured and just waiting on the claims process. Local hospitality entrepreneur Bob Tinsley started a GoFundMe to cover wages for the restaurant’s cooks, wait staff, and bartenders while it rebuilds, and the community has already chipped in $21,000 across 291 donations. Co-owner Patty Keegan says the goal is simply to keep the staff whole until they can reopen, and people can also support the business by buying its branded pasta sauce and frozen pizzas at local grocers and co-ops. It’s not the first crisis Jakeeno’s has weathered: the restaurant also survived the Great Recession, COVID-19, and more.

  

• Mexican fisherman Erasto Crisanto Valdez survived 15 days trapped in total darkness inside a submerged cave after getting lost while fishing in a cenote on July 23rd, kept alive by drinking rainwater from a spring and breathing from an air pocket he stumbled into. He wasn’t found until August 7th, after the Municipal Government of Uxpanapa coordinated what it called an “unprecedented deployment on land, river, and air” across 15 days, involving three levels of government and specialist rescue teams. Valdez was hospitalized in a state of extreme malnutrition and dehydration, having lost all sense of time in the darkness, saying the 15 days “felt like only three days” to him and that he leaned on his faith in God to endure it. He recalled being unable to see anything and only able to hear the lake, unsure whether it was day or night, while surviving off cenote water whenever he felt hungry or thirsty. The story is a reminder of how dangerous submerged cave environments are, and why divers are urged to carry long-lasting light sources and leave trail markers before entering one.

• Johns Hopkins researchers report the first-in-human demonstration of a drug designed to prevent pancreatic cancer in people with mutant KRAS, a high-risk gene present in most pancreatic cancers and precancerous lesions, by training the immune system to recognize and destroy mutated cells before they turn cancerous. In a phase 1 trial published July 16th in Cancer Discovery, 20 participants with a hereditary predisposition and a detected pancreatic abnormality received four doses of the vaccine-like drug (a mix of peptides and an immune adjuvant) over 13 weeks between April 2022 and February 2026, and 18 of the 20, or 90%, developed a median 18-fold increase in KRAS-specific T-cell responses that persisted for two years of monitoring. After a median follow-up of 16.5 months, none of the participants developed pancreatic cancer or a high-risk lesion requiring surgery, and all side effects, mainly injection-site reactions, fatigue, chills, and flu-like symptoms, were mild to moderate and resolved on their own. Deputy Kimmel Cancer Center director Elizabeth Jaffee, a co-senior author, called it “a good start aimed at prevention, which no one had thought about doing before,” though researchers caution the trial was designed to test safety and immune response rather than proven cancer prevention, and the small sample size and short follow-up limit conclusions about real-world efficacy. The same treatment approach was tested earlier in post-surgical patients at high risk of recurrence, with a 2026 Nature Communications study finding that those who mounted a strong immune response stayed cancer-free for at least five years.

• Philanthropist Maja Kristin discovered that teachers in California’s Ross Valley School District, located in wealthy Marin County, were the lowest paid of any peer group in the county despite Marin’s sky-high property values and per capita income, with the district sitting in the bottom 20th percentile for state school funding. She asked the district to quietly gather 100 K-8 teachers for a meeting on August 13th without telling them why, then had principals hand out envelopes containing checks made out to each teacher for $9,161.70, part of a $1 million donation to the district. Kristin told the assembled teachers, “we as citizens, we can write direct checks,” and local outlet KRON 4 was in the room to capture their reactions as they opened the envelopes. Teacher Sydney Dean called the bonus “life-changing,” while another, Amber Bunnell-Wild, said she’d never experienced “such a beautiful gift from someone I don’t even know or haven’t taught their kid.”

• A LiDAR survey of 4,497 square kilometers in the southwestern Amazon, led by Martti Pärssinen of the Ibero-American Institute of Finland with Finnish and Brazilian colleagues, identified 432 geometric earthworks near the cities of Rio Branco, Lábrea, Boca do Acre, and Carauari, 396 of them previously undocumented. Extrapolating from that data alongside existing satellite studies, the researchers estimate the wider region may hold between 24,000 and 30,000 such earthworks, built by a little-understood precolonial society called the Aquiry civilization. The Aquiry are known mainly through these geoglyphs, ditched geometric enclosures ranging from under one to 123 acres that likely served as ceremonial, political, and public gathering sites, first built roughly 2,500 years ago and used, with stylistic changes, into the 13th century; the civilization is believed to have peaked between the 1st and 4th centuries CE. The study’s authors now estimate the Aquiry population at that peak reached 1.25 to 3 million people, comparable in scale to the Late Preclassical Maya, and say the findings triple the known area of Aquiry civilization from about 60,000 to roughly 183,000 square kilometers. Published last week in Nature, the research marks a major leap in understanding a society archaeologists still know very little about.

• A motion-activated camera along the Bronx River captured a river otter on June 23rd, the first documented sighting of one in the Bronx in roughly 100 years. The camera was set up by RJ Hawkins, a scientist working with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Education Department out of the Bronx Zoo, who called seeing the footage “an incredible moment” that underscores the value of long-term wildlife monitoring. WCS’s Craig Piper credited decades of restoration work by public and private partners for delivering cleaner water and healthier habitat, calling the otter’s return “a win for both wildlife and people.” River otters vanished from many New York waterways due to pollution, habitat loss, and unregulated trapping, and are considered indicators of a healthy freshwater ecosystem since they need clean water and abundant fish to survive; this sighting follows beavers returning to the same river in 2007 for the first time in over 200 years. Researchers caution one sighting doesn’t confirm a resident population, but the Bronx River Alliance’s Javier Lopez called it a reward for the 50 years communities have spent fighting to revive the river.

  

• Facing a projected 10 to 18 inches of sea level rise over the next 25 years, Boston and the US Army Corps of Engineers released a feasibility study outlining 20 separate coastal infrastructure projects spanning roughly 16 miles of shoreline, from Powder Hill in the north to Columbine Cliffs in the south. The study warns that doing nothing could cost the city up to $54 billion by 2090 in damage to historic buildings, neighborhoods, and especially transportation systems, and it proposes phased investments totaling about a fifth of that figure, roughly $10 billion, to blunt those impacts as sea levels rise. Corps deputy commander Lt. Col. David MacPhail said inaction isn’t viable since flooding costs to public safety and the economy will only compound, and the Corps estimates nearly all of Boston will flood during a 100 year storm event within the next 64 years. No specific measures like seawalls have been finalized yet given the wide range of possible costs, but Mayor Michelle Wu called the study critical to protecting vulnerable inland neighborhoods and unlocking resources, while Green Ribbon Commission’s Rebecca Herst noted this is a rare shot at major federal funding if Boston can put forward a workable local match. A task force plans to finalize its financial plan by next summer alongside the Corps’ final study, and the public comment period on the analysis runs through September 18th.

• Zion National Park has become the first national park in America to offer a free, all-terrain wheelchair for public use on its trails, funded through donations arranged by the nonprofit 2Live4 and delivered to the park last July. The chair was built by Extreme Modus, whose co-founder Ryan Grassley developed the model over seven years while taking his friend Sam, who has cerebral palsy, to nearly every national park property in Utah. Chief business development officer Kenny Jardine said the roughly two-year process of getting the chair to Zion made the park the first in the national park system with its own offroad mobility equipment. Grassley recalled that during the delivery, a mother whose child uses a wheelchair happened to walk by, and after learning what the chair was for, she was moved to tears, a moment he said confirmed the equipment belonged there. The single available chair is now offered to any visitor free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis.

  

• With over 110 million Chinese citizens living and working abroad, elderly parents left behind in rural areas often go without regular contact, a gap 39-year-old former courier Tian Rui set out to close using his old delivery routes through the mountains of Yichang Province, Hubei. After years of building close relationships with rural residents while delivering parcels, Tian began acting as a paid middleman for their children overseas, making over 200 trips to bring groceries, medications, and birthday cakes, or simply to sit and have tea with seniors whose kids can’t visit, including one client as far away as Bolivia. He charges nothing for short trips and only asks for fuel reimbursement on longer ones, and documents each visit on video to send back to the family, work that Tian says matters most because “what they really want is to know their children are thinking of them and to have someone to talk to.” In one case, video he sent a family last December turned out to be their final glimpse of an elderly relative, who died four months later, while other visits capture moments of surprising vitality, like a 100-year-old woman who insisted he stay for dinner and told him stories about all 16 of her grandchildren. Tian’s visits have gone viral on Chinese social media, earning him recognition as a “family bridge” for isolated rural elders who routinely ask him when he’ll come back next.

• When TikTok influencer and NYT bestselling author Jen Hamilton got a DoorDash order in early August, she found a handwritten note from the driver reading “Your tip is helping make our wedding possible. It means the world to us. Hope & Tyler.” Hamilton, a delivery room nurse and founder of a nonprofit offering free home cleaning for low-income parents, tracked down the couple’s wedding registry and sent a pile of gifts through Amazon that arrived stacked outside their front door. Hope, the driver’s fiancée, posted a video of the haul saying the couple was “so grateful,” and GNN confirmed DoorDash itself followed up by sending the couple a wedding gift as well. This isn’t the first time generosity on the platform has snowballed: in March, a woman who saw an elderly DoorDash driver struggle up her front steps started a GoFundMe that raised $940,000 for his retirement, and DoorDash added another $20,000 on top of it.

• French energy giant TotalEnergies has switched on the Hydra Project in South Africa’s Northern Cape, Africa’s largest hybrid renewable energy and storage plant, pairing a 216 MW solar array with a 500 MWh battery storage system. Built with partners Hydra Storage Holding and Reatile Renewables, the facility will deliver 75 MW of dispatchable renewable power to the national grid continuously from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. under a 20 year power purchase agreement, generating 400 gigawatt hours of electricity. TotalEnergies Southern Africa managing director Magali Pailhé said the project strengthens South Africa’s energy security while decarbonizing power generation in the continent’s largest electricity market, and it pushes Total’s total gross renewable capacity to just under 36 GW. Hydra will hold the title of Africa’s largest combined renewables and storage project only until Egypt finishes a far bigger 6,000 MW solar, wind, and battery complex along the Red Sea, being built by Orascom Construction, Engie, and Toyota Tsusho. Egypt is also already home to the continent’s largest single renewable generation project, the 1.8 gigawatt Benben Solar Park, which came online in 2019.

• White storks are returning to Derbyshire in the English Midlands for the first time in 600 years, part of an effort to establish a wild breeding colony at Willington Wetlands, the same river system where beavers were recently reintroduced after an even longer, 800 year absence. The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, which manages the site, will keep the storks in a predator-proof acclimation enclosure built by Celtic Rewilding (the Staffordshire charity the birds came from) before any release into the wild, funded by a £300,000 grant from the Veolia Environmental Trust. The Trent Valley location was chosen because wild storks have recently been spotted flying over the area, and organizers hope the settled birds will encourage those wild storks to stay and breed there. Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s Katie Last said the project will help strengthen wetland habitats and biodiversity while helping people reconnect with nature, and Celtic Rewilding’s Harvey Tweats noted that archaeological evidence and place names around the Humber confirm storks historically lived in the region, making the Trent Valley’s mix of wetlands and former gravel pits well suited to their recovery.

• A whitethroat, a migratory songbird listed as an amber species of UK conservation concern, was found stunned in the road last Saturday after being hit by a car and brought to Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital. Staff discovered his feet were curled and unable to grip due to nerve or ligament damage, so they fashioned tiny casts out of cardboard, cotton wool, and micropore tape to hold his feet steady while they heal. Hospital staffer Amy Blower said the technique has been used before on baby birds with nutritional deficiencies, but it’s working well here too, and the bird is making good progress. Since he was otherwise uninjured, staff expect to release him back into the wild within a few days, a happy outcome for a species that’s only in the UK during summer migration from Africa.

  

• A LiDAR survey of 4,497 square kilometers in the southwestern Amazon, led by Martti Pärssinen of the Ibero-American Institute of Finland with Finnish and Brazilian colleagues, identified 432 geometric earthworks near the cities of Rio Branco, Lábrea, Boca do Acre, and Carauari, 396 of them previously undocumented. Extrapolating from that data alongside existing satellite studies, the researchers estimate the wider region may hold between 24,000 and 30,000 such earthworks, built by a little-understood precolonial society called the Aquiry civilization. The Aquiry are known mainly through these geoglyphs, ditched geometric enclosures ranging from under one to 123 acres that likely served as ceremonial, political, and public gathering sites, first built roughly 2,500 years ago and used, with stylistic changes, into the 13th century; the civilization is believed to have peaked between the 1st and 4th centuries CE. The study’s authors now estimate the Aquiry population at that peak reached 1.25 to 3 million people, comparable in scale to the Late Preclassical Maya, and say the findings triple the known area of Aquiry civilization from about 60,000 to roughly 183,000 square kilometers. Published last week in Nature, the research marks a major leap in understanding a society archaeologists still know very little about.

See you soon.

— Aaron

Also today: a new financial disclosure shows Trump made over 1,000 stock trades in a single month, part of a pattern of more than 21,000 trades in 2025 alone, raising fresh questions about how a sitting president is this active in the market while setting the very trade and tariff policy that moves it. Plus a CNN review finds a top Trump aide flooded Twitter with over 150 posts on January 6th, a mother is detained by ICE while recovering in the hospital from a car crash, a service member says his father was taken by ICE while he was deployed fighting in Iran, and a full rundown of everything else, from a federal court striking down Trump’s 75-country visa ban to Congo’s fight against the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history.

If you find this kind of daily rundown useful, the best way to support it is by becoming a paid subscriber. This newsletter exists because readers fund it directly, not access, and not favors to any administration or network. That’s what makes it possible to report plainly on stories like the ones above without worrying about who it upsets.

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Here’s the news:

Let’s get into it.

Canada Trade War:

• After a last-minute breakdown in trade talks Friday night, the US imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods early Saturday, prompting Prime Minister Mark Carney to vow “dollar-for-dollar” retaliatory tariffs on US steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp, paper, and electronics starting September 8th. Carney said the US “asked too much, and they offered too little,” accusing Washington of proposing new terms in the final days that were “uneconomic, unfair” and undermined the deal’s reliability, despite Canada offering concessions like restoring US alcohol to store shelves. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer countered that Canada “declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week” after the US offered “significant tariff reductions on steel, aluminum, autos, and lumber,” and said no new talks are planned as the US moves ahead with its own countermeasures. The tariffs rely on the little-used, Depression-era Section 338 law, which unlike Trump’s other tariff authorities carries no apparent time limit, meaning the duties could remain indefinitely absent a legal challenge or a future president’s reversal. Analysts estimate Canada could lose up to 90,000 jobs and 0.3% to 0.6% of GDP from the new tariffs, with Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia expected to be hit hardest given their manufacturing, auto, and export-heavy economies.

• Provincial leaders have rallied behind Carney’s hardline stance, with Ontario Premier Doug Ford pledging “full support for a strong response, tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar” and British Columbia Premier David Eby declaring “our politeness should never be mistaken for weakness.” The breakdown caps months of on-and-off negotiations in which the US sought Canadian concessions including dropping retaliatory auto tariffs, loosening dairy quotas for US cheese producers, and lifting provincial bans on American alcohol sales, the last of which the Distilled Spirits Council says cut US spirits exports to Canada by more than 70% year-over-year. Business groups on both sides warned a deal’s collapse would hurt everyone, with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s Candace Laing calling the new tariffs “a body blow to North American competitiveness” that leaves small exporters questioning what they can still afford. Public opinion is split on how far to push back, with an Abacus Data poll finding about 36% of Canadians support retaliation and 30% prefer continued negotiation, leaving Carney needing to convince the public that standing firm against Washington is worth the near-term economic pain. The dispute marks a serious rupture in what had been one of the world’s most deeply integrated trading relationships, with Canada sending roughly 70% of its exports to the US.

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford has pushed the fight further by urging Ottawa to target retaliatory tariffs specifically at states that backed Trump, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Texas, and Wisconsin, arguing in a letter to Carney that Canada should hit “politically significant states to the current administration’s base of support.” Alabama is a notable target given Canada is its largest export market, having received $4.3 billion in Alabama goods in 2025, representing 18% of the state’s total exports, while also ranking among Alabama’s top import sources. Ford also called for treating Canada’s electricity, energy, and critical minerals infrastructure as “Team Canada assets” to strengthen the country’s negotiating leverage, framing the broader fight bluntly: “we have to use every tool in our toolbox to make sure, as Donald Trump is trying to inflict pain on every Canadian, that we inflict pain right back.” It remains unclear whether Carney’s government will actually pursue state-targeted tariffs, which would represent a shift from Canada’s current sector-based retaliation approach, and Alabama officials have not yet responded to the proposal. The idea surfaces as both countries brace for a prolonged standoff, with Carney’s broader sector-based countermeasures already set to take effect September 8th regardless of whether the state-specific approach gains traction.

• Senator Susan Collins, who is vulnerable, came out against the tariffs:

• When asked whether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s involvement in the final days of trade talks was an impediment to reaching a deal, Prime Minister Mark Carney deflected the question back to the US administration but couldn’t resist a pointed jab at Washington’s internal coordination, saying the Canadian negotiating team was unified with everyone clear on the country’s objectives, then adding, “you cannot say that about the US administration,” implying that mixed signals or infighting on the American side, rather than any single official, were what ultimately sank the negotiations.

Trump’s Stock Trading:

• A financial disclosure published Saturday by the US Office of Government Ethics shows President Trump made more than 1,000 securities trades in June alone, including significant purchases of Berkshire Hathaway, Visa, Mastercard, and Cintas. Because the filing only requires disclosing a value range rather than exact figures, the total value of June’s transactions falls somewhere between $78.1 million and $263.1 million. The single largest transaction was a June 22nd sale of between $5 million and $25 million in a Vanguard exchange-traded fund. The scale of this trading activity, even within just one month, is unusual for a sitting president.

• June’s activity is part of a much larger pattern documented over the past year: Trump made more than 21,000 securities trades in 2025 alone, often in bursts tied to market events he himself created, with total value estimated between $600 million and $1.86 billion. Disclosures have occasionally shown him buying and selling the same security on the same day, a trading pattern more typical of an active trader than a passive investor. The sheer volume raises questions about how closely his personal financial interests intersect with the market-moving policy decisions he makes as president.

• The White House maintains there is no conflict of interest because Trump’s investments are independently managed, and his son Eric, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, has said the assets are held in a blind trust. Critics note that a true blind trust typically means the office holder has no knowledge of or input into specific holdings, which is difficult to reconcile with such an active, high-volume trading pattern. Bloomberg’s report does not allege any specific instance of trades timed to policy decisions, but it lays out the scale of the activity for public scrutiny. The disclosure was reported by Bloomberg’s Hadriana Lowenkron, a White House correspondent covering the administration.

Other news:

• A CNN review of Natalie Harp’s now-removed Twitter account found she posted more than 150 tweets on January 6, 2021, urging Republicans to “FIGHT FOR TRUMP,” amplifying Trump’s stolen-election claims, and promoting Rudy Giuliani’s “trial by combat” call before the Capitol riot. After the Capitol was breached, Harp, then a One America News host, falsely claimed the rioters “were not Trump supporters” and spread unfounded reports that Antifa had infiltrated the mob, later praising lawmakers like Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the six senators who voted to sustain election objections as “patriots.” University of Akron political scientist David B. Cohen described her as “a totally loyal sycophantic adviser” who gives Trump the reverence he craves, and CNN’s review found her devotion dating back to 2016, including tweets defending him during his 2019 impeachment and declaring Biden’s win “A COUP.” Harp, who has served as a close Trump aide during his second term, was thrust into public attention this week after Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff named her in a floor speech and the Daily Beast published letters she reportedly wrote pledging her loyalty to the president; neither Harp nor the White House responded to CNN’s request for comment.

• Grace Stephanie Calero Cabanilla, 39, and her 19-year-old daughter Giulianna were recovering at HCA Florida Poinciana Hospital in Kissimmee after a rollover crash around August 20th when Polk County deputies, operating under a 287(g) agreement with ICE, questioned the pair’s immigration status and turned them over to federal agents, who detained the mother despite her pending asylum case and valid work permit; the daughter, who holds a visa valid through 2030, suffered a seizure after watching her mother restrained, and the family has since launched a GoFundMe as public reaction to the enforcement action remains sharply divided.

• A 1-year-old baby appeared unrepresented in Arizona immigration court this week and was instructed to file an asylum application before the next hearing or face deportation, with the USCRI attorney present staying silent rather than objecting, according to court filings in an ongoing legal dispute between immigrant-rights nonprofits and the Trump administration. The incident stems from the July 31st lapse of a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which had distributed federal funds to nearly 100 legal providers representing over 24,000 unaccompanied migrant children, leaving many kids to face court alone despite two new HHS contracts awarded to USCRI ($20 million) and anti-trafficking group Our Rescue ($158 million). Nonprofit leaders have documented other cases of USCRI attorneys staying silent during proceedings, including an August 6th California hearing where an unrepresented minor requested voluntary departure without any objection, and the suing nonprofits argue HHS has created “a façade of compliance” that’s produced chaos rather than actual representation. An ORR spokesperson said USCRI is still assessing which children remain represented amid unclear transitions, while an ORR official told the court that attorneys have covered all hearings for 1,800 kids in the agency’s care without complications; USCRI and Our Rescue did not respond to requests for comment.

• A service member says his father was taken by ICE while he was deployed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln for over nine months fighting the war in Iran.

  Per his post, his father has a driver’s license, social security card, and a work permit.

  

• A New York federal judge, Jeannette Vargas, struck down the Trump administration’s policy suspending visa processing for citizens of 75 countries, ruling that Secretary of State Marco Rubio exceeded his statutory authority in issuing the ban. The court found the rule unlawfully bypassed consular officers, who hold statutory discretion over individual visa eligibility decisions. The lawsuit challenging the ban was brought by two nonprofit organizations along with 11 individuals directly affected by the suspensions. Immigration advocates hailed the ruling as a major win for the rule of law and for family reunification.

• Congo has received more than 16,250 doses of the Ervebo Ebola vaccine, part of a planned 70,000-dose shipment from the WHO and partners, as the country battles the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved treatment or vaccine of its own, though Ervebo (licensed for other Ebola strains) may offer some protection according to the WHO. The current outbreak has recorded 2,557 deaths among 5,375 confirmed cases across six provinces and is on pace to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that killed over 11,000 people, with Africa CDC data showing transmission hasn’t yet peaked and could triple. Containment efforts are being hampered by armed conflict between the government and rebel groups controlling key hot-spot cities, attacks on medical staff and facilities, a mobile labor population and conflict-displaced people, and a lack of basic health infrastructure. More vaccine doses are expected to arrive early next week.

• Nine months after Trump promised his drug-pricing deals would expand Medicaid access to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, only Indiana has publicly signed on, 29 state Medicaid programs have declined to participate, and access has actually shrunk, with five states (California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) ending coverage over the past year and Rhode Island set to follow in October. States cite budget fears reinforced by California’s experience, where projected GLP-1 costs were set to nearly quadruple to $800 million by 2028-29, plus looming Medicaid cuts from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act; Louisiana’s Medicaid director Seth Gold said he wants coverage but won’t risk having to “contract or withdraw” it later like other states have. Under the model, states get Wegovy at $245 per monthly dose (Indiana will cover $85.16 of that per person) in exchange for adopting standardized criteria including a BMI of 35 or higher, but participation requires new budgeted spending that states like Florida and Oregon say would need fresh legislative appropriations, while New Jersey and Kentucky law outright bars Medicaid weight-loss drug coverage. Seven states are still weighing participation, and experts say most others are taking a “wait-and-see” approach, watching how Indiana’s Medicaid budget holds up over the next one to three years as federal cuts phase in before committing either way.

• Federal prosecutors pursuing charges against former FBI director James Comey for allegedly threatening Trump cited passages from Comey’s novel FDR Drive to bolster their case, arguing its fictional protagonist, a federal prosecutor who targets a far-right media personality, shows Comey believes such figures should have “something... done” about them. PEN America’s legal director Mara Gassmann condemned the move as a “desperate Hail Mary” that compounds First Amendment concerns, warning that “extreme caution should be taken any time creative works are used to support criminal charges.” The underlying charges stem from a May 2025 Instagram post where Comey, vacationing in North Carolina, arranged seashells to spell “8647,” which prosecutors say is unambiguously a threat against the 47th president using “86” slang for getting rid of someone; Comey has said the connection “never occurred to me” and took the post down since he opposes violence of any kind. Prosecutors also suggested in their filing that Comey had a financial motive to stir controversy to boost book sales, though the novel has sold just 6,471 copies according to Circana BookScan. Comey’s attorneys are seeking dismissal, arguing no reasonable observer would read “86 47” as a personal threat and calling the prosecution “vindictive and selective,” rooted in what they describe as Trump’s years-long campaign to punish Comey for protected speech tied to his handling of the 2016 Russia investigation.

• The Justice Department reached a $400 million settlement with TikTok and parent company ByteDance to dismiss claims that the app illegally collected data on millions of children under 13 without parental consent and failed to honor deletion requests, resolving a lawsuit the Biden administration filed in 2024, while also vacating a separate 2019 FTC privacy consent decree tied to TikTok’s predecessor Musical.ly; DOJ cited “significant changes” to TikTok’s management, ownership, and privacy practices, including its restructuring as a joint venture under US investors (with ByteDance retaining a 19.9% stake), but former Biden-era FTC public affairs director Douglas Farrar blasted the deal as “a Trump bailout for Larry Ellison,” calling the violations “the worst we saw” and the fine “a fraction of what the government should have sought.”

• A Texas appeals court slashed the $50 million judgment Alex Jones owed Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis down to about $6 million, with the Third Court of Appeals citing state damage caps in a unanimous ruling that left $4.1 million in compensatory damages intact but cut over $45 million in punitive damages to $1.5 million. The ruling doesn’t touch a separate $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, where he was also found liable for defaming Newtown families who say his followers, believing his hoax claims, subjected them to death threats, harassment, and abuse. Jones called the Texas ruling “a gigantic victory for the First Amendment” and says he’ll keep appealing to the state Supreme Court, though the court did not overturn the underlying defamation finding against him. Heslin and Lewis’s attorney Mark Bankston dismissed the ruling as “irrelevant,” noting Jones still faces over a billion dollars in total liability and that Sandy Hook families have yet to collect any money from him as he wages appeals through state and bankruptcy courts. Jones took Infowars off the air in April and now streams from new platforms, while satirical outlet The Onion’s bid to take over Infowars’ branding remains on hold amid the ongoing bankruptcy liquidation proceedings.

• Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least seven people across Ukraine on Saturday, including two people killed in a ballistic missile strike on the Kyiv region and one killed when missiles hit railway infrastructure in Kyiv itself, while a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Krasnodar region killed two children and wounded two adults. Zaporizhzhia was also hit hard, with a nighttime drone strike killing one person and a daytime attack killing three more and wounding 15, plus three more wounded in a strike on a minibus in the regional capital. The attacks came a day after Russian drones hit a shopping center in Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a strike Ukrainian officials say has now killed 16 people, left nine still missing, and wounded 130 in what Zelenskyy called a deliberate “double-tap” targeting rescuers; Kryvyi Rih has been struck repeatedly through the war, including an April 2025 attack that killed 20 people. The UN says Kyiv was among the hardest-hit cities in July alone, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 wounded, as Russia exploits Ukraine’s shortage of Patriot interceptors to intensify ballistic missile attacks on the capital. Ukraine, meanwhile, has pushed the war onto Russian soil with long-range drone strikes on oil facilities and retail warehouses, including a strike Saturday on the Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, roughly 620 miles from the front line.

See you soon.

— Aaron

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Here’s the news:

Let’s get into it.

Trump impeachment:

• House Democrats are quietly assembling a sprawling investigative agenda for if they retake the majority in November, with nearly a dozen early targets ranging from the Iran war and Trump’s family business dealings to the White House ballroom, his Jeffrey Epstein ties, and ICE’s immigration enforcement. The party is split on strategy: progressives like Judiciary’s Jamie Raskin call impeachment “a tool” and note most of the caucus has voted for it before, while leadership figures like Pete Aguilar insist impeachment “just doesn’t exist” as a topic in their meetings. Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia frames the focus as “Trump corruption and Trump family corruption,” citing crypto schemes, pardon sales, and defense contracts, while AOC wants a parallel track on “very real issues” like data centers straining water and power supplies and healthcare monopoly pricing.

• The White House says it’s prepared to handle oversight regardless of who controls Congress, and DOJ has already issued a memo asserting executive privilege can shield some presidential communications with private advisers, which Democrats read as early stonewalling. Some members, like Josh Gottheimer, are wary of a third impeachment attempt after two failed Senate trials, joking that “the third movie is never good,” while Jeffries, the likely next speaker if Democrats win, would have to referee the divide between that caution and the appetite among roughly 140 Democrats who backed forcing an impeachment vote last December. Trump even said last night that he will be impeached if Democrats take over:

• Democratic control would hand multiple committees (oversight, intelligence, judiciary, foreign affairs) subpoena power, and the administration is already preparing for it: White House lawyers have briefed Cabinet secretaries on likely subpoenas and how to respond, anticipating that agencies may stonewall or fight requests in court. Sen. Adam Schiff, who chaired Intelligence during Trump’s first impeachment, said Democrats are weighing a workaround if the administration blocks access, issuing subpoenas directly to Trump’s outside political allies or donor companies instead. Investigators are eyeing Trump Organization dealings abroad and in crypto, contracts awarded to Trump allies, and construction projects including the ballroom and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, even as Trump’s aides deny any conflicts of interest and say his sons run the business independently.

• The political stakes are tight: Democrats need only a handful of seats to flip the House, and Republicans privately worry about holding it, while the Senate is seen as a toss up by both parties. Trump was impeached twice before (2019 over Ukraine aid, 2021 over January 6) and acquitted both times in the Senate, and any member can still file impeachment articles unilaterally, as Al Green did last December before losing his primary. Beyond impeachment, House Democrats plan hearings on grocery and healthcare costs, and Rep. Robert Garcia said his Oversight Committee is spending the summer finalizing its full agenda ahead of a potential majority.

Trade war with Canada:

• A trade war has officially erupted between the US and Canada after last-minute talks collapsed just before Trump’s midnight Friday deadline, triggering 50% US tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, about 5% of everything Canada exports north to south. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa couldn’t reach a deal that would “meet our objectives,” announced he was suspending negotiations and recalling Canada’s negotiators, and vowed Canada “will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer claimed Washington had offered “significant tariff reductions on steel, aluminum, autos, and lumber” plus a “historic economic and national security partnership,” but Carney said last-minute US changes to the terms “were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”

• The breakdown caps a relationship that’s steadily deteriorated since Trump’s return to office, driven by disputes over Canadian provincial alcohol bans, auto and dairy quotas, and steel and aluminum duties, with Trump this week emphasizing the failed deal would have been “great for our farmers” by loosening Canada’s dairy import restrictions. The tariffs Trump is now imposing rely on a little-known, never-before-used 1930s law called Section 338, which unlike his other tariff authorities appears to carry no time limit, meaning these duties could stay in place indefinitely unless a future president removes them, and the move is expected to face legal challenges. The target list reaches far beyond the dairy, alcohol, and auto sectors at the heart of the dispute, spanning close to 500 items, from smartphones and video game consoles to clothing, jewelry, furniture, and even antiques, though Trump has so far spared major Canadian exports like energy, critical minerals, and fish.

• Canadian officials and businesses are already bracing for fallout: Carney says his government will roll out “additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses,” on top of nearly $25 billion in support provided over the past 18 months, while insisting Canada’s economic growth is “accelerating” and that Ottawa will “not allow any nation to determine our future.” On the ground, the trade war is already reshaping commerce, Montreal’s famed Schwartz’s Deli has stopped selling its Black Cherry Cola because of the US tariffs, and Canadian businesses more broadly say they fear closures without a deal in place. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s still “aiming to get the best agreement” for her province specifically, even as the broader standoff between Ottawa and Washington shows no sign of resolving.

Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Suffers Setback:

• FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend, 27-year-old country singer Alexis Wilkins, has lost a defamation lawsuit against former Republican Senate candidate Sam Parker, whom she’d accused of falsely implying in a viral X thread (1.6 million-plus views) that she was a foreign agent sent to manipulate and compromise Patel. A federal judge in the US District Court for the District of Utah ruled the case didn’t belong in that jurisdiction, and the decision drew little attention since neither party commented publicly, with Court Watch first reporting the ruling Friday. Wilkins was seeking $5 million in damages, and the case is one of several similar suits she’s filed against conservative figures making comparable “foreign agent” claims, including ex-FBI agent Kyle Seraphin and influencer Elijah Schaffer.

• Wilkins has also sued MS NOW, seeking at least $75,000 in damages in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, over a report alleging she’d repeatedly asked her FBI security detail to drive her friends home after nights out in Nashville. MS NOW journalists Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, both named in the suit, say they relied on confidential sources for that claim. MS NOW’s legal team has moved to dismiss or transfer the case, citing lack of personal jurisdiction in Tennessee, a defense that mirrors the one that just sank her Utah case against Parker.

• Wilkins’ attorneys argue the MS NOW report is false on its face, claiming she had no security detail at the time described and that she doesn’t drink alcohol. Taken together, the pattern across her lawsuits, against Parker, Seraphin, Schaffer, and MS NOW, shows Wilkins aggressively litigating claims about her relationship with Patel and her conduct, even as the jurisdictional dismissal in Utah suggests her broader legal strategy may face similar procedural hurdles going forward. Patel and Wilkins have been in a relationship since 2023, and neither has publicly commented on this week’s ruling.

Other news:

• Trump spent Friday night on a furious late-night tirade against Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie after Carlson met with the two, branding them “LOSERS ALL,” calling Carlson “totally irrelevant” and “Low I.Q.” while demanding he take a cognitive test, dismissing Greene as “highly neurotic” and claiming she turned on him only because he stopped taking her calls, blasting Massie as a “failed politician” and “real JERK,” and signing off with the bizarre closer: “PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”

• New CDC data shows kindergarten MMR vaccination rates dipped slightly to 92.4% while non-medical exemptions jumped 17% in a single year, from 3.6% to 4.2% nationwide, the largest such increase ever recorded, with at least 280,000 kindergarteners missing the MMR shot. Vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit and other public health officials say the decline reflects confusion sown by the administration, pointing to Trump’s August 10 executive order (signed alongside RFK Jr.) calling for splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate doses and Trump’s own false claims that combined vaccines could be “quite lethal” and that some shots look “like the size of a soda bottle.” Local officials like Cleveland’s Dr. David Margolius say federal confusion is undermining real local progress, even as they push exemption-hit pockets like Idaho and Ohio toward better numbers amid the worst measles year since 1991. The piece also traces Kennedy’s own history as an anti-vaccine activist, including his past paid role at Children’s Health Defense, undisclosed referral fees from vaccine-injury law firms, his firing of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, and false claims like MMR containing “aborted fetal debris.” Offit summarized Kennedy’s approach bluntly: “he is waging a war against vaccines” as “a zealot” who tells parents on hiking trails not to vaccinate their kids.

• Tina Peters, the convicted Colorado election clerk whose prison sentence was commuted by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in May, traveled to Washington this week for meetings with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and DOJ civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon, pitching a plan to invoke emergency powers and assert unprecedented federal control over elections before the midterms. It’s her latest stop on a national tour spreading the same false voting-machine conspiracy theories that got her convicted, following a private White House lunch with Trump in June where she was also greeted by JD Vance and Marco Rubio. Colorado AG and gubernatorial candidate Phil Weiser, whose office helped prosecute her, called the Washington reception “perverse,” saying “she is a criminal who compromised elections and election equipment, who is entirely unremorseful,” while Polis defended his commutation but said he’s “disappointed but not surprised” she’s still spreading “baseless and inaccurate claims.” Peters is also reportedly weighing a consulting job in Shasta County, California’s elections office, offered by controversial county clerk Clint Curtis, and touted an already-debunked Census Bureau claim of 24,000 noncitizen votes in 2020 during her meeting with Lutnick.

• This weekend’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix IndyCar race around the National Mall has drawn sponsorship from corporations with major business before the federal government, including Boeing ($2.8 million in lobbying last quarter alone), SpaceX, Delta ($300,000 lobbying Transportation and Congress), Shell, and Amazon, fitting a broader Trump-era pattern of corporate money flowing into opaque nonprofits around events like the inauguration, the White House ballroom, and June’s UFC matches on the South Lawn. Sen. Chris Van Hollen criticized Trump for “extracting IndyCar contributions from the same corporations he regulates” instead of lowering costs for Americans, while CREW’s Donald Sherman said the arrangement risks “significant conflict-of-interest concerns” by letting companies “grab the attention and favor of the administration” through donations or ad buys. The White House dismissed the criticism as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and organizers say no taxpayer money is funding the race itself, though a local official said D.C. will likely still tap congressional funds for police and other costs. IndyCar chair Bud Denker, who also heads Penske and the race’s nonprofit, spent $35 million transforming the Mall area and has openly touted sponsor placements (”Boeing is at turn six... Starlink is at turn two”), while ethics watchdogs at the Brennan Center flagged VIP packages that could let wealthy attendees buy access to federal officials at the event, calling it something that “contributes to the sense of cynicism that the public increasingly has.”

• The FDA says recalled Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce from a Mexican facility may have reached nine more states and territories than previously known (California, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico), expanding America’s largest-ever cyclosporiasis outbreak, which now totals 10,930 illnesses across 17 states tied specifically to this lettuce. Nationally, CDC data shows over 27,000 cyclospora cases across more than 40 states, with Michigan hardest hit at 14,277 cases, 335 hospitalizations, and two deaths, some linked to Taco Bell locations that have since pulled the lettuce. Separate, still-unexplained outbreaks are also growing, with the largest jumping from 172 to 201 cases in just the last few days, and HHS says it’s working with state and local officials to trace exposure sources. Cyclospora spreads only through human waste contaminating water or produce, and symptoms like explosive diarrhea and severe dehydration typically don’t appear until two weeks after exposure, which is part of why outbreaks like this one are so hard to trace before tainted products disappear from shelves.

• At least 16 people were killed and more than 130 wounded, including 22 children, when Russian drones struck a shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskiy’s hometown, on Friday, with a second drone hitting the site roughly half an hour after the first in what Zelenskiy called a deliberate “double tap” targeting emergency responders; nine people, including two children, remained missing as of Saturday, a separate Mykolaiv strike the same day killed four (three of them children), and the attack came a day after a Russian ballistic missile strike killed 17 in Kyiv, part of an escalating air war as the fighting nears the four and a half year mark.

• ICE agent Thomas Bailey, 58, was jailed Friday in St. Tammany parish, Louisiana, charged with unauthorized entry after allegedly breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment near Covington without permission while she wasn’t home. Bailey works out of ICE’s Oakdale, Louisiana office, roughly three hours away, and could face up to six years in prison and a $1,000 fine if convicted. ICE said it couldn’t comment on the specific case but stressed it “takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously” and that “the vast majority” of its employees act with “professionalism and honor.” The arrest adds to mounting scrutiny of ICE’s hiring practices amid rapid expansion under Trump’s deportation push, following AP reporting that at least two dozen ICE employees and contractors have faced criminal charges since 2020, and border chief Tom Homan’s admission that an ICE officer involved in a fatal Maine shooting likely “should have ever cleared vetting.” A recent PBS/NPR/Marist poll found 65% of Americans believe ICE has gone too far in its immigration crackdown. Body camera footage shows ICE agents using racial slurs during immigration operations:

• California AG Rob Bonta’s office and Paramount Skydance are set to meet Monday for settlement talks aimed at resolving the multistate antitrust lawsuit challenging Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, ahead of a March trial. The push comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom, gubernatorial frontrunner Xavier Becerra, and LA Mayor Karen Bass all signaled they’d prefer the case settle rather than go to trial, with Newsom saying “there are many meetings going on” and that he’s “appreciative” of Bonta’s stated preference to resolve disputes “in the boardroom instead of the courtroom.” Bonta, who sued alongside 11 other state AGs in July over concerns spanning theatrical film distribution and basic-cable licensing, insisted any settlement talks would be “unproductive absent robust structural remedies,” warning the merger as proposed “will mean higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows.” Newsom also said he takes seriously Paramount’s threat to leave California over the litigation, a threat Bonta has separately called a form of “blackmail,” and momentum for a settlement has been building from other stakeholders too, including the country’s three largest theater chains, two Hollywood unions, and roughly a third of state legislators representing LA County.

• Karoline Leavitt confirmed Friday that after leaving her post as White House press secretary at the end of August, she’ll join MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC sitting on over $350 million ahead of the midterms — a role she held before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign. She hasn’t specified her title but said “you guys will still see me all the time,” and Friday’s flight to Myrtle Beach for a Lindsey Graham rally was her last official trip as press secretary. Trump has called her a future “top adviser” and said he’s received an unprecedented number of applications for her replacement, with CNN’s Scott Jennings and Katie Miller (wife of Stephen Miller) reportedly among the top contenders. Leavitt says she’ll still join Trump on the midterm campaign trail, including September’s GOP convention in Dallas.

See you soon.

— Aaron