Speaking at a town hall Tuesday, Nebraska Representative Mike Flood flailed when asked what he would do to provide insurance benefits for people with all disabilities.

“Well, under the One Big Beautiful Bill we protected—” Flood started to answer, only to be drowned out by boos from the audience.

“We protected a system that if it had gone unchecked it would not have been long-term available for the people that are the most vulnerable,” Flood continued.

“We protected Medicaid in a bipartisan, common sense way,” he added, as the audience’s jeers continued.

WATCH: Mike Flood gets drowned with boos for his Big Beautiful Bill vote and falsely claims "we protected Medicaid." #NE01 pic.twitter.com/NnhVCOhUyb

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) July 7, 2026

In reality, Trump’s behemoth budget bill will cut nearly one trillion from Medicaid funding over the next 10 years, causing hospitals to shutter and benefits to disappear, hurting all Americans—especially people with disabilities and the elderly.

This isn’t the first time Flood has downplayed his decision to support Trump’s move to gut Medicaid. Last year, he admitted that many rural hospitals would need to prepare to adopt “an emergency room model”—meaning they would be stripped of essential services and benefits.

Cuts to Medicaid will force rural hospitals, which already operate on razor-thin margins, to absorb skyrocketing rates of uncompensated care. The continued strain will force them to cut services and personnel, and eventually possibly close. More than 45 percent of rural hospitals in the United States operate with negative margins, and as a result of Flood’s vote, more than 300 rural hospitals are at risk of closing.

Donald Trump bitterly referred to Iran’s leadership as “scum” during a NATO summit presser in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, telling reporters that he believes peace negotiations—and the regional ceasefire—are “over.”

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. Do you know what scum is?” Trump said. “They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people, and if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over. I’ll speak to our negotiators, they’ll want to negotiate, they’re good people. Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, but they’ll have to come back to me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”

“They’re liars. We make a deal—if I make a deal with him, we have a deal, and it goes out and he talks,” Trump said, briefly gesturing to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We make a deal, everyone’s agreed, no nuclear weapons. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press, they say we never even talked about it.

“There’s something wrong with them, they’re cuckoo,” he added.

Q: Is the ceasefire over? Is the MOU dead?

TRUMP: I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. Do you know what scum is? They're led by sick people. They're vicious, violent people. They're liars. They're cuckoo pic.twitter.com/fGlomtlSrz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 8, 2026

The White House and Tehran preemptively signed a drafted memorandum of understanding (MOU) in June, initiating a 60-day negotiation process. The mutual willingness to draw up a peace plan spurred hopes that the violence and economic barricades could soon come to an end, but the two nations began exchanging strikes again this week.

CENTCOM confirmed on Tuesday that the U.S. military had “completed” a new round of strikes on Iran, hitting “over 80 targets with precision munitions” over a four-hour period. The strikes were “in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said in a statement. Washington has also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales.

In retaliation, Tehran said it had launched strikes on 85 U.S. military targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, reported Al Jazeera. Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the “aggressive attacks and gross violation” of the MOU.

The office added that Iran’s armed forces “will not hesitate in defending Iran’s territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and national security against US military aggression in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, and will target the source and origin of the aggression.”

Oil prices surged as a result, with the price of Brent crude—the international oil benchmark—rising more than three percent on Wednesday.

Trump, meanwhile, is planning to extend the violence.

“We’ll probably hit them hard again tonight,” he told reporters.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump thinks he has a new way to force Republicans to pass voter suppression legislation in time for the midterms. In a late-night tirade, Trump demanded that Republicans pass the so-called SAVE Act by attaching it to a must-pass defense spending bill. This comes as Republicans are getting more nervous about losing the Senate this fall, and some reportedly fear that Trump is setting them up. If they don’t pass the SAVE Act, they fear he’ll blame them for any midterm fiasco that takes place.

We think it’s premature to rule out the possibility of Republicans actually passing this thing. It’s a high-stakes moment that’s passing largely under the radar. So we’re talking to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, one of our go-to people for decoding the congressional GOP. Norm, nice to see you.

Norm Ornstein: Good to see you too, Greg.

Sargent: So Donald Trump and MAGA are pressuring Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which is this disgusting piece of voter suppression legislation. It can’t pass the Senate, so Trump is demanding that Republicans end the filibuster to pass it, which they don’t want to do or can’t do.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson is looking for a way to pass something that he can call the SAVE Act to placate all the hardliners allied with Trump. Norm, what exactly is Mike Johnson trying to pass, and what’s he trying to pull off here?

Ornstein: So first let me note, Greg, that John Thune has been as loyal a leader to a president, and certainly to Donald Trump, as anyone could have wished. And now he’s taking all of this abuse. But for Mike Johnson—many of his members, and they’re of course in very real danger of losing the House—they’re talking, and he’s talking to Trump, about using every voter suppression measure possible.

But they really, really, really want this SAVE Act, because so many of the districts that are vulnerable to them are in blue states. Red states are going to do a lot, including a lot that’s already in the SAVE Act. Florida’s talking about passing their own version, Texas and others.

But he needs something, and the SAVE Act includes a whole series of measures that would limit votes, suppress votes, make it difficult for people to vote at a time when Republicans are worried about a surge in voting—requiring that everybody provide proof of citizenship.

And even if you’re registered, you have to go back to the office to re-register with that proof of citizenship, which has to be either a passport or passport card or a birth certificate—but not just any birth certificate. It has to be one that’s embossed, not a copy. And of course, as we know, if you are a woman who got married and changed your name, you have to jump through additional hoops.

Sargent: The SAVE Act, as Trump wants it to pass, would include both the proof of citizenship requirement and also basically an end to mail voting, among a bunch of other stuff as well.

What Mike Johnson seems to be trying to do is put aside the piece that would end mail voting, because Republicans who aren’t crazy actually know that they need mail voting for themselves as well. So Mike Johnson wants to put that aside and pass the proof of citizenship piece, correct?

Ornstein: Exactly so, Greg. And let’s note here that Mike Johnson has a couple of reasons for wanting to do this. He is desperate to get something done. The fact is, many of his own members—and it’s particularly true of Mike Lee in the Senate and a couple of the others—are agitating publicly for this over and over again. There is a fear on the part of Johnson and other House Republicans that if they don’t pass something that has the name “the SAVE Act” attached to it, it will demoralize a portion of their base, who will say, you’re not doing what you need to do. That’s one reason.

The other, as we’ve discussed, is suppressing what they believe will be votes for Democrats. And the proof of citizenship, which is a poll tax, which ought to be unconstitutional and illegal, is the core part of it. But he wants to take out the mail-in voting, not just because it can hurt Republicans a lot—they use mail-in voting plenty—but also because he needs to get something through and then blame the Senate. Because frankly, if Mike Johnson had to choose one house to go over to the Democrats, he of course would rather have it be the Senate.

Sargent: Right. And so Mike Johnson thinks that he can essentially have slightly more of a chance of passing a SAVE Act that doesn’t have the mail voting piece. So in this context, at 12:58 a.m., Trump unleashes a tirade on Truth Social, calling our military “the strongest and the hottest in the world” and so forth—never mind the Iran fiasco, which is ongoing.

Then Trump says this: “When Congress returns, we must pass Reconciliation 3.0. The SAVE America Act, paired with the full funding of our great Department of War, can be passed very quickly, ensuring that the United States of America stays FREE for generations to come.”

Norm, let’s break this up into two pieces. What exactly does Trump want here? It seems that he wants Republicans to attach as much of the SAVE Act as they can to defense funding and pass the entire thing via reconciliation, which would then be able to pass the Senate on a simple majority due to that process, correct?

Ornstein: That’s exactly what he’s trying to do. And he wants to make the defense bill, which normally would be handled separately, as part of a separate appropriations along with a separate authorization, folded into a third reconciliation bill.

They’ve already done two. It’s unprecedented, or close to it, to have a third one. But it’s basically blowing up norms and rules to try and jam this through, even though the rules make it clear that it’s not allowable.

Sargent: Why can’t Republicans end the filibuster? Is it just that they don’t have enough Republican votes to do that?

Ornstein: Look, one part of it is a belief that if they do this first, then Democrats are going to take advantage of it if and when they end up with majorities in the House and Senate and a president, and they will dismantle everything that Republicans have done—not just during the Trump era, but going back to previous Republican presidents.

Sargent: Right. But Norm, if Republicans wanted to end the filibuster, could they do it?

Ornstein: They could with a majority. But there’s another deeper reason why some Republicans don’t want to do this. They know that there are lots of things that would be deadly for them and the country, devastating, that they don’t want to do—crazy radical stuff, stuff that moves us even more towards a police state, stuff that could blow up their own economies and their own workforces.

And they’re able to avoid doing that by saying, we would have voted for it, but we don’t have 60 votes. So the filibuster actually gives a number of them who are not the crazy radical rightists—there are few who are—even if they all vote the same way, who understand that the filibuster gives them protection.

Sargent: Norm, let me underscore that just so people really get it. Republicans know that if the filibuster were done away with, all of a sudden they’d be able to pass whatever Trump and MAGA want with a simple majority in the Senate. And they don’t want that state of affairs, because that would fuck the country and fuck the Republican Party in essence. So keeping the filibuster for them is kind of like a way to crazy-proof themselves against Trump and MAGA, more or less, right?

Ornstein: That’s exactly right.

Sargent: If Mike Johnson were to send some version of the SAVE Act over to the Senate, can they pass it with reconciliation, or would the Senate parliamentarian kick that out?

Ornstein: There is no doubt that every part of the SAVE Act is inadmissible under budget reconciliation rules in the Senate. They have something called the Byrd Rule, which is named for Robert Byrd when he was the Senate leader. And it is basically that the fundamentals of everything in the budget reconciliation bill have to be fiscal. It has to involve spending and/or taxes. And it has to not add to the deficit or debt after a 10-year period. But they’ve always relied on what the parliamentarians said.

However, the way they’ve relaxed their rules in the past is through this kind of maneuver. The parliamentarian rules that this is out of order. Somebody appeals the ruling of the chair. A simple majority can overrule the chair.

And so what would happen here is, the parliamentarian would say, no SAVE Act, no portion of the SAVE Act, not allowable under the rules. Somebody—Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, any of the others—would appeal the ruling of the chair. Fifty Republicans would vote to overrule the chair, and then it would pass.

It would be wrong. It would be illegal under the Senate rules. What would stop it from being signed by the president? Nothing. What would stop it in the courts? There’s no way the courts would intervene.

So they can do this through the back door. But they also know that doing it that way is going to open up the floodgates for all kinds of actions that they would not like. And if they do it this way, then every radical, crazy Freedom Caucus right-wing proposal under the sun, they’re going to jam into reconciliation and use this as a precedent.

Sargent: And then overrule the chair. Well, I just want to move on to another thing. NBC had this really striking report on what’s going on inside the Republican Senate caucus. The report says, “Some Republican strategists worry the party’s chances of holding the Senate are dwindling.”

And the report also suggests Republicans are shocked and baffled that Trump keeps prioritizing the SAVE Act over showing that the party cares about costs, which is voters’ top issue. Republicans think, in short, that this is screwing them—Trump is screwing them, essentially.

One GOP operative says, “Poll after poll shows affordability is the top issue, but his mind is elsewhere.” Norm, you’ve been around a long time. Have you ever seen a GOP Senate caucus quite this angry with a Republican president?

Ornstein: No, I have not seen a Republican caucus in the Senate this angry with one of their own presidents. But let’s also keep in mind, Greg, that that anger, which is expressed for almost all of them privately—occasional exceptions—Thom Tillis talks a good game, and then they vote for what he wants.

Now, they may not do it in this case, because it cuts too close to home. But two things are involved here. They’re pissed because he’s putting pressure on them to do something they don’t want to do, and it’s a distraction, and it undermines their standing at home, because some of their own base voters are going to say these guys are disloyal—because they’re cultist voters. At the same time, they’re right that what people care about is first and foremost their own lives and affordability.

And it’s not just, let me note, that Trump is just talking about the SAVE Act. Look at some of the things he’s said recently. “They make up this word ‘affordability,’ those Democrats. There’s no such thing”—which does not resonate with their own voters, with working-class voters. And he said, we’ve got a war to fight, we can’t fund Medicare or Medicaid or education or housing or any of these other things.

And when they were able to pass a bipartisan housing bill to deal with a key component of affordability, he said, I’m not going to sign it—after promising that he would. The bait and switch. So he’s undermining them at every front. But it’s still a cult, Greg, and we cannot rule out that when he pushes hard, they’ll go along, because they’re afraid.

Sargent: Well, there’s another striking thing in the NBC report. Republicans say they fear Trump is setting them up to take the blame for midterm losses. One GOP senator says Trump “will blame it on us and the fact that we didn’t pass the SAVE Act.”

The senator adds: “He likes to dominate people, and he’s a bully, and he’s fucked things up as fast as he can, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Norm, that’s amazing stuff. Republicans created this guy every step of the way. He’s fucked them in every which way. His unpopularity is the reason that they’re cratering potentially this fall. And now they’re saying—now all of a sudden they’re angry at him? What do you make of that?

Ornstein: I think there’s frustration. And part of the frustration is that they’ve come to realize that the rash acts that he’s taken—this insane war with Iran and the way it’s playing out, the tariffs in and out and up and down, the inability to deal with major problems facing the country. The fact that—because he’s not just blown up green energy, he’s paying billions of taxpayer money to stop wind projects that are almost completed.

And as a result, we’re likely to have more energy shortages and stoppages during the worst summer weather, that will hurt them as well. There is a growing awareness that this monster that they’ve created is creating problems for them and not just for others.

You know, at the same time, they are unwilling to push back on the horrible things that ICE and the Border Patrol are doing. And what they’re realizing in states, including like Texas, is that the Hispanic votes that went to Republicans in 2024 are leaving them in substantial numbers, because of the policies that Trump is pursuing and their unwillingness to try and put a brake on any of them.

Sargent: A hundred percent. Well, to wrap this up: we’ve got Donald Trump demanding that they pass the SAVE Act, Republicans fearing that his obsession with the SAVE Act and refusal to focus on costs and everything else are putting them at risk. What’s going to happen?

There are several stages here where this could kind of fall apart, on liberals really. Number one, they could just end the filibuster—Republicans could end the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act. Number two, they could try to pass it via reconciliation, and if the parliamentarian throws it out, they could take the steps you outlined to overrule the parliamentarian. So is one of those things going to happen? Are they going to pass the SAVE Act, Norm?

Ornstein: I think there is a 40 percent chance that they will. And the reason, in the end, is—well, two reasons. One is the relentless pressure from Trump and the fear that by failing to do so, their own voters will turn against them. The second is the fear that they could lose the Senate, and they’ll do anything, including long-shot stuff, to make it happen.

Now, there’s one caveat I would offer out there. The Constitution has banned poll taxes. This goes back to the Jim Crow era, where Southern segregationists blocked African American votes—blocked poor people’s votes—by putting a poll tax. You had to pay to vote. And the Constitution says you can’t do that in federal elections. Law says you can’t do it in state and local elections.

Requiring a passport or an embossed birth certificate is a poll tax. It costs $170 to get a passport if you don’t have one. And you have to provide proof of citizenship. Every state has some kind of a fee for an official birth certificate. Many of them are not available. So it’s at least possible that that part of the SAVE Act could be blocked in the courts as unconstitutional—although this Supreme Court, God knows what they would do.

Sargent: Right. And that’s critical, because it looks like the mail piece won’t pass—the banning of vote by mail won’t pass, because Republicans want to keep that. Just to really clarify this: you think there’s a 40 percent chance that Republicans either end the filibuster or overrule the parliamentarian to pass the SAVE Act?

Ornstein: Yeah. And I think it’s far more likely that they would do it by overruling the parliamentarian, so that they could then claim, we didn’t take away the filibuster.

Sargent: Well, if that happens, Norm, all bets are off—but I really just don’t know whether that actually helps them. It could potentially help Democrats more. Norm Ornstein, thanks so much for coming on. That was a really, really great roadmap for us. We really appreciate it.

Ornstein: Always happy to do it with you, Greg.

Thomas has long carved out a reputation for frequent and idiosyncratic opinion writing. He pens more concurring and dissenting opinions than any of his colleagues on the high court. (Chief Justice John Roberts, by comparison, has not written separately in the last two terms.) This year alone, in a wide range of cases, Thomas sketched out a stunningly broad view of executive power—and, simultaneously, a sharply narrowed view of congressional power—that verges on the monarchical.

This can manifest in both historic cases and less closely watched ones. In Monsanto v. Durnell, for example, the court was asked to decide whether a federal law on insecticides could preempt state-level lawsuits against the makers of Roundup. The court’s answer was “yes,” with which Thomas agreed. But he then went further, in a concurring opinion, to “call attention to some of the underlying constitutional infirmities in the [Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide] Act.”

In his view, the law exceeded Congress’s powers under the commerce clause. “This power allows Congress to regulate ‘selling, buying, and bartering’ across state lines,” he wrote, quoting from a concurring opinion that he wrote in 1995. “It does not allow Congress to regulate ‘agriculture’ or ‘manufacturing,’ activities entirely ‘separate’ from ‘commerce.’”

Huh? It is somewhat absurd to treat “agriculture” or “manufacturing” as distinct from “commerce,” as if farmers grow crops and factories make goods for recreation instead of economic reasons. Thomas’s own phrasing of the commerce clause is much narrower than its actual text, which gives the legislature the power to regulate “commerce … among the several states.” Thomas’s interpretation, if adopted by the high court, would demolish most federal statutes that regulate the economy.

In Learning Resources v. Trump, the Supreme Court struck down the “Liberation Day” tariffs imposed by Trump last April. The court concluded that the Cold War–era law invoked by Trump did not allow him to impose tariffs via its permission to “regulate importations.” Some of the court’s conservative members disagreed with this interpretation, including Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh.

Thomas also disagreed with the majority’s holding but, as usual, opted to take it one step further. He argued that Congress could delegate, and had broadly delegated, its power to levy tariffs to the presidency. Thomas claimed that the nondelegation doctrine, which generally forbids one branch of government from ceding its power to another, did not apply here.

“Because the Constitution assigns Congress many powers that do not implicate the nondelegation doctrine, Congress may delegate the exercise of many powers to the President,” Thomas wrote. “Congress has done so repeatedly since the founding, with this Court’s blessing. The power to impose duties on imports can be delegated.”

This seemed to baffle some of Thomas’s usual allies, such as Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has frequently called for a stricter interpretation of the nondelegation doctrine. “It’s a sweeping theory,” he wrote, while disputing Thomas’s argument at length. “One that would require us to reimagine much of our case law addressing Article I’s Vesting Clause. And one that presents difficulties of its own.”

Thomas drew on medieval and early modern English sources to argue that the presidency could, in fact, wield broad powers like those of the British king. “In Great Britain, the King had no unilateral legislative power, but he had much unilateral power over foreign commerce,” the justice argued, quoting from the English jurist Lord Blackstone. “His power over foreign commerce included the power to ‘govern foreign trade,’ and to ‘prohibit any of his subjects from leaving the realm.’”

Gorsuch could barely hide his astonishment at this line of argument. He noted that, to the extent it was relevant, the arc of English history was one of Parliament wrestling away revenue raising from the Crown. More relevantly, he noted, the Boston Tea Party ran counter to Thomas’s thesis. “Are we really to believe that the patriots that night in Boston Harbor considered the whole of the tariff power some kingly prerogative?” Gorsuch asked.

Thomas’s view of executive power went even further in the court’s presidential-removal cases this term. In two separate cases, Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter, the justices weighed when and how the president could fire Senate-confirmed executive branch officials despite Congress’s protections for for-cause removal.

In Slaughter, the court’s conservative majority held that the president could fire commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission at will, overturning a nearly century-old precedent to the contrary. But in Cook, the court held that Trump could not remove a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, even with a pretextual for-cause rationale. Thomas enthusiastically supported the former ruling but dissented at length from the latter.

“Today’s decision is an unprecedented incursion on the executive branch,” Thomas wrote. “Neither the parties nor the court can point to a single time in American history that this court has upheld an injunction against the president’s removal of an executive officer. In the 237-year history of our Constitution, this court has, by all accounts, never done so.”

Roberts, writing for the court in Cook, concluded that the Federal Reserve could maintain its independence because it fit within the historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States, which operated at arms’ length from the federal government of that era. Thomas found the comparison to be ahistorical and argued for absolute presidential control over the nation’s central bank.

“Regardless of whether unaccountable executive officers like Cook would better govern the economy, the Framers rejected such a ‘promised land of technocratic governance,’” Thomas wrote. “They instead chose government by the people. As a court, our duty is not to second-guess that decision, but to uphold it.”

Thomas’s invocation of “the people” here is revealing. The executive and legislative branches are often described as the “elected branches,” in comparison to the life-tenured appointees to the federal bench. But only one of those two branches was elected from the start. The Framers always intended for Americans to choose their own representatives in the House, even if they circumscribed in practice who actually got to cast a vote.

The presidency, on the other hand, is not and has never been directly elected by the American people. The Framers inserted the Electoral College as a buffer between the popular will expressed by American voters and state legislatures and the nation’s executive power. While some states allowed voters to cast ballots for slates of presidential electors, this did not become the norm until after the founding generation had passed out of public life in the 1820s and 1830s.

Congress, on the other hand, was always meant to be the branch that channeled the popular will into law and policy. Part of that “government by the people” is Congress’s decision to create a central bank with a healthy degree of independence from the president’s day-to-day influence. If the American people wished to change course, they could elect representatives to Congress who would change it for them. They have not done so because, broadly speaking, it is good financial policy to not let the president personally set interest rates.

Thomas’s monarchical tendencies are strongest when it comes to immigration and foreign policy. Mullen v. Al Otro Lado involved a challenge by immigrants rights groups to a federal immigration policy that prevented asylum-seekers from applying for asylum at U.S. ports of entry by physically preventing them from stepping foot on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the policy, interpreting the statute’s defining of “arriv[ing] in the United States” to mean literally setting foot on U.S. soil.

Thomas joined the majority opinion but also wrote a concurring opinion where he went even further to criticize the lower court that had initially ruled in favor of the immigrants. “The relief that the district court provided may well have unconstitutionally infringed on the president’s inherent authority to exclude aliens from the country,” Thomas wrote.

Under the high court’s precedents, Congress and the executive branch have absolute discretion to determine which foreign nationals—whether they be immigrants, asylum-seekers, temporary visa holders, or whatnot—can or can’t enter the country. Thomas took this reasoning an additional step to argue that this power actually rests with the executive branch, not with Congress.

Thomas previously argued, in the Muslim travel-ban case during Trump’s first term, that the president “has inherent authority to exclude aliens from the country,” a remarkable theory given that Congress has the explicit Article 1 power to regulate immigration and naturalization. But Thomas disagreed with that approach on two levels.

First, he claimed, the president inherited such a power from the English monarchy. “For example, William Blackstone explained that the King could send alien friends ‘home whenever the king sees occasion,’” he wrote. “And, at the time of ratification, [the] Framers of the Constitution argued that the President would have the same power.”

Second, he argued that Congress’s power over immigration was much narrower than the legal consensus assumed over the past 150 years. “Congress, for its part, has no enumerated power to require the President to bring certain aliens into the country,” he wrote. “The Constitution grants Congress the power to ‘establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.’ But, the class members in this case are not naturalized or even on the path to naturalization.”

To the extent that this is true, it is because the executive branch literally denied them the ability to request asylum at a U.S. port of entry. But to Thomas, this does not matter. “Any statute that forced the president to allow aliens to cross the border against his will would appear to exceed Congress’s enumerated powers, and a court could not enforce it against the President,” he claimed.

If the court were to adopt this position, it would gut much of federal immigration law. Holding a green card would be pointless if the president, on a whim, could deport you back to the country from which you originally came. Statutory protections for refugees, asylum-seekers, and temporary visa holders would be meaningless. A broad swath of people lawfully present in the United States would suddenly find themselves at the president’s personal mercy, even if Congress wished to protect them.

Thomas’s concurring and dissenting opinions, by nature, are not law. They can nevertheless prove to be highly influential in conservative legal circles. Lower court judges routinely cite them when challenging or disputing Supreme Court precedents. Some of those judges can be former Thomas clerks themselves: The Trump administration has drawn heavily from his acolytes to staff the federal bench. While Thomas’s opinions are rarely the law today, they can be a telling indicator of the world in which the conservative legal movement hopes to one day make us live.

Happily for the report’s authors, it was nearly impossible in the immediate aftermath of the report’s release to check its findings against the reality of the museum itself. It took me nearly an hour after I got off the subway on July 6 to get inside the building because Trump’s Great American State Fair, it turns out, runs through July 10. Not that many people were making their way into it, but the Mall itself was surrounded by fencing and Army trucks—this state fair looks more like an internment camp—and National Guard personnel patrolling the perimeter gave contradictory information about how to get around it. 

When finally I staggered into the National Museum of American History, I remembered my mixed feelings about the place. These objections have nothing to do with any evangelical leftism that the White House claims to have found there. Rather, I can’t square the museum’s mishmash of genuinely stirring artifacts (the Star-Spangled Banner, Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, the short-handled hoe that wrecked the backs of generations of California farmworkers until Cesar Chavez got it banned) with its pop-culture kitsch (Judy Garland’s ruby slippers, R2DT from Star Wars). The latter items really belong in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles or the Paley Center for Media in New York (though let’s keep Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet). Plus there’s all those terminally boring First Lady gowns. For as long as I can remember, NMAH has been over-anxious to please the masses. The masses are not pleased by lefty virtue-signaling, so you won’t find much there.

Reading the White House report, one realizes as early as Page 2 that the authors’ evidence-gathering will fall short. The sentence announcing this is: “One of the most significant findings in this report concerns what is missing.” No self-respecting polemicist ever begins this way; you save the null-set argument for last, after you’ve flattened your opposition with devastating particulars. In this philippic, though, “what’s missing” is the very first item listed under the heading, “Key Findings.”  You can practically hear Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley—a former speechwriter to Newt Gingrich—shout from his rostrum, “I got nothing.”

What exactly “is missing” from the National Museum of American History? The Founding Fathers! The report explains:

[A] visitor to the Museum today will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware.

I’m going to spend the rest of this essay demonstrating how very untrue that is. 

As we enter NMAH the very first thing to catch our eye is a monumental Horatio Greenough statue of a bare-chested and toga-clad George Washington. The work’s homoeroticism embarrassed many people at its unveiling at the U.S. Capitol in 1841 (Charles Bullfinch: “I fear this statue will only give the idea of entering or leaving a bath”), prompting its eventual removal to the Smithsonian. But Haley and his coauthors know that a bathhouse-dwelling George Washington can’t be blamed on today’s LGBTQ lobby, so they leave Greenough alone.  

Instead, the White House gripes about a “didactic” (i.e., a text panel accompanying an artwork; I thought Haley was being snide but that’s what museums actually call these) describing a frieze on Washington’s chair that shows Hercules battling a snake. This symbolizes, the didactic says, “the perceived courage of the American people.” If you can’t see what’s wrong with that phrasing, congratulate yourself for being sane. The offending word is “perceived.” Such distancing, the report complains, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”

Are the American people courageous? Some are, certainly. But to me, the great revelation over the past 18 months has been discovering how many of our leaders are not.

When the first thing you see on entering the National Museum of American History is a gigantic half-naked George Washington, in what sense does that give short shrift to the Founders? Well, Haley might reply, a statue is not a “major exhibit.” So let’s step around our first president and enter “American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith,” an exhibit on permanent display since 2017. “More than just waging a war of independence, American revolutionaries took a great leap of faith,” reads a wall text, “and established a new government based on the sovereignty of the people. It was truly a radical idea that entrusted the power of the nation not in a monarchy but in its citizens. Each generation since continues to question how to form ‘a more perfect union’ around this radical idea.”

Inside the exhibit, what I first notice is an original copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Okay, Paine’s not the right’s favorite Founder (too left), but they like Thomas Jefferson, right? Here’s a handsome reproduction of Jefferson’s portable desk (the real one is on loan to the Smithsonian Castle, across the once-traversable National Mall), which (of course) Jefferson designed himself. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on that desk. And here’s a print of the Declaration of Independence made from a copper-plate facsimile commissioned in 1823 by John Quincy Adams, when he was secretary of state. And here’s the document box that George Washington used at the Constitutional Convention, which may be the single most exciting object in NMAH’s collection. Incidentally, I see here no didactics that tattle on Washington for being an enslaver (though probably there’s one someplace around here because—sorry Parson Weems—he was). What I see instead is the following, which I quote in its entirety:

“Father of His Country”

Admired in his time for courage, integrity, and leadership, George Washington became an icon after his death—a man to be emulated and venerated in monuments, celebrations, and epic stories, both real and myth. While Washington can seem a distant figure to 21^st-century Americans, and modern scholarship focuses on the fallible man rather than the marble hero, his image is still used for inspiration, patriotism, and commercial gain. Now joined by modern heroic figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington continues to hold a place for many as a symbolic “father” of the country.

Note that we see here no hedging on Washington’s courage (unlike that of the American people, it’s indisputable). I’m not crazy about the word “icon” (more here), and I suppose Haley might work up a head of steam over putting the word father inside quotation marks, but that’s too weak a complaint even for the White House report. Another didactic similarly omits Washington’s slaveholding and says he “spent his life in service to the nation.” Not perceived service to the nation. Service to the nation.

Continental Congress? Check. Pilgrims? Check. Puritans? Check. Revolutionary War? Check. I didn’t see anything about Washington crossing the Delaware, but it’s possible I missed it (and anyway, who gives a shit; if you want to see the Emanuel Leutze painting visit the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). 

I did glimpse the gunboat Philadelphia, “part of a small fleet that against all odds stalled a British invasion intent on ending the American Revolution,” per the didactic. “Today conservators are preserving this iconic vessel, stabilizing its timbers and iron fittings. And historians are making new discoveries about the people who built it and fought aboard it.” 

Hooray. Let’s hope White House budget chief Russell Vought doesn’t cut their funding.

So I understood the hype, but I never thought he was a great candidate. The political class who backed him—overwhelmingly white, male progressives—should have been more discerning, especially as one scandal after another emerged. The fact that his sketchy past, like his troubling Reddit posts and Nazi tattoo and “unsettling” behavior toward women didn’t imperil his campaign until a woman came forward with rape allegations on Monday shows how toxic some reaches of the left can be, as willing as the right to dismiss misogyny and other disqualifying offenses when it’s politically inconvenient. In fact, Platner’s checkered history may have been part of his appeal, as some on the left romanticize the working class and think we should cling to an outdated masculine ideal to win them back.

For starters, Platner’s working-class bona fides were questionable. His grandfather was an architect, and his father was an attorney in Ellsworth, Maine. He attended private schools as a teenager. His father lent him $200,000 to buy his house, which he pays about $950 a month toward, and his mother owns a restaurant that buys his oysters. In an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel, in June, Platner rebutted charges that he was “cosplaying” by effectively broadening his definition of working class. “If the bulk of the money that you get to live comes from wages, comes from working, and you are not just sitting on an immense amount of hoarded wealth, which generates income for you, then you work for a living,” he said.

While I’m sympathetic to that broader definition, the bulk of working-class folks who don’t have some amount of family privilege to fall back on might quibble with it. Much of Platner’s adolescence and early adulthood—being expelled from school, working odd jobs, eschewing college, serving in the Marines in Iraq before his mother helped get him into oyster farming—speaks to the kind of privilege someone with a solid middle-class upbringing knows they can rely on, not the kind of panicked effort to find solid ground I witnessed in my working-class upbringing in Arkansas.

Platner has attributed his alcohol abuse and other troubles in adulthood to PTSD related to his military deployments (he also served in Afghanistan with the National Guard). That is useful context for some of his problems but not all of them—and it’s certainly not cause enough for wholesale forgiveness. Yet, despite these setbacks, Platner continued to get extra chances to make it in society. It’s hard to imagine someone who grew up with less money and fewer connections (or anyone but a white man, for that matter) bouncing back from his checkered history and lack of professional experience to run, not just for any political office, but for a U.S. Senate seat held by a five-term incumbent—and then somehow successfully convincing voters to back him in the primary over the sitting (woman) governor.

As a candidate seeking the je ne sais quoi of authenticity, Platner conveniently eschewed his family history and instead implored voters to consider his experiences as a working-class adult. But at the same time, we were asked to discount some of his other experiences and actions in adulthood. When it was revealed that he had a Totenkopf tattoo, he said he was drunk when he got it and didn’t know its history. I can maybe buy that. But are we also meant to believe that in the intervening 20 years he never learned—from, say, a World War II documentary, a book, or a friend—the truth about his tattoo? That is harder to believe.

When Platner’s questionable treatment of women first surfaced, he hardly needed to defend himself because other people were happy to do it for him. It wasn’t just that his fans dismissed these accusations, but that they had nothing but contempt for the people who did worry about them. In fact, when he clinched the Democratic nomination in the June 9 primary, his fans doubled down. Journalist Ken Klippenstein called it the end of “smoothgroin” politics, comparing certain politicians to real-life Ken dolls. “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly,” he wrote, and went on to describe politicians he thought fit that mold. “In the real world, it seems everyone and anyone can have dark present and past,” he wrote.

Matt Stoller, the anti-monopoly journalist, declared it the end of “Dem HR lady politics.” After some backlash, he tried to claim he was making the case against “authoritarian corporate officers.” But it was hard not to envision what he meant in his first post. You can make any case against corporations you want, but the fact is that in most workplaces sexual harassment claims are handled by H.R. offices—often populated by middle-class women, by the way—and to the extent they still exist, most of us encounter H.R. officers as the person who makes sure you get your vacation time and sign up for your health insurance and 401(k). Stoller wants us to believe that lurking behind H.R. is a corporate machine that protects itself from liability by being unfair to men. (The #MeToo movement showed how wrong that is because it took outrageously horrendous examples of sexual assault to bring down powerful men—and even then many of them got a second or even third chance.)

For some of Platner’s male supporters, or perhaps many of them, his violent edge was always part of his appeal. He seemed like he could punch someone, and people are angry and want a fighter. But that is not what it means to be working-class—and working-class voters in Maine apparently sensed that Platner was a phony. While it’s still early in this midterm election year, with most voters still tuned out, a recent New York Times poll showed that Collins led him by 30 points among white men without college degrees. She’s a known quantity in the state with a lot of name recognition, and a newcomer like Platner had some campaign work to do. But most of his support was coming from those with bachelor’s degrees, 66 percent of whom backed him over Collins.

That may seem surprising given how Platner portrayed himself on the campaign trail. But it’s less surprising when you consider that his loudest supporters online were that same demographic. They, at least, were fooled: To lefty college graduates who pay close attention to politics no matter the month or year, Platner did indeed appear authentically middle-class—or at least close enough not to question it, given that he adopted all of the progressive positions that this online cohort supports. Perhaps Platner’s press photo was modeled on a romance novel, after all, because these people swooned over him.

As Platner appears poised to drop out of the race, many progressives are pushing for the Maine Democratic Party to tap Troy Jackson, a former president of the state Senate, to take on Collins. It’s easy to see why. He’s a staunch union supporter with a history of fighting for strong labor protections, but he’s also a middle-aged white guy with working-class bona fides: He’s a fifth-generation logger. Let’s hope he’s been a better man than Platner has been.

Amanda McGonigle, who has nearly two million followers for her massive “CatsonaCouch” Instagram account, was stopped in line at a Maine event for the vice president in May.

“They got me. So, while I was in line to go into the event, Secret Service … came up to me and said, ‘Hey Amanda, you can’t come in.’ And I was basically like ‘but I have my registration,’ and they were like ‘well since it’s a private event , you can’t come in,’” McGonigle said on her Instagram account back in May. “I was like … ‘You realize that’s silly, right? I’m a cat account.’”

While she was waiting in line, McGonigle was also told by the Secret Service, “We know where you stand.” She insists that the event was advertised as public.

“Either it was a public event as advertised and I was denied entry because I think JD Vance is a sentient jar of mayonnaise, or it was a private event and taxpayer dollars were being used to fund JD Vance’s little ‘safe space,’” McGonigle said again after the event. “Either way, it’s giving lawsuit vibes.”

McGonigle is suing the U.S. Secret Service and the Executive Office of the President for infringement on her constitutional rights.

“The First Amendment protects every person’s right to express their opinions and political views, free from fear of government retaliation or retribution,” ACLU of Maine attorney Anahita Sotoohi said in a statement. “Ms. McGonigle uses her platform to criticize and satirize elected officials, using humor to garner support for causes important to her and inform her followers about political developments. The freedom to mock has been a central tenet of American political discourse since the founding. The First Amendment cannot be revoked just because one of the country’s most powerful people can’t take a joke.”

McGonigle created the account in 2024 in the wake of Vance’s comment deriding “childless cat ladies.” It exists with the aim to “have more followers than JD Vance by the time he leaves office and to troll him mercilessly every single day,” according to McGonigle.

The White House has yet to comment on McGonigle, although they seem to very aware of—and bothered by—her account’s existence.

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery reached out to McConnell’s staff Tuesday about the speculation. A day earlier, far-right influencer Laura Loomer and independent journalist Desirée Townsend, who first flagged the EMS call to McConnell’s home that revealed he was unconscious, declared that the Kentucky senator is “officially brain dead.” Bendery said the senator’s staff did not confirm or deny the report, instead directing her to a week-old statement that doesn’t clarify McConnell’s condition.

“Senator McConnell appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital,” a spokesperson told Bendery. “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”

Earlier in the day Tuesday, several Republicans publicly insisted that McConnell was still alive and that they had just spoken to him. CNN commentator Scott Jennings said, “He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history.”

Senator Scott Barrasso and Senate Majority Leader John Thune also said they had spoken to McConnell about Senate business. However, other Republicans, such as Senator Mike Lee, said they still don’t know what’s going on with McConnell.

“Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee said on X.

Trump’s MAGA base has demanded proof that McConnell is still alive, and his office’s response Tuesday will only fuel their conspiracy theories. There’s speculation over whether Republicans are trying to avoid a quick special election, as is required under Kentucky law, that could open the door for Representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic, to run for the seat. For now, McConnell remains in the hospital without any explanation.

A damning new rape allegation emerged against Platner Monday evening, marring the Maine oyster farmer’s candidacy and prompting a slew of progressive lawmakers to revoke their endorsements of the firebrand.

It was, apparently, the final straw for Platner’s team, who had largely stayed by his side through previous controversies, including the uproar over his Nazi-themed chest tattoo, prior accusations related to Platner’s heavy drinking, revelations about his extramarital sexting, and allegations from his former romantic partners about his violent propensities.

Within hours of the Politico report, some 1,400 volunteers on Platner’s statewide organizing Discord server had called for him to withdraw from the race, reported Drop Site News Tuesday, noting that the cohort included door knockers, canvassers, digital organizers, and tablers.

“I don’t necessarily want Graham to win. I want our political ideas to win. He is not coming back from this and we should find someone to carry on the ideals now,” Dante Cusolito, a volunteer and recent college graduate, told Drop Site. “People can be flawed and become better, but hanging your movement on the coattails of somebody credibly accused of sexual assault is the exact thing we are trying to be better than.”

Instead, local political organizers are turning to former State Senator Troy Jackson, a Bernie Sanders–backed logger from northern Maine, as Platner’s possible replacement.

A spokeswoman for Jackson, Christine Kirby, told Drop Site that their campaign had been flooded with calls, texts, and emails encouraging Jackson’s candidacy since the rape allegations emerged.

“He is clearly the strongest option to replace Graham Platner and take on Susan Collins in the general election,” Kirby told Drop Site. “This movement is greater than any one person, it’s about a coalition of Maine people fighting for a future that doesn’t have to belong only to the wealthy and powerful. And Troy is up for the fight.”

Jackson, who served as president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024, came in third place in the Maine Democratic gubernatorial primary last month. By Tuesday, he had already repositioned himself, filing exploratory committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission for a potential Senate run.

But he’s not the only Mainer trying to throw his hat in the ring to supplant Platner. Bangor-born David Costello, who lost the state primary race to Platner last month, wrote on X that he’s “back in” to replace Collins if Platner formally withdraws.

Nirav Shah, a visiting professor at Colby College who similarly failed to gain ground in Maine’s gubernatorial primary, also released a statement indicating his interest in the Senate race.

The Texas attorney general has been registered to vote at his Collin County home—where he has not lived since his divorce two years ago, according to filings by his ex-wife, State Senator Angela Paxton.

It’s not entirely clear where Mr. Paxton has resided since, but prior reporting linked him to another home in Denton County—making him ineligible to participate in elections in Collin County. Doing so is a second-degree felony punishable by a fine up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Election lawyers have cautioned that this kind of voter fraud is incredibly hard to prove.

Voter rolls showed that Paxton voted in Collin County in the March Republican primary, and again in May when he became his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate.

David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer, told ProPublica that Paxton would be allowed to remain registered there if he had a reasonable expectation of returning, but his contentious and highly publicized split from his ex-wife suggests that is not the case.

“I think there would be questions raised about a residence where someone does not live, does not spend the night, and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside,” Becker said. “Those would probably raise red flags in any state.”

“Certainly, the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Texas, someone who has made claims about election integrity and made it a priority of his office, should be charged with knowing the laws of residencies of the state of Texas with regard to voting,” Becker said.

Forget “knowing”—Paxton’s office published the very guidelines he broke. When Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for suspected voter fraud in February, he shared guidelines for voter registration, including the requirement to “provide the address where you reside when registering to vote.”

Attorney Clark Birdsall told ProPublica that it was “especially egregious that someone such as Ken Paxton appears he’s not conforming to the law.”

Paxton, a fierce ally of President Trump, has previously advocated for cracking down on voter fraud, while also threatening to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Madison Cercy, Paxton’s campaign spokesperson, called the report a “baseless, lie-filled tabloid story.”

The CDC initially only reported 145 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis last month in the U.S. But on July 1, Michigan health officials confirmed 100 more cases in only nine days, a troubling spike.

The cyclosporiasis infection—caused by “a one-celled parasite too small to be seen with the naked eye”—has impacted nearly 700 people in Michigan and Illinois. It can be found in contaminated water and unwashed leafy produce, and is most active in the spring and summer.

Symptoms begin with diarrhea, then can include appetite loss, bloating, nausea, cramping, and fatigue. Confirmed cases include those aged five to 86, with over 60 percent of them being women. There have been no deaths, although 20 people have been hospitalized. While this parasite appears every year, this many cases is certainly abnormal. Last year there were only 50 confirmed cases in Michigan, according to NBC Chicago.

“Outbreaks of cyclosporiasis have been occurring across the United States and now here in Michigan,” the state’s chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, said in a statement. “Based on the unusual number of cases we have identified in a little over a week, we anticipate additional cases of illness being reported. We recommend Michiganders contact their health care provider if they experience sudden, ongoing diarrhea and reach out to their local health department if additional members of their family are suffering from the same symptoms.”

The temperature is extremely high in many parts of the United States, and public trust in the CDC is extremely low. The next few weeks will be a significant test on their ability to manage outbreaks like this.

Conservative commentator Scott Jennings wrote on X that he spoke to his “old friend” Tuesday morning.

“He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history,” Jennings said. “I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.”

McConnell also reportedly spoke with Senator John Barrasso earlier in the day, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday, according to NOTUS’s Al Weaver.

“Leader Thune spoke with Senator McConnell yesterday by phone,” a Thune spokesperson told Weaver. “They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.”

But lawmakers on the other side of the conservative caucus weren’t so confident. At least one MAGA-aligned legislator, Utah Senator Mike Lee, shared online that most of Congress had stayed mum on the subject because they were completely and utterly in the dark as to the state of McConnell’s health.

“Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee wrote on X Tuesday.

Rumors about McConnell’s health spiked late Monday, when far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that McConnell is “officially brain dead.” In a separate post, Loomer claimed that McConnell is in organ failure, and that the White House had been told he “isn’t ever coming back.”

Shortly afterward, the reporter that first broke the story that McConnell had gone into cardiac arrest in mid-June—Desirée Townsend—said that her sources had shared the same information.

Within hours, far-right influencers were demanding proof that McConnell was still alive, questioning why his office had not shared a video of the 84-year-old lawmaker if he was able to talk. McConnell’s office has not yet done so. In the weeks since McConnell was hospitalized, his team has released only vague and repetitive statements that have failed to acknowledge the senator’s condition or why he was receiving care.

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal suffered “an adverse drug reaction” to an unidentified substance, which triggered anaphylaxis and exacerbated his asthma, according to his death certificate. The document was certified on June 25 and released Monday, three months after his death.

AfghanEvac, an advocacy group, reported that the death certificate falsely states that Paktiawal died on March 12—a day before he was even taken into custody. It also lists the effects of methamphetamine, which Paktiawal’s friends and family say he did not use.

“If my brother never used that drug in his life, how did it get into his body while he was inside an ICE building?” said Naseer Paktiawal, the deceased’s brother.

The family has still not received an autopsy report explaining Paktiawal’s death certificate. In a June 24 letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said it would continue to withhold his full autopsy report because of a pending federal criminal investigation.

Paktiawal was detained by federal immigration agents in Richardson, Texas, on March 13 while dropping off two of his children at preschool. After 24 hours with ICE, he was dead.

The evening of his arrest, Paktiawal complained of shortness of breath and chest pain while being held in the ICE’s Dallas field office. He was then transferred to Parkland Hospital, where he received treatment and remained for observation. The next morning, medical staff observed that his tongue had become swollen. Later, after cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other lifesaving measures, Paktiawal was declared dead.

Before emigrating to the United States in 2021, Paktiawal was a member of the Afghan special forces who were hired by the U.S. government. He worked with them for more than a decade.

According to ICE, Paktiawal was “paroled into the U.S. by an immigration officer,” or granted temporary permission to enter the country under Operation Allies Refuge, an evacuation effort for allied Afghan nationals that took place under the Biden administration.

ICE claimed they had no record of his military service, and said his parole expired in August 2025. The agency also claimed that Paktiawal had previously been arrested for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fraud and theft.

More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office—a marked increase from past administrations—but Paktiawal’s death is the first to be ruled an accident.

Bloomberg reports that the deal, finalized last month, likely benefited Lutnick’s two sons, who took over Cantor Fitzgerald after their father left to join the Trump administration. The financial services company served as a placeholder agent for the deal between the Department of Commerce and USA Rare Earth, or USAR, and Democrats expressed their concerns in a letter to Brandon Lutnick, Howard’s younger son and the firm’s chairman, dated Monday. 

“It is imperative your company provide complete transparency about the substantive conflict of interest concerns raised by the circumstances of this investment,” said the letter, written by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Ron Wyden in addition to Representative Zoe Lofgren. “Secretary Lutnick appears to have played a part in facilitating the USAR deal with Commerce.”

Wyden and Warren serve on the Senate Finance Committee, while Van Hollen serves on the the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies.* Lofgren is the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. They also sent a letter to USAR detailing their concerns.  

In January, the Trump administration agreed to take a 10 percent stake in USAR, and the Commerce Department offered the company funding and loans. These terms “raise serious questions about Secretary Lutnick’s exposure to federal conflicts of interest and bribery laws,” the legislators wrote in the letter. 

One year ago, USAR was a much smaller company. After meeting with Secretary Lutnick and other administration officials, it secured government help in January and has since purchased a rare earth mine in Brazil and acquired, either in partial stakes or in totality, processing businesses in France and the United Kingdom. 

These Democrats are hoping to get details about the meetings between Cantor Fitzgerald and the Commerce Department. But, even with congressional hearings, they may not get much in the way of answers, considering how much the president and his administration traffic in corrupt, self-serving business deals. 

* This article has been updated to clarify Van Hollen’s committee membership.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross was caught on tape—from multiple angles—sidestepping the front of Good’s red Honda Pilot before advancing toward the driver side door, aiming his gun at Good, and firing his weapon.

The 37-year-old was a mother and an award-winning poet. In the immediate moments after her death on January 7, the federal government’s response seemed to be normal. The FBI mobilized to investigate the crime scene, and local authorities received assurances from the government that the probe would proceed as a joint investigation.

But by that evening, Washington had completely shut out Minnesota police and law enforcement in Hennepin County. The FBI shuttled Good’s SUV to a storage facility before Minnesota authorities got a chance to look at the evidence.

“I was on the phone with the U.S. attorney, and everybody agreed this would once again be a joint investigation. And then suddenly the [Bureau of Criminal Apprehension] was kicked off the case,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told the Pod Save the People podcast in June, referring to the state local law enforcement agency.

“And so we realized then and there it was going to be a different situation,” Moriarty continued. “They took away Renee Good’s car. It’s shrink wrapped. It’s still sitting in a warehouse somewhere. They won’t share any evidence that they collected or got from any statements.”

The restricted access to critical evidence meant that the Justice Department was the only agency left capable of conducting a full investigation into the incident. But Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ Civil Rights Division, had no interest in doing so, The New York Times reported in January.

Three current and former department officials told the Times that Dhillon would not consider opening an investigation into whether Ross had violated the law. Instead, the department considered investigating Good and her widow, Becca Good, regarding their supposed ties to activist groups. The unusual request prompted the mass exodus of several federal prosecutors.

But the push to shield Ross went all the way to the top. Then–Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement that there was “no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into Ross.

Shortly afterward, Donald Trump and his allies began to slander Good as a “domestic terrorist,” preemptively attempting to sentence her in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, the day after Good was killed, Vice President JD Vance practically promised Ross’s freedom: “That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vance told reporters at the time. “He was doing his job.”

As of now, very little has been materially done to investigate Good’s death or hold her killer accountable. In a statement to The Atlantic, the Department of Homeland Security both confirmed that it was still looking into the circumstances of the shooting and echoed Vance’s comments that Ross had “acted in self-defense” after Good had “weaponized her vehicle against him.”

The magazine noted in a story Monday that the word choice was “not particularly indicative of an agency keeping an open mind as to what happened.”

In lieu of legitimate action from the federal government, state and local law enforcement have started to try to gain access to the evidence in their own ways, including legal action to demand federal agents hand over the protected material.

Good’s widow has also filed her own lawsuit, asking for the return of the car so that Minnesota investigators can take a look at it.

The family’s legal team “continues to take all aggressive offensive measures and is fiercely committed to pursuing truth and accountability,” Antonio Romanucci, the family’s attorney, said in an emailed statement to The Atlantic.

That’s what New York Times journalists Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman wrote in their new book, Regime Change, which looked at the internal workings of President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the first year of his second term in office. The pair mentioned how Vance describes himself as a “doomer” who is “always latching onto the most negative possibilities,” and after Kirk, who Vance considered one of his friends, was killed, the vice president went off the deep end.

Vance’s “instincts told him that there was a larger plot behind the murder,” Swan and Haberman wrote. “He went down countless online rabbit holes, becoming so consumed by the videos and the theories that his wife, Usha, told him she was worried about him.”

This new revelation is worrying. Vance is the immediate successor to the presidency if anything happens to President Trump, who has visible health problems. Besides that, Trump has reportedly chosen Vance as his successor to run for president in 2028.

Future presidents should not be diving into internet conspiracy theories and YouTube rabbit holes, and vice presidents should not have that much time on their hands. How is Vance able to get into the weeds with his position? While he didn’t create a specific policy portfolio, he has taken on some important duties, helping with peace negotiations with Iran and representing the U.S. in different international trips. Evidently, that hasn’t kept him away from crazy internet theories.

The lawsuit, filed in June by the government watchdog American Oversight, requested “All email communications sent or received by Todd Blanche and containing both a key term from Column A and a key term from Column B,” and “All text messages and messages on messaging platforms ... sent or received by Todd Blanche and containing the term ‘Epstein.’”

Column A contains “Epstein” and “Maxwell,” while column B contains “Trump,” “DJT,” “POTUS,” “DOE174,” “Tallahassee,” and nine other terms.

The lawsuit also argued that Blanche’s upcoming Senate confirmation hearings creates “an urgency to inform the public about Mr. Blanche’s work in his official capacity surrounding the government’s treatment of the Smith Report,” and that “Mr. Blanche’s work history regarding the Epstein Files raises significant questions about the government’s integrity that affect public confidence.” American Oversight requested the records by July 14. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled Blanche’s confirmation hearing for July 15 and 16.

The Justice Department argued against these requests in a 38-page memo, filed Monday, that alleges that American Oversight’s FOIA request would disrupt “the processing of other requests awaiting agency attention” and that granting this one would “wreak havoc on agencies and the court.”

“The FOIA was intended to be available to all members of the public, not just those who are professional FOIA requesters or who have the resources to file a complaint in district court and move for preliminary injunctive relief. It is unfair … for AO to jump ahead of other requesters who filed their FOIA requests earlier, and who are waiting patiently in line for their requests to be processed,” the DOJ argued. “Granting relief would create perverse incentives and send the message that requesters whose preferred deadlines align with high-profile governmental proceedings can circumvent statutory procedures to leapfrog other requesters.”

This response comes as over 1,200 former DOJ employees signed a letter on Tuesday urging Congress to reject Blanche’s nomination.

The Department of Justice has yet to release or unredact all of the entire Epstein files, and has been dogged by Blanche’s own controversies over his handling of the files, given his meeting with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and his past work as President Trump’s personal lawyer. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi has said Blanche is wholly responsible for any missteps with the files, even under her tenure. The new strange, albeit flimsy, argument from the DOJ will only rightly increase scrutiny as his hearing approaches.

In March 2025, the State Department started to hold meetings with Iranian officials to discuss detained Iranian immigrants, according to the complaint from the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and the Public Citizen Litigation Group.

In those meetings, U.S. officials allegedly shared sensitive information about Iranian immigrants, including details from their asylum applications, in which immigrants reported whether they’d been persecuted for their religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or involvement in women’s rights activism.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement then forced Iranian immigrants to meet with Iranian officials, who seemed to have comprehensive knowledge of their asylum applications, the complaint said. Those meetings have continued amid the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

Federal regulation passed in the 1990s bars the U.S. government from revealing confidential information about asylum applications, credible fear determinations, and reasonable fear determinations. If confirmed by a court, the Trump administration has blatantly violated this rule in order to execute the president’s mass deportation agenda.

Roughly 600 Iranian immigrants were detained by immigration enforcement last year. In September, Iranian officials agreed to take as many as 400 deported Iranian immigrants. That month, a flight returned dozens of immigrants to Iran. In nearly every case, either the immigrants’ asylum requests had been denied or they had not been provided a hearing. Two more flights took place in December and January. The last was a week before the war started.

In addition to cracking down on undocumented immigrants, the Trump administration has made sweeping efforts to undermine legal immigration pathways. There have been mounting reports that asylum cases are being routinely dismissed by immigration judges and that asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal. The government has stacked the deck by appointing immigration judges bent on denying asylum claims, curbing America’s refugee program, and imposing steep price increases on H-1B visas.

“That’s what hurt my relationship with NATO. Because Greenland doesn’t help Denmark, Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the United States. And it’s surrounded by China ships and Russian ships,” Trump said. “That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark. And when NATO wouldn’t go along with it, and with all of the money we spend to help them with Russia, and we don’t have to spend any money. We could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe.”

Trump on Greenland: "That's what hurt my relationship with NATO. Because Greenland doesn't help Denmark. Denmark doesn't spend money to really help Greenland, but it's an important part for the United States. And it's surrounded by China ships and Russian ships. Greenland should… pic.twitter.com/MdvZPdGrEn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 7, 2026

Trump seemed to have forgotten about Greenland for the past few months after nearly setting off an international incident in January, with his rhetoric alarming NATO leaders so much that they deployed troops to the island in case Trump quickly decided to seize it by force.

The situation seemed to calm down after Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, later that month. Public opinion in Greenland and Denmark toward the U.S. has plummeted amid Trump’s desperate attempts to take over the territory, including bribing its residents. Trump’s latest bluster is not likely to help.

During a joint press conference Tuesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, Trump appeared dumbfounded when pressed about his terms for potentially selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey despite a congressional ban.

A reporter asked Trump whether the sale of F-35 jets would require the country’s Russian-made S-400 missile defense system to be sold to a “third party.”

“Third party? What is the third—with respect to what?” Trump asked.

“There are concerns about the Russian missile defense system. Do you have those concerns about this system?” the reporter asked.

“I have no concerns at all about anything,” Trump replied.

“I mean,” he continued, “he’s a leader of a country that he’s made a much better country, a much more powerful country. You see it, I mean, it’s beautiful. You get off the roads are beautiful, it’s an amazing thing. No, I have no concerns with anything having to do with Turkey. The relationship, I would say the relationship with Turkey right now is better probably than it’s ever been. It was good in my first four years, but I think now it’s probably even better than that, if that’s possible.”

a confused Trump has difficulty understanding a question from a reporter:

Q: There are concerns about the Russian missile defense system. Do you have those concerns about this system?

TRUMP: I have no concerns about anything pic.twitter.com/HtuaeLp7WH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 7, 2026

One can only imagine the right-wing reaction if former President Joe Biden had delivered such an unintelligible response.

Turkey was barred from America’s F-35 program in 2020 after it purchased an advanced missile defense system from Russia. The sale sparked concerns in Washington that Turkey would train the system on newly provided F-35 jets, allowing Russia to learn how to respond to U.S. military capabilities.

In order to move forward with the sale, Turkey could potentially hand off its missile defense system to a third party, one Trump administration official told The New York Times. But on Tuesday, Trump was evidently unbothered by Turkey’s Russian-made missile defense system, and even suggested he would lift sanctions preventing the sale of the F-35.

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” Trump told reporters. “We don’t want to sanction friends.”

One little problem: The sanctions were put into law by Congress, so in order to approve the sale, Trump would have to convince lawmakers to back him up. The president is going to have to come up with a better argument than I don’t care about the Russian military threat because the roads in Turkey are so beautiful.

A damning new rape allegation emerged against Platner Monday evening, marring the Maine oyster farmer’s candidacy and prompting a slew of progressive lawmakers to revoke their endorsements of the Democratic firebrand.

It was a swing and a miss on Fox News shortly after the news broke, when McCarthy attempted to use the dark moment to back-pat the Republican Party by claiming that conservatives always turn away from a “very bad candidate.” But the attempted roast only highlighted just how ignorant the GOP is, considering the orange-toned sexual abuser currently sitting in the White House.

“The one thing I know about Republicans: When we had a very bad candidate and found out, we didn’t vote for that person. We walked away,” McCarthy told the network.

Kevin McCarthy on Platner Allegations: That one thing I know about Republicans is when we had a very bad candidate, we didn't vote for that person. We walked away. pic.twitter.com/wkm65CCGHb

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 7, 2026

But that’s not what Republicans did in 2016 (or 2020, or 2024). By the time the presidential election rolled around that year, more than a dozen women had accused Trump of sexual misconduct, and a viral Access Hollywood tape had publicized Trump’s gross beliefs about consent in his own words. Nonetheless, conservatives across the country voted for him for president.

Years later, in 2023, Trump was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll. At the time, the judge in the case went out of his way to explain that Trump could be considered a rapist based on the common definition of the word.

Online commenters were quick to point out McCarthy’s blatant hypocrisy, flaming the former politico for his thoughtless comparison.

“You can grab ’em by the pussy,” wrote one X user, quoting Trump’s Access Hollywood hot mic moment.

“What the f***, man?” commented a self-identified Republican turned Democrat. “You literally voted for a pedo grapist and Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend!”

But even disregarding Trump, the Republican Party has a long history of fervently backing highly controversial candidates. In recent years, the party has put its weight behind Herschel Walker, the 2022 Georgia Senate candidate who faced alarming domestic violence allegations; and George Santos, the New York lawmaker who fabricated practically everything he shared about himself and was later ousted from Congress and sentenced to 87 months in prison for fraud. Trump prematurely commuted his sentence via an unprecedented presidential pardon.

The GOP also remained behind Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to physically assaulting a journalist; Rick Scott, who was tied to a massive Medicaid and Medicare fraud scandal in the late 1990s; and former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, despite a House Ethics investigation that found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had violated House rules prohibiting “prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off, OK? I don’t want him to waste his time answering that question,” Trump said to reporters while gesturing to Erdoğan at a NATO summit in the country’s capital, Ankara.

BREAKING: Trump says he’ll remove CAATSA sanctions on Türkiye. pic.twitter.com/uPH3hjTBeP

— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 7, 2026

The move would end a ban that was imposed on Turkey in Trump’s first term after the country accepted a Russian S-400 air and missile defense system against U.S. warnings. Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act in 2017 to punish any country that does business with Russia’s defense and intelligence agencies, and reinforced that restriction in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.  

That bill contains a prohibition on transferring the fighter jets to Turkey unless it “no longer possesses” the Russian missile system, its materials, or anything associated with it. Trump didn’t make clear whether the sanctions would be lifted only on Turkey, or on all countries that possess Russian military articles.

Regardless, Trump’s plan faces opposition from Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Last week, six Republican and four Democratic members of Congress wrote a letter to Trump opposing the sale of F-35s to Turkey. 

“With President Erdoğan’s continued aggression toward our greatest partners along with his troubling defense partnerships with our adversaries, it is not in the best interest of our country to sell them F-35s,” wrote Republican Representatives Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Gus Bilirakis, Jeff Hurd, Max Miller, and Young Kim, in addition to Democratic Representatives Stephen Lynch, Gabe Amo, Jared Moskowitz, and Brad Sherman.

Israel also opposes the sale of F-35s to Turkey amid worsening ties with the country and Turkish criticism of Israel following its massacre of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Monday that he didn’t think Turkey should get the jets or F110 jet engines “because that’ll upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority, and also by, I think … America’s posture in the Middle East.”

Under Trump, the U.S. has already said it would allow the sale of F110 fighter jet engines to Turkey for use in developing its own fighter jet. The administration also wrapped up a lawsuit against Turkish bank Halkbank for failing to comply with U.S. sanctions against Iran, weakening punishments against the financial institution. Now it seems that Trump wants to appease the country and Erdoğan at the expense of U.S. national security. 

“The United States Military has never been stronger, or more powerful. No other Nation can do what we do (It’s not even close!). This year we set even more Historic Recruiting Records, months ahead of schedule. Morale has never been higher. Our Military’s unmatched POWER was on full display during our Celebration of 250 Years of American Independence and, like our Country, the WAR DEPARTMENT has never been ‘HOTTER,’” Trump wrote. “We need to keep it that way, which is why, when Congress returns, we must pass Reconciliation 3.0, with 350 Billion Dollars for Defense, plus THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!

“I am calling on House and Senate Leadership to make this their Number One Priority, and ensure that 350 Billion Dollars in Recon 3.0 moves out of the Budget Committee as soon as Congress is back in session. The SAVE AMERICA ACT, which everyone is asking for, paired with the full funding of our Great Department of War, can be passed very quickly, ensuring that the United States of America stays FREE for Generations to come.”

The only person, Democrat or Republican, “asking for” the SAVE America Act may be Speaker Mike Johnson. The blatant voter suppression bill still lacks the votes in the Senate, putting Trump’s third massive spending package of his second term in jeopardy. Trump had originally requested $67 billion for the Pentagon be added to the supplemental appropriations bill.

To add hundreds of billions more to that and force through voter ID requirements and mail-in ballot bans is a gargantuan task, regardless of how much the president posts.

The United States spent over $900 billion on defense last year alone.

Trump is once again an international laughingstock after the U.S. Men’s National Team crashed out of the World Cup despite the president’s meddling.

Trump had urged FIFA president Gianni Infantino over the weekend to overturn a red card that would’ve kept the U.S. team’s top scorer from playing against Belgium Monday night. For the first time in half a century, FIFA overturned the decision, but even that couldn’t save the U.S. Men’s Soccer team from being handily defeated 4-1. (And the player in question, Folarin Balogun, didn’t even score America’s lone goal of the night.)

“Overturn this,” the Belgian Red Devils, Belgium’s national team, wrote in a post on X after the game.

As if losing wasn’t humiliating enough, a handful of players on the Belgian team were spotted doing Trump’s iconic dance to celebrate one of their goals.

Belgium’s team celebrated their victory over the US by mocking Trump’s signature double jerk off dance move. pic.twitter.com/emvy5tK6Xr

— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) July 7, 2026

Online, people speculated that Trump might even be a sports curse.

Last month, Trump made an appearance at Madison Square Garden for the NBA Finals. The president was loudly booed, fell asleep—and the Knicks broke their winning steak.

In 2025, Trump attended the Super Bowl, fled the stadium during a very political halftime performance by Kendrick Lamar, and backed the Kansas City Chiefs—who lost. Trump skipped this year’s Super Bowl after being warned that he’d be drowned in a sea of 69,000 boos, and the New England Patriots, his friend Robert Kraft’s team, still lost.

Trump also attended the 2025 Ryder Cup, where team Europe beat the United States.

McConnell was admitted to the hospital last month, sparking grave concerns about the Kentucky Republican’s health. The worries were only stoked by vague and repetitive statements from McConnell’s aides that failed to elaborate on the senator’s condition or why he was receiving care.

But rumors about McConnell’s health spiked late Monday, when far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that “Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead.” In a separate post, Loomer elaborated that “McConnell is in organ failure,” and that the White House had been told “McConnell isn’t ever coming back.”

Shortly afterward, the reporter that first broke the story about McConnell’s cardiac arrest—Desirée Townsend—said that her sources had shared the same information.

By Tuesday morning, a slew of MAGA-aligned figures were demanding answers from McConnell’s office.

“McConnell’s staff should produce proof of the senator’s condition one way or another right now,” posted Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief for the far-right commentary website Breitbart.

MAGA influencer Catturd posed the obvious question to his 4 million followers on X: “It’s really easy for Mitch McConnell’s team to prove he’s still alive and well. Just do a video from the hospital. Why won’t they do it?”

Steve Bannon has also speculated about McConnell’s condition, promoting claims online that the senator’s office is trying to “avoid triggering a special election that could allow Thomas Massie to run as an independent.”

The 84-year-old Republican has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 1985. He also served as the majority leader of the upper chamber from 2015 to 2021.

These are supposed to be McConnell’s final months in office—he is currently set to retire in January, at the end of his seventh term.

But his determination to remain in play on Capitol Hill has also forced him into the limelight due to several critical health scares since 2023. In March of that year, McConnell fell at a dinner event at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, fracturing his rib and suffering a concussion in the process. He fell again that July. He also froze mid-sentence twice that year, dissociating for 20 to 30 seconds each time, sparking concerns that the aging lawmaker had suffered a stroke.

In December 2024, McConnell fell for a third time in a public setting, and again in October 2025 while on his way to vote in the Capitol. He has since been transported via wheelchair by his aides as a health precaution.

In February, McConnell’s staffers shared that the lawmaker had spent roughly eight days in the hospital for “flu-like symptoms.”

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

In the run-up to Donald Trump’s gala celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary, we’ve been arguing here that it was important for it to fail. Trump delivered his speech, and there were some pretty bad highlights, but perhaps most notably it was beset with chaos after Trump overruled officials who recommended calling it off amid storms causing an exodus from the Mall. But we’re going to dig deeper into the bigger failures here.

This was the moment when we were supposed to celebrate the American experiment enduring for a quarter of a millennium, and Trump still couldn’t help but make it all about the crowd sizes that were supposedly there for him and all about his pet obsessions. We’re talking about all of it with New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, because Alex predicted very early on that Donald Trump would lose the culture, including on this, on the celebration of the 250th. Alex, good to have you back.

Alex Shephard: It’s great to be back.

Sargent: So what we now know is that Trump finally delivered his speech after 11 p.m. on July 4, after what The Washington Post called a “chaotic scramble.” This was the result of officials essentially saying this thing should be canceled and then him overruling them. Trump claims 150,000 people were there in the end, while saying that at least twice or three times as many had been there before the evacuation. Alex, you saw the imagery of the empty seats. What’s your take on the claim of 150,000 for the speech?

Shephard: I mean, there have been a lot of ridiculous Trump crowd-size claims, but I think this is one of the more brazen ones. The VIP section of this speech wasn’t even full. It was half full by the middle of the speech. People that love Trump and that need things from Trump weren’t willing to stay the entire time.

The weather was awful, but I think mostly people did not want to sit through what Trump had promised to be a very long speech. It wasn’t actually that long—I think it was like 30, 35 minutes. But it was exactly what you would expect. It was this kind of endless recitation of the familiar grievances, with a few kind of new half-baked insults thrown in.

So it just felt exactly like a perfect encapsulation of where we are with this president right now. Somebody who’s just almost bored, I think, with it, but who has no real argument to make to the American people and is still just kind of falling back on these very, very tired arguments.

Sargent: And of course, crowd sizes were really essential for Trump. Leading up to it, there was reporting saying that he had been in absolute rage about pictures of the crowd sizes during the events leading up to this. They had really set him off quite miserably in many ways.

Shephard: Well, I think going back to that too, there’s this larger failure of the Great American State Fair project, this kind of idea that they were supposed to put on almost like a world’s fair on the National Mall. It increasingly got taken over by Trump people. And between the weather and, I think, the lack of real draws, you were just seeing nobody coming through here.

And I think that again, like, the president can be furious about this as much as he wants, but it’s just another example of him living in this total fantasy world. It’s like when he posts about polls where 70 percent of the people love him. It’s just absurd.

Sargent: It is. Well, let’s check out what Trump said during the speech about the size of his crowd. Listen.

Donald Trump (voiceover): And they estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave. And they now have 150,000 people. It’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever seen. At least.

Sargent: But then on Truth Social afterwards, he suddenly inflated the number. He said, “The crowd at 7:05 in the evening was 422,000 people.”

Shephard: I mean, I think it also gives it a sort of historic register, right? He wants this to be like the March on Washington. He wants this to be like—I don’t know, when they tried to levitate the Pentagon or something. But I think what you’re seeing is the president trying, like, really, really hard to use his theoretical superpower, which is to just manufacture reality, right?

He’s a disciple of the power of positive thinking. He believes he can just kind of manipulate reality by saying things, and that by the time people correct him, it’ll be too late. But I think what we’ve seen again and again, especially since the start of this year, is that he’s just totally lost that ability, right? He can just say this stuff and people just ignore it. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Sargent: I mean, it’s almost like one final humiliation for him to not only only get 150,000 by his own invented estimation, but that’s actually this huge bump down from this bigger number that he estimated—and then he turns around and undermines even that bigger number by inventing another one.

Shephard: I think Trump at his best, in a kind of non-value-judgment way, is sort of like the Grateful Dead or something, where people are going because there might be these parts that are not very good, but there’s going to be 20 or 30 minutes that are genuinely surprising and new and interesting.

And I think that’s like what brought people into Trump in ’15 and ’16. And I think now you’re seeing Trump as the Grateful Dead when Jerry Garcia was on loads of heroin or something—it’s just very familiar and it doesn’t work at all. And I think people are just bored by it right now.

Part of it is that he’s the president, right? So he’s just repeating the same kind of points over and over again. But I think that what we’re seeing is just a president that’s not actually engaged with people or with the culture in a larger way. And the speech itself, to me, failed on numerous grounds. But I think one of the reasons why people were not coming is just, it was this really familiar recitation of grievances, and kind of really pro forma points that Trump himself doesn’t even really care about.

Sargent: So let’s talk about a few highlights here. Trump claimed that we built the “Empire of Liberty.” He slurred his speech numerous times, a lot of screwups. He actually talked about the need to end mail balloting, which is really, truly bizarre. Talk about grievances—that’s something that a lot of Republicans don’t want to hear him talk about anymore.

And then there’s one quote that really leapt out, I think. It was this: “As our Declaration of Independence tells you, we’re all made in the image of one Almighty God, and a communist will never say that.”

Alex, to you, what substantively about the speech really kind of jumped out?

Shephard: I think part of it to me—or the big part, you just got at it—was this really new move from Trump, which is to try to kind of reenergize the Cold War, or to sort of make the larger fight for the country one of capitalism against communism. Essentially the idea here seems to be to use Mamdani as the kind of symbol of the Democratic Party heading into the midterms. But part of the issue here is—and maybe I’ll just sound like Barack Obama in the debate against Mitt Romney, but I’m like, the Cold War was a long time ago, right?

And one of the reasons why—and you see this—I think Steve Bannon is not somebody whose word should be taken literally most of the time, but I thought he had a very interesting point about the rise of kind of democratic socialism after the Colorado results last week, where he was essentially saying, Yeah, you know what, these people are speaking to people who are dissatisfied with our current politics, right? And they’re organizing really effectively around that.

And I think that with Trump, what’s notable here is that Trump first rose speaking to a similar kind of person, right? Somebody who’s disaffected, somebody who is, I think, fairly concerned about the corruption of our politics and looking for people who don’t fit the mold of regular politicians. And that was Trump for a while, right?

But now Trump is himself trying to say, No, I am the kind of symbol of capitalism—all while running the most corrupt and crony-filled administration that you’ve ever seen. And I think that to me points to somebody who’s just lost his touch to some extent. This is the laziest argument that you can make in politics, essentially: My opponents are all communists, right? Well, people like Mamdani—he’s made himself a kind of very approachable, kind force in American politics and I think has actually organized really effectively, in a way that Trump has as well.

But I think what we’re seeing here is just this effort to kind of narrativize his way out of this mess. And the narrative that he’s offering is one that Republicans have been pushing since Barry Goldwater, right? And sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Sargent: That’s absolutely right. I want to home in a little bit on his characterization of the Declaration of Independence, though. When he says, “We are all made in the image of one Almighty God,” he’s referring to the fact that the Declaration says we hold these truths to be self-evident, that our creator made all people equal and so forth. But Trump very much invisibly dispenses with the equal part. And also, “our creator” is not the same as “one Almighty God.” “Our creator” is a much more generic way of putting it, which is deliberate. He’s turning this into almost like a Christian nationalist celebration in a sense.

Shephard: Yeah, I mean, I think that Thomas Jefferson certainly would be appalled by that, right? Like, as a deist, he was not somebody who was thinking about our creator endowing us with anything. I think that the idea here for Trump is that the white men who founded this country did so with very clear designs in that order, that align with the sort of Pete Hegseth vision. And again, I think that speaks to a weakness within this administration, to me—that Trump is parroting stuff that he doesn’t care about, right? He’s not a Christian nationalist. He’s just doing this to try to pander to people within his base, right? And whenever Trump sounds like Pete Hegseth, I feel like he’s really losing here overall.

And I think again, we’re just seeing this kind of laziness, right? It’s this really warmed-over version of Republican politics, really like kind of mainstream Republican politics. As bad as the Christian nationalism stuff has gotten, a lot of the content of this speech would be familiar in a bad speech given by any Republican politician for the last sixty years. And ordinarily you would say, OK, well, that’s fine.

But the problem is that Trump’s whole thing is he’s not like those other people. So this speech, I think, to me captures the two halves of what we’re seeing with Trump right now, which are, on the one hand, these really finely ground grievances like the SAVE Act, right, that most people do not care about, things that Trump cares about quite a bit. And then on the other half, it’s just this really familiar drivel that has sort of characterized the conservative movement and the Republican Party for decades. And I think when you combine these two, you get, one, just a really boring speech, but you also get a picture of a presidency that’s in total free fall.

Sargent: And let’s point out that Barack Obama spoke at the dedication of his presidential center just around a month ago. I want to read a sentence from his speech, because I think it’s really applicable here. It’s sort of fortuitous that Obama’s speech came around a month before Trump’s display, because they really neatly bookend this moment in a really kind of telling way. Obama said that the “story of America at its best” rests on “shared values that make democracy possible.”

They include this: “a belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection, a belief in checks and balances in our government … a belief that our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party, but to the people and our Constitution.”

You know, Alex, there was a time when a Republican president, whether he would mean it or not, would say something quite like that. But of course, let’s be clear—it’s a defining fact of this moment that Trump and MAGA don’t accept any of those things to be true, what Obama said, right?

Shephard: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s part of the long run of Republican and Democratic presidents giving speeches that subtextually rebuke Trump in this exact way, right? Like, George H.W. Bush could have given a large part of what you just read as well. But that’s I think one of the other things that really jumps out about this moment, and in some ways the tragedy of Trump being president at this moment—there are many worse things that are happening.

But one of them, I think, is that this is an opportunity to reflect on the actual meaning of this nation. And I think it’s one of the things that Obama does very well. It’s something that actually Mayor Mamdani here in New York City, I think, also did very well in a speech that he gave on July 3 that was largely about immigration as part of the American story. But there’s just been this refusal to engage with that kind of narrativizing, right? Which I think is an important part of building a culture.

And I think what you see with Trump is that he’s only capable of essentially either, when things are going well for him, building a political movement, or, I think, attempting to sustain or salvage it, which is what we’re seeing now. And it’s just the political movement, right? It’s only things that are innate to Trump. And as you’ve mentioned, the Declaration of Independence is hostile to that project, right?

Like the Reconstruction Amendments are hostile to that project. When you think about the larger American story—which Obama has narrativized, I think, brilliantly many times, of a country struggling to live up to the ideals in its founding documents—that’s, I think, a powerful story. But that’s not the story that Trump tells, right? The story that Trump tells is, these people won’t pass the SAVE Act, and so my elections are going to keep getting stolen.

Sargent: You’ve got the World Cup really sort of acting as the perfect foil to Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist display of our 250th. Can you talk about the contrast there?

Shephard: For the most part, what you’ve seen in this World Cup is it being a celebration of the kinds of things that Obama talked about in that speech, that I think you look at when you think about the good parts of America, right? People are really friendly here. People like to visit America, and they like to visit it because of Americans and because of American culture. And I think we’ve seen quite a bit of that. And this tournament has largely been a huge refutation of Trumpism.

The best player for the United States Men’s National Team during this tournament is somebody who is only a U.S. citizen because of birthright citizenship. It’s a huge refutation of the president. But what we’ve seen since Sunday, when that player, Folarin Balogun, who had been suspended, that he gets unsuspended, possibly because of lobbying from the White House, and the president certainly takes credit for it. And I think what you see is, it’s not that dissimilar to when Trump came to New York for game three of the NBA Finals. What you see is a sort of party, right? This sort of joyous thing that’s then poisoned by the president.

But I think it’s more notable here too, in that it’s another example of his weakness culturally, right? Like, the U.S. team is doing really well, but Trump doesn’t own that at all—partly because, again, the striker on this team, Folarin Balogun, is on the team because of birthright citizenship. His backup, Ricardo Pepi, his family is Mexican, right? The left back is English, the right back is Dutch. It’s a complicated story of America, but it’s one that refutes what the president’s trying to say. And I think with this sort of eleventh-hour intervention, what you’re seeing from this president is someone who can’t own the narrative. So he has to force his way in. And I think that’s what we’ve seen here.

And the U.S. will play Belgium after we talk, before this episode goes out. But I think that the team may or may not respond to that. Hopefully they are able to kind of compartmentalize it. But for a lot of people—and I wrote about this for the New Republic site today—this has kind of poisoned the World Cup. And that, I think, is what Donald Trump has been doing culturally for the last year and a half, essentially. He’s just kind of butted into things and ruined them.

Sargent: And just to conclude this, Donald Trump is clearly trying to associate himself with the success of the World Cup, but failing. And I think the dynamic that you’re getting at is really that everyone just wants to be done with this guy and done with this movement already, right? Everybody just at this point sees how toxic Trump and Trumpism have really become as toxic forces in American life.

I mean, the ethnonationalism, the cruelties and the barbarities, the corruption, the self-dealing, the oligarchy, right? The big upward transfer of oligarchic wealth, which was a major component of Trump’s second-term agenda, the displays of dictatorial self-glorification, and him just kind of desecrating these symbols of republicanism, small-r republicanism, in the nation’s capital. Everybody just wants to be done with this—all these enmities, all these hatreds, all these degradations, all this nonsense already.

Shephard: Well, yeah, I think that the U.S. team is a great example of this, right? Like, so I mentioned Balogun being a sort of birthright citizen, but you don’t have to know that to enjoy this team, right? They’re a fun team. And I think that they encapsulate a lot of what you would like to love about this country. If you’re a MAGA person, you could easily get into a kind of “USA, USA” version of this team. If you’re a liberal like myself, you can find a million ways to be excited about them, right?

And I think that what you see about Trumpism culturally here is the inability to let those kind of monocultural things stand, right? You have to choose one or the other. Taylor Swift can’t be Taylor Swift, right? She has to be an enemy of the MAGA movement. Bruce Springsteen, same thing—which is, again, how you got the horrific music lineup at the Great American State Fair.

But I think that you’re seeing a kind of resistance to that now as well, right? And I think that this is a sort of political movement dying out, in that it’s resisting Trump’s efforts to co-opt it. But it sucks to be in the end stage of that too, because he is, I think, really raging against the dying of the light right now, for lack of a better term.

Sargent: Yes, I’ve been using the term “late-stage Trumpism.”

Shephard: Yeah.

Sargent: It really is—it’s got an end-stage feeling to it, an end-stage cult feeling. We’re in the middle of late-stage Trumpism, and everybody’s just waiting for it to collapse in on itself, basically. And I think maybe the ultimate tell here is for Donald Trump to inflate the crowd sizes at the 250th event, right, which is supposed to be all about the country. And one last time, he makes it about himself. He makes it about his own crowd sizes. It’s almost the final humiliation.

Shephard: Well, yeah, and it’s how it all began, right? That was literally day one of the Trump administration, when people were saying, maybe this guy will be different. And you’re just like, nope. It’s just going to be an even dumber and worse version of what we thought. And now we’re just—it’s crowd sizes all the way down now. And we’ve got two and a half more years of this, and it’s going to be brutal. But, you know, again, it is the late stage.

Sargent: Late-stage Trumpism, folks. That’s what America’s become. Alex Shephard, always a great pleasure talking to you, man. Thanks so much for all this. And you were really ahead of the curve on this stuff, I’m telling you.

Shephard: Thank you. I appreciate it.

That same day, Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission delivered a full draft of its 224-page report, the centerpiece of which is “12 Recommendations to Strengthen Religious Liberty for All Americans.” Those recommendations include the creation of a Justice Department “religious liberty task force,” production of “Know Your Rights” posters, repealing the Johnson Amendment, and creating “religious liberty violation reporting hotlines/online portals.”

The commission, housed in the DOJ, was established via executive order last year to advise the White House Faith Office and Domestic Policy Council by offering suggestions for how to “preserve and enhance religious liberty” in U.S. law and public life. Chaired by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and vice-chaired by Ben Carson, it is primarily composed of right-wing activists. A few have legal experience; others are prominent religious leaders, politicians, authors—and Dr. Phil.

The report itself is, as legal scholar Micah Schwartzman has put it, “an embarrassing document” (although “shameless” might be more fitting). Still, as we have learned and relearned over the past decade, government officials do not have to be thoughtful, competent, or serious to do real damage. Slapdash and unserious as the report might be, it does its job: laying out how to use the cause of religious liberty to advance right-wing goals.

For over two decades, the Christian conservative legal movement, led by well-funded groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom and with help from the Roberts court, has transformed the idea of religious freedom. The era of “high separation” between church and state is over, and free exercise is a tool reserved primarily for conservative Christians. If the commission’s recommendations are implemented with the DOJ’s backing, they will be the next steps in this broader project. Religious liberty is a banner under which the administration and its allies will continue to undermine other civil rights, dismantle public goods, and insulate certain favored citizens from public accountability.

The commission’s report offers many legal and policy suggestions, but it also seeks a broader cultural shift. “Safeguarding religious liberty,” it claims, “requires more than defending legal rights after they have been violated. It requires cultivating a culture that understands why those rights exist in the first place.” This mission demands that Americans respect religious liberty and the rights it affords, but first they must celebrate and value religion itself.

The premise of the commission’s work is “a simple but profound truth: religious liberty is essential because religion itself is indispensable to a flourishing society.” In recent decades, high-profile cases have dramatized the conflict between individual religious freedom and the public good. The religious belief and speech of cake bakers, website designers, and licensed counselors—to refer to three Supreme Court cases in which ADF successfully sought exemption from or contested Colorado’s civil rights laws—come into conflict with the civil rights of others, particularly LGBTQ people. But, the commission argues, the “Founding Fathers recognized that religious liberty is not merely a private benefit for believers, but a public good for the nation.”

Here, they sidestep the fact that private benefits do in fact conflict with public goods—when business owners discriminate against their potential clients, when tax dollars are funneled to discriminatory private institutions and away from public schools, or when religious groups flout public health mandates during a pandemic—and instead assert that, because religion is ultimately good, religious liberty benefits everyone. If religion is “an essential aspect of what it means to be human,” as the report claims, then it follows that it would be privileged at least as much as, if not more than, other aspects of one’s humanity. Thus, those institutions that foster religion are not at odds with, or even really separate from, state institutions: Church and state should not be completely separate but, “in reality,” should “strengthen and support one another.” There is no wall between the two, the commission concludes, but a “bridge.”

The report is divided into 14 chapters, most of which are devoted to a particular issue or arena of public life. Chapter titles include “Students Don’t Check their Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate,” “The Rights and Roles of Parents and Teachers,” and “Anti-Semitism.” The content of each is drawn largely from the commission’s seven hearings held over the past year. These hearings primarily served as platforms for supposedly persecuted believers—each one a potential “religious freedom celebrity”—to offer testimonials, with occasional subject-area experts adding their analysis. Some were claimants in well-publicized disputes, including cases brought by conservative Christian legal organizations, such as ADF and First Liberty Institute, whose Kelly Shackelford and Allyson Ho are on the commission.

These anecdotes make up much of the report, the final recommendation of which is: “Honor the courage of religious liberty heroes through creating a Presidential Medal of Religious Liberty and First Freedom Hero Awards to recognize Americans who stand up for religious freedom and play an indispensable role in protecting citizens’ Constitutional rights.” Chapters conclude with pictures from the hearings of these heroes. It reads like a book of martyrs with policy recommendations.

The testimonies reveal their uses. Twelve-year-old Shea Encinas testified that in fifth grade, his “school forced [him] to teach [his] kindergarten buddy about changing his gender using a book called My Shadow Is Pink.” Shea did not refuse. However, his family “spoke up” afterward, and, according to Shea, “the school treated us badly and kids started bullying me and my brother because of our faith and the school did nothing to stop it.” The school did not offer an opt-out of certain readings. Later, the school hosted a “Pink Out the Hate” day, on which students would wear pink to show solidarity with LGBTQ students. According to Shea, he “felt like the entire school …[was] standing against me and ridiculing my beliefs.” When he arrived, he was dismayed to see that “over half the school wore pink. I felt completely alone.” Shea and his brother were ostracized, and the family “felt they had no choice” but to enroll in a private school.

Without discounting (or taking too seriously) Shea’s feelings, there is something poignant in stating so starkly that when he was not in the majority he “felt completely alone.” In the nation the commission hopes to create, Shea’s rights would not simply be protected; so too would his feelings. The commission wants Americans to be proud of religion, and of religious liberty. Perhaps even more than wanting to feel pride, they want some people not to feel shame. They want anti-sociality without consequent social stigma. As religious studies scholar Donovan Schaefer has written, for some conservatives, “it becomes easier to repudiate shame altogether than respond to the moral demands placed on them.”

Following this line of argument, religious studies scholar Finbarr Curtis explains, “Trumpism is the response to the fear that someone somewhere is threatening to take something that is rightfully yours. As a vigorous response to threats, Trump’s illiberalism makes his supporters feel safe.” The message of the commission’s report is that these threats abound, from vaccine mandates and “transgenderism” and “bad actors in the government and within institutions,” but the Department of Justice will protect you. There will be posters reminding everyone to “Know Your Rights.” Your teachers will undergo religious liberty training. If anyone does violate your rights or make you feel unsafe, there will be an online portal where you can report the threat. They will be investigated.

Even in this boom time for religious liberty, with religion’s stock going up, some claimants still lose their cases. In fact, the named claimant in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, the most recent religious freedom case at the Supreme Court, lost. And a landmark law—2000’s Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA—was significantly restricted. Naturally, it was a case that spelled out exactly who could expect to enjoy religious freedom and who should not.

Damon Landor, by all accounts a devout Rastafarian, did not cut his hair in keeping with his faith. When incarcerated, he explained and documented this practice. For a while, his religious rights were honored. When he was transferred to a new facility, he handed them his paperwork stating his religious exemption. Prison guards threw it in the trash and then held Landor down and shaved his head. He sued the prison officials in their individual capacity, which the court found was beyond the scope of RLUIPA. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, held that prison employees could not be sued here because they had not “voluntarily and knowingly consent[ed] to answer lawsuits” under RLUIPA. As lawyer and legal scholar Elizabeth Reiner Platt noted, this is a standard that “employees are unlikely to agree to.” Why would they?

The Religious Liberty Commission’s report—in a draft issued three days after the Landor decision—says DOJ “should issue updated guidance on how [RLUIPA] provides incarcerated individual with the right to receive reasonable religious accommodations while incarcerated.” To what end? With what effect? Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her Landor dissent that “state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law.” It is hard to imagine that DOJ will effectively cultivate a culture of respect for religion and religious liberty in a case like this. Will prisons hang “Know Your Rights” posters in common spaces? Will wardens undergo religious liberty trainings that would prevent such an incident? Will incarcerated persons call the hotline? The recommendations seem to be for Shea Encinas and his parents more than Damon Landor.

Some critics, such as Sarah Posner, a journalist and expert on the Christian right, have called the commission’s report “an homage to Christian nationalism.” As Posner notes, a multi-religious coalition legally challenged the commission, based on its nearly entirely Christian composition and clearly biased framing. Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said that the commission is “not about religious liberty, it is about pursuing a culture of Christian Nationalism that seeks to divide and isolate people across our nation.”

The Public Religion Research Institute has found that 11 percent of Americans are “adherents” to Christian nationalist ideas and 21 percent are “sympathizers.” Christian nationalism is correlated with support for religion in general and “Judeo-Christian values.” In a 2021 poll on religious liberty, PRRI found that 10 percent of Americans completely agree and 21 percent somewhat agree with the statement, “In the U.S., when there is a conflict, the rights and religious freedom of Christians have priority over the rights and religious freedom of non-Christians and non-religious Americans.” Perhaps this is the “culture of Christian Nationalism” of which Perryman warns. About a third of Americans, then, support some kinds of favorable treatment for Christians. It is reasonable to think that the hotlines are for them—or, at least, that they’ll be frequent users.

While Christian nationalist ideology might be a factor, the Religious Liberty Commission is better understood as a right-wing project. If its goal is to install Christian supremacy, it is only as a route to empower private actors to subvert the public good. It seeks to exempt certain people—Christians, yes, but more importantly conservatives—from public accountability, and from feeling bad about abridging the civil rights of disfavored groups. It advocates siphoning funds from public schools and rerouting them toward private institutions, or “creating a robust system of universal school choice” and “securing parental rights.” It encourages citizens to surveil and report, rather than tolerate, their neighbors. It recommends that DOJ “develop a dedicated Religious Liberty Task Force,” whose tasks would include issuing cease-and-desist letters to public school districts with trans-inclusive policies. It seeks to create a culture of fear and suspicion and, in so doing, alleviate the fears of anti-pluralists, their feelings of loneliness, exclusion, and shame. Throughout, the message is clear: Get religion. If you don’t, the commission suggests, it just doesn’t seem to work out, does it?

Make no mistake, originalism has always been a sham—and always applied selectively in the pursuit of reactionary ends—but this term’s opinions put on display a methodology that’s in crisis, unworkable even for the justices who claim to be its most ardent proponents.

Let’s start with Trump v. Slaughter, which dismantled the century-long practice of Congress restricting the president’s power to fire the heads of certain agencies. The ruling had been a longtime goal of the right-wing legal movement, but standing in its way was not only decades of precedent but also some inconveniently conclusive evidence from the Founders themselves.

Take a line from Federalist, Number 77, where Alexander Hamilton noted the Senate’s consent would be required “to displace as well as to appoint an officer,” so as to prevent the president from becoming “the sole disposer of offices.” When it comes to founding-era evidence, it’s hard to get better than that—the most forceful and influential advocate for a strong executive among the founding generation answering your question directly on point.

The conservative majority’s response? To call this a “passing comment,” bizarrely suggesting the word “displace” doesn’t necessarily mean “remove,” and instead demanding that we consult the “logic of The Federalist as a whole.” It’s one thing to completely ignore inconvenient evidence in pursuit of a sought-after goal; surely we’ve seen that move employed before. It’s another for this group of jurists, who so dogmatically scold those who diverge even slightly from the historical record, to so brazenly toss aside the plain meaning of words spoken directly by one of the Founders themselves in the name of “logic as a whole.”

Still, that alone would be a fine, if familiar, example of conservatives editing the record to achieve their predetermined outcome. But it’s in Barbara v. Trump, the ruling that blocked President Trump’s abominable effort to eviscerate birthright citizenship, where things take another turn.

The majority in Barbara is an unlikely pairing of the liberal justices with two conservatives, so the result provides a unique window into the unstable nature of the right’s methodology. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment, but wrote separately to state that the constitutional definition of birthright citizenship is not set in stone, and opened the door for Congress to create “exceptions” to birthright citizenship “recognized based on new developments after 1868.”

“Exceptions”? “New developments”? You might be wondering where this guy was when gun rights activists questioned the logic of blocking assault rifle restrictions based on words written centuries before those weapons existed, or when reproductive rights activists asked whether eighteenth-century history should govern modern medical procedures. You’re right to be confused. It’s people like Kavanaugh who laugh progressives out of the room for suggesting that two people separated by two centuries might read the same words differently.

Archconservative Justice Samuel Alito, in dissent, takes things even further, developing a citizenship test so strict that virtually all children born to foreign parents would fail. But recognizing how absurd this result will be, Alito just stops his historical inquiry right there, developing an exception out of thin air for parents who have “done everything within their power … to become American.”

In response, a fellow originalist, Chief Justice John Roberts, scolds Alito for creating this “ad hoc exception,” simply because he cannot “stomach” the result of his supposedly historical exercise. Alito, he writes, “does not explain how that exception can be squared with his view of the text.” As for Kavanaugh, Roberts writes that his willy-nilly reasoning is “at war with his supposedly unifying principle of the Clause.”

If this seems like a mess, it is. And that’s the tell. Originalism was never marketed to the public as just one interpretive tool among many. It was marketed as a discipline, the thing that would keep judges from substituting their own values for the Constitution’s plain original meaning. But here we are, answering some of the most momentous constitutional questions ever posed to this nation’s high court, and the method that promised to provide clarity and stability is instead producing some of the more incoherent, nonsensical gobbledygook ever published.

Indeed, a method that can’t generate internal agreement among its own adherents—let alone a coherent logic behind its conclusions—is not a method at all. It’s just a vocabulary. What was once sold as a mission to develop clear, consistent, stable jurisprudence has instead rendered constitutional law in this country a foolish and exhausting exercise, completely divorced from logic, philosophy, or common sense; a petty game of jurisprudential grab bag to determine who has the best quote from an eighteenth-century slave owner.

None of this is an argument that the justices are reasoning badly, exactly. Every judge, on every court, has always had to decide which evidence matters and which doesn’t. That is simply what judging is. Even Antonin Scalia, the godfather of originalism, reserved the right to set aside historical evidence when the results struck him as too absurd to accept, famously noting that “I’m an originalist and a textualist, not a nut.”

It was a tell even then—an admission that the method bends whenever it has to. But the scandal was never the bending. It was the pretense that a stable, principled method existed at all, one capable of producing consistent results regardless of who was applying it. Slaughter and Barbara show that even the people who invented that pretense can no longer keep it up among themselves. It might be time for the rest of us to stop pretending as well.

That’s nonsense—five justices affirmed that just about all children born on U.S. soil, including those with undocumented parents, are citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. But House Speaker Mike Johnson knows he must appear prepared to obey Trump’s command, so on Fox News Sunday, he declared that House Republicans are examining ways to undo what the Constitution says.

“If there’s some legislative fix, we’ll advance that immediately,” Johnson insisted. Note the word “immediately,” which seems to mean “between now and Election Day.” Is this something vulnerable House Republicans will really want to vote on?

Doubtful. Indeed, look carefully and you’ll see the beginnings of a pattern: Republicans like Johnson—who know this would be extremely unpopular—are conjuring up a new tone and new language designed to recast it as a modest step, and not as the radical upheaval it would truly represent. Just watch Johnson’s full quote on this matter:

🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: Speaker Johnson announces he's coming up with legislation to STRIKE DOWN rampant birthright citizenship and tourism scams for illegal aliens

GOOD! Act fast!

"I really enjoyed Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent, everybody should read that. And he explained that… pic.twitter.com/GT2z3kgeV6

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 5, 2026

Birthright citizenship might require a mere “legislative fix,” Johnson says, because under it, citizenship has been “devalued” by “birth tourism.” That last phrase has long been a noxious rallying cry on the anti-immigrant right. But in Johnson’s hands, it’s meant to portray the birthright citizenship “problem” as no biggie, as a trivial matter that just needs a little patching up. And note the oh-so-casual tone he strikes throughout, as if he’s discussing an adjustment to marginal tax rates.

Or take Vice President JD Vance, who recently described ending birthright citizenship in similarly bland terms. “It’s fundamentally a loophole that exists in our immigration system that rewards illegal aliens,” Vance said on Fox News Sunday. “There are a number of things that we’re already looking at to close that loophole.”

Note Vance’s repetition of the word “loophole,” which seems suspiciously deliberate. Why, this would be a mere tweak—akin to a new coat of paint on the garage door or oiling a squeaky hinge, you see.

Theoretically, Johnson and Republicans could write legislation that, say, prohibits the grant of citizenship to any babies born to one or two parents who entered illegally and/or were undocumented at the time of the birth. Right now, such a bill would presumably be upheld as constitutional by “only” four Supreme Court justices: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch voted to overturn birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds, and Brett Kavanaugh sided with the majority but only on a statutory basis, not a constitutional one.

That’s alarming. It means only five justices now believe birthright citizenship is a “foundational guarantee,” explains Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, so opponents need only to “nab one more vote” on the court to create a majority to uphold a congressional statute ending it. So Republicans might try to pass something that might be invalidated now but could test the court again—and lay the groundwork for more efforts later, similar to how Roe v. Wade foes chipped away at it for years before succeeding.

The irony to Johnson’s effort to make all this sound trivial is that the problem he identifies—people coming into our country solely to have a baby and scam the system into letting them stay—actually is very insignificant. A brief in the case by over 100 specialists in social science, demography, and other fields notes that the government’s own numbers put such births at far less than 1 percent of overall U.S. births. And even that low figure is almost certainly wrong: The real total, they detail, is far more “infinitesimal.”

But the change that Republicans are contemplating would be a moral, substantive, humanitarian, and constitutional earthquake. As Amanda Frost explains, ending birthright citizenship could lead to hundreds of thousands of newborn babies per year going forward remaining undocumented. That would mean they have less earning power as adults, harming the economy. Alternatively, if they are removed (or not born here at all), that means a future of national demographic decline.

Here it’s critical to stress that the overwhelming majority of those people would not be the children of “birth tourists.” They wouldn’t be the children of people who came here solely to have babies and are getting “rewarded” for this, as it doesn’t earn the parents legal status in any case. Instead, the parents constitute families already in the process of immigrating here for the same reasons immigrants long have done—to participate productively in our economy and communities and, ultimately, in our democracy.

So while Johnson and Vance are aiming their rhetoric at “birth tourists”—an easy-to-demonize group—their actual concern is with the much larger class of people who want to settle here for reasons that are recognizably American. That’s who they want to keep out.

Further underscoring the point, don’t overlook Johnson’s assertion that our citizenship is being “devalued” by birthright citizenship. Two of the justices—Thomas and Alito—used similar terms, insisting the children of undocumented immigrants “devalue” and “degrade” American citizenship more broadly. That’s extremely loaded language: As Adam Serwer notes, it echoes Civil War–era language about freedom for enslaved people “degrading” the white race, thus casting all those undocumented children as fundamentally “inferior” to other American-born children.

Which is ultimately why all this strikes so hard at our constitutional order. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurrence forcefully points out that birthright citizenship enshrines the promise of equality in part precisely by overturning “bloodline” as the “marker” of belonging. The key is that the child’s status should not be hereditary. Vance and Johnson want to undo that, reversing what Jackson calls the Fourteenth Amendment’s destruction of “racial caste.”

So let’s step back and really appreciate Johnson’s vile two-step. He claims in passing that birthright citizenship “devalues” American citizenship, casually endorsing a disgusting attack on the hallowed principle that a child’s status should depend on birthplace, not heritage or inheritance. Undoing this would be seismic, yet he frames it as a mere “fix” to “birth tourism,” making it sound benign to those who might not immediately appreciate the grand principles at stake here.

“The new quote-unquote ‘fixes’ try to shift the public’s focus to the legal status of the parents, away from the geographical birthplace of the child,” Anna O. Law, a historian of immigration law, tells me. “For people who don’t know the history of the Fourteenth Amendment, it might sound plausible. But it would blow a huge hole in the U.S. Constitution. It’s deeply cynical.”

It would also be deeply, deeply unpopular. A recent Fox News poll found that 69 percent of Americans think a kid born to an “illegal immigrant” (Fox’s language) should “automatically become a U.S. citizen.” That includes 65 percent of noncollege white voters, 61 percent of rural whites, and even 57 percent of white evangelicals. As Fox quietly reported in March (how often do you hear this finding on the network?), relative to previous years, support for it is up.

To be sure, now that Trump and MAGA have taken up this cause, it might shift some Republican voters their way. Focus-grouping by The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell shows some Trump voters are now echoing his own language about it.

But still: It’s very, very doubtful that Johnson really wants vulnerable House Republicans to vote on such legislation before the midterms. Yet he’s now been pushed into the position of keeping expectations for a legislative “fix” alive with MAGA—all because he’s required to pretend Trump’s command for legislation is rooted in something real. And Vance will have to champion this when his presidential run starts next year, no matter how unpopular it remains. When he does, he’ll use euphemisms like “loophole” to mask how wildly radical and destructive it is. And it’ll be squarely on us to prevent him, at all costs, from getting away with it.

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the White House to unfreeze immigrants’ benefit applications, citing Trump and Vance’s “outright hostility towards immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential election.” These applications include filings for work authorization and green cards from people in the U.S. from countries including Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela.

“Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia,” Marbley, nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, wrote.  

The judge quoted many of Trump’s comments against immigrants of color, including the time he railed against people coming to the U.S. from “shithole countries” or when he claimed Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of our country. In his second term as president, Trump attacked Somali Americans and accused them of adding “nothing” to the country, and oversaw violent immigration crackdowns across the country, particularly in Minnesota.

Marbley also highlighted Trump and Vance’s made-up accusation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pet cats and dogs. 

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said in 2024, which Marbley quoted directly.

“This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people,” Marbley added.

Now, the Trump administration’s racism has come back to bite Trump and Vance, and at least some immigrants can have a chance to establish some stability in the U.S. The administration’s attempt to shut them out and penalize them for where they come from, for reasons born of prejudice, was temporarily blocked Monday. 

Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old Maine resident who dated Platner on and off for two years, says that he sexually assaulted her in 2021—drunkenly entering her home uninvited and forcing himself on her even as she told him to stop multiple times.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Racicot told Politico in an article published on Monday. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

Racicot was one of the women who detailed Platner’s past “unsettling” behavior to The New York Times last month, but did not make her full allegation until recently due to the reaction to the story being dominated by one of the women’s political connections to the GOP. She also mentioned the internal ideological conflict in her decision.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

Platner has denied the allegations.

“Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said in a video posted on X. “Over the last 10 months, I have been deeply humbled by the faith Mainers have put in me. You have welcomed me into your homes, into your places of work, into your restaurants.… Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

pic.twitter.com/9itIt4Mw25

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026

While the announcement is unclear, Platner’s political future is in more jeopardy than it already was, as calls for him to drop out begin to foment. 

This story has been updated.

House Republican leadership has claimed that the controversial voter ID bill—which has so far held up confirmation hearings and bipartisan bill signings at Donald Trump’s behest—could still be passed through reconciliation. But at least one GOP lawmaker whose vote is very much needed to advance the effort to the president’s desk is not so confident.

“It can’t” pass through reconciliation, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis told MS NOW. “If it could, we’d already be talking about it. Let’s just stop playing games. Let’s stop being dishonest.”

When a reporter suggested that the House might strong-arm the Senate into passing the act by blocking other legislation, Tillis responded bluntly: “That’s super cute.”

Tillis has been one of the more vocal conservative critics of Trump’s signature bill, openly questioning how the SAVE America Act could be implemented without the use of federal funds.

“Let’s assume you only allow early voting in the month of October,” Tillis told the Raleigh News & Observer last week. “Then do you honestly believe that we can have this thing up in 50 states? There’s no funding. There’s no specific implementation instructions.”

“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis continued. “And honestly, here in North Carolina, or in virtually any state, the ability, if we go back to when we implemented voter ID in North Carolina, it took a year to get everything in place with adequate funding.”

The SAVE America Act sparked nationwide controversy earlier this year, particularly over a detail in the first version of the bill that would have made it more difficult for married women to vote. The backlash on Capitol Hill was so grave that it gummed up efforts to fund the Department of Homeland Security for several months, forcing Republicans to bail on the package in order to end the congressional gridlock.

The original SAVE America Act suggested numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials. The measure also would have added to federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports, and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”

But the bill has been radically pared down since then, in large part due to the improbability of passing it in whole. House Speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that the current iteration of the act proposed by the lower chamber preserves the “backbone” of what Trump is pushing to pass in the Senate. That includes requirements to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and a mandate to present photo identification when casting a ballot.

“That eliminates the problem, all the fraud and everything that everybody’s concerned about in our elections, particularly, frankly, in these blue states,” Johnson told Fox News Sunday, describing the SAVE Act as a shared top priority between the lower chamber and the White House.

The House is currently in a two-week recess, and only a handful of legislative weeks remain before midterm elections. Beyond that, lawmakers aren’t convinced the president will be satisfied with whatever solution could even get through Congress.

“He wants to go it alone, his way to the highway, and it don’t work,” Nebraska Representative Don Bacon told MS NOW. “He’s trying to pound the square peg through the circle, and it doesn’t work.”

Despite Trump’s aggressive efforts to turn the tide, Republican holdouts on the bill haven’t budged—and those that remain wish that the current administration would let this strenuous chapter come to a close.

“Republicans—those of us who can do math—would like the president and other members to recognize that there isn’t a path forward,” an unidentified lawmaker told the network.

The NWS is hiring for hundreds of mostly entry-level positions, after the agency lost about 15 percent of its employees during Trump’s first year back in office, CBS News reported Monday.

Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said that the agency had shed roughly 600 workers in 2025. Most of those employees were seasoned workers who accepted early retirement packages, while roughly 100 were probationary employees in their first year of work. Meanwhile, NOAA employed nearly 300 fewer meteorologists and hydrologists at the end of May than it did in January 2025, according to federal data reviewed by CBS News.

Former government scientists told CBS News that mass layoffs, which forced out experts, have undermined the research and forecasting conducted by these agencies.

Alan Gerard, a meteorologist who worked for three decades at the weather service and NOAA before retiring last year, told CBS News that the Trump administration’s sudden reductions to the workforce disrupted the flow of institutional knowledge.

“Obviously, people retiring and new people coming up is a natural part of any business or agency,” Gerard said. “But it’s meant to be done in an organized process, where the new people coming in have the benefit of working for a period with people who are experienced and can help train them and build up their expertise.”

Rick Thoman, a climate specialist in Alaska who worked for three decades as a weather service meteorologist, told CBS News that the sudden layoffs had been “a really bad thing.”

“Alaska is not like forecasting for Nebraska, and there are no schools of meteorology in Alaska. Everyone has to come here and learn it,” Thoman said. “So, even though there’s some effort to increase staffing now, because there are no old-timers left, and folks come in here without any experience in high-latitude weather forecasting, it just makes it that much harder.”

Already, the cracks have started to show. Since Trump returned to office, employees, including Gerard and Thoman, have observed a notable decline of “upper air” data collected by weather balloons as several weather stations have stopped launching probes twice daily.

“There’s concern about the quality of the models because of the lack of upper air data,” Gerard told CBS News. “There’s a lot of expression of just being less confident, and having less confidence in your data tends to undermine a lot of your operational decisions, right?”

Thoman pointed out that in October, weather models had incorrectly predicted a storm that displaced more than 1,000 people, after more than half of the area’s scheduled balloon launches failed to take flight in the days before the storm hit.

Thoman said it was “inconceivable” that the lack of data had made no impact on the weather model forecast.

This shortage of both data and weather experts is especially concerning with the hurricane season about to start. Climate change has resulted in longer, more intense storms—and now, it looks like some people won’t be as well equipped to face them.

Two agents with Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, rang Streever’s doorbell on June 23 and left a “WARNING NOTICE” with his wife, which said he was possibly in violation of federal law and that Lyons was “requesting that you promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.”

Streever was in Finland with his daughter at the time. When they returned, federal agents even came to the JFK Airport hotel he stayed at that night and left a note for him at the front desk.

The visit came five months after Streever initially sent the email. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, highlights that.

“If someone is really threatening a government official, you don’t wait five months to act on it,” Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney at FIRE, said. “The fact that authorities didn’t respond immediately shows that David presented no threat. This pursuit is designed to intimidate lawful speech, pure and simple.”

Streever’s January email to Lyons followed ICE’s killing of Americans Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

The subject line was “What’s next,” and Streever warned Lyons would be haunted by the shootings.

“You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself,” he wrote. “But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.” He also equated Lyons with a Nazi.

Streever sent the email on January 26, two days after Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota, and 19 days after Good suffered the same fate.

The lawsuit argues that Streever’s email was speech protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is actively threatening that freedom, tracking down and retaliating against speakers like Plaintiff David Streever because he exercised his fundamental right to criticize one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in the United States,” the suit reads. “ICE’s issuance of formal ‘WARNING NOTICE’ documents to critics who engage in protected speech—and its decision to have federal agents deliver those warnings in person—can have only one purpose: to systemically chill ICE’s critics and coerce them into silence.”

Streever said his email came from frustrations with ICE’s violent tactics.

“Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something,” Streever said in a statement. “Writing an email to the head of ICE seemed like the least I could do to express my sense of outrage. I never dreamed it would lead to a knock on my door by federal officers or descending on my hotel in the dark of night.”

It certainly shouldn’t have. Yet this pattern of speech repression has become all too common under the Trump administration, as it has attacked or threatened to attack people for anything that threatens its ideology, whether writing op-ed columns in support of Palestine or criticizing Charlie Kirk.

Yet those moves, and the unavoidable reality that the principal host nation is run by an authoritarian president, somehow have not sullied the World Cup, which, at its best, serves as a potent display of multiculturalism and global togetherness. Hundreds of thousands of fans from all over the world have been welcomed to the U.S., whose national team includes players who have spent most of their lives living abroad, principally in Europe. No player better represents that World Cup than Folarin Balogun, a star striker at Monaco in France’s top league and the U.S. team’s highest scorer in this tournament. Balogun is a U.S. citizen only because his mother was deemed too pregnant to fly back to England from the U.S. In other words, as many have pointed out, he is precisely the type of birthright citizenship case that Trump wishes to abolish.

The team last week won its first knockout game in 24 years because of a goal from Balogun, but he was later given an unduly harsh red card, which triggered a series of events that have engulfed FIFA in particular, and the World Cup in general, in a typically Trumpian controversy that may sour the event from here on out.

That red card carried a one-match ban for Balogun, with no chance to appeal, thereby keeping him out of Monday night’s game against Belgium in the round of 16. But on Sunday, FIFA announced that it had effectively lifted his punishment, allowing him to play while on probation of sorts. Why did FIFA do this? Because they can, mostly. There is a statute in their rule book that allows them to suspend red cards whenever they want, a power they used ahead of this tournament so that several players—notably global superstar Cristiano Ronaldo—could play in opening matches that they otherwise would have had to sit out. FIFA has a long history of bending the rules in the interest of providing the best possible on-field entertainment.

Which is just another way of saying that FIFA doesn’t care nearly as much about the integrity of the sport as it does about money. The success of the U.S. Men’s National Team is important to FIFA because the U.S. is the tournament’s main host and source of revenue. Because of the cost of tickets and the Trump administration’s nativist immigration policies, U.S. residents are also the people buying the most tickets. So it’s in FIFA’s financial interest to keep the U.S. happy. FIFA surely knew that wiping out Balogun’s red card, even though the ref’s decision was widely considered wrong, would be controversial—but it bet that ultimately people would forget about it because during World Cups, the on-field action almost always prevails over off-field issues.

That might have been the case here, except for one thing: Trump. The Balogun reversal has grown into an international incident largely because, as The New York Times reported on Sunday, the president intervened on behalf of the USMNT with a call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino. By Monday, Trump was patting himself on the back. “I asked for a review by FIFA. I spoke to a man who’s highly respected.… I’m the one who got them to do it,” he said at a press conference. “It was not Biden, Biden was asleep!”

The Royal Belgian Football Association appealed the decision, but FIFA on Monday afternoon rejected it. The Union of European Football Associations, Europe’s governing body, has come to Belgium’s defense, turning this into a nasty proxy fight. The USMNT is caught in the middle.

The reversal of Balogun’s suspension is part of a long history of FIFA inserting itself to protect its own interests. But what makes this decision different, and what has elevated it into a profound crisis, is Trump’s involvement. Even with the USMNT’s on-field success, the administration has largely kept quiet, at least by its standards. Administration officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have attended games, but the president has been relatively quiet.

But that was never going to last. Trump had long planned to not just attend the Cup final but to hand the trophy to the captain of the winning team. The controversy over Balogun’s suspension, it seems, was too good for him to stay away, especially since it allowed him to take credit for an outcome that FIFA probably would have arrived at without the U.S.’s intense lobbying campaign. This is also an opportunity for Trump to recite his familiar list of grievances—and not just against Biden. In the press conference on Monday, Trump said, referring to Belgium, “If they beat us [with Balogun], they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, we’ll say—I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that.”

We have grown used to rolling our eyes when Trump says such things, but for him to utter this familiar lie in the context of the World Cup makes one’s blood boil anew. Trump has now poisoned a USMNT that had, until this point, remarkably good vibes. This was a team that you could get behind regardless of your political allegiance. It was also a team that was truly multicultural, and that, like most of this tournament, has not fallen victim to America’s toxic politics or FIFA’s blatant corruption. No more. FIFA’s opaque, rotten bureaucracy has aligned with Trump’s megalomania for a perfect storm that has the power to wreck this World Cup, at least for fans of the underdogs in red, white, and blue.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters at a press conference in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday that NATO’s traditional reliance on the U.S. is no longer a sustainable model for the military and economic coalition.

“What you are seeing is a NATO which indeed is changing in a transformational sense,” Rutte said. “I would argue that the NATO we had only three or four, five years ago was not sustainable.

“It is not sustainable that we ask a country with 350 million people, living eight hours flying from here, to defend against the Russians with 600 million people living in this part of NATO territory—the richest part of the world—being so overly dependent on the United States,” Rutte continued.

“So, rebalancing that—the United States still providing nuclear, the United States still providing crucial conventional support to NATO as a whole and therefore to the transatlantic security, and therefore of course also to their own security—rebalancing that is crucial.

“And therefore a stronger European role, Canada also stepping up, is important, because all of us—the alliance, to be honest—would long-term probably not have been sustainable,” Rutte said. “Stronger Europe, stronger NATO.”

Canada has made generational investments in its defense spending over the last year, and is reportedly on course to meet NATO’s next commitment: using 5 percent of its gross domestic product for defense spending by 2035, according to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carney has made a point to publicly criticize Donald Trump and his apparent disinterest in being the leader of the free world. Earlier this year, Carney delivered a scathing address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he marked the finale of Pax Americana and the reorganization of global power.

“The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said at the time.

Leaders from NATO member states, including Trump, are meeting in Turkey this week in what foreign policy experts anticipate will be one of the tensest summits yet. Late last week, Trump claimed that the NATO alliance had become “one-sided,” and that the U.S. “didn’t need anything” from the Cold War–era coalition. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump referred to America’s involvement in NATO as “ridiculous” and claimed that “they were not there for us!!!”

But that’s not true. Despite Trump’s rhetoric, there has only ever been one time in history in which NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked: the global mobilization to support America in its military offensive against Afghanistan after 9/11.

Nonetheless, Americans don’t seem to believe that the country’s long-standing European allies would support the U.S. if it were attacked. A Politico survey of more than 31,000 respondents, published Friday, found that just 43 percent of U.S. adults believed that the alliance would assist their home country if it were attacked. That was the lowest score out of any of NATO’s 32 member states when asked the same question.

The U.S. president has been on the offensive against NATO since the early days of his first term in office. He regularly threatens to remove America from the coalition, and has been remarkably cavalier at times about the organization’s potential dissolution. He has also baselessly insisted that other NATO members have failed to pay their dues to the entity and shortchanged the U.S. in the process, even though that’s not how the alliance operates.

It is unclear who in the Western world benefits from the dissolution of NATO. John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser and a policy hawk who also served under Ronald Reagan, has said that the consequences of exiting the alliance could be dire.

The Trump administration sped up construction of a new helipad on the White House’s South Lawn, adding $875,000 to the price tag in the process, according to the records from Clark Construction obtained by The Washington Post.

The project to install the helipad, renovate the White House’s South Portico, and re-top the driveway with white stone already cost a whopping $13 million.

The contractor’s documents showed that the company received a last-minute demand to complete construction by September 17, in anticipation of an “upcoming state visit.” The request was made just days after Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the White House on September 24.

This isn’t the first time that the budget for one of the president’s renovations has exploded. Trump originally claimed that his White House ballroom project would only cost $200 million, but that number later ballooned to $300 million, and then $400 million after he decided to tack on extra construction. Last month, a bombshell report revealed that taxpayers would actually be responsible for half of a $600 million price tag.

Speaking to reporters at the White House Monday, Trump announced that Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin that builds Marine One helicopters, would cover the cost of a $5 million or $6 million helipad, complete with a White House seal carved out of granite.

It’s not clear who’s picking up the rest of Trump’s multimillion-dollar tab—but I have a sneaking suspicion it will be the same people who he wants to pay for his gaudy ballroom: American taxpayers.

Now the French national team has appealed to FIFA, the soccer governing body, to rescind Michael Olise’s yellow card, which he received during the match with Paraguay on Saturday. Olise was penalized for a tackle for contact with Paraguyan Matias Galarza’s face, but replays showed Olise only held Galarza’s shirt.   

A yellow card doesn’t directly translate into a suspension like a red card, but France evidently feels that overturning Balogun’s suspension has opened the door. It follows British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also intervening with FIFA to prevent the start time for England’s match against Mexico being moved up over weather concerns, with England believing that they wouldn’t have enough time to train for high-altitude conditions at Mexico’s national stadium, Estadio Azeteca. 

British Attorney General Richard Hermer also may intervene with FIFA to overturn England player Jarrell Quansah’s red card, issued Sunday versus Mexico, The Telegraph reports. FIFA, meanwhile, denied an appeal from Belgium Monday challenging the decision to lift Balogun’s red card.

The red card came after Balogun awkwardly stepped on Bosnian defender Tarik Muharemović’s ankle during the match on Wednesday. Hours after the game ended, Trump called up FIFA President Gianni Infantino to complain about the decision, and on Sunday, FIFA’s disciplinary committee announced it was overturning Balogun’s suspension, leaving him free to join the U.S.-Belgium game Monday.

It’s the first time a red card has been rescinded in this manner since 1962, and Trump enlisted the full force of the U.S. government to get the foul overturned, with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and White House World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani quickly engaging lawyers to help U.S. Soccer put together an appeal. 

On Monday in the White House, Trump openly bragged to reporters about his role in getting the suspension overturned, noting that he called Infantino himself, and attacking the match referee’s credibility. 

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump said. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.”

Correct call or not, this chain of events has ruined the credibility of FIFA and this tournament. Infantino denied any kind of wrongdoing in a statement Monday, claiming that the FIFA Disciplinary Committee is an independent body. 

“Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders and business executives from around the world on many different issues,” Infantino said. “During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA’s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.” 

Infantino’s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, himself banned from soccer activities over corruption allegations, ironically called out Infantino’s decision to overturn the red card in a post on X early Monday morning. 

“Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls. They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies. If a U.S. President intervenes with the FIFA President—and a player is suddenly cleared before a World Cup knockout match—the question is unavoidable: Quo vadis, FIFA? Football must never become a playground for political power. #FIFA #WorldCup #GianniInfantino #DonaldTrump,” Blatter posted. 

The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.

The innocent, celebratory clip—orignally posted on X in June by the right-wing “End Wokeness” account—was re-upped by Trump, who also posted the account’s original caption: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

The post was then seized on by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters all over again, as Trump’s comment section was full of calls to deport the children and ban hijabs.

This post is Islamophobic, weird, and creepy. It should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.

Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota

Every girl is in a hijab… in kindergarten pic.twitter.com/08JOggCMU8

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 12, 2026

This comes just a week after a Kentucky church’s vacation Bible school came under fire for holding a violent mock execution of an immigrant in front of dozens of children. But Trump takes more issue with Muslim kindergarteners graduating.

“On the Trump accounts—the SpaceX president has said that she is going to donate shares to the Trump accounts,” said Yahoo Finance’s Jennifer Schonberger, referring to Gwynne Shotwell. “Have you spoken at all with Elon Musk about further share donations as well as other corporate—about share donations?”

“I’m like a cheerleader for geniuses,” Trump started before almost immediately switching the topic. “Now there’s a thing called TikTok, have you heard of it?”

Trump recalled a segment he had seen recently on Fox Business’s Mornings With Maria. “It was announced about two days ago, the new numbers just came out. Do you know who the number one person on TikTok is by far? Trump. Me.

“I’m number one. Like Taylor Swift was number 11. I’m number one, by far,” Trump repeated.

The president then suggested that the social media company’s influence couldn’t be too dangerous, since he was such a hot topic on the platform.

“Maybe they’re bad, maybe they’re not,” Trump said. “I know one thing: Great American people, tremendous businesspeople and companies, bought it.

“American companies, great ones, own our TikTok, and it’s very influential, but I’m number one by a lot,” he continued. “I think it helped me win the election in a landslide, if I tell you the truth.”

Trump tried and failed to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app during his first term in the White House. At the time, the White House said there were national security concerns associated with allowing TikTok to operate without U.S. intervention, claiming that the social media platform had created a back door for the Chinese government to access American data.

Congress passed a bipartisan ban on TikTok in 2024, yet American access to the app has prevailed due to negotiations that transferred domestic control of TikTok’s U.S. business to American investors. The principal investors in TikTok’s U.S. operations are Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, who are responsible for data protection and content moderation within national boundaries.

Axios reports that the president is happy with how Vance has handled his position, from TV appearances to public remarks, and consistently talks up the former Ohio senator to his inner circle to the detriment of another prospective heir, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

“POTUS isn’t asking, ‘JD or Marco?’ anymore,” an unnamed source told the publication. “He’s no longer asking, ‘How’s JD doing?’ He’s now saying, ‘JD looks great, right?’”

A senior Trump adviser told Axios that “JD is earning it, and Trump sees it,” adding that Rubio “wasn’t planning to run [for president in 2028] anyway, and he’d be even less likely to do so now.”

A pivotal event for Trump’s positive opinion of Vance came after he worked with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to reach a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Iran, which has brought momentary peace. Vance benefited from positive media attention over his role in the negotiations while at the same time beginning a media tour to promote his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

Vance’s 33 TV appearances impressed Trump, who has a fixation with the medium, and even though Trump hates many of the shows on which Vance appeared, particularly ABC’s The View, he was impressed with the video clips circulating from those appearances. 

Vance has raised $70 million for the Republican National Committee, and he’d rely on the organization if he ends up running for president. He’s still very unpopular with the American people, just like Trump, but is almost as popular among Republicans as the president, with a 62 percent favorability rating as opposed to Trump’s 65 percent. Early 2028 polls also have him leading the Republican field nationally and in pivotal states like New Hampshire.  

Still, pro-Israel conservatives have soured on Vance in recent months after he criticized the country’s leaders for denouncing the MOU with Iran, and on Saturday, the head of the conservative, pro-business Club for Growth, David McIntosh, said on X that Vance didn’t understand the importance of free markets.

Even if he overcomes all of that to get the 2028 Republican nomination for president, Vance faces an uphill battle to take Trump’s place in the White House. His book has been poorly received and reviewed, and Trump has saddled him and the Republican Party with record unpopularity with everyone who isn’t in the MAGA faithful. As 2028 approaches, it will be interesting to see if Vance tries to attach himself to Trump, or tries to create some distance, to better his own political prospects. 

The two world leaders attempted to dial in to a video call led by then–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada—but Trump became frustrated by a technical issue that prevented him from speaking. In response, he lobbed the tablet he was using over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official told the Journal.

This incident was part of an expansive Journal report detailing the crumbling relationship between the United States and Europe—and Trump’s outburst in front of Macron was only the beginning. The president has continued to escalate feuds with European leaders, give hall passes to their enemies, and make deranged demands to seize their territory. 

This also isn’t the first time one of Trump’s temper tantrums has turned violent. 

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, previously testified to Trump’s lunatic behavior behind the scenes. 

In December 2020, Trump launched his lunch at the wall after Attorney General William Barr denied the president’s claims of widespread voter fraud, according to Hutchinson. 

On January 6, 2021, when Trump was told it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol, the wild-eyed president tried to take the wheel of his car. When a Secret Service agent attempted to hold him back, the president tried to grab an agent just below the neck, Hutchinson testified to Congress. 

Balogun was initially supposed to be suspended from playing in Monday’s Round of 16 match against Belgium after receiving a red card for a tackle against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemović last week. FIFA stated that teams are unable to appeal red cards, which keep a player out of the following game. Nevertheless, Balogun will be playing on Monday after Trump’s call with FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Belgium has challenged the decision at the time of this writing, but no update has been made. 

“Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House on Monday morning. 

“You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing? Yeah, I did, I spoke to Gianni, who’s highly respected, who’s produced the most successful World Cup in history by, they say, four times.… So I saw the play. And I’m a person that loves sports, was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well. Really well. And that wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction,” Trump replied. “That was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can’t take your foot and properly place it on somebody else’s foot—these were two great athletes that got tangled up. And this referee, who is a little bit suspect, if you check his past … he made a call that nobody could believe, even people on the other side.” 

Reporter: Can you describe your phone call with Gianni Infantino about the red card? Belgium is appealing the decision.

Trump: You’re asking me about the whole soccer thing. So, yeah, I did. I spoke to Gianni.

That wasn’t a foul. That wasn’t even an infraction. That was two… pic.twitter.com/zpC1e5L818

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 6, 2026

“He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s our best player, or one of our best players … and [the referee] gave him a red card. Then I started hearing that means he can’t play in the next game.… When they take your best player … and they say you can’t play? That’s very unfair,” Trump continued. “So yes, I asked for a review by FIFA.… I’m the one that got them to [rescind the suspension]. It was not Biden. Biden was asleep.” 

“All I did, all I did, I asked for a review because I didn’t think it was a foul. And, you know, again, I’m good at this stuff. I didn’t think it was a foul.” 

Trump was later asked about the Belgian response, and if he would speak to the country’s prime minister before the game. 

“The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they win the game with a player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad. All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this,” he said. “This man is a smart, tough man, Gianni Infantino. He’s a smart, tough man, and his stock has gone through the roof.… I fear we have to have all the best players on the field.”

Trump: The people in Belgium—if they win the game, they can be very proud. If they would have won the game with the player missing, it would have been a different feeling. You can’t do that, and I’m very glad.

All I did was ask for a review. I didn’t say, “You have to do this.”… pic.twitter.com/CxJIVVsY0x

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 6, 2026

The decision has been met with protest from fans, the Royal Belgian Football Association, or RBFA, and even UEFA, the governing body of European soccer. 

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” UEFA said in a statement. “Equally, such a decision creates a precedent in the ongoing tournament, where similar situations will now require an equal treatment, to the detriment of the competition.… “We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision.”

Balogun’s tackle was certainly a foul. And even if you don’t agree that it should have been a red card, it is undeniable that the president of a country pressuring the FIFA president to go against a rule it hasn’t broken in 64 years is a baseline example of political corruption in sports. Infantino and Trump already have a questionable relationship, as the former’s gifting of the  “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump raised conflict-of-interest questions that have now only grown louder. 

This play is being reviewed for a potential red card against the US pic.twitter.com/EdyPpgpycA

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 2, 2026

“Decisions on sporting rules and sporting matters belong to sporting bodies, not politicians. Influencing sporting decisions would undermine the autonomy of sport,” European Commissioner for Fairness Glenn Micallef wrote on X. “Our focus should instead be on the real governance challenges facing sport, including the weaponisation of sport for political purposes.” 

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer turned political defector, is reportedly back on good terms with the president, according to the New York Post.

Cohen had served as a personal attorney to Trump for more than a decade before he became the middleman in Trump’s hush-money fiasco with porn star Stormy Daniels. To save himself, Cohen testified in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial, divulging that the real estate tycoon had directed him to pay Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in order to quell reports that Trump had had an extramarital affair with the adult film star circa 2006.

The hush-money trial ultimately found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, but the bad blood between Cohen and Trump is apparently history.

Cohen, as of this past weekend, has landed a new gig at 770 WABC radio—with the president’s blessing.

Cohen told the Post that the new gig will be “completely liberating” and give him an “unfiltered pipeline to the people.”

“I’m moving my 1.5 million followers from my podcasts, YouTube, and Substack over to this new platform, and it’s an absolute rush to have a space where I can give them the plain, unvarnished truth,” Cohen said on Sunday, noting that “after everything I’ve been through, I know exactly what BS smells like, and I’m here to call it out every single day.

“I’m here to use my past and my insider knowledge to pull back the curtain and set the record straight for them,” Cohen told the Post.

WABC owner and major Trump supporter John Catsimidatidis told the Post that Cohen and Trump had made amends.

“I checked with the White House and they had no objection,” Catsimatidis said. “I understand everything is fine.”

Cohen is expected to take over the Sunday slot from Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, though Cohen is reportedly vying for a regular, five-days-a-week show. His voice will be heard on the conservative talk radio station beginning July 12.

“I was told the president gave me a glowing recommendation for this gig because he believes I’m going to be the next Rush Limbaugh,” Cohen said.

MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900 to back Georgia Representative Clay Fuller’s campaign. Since then, MAGA Inc. has only given $560,000 to MAGA KY, which used it to back Ed Gallrein’s challenge against Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Trump has openly mocked mounting concerns about affordability, and actively downplayed Republicans’ efforts to address it. Now, Republicans are frustrated that the president hasn’t spent a dime to convince voters that his party actually cares about them.

“We didn’t leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics,” a GOP lobbyist and donor told Politico. “The electorate’s mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas.

“Now is the time to sell the message—America 250, the world loves America, the Democrats are crazy left again, and we sealed the border,” the lobbyist added.

Matthew Bartlett, Republican strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department in the first administration, wasn’t optimistic that help was on the way.

“What makes you think they’re going to spend? We’ve been waiting for the cavalry,” Bartlett told Politico. “Every day matters about shaping sentiment and ideas, and when you have limited time, you should be attacking that early. So the notion of waiting is just inherently concerning … but even more of like, are you even actually going to be playing?”

Beyond sorely neglecting Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections, in some cases, Trump has actively undermined them.

Trump’s latest attempt to antagonize Meloni comes ahead of a NATO meeting in Turkey on Tuesday, which both leaders will be attending.

Last month, the president nearly sparked a diplomatic crisis by claiming to an Italian TV station that Meloni “begged” him for a picture with her at a G7 summit in France.

“She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her,” Trump said. Meloni denied ever saying that, posting a video on X stating, “Neither I nor Italy ever beg,” in Italian.

“Donald Trump’s statements are completely made up,” Meloni said. “I am frankly astonished. I don’t ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies: It is not the first time, moreover.”

After that, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled a planned trip to the U.S., calling Trump’s remarks “serious and offensive.” Footage emerged from the summit of Meloni appearing to speak forcefully toward Trump, not appearing to beg at all.

Trump doubled down days later, claiming that Meloni asked for a picture “over and over” and telling NBC News that she “was a big fan” of his.

“But I don’t want her as a fan because she was not there―along with the NATO group―having to do with the strait,” Trump said, referring to Italy’s refusal to join in any efforts to retake the Strait of Hormuz along with other European allies of the U.S. He also mocked Meloni and claimed she needed a photo with him because “she is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity.”

“My popularity is none of your concern,” Meloni later replied. “I suggest you focus on yours.”

What his intention is with his latest post doesn’t make sense, and is likely to make things worse. He clearly has some kind of obsession with her, as he called her a “beautiful young woman” in an embarrassing moment at a peace summit in Egypt last year. She was less than impressed.

“The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote in a report published the evening of July 4.

“As this report shows, confirmed in the words of Museum leadership, this ideological capture has moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country,” the report continued. “By the intention and at the direction of current Museum and Smithsonian leadership, [the museum] has become subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”

From the Kennedy Center to Ivy League schools to the National Park Service, Trump has made a concerted effort to imbue cultural institutions with a more whitewashed version of American history that minimizes the injustices suffered by minority groups while ignoring the well-documented sins and valid critiques of the country’s Founding Fathers. This is all tied to his “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order signed upon his return to office.

“American history belongs to us all. Any attempt to erase history will fail. It lives in our very DNA,” former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote on X.

Last spring, the National Park Service briefly removed a picture of African American slave and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman from its webpage on the Underground Railroad, changed the words “enslaved African Americans” to “enslaved workers,” and removed a section that discussed Benjamin Franklin being a slave owner.

“There’s not one individual narrative that a president gets about our history,” Pennsylvania governor and presidential hopeful Josh Shapiro said in a CNN interview aired the day after Trump’s report. “And any president should want to make sure that that full history is shared, that the American people are able to draw their own conclusions.… If we understand where we came from, we’re going to have a better path forward.”

Just hours after top U.S. Soccer scorer Folarin Balogun received a red card and a minimum automatic one-game suspension, Trump urged FIFA President Gianni Infantino to review the decision, four people told The New York Times.

FIFA announced Sunday that it had reversed Balogun’s suspension, making him eligible to play against Belgium on Monday as the U.S. tries to advance to the quarterfinals. This is the first time since 1962 that a player has been allowed to appear in a game after receiving a suspension.

The unprecedented decision has sparked serious concerns of favoritism. Earlier this year, Infantino shocked his own top officials by cooking up the FIFA World Peace Prize, apparently to placate Trump after his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize crashed and burned.

It wasn’t just Trump who intervened—senior administration officials including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and World Cup task force director Andrew Giuliani worked quickly to engage lawyers to help U.S. Soccer mount an appeal.

When FIFA delivered its decision, the organization offered no explanation for why Balogun was exempt from his suspension, sparking widespread outrage.

The Royal Belgian Football Association released a statement Monday arguing that FIFA had failed to follow its own rules in processing an appeal and that the RBFA was “investigating all potential options.” Shortly after, the federation announced it was challenging the decision.

The Europa League also released a statement saying the decision was “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable,” and that FIFA had “crossed a red line.”

“When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined,” the football club said.

Meanwhile, Trump celebrated the decision. “Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” the president wrote in a post on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.

Despite having to drain and fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool within weeks of insisting the renovation was complete, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum insisted to ABC News Sunday that the multimillion-dollar restoration was nonetheless a “big success.”

“And so when we look in context, President Trump set out to make D.C. safe and beautiful. He’s done that,” Burgum said. “The Reflecting Pool was part of the original design of the Lincoln Memorial.… It was leaking 45,000 gallons a day.”

Burgum then cited attempts by previous presidential administrations to remedy the pool’s leaks, including the Obama administration’s two-year, $34 million effort between 2010 and 2012. The difference now, according to Burgum, is a vast advancement in technology, such as “nanobubblers” that he claimed have completely rid the pool of algae, as well as an industrial liner that has stopped the pool from leaking.

Neither of those details, however, appear to be true. Within days of refilling the pool, the algal bloom that the Trump administration had spent $14.7 million to eradicate had returned, while the painted liner at the bottom had begun to slough off.

“So the Reflecting Pool has been a big success. And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward,” Burgum said.

“Well, you say it’s been a success, but the pool is going to be drained this week, isn’t it?” asked host George Stephanopoulos.

“We don’t know if we need to drain the whole thing or not because, you know, the cutting happened on the edge,” Burgum responded. “And of course, again, when you’re talking about 340,000 square feet of surface, even though there was, you know, damage done by vandals that was there, it is a small, small—99.99 percent of the pool bottom is perfect.”

Donald Trump had originally promised that the project would cost $1.8 million. Now it seems the total project will cost far more than $15 million.

In another interview with CNN, Burgum again insisted—without evidence—that portions of the pool’s broken liner were caused by vandalism, echoing Trump’s explanation for the failing reno.

“It didn’t peel off. There was vandalism. There were box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There were people literally trying to destroy part of a monument, the Reflecting Pool,” Burgum told the network.

“There are photographs of a person or people cutting a 300- or 350-foot gash in the bottom of the Reflecting Pool?” pressed State of the Union host Dana Bash. The president initially announced late last month that the damage involved a 250-foot gash. The following day, the number escalated to 300, and then 350 feet the day after that.

“Dana, I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not—think, this is an industrial liner,” Burgum continued. “Every farmer and rancher in America that’s had their pickup liner lined by this sprayed-on liner knows that you literally—literally, it would never just like peel off or fall off. This is, like, a strong material.

“The only way you can end up with actual slices in one spot and not the other is that someone physically cut it,” Burgum said.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

The right has long been obsessed with the idea that huge numbers of women come illegally to the United States only to have babies. But now Donald Trump’s top officials and the MAGA movement are giving this a new twist. They’re seriously talking about preventing pregnant women from entering the country. This is being discussed all over MAGA media. Some are talking about forced sterilization. Others are talking about pregnancy tests before entry.

Sarah Posner, a writer for Talking Points Memo, memorably summed this up with a single tweet: “So will every woman now have to pee in a cup at airports?” It’s a damn good question. And it’s all very ludicrous, except for one thing—it reflects an actual vision for the country, a vision that JD Vance and Donald Trump and a lot of significant MAGA personalities very much share. So we’re talking to Sarah Posner about all of it. Sarah, great to have you on.

Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me again, Greg.

Sargent: So the backdrop to all this is the Supreme Court ruling upholding birthright citizenship. This unleashed fury and anxiety among MAGA figures across the spectrum, who started to imagine the United States getting dramatically swamped by far more immigrant babies going forward. One leading MAGA figure said the possible ways forward now should include: “Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners,” “deny entry to all female foreigners,” “require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

Wow. What’s your immediate reaction to just the sheer level of fear and anxiety we’re witnessing here?

Posner: Well, I think we’re witnessing a sheer level of racism. The anxiety about birth tourism, and women coming to America from China or other places just so they could have a baby who would be an American citizen, has long been a talking point in the anti-immigrant right. So it’s not like it came out of nowhere.

But never have I seen the range of people talking about such extreme policy proposals, if you can call them that, to try to prevent this thing that can already be prevented by U.S. consulates, who investigate this sort of thing when they’re deciding whether to grant somebody a visa, and can turn down somebody’s visa based on that.

What these people are proposing is the idea that women would be potentially sterilized if they wanted to come to America. That’s insane. Or that testing women, giving women pregnancy tests before they come. I mean, it’s just so bananas. I can’t even believe that they’re not ashamed to talk about it on TV.

Sargent: Yeah, and they even seem to be enjoying it a whole lot as well. I want to read some quotes from leading MAGA figures. Here’s Mike Davis: “We need to get all illegals out of our country fast, and we need to start with birthing-aged women.”

Ben Shapiro: “If you’re coming in six months pregnant, we should not give you a four-month visa. We should give you a one-month visa and then kick your ass out, right?”

Sarah, one interesting thing here is that there’s always been this intense misogyny to MAGA. And here you’re seeing almost a conflation or a bundling of the misogyny and the hysterical hatred of immigrants and the great replacement theory, just really juiced up to the most hyperbolic and insane levels you can imagine. You’re good on the topic of MAGA misogyny. What do you make of that element of it?

Posner: Well, for one thing, MAGA has always been very interested in policing women’s bodies, whether it’s preventing them from having an abortion, preventing them from accessing birth control, or in this case, preventing them from being in the United States when they go into labor, right?

Like, all of these things are about making sure that they have control over women’s bodies and women’s reproductive freedom. So that is completely on brand for them, to be obsessed with this.

And then you add that to their obsession about immigrant, quote-unquote, “invasions”—that these invasions of immigrants are making the United States less pure, are contaminating us. And so you have a movement that’s at its core disgusted by women’s bodies. And that’s why they want to control them.

And here they add to that layer of disgust by talking about immigrant women as being—or, I mean, not just immigrant women, women in general, like women who are coming to the United States to visit family or go see the Empire State Building—you know, that they’re talking about them as being conniving and dirty and wanting to basically defraud America.

Sargent: And some leading MAGA women are getting into this act too. Here’s Megyn Kelly.

Megyn Kelly (voiceover): Would there be the possibility of cracking down on pregnant aliens who are coming over here—revoking visas, pregnancy tests, even? I mean, how far could we go with that?

Sargent: There seems to be this almost zealous desire to stop people from coming here at all. I really think at this point they just want the whole world to go away. Can you talk about that element of this?

Posner: Well, I think that they’re creating this image that they’re closing off America to the world, and that they’re going to make it difficult or scary for people to come here, even if it’s just for a vacation. And I think that it is in part a performance for MAGA. Because as we’ve seen from the World Cup—even though the world has seen that ICE is arresting people, and people are being sent to gulags or deported to a country that they’ve never been to, and those fears are real—it made me quite astonished, actually, that lots of people came to see the World Cup anyway.

But a lot of people did come, right? So they were basically saying either, you know, that’s not going to happen to me, or I’m not afraid of ICE, or maybe they were just thinking, I want to see the World Cup so badly that I don’t care.

And the deportations and the arrests and detentions are very real, but I also feel like the scale of what they’re proposing here is so absurd that I’m not sure how they could actually carry it out without completely collapsing the American tourism industry.

Right. And so I think a lot of it is to kind of perform for MAGA, perform for Trump, because they have to coddle their little baby fascist president who just lost a case at the Supreme Court. So they have to show that they are really coming up with other ways to ensure that no foreigner has a baby in the United States anymore, despite the Supreme Court decision.

Sargent: I think you put a finger there on something really essential about how MAGA and Trump function, which is that when they take a loss, their instant response, almost without exception, is to come up with some way to re-portray themselves as being on offense. Because they can never lose, they can never be weak, they can never be on the wrong end of public opinion, on the wrong end of history, on the wrong end of the law, et cetera, et cetera.

So you’ve actually got acting Attorney General Todd Blanche going out there saying that there will be concrete action to stop this. He says there will be things the administration might do as part of the visa process to limit it.

And at one point he actually said that the Justice Department, which he runs, is going to make sure that Homeland Security Investigations agents and the FBI are focused on stopping pregnant people who intend to come here to have a child.

Posner: It’s actually not the Department of Homeland—I mean, I don’t know that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche knows this or not, which is kind of sad and pathetic, but it’s not the Department of Homeland Security who decides who gets a visa. It’s the State Department. So he can ask the Department of Homeland Security to do stuff, but they’re not the ones who would stop somebody from getting a visa.

And then in terms of people who are coming here for a shorter time than would require a visa—what’s he proposing? That every single woman of childbearing age who crosses the border from Canada or Mexico, or who flies in an airplane into any of the airports in the United States, will have to be examined to see if she’s pregnant? Like, what are they even talking about? How would that even work?

I suppose they could try to do it, but the scale of staff and resources that they would need to do it—now, that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t stop them from making an example of somebody, because they love to produce content for all the people who are watching, all these influencers on their podcasts and on X talk about stopping all this supposed birth tourism.

So you could definitely see them pulling this stunt on a woman entering the country just to scare other people, or to perform, like I said, for Trump or for social media content. But the scale of what they’re talking about is so ludicrous that it’s hard to take seriously as a mass policy.

Sargent: Yeah, I think it just goes back to what you said before about them performing for the audience of one. They need to let him know that things are being done, because he’s strong and he never just loses. He’s always on offense, right? So here they are on offense again. I really think that is such a crucial piece of the MAGA psyche—to always be on offense, to always be strong, to never be losing, et cetera, et cetera.

Posner: But I think in this particular case, it’s not just the audience of one. It’s that that audience of one has had a terrible couple of weeks in terms of his popularity, the complete failure of his Great American State Fair, which has been a complete bust in terms of people coming to it.

And so they also have to perform for the MAGA audience, that they’re worried might be either losing interest or thinking that maybe Trump is failing or losing his power.

Sargent: Trump’s power is ebbing—that can’t be the image.

Let’s listen to something that Stephen Miller said about the birthright citizenship decision, because it really kind of encapsulates the bigger thing that they’re talking about here. Listen to this.

Stephen Miller (voiceover): Just physically being on U.S. soil does not make you a citizen, or qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country. We have people from all over the world, from Third World nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel. And they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital, paid for by you and me, and then that baby’s automatically a citizen. That baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you and sit in judgment of me and sit in judgment of our loved ones, can decide who our mayors are, our governors are, our presidents are.

Sargent: So, Sarah, this rant is one of the most crazy things I have ever heard from a Trump administration official, or any administration official ever. It’s absolutely unhinged in every conceivable way.

But what I think it gets at really is the degree to which stopping birthright citizenship, or upending birthright citizenship, was central to their big project. They really, really, really think that we’re in the midst of a demographic emergency, and that something incredibly drastic and Caesar-like is needed to prevent that from happening.

Posner: Does he think that the wheel was invented in the United States of America? Like, he’s so crazy. And so the idea that he’s trying to invent a reason why—that’s not just, we don’t want them here. So he’s trying to say, well, The people who want to come here and have their babies are not smart and inventive and creative and coming up with inventing the airplane or anything like that. And so that’s why we can’t let them in.

And it’s just such a crazy, weird thing to say, because obviously it’s not true. Like, Americans have not invented all the great inventions in the history of humanity. And also that he feels like that’s the thing that he has to say.

So I don’t know. I mean, I just find Stephen Miller such a simultaneously dangerous and ridiculous person. But you can’t help but hear that kind of desperation in his voice in that particular clip.

Sargent: I think what he thinks is that the United States is the privileged inheritor of what he calls Western civilization, and that everybody outside this kind of civilizational charmed circle that he’s invented—which essentially includes Europe, and now includes Southern and parts of Eastern Europe, whereas it didn’t before when his relatives came over—he thinks that the charmed circle of civilization has been drawn in a way that it excludes what he calls the Third World.

And so everybody outside this circle, in the Third World, none of those people are fit to invent things or fit to inherit the great Western inheritance that we are fortunate to have bequeathed to us. It’s a really, really deeply twisted vision that really is, I guess, civilizational supremacy.

And you’ve written about this as well a number of times. Can you talk about the religious dimension to what I’m talking about there, this kind of vision of civilizational supremacy? There is a religious nationalist dimension to it as well, isn’t there?

Posner: Well, Christian nationalism is a movement of American superiority and American exceptionalism. There was a point in time in the not too distant past that the Republican Party and the evangelical movement believed that the future of their political project depended on immigrants—depended on immigrants who were evangelical or Catholic, coming from Central and South America. And there was a senator by the name of Marco Rubio who was very involved in an effort to engage in immigration reform back in the 2010s. And, I’m sure that Rubio would not want to be reminded of that now.

And so I think that the religious right has shifted. Like, they’ve gone back and forth between being an anti-immigrant movement, being a movement that pretended for a while that it was interested in bringing people of color and immigrants into their movement and making them part of the Republican Party, and to being completely committed to Donald Trump and his mass deportation policies.

So I think that the modern religious right has had an identity crisis over this. But now they’re in a place where they cannot deviate from Trump or Stephen Miller or any of his other acolytes. And so they’re all in on whatever his immigration policy is. They don’t question it.

Sargent: I think you really nailed it when you said that they’re going to essentially want women to pee in cups at airports now, because that really captures all the craziness of it—the misogyny, the hostility to women’s bodily functions and so forth.

Let’s spool this forward a little bit. Next year, JD Vance is presumably going to be starting his presidential run. He’s going to be trying to figure out how to inherit this kind of coalition that’s been created. And he’s going to have to figure out how to deal with, I guess, a major part of the coalition here, which is extremely frustrated and anxious and angry about having failed at this one fundamental thing, which is so central to their broader agenda.

How does he, do you think, handle that while at the same time appealing to the middle? It seems like this vision is so extreme and so crazy. And someone like JD Vance, whose whole kind of shtick is to be the guy who makes MAGA seem reasonable and puts an intellectual gloss on it—we’re now at a point where it’s getting so crazy that it’s going to be very hard for him to do that. How do you see him managing this?

Posner: I actually don’t see him as trying to put a more moderate gloss on MAGA. I think that that is an image that he has worked hard to promote, and some people in the press have helped him with that. But when you hear him talk, he’s not really doing anything to soften any MAGA positions. He’s typically just saying something that will position him as being maybe less of a loser, say, in the Iran war ceasefire negotiations.

I think that Vance’s biggest political problem—one of his own creation, obviously, because he’s trying to appeal to the MAGA base and the anti-immigrant base—is that the base is very distrustful of him because his wife is not white and she’s not Christian. And he has to like run in circles to try to convince them that he’s OK and he’s one of them.

But I think that for someone like him, given his track record, trying to promote the idea that they’re going to police, quote-unquote, “birth tourism” more aggressively will be super convenient, even if he knows that it’s super impractical. But I don’t see him running from this.

I mean, he’s reinvented himself numerous times, but he can’t go anywhere without the MAGA base, right? Because it’s not like he has some natural constituency other than the MAGA base. So it’s not like if he went out there tomorrow and said, I agree with the majority opinion in the birthright citizenship case, that there would be a constituency for him. So he’s stuck with trying to appeal to MAGA.

Sargent: Yeah, I have to agree with you, Sarah. I think that this is going to be extremely difficult for JD Vance to manage. But the funny thing is, you know, he helped create this monster. And if he gets devoured by it, then, you know, that’s poetic justice. Sarah Posner, always an enormous pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

Posner: Thanks for having me, Greg.

But perhaps no nation has been more dependent upon its stories than the United States, a country formed in the relatively recent past without the benefits of shared ethnicity, language, or custom. In the absence of the usual ties that typically hold a nation together, it is values, we are told, that make an American an American and that make this country the special place that it is. Ironically, while Americans have always bitterly disagreed about the practical implications of those values, they have largely been consistent in the story they tell about those values and thus themselves. That story goes a little something like this: The United States was founded by good men, rebelling against tyranny and dedicated to the cause of liberty. Throughout its history, the United States has sought to pursue the path of freedom and justice, although some people—often, but not always progressives—are willing to concede that it has sometimes fallen short of this ideal. What these people will not concede, however—what they almost never concede—is the fundamental assumption that the United States of America is collectively a nation striving for the good.

In any other time, this persistent bit of American Exceptionalism might be excusable, even charming. But in a moment in which it seems not only increasingly impossible, but irresponsible, to ignore the deep flaws at the heart of the American project, this is exactly the choice that has been made by a certain brand of liberal public intellectual cum influencer in the Trump era. This cohort includes figures such as Jill Lepore, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Joanne B. Freeman, and Kevin M. Kruse. Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder are arguably the two most prominent examples of a new iteration of an old trend, the historian as explainer, and perhaps more jarringly as political strategist. Credentialed historians and critics of the current regime, they promise key insight into the present via their knowledge of the past, and they have become a prominent feature of the opposition to Donald Trump.

The narrative of history and, more importantly, of the present that they offer has gone viral, offering comfort to its audience and a substantial economic benefit to its creators in the form of newsletter subscriptions and book deals. While it seems cruel to challenge anyone’s source of comfort in this very disquieting age and is certainly unkind to question academics pursuing alternate income streams, it is time we start to question the narrative of history that has been so widely adopted by many Americans and ask whether this particular fantasy of the past is providing any benefit in our increasingly dystopian present. In particular, there is an insistence among these figures that the past is something to be mined for lessons about how to survive the rising tide of authoritarianism and fascism. It’s a compelling premise. But a decade into what future historians may very well term the “Trump Era,” it’s still not precisely clear what use the past is to understanding—let alone escaping—the current predicament.

The Resist! Historians, as you might call them, would not be possible if not for the American center-left’s increasingly romantic view of expertise. It (and the Democratic Party) have over the past 30 years come to be dominated by the most well-educated: Roughly 60 percent of people with graduate degrees lean blue. The nation’s best students are now collected in one political corner utterly unwilling to question the teacher’s competence. She is, after all, the teacher.

This shift has also been catalyzed by the American right’s increasingly dangerous anti-intellectualism, which in part drove their political opponents to a sometimes exaggerated deference to credentialed authority—a deference that often ignores the fact that experts frequently disagree with each other. Take, for example, the progressive rallying cry to “Believe science.” This certainly seems to be a good idea, especially on clearly settled topics such as the efficiency of vaccines and the reality of climate change. But what about those issues where the science—and more importantly the scientists—deeply disagree? Who exactly are we trusting then? After all, there are good faith, legitimate debates occurring around issues ranging from the effects and efficiency of long-term psychiatric drug use in children to support options for autistic people to the ethics of AI. None of this is settled, and experts—credentialed experts—disagree.

This deification of expertise in and of itself has also made it somewhat portable, a fact that is on clear display among the historian influencers. Take, for example, Heather Cox Richardson—arguably the most prominent of the cohort. Richardson’s Substack Letters From an American boasts over three million subscribers and is one of the most widely read newsletters in the world. The Harvard-educated Boston College professor has nearly six million followers on social media and was a Time 100 Creator in 2025. Letters From an American began as a synopsis of the events around Trump’s first impeachment and continues as a daily commentary on current events, much of which includes Richardson’s advice on topics ranging from how to identify fascism to how resistance to the MAGA movement ought to be organized. Her blog has also built a New York Times bestselling book, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.

When her work is shared, and it often is, the credibility of her positions is upheld by the assurance that Richardson is an expert—which is most certainly true: She wrote her dissertation on the Republican Party’s economic policies during the Civil War. Before Richardson entered the realm of public intellectualism as the co-host of the NPR-affiliate podcast Freak Out and Carry On in 2017, all of her books were focused on nineteenth-century America, including works on Reconstruction, the Battle of Wounded Knee, and the history of the Republican Party. Although fascism does have nineteenth-century roots, albeit in Europe, much of her newsletter is devoted to what is best described as punditry: analysis of the president’s mental state, upcoming Senate elections, and the weaponization of government agencies.

Timothy Snyder, the other bright star of this constellation, has a better claim to being an expert on fascism. Snyder, who decamped from Yale to the University of Toronto last year, is a historian of Central and Eastern Europe, with a specialization in the Holocaust and the Soviet Union. But his academic work is not directly linked to his advice on what to do in twenty-first-century America. That work, for example, includes a biography of Wilhelm von Habsburg, the poet and soldier who was placed in charge of Ukrainians against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of World War I. Moreover, perhaps even more than Richardson, Snyder has leaned into the dubious idea that the historian is really a political strategist in disguise. His 2017 book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, topped The New York Times bestseller list and became something like scripture among some left-leaning Americans during the first Trump administration.

The entire subdiscipline of historiography exists because historians themselves are conscious that the way history is written and interpreted does itself have a history, one that is infused by ideological and sociological (and not infrequently psychological) influence. When we try to learn lessons from history, we must first choose a version to teach us—which narratives to highlight or omit, which assumptions to accept, which voices to elevate or ignore. That is why the past is often a comforter as much as if not more than it is a teacher. This is certainly true in the case of the Resist! Historians.

The popular success of figures like Richardson and Snyder rests on the fact they are presenting a narrative that rarely challenges their audience—which is largely white, middle-class, well-educated, and progressive. It is an audience made up of people for whom, up until now, the American project has worked out very well. What many of these people want to hear is that the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement is an aberration, a fixable malfunction. The audience for Richardson and Snyder, whether on podcasts, Substack, or Threads, want to believe that the current president and his supporters are not heirs to their American legacy but have instead twisted the truth about this nation’s history for their own malign ends. In this context, not only are their detractors the real inheritors of the nation’s Founders, but there is a clear path to escaping this fraught moment: accepting the truth about the nation and following where it leads us.

When Richardson, for instance, wrote about Rededicate 250, a bizarre event held on the National Mall on May 17 that was part political rally and part evangelical revival, she wrote with confidence, “...the United States of America was not founded as a Christian nation. The Founders were quite clear about that…,” and she went on to quote the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which famously declared that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion” and “has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility [of Muslims].” It’s a bold, appealing proclamation, one that seeks to co-opt, if not to obliterate, a key trope on the right, where the Founders’ status as (almost exclusively) white Protestants and their invocations of the Almighty trump the constitutionally protected rights they enshrined, most notably in the First Amendment.

And it’s true, the Treaty of Tripoli does say exactly that. But this is not the whole story. Many states maintained a religious test for office, and an established church, well into the nineteenth century. In fact, Massachusetts, where Richardson was educated and continues to work, did not fully disestablish its state church until 1833. Moreover, institutional histories are not the only histories that count. Rededicate 250 can only be seen as an anomaly if you ignore the long history connecting evangelical revivals and American politics dating back to Colonial times—traditions that have continually reasserted themselves in figures like Billy Graham and the continued prominence of megachurches. In the lived history of the Republic, not only the Christian character, but the evangelical nature of the country, are hard to deny. It can certainly be complicated and contextualized via documents like the Treaty of Tripoli. But that is different than asserting that their existence trumps other relevant details and events in U.S. history.

Of course, the truth of some of its assertions does not mean that the contemporary brand of MAGA evangelical has the right to govern the United States unchallenged, but it is also incorrect that there is no precedent for the rise of MAGA. As in a version of the twentieth century that exists to provide “lessons” to anti-fascists in the present, the idea that there is a pure, uncontested American history available for use by those disgusted by the current regime is comforting, even inspiring. It simplifies history, creating binaries between the authentic and the opportunistic and, in many cases, between good and evil. Rather than unspooling the complexities and ambiguities of American history, it instead treats the past as raw material for punditry. The Treaty of Tripoli is not an early example of diplomacy and statecraft from a new nation struggling for legitimacy, but a tool to be used against Christian conservatives who wield history and Scripture selectively.

But history is neither a teacher who rewards the best students nor a sweeping morality play. It is inconsistent, morally ambiguous, and often not especially helpful. It is one of many forms of expertise that can provide resonant analogies and occasional lessons—but its lessons are not inherently of more use than those offered by social science or even political activism.

It is, of course, hardly unique for subject experts, particularly academics, to stray outside their areas, particularly while providing mainstream political commentary. Economics, in particular, has turned out a steady stream of pundits, from the respectable (former New York Times columnist and, yes, current Substacker Paul Krugman, for example) to the baldly ideological (such as the nationally syndicated, baldly libertarian John Stossel). But there is nothing about academic training, no matter the discipline, that translates automatically to expertise in political strategy, just as there is nothing in history that provides a clear playbook for escaping the overlapping crises brought about by the second Trump administration.

That is not to say that Richardson, Snyder, and the other historian influencers need to quit the public square, but more that their visions and approaches to historical punditry need to be challenged. There is room for more diverse and sometimes dissenting voices, who are more willing to voice facts about the United States that disquiet and disturb. There is room to question expertise, particularly when it is deployed as cover for political analysis or punditry. And there is room for more stories to be told about America, even when they are stories we may not like.

Layoffs have hit multiple universities. Boston University laid off more than 100 of its staff last spring, the New School laid off nearly 90 faculty and staff, the University of Maryland laid off 84 employees, and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Science is looking at laying off 25 percent of its staff (thanks to a plan put together by McKinsey and Company). Most dramatically, Hampshire College announced the closure of its doors this past spring. It will unfortunately not be the last institution to fold.

Where faculty have jobs, they increasingly do not feel free to do their work. In Texas, the A&M and Tech systems have implemented prohibitions on teaching of race, sex, and gender—leading to the cancellation or modification of courses. At the University of Texas at Austin, departments have been merged, likely because of pressure caused by “anti DEI” bills, which also saw the closure of student services offices across the state of Texas. But it’s not just public universities in Republican states that face these pressures. At Harvard, the heads of the Center for Middle East Studies and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights were dismissed from their roles for running programming related to Palestine.

Facing distrust from the public, hostile lawmakers, and corporate decision-making practices, what are the students, staff, and faculty of the ivory tower to do? The solution lies in what graduate students across the country have been doing for the past few years; what workers in the U.S. have done for over a hundred years—organize a union.

Both inside and outside of higher education, there has been talk for years about what ails the system and why it has seemingly become out of touch and distrusted. A core tenet of the oft-repeated arguments is that universities have become bastions of activism, rather than places where scholarship is cultivated. The lone scholar who spends years studying Plato and Aristotle is run off campus and replaced by a purple-haired student with a sticker-laden megaphone; or so we are told. At the same time, universities are critiqued for not being engaged enough with communities, for setting kids up with degrees that will not serve them in the “real world”—the bubble of scholarly pursuit is simultaneously romanticized as a lost bygone era and source of present-day weakness.

The solution to this put forward by higher education leaders is to invest millions in viewpoint diversity or civic engagement centers, like those at Tufts University and the University of North Carolina, with the goal of bringing more conservative voices to campus. At the behest of donors and lawmakers, universities have become a battleground for the culture war.

When you dig in to the polling numbers about why universities are distrusted, it is true that a vast majority of Americans believe colleges and universities are headed in the wrong direction. Within those numbers, about 45 percent of people believe that universities do not do enough to expose students to a wide range of opinions. Meanwhile, 80 percent believe that universities are doing a poor job of keeping tuition costs affordable. 

The reality is that universities have come to be operated more as businesses than as not-for-profit entities of higher education, and this has led to their having the trust that businesses are afforded. Presidents of private colleges, in particular, are paid in the millions (at public universities, so are the football coaches). Universities have amassed huge amounts of property, corporate consultants are brought in for all sorts of reasons, and tuition costs continue to skyrocket. This trend is slated to get worse as universities seek to disentangle themselves from public dollars to make them less fickle to changes in political winds.

Despite being operated like businesses, universities encourage their workers to view their pursuit of knowledge and/or labor in support of it as separate from work that would require a union: It is a privilege to be able to do scholarship or work in higher education, and therefore you don’t require a union like a coal miner or an autoworker. It is this separation of profession that encourages isolation from other working people. When graduate students across the country unionized with the United Auto Workers, they showed up on the picket line when autoworkers went on strike in 2023. Dues paid by academic workers support other industries when they are on strike, and vice versa.

I’ve seen this dynamic firsthand as a member of a graduate labor union. When workers of the local grocery store chain went on strike, in 2019, the union coordinated people to join up at the picket line. A few of us joined one rainy morning and were approached by a white guy in an NRA hat, holding a strike sign. He thanked us for being there; regardless of what he may have heard about universities, or what differences may have otherwise existed politically, here was an example of workers coming together in a material struggle.

Unions contribute to community cohesion and trust. In Rust Belt Union Blues, Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol write about how unions in Pennsylvania integrated themselves into every facet of daily life. The union hall was a place where weddings and community functions occurred; the union itself was a source of connection—where people felt united based on their shared identity as workers. As unions dwindled due to deindustrialization, so too did this broader union infrastructure, leaving people to find social identity in other group settings, some of them more reactionary. Higher-ed unions are not going to magically solve community isolation and atomization, but considering the acute need to boost community understanding and trust for this sector, in particular, academic workers can and should be part of the solution.

Organizing a union requires having hard conversations. It requires you to talk to many different people across life and work experience, political allegiances, and other divisions. They may or may not agree with the purpose of a union. Still, this dialogue exposes you to alternative viewpoints in a more visceral way than the proposed “viewpoint diversity” centers will allow. Whether or not everyone agrees from the outset, they will ultimately be a part of your union if you succeed. And to get there, you have to do the necessary work of convincing a majority of the potential beneficiaries of labor organizing that it’s a worthwhile effort—that at the end of the day, they’ll all come out ahead.

There are many tangible material benefits that unionization can provide; it creates leverage on university governance, where faculty, staff, and students may otherwise feel they have none. But unions are not a panacea—in light of broader industry-related shifts, layoffs do happen (Harvard staff who are facing cuts are unionized). It happened to the auto industry, and it can happen to higher ed. Nevertheless, organizing makes any cuts to workers much more costly to do, and it gives workers far more benefits when parting.

For people in higher education, the last year has been spent on edge watching decisions come down the pipeline that have impacted their industry and their livelihoods, with no ability to control what happens. It is a feeling of utter and complete helplessness. Universities and professional organizations have been mostly siloed in this effort, relying on conversations with members of Congress and direct negotiations with the government, or otherwise taking legal action. As the public has been galvanized by issues of war, immigration, and the economy, the destruction of America’s research and academic institutions is not a top priority for people’s attention.

This siloing also occurs on campus. Currently, the American Association of University Professors is trying to organize faculty across different fields of study. For years, it was thought that humanities faculty were the ones primarily under threat, so they currently make up more of the AAUP’s base. Now it is science faculty who are facing the chopping block and are doing so unorganized and unprepared. While humanities faculty may be aware and sympathetic, it ultimately takes members of the scientific community to provide insight on how certain policies put forward by federal agencies may impact them. You cannot be a bystander to the saving of your field; no one else will have these conversations for you.

As nonsensical and counterproductive as these cuts are to the national interest, they are no different from what a factory worker experienced during the signing of the free trade agreements of the 1980s and 1990s. Watching the government take an ax to your industry and countless communities, with little recourse available, is depressing. Organizing can help allay the bad feelings and put those who are under the boot back on the front foot. Universities may not be able to mobilize the public or build effective coalitions as institutions, but members of the university community can—and should. 

Through the union, every street becomes the classroom; coalitions are built, picket lines are formed, and people come to understand each other across lines of division. This may seem overly idealistic and hopelessly naïve. There’s no doubt that the battle will be a hard one. All the same, it is a path forward with tangible steps and real benefit—if only because you’ll be fighting the fight together. Form the union today, protect your job tomorrow, build a better community next week.

Well. The first question here is whether Americans even know what communism is (or was) anymore. There are five countries in the world that still call themselves Communist, but one of those is China, which at least in economic terms barely counts (the others are Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos). More than that, it’s getting to be close to 40 years now since the Eastern bloc collapsed. A person would have to be at least 45 years old to have any memory of all that. Right now, 57.5 percent of Americans are under that age.

As you’d expect, young people who weren’t alive to see how cruel, corrupt, and lethargic the Soviet Union was either don’t know much about communism or don’t see it as such a bad thing. A poll released last week by the libertarian Cato Institute had some interesting numbers. Among all Americans, capitalism was viewed favorably by just 52 percent (that’s the number that would be worrying me if I were a Friedmanesque free marketeer; it’s insanely low!). Socialism was viewed favorably by 37 percent. And communism got a thumbs-up from 21 percent.

That’s overall. Among respondents under 30 years old, 38 percent said they had a favorable view of communism. But in the Queens of Donald Trump’s youth, calling someone a Commie packed a real wallop, so he clearly thinks it still can.

The word doesn’t actually apply to any of these people he’s trying to condemn, of course. As I noted last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, and even Bernie Sanders himself aren’t really socialists, in the proper historical sense of the word. I don’t hear any of them calling for the state to seize the means of production, which is the basic historical position of socialism. They’re social democrats.

The only one among the crop who has apparently said a few nice things about actual communism is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old who won the Democratic primary in an upper Manhattan district. Her leftism appears to be much more of the campus-radical variety than Mamdani’s sewer socialism; we’ll see in two years whether the voters of her district are good with that, or whether she has indeed “grown considerably” since she wrote those social media posts.

Meanwhile, on the Fourth of July, a bunch of white supremacists from something called the Patriot Front felt at home enough in Trump’s Washington to march in front of the Capitol wearing masks, sunglasses, and ballcaps with the group’s logo boldly displayed and carrying an array of flags, including the Confederate flag. (These ghouls undoubtedly went unmasked during the pandemic to protest supposedly totalitarian public health policies, and now they’re dressing like totalitarians in an attempt to terrorize regular people.)  

And that night, of course, America, or that portion of it that was interested, listened to another windy address from a president who once invited avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dine with him at his house and told the extremist Proud Boys to stand by.

That same president participated back in May in Rededicate 250, a Christian nationalist prayer gathering that, whatever its organizers said, was clearly intended to pound home the idea that the United States is supposed to be a Christian nation, which of course it is not. Democratic Representative Jared Huffman of California accurately told PBS that the event “would have the Founders rolling in their graves.” 

This doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of right-wing radicalism in this country, most of which Trump tacitly or sometimes explicitly endorses with rhetoric that’s clearly fascist. And beyond Trump himself, many rank-and-file Republicans are shocking extremists; remember Nazis mingling openly at the 2024 CPAC conference, or those leaked text messages by young Republicans last fall (“I love Hitler”)?

It’s crystal clear in a factual sense which party is more radical today. The Democrats could elect two dozen socialists and they still wouldn’t be anywhere near as far left as the GOP has gone far right. Oh, and by the way: For all the media attention socialist candidates get when they win, it’s still a fact that on balance, mainstream and even centrist Democrats are winning more primaries this year. The Cook Political Report revealed over the weekend that in the 22 GOP-controlled congressional districts where Democrats have held primaries so far, 14 have been won by candidates with mainstream and centrist backing. Only four have been won by candidates backed by the Progressive Caucus. So in swing districts, Democratic voters are still mainly choosing the nominees they calculate have a better shot at winning such a district.

But we’re going to be hearing all about Communists for the next four months. Trump is obviously trying to make the midterms a referendum on the Democratic Party and not on him. 

History tells us this rarely works. It didn’t work for him in 2018, when he was around 40 percent in the polls and tried to make the dreaded caravan headed toward the Rio Grande from Central America the central issue. And the economy was comparatively good then, unlike now, when a soaring stock market is benefiting the rich while most Americans continue to struggle with Trump-juiced inflation.

So Democrats, who tend to freak out about things, should not freak out about this. Sure, communism is a scary word, at least to people of a certain age and ideological bent. But I’d imagine very few people who aren’t dyed-in-the-wool MAGA believe the Democratic Party is a bunch of Communists. I hope that instead of lamely denying it and moving on to gas prices, they have the guts to fight fire with fire and point out to voters who the real extremists in this country are.

He’s right. America the Polarized has found some agreement at last. While President Trump guns it on building data centers, 71 percent of Americans oppose them, including a majority of Republicans. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas, Republicans are breaking with Trump and issuing stern warnings about the massive facilities that increasingly pock rural America. And now Humans First, a conservative group that says it supports an “America First AI policy,” is planning a nationwide data center protest on July 18.

Data centers are also shaping up to be a rogue issue putting torque on the midterms. South Florida Representative Byron Donalds, now a Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate in his state, has quietly defied the big guy, pledging to “protect Florida’s families and communities from data centers.” In one ad, he even seems to support government control of electric utilities. (Welcome to the struggle, Comrade Donalds.)

So who supports data centers? Only politicians who benefit from Big Tech’s ambition to dominate global AI. Parr, who himself ran for City Council in Burbank, California, in 2024, further said of data centers: “We’re just supposed to accept them because we might lose a race with China. Dude, where’s China?”

That Homer Simpson–esque question might just nail it, and it should be taken seriously if not literally. It suggests just how vexed Americans are with Big Tech’s ongoing effort to sacrifice regular people to the global ambitions of billionaires.

Thus we have a mass mobilization focused squarely on protecting American hometowns from oligarchic exploitation. According to Data Center Watch, protest groups against data centers now number an eye-popping 833 across 49 states. That’s a genuine movement. For more than a year, the protests have roused corners of America that not long ago were stuck in tribal stalemates focused on the personality of Trump.

Out of these protests, a surprising, hopeful, and effective rural progressivism is emerging. Data centers, which never close, consume vast amounts of electricity. They also drain millions of gallons of local water for cooling and churn out air and noise pollution all day every day. No wonder the data center protesters have keyed into AI’s environmental impact. Contrary to popular belief that Americans are dismissive of climate concerns, 70 percent of Americans now worry about the ravages of data centers.

Populists of every stripe have further grown wary of the brutally expensive ruling-class projects that jeopardize our daily lives: Silicon Valley monopolies and the war in Iran. A big faction of the anti-globalist set has further turned its attention away from the right-wing bugbear of immigration and toward causes that elsewhere are derided as “Communist”: working people and the climate.

And the protests are surprisingly tactical. When it comes to affecting policy, they put the bigger No Kings demonstrations, which largely exist to express anger and ideological affiliation, in the shade. According to a watchdog group, data center opponents blocked or slowed more than 75 projects nationwide, worth $130 billion, between January and March alone. What’s more, 141 moratoria have been proposed at local, county, state, and national levels. And dozens of cities have actually implemented temporary bans, including Birmingham, Alabama; New Orleans; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Communities have internalized an opposition playbook,” writes Data Center Watch. “As political resistance builds and local organizing becomes more coordinated, this is now a sustained and intensifying trend.”

If these communities keep at it, and keep notching wins, they might just show the way out of the defeatism and blind rage that have stymied American progress and policy for the better part of a decade.

“We are anti–sacrifice zone,” said protester Megan McDonough at a Pennsylvania state Capitol demonstration last week. A sacrifice zone is a municipality that is thrown to the wolves of Big Tech.

“We are anti being told that billionaire tech bros deserve more protection than the people who drink the water, breathe the air, pay the taxes, and live with the consequences.”

McDonough’s speech and Parr’s where’s-China comedy spiel really point to what’s most galvanizing about the protests. The data center opponents are ordinary Americans. They embody a national everyman type we need more of in politics: the wise child, forever underestimated, who asks Socratic questions.

This archetype is so American it should be featured in a pavilion for the 250th. Its vibe draws on centuries of unlikely American heroes: nonconformist Yankee Doodle, outlaw Huckleberry Finn, naïvely principled Mr. Smith, anti-authoritarian Jeff Spicoli, and, of course, skeptical realist Homer Simpson.

These fellows are friends to the obvious. They don’t like abstractions. The data centers are right in front of our faces. They’re not one of the intangible threats of technology that preoccupy anti-woke and anti-tech faddists like Jonathan Haidt. (Citing Haidt’s out-of-step philosophies and opposition to DEI, dozens of students booed and walked out of his commencement address at NYU last week.) Instead, the data centers are physical outposts of AI empires—ugly water guzzlers that don’t even pretend to serve communities.

At least Homer’s nuclear plant keeps him employed. A massive data facility uses automation and, once built, rarely employs more than a few dozen people. Data centers really only benefit the Big Tech emperors, to whom, according to a growing American consensus, we are no longer willing to sacrifice our towns.

This, at least, was the idea when the project was officially announced in March 2026. Since then, however, the project has become an encapsulation of Americans’ distrust of the AI industry at large and the structural risk that unregulated data center development creates for investors across the board.

In Utah, opposition to the Stratos Project was driven in part by predictions that it would have severe adverse effects on the environment. Utah State University professor Robert Davies calculated that the heat from the completed Stratos center would raise local daytime temperatures by five degrees Fahrenheit and a staggering 28 degrees at night, a thermal load equivalent to “23 atom bombs” worth of energy. Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University, warned that these temperature spikes would transform the local environment from semiarid into something more closely resembling the Sahara Desert. There were also additional concerns that the center would be a massive water draw in a region already prone to drought and facing increasing water shortages.

Despite this, and the complaints of thousands of residents, the project was approved by the Box Elder County Commission in May 2026—barely two months after it had been announced. The relative alacrity of their decision-making was partially enabled by the fact that Stratos utilized Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, a state entity whose involvement let it bypass ordinary county zoning and the public review such projects normally require (since the project could theoretically help improve military AI adoption and cybersecurity).

Stratos’s chief backer is Kevin O’Leary, a celebrity billionaire investor better known for his role on the TV show Shark Tank than as an AI infrastructure guru. He has claimed that Stratos would create 2,000 permanent jobs (despite the fact that Stratos is yet to have a tenant, and that data centers have historically created far fewer jobs than advocates claim).

But O’Leary’s promises have done nothing to dampen local opposition to Stratos. In fact, opposition intensified throughout the month of May until Utah Governor Spencer Cox—who had initially backed the project when O’Leary met with him in January 2026—signed an executive order on May 29 to ensure that the state properly evaluates data center proposals. While the Stratos Project was not specifically mentioned in the order, the timing of the announcement, coupled with the significant statewide pushback to the project, showed it was clearly an inflection point. Less than a week later, O’Leary agreed to significantly scale back the proposed data center from 40,000 acres to just over 20,000.

“People are concerned about data centers,” Cox said in a press conference, “they’re concerned about the lake, they’re concerned about resources, and they should be concerned.”

So, six months after the supposed “industrial marvel” of the Stratos Project was introduced, the results have been an angry local community, an embarrassed investor, and a local state government belatedly searching for a sensible framework with which to govern data center growth. The backlash has not stopped yet, either. On June 23, Utah state Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who was also the chairman of the Utah agency that initially approved Stratos, lost his Senate seat to a rival who explicitly criticized his support of O’Leary’s project.

But data center investors face a more significant problem than public embarrassment—they risk losing money. In Utah, there are now two separate lawsuits underway against O’Leary’s project, each likely to further slow the already scaled-back data center. The problem isn’t confined to the Stratos Project, either. According to a recent analysis by JPMorgan, more than 60 percent of data center capacity planned for 2027 isn’t yet under construction. The research firm Data Center Watch has claimed that in the first quarter of 2026, over $130 billion worth of data center projects were either delayed or canceled.

Together, this suggests that regulatory and community friction is already taking a significant toll on investors’ bottom lines, alerting them to the dangers of rushing headlong into new proposals. A May 2026 note from the law firm Ropes & Grey warned as much, noting that “permitting challenges and local [community] resistance are emerging as serious obstacles” and that “standstills are a real risk absent industry engagement or federal preemption.”

States have caught on to this problem. Beyond Spencer Cox’s executive order, which directs Utah agencies to protect the environment while promoting economic growth, Maine passed a bipartisan data center moratorium act in April. Initially vetoed by outgoing Governor Janet Mills, the act could come back into consideration after the November 2026 midterms. Ohio and California, meanwhile, have both passed legislation, with Ohio requiring data center operators to cover their own grid costs, and California mandating that they disclose their electricity consumption.

Big Tech firms are now keenly aware of the need for their data centers to have at least some environmental protections and community considerations built into development plans. Microsoft, for instance, announced its “Community-First” AI infrastructure plan in January 2026, shortly after it was forced to cancel a proposed data center in rural Wisconsin. The plan calls for covering the grid and electricity costs its data centers create, minimizing and replenishing local water use, and paying its full share of local property taxes rather than seeking the tax breaks data centers typically negotiate. OpenAI has called for significant investment in renewables to help modernize the U.S. electrical grid and make data center build-out more sustainable, while Anthropic has pledged to cover the grid infrastructure improvements and electricity cost increases that are generated from the data centers it uses.

These actions from both big business at one end and state actors at the other are a recognition of the problem. But they are the inverse of the kind of investment that the Stratos Project represents: rushed ad hoc investment on one side of the coin, and reactive ad hoc regulation on the flip side.

What’s more, both actors have fundamental limitations. Data centers are a footloose industry, meaning if one state is deemed to be overregulating, investors can easily shop for a friendlier jurisdiction. And while Big Tech firms might talk a good game, they are also subject to severe market pressures that could make them put their plans for equitable, environmentally friendly data centers on the back burner.

What’s needed is a concrete set of enforceable federal standards that can slow down the ad hoc gold rush in favor of equitable (and ultimately faster) long-term build-out. But here, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite. In its July 2025 executive order, the White House moved to ease regulatory burdens on data centers costing at least $500 million, while compressing review windows and streamlining environmental evaluations meant to identify those burdens, and saying nothing about the water consumption or community frustration driving the backlash.

It’s a counterproductive way to win the AI race. On one hand, the Trump administration (as well as backers like O’Leary) insist that data centers are a strategic imperative for the United States. But the administration is blocking the one thing—a clear set of rules—that would allow for data center construction without risking a backlash in every county they touch.

The alternative is another dozen Stratoses, each one announced in the dark and built in haste, before an angry public demands concessions. That option leaves everyone on the losing end—including, it turns out, investors.

Hall opens by dismissing the “popular writers who claim that America’s Founders owed something to the Enlightenment.” Historians going all the way back to the founding itself have maintained that the Founders drew heavily from the Enlightenment—but Hall, like so many in the MAGA movement, isn’t interested in serious historians and cites none during this video. His agenda is information-averse: Sure, he includes some snippets of texts and historical facts. But he’d prefer to convince viewers that the Founders were super-holy men, not learned ones. And these Founders definitely never intended to separate church and state in the first place. Apparently, the Founders inserted that pesky First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion in the Constitution just to ensure that conservative Christians would assume their natural right to rule the country.

Hall starts with the claim that America’s Founders cited the Bible more than any other text. By this logic, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason—which cites scripture repeatedly in order to make the point that, as he wrote, “it is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder”—must count as an exercise in religious devotion and Christian nationalism.

Hall then dwells on comparatively minor figures such as Elias Boudinot, the director of the U.S. Mint, who resigned from that post in 1805 to found the American Bible Society, which he led for five years. Hall neglects to mention that Boudinot’s boss, President Thomas Jefferson, was in those very same years taking a razor to the Bible to separate the morsels of moral wisdom from any reference to the supernatural, miracles, and other references to the divinity of Jesus. It was like locating “diamonds in a dunghill,” Jefferson wrote in an 1813 letter to John Adams.

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Ethan Allen, and other Founders were also known in their time as “infidels,” “deists,” and otherwise unorthodox in their religious views. Yet, as Hall tells us dismissively, in this video about the faith of our Founders, “that label [deism] may only be applied to only a handful of individuals.”

The narrative reaches a climactic absurdity in the treatment of the debates concerning religious freedom in Virginia. As Hall notes, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, authored principally by George Mason, declares “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” According to Hall, this somehow proves that Mason never wanted to separate church and state. In fact, the point of the Declaration was to do precisely that. Mason himself was a classic Enlightenment rationalist who valued empirical inquiry and universal natural rights over blind obedience to religious dogma and clerical leaders. That’s why he put in the bit about religion being grounded on “reason and conviction”—and not revelation. Hall manages to twist this declaration of religious freedom and the values of reason and equality into pro-religious nationalist messaging.

Sure enough, by the time we arrive at the photomontage with which the video culminates, we are treated to an engraving, based on the 1866 painting by Henry Brueckner, of George Washington that shows him kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge. The alleged Valley Forge epiphany has been repeatedly debunked ever since it was invented, including by the Valley Forge Park Commission, which concluded in 1918, after a comprehensive investigation that included analysis of thousands of pages of correspondence and diaries of Washington and his staff, along with those of other officials and personnel who were at the military camp, that “in none of these were found a single paragraph that will substantiate the tradition of the ‘Prayer at Valley Forge.’” In fact, Washington was infamous among the ministers of his time for pointedly refusing to kneel in church. But as with the Christian nationalist movement’s elevation of the work of revisionist historian David Barton, the myths, contradictions, and deliberate decontextualizations are too valuable to reject simply because they are not true.

This is hardly surprising, given that Mark David Hall serves on the advisory board of lay leaders on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, which was established in May 2025 by executive order. The interests of the commission, which is largely comprised of conservative Christians, appears to conform to the agenda of the Christian nationalist movement, whose leaders have played a pivotal role in putting Trump in office. Its chair has called for a federal hotline with an automated recording: “There is no separation of church and state.” Another member pressed for giving a presidential medal to the baker who declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. Many members of the commission, along with those on its advisory boards, are frequently featured at right-wing and Christian nationalist conferences and gatherings, such as Road to Majority, Pray Vote Stand, CPAC, NatCon, and the National Pro-Life Summit.

In its public-facing media, the commission does address several incidents of genuine religious persecution. But other action items include expanding opportunities for faith-based organizations to receive public money and for conservative religious people to practice discrimination themselves if they have a faith-based excuse.

Like the rest of the MAGA movement, Hall pretends to be standing on the side of the people against the tyranny of those liberal educational institutions that dare to report the truth about America’s Enlightenment Founders. But Hall is a professor at Regent University, itself an educational institution aligned with a partisan movement that is bankrolled by a sector of the ultrawealthy.

Maybe the defining feature of the video—as well as the commission, and the MAGA movement in general—is its divisiveness. America’s 250th anniversary might have been an opportunity to celebrate the unity that, in spite of our many setbacks and challenges, Americans have managed to achieve over the centuries in the face of so much natural diversity. The animating spirit of “e pluribus unum” might have been nice to hear at a time like this. Even at the time of America’s founding, as serious historians have long noted, America was exceptionally diverse in its forms of religious expression. What the White House has offered now, in propaganda videos just as in its daily cycle of corruption and self-dealing, is the opportunity for an aggrieved minority to hate those people it imagines to have strayed from a supposedly pure, original version of an America that has never in fact existed.

Time has vindicated the French approach to sourcing talent for its national team. Everyone else at this World Cup is doing what the French national team started doing 30 years ago: weaponizing its multiculturalism. Or, conversely, cultivating and capitalizing on its diaspora.

Nearly a quarter of the 1,248 players in the 2026 World Cup were born in a different country from the one they represent. To wit: There are 99 French-born players at this World Cup—more than were born in any other nation—but only 26 of them are on the France roster. The rest play for other countries, which pick off the players eligible for their teams who didn’t make the grade for Les Bleus. Such is the glut of world-class players produced in France, emanating overwhelmingly from the super-diverse suburbs surrounding Paris, that the other nations contesting this tournament have eagerly gathered up the leftovers. Enough of them to fill almost three full World Cup rosters.      

And yet of the 48 teams contesting this quadrennial tournament, France seems to be having the most vociferous national discourse on how “French” the French team should be. Which is to say, how white. France alone bickers over what the racial makeup of its national team says about the nation, which, per the Institut National d’Études Démographiques, now comprises as much as 18 percent Arab or Afro-French citizens. 

Seemingly every two years, when a World Cup or European Championship comes along, another tired debate sparks off in France, which may well have the most politicized national team in soccer, clearing an extraordinarily high bar. All the more so since the French have been one of the planet’s most successful teams in the last three decades, winning the World Cup twice and the European Championship once, while making the title game of those tournaments thrice more. 

The men’s national team is the public-facing French institution that has consistently functioned the best—although you’d never know it from the way it’s spoken about.

In 1996, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then France’s far-right leader, dismissed Les Bleus as “artificial” for having to “bring in players from abroad and call them the French national team.” They very much hadn’t—all but one player was born in France.

Two years later, that team, popularly described as “black, blanc, beur” (Black, white, Arab), even though only star playmaker Zinedine Zidane actually fit the latter ethnicity—won the World Cup on home soil and was heralded as a paradigm for a new, more diverse and multicultural France. This, of course, ignored the rampant racism and substantial issues still faced by the nation’s minorities at the time, and which persist—from 2020 to 2024, the number of reported hate crimes in France more than doubled. 

Zidane and his Black teammate Lilian Thuram understood that nothing had been solved, even though many of their countrymen felt good about themselves. They remained vocal about the dangers posed by Le Pen and his movement. The National Front, Zidane said in 2002, “does not correspond to French values.” Zidane reiterated his stance on the National Front in 2017: “We have to avoid it as much as we can.”

Kylian Mbappé, the face and captain of the team today—and currently the World Cup’s co-leading scorer, along with Lionel Messi, at six goals apiece—was born in that very year, 1998. Lilian Thuram’s son, Marcus, is his teammate. Ahead of another election that threatened to elevate the rebranded National Rally in 2024, now led by Le Pen’s daughter Marine, Marcus Thuram warned the nation: “The situation is extremely serious,” he said. “As citizens, we have to fight to make sure that the National Rally doesn’t get through.”  

Mbappé agreed and said so publicly, calling the National Rally’s ascent “catastrophic.” Whereas his fellow global megastars Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been studiously apolitical all their careers—never mind that the latter was named for Ronald Reagan and both have taken many millions from sports-washing Gulf states—Mbappé has shown no compunction about wielding his enormous platform in opposition to the far right. Nor have the rest of the team, flouting convention in international soccer.

Unpopular centrist French president and noted soccer nut Emmanuel Macron has been in power throughout the nation’s glorious soccer run and has attached himself to the team like a barnacle. He personally and successfully lobbied Mbappé against leaving Paris Saint-Germain for Real Madrid, citing the national interest, for several years, although Mbappé eventually went in 2024. It has brought Macron little benefit; not even his association with World Cup success could make the people love him. 

With yet another round of French elections in the offing next spring, Mbappé doubled down in an interview with Vanity Fair ahead of the World Cup. “I know what it means, and what kind of consequences it can have for my country when those kinds of people take control,” he said of the National Rally. “So we are citizens. We have the right to give our opinion like anyone else.”

That word, citoyen (citizen), is meaningful in France. During the French Revolution, it was used as a greeting, not unlike comrade under Communism. “Aux armes, les citoyens,” the national anthem still impels. Arm yourselves, citizens. It is drilled into French children that good citizenship is a high virtue. 

France manager Didier Deschamps, who is white and himself a veteran of that 1998 World Cup–winning team, which he captained, lamented that his players would be asked about politics during this  World Cup. But he stopped well short of condemning them. “I’m not going to tell them not to speak,” he said. “They are well aware that there are sensitive topics. They are citizens.”

It’s unclear exactly at what point during the French Revolution the rallying cry of “liberté, egalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, brotherhood) was adopted, eventually becoming the new republic’s national slogan. What is entirely clear is when it was bastardized into “liberté, egalité, Mbappé.” That was the 2018 World Cup, when the 19-year-old led his nation to its second world championship. 

It proved to be prophetic. As national team captain, he is so conscious of his clout that he works little digs at the far right into humdrum press conferences. A journalist trying to help Mbappé spot him in a crowded room earlier on in the World Cup waved and said, “I’m to your left, really the far left.”

“Luckily you weren’t on the other side,” Mbappé shot back with a grin, before the room broke into laughter.

He understands that the work of making the case for diversity is unfinished, both in soccer and beyond it. As recently as 2011, a scandal spilled into the open when it transpired that, in a meeting with the acquiescing national team head coach present (Deschamps’s predecessor and ’98 teammate, Laurent—wait for it—Blanc), federation officials discussed capping the number of nonwhite players in the nation’s youth academies at 30 percent. Delightfully, a 12-year-old Mbappé happened to be interviewed in the aftermath of the scandal, speaking into the camera and declaring, “If you look at history, the best ones [soccer players] were Black ones and Arab ones.”

Around that same time, the underperformance of a querulous and scandal-plagued incarnation of the national team—which went on strike at the 2010 World Cup over a falling-out with its head coach—was blamed on the team’s Black and Muslim players and those of North African descent. 

There is a creeping sense that France will win this World Cup if it decides it wants to win it. It abounds with talent. Deschamps left players at home who would have starred for just about any other team. I was at their tournament opener against Senegal, and Les Bleus were a hot mess in the first half until they decided that, actually, they could be bothered after all and cut the African champions apart in the second half. I was at their round-of-32 match with Sweden on Tuesday, a 3–0 rout that could have gotten far uglier. I watched Mbappé score four times in those two games. 

I also saw a Frenchman in a full Napoleon costume. But what struck me was the makeup of France’s fans who followed their team to New Jersey. They were almost exclusively white. Deschamps is white. His assistants are all white. And yet so few of the players are. Zidane, French-born to Algerian parents, the impeccably qualified alternative, has been lying in wait to replace Deschamps for years—he finally will after this tournament. That will make him the national team’s first nonwhite manager.

This will be noted on the far right. Nothing about the Les Bleus is apolitical. 

“You can be a player, you can be an international star, but above all that, you are a citizen,” Mbappé told Vanity Fair. 

The French team is full of citizens.

Welcoming immigrants: In his last speech as president, more than two years after signing the biggest amnesty for undocumented immigrants in world history, Ronald Reagan expressed the political consensus on the subject by quoting from a letter he’d received, “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, Turk or Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Donald Trump was the first modern president to express an attitude toward immigration that was more hostile than that of the average member of his own party. Now, although the Supreme Court did at least uphold birthright citizenship this week, we have seen recent immigrants subjected to a reign of terror with violent deportations, cruel detentions, and immigration agents functioning as a fascist force.

Higher education: The U.S. has long been home to one of the best higher education systems in the world, with the greatest variety of majors, prestigious institutions that draw top talent from around the world, as well as accessible working-class schools like community colleges and regional universities. Our college sports are also unrivaled worldwide.

But it’s all falling apart. Tuition is unaffordable to many American families, and the number of college-age Americans is declining. While American higher education has long been a boon to overseas students—and vice versa, since they tend to pay full tuition—an increasingly hostile immigration regime has curbed the number of students coming here to study. Cuts in federal funding for research and student aid are also hitting schools hard and impoverishing the college experience.

Science: The U.S. has had some of the best infrastructure to support science in the world. In addition to our now-besieged universities, we have been the envy of the world with government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has virtually eliminated malaria and polio from the United States and is responsible for the eradication of smallpox, the only human disease totally eliminated from the world.

But with decreases in funding and attacks on foreign nationals coming to the U.S. to do research, labs are closing all over the country, scientists are relocating, and many science students are choosing other fields.

Consumer goods: Early in the Cold War, as the Americans and Soviets competed to prove whose system was superior, the latter pointed out that under communism, no one was homeless, no matter how poor. Capitalism, America’s boosters countered, could deliver better stuff: TVs, toasters, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had a famous “Kitchen Debate” during the 1959 World’s Fair, where the U.S. put shiny appliances and gadgets on display. Khrushchev played it cool, saying, “We have all these things.” While it was true that the Soviets were trying to deliver higher-quality goods, the success of that project was limited; envy of America’s designer jeans and shopping malls persisted throughout USSR communism. With the rise of globalism, consumer goods have gotten even more affordable to Americans.

The drive for cheapness has had myriad knock-on effects in the U.S. economy, especially for working-class people, and the goods we consume now aren’t as well made or durable. With Trump’s tariffs—and increased energy costs due to the Iran war—the prices are rising, too.

Innovation: Capitalist propagandists love to boast that the United States is the world capital of innovation—and they’re right. We are responsible for most major inventions, including the steamboat, cash register, air conditioner, personal computer, cell phone, the internet, and much more.

There are many ways to measure innovation, but one crude one is the number of patents. By that tally, the U.S. is still second only to Japan. But there are reasons for concern. The spread of AI may hamper people’s ability to think creatively. Less speculatively, much of the entrepreneurial energy in this country comes from recent immigrants, and Trump has made it much more difficult for people—including high-skilled workers—to come here. An even more direct blow is the Trump administration’s cuts to R&D, which an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office last year found would decrease innovation.

Gay rights: Even decades before Stonewall, the U.S. had the first organized gay rights movement and has been a beacon for LGBTQ people all over the world.

Trump, however, has made bigotry toward trans people central to his administration, and so have many of his fellow conservatives. He has erased many legal protections for LGBTQ Americans and even in some instances mandated discrimination (and in further backward moves, this week the Supreme Court upheld state bans on trans people in girls’ and women’s sports).

Feminism: American women led the world for decades in striving for full civic personhood. After winning the right to vote in 1920, they, decades later, famously disrupted the Miss America pageant, won the right to abortion, and entered the workforce en masse. Trump’s two elections reflected unease with all that, and his administration has rolled back equal rights provisions for women.

National parks: Our national park system—more than 85 million acres of land—has long been the envy of much of the world. Even the Chinese government, no slouch at public infrastructure creation, regards it as a model. We constantly celebrate our great wilderness in America, from legends about the frontier to the “purple mountains’ majesty” of our national anthem to car ads that panoramically revel in the Western landscape. But the park system is what has kept much of that glorious landscape from being turned into auto dealerships, coal mines, or strip malls, as it all would be if our oligarchs had their way. The national parks have never been more popular, in 2024 reaching a record high of 331.9 million visitors. Yet Trump’s cuts to the system have been severe, reducing the NPS workforce by 25 percent, even as he spends lavishly on his immediate environs, like the algae-plagued Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Pop culture: This country was the birthplace of rock and roll, soul, jazz, and rap. And Hollywood in its heyday made the best and most popular mass-market movies in the world. American pop culture has been one of our greatest exports.

There is life in our cultural production machine yet: Last year’s K-pop Demon Hunters, an American production, was a global phenomenon. But with Hollywood’s increasing dependence on IP tentpoles—superhero franchises, sequels, remakes—and the AI slop beginning to infect internet platforms like Spotify, America’s cultural dominance looks shakier every year.

Secular government: Americans have enjoyed freedom of religion, enshrined in the First Amendment, which has also—equally importantly—meant freedom from religion in our everyday interactions with the government.

To the far-right theocrats in Trump’s government, however, “there is no such thing” as separation of church and state in the Constitution. They dismiss the concept as propaganda from “the anti-God left,” and have been working to tear down the wall that our Founders erected between church and state.

The biggest bullet dodged was this week’s decision in Trump v. Barbara, in which the court ruled against Trump’s executive order attempting to nullify the birthright citizenship rights explicitly granted by the Constitution. One of the grand plans of this administration has been to ethnically cleanse the United States, and had the court gone along with Trump and his aide-de-camp, Stephen Miller, millions of Americans might now be facing the end of their citizenship—including the U.S. World Cup team’s current leading scorer, Folarin Balogun. Despite this rare victory of reason over right-wing nuttery, I think we should be concerned that the conservative legal movement still has its eye on waging war on the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—especially the one that grants birthright citizenship in the first place: the Fourteenth Amendment.

I raised an alarm last year about the far right’s desire to delete the Fourteenth. The amendment is a substantial target for the MAGA movement because of the unique way it enables and extols the promise of a multiracial democracy, something that Trump and his minions have sworn to destroy. And the way the Supreme Court overrode the disqualification clause, granting Trump the right to run for office again without any concern for the Constitution’s explicit admonitions against insurrectionists holding high office, gave abundant hope to those who’d like to see the Fourteenth Amendment dismantled.

Do the court’s conservatives disdain the Reconstruction Amendments? “They definitely do, to a certain extent,” says TNR’s Matt Ford. “They’ve largely read the Fifteenth Amendment out of the Constitution, in Brnovich and Callais, by making it impossible to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act, and they more or less nullified the disqualification clause in Trump v. Anderson. There are parts they’re fine with, like the equal protection clause in some circumstances, but they’ll never interpret it as broadly as the liberals.”

Ford says that the most charitable read is along the lines of what Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent in Trump v. Barbara. “They generally think the Reconstruction Amendments were designed to address the specific circumstances and exigencies of the post–Civil War era,” he says, “and that while they can have plenty of applications beyond that, they aren’t meant to be used to (in their view) fundamentally restructure American society anymore or provide special treatment for anyone.”

Here’s where the biggest conflict lies, as the liberal position is generally that the Reconstruction Amendments were a second founding, not a postbellum clean-up. “In this view,” says Ford, “Congress has broad powers to ensure that there is no American underclass or subaltern population, which Jim Crow nonetheless managed to create for about 90 years.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson got at this in her concurring opinion, in which she took issue with Thomas’s dissent on these lines. Thomas’s “narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment bears little relationship to the history of its ratification,” she wrote, adding that his take on the matter “elides the entire point of the Second Founding: The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.”

Thomas didn’t win the argument this week. But the fact that these matters are being argued in the first place is cause for serious alarm, according to former Massachusetts Senate candidate Alex Rikleen. “By even considering the legitimacy of birthright citizenship, the Roberts Court, stacked with jurists ready and willing to make anti-constitutional rulings time and again, has helped transform a fringe white supremacist attack on the 14th Amendment into a question that millions of people now understand as up for debate.”

This is hardly a new or novel fear. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson—in which they essentially deleted the disqualification clause from the Constitution—was enabled by the fact that too many were willing to countenance the idea that the plain English language of the Fourteenth Amendment was, in fact, open to interpretation. I am still angry that The New York Times in 2023 referred to the disqualification clause as “an obscure clause of a constitutional amendment enacted after the Civil War,” thus injecting a derogatory bit of editorializing into what purported to be a straight news piece.

In light of the tête-à-tête between Thomas and Jackson, I’m disturbed anew by the way the Times casually denigrated the amendments “enacted after the Civil War,” as if they were some stitched-on appendage and not language that carries the same force and lawfulness as the founding-era amendments. If the paper of record is skeptical that the Reconstruction Amendments are legitimate (and they, like the court’s conservatives, do seem interested in creating a subaltern class beyond the Constitution’s protections, for what it’s worth), this will only further the right-wing project to tear those amendments out of the Constitution and undo the nation’s second founding. So be glad that the worst didn’t happen, but stay on guard—we are not out of danger yet.

Now it’s your turn! Take this reader survey and tell us what you think the right answers are—and see where yours stack up compared to our experts and to other readers. — Editor Michael Tomasky

We do, however, have more thoughts on the matter from Johnson that have survived. The year before, Johnson—something of a mixed bag, politically, but an ardent foe of slavery long before abolitionism became a movement in Great Britain—wrote and delivered to Parliament a speech he called “The Patriot.” It was election time, and Johnson was laying out for the assembled some of his ideas about the duties of public service, and what patriotism does, and does not, mean.

Herewith, just a few choice quotes:

“To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.”

“Still less does the true patriot circulate opinions which he knows to be false. No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous complaints, that the protestant religion is in danger, because ‘popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec,’ a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be ignorant.”

Finally, in his closing peroration, Johnson urged the next House of Commons to “unite in a general abhorrence of those, who, by deceiving the credulous with fictitious mischiefs, overbearing the weak by audacity of falsehood, by appealing to the judgment of ignorance, and flattering the vanity of meanness … arrogate to themselves the name of patriots.”

As we watch (or avoid watching) Donald Trump trying to turn the celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday into a celebration of Donald Trump, we would do well to remember Dr. Johnson’s thoughts. In wondering what he might think of the president’s ideas and actions this week, there is very little mystery. Let’s review a couple of those actions, as reported by Politico Playbook Friday morning:

• You saw that ridiculous video of Trump “talking” with the AI Teddy Roosevelt? Well, this was meant to be part of a “living museum recreating Theodore Roosevelt’s frontier experience,” as envisioned in a “planning document” from America250, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered, decade-old plan to launch various commemorations. From Playbook: “It hoped to draw 250,000 visitors for a nationally televised celebration on July 1 featuring A-list performers, immersive historical programming, a drone spectacular and, ultimately, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library’s grand opening.” Instead, it launched with a visit from Trump.
• The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a decades-old Washington summer fixture that always takes place on the National Mall, was given the boot this year and forced inside the Smithsonian Castle to make way for Trump’s Great American State Fair, which has been drawing fewer attendees than a lot of Little League games.
• Finally, it almost goes without saying that the Trump administration stiffed America250, according to Politico. Congress appropriated $150 million to the project, but organizers have received just $25 million to date. Democrats also alleged this week that some America250 donors were tricked into donating to Trump’s personal semiquincentennial organization, Freedom 250, which is responsible for the UFC fight at the White House and the ongoing fair. (Naturally, Freedom 250 is not subject to congressional oversight, and it can keep its donors private.)

But these, of course, are minor matters that will pass. The real hallmarks of Trump’s false patriotism are the things that make his tenure such a horrific embarrassment and civic tragedy to so many millions of Americans. The constant lies meant to glorify him and his reign. The toxic hatred of so many of the people he was elected to serve. The petty and immoral pursuit of his political enemies. The operatic and open corruption.

These are venal acts. But as July 4 approaches, it behooves us to remember specifically that they are also unpatriotic. Or worse: They are aggressively anti-patriotic. Real patriotism is truthful and humble; it tolerates and even welcomes dissent, and, understanding that the people rule in a democracy, it serves supporters and detractors equally; it seeks justice rather than revenge; and it understands that to pursue profit from office is abhorrent.

Trump knows none of that. He is a treacherous, know-nothing anti-patriot. The image that sticks with me, the photo that made me both roll my eyes and gasp in horror when I first saw it, was the one of Trump kissing an American flag. What a grotesque act of civic idolatry; in fact, let’s throw “idolatrous” in there too. And if you don’t understand why kissing a flag is an act of grotesque civic idolatry, then you, my friend, are part of the problem.

Let’s close with a few more thoughts on patriotism from some people who actually knew what it means:

George Washington: “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

G.K. Chesterton: “‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

Albert Einstein: “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them!”

And maybe my favorite, from Clarence Darrow: “True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

There is still much to celebrate about the United States of America—its art and literature and music, its scientific achievements, its physical beauty, and of course the principles of liberty it introduced to the world 250 years ago and toward which we daily and yearly strive. The anti-patriots do have the upper hand right now, but more and more people are seeing through them. In addition, they are also making real, Johnson- and Darrow-esque patriots of millions who were once disengaged. That is something to be hopeful about, and to celebrate, this weekend.

In fact, the Founders were deeply worried that concentrations of wealth would corrode self-governance and hollow out the republic from within. In their study of history, they saw how wealth inequality fueled political division, class conflict, and social unrest, eroding governance and ultimately contributing to failed states like the Roman Empire.

James Madison’s Federalist, Number 10 explicitly links political instability to economic disparity, citing the inherent tension between property owners and non–property owners. Madison saw a role for government to address economic inequality in his 1792 essay Parties, noting that it should do so “by political equality of rights ... and by withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches.” Madison warned that if the state favors financial speculation, it creates an artificial aristocracy that distorts public policy and subverts democratic representation.

Thomas Jefferson was even more full-throated in his warnings about concentrated economic power. Jefferson worried powerful employers could coerce workers’ votes, thus limiting their democratic power. In an 1816 letter, Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Jefferson believed a concentrated financial class would inevitably capture government institutions, transforming a republic of equals into a playground for the wealthy. Because of this, he championed structural limits to inequality, for instance by advocating for the abolition of laws that kept massive estates intact across generations to ensure wealth was continually broken up and redistributed through inheritance. He even authored two laws as a Virginia state legislator banning feudal inheritance practices that were in place across Europe.

Today, the Founding Fathers’ worst fears are playing out in front of our eyes.

Alongside Musk, the newly minted trillionaire, 300,000 U.S. households—those worth $50 million or more, in the top 0.2 percent—control $40 trillion, an amount comparable to the net worth of the 256 million Americans who make up the bottom 80 percent. And just as the Founders warned, this concentrated wealth is actively eroding our democracy and economy. Under our current tax code, wealth begets more wealth, and that wealth is in turn wielded to amass extraordinary power.

The American dream of working hard to get ahead looks very different for billionaires. Sure, there is an element of hard work, but it’s the system created by and for the ultrawealthy that underpins this financial success. Take Musk as an example. His companies have benefited from at least $38 billion in government contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks, with billions more guaranteed in the years ahead.

Our tax dollars built the foundation for Musk’s accomplishments, and now he owns the penthouse. And here’s the kicker: After sucking up all those public dollars, Musk can exploit our tax code to choose whether he gives anything back at all to the society that trained the scientists and built the infrastructure that enabled him to accumulate such a fortune.

That’s because under our current system, billionaires like Musk are able to pay very little—and sometimes nothing at all—in federal income taxes, while ordinary workers pay tax on every paycheck. Our current tax system largely shields wealth held in assets like stock from taxation, transferring the cost of running our society onto you and me while empowering Musk to accumulate the kind of wealth and political power that corrupts democracy itself.

That type of extreme wealth is then wielded to reshape markets and ensure policy outcomes that will protect and expand this financial and political dominance. Extreme wealth concentration has eroded the “one person, one vote” principle underpinning American democracy. In 2024, for example, Elon Musk personally financed the Trump campaign’s ground operations and gave individual Trump voters $1 million per day, a legally questionable scheme that some experts argued amounted to paying for votes.

That same year, 150 billionaires collectively spent a record-breaking $2 billion on federal races, and many have been rewarded with positions of real power in the government. Trump empowered Musk to gut essential workers and services through DOGE while securing new federal contracts and ending regulatory actions that threatened $2.3 billion in potential liabilities for his companies. Trump selected Cabinet members from the top 0.0001 percent of America, and his signature tax law will reward the richest 1 percent of Americans with $121 billion in net tax cuts in 2026 alone. Is it a surprise then, that in the first 16 months since Trump was reelected, the collective fortune of America’s 974 billionaires grew by $1.96 trillion, or 30.6 percent?

Today’s extreme wealth concentration is precisely the oligarchic threat the Founders envisioned. The American dream cannot survive when unlimited wealth for a few destroys opportunities for the rest of us.

A crisis of this scale calls on us to reflect the courage that the Founders displayed in declaring independence from the entrenched power of the British Empire. We must stop pretending that merely calling for the ultrawealthy to pay their “fair share” in order to meet certain revenue targets is sufficient within a tax system that is itself so unfair and unjust.

Instead, we must declare our own independence from the influence of the oligarchy by pursuing a set of reforms that are targeted toward reducing their power and building up our own. That means using tax policy as a way to reduce the wealth of the ultrawealthy by aggressively taxing their wealth, incomes, and estates. Doing so is essential for constructing a new system that generates the revenue we need for rebuilding the working class with programs that benefit working families, such as universal childcare, affordable housing, and climate-resilient infrastructure. We must also deploy policy tools to break up the dangerous concentrations of power threatening our economic growth, democracy, and climate.

Reining in billionaire control is incredibly popular: 77 percent of voters support raising taxes on the ultrawealthy, including 65 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of independents. Three in five (62 percent) prefer a candidate who supports raising taxes on billionaires, versus just 12 percent who prefer one who opposes it—a 50-point gap. Among Democratic primary voters, that gap widens to 79 points (83–4). This is because voters are living the consequences the Founders warned of—they cannot afford housing, health care, childcare, or other basic needs. They yearn for the upward mobility of previous generations. The American dream isn’t just fading—it is being erased by billionaires who are actively enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. They wield their extreme wealth as weapons, bending our democracy to their own agenda like kings—and as the Founders foretold.

Using the tax code to break up this concentrated wealth and power isn’t radical, it’s actually our founding-era orthodoxy. It’s time for our leaders to tax greed.

“Before we begin the time-consuming review process,” the email stated, using the same boilerplate language I’d been given by the agency in response to other, unrelated FOIA requests, “we want to ensure that you are still interested in continuing the processing of this request.”

This Saturday is not just the 250th anniversary of the United States. It’s also the sixtieth anniversary of FOIA, one of the most critical tools for government transparency in the U.S., which has been used to uncover severe government wrongdoing. Alas, the law—or rather, the government’s adherence to it—is broken.

Over the past 15 years, in my work at the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, I’ve filed and helped to litigate dozens of FOIA requests, primarily related to federal law enforcement programs run by our bureaucracy of acronyms—ICE, FBI, DHS, DOD, and many more. It has become increasingly apparent that most federal agencies don’t take these inquiries seriously unless, and until, we take them to court. This is not how it’s supposed to work.

While the Trump administration’s mass purging of federal employees and offices has created new roadblocks to filing records requests, government resistance to the law is not new. In fact, President Lyndon B. Johnson somewhat reluctantly signed the FOIA into law on July 4, 1966, hedging on how much access the public might have, especially related to “individual privacy” and “national security.” In the decades since, both Republican and Democratic administrations have eroded the ability of ordinary people to get useful and timely information via the act.

By “useful information,” I am not talking about whether alien life has escaped from Area 51 or what took place on the grassy knoll. As the manager of CCR’s Open Records Project, every month I file FOIA requests or train advocates, lawyers, and journalists on how to draft their own. The requests we file support people who desperately need individual immigration files for detained family members, grassroots organizations looking to shed light on surveillance technology Border Patrol uses, or advocates deeply concerned with how the administration’s policies threaten transgender people across the country. But law enforcement agencies have found numerous ways to delay and ultimately force requesters to give up out of sheer frustration.

For instance, an agency might simply never respond, respond years later, send a boilerplate response accusing the requester of submitting an “overly broad” request, or, if the agency actually produces documents, redact those records so severely that they are useless. A person is then typically left with only one choice—pursue legal action—but lawyers often require thousands of dollars in fees. Even if you do get into court, agencies can still find ways to delay providing records for months if not years, often making the records irrelevant by the time they are received. And federal judges typically defer to government officials, creating an increasingly immense docket of case law supporting government secrecy rather than openness the law is supposed to provide.

A few examples from FOIA requests I’ve filed show the lengths to which agencies will go to hide the most basic information. Simple data points like the number of medical staff employed at an immigration detention center have been redacted from public view due to potential “hostage taking.” A former director of ICE’s Chicago office “lost” archives of emails when he copied them onto a corrupt external hard drive, but he should have responded to the FOIA request years before then.

As it was Congress that forced the executive branch to sign FOIA into law and later expand it, Congress has the power to do so again. But our representatives need to look beyond vague reforms such as integrating AI technology or pumping more funding into the already bloated budgets of the Homeland Security or Defense departments. I asked several colleagues with over a decade of experience writing and litigating FOIA requests to imagine more specific and concrete ways of making FOIA an effective tool for transparency.

Maryland attorney Amber Qureshi suggested that if an agency fails to comply with FOIA deadlines, courts should forbid the agency from withholding certain types of discretionary information, which it might otherwise do. “Barring an agency from applying discretionary exemptions would further FOIA’s purpose of full agency disclosure and speed up processing times,” she told me.

Andrew Free, a lawyer and investigative journalist based in Georgia, also suggested accountability measures. “Congress should authorize per-day, per-record penalties for agencies that fail to substantively respond to FOIA requests.” He noted that Washington state and New Mexico already employ similar rules in their states’ open records laws.

The incredible deference many federal judges afford law enforcement officials to hide almost any material from public view also remains a major problem. For instance, so-called “Glomar” responses, where an agency refuses to acknowledge whether it even has responsive material, should be outlawed. Congress members could create a new agency to oversee and audit FOIA, similar to the Committee for Open Government in New York, which regularly promulgates advisory opinions on the law.

Recently, a government attorney alleged that a FOIA request of ours was so large it would “shut down the government.” But none of us who continue to pursue these requests should be intimidated by such hyperbole. Though broken, the FOIA still remains a useful tool, and we need its help in combating the culture of secrecy that permeates our political class while we demand that Congress strengthen the law.

Sixty years ago, despite his reservations about FOIA, President Johnson said, “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded.” As I’ve seen firsthand, the people’s right to know is no longer cherished by leaders in the executive branch, and it’s not being guarded by those on Capitol Hill. As the Trump administration goes to lengths to conceal its crimes and corruption, there’s never been a more critical time for the politicians who still believe in the principle of FOIA to not only defend it, but expand it.

Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Kavanaugh took the position that Trump’s executive order was constitutionally permissible but statutorily illegal. In other words, the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause did not block Trump’s effort to curtail birthright citizenship, but an act of Congress that used identical language did.

At a very superficial level, this might sound sensible and moderate by implicitly inviting Congress to address the situation. Kavanaugh certainly positions the opinion—and himself—as such. On closer inspection, it might be the most dangerous and extreme view of U.S. citizenship to be articulated by the justices this week.

To understand Kavanaugh’s position, a brief sketch of the other justices’ views is necessary. Last January, Trump issued an executive order that instructed federal agencies to not recognize the U.S. citizenship of children whose parents were undocumented immigrants or living in the United States on temporary visas. A group of plaintiffs sued, arguing that this violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.

That clause reads as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that the son of two Chinese immigrants in San Francisco had acquired U.S. citizenship at birth solely by virtue of being born on American soil. The “subject to the jurisdiction” exception was narrowed to a handful of situations that rarely apply today.

In Tuesday’s ruling in Barbara, the justices essentially took four separate positions. Five of them took what can be described as the consensus view. Americans had inherited the rule of birthright citizenship from the English common law, Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his majority opinion. Dred Scott v. Sandford’s holding that people of African descent were ineligible for U.S. citizenship was a violation of that rule, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause restored and entrenched the original understanding.

Two of Roberts’s fellow conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, took a different view. Thomas affirmed Wong Kim Ark as correct but argued a person’s domicile status—or, more specifically, that of their parents—also determined whether that person had U.S. citizenship at birth. Since Trump’s executive order was lawful in at least some circumstances, like birth tourism, the two justices rejected the facial challenge to its constitutionality.

At the same time, both justices signaled that even if their domicile-focused view had prevailed, it would not grant total victory to the Trump administration. Thomas and Gorsuch concluded that children of temporary visa holders would not be eligible, and their respective dissents largely focused on that aspect of the order. But both justices wrote that they would not necessarily reach the same conclusion for children of undocumented immigrants, especially if they had lived long-term in the U.S.

The third position was adopted solely by Justice Samuel Alito, who argued that the clause “confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.” He argued that Wong Kim Ark should be read much more narrowly by the court since, in his view, it showed “little respect for precedent.” Instead, Alito leaned heavily on phrasing in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which only extended U.S. citizenship to those “not subject to any foreign power,” a narrower phrasing than the clause that was ratified three years later.

Even then, Alito ultimately concluded that Wong Kim Ark was correctly decided. The Chinese Exclusion Acts had made it impossible for Chinese immigrants to be naturalized, so Wong’s parents faced a different threshold under the clause. “By establishing domicile, they had done everything within their power to express their desire and intent to become Americans,” Alito explained.

“Wong Kim Ark is therefore best understood as holding that people who are lawfully present here, establish the United States as their intended permanent home, and do everything within their power to become United States citizens can be seen as no longer subject to any foreign power,” Alito argued.

That brings us, at last, to Kavanaugh. He voted with the majority to strike down the order on different grounds from those of Roberts and the other four justices in the majority. Kavanaugh said that he found the constitutional issue to be “far more complicated” than the statutory one. In particular, he nodded to the “detailed account of history and precedent” laid out by Roberts, as well as the “weighty and thoughtful dissents” by the other three conservatives.

This indulgent phrasing gave the impression of a justice trying to strike a narrower, more moderate position. “The constitutional issue is not straightforward, much as we might want it to be,” he wrote. “That is another reason why, in my respectful view, the court should have decided the case on the narrow and straightforward statutory ground.”

What does that ground look like? Kavanaugh noted that the Nationality Act of 1940 had incorporated the citizenship clause’s exact text into federal immigration law. He concluded that the president’s executive order was illegal as a matter of statutory interpretation. Courts sometimes rely on a principle known as “constitutional avoidance,” where judges avoid answering constitutional questions if they can decide a case on other grounds.

If avoidance was Kavanaugh’s intent, he failed miserably. It is not possible to disentangle the statutory text from the constitutional text this time. The citizenship clause and the Nationality Act both use identical phrasing, including the “subject to the jurisdiction” exception. All sides in this litigation, including the Trump Justice Department, also stipulated to the justices that there is no daylight between the two versions.

To explain why they mean different things, one must explain what they actually mean. Kavanaugh argued that they could be distinguished because Congress passed the Nationality Act roughly 42 years after Wong Kim Ark. He suggested that what Congress had actually done was incorporate Wong Kim Ark’s interpretation of the citizenship clause into federal immigration law, including the four recognized exceptions that flow from “subject to the jurisdiction.”

This meant, in Kavanaugh’s eyes, that Congress could lawfully do what the president could not. “If Congress amends [the Nationality Act] or otherwise enacts a statute creating new exceptions along the lines of the Executive Order for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country, such a statute, as I see it, would pass constitutional muster,” he wrote.

This view is substantially more extreme than those of Roberts, Thomas, or Gorsuch. In a footnote, he assured readers that he agreed with Alito’s position that the “result in Wong Kim Ark was correct given the facts and circumstances in that case.” Even so, he claimed that the Wong Kim Ark exceptions were not a “closed set,” and additional ones could be discerned even if undreamt by the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters.

“Considering the four exceptions as a permanently frozen or closed set as of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification in 1868—such that there can be no subsequent exceptions recognized based on new developments after 1868—is inconsistent with the Court’s longstanding approach to constitutional interpretation in a variety of areas,” Kavanaugh claimed.

If this sounds a little un-originalist, that’s because it is. Originalists tend to hold that the Constitution’s meaning is fixed, in contrast to the theories of living constitutionalism that originalism was created to refute. That fixed meaning is typically discerned by the text’s original public meaning when it was ratified or amended. Kavanaugh would take a different approach by adapting the citizenship clause to new situations rather than applying it as written.

To be fair to Kavanaugh, he is hardly the first or only originalist to stray from the faith in this case. Solicitor General D. John Sauer also claimed at oral arguments in Barbara that the president was responding to situations that the clause’s drafters did not anticipate. Roberts gave an originalist quip in response: “It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

Kavanaugh, perhaps anticipating this critique, argued that all of this is just normal constitutional interpretation. (Which, again, he claimed to not be doing at the outset.) “The Constitution is an enduring document, and its principles were designed to, and do, apply to modern conditions and developments,” he assured readers, before adding that it must be “faithfully applied” to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”

“Therefore,” Kavanaugh concluded, “under basic tenets of constitutional interpretation, other exceptions can be recognized when the new exceptions (i) are based on subsequent developments or circumstances that are new, i.e., largely unknown or unanticipated by the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, and (ii) are relevantly similar to the four previously recognized Wong Kim Ark exceptions.”

One could easily apply this reasoning to uphold an assault-weapons ban, for example, by arguing that the Second Amendment’s drafters could not anticipate such an efficient killing machine in the age of muskets and cannons. If past exceptions could be found, so could new ones, as well. It will be interesting to see if Kavanaugh takes this approach next term when the court hears cases on exactly that subject.

All the same, this is not a particularly laudable constitutional interpretation. By striking down Trump’s executive order on the grounds that Congress said otherwise, he essentially transforms the citizenship clause into an Article 1 legislative power. If Congress can grant or deny exemptions to the clause, then it does not really protect a constitutional right or rule of citizenship at all. Then again, most of Kavanaugh’s opinion dwells on judicial interpretation of these exemptions, so maybe it would all be up to the Supreme Court to ultimately decide.

Kavanaugh also fundamentally misunderstood why the citizenship clause exists. Both the Roberts majority and the other three conservative dissenters agree that its purpose was to constitutionalize a rule for American citizenship. They only part ways with one another on the origins, scope, and basis of the rule that the citizenship clause defines.

All three positions also recognized that U.S. citizenship carries special significance. Roberts described it as the “right to have rights.” Thomas and Gorsuch complained that the majority’s sweeping ruling “devalue[s]” American citizenship, while Alito said that citizenship was “precious.” They also seem to implicitly understand that the clause sought to place citizenship itself beyond ordinary political debate by emphasizing the case’s high stakes.

Kavanaugh’s position, by contrast, would greatly diminish the security and integrity of citizenship for everyone. Americans’ rights to participate in their political community would be fungible, partible, and malleable depending on what Congress (and, in all likelihood, the courts) decide. Even Kavanaugh himself may not agree with the logical outcome of his reasoning, since he still presumes that birthright citizenship is the norm, even as he rejects Wong Kim Ark.

I also cannot stress enough again how strange it is, almost to the point of concern, that Kavanaugh thinks that all of this isn’t constitutional interpretation. Indeed, his opinion is at war with itself: In the concluding paragraph, he states outright that Trump’s executive order “does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment” without elaboration, as if he simply started writing the opinion and stumbled upon the conclusion along the way.

It is hard to avoid the impression that Kavanaugh wanted to join Alito’s opinion but could not bring himself to do it because of public perception. In his desire to present himself as a middle-of-the-road guy on this issue, Kavanaugh adopted a nonsensical view of the entire case and fell backward into extreme propositions that go beyond anything laid out by his colleagues. Even Alito, for example, does not propose that Congress can lay out “exceptions” to the citizenship clause.

“Nothing in this opinion is intended to suggest how birthright citizenship should be addressed as a policy matter,” Kavanaugh affirmed in a final footnote. This is likely meant to assure readers that his concurring opinion was the product of carefully considered legal reasoning. In this case, it would be more comforting if the opposite were true.

Trump eventually settled for displaying a copy, but the document has clearly been on the administration’s mind—perhaps predictably so, given the semiquincentennial celebrations Trump will soon preside over. It was announced in April, for instance, that a limited edition of passports this year would feature John Trumbull’s iconic painting of the draft declaration’s presentation to Congress alongside the text of the declaration—with Trump’s portrait overlaid on top of it, naturally.

Trump has spent much of his second term symbolically grasping for the kind of monarchical deference most Americans believe the declaration was written to reject. In February 2025, for instance, the White House posted on social media an image of Trump wearing a crown and captioned it “LONG LIVE THE KING.” But substantively, the depravity of this administration’s policies has mattered more and angered more. And in surveying them, more than a few commentators, some here at The New Republic, have noted that the transgressions of Trump’s presidency bear an uncanny resemblance to the very grievances against Britain listed in the declaration. Trump’s unilateral demolition of federal agencies and programs, the biographer Stacy Schiff and Mother Jones’s David Corn and Tim Murphy have written alike, certainly recall the declaration’s charge that King George III had “refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” The charge that George III had “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” also works as a précis of the administration’s immigration policy. “Cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” “imposing Taxes on us without our consent,” “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences”—as Schiff writes, “for many who read the litany today, the resonance is unmistakable.”

True as all this may be, one needn’t refer to the Declaration of Independence for reasons why Trump is unfit to govern. And the declaration did more than separate us from the impetuous king about whom it offered a handy list of complaints. Exactly how much more, of course, has been contested throughout our history—the text of the declaration, it might be said, is the arena we return to, time and again, to debate America’s purpose and American identity. In recent decades, its self-evident truths have been flattened into truisms—innocuous clichés, available to all, that commit our leaders to vanishingly little. Those who signed it 250 years ago understood the possibility that they had condemned themselves to death. Today, the Declaration of Independence is the safest, most sterile ground in American rhetoric. But it needn’t be. The declaration and its history are instructive because they offer us reasons not only to resist would-be kings, but to make our own claims against the systems that foist would-be kings upon us. The declaration, even today, can be read as an invitation to a task that presses upon us as or more urgently than the cause of independence did: to “alter or to abolish” the systems destroying our country and our world.

As the conflict that would eventually be called America’s Revolutionary War began—and as many Americans today would likely be surprised to learn—the overwhelming consensus even among America’s patriot leaders, a radical minority of the Colonial population, was that British parliamentary monarchy remained the greatest system of government ever devised, and that King George III bore little to no responsibility for the Colonial policies that had angered them. It was wayward parliamentarians, “wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors,” John Jay had written to mainland Britons on the First Continental Congress’s behalf in the fall of 1774, who had trampled on the colonists’ rights as British subjects, and the remedy was a return to the British constitutional order as the colonists understood it, not a break from it.

And in a pattern that seems to recur throughout American history, delegates were sent to the Continental Congress with explicit and futile instructions to heal the growing divide any way they could. On March 16, for instance, the Delaware Assembly told its delegates to take up whatever measures “as shall appear to them best calculated for the accommodation of the unhappy differences between Great Britain and the Colonies, on a constitutional foundation.” Just over a month later, those “unhappy differences” finally culminated in a chaotic day of skirmishes between British troops and already mobilized militiamen at Lexington and Concord, just outside British-occupied Boston.

Even as open conflict broke out, Colonial leaders still hoped for rapprochement, although attitudes were changing. By mid-January 1776, Congress and attentive colonists had learned of a royal address to Parliament where George had accused them of mounting a rebellion “for the purpose of establishing an independent Empire” and welcomed foreign assistance in the fight to suppress it. Parliament had also passed the Prohibitory Act, banning trade with the Colonies and declaring that Colonial vessels were to be treated as “the ships and effects of open enemies.” And in November 1775, Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had issued a proclamation promising freedom to all slaves willing to fight for the British Army—a decision, in the opinion of South Carolina Continental Congress delegate Edward Rutledge, likelier to “work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies, than any other expedient, which could possibly have been thought of.”

These were the escalations that elevated independence to serious discussion for the first time after years of clear and consistent opposition from most patriot leaders, to the delight of radicals like John Adams, who mused that the Prohibitory Act, in particular, had already amounted to an “Act of Independency.”

It nevertheless became increasingly clear to many delegates and thinkers that Congress would have to formally clarify the Colonies’ new place in the world itself—partly so that the Colonies could engage potential allies abroad as a state rather than as a mere rebellion. And though Congress wouldn’t formally take up the independence question for months, the situation across the Colonies was shifting radically as royal governments were toppled and replaced. From the winter of 1775 through the spring of 1776—with varying levels of enthusiasm, willingly or not—the leaders of a Colonial rebellion became Founders. And even in the throes of political upheaval and an intensifying war, at least some of them took it upon themselves to consider, philosophically, what the fundamental purposes of the governments they were establishing would be. “All speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man,” John Adams wrote in “Thoughts on Government.” And thinkers “ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian,” including Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and Muhammad, had established that true happiness consisted in the pursuit of virtue. “If there is a form of government then, whose principle and foundation is virtue,” Adams wrote, “will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”

On May 10, Congress passed a resolution recommending that each of the Colonies “adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular and America in general.” Five days later, it narrowly approved a preface to the resolution assigning blame for the Colonies’ woes to “his Britannic Majesty, in conjunction with the lords and commons of Great Britain” for the first time. The resolution also declared that it was “irreconcileable to reason and good Conscience, for the people of these colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the crown of Great Britain.” One delegate, Adams wrote in his diary, “called it, to me, a Machine for the fabrication of Independence. I said, smiling, I thought it was independence itself: but We must have it with more formality yet.”

Soon, they would. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee offered a resolution declaring, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States,” and “That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.”

But while conditions were more favorable for independence, the resolution was stymied by a dilemma: Many delegates weren’t allowed by their instructions to back independence, a move that, ideally, would be supported as close to unanimously as Congress could manage. So the resolution was tabled as the Colonies, localities, militias, and other groups took it upon themselves to draft not only new state constitutions, but new instructions for the congressional delegates and other resolutions backing independence, some of which are collected in the historian Pauline Maier’s American Scripture. And some of these documents justified independence in terms that would have been familiar to readers of Enlightenment-era political philosophy, including the work of John Locke. “Whensoever therefore the legislative shall ... endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people,” he wrote in his Second Treatise of Government, “by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”

Meanwhile, a committee that Congress had put together in anticipation of new instructions approving independence was already at work on a declaration. Among the five men whom Congress appointed—Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, New York’s Robert R. Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—it was Jefferson who would take the lead on the draft, given his relatively light workload (Congress was a mess of overlapping committees that drew upon everyone’s time), and perhaps because a Virginian might have been seen as a more moderate and thus legitimate voice on the question of independence relative to a figure from the tempestuous North like the already-infamous Adams.

But as it happened, the document Jefferson and the committee produced was quite grand, beginning with a preamble that framed the question of independence in elemental human terms. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” it read, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Some of the declaration’s complaints, made “to a candid world,” are well-remembered, like taxation without representation and the quartering of troops. Others, like the charge that Britain had raised “the conditions of new appropriations of lands” out West and backed attacks from “the merciless Indian savages” against frontier settlers, have been decidedly less celebrated over time.

The account of Colonial history offered by Jefferson in his initial draft of the declaration is, it should be said, fascinatingly unhinged in places. In one line edited out of the final document, for instance, it is claimed that colonists had settled America “unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain.” And in one section Congress deleted altogether—one of the most extraordinary and mystifying passages Jefferson ever wrote—blame for the slave trade is laid almost entirely at George III’s feet. The king had “waged cruel war against human nature itself,” he thundered, “violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death, in their transportation thither.” And attempts to abolish or restrict slavery, he alleged, had been suppressed out of a determination “to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold.”

Jefferson, like many of the men who would sign the declaration, was nonetheless a reliable customer at the market where men were bought and sold. It’s thought that he owned more than 610 slaves over the course of his lifetime, including Sally Hemings, whom he raped at the age of about 14 or 15, and the children she bore with him.

Jefferson’s character and the character of the country being written and legislated into existence would eventually be judged by the terms established in the declaration’s second paragraph. An earlier pass at the Lockean ideas it would contain had been made by fellow Virginian George Mason in his Virginia Declaration of Rights, which proclaimed, in already familiar and widely used language, “That all men are born equally free and independant, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety,” and also declared that the people “hath an indubitable, unalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish” bad governments.

On the whole, Jefferson and Congress’s reworking of those words was an improvement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The nuances and differences in language here—between Locke’s “life, liberties, and estates,” Mason’s lengthier construction, and the declaration’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” for instance—have been a gift and subsidy to historians and political philosophers ever since. But whether one takes the “pursuit of happiness” to mean the pursuit of material prosperity or believes, like Jefferson’s co-draftsman Adams, that pursuing “happiness” is a matter of pursuing virtue, the declaration’s second paragraph is, plainly, about the protection and enhancement of human agency—and, as far as at least Jefferson was concerned, not merely the agency of white men either. As Harvard’s Danielle Allen has observed, the question of whether “all men are created equal” should actually be read as an assertion of universal human equality is functionally answered by Jefferson’s deleted clause about slavery, in which he unambiguously refers to slaves—“persons” whose “rights of life & liberty” had been violated, including not only nonwhite males, but women—as “MEN.”

Ultimately, those words would matter less to the American cause, in the near term anyway, than the declaration’s final proclamation—that the 13 Colonies were “Free and Independent States” with “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

On July 1, Congress returned to consideration of Lee’s resolution declaring independence, and a final vote was taken on the 2nd, with all states but New York—still waiting on instructions supporting independence that the state would approve a week later—voting in the affirmative. The American Colonies, Pennsylvania newspapers immediately reported, were now a country. “The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished,” Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail. “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.... It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

With the 2nd of July firmly and obviously established as the day Americans would commemorate their independence, all that remained was the issuing of an official document announcing and explaining to the world what Congress had already done. Delegates collectively and carefully edited the draft of the declaration presented to Congress. To Jefferson’s frustration, their edits were rather extensive in places—tempering or eliminating Jefferson’s most tendentious claims most of the time and making the text more rhetorically fluid and graceful. On July 4th, Congress finished its work, approved the document, and sent it off for printing and distribution.

In the following weeks, the declaration would be read up and down the new country—to legislators and troops in the field, in town squares and taverns—and independence itself would be celebrated often raucously.

The British, meanwhile, long convinced that American patriots had been bent on independence to begin with, read the document incredulously, taking particular exception to Jefferson’s listed grievances, which critics alleged had been wildly exaggerated or made up entirely, and to the hypocrisy of denouncing Dunmore’s proclamation in a document that made appeals to human equality.

Despite the declaration’s glaring contradictions and British protestations, it fulfilled Congress’s practical objectives. The French eventually lent their indispensable aid not to a mere Colonial insurrection but to an independent American state, drawing the British into war with France and allied Spain.

And Americans, naturally, began memorializing the anniversary of the nation’s arrival in the world well before the war ended. When Congress decided to commemorate the first independence day in 1777, it began its preparations belatedly. The 4th happened to be the earliest a celebration could be put together, with all the “pomp and parade” Adams had hoped Americans would take to on the 2nd. That change stuck. The declaration itself, however, would fade from public consciousness for some time—it was little read or remarked upon after the war’s end and directly referenced only rarely in state bills of rights and the discourses surrounding the Constitution.

Partisanship eventually changed things. Democratic-Republicans, hoping to lionize their founder, Jefferson, and denigrate the Anglophilia of their rival Federalists, found the declaration useful to both ends, particularly after the War of 1812. And by the 1820s, relative stability and security in the rapidly growing and expanding republic finally afforded Americans the luxury of nostalgia. As the country looked back to a founding generation whose improbable project seemed to be succeeding, the declaration became a national totem. Its text, Jefferson wrote in the last letter he sent before his—and Adams’s—deaths on July 4, 1826, had been “pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world … the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government.”

Many of the chains that had yet to be broken, of course—at Jefferson’s own Monticello and elsewhere—bound the limbs of American slaves. And in the deepening political and social crises of what we now call the antebellum era, the tension in the declaration between its claim that “all men are created equal” and the reality of slavery was resolved by the defenders of slavery by rejecting the claim. “Taking the proposition literally (it is in that sense it is understood), there is not a word of truth in it,” John C. Calhoun said in an 1848 Senate speech.

Abolitionists, meanwhile, inevitably found inspiration in the declaration. Even in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”—a now much-beloved and republished jeremiad against patriotic pomp in the face of slavery—the Declaration of Independence was, to Frederick Douglass, “the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation’s destiny,” and a document that embodied “the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice.” “It is scarcely necessary to search for new truths,” he said in another address, “till the old truths which have been uttered from the Declaration of Independence until now, shall have become recognized and reduced to practice.”

These rival perspectives on the declaration clashed most famously and significantly in the 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, where Lincoln defended a reading of the declaration that clearly left no room for the subjugation of human beings, whatever their condition or station, while rejecting racial equality. “There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he said in one exchange. “I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects–certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

While Confederates and their sympathizers would also appeal to the declaration as the South broke from a supposedly tyrannical Union, it was Lincoln’s reading of the document that would endure. So, too, would his framing of America, in the words of the Gettysburg Address, as a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and ever striving to fulfill that founding ideal—“the unfinished work,” he said of the fallen at Gettysburg, “which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

There’s little evidence that Lincoln considered expanding the rights of women an especially important part of completing that “unfinished work,” and most who shared his views didn’t. But feminists and suffragists also took up the language of the declaration for their cause—the “Declaration of Sentiments” adopted by the attendees of the convention of Seneca Falls in 1848 asserted that “that all men and women are created equal” and detailed “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” And although it’s passed from memory even on the left, the declaration was also an especially important symbol for the early labor movement and its supporters. The Fourth of July, the historian Philip Foner wrote in We, the Other People, his regrettably named compilation of declaration-inspired documents, “was a day of parades, banquets, and festivals—a day for renewing the Spirit of ’76, for dramatizing the demands of the working class.”

In 1883, for instance, a weekly in San Francisco went as far as to advertise that a Fourth of July event would include the reading of “a celebrated COMMUNIST manifesto entitled ‘The Declaration of Independence’” which had been “written by a certain SOCIALIST named Thomas Jefferson.” “The gist of the Declaration is contained in the ‘self-evident’ clause,” the announcement read. “It is Justice, Reason, Truth. It is Socialism. For every man having the self-evident and inalienable right to the means of living has the right to receive the FULL product of his own labor … and his proportionate equal share of all the means of life created by past and dead generations and left by them here when they died, and now held by the thieves, robbers, nobles and tyrants of the world.”

Gradually, however, the left’s deepening ties to an international workers’ movement shaped by Marxism and class-based critiques of the American founding came to discourage appeals to the declaration and nationalist rhetoric more broadly, though there have been exceptions in the last half-century.

Meanwhile, condemnations of American racism—which the left’s invocations of the founding had rarely mentioned initially—from the Civil Rights Movement and the identity movements of the late twentieth century also influenced progressive perceptions of the document in different directions, from Martin Luther King Jr.’s rendering of the declaration as part of “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir” to Black Power writings like the National Committee of Black Churchmen’s “Black Declaration of Independence,” which proclaimed that “the history of the treatment of Black People in the United States is a history having in direct Object the Establishment and Maintenance of Racist Tyranny over this People.”

These shifts in perceptions of the declaration at the margins of American politics coincided with the deepening of a mainstream consensus around the declaration’s meaning and import. “The Declaration is the Polaris of our political order—the fixed star of freedom,” Gerald Ford said upon the bicentennial. “It is impervious to change because it states moral truths that are eternal.” Though the Constitution had changed and would continue to change over time, he added, “the Declaration will be there, exactly as it was when the Continental Congress adopted it—after eliminating and changing some of Jefferson’s draft, much to his annoyance. Jefferson’s immortal words will remain, and they will be preserved in human hearts even if this original parchment should fall victim to time and fate.”

What do those words—“impervious to change”—mean to us now, 50 years on? In April 2025, after being shown Trump’s framed copy of the declaration in the Oval Office, ABC News’ Terry Moran asked the president what the document signified to him. “Well, it means exactly what it says—it’s a declaration,” Trump replied. “A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.” These remarks were widely ridiculed; again, Trump’s conduct in office has given many Americans good reasons to revisit and resurface the grievances that inspired the declaration and the American Revolution in the first place. But Trump’s gloss on the declaration was, in truth, fairly similar to what we’ve come to hear from most politicians.

“The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God, that all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity and respect, that all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence,” Joe Biden said in a 2022 address at Independence Hall. “Democracy begins and will be preserved in we, the people’s habits of the heart—in our character … the willingness to see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans.”

Barack Obama similarly contended during his presidency and campaigns that the declaration’s truths were no longer in question. “We, the people,” he said, “declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still.”

It might be reasonably protested that human equality is still not a settled question in America. What the declaration’s history tells us, however, is that the concept of human equality, as professed by abolitionists, slave owners, feminists, chauvinists, communists, and capitalists alike, itself settles very few of our differences. This is partially because the concept of human equality is inert without political commitments and acts of interpretation that put us into conflict with one another. As such, the remarkable thing about the declaration’s place in the American story isn’t the extent to which appeals to it have unified us. It’s the extent to which those appeals haven’t.

As Ford said, the declaration addresses all who read it with the same words and language. But its conflicting interpretations arise from the fact that the declaration is an invitation to participate in political philosophy—it asks its readers to consider the nature of human existence and the fundamental ends of politics. On that basis, it justifies a particular course of action in such a way that makes clear its readers—by dint of their own reason and understanding of its concepts, even in a different age and under different circumstances—may have cause to do the same.

The human right to revolution was among the self-evident truths the declaration professed and the one that made it effectual as a document. It is also the self-evident truth politicians today are likeliest to omit from their accounts of the declaration’s significance—dropped in favor of appeals to human equality as a shared principle that might bring Americans together to solve our problems without tearing the system down. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America,” as Obama put it. “We are one people.” The promise of this civic nationalism, and of the now-prevailing reading of the declaration, was its potential to unify Americans of many ideologies and no ideology—the hope of bringing parties and peoples with profoundly divergent conceptions of America’s challenges and the solutions to them into alignment with a common understanding of America’s purpose. This was a capacious vision of American identity precisely because it was empty—one that offered a triumphalist account of where America has been and what America has accomplished in lieu of a concrete, contestable, and potentially divisive vision for where America should go. In the near-decade since Obama left the presidency, fascists have asserted themselves in that vacuum.

In 1933, by contrast, around 4,000 delegates of a “Continental Congress of Workers and Farmers” convened in Washington not only to demand relief amid an economic depression but to make the case for fundamental and transformative economic reforms. In their “A New Declaration of Independence,” they rededicated themselves to the cause of freeing mankind “from the crushing and needless bonds of poverty and insecurity” in an age of plenty. “The system is collapsing before our very eyes,” they wrote. “It is destroying itself with a destruction that threatens the historic gains of human rights and the achievements of human civilization.”

Whether the stewards of our systems accept it or not, the politics of systemic collapse have returned. Last fall, CNN found that 76 percent of Americans believe the U.S. political system is in need of either “a complete overhaul” or “major reforms”; a similar poll earlier in the year from Navigator Research found 74 percent support for the assertions that America’s political and economic systems need “major changes” or need “to be torn down completely.” This past spring, nearly 60 percent of respondents to an NBC News poll reported feeling that both the American political and economic systems were stacked against them.

Much of that discontent stems from the left’s continuing efforts to make certain facts about those systems—beyond the evils and disgraces of this particular presidency—known to the American people and “a candid world” today. In lieu of a democracy, we have political institutions that work most reliably for the rich—a constitutional order that does not guarantee the American people fair or equal representation, and where the right to vote and electoral outcomes are regularly challenged by a structurally advantaged minority. Instead of an economy that delivers the American worker just returns for their labor, the American people work within and under economic institutions that squeeze them more and more, only to deliver an ever-larger share of the economy’s gains to a smaller and smaller share of the already wealthy—including the man set to be the world’s first trillionaire—even as the costs of health care, housing, and education rise and roughly 36 million Americans languish in poverty. And rather than developing technologies that expand human capacities and enrich human life, out of a belief in the limitlessness of human potential, our most prominent technological innovators have made the American people, and all humanity, the subjects of a grand experiment without precedent in human history—the project of putting the human mind itself into obsolescence so that a privileged few, whose creations, developed in contravention of established laws, have already inundated our lives with noise and nonsense, may profit from the development of superior intelligences, while tens or hundreds of millions of ordinary people, they hope, are thrown out of their vocations.

True as all this may be, societies have never been remade by the restatement of grievances alone. Those who seek change on the scale we deserve and hope for are obliged to offer the American people a particular understanding of human life, what human beings are entitled to, and, divisive and contestable as they may be, strong ideas about what specific political, social, and economic arrangements are best suited to the preservation of human life, liberty, and happiness. The manifestations of the concept that “all men are created equal” that we’ve come to take for granted—the ones the stewards of our existing political institutions now celebrate—were built from such ideas and from conceptions of the American project those who established this country would have found incomprehensible. Fortunately, they were only our first generation of Founders. Many Founders since have reenacted the declaration and given its words new life. Now it is up to us whether it will survive as a mere artifact or as an example.

The stage for Freedom 250’s July Fourth celebration fell apart during rehearsals Thursday, with a large component of the structure’s ceiling falling roughly two stories down and landing behind a group of dancers and musicians. Miraculously, no one appeared injured.

The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration. pic.twitter.com/bPbg94hp6X

— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) July 2, 2026

Online commenters were quick to flame the stage’s apparently dangerous construction.

“That’s what happens when you don’t consider merit in hiring,” wrote one X user.

“This is why you never let Trump select the subcontractor based on percentage of kickback,” commented another.

Even a lawmaker joined in on the roast.

“Feeling more and more like the Hunger Games,” wrote Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie.

Practically every component of Trump’s wildly expensive plan to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary has turned out to be a dud. The $15 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed to rid the iconic monument of algae; a multi-week lineup of music acts had to be cancelled after practically every artist pulled themselves from the program; and a fleet of buses carrying a contemporary retelling of American history have failed to make a splash in their journey across the country.

The Great American State Fair was supposed to be the centerpiece of the celebration, yet even it is more of a potemkin village than a sincere homage. The booths, which offer space for each state to represent its heritage and culture (pet a replica of a bison at the North Dakota pavilion, or walk away with a bag of chips from Maine), are ideologically pitted against the seismic presence of the federal government and Trump’s authoritarian expansion (banners featuring Trump’s grim face flank the event, while a small-scale replica of his proposed “Triumphal Arc” sits center stage). As The Atlantic’s Kelsey Ables put it, “the president is bringing down the mood.”

The indictment seems rather flawed, as Hearn, 67, maintains that all he did was dip his hand into the pool and touch a piece of peeling paint.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post the day after his arrest last month. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

At a press conference Thursday, a reporter asked Pirro why Hearn was being charged with a felony over something so small, and she struggled to explain.

Pirro: He caused damage and that damage was over $1000.

Reporter: How do you prove that?

Pirro: With an expert.

Reporter: With his bare hands?

Pirro: We believe it's his bare hands, both hands.

Reporter: Do you believe it was damaged before?

Pirro: He damaged it!… pic.twitter.com/LmtTZueKZU

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 2, 2026

“There was an effort, a violent effort, to rip up the sealant from the pool, and irrespective of whether or not we think that there is some situation that preceded it, we can state, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that he caused damage, and that damage is worth over a thousand dollars,” Pirro said.

When asked how she could prove that, Pirro said, “With an expert,” and urged the reporter who asked the question to come to the trial. The reporter incredulously asked if Hearn used his bare hands, to which Pirro affirmed yes, both hands. The reporter then asked if the pool wasn’t already damaged before.

“Oh, he damaged it. He damaged the pool. He damaged this pool,” Pirro repeated. When the reporter brought up videos showing that the pool’s paint was already peeling, Pirro said, “Well, good. I’m glad you got that evidence. Come on in the grand jury and you can testify.”

It all seems nuts, as the poor state of the pool, from algae growth to peeling paint, had been documented for quite some time before Hearn visited it. The paint had been peeling because hydrogen peroxide was dumped into the pool in a vain effort to kill algae growth. Hearn is clearly being made a scapegoat to satisfy President Donald Trump, who is blaming nonexistent vandals rather than admit he messed up the pool.

U.S. Capitol Police have already restricted Thursday night’s rehearsal for “A Capitol Fourth Concert” to essential personnel, posting on X that they came to the decision after consulting with the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician.

“For safety reasons, the public will not be able to attend tonight’s rehearsal concert,” the post read. “Everyone is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. The National Weather Service is forecasting an extreme heat watch with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.”

The post added that an update will come Friday by 10 a.m. on the status of the full concert, which is scheduled to take place from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday night.

Similar warnings are hitting the Great American State Fair; organizers have already had to cancel a rodeo demonstration scheduled for Thursday night. Attendance at the fair overall has been depressed, and some visitors are complaining about the weather. U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer had an audience of maybe 25 people when he spoke about tariffs on the main stage Thursday afternoon.

Many booths at the fair don’t have air conditioning, leading at least one visitor to overheat. She told a reporter she finally found relief at a baptism tent, where she took a dip to cool down.

Great American State Fair goer tells our @JenDelgadoFOX many of the booths she went to today didn't have air conditioning, she overheated, said she saw stars and needed medical attention -- found the baptism tent and took a dip to cool down pic.twitter.com/Smufj0GN8g

— Homa Bash (@HomaBashNews) July 2, 2026

Even without the heat, the fair is coming across as tacky, with empty booths and a lack of energy. The food is expensive, reviews are abysmal, and people aren’t coming, enraging the president. When it hasn’t been hot, it’s been raining. America’s 250th anniversary was already going poorly thanks to Trump, and now the weather may cement the once-in-a-lifetime event’s status as a failure.

The surveys—one from The New York Times and the other from Fox News—offer good and bad news for Platner. But they’re worrying some Democrats because a loss here deeply complicates the path to Senate control. Without Maine—which voted against Donald Trump by seven points in 2024—Democrats probably must win four out of five seats in Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and North Carolina. Trump won all five states—most by lopsided margins—and now Democrats lead in the last but are tied or a bit behind in the others.

The Times survey has Platner up two among likely voters overall, 49–47, and the Fox poll has Collins up three, 50–47. It’s a dead heat—it’s winnable, but he should probably be leading by more given the state’s Democratic lean, which is being outweighed by the brutal press he’s sustained over his Nazi-like tattoo and alleged violence against women.

But note this: In the Times poll, Platner trails among voters without a college degree, a proxy for the working class, by 37–58. In the Fox poll, that’s 41–56. What’s driving this? One possibility: The Times poll has working-class voters saying Platner has “good character” by 37–57 and “the right kind of moral values” by 36–57.

On the plus side, Platner leads in the Times survey among women by 52–44, among young people by 59–32, and among college-educated voters by 66–32. But Platner’s candidacy is all about his blue-collar aura: He’s a tattooed oyster farmer who speaks openly—in that deep, gravelly voice—about his trauma from serving in combat. Though his backstory is somewhat more privileged (his father is an Ivy League graduate and lawyer), he speaks in a left-populist idiom that seeks to connect with working people’s struggles. So his numbers among them are concerning.

Here’s the upshot: This race is awfully close, and importantly, Platner is running behind the Democratic Party as a whole in Maine. Voters there want a Democratic Senate by 54–42, so his 49 percent support lags that. By contrast, in Times polling, all the Democrats in other red states—Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina—are outrunning their party.

I talked about all this with Rebecca Katz, a top Platner adviser. Asked about his numbers with working-class voters, Katz noted that the race has been heavily nationalized, leading them to initially fall into their familiar pattern of opposition to Democrats. Many of these voters, Katz said, have been introduced to Platner via a massive barrage of negative ads and some very bad news cycles.

Katz said the political landscape in Maine—a largely rural state where retail campaigning will really matter—provides Platner with a unique opportunity to grow among that demographic. She noted that he’s already done over 60 town halls in rural areas, and pointed to an intriguing dynamic: People in these areas are coming to listen.

“They are curious about him,” Katz told me, noting that Graham is already somewhat outperforming losing 2020 Senate candidate Sara Gideon among working people.

If one criticism of Democrats is that they don’t show up and talk to rural and working- class voters, well, Platner is certainly doing that. The theory seems to be that despite his bad stories, Platner is compelling enough to open the door to getting an audience with these constituencies, and then to reach them in a fresh way.

“Graham is a different kind of candidate,” Katz said. “He grew up in a rural community. He’s one of the only candidates running who’s actually worked with his hands. He will continue to connect with more rural and conservative voters.”

Asked to respond to the oft-heard argument that seeking working-class voters with Platner’s type of leftist politics is a chimera, Katz insisted this doesn’t jibe with what they’re seeing at town halls in working-class and rural areas.

“Mainers are focused on their cost of living, health care, corruption, and whether anyone in Washington is actually fighting for working people,” said Katz, a founding partner of Fight Agency, the firm that does Platner’s media and strategy, along with rising progressive strategist Morris Katz (no relation), who helped recruit Platner.

In this understanding, Platner’s appeal can get these voters to at least listen to his agenda of breaking billionaire control over elections, Medicare for All, a more progressive tax system for small businesses and corporations alike, a billionaire minimum tax, and protecting and expanding social welfare programs. That agenda is somewhat to the left of many mainstream Democrats. But it’s aimed squarely at what’s really driving voter concerns, Katz notes, which matters more than the details, and Platner is the one to make that case.

“There are people coming who are not into politics but are intrigued by Graham,” Katz said of the town halls. “He’s an outsider.”

Asked to respond to Platner’s struggles with working people, Adam Green, the head of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee—an early booster of Platner’s candidacy—acknowledged that he has more work to do among them. But he cast this as an opportunity. “Most working-class people who are low-propensity voters don’t know him yet,” Green said. “But once they do, he’s an obvious fit for them.”

Katz, for her part, said other big dynamics here deserve attention: This is likely to be a change election amid deep anger at establishment politicians. The Times poll finds 61 percent of Maine voters say the country is on the wrong track, 60 percent disapprove of Trump, large percentages say Collins is too old to serve, and Democrats hold a nearly 20-point enthusiasm edge.

“The big question of this race is whether or not voters are willing to vote for change,” Katz said.

The political graveyards are full of men—mostly men—who boasted of the right kind of populist and biographical appeal to reverse Democratic losses among working people. Indeed, different factions in the party are already battling over the meaning of Platner’s candidacy, with progressives and socialists insisting it will show their agenda to be broadly popular and moderates insisting that chasing working-class voters with that sort of leftism is a fool’s errand.

But, unsatsfyingly, the outcome is unlikely to turn on Platner’s precise policy prescriptions or his exact ideological leanings. It will more likely be decided on whether Collins’s special hold on the Maine electorate is spent, particularly after her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the overturning of Roe v. Wade; whether Trump’s unpopularity will be enough to nudge voters to risk a different kind of challenger; whether Platner’s able to reach just enough persuadable voters to allay concerns about his past conduct; and a thousand other intangibles involving turnout and last-minute voter decisions.

Ultimately, it may all turn on good old-fashioned shoe-leather politicking. And whatever you think of Platner, one thing that can’t be denied is this: He’s certainly willing to work hard enough to win.

Florida Representative Neal Dunn’s office told Punchbowl News Thursday that he won’t be voting unless Republican leadership says they need him.

Donald Trump put the 73-year-old lawmaker on blast in March, prematurely revealing at a White House event that Dunn was suffering from a terminal heart problem and would be “dead by June.”

“Congressman Neal Dunn of Florida had had some real health challenges, and it was very serious, and had had a pretty grim diagnosis,” House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted at the event at Trump’s behest. “I mentioned it to the president. I said, ‘Congressman Dunn is a real champion and a patriot because he’s still coming to work, and if others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire.’”

“What was the diagnosis?” Trump pressed.

“It was—I mean, I think it was a terminal diagnosis,” Johnson said.

“He would be dead by June,” Trump interjected, before Johnson confessed, “That wasn’t public.”

Dunn has not been on Capitol Hill since June 11 and has so far missed 11 votes, according to his voting record. Nonetheless, he has not announced any plans to truncate his time in office. In January, Dunn released a statement indicating that he would not seek reelection, though the former Army surgeon is apparently not planning to formally bow out before the end of his term.

Dunn has a bad track record with missing votes. Since he entered the House in January 2017, Dunn has missed 246 of 4,992 roll call votes. That means the septuagenarian has missed at least 4.9 percent of the votes that took place during his term, according to an analysis by Govtrack.us, which is much more than the median of 2.1 percent missed by other representatives.

But he’s not the only Republican who’s been missing in action. Representative Tom Kean Jr. was absent from Congress since March 5, sparking a Washington brouhaha that lasted until Tuesday, when he suddenly appeared before the House floor to share that his inexplicable multimonth absence was due to depression. Notably, Kean has voted repeatedly to block paid sick leave for his constituents.

DOJ lawyers sent the sealed report to lawyers for Carmen Lineberger, who was charged with stealing the report by emailing it to herself disguised as a cake recipe. On June 3, DOJ officials handed over discovery items on flash drives to Lineberger’s lawyers. Included in those drives were documents embedded in electronic messages that were required to be disclosed. On June 9, the defendant’s attorneys reported they found three documents and contacted the government to confirm if they were supposed to be part of discovery materials.

After they reviewed the documents, DOJ lawyers confirmed that they were actually copies of Smith’s report. Defense attorneys told the government they stopped reviewing the material before examining the report itself, deleted the discovery materials they had downloaded, and handed the flash drives back to the government. Thursday’s legal filing was to notify Judge Aileen Cannon, the judge presiding over Trump’s classified documents case.

The accidental leak has to be embarrassing for the government, considering Trump’s successful effort to keep the Smith’s report hidden from the public after he won the 2024 presidential election. The defense counsel could have leaked the documents, but considering that their client was accused of improperly handling them, chose to follow the rules.

The situation is ironic, considering Smith’s report was all about how Trump allegedly mishandled classified documents by keeping them at Mar-a-Lago instead of returning them to the government. Smith’s case wasn’t allowed to go to trial thanks to Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissing it on flimsy grounds. It seems that the public may never know the full details of what Trump did.

The Trump administration has not communicated how much the July 4 celebration will cost, or who is expected to foot the bill for the pyrotechnics display. There has been no public record of the company behind the show, Pyrotecnico, receiving a standard government contract for the job, as has been the case with Washington’s previous July 4 celebrations.

In lieu of concrete digits, NOTUS’s Anna Kramer reached out to several fireworks companies for a rough estimate on the show’s price tag. They projected the cost in the millions.

“You’re talking a many multimillion-dollar production, without a doubt,” James Woods, the director of sales at Pyro Shows in Tennessee, told NOTUS. Pyro Shows assisted in one of the previous world record-setting fireworks displays in Dubai in 2014.

Woods told NOTUS that some of the individual shells used in the upcoming celebration could cost anywhere between $50 to $1,000. NOTUS estimated that if even “3 percent of the devices used in this show cost $50, that would total $1.3 million for those devices alone.”

This year, the Freedom 250 celebration has promised a record-shattering 40-minute display beginning at 10:30 p.m. that will use more than 860,000 explosives. They’ll be set off along the Reflecting Pool, as well as in West Potomac Park and off of eight barges on the Potomac River.

The current record is held by the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a church in the Philippines that earned the Guinness World Record title in 2016 for lighting 809,000 fireworks during a New Year’s Eve event.

Another fireworks professional, Kellner’s Fireworks owner Bob Kellner, hypothesized that even if the entire record-setting show were composed of “filler” shells (the cheapest explosives possible, sold for around $2 a pop), the display would still cost a minimum of $1.7 million. But only hitting that bare minimum is highly unlikely, as more sophisticated fireworks cost significantly more.

There is just one federal record offering details about the upcoming semiquincentennial. A document from the Interior Department, dated December 2025, dedicated $1.5 million to Garden State Fireworks to run the display. But that was months before Donald Trump promised to launch “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY” on Independence Day 2026.

NOTUS reported that Garden State Fireworks has been responsible for the capital’s July Fourth show for the last decade, and typically receives a contract between $250,000 and $300,000 for the display.

Trump filed his latest financial disclosure on Monday, and it shows that he made 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million on April 8, 2025, from companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company), according to an analysis from investigative outlet Sludge. The next day, Trump announced that he was pausing his sweeping tariffs for 90 days, and the S&P 500 went up by nearly 10 percent, one of its largest one-day increases ever.

The timing of these trades suggests he planned to cash in, realizing that markets would rally after his announcement. Those weren’t the only suspicious stock trades he made last year, either. On August 18, Trump’s accounts bought between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in chipmaker Intel, four days before the president announced that the federal government would take a nearly $9 billion equity stake in the company. Intel’s stock price went up 6 percent after that announcement.

Trump also bought stock in defense contractor Palantir Technologies throughout the year, publicly praising the company while increasing its federal contracts, particularly those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of his top advisers, White House deputy chief of staff and anti-immigration hawk Stephen Miller, also owns between $100,001 and $250,000 of Palantir stock. This year, Trump singled out Palantir on Truth Social in April and sent its stock price soaring.

By law, Trump and other executive branch officials are supposed to publicly disclose securities transfers, including stock purchases, over $1,000 within 45 days. Not only did Trump wait more than a year to disclose the April stock purchases, he didn’t disclose any other of the thousands of stock trades he made in 2025.

In all, Trump reported $2.2 billion in income in 2025, from crypto, stock trades, foreign real estate, suing news organizations, and other grifts. His administration is openly engaging in market manipulation and insider trading without any fear of consequences.

Trump announced Thursday that stock in Micron Technology Inc., a semiconductor company, had leapt nine points on the stock market following the company’s commitment to donate $250 million to the president’s Trump Accounts, the individual savings vehicle for eligible American citizens under age 18.

“Thank you Micron!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s thanks aren’t just on behalf of America’s children—it seems that the president personally benefited from the stock’s sudden rise.

Trump’s recently released financial disclosures from 2025 revealed that the president already owned between $1.67 million and $6.65 million worth of stock in Micron. In March, as the administration was making preparations to launch the Trump Accounts, Trump purchased between $215,000 and $550,000 in Micron stock, according to MeidasTouch.

In a press release Tuesday, Micron said the donation was the “largest corporate commitment of its kind.” At the same time, the company is facing a federal class action lawsuit over allegations of collusion and price-fixing with other chip manufacturers.

In 2025, the president raked in loads of cash in the stock market by buying or selling a whopping 21,000 times with companies he talks about publicly, such as Nvidia and Intel. And Trump has a history of manipulating the stock market by boosting certain companies on social media.

This also isn’t the first time the president has attempted to boost a company tied to Trump Accounts. In December, Dell pledged a $6.2 billion commitment to the accounts. A few months later, Trump purchased at least $1 million in Dell stock, and then went on a rant about buying Dell computers.

But one strange detail about Trump’s bathroom renovation, revealed by New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in their new book, Regime Change, might be the grossest yet.

“New carpet was laid in the bathroom on Inauguration Day, as before,” the authors wrote. “Trump’s preference for a fully carpeted bathroom had posed a challenge for the Residence staff during his first term. The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath.”

Carpeted bathrooms became trendy in the 1970s and ’80s, several decades after synthetic fibers—namely nylon—were first introduced as carpet materials, making wall-to-wall carpeting a possibility for American homeowners. The novel idea was initially marketed as a luxury option, extending the lush comfort of the bedroom into the washroom.

But the fad quickly fell out of style for obvious reasons. By the late 1980s, carpeted bathrooms had largely been replaced with vinyl or tile to reduce the possibility of trapped moisture and mold growth.

Trump, however, seems to have held onto the fantasy that it could be done well.

“It was important to him to have a fully carpeted bathroom, and residence staff’s solution to the damp problem, or the potential mold problem, was to get essentially a small piece of carpet and overlay it as if it was a bath mat on top of the carpet in front of the shower, and then substitute and rotate that carpeting,” Swan told MS NOW. “So, we do have some details from inside the residence, including some disputes and tensions between the president and the first lady over the interior decorating and renovating.”

The Times duo’s reporting revealed further interior decorating disputes between Trump and his wife, with the president often removing items that Melania had intentionally placed around the residence and stowing them away in his office.

Donald Trump posted an AI-generated clip to his Truth Social late Wednesday, sharing a depiction of himself as a white coat–wearing doctor supposedly “curing” celebrities of “Trump derangement syndrome.”

“Have you or someone you know been diagnosed with TDS? The symptoms can be relentless. Fortunately, I’m Dr. Trump, and I have a treatment plan,” the Trump clone says in the video.

The video then showcases deepfakes of several actors, comedians, and talk show hosts who have been vocal critics of the president and his policies, including The View hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts, Edward Norton, and John Leguizamo.

“I really was unsure I could help some of these people. They were so far gone, I wasn’t really sure,” Trump’s avatar says after several fake testimonials.

Trump then encourages viewers to “turn off fake news” and “just have a Diet Coke like me.”

The president has proven himself to be a big fan of AI-generated media, though the practice has frequently landed him in trouble. In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s executive assistant, Natalie Harp, was the inner-circle figure primarily responsible for the president’s late-night social media binges. Over the last several months, Harp has reportedly shared an AI-generated video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes and an AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus Christ.

Trump took down both posts after they spurred immense public backlash. In the former instance, Trump claimed he did not see the section of the video that mocked the former president and first lady in a racist manner. A White House official blamed the mistake on an editing error. In the second instance, Trump claimed he thought he was being shown as a doctor.

“We’re told that the aerial image of the crowds from his rally last week enraged him so much that officials ended up deleting them,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported Wednesday evening.

Dozens of attendees were seen flocking toward the exits during Trump’s commencement address, though the president insisted the event was “packed to the brim.”

Photographs of the event showed that there was a crowd, but not a very big one, and certainly not the 45,000 that Trump claimed on social media.

Attendance at Trump’s supremely underwhelming Great American State Fair has remained visibly low, as the festivities have been beset by technical difficulties, lame programming, and disappointing weather delays.

White House staff are reportedly concerned that Trump’s rally planned for the Fourth of July will spark yet another presidential meltdown.

That rally is scheduled to take place outside on the National Mall, on a day temperatures in Washington are projected to reach at least 100 degrees. The rally will be punctuated by a massive fireworks display, currently scheduled to begin at 11 p.m. Unlike in past years, attendees will not be able to bring coolers to help beat the heat.

A report released by House Democrats, based on newly obtained documents and whistleblower accounts, said that the White House repeatedly steered donors toward Trump’s Freedom 250 setup instead of the America250 effort set up by Congress 10 years ago.

Some donors and sponsors who sought to send funds to America250 were told by the Trump administration that they didn’t have a “green light,” and were pressured to redirect their money to Freedom 250. Freedom 250 also reached out to America250 donors with donation requests, confusing some corporate executives who didn’t know the difference between the two groups, the Democrats’ report states.

“I’m a lawyer, and I know better than to pronounce that a crime has been committed,” Representative Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, told The Washington Post. “But I do know the elements of fraud, and there is evidence of all those elements here.”

The report goes on to detail how Freedom 250 officials explicitly steered money away from America250 toward projects favored by Trump, who undermined a bipartisan plan to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary to the benefit of himself and his allies.

For example, America250 had received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund Freedom Trucks, mobile museums that would travel around the country with lessons on American history. That grant was transferred to Freedom 250, which produced its own version of the trucks with history lessons that present a distorted image of U.S. history.

Democrats accuse Trump allies of steering away $75 million worth of taxpayer funds originally allocated by Congress to America250. The leftover money is expected to be kept by the White House. And Freedom 250’s staff is made up of many former employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which harvested user data.

Officials of the bipartisan America250 say now that they have shifted their efforts toward events outside of Washington, D.C., while Freedom 250 handles events in the nation’s capital. But the split has confused legislators and corporate leaders and caused tensions between the two efforts, according to the Post.

Thanks to Trump, America250’s grants, educational initiatives, and volunteer programs have been overshadowed by Freedom 250 efforts. Officials expect to make up for their lost funds through more private donations, but the president has effectively ruined what could have been a unifying, nonpolitical celebration of the U.S. at a time when the American people could really use it.

Rutinel, a 31-year-old member of the Colorado House of Representatives, beat his more moderate opponent, Shannon Bird, earlier this week in yet another victory for insurgent progressives. But as he now pivots to the general election, he’ll be facing Republican Gabe Evans and an onslaught of attacks over his past statements on animal rights and meat consumption.

The 8th district, created in 2021 by the state’s independent redistricting commission, is Colorado’s only swing district, and swingy it is—voters in the district elected a Democrat in 2022 by fewer than 1,600 votes and Evans in 2024 by fewer than 2,500 votes.

“It’s reasonable to think that [the district] will just switch back and forth with whatever party is having a good year that year,” said Seth Masket, professor of political science at the University of Denver. “Given what we’ve seen in other elections this year, I think there’s a very good chance it swings to the Democrats.”

The district, which includes the northern suburbs of Denver and stretches north into more rural communities, is a major agricultural region. JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company, is one of the district’s biggest employers. Evans himself owns a small cattle herd and is a self-described beef producer.

As a student at Yale Law School, Rutinel gave an interview to a campus publication calling animal agriculture “a horrific, exploitive industry.” That same year, he told a legislative committee in Connecticut that “the globe must dramatically shift away from animal products and toward fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and nuts.”

Since running for Congress, Rutinel has backtracked, saying that he is no longer a vegan and that “it’s important for me to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make.” He’s also stopped calling for Medicare for All and a ban on fracking.

Republicans are already jumping onto Rutinel’s vegan past. After Rutinel won his primary, the regional press secretary for the National Republican Campaign Committee posted a photo on X of Rutinel as a college student, shirtless and carrying a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sign. “He is a far-left vegan activist who wants to end animal agriculture,” the post reads.

Meat occupies an almost sacred space in American politics—and a particular obsession with it on the right is nothing new. Already this cycle, Republicans have attacked Texas Senate candidate James Talarico over his past comments about reducing meat consumption: “This freak wants to BAN BBQ,” Senator Ted Cruz wrote in an X post. In response, Talarico leaned into meat eating, posing for a photo in a Texas flag shirt while eating barbecue. At an event, he said, “I deny all accusations of veganism.”

“Republicans will just be working to portray him as out of step, as too far left for Colorado. That is to some extent what they’re trying to do now with going after vegetarianism,” Masket said about Rutinel. But he’s not terribly worried that Rutinel’s vegan past will hurt his campaign. Unlike in Texas, Masket said, vegetarianism and veganism are well established and understood in Colorado, and the more important dynamic in this election will be voters’ dissatisfaction with Trump, he said.

“November is going to be, particularly at the congressional district level, a referendum on the Trump administration,” agreed Robert Preuhs, the chair of the political science department at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The outcome in the 8th district in particular, he added, will “depend to some extent on what the Trump administration does between here and November and the extent to which Dave Evans feels comfortable endorsing those actions.”

Rutinel has established himself as a forceful critic of the Trump administration, campaigning adamantly against Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and criticizing Bird for her committee vote against a bill that would prohibit local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE.

Rutinel also took a strong stance on artificial intelligence. In 2025, he was a sponsor of a bill that would protect whistleblowers who sought to disclose AI safety issues. Public First Action, an AI-safety PAC, covertly supported Rutinel by giving $2 million to the Latino Victory Fund, Transformer reported on Wednesday. A PAC funded by Chris Larsen, a billionaire cryptocurrency firm founder, also spent $980,000 on the race in favor of Rutinel.

Analysts say Rutinel now faces a difficult balancing act: moderating his positions enough to appeal to swing voters, while also keeping his base energized. He’ll have help: The Democratic Party is expected to spend heavily to try to flip this district. The race may wind up being a test of whether culture-war issues—like Rutinel’s past veganism—will matter more to swing voters than ICE and Trump’s record.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

This week, The New York Times released a batch of polls showing Democrats within striking distance of winning enough Senate races to win control. One big finding was that Donald Trump’s numbers in these states are absolutely abysmal. Small wonder, then, that Trump is taking some corrupt new steps to give Republican candidates a big boost. Steve Benen of MS NOW noticed a really intriguing pattern. In several states, Trump is directly linking the approval of disaster aid right to his endorsements of GOP candidates in some of the most contested races.

That’s not how this is supposed to work, but it opens a window on something to watch for, which we’re talking to Steve Benen about today. Trump will surely scale up his use of the government to boost GOP fortunes in coming months, and God knows how he’s going to do that. Steve, good to have you back on.

Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here.

Sargent: So let’s just start off really simply. Steve, how is the president supposed to make decisions about disaster aid to states? And has he doled out disaster aid in an equivalent way to blue and red states?

Benen: The foundational question here is exactly that. There’s a system in place that has been in place for generations. When it comes to federal disaster aid, presidents and their administrations are simply supposed to make these decisions on the merits. Does a state deserve, and does it need, federal disaster aid? If it does, great. If it doesn’t, then no. But that’s how it’s always worked, in a bipartisan and objective way.

Even in Donald Trump’s first term, we didn’t necessarily see any major controversies or scandals surrounding the politicization of disaster aid. However, over the last year, year and a half, it’s been much different. Politico reported in March—a report that I think really bears repeating:

Donald Trump approved just 23 percent of disaster funding requests from states with Democratic governors and Democratic senators, while at the same time, over roughly the same period, states with Republican governors and Republican senators had their [requests approved] 89 percent of the time.

Twenty-three percent, less than a fourth, for blue states; 89 percent, nearly nine out of ten, for red states. It’s a dramatic, indefensible ratio, and it speaks to the fact that it’s really been corrupted and politicized in a way that has never existed before in the federal government.

Sargent: Well, you noticed this pattern in addition to this. In recent days, Trump announced huge amounts of disaster aid to at least six states. Most of them were red; two of them were swing states, Michigan and Wisconsin, and I want to focus on those for now. Let’s take Michigan first.

Trump said this on Truth Social: “I am pleased to announce that the great state of Michigan has been approved to be given $32 million in its disaster declaration request.” Trump added: “The people of Michigan are in good hands with Trump-endorsed Mike Rogers, who is running for U.S. Senate, and John James for governor.”

Steve, it’s true that Trump also cited the Democratic governor in the tweet, but she’s not running for anything. And he did boost two critical GOP candidates: Senate hopeful Mike Rogers and gubernatorial hopeful John James. Can you explain why you see that as corrupt?

Benen: There was a point last year we saw some hints along these lines, where Trump would talk about the fact that he’d approved disaster aid for, say, Missouri, for example, and he would emphasize the fact that he won Missouri’s electoral votes in his previous elections, suggesting there was a connection between his political support in the state and his eagerness to provide federal relief for that state. Now he’s just dropped the pretense. There’s no real sense that maybe he’s just being coy or being subtle about any of this.

Here we have an instance in which he’s talking about approving federal disaster aid and literally, explicitly, overtly including an endorsement for various candidates aligned with his White House, as if they’re interconnected in ways that, as far as he’s concerned, are inextricable.

Sargent: Let’s move to Wisconsin now. Here Trump was even more blatant. He posted this: “I just spoke with Congressman Tom Tiffany, who has my complete and total endorsement for governor, and informed him that the great state of Wisconsin has been approved to be given $22.6 million in its disaster declaration request.”

Steve, here he makes it sound as if this Republican candidate for governor helped deliver this money to the state. Trump also says the people of Wisconsin are in good hands with him, and then also cites Congressman Derrick Van Orden, who is locked in an absolutely key House race. He’s just blurting it out right in public.

I want to be clear that all these races we’re talking about here—Michigan Senate and governor, Wisconsin governor and congressman—are really critical races, and they’re toss-ups. Your thoughts on all this?

Benen: The brazenness of it all is just breathtaking. Here we have a situation in which we have a competitive state—arguably the most competitive state in the nation—Wisconsin. We’ve seen it over and over again in recent election cycles. Instead of acknowledging the Democratic governor’s role in perhaps requesting federal disaster relief in the first place, Donald Trump just ignores that and makes a connection between this congressman who had nothing to do with the process and the money that’s going to the state and communities in the state that need the aid.

There’s no real pretense here. There’s no sense of propriety at all. It’s making a direct connection between a congressman running for governor who enjoys the president’s support and the money that the Trump administration is now providing to the state.

I hope your listeners can appreciate the fact that it has never worked this way. We’ve never had a system in place in which a White House, or a Republican administration, or any administration has necessarily made this direct tie between endorsing a candidate and federal disaster relief.

It’s scandalous. To my mind, it’s borderline impeachable, that we’d have this indefensible connection between two things that should have nothing to do with one another.

Sargent: If you put this in the larger context, it really gets thrown into stark relief. He’s badly stiffed Democratic states of disaster aid relative to Republican states over much of his second term. Here he’s doling this out to these swing states, arguably precisely because they have very competitive and important races in them.

It’s not that much of a leap to say that’s why he approved the aid to them. He’s trying to create the impression that these candidates played a major role in delivering this federal money to these states.

Benen: Right. We’ve had a series of controversies over the last year and a half—you and I have talked about this before—in which we’ve seen the administration and the White House being accused of misusing federal resources for political purposes to achieve electoral goals, which in itself is scandalous. Here we have more evidence to consider as part of these broader allegations.

Is the White House making decisions as it relates to federal disaster funds for the purposes of affecting the outcomes of elections? If so, that’s the sort of thing that maybe the next Congress might want to investigate in more detail—maybe hold a congressional hearing or oversight hearing or two as it relates to this.

This is the sort of thing that can resonate with most people, because there’s an understanding: We don’t do that in the United States. We don’t connect communities that are affected by disasters, and the money that the people in those communities need and deserve, with electoral strategies and campaign strategies. Those two things should never be mixed.

Yet we have reason to believe that that’s exactly what’s happening here. It’s incumbent upon lawmakers and policymakers to get answers to these questions, because really, if this is happening in our name, it is a scandal that should help define Donald Trump’s second term.

Sargent: Now, you singled out a number of other states. It’s not quite as clear that these are ones with competitive races, but they do have races in them. In these cases, you found there really is an apparent connection between the decision to award the aid and the political fortunes of Republicans in these states. Can you talk about these other places that you looked at?

Benen: Sure. Let’s look at Kansas, for example. Now, Kansas, as your listeners will know, is a pretty reliable red state, but it has a Democratic governor, and it requested federal disaster relief. Now, fortunately, the president approved that disaster relief, to the tune of $5.5 million.

But when he did so, he specifically acknowledged Senator Roger Marshall, a close presidential ally who just happens to be running for reelection in 2026, and didn’t mention the governor. And then he took the additional step of mentioning Ty Masterson, the GOP candidate in the gubernatorial race for 2026.

Now, there was no need to mention Marshall or Masterson. But again, here we have a situation in which the president’s preoccupation is not with the people who need the aid or the communities that have been affected by natural disasters. What he’s prioritizing is the fact that there are these Republicans who are aligned with his White House who are on the ballot in the fall.

That’s the focus. That’s the priority. That’s the message that he wants to get through—that he’s approving this aid, and he wants people to make that connection between the federal emergency assistance and the candidates that are going to be on the ballot.

Sargent: You did look at some other states, and you really drew a convincing pattern. Let’s just talk about the polls for now, though. The New York Times surveyed six Senate races. Democrats are ahead in North Carolina and up by a hair in Maine, tied in Texas, and just behind in Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio.

That puts Dems in striking distance of winning the four of these contests that they need to win to take the upper chamber, though they’re still clearly the underdogs for Senate control. Steve, on balance that polling’s pretty good news. Nobody really expected Dems to be this competitive in these particular states, many of which are red. What did you think about these findings?

Benen: Yeah, that last point that you mentioned a moment ago is exactly the key. If we look at this in the context of, say, where we had the political landscape two months ago, or really six months ago, or maybe even a year ago—the idea of a Democratic Senate getting elected in the 2026 midterms was absurd. It was not something that people were thinking about, wasn’t something people were talking about.

Democratic hopes were focused on the House, which seemed more plausible, more realistic, given the fact that there’s really a small GOP majority right now. And given historical trends, it seemed likely that Democrats were able to pick up enough seats to gain a majority and take the speaker’s gavel away from Mike Johnson.

The Senate was a long shot. It just seemed like it was out of left field and not really part of the conversation. That has changed considerably. There are contests now that are very much in play that people weren’t even thinking about at all. States like Alaska, Texas—even Iowa. The New York Times poll that you just referenced showed Iowa being very competitive, and that’s another state that is now generally seen as a red state that is now very competitive at the Senate level.

Taken together, we start to see a path. Now, it’s not an easy path, especially given that there are 53 Senate Republicans and it would take a lot. But at the same time, given historical patterns, if there’s a serious enough backlash to the status quo—we have a very unpopular president, we have a MAGA agenda that is generating all kinds of pushback and protests nationwide—those factors, you put them together, coupled with the fact that people aren’t satisfied with the state of the economy or the war in Iran, you start to wonder: Maybe the Senate can be flipped, given the right circumstances. It’s no longer unrealistic.

Sargent: Yes, and here’s what’s critical about these numbers from The New York Times. Trump himself is polling terribly in these states. On the war with Iran, across these six states, only 38 percent approve of his handling of it, while 59 percent disapprove. On gas prices, it’s 33 percent to 63 percent. And across these six battlegrounds, only 36 percent approve of his handling of the cost of living. And on that, his approval is 24 percent among independents.

Steve, I want to stress this. Trump won five out of these six states. We’re talking about places like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas. These are red states. And he’s in the thirties on the cost of living, and in the twenties on that among independents. That’s why these races are competitive. What do you think of that?

Benen: If I were a Republican official right now, or if I were a GOP strategist looking ahead to the fall, I would be sweating. In fact, I would be losing sleep, because these numbers are abysmal. It would be one thing if we were looking at the polling in Vermont and Hawaii, and we saw Democrats with a big advantage, and we saw widespread opposition to the White House and its agenda. That would be expected and not necessarily alarming.

But for Republicans, what you just emphasized is exactly right. In red states, in states where Donald Trump won by large double-digit margins without even having to break a sweat, he is not only deeply unpopular, but there’s a rejection not just of him, but of his policies, of the effects of his policies, and the way in which his presidency is unfolding—the way that people are just dealing with the crises that are unfolding in their daily lives, that Donald Trump is ignoring.

You know, Mr. “I love the inflation”—this is not a winning strategy. The party doesn’t have anything to run on except maybe their opposition to DSA candidates, which is really not going to be enough to get them very far.

Sargent: And by the way, I want to stress this number as well, on the Times polling. In these six states, only 35 percent say the economy is good, while 63 percent say the opposite. That’s really terrible—again, in states that Trump largely won.

Benen: Exactly. Year in and year out, especially in the wake of the pandemic, the economy is really the driving force that we see overriding every other consideration. There is an affordability crisis. We’ve seen weak job numbers, we’ve seen weak GDP growth.

Donald Trump ran for office saying that voters can expect an immediate economic boom on day one of his second term. He’s failed spectacularly to live up to those promises. And voters have noticed.

There’s only so many ways that you can lie to people about their own wallets, about their own paychecks, about the bills that are piling up on their desks. I’m at a loss to explain what the White House can do about this, other than maybe hope that the ballroom is a lot more popular than it is now.

Sargent: I want to highlight still more findings here. Voters in each of these six states said the most important issues to them by far are jobs, the economy, inflation, the cost of living. The Times says this: By a 14 percentage point margin, voters in these battlegrounds said that Trump’s policies have hurt more than helped. And 52 percent of independents said Trump’s policies had hurt; only 22 percent said they had helped. Again, in states Trump won mostly, almost all of them.

Benen: Right. The significance of that is that the White House strategy over the last year and a half has been to blame Biden every time these questions have come up. Every time they’re confronted with another poll, another controversy, another pushback from Congress about the state of the economy, they say the same thing: No, no, let’s blame Joe Biden, let’s blame Kamala Harris, let’s blame the past.

But this poll indicates that that talking point, that pushback, simply does not work. People are looking at the effects of Trump’s agenda, of Trump’s policies, of what Trump has been able to deliver. And they’re saying, You know what? I’m not better off. I was better off before. Things are worse. The value of my dollar is worse. Every time I go to the grocery store, it’s worse. Every time I fill up the gas tank, it’s worse.

They can’t blame Biden when Americans are looking at the status quo and realizing that over the last year and a half, Trump has failed to deliver, and things are not better than they were. Despite his promises, despite everything he said he was going to be able to do, he hasn’t been able to do it, and people have noticed.

Sargent: Let’s tie this back to the broader theme of this episode. We’ve been discussing how Trump, in a very blatant way, is corruptly tying disaster aid to states right to Republican candidates in these states. The larger context here being that he had been stiffing Democratic states in the past, and all of a sudden he’s now granting aid to the ones where he wants to boost the Republican candidates. I think this is all a sign that we’re going to see a real ramped-up effort to use the government in every conceivable way possible to try to swing these midterms.

The obvious stuff would be maybe using ICE or even the military to send in troops basically to create a sense of crisis. But that’s only the most prominent and dramatic thing that he could do. What we’re seeing with this pattern you identified is that there are subtle things he can do as well. Where do you think this is going to go?

Benen: We should be expecting an all-of-government approach in the coming weeks and months. RFK Jr. has hit the campaign trail and is going to competitive districts and making connections between HHS and local elections, local officials running for statewide offices.

If HHS is doing it, and now we see FEMA resources, and then we see ICE, across the board, what we can expect in the coming weeks is a federal government that is focused exclusively on helping Republicans win elections. Period, full stop. That is unfolding in real time right now.

It’s only going to get worse, especially as the polls show Democrats with an advantage—as polls show Democrats with a stronger lead, the anxiety in Republican circles will intensify. The panic will lead to more abuses, more corruption, more misuse of resources. It’s something that Americans need to be keeping a close eye on, because this is happening in their name. These are their resources. This is their government that’s being abused. It’s a scandal that’s unfolding before our eyes, the likes of which we have not seen in modern history.

Sargent: And just to wrap this up, what’s really intriguing about the whole situation is that Trump has to blurt out the corrupt scheme right in plain sight, precisely because he wants voters to draw these connections. He wants voters to say to themselves, in these places, OK, it’s because of John James that Michigan is getting all this aid, or it’s because of Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin, or the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate—this is why Wisconsin’s getting this aid.

It’s sort of an intriguing situation in that sense, that he goes out of his way to blatantly blurt out the scheme right in plain sight in order to get voters to draw the link.

Benen: He has no choice. The corruption doesn’t work if it happens in secret. He has to make it public—and I’m saying this deliberately—in order for people to vote the right way. He can’t keep it secret. He has to expose it in order for the scheme to work.

My fear is that as far as he’s concerned, he is above reproach. He is literally unimpeachable. He cannot be held accountable for his own actions, because as far as he’s concerned, he’s never been held accountable for his own actions. According to the Supreme Court, he can’t even be prosecuted even after leaving office, so long as there’s some fig leaf about this being official acts. As far as he’s concerned, he can get away with it because he can’t be held accountable.

My hope is that if there is, say, a Democratic House next year, perhaps even a Democratic Congress, he will soon learn that he can be held accountable—that there is a Congress that will hold hearings, that will consider impeachment, that will consider penalties that will actually matter. Because, up until now, he has gotten away with so much.

Sargent: I’ve said this before on this show, and I’m going to repeat it again: There is one body of people out there who can actually hold Trump accountable, and it’s the voters. We really need them to do that. We really need it, Steve. Steve Benen, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much. Good flag on this stuff, by the way.

Benen: Thank you, Greg. I appreciate it.

Removing TPS for approximately 330,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians is fundamentally a humanitarian issue, potentially forcing thousands to return to unsafe and even life-threatening circumstances in their home countries. But it will also have a dramatic economic effect within the United States, as the loss of workers and consumers will resonate in communities of all sizes throughout the country.

“They’re workers, they’re taxpayers, they’re consumers, they’re community members. And removing them not only impacts the workforce but their families, and their employers, and the local economy,” said Steven Hubbard, senior data scientist at the American Immigration Council.

Around 1.3 million people from 17 countries are protected through TPS, according to the latest data available from the Department of Homeland Security, as of March 31 last year. These designations are only in place for a finite period of time and must be extended by the government to continue. In 2025, the Trump administration terminated TPS for 10 countries, and four more countries have designations set to expire this year. The Supreme Court decision makes it much more likely that litigation challenging Trump’s efforts to end TPS for other countries will be successful.

“Employers will have to let those people go if they want to stay on the right side of the law, and in theory that group of people is expected to leave the country,” said Tara Watson, director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institute. “I don’t think most of them will, unless they are apprehended by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but it’s going to have a pretty big impact just because of the magnitude of the change.”

The impact of the Supreme Court’s decision could be felt almost immediately. Employers will have to fire Haitian and Syrian laborers who are only authorized to work through TPS. The loss of these protections could have a profound effect on the health care industry, and specifically in elder and home care, which employs a large number of Haitian workers. The health care industry is facing an ongoing labor shortage, meaning that it may be difficult to replace the jobs lost because of the termination of this program. TPS individuals also participate in construction, agriculture, hospitality, and retail industries in large numbers, and have a higher rate of workforce participation than U.S.-born individuals.

“Many have been living and working in the United States for years, and even probably for decades,” said Hubbard. If employers lose workers who may have years of experience in a particular field, it could be difficult to find replacements, he added.

A report by the American Immigration Council found that TPS individuals paid $10.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2021. Through their taxed income, they help bolster programs from which they themselves cannot benefit, including Social Security, Medicare, and safety net supports for low-income households. Since 2001, TPS individuals have contributed $20 billion to Social Security, according to the criminal justice and immigration advocacy organization FWD.us. The primary Social Security fund is facing insolvency by the end of 2032, according to an updated estimate from the fund’s trustees based in part on a projected decrease in immigration.

“They aren’t consuming as much in public benefits as people sometimes think, and are contributing fiscally to the economy,” Watson said about TPS holders. “Taking away this pipeline of resources for [Social Security] seems like a mistake at this particular moment.”

Then there are the knock-on effects for local economies. The surge in immigration enforcement operations in several cities in 2025 resulted in more job losses than they would have seen otherwise, according to the Brookings Institute. This included jobs in the arts and entertainment industries, which have fewer immigrant workers than other sectors. This could be an indication of how the loss of TPS holders could also affect even seemingly tangential industries.

Moreover, according to estimates from FWD.us, TPS holders contribute $29 billion annually to the American economy overall. In 2021, TPS holders had $8 billion in spending power, which can be used for necessities such as groceries and rent. The economic impact was especially great in Florida, California, Texas, and New York, where the bulk of TPS holders are concentrated; in the first three states, this population had more than $1.1 billion in spending power. The influx of TPS individuals in smaller cities, such as Springfield, Ohio, has bolstered local economies.

“If you think about communities—they require a tax base, they require people having income, because once they have income they spend it locally,” Hubbard said. “When that’s taken away, that can have negative consequences for many communities.”

TPS individuals have few and complicated pathways for staying in the U.S. legally, and the Supreme Court has rubber-stamped many of Trump’s efforts to limit methods for migrants to receive asylum or permanent residence. Many of them also live in households with U.S. citizen residents; according to FWD.us, TPS holders live with U.S.-born children. The consequences for this younger generation could be severe, particularly if their households are losing a wage earner.

“Their parents went from having regular formal sector jobs to not having those jobs and being at risk of deportation, so that’s going to affect a lot of children,” said Watson.

The declaration kicked off the Weather Underground’s yearslong bombing campaign against institutions of “American injustice,” including the New York Police Department headquarters, the State Department building, and the Pentagon. Young white Weatherwomen would dress as secretaries, plant incendiary devices in bathrooms, set timers, and walk out undetected. Later, someone would call in a warning to evacuate the targeted building before the bombs went off; there were never any fatalities. The goal was to draw attention to the Weather Underground’s causes—fighting for an end to the war in Vietnam and to racism at home.

In the 1960s, when Dohrn was studying at the University of Chicago, she had participated in the civil rights and anti-war movements in legal ways. As a law student in 1966, she conducted research on Chicago slumlords for Martin Luther King Jr. and marched with him through all-white neighborhoods to promote integration. She joined Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, in 1967 and traveled the country to provide advice to college students on how they could legally avoid conscription. But after King’s assassination and the My Lai massacre, Dohrn and many other white student activists in the SDS opted for militant action. “There’s no way to be committed to nonviolence in the middle of the most violent society history has ever created!” she told an SDS crowd in 1968. The next year, she split off a faction of the SDS into the Weathermen, committed to solidarity with the Black liberation struggle and with the Vietcong and other guerrillas fighting American imperialism abroad.

Dohrn became a counterculture hero and a symbol of anxiety over how America could turn a well-educated, middle-class white girl into a violent revolutionary. In fall 1970, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover called her “The Most Dangerous Woman in America.” She became the fourth woman in history to be placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, replacing Angela Davis. Along with her partner, Bill Ayers, also a member of the Weather Underground, she would spend nearly a decade as a fugitive, frequently changing identities and apartments and low-paying jobs, moving from city to city, all while remaining dedicated to the idea that the only worthwhile response to injustice is militant struggle.

But by the end of 1980—five years after the fall of Saigon, and with Ronald Reagan recently elected president—Dohrn felt that “the world had moved on.” It was time for her and Ayers to surface. The federal conspiracy charges against the two had long since been dropped, thanks to the FBI’s use of illegal surveillance tactics in the COINTELPRO program, but Dohrn was still wanted in Illinois on misdemeanor charges stemming from her role in a 1969 SDS uprising in Chicago called “the Days of Rage.” Her lawyer worked out a plea deal for probation, and she and Ayers drove from Harlem to Chicago so she could turn herself in.

For Dohrn and Ayers, the strongest motive to leave the fugitive lifestyle behind was the fact that they had two additional passengers in their blue station wagon: their sons Zayd, almost four, and Malik, not yet one. In his new book, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, now a playwright and professor at Northwestern University, returns to what he calls “one of the most challenging tasks of my early childhood”—“understanding my mother’s revolutionary commitment.” Through interviews with his parents and their fellow radicals, as well as access to family documents and thousands of pages of newly declassified FBI documents, Dohrn pieces together his parents’ motivations, the extreme personal costs of their actions, and their conflicted loyalties—to the movement on the one hand and to their young family on the other.

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young, which takes its title from the 1969 Jefferson Airplane song “We Can Be Together,” represents Dohrn’s second attempt to understand his family’s revolutionary history. In 2022, he released a 10-part podcast series with Crooked Media called Mother Country Radicals, which traces his parents’ radicalization in the 1960s and involvement in the Weather Underground in the 1970s, tells the story of the group’s rise through the counterculture, and explores its collaborations with groups like the Black Panthers and its splinter cell, the Black Liberation Army.

The book’s structure highlights the tension between his parents’ dedication to changing the world and their responsibilities toward their family; each section of the book opens with a chapter set during Dohrn’s early childhood. The effect is to highlight the burdens of being raised underground, “living on the margins of society, under assumed names, with no school or regular place to call home, all to fight for ideals that were too abstract for us kids to begin to understand,” as Dohrn puts it. Both he and his brother were born at home and lacked birth certificates. As a toddler, Zayd learned from Ayers how to spot undercover FBI agents and plainclothes cops (“even disguised in long hair and scruffy jeans, undercovers usually wear cheap leather loafers, well-shined”). He recalls that “the closest I ever came to feeling totally safe in my family” was when they were together on the road, in flight.

Growing up as the child of two Weather Underground revolutionaries also meant that Dorhn’s childhood education revolved around “radical lesson[s]” about race, class, and gender. Both boys were named for “freedom fighters”—Zayd for Zayd Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army killed in a shoot-out with New Jersey state troopers in 1973; Malik to honor the middle names of both Shakur and Malcolm X. “My parents always made it clear, even when my brother and I were still toddlers, that the only acceptable purpose in life, given our gender and skin color … was to find a way to fight for a better world,” he writes. “They showed us, in books and stories and by direct example, that white people in particular had a moral responsibility to be militant comrades in the struggle for Black liberation.”

But while Dohrn makes clear his own leftist politics in the book, he didn’t choose to take up his parents’ brand of activism. He has carved out a more solitary path as a writer, observer, questioner. In a chapter about attending a protest against Operation Desert Storm with his parents as a teenager, Dohrn reflects on this split: He has always understood the necessity of mass protest, but he is temperamentally “suspicious” of crowds. He goes on to surmise that this characteristic could be “a reaction against my parents—their willingness to be swept away by a movement, to sacrifice their free will and agency, and even their own morality, in the name of mass solidarity.”

Dohrn empathizes with his parents’ political motivations, weighing the personal and moral costs of revolution, while refusing to write off the idealism that powered it. “All of us kids who grew up in the underground know intimately the costs and tragedies of that struggle,” he writes. “But if all we inherit is their failure and tragedy, then we lose the value of their hope and idealism. Their youthful courage and fierce commitment to a cause. And the motive force of their wild and radical imagination.”

And though Dohrn doesn’t dwell on recent events, he does note that Americans today are facing “a new era of American authoritarianism and racial reckoning, a new moment of widespread resistance and impetus for radical change”—a time when idealism and principled resistance is indispensable. It’s hard not to think of the nonviolent protesters and legal observers who have been met with harassment, violence, and even lethal force, as they came together to protect their neighbors from Donald Trump’s ICE surges in the last year. At a time when exercising one’s constitutionally protected right to protest can come with mortal danger, how do activists balance what they owe to the world against what they owe their families, especially their children?

Dohrn’s parents had always told him a relatively neat story about where they placed the dividing line between activism and raising a family. When he was born, they assured him, they had forgone political violence in order to devote themselves to raising him—even if it didn’t always feel that way.

When his parents came out of hiding in 1980, it seemed that they were choosing to give up their roles to dedicate themselves to their sons. As Dohrn writes, that was the narrative he absorbed from family as a child:

If my mom and dad had done things in the past that were dangerous and illegal—I knew they had done them for the right reasons. To help people. To make the world a better place. And I trusted that they had stopped taking those terrifying risks after I was born. They had always told me—and I believed, as one of the first tenets of my childhood faith—that my brother and I were their first priority, the center of their hopes and dreams for the future.

But the statement Bernardine Dohrn read after surrendering in a Chicago courtroom in 1980 made clear that becoming a mother had not softened her revolutionary ideals. “I regret not at all our efforts to side with the forces of liberation,” she said. “The nature of the system has not changed. Given the system which perpetuates such harsh oppression and suffering, rebellion is inevitable and continuous. And I remain committed to the struggle ahead.”

Less than two years later, her family would be left to grapple with her revolutionary commitments when she was locked up in a federal jail in Manhattan, held in contempt of grand jury for refusing to testify against her comrades in the Black Liberation Army, against whom the government was trying to build a racketeering case. She would spend seven months incarcerated. Zayd was five years old when his worst fear as a child—that his mother would be caught and taken away from him—came true. “As the days of our separation stretched into weeks and then months—as it went from sudden rupture to bleak routine—I started to wonder how my mother could continue to choose loyalty to her friends over love for us,” he writes. “I didn’t understand the legal subtleties of her case, but I knew she was making a choice—day after day after day after day—not to come home.”

The “myth” Zayd and Malik were raised with was that their parents “gave up on political violence. They stopped bombing buildings and breaking people out of jail…. They told us they had committed themselves to love for us, to a different kind of future.” But while researching Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young, Dohrn would learn that his father participated in a jailbreak in 1979, when Bernardine was pregnant with Malik. He would learn that, around that same time, his mother participated in an identity theft scheme to aid white female members of a Weather Underground splinter group, who were in turn offering solidarity to a cell of the Black Liberation Army, itself a splinter group of the Black Panthers.

His parents would be forced to confront just how perilous it could be to continue to act as movement soldiers while starting a family when their comrades Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert received lengthy prison sentences for their roles in a 1981 armed robbery with members of the BLA that resulted in the deaths of two police officers and a security guard. Boudin and Gilbert’s son, Chesa, was only 14 months old at the time. Dorhn and Ayers adopted Chesa and raised him alongside Zayd and Malik.

Some of the most affecting passages of the book come as Dohrn challenges his father to confront the risks he took even after Zayd’s and Malik’s births. “I am seventy-six years old, and I have felt the most vivid sense of having survived and squeaked through again and again and again,” Ayers said. “The sense Bernardine and I always had was, there but for fortune. Because we were all living on the edge.”

In truth, his parents had been thinking for several years about how raising children could fit into their political vision. A Weather Underground communiqué from December 1970 holds hints of the parenting philosophy. Earlier that year, three Weathermen died in an accidental explosion of hundreds of pounds of dynamite in a West Village townhouse—dynamite that the New York cell of the group was planning to use at an officers’ dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey, which could have been deadly not just to members of the military but to civilians, as the Weathermen did not plan to call in a warning. In the aftermath, Bernardine reflected on a new path forward for the underground: “the townhouse forever destroyed our belief that armed struggle is the only real revolutionary struggle.” Instead, the group was thinking seriously “about how hard it will be to fight in Amerika and how long it will take for us to win.” In the meantime, she wrote, she suggested a turn to the personal and domestic:

People have been experimenting with everything about their lives, fierce against the ways of the white man…. They’ve moved to the country and found new ways to bring up free wild children. People are forming new families ... they are units of people to trust each other both to live together and to organize and fight together.

As Dohrn explains, the idea that “having children was revolutionary” was drawn from the Black liberation movement. His mother would go on to take inspiration from Assata Shakur, a member of the BLA, who in 1974 gave birth to a daughter conceived with a fellow BLA soldier behind bars. Sha­kur later explained how she thought about having a child when she saw the world as a “terrible, terrible place”: “I thought about my mother. My grandmother. My great-great-great-grandmothers. And what they must have thought about as slaves bringing life into this world. And we just decided that we were going to live, you know?”

By the time Dohrn was born in 1977, the Weather Underground had dissolved. “Without the moral gravity of opposition to the Vietnam war, and with the cultural zeitgeist shifting against them, the group was isolated and adrift, increasingly vulnerable to the purity tests and infighting that have always afflicted progressive leftist movements,” Dohrn explains. His parents needed to find a new sense of purpose, a new way to make sense of their pasts and to move forward in a future they had not imagined living long enough to see.

In his conversations with his parents and through revisiting their letters, statements, and other documents, Dohrn comes to understand that his parents did not see their commitments to the larger world and their commitments to their children as contradictory. “Asked to choose between solidarity and family, revolution and romantic or familial love, my parents and their comrades chose the cause every time,” he writes. “This bothered me for a long time—it still bothers me, as a son and as a father—but I’ve come to think that, in my parents’ minds, the two ideas are inseparable: the fight to build a better world is a manifestation of their hopes for the future; the revolution itself is a birthright to pass on to their children and their children’s children.”

This is a complicated legacy, one that can come with devastating consequences, as evidenced by the fates of many from the radical underground of the 1960s and 1970s, who died or were imprisoned and left behind young children. But it opens up an enduring set of questions. What is worth fighting for? And who should be prepared to fight, when they have obligations to care for family? Is fighting for a better world also a fight for one’s children?

The settlers, as if they were the ones in danger, alerted an army unit, and soldiers arrived, bearing a military document that declared the area off-limits to civilians. They ordered the Palestinians and the activists to leave—but not the settlers. By the day’s end, eight Palestinians were arrested and held for hours, one of them for days. One of the Israeli activists was questioned by police and released on condition that she not enter the West Bank for 15 days, as if keeping her away would prevent trouble. 

Pruning the vines—on which the farmers depend for their livelihood, all the more so since being barred from working in Israel after the Hamas attack from Gaza of October 7, 2023—is essential to ensure the yield. But they remained unpruned.

This picture of one day in the West Bank, in the lush farm country between Hebron and Bethlehem, is pieced together from the accounts of two of the activists and one of the Palestinians, from the brief video footage, and from an oblique response from the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson’s office to my questions. It’s a scene in the ongoing saga of Halhul’s vineyards, and in the larger story of settler harassment and violence.

But it’s also part of the story of a growing number of Israelis engaged in a form of activism known as “protective presence”: accompanying Palestinian farmers and shepherds, putting themselves at risk of arrest and injury, and in doing so bringing settler terror into the spotlight of Israeli media and political debate.

Settler attacks on Palestinians have escalated drastically in recent years, according to human rights groups, especially since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power at the end of 2022 as the head of an extreme right-wing government. A key factor has been the coordinated effort by settler groups to expand beyond suburban settlements to take physical control of much more land and to drive Palestinians off it. To do so, they’ve established small outposts, typically a single family accompanied by a few teenage boys—the so-called hilltop youth—who engage in farming and especially in grazing sheep, goats, and cattle over wide areas. A few outposts have been removed by Israeli authorities. Most have enjoyed support, including grazing permits and security equipment, such as all-terrain vehicles, from government bodies.

Over the three years of 2023 to 2025, 185 new outposts were set up in the West Bank, according to Hagit Ofran of the Peace Now movement’s Settlement Watch project, and researcher Dror Etkes of the Kerem Navot organization. (“Kerem Navot”—the vineyard of Naboth—is a reference to the Biblical story of how the evil King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, stole a poor man’s land.) By the end of last year, these outposts had taken de facto control of an eye-popping more than 264,000 acres, nearly one-fifth of the entire West Bank, Ofran told me.

To do this, settlers have engaged in tactics ranging from fencing off grazing land and stealing agricultural tools to attacking farmers in their groves during harvests to rampages through villages. The violence reached a peak this spring when public attention in Israel was focused on the constant missile alerts of the war with Iran. During the six weeks of that conflict, the Yesh Din (There Is Law) human rights organization tallied 378 incidents of settler violence, with 200 Palestinians injured and eight shot dead.

On a recent day, I drove from Jerusalem with Gilles Alexandre, a 73-year-old member of the Jordan Valley Activists, to the pasturelands on the slopes above that valley in the northeast corner of the West Bank. Alexandre’s group works with about a dozen small Palestinian communities in the area, each consisting of one large family or several and their livestock, some living in semipermanent tents. A larger number of communities have abandoned their encampments under settler pressure. The rains were unusually good last winter, but outpost settlers regularly block hungry herds from reaching the high grass.

At a place known as Hamamat Al Malih, settlers allegedly stole 350 sheep last summer, taking what they could manage, killing the rest, and leaving the corpses in the fields. The last family of Palestinian herders gave up and left the spot early this spring. A small schoolhouse still served about 60 Palestinian children from the area until one night in April, when parties unknown bulldozed the building. Afterward, on a Jordan Valley Activists’ WhatsApp group, a member shared a picture of a book he’d found in the wreckage: an Arabic translation of Hebrew poet Leah Goldberg’s classic Room for Rent, a fable meant to teach children acceptance of people different from themselves. (Later, when I asked a spokesperson for Israel’s national police force if the sheep rustling or the school demolition was being investigated, I received the Kafkaesque response that he could only answer if I supplied the file numbers of the investigations.) We found only concrete and metal rubble, and a broken swing set and seesaw in the silent playground.

In a field a few miles from the ruins of the school, we met Nitsan Michaeli and two other activists, along with two Palestinian shepherds grazing their 800 sheep. Michaeli wore a loose shirt and pants, a wide-brimmed cloth hat, and a trim grey beard framing his deeply tanned face; he carried a staff and a cell phone and had a body camera hooked to the straps of his backpack.

A few minutes earlier, he said, a pair of settlers riding a dirt bike and a four-wheel ATV had approached. When Michaeli blocked their path and started filming them, the settlers left, most likely because they feared the effect of photographic evidence of whatever they had planned. For most of the Israeli public, what happens in the West Bank, an hour’s drive or less from their homes, might be “beyond the mountains of darkness,” to use an ancient Hebrew phrase. But videos posted on social media with Hebrew texts and shared with Israeli journalists are bringing the range war onto Israelis’ television and phone screens—and recruiting more activists who will film yet more testimony of what is increasingly and accurately described within Israel as Jewish terror.

In some cases, though, protective presence simply means putting oneself between the attackers and Palestinians. In December 2023, Alexandre was spending the night at Al Farisiya, another herding community in the northern Jordan Valley. Assailants who invaded the encampment at two in the morning blasted pepper spray in his eyes, continuing to attack him with stones after he collapsed, and severely beat another Israeli volunteer who tried to protect him. With the activists’ help, though, the Al Farisiya community has resisted expulsion.

Michaeli began accompanying herdsmen 10 years ago, after the first outpost appeared in the area. That was the start of the Jordan Valley Activists. Today the group has over 100 volunteers from around Israel, with as many as 20 in the field at any time. Since October 7, as attacks increased, more people have joined and have begun spending nights as well as days with the herding communities.

Other groups work elsewhere in the West Bank, a geographic division of labor. They are engaged in a battle of attrition in the face of settlers who have the stronger hand, at least as long as this government is in power.

Yet protective presence is the bravest and probably the most effective Israeli resistance to settlement I’ve seen. I’ve covered settlement in the occupied territories for over 40 years, and I wrote the authoritative history of how the disastrous project began. Since the start, there have been Israelis who opposed settlement. Yet while they spoke, and wrote, and voted, and held protests, the supporters of settlement built roads and homes, and they moved in and stayed. The protective presence volunteers are in fact present, in the West Bank, connected to Palestinian communities, making them visible to other Israelis.

Bnei Avraham stands out because its volunteers are overwhelmingly young—and religious. The group began in 2022; the following year it became part of the newly formed Hasmol Ha’emuni (The Faithful Left) movement, which seeks to reclaim Judaism from the revanchist reading of the religious right that has become the most visible face of the settlement movement.

Efrat Reubinof, one of Bnei Avraham’s founders, spent her teen years at a girls’ boarding school she described a “flagship” of hard-line Orthodoxy and nationalism, and later continued her religious studies at an academy for young women in a West Bank settlement where the curriculum included visits to outposts. In a process of “questioning all sorts of things I grew up with,” she told me, the turning point was attending, “out of curiosity,” a dialogue seminar of Palestinian and Israeli women in Germany, and hearing “firsthand what it’s like living under the occupation in the West Bank.”

Roei Kleitman, another of the founders, says that Bnei Avraham chose to focus on the region around Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank in part because many of its members had earlier studied in the prominent religious academies in settlements in that area. The group decided to work with farmers in large, established communities such as Halhul that can withstand pressure to leave but are in danger of losing their farmlands. There, he says, the Israeli activists can “join the impressive struggle of Palestinians who believe in nonviolent resistance.”

The activists have, however, regularly been the target of violence. “Settlers have thrown stones at us, sprayed us with pepper gas,” says Reubinof. “I’ve been pushed, and kicked,” she says, and pauses a quarter of a second before adding, “and touched, like, in a harassing way.” But “if we hadn’t been with the Palestinians,” she said, the settlers “also could have shot at them.” Reubinof is speaking to me at a sidewalk table outside a tiny Jerusalem café on a peaceful evening, yet her voice is the narration of a completely different scene, the confrontation outside Halhul where settlers descended from an outpost and she was recognized by soldiers as the activists’ leader and arrested.

“It feels like a duty,” she says, “to stand and resist and say” to the settlers, “No, you don’t represent me, you aren’t connected to the religion that I believe in.”

Bnei Avraham’s first contact in Halhul was Mohammad Shaban, who owns 15 acres of vineyards. When the first volunteers came, he told me, many people in the town said “they don’t trust Israeli people,” believing that “they are all the same.” Then the townspeople saw that when the farmers and activists managed to reach vineyards together, the Israelis worked harder than anyone else, and Bnei Avraham volunteers were injured in confrontations. During Ramadan, Shaban invited the Israelis to an iftar meal with Halhul residents. Halhul children met Israelis who were not soldiers, and religious Israelis who were not settlers. Shared meals became a ritual. On a day that I visited Halhul with a dozen volunteers, I listened as, over a meal of hummus and pita, Kleitman and Shaban compared the stories of Moses in the Bible and the Quran.

“We became like a family,” says Shaban. “They became famous in Halhul.” And beyond: Palestinian communities keep contacting Bnei Avraham asking for help. The number of volunteers is now over 150.

In parallel, protective presence activists have boosted coverage in the Israeli media of settler violence. Shaban notes that Bnei Avraham has brought journalists from the mainstream daily Yediot Aharonot to Halhul. A columnist for the paper’s weekend magazine recently accompanied activists to another West Bank town, Tarqumiyah. A recent hour-long report by Israel’s public TV channel on attacks on Palestinians by settlers serving as army reservists began with an interview with Bnei Avraham’s Kleitman.

An ex-general, working with activists, has brought retired high officers and security officials to the northern Jordan Valley. Veteran military correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai accompanied four former generals on such a tour and wrote in Yediot Aharonot that the settlers were engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of much of the West Bank, carrying out the strategy of the far right with Netanyahu’s cooperation. This is a simple, uncomfortable fact, but Ben-Yishai’s voice makes it harder for centrist Israelis to ignore.

The coverage is crucial, because a strategy of nonviolent resistance succeeds by arousing a much larger political constituency against an evil. On a day-to-day level, protective presence volunteers may enable shepherds and farmers to hold on. Stopping the campaign of violence and expulsion depends on national politics: first, on turning Netanyahu and his allies out of power in this fall’s election, and second, on ensuring that the very diverse coalition likely to succeed them is under public pressure to reverse this government’s policy toward settlers and Palestinians.

 The activists willing to put their bodies on the line are a conduit through which the picture of what is happening to Palestinians in the pastures and farmlands of the West Bank reaches the living rooms of Israelis. Covering settlement has sometimes pushed me toward despair. With the protective presence activists, I allowed myself to hope. 

A cynic might observe that Trump’s special treatment is no different from that of American chief executives in the private sector who are similarly insulated from failure. But Trump’s payday puts theirs in the shade. The only CEO whose compensation exceeded Trump’s last year was Elon Musk, who (for now) is a category of one. Musk’s $158 billion pay package from Tesla last year was more than 15 times larger than the combined pay packages of the other 391 chief executives surveyed in late June by The Wall Street Journal.

If we set Musk aside, the highest-paid chief executive in the Journal’s ranking was Shankh Mitra, chief executive of Welltower, “a real estate investment trust focused on senior housing and healthcare.” Let’s leave for another day the ethics of harvesting a vast personal fortune from the physical and mental decline of one’s fellow human beings. My point here is that Mitra’s obscene pay package last year of $821 million was less than half of Trump’s $2.2 billion. Plus, I bet Mitra had to put in at least some actual work.

I observed a year ago that Trump is America’s first rentier president. A rentier is someone who makes his money through the possession of assets rather than the exertion of labor. Rentiers are capitalism’s nepo babies. Prior to Trump, the main rentier occupations were real estate and finance. Trump himself was a classic rentier capitalist, a rich kid who joined the family real estate business, exaggerated his success to a credulous tabloid press, and inherited $413 million from his more successful father. Trump moved the family business from dowdy apartment buildings in Brooklyn and Queens to luxury apartments and hotels in Manhattan and beyond, but many of these went bankrupt. In 2018, The Economist concluded Trump would have made more money had he been a more conventional rentier and invested daddy’s money in index funds.

The rentier presidency is a much more lucrative proposition than rentier capitalism, and one with which index funds can’t possibly compete. Crucially, there is no index fund that lets you acquire a stake without investing money or labor. During the 2024 presidential campaign the Trump family acquired a 60 percent stake in World Liberty Financial and was granted 75 percent on net revenues from token sales. (The Trump family stake in the company, the less valuable part of this deal, has since fallen to 38 percent.) Trump did not pay for these privileges, yet last year he earned more than $594 million from them. Neither is there any evidence, according to Reuters’ Bergin, that Trump ever paid for his stakes in the crypto firms ALT5 Sigma, American Bitcoin, or Celebration Coins. This last alone netted Trump more than $636 million last year.

The business press often notes these days that Trump has become less a real estate investor than a crypto investor. But to call Trump a crypto investor is a misnomer because investors, um, invest. Trump doesn’t invest. He receives.

Nor should we call Trump a media investor, because Trump didn’t pay one cent to acquire his majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group. This company owns Truth Social, on which Trump posts his late-night rants, and “has engaged,” Michael Hiltzik observed last March in The Los Angeles Times, “in a number of baroque financial transactions.” It works out well for Trump that he didn’t put money into Trump Media & Technology Group because it lost $715 million last year on revenue of $3.7 million. Yet Trump’s stake in this money-losing venture somehow remains, according to his latest filing, worth more than $50 million. Nice work if you can get it.

The business model for a rentier presidency might puzzle the untutored, given the extensive losses involved. Why would anyone invest with the president of the United States? Some of them are just suckers, still bedazzled by the phony business-genius image he created during 14 TV seasons of “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice.” But others derive value in other ways. The United Arab Emirates bought a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial for about $500 million, then dropped another $2 billion on a World Liberty Financial stablecoin, and in return got an export ban lifted on AI computer chips. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao found various ways to boost World Liberty Financial, including giving the firm some software free of charge, and snagged a presidential pardon. Other examples of Trump auctioning off government policy are too numerous to mention, but Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, provided a pretty good overview in a recent floor speech (video and transcript).

Often what’s paid to Trump is protection money against some non-specific future harm. That explains ABC’s $16 million settlement of a baseless defamation suit Trump brought against George Stephanopoulos, and CBS’s $16 million settlement of a baseless election-interference suit Trump brought over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. These were shakedowns for Trump’s presidential library. The ABC and CBS windfalls landed there, according to the financial disclosure, along with a $24.5 million settlement with Meta over Trump’s post-January 6 suspension from Facebook and Instagram, and a $22 million settlement with Google over Trump’s post-January 6 suspension from You Tube.

People often speculate that Trump ran for president in 2024 in order to stay out of jail. That’s certainly possible. But I’m more inclined to think he did it to stay out of bankruptcy court. It’s hard to remember, but as recently as March 2024 bankruptcy looked like a real possibility for the ex-president, at least to me. At that time Trump was worth a mere $2.6 billion, according to Forbes, and his net-worth trajectory over the previous decade was downward.

What a difference a presidential election makes. By March 2026 Forbes put Trump’s net worth at $6.5 billion. In 2024, according to last year’s financial disclosure, Trump earned more than $622 million. In 2025, according to this year’s financial disclosure, Trump earned more than $2.2 billion. How does a full-time politician increase his wealth by $4 billion over two years and his income by $1.6 billion over one? To ask the question is to answer it. And on top of everything else, he gets free housing.

In the Roman era, passing through a free-standing arch—its attic and friezes crowded with reliefs depicting military victories and the spoils of war—meant taking a historical tour of some of the empire’s greatest triumphs. The aim of the so-called Independence Arch is less clear. The 250-foot-tall structure is supposedly intended to honor America’s semiquincentennial, but when asked whom it’s being built for, Trump replied, “Me.” (Some observers have thus taken to calling it the “Arc de Trump.”)

Trump, like a Roman emperor, is obsessed with building and renaming things in his honor. The arch has not begun construction, but the same can’t be said for his massive ballroom, for which he leveled the East Wing of the White House with nary an approval. Dulles International Airport may be next. Trump also had his name etched into the Kennedy Center (since removed, to comply with a court order) and the U.S. Institute of Peace (still there). He has plans for a National Garden of American Heroes on the National Mall, and he even wants people to think of him when they peer into the peeling, algae-infested Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In Trump’s attempt to remake an already great capital, he brings to mind one twentieth-century leader in particular: Benito Mussolini.

If, when in Rome, you were to take the subway south from the historic center, past the point where noisy tourists thin out, you would surface in a sea of massive white marble and travertine buildings—a neighborhood almost too geometrically perfect, and eerily out of place in a city known for its narrow streets and warm ochre or burnt orange walls. This is the Esposizione Universale Roma, or EUR: a fascist, megalomaniacal dreamland founded by the Italian dictator in 1937.

Mussolini’s construction obsession, like Trump’s, was about etching himself into the historical record. (Il Duce also liked putting his name on things, like the obelisk in Rome’s Foro Italico—or the avenue beyond, which is paved with mosaics spelling out “DVCE” again and again.) The EUR was intended to prove Italy’s might and the success of fascism to the entire world: a sprawling exposition space for the 1942 World’s Fair, where Mussolini would receive representatives from every nation—not unlike Trump’s $600 million ballroom, where visiting heads of state will encounter gilded Corinthian columns and gold-inlaid ceilings. But the most revealing thing about the EUR, and what connects it most directly to Trump, is what Mussolini was trying to replace.

The mock-ups of the arch that were approved last month by the Trump-packed Commission of Fine Arts are pure neoclassical pastiche: a heavy attic with the inscription “One Nation Under God,” topped by a winged “Lady Liberty” flanked by two eagles (all three in gold, of course). It recalls a form perfected by Rome’s conquering generals and, much later, borrowed by Napoleon for the 164-foot Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The antecedent is precise, and almost every strongman since has been inspired by the same playbook, knowingly or not. But no one in the modern era understood the power of pulling from ancient architecture more instinctively than Mussolini.

“An architecture made of arches and columns is easily understandable by the masses,” explained Paolo Nicoloso, a historian and the author of Mussolini, Architect, which examines the dictator’s role in shaping major construction projects during the latter part of his reign.

Nicoloso notes that Mussolini, who ruled from 1922 until his execution in 1945, used architecture to perpetuate two narratives that were crucial to his power: that of Romanità or Romanness, the belonging to a great and civilizationally essential nation; and his own personal legend, as the man delivering or returning greatness to a people that had ostensibly been denied it. “Fascism governed through myths,” he said. “This myth made people believe that, after almost 2,000 years, a new people of world rulers, Mussolini’s Italians, was reborn with the regime” and was “once again set to dominate the world.”

At first, in seeking broad consent from the public, Mussolini’s government built schools, nurseries, opera houses, and homes for the disabled, but Nicoloso says Mussolini later pivoted to more “daring” projects, reaching for a more traditionalist style, closer to the classical idiom of Rome, to cement his rule. The EUR was to be the crowning achievement of his architectural projection of power, a celebration of 20 years of fascism and the rebirth of the new Roman Empire.

While he involved a coterie of the most brilliant architects of his era, Mussolini was also personally invested in the EUR, conceiving it as a modern reinvention of imperial glory fused with rationalism, Italy’s answer to the international modern movement—a synthesis the regime would name the Stile Littorio. Today, walking down the wide boulevards flanked by leggy Roman pines, the effect is both impressive and jarring: The form is unmistakably ancient and familiar, yet the scale and the cold geometric repetition feel subtly, deliberately alien. It is, in a word, uncanny.

The best example and the area’s most remarkable monument is the six-story Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. Romans call it the Square Colosseum, which tells you most of what you need to know: It’s exactly what you would get if you compressed the most famous round arena on earth into a rectangular box and stood it on one end. What better way to make an impact on the masses than to put your own twist on one of the most striking ancient landmarks in the world?

The palace highlights the absurdity of the entire project. Mussolini was ruling from Rome, one of the most beautiful, historically significant cities in the world, and the actual Colosseum was a few miles up the road, not to mention real imperial ruins scattered across the city. And yet, he decided that the city he ruled needed a new center, built by him, that would make everything that came before look like a prelude to his arrival. So he spent a fortune raising a second Rome on the edge of the first—because the past, to be useful, had to be remade as his.

Rather than accepting his place in a long line of leaders who had shaped the city before him, Mussolini wanted to eclipse them entirely by moving Rome’s center of gravity away from the legacy of everyone who had come before him and anchor it to himself instead. Trump is doing the exact same in D.C. Where previous presidents understood themselves as stewards of an institution greater than themselves, and were honored to become part of a long line of American presidents, Trump wants to be its culmination—the most important name in a city full of important names.

Mussolini, like Trump, had plans to build a triumphal arch of sorts in the EUR, to be called the Arch of the Empire—a towering parabola of steel and aluminum, not unlike the Gateway Arch built in St. Louis in the early 1960s. It never got built, like much of what Mussolini had planned for the EUR: Construction of the district began in 1938 and continued through Italy’s entry into the war in 1940, but fighting drained the regime’s resources and the 1942 World’s Fair was ultimately canceled.

Only one building was fully completed before the war: the Palazzo degli Uffici, whose entrance still bears a bas-relief depicting Rome’s history from Romulus and Remus through to Mussolini himself, on horseback, at the bottom. The other half-finished marble palaces were occupied by the Germans after the fascist government fell in 1943, then by the Allies after Germany’s defeat. The postwar Italian government—backed by Washington, which preferred Christian Democrats to antifascist partisans and Communists, who would have likely razed it to the ground—finished the neighborhood in time for the 1960 Olympics, sticking to Mussolini’s original plans. The bones of the quarter remained his, and the idea of EUR endured.

The myth of Mussolini the tireless builder, founder of cities, survived the man precisely because his buildings all over the country did. Architecture, the most patient form of propaganda, kept making its case long after the propagandist was gone and his ideology shunned. That, no doubt, is also the 80-year-old Trump’s intention.

Nicoloso is careful not to flatten the comparison between Mussolini and Trump. The latter, he emphasized, is volatile in a way Mussolini was not, and it is hard to know whether his plans for the Memorial Circle arch “reflect a coherent plan or merely a whim.” That Trump should reach for classical architecture, “a time-tested, age-old instrument of power in the digital age, is certainly striking,” Nicoloso remarked, but he added: “I doubt that the extraordinary fascination that architecture held for the masses a century ago has the same hold on digital man today.”

The ideologues behind Trump’s construction push suffer no such hesitation. Chief among them is Justin Shubow, president of a small Washington nonprofit called the National Civic Art Society, who helped draft Trump’s executive order last August titled “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” a revival of a near-identical order from Trump’s first term, which President Joe Biden scrapped.

A critic rather than a practicing architect, Shubow has long argued that the architecture of American democracy was hijacked some 75 years ago by a modernist elite contemptuous of “ordinary people,” and calls brutalism, the raw-concrete style of midcentury government buildings, “aesthetic pollution.” Praising Trump’s order, he wrote that “since the mid-20th century, Modernist mandarins controlling government architecture have been forcing ugly designs upon us.”

Shubow’s argument has genuine populist purchase because it is half true. Federal Washington is overwhelmingly neoclassical, and the midcentury turn to modernism was a real break from it. Americans associate government buildings with columns and domes because that is what they mainly were and are today. (And to be fair, Shubow’s view of Washington’s brutalist buildings is widely held among locals.)

The Founders saw their fragile new republic as the heir to Athens and republican Rome, and they wanted the buildings to say so. Thomas Jefferson modeled Virginia’s Capitol building on a Roman temple precisely to claim that lineage in stone. The U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the earlier memorials along the Mall used classicism as an argument that the United States belonged among the self-governing republics of antiquity.

“Monuments can do different kinds of work politically under different circumstances,” said Reinhold Martin, a professor of architecture at Columbia University and co-editor of Architecture Against Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International.

Martin draws a distinction between buildings that mainly do something and buildings that mainly mean something. The dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority, built under the New Deal, are monumental as well as functional, public works for the general welfare. “In the case that we’re faced with now in the United States, we’re dealing mostly with symbols,” he explained. Referring to Trump and his cronies, Martin added, “In the world of architectural language, they are trying to transcend to a previous era and identify with ancient classicism, what they perceive as the heart and soul of the civilization, which is usually some form of mythic civilization.”

For Martin, the style is not the scandal so much as the spirit behind it. Gold laid on gold, a ballroom bolted onto the White House where the East Wing once stood, grandeur measured by the ounce, an arch meant to overshadow both the monuments of the National Mall and Arlington National Cemetery. He calls it “a form of barbaric kitsch, because the term that applies most directly to these arches and the ballrooms is a kind of aesthetic barbarism.”

Trump’s obsession with building “classical” monuments is, like Mussolini’s was, an overcompensation his country doesn’t need. If he were the ruler of a small, young nation, the impulse to borrow historical grandeur by raising gilded Roman arches would at least partially make sense. But the United States, on the 250th anniversary of its independence, should be secure enough in its identity and culture not to have to ransack the pasts of other countries. France, after all, built the Arc de Triomphe during its imperial era, but it does not build new ones (well, not “classical ones,” anyway). Confident nations let their old monuments stand and build forward. The United States deserves a president with the vision to do that—or, at least, one who is less susceptible to revisionists and more concerned with building a public legacy that’s worth carving into marble.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, Trump announced to the crowd that he’d just spoken with the twenty-sixth president, who died more than 100 years ago.

“I even had a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt,” Trump said. “I said, ‘What did you think about the Panama Canal? Do you consider that your greatest achievement? How do you feel about the fact that the Democrats gave the Panama Canal away to Panama for $1?’”

Trump: "I even had a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt. I said, 'What do you think about the Panama Canal? Do you consider that your greatest achievement and how do you feel about the fact that the Democrats gave the Panama Canal away to Panama for $1?'" pic.twitter.com/nP0ox7ensO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2026

Despite what many people on the internet seemed to think, the 80-year-old president was not publicly sundowning. He was referring to an interaction he’d just had with an eerie, lifelike AI simulation of Roosevelt.

A video posted by Margo Martin, a special assistant to the president, showed Trump listening intently as the fake Roosevelt reminded Trump that “the nation comes first.”

“Well, I appreciate those words, those words are fantastic,” Trump said. “I just want to say it was an honor to be with you today, we are taking a little bit of a tour of some of the fantastic things you’ve done.”

.@POTUS interacts with AI President Theodore Roosevelt at the Theodore Roosevelt Library in North Dakota 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/4ISRo2Tsbj

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) July 1, 2026

There’s something deeply sad about watching the forty-seventh president speak to a computer-generated version of the twenty-sixth. It has a similar effect to watching your elderly grandfather chat with a young, hot single on an online forum: It’s not real, grandpa. Now, go back to bed.

Trump’s fascination with AI presidents is nothing new. The president’s lackluster Great American State Fair features its own AI George Washington to chat with attendees—what few of them there are.

Trump has previously used his praise for Roosevelt to push his agenda to “take back” the Panama Canal—which, along with the threatened annexations of Greenland and Canada, are at the heart of his disastrous “Donroe Doctrine.”

“During my first term it was a privilege to sign the bill that helped get this incredible project underway, and transferring 90 acres,” Trump said at the ceremony for the library’s opening Wednesday. “We took it right out of the federal government. We ripped it away from the federal government, they don’t know it’s missing. They still haven’t figured out what the hell happened.”

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation bought 90.3 acres of protected land from the U.S. Forest Service in 2021, after a bill supported by President Trump triggered the sale in December 2020.

Aside from the sale, Trump has significantly rolled back environmental protections that Roosevelt championed during his tenure, weakening the Endangered Species Act and exposing 86 million previously protected acres to drilling and development.

Trump on taxpayer funds for the Roosevelt library: "We ripped it away from the federal government. They don't know it's missing. They still haven't figured out what the hell happened." pic.twitter.com/vJiwYEC4BS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2026

First the Supreme Court struck down his executive order banning birthright citizenship on Tuesday morning because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Then, hours later, a federal judge dismissed the White House’s effort to acquire New Hampshire’s voter information. After that, two federal judges shut down the president’s restrictions on a student loan forgiveness program.

On New Hampshire, U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante found the administration’s request to get the state’s voter registration list infringed the Civil Rights Act’s provisions on federal election records. LaPlante also ruled that the Justice Department couldn’t find any real violations of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which created standards for states’ voter registration lists and voting systems, to merit access to the voter rolls.

It’s the tenth time the DOJ has lost a case in which it sought voter information from a state government. Judges have ruled against the Trump administration in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, and dismissed a Georgia effort because it was filed in the wrong city.

On student loans, federal judges appointed by President Biden in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts blocked Trump’s attempt to reshape the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which helps those who work for the government or nonprofit organizations. Trump attempted to prevent public service workers from getting student debt relief if their work had a “substantial illegal purpose” in the eyes of the administration. A coalition of nonprofit organizations joined 20 states to file a lawsuit against the rule, claiming that Trump’s Department of Education could target organizations that go against the president’s personal views, such as those dedicated to immigrant rights and transgender health care.

“The Department cannot create new criminal prohibitions through rulemaking,” U.S. District Judge Myoung Joun ruled in Massachusetts, stating that the department didn’t have legal authority and could be violating the Constitution’s First Amendment. “Indeed, the record further demonstrates ‌that the ⁠Final Rule has already chilled protected speech.”

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali struck down the rule in a case brought by four nonprofits that work for immigrant rights. The Trump administration’s response to the student loan rulings seemed to prove the judges’ point.

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is intended to support Americans who serve the public good, not to subsidize organizations that engage in terrorism, facilitate illegal immigration, or support the mutilation of children,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent complained in a statement.

In all, these rulings show Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and that federal courts seem to be the only branch of government willing to prevent the administration from flouting it, as Republicans in Congress are unwilling to stand up to the president. Trump will have to come to terms that some of his favorite policies aren’t backed up by U.S. law.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing Tuesday that Trump’s legal representative had called her the day prior asking for another delay to the $5 million sum Trump owes the writer. Later Monday, Kaplan said she informed Trump’s team that “Carroll does not consent,” and asked whether Trump would comply with the immediate disbursement of funds.

Carroll has a long and unfortunate history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages.

He subsequently lost his defamation case against her the following January, when a judge ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the assault on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case.

But Carroll hasn’t yet seen a dime from either case. In May, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether or not to pick up the case. The court made their decision Monday, rejecting Trump’s challenge and allowing the verdict to stand.

In a separate filing Tuesday, Kaplan asked a judge to implement an expedited payment schedule for the sum that Trump owes Carroll. She referred to a June 2023 filing in which both parties agreed that Carroll could collect if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Kaplan added that, by this point, the $5 million sum had accrued an additional $779,783 in interest, raising Trump’s initial debt to nearly $5.8 million.

Nonetheless, Trump has continued to make a target out of Carroll. In May, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the writer, probing whether Carroll committed perjury in her previous cases against Trump.

The remarkably low turnout for Trump’s Great American State Fair has sparked serious worries that the president’s massive rally planned for Saturday will also be a dud, multiple sources told CNN Wednesday.  

The rally is scheduled to take place outside on the National Mall, as temperatures in Washington are forecast to reach a stifling 100 degrees. 

One official familiar with the event told CNN that there would likely be large groups of people who reserved tickets for Trump’s address but don’t end up attending. Empty seats means that viewers are likely in for another presidential temper tantrum—a sorry sight given it will be the country’s 250th anniversary. 

The rally will be punctuated by a massive fireworks display, currently scheduled to begin at 11 p.m. Unlike in past years, attendees will not be able to bring coolers to help beat the heat. 

“I do not understand why we are doing this so late,” one White House official told CNN, adding there were still ongoing efforts to fix the timing. “I’m really not sure who thought this was a good idea.”

So far, Trump’s Great American State Fair has been supremely underwhelming and beset by technical difficulties, lame programming, and disappointing weather delays. Trump has raged in the face of bad reviews and lied about the visibly low attendance.

Internally, those in Trump’s orbit have begun pointing fingers about the president’s own Fyre Festival (except people actually went to the Fyre Festival). “The mistake here was not driving attendance,” one person close to the White House told CNN. “It was an ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality that failed.”

Their new suggestion: Ban all pregnant foreigners from entering the country.

“If you have birthright citizenship, it means if a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around at some things, in a couple of weeks that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen—and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life,” White House adviser Stephen Miller hollered at Jesse Watters on Fox News Tuesday evening.

“Mr. Miller, are we banning pregnant women from America? Are we banning foreign pregnant women?” Watters asked with a laugh.

“Well, what I’m saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility [for] birth tourism … when people come here just to have babies on American soil.”

Watters: Are we banning pregnant women from America?

Miller: You have to think carefully on who you let into the country. There’s a lot of things we have to take a hard look at. pic.twitter.com/mazrvtLhxa

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 1, 2026

“Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here if you’re pregnant is to have a child to become a United States citizen,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Wednesday, calling birth tourism a “booming industry.”

“Just saw a pregnant Haitian woman at the grocery store. Called ICE immediately,” right-wing content producer Matt Morse wrote. “Can’t take any chances, these days.”

“The State Department should IMMEDIATELY cease to give out visas to pregnant applicants,” MAGA Representative Lauren Boebert said. “Sorry, Birth Tourism cannot continue.”

Some took the suggestion to an even more extreme level, calling for sterilization of all foreign visitors.

“Several ways forward here  given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language,” The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis wrote on X. “Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.… Deny entry to all female foreigners.… Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

The same party that harangues single women about the low birth rate is now threatening any pregnant woman in this country who isn’t a citizen—the consequences of which could be devastating.

Brennan, who is under investigation by the Justice Department, is seeking to make sure the administration preserves all records pertaining to that investigation. In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, he expressed concern that the DOJ wouldn’t preserve records and communications that would allow him to take legal action in the future if the administration decides to prosecute him.

“Administration officials from the Acting Attorney General to the FBI Director and the Counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and an indictment,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote. “And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the President’s direction.”

Brennan wants President Trump, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, federal prosecutors in Miami who have investigated him, and intelligence officers to preserve any records related to him. The Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office is reportedly involved in investigating Brennan and has hired John Yoo, a former DOJ official from the Bush administration famous for legally defending torture after 9/11, to consult on a case that may concern Brennan.

One DOJ prosecutor who expressed doubts about the investigation into Brennan, Maria Medetis Long, was removed from the case in April. Long is chief of the national security section for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, and would normally be involved in a case concerning intelligence. This suggests that Brennan may have a point about the DOJ’s interest in him having to do with Trump wanting to punish anyone he perceives as an enemy.

“The United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement Wednesday, the deadline to renew the 16-year arrangement. Greer added that, despite the lapse, the USMCA would remain “in force pending resolution of these issues or until the Agreement’s termination.”

“The United States will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries,” he said.

The USMCA will automatically expire July 1, 2036, unless all three member countries come to a new agreement.

Donald Trump initially lauded the deal when it was negotiated under his first administration in 2018 as a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. It went into full effect on July 1, 2020, and was designed to assist North American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses by creating a “more balanced, reciprocal trade” that would support job growth across the continent, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Since then, the U.S. has exported trillions of dollars worth of goods and services through the arrangement, though that was apparently not enough to prevent Trump from souring on the trinational accord.

Trump opted instead to impose unprecedented duties and tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods after he returned to office in 2025, tearing the deal to shreds in the process. On June 10, the president insisted that the U.S. should have a more level playing field with its trade partners, claiming that America doesn’t need its neighbors’ goods and services.

“We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have,” Trump told reporters at the time. “And they have to treat us better.”

Canada and Mexico are two of America’s top trading partners, cumulatively accounting for about a third of all U.S. exports, per the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade statistics. Annually, the deal has provided the infrastructure for roughly $2 trillion in annual trade, according to data obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

But the lapsed trade agreement sets the stage for a larger debate over American economic relations that some economists estimate could take a long time to pin down. In the meantime, regional economies are expected to suffer from the lingering uncertainty.

Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, told the Journal that the U.S. will likely morph the deal into something that could look much different from the USMCA.

“That process will carry on throughout the rest of the summer, if not into the end of this year,” she said.

NOTUS reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding for humanities nonprofit councils in states and territories across the country, many of which planned to use those federal funds on history projects for the upcoming semiquincentennial. These official nonprofits were created by Congress to help make history and literature accessible to the American public.

Humanities councils in Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, and Washington state all had to axe or scale back their anniversary plans, their leaders told NOTUS, and it had a ripple effect down to local historical organizations.

Musk’s DOGE initiative left these state organizations with just enough money to stay afloat last year. President Trump shifted millions from DOGE cuts toward his “triumphal arch” and “Garden of American Heroes,” preventing further funds from going toward local 250th anniversary projects.

Congress tried to remedy the shortfall by restoring funding for the state humanities councils to their normal levels for the 2026 fiscal year. But the Trump administration has refused to disburse that money, giving the councils less than half of what was appropriated, and told them not to expect any more.

That’s having a real impact in towns across America.

“It means that we are not able to do things that are extra, things that are bigger projects. A lot of humanities organizations would have had some incredible projects that none of us have been able to complete,” said Jessica Cyders, the executive director of the Southeast Ohio History Center. Her organization could have been a candidate for a 250th anniversary grant from Ohio Humanities, which distributes federal grants to the state’s local historical societies and community groups.

“There’s not really a lot of cultural infrastructure in West Virginia. Where most of the cultural work is done is in regional centers, community centers, small museums, county historical associations. So the people who really got hurt were those small organizations across the state,” Eric Waggoner, the head of the West Virginia Humanities Council, told NOTUS. They had planned to send their 250th anniversary funding to West Virginia University, local libraries, and small museums.

“I’m sad to say we had to scrap it,” Waggoner said. “Since we’re the only organization that does this kind of grant-making in West Virginia, without us, there’s really not much.”

“This is a pretty significant national event,” Cyders said. “Look, I’m probably not going to be alive for the 300th anniversary.”

Trump also took funding from America 250, the federal bipartisan organization that was supposed to be planning the semiquincentennial celebrations, and redirected it toward his own pet Freedom 250 projects. The president seems to have ruined what could have been amazing celebrations for the entire country with his ego, and who knows what could have been going on at the National Mall instead of a tacky “Great American State Fair.”

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Donald Trump said he saddled Pulte with the responsibility of declassifying “almost everything.”

“Bill [Pulte] is there just for a fairly short period of time. But while he’s there, I said, ‘You can declassify whatever you want,’” Trump recalled. “I think that Bill will declassify. I told him, ‘You can declassify whatever you want.’”

The comments followed an NBC News report that the White House task force planned to declassify thousands of documents from U.S. intelligence agencies in order to bolster Trump’s election fraud conspiracy claims from the 2020 presidential election.

Sources that spoke with CNN last month said that Trump views the Office of Director of National Intelligence as playing a “central role” in election security, both past and present.

Pulte, despite bringing zero national security experience to a job in which it is legally required, impressed the president during his time in previous administration roles. In his prior position as the director of U.S. federal housing, Pulte found novel ways to legally pursue Trump’s political opponents.

“That’s exactly the type of stuff Trump wants in the person leading election security efforts. Bill will go there, unabashedly,” one unnamed source told CNN.

Trump noted Wednesday that Pulte will only temporarily fill the role, while his formal nominee, Jay Clayton, undergoes his confirmation process. That day could not come soon enough for some people within the Trump administration, who lament Pulte’s efforts to push his own agenda with the president.

“A lot of people absolutely detest Pulte,” one source told CNN last month.

Federal financial records first reviewed by NOTUS showed that on November 21, Patel  purchased between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in MicroStrategy, a “bitcoin treasury company” that has done millions of dollars in business with the DOJ over the past decade.

Patel failed to disclose the purchase within 45 days of the trade, in violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, also known as the STOCK Act.

In a letter to the Office of Government Ethics on May 26, Patel said the purchase had been “inadvertently omitted” from his financial disclosure. Two days later, in a letter to the Office of Government Ethics, Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Taylor said the purchase had been omitted due to a miscommunication. “I continue to believe that Director Patel is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing conflicts of interest,” he wrote.

An FBI official told NOTUS that Patel’s late reporting was “not realized and unintentional.” However, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of the Project on Government Oversight, told the outlet that Patel’s stock purchase disclosure is “absolutely” late under the letter of the STOCK Act.

“That’s violating the law—no other way to put it,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.

Patel has yet to face the customary $200 fine for his breach of conduct—and he probably won’t.