Half of Republicans Don’t Think Trump Took Classified Docs. That’s Terrifying.

Half of Republicans don’t actually think that Donald Trump had hidden classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, a poll released Thursday found, a troubling sign that the party is still deeply in his thrall.

Trump was charged in June with 37 criminal counts of willful retention of national defense information, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justices, among other things. The indictment included multiple photos of the boxes of documents that Trump hoarded at his Florida resort. He kept them stored everywhere around the property, from the ballroom to the bathroom. And there’s even a public recording of him admitting he kept the classified materials.

But despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence against him, only 49 percent of Republicans actually believe there were classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, according to a new Marquette Law School survey, while 50 percent don’t believe there were documents there.

Those numbers are a fortunate shift from September, when only 40 percent of Republicans believed there were documents, and 60 percent did not.

Democrats, meanwhile, have never been in doubt. The survey found that 95 percent of left-leaning voters believe classified material was kept at Mar-a-Lago, compared to 91 percent in September.

Independents are not quite as convinced as Democrats, but far more believe the indictment than Republicans. Seventy-eight percent say classified documents were present at the resort, up from 66 percent in September.

Republicans’ refusal to see the facts right in front of them is a clear sign of how much influence Trump still has over the party. He is leading the pack of Republican presidential candidates by a mile, and if anything, the multiple indictments against him have made him even more popular.

This is a chilling indication of what we can expect next November. If Trump wins the GOP presidential nomination, then he will still have a solid fan base on which to draw come Election Day.

And if he does return to the White House, good luck prosecuting him for anything.

Congress is even older than you think it is.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to shut down while giving a press conference at the Capitol. He froze, apparently unable to speak, as several of his colleagues asked him if he was alright. Eventually, he had to be escorted away.

While he seems to have recovered shortly thereafter—glaring at reporters who asked him whether he had chosen a successor yet—the incident has revived questions about his age and fitness to serve. After all, this isn’t the 81-year-old lawmaker’s first public health scare.

But zooming out, it also casts a light on just how old our Congress is getting.

According to an NBC News analysis, this Congress is the third-oldest since 1789, when the legislative branch as we know it today was first established. The Senate is the second-oldest in U.S. history.

And as the House keeps getting younger, the Senate keeps getting older.

A Pew analysis found that the median age of House lawmakers is 57.9 years, down from 58.9 in the last Congress. The Senate’s median age, however, is 65.3 years, an uptick from 64.8 in the last session. These reverse trends have been continuing for years now.

While age isn’t everything, and we don’t have the full details of what happened to McConnell, it’s hard not to be concerned about this trend.

In March, McConnell tripped and suffered a concussion and cracked rib, leaving him out of session for nearly six weeks before he was finally able to return to Congress. His injury is a common one among older people, as an estimated 800,000 seniors per year are hospitalized for injuries from falling. After Thursday’s incident in the press conference, reporters revealed that McConnell has fallen multiple times this year and has taken to using a wheelchair in airports to avoid future accidents. (McConnell, it should be noted, is a polio survivor and walks with a limp, but his recent history is troubling even his Republican colleagues.) 

On the other side of the aisle, Senator Dianne Feinstein was missing from the chamber for nearly three months due to a particularly bad bout of the shingles. The illness led her to contract Ramsay Hunt syndrome, causing facial paralysis and vision and balance impairments, as well as encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can cause “lasting memory or language problems, sleep disorders, bouts of confusion, mood disorders, headaches and difficulties walking,” according to The New York Times.

When she did finally return to Congress, Feinstein seemed completely unaware that she had been missing at all.

On Thursday morning, during a vote on the defense appropriations bill, she launched into a full speech instead of simply casting her vote.

“Just say ‘aye,’” Senator Patty Murray advised Feinstein, giving her a thumbs up.

“OK, just—?” she replied, looking confused. “Aye.”

Donald Trump had a dangerous warning Thursday for special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating him for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election: Another indictment would “destroy” the United States.

Smith has already indicted the twice-impeached former president for mishandling classified documents. Trump’s lawyers met with Smith’s team earlier Thursday and were reportedly told to expect an indictment.

Trump has not been handling all of the indictment talk well (to put it mildly), and his post on Truth Social was no different.

“My attorneys had a productive meeting with the DOJ this morning, explaining in detail that I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an Indictment of me would only further destroy our Country,” he wrote.

“No indication of notice was given during the meeting—Do not trust the Fake News on anything!” he added, disputing reports that his legal team was warned an indictment was coming.

In addition to Smith’s charges against him, Trump has been charged with 34 counts of business fraud in New York relating to hush-money payments made during the 2016 election, has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and has been sued for defamation yet again. He could also be indicted in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election within the next few weeks.

Los Angeles city police arrest a Black or Latino person nearly eight out of every 10 times, despite the fact that those two communities only make up about half the city’s population, a new study has found.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office released an analysis Wednesday night of the LAPD’s nearly 300,000 arrests made from 2019 to 2022. Mejia was elected in November, and part of his campaign involved putting up billboards around Los Angeles blasting the city’s massive police budget.

Black and brown people make up an average of 78.26 percent of all arrests for the years analyzed—but they make up only 56 percent of the city’s population, according to 2020 census data.

The majority of the arrests, every year except 2021, occurred in the city’s District 14, where people of Hispanic origin make up nearly three-quarters of the neighborhood. In 2021, District 8 had the most arrests by just three. That district, which also has high arrest numbers, has a primarily Black- and Hispanic-origin population.

The report comes as police departments across the United States increased scrutiny, particularly of systemic racism and brutality. In June, the Department of Justice released a report that found the Minneapolis Police Department systematically used excessive force and discriminated against racial minorities for years ahead of the police killing of George Floyd.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that construction on the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline could continue, a huge win for Senator Joe Manchin and a blow to environmental groups.

Manchin had demanded that permits for the pipeline be included in the debt ceiling deal in exchange for his supporting the bill. Democrats agreed, infuriating environmental activists and politicians alike. Two separate appeals courts issued stays on the pipeline earlier this month, one of which determined that the pipeline would violate the Endangered Species Act.

But the Supreme Court agreed to lift the lower court orders and allow construction to continue. There were no public dissents, even from liberal justices, a rare occurrence on the politically divided bench.

The pipeline will run more than 300 miles from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia, possibly even into Northern California. It will carry fracked gas, which is proven to be the cause of surging global methane emissions—a major contributor to climate change.

But President Joe Biden has backed the pipeline, despite opposition from other Democrats. Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who represents one of the regions that will be most affected by construction, was particularly furious that the pipeline was included in the debt bill instead of moving through the standard process.

The ruling also comes as states from coast to coast struggle with triple-digit temperatures. July is set to be the world’s hottest month on record.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are not just burying their heads in the sand over the heat wave but actively plotting to undermine Biden’s environmental policy plans.

The GOP is blocking Biden from declaring a national emergency over climate change, introducing a bill that bars him from directing resources to address the life-threatening crisis. The House and Senate sponsors of the bill have received about $5 million from fossil fuel interests just over the past five years.

This story has been updated.