In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.

Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” focuses exclusively on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities, and mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

“I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda,” journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.

Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.

“In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report,” Klippenstein wrote.

For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and “entities” and listing several protected beliefs as “indicia” of extremism.

These include:

• “Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;
• Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
• Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
• Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

What’s more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI’s over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.

“For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level,” Klippenstein wrote.

The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” as “domestic terrorist acts.”

The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.

Finally, as Drop Site News pointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.

“By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime,” Drop Site wrote.

The Trump administration’s focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardian reported earlier this month.

The administration’s efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.

“Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover ‘radicalism,‘” Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.

“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” he wrote on social media on Friday. “The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized.”

In an interview with Greg Sargent for the New Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as “goading” on violence against the agency.

Referring to Miller’s comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.”

The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.

“Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity,” Sargent wrote. “That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them.”

Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools, has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The Des Moines Register reports that Roberts, who has served as superintendent in the Iowa district since 2023, was taken into custody by ICE agents on Friday morning.

The Des Moines Register has confirmed that Roberts is currently being held at the Pottawattamie County Jail, which the paper noted would put him in close proximity to the Omaha Immigration Court.

According to local news station KCCI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that that Roberts was been taken into custody as part of a “targeted enforcement operation.”

DHS said that after ICE officers approached Roberts’ vehicle on Friday, he sped away and tried to escape. They eventually apprehended him and found a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed-blade hunting knife inside his vehicle.

DHS also claimed that Roberts had been ordered to be removed from the US in May 2024, and that he had an existing weapons possession charge dating from 2020.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, put out a brief statement on Friday saying she was “made aware this morning that Ian Roberts was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is in contact with the Iowa Department of Public Safety and federal authorities.”

Reynolds last year touted a meeting she’d held with Roberts in which she said the two discussed “our shared goal of providing all Iowa students a world-class education.”

Local residents who spoke with The Des Moines Register were stunned by news of Roberts’ detention. Alison Hoeman, founder of the local nonprofit Des Moines Refugees Support, told the paper that her phone “blew up” from concerned parents as soon as they heard the news about Roberts’ arrest.

“You know it’s the Black and brown kids who are worried,” she said. “If it’s Ian Roberts who’s in trouble, what does that mean for them?”

Roberts was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Guyana, and he told local news station WHO 13 last year that he spent considerable time in both countries growing up.

Prior to pursuing a career in education, Roberts competed in the 2000 Summer Olympics as a middle-distance runner for the Guyana team.

The federal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday night unleashed a deluge of contempt directed at President Donald Trump, who pursued the case from his perch in the Oval Office, shattering the line that has long separated the operations of the Justice Department from direct presidential influence.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the charges against Comey—filed by one of Trump’s former personal defense attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, installed as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just days ago, show that Trump “refuses to allow the facts or the law to stand in the way of his wrath and vengeance campaign.”

Comey is charged with lying to Congress and obstruction of congressional proceedings related to testimony he gave to a US Senate committee in 2020, but the previous prosecutorial team in the Eastern District concluded there was not sufficient evidence to bring such a case. Earlier this week, Trump forced Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, to resign after he refused to bring the charges. “He didn’t quit,” Trump said of Siebert, “I fired him.”

Trump has named Comey as a political enemy and accused the former director of misconduct in relation to the 2016 FBI investigation into Trump and his staff over alleged ties to Russian interference with that year’s presidential campaign, which Trump ultimately won against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“This vindictive prosecution shows just how far Trump and his toadies will go to exact retribution on perceived enemies.”

The relentless pursuit of Comey by Trump since then, and now a federal indictment, say critics, shows that Trump is the one willing to weaponize the Justice Department against perceived political enemies, regardless of the existence or quality of evidence.

As The New York Times notes:

[The indictment] represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump administration to harry, punish and humiliate a former official the president identified as an enemy, at the expense of procedural safeguards intended to shield the Justice Department from political interference and personal vendettas.The bare-bones, two-page indictment was signed only by Ms. Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who personally presented the case to the jury, despite her lack of any previous prosecutorial experience. Typically such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.

The president, said Raskin in his statement, “forced Mr. Seibert to resign in order to replace him with one of his former defense attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, who has literally no prosecutorial experience but is clearly willing to blindly carry out the president’s orders. As if by magic, within mere days of being appointed, Ms. Halligan delivered for the president by filing the exact baseless charges against Mr. Comey that her predecessor had rejected.”

Trump responded to the charges Thursday night by declaring, “Justice in America!” in a social media post, while Comey professed his innocence in a statement, said he looks forward to defending himself at trial, and that he would not be cowed. “We will not live on our knees,” said Comey, “and you shouldn’t either.”

The indictment of Comey, said Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, “isn’t justice – it’s revenge.”

“By weaponizing the DOJ to settle political scores,” said Harvey, Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi “have shredded the last scraps of the Department’s independence. Americans do not want our president using taxpayer-funded prosecutors and law enforcement to exact revenge.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, called Comey’s indictment “a perversion of our justice system” and a worrying sign of what’s to come.

“This vindictive prosecution shows just how far Trump and his toadies will go to exact retribution on perceived enemies. And how large perceived slights loom on the president’s priorities list,” warned Gilbert. “Installing a hand-picked prosecutor to bring a meritless case demonstrates the danger our democracy is in from this wannabe dictator.”

The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law coalition, which includes Public Citizen, the Constitutional Accountability Center, MoveOn, and Stand Up America, released a joint statement, saying the prosecution of Comey represents the “dangerous ongoing weaponization of our justice system” and continued:

This has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution. Yet Trump’s handpicked replacement is proceeding anyway, ignoring both DOJ guidelines and prosecutorial ethics. When the Department of Justice becomes a tool for settling personal grudges rather than protecting Americans from real threats, our liberties are in grave danger. Agencies that should investigate terrorism and organized crime must not become personal revenge squads for the president. Congress must act to restore independence to our justice system and stop this authoritarian abuse of power—Trump’s attorney general has made clear she won’t.

For Raskin’s part, he said, “I have no doubt that a jury of his peers will acquit and vindicate Mr. Comey after being afforded the opportunity to hear all the relevant evidence. But, until that happens, Mr. Comey will be forced to spend time, money, and energy defending himself against this blatantly fraudulent and vindictive indictment.”

“The rule of law was supposed to replace vendettas, blood feuds, and mad kings exacting vengeance on their perceived enemies,” he added. “This sordid episode is one more savage assault on justice in America.”

After the Trump administration successfully pressured ABC to kick Jimmy Kimmel off the air last week, hundreds of artists signed an open letter Monday denouncing the government’s campaign to “pressure” entertainers and journalists into silence.

The letter, organized by the ACLU, was signed by numerous household names, including Jason Bateman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana DeBose, Jane Fonda, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Regina King, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Diego Luna, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Natalie Portman, Olivia Rodrigo, Martin Short, and Ramy Youssef.

“Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after our government threatened a private company with retaliation for Kimmel’s remarks. This is a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation,” the letter says. “This is unconstitutional and un-American. The government is threatening private companies and individuals that the president disagrees with. We can’t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered.”

Kimmel’s suspension came hours after the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened to revoke the broadcast license of ABC News affiliates unless the network pulled the comedian’s late-night show off the air following comments he made criticizing the President Donald Trump’s reaction to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Major entertainment unions have condemned Kimmel’s suspension, including SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, which organized demonstrations in Times Square and outside ABC’s parent company Disney over the weekend that drew hundreds of protesters, while some actors have pledged to stop working with Disney until Kimmel is reinstated.

In subsequent days, Trump continued to issue threats to the media, suggesting that he would seek to strip the broadcasting licenses of networks that give him “bad press,” saying, “They’re not allowed to do that.”

The letter says that “In an attempt to silence its critics, our government has resorted to threatening the livelihoods of journalists, talk show hosts, artists, creatives, and entertainers across the board. This runs counter to the values our nation was built upon, and our Constitution guarantees.”

Members of the Trump administration, including JD Vance, have also promoted a wide-ranging campaign to have private citizens reported to their employers over critical comments they made about Kirk following his assassination.

Students for Trump National Chair Ryan Fournier created a database with tens of thousands of social media accounts and has boasted of having gotten dozens of people fired over their posts, many of which simply state disagreement with Kirk even without endorsing his assassination.

“We know this moment is bigger than us and our industry. Teachers, government employees, law firms, researchers, universities, students, and so many more are also facing direct attacks on their freedom of expression,” the letter says. “Regardless of our political affiliation, or whether we engage in politics or not, we all love our country. We also share the belief that our voices should never be silenced by those in power—because if it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.”

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, described these blacklisting efforts as the dawn of “a modern McCarthy era” with Americans “facing exactly the type of heavy-handed government censorship our Constitution rightfully forbids.”

Noting that former Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) “was ultimately disgraced and neutralized once Americans mobilized and stood up to him,” Romero said that “we must do the same today because, together, our voices are louder and, together, we will fight to be heard.”

A federal jobs report released on Friday showed the US economy added a mere 22,000 jobs in August in yet another signal of weakness in the US labor market.

Economists had projected the economy would produce 75,000 jobs on the month, which means that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers released on Friday were well below the consensus estimate.

What's more, the total number of jobs created in July and June were once again revised downward, and the economy as a whole has added an average of fewer than 30,000 jobs over the last three months.

Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, put the bad jobs report in stark terms.

"The labor market is going from frozen to cracking," she said, and then pointed to net job losses in industries including mining, construction, and manufacturing that show significant stress in the blue-collar economy. In fact, the majority of job growth came from the healthcare industry over the last month.

"The US job market is almost entirely dependent on healthcare," she observed. "That's not healthy for the economy."

Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, also said that the new numbers showed a continued deterioration in both the US labor market and the economy as a whole.

"I'm worried," he said. "The economy was in a good place in late 2024. That's no longer true. And the trajectory is, at a minimum, concerning. That's millions of people's lives, and millions of stories of pain."

Wolfers also zeroed in on the fact that manufacturing employment has been contracting for several months, despite US President Donald Trump's pledges to lead a manufacturing revitalization.

"But the Administration has made dramatic policy shift to boost manufacturing, and it just ain't working," he said. "Manufacturing employment fell [by 12,000 jobs], and is down [78,000 jobs] over the year."

Former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom Trump fired last month after he baselessly accused her of concocting negative job numbers to harm him politically, argued on Bluesky that the new report's downward revisions of previous monthly estimates are indicative of a labor market that is very quickly cooling.

"The larger-than-usual downward revision last month was in large part driven by a negative skew in the job growth distribution among late reporting firms," she said. "That's unusual, but it's happened before when the pace of job growth slows rapidly. This print is more evidence that was the case."

Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and former member of President Joe Biden's National Economic Council, argued the new jobs report demonstrates that "the theory of Trumponomics is failing."

"The first theory of Trumponomics was that tariffs would build up manufacturing work and federal workforce cuts would free up workers for them," he explained. "That's failed. Manufacturing lost jobs almost as fast as the federal workforce (-12 vs. -15K)."

Konczal then showed how Trump's tariffs have hurt his stated goal of bringing back well-paying jobs for blue-collar men, as industries that produce such jobs have also been harmed by his tariffs on foreign goods and materials.

He also pointed out that Trump advisers claimed that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would create new job openings that native-born workers would rush in to fill.

"But, you guessed it, that's also failing," he said. "Amidst the broader weakening, the native-born unemployment rate is at the highest levels since the pandemic."

Elise Gould, the director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, similarly noted that "there have... been sustained losses over recent months in manufacturing, construction, and mining," in recent months, which she said was "an indication that Trump's blue-collar renaissance is clearly not happening."

Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the progressive advocacy organization Groundwork Collaborative, called the jobs report "devastating," while laying the blame at the feet of Trump.

"Trump's promises to working families have fallen flat," he said. "The unemployment rate is the highest in nearly four years, the economy has lost nearly 40,000 manufacturing jobs this year alone, and millions of workers are unable to find full-time employment. Families are getting fewer chances to secure the American dream in Trump's economy."

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) reacted to the jobs report by issuing a scathing rebuke to Trump and his management of the economy.

"Donald Trump inherited an economy built on years of steady job growth," he said. "In just seven months, he's managed to screw it up—just like he's screwed up everything else in his life. Now, working families are getting squeezed from every direction: higher prices, Republicans' Big Ugly Law ripping health care away from millions, and a job market that's slowing down."

In what Public Citizen called "the greatest corruption in presidential history," US President Donald Trump and his family added $5 billion in cash to their fortunes this Labor Day as his new cryptocurrency was opened to the public market.

The currency, known as WLFI, is owned by World Liberty Financial, a company founded by the president's sons, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump. A Trump business entity owns 60% of the company and is entitled to 75% of the revenue from coin sales.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Monday:

The trading debut was most likely the biggest financial success for the president's family since the inauguration...WLFI is likely now the Trumps' most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio. While the president's family has continued to pursue property deals around the world since taking office, the fast-moving crypto business has had the biggest early impact.

Crypto is now the dominant source of Trump's wealth. As an investigation by the anti-corruption group Accountable.US found last month, "President Trump's net worth could roughly be $15.9 billion, with about $11.6 billion in uncounted crypto assets," meaning that the digital currencies now make up 73% of his total net worth.

In addition to the tokens owned by World Liberty Financial, it found that two Trump-affiliated companies owned 80% of the $TRUMP meme coin as of May and had collected over $324 million in fees since Trump took office in January.

Meanwhile, Trump Media, which owns his online platform Truth Social, bought $2 billion worth of Bitcoin in July and reserved another $300 million in Bitcoin options.

As America's self-proclaimed "first crypto president," Trump has sought to curb regulations against the volatile financial assets.

In July, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, which purports to establish the US's first regulatory framework for crypto. However, critics noted that the law designated so-called "stablecoins," of which Trump owns many, as "commodities" rather than "securities," allowing them to face much looser oversight.

Though the bill passed with support from over 100 Democrats, Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, warned that the bill "legitimizes Trump actively building the most corrupt self-dealing crypto environment this country has ever seen."

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) described Trump's latest $5 billion windfall as "blatantly corrupt and a brazen abuse of power."

"The current occupant of the White House," she said, "is putting personal profit above the people, using his power to illegally line the pockets of his family and billionaire friends while hanging everyday families out to dry by ripping away their healthcare, food assistance, raising the cost of consumer goods, gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more."

While cryptocurrency is often billed as an asset available to everyone that levels the playing field of the finance world, in practice, its ownership is largely concentrated among the wealthiest Americans. According to a Harris poll published in April, nearly half of all crypto owners have a yearly income of over $150,000, putting them in the wealthiest 10% of the country.

"Your family gets higher energy prices and cuts to healthcare. [Trump's] family gets billions," said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Corruption, plain and simple."

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), a strong advocate for crypto regulation, said that such blatant profiting from the presidency makes Trump "easily the most corrupt president in our country's history," and emphasized that "Republicans in Congress are not lifting a single finger to exercise basic oversight."

According to data from OpenSecrets, just three crypto industry-backed political action committees (PACs) poured over $133 million into the 2024 election. Though they spent the majority of that money supporting Republicans, nearly 40% of it went to Democrats.

But although all this money helped to buy what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called "America's most pro-crypto Congress ever," according to Reuters, just 3% of legislators in the US House of Representatives and Senate own these assets themselves, including Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mon.), as well as Reps. Nick Begich (R-Ark.) and Mike Collins (R-Ga.).

But Trump's profiteering far exceeds the crypto holdings of every congressperson put together.

"We have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the damage that this corruption will inflict on the American people," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial reform advocate with Public Citizen. "The impact of attempts by the Trump family and others to buy and sell politics and politicians will continue to ricochet."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday said that the vast majority of schools in the Lone Star State should still plan on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms even after a federal judge ruled against it last week.

In a statement, Paxton said that "schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide" by a state law that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in all public and secondary school classrooms.

"The woke radicals seeking to erase our nation's history will be defeated," he said. "I will not back down from defending the virtues and values that built this country."

Paxton asserted that only nine Texas school districts are affected by the injunction and said that all other districts "must abide by the law once it takes effect on September 1, 2025."

The Texas attorney general's defiant stance on the Ten Commandments earned him a quick rebuke from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who accused him of grandstanding instead of doing his job as the state's chief law enforcement official.

"Paxton's job is to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the separation of church and state—not the Ten Commandments," he wrote on X. "Our public schools should focus on educating Texas students, not stoking culture wars."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also rebuked Paxton for failing to uphold the Constitution's prohibition of the government establishment of a religion.

"The Constitution, not the Ten Commandments, built this country," the foundation said. "Forcing students to observe one religion’s rules is a blatant violation of the First Amendment regardless of what Ken Paxton claims. Public schools are for education, not religious indoctrination."

Paxton's declaration came less than a week after US District Judge Fred Biery of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed.

In his ruling, Biery argued that the classroom displays "are likely to pressure the [students] into religious observance, meditation on, veneration, and adoption of the state's favored religious scripture, and into suppressing expression of their own religious or nonreligious background and beliefs while at school."

US President Donald Trump has pitched his tariffs on foreign goods as a way to bring more manufacturing jobs back into the United States.

However, it now appears as though the tariffs are hurting the manufacturing jobs that are already here.

As reported by Des Moines Register, iconic American machinery company John Deere announced on Monday that it is laying off 71 workers in Waterloo, Iowa, as well as 115 people in East Moline, Illinois, and 52 workers in Moline, Illinois. The paper noted that John Deere has laid off more than 2,000 employees since April 2024.

In its announcement of the layoffs, the company said that "the struggling [agriculture] economy continues to impact orders" for its equipment.

"This is a challenging time for many farmers, growers, and producers, and directly impacts our business in the near term," the company emphasized.

According to The New Republic, Cory Reed, president of John Deere's Worldwide Agriculture and Turf Division, said during the company's most recent earnings call that the uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariffs has led to many farmers putting off investments in farm equipment.

"If you have customers that are concerned about what their end markets are going to look like in a tariff environment, they're waiting to see the outcomes of what these trade deals look like," he explained.

Josh Beal, John Deere's director of investor relations, similarly said that "the primary drivers" for the company's negative outlook from the prior quarter "are increased tariff rates on Europe, India, and steel and aluminum."

The news of the layoffs drew a scathing rebuke from Nathan Sage, an Iowa Democrat running for the US Senate to unseat Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has praised the president's tariff policies.

"John Deere is once again laying off Iowans—a clear sign economic uncertainty hits the working class hardest, not the CEOs at the top," he wrote in a post on X. "Cheered on by Joni Ernst, Republicans in Washington want to play games with tariffs and give tax cuts to billionaires while Iowa families continue to struggle. It's time to stop protecting the top 1% and fight for the working people who keep our economy strong."

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) also ripped Trump's trade policies for hurting blue-collar jobs.

"Because of Trump's tariffs, farmers can't afford to buy what they need to make a living," he said. "Equipment manufacturers like John Deere have lost millions, but let's remember that working people are hit hardest by the president's disastrous economic policies. Tired of 'winning' yet?"

John Deere is not the only big-name American manufacturer to be harmed by the Trump tariffs, as all three of the country's major auto manufacturers in recent months have announced they expect to take significant financial hits from them.

Ford last month said that its profit could plunge by up to 36% this year as it expects to take a $2 billion hit from the president's tariffs on key inputs such as steel and aluminum, as well as taxes on car components manufactured in Canada and Mexico.

General Motors last month also cited the Trump tariffs as a major reason why its profits fell by $3 billion the previous quarter. Making matters worse, GM said that the impact of the tariffs would be even more significant in the coming quarter when its profits could tumble by as much as $5 billion.

GM's warning came shortly after Jeep manufacturer Stellantis projected that the Trump tariffs would directly lead to $350 million in losses in the first half of 2025.

CNN reports that a majority of the Democrats in the caucus "complied with the law enforcement escort, showing reporters what they called 'permission slips' they received to leave the House floor and pointing to the officers escorting them around the Capitol."

"I won't just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination." —Democratic Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier

But not Collier, who represents the Fort Worth area in District 95.

"I refuse to sign. I will not agree to be in DPS custody," Collier said. "I'm not a criminal. I am exercising my right to resist and oppose the decisions of our government. So this is my form of protest."

In a video posted Monday night from inside the chamber, Collier explained why she refused to sign for the escort and lashed out at her Republican colleagues for their continued assault on the rule of law.

"My constituents sent me to Austin to protect their voices and rights," said Collier in the video. "I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts. My community is majority-minority, and they expect me to stand up for their representation. When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents—I won't just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination."

Fellow Democrats, both inside and beyond Texas, championed Collier's stand and condemned the GOP for their latest authoritarian stunt.

"In the face of fascism, [Rep.] Nicole Collier is a hero," said state Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos (D-102), chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus.

Seth Harp, a Democrat running for Congress in Florida this cycle, accused Texas Republicans of "just absolutely destroying the 4th amendment," which bars unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. "It's essentially kidnapping and taking a hostage," Harp added.

"Hey GOP," he asked, "exactly how much do you hate the Constitution?"

Rep. Jasmine Crocket (D-Texas), who previously served in the state's legislature, also condemned the move by Burrows and his fellow Republicans.

"Let me be clear: LOCKING Rep. Nicole Collier inside the chamber is beyond outrageous," Crockett declared in a social media post Monday evening.

"Forcing elected officials to sign 'permission slips' and take police escorts to leave? That's not procedure," she said. "That's some old Jim Crow playbook. Texas Republicans have lost their damn minds."

A leading inflation indicator surged much more than expected last month, just as the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs started to weigh on American businesses and consumers.

New Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers released on Thursday showed that wholesale prices rose by 0.9% over the last month and by 3.3% over the last year. These numbers were significantly higher than economists' consensus estimates of a 0.2% monthly rise and a 2.5% yearly rise in producer prices.

PPI is a leading indicator of future readings of the Consumer Price Index, the most widely cited gauge of inflation, as increases in wholesalers' prices almost inevitably get passed on to consumers. Economists have been predicting for months that Trump's tariffs on imported goods, which at the moment are higher than at any point in nearly 100 years, would lead to a spike in inflation.

Reacting to the higher-than-expected PPI number, some economic experts pinned the blame directly on the president.

"So much for foreigners paying tariffs," commented Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at tax consulting firm RSM US, on X. "If they did, PPI would be falling. Wholesale prices up 3.3% from a year ago and 3.7% in the core. The temperature is definitely rising in the core. This implies a hot PCE reading lies ahead."

Liz Pancotti, the managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, took a deep dive into the numbers and found that Trump's tariffs were having an impact on a wide range of products.

"There is no mistaking it: President Trump's tariffs are hitting American farmers and driving up grocery prices for American families," she said. "Wholesale prices for grocery staples, like fresh vegetables (up 39% over the past month) and coffee (up 29% over the past year) are rising, squeezing American families even further in the checkout line."

Pancotti singled out the rise in milk prices as particularly worrisome for American families.

"Milk drove more than 30% of the increase in prices for unprocessed goods, rising by 9.1% in just the past month," she explained. "Tuesday's CPI print showed that milk prices rose by 1.9% in July, and this PPI data suggests further price hikes are on the way."

Betsey Stevenson, who served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, also pointed the finger at Trump's policies.

"Tariffs will cause higher prices," she said. "Volatility and uncertainty will cause higher prices. The PPI jump is not a surprise, it was inevitable."

On his Bluesky account, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla flagged analysis from economic research firm High Frequency Economics stating that the new PPI numbers were "a kick in the teeth for anyone who thought that tariffs would not impact domestic prices in the United States economy."

The firm added that it "will not be a long journey for producers' prices to translate into consumer prices" in the coming months.

Liz Thomas, the head of investment strategy at finance company SoFi, argued that the hot PPI numbers could further frustrate Trump's goal of getting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates given that doing so would almost certainly boost inflation further.

"The increase in PPI was driven by services, and there were increases in general services costs and in the Trade component (i.e., wholesale/retail margins)," she commented. "The Fed won't like this report."

Ross Hendricks, an analyst at economic research firm Porter & Co., described the new report as "scorching hot" and similarly speculated that it would stop the Federal Reserve from cutting rates.

"Good luck with them rate cuts!" he wrote. "Can't recall the last time we've seen a miss that big on a single monthly inflation number."

Hedge fund manager and author Jeff Macke jokingly speculated that the bad PPI print would cause Trump to fire yet another government statistician just as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Whoever compiles the PPI needs to update their CV," he wrote.

Just as with the monthly jobs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and publishes PPI data.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday morning tried to put his best spin on a Friday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that yielded neither a cease-fire agreement nor a comprehensive peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Writing on his Truth Social page, the president took a victory lap over the summit despite coming home completely empty-handed when he flew back from Alaska on Friday night.

"A great and very successful day in Alaska!" Trump began. "The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO."

Trump then pivoted to saying that he was fine with not obtaining a cease-fire agreement, even though he said just days before that he'd impose "severe consequences" on Russia if it did not agree to one.

"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Cease-fire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump said. "President Zelenskyy will be coming to DC, the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved."

While Trump did his best to put a happy face on the summit, many critics contended it was nothing short of a debacle for the US president.

Writing in The New Yorker, Susan Glasser argued that the entire summit with Putin was a "self-own of embarrassing proportions," given that he literally rolled out the red carpet for his Russian counterpart and did not achieve any success in bringing the war to a close.

"Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump, and still more time on the clock to prosecute his war against the 'brotherly' Ukrainian people, as he had the chutzpah to call them during his remarks in Alaska," she wrote. "The most enduring images from Anchorage, it seems, will be its grotesque displays of bonhomie between the dictator and his longtime American admirer."

She also noted that Trump appeared to shift the entire burden of ending the war onto Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he even said after the Putin summit that "it's really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done."

This led Glasser to comment that "if there's one unwavering Law of Trump, this is it: Whatever happens, it is never, ever, his fault."

Glasser wasn't the only critic to offer a scathing assessment of the summit. The Economist blasted Trump in an editorial about the meeting, which it labeled a "gift" to Putin. The magazine also contrasted the way that Trump treated Putin during his visit to American soil with the way that he treated Zelenskyy during an Oval Office meeting earlier this year.

"The honors for Mr. Putin were in sharp contrast to the public humiliation that Mr. Trump and his advisers inflicted on Mr. Zelenskyy during his first visit to the White House earlier this year," they wrote. "Since then relations with Ukraine have improved, but Mr. Trump has often been quick to blame it for being invaded; and he has proved strangely indulgent with Mr. Putin."

Michael McFaul, an American ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama, was struck by just how much effort went into holding a summit that accomplished nothing.

"Summits usually have deliverables," he told The Atlantic. "This meeting had none... I hope that they made some progress towards next steps in the peace process. But there is no evidence of that yet."

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Facing threats from Republicans who have called for her deportation this week, U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez has refused to back down.

The progressive Guatemalan-American congresswoman from Illinois has become a punching bag in right-wing media this week after comments she made in Spanish were apparently mistranslated by The Blaze, which claimed she said: "I'm a proud Guatemalan, before I'm an American."

It was quickly revealed that the Democrat had, in fact, said she was "very proudly Guatemalan," but "First, I am American."

But this did not stop Republican officials—including Reps. Andy Ogles (Tenn.) and Byron Donalds (Fla.); Trump border czar Tom Homan; and even the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security, from threatening to strip Ramirez—who is a U.S.-born citizen—of her citizenship and throw her out of the country.

In her first public appearance since the attacks began, at the annual progressive gathering Netroots Nation in New Orleans, Ramirez was defiant.

In an interview with Emily Topping for Current Affairs magazine, she called the three men who attacked her "cowards."

Of Ogles, who said Ramirez should be kicked off the House Homeland Security Committee, she said, "This is a man that wants to talk about 'oath of office' but violates it every single day."

"I was born in this country just like he was," she added, "and therefore calling for me to be denaturalized and deported is not constitutional, and it's illegal."

She accused Donalds—who said he "never had a chance to meet Ramirez"—of being too afraid to face her directly: "If you don't know me, why are you talking about me? Why don't you pick up the phone and ask me what I think?"

"Because I show up to Congress," she said. "I show up every single week defending Medicaid, Social Security, education, collective bargaining, and the Constitution, something that perhaps he should think about instead of attacking a colleague on Twitter."

The congresswoman said her other Republican attackers were using her as a distraction from the mounting inquiry into President Donald Trump's involvement with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"They don't want you to think about the Epstein files and how their number one job is to protect the pedophile and not protect the American people," Ramirez said. "But I think this is the moment we are living in."

In a keynote speech at the Netroots conference Thursday evening, Ramirez addressed that moment with ferocity.

She called out Homan, who has complained that the immigrants in Ramirez's hometown of Chicago are "very difficult" for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest because they are "educated" about their rights.

"He hopes that we don't know our rights so they can violate them," Ramirez said. "We will continue to stand up for our rights, and we will continue to call out the terrorist organization that is ICE."

Attacks on immigrants were just one prong of what she called "the Trump administration's heartless, inhumane, brutal campaign of control all around us."

She said Israel's war on Gaza, which she later described as a "genocide," is also part of this campaign, as are the administration's attacks on transgender people, the homeless, unionized workers, and safety net programs like Medicaid.

"Their campaigns of starvation, displacement, and death, at home and abroad, are meant to break us," she said. "They want our resources. They want our land. They want our freedoms. They want our lives so that they can advance their imperialist authoritarian agendas across the world."

In June, Ramirez led a group of 18 congresspeople who introduced the Block the Bombs Act, which would restrict the transfer of offensive weapons to Israel.

In May, she also introduced the Born in the USA Act, which asserts that the 14th Amendment unequivocally grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, and declares any attempts to restrict birthright citizenship unconstitutional.

Though neither bill has passed out of the Republican-controlled House and restrictions on weapons sales to Israel have struggled to receive even Democratic support, Ramirez said she still feels cause for optimism—despite what she called "dark times"—by looking at the future she hopes to build.

"It is not enough to simply protect the rights and freedoms we have now," she said. "We will create a future in which working people have every single damn thing they deserve and more."

She spoke of renewing the push for Medicare and housing for all, the Green New Deal, and an increased minimum wage. She also previewed a piece of legislation she plans to introduce in September that would increase taxes on the rich.

"In a time where they attempt to silence us, where they attempt to paralyze us, may we never normalize this moment," she said. "Yes, war is destruction, but we are creation people in a creation movement, and we are building forward."

Watch a video of her appearance below or at this link.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

A lawyer representing New York's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Letitia James, said Friday that the news of the Trump administration's investigation into James and her successful legal cases against President Donald Trump amounted to "the most blatant and desperate example" of the president's "political retribution campaign."

In recent days, The Washington Post reported Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a subpoena to James as part of an investigation into whether the attorney general, a longtime adversary of Trump, violated the president's civil rights when she successfully sued him and his real estate business for fraud.

A second subpoena was related to James' litigation against the National Rifle Association, in which a New York jury found last year that former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and other executives had engaged in rampant corruption.

The civil rights statute that the Trump administration is reportedly using to investigate James' case against the president is typically used in cases related to law enforcement officers discriminating against or mistreating people based on race, religion, sex, or ethnicity. According to The New York Times, the DOJ is arguing that James used her law enforcement authority to deprive Trump of his rights.

James filed a civil fraud case against Trump and the Trump Organization in 2022 and won a $450 million judgment against the president in penalties plus interest. The interest the president owes has grown to half a billion dollars as he has refused to pay and has appealed the ruling.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engeron said that Trump and his company's executives were "incapable of admitting the error of their ways" regarding the "blatantly false financial data" they used to misrepresent of the value of their properties, which allowed them to get better loan and insurance rates.

The Democratic candidate in the New York City mayoral race, state Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-36), expressed little surprise that Trump was apparently retaliating against the attorney general who won against him in court.

"Attorney General James took on Trump's fraud and the NRA's rampant corruption—and won both cases," said Mamdani. "So it's little wonder that Trump's politicized DOJ is now coming after her. The people of New York stand with their lawyer and champion."

The subpoenas were issued months after the DOJ appeared to try another tactic to punish James when it opened a criminal investigation into alleged mortgage fraud, accusing the attorney general of lying on loan documents for a home that she purchased in Virginia and saying the home would be her primary residence. James' attorneys have said the error was an honest mistake.

Dana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan, came to James' defense on Friday and condemned "the depths to which Trump and his cronies will go to exact vengeance upon anyone who has dared to hold him accountable."

But the subpoenas, said Nessel, are not just a concern for James.

"Americans should know and understand how deeply compromised our federal law enforcement agencies are," she said. "If this can happen to AG James, it can happen to anyone."

Geoff Burgan, a spokesperson for James, agreed that "any weaponization of the justice system should disturb every American."

"We stand strongly behind our successful litigation against the Trump Organization and the National Rifle Association, and we will continue to stand up for New Yorkers' rights," said Burgan.

Abbe Lowell, the attorney general's lawyer, said that "weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration."

"If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth," said Lowell, "we are ready and waiting with facts and the law."

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration earned condemnation from Amnesty International on Thursday over its leaked plans to downplay human rights violations in countries favored by the American government.

News of the plan was originally reported on Wednesday by The Washington Post, which documented how the administration has been revising State Department reports on human rights in El Salvador, Israel, and Russia to "strike all references to LGBTQ+ individuals or crimes against them." The Post also added that "the descriptions of government abuses that do remain have been softened."

In the case of El Salvador, where the administration earlier this year began lawlessly shipping immigrants deported from the United States, the administration's report stated that were "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses" there, even though a State Department report under former President Joe Biden's administration issued last year documented "significant human rights issues" in the country.

Human rights violations against LGBTQ+ people were deleted from the State Department's report on Russia, while the report on Israel deleted references to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial and to his government's threats to the country's independent judiciary.

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA's national director of government relations and advocacy, ripped the administration for selectively whitewashing human rights records of nations favored by the president.

"The leaked chapters of the latest Annual Human Rights Report reveal a disturbing effort by the Trump administration to purposefully fail to fully capture the alarming and growing attacks on human rights in certain countries around the globe," she said. "Alarmingly, we understand that the mandate from Secretary Rubio was... to go back and wipe out portions of the reports that had already been written—to delete stories from survivors of human rights violations."

Klasing went on to accuse the administration of turning the human rights report "into yet another tool to obscure facts to push forward anti-rights policy choices."

She also emphasized that "it would be a travesty and subversion of congressional intent to downplay or ignore human rights violations faced by marginalized populations including refugees and asylum seekers, women and girls, Indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQI+ people throughout the world."

An unnamed State Department official this week told the Post that the administration was merely simplifying the human rights reports to make them more "readable."

"The 2024 Human Rights report has been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability, and is more responsive to the legislative mandate that underpins the report," the official said. "The human rights report focuses on core issues."

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U.S. President Donald Trump is constitutionally prohibited from being elected to a third term in office, but that's not stopping his super political action committee from raising eye-popping sums of money.

A report from the Brennan Center for Justice released on Tuesday found that MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting Trump's political campaigns, raised an "unprecedented" sum of $200 million between last November's presidential election and the end of June 2025. This massive war chest is more than six times the amount that former President Joe Biden's super PAC raised between the November 2020 election and the end of June 2021.

The Brennan Center also said that MAGA Inc. has become "almost exclusively a game for the richest of the rich," with 96% of the money it's received over the last seven-plus months coming "from donors who gave more than $1 million each." This massive fundraising haul raises serious questions about where this money is going, presuming that Trump isn't going to try to run for an unconstitutional third term.

The biggest donors to the super PAC have been entities that might benefit from regulatory or policy changes that the government could enact: Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, donated $25 million; investor Jeffrey Yass, whose company Susquehanna International Group owns a large stake in the parent company of Chinese social media app TikTok, donated $16 million; and Foris Dax Inc., the firm behind Crypto.com, donated $10 million.

Advocacy group Public Citizen on Monday took a look at the donations pouring into MAGA Inc. and found that cryptocurrency companies, executives, and investors had forked over a total of $41.7 million to the PAC, while fossil fuel companies and executives had shelled out $26.8 million.

Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen, said that the massive sums being given to the PAC should raise real questions about corruption.

"The real question this mega-donor list raises is not 'how much,' but 'who from?'" he said. "By taking contributions from wealthy individuals and industries who want something from government, Trump's super PAC has used pay-to-play to raise big money from special interests like a legalized shakedown."

The Brennan Center similarly raised corruption concerns and said the super PAC's dealings were yet another example of how the
U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to scrap all limits on campaign donations from corporations and outsized interest groups had damaged the integrity of American politics.

"The degree to which wealthy donors appear to be using super PAC contributions to curry favor with the Trump administration once again illustrates how wrong the Supreme Court was... when it predicted that the 'independence' of groups like super PACs would prevent them from becoming vehicles for real or perceived corruption," the Brennan Center wrote.

A report from Politico last week suggested that the MAGA Inc. war chest could give Trump unprecedented power for an incumbent president to influence the 2026 midterm elections.

"Having millions of dollars at Trump's disposal—an unheard of amount for a sitting president who cannot run again—could allow him to become one of the biggest single players in next year's midterms, alongside long-standing GOP stalwarts like the Congressional Leadership Fund and Senate Leadership Fund," explained Politico. "Trump could boost his preferred candidates in GOP primaries, or flood the zone in competitive general election races in an effort to help Republicans keep control of Congress."

Trump has not yet ruled out running for a third term in office even though the United States Constitution's 22nd Amendment explicitly states that "no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

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Two Democratic senators on Monday tore into their Republican counterparts for "sneaking" a provision into their party's massive budget legislation that they said would provide a "multibillion dollar bailout" for the American pharmaceutical industry.

In a letter sent to U.S. President Donald Trump, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) pointed out that the budget package "includes provisions that block or delay the Trump administration from using Medicare drug price negotiation to lower the price of certain blockbuster drugs" including "the top-selling cancer drugs in the world, such as Keytruda, Opdivo, Darzalex, and more."

The senators explained that Keytruda was originally due to become subject to Medicare price negotiations starting next year, but that has now been put on ice by the GOP's legislation.

"We see no policy rationale whatsoever for delaying the... ability to negotiate lower prices on these drugs other than handing money over to the industry," they charged. "Because of you and congressional Republicans, seniors will continue to face astronomical, unaffordable costs for lifesaving cancer treatments."

The senators noted the cruel irony of this gift to the pharmaceutical industry was that Republicans offset its cost by slashing roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, a move that's projected to strip health insurance from millions of Americans.

"Republicans were able to find billions of dollars to bailout the pharmaceutical industry in their multitrillion tax bill, but you claimed that fiscal austerity required you to enact the largest healthcare cuts in history, terminating coverage for more than 15 million Americans and hiking healthcare costs for everyone, even imposing a 'sick tax' on the lowest income Americans," the senators argued. "Republicans' budget bill benefited the ultrawealthy and big corporations, like Big Pharma, with tax cuts and bailouts at the expense of working and middle-class Americans' healthcare."

The senators also slammed Trump's decision to eschew Medicare price negotiations of the kind first employed by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration after the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that authorized such negotiations for a limited set of drugs for the first time. Instead, they pointed out that Trump has demanded pharmaceutical companies cut prices on Americans by raising them everywhere else in the world, which they described as a "flashy, empty announcement."

Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, similarly dismissed Trump's recent letters to pharmaceutical companies last week as a completely ineffective approach to lowering prescription drug costs.

"If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world," he said.

Trump in recent days has been making a number of mathematically impossible promises to lower the cost of drugs for Americans by as much as "1,200%," which would mean that pharmaceutical companies would be paying Americans substantial sums of money in exchange for taking their drugs.

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To prevent Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his fellow GOP lawmakers in the state from holding a vote Monday that has been described as a direct assault on voting rights ahead of the 2026 midterms, members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus on Sunday reportedly fled the state in order to delay passage of the legislation.

"This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity," said state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of "using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal" with President Donald Trump that would see voting districts across the state redrawn in order to benefit Republicans in next year's elections.

According to the Texas Tribune:

The maneuver, to be undertaken by most of the Texas House's 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map. The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature's ongoing special session to a halt.

The current special legislative session in Texas was initially called by Gov. Abbott in response to deadly flooding that rocked the state earlier this summer, but the redistricting legislation was later added to the agenda.

State Rep. Wu, in his statement, said Democrats in Texas would not "allow disaster relief to be held hostage to a Trump gerrymander."

"We're not walking out on our responsibilities," said Wu. "We're walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent. As of today, this corrupt special session is over."

The fight over a new wave of Texas gerrymandering led by Gov. Abbott has touched off a new national fight over redistricting for 2026, with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announcing over the weekend that he would—if Texas proceeds—"fight fire with fire" by looking at ways to carve away Republican districts in his state.

Speaking with the New York Times, a person close to the president—given anonymity by the Times to speak candidly about a plan that goes far beyond Texas—said the strategy on redistricting is something like this: "Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time."

In addition to Texas, the newspaper reports that Trump hopes to encourage a number of other Republican-controlled states—including Missouri, Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire and Ohio—to take on similar efforts ahead of 2026.

Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) backed Newsom's effort.

"If Republicans were confident on their policy agenda, they'd be eager to defend it with the people and to defend it at the ballot box next November," Padilla said. "But they know they're in trouble. And so they're trying to rig the system to hold on to power."

In this context, Democrats in Texas, though in the minority, have vowed to fight, and fleeing the state to deny the GOP quorum is a testament to their weak political position, but also their desire to show they are willing to put themselves at risk to prove to their constituents—and the rest of the nation—that they are not rolling over.

Democratic State Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher who describes himself as a "proud progressive," has been raising the alarm in recent days about the Republican effort and accusing Trump of trying to "rig the next election."

"[Trump] told Republicans to redraw the political maps in Texas to give himself five more seats and protect his majority in Congress," said Talarico. "This is the rot at the core of our broken political system."

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The far-right former Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday night in a strictly party-line vote to become the next U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, a position progressive critics and Democratic opponents warn she is deeply unqualified to hold.

Pirro, who has been serving as the acting U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. since May, has a long history of spewing far-right conspiracy theories on air and throwing facts to the wind when it comes to lining up behind President Donald Trump. Pirro was a prominent figure when Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for defamation over the outlet's coverage of the 2020 election and she was a vocal proponent of Trump's "Big Lie" that the voting was rigged against him.

Christina Harvey, executive director of the pro-democracy group Stand Up America, condemned Pirro's confirmation.

"Republicans have handed the keys to our nation's capital to a Trump loyalist with zero credibility and a track record of unhinged extremism," warned Harvey. "Keanine Pirro isn't a serious prosecutor—she's a partisan attack dog who's made a name for herself by promoting conspiracy theories and threatening to criminally investigate January 6 prosecutors in the office she was just confirmed to oversee. A Fox News producer once called her a 'reckless maniac.'"

"By confirming Pirro," added Harvey, "Senate Republicans made one thing clear: they care more about pleasing Donald Trump than honoring their constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential nominations. Qualifications, independence, integrity—none of it matters. Just blind loyalty."

The vote in the Senate was 50-45, with every Republican voting for Pirro and every member of the Democratic caucus voting against. Five senators did not cast a vote.

Congressional Democrats voiced their contempt for Pirro both leading up to the vote and following it.

"Pirro should never be a permanent U.S. Attorney," declared Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, just after the vote was finalized. "She endorsed the firing of January 6 prosecutors. She recklessly spread the Big Lie to the point her *own producers* had to tell her to cool it. Ultimately, she’s a rubber stamp for Donald Trump."

Ahead of the vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) explained his opposition to her confirmation, saying Pirro was "deeply unfit and unqualified" and describing her as "a loyal acolyte and sycophant" of Trump.

"She is not objective, she is not independent," said Blumenthal. "Instead she has made her mark spreading damaging, offensive conspiracy theories."

Last week, Rep. Jeremy Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Senate leadership urging against Pirro's confirmation, calling her a threat to the government's independent judiciary and unfit to run the U.S. Attorney's office in D.C., the largest of its kind in the nation.

"Over the past decade, Ms. Pirro has consistently demonstrated that her loyalty lies with Donald Trump the person, not with the Constitution or the rule of law," said Raskin in a letter addressed to Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

"Her blind loyalty to Donald Trump at the exclusion of other principles, her embarrassing support of the 'big lie' that the 2020 election was rigged in the face of all evidence to the contrary and 60 federal and state court decisions rejecting such claims, her unswerving defense of convicted January 6th rioters, and her incendiary rhetoric that urges President Trump to seek retribution against his alleged enemies," continued Raskin, "all make it clear that she lacks the intellectual honesty, personal principles, temperament, integrity, and fundamental constitutional fidelity required to lead this important office."

New reporting based on a leaked briefing memo from a recent meeting between high-level officials at the Department of Homeland Security and Defense Department sparked fresh warnings on Saturday about the Trump administration's internal plans to increase its domestic use of the U.S. military.

According to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, which obtained the memo, the document "suggests that Trump's use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse."

The "terrifying" memo—which the outlet recreated and published online with certain redactions that concealed operational and personnel details—"provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation."

Circulated internally among top Trump officials, TNR reports the memo was authored by Philip Hegseth, the younger brother of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The younger sibling, though lesser known by the public than his controversial brother, currently serves as a senior adviser to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and acts as DHS liaison officer to the Pentagon.

The meeting between DoD and DHS officials and the memo centers on Philip Hegseth's push for closer collaboration between the two departments, especially with regard to operations on the ground, like those that happened earlier this year in Los Angeles when National Guard units and later U.S. Marines were deployed in the city to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and local law enforcement put down local protests sparked by raids targeting immigrants and workers.

As Sargent noted in a social media post:

Strikingly, the memo says straightforwardly that what happened in Los Angeles is the sort of operation that may be necessary "for years to come." As one expert told me: "They see Los Angeles as a model to be replicated."

"To Make America Safe Again, DHS and DoD will need to be in lockstep with each other, and I hope today sets the scene for where our partnership is headed," states the memo, which also compares transnational criminal gangs and drug cartels to Al Qaeda.

Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, was among the experts TNR spoke with who called that comparison particularly worrying. "The conflation of a low-level threat like transnational criminal organizations with Al Qaeda, which was actually attempting to topple the United States government, is a clear attempt to use excessive force for a purpose normally handled by civil authorities," said Cohn.

Sociology professor Kim Lane Scheppele, a scholar who studies the rise of autocracy at Princeton University, was among those who raised alarm in response to the published reporting and the contents of the memo.

"Here it comes," wrote Kim Lane Scheppele. "The worst we've been waiting for."

According to TNR:

The memo outlines the itinerary for a July 21 meeting between senior DHS and Pentagon officials, with the goal of better coordinating the agencies' activities in "defense of the homeland." It details goals that Philip Hegseth hopes to accomplish in the meeting and outlines points he wants DHS officials to impress on Pentagon attendees.Participants listed comprise the very top levels of both agencies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several of his top advisers, Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine, and NORTHCOM Commander Gregory Guillot. Staff include Phil Hegseth and acting ICE commissioner Todd Lyons.
"Due to the sensitive nature of the meeting, minimal written policy or background information can be provided in this briefing memo," the memo says.

Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told TNR it was "disturbing to see DHS officials pressuring the U.S. military to turn its focus inward even further." Nunn added that the memo suggests that "military involvement in domestic civilian law enforcement" is set to become "more common" if the policy recommendations put forth by Phillip Hegseth take hold.

Following publication of his reporting, Sargent said he wanted to flag something specific for readers.

"It looks plausible that the Hegseth brothers are trying to push military leaders further on involving military in domestic law enforcement," he noted. "Two experts I spoke with read the memo that way. There may be a bigger story here to get."

U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to immediately bring down inflation upon taking office, but a Thursday report from the Century Foundation finds that Americans' finances are still in a very precarious condition.

The Century Foundation commissioned a survey last month with polling firm Morning Consult and found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Trump's policies are to blame for their current financial struggles. However, the report also emphasized that Americans' "financial insecurity is widespread and runs deep," and that their concerns stretch back well before Trump's second term.

"More than 4 in 5 Americans (83%) are concerned about the price of groceries, with nearly half (46%) saying they are very concerned," writes the Century Foundation. "Nearly half (47%) of Americans are worried about their current ability to pay their rent or mortgage. And nearly two-thirds (64%) worry about their ability to pay an unexpected medical expense if one should arise. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) believe they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill without borrowing."

These anxieties were particularly strong among younger Generation Z voters, as well as among Black and Latino voters across all age demographics.

Even more troubling, the survey found that Americans are increasingly using financially risky strategies to keep up with paying their bills.

"More than a third of Americans are turning to high-cost debt to cover their bills," writes the Century Foundation. "Significant shares have also had to turn to credit cards (37%) or take on debt (29%) to afford the bills. This is consistent with the larger trends in use of credit products, like the notable shift in use of 'buy now, pay later' products for groceries. The rates of families using credit card debt to cover expenses is all the more concerning as credit card delinquencies continue to rise."

Roughly 2 in 5 Americans reported dipping into their personal savings at least once in the last year in order to pay their bills, while 1 in 4 Americans reported skipping out on meals to make ends meet, the survey found.

When it comes to what Americans see as the major obstacle to having a lower cost of living, the survey found that they considered unchecked corporate power to be the main culprit.

"Across party lines, Americans believe that tamping down corporate power will help them," writes the Century Foundation. "According to most Americans, actions that hold the wealthy and powerful accountable would help them and people like them. That includes reducing the influence of money in politics (60%), prosecuting companies that cheat workers and consumers (60%), and raising taxes on the rich (57%)."

The Century Foundation's poll isn't the only one to release this week to show Americans are highly anxious about the economy. A poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of U.K.-based newspaper The Times found that 50% of Americans believed the economy was getting worse under Trump's watch while just 24% said it was improving.

This poll similarly found that Americans are concerned about the cost of living and the impacts that Trump's tariffs will have on their ability to afford basic necessities such as groceries.

"The honeymoon at the beginning has gone: Inflation and jobs are still the leading issues and there is not a perception of anything improving," explained YouGov analyst Mark Blumenthal. "The survey suggests that Trump's two flagship economic initiatives—his tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill—are not perceived as helping the economy."

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The leadership of the European Union on Sunday struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that will leave tariffs significantly higher for many of the bloc's exports—including cars, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors—and at 50% for steel and aluminum.

News of the deal was met with sharp criticism, including from some European officials. François Bayrou, France's prime minister, wrote on social media that "it is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission."

Nick Dearden, director of the United Kingdom-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, warned that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen "has just handed Trump the biggest victory he could hope for."

"We will all pay the price because in the process, she has strengthened him and his fascist project. Deeply depressing," Dearden wrote, arguing that the deal "simply empowers the bully" and likely won't last.

In her statement announcing the agreement with Trump, von der Leyen suggested the deal would avert further escalations from the U.S. president and bring "stability" to markets unsettled by his erratic threats.

"Today with this deal, we are creating more predictability for our businesses," she said. "In these turbulent times, this is necessary for our companies to be able to plan and invest."

The sweeping 15% tariff on E.U. products entering the U.S. is half the rate that the president threatened to impose earlier this month, but it is far higher than the estimated 1.5% rate prior to Trump's second White House term. The E.U. is the United States' largest trading partner.

Cailin Birch, global economist at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC that while the deal represents "a climb down from a much worse place," the 15% tariff "is still a big escalation from where we were pre-Trump 2.0."

Wolfgang Niedermark, a board member of the Federation of German Industries, called the deal "an inadequate compromise" that "will have a huge negative impact on Germany's export-oriented industry."

Trump and his team wasted no time bragging in bombastic terms about the agreement. Trump called it "probably the biggest deal ever reached in any capacity, trade or beyond trade," while the president's deputy chief of staff gushed that it is "impossible to overstate what a staggering achievement President Trump delivered for America today."

"Stephen Miller is boasting about Trump hitting us with a HUGE tax increase," responded economist Dean Baker, alluding to the fact that tariffs are often passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.

As part of the agreement, the E.U. pledged to buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy over three years—including LNG and oil.

Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said in a statement Monday that "it's deeply shortsighted to see the E.U. strike a so-called 'deal' with the U.S. that locks us into expensive, polluting gas."

"Fossil gas is not only worse for the climate than coal, it comes at a higher cost," said Sieber. "This risks locking Europe into decades of fossil fuel dependence, volatile energy bills, and accelerating the wildfires and flooding already wreaking havoc across the continent. While Trump celebrates this as a win, communities on both sides of the Atlantic are suffering with deadly climate impacts."

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A Friday report from Reuters claims that a senior Trump administration official recently informed diplomats in South Africa that a refugee program set up by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year was explicitly intended for white people.

According to Reuters, American diplomats in South Africa earlier this month asked the U.S. State Department whether it was allowed to process refugee claims from South African citizens who spoke the Afrikaans language but who were of mixed-race descent.

The diplomats received a response from Spencer Chretien, the senior bureau official in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, who informed them that "the program is intended for white people," writes Reuters.

The State Department told Reuters that the scope of the program is actually broader than what was outlined in Chretien's message and that its policy is "to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement," which lines up with guidance posted earlier this year stating that applicants for refugee status under the program "must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa."

Trump back in February issued an executive order establishing a refugee program for what the order described as "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination." The president also lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa this past May that his government was engaging in "genocide" against white farmers in his country.

The notion that whites in South Africa face severe racial discrimination, let alone the threat of genocide, is difficult to square with the reality that white South Africans own three-quarters of the private land in the nation despite being a mere 7% of the population.

Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council, reacting to the Reuters report, explained on social media platform Bluesky the reasons that Trump's refugee program for Afrikaners is highly unusual. Lind pointed to the fact that the United States government at the moment is still trying to block refugees who have already gone through a two-year vetting process from entering the country, whereas it let many Afrikaner refugees into the country after a mere two weeks of vetting.

"Two years of vetting is insufficient, but two weeks is enough to know if someone will 'be assimilated easily'—as admin officials said when the Afrikaners came," she observed.

In what has been described as a "barrage of attacks on workers," the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.

The administration announced this month that it planned to change over 60 regulations it deems "unecessary" burdens to businesses and economic growth.

According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes "reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day's pay and come home healthy and safe."

In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.

These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.

Stettner told Common Dreams that the changes will "suppress wages" and allow agencies to "put the screws on workers to work 50- or 60-hour weeks."

The Trump administration is also rolling back a Biden-era rule that banned bosses from paying subminimum wages to disabled employees.

This discriminatory practice has been on the wane due to state-level bans in 15 states. But in the absence of a federal ban, nearly 40,000 employees—most of whom have intellectual disabilities—still received less than the federal minimum wage as of 2024.

The Century Foundation report says that by ending the rule, the Trump administration would be once again "relegating workers with disabilities to jobs that pay as little as pennies per hour."

The department is also taking a hatchet to workers' rights and safety. Another major change it proposed would do away with protections for seasonal migrant farmworkers under the H-2A visa program who raise complaints about wage and hour violations.

It was commonplace for farm owners to take advantage of these seasonal employees, whose legal status was tied to their work, and who therefore risked deportation if they lost their jobs.

Cases of exploitation, however, declined to an all-time low after the Biden administration introduced the rule, which banned employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against workers who attempted to participate in collective bargaining.

"These reforms protected the rights of farmworkers in the H-2A program to speak out individually and collectively against mistreatment and prevented employers from arbitrarily firing them from their jobs," the report says.

The department also proposed weakening the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) general duty clause, which allows businesses to be punished for putting their employees in dangerous situations. The proposed change would exempt many jobs that are deemed "inherently risky" from protection.

The administration described it as a way to prevent OSHA from cracking down on workplace injuries among athletes and stuntmen.

However, Stettner suggested that the broad language could allow the administration to go much further in defining what is considered "inherently risky." The report notes that the administration is "crowdsourcing" suggestions from employers about what other occupations to exempt.

"The employer community, they're jumping onto this," Stettner said. "They're telling their members to write in to the Department of Labor about other inherently dangerous occupations they should accept from the general duty clause."

The authors pointed out that the administration has previously rolled back restrictions meant to protect workers from heat-related stress on the job, which results in more than 600 deaths and over 25,000 injuries each year.

As the administration pushes to expand coal mining, it is also weakening protections for the miners themselves. After laying off most of the employees at OSHA's research arm—which monitors cases of black lung disease—earlier this year, it is now weakening safety requirements to prevent roof falls, mine explosions, and exposure to toxic silica.

"The DOL's role should be to protect the most vulnerable workers: farmworkers, people with disabilities, people that have suffered discrimination," Stettner said. "They're showing their true colors as an anti-worker administration."

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As the Trump administration pushes to cut 7,000 jobs held by federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the agency that oversees the crucial anti-poverty program for senior citizens and people with disabilities has made numerous efforts to disguise the customer service crisis that the cuts have caused—and Democrats on Monday demanded answers about what one progressive lawmaker recently denounced as a "cover up" to hide long wait times.

U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) led 18 Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee in writing to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, urging the former Wall Street executive to explain why several customer service metrics were deleted from the SSA's website just as Americans were facing longer wait times and a reduced ability to speak with customer service representatives rather than having their claims and questions handled through automation.

Chu spearheaded the letter weeks after the SSA stopped publishing more than 30 metrics related to the performance of its 1-800 number, retirement claims processing times, and disability decision reconsideration wait times.

"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance," wrote the Democrats. "We are concerned that this new menu is far less helpful for our constituents in knowing what to expect when interacting with SSA."

In addition to omitting crucial information about how long retirees and people with disabilities can expect to wait to receive their benefits or to talk to a representative, Chu noted that the metrics that are currently shown "seem designed to pressure beneficiaries to use online tools instead of talking to live people, an option that simply doesn't work for all beneficiaries, especially the very old and people in rural areas with poor Internet access."

"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," reads the letter.

"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance."

The letter was sent days after The Washington Post reported that the SSA is pulling staff from its field offices to act as customer service representatives for its 1-800 number following a surge in complaints about dropped calls and website crashes.

That change is likely to slow down responses to complicated claims cases that are often handled by field office staff, Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.

"So it's just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that's sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the teleservice centers," LaPointe said last week.

Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Post last month as the metrics were deleted from the SSA website that the Trump administration's attempts to conceal the effects of its mass layoffs would not succeed.

"People notice when they can't get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person," said Lawson.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the agency for "playing musical chairs to try and fill in the gaps" and suggested Bisignano "stop gutting the critical workforce that helps Americans every single day."

Chu and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats emphasized that the agency recently restored one metric to its new website: a chart showing the six-year trend of disability determination processing times.

"That the agency chose to cherry pick and restore only this metric," they wrote, "and not any of the others that had been removed, only deepens our concern about why your agency continues to keep hidden certain metrics that had previously been publicly available."

The Democrats demanded that the SSA restore "all the robust public data that the agency had previously reported prior to June 2025, including historical data, and to regularly update that data."

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U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said he will attempt to force a vote in Congress to release all the government's files pertaining to the notorious financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"On Tuesday, I'm introducing an amendment to force a vote demanding the FULL Epstein files be released to the public," Khanna (D-Calif.) tweeted Saturday night. "Speaker [Mike Johnson] must call a vote and put every Congress member on record."

The administration of President Donald Trump has been accused in recent days of covering up information about the extent of the financier's crimes and his connections to powerful individuals, including President Donald Trump himself.

"Why are the Epstein files still hidden? Who are the rich and powerful being protected?" Khanna asked.

Since Epstein's death in 2019 in federal custody following charges of child sex-trafficking, the billionaire investor has been the subject of rampant speculation.

Though his death was officially ruled a suicide, some have speculated that Epstein was murdered to prevent him from implicating other elite "clients" in his sex-trafficking ring. Epstein had relationships with powerful individuals, including former President Bill Clinton and the U.K.'s Prince Andrew.

Trump also has a well-documented history with Epstein. They have been extensively photographed together. And last year, an audio tape was released in which Epstein described himself as "Donald Trump's closest friend."

In June, amid a public falling-out with the president, billionaire Elon Musk said that the Trump administration, which he'd just departed, was covering up the files to protect Trump.

"Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files," he wrote. That is the real reason they have not been made public."

During the 2024 campaign, Trump said he would "probably" release the so-called "Epstein files" to the public. Meanwhile, many members of his Department of Justice—including FBI Director Kash Patel—rose to prominence in part by accusing Joe Biden's administration of covering up secrets about Epstein to protect powerful Democrats and other elites.

During his confirmation hearing, Patel said he would "do everything if confirmed as FBI director to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened."

In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the DOJ would be "lifting the veil" on "Epstein and his co-conspirators." She said she had Epstein's client list "sitting on my desk right now to review" and promised that "a lot of names" would be revealed. Though in subsequent days, little was released beyond information that was already public.

A memo released July 7 by the DOJ later stated that there was "no incriminating client list" and that Epstein indeed committed suicide. It also said that "no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted."

This reversal resulted in widespread anger, including from many Trump supporters directed at Bondi, who they accused of covering up information that might damage the president.

"Pam Blondi [sic] is covering up child sex crimes that took place under HER WATCH when she was Attorney General of Florida," wrote one of Trump's closest confidantes, Laura Loomer. "Bondi needs to be fired."

The following day, Trump chastised a reporter for continuing to ask about Epstein.

"Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years… Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable," the president said.

He would later write a long Truth Social post in which he defended Bondi and urged the public to "not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about."

The post received an almost totally negative response on Trump's own social media app.

The administration's dismissive response to the mysteries surrounding Epstein has led to suspicion across the political spectrum, including from some of Trump's closest allies.

"He said 'Epstein' half a dozen times while telling everyone to stop talking about Epstein," wrote Musk on X. "Just release the files as promised."

Khanna is now hoping to wield the widespread backlash to force the administration to come clean about what it knows.

"This is about transparency and restoring trust, not partisan politics. The public outcry is apparent," he said. "The files should be fully released and can be done so consistent with DOJ principles of protecting victims and the innocent."

Outrage continues to grow against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem over her response to the deadly floods that ravaged Texas last week.

According to a Friday report from The New York Times, more than two-thirds of phone calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from flood victims went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off on July 5, just a day after the nightmare storm.

According to The Times, this dramatically hampered the ability of the agency to respond to calls from survivors in the following days:

On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.

Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10—five days later—to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls.

"Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific," Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.

"Put yourself in the shoes of a survivor: You've lost everything, you're trying to find out what's insured and what's not, and you’re navigating multiple aid programs," he added. "One of the most important services in disaster recovery is being able to call someone and walk through these processes and paperwork."

The lapse is a direct result of a policy introduced by Noem last month, which required any payments made by FEMA above $100,000 to be directly approved by her before taking effect. Noem, who has said she wants to eliminate FEMA entirely, described it as a way of limiting "waste, fraud, and abuse."

Under this policy, Noem allowed other critical parts of the flood response to wait for days as well. Earlier this week, multiple officials within FEMA told CNN that she waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of search and rescue teams and aerial imaging.

Following The Times' piece, DHS put out a statement claiming that "NO ONE was left without assistance, and every call was responded to urgently."

"When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase," DHS said. "Despite this expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance. No call center operators were laid off or fired."

This is undercut, however, by internal emails also obtained by The Times, which showed FEMA officials becoming frustrated and blaming the DHS Secretary for the lack of contracts. One official wrote in a July 8 email to colleagues: "We still do not have a decision, waiver, or signature from the DHS Secretary."

Democratic lawmakers were already calling for investigations into Noem's response to the floods before Friday. They also sought to look into how the Trump administration's mass firings of FEMA employees, as well as employees of the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) may have hampered the response.

Following The Times' revelations, outrage has reached a greater fever pitch.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called it "unforgivable and unforgettable" and an "inexcusable lapse in top leadership."

"Sec. Noem shows that dismantling FEMA impacts real people in real time," he said. "It hurts countless survivors & increases recovery costs."

In response to the news, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) simply wrote that "Kristi Noem must resign now."

Others pointed out that Noem has often sought to justify abolishing FEMA by characterizing it as slow and ineffectual. They suggested her dithering response was deliberate.

"She broke it on purpose," said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in an interview on MSNBC. "So that when it fails this summer, she can say, 'Oh, see, we told you—FEMA doesn't work.'"

"It's not really incompetence because they know what they are doing," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). "They are intentionally breaking government—even the parts that help us when we are deep in crisis."

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Deadly flooding caused by torrential rain in central Texas late last week called attention to U.S. President Donald Trump's full-scale assault on the climate research and monitoring agencies tasked with studying and predicting such weather catastrophes, as well as his ongoing attacks on disaster preparedness and relief.

Though local National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters did issue warnings in the lead-up to Friday's flooding—which killed at least 82 people, including dozens of children—key roles were reportedly vacant ahead of the downpour, prompting scrutiny of the Trump administration's mass firings and budget cuts, in addition to years of neglect and failures by Republicans at the state level.

Asked whether he believes the federal government should hire back terminated meteorologists in the wake of the Texas flooding, Trump responded in the negative and falsely claimed that "very talented people" at NWS "didn't see" the disaster coming.

"This is an absolute lie," replied meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus. "Worse, this is the person responsible for making those kids less safe and he's trying to deny the damage he caused."

Holthaus wrote Sunday that Trump's staffing cuts "have particularly hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Modeling Center, which aims to improve the skill of these types of difficult forecasts."

"Though it's unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster," he added, "it's clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent."

"Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis."

Under the guise of "government efficiency," the Trump administration has taken an axe to staff at federal climate agencies and is trying to go even further with its budget for the coming fiscal year. The Washington Post noted Sunday that "a budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers' hands."

"But even just the specter of President Donald Trump's budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts," the Post noted. "Trump's efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government's scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here."

Since the start of his second term, Trump has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who were working on the National Climate Assessment, moved to slash NOAA's workforce, and announced a halt to climate disaster tracking, among other changes—all while working to accelerate fossil fuel extraction and use that is supercharging extreme weather events. One NOAA veteran warned that Trump's cuts could drag the agency back to "the technical and proficiency levels we had in the 1950s."

"The Trump regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons, at the very time we need a much better understanding of it," environmentalist Stephen Barlow wrote on social media on Sunday. "This is so reckless and dangerous, which is why I suggest we call these tragedies Trump events."

Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said over the weekend that "Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis."

"These deaths are on Trump's hands," she added.

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Critics of President Donald Trump's announcement of a planned Ultimate Fighting Championship event on White House grounds to celebrate the United States Semiquincentennial next year took to social media Friday to call the proposal something "straight out of 'Idiocracy'"—the comedy cult classic about a dumbed-down 26th-century America—and condemn what one detractor called "authoritarian theater."

"Every one of our national park battlefields and historic sites are going to have special events in honor of America 250," Trump said at the Iowa State Fairgrounds Thursday. "We're going to have a UFC fight—think of this—on the grounds of the White House."

While Octagon aficionados cheered the prospect of a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue fight card, many observers couldn't help but notice parallels with the plot of Mike Judge's 2006 film "Idiocracy," a satirical skewering of issues including the erosion of White House decorum in a future when IQs have plummeted and a sports drink corporation owns the country, whose voters elect Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, "five-time ultimate smackdown champion" as president.

"If anyone defends Trump saying there will be a UFC fight on the White House lawn never listen to them again," former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois wrote on the social media site X Friday, adding that Trump's announcement was like the "plot to 'Idiocracy' with an equally stupid-a-- president."

Another X user fumed: "This is what happens when a failed empire hits rock bottom and throws a party about it. UFC fight on the White House lawn to celebrate 250 years of what used to be a country with brains. This ain't strength, this is pure f------- Idiocracy. Straight out of Rome before it burned, give the mob a fight and some burgers while the world collapses around them.

Yet another social media critic joked that "'Idiocracy' was actually a documentary from the future, sent back in time as a warning to us all."

Some critics pointed to the decadeslong business ties between Trump and UFC President and CEO Dana White, who has donated at least $1 million to Trump's campaign coffers.

Others noted the "bread and circuses" vibes of Trump's proposed event, which some called a cynical ploy meant to distract from the devastating impact of policies like Friday's signing of a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut that will overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations, while ballooning the deficit and leaving millions of Americans without desperately needed health insurance coverage and food assistance.

"Americans, you won't have healthcare, Medicaid, public schools, nursing homes, rural hospitals, or SNAP. But, you'll get UFC fights on the White House lawn," New York Times opinion contributor Wajahat Ali wrote on Bluesky. "America, F-YEAH!"

Writing for The Guardian Saturday, Karim Zidan asserted: "Donald Trump's UFC stunt is more than a circus. It's authoritarian theater."

"It carries shades of fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, particularly its obsession with masculinity, spectacle, and nationalism—but with a modern, American twist," he wrote. "Fascist Italy used rallies, parades, and sports events to project strength and unity."

"Similarly, Trump has relied on the UFC to project his tough-guy image, and to celebrate his brand of nationalistic masculinity," Zidan continued. "From name-dropping champions who endorse him to suggesting a tournament that would pit UFC fighters against illegal migrants, Trump has repeatedly found ways to make UFC-style machismo a part of his political brand."

"There was once a time when the U.S. could point to the authoritarian pageantry of regimes like Mussolini's Italy and claim at least some moral distance. That line is no longer visible," he added. "What was once soft power borrowed from strongmen is now being proudly performed on America's own front lawn."

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The New York Times on Thursday published a story questioning New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's past statements about his racial background based on a tip it received from a proponent of "race science."

The Times piece in question focused on Mamdani's college application to Columbia University in which he listed both "Asian" and "Black or African American" as his race.

Although both of Mamdani's parents are of Indian descent, he was born in the African country of Uganda and lived there for the first five years of his life. Mamdani told the Times that he checked the box on the application for "Black or African American" because he considers himself an American who was born in Africa. He emphasized that he does not identify as Black and argued that he found it difficult to express the complexity of his racial background given the options on the application.

However, what is stirring controversy about the Times piece isn't so much its content but the source of its information. The Times acknowledges that the information on Mamdani was culled from a large hack of a Columbia database and that it received a copy of Mamdani's application from "an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X," whom it describes as "an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race."

A report from The Guardian's Jason Wilson published earlier this year shows that the Times is vastly underselling its source's extreme views on race. As Wilson documented, the "Crémieux" cited by the Times is a man named Jordan Lasker, whose writings regularly defend the work of "race scientists" who use I.Q. test results to argue that Black people are mentally inferior to other races.

"Crémieux runs a Substack also featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and I.Q.," Wilson explained. "A prominently featured post there seeks to defend the argument that average national IQs vary by up to 40 points, with countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia at the high end and countries in the global south at the low end, and several African countries purportedly having average national IQs at a level that experts associate with mental impairment."

Another report from Talking Points Memo's Hunter Walker found that Lasker has regularly posted about a racial "I.Q. gap" and has even suggested that there are "genetic pathways of crime." On his X account, Lasker has mused about the differences in brain sizes between Black and white Americans and between women and men more generally.

Brandon McEuen, a historian at Wayne State University who specializes in teaching about the history of the eugenics movement, slammed the Times for not only relying on Lasker as its source for the story on Mamdani but also for granting him anonymity.

"The decision to keep Lasker anonymous is ridiculous since his name has already been published in other outlets that don't provide softballs for eugenicists," he wrote on his Bluesky account.