Dispatch writer Nick Catoggio says he knows what probably drove President Donald Trump’s little hissy fit in the Senate earlier this week and his threat to veto a popular housing bill. The bill would have made housing cheaper, for starters.

“Americans want cheaper housing, [Trump] wants the SAVE America Act. He didn’t debate for a second whose desire should take precedence, I’m sure,” said Catoggio. “Still, there might be more to his Trumper tantrum over the housing bill than rank spite at not getting his way on election reform. … For all his pretensions to being an avatar of ‘the forgotten man,’ the president remains a Manhattan real estate developer at heart. And real estate developers have been conditioned by their trade to want property to grow more expensive, not less.

“Just ask him. ‘I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes,’ Trump admitted in January. Later, in March, the Great Populist assured House Speaker Mike Johnson that ‘no one gives a s—— about housing,’ according to four sources who spoke to Punchbowl News. Some of the president’s infamous quotes about the cost of living have been taken out of context to make him sound more callous (some, not all), but his attitude toward high housing prices is what it is. He doesn’t care. At best.”

But the potential electoral consequences for his party don’t seem to be keeping him up at night either, said Catoggio.

“He’s not behaving like somebody who cares. Maybe he will start to at some point, but he is not right now,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman wondered Thursday about the GOP’s affordability problem after the housing bill went unsigned.

“I doubt it,” said Catoggio. “An old guy who’s entered the “YOLO phase” of life is unlikely to revert to worrying about what other people — that is, 150 million American voters — think of him. All told, in Trump we have a president who got elected on populism and popularism yet has functionally renounced both in less than two years in office. He plainly isn’t prioritizing the welfare of the working man and he also plainly no longer worries about making the average voter happy, at least when doing so would conflict with his own whims. Even his decision to strike a terrible deal with Iran for the sake of bringing down gas prices was framed less as a matter of helping Americans than of protecting his own legacy.”

But Trump is a weird mishmash of psychology issues, Catoggio said

“… [I]t’s always been hard to tell … whether his paranoia about elections is a knowing lie told by a dissembling megalomaniac to discredit a threat to his power or a sincerely held delusion by a fragile egomaniac to reassure himself that the people love him,” Catoggio said. “If you see him mostly as a strongman, you think it’s the first. If you see him mostly as a narcissist, you think it’s the second.”

Regardless, Trump knows his bad behavior is sinking his popularity, and he desperately needs to do what he can to upset a natural democratic order that tends to toss out a president who stops caring about what the voters want.

“Enjoy ‘Stop the Steal 2.0’ this fall, American voters. You earned it,” Catoggio said.

National Intelligence acting director Bill Pulte has installed as his chief of staff a woman who worked on election-related schemes for the Republican National Committee, according to former U.S. officials.

“Christina Norton, the former R.N.C. official, has also served as Bill Pulte’s chief of staff at the federal housing agency he leads. But much of her recent work for the G.O.P. has centered on election issues, including efforts to monitor voting sites during the 2024 presidential election,” reports the New York Times.

While at the R.N.C., the Times reports Norton oversaw a poll watcher program that included conservative conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who helped spread the “Pizzagate” stories about child abuse at a restaurant in Washington.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the mission of Pulte’s office was supposed to be countering foreign threats, not importing “election denialism into the intelligence community.”

“If reports are true that Bill Pulte, whose installation as acting D.N.I. already raises serious legal questions, is bringing a former senior R.N.C. official who cavorted with election deniers and conspiracy theories into O.D.N.I. as his chief of staff, Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections,” The Times reports Warner saying in a statement.

Rep Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee had his own issues with the appointment, saying Pulte’s office is supposed to ensure “they report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not [President]Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”

“Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind,” Himes said in a statement.

CNN reported Pulte came into his appointed post ready to fire people, and began "asking for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them.”

Juliette Kayyem, CNN's senior national security analyst and ex-assistant secretary of Homeland Security said Pulte was “there for one reason, and that is to satisfy the president's agenda of politicizing the intelligence community.”

“It's not [just] a personal opinion,” Kayyem added. “By statute, Bill Pulte is not qualified for this position. The Director of National Intelligence is supposed to come from the intelligence community. Bill Pulte is a businessman with strong ties to MAGA and to Trump."

Daily Beast reports a Trump endorsement could be a problem for more and more voters in the general election, according to information taken from Reuters.

“President Donald Trump’s deal with Iran has done little to boost his standing among his own voters,” said Daily Beast reporter Wiktoria Gucia. “Interviews conducted by Reuters with Americans who voted for the 80-year-old president suggest many remain skeptical of the agreement he struck this month to end the war that sent gas prices soaring above $5 a gallon.”

Trump voters went so far as to say they would reconsider backing candidates endorsed by the president in the upcoming midterm elections.

"A lot of people say: 'Why should I vote when the president's not doing what he promised?'" said Juan Rivera, 26, while canvassing Latino neighborhoods.

Hispanic voters were central to Trump’s 2024 victory, with the president winning 48 percent of the Latino vote — a 12-point improvement from four years earlier, according to the Pew Research Center. However, he is now bleeding support among this key voter bloc.

Steve Egan, 65, from Tampa, Florida, voted for Trump but became disillusioned as the president’s 2025 tariffs hit his business. Egan told Reuters that when deciding who to vote for in the upcoming midterm elections, any candidate endorsed by Trump would be “the kiss of death.”

A number of Trump voters speaking with Reuters said they were disappointed with the president’s handling of the war with Iran, arguing that he failed to deliver on what he set out to achieve. Others said that entering the conflict ran counter to his earlier promise to avoid foreign entanglements.

“We need to truly weaken the Iranian regime instead of this, ‘beat them up a little bit and then step back and let them rebuild,’” Terry Alberta, 65, told Reuters.

Rivera, similarly, told the outlet that the Trump “criticized his predecessors about negotiating with terrorists, and he’s basically done the same exact thing.”

One Trump voter speaking with Reuters complained that the Iran attack appeared to benefit oil companies at the expensive of increased pump prices. Another argued Trump’s war had “triggered greater international hostility toward the United States.”

And while Trump’s memorandum of understanding he signed on June 17 originally appeared to have broad support among Republican voters, the Beast reports prominent Republicans have grown to question the fine print and whether it delivers on the president’s claimed objectives of disarming Iran and freeing the Iranian people from their onerous government.

“I hate to say this in this deal. The biggest loser is the United States and India,” proclaimed “Bolling” host Eric Bolling.

“I will say that the early returns do not look wildly promising at this point,” lamented MAGA influencer Ben Shapiro. “… Let's be very clear. This is the vice president's deal. It does not have support.”

Former Republican Steve Schmidt says House Speaker Mike Johnson is not so clueless that he can’t see the future, and that future involves a Democratic majority in the House, and lots of scrutiny.

“Mike Johnson seems like he needs to be reminded about an important reality,” said Schmidt on his “Warning” substack. “Most people drown because they panic, not because they can’t swim. Mike Johnson is panicking.”

Johnson’s overly frank claims about a future without a Republican majority in the House were quite the admission.

“If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats… impeachment’s not even the big concern,” Johnson said before a live audience. “They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the cabinet, his donors and friends … half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you. We’re going to win the midterms.”

It was “an astonishing statement,” said Schmidt, comparing it to dialogue written for Burgess Meredith playing the Penguin in the old ‘Batman’ TV series: “I run the protection program.”

“Mike Johnson isn’t panicked because he believes innocent people will be persecuted,” said Schmidt. “He’s panicked because he understands that accountability may finally be coming to Washington. He knows there will be subpoenas. He knows there will be hearings. He knows there will be oversight. He knows investigators will begin asking questions that should have been asked years ago — and he knows the answers may be devastating.”

Johnson isn’t afraid of unfair investigations, Schmid added. He’s afraid of fair ones.

“He’s afraid of evidence. He’s afraid of witnesses. He’s afraid of documents. He’s afraid that Americans will finally see the greatest spasm of political corruption in our nation’s history in all of its staggering breadth,” Schmidt said.

President Donald Trump did not commit corruption in a vacuum, he explained. He did it with the help of a MAGA Congress — the worst Congress in American history. House Republicans abandoned their constitutional responsibilities while Trump likely engaged in cryptocurrency schemes and sold presidential pardons. They also stood by while Trump politicized the DOJ and other state agencies for the benefit of party over country.

“They protected power instead of checking it. They chose personal loyalty over constitutional duty. They became accomplices through silence, indifference, and submission,” said Schmidt, adding that the American people deserve scrutiny of every corrupt act, investigation of every abuse of public office, and accountability for every official who violated the public trust.

“Every investigation should follow the evidence. Every criminal referral should be based on facts. Every prosecution should meet the highest standards of fairness and constitutional due process. That’s what separates the rule of law from authoritarianism,” said Schmidt. “Mike Johnson understands this perfectly. That’s why he sounds panicked.”

Salon reports right wing media is freaking out over a slew of Democratic victories this year and preemptively pleading to the Supreme Court to save them from the results of democracy.

This tactic involves demonizing the electorate that votes Democrat and excluding them from the electoral process as much as constitutionally possible.

“This is what happens when you import the third world,” Fox News talking head Jesse Watters recently growled about New York’s primary results, wile describing it as “a third world takeover.” Laura Ingraham, said Salon, also labored to connect progressive politics with foreignness rather than domestic political preferences.

“The entire lead-up to July 4, I consider it one big trigger warning to the Mamdani minions,” Ingraham said. “They’re happiest when foreign flags are flying. Because to them, red, white and blue ... is like sunshine to a vampire.”

Steve Bannon was no better on his “War Room” podcast, said Salon writer Sophia Tesfaye, calling New York a “foreign city.”

“Go look at Mamdani’s base,” Bannon told his audience. “It’s foreign. These sanctuary cities — this is all by design.” Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh was even less subtle, saying “Third world communists are the enemy,” on X. “They’ve taken over our greatest American city. They’re taking over one of our two major political parties. They hate this country. They hate white people. They hate our heritage and traditions.”

“The danger of this commentary lies in its explicit de-legitimization of the democratic process itself,” said Tesfaye. “When a citizen votes for a candidate who happens to hold democratic socialist views, conservative media treat the voter as an illegal interloper whose very participation in the franchise is a form of national contamination. And they’ve turned to the nation’s highest court as a counter-majoritarian shield, framing an ordinary shift in municipal politics as an existential emergency that justifies the legal dismantling of a century of constitutional consensus.”

Tesfaye referred to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who claimed in a series of his own posts following Tuesday’s New York results that Democrats had “imported a new electorate.”

“Appearing later on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, Miller told viewers that ‘a vote for any Democrat anywhere for any office is empowering a party that wants to strip this country to the bone,’" said Tesfaye. “This is the kind of overheated language that has become so normalized on right-wing television that it barely registers as remarkable.”

“Within the same news cycle as these election results, conservatives turned their attention to a series of favorable Supreme Court rulings for the Trump administration on immigration policy,” Tesfaye added. “A 6–3 decision allowing the continuation of certain border restrictions was celebrated not simply as a legal victory, but also as a cultural one. The right’s reaction to these rulings exposed the raw ethno-nationalist impulses driving the judicial pivot.”

On a recent podcast, Megyn Kelly revealed her personal delight at the court decision.

“Look, this has been going on for over a dozen years,” Kelly said of the migrant populations. “Go home, get out! We know our country is better than yours! That’s because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values! You being here only dilutes it for us, those who built it and live it!”

“The Trump administration’s effort to reinterpret that guarantee — excluding children of undocumented immigrants — has long been considered a legal long shot. But in the current climate, it has taken on outsized symbolic importance. For many on the right, it represents a way to redraw the boundaries of national belonging through judicial power rather than electoral competition,” said Tesfaye. “This is why the reaction to the New York primaries so quickly converged on the courts. If cities are ‘lost,’ if the electorate is ‘changed,’ then the judiciary becomes the arena where outcomes can still be controlled.”

The right-wing media ecosystem, said Tesfaye, is making a real-time argument that the solution to democratic elections producing outcomes conservatives hate is to ensure that fewer of the people who voted in them are legally recognized as citizens.

Unaffordable home prices are not the kind of thing billionaire President Donald Trump has had to worry about his whole life, but his voters are having a hard time with it in his economy. Locally elected Republicans are feeling more heat over the economic situation than Trump in his gold-plated Oval Office, however, and this is pressing Columbia, SC. Mayor Daniel Rickenmann to plead Trump for mercy.

“I think it's terrible for the Republican Party, to be quite honest,” said Rickenmann, speaking to an MS NOW “Weekend” panel Saturday morning about the possibility of Trump vetoing a popular housing bill to force Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act. “… When you have Senator (Rick) Scott and Senator (Elizabeth) Warren working together, this is what this country is based on, so we're really excited. You know, look, in 10 days this bill will be law. And I don't think the President would be wise to even think about vetoing something like this. This is monumental. This is the beginning. First housing bill in 30-plus years.”

Trump is facing a likely disastrous midterm election threatening to remove his protective Republican buffer in the House and Senate — which is the only thing protecting him from numerous investigations into claims of fraud and various tampering. Knowing this, Trump is determined to pass the SAVE Act, an election bill that critics say will make it harder to vote.

But passing the SAVE Act means also means nuking the Senate filibuster and removing the Senate parliamentarian, which Senate GOP leaders are loathe to do. For this reason, Trump is holding all bills hostage until the Republican majority commits to passing the SAVE Act to the White House for a signature.

But Trump may have other reasons behind his indifference to the Housing Bill, said MS NOW Eugene Daniels, who played footage of Trump dismissing the need for lower housing prices.

“I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody. Maybe anywhere. It is all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rate. You can have all the housing you want. But you have to understand: I don't want to … hurt people that own houses too. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses, they become rich. I don't want to hurt them either.”

“What's interesting is several weeks ago, a month ago, he talked about how this is important,” responded Rickenmann. “This is the number one issue across America in every city. … If you're a Democratic city, Republican city, whatever, there's three and a half million units needed across this country. … We had over 1,800 [building permits issued] in our city. We're pushing everything we can. But to say that it's just interest rates is not true. And to say this isn’t monumental as also very disappointing, in my point of view.”

“It is very important for us to protect the integrity of elections,” Rickenmann insisted. “But at the same time, we can't hold one bill for other. We've got to work on thousands of things together, and I don't like the impression that one bill is being held up for another. That's just not the way things need to work.”

Friday night’s final season edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher delivered a patronizing interview with Vice President JD Vance, but not before Maher first hammered President Donald Trump over his plummeting approval ratings and his Reflecting Pool debacle.

“Fourth of July coming up, and you know what? Today it opened, Supergirl, perfect for the Fourth of the July. Yeah, big superhero, another superhero movie opened this week, but what’s going on in Washington? Deadpool,” said Maher, according to reporting by Mediaite.

“Oh, we’ve killed the reflecting pool. I’m tired of hearing about the god—— reflecting pool,” Maher added. “I’ve got to say. I don’t really give a s—— about the reflecting pool. And I love America, but I’ve gotta admit, we’re the only place you could make a pool improve by p—— in it.

“But you know, the problem is now, there are dead ducks in the pool, or possibly murdered by Antifa. I don’t know,” Maher then continued. “But you know the pool is dragging down the president’s approval ratings. It’s like a little in the low 30s now in the country and among independents, 25 percent—and 0 percent with ducks.”

Trump is clearly growing sensitive over the state of the pool, which he forced taxpayer to pay $14 million in a no-bod contract to one of his connected flunkies.

A Colorado-based storm chaser even got a visit by the FBI after cracking a joke about introducing algae spores into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

"I am the leftist who put algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. This plan was months in the making. I introduced spores into the paint used by the contractors who repainted the pool. It was me the whole time," said Patrick Pineda, in a since-deleted BlueSky post.

Pineda said his joke was so scientifically absurd, he assumed his audience would be intelligent enough to know it was a joke. But this is Trump’s FBI.

Meanwhile, Trump’s polling is still woefully cratered, and tearing down his party’s chances in November as well.

“Democrats have led the generic ballot in every single Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll since we began fielding in May 2025,” said pollster G. Elliot Morris. “Across 13 monthly polls (we skipped December 2025), Democrats have never trailed, with margins ranging from +5 to +10 points among registered voters.”

Just 25 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling prices, while 71 percent disapprove and 54 percent disapprove strongly, Morris added, creating a tough spot for Trump and the party.

“He is underwater on 11 of the 12 issues we tested,” Morris added.

A New York Times panel of columnists say America is heading toward its 250th anniversary, but many of its citizens and residents are not feeling celebratory, especially with billionaire President Donald Trump working to make it a celebration for only one certain class of people.

Columnists Michelle Cottle, David French and Jamelle Bouie took turns decimating the failure.

“The weird special event for our birthday boy, Mr. President, two weeks ago, with the U.F.C. fight and all of that — … that [was] not meant for the broad public. Like, you had to have a Paramount+ subscription to even watch it, first of all. It was meant for just a subset of even his own supporters,” said Bouie. “It wasn’t any kind of attempt to bring the country together under common civic rituals. And to me, that’s an intentional thing. They’re thinking of the 250th as an attempt to kind of glorify — and I use that in a religious way — Donald Trump, and not as an opportunity to, despite our many divisions and fractious nature and all that, think about our common origins and our common purpose.”

The White House doesn’t “conceive of all Americans as being American in the same way,” said Bouie, with the dividing line being whether or not you support Trump’s political project.

“It’s this constant stratification,” said French, referring to the celebrations very limited appeal of UFC wrestling and one or two acts of hard rock country singers. “It’s this constant sense of a pecking order, and then this constant sense there is always, always in the back of their mind something that goes like this: ‘How can we do this in a way that will make other people mad, that will make our enemies mad? How can we make our enemies mad today?’ As opposed to, ‘How can we bring the country together today?’ It really does seem to be an absolute communications priority of this administration to just go ahead and decide to tick people off on purpose, as long as it’s the right people.”

“That strikes me as at the root of the president’s movement all along,” said Cottle. “Whatever you think of his politics, it’s all about ticking off the elites, which is hilarious because he is an elite of sorts. He’s just an elite who’s always had a chip on his shoulder and has never really fit in.”

“Right, and elites here are defined in a purely cultural, nonmaterial way,” said Bouie. “For these people — if you are, like, a barista with an English degree, making $15 an hour, you’re an elite because Netflix producers like to make shows for you sometimes. Whereas if you are a billionaire buying pardons for your buddies, you’re not an elite, because the cultural tastemakers supposedly look down on you.”

“What Jamelle said was exactly right about elites,” said French. “You can be an underemployed Brown English or art major grad, and that’s an elite. And if you own five car dealerships in, say, Hattiesburg, Miss., you’re just a working man. … Somebody who might be on the elder board of a church, the head of the local Kiwanis Club, or, you know, has their name on a building in a local college, right? And they will view themselves as the scrappy underdog because, you know, the gender studies department in Oberlin looks down on them.

“Oh, my God, boo-hoo-hoo,” erupted Cottle. “That’s all I’ve got to say to the president, just boo-hoo-hoo. Get over it, OK? Get over yourself.”

Dispatch writer David M. Drucker dropped some truth on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” show on Saturday, explaining exactly why Republican leaders in the Senate are finally defying President Donald Trump by refusing to pass the SAVE Act.

Passing the act, which critics say will severely constrict voter access, will require unprecedented moves in the Senate, including the dismantling of the Senate filibuster and the removal of the Senate parliamentarian. Neither of that’s going to happen, however, because Republicans in the Senate can see the future whereas Trump — who is pushing 80 — sees very little future at all.

“What I find silly about this, but it kind of shows you where the President's head is at — which is the same place it's always at —,” he said suggestively, “is that what Republicans do unto you today, Democrats can do unto you tomorrow.”

“So go ahead and fire the parliamentarian, go ahead and scrap the filibuster. Democrats are going to be in power again sometime soon. Look at the past 25 years. This goes back and forth. And they will trash this bill. They'll [install] universal mail-in balloting. They'll do all these things that will force Texas and Florida and Idaho and all these red states to govern elections the way they want. We just played ping-pong doing this. So, the whole thing is just ridiculous,” Drucker said.

Drucker added that Trump’s time would be much better spent helping his party focus on economic issues to smooth Republicans' slide into the midterms — only that’s not going to happen, he said.

Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.), who Trump had removed in the Republican primaries for daring to release the Epstein files, said on Thursday that Republicans can expect “an absolute shellacking” in November because “we’re wasting the opportunity that voters gave us.”

Drucker agreed on Tuesday, writing that Republicans hoping for Trump to pivot to the economy would be better off spending their time hunting “proof” of the “tooth fairy.” The very next day, Trump stomped a Congressional effort to pass a housing bill that would make home ownership for affordable.

“I am prescient, man,” Drucker told the MS NOW panel. “[Trump] is … a complicated political figure, but not a complicated man. He is singularly focused on his things that interest him and his grievances.”

“[H]e is approaching this presidency doing everything that he ever dreamed he might want to do from the very beginning,” Drucker added. “He never had any use for Congress from the very beginning. He never took well to criticism from voters, and so this is how he has been, and this is how he will be to finish out his last two and a half years.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Salon reports the specter of Jeffrey Epstein appears to be looming over the Republican Party as the GOP struggles to maintain it’s delicate House and Senate majorities.

Republicans have seized on Epstein’s ties to Democratic figures like former President Bill Clinton, but it appears that Epstein lingers most heavily over the party with a president whose name peppers the Epstein files, and who worked so obviously to keep the files under wraps. Trump also labored to remove Republicans who favored exposing the Epstein files in Republican primaries.

This is giving Democrats an additional edge in a race that is already swinging heavily away from Republicans who have failed to reign in President Donald Trump’s various power grabs and his monetizing of the White House.

“The revelations from the files further fueled the widespread, bipartisan exasperation among voters with the wealthiest elites,” reports Salon. “The Epstein issue, two Democratic pollsters told The 19th, is rare for its high salience and far reach even among less politically engaged voters — and for the high levels of bipartisan agreement on the need for more action.”

Surveys from Navigator Research and progressive pollster Data for Progress buttress that argument, with both polls showing majorities of voters — including a majority of Republicans — believe “there hasn’t been enough accountability connected to Epstein’s crimes” and they want to see more arrests and prosecutions. The March Navigator poll, in particular, revealed the share of Americans who said they believed Trump administration officials should resign over the Epstein matter increased when they were informed about officials in other countries being arrested, fired or forced to resign over their Epstein connections.

“What has happened with the Epstein files is such a clear distillation of the frustration that Americans across different partisan ideologies, even Republicans, even MAGA Republicans, and certainly independents, feel that there’s a different set of rules — or that really no rules at all — for the elite who just seem to get ahead,” said Melissa Toufanian, managing director at Navigator.

The Navigator survey, revealed that half of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats and nearly 60 percent of independents, said they believed the government was “definitely” covering up additional wrongdoing by Epstein. And 72 percent of Americans, including 70 percent of independents, 67 percent of non-MAGA Republicans and 57 percent of respondents identified as MAGA Republicans, demanded more arrests and prosecutions related to Epstein.

Sixty-four percent of surveyed adults, including two-thirds of independents and half of Republicans, said they believed Epstein’s crimes were “unsurprising and the result of a broader problem.”

This is giving Democrats a definite edge in the midterms after the party battled the White House and it’s foot-dragging Republican defense team in the House to release the files last year.

“It really cuts across every political divide in a way that we almost never see on other issues,” Toufanian said.

The number of red state candidates running on Epstein and the “Epstein class” demonstrates this, reports Salon. Texas Democratic senatorial candidate James Talarico and Ohio Democratic senatorial candidate Sherrod Brown appear to be getting good mileage out of their Republican opponents by campaigning against the Epstein class, as is Noah Taylor, an Army veteran running as a Democrat for the Senate in Kansas, and Dan Osborn, an independent Senate candidate in Nebraska.

“Osborn, who is challenging Sen. Pete Ricketts, issued a news release pointing to a campaign rally in which Ricketts and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appeared together, calling them ‘birds of a feather who are content to carry out the agenda of the billionaire Epstein class,’” reports Salon.

And it definitely does not help that voters were not only highly aware of the Epstein files issue but were able to name specific figures connected to it, including Trump, who they believed to be part of the Epstein class, according to Data for Progress research.

The Boston Globe reports Two Republican candidates for statewide office, including the state party’s de facto nominee for attorney general, won’t appear on the September primary ballot after the commission that oversees ballots took issue with hundreds of nomination signatures they submitted.

The result comes as a shock considering President Donald Trump and his Republican Party’s purported war on voter fraud in what critics say is actually a ploy to remove Democratic voters from rolls.

Despite the party’s crusade, however, Anne Manning Martin, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, and Michael Walsh, the party’s endorsed candidate for attorney general, were both knocked off after the commission found problems with enough of the signatures they had collected.

“In accordance with the Ballot Law Commission’s decisions, the names of Anne Manning Martin for Lieutenant Governor and Michael C. Walsh for Attorney General will not be printed on the September 1, 2026, state primary ballots,” said Deb O’Malley, a spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.

The commission invalidated 1,021 signatures of the 10,677 Walsh turned in to the secretary of state’s office, leaving him hundreds of signatures short of the 10,000 required to make the ballot.

For Manning Martin, the commission invalidated 1,279 signatures her campaign submitted, leaving her with only 9,413 “valid signatures.”

“A general review of the certified signatures on the nomination papers also demonstrates they are likely fraudulent,” the commission wrote in the decision.

The Globe reports this decision is “the latest development in the signature fraud controversy that has now decimated the Republican ticket, knocking off two candidates for lieutenant governor and eliminating the party’s sole challenger to Attorney General Andrea Campbell.”

“The state Republican party, already struggling to field candidates down-ballot, is now only officially challenging for three of the six statewide constitutional offices, all of which are currently held by Democrats,” The Globe reports.

MAGA influencer and podcaster Tucker Carlson was happy to laud the hard feelings between President Donald Trump’s digital media manager Alex Bruesewitz and ultra conservative columnist and Fox News pundit Mark Levin on his Friday podcast.

In addition to discussions topics about how hard the nation appears to “discriminate” against white people and foreign influences on social media, Bruesewitz and Carlson eventually got around to the topic of Levin, who has criticized Trump’s disastrous invasion of Iran as well as a few other Trump policy disagreements.

“Mark Levin hates Trump. He's always hated Trump, has worked against Trump openly for a decade. And then Trump does something that he agrees with and he's [suddenly] the gatekeeper and Trump's best friend,” said Carlson. “Now he hates Trump again and he's attacking Trump. How long does Trump continue to be friends with this guy?”

Carlson himself has roundly criticized Trump’s invasion of Iran and warned that the invasion could escalate into a major world war if Trump followed through on his threat to annihilate Iranian civilization. But this discussion was about Levine.

Bruesewitz pointed out that Levin is “trying to get me fired, by the way,” before claiming Trump is “unique” in that he can handle when people criticize him,” in blatant contradiction to facts.

“Oh, he can? … He doesn't think they’re ‘low IQ crazy people’? Carlson demanded incredulously, referring to Trump’s insult of Carlson’s own criticism a matter of weeks ago over Iran.

“Only some,” Bruesewitz admitted, before going on to describe Levin as “part of the Republican Party that has been left in the past.”

“They are desperately trying to remain relevant and they use conflicts, whether it's in the Middle East … for example or the conflict in Ukraine. They use these issues to have a little relevance to maintain their presences on Fox News. But the people aren’t with him and you see that in polling. You see 60-something percent of Americans support [Trump’s] MOU [ending the Iran war]. You look at Mark Levin's twitter feed he acts like everybody's against it. Nobody’s against it except for Mark and his friends, who are probably coordinating in their messaging and talking points.”

“I always try to remind myself Mark Levin is not a player in any affairs, global or local,” Carlson said in agreement. “He's irrelevant and his job is, like, to make me mad and suck me into his fantasy world and I should just ignore this and you clearly already figured that out.”

“Don't take the bait,” Bruesewitz advised.

Dispatch writer Nick Catoggio appears to be feeling more venom than usual. On Friday Catoggio lit into the no-explanations secrecy with which President Donald Trump and his lieutenants conduct business, particularly the quick removal of four-star Gen. Chris Donahue.

Donohue was the top Army commander in Europe who led Delta Force in battle against ISIS. As commander of the 82^nd Airborne, Catoggio said he was also famously the last man out of Afghanistan when U.S. troops withdrew in 2021.

Before his removal the Atlantic reports he was “leading the service’s effort to take lessons from Ukraine and apply them to future conflict.

“Not a man the military would lightly part with, one might think. He must have done something awfully bad for our defense secretary, who famously loves warfightin’ warriors, to send him packing,” said Catoggio. “… Or maybe it simply bugged Hegseth to have someone in the chain of command as universally admired as Donahue is. It’s not just a matter of jealousy (although it probably is that too). An officer as distinguished as Donahue having to answer to a cosplaying yutz who used to host Fox & Friends Weekend only made Hegseth’s yutziness more glaring by contrast to the brass, I’m sure.”

But there’s no official explanation coming on why exactly Donohue is out — and you’re not going to get one in this administration, said Catoggio.

“[E]lecting a figure like Trump implicitly amounts to a sort of waiver by voters of their right to accountability from their government,” Catoggio said. “You don’t hand power to a nationalist strongman expecting that he’ll dutifully explain his thinking on policy periodically like some egghead technocrat. You do it because you don’t expect that. You trust him. Your vote is a vote of confidence in him and his instincts.”

Under Trump, “the people’s role in government ends on election night. (Unless the Democrats win, of course, in which case rigorous oversight going forward is a must.) The administration couldn’t be any plainer about that,” said Catoggio. “‘TRUST IN TRUMP,’ the official White House Twitter account declared a few weeks ago amid spiking anxiety over gas prices, going on to quote the president: "Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does!"

And that’s your answer as to why Chris Donahue was fired, said Catoggio. It’s what Americans supposedly agreed to do in 2024, so that’s all the explanation they’re entitled to.

“The last 16 months are littered with examples of that ethos at work,” Catoggio added, referring to DOGE running “roughshod” over federal agencies with little explanation to Congress or voters about what was getting cut or why. It also explains the complete silence behind dozens of “outrageous” federal pardons being issued without explanation, just like Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade war, and his disastrous war on Iran.

“Even the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, an obsession of the president’s own base, would still be hidden if not for a revolt in Congress that forced their publication. MAGA fans who turned out in 2024 may have thought they were voting for transparency on Epstein by voting for the president, but that’s not how postliberalism works. To Trump, they were voting to signal their absolute trust in him,” said Catoggio. “If he thought they shouldn’t see the Epstein material, that should have been good enough. No further explanation required.”

Former Republican and current Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller showed no mercy to MAGA podcaster Megyn Kelly after her attack on Haitians this week.

“I think you're kind of nice to Megyn Kelly there because what Megyn Kelly is doing is she's being a rancid b——,” Miller said on his Friday afternoon Bulwark podcast with guest host Jane Coaston. “That's what she's doing. I'm sorry but, like, that is all she's doing.”

The former NBC daytime talk host took to her SiriusXM “Megyn Kelly Show” and denigrated Haitian immigrants living in the U.S.

“And half of you people, more than half, you won't assimilate. We don't want you,” Kelly said. “We don't care if you're offended. Get out. Go home. Go back to f—— Haiti. Sorry. I'm just I'm thinking about our friends in Ohio who've been dealing with these … Haitians for years now. Drunk driving all over their towns and killing people.”

“This is the whole cats and dogs thing,” Kelly then added, citing a soundly debunked claim by President Donald Trump that immigrants were eating cats and dogs prior to his 2024 re-election. “They don't want to live like Americans live.”

Coaston called Kelly’s rage insincere because she was merely doing it for money.

“It's a performance for an audience. It's fake. This is what [they] want,” said Coaston. “This is what [they] want to hear from you … and we want this from you and it will benefit you financially to do this. If it didn't, she wouldn't be doing it.”

“We have evidence of all of this because do you remember when she was working for NBC?” Coaston asked Miller.

“Yeah, it was a totally different character,” said Miller. “She was like a totally different character. She was loving trans children, having them on the show. There's like a soft morning mom after school drop off [kind of vibe]. She did the wine dancing.”

Kelly’s tenure on NBC was short-lived, however. In 2018, she was criticized for on-air remarks she made on Megyn Kelly Today related to the appropriateness of blackface as a Halloween costumes, saying “that was okay as long as you were dressing up like a character." She also defended Luann de Lesseps's use of blackface to wear a Diana Ross Halloween costume.

Kelly issued an email apologizing for the remarks after catching backlash. But three days later, NBC canceled Megyn Kelly Today. She had only been with the network for about a year.

Kelly is just an actor, said Miller, who contributes nothing to the nation, unlike the immigrants who actually arrive and work hard.

“She is perpetrating a lie. That is what is underscoring the tragedy that's happening to these people that are being sent back to Haiti for no reason. They're being menaced by our government for no reason. They're in the country working hard, going to church. raising their families,” said Miller. “… Megan Kelly, you didn't build s——. She has not built any lasting cultural touchstone. She's added nothing to the culture. All she's trying to do is rip the country apart, undermine what made America special.”

MS NOW analyst Steve Benen says House Speaker Mike Johnson dropped an unexpectedly corruption-friendly reason for protecting the House’s GOP majority against its near inevitable collapse in the November midterms.

“If we lose the midterms, these Democrats will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the cabinet, his donors, friends, half of you in this room will be targeted,” Johnson said — and then added out loud that “I run the protection program. We’ll take care of you.”

In the final two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, there was a Republican Congress and a Democratic president, said Benen, and Republicans “put aside any legislative ambitions and spent 2023 and 2024 … investigating all sorts of perceived controversies related to the Democratic administration.”

But after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the GOP-led Congress completely switched gears and clanked the Congressional vehicle into protection mode.

“This time, lawmakers also abandoned their oversight responsibilities to an almost cartoonish degree, pretending not to notice any of the incumbent president’s many abuses and scandals,” said Benen.

In fact, Congressional Republicans have done so little oversight, The Washington Post reported last month, that the White House Counsel’s Office, expecting Democrats to reclaim a majority in at least one chamber, recently began “giving private briefings to the administration’s political appointees on how to best prepare for congressional oversight,” said Benen.

That same article added that the roughly 30-minute briefings have included “a PowerPoint presentation about how congressional oversight works and best practices for handling it.”

Regarding his statement, Benen notes the GOP leader did not appear to be reading from a prepared text. He was just shocking shooting GOP intent from the hip before a live audience.

“What was on his mind was a near future in which a possible House Republican majority spends 2027 and 2028 shielding the president, his team and their allies from the kind of scrutiny that Congress has a responsibility to do as a matter of course,” said Benen.

“This isn’t altogether surprising,” he added, “given everything we’ve seen from Capitol Hill over the past year and a half, but it was nevertheless remarkable to hear a sitting House speaker declare, out loud and in public, that he wants and expects to run a ‘protection program’ — a phrase more commonly associated with organized crime — on behalf of the White House.”

Republicans have already been using their majority to shield the president from the fallout of the Epstein files, with Kentucky Republican and House Oversight Chair James Comer being accused of using "a new strategy" to "contain" the ability of lawmakers to issue subpoenas against "high-profile figures in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation."

Before that, Republicans used their majority to stall the passage of a new law making the Trump administration’s release of the files legally mandatory. And after failing in that effort, Trump himself targeted Republicans who favored the release for ousting in GOP primaries.

The GOP’s labor to protect Trump from incrimination is well noted, but Benen said “usually, GOP leaders are a bit more subtle about their anti-oversight posturing.”

Johnson’s protective oath sounds odd considering how hard Trump appears to be working to get the Republican majority removed from Congress, however. Trump’s polling is at historic lows, and his recent effort to blowup a hugely popular housing bill in the Senate is souring voters to both the administration and his party.

It was an ad campaign designed to sink an American legend with Trump-style accusations, but the legend appears to have endured.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports American motorcycle company Harley Davidson has weathered a hateful ad campaign by competing cycle company Indian Motorcycle.

“The attacks by Indian Motorcycle on Harley-Davidson Motor Company have generated a buzz, but not on Wall Street,” reports Sentinel writer Ricardo Torres. “Harley's stock price has increased since Indian, in late May, launched a campaign criticizing the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker's executive hires and previous policies on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Harley's stock is up roughly 10 percent in the last month to about $25.70 per share.

“Investors aren’t paying attention to the social commentary and are instead waiting to see if Harley-Davidson's strategy of more offering affordable bikes will work, said Jaime Katz, who monitors Harley-Davidson for Morningstar.

Harley plans to relaunch the Sprint model later this year, complete with a starting price of about $6,000, and it will bring back the Sportster in 2027, which is expected to sell for about $10,000. These prices are not the kind of costs Harley customers are accustomed to from a factory paying American-worker-style wages. But Harley is leaning into lower priced cycles in response to “changing economic conditions” under Trump.

“We have a higher inflation environment for internal combustion engines; you have higher gas prices for your motorcycle; you have consumer sentiment that’s still declining; you have a stalled employment picture; you have services still outperforming goods; you have lower consumer savings,” Katz told the Sentinel.

To commemorate America’s 250^th anniversary, Harley also brought back a limited edition of the red, white and blue Super Glide model from 1971. The Sentinel reports the company is planning to build only 2,500 of them, on sale for about $15,000.

President Donald Trump’s supporters began denouncing Harley Davidson as “woke,” allegedly over the company’s unconfirmed DEI policies.

“The conservative influencers have spoken: Harley-Davidson—whose motorcycles helped create the paradigm of American masculinity —I s in fact woke and gay,” wrote The Bulwark’s Will Sommer earlier this year. Observing the numerous MAGA personalities and meme accounts denouncing the company, including actor Kevin Sorbo among others.

Sommer observed that “this campaign against the motorcycle giant stands out for the fact that Harley-Davidson doesn’t appear to have done anything terribly ‘woke.’”

Matt Laidlaw, who works at the “oldest, largest” Harley dealership in LA, claimed Indian Cycle “starting practicing some dirty marketing tactics” by “hiring political, social-media influencers to label Harley-Davidson as ‘Woke’ after Indian Cycle’s parent company, Polaris “ditched” the Indian brand.

The attacks ramped up after influencers had launched similar attacks against Cracker Barrel and Deere. In the months since these campaigns, however, MAGA sites themselves have been collapsing as fewer visitors click in—due to Trump’s low popularity and faltering health.

Former Hill writer Jason Easley reports President Donald Trump exposed every bit of respect he still has for the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, which helped put him back in the White House in 2024.

“America finally got to see what Trump really thinks of his evangelical supporters at the White House on Friday,” reports Easley. “Evangelicals formed their circle around Trump, who was seated at his desk in the Oval Office, and they sang his praises in the most godly of terms.”

Trump’s “spiritual adviser,” Paula Reid, happily praised Trump’s commitment to inserting Christianity more deeply into U.S. government, and for doing his best to frame the national argument as a war on Christianity.

“The rejection, the pain, the trauma that was caused simply because of faith. And it is just inconceivable that no one has stood up like you have stood up to fight for faith, which gives us meaning and purpose and hope and an ability to continue to be our better selves,” Reid said.

There is no telling if Trump agreed with her, however, because Trump was asleep.

The president nodded off at least twice, said, Easley, even as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick delivered his own speech.

“A phrase that's not in the Constitution, and that phrase is separation of church and state,” Patrick claimed. “The left has used that one phrase that was one line out of one of hundreds of letters by Thomas Jefferson to batter and hammer people of faith for the last 70 to 80 years. And this report will speak very clearly that we want to be sure Americans understand that they cannot be attacked by that phrase any longer. So, we have 12 recommendations. I'll read the first six.”

“Patrick could have had a list of 12,000 recommendations, and Trump would have had no idea,” said Easley, because he was again off to la-la land. Easley then produced a second video of Trump snoozing for Patrick in his trademark slack-faced style.

MSNOW reporter Stephanie Ruhle reports “Evangelicals have stood with Donald Trump through thick and thin,” with more than 80 percent voting for him in all three of his presidential races. And most have even stuck with him through his fight with the Pope.

But now, “his hold on the group may be starting to slip, as indicated by a recent poll from Reuters showing his approval rating with evangelicals has fallen to 52 percent, she said. That’s still more than half — but back in March of 2025, it was 82 percent. In other words, Trump has seen a dramatic collapse among one of his most essential support groups.

But evangelicals “don’t care that Trump is an enemy of their faith,” said Easley.

“All they care about is a political agenda. Trump understood this and knew that these people would sell out their faith for political power. Now that Trump no longer needs them or their votes, he doesn’t have to pretend anymore and can humiliate them by sleeping as they speak.”

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson said he was worried that House and Senate Republicans had tied themselves so thoroughly to President Donald Trump that the president knows he can blow up their November midterms chances without

Wilson told MS NOW anchor Katy Tur that Trump is the kind of personality that deliberately hurts those who show fealty because he sees their kindliness as weakness, and weakness must be abused.

“I think this is a real moment where the Republicans, if they were politically smart about it, would try to get some daylight between themselves and Trump, but they are so locked in this abusive marriage with him,” said Wilson. “He is the Ike Turner of their lives. He's going to torture them and hurt them, and they can't seem to escape.”

Semafor Congressional Bureau Chief Burgess Everett described Trump’s refusal to pass a popular housing bill until his GOP cohorts pass the SAVE Act — despite the bill’s inevitable doom from Democrats and a few centrist Republicans. But with the November midterms approaching fast Republicans desperately need new laws to brag about.

“They need to get together to be able to say, ‘hey, voters, you can trust us with another two years in Congress,’: Everett said. But may be unlikely if Trump refuses to sign any bills until he gets his precious SAVE Act.

Wilson said Republicans have only themselves to blame for the monster hounding them out of their Republican majority in November.

“Donald Trump started the week in very bad shape. He went in Wednesday and blew up his already tattered relationship with the Senate, threatening to veto this bill. You could see the air going out of Republicans in the House who desperately needed anything, even a symbolic lightweight, ephemeral sort of thing to take to the voters and say ‘yeah, we looked at affordability. We're working on housing costs.’ But I think there's also a great chance that Donald Trump will get bored or restless or change his mind, or somebody will get in his ear over the weekend and he'll blow it all up again,” said Wilson.

“The idea that the House is going to be somehow saved by Donald Trump, from its own worship of Donald Trump — which is what's put them in this terrible political position. I think that is a big old category error. And I don't think they see the freight train coming at them.”

Tur pointed out that the American public is “speaking pretty clearly” about their own 'fealty' to Trump, with the president suffering a 30-point popularity drop in just over a year.

“No president in modern times, with numbers that low doesn't end up splashing some radiation onto the members of his own caucus, of his own House and Senate,” said Wilson, “so these guys are really running up against a very steep hill.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Bulwark political reporter Joe Perticone says it doesn’t pay to be a former lawmaker minion for President Donald Trump.

Perticone and his associates have covered the high number of House Republicans retiring or seeking statewide positions back home after the “historically ineffective” speakership of Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) and Trump.

“Unfortunately for the candidates looking to move on up from the federal kiddie table, voters seem unimpressed by their claims to be ready for a seat among the adults,” Perticone reported. “Of the 21 House Republicans running for statewide office this cycle, eight have lost or abandoned their primaries. Just four have won their respective races — several of whom ran in non-competitive primaries or received a hefty assist from President Donald Trump.”

The future of more former GOP House members is still in question, but Perticone said at least one more loss is waiting because Reps. David Schweikert and Andy Biggs are competing against one another for the Republican nomination in Arizona governor.

“What gives? Well, for starters, the stench of currently being in office,” said Perticone, citing a recent interview with Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who made the leap from House to Senate in 2024.

“It’s a tough climate,” said Curtis describing this year’s election.

“… I think it always has been [toxic],” he added of Republican incumbency in primary races. “I mean, it has its advantages, obviously. But people love the new, shiny things.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who just lost his primary to be Texas’s next attorney general, is another failed lawmaker still trying to figure out how he got here.

“I think people like to come up with all sorts of reasons for why individual campaigns work or don’t work,” Roy told Perticone. “I just ran a race, in Texas, against $30 million, and against a bunch of ads saying I’m ‘not Trump enough.’”

“I didn’t have to do it,” Roy added of his bid for Texas AG. “I could’ve stayed [in the House] and kept doing my thing and been here for a long time. I wanted to enter the fray to try to fight back in Texas.”

But Roy said candidates with all the on-paper credentials keep falling short this year, citing Ralph Norman’s failed bid to win the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary. In fact, two GOP U.S. House members with good credentials both failed to make the runoff.

“Nancy Mace had a whole bunch of name ID,” he added.

Trump endorsed both Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and winner Alan Wilson.

“Every race is unique, but so far, the GOP candidates attempting to leave the House to pursue state-wide ambitions are frequently running into unexpected walls,” said Perticone, suggesting maybe “it’s because they’ve lost the ability to create real legislative results.”

MAGA is still very much a power player in Republican primaries, but Zeteo reports Trump’s culty foundation is crashing out with the rest of America, particularly voters.

The news comes as Fox News published stunning poll results for the Senate race in red-state Ohio with Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP incumbent Jon Husted, 53 percent to 45 percent.

“In an era of metronomic partisan polarization, that eight-point Democratic margin in Ohio almost defies belief,” said Zeteo writer John Harwood. “But an intra-Republican fracture explains it: Only 4 percent of those aligned with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement backed Brown, but 31 percent of ‘non-MAGA’ Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democratic candidate.”

“That snapshot reflects an emerging 2026 picture that does not resemble a familiar face-off between evenly-matched Republican and Democratic two parties,” said Harwood, a former White House correspondent for CNN. “Instead, the midterm elections increasingly pit the MAGA minority against the American majority of everyone else.”

Trump’s MAGA base is still solid, with polling measuring it as 36 percent of all voters months after his last re-election. But 36 percent is not enough to win an election, and it’s not getting any higher with Trump’s popularity crashing.

“The non-MAGA segment – currently about 40 percent of the GOP – had misgivings about Trump after his first term and its violent conclusion. But in the end, three of four backed him, finding Harris too far left and Trump more likely to help on inflation and immigration,” said Harwood.

“The difference in this cycle is their illusions have been shattered,” said pollster Geoff Garin.

“Instead of taming inflation … Trump’s tariffs and failed war against Iran have worsened it,” said Harwood. “Meanwhile, the president fattens his bank account, feeds his ego with vanity projects, fabricates prosecutions against enemies, and excuses or obscures the crimes of friends, including the late [sex-trafficker] Jeffrey Epstein.”

“Ominously for the GOP,” Harwood reports, “attitudes among non-MAGA Republicans keep edging closer to those of self-described independents – who have abandoned Trump in droves. On issues large and small, that produces lopsidedly negative national assessments of Trump’s priorities.”

Only 18 percent of Americans say Trump’s Iran war had been useful, in one poll, while 63 percent say Trump’s policies benefit the rich and corporations. And only 16 percent approved of Trump’s UFC fight on the White House lawn in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

And while Trump disgust won’t turn non-MAGA Republicans into Democrats, but some will, as indicated by Brown’s lead in Ohio. Many other non-MAGA Republicans will simply not vote at all.

“MAGA appears loyal enough to keep Trump’s national job approval from dropping much below its current 36-39 percent range in the leading polling averages. [But] … given the alienation of other Republicans, Democrats may not need it to,” said Harwood.

US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan may have opened the floodgates by siding with former MS NOW show host Katie Phang in her lawsuit demanding the Trump administration adhere to the word of the Epstein Transparency Act.

Politico writer Josh Gerstein reports Judge Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction against the DOJ for failing to comply with the letter of the Act by over-redacting released records and not explaining the reasons behind redacting the info.

The ruling means Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche now has explain why he shouldn't be forced to release names redacted from emails and documents that reference potentially damning videos and allegations of abuse of minors. Also included in redacted info includes the potential names of co-conspirators of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, as well as potentially damaging FBI interview notes from a victim who claimed Epstein introduced her to President Donald Trump when she was only 13.

Trump has denied the allegation that he assaulted the minor.

Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney before Trump put him over the DOJ, did not defend the redactions of the information before the court but instead argued the court had no power to decide on the case.

However, “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act,” Judge Sullivan said. Additionally the judge refused the DOJ’s wish to be granted a stay, arguing that "There is no competing harm to the government with the issuance of preliminary relief that orders compliance with statutes.”

“Phang is not requesting the immediate production of documents, but rather that the Attorney General show cause if he declines to do so,” Sullivan wrote. “As to the requests to review of foreign language documents and publish the redaction log, the Act required the Attorney General to produce the documents and publish the log by December 19, 2025 — more than six months ago. … Conclusion: For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants Ms. Phang’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction.”

Prior to this judicial decision the Epstein Transparency Act had no enforcement, but Phang sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, which potentially lets courts overturn government agency decisions.

Sullivan’s decision could open the floodgates to a host of other journalists suing under the same argument.

Dispatch writer Kevin Williamson has little patience for conservative friends who “hurl themselves headlong at an opportunity to find something good to say" about President Donald Trump.

Recently the staff of the hyper conservative National Review even knocked together a recent staff editorial — premature, he says — on the subject of Trump’s reflecting pool beautification project before it went straight-up swampy.

Of course, the Trump administration awarded the no-bid contract to a firm linked to a Trump crony, so Williamson said of course the thing became a “fiasco” with algae and ducks “keeling over dead.”

But what should people who believe Trump expect if not another head dip in embarrassment? There’s a pattern here, after all.

“The president himself, and virtually every senior member of his administration, lies almost all the time about almost everything. J.D. Vance, out there flogging his book about becoming a Christian, uses the Eighth Commandment like it came out of a package that says ‘Charmin’ on it. Federal judges no longer accept as given that DOJ lawyers will not simply lie to them. A federal court has just thrown out a nakedly political and legally laughable attempt to prosecute Trump’s political opponents in Minnesota,” said Williamson.

“Given a choice between the word of the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the Republican leader in the Senate, the speaker of the House, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Lindsey Graham, et al., and the word of some utterly unknown party, the only rational assumption is that the unknown party starts from a higher degree of presumptive credibility, inasmuch as one does not know for a fact that he has already lied repeatedly about important public matters or served as an active collaborator with such lies,” Williamson added. “Maybe there has been [Reflecting Pool] vandalism. But whose word can we take on that? Trump’s? Vance’s? Jeanine Pirro’s? Are you kidding me?”

Williamson made a reference to another historical cad with an administration that had great talent at building highways.

“’It cannot be the case that literally everything the man did is wrong,’” Williamson quoted the National Review, speaking of Trump’s beautification efforts. “I suppose those words might have occurred to contented motorists speeding down Germany’s magnificent autobahn from time to time. But, at some point, one might legitimately ask why anybody would grasp at such a straw.”

“Half the problem with Trumpism is Trumpism. And the other half of the problem with Trumpism is Trump,” Williamson argued. “Trump will always betray those who trust him. And he will always force his underlings to go out in public and defend indefensibly stupid things. Ask Larry Kudlow or Kevin Hassett. And, contra National Review’s social-media intern, Trump will reliably make everything he gets his hands on ugly: His Caligula-by-way-of-Liberace aesthetic is not only — or even mainly — the result of bad taste but the result of bad character. There is a reason vanity is numbered among the seven deadly sins.

“To assume that the reflecting pool work would be done incompetently and corruptly is far from absurd. If you happen to be among those who believe that character is destiny, then it is, at the very least, a reasonable assumption even if it is something short of an existential certainty,” Williamson concluded.

RADAR Online confirmed source information from a new book that President Donald Trump likes to wander around the White House gluing goldish bits and gewgaws onto walls — but it doesn’t sound much better the way anonymous White House sources frame it.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claims Trump has been personally decorating the White House by using a tube of super glue to jam gold ornamentation over the historic building. But RADAR’s sources say Trump’s little glue pen is nothing new.

"A source familiar with the White House told Radar the episode reflected Trump's highly personal approach to the presidency rather than an isolated incident,” reports reporter Aaron Tinney.

"People around him understand that if he has an idea about how something should look, he's likely to carry it out himself. It has become part of the way the White House operates under this administration,” said one source. "But it comes across as the behavior of a demented old man with tacky tastes."

"The president likes to oversee every detail of his surroundings. Whether it's a major construction proposal or a decorative flourish inside the Oval Office, he wants the final result to reflect his own taste and vision,” said another source, speaking of Trump’s arty tidbit additions.

Another insider said Trump's involvement in the décor had become well known among staff members.

The book has already unleashed several revelations about Trump's second term and it “portrays a president driven by grievances, instinct and an intense desire to reshape Washington in his own image,” according to Radar.

Revelations include just how impenetrable Trump’s “hermetically-sealed bubble,” of misinformation and flatter is in his second administration.

“His aides are not eager to bring criticisms to him — in fact, mostly they keep them away from him, because they know there's a limited amount of capital that they're willing to spend by being the one to say, ‘Hey, here's some bad news,’” Swan told an MS NOW anchor on Wednesday.

Other disclosures include Trump’s habit of letting trash collect around his living quarters, his isolation from the First Lady and his habit of throwing out expensive silver White House cutlery and utensils.

Trump is a compulsive all-night social media crawler, as indicated by his outlandish, hours-long chain posts and his perpetual narcolepsy during meetings and press engagements. But Haberman and Swan say all that overnight online raging comes complete with a long string of fast food and the resulting trash and wrappers.

President Donald Trump launched into a punishing shouting match with Republican senators on Capitol Hill week, furious that his normally devoted GOP are refusing to pass “The Save America Act”, which requires all voters to present identification and proof of their US citizenship in order to cast their ballots.

iNews reporter Simon Marks said the explosive hour-long lunch was filled with Trump talking over Senate Majority Leader John Thune as he “tore into his own party’s leading figures in Congress, accusing them of betrayal for backing legislation earlier this week that would prevent him from waging further war on Iran.”

The shouting match included a blazing, face-to-face row between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — who Trump got removed in the GOP primaries. Marks reports Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) telling reporters that Trump was “mad as a murder hornet,” during the fight while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the discussions “spirited.”

But Trump’s fury is coming from a place of fear, said Simon.

“His blind rage on Wednesday reflects his party’s dimming prospects in November, and his own desperate determination to do whatever it takes to bully, bluster and bludgeon his own party into supporting his efforts to rig the election,” said Simon.

While already passed by the House of Representatives, many Republican senators remain unwilling to back the Save Act, which challenged the constitutional rights of the nation’s 50 individual states to run their own elections.

Thune says he has told Trump over and over that the Senate votes aren’t there to pass the bill: “That’s not a conclusion, obviously, he would like to see us draw, but that’s what I have to say,” he told reporters, because Democrats oppose the legislation. Dems say the SAVE Act is a deliberate effort to disenfranchise millions of minority voters by making it harder for them to show up at the polls.

But Republicans have already been engaged in “feverish efforts” to shape elections by shaping who votes, said Simon, having already redrawn congressional maps after an April Supreme Court decision eviscerating the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and giving a loving kiss to undemocratic gerrymandering.

“Across the south, Republicans are now forcing minority voters, who usually back Democrats, into new districts where their voting power will be diluted,” said Simon. “… [and] Trump is making no bones about his determination to only respect the outcome of the midterms if Republicans win. He knows that if the Democrats take control of the House, they will have the power next year to launch impeachment proceedings against him and his top cabinet officials.”

Political authors Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan say President Donald Trump’s likely fall from Congressional dominance could involve a constitutional crisis as the budding autocrat refuses to acknowledge a Congress that is no longer beholden to him.

Trump think himself the most powerful person to walk the Earth, thanks to a report hashed together not by a historian but by the caddy of retired South African professional golfer Gary Player, according to Haberman speaking to MS NOW anchor Katy Tur.

“If he believes he's all powerful and he's the most powerful person has ever walked the Earth and he always wins. There is that open question of whether he leaves office after all,” asked Tur. “He's gilding it, he's remaking Washington. That ball room is only supposed to be finished a couple months before he leaves office.”

“We talk about this a fair amount in this in a presidential cycle, in a lame duck term, which this is. You can see where an unpopular president's party is headed and it's not for good or good results on Election Day, in the midterms and then the control of the House flips, maybe control of the Senate flips, and then what follows is a lot of subpoenas and oversight, hearings and so forth. If I'm sure if the House flips if the Senate flips one or the other or both. There obviously will be attempts by democrats. To do all of that.”

“But what we haven't seen before is what happens if a sitting administration across the board does not respond to those subpoenas, does not supply witnesses,” asked Haberman. “Now we have had instances where that has happened. You know in specific cases before under Obama, under Trump, on and so forth. What happens is if it's everything. Congress's ability is to actually engage in any accountability, if that's true, is pretty hamstrung. They don't have a jail in Congress, they will have to refer contempt of Congress, subpoenas, referrals to the DOJ, which will be led by a Trump appointee.”

“And not just a Trump appointee,” said Swan. “Trump's own former personal lawyer.”

And Swan added that if Republicans are in any kind of position of control in either the Senate or the House they will doubtless work in Trump’s favor over the health of U.S. democracy, likely out of self-preservation.

“You are seeing the Senate operate in a slightly different way than the House. But that's largely because Donald Trump has so aggressively alienated a few Senators,” said Swan. He added, however, not to expect the GOP to find its backbone, even in retirement.

“You know when it turns out, when you run them into retirement and defeat them and run opponents against them, they don't tend to retain their loyalty. But it's also instructive pretty much all these people who went against him are out of the job after the election,” said Swan. “So, this idea that, like Donald Trump, is losing all his power, I don't know. I kind of question that a little bit. He's still in the Republican Party, he's still the colossus and he still ends people's careers. So, we shouldn't get like too delusional about that.”

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The Baton Rouge Advocate reports a Southern minister with ties to president Donald Trump has been hit with second degree battery charges and a $25k bond after marching across a four-lane highway to assault a neighbor’s kid.

“The Rev. Tony Spell stood on the steps of his church in Central on Wednesday — a day after being arrested for allegedly beating up his neighbor’s 20-year-old son — and defended his actions, comparing himself to a shepherd protecting his flock,” reports the Advocate.

Spell claims the neighbors across the street from his Life Tabernacle Church on Hooper Road, have been “terrorizing” him and his congregation for months. He even described the Sherwin family as “domestic terrorists,” although Central Police Chief Roger Corcoran said they have only received one complaint about the family, filed by the Spell’s wife, Shaye Spell. Corcoran said they investigated the claim but found nothing and closed it, reports the Advocate.

Just before the fistfight, the pastor claimed the 20-year-old man threatened to rape and kill his family from across the road. However, Scott Sherwin, the father of the 20-year-old, countered after the press conference that his son wouldn’t have said something like that, let alone loud enough for Spell to hear across four lanes of traffic.

“You know what I think? I should buy my son a megaphone because I know [Spell] didn’t hear across the highway,” Sherwin told the Advocate. He added that his son was in the front yard checking whether the grass was finally dry enough to mow, and had done nothing to provoke Spell.

But Spell claims the son was on the other side of Hooper Road, shouting obscenities. Spell’s arrest warrant claims the man yelled: “f—— you.”

Surveillance footage shows Spell running across the road, with the neighbor videoing him with a cellphone until the fight ensued. The Advocate reports video appears to show the neighbor throwing the first punch as Spell pounced, but then Spell punched the man eight times before tackling him to the ground, then hitting him another 27 times.

During the fight, Spell also threw the neighbor’s phone into the street. Between punches, while on top of him, Spell twisted the neighbor’s neck to the side. And after the punchout, Spell stood and delivered a kick to the man’s side before crossing back over the road and going into the church.

The Advocate reports Spell drew national attention in 2020 after refusing to shutter church services at Life Tabernacle, defying the Louisiana governor’s emergency orders restricting group events because of the COVID pandemic.

At the time, Spell said he had spoken with Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical Family Research Council and one of President Donald Trump’s religious advisers, and “he has been a big help for us,” offering encouragement.

Around that same time, Covid was spreading faster in Louisiana than “anywhere else in the world,” according to the LA Times, with 1,388 cases and 46 deaths.

Former GOP U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Penn.) lamented before a CNN panel at how eagerly President Donald Trump appears to be trying to ruin Republicans’ chances in November, even when he’s allegedly campaigning on their behalf.

Dent was responding to a recent comment about Trump from U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, (R-La.) comparing Trump to a child.

Trump allegedly called Cassidy a ‘lunatic,’ in a recent war of words, which prompted Cassidy to tell reporters: “Can I imagine that the President called me things that would be said on a school playground? I can imagine [that]”

But Dent said Republicans like Cassidy appear to be late in showing their feelings as the midterm elections begin to close in on them, with the public growing ever more frustrated at Trump’s economic policies and his unilateral attack on Iran, which inflated U.S. fuel and food prices in time for November.

“If I wanted to lose a midterm election, I would do the things the President is doing,” said Dent. “I would steal defeat from the jaws of victory on this Housing Bill. I would obsess over a ballroom. I would obsess on a pond — the reflecting pool — and an arch. I would say ‘I don't care about Americans’ financial condition. I mean it's as if he's trying to deliberately undermine his own party's electoral prospects.”

“He was just in my hometown of Allentown yesterday … up at the Mack truck plant. And he doesn't even mention the Republican gubernatorial candidate who's sitting right there,” marveled Dent. “The State Treasurer doesn't even call on the Republican congressman until the end to say something and say it fast. I mean it's — it’s just incredible that he doesn't care about their electoral prospects.”

Trump’s not good at legislation anyway, said panelist Paul Rieckhoff, host of the “Independent Americans” podcast. This, he said, is also doing nothing for a Republican Party that desperately needs to take a win home to their voters if they are to have a chance in November.

But Trump has instead stalled all legislation in an effort to bully Congress to pass the SAVE Act with its onerous vote restrictions. He’s even stalled a popular bill to help with overpriced U.S. housing.

“[Passing legislation] requires negotiation, it requires compromise, it requires getting along with people from the other side. And [Trump] doesn't like doing that. He's a snow plow, he likes to go full force, all gas and no breaks without stopping for anyone,” Rieckhoff told CNN anchor Erin Burnett. “I think it's really [typical] that he's focusing on the SAVE act, because he's focusing on the elections. He's always focusing on the elections because he has to protect his power and he knows that free and fair elections this fall will mean accountability for him. It could mean impeachment; it could mean prison. He knows that that is America's circuit breaker. That's why he continues to prioritize it.”

“He doesn't care about housing,” said Rieckhoff. “He said that before, even though most of America does. … He cares about power, and the most important thing in protecting his power is the SAVE Act.”

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An MS NOW panel had to warily admit that President Donald Trump has sandblasted his Republican Party so hard against the wall that even Fox News can’t seem to repair the damage.

Polls suggest Trump’s popularity is at a career low, and he’s dragging his Republican Party into the pit with him. But there’s more than just polling, said John Heilemann with Puck News. The enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans is also apparent in recent elections.

“[D]emocrats are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about voting for non-Republican candidates this November and we have seen this not once, not twice, not in an outlier way, but in a consistent way,” Heilemann told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “Democrats are showing up and they're showing up in large numbers by the standards of off-year elections and the standards of special elections, and they're not just exceeding [Trump’s margins from 2024] but blowing them out of the water.”

“That's not a poll. That is not a focus group. Those are points on the board right where you're saying ‘here's a team that's winning.’” Heilemann insisted, adding that “we're seeing a deflated Republican electorate that’s not excited about its options [and] … doesn't believe that Donald Trump or the … Republican party around Donald Trump has done right by them.”

Wallace said she could even see the enthusiasm gap creeping into the markedly more somber atmosphere of the non-stop Trump cheerleading squad at Fox News.

“One of my indicators is Jessica Tarlov from [Fox’s] ‘The Five.’ In the early months of Trump's second term, she was always exquisitely prepared, but I almost was nervous for her. But now she like runs the table,” Wallace told the panel. “… I don't know if they're capable of embarrassment, but the whole power structure of the table has changed. She's just one [liberal] person, but I think she called Jesse Waters a guy who shills for an idiot and everyone was just stone silent afterward.”

“I mean it's not just vibes,” Wallace asserted. “If you trust your eyes, if you trust your ears. Donald Trump is a political loser right now. That is undeniable.”

Angelo Carusone, with Media Matters for America, quickly agreed to the network’s muted shift in tone.

“Fox News has been the firmest out there trying to carry water for the story that Trump is telling, and they just can't do it anymore,” said Carusone. “When you start to even expose it a little bit like the Tarlov example it's impossible. And they're his firmest allies.”

“They are the strongest [support structure] Trump has, Fox and the Fox audience — and even they are having a lot of difficulty carrying water for Trump right now.”

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The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports Republicans in the red state of Georgia are panicking over low enthusiasm in the months leading up to the November midterms, potentially threatening Trump’s dominance of both the U.S. House and Senate.

Georgia conservatives warn of “an enthusiasm collapse you can measure.”

“A statewide runoff drew fewer than 1 in 14 active voters, and a rodeo our own party hosted in Perry played to empty stands,” Kylie Jane Kremer, a longtime GOP activist, told AJC. “Those empty seats were a referendum.”

Kremer personally blames lingering low Republican interest on “growing disillusionment” with GOP state leaders, who she says are unwilling to use the power of their trifecta in the legislature and governor’s office, as well as their dominance in statewide elections.

Kremer said many conservative activists expected Republican lawmakers to redraw congressional and legislative districts a few weeks ago to help the GOP gain as many as two additional U.S. House seats in the 2028 cycle. They also “anticipated a sweeping move away from Georgia’s QR code-based voting system, which has long been distrusted by many Trump supporters and election skeptics,” according to AJC.

Instead, they got neither, with the AJC reporting Republican legislative leaders rejected calls from Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to redraw political boundaries while litigation over the state’s maps remains pending.

Additionally, “lawmakers approved a scaled-back voting measure that would delay an impending ban on QR code vote-counting technology until January 2028 while also calling for hand recounts in for Georgia’s races for governor and U.S. Senate,” reports AJC. “The result leaves the touchscreen voting system — long maligned by Trump’s base — intact through this year’s election cycle while shifting responsibility for future changes to the next governor, secretary of state and Legislature.”

Republican leaders like House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that Kemp’s push to redraw district lines during the special session was “not the right path forward for our state at this time.”

But while GOP activists and critics like Kremer blame their leadership, Georgia voters appear to have turned on the Republican Party, partially due to President Donald Trump’s pathetic polling numbers, and a gnawing need to rein in Trump’s assorted White House power grabs.

Democrats ransacked the state’s Public Service Commission elections last year in “a 26-point rout” in two usually low-profile races, despite the state’s long history as a Republican stronghold. The losses terrified Republicans so much that the GOP Senate majority in the neighboring state of Alabama passed a bill expanding that state’s Republican-dominated Public Service Commission from three positions to seven — to inoculate the commission against a possible wave of Democrats.

The revelatory book “Regime Change,” by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, is the gift that keeps on giving, said MS NOW journalist Paul Waldman. But he said it’s also revealed a “sinister” relationship between Trump and his aids that have created a “cocoon of sycophancy Trump has built around himself, with dire consequences for the country.”

“The president has finally created an administration that works exactly how he wants it to, and the result is a vicious cycle of incompetence and moral corruption,” said Waldman, citing the new book’s insights. “In short, everything about how the White House operates exacerbates Trump’s most pernicious instincts and character flaws. His aides enable him to be the worst version of himself, and in turn he makes them the worst version of themselves.”

His cocoon was being constructed from the moment Trump began staffing up his second administration, according to Waldman. We know how much Trump has always valued loyalty, but as Haberman and Swan report, “there was a new acid test: January 6.”

“Anyone seeking a place near the center of power had to say it was the act of patriots who were subsequently abused by the Biden administration,” said Walkman. “That weeded out anyone with a real commitment to American democracy. And it forced everyone to publicly proclaim a lie. When you abandon your integrity in that way, you become much more willing to do terrible things in the future.”

Occasionally someone raises a doubt or gently suggests a different course for Trump to take, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging the president to say publicly he had no intention of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in order to calm markets. Former deputy AG Todd Blanche told Trump there were no grounds to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James. But the authors note those moments of moments of dissent are few and far between, and Trump can only be constrained for a moment.

“He did get his bogus indictment of James, for instance, a case that quickly fell apart,y fell apart,” said Waldman. “… The result is an administration full of people who either agree with Trump’s most self-destructive impulses or know that objections are all but pointless.”

Few Trump aides called out the danger of sending in the National] Guard to American cities to enforce immigration law, wrote Haberman and Swan report, and the results were deadly disaster. And when Trump suggests the U.S. take possession of Gaza — a self-evidently ludicrous notion — no one disagrees.

“It’s a strong move,” Communications Director Steven Cheung told Trump, when asked about the prospect, even though Trump aides privately conceded the suggestion was “legitimately nutso.”

What comes of this are disasters like the Iran war. Vice President JD Vance expressed misgivings about the war, said the authors. “But with the exception of the vice president, nobody on the senior team — not his secretary of state, not his chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not his chief of staff — had made a real effort” to talk Trump out of it.

“This is a portrait of an unserious president surrounded by unserious people, all bringing out the worst in each other,” said Waldman. “Most frightening of all, there are still 2 1/2 years left.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to include a statement from Fox News.

Politico reporter Josh Gerstein says a DC Circuit court has declined to stay a ruling against former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge, meaning Herridge is now staring down the barrel of an $800-a-day contempt fine and possibly jail.

As president, Politico reports President Donald Trump will “lack the power to directly waive the fine or potential jail time that Herridge faces, but he could order the Justice Department to settle an underlying lawsuit filed by the woman, Yanping Chen.”

Settling the suit would wipe away the fines and any other punishment against Herridge.

“Herridge relied on one or more anonymous sources for several 2017 stories about potential national security risks related to a Virginia school that was founded by Chen and attended by many members of the U.S. military whose tuition was paid by taxpayers,” reported Politico. “Herridge published details about an FBI investigation into Chen, including photos of her in a People’s Liberation Army uniform.”

But Chen argued that leaks about the probe damaged her reputation, and she sued several federal agencies over the disclosures. As part of that lawsuit, she issued a subpoena to Herridge to try to force her to disclose her source, but Herridge refused. Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 for monetary damages and an admission of wrongdoing from the government that leaked about her violated the Privacy Act. But after her depositions failed to reveal the leaker, Chen turned her lawyers loose on Fox News and Herridge.

Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Herridge to pay the $800-a-day fine for her defiance of the subpoena, but he delayed enforcement of the fine to allow Herridge to appeal. Now that she has lost her appeal, Chen’s lawyers could ask the judge for stiffer fines or even to jail Herridge if she refuses to surrender her source.

“Judge Greg Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judge Harry Edwards, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, both sounded dubious of Herridge’s legal argument that Cooper should have balanced the public interest in news reporting against Chen’s desire to be compensated for damage to her reputation,” reported Politico last year.

“What is this balancing test? … What does that mean?” Edwards asked in arguments, while Joe Biden appointee Judge Michelle Childs was even less supportive in her comments about who exactly qualifies as a journalist — complete with journalistic protections.

“We’re now in this social media age where people hide behind Twitter, people hide behind other social media outlets. Who are you really protecting?” Childs asked.

Herridge was an investigative TV reporter, Politico reports she left Fox News for CBS in 2019, before being laid off by CBS in 2024. She now publishes her work on Substack.

In a statement to AlterNet, Fox News said, "The D.C. Circuit’s refusal to pause these crippling fines while a petition is actively being prepared for the United States Supreme Court is deeply troubling. As we have maintained, forcing a journalist to expose a confidential source strikes at the very heart of the First Amendment and sends a chilling message to newsrooms in their ability to hold the powerful accountable. We plan to continue fighting for Catherine Herridge, and the protected rights of all journalists across the country.”