Trump Begs Judge to Give Back Money He Just Paid E. Jean Carroll

Donald Trump has made billions of dollars grifting the American public since returning to office, yet he’s still trying to find a way to weasel out of paying E. Jean Carroll.

The president cannot accept the reality that he lost: Trump’s legal team demanded that the former Elle columnist repay him the $5.6 million that he was court-mandated to give her, The Independent reported Tuesday.

The money was disbursed to Carroll from a court-controlled escrow account on July 9—three years after a nine-person jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s and defaming her in the early 2020s when she went public about the attack. Trump had done everything in his power to avoid paying Carroll her due, including attempting to take the case to the Supreme Court, although it ultimately refused to hear the case in June.

“But rather than accept the reality that he had lost, [Trump] has engaged in a series of maneuvers trying desperately to forestall payment,” Carroll’s lawyers wrote in a legal filing Monday night, noting that the payment should have been the end of the case.

“But Defendant now demands yet another unprecedented remedy,” Carroll’s attorneys continued. “The judgment here is final, the money has already been disbursed, and Carroll is entitled to keep it.”

Her team added that each of the president’s attacks has a “domino effect” that subjects the writer to “ongoing and prolific harassment” from people who take Trump’s word as gospel, “including a multitude of death threats and other threats of physical injury.”

The sum is just the tip of the iceberg for how much Trump owes Carroll, however. After the 2023 civil case, Trump tried and failed to sue Carroll for defamation, insisting, despite the jury’s determination, that he had not sexually abused her. A federal judge eventually ruled that Trump—not Carroll—was the liable party, as he had defamed the advice columnist by denying the sexual abuse on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of inventing the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book.

A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case, though Carroll has not yet seen a dime from that decision.

After months of scandal, Republican Representative Cory Mills is finally under investigation.

MS NOW, citing two anonymous sources, reports that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal probe into the Florida man, who is accused of sexual misconduct, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations.

A third source told MS NOW that the FBI has spoken to at least one person about Mills’s finances and the allegations against him, which are numerous. Mills told the outlet by phone, “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”

“The [Federal Election Commission] dismissed all the campaign stuff,” Mills said, referring to allegations he misused campaign funds. He said that he thought the investigation must be about “all the things stemming from the Ethics investigation.” The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation into Mills last November, and was still gathering evidence about Mills’s misconduct as of May this year.

Mills allegedly harassed his ex-girlfriend, former Miss United States Lindsey Langston, and threatened to release revenge porn of her after she dumped him last year upon learning of his affair. Mills also allegedly assaulted the second woman he was dating, who reported him to police.

Mills didn’t face any criminal consequences in the latter case, as the interim District of Columbia U.S. attorney at the time, Ed Martin, refused to sign the Metropolitan Police Department’s arrest warrant. Later reports found that Mills tried to get out of being arrested by threatening to call then–Attorney General Pam Bondi. Also in 2025, news reports revealed that Mills was caught with sex workers in 2021 in the East European country Georgia while en route to Afghanistan.

Mills has ignored calls to step down, and Republicans in Congress have decided not to pursue expelling him from the House. Mills is still running for reelection, and it remains to be seen if he’ll face any consequences in Florida’s August 18 primary, or the November general election.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just lowballed the Iran war to the tune of about $62.5 billion.

Hegseth, alongside officials including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday to update lawmakers on the state of the war and to request nearly $88 billion more for “urgent needs” in the war effort.

About 15 minutes into Hegseth’s testimony, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin asked if he had a new estimate for how much the war in Iran has cost so far.

“Senator, the estimate we have as of today is $37.5 billion,” the defense secretary replied.

In reality, both U.S. intelligence officials and independent analysts are putting the total cost of the war upward of $100 billion. That’s at least $62.5 billion more than Hegseth claimed.

“It’s my understanding that this whole supplemental funding request is $87.6 billion,” Durbin continued. “We are told the Department of Defense still has $75 billion in un-obligated funding from last year’s reconciliation package. Is that true?”

Hegseth stammered about his predecessor, Lloyd Austin, and replied that he couldn’t offer “specific numbers” as to where that extra $75 billion in defense spending had gone.

At the start of the month, Popular Information’s Stephen Semler published an independent review of U.S. expenses in the war so far, including $28 billion in mobilization, administrative, and immediate combat costs; $46.7 billion on missiles, interceptors, and bombs; $20.3 billion on damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.9 billion on Israel’s bombs and interceptors; and an additional $4.8 billion on war costs to nonmilitary U.S. agencies. Put that together, and you have a whopping $102.7 billion—not counting repairs and replacements for the 42 U.S. aircrafts that have been lost, damaged, or destroyed.

Hegseth’s testimony came only days after the U.S. military announced the deaths of at least three more American service members in the war, bringing the official death toll to 17. (A fourth service member is still missing.) The secretary is calling the request for more funding part of his national defense strategy, “peace through strength.”

The Trump administration’s war in Iran is wildly unpopular, and Republicans know it. Maybe Hegseth thinks lowballing the price tag will distract the American people with a discount rate.

Taylor Farms must be very sorry to have ever claimed that the Food and Drug Administration apologized to them.

The pro-Trump produce supplier deleted all mentions on social media of the aforementioned penitence following a false positive by the FDA that incorrectly identified some of Taylor Farms’ products as a source of the cyclospora outbreak that has caused explosive diarrhea across the country.

In statements since scrubbed from social platforms, the vegetable company said Monday that the FDA had “apologized” for the error.

That set off the federal government, which initiated a typhoon of P.R. damage control that has since been described by agriculture journalists as a “public health communications nightmare.”

On Monday, the FDA denied that it had offered the company any such apology. And in its own since-deleted post, the Department of Health and Human Services asserted that Taylor Farms’ statement “DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

“Epidemiological evidence and traceback analysis provide strong, actionable public health evidence,” HHS shared Tuesday afternoon, responding to a CNN report that Mexico denied its regional cases had anything to do with the current outbreak in the U.S. “By looking at the supply chain—from point of sale to distributors, processors, and growers—the data gathered from the 5-state outbreak converged on shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms locations in Mexico.”

Taylor Farms is one of the largest fresh-produce suppliers in the country, providing products to Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger, SYSCO, Aldi, Target, and Dollar General. It also sells food for private-label brands, such as Whole Foods’ “365” line, and offers assembly-line products for a slew of fast-food chains, including McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, and more.

Taylor Farms said that it had recalled all of the shredded iceberg lettuce that was grown and processed in central Mexico out of an “abundance of caution.”

“While the FDA traceback is indicating a specific independent farm, which represents less than 1% of the U.S.’s iceberg lettuce supply, as the potential source of the outbreak, we have removed all iceberg lettuce from the region indefinitely,” the company said Friday in a statement.

Yet somehow, sending Americans rushing to the lavatory isn’t the only scandal plaguing Taylor Farms. The supplier’s parent company, Taylor Fresh Foods Inc., reportedly donated $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc.—a super PAC affiliated with the president—in March 2025.

Company executives also met with White House officials and FDA representatives last week, just before Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall of its Central Mexico lettuce supply, reported the Daily Beast Tuesday.

Since the beginning of May, the CDC has confirmed 1,645 cases of cyclosporiasis and is investigating 5,100 more, though the agency noted that most cases have likely gone unreported. Still, both totals are substantially higher than normal: This time last year, just 249 cases had been reported. So far, 141 cases have resulted in hospitalization, and no one has died from the disease.

Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton was given an opportunity to address two major scandals that stand to derail his chances against Democrat James Talarico in November. Instead of acknowledging them, he ended the press conference and left the room.

“General, I wanted to give you a chance to respond to state Representative Talarico and his campaign,” a reporter asked Paxton while flanked by over a dozen law officers in cowboy hats during a Tuesday press conference. “They’ve made a lot about the reports that have come out, one in The New York Times about you acquiring properties worth—”

“So Jack, can we keep this to law enforcement today?” Paxton interrupted.

“Well, I’m giving you the opportunity to answer the question.”

“We’re here with the sheriffs, I’d like to keep today to law enforcement, so that’s what I’m gonna answer, questions about law enforcement,” Paxton replied.

Paxton was then pressed on a separate scandal just seconds after.

“Will you answer a question about why you voted in Collin County? Clear that up?” the reporter asked, only to be shut down by a staffer immediately while Paxton began to leave, looking visibly uncomfortable.

Paxton refused to answer the questions even as he spoke at a podium with Talarico’s face plastered on it, alongside the caption “Talarico: Handcuffed to his record.”

A Times report last week detailed how Paxton—who has been Texas attorney general since 2015—has acquired 15 properties worth $9 million in states like Utah, Hawaii, Florida, and Oklahoma, all on a government salary while in the midst of both a Senate run and a divorce.

Another ProPublica report from earlier this month found that Paxton, who has echoed Trump’s concern with voter fraud, voted using an address he didn’t reside at in six elections in two years. Paxton didn’t really address those allegations at the time of those reports, and he certainly didn’t do so on Tuesday.