On King Island, which lies between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, the Dolphin Mine has one of the world's largest deposits of tungsten — a rugged metal used to harden bullets and shells. According to Bloomberg News' David Fickling, the mine (which opened in 1917) is used as an unlikely predictor of major wars — and it's opening again.

"First opened in 1917 to support munitions production in World War 1, it shut down three years later when peace crashed the tungsten market," Fickling explains in a Bloomberg News opinion column. "Starting up again in 1938 on the eve of World War 2, it was saved twice more as conflict broke out first in Korea and then Vietnam. In 1990, exactly 12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it closed, seemingly for good. Water flooded its pit and underground tunnels, and the workers' settlement became a ghost town."

Fickling continues, "Viewed from the perspective of 2026, this boom-and-bust cycle looks like a foolish way to have treated such a vital strategic element. With geopolitical tensions on the rise, the retrenchment of supply chains that began with the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a global scramble to secure critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium and cobalt."

In 2026, Fickling observes, one is seeing an "eruption of speculative interest reminiscent of previous wartime tungsten rushes."

"Since the start of 2025," the Bloomberg News columnist observes, "prices have jumped almost eight-fold, attracting the attention of many players — including the president of the United States. Donald Trump's sons are collaborating with the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on a tungsten project in Kazakhstan, according to the New York Times."

Fickling points out that Kevin Pallas, CEO of the Dolphin Mine's parent company, "is betting that global interest in tungsten" will work in the mine's favor.

Pallas told Fickling, "The phone started ringing in January, and it hasn't stopped ringing. The majority of the early calls we got were people saying, 'We thought you were dead.'"

Fickling notes that during wartime, tungsten "has a deadlier purpose" and "can slice straight through armor plating." A "metal rain of tungsten pellets," according to Fickling, "can destroy drones and missile batteries."

"These lethal properties explain why tungsten was once seen as the ultimate military and strategic mineral, as vital to victory as steel or oil," Fickling notes. "During a 1932 League of Nations disarmament conference, prices first collapsed and then soared again as prospects of a deal waxed and waned. Through the decade, as fears of war grew, the belligerents scrambled to secure stockpiles before conflict severed their supply lines. In the run-up to the 1944 D-Day landings, the U.S. imposed an oil embargo on Francoist Spain to force it to stop selling the element to Nazi Germany…. Military strategists have another reason for alarm: the rising tide of conflict is depleting tungsten supplies at the fastest pace in decades."

Construction and makeover projects in and around Washington, DC remain a high priority for U.S. President Donald Trump, from a proposed White House ballroom to a "triumphal arch" near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Another is East Potomac Golf Links; according to the Washington Post, Trump's plans for a redevelopment of that municipal golf course appear to be "far more extensive" than federal officials "have publicly disclosed."

The Post's Rick Maese reports that on Sunday, Trump toured East Potomac Golf Links and was carrying what appeared to be "detailed plans" for the redevelopment.

"The plans, visible in photographs taken during Trump's visit, seem to stretch the redesigned golf course across nearly the entire East Potomac peninsula, extending play to the shoreline," according to Maese. "The renderings do not appear to show several of the park's best-known public amenities, including the riverside bicycle trail, the miniature golf course and Washington’s oldest grove of cherry trees. The drawings offer the clearest glimpse yet of how the Trump administration wants to transform one of the nation's oldest municipal golf facilities into a championship-caliber venue capable of hosting the U.S. Open, the Ryder Cup and other major tournaments."

East Potomac Golf Links goes back to the early 1920s. Trump's "newly visible plans" for the course, according to Maese, "raise fresh questions about the scope of the project and what parts of the heavily used public park could be altered or displaced."

"Trump spent more than 90 minutes at East Potomac on Sunday morning, walking the property with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, golf course architect Tom Fazio and other administration officials during what is believed to have been his first visit to the waterfront course," the Post reporter explains. "From what can be seen on the plan, the administration seems to have abandoned the short par-3 course that remained in the conceptual rendering that Burgum released in May. If built as shown, the redesign would reduce East Potomac from its current three-course, 36-hole layout to a single 18-hole championship course. It would also expand golf into roughly 50 acres of parkland now used for picnicking, fishing, cycling and other recreation."

Ed Stierli of the National Parks Conservation Association, is sounding the alarm about Trump's plans for the East Potomac Golf Links.

Stierli told the Post, "It's deeply concerning to see that the president is carrying around plans that would essentially eliminate public access to (a) beloved park used by the public for fishing and recreation. This is an admin that says they want to prioritize public access for recreation, and in this case, that doesn't seem to be what is being prioritized."

In Texas, MAGA Republicans and evangelical Christian fundamentalists have been pushing for Bible study to be mandatory in public schools — a move that, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), violates the separation of church and state outlined in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. The GOP-controlled Texas State School Board, on June 26, added Bible stories to mandatory public school reading lists. But according to Salon's Amanda Marcotte, using public schools to promote evangelical fundamentalism will "likely backfire" for Texas Republicans.

Texas State School Board member Brandon Hall, at a news conference, told reporters, "Our nation was founded as a Christian nation." But that claim, Marcotte stresses, is a blatant "falsehood" — as the Founders "clearly forbade" an "establishment of religion" in the U.S. Constitution.

"The school board hired David Barton, a discredited writer who falsely claims to be a historian, as an adviser," Marcotte explains in her early July article for Salon. "Barton has no training and less than zero credibility, having been caught repeatedly peddling easily disproved lies. But because Republicans are pleased by his intellectually dishonest interpretation of America's past, they continue to choose his nonsense over actual history developed by real scholars. This is Christian nationalism in a nutshell."

Marcotte continues, "The use of Barton by the GOP and the Texas State School Board is not about faith or belief; it's about power. Specifically, it's about pushing their belief that certain people — white right-wing Christians — are the 'real' Americans. In practice, it means that everyone else deserves second-class status. Forcing kids to read Bible passages signals to anyone outside the white evangelical tribe that they don't belong, which is a grotesque violation of American values of equality and freedom."

The Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Marcotte emphasizes that the First Amendment "violation" in Texas Public Schools is "likely to backfire on the Religious Right."

"They better hope that the kids skip the assigned reading, much less actual discussion and debate about it in class," Marcotte argues. "As many an ex-evangelical can tell you, direct exposure to what the Bible actually says is often the first step to walking away from Christian fundamentalism altogether. There's a reason conservative Christians prefer quoting solitary Bible verses out of context: Not only does this allow them to twist the meaning for their own personal or political ends, but it also makes it much easier to avoid the critical thinking that engaging with longer passages can provoke…. It's also worth remembering that many students — and even some teachers — aren't Christian, which means that classroom discussions will not always been favorable to an evangelical interpretation of scripture."

Marcotte adds, "In short, Texas Republicans have likely created opportunities to expose Christian kids to other people’s points of view, which may not have happened otherwise."

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and other GOP senators were quite frustrated when President Donald Trump paused his nomination of federal prosecutor Jay Clayton for national intelligence director in order to keep MAGA loyalist and Acting Intel Director Bill Pulte in the position longer despite his lack of experience. "I've never been asked to slow a nomination down before," Thune noted. And according to former Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), the United States is facing a dangerous intel crisis that continues to worsen.

Harman, writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, warns, "The threat picture is getting demonstrably worse. And the U.S. government is doing the opposite of what would be required to keep up."

During her decades in Congress, centrist Blue Dog Democrat Harman was known for her heavy focus on intel and national security. Harman, now 81, served on the House Intelligence Committee before chairing the Homeland Security Committee's Intelligence Subcommittee. And the California Democrat, in her early July article for The Bulwark, lays out some reasons why U.S. intel is in trouble during Donald Trump's second presidency.

"On June 14," Harman explains, "the Congress let Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expire. It is the most productive foreign intelligence collection tool the United States has, but Congress refused to reach an agreement to extend it — and the president made its renewal hostage to an unrelated voter-ID bill…. Add to that the president's installation of Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency with no national security background, as acting director of national intelligence, after pulling his nominee, Jay Clayton — who is generally viewed as qualified — to extract Senate confirmation of one of Trump's personal lawyers for an unrelated post."

Harman continues, "Pulte is now running the U.S. intelligence community without a hearing, without Senate confirmation, and without meaningful congressional oversight…. So where is Congress in all of this? AWOL."

The Five Eyes intel alliance — which includes the U.S., the UK, Australia and New Zealand — recently issued a warning about the threat of major cyberattacks that, Harman notes, "could shut down a regional power grid, ground a national air-traffic control system, take a missile-defense radar offline, or corrupt the financial databases on which the American economy runs."

Without Section 702, according to Harman, U.S. intelligence "will have a harder time tracking the type of catastrophic attack the Five Eyes warned about."

"The Five Eyes have told us, in plain language, that the attack window is measured in months," Harman writes. "Confirm a serious DNI. Reauthorize Section 702, clean. Restore the intelligence community's access to the tools it needs to defend us. Stop being a bystander as our Constitution and our intelligence architecture are dismantled together."

Former First Lady Michelle Obama is excluding actress Cheryl Hines, who is married to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from a new HBO sketch comedy series celebrating the United States' 250th anniversary. And according to SILive, Hines is really angry about it.

Obama, journalist Tom Wrobleski reports on SI Live, made it clear that she doesn't want Hines to have anything to do with "Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America" — which Michelle Obama is producing with former President Barack Obama and stars comedian Larry David, well-known his work on the popular sitcom "Seinfeld" (which he created) and HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." The show is marking

An insider on the program told the UK-based Daily Mail that Michelle Obama was adamant about excluding Hines, declaring, "We cannot and will not have that woman on this show. She is not one of us."

Wrobleski reports, "The ban stings hard because Hines played David's wife for a dozen years on the wildly successful HBO program 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.' The insider said that Hollywood fears the clout of the Obamas and that Michelle Obama 'can be a b– – on wheels when she wants."

According to an insider, Hines, "felt terribly hurt and emotionally injured" by Michelle Obama's decision.

"Cheryl's dream was to work with Larry again and be part of the cast of the new show," the insider said. "She firmly believed that the staunch anti-Trumper could put aside his negative political views about MAGA and Kennedy. But banning Cheryl was a command from Michelle that Larry could not go against — even if he had wanted to, for old time's sake — and mend their past close ties."

The insider added, "He always respected her as an actress. But Michelle's the boss. And you don't cross the boss, especially a powerful anti-MAGA force like Michelle."

Like Michelle Obama, David is an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump. The former first lady, however, is not disdainful of conservatives in general; she has often spoke highly of former President George W. Bush, making it clear that despite their political differences, she considers him a "delightful" man and really likes him as a person.

Although MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. is a member of the Kennedy family and a former Democrat — his father was Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and President John F. Kennedy was his uncle — he is drawing a great deal of criticism from Democrats because of his controversial views on medicine, including a strong opposition to time-tested vaccines.

In deep red Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been accusing businesses of being controlled by the People's Republic of China. But Sanders, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is making such accusations without proving them first. And in a scathing late June editorial, Arkansas Business' editorial board takes her to task for favoring "performance art" over meaningful governance.

"Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders maligned businesses in Arkansas as being linked to Communist China even after her administration was warned that the claims were unproven, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported earlier this month," the Arkansas Business board writes. "She did it, texts uncovered in a court case reveal, because she would 'rather have a media hit and have to walk it back later.' In one case, Sanders took to X on July 24, 2024 to cast doubt on 4811 S. Zero Street LLC, a Walmart supplier, which operates a factory near Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith."

The editorial board continues, "'China is America's greatest threat. I won't let them buy up land close to our military installations and spy on our nation's defense assets.' It turned out that Zero Street is owned by a naturalized U.S. citizen and native of Taiwan, a staunch ally of the U.S."

The Arkansas Business writers point out that Sanders also accused the Jonesboro-based Risever Machinery of having "significant ties to China." But even though Risever is "owned by a Chinese family," according to the board, the company "was found to be in compliance with Arkansas law."

"The entire episode frustrated a number of top business officials in the state who are usually reliable Sanders allies," according to the Arkansas Business editorial writers. "The governor has pledged repeatedly to make Arkansas the best state in the U.S. to do business; that can't be true when she attacks companies owned by people with names that she or her staff determine are not adequately western. The governor of Arkansas should protect its citizens from potential threats posed by hostile foreign interests. She should not smear companies before knowing all the facts."

The board adds, "That is not good governance. That is performance art."

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's Dale Ellis, on June 16, reported, "Asked by a deputy under State Attorney General Tim Griffin to delay public pronouncements in one case until allegations of a Chinese connection could be investigated, the administration refused, a text said. A top Sanders staffer said the administration 'would rather have a media hit and have to walk it back later,' a deputy attorney general wrote in a text to Griffin and others."

In a 6-3 bombshell in Trump v. Slaughter issued on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court's GOP-appointed justices ruled that President Donald Trump is well within his right to fire members of independent agencies — including former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — and overturned the 1935 SCOTUS precedent in Humphrey's Executor v. United States. Trump loyalists are applauding the decision, but not everyone on the right is happy with it.

Journalist Andrew Egger, in the conservative website The Bulwark, argues that the High Court's Trump v. Slaughter ruling could be terrible for conservatives in the long run.

"Many Trump foes have come to view this Court as a doormat for the president," Egger explains. "This is dramatically overtorqued: The Court hasn't been afraid to cross Trump on some of his biggest priorities, from the 2020 election to his signature 'Liberation Day' tariffs to his mass deportation regime. Just yesterday, in a separate case, SCOTUS dealt Trump a major loss on the issue of mail-in ballots, ruling that he could not prevent states from accepting ballots postmarked by Election Day where that practice is consistent with their laws. But there's no question that this conservative Court has one ideological priority that aligns perfectly with Trump's own."

Egger continues, "They see the independent agency structure — in which Congress impanels some regulatory body, gives them broad policy-setting and enforcement authorities, and insulates them from political accountability by setting up mechanisms that make their members difficult to fire — as inherently dubious under the Constitution. Their decision in Slaughter yesterday, which greenlights Trump's firing of a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, is the culmination of this view."

Back in 1935, it was conservative Republicans who applauded the Humphrey's Executor precedent — as they believed that liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with his New Deal, was doing too much too quickly. But in 2026, many MAGA Republicans are pushing the "unitary executive theory," which favors a very strong and powerful executive branch.

According to Egger, Trump is too "shortsighted" to realize that the High Court's Trump v. Slaughter ruling could hurt conservatives down the line.

"Trump continues to show remarkable disdain for the sausage-making and horse-trading of the legislative process; just yesterday, he dismissed his own administration's housing bill as 'a yawn,'" Egger writes. "But after he leaves office, his laws will be all he can count on remaining. Yes, the Supreme Court has made it easier for Trump to remake the government in his image for now. But they've done just as much to make it easier for the next Democratic president to blot out that image once he's gone."

On Monday evening, the Trump White House posted, on X, an image that showed a golden eagle attached to the Truman Balcony. The post read, "A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year! - President Donald J. Trump." The president himself posted the image on his Truth Social platform.

But according to CNN, the image doesn't appear to be an actual photo, but rather, an AI-generated image.

CNN's Donald Judd reports that there are "small differences between the railing of the balcony in the picture and the real-life Truman Balcony."

Judd explains, "The image also has content credentials in its metadata that indicate it was created with Google AI. And Andrew Leyden, a freelance photographer, posted images on X of the balcony he said were taken at 9:30 p.m. — after Trump posted the image — that did not show the eagle."

In a Tuesday morning post on X, Judd observed, "The shield also features 11 stars, as opposed to 13, and content credentials in its metadata that indicate it was created with Google AI."

The CNN reporter notes that Trump has done a lot of redecorating during his second presidency.

"Since returning to office in 2025," Judd reports, "Trump has added a string of personal touches to the White House, affixing assorted gold accents throughout the Oval Office and attaching large, challenge-coin style medallions throughout the West Wing and White House residence. He's also overseen massive construction projects, including a completely remodeled White House Rose Garden, two large flagpoles on the White House North and South Lawns, and the demolition of the East Wing, which the president has bulldozed to make way for his controversial ballroom project."

Trump is claiming that the proposed ballroom is a matter of national security, as he has survived three assassination attempts. The president's critics, however, are arguing that the ballroom is merely a vanity project — not relevant to national security.

Trump is also proposing a "triumphal arch" that, if completed, would appear next to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington DC. But according to CBS News reporters Arden Farhi and Jacob Rosen, opponents of the project — including some U.S. military veterans — believe that the proposed arch "hasn't gotten proper congressional approval."

The Truman Balcony, which overlooks the South Lawn of the White House, was completed in 1948 and named after then-President Harry S. Truman.

President Donald Trump suffered a major setback when the U.S. Supreme Court, on Monday, declined to hear his appeal of the $5 million civil judgement that a federal New York jury awarded former Elle Magazine editor E. Jean Carroll. David Rothkopf, on the Daily Beast's vodcast, laid out some reasons why the High Court's decision is so devastating to Trump.

Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles, "It's now gone to the Supreme Court, and so, it now stands. This is a matter of law: Donald Trump is a sex abuser. That's going to sting because Trump is ego, ego, ego."

Trump was facing four criminal indictments when he won the 2024 presidential election. Carroll's cases against him, however, were strictly civil — not criminal.

Rothkopf told Coles, "The president was arguing, 'I'm the president, I am important.' In fact, this was an amazing argument because it was kind of like, 'I'm a very important president doing a very important presidency' — like that makes it special — and therefore, I shouldn't be bothered with this old stuff.' Well, they said, 'Nope, we're not even going to hear it'…. You know, Donald Trump and rich people, they treat and view courts differently."

Rothkopf continued, "They feel they can hire as many lawyers as they want for as long as they want to come up with delaying tactics. Because every time they go and bring a new case or come up with a new tactic, they know that the other side's got to write a check. The other side's got to pay for it. And so, it becomes a way of punishing people, even if they know the case isn't gonna go their way."

Coles pointed out that so far, Carroll has "not gotten a single penny" from Trump. But Rothkopf emphasized that the High Court decided to let the $5 million judgement "stand."

In an angry post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "Surprisingly, the Supreme Court declined to 'review' a Fake Case brought against me by a woman I never met (Decades old celebrity photo line, standing with her husband, does not count!). I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength. This Case is really against the United States of America, and all it stands for, and should never be allowed to happen to another President, or Candidate to be!"

But the Daily Beast's Erkki Forster points out that the High Court's decision "means there are no more direct appeals available in the judicial system and that Trump will now have to pay Carroll the $5 million that a jury initially ordered him to pay in 2023."

Trump also owes Carroll a larger amount, $83.3 million, from a separate civil judgement.

After returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump made a point of surrounding himself with ultra-MAGA loyalists — from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a traditional pre-MAGA conservative who is wearing multiple hats in the second Trump administration (he also serves as acting national security adviser). And Never Trump conservative Matt K. Lewis expresses his reservations about him in an op-ed for NOTUS.

"Marco Rubio's stock has been rising recently, and it's pretty clear the secretary of state is a leading 2028 presidential candidate," Lewis explains in NOTUS. "That may sound like good news for Never Trump conservatives like me. But actually, it poses something of an existential headache. I voted for Rubio in the 2016 Republican primary. And I seem to recall having written one of those embarrassingly premature 'Marco Rubio for president' columns, circa 2010, for the now-defunct Politics Daily. I've also been an ardent critic of Donald Trump from Day 1. So, the possibility that this sad detour in American politics could end with a President Rubio offers, at least on the surface, a tiny bit of hope…. But then, there's the uncomfortable part."

The "uncomfortable part" with Rubio, according to Lewis, is that he "is one of Trump's top deputies, with all the baggage that entails."

"The image of Rubio sinking into that couch while Trump and JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is permanently etched in my brain," Lewis writes. "It's really a catch-22: Any Republican who remained opposed to Trump has already been purged, which means the only viable Republicans have, to varying degrees, been tainted. Democratic readers are probably shouting, 'Exactly! That's why you should vote blue, no matter who.' In 2026, that seems reasonable. But what about 2028, after Trump is, presumably, no longer on the ballot?"

Lewis recalls that Rubio once expressed "Ronald Reagan's sunny conservatism," but the Never Trumper wonders how Reaganesque the Florida Republican can be after serving in an ultra-MAGA administration.

"Even today, some Democrats worry about the threat posed by Rubio's appeal," Lewis observes. "'If Marco Rubio is the nominee for president,' Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) recently warned, 'we are in trouble.' Still, it's hard to get past Rubio's complicity in Trump's administration — and the lack of clarity surrounding his motives. Is he still the fundamentally compassionate conservative who believes in the American dream but calculated he could do more good by occasionally nudging Trump in the right direction? Has he transformed into a genuine populist nationalist? Or is he simply a chameleon? Is there even a 'real' Rubio? I don't know the answer, but I do think it matters."

During World War 2 in 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement made the U.S. dollar the world's reserve currency. And 82 years later, it still enjoys that status. But liberal economist Paul Krugman, in a late June Substack column, lays out some problems the U.S. dollar is facing during Donald Trump's second presidency.

"We are now four months into a war that was supposed to last a couple of weeks," Krugman argues. "There is no end in sight as strikes and counterstrikes continue despite Trump's farcical proclamations of American victory and Iranian surrender. Sixteen months into his presidency, Trump has squandered all of America's credibility with the rest of the world. So let me add one more item to the tally of destruction: the supremacy of the dollar, the pre-eminent tool in America's toolbox of global financial power, has been seriously damaged by the rise of alternative payment systems — a rise that was greatly hastened by the Iran war."

Krugman explains exactly what he means when he speaks of the U.S. dollar's "supremacy" being "seriously damaged." And he cites Trump's "stunning failure" with the Iran war as a key factor.

"Let me be clear that I don’t mean that the dollar is close to losing its dominant role in global business," Krugman writes. "And I am definitely not claiming that the dollar's weakened status will make the United States substantially poorer. Instead, what I am talking about is the loss of a non-military tool of coercion — the power to punish that the dominant role of the dollar in international financial transactions gave the United States. That power is now greatly diminished because Trump's Iran war demonstrated to other nations that they can bypass the dollar-centered world payments system — largely thanks to China."

Krugman notes that the U.S. dollar's "importance in international financial transactions far outweighs the U.S. economy's global importance."

"America is by no means a dominant force in world trade or world GDP," Krugman observes. "There are, in fact, three roughly comparable-sized economic superpowers in today’s world: China, the United States, and the European Union. However, the U.S. dollar does play a dominant role in world finance…. Why does everyone use dollars? Because so many other people and businesses use dollars, which makes markets in dollars far more liquid and efficient than markets in any other currency…. What dollar dominance does do…. is give America a powerful economic weapon against other nations."

Krugman continues, "Transactions that involve dollar payments normally require transferring money between U.S. banks — which means that they are visible to and can be blocked by U.S. authorities…. The Iran debacle has demonstrated that using dollars and retaining access to the U.S. banking system, while convenient, aren't necessary. Iran's ability to withstand American pressure has demonstrated that U.S. sanctions are a lot less effective than in the past given that rogue actors can use the yuan and CIPS as a work-around. And as the Gulf States' actions show, even countries that are U.S. allies are now considering signing onto the Chinese payment system."

Operating a food truck is highly competitive in large northeastern U.S. cities, from New York to Philadelphia to Boston. According to the Washingtonian's Jessica Sidman, the competition among food truck owners around Washington D.C.'s National Mall is so intense that residents of the city are jokingly comparing it to the "Mad Max" movies of the late 1970s and 1980s.

"The pirates have commandeered Constitution Avenue," Sidman explains in the Washingtonian. "Hawking neon snow cones and chicken shawarma, their food trucks are squished so close together that, in some cases, the bumpers are literally touching. A few are blocking fire hydrants in front of the National Museum of American History. One of the first trucks we approach has no prices listed. Actually, none of them do. But this one looks particularly suspect, with a janky, rusted pipe jutting from its roof."

According to Zack Graybill, owner of the pizza food truck DC Slices, many of his competitors around the National Mall are not licensed.

Graybill told The Washingtonian, "I think they're 'Mad Max'-ing it. That's exhaust from the generator. We can start with the fact that this is not legal vending.”

The "Mad Max" action movies, starring Mel Gibson, took place in Australia and depicted a dystopian future in the Land Down Under. The third Max Max movie, "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" in 1985, famously featured Tina Turner's mega-hit "We Don't Need Another Hero." And by jokingly comparing DC's food truck wars to "Mad Max" films, Graybill is saying that they have truly gone off the rails.

Graybill noted that a competing food truck was spilling gasoline on the street, telling The Washingtonian, "If this was a hot summer day and he was doing that, the chances of a fire actually happening is high. The number-one potential cause of food trucks catching fire is from refilling the generator with gasoline."

The Washingtonian also interviewed Jackie, a Tunisian immigrant who operates a food truck near Constitution Avenue. When Jackie and a competitor got into an argument over a parking space, the person attacked him with a screwdriver and try to stab him in the eye with it.

According to Brisa Valentin, who owns the Fly Pizza food trucks in DC, violence among unlicensed food truck operators is not uncommon in the U.S. capital.

Valentin told The Washingtonian, "I used to tell my husband, 'Those are the food-truck mafia.' They look out for each other. They're a clique. They don't like outsiders, they really don't. They're cutthroat. They're ruthless."

Prominent military experts, from retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling to retired U.S. Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration forcing Gen. Chris Donahue to step down from his role as commander of U.S. Army Europe. The departures of Donahue and other military leaders, according to Hertling and McRaven, are making the military dangerously unstable. Similarly, legal scholars Michael N. Schmitt and Ryan Goodman are warning that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are robbing the military of a wealth of expertise.

Writing for Just Security, Schmitt (a law professor at New York University) emphasizes that nothing good can come of the Trump/Hegseth purges at the Pentagon — especially in light of the caliber of military leaders being forced out.

"Since January 2025," the legal scholar explains, "the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. Among them are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Army, and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who concurrently serves as director of the National Security Agency. Most recently, Gen. Christopher Donahue, one of the most decorated and combat-experienced officers of his generation, has been forced out as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, in his NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) role, as commander of Allied Land Command. Public explanations have been sparse and, to the extent they have been offered, largely general."

Schmitt continues, "The question regarding these departures is not whether the president and secretary of defense have broad lawful authority to reshape the senior officer corps. They unequivocally do. Nor is it a question of whether personnel decisions of this kind are ever warranted. Sometimes, they certainly are. Instead, at its core, a central question is their impact on the combat effectiveness, indeed the lethality, of our armed forces."

Schmitt, in his article, lists 25 U.S. military leaders who have been forced out during Trump's second presidency and notes that collectively, they had a combined 901 and one-half years of experience.

Schmitt argues that the military purges that occurred in the Soviet under Josef Stalin during the 1930s offer a sobering history less for the U.S., as Stalin's Red Army purges made the Soviet Union more "vulnerable" to Adolf Hitler's aggression.

"Between 1937 and 1938," Schmitt explains, "Joseph Stalin systematically purged the Red Army's officer corps. His motivations were political, for he wanted to eliminate perceived rivals and consolidate absolute personal authority. Of the five marshals of the Soviet Union, three were executed. Of the 15 army commanders, 13 were removed…. Launched in November 1939, the Winter War against Finland revealed the costs. Despite massive numerical superiority, Soviet forces performed disastrously, with the Red Army sustaining casualties at least several times higher than those of the Finns."

Goodman, also a NYU law professor, highlights Schmitt's article in a thread for X, formerly Twitter.

Goodman notes, "Over 900 years of military experience has been lost due to Pete Hegseth's purge of 25 senior military officers…. I highly recommend this important essay by Mike Schmitt just published."

U.S. President Donald Trump's "memorandum of understanding" with Iran was put to the test when, on June 25, Iranian forces attacked commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the United States responded with military attacks against Iran. Conservative Journalist Bill Kristol examines the state of the "memo of understanding" in The Bulwark, arguing that Trump left Iran in a stronger position than it was in before the war.

"This military tit-for-tatting happened amidst a cacophony of competing understandings of the much-heralded memorandum of understanding signed two weeks ago," Kristol writes in The Bulwark. "It turns out that an agreement that Iran would 'make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels' is subject to very different interpretations of 'arrangements' and 'best efforts.' The United States thinks 'safe passage' should mean free passage. Iran thinks that if Iran can 'make arrangements,' it's allowed to — make arrangements. Who could have known there would be disagreement on this point? But the bottom line is that this is what a messy but unacknowledged surrender by the United States of America to the Islamic Republic of Iran looks like."

The Bulwark uses a clever "Wizard of Oz" analogy to describe Trump's Iran deal. In the famous L. Frank Baum children's story, the "man behind the curtain" isn't really the all-powerful individual he pretends to be — and The Bulwark compares him to the "man behind the curtain."

"You could emphasize his personal role in bringing about this sad state of affairs," Kristol writes. "In this case, you might rather want to go middlebrow and cinematic, and quote from the climactic scene of the 1939 movie, 'The Wizard of Oz.'"

The "new normal" with Trump and Iran, Kristol predicts, will find the U.S. in a state of "surrender."

"It will consist of on-and-off military tit-for-tats; endless diplomatic squabbling and propagandizing; a Strait of Hormuz that is quasi-open but not reliably so, and is mostly so at Iranian sufferance; no resolution with regard to Iran's nuclear program; and at the end of the day an Iranian regime that is emboldened, American allies that are uncertain and dispirited, and a United States that is unable to exert its power or will decisively," Kristol laments. "It's not good. But it's where we are…. You could point out how unlikely it is that Trump can 'militarily complete' the job he started."

Kristol adds, "You could suggest that this latest instance of Trumpian bluster does more to highlight than to cover up his weakness in this moment. And you could emphasize how foolish and reckless was his choice to start this war. So, citing T.S. Eliot is apt: We are at an important, even world-historical moment."

This Tuesday, June 30 marks the conclusion of "Nuclear Family Month," which many MAGA Republicans have been promoting as a Christian fundamentalist alternative to Pride Month. Defenders of "Nuclear Family Month" often argue that they are merely defending religious values, not attacking LGBTQ Americans. But Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that "Nuclear Family Month" is not only anti-gay — it also underscores the Religious Right's contempt for heterosexuals who don't embrace their severe version of Christianity.

"In recent years," Marcotte observes in Salon, "Republican propaganda has quietly moved away from loud condemnation of the gay community to focusing the most overt hate on trans people. Donald Trump even has a few token gay men in his closest circles, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has two children with his husband…. But while it hasn't attracted widespread media coverage, Republicans have not given up arguing that LGBTQ+ equality is a threat. This year, a slew of red state governors signed proclamations intended as blatant attacks on Pride Month."

Marcotte continues, "Some states are even calling June 'Nuclear Family Month.' Others have dubbed it 'Strong Families Month' or 'Fidelity Month.' Whatever euphemism is used, they are all poking a thumb in the eye of LGBTQ+ people during Pride, as Arkansas' Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, made clear when she tweeted a Daily Wire article headlined, 'Another Red State Is Counter-Programming Pride Month, Focusing On Family Instead' — as if queer people don't have families."

Gay pride events have grown by leaps and bounds in the United States, where Pride Month is now a month-long celebration held in June. On Sunday, June 7, for example, Philadelphia's 2026 Philly Pride festival reported attracted around 147,000-150,000 attendees.

Marcotte, in Salon, emphasizes that heterosexual Americans should also be worried about the motivations behind "Nuclear Family Month."

"Straight people should definitely not feel safe with these Republicans in charge," Marcotte warns. "These documents don't only demonize LGBTQ+ people; they condemn the vast majority of straight people who don't adhere to the exceedingly narrow proscriptions of the Christian right. Divorced people, anyone who has ever needed government assistance, parents who put their kids in public school, non-Christians and women who don't see themselves as inferior to their husbands all get blasted as immoral — and queer people are implicitly blamed for what Republicans see as 'dysfunction' in the lives of everyday straight people…. 'Nuclear Family Month' and other such nonsense this year reflects a resurgence in the GOP of the view that most people, straight or not, are wicked, oversexed hooligans who need to be browbeaten into depressing marriages. Vice President JD Vance has been at the forefront of this pressure campaign that wants people to marry not out of love or joy, but out of grim duty to the patriarchy."

With tensions between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) growing — and the 2026 midterm elections a little over four months away — Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) invited Trump to address Senate Republicans at a lunch held on Wednesday, June 26. Scott is saying that he was trying to promote a healthy dialogue between Trump and Thune, but the Florida senator, according to Politico's Jordain Carney, proposed the lunch "without Majority Leader John Thune's express approval" — and Scott's actions are fueling speculation about his possible motivations.

"What has become eminently clear in recent weeks is that Scott — after a long career in business, two terms as governor and nearly eight years as senator — just isn't a back-bench kind of guy," Carney reports in Politico. "He has lots of thoughts on how the Senate should be run and a willingness to express them, even if it puts him at odds with Thune's vision. The leader, who trounced Scott in a 2024 conference election, has largely avoided holding doomed votes that would split Republicans and, like many GOP senators, would like nothing more than to get past the months-long intra-party fight over the SAVE America Act, the elections bill pushed by Trump."

Scott, according to Carney, "insists that those who see this as a prelude to a leadership challenge" against Thune "have it all wrong."

The Florida senator/ex-Florida governor told Politico, "Here's what I don't get. Other people get to put out their position. If I put out mine, then I want to be leader?"

But Carney notes that Scott's latest actions are "only his latest attempt to stay in the thick of the action in a body where obscurity can be hard to avoid."

"His stint running the GOP Senate campaign arm ahead of the 2022 midterms was controversial and ended with Democrats beating historical headwinds and slightly expanding their bare majority," Carney reports. "He annoyed colleagues with his policy of not intervening in contested Republican primaries and infuriated some of them by promulgating a policy agenda through his personal political operation that they hadn’t agreed to. That did not deter Scott from challenging then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after the election that year, garnering only 10 votes of 47. He tried again after McConnell stepped down as leader two years later. Scott won 13 votes in a three-way race, but Thune ultimately prevailed."

Carney points out that Thune, unlike McConnell, Scott "doesn't have an openly antagonistic relationship with Scott." And the Senate majority leader avoided criticizing Scott during an interview with Politico.

Thune told Politico, "He brings people in that help inform our conversations and discussions about some of the major policy issues. I'm very supportive of what he's doing."

U.S. President Donald Trump isn't shy about saying who he likes and dislikes in Latin America. Trump often praises right-wing populists like Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Argentinian President Javier Milei, but he is no fan of progressive Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. And he used the U.S. military to remove former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, although Venezuela still has a leftist government under Acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

According to University of Chicago political science professor Michael Albertus, the far right continues to make significant gains in that part of the world. And Albertus, writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, stresses that the "Trump playbook" is being used extensively in Latin America.

"The political landscape of Latin America has changed dramatically," Albertus explains. "Within the span of several weeks, two of South America's largest democracies have elected leaders from the far right. In Peru, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the dictator who governed the country between 1990 and 2000, has apparently won a razor-thin runoff against leftist Roberto Sánchez. In Colombia, far-right outsider Abelardo de la Espriella defeated the candidate backed by the outgoing left-wing government of Gustavo Petro. These results follow a landslide victory in December by far-right candidate José Antonio Kast in Chile."

The political scientist continues, "Latin America is a complicated place, and each of these elections has its own national dynamic. But taken together, they tell a larger story of a resurgence in right-wing politics across the Andes."

Albertus describes that the "rightward shift" in Latin America as a "product of deeper forces reshaping the political landscape across the region" — including "a spiraling security crisis fueled by drug trafficking and organized crime" and a "migration shock centered on Venezuela."

"A new generation of right-wing politicians has learned — both from each other and from the Trump playbook — how to weaponize these forces to their advantage," Albertus observes. "And they have seized on the opening provided by mainstream parties that are either in collapse or that have earned a reputation for their incapacity to deal effectively with crime and migration. The question now for the defenders of liberalism globally is whether and how this can be contained."

Crime, according to Albertus, is a key factor in the wave of MAGA-like victories in Latin America.

"Chile's crime surge is real, even if modest by regional standards," the University of Chicago political scientist notes. "And hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian migrants have provided a convenient scapegoat. Meanwhile, previous president Gabriel Boric's economic record was underwhelming: growth was anemic, inflation spiked in the aftermath of COVID, and many Chileans reported a desire to emigrate…. The combination of weakened institutions, metastasizing organized crime, and a Trump administration that has abandoned democracy promotion creates conditions in which democratic backsliding can happen quickly."

Although the United States' 2024 presidential election was quite close — Donald Trump won the national popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent — many right-wing media figures echoed Trump's claim that his victory was a "landslide" and described the election results as a major sea change in American politics. Democratic strategists, meanwhile, spent months asking themselves: Where did we go wrong?

But the New York Times' David Wallace-Wells, in a late June column, lays out some reasons why GOP claims of an "enduring MAGA majority" are now looking more and more like an "illusion."

"Remember the vibe shift?" the Times columnist writes. "In 2024, first as the election approached and then after Donald Trump's victory, pundits and political strategists lined up to declare its cultural meaning quite expansive — a shift not just in electoral politics, but also, in the partisan alignment and cultural life of the whole country. This was the beginning of an era, we were told; his election was perhaps as significant as the one that once heralded the Reagan revolution or what was called the emerging Democratic majority in Barack Obama's multicultural America. A new course had been plotted, and the country would be moving MAGA-ward — both in politics and beyond it."

Progressive Zeteo founder and former MS NOW (then MSNBC) host Mehdi Hasan always viewed Trump's "landslide" claims as ridiculous, emphasizing that a 1.5 victory in the popular vote is a close election — not an actual landslide like Ronald Reagan in 1984 or Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. Reagan, in 1984, was reelected by 18 percent in the popular vote and carried 49 states in the Electoral College; FDR won the popular vote by roughly 18 percent in 1932.

Wallace-Wells notes that "it's been a while since" Republicans discussed "MAGA’s cultural victory" of 2024 in "triumphalist terms."

"The cruel kids' table is not nearly as crowded anymore, and those lingering at it look to the rest of the country more like monstrous radicals or opportunistic grifters than anything that might be called a political vanguard for the entire country," the New York Times columnist argues. "The podcasters who once played the role of MAGA intellectuals have revealed themselves as political weather vanes, separating themselves from the president on one issue after another. And even if Mr. Trump's evangelical base remains mostly loyal, Republicans keep getting clobbered in special elections…. Eighteen months later, we can say that if that first vibe shift was real, it's been followed by another, in the opposite direction, with the bottom falling out of Mr. Trump's second term and his administration looking again like the same old destructive kakistocracy."

Wallace-Wells continues, "But another way of looking at the disarray of the second MAGA era is to consider the possibility that it was always at least partly an illusion, jointly conjured up by self-aggrandizing Republicans and self-lacerating liberals. We haven't even hit the midterms yet, and the prospect of an enduring MAGA majority doesn't look like the natural path of the American future. It looks like a projection from the recent past, already fading."

Set for Tuesday, November 3, the United States' 2026 midterms are a little over four months away. And Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias has a warning: expect President Donald Trump to do everything he can to make the midterms as chaotic and stressful as possible.

Elias, publisher of Democracy Docket and a frequent guest on MS NOW, warned voters to expect the worst from Trump in an interview with The New Republic's Win McCormack and his wife Carol Butler.

“What we've seen from Donald Trump in the past is that he starts with lies; then, he increases the rhetoric behind the lies," Elias warned. "Then, you see the legal process. And then, when he fails in the legal process, we have violence. And I think that we are on that progression. He has lied about voting, he has now upped the rhetoric for all of the SAVE Act — which began as a proof-of-citizenship law. It's now become a voter suppression, voter purge, ban on mail-in voting, trans-targeting law, right?"

The Democratic election lawyer added, "So, when he loses in court in the cases I referenced, and he's not able to pass this law through Congress, as we've discussed, I think he's going to escalate further."

Elias said of the midterms, "It's just gonna be a knife fight from here to the end."

The attorney warned that in November, Trump might send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to polling places in a blatant effort to intimidate voters. On his "War Room" vodcast earlier this year, MAGA Republican Steve Bannon urged Trump to do exactly that.

Elias told McCormack and Butler, "Let's assume that they're not at the polling place, but rather, they are occupying all the parking lots, and they are closing off the streets.… You're now being told you're going to have to park a mile away and walk to the polls, right? So, don't underestimate the amount of voter suppression they can impose, simply through their chaos and contrived inconvenience."

But the elections lawyer laid out a variety of ways in which Trump opponents can protect the midterms and fight back.

"There are things that lawyers can do which are unique to lawyers," Elias explained. "There are things that elected officials can do that are unique to elected officials. There are things that philanthropy can do that are unique to philanthropy. But everyone — no matter who they are, no matter what their job, no matter how much they have or don't have — they do have a town square that they can stand out in and speak out."

The Democracy Docket founder continued, "Now, some people have really big town squares. You know, they own major media publications. Other people have smaller town squares. It may be just their social media feed, it may be their dinner table, it may be their bridge club or the bowling league they belong to. But everybody's got some place where they can speak out and be heard. And what everyone needs to do is to use that town square to call out what Donald Trump is up to and what is happening to our democracy."

President Donald Trump and his appointees — including Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and federal prosecutor Jeanine Pirro — often paint themselves as zealous defenders of national security. But according to former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, national security is suffering greatly under Trump's second presidency—and the United States is the most vulnerable it has been since the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In a late June interview with Zeteo's John Harwood, Taylor warned about "people who want to kill Americans" and added, "We are less prepared to stop them than at any point since 9-11."

The conservative Taylor served in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during Trump's first administration, but he later became quite critical of Trump publicly and is now very much in the Never Trump camp — rooting for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.

The U.S., according to Taylor, is "asleep at the wheel" from a national security standpoint.

Harwood asked Taylor where the greatest national security threats are coming from, to which he responded, "You'd normally, in the national security realm, you worry about holidays. Why? Because terrorists love holidays. They see it as a prime opportunity to capture the public horror. And so, whether it was the Fourth of July or Halloween or Christmas or New Year's, those were the periods when the Department Homeland Security and FBI — we were on heightened alert."

The former DHS official continued, "I mean, people hear that terminology all the time, but there's a reason why you were on heightened alert. That also means, if you work in those agencies, you are used to holidays being destroyed. I can remember Christmas Days and New Year's Days where I was sitting in the basement of a family member's house for four hours dealing with the response to one of these things."

Taylor noted that during the United States' 250th anniversary celebrations, law enforcement agencies "will rightfully be concerned." And when Harwood asked if they would be more concerned about foreign terrorists or domestic terrorists, he replied, "I think both."

Taylor told Harwood, "I think that there's an equal measure of potential threats from Iranian proxies…. Terrorist organizations like ISIS and al-Qaeda still have the capability and intent to attack the United States. But also, domestically. There are a wide range of domestic extremist organizations that might want to use the 250th to make a statement. That includes organizations that are opposed to Donald Trump."

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz became yet another target of the Donald Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) when the offices of him and other Democratic officials in that state received immigration-related grand jury subpoenas. But those subpoenas were invalidated by U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz — a development that attorney Lisa Needham describes as a major humiliation for the Trump DOJ.

Needham, in scathing analysis for her Public Notice column, argues, "One thing that is becoming increasingly clear as President Trump's second term grinds on is that the lower courts have had enough and aren't interested in entertaining the administration's persistent lawlessness. In a truly remarkable setback for the Department of Justice, the chief judge of the United States District Court in Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, quashed six grand jury subpoenas targeting state and local elected officials, saying they 'were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce and retaliate.'"

Walz, who was Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' running mate in the United States' 2020 presidential election, argued that the subpoenas were politically motivated — and Schiltz expressed similar views in his biting rebuke of the Trump DOJ.

Needham emphasizes that it's rare for a federal judge to throw out federal grand jury subpoenas.

"When it comes to grand jury subpoenas, the government enjoys a remarkable amount of deference from the courts," Needham writes. "Those subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable, and a party challenging them has the burden of overcoming that presumption of regularity. Additionally, unlike search warrants, grand jury subpoenas don't require a showing of probable cause. Because of this, it's very hard to get out from under a grand jury subpoena. Courts can quash them if 'compliance would be unreasonable or oppressive.' This usually involves an overbroad demand, where the government asks for tons of records that have no meaningful relevance to the case. Courts can also quash a subpoena if the 'dominant' purpose of it is improper. Investigations initiated out of malice or with the intent to harass fall into this category. You will probably not be surprised to learn that these subpoenas managed to run afoul of both of these."

The attorney continues, "But the evidence showing that the subpoenas were issued 'as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so' was so strong that the court quashed the subpoenas for that reason alone."

On Friday morning, June 26, former National Security Adviser John Bolton entered a guilty plea to illegally retaining classified information related to his work in the first Trump administration. But Bolton's attorney, that same morning, gave a scathing opinion of the indictment.

Lowell, according to journalist Scott MacFarlane, said, in his statement, "Ambassador Bolton did what real leaders do. He took responsibility for a mistake he made, thereby saving the government resources to pursue a case that could expose additional sensitive information. By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct. Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself."

According to NBC News reporters Owen Hayes and Rebecca Shabad, Bolton "faces a prison sentence of up to 60 months and has agreed to pay $2.25 million, prosecutors said. He is set to be sentenced October 28."

Hayes and Shabad note, "Bolton described the national security information that he retained as an electronic diary entry that he shared with two members of his family. Bolton was originally indicted in October 2025, charged with eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of retention of national defense information. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and faced up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine per count, and three years of special release."

The NBC News reporters point out that in 2025, Lowell said of the case against Bolton, "The underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago. These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton's personal diaries over his 45-year career — records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021."

Hayes and Shabad report, "Last fall, Bolton was the third Trump critic to be indicted by the Justice Department, which also charged New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey in separate cases on charges of mortgage fraud and lying to Congress, respectively. After a federal judge dismissed the charges against James, the DOJ twice failed to re-indict her."

The Great American State Fair kicked off on Wednesday night, June 24 with a speech by President Donald Trump on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The Trump administration is touting the Fair, which continues through July 10, as a celebration of the United States' 250th anniversary. But Trump's critics are arguing that the opening felt more like a partisan MAGA rally than an actual celebration of America's achievements as a democratic republic.

One of those critics is Media Matters' Matt Gertz. During a late June appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast," Gertz stressed that turnout at the Great American State Fair's opening was a major disappointment — citing the MAGA themes as a key factor and attacking Fox News' glowing coverage as painfully awkward.

Fox News, according to Gertz, went out of its way to "carry water" for Trump with its Fair coverage.

Gertz told podcast host Sargent, "It's been a tough few months for people who have to carry water for Donald Trump every night…. And basically, they're trying to use what should be a celebration of the Declaration of Independence, of America’s 250th birthday, as a partisan wedge issue, as a cudgel against the Democratic Party, while simultaneously talking up Donald Trump and his ability to pull a huge crowd and get them together for a big rally. So, the failure, I think, of the kickoff event is a pretty big problem for them in the medium term as they try to keep that message going over the next 10, 12 days."

Gertz described attendance on Wednesday night as a major disappointment.

The Media Matters report told Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, "Originally, this was supposed to be a big concert with a bunch of different artists who were scheduled to play. But as it became more and more clear that these Freedom 250 events are extremely partisan, the artists decided to drop out. And eventually Trump kind of threw up his hands and said, instead of having this concert, we’re going to launch the state fair with what he called the greatest rally ever. It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way."

Sargent pointed out that Trump "seems very sensitive" about the "low turnout" on June 24, lamenting that he "tried to turn a celebration of America's 250th birthday into a Trump rally." When the "Daily Blast" host described Trump's Great American State Fair speech as an "imperial, dictatorial display of self-glorification," he got no argument from Gertz.

The Media Matters reporter told Sargent, "I mean, I think what we have here is a president who does not respect any sort of separation between himself and the country at large. And so, he views the idea of celebrating the nation's birthday as one and the same with celebrating himself. I think there's no clearer way to see that than how he decided to kick off the festivities with what he personally described as a rally speech — a partisan speech in which he sort of ran down what he claims are his accomplishments and talked about himself, rather than the nation, rather than what brings us together. And that becomes more and more fraught as he becomes more and more unpopular."

Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a former U.S. Army Europe commander, is warning that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — by forcing seasoned military figures out of leadership roles — are promoting instability in the U.S. Armed Forces. But Hertling isn't the only veteran who is sounding the alarm. Retired U.S. Army Adm. William H. McRaven, writing in The Atlantic, emphasizes that the United States needs detailed "answers" about all the firings and resignations taking place at the Pentagon during Trump's second presidency.

"Every president and secretary of defense has the right and, moreover, the responsibility to remove officers who are failing to meet the high standards expected of senior leaders," McRaven argues in his Atlantic article. "But when crucial decisions regarding the professionalism, effectiveness, or morale of the military are made, the people and their duly elected representatives have a right to know why these decisions were made. In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation. I have personally worked with most of them in combat."

McRaven continues, "I can tell you from experience that Generals C. Q. Brown, Randy George, Jim Mingus, J. P. McGee, Dave Hodne, Jim Slife, and Joe Berger and Admirals Lisa Franchetti and Jamie Sands were war fighters through and through. And this week, in an egregious decision, the president forced Gen. Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe."

Hertling, on the conservative website The Bulwark, found the forced resignation of Donahue especially troubling — as Donahue, Hertling argued, brings a wealth of military expertise to the table.

McRaven, similarly, writes, "Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops…. What is particularly concerning about these firings is the effect the dismissals will have on the officer ranks."

The Trump/Hegseth firings at the Pentagon, according to McRaven, "raise a real risk that senior officers will be overly cautious about providing their best advice and, therefore, that the chance for military miscalculation will grow dramatically."

"If Secretary Hegseth is trying to 'revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military,' as he has said, then the unplanned departure of these senior leaders will do just the opposite and may leave the president and the secretary without the experienced voices they need to make the best military decisions," the retired U.S. Navy admiral says. "Members of Congress should demand answers. The American people should demand answers. The future of our national security depends on it."

Among critics of President Donald Trump — liberals and progressives as well as right-wing Never Trump conservatives and libertarians — there is a widely held view that his second presidency is considerably worse than his first. The second Trump White House is the focus of "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Sean Woods, in a late June review for Rolling Stone, describes "Regime Change" as "essential reading" for those who want to understand why Trump's second presidency is so chaotic and dysfunctional.

"President Trump, the most powerful man in the world — maybe in history — comes off in these pages as among the most miserable of humans, surrounded by sycophants and toadies, living in a gilded palace, filled with rage and bile," Woods says in Rolling Stone. "It's an unpleasant and chaotic portrait, one that could almost be satirical but for the fact that his wars, police-state tactics, and pettiest grievances have affected all of our lives."

One of the anecdotes in "Regime Change" that speaks volumes about Trump's state of mind, according to Woods, describes Trump's reaction to Tesla/Space-X head Elon Musk attacking Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Act as an "abomination." Trump commented, "They always leave me. They always do this. This is why I can't have friends."

Trump didn't view Musk's criticism of the Big, Beautiful Bill as a major policy disagreement — he saw it as an act of betrayal.

"With Trump, it's always one d– – thing after another: Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) destruction of the federal work force already feels like another era, and that was barely a year ago. We are light-years away from the man who ran for office in 2016. Too much has happened in those 10 years. Swan and Haberman show why Trump, and his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have returned to Washington with vengeance on the mind and a ruthless desire to wield and abuse power…. It's immediately clear in Trump 2.0 that all the safety checks that existed in Trump 1.0 are long gone."

Woods adds, "Turns out, the presidential Cabinet really matters — and if it's staffed with the Pete Hegseths and Kristi Noems of the world, nothing good will come of it."

Another thing "Regime Change" brings out is how many people on the right have turned against Trump.

"As the Year 1 barrels along," Woods notes, "Swan and Haberman document the fallout. MAGA loyalists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie and Tucker Carlson split with Trump over the mishandling of the Epstein files and the Iran war…. Former allies, Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, and Mike Pence are now hostile to the White House and John Bolton has been targeted by Trump for vengeance."

Woods continues, "Bad blood and feuds surround MAGA, a coalition only held together by the president's will and fear of his wrath…. It makes for grim reading. No president, perhaps no person in public life, has ever fully embodied the Seven Deadly Sins the way Trump does. You see them all in him, even at 79, throughout these pages: lust, greed, pride, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth…. 'Regime Change' is essential reading to understand how, in just 18 months, Trump's presidency reached this dreadful precipice, and why, in the end, everyone leaves him."

During a late June visit to the Middle East on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait to discuss foreign policy matters — including President Donald Trump's ceasefire agreement with Iran. Trump's son-in-law Michael Boulos was sitting next to Rubio during a meeting with UAE's president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in Abu Dhabi — and Boulos' presence is raising questions.

On X, formerly Twitter, Rubio posted a photo from that meeting, noting that he discussed the memorandum of understanding signed by the U.S. and Iran as well as "efforts to secure full and safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz" and "regional stability."

The New York Times' Edward Wong is among the reporters drawing attention to the fact that Boulos, who is married to President Trump's daughter Tiffany Trump, was sitting next to Rubio.

Wong, on X, observed, "Trump's son-in-law, Michael Boulos, sits next to Rubio in this meeting in UAE with Sheikh MBZ, the country's leader. Boulos is a businessman who has no official post (his father has one). He visited UAE in May 2025 with Trump for a business event."

Wong, in a separate tweet, noted, "On that May 2025 trip, Michael Boulos and Tiffany Trump were at a business roundtable in UAE at which President Trump gave a speech."

Speaking to reporters in Kuwait City, Kuwait, Rubio was asked about Boulos and responded, "Oh, Michael Boulos? His brother lives here. He was just at the meeting to catch up."

Rubio also told reporters, "I'm a good friend of Michael. So we had a chance to catch up."

But journalists are pointing out that Boulos doesn't actually serve in the Trump administration in an official capacity, and they find his presence during Rubio's meeting with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan odd and Rubio's explanation vague.

CNN's Aaron Blake, formerly of the Washington Post, tweeted, "From Rubio's exchange with reporters on this — > Q: Sir, can you clarify — can you clarify what the role of Michael Boulos was today?.... RUBIO: Oh, he was there to see his brother who lives here. He was just there to see me and catch up."

Rubio was once a scathing critic of Donald Trump, repeatedly attacking him when they were competing for the GOP nomination in the United States' 2016 presidential race. But Rubio and Donald Trump later made amends, and now, he wears multiple hats in Trump's second administration. In addition to serving as secretary of state, the 55-year-old former U.S. senator is acting national security adviser.