DOJ Tried to Force Hospitals to Hand Over Private Info on Trans Kids

The U.S. Department of Justice tried to force a Philadelphia children’s hospital to hand over information on young transgender patients as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on gender-affirming care for minors, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

A subpoena issued to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June demanded access to “every writing or record of whatever type” that doctors had made, including everything from emails, Zoom recordings, and texts to names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers.

Notably, gender-affirming care is not illegal in Pennsylvania. Still, the Trump administration is taking efforts to invade young patients’ privacy, endangering them and the health care providers who treat them.

The subpoena became public Monday as part of a separate lawsuit from Washington state Attorney General Nicholas W. Brown, who is suing the Trump administration to block its executive order threatening to end federal funding to medical institutions that provide lifesaving gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 19.

In a court filing, Brown wrote that the DOJ’s request for info from CHP has “only escalated” Trump’s efforts since a judge blocked his executive orders earlier this year.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the DOJ had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that it claimed “mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.” The subpoenas arrived at hospitals in states that had banned gender-affirming care, as well as those that had not.

HuffPost conducted an independent review and found that 25 hospitals had ended gender-affirming care services since July, and none of them were in states that had bans. Health care providers are concerned that providing hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgeries could result in them being charged with a felony.

In July, Trump claimed credit for ending gender-affirming care at specialized adolescent programs in several states where it is legal: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign adviser was caught trying to bribe a reporter with a potato chip bag full of cash on Wednesday.

This move comes as more and more of Adams’s inner circle face corruption, fraud, and bribery charges.

It started at what was a very typical event: the opening of Adams’s new Harlem campaign office, which The City’s Katie Honan was in attendance for. She got a text from Winnie Greco—campaign adviser and former Asian community liaison—saying that she’d seen her there, and asking her to meet her for a chat at a nearby Whole Foods.

While they were talking, Greco gave Honan an opened bag of chips with the top smushed closed. Honan told Greco she didn’t want the chips, but Greco insisted. When they went their separate ways, Honan opened the bag and found at least $140 in cash in it.

“I can’t take this, when can I give it back to you?” Honan texted Greco. She did not reply. Honan then took the bag back to The City’s office and gave it to her editors, who then contacted New York’s Department of Investigation. The publication never actually took the money out of the bag.

Following the interaction at the Whole Foods, Honan brought the chip bag and envelope with money back to The City’s office and handed it over to her editors. The City then contacted the city Department of Investigation. Anticipating possible law enforcement investigations, The City did not open the envelope or count the money inside.

After getting caught, Greco apologised profusely and blamed the blatant bribe on her Chinese heritage.

“I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing,” she said, according to The City. “I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey.”

Greco told The City to call her lawyer, Steven Brill.

“I can see how this looks strange.… But I assure you that Winnie’s intent was purely innocent,” he said. “In the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of friendship and gratitude. Winnie is apologetic and embarrassed by any negative impression or confusion this may have caused.”

Absolutely no one was buying this excuse, not even the Adams campaign. It suspended Greco from any campaign activity, effective immediately.

“We are shocked by these reports,” Adams campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro said. “Winnie Grecco [sic] holds no position in this campaign and has been suspended from all VOLUNTEER campaign-related activities. Mayor Adams had no prior knowledge of this matter. He has always demanded the highest ethical and legal standards, and his sole focus remains on serving the people of New York City with integrity.”

Decisions like this are why several Adams aides and confidants are being charged with multiple counts of fraud and bribery. This is another extremely serious act of corruption from the campaign of an extremely unserious mayor.

In a sudden about-face, Donald Trump now thinks it would be “better” if Russia and Ukraine met without him.

For the better part of this week, the U.S. leader has bragged that his recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were “very successful”—in spite of the fact that the internationally controversial decision to invite his Russian counterpart to Alaska proved fruitless.

On Monday, Trump promised to coordinate a trilateral arrangement between himself, Putin, and Zelenskiy to solidify a peace deal. But just days later, the commander in chief changed his tune.

In an interview with conservative podcaster Mark Levin on Wednesday, Trump claimed the two warring countries should meet without his involvement.

“I had a very successful meeting with President Putin. I had a very successful meeting with President Zelenskiy. And now I thought it would be better if they met without me, just to see. I want to see what goes on. You know, they had a hard relationship, very bad, very bad relationship,” Trump said.

Putin has remained adamant that any peace deal would require “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine. Ukraine, on the other hand, has remained just as adamant that those regions will remain within its borders.

Trump did suggest that the apparently just-for-fun meeting could be saved by his intervention, if needed.

“And now we’ll see how they do and, if necessary, and it probably would be, but if necessary, I’ll go and I’ll probably be able to get it close,” he continued.

Whether or not the U.S. president appreciates the gravity of negotiating over Ukraine’s occupied territories is unclear, considering he doesn’t seem to know where or how large they are. In the same interview with Levin, Trump wrongly asserted that Crimea was “the size of Texas” and that the Ukrainian peninsula was “in the middle of the ocean,” a faux pas that was not received well by Kyiv’s news media.

At least 13,883 civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The monthly death toll reached 67 in July, with 209 injured, marking the highest monthly civilian death and injury count since the conflict began.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently shares the president’s obsession with shiny objects.

After the Department of Homeland Security blinged out ICE vehicles for a vain rap video, the agency now plans to shell out millions more in taxpayer dollars on flashy new rides.

The video, posted on social media last week, showed two ICE vehicles, darkly wrapped with gold accents and emblazoned with the slogan “DEFEND THE HOMELAND,” cruising through Washington, D.C., to DaBaby’s 2019 hit, “Toes.”

The cars in that video reportedly cost over $380,000, but the agency seems ready to dish out millions more on vehicles in the same style.

The Washington Post on Wednesday revealed $2.4 million in planned ICE expenditures—the bulk of which will go toward 25 Chevrolet Tahoes, with about $174,000 covering the custom-wrapping of Tahoes, Ford Expeditions, and other vehicles.

The purchases were detailed in records that the government had to submit in order to forgo the typical competitive bidding process that’s in place to ensure best value for taxpayers.

The decorated cars are, according to the documents, “essential for officers to provide support and a law enforcement presence” in the nation’s capital, and “must be deployed to the streets immediately to provide a visible law enforcement presence, support public safety operations, and reinforce recruitment efforts.”

Beyond seeking cosmeticized cars to aid President Donald Trump’s D.C. crackdown, the agency is also dipping into its congressionally approved slush fund to the tune of hundreds of thousands for vehicles and car-wrapping services as part of recruitment efforts.

ICE is eschewing the open bidding process for these, too, on the grounds that “the need for the services is so urgent and compelling that providing full and open competition would result in unacceptable delays and seriously hinder the Government’s recruiting initiative.”

For example, Ford Mustangs included in this order—in “an immediate request” by the White House—are said to feature “eye-catching design[s]” that help “attract top talent by conveying a culture of excellence and forward momentum.”

Texas appears to have sparked a redistricting domino effect.

Republicans in the Lone Star State forced through their gerrymandered maps Wednesday night by locking state representatives inside the Capitol until they voted on a chart that would carve out five new GOP-favorable districts and erase Democratic areas. The brutal initiative followed weeks of counterefforts by state Democrats, who at one point fled Texas in order to avoid participating in the Donald Trump–directed vote.

Other areas of the country were watching the bedlam to ascertain just how far Texas would go to obey Trump’s command—and now, they’re acting.

Democratic governors on both coasts proclaimed redistricting war in the wake of the vote, announcing on social media that they would work to offset Texas’s maps, intended to help the GOP secure five more House seats in Washington.

“Game on,” wrote New York Governor Kathy Hochul, responding to news of the passed vote.

“It’s on, Texas,” posted California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, after new census data is released. But Texas’s decision to do so in the middle of the decade—at Trump’s direction—has raised alarms, with Democrats across the country labeling the effort a threat to democracy.

Between them, New York (26) and California (52)—two of the country’s most populous states—have 78 representatives, the bulk of whom are Democrats. Their share accounts for nearly 18 percent of the House’s membership. But as Texas worked to obey Trump’s midterm demands, the pair of Democratic strongholds warned that carving out more Democratic seats was well within their power.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast earlier Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some people’s sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

When asked last month if he was concerned about California following suit in the redistricting department, Trump said that the White House would “fight them.”

“You know they’re so corrupt in California, you never know what’s going to happen,” Trump said at the time. “But we’ve done pretty well in the courts in California, you see. We’re batting about 1,000, ultimately.”

But the Republican stratagem is far from over. Trump issued similar demands of five other states: Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Florida.

Vice President JD Vance is so good at saying exactly what Moscow wants him to say that he’s earned a starring role in state propaganda.

During an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday night, Vance described his positive impression of Russia’s leader.

“So, I have never actually met [Vladimir] Putin. The president did that meeting. I have talked to him on the phone a number of times. You know, it’s interesting, he’s more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect. You know, the American media has a particular image of him,” Vance said. “He’s soft spoken, in a certain way. He’s very deliberate. He’s very careful.

“And I think fundamentally he is a person who looks out for the interests, as he sees it, of Russia,” Vance continued. “And I think one of the reasons he respects the president of the United States is because he knows the president looks out for the interests of the American people.”

That soundbite of Vance’s interview was then shared on X by Russia Today, the Russian state-controlled television network that has been banned in the U.K., EU, and Canada. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in November 2022, RT suspended its activities in the U.S., as well.

Despite what Vance has claimed, Putin isn’t a gentle altruist—he’s a dictator who hopes to acquire Ukrainian territory by force—and Vance knows that. “The Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory,” Vance told Ingraham. “The Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they’ve occupied, but some of which they haven’t.”

But the Kremlin also hopes to block Ukraine’s long-awaited NATO membership. President Donald Trump claimed earlier this week that if Ukraine could agree to give up Crimea and its dreams of joining the military bloc, then the war would immediately end.

During a meeting with European leaders Monday, Trump portrayed an unearned optimism about Putin making a deal “for him,” after dragging out negotiations for months. The White House then appeared to walk back claims that it had actually assured a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Russia has yet to confirm any such agreement.

Lindsey Halligan, the White House official leading President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Smithsonian, thinks its museums overemphasize slavery when they should be emphasizing “how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Halligan appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss her effort to make the Smithsonian’s content align with the president’s version of history ahead of the U.S. Semiquincentennial.

So far, it remains unclear which specific content will be targeted for removal and replacement, but a March executive order claimed that the Smithsonian is overrun by “a divisive, race-centered ideology,” citing an exhibit that described race as a social construct (rather than promoting the fringe notion that it is “a biological reality”). In a Tuesday Truth Social screed, Trump lamented that the museums focus too intently on “how bad Slavery was.”

Halligan expressed similar sentiments on Fox, saying the institution has become a “platform” for “ideological narratives,” whereas it should be a (presumably somehow nonideological) means of representing “our country in a positive way.”

Asked by Fox anchor John Roberts whether she believes America’s “checkered past” should be minimized in museums, Halligan replied that, while slavery was “awful,” she believes the museums exhibit “an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Espousing a feel-good version of history that would please Orwell’s Big Brother, Halligan continued, “We should be able to take our kids, our students through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave.”

American history, she concluded, is “both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward” and “focus on all the positive as we approach America’s 250th birthday.” It’s a suspicious credo for an official tasked with radically transforming the world’s largest museum system.

Another slew of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s allies will likely face charges, which are expected to include multiple counts of bribery, according to The New York Times.

The defendants will probably include the mayor’s former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin; her son Glenn D. Martin; Adams’s friend and local official Jesse Hamilton; two businessmen; and supporters Gina and Tony Argento, who are siblings and whose company donated over $20,000 to Adams.

They all plan to plead not guilty, according to sources from the Times.

Lewis-Martin, who has described herself as Adams’s “sister ordained by god,” and her son allegedly tried to impact city policy by accepting favors from the other defendants. Lewis-Martin is already dealing with corruption charges from last year, in which prosecutors claim to have caught her via wiretap accepting $100,000 from the aforementioned two businessmen. She is also alleged to be the catalyst behind almost every corruption charge linked to the Mayor’s office, the Times reported.

Adams has attempted to wash hands of this.

“Mayor Adams was not involved in this matter and has not been accused of or implicated in any wrongdoing,” his spokeswoman, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said. “He remains focused on what has always been his priority—serving the 8.5 million New Yorkers who call this city home and making their city safer and more affordable every single day.”

Altus also noted that Lewis-Martin does not work for Adams anymore, without mentioning that she resigned just days before she was indicted last year.

These are just the latest developments in the scandal plaguing the administration of Eric Adams, who is in the midst of an underwhelming mayoral campaign, trailing solidly behind Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.

In the past few weeks, Adams has had his former chief Muslim community liaison charged with fraud for instructing witnesses to lie to the FBI, a loyal Turkish businessman and donor convicted for making illegal donations to him, and four of his former police officers sue him for corruption. In the suit, they accused him of running the NYPD like a “criminal enterprise.”

Yet Adams’s campaign still chugs on. He seems intent on ignoring hit after hit to his reputation and legacy, instead choosing to post his way through it all. It seems clear that not even the de facto pardon from President Trump can help save him now.

You may recall that the president has a meme coin, $TRUMP. Days before his second inauguration, the president—who told Fox News in his first term that he was not “a big fan” of cryptocurrencies, which he deemed possibly “fake”—made his own foray into crypto.

The meme coin’s value quickly rocketed to around $75. It dropped shortly thereafter but saw a bump in April when Trump announced “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world”: for the top 220 investors in $TRUMP coin to enjoy a private dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club.

Since then, the Trump coin’s value has slumped again, to $9, having sunk 88 percent from its January high.

You may also recall—if you strain your memory further—that the first lady, Melania Trump, is in the meme coin business as well. Her $MELANIA coin has followed a similar trajectory to her husband’s coin, seeing a precipitous, 98 percent decline in value from its $8.50 peak in mid-January.

In May, the Financial Times published an investigation into Melania Trump’s meme coin, revealing that a coterie of traders reaped nearly $100 million by buying $MELANIA coin minutes before it was publicly announced, before off-loading most of their holdings after its value spiked following the announcement.

The first lady’s meme coin is now worth less than a quarter of a dollar.

Six Republican-led states are sending a collective 1,200 National Guard troops to assist Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C. But the states those troops came from have higher crime rates than the nation’s capital.

As Washington’s residents brutally resist the president’s authoritarian takeover of local law enforcement and deployment of federal troops, other states would do well to remember the old proverb: Doctor, heal thyself!

To compare, The New Republic has evaluated the FBI’s national crime data for 2024 alongside state populations, focusing on available data documenting violent and property crime rates in major cities in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia.

FBI data showed that in 2024, for every 100,000 Washington residents, 926 were victims of violent crime and 3,588 were victims of property crime. In 2024, the nation’s capital saw roughly 25 murders for every 100,000 residents.

Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio, experienced higher rates of both violent crime and property crime than Washington did in 2024, according to Cleveland.com. For every 100,000 Clevelanders, 1,550 were victims of a violent crime and 4,446 were victims of property crime. Cleveland also had a higher homicide rate than Washington in 2024, with 35 homicides for every 100,000 residents, according to the office of the Cuyahoga County medical examiner.

Columbus, which is Ohio’s most populous city, has a comparatively smaller crime rate. It saw marked decreases in violent and property crime in 2024, according to the Columbus Division of Police.

Tennessee

Tennessee’s violent crime rate in 2024 was higher than the national average at roughly 597 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents, according to FBI data compared to population. While that alone is not higher than the violent crime rate in Washington, that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 2024, the state’s own capital, Memphis, had a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, according to The American Prospect—a number significantly higher than D.C.’s homicide rate.

Meanwhile, Nashville, the state’s most populous city, which was home to an estimated 704,963 people in 2024, experienced 8,473 violent crimes and 31,902 property crimes, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. That means that for every 100,000 Nashville residents, roughly 1,202 were the victims of violent crimes and 4,525 were the victims of property crimes, which are both higher than Washington’s crime rates.

Still, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is set to send roughly 160 guard members to Washington this week.

Mississippi

For every 100,000 Mississippians, 118 were the victim of a violent crime and 751 were the victims of property crime, according to FBI data. The American Prospect reported that in 2024, Jackson, Mississippi, had the highest murder rate of any city in the country, experiencing a rate of 77 homicides per 100,000 residents, which was more than three times the homicide rate in Washington.

Louisiana

For every 100,000 Louisianians, 406 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,758 were the victim of a property crime. But state capital Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 per 100,000 in 2024, and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000—both of which are considerably higher than Washington’s homicide rate.

South Carolina

In 2024, for every 100,000 South Carolinians, only about 438 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,985 were the victim of a property crime. However, North Charleston, one of the state’s most populous cities, had a murder rate of 26 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to The American Prospect. This places it on par with the homicide rate of Washington. South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered 200 troops to be deployed to the nation’s capital.

West Virginia

For every 100,000 West Virginians, 234 were victims of violent crime and 1,051 were victims of property crimes in 2024, in keeping with the state’s trend of being generally below the national average.

But the state’s most dangerous city is Beckley, which has a similar violent crime rate to Washington. With a population of 16,234, Beckley experienced 147 violent crimes in 2023, which equates to a rate of 905 violent crimes per 100,000.

By comparison, property crimes were off the charts. In 2023, there were a whopping 836 property crimes, so for every 100,000 Beckley-ians (again, there aren’t really that many), 5,149 would be a victim of a property crime, a rate significantly higher than that of Washington.