jim david adkisson

President Donald Trump has long benefited from support in the so-called “manosphere,” with even Democrats like former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg pandering to them while female conservatives try to create an analogous “womanosphere.” Yet according to a recent interview between Trump’s former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor and political Ross Morales Rocketto, founder of the 2024 political group White Dudes for Harris, Trump is starting to lose support among white men.

“Donald Trump went from 50 percent approval in this country, that means he had some independents on his side; then he went down to 40 percent, which basically meant any independents he had, those people are gone,” Taylor told Rocketto during their interview. “They're bailing. He's losing some concerned conservatives. Then you go from 40 to 30 percent and you're literally losing millions of your followers. It means you are losing millions upon millions of your followers, and a lot of them are dudes. They're just guys that kind of got recruited into the movement. They felt like it was cool to back Donald Trump since it was provocative. They don't pay attention to politics. They're like, ‘I don't know. Everyone hates him. Could be kind of cool to see this come back into office.’” Yet he added that because of Trump’s various unpopular domestic and foreign policies, “now they're not happy with what they are seeing. Do you think this is a significant pickup moment? And what might we look for in the numbers at the midterms to see whether folks have really started to bail and gone to the other side?”

Rocketto offered a nuanced analysis, saying that Democrats stand to make some gains but not all at once.

“What I hope we see is more young men coming out to vote in this election cycle, because I think if we see more young men voting in this election cycle, they will probably be voting for Democrats, and I think that bodes quite well,” Rocketto told Taylor. “I think what we are likely to see is a lot of these guys will just stay home and not vote, which will also mean that we probably do quite well in the midterms. I'm still pretty bullish on us retaking the House. I'm a little more skeptical about the Senate.”

While he anticipated a lot of Trump’s manosphere supporters will sit out during the 2026 midterms, he suspects they will also be up for grabs in the 2028 contest.

“I think how we talk is going to matter,” Rocketto explained to Taylor. “I've been saying this a lot over the last six months. The 2028 election isn't going to be decided in a fight between moderates and progressives. It's going to be between people who are angry and people who aren't angry. And I think the candidates who are angry and can show that anger, and can show that they are willing to do something to completely shake up the system — I think that's who we're going to end up with as a nominee.”

Earlier in their conversation, Taylor described the recent arrest of manosphere influencer Andrew Tate as a metaphor “because the rest of the MAGA manosphere is looking around and saying, ‘I don't know if I want to be a part of this.’ Turns out these guys are losers, and they might be corrupt losers, and they might be getting us sent to jail with the things that they're doing and recommending.”

Rocketto agreed with Taylor, opining that “as we've learned with folks like Andrew Tate — who spent a lot of time during the [former President Joe] Biden years not in the United States — we know that it's extremely important, and we also know that these far-right movements find a home in far-right culture. And I think what Donald Trump was able to do in both elections that he won is unite a group of people that we'd never seen someone on the right unite before.”

The influencer added, “The cultural right and the political right, for many, many years, had never really been able to get united to build power together. And what Donald Trump did at its core was unite those two groups of folks in a very unholy union. And what you're starting to see is that union starting to fray as he gets a little bit older, as people remember what the first term was like, and as folks are realizing that maybe he is going a little too far. You know, [far right podcaster] Joe Rogan was one of the first folks on the cultural right to start talking about the administration's immigration policy. And I think it would be a mistake to say that we're going to get all those folks back overnight because of his overstepping. But it has created an opportunity, because many of those folks might be saying, ‘You know what? We do think we should deport criminals, but we don't like it when it's being done this way. We don't like it when people are getting shot in the streets of Minnesota and Houston and cities across the United States. We don't like it when masked people show up in our communities and just kidnap folks who haven't done anything wrong.’”

Overall the manosphere has been widely condemned for promoting toxic behaviors. In March Irish Times writer Kathy Sheridan captured the prevailing view in her take on documentarian Louis Theroux’s “Inside the Manosphere” film.

“Watch again and the soulless, ignorant young men become savagely wounded children with podcasts, millions of social media followers and a guru in the shape of the alleged rapist and sex trafficker, Andrew Tate,” Sheridan wrote.

President Donald Trump criticized CNN host Kaitlan Collins' journalism award during his speech at Friday's White House Correspondents' Dinner, calling the honor "fake" even as he offered what appeared to be congratulations.

Collins was honored with the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure for her reporting on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's 2025 visit to the Oval Office.

During his remarks, Trump said: "I want to personally congratulate CNN's Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was a fake, she shouldn't get the award, it was a fake. But I didn't mind. I said, 'Kaitlan, congratulations.' But it was fake, there's no question about it."

On Monday, during an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Collins addressed Trump's criticism of both her award and his previous personal attacks on her appearance and demeanor.

Trump has previously criticized Collins for not smiling enough and compared her appearance to transgender singer Dylan Mulvaney.

"It's not really about me and I don't want it to be about my reaction," Collins told Stewart. "I think if you let it become about that, then it becomes a back-and-forth between the two of us."

Collins said it was "more effective" to focus on the substance of her journalism rather than Trump's personal attacks. "When he is insulting me or when he is criticizing me about the question I asked or the reporting that I did, that he was so angry about in this moment—it's important to put the reminder back on the work, and the question and the non-answers we get," she said.

She noted that Trump's reaction to her award was telling. "The fact that I got an award for it really bothered him clearly," Collins said.

President Donald Trump has a well-documented history of attacking female journalists, often focusing on their appearance rather than their reporting. The pattern intensified during his first term and has continued into his second presidency.

Trump has repeatedly criticized women reporters for their looks, demeanor, and perceived bias, often in demeaning terms. In addition to his comments about Collins, Trump has targeted numerous female journalists over the years, including Mika Brzezinski, Megyn Kelly, and others, frequently making personal attacks unrelated to their journalism.

Media watchdog groups have noted that Trump's attacks on women journalists often differ significantly from his criticism of male reporters, with personal appearance and tone becoming focal points rather than editorial content or questioning style.

The strategy appears designed to delegitimize critical coverage by focusing on the messenger rather than the message. By attacking journalists personally, particularly women, critics argue Trump attempts to undermine their credibility and distract from substantive questions about his administration's policies and actions.

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Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.

That might explain why John Deere's top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America's farmers. For years, they've decreed that while a farmer "technically owns" a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls out, etc. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves.

The monopolistic profiteer refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so ... gotcha.

But in 2020, Walther Schweitzer rallied with other mad-as-hell farmers and ranchers to rebel. The Montana rancher's tractor had gone kaput in hay baling season -- but, "no," said a Deere dealer, a technician is not available; and "no," you can't have access to the diagnostic computer to do it yourself. So, he had to wait weeks before Deere finally got his tractor running -- a fairly basic job worth about $600 ... but they billed Walter nearly $4,000.

That's what's called "a monopoly fix." But they messed with the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere's aloof executives settled that suit, finally letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that -- hello! -- they own!

Schweitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of Deere executives is just one stepping stone to a right-to-repair law for all products. To help push this right forward, go to repair.org.

IGNORANCE + ARROGANCE + POWER = LUNACY
Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns.

Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is "lunatic," hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors and ... well, everyone who offends him.

But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he's appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he's going to abolish NPR.

Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk proteges who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to "light the night!"

Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: mirrors.

They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth's rotating dark areas. Lots of mirrors -- the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons!

Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn't ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this "novel technology," blandly assuring us that "harms are unlikely to occur."

To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org.

President Donald Trump’s mass firings in the military have already alarmed Pentagon officials and foreign policy experts, but now a conservative commentator is going one step further: He is accusing Trump of outright destroying the military.

“The degree to which one knows that Hegseth is a very bad Secretary of Defense, I'm now worried that he's doing much more damage to our military than I previously had thought, which, you know, that's one of the institutions you think holds up best under adverse circumstances,

and it has many, many times,” William Kristol, a longtime conservative commentator, said during a podcast for The Bulwark on Monday. “And I had talked to a couple of people who've served in the military just sort of randomly, and I saw them or talked to them over the weekend, and they did not disabuse me of my fears.”

John Hailemann, NBC News national affairs analyst, argued that Trump’s frustration at his inability to bring about a permanent resolution in the Iran war could cause him to engage in drastic actions.

“He's backed into a corner,” Hailemann told Kristol. Nothing he's doing is working now. And might he, under those circumstances, just decide to finally go forward and do the thing he's been threatening to do basically for the last five months, essentially, which is like rain hellfire down on Iran and escalate the war in a really dramatic way. And the news of the weekend was he was presented with those plans. There was a thoroughgoing debate. And he decided, no, he was not going to do that. Although the reasons for it, to the extent that the reporting suggests that the reasons are basically, we don't have enough bombs anymore.”

Kristol said that this reported bombs shortage raises questions about the state in which Trump has left the US military.

“It really was striking,” Kristol said. “And I was, I guess, a little rattled by that. I mean, one knew obviously that Donald Trump is not a great strategist or a strategist at all, that he's doing this based on a kind of hubris and a whim, and that it's very foolish, and we were going to pay a price for it. But the degree to which it's not just him being a bad commander-in-chief, but the drawing down our stockpiles, I think especially of the things we use to shoot down incoming stuff, and that's presumably why people were killed a week ago.”

He added, “Not presumably, that is how people were killed. You know, those are the casualties that Trump doesn't want to acknowledge. The Trump Defense Department doesn't believe we're part of the war on Iran, even really unbelievable, right?” All of Trump’s dodginess about the fact that America is at war with Iran and the number of casualties we have incurred there deeply alarms Kristol.

“I was so furious when I read that Thursday night, right, that they'd removed those four army soldiers, killed in action, from the website,” Kristol said. “But that turns out to be, I mean, that's terrible, but then it turns out to be, I won't say the tip of the iceberg, but a kind of indication of something much bigger, which is, the military is kind of complicit, I would say, in the cover-up of how bad things have gotten in terms of our, as you say, our munitions, especially anti-drone, anti-missile, anti-aircraft, maybe anti-aircraft as well, munitions in the region.”

Kirstol also warned about the damage Trump has caused to the military by politicizing it, particularly in terms of firing people who might stand up to or challenge the administration.

“It's that they really are doing some real damage now to this one institution that has held up so well over recent decades through thick and thin,” Kristol said. “And I had thought and do think still is probably holding up better than most of our institutions in the federal government against the Trump and Trumpist onslaught. But it turns out you can do a lot of damage when you've got a Secretary of Defense and people willing to go along with him and he removes the people who might have stood up to him and he's got the backing of the White House and he... I guess, wanted to show Trump that everything was going great.”

Earlier on Monday, a former CIA analyst who worked for both Trump and President Joe Biden similarly warned that Trump’s politicization of intelligence services has weakened American from a national security standpoint.

“In 2025, I watched from inside the White House and at the CIA as the intelligence community came under assault: senior officers fired in public, clearances revoked for dissent, decade-old assessments denounced by the CIA director in the press,” Julia Curlee wrote for Lawfare. “Earlier this month, the campaign reached the raw intelligence itself, as the White House declassified selected reporting to sustain election interference claims that the intelligence community’s own finished analysis would not support.”

As one example of Trump’s politicizing intelligence, Curlee described how members of the CIA with expertise in Venezuela were fired when they did not back the administration’s position on taking over that country.

“Twenty years later, days after taking office, the second Trump administration tasked the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to assess whether the Venezuelan regime had directed Tren de Aragua—a criminal gang—to invade the United States,” Curlee wrote. “The question, from Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, matched nearly word for word the predicate for the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last invoked in World War II to intern Japanese, German, and Italian nationals.”

Preservationists are reacting with fury after allies of President Donald Trump moved to weaken federal restrictions on construction projects built on historic sites.

Trump-appointed members of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) on Friday voted move forward with rules that would weaken Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires the federal government to both evaluate how construction projects might impact protected places and to consult with people and groups affected by such projects, including Tribal Nations.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, on Monday ripped Trump for stacking the council with loyalists who appear determined to “tear down the safeguards that protect America’s history so he and his billionaire friends can build whatever they want, wherever they want.”

“Right now, a developer has to stop and listen before paving over a tribal burial ground, a Revolutionary War battlefield, or the church where your grandparents were married,” Huffman added. “Trump’s council wants to end that and cut tribal nations, states, counties, towns, and communities out of that conversation entirely.”

Greg Werkheiser, founding partner at the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners, said in an interview with NPR published on Friday that the vote amounted to an “attempt to gut historic preservation protections.”

“There are millions of these sites in this country,” Werkheiser emphasized, “and all of them are made less protected by this effort by the Trump administration.”

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) on Monday denounced the council’s vote, describing it as “a significant step back for historic preservation, community participation, and the inclusive design processes that serve the public good.”

“At its core, the revisions strip communities of their right to be heard,” said the AIA. “These revisions place approximately 1.4 million historic sites at greater risk by shifting decisions away from the communities where they are rooted. The revisions make public comment optional rather than mandatory, narrow the definition of historic property, and shift decision-making authority almost entirely to federal agencies—sidelining state historic preservation officers, tribal historic preservation officers, tribes, and local governments.”

Michaela Pavlat, manager for the National Parks Conservation Association Indigenous Partnerships Program, said the Friday vote was a “calculated, yet unwarranted attack on tribal consultation, historic preservation, and the regulations that have protected the places that tell our country’s diverse stories.”

Gussie Lord, managing attorney for tribal partnerships at Earthjustice, noted that the National Historic Preservation Act “has not slowed the pace of new roads and power plants in this country, but it has given Tribes a seat at the table and preserved irreplaceable Indigenous sites from destruction.”

“What happens when entire landscapes are bulldozed without a thought to their cultural and historic importance?” Lord asked. “No one should support cutting Tribes out of the decision-making process for projects that impact their rights and sacred places.”

Even as President Donald Trump continues dismissing Americans’ concerns about affordability heading into the 2026 midterm elections, a study released on Monday reveals that US parents are about to pay a hefty premium to ensure their children are prepared for school this fall.

A joint analysis from Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation finds that a typical basket of school supplies costs nearly 8% more than it did last year, with typical school lunch items costing 11% more.

Science hints at Trump and MAGA’s insidious threat to truth – and it is ugly

Science hints at Trump and MAGA’s insidious threat to truth – and it is ugly

Lunch boxes have posted the largest yearly price increase, as the analysis estimates they will cost nearly 27% more this year than in 2025. Other items whose prices have soared include one-subject notebooks (23% yearly increase), index cards (22%), and notebook paper (20%).

Trump’s illegal war with Iran, which has caused fuel prices including diesel to surge higher, has played a large role in increasing prices, as have his tariffs on foreign imports, the report notes.

The increase in diesel has been particularly troublesome for the price of food, the analysis points out, as the fuel is used both by farmers to power their agricultural equipment and by delivery trucks that ship food to grocery stores.

When it comes to the tariffs, the report points to Newell Brands—the company that makes Sharpies, Paper Mate, Elmer’s glue, and other school supply staples—which has been hit with a $174 million tax bill thanks to Trump’s policies and has consistently raised prices over the last year.

The report also points to changes made to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) made in Republicans’ 2025 budget law that will make it harder for low-income kids to qualify for food assistance this school year.

Lindsay Owens, president of Groundwork Collaborative, said Trump’s policies are forcing parents “to worry about whether they can afford to buy what their students need to be successful in the classroom.”

“If the president continues to treat our economy like a schoolyard game, our students and their families will pay the price,” said Owens. “When report cards come this year, Americans will give Trump an F.”

Janelle Jones, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, noted that school supplies aren’t luxuries for families, but rather “the baseline for a kid to show up ready to learn.”

“When notebooks and paper are up over 20%,” Jones emphasized, “we’re not just squeezing family budgets, we’re setting students up to fall behind. We know where this leads: lower test scores, more kids repeating grades, and worse outcomes well into adulthood.”

Lawyers trying to mount a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk and America PAC, a super PAC he funded to support President Donald Trump and other conservatives, say the defendants aren’t cooperating in turning over key documents.

“We’re getting the run-around,” said attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is based in Massachusetts. “We’ve been delayed in getting discovery.”

The cases against Musk and America PAC stem from a promise to pay $47 for every successful referral of a registered swing state voter to sign a petition in favor of “free speech and the right to bear arms.” The amount was later raised to $100 per signature.

“Easy money,” Musk posted on the social media site X, which he owns, in October 2024.

One proposed class action case was brought by an anonymous plaintiff who says, while working as an hourly canvasser for America PAC, he was encouraged to refer people to sign the petition for additional pay. The plaintiff, listed as John Doe, says he’s owed more than $20,000 and is aware of others in similar situations.

Another case was brought by Lancaster man Anthony Maglietta and two other swing state voters who say they were never paid for signing the petition or referring others.

Liss-Riordan, the attorney for both cases, is trying to get them approved as a class action. They’re moving forward together in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

She says she’s heard from dozens of people who could qualify if the court allows it.

“These are generally people who are followers of Elon Musk, and believed in what he was doing and are aligned politically with a goal here,” she told the Capital-Star. “The fact that they weren’t even paid what they were told they would be paid — I don’t know if it’s surprising or not, but it’s very disappointing.”

The Capital-Star reached out to lawyers for Musk and America PAC, an email associated with Musk’s family office, and a public relations firm that employs a spokesperson for America PAC. None responded.

America PAC’s website says, “America PAC has already mailed the overwhelming majority of checks owed to eligible referrers and petition signers. If you haven’t received payment yet, that does not necessarily mean you won’t … We continue to review and process outstanding payments that have been flagged for mismatched information or require additional action.”

Musk is reported to have spent around $290 million helping Trump and Republicans get elected in 2024, making him the largest single political donor of the election cycle. Following the election, he was made a special government employee by the Trump administration, serving as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

“Going in circles”

In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Wendy Beetlestone, Liss-Riordan explained that her clients requested documents from the defendants in December 2025, part of the discovery process.

She said her team was told by America PAC that they did not have the documents, and should seek them from third-party vendors they’d contracted. But when they went to those vendors, they were told that America PAC had them.

“Plaintiffs are frustrated that they have been going in circles to obtain the discovery that is essential to their case – with Defendants claiming the vendors have the documents and the vendors claiming Defendants have the documents – and neither agreeing to produce them,” Liss-Riordan wrote.

Moreover, she alleges that some of the vendors may not be as independent as they seem. She says, for example, United States of America Inc. and Group America, LLC were established by Musk. And other vendors she sought documents from had principal members who were also high-ups at America PAC.

A conference has been set up between Eastern District Judge Wendy Beetlestone and lawyers for both parties on Tuesday, but it will not be streamed to the public.

Both parties have requested an extension of the deadline to certify a class action case from July 31 to November 30. It would mark the third such extension.

According to Liss-Riordan, class certification can’t be done until more documents are turned over in discovery.

Musk and America PAC are also being sued in a Texas U.S. District Court over an alleged $1 million giveaway to swing state voters who signed a petition to support the U.S. Constitution. Plaintiffs allege that Musk and America PAC misled voters into thinking winners would be chosen randomly, but were actually predetermined.

The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission also agreed in a 5-1 vote in July to refer two complaints against Musk to the Brown County district attorney’s office, finding probable cause that he violated the state’s election bribery statute with another million dollar giveaway during the state’s 2025 state supreme court election.

Ever since former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell became mysteriously absent, the Kentucky senator’s health has prompted much news and talk show host commentary as well as two controversial proof of life photographs.

“McConnell, 84, was hospitalized June 14 after a fall and a brief loss of consciousness,” wrote the Louisville Courier Journal’s Keely Doll on Monday. “Since his absence, both Republicans and Democrats have called for increased transparency around the senator’s health. Gov. Andy Beshear penned an open letter to the senator requesting updates shortly before McConnell’s office addressed the speculation and concerns.”

Doll noted that Trump has not been seen publicly since his June 14 hospitalization and added that, although McConnell described the process as personally frustrating to himself, it has caused compounding frustrations for the United States Senate.

“McConnell’s absence is also putting pressure on GOP leadership,” Doll wrote. “McConnell serves as a key GOP vote on two important committees, Appropriations and Agriculture. Without his vote, the committees are split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, making it impossible to advance legislation without bipartisan support.”

Doll also pointed out that McConnell has missed a number of committee votes and Senate floor votes.

“McConnell missed 38 votes in the Senate in the weeks following his June 14 hospitalization,” Doll wrote. “Out of those, the majority were nominations and confirmations for judges, ambassadorial positions and other civilian nominees. About a dozen of the votes were legislative, including a bipartisan affordable housing bill.”

The journalist added, “But the real debate putting pressure on McConnell’s absence in Congress is the resolutions over presidential war powers and the U.S. military involvement in Iran.”

Doll concluded, “With McConnell’s return timeline to Congress uncertain and the growing concerns about the war in Iran, even GOP leaders have admitted that the numbers game is getting tighter. During McConnell’s absence, several different resolutions on war powers have come to the floor with razor-thin margins.”

Despite the ongoing concerns about McConnell’s fitness to serve, his office continues to insist that he is on the job.

"The Senator continues to meet with staff regarding Senate and Kentucky business, including discussions on defense appropriations, foreign policy, the farm bill, constituent services and constituent federal grant requests,” spokesman David Popp told The Washington Post in a recent statement. “As the senator continues to improve in rehab, we will be sure to keep you updated.”

President Donald Trump is facing one significant failure after another, and at least one former conservative is mocking his flubs amid his obsession with "winning."

Ex-conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote in her Monday column for "The Contrarian" that Trump simply can't stop "losing." The commander-in-chief didn't merely bomb at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, as critics said, but he keeps losing in the courts and at the polls.

A number of polls were released last week showing just how bad he and Republicans are doing with midterm elections in fewer than 100 days. DDHQ’s chief elections analyst Geoffrey Skelley told The Hill's Julia Mueller on Sunday that both houses are officially in play. It was assumed for most of the summer that the House would likely flip, but the Senate is now in play as the Iran war drags on and gas prices soar once again. It's serious enough that reports say Republicans are in panic mode.

Meanwhile, Rubin said Trump is "burying them in new taxes (tariffs) that worsen their struggle to get by, and plundering the treasury to glorify himself with garish monuments and tacky tributes that have marred the nation’s capitol."

Court losses are stacking up, too, and they haven't been mere losses; they're also failures that earned the Justice Department rebukes from judges.

One unfolded last week as The New York Times won its ongoing fight with the administration over the demand for reporters' and their families' phone records. The judge in the case gave the DOJ the option to either withdraw their subpoenas or risk having all of them quashed. He also unleashed on a prosecutor who tried to circumvent him to get sign-off from another judge.

It adds to what Rubin called "a truly stunning victory" in which Democratic state governors managed to hold off the MAGA media purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery by "Trump sycophant David Ellison." The merger is on hold until June 2027 and at that point they'll go to court to debate it. The Ellisons have already purchased CBS/Paramount and now intend to merge it with Discovery and Warner Bros. Rubin's colleague, Norm Eisen, also launched a lawsuit in the U.K. over the merger, he said on BlueSky Monday.

"The dramatic consolidation of news and entertainment businesses under the auspices of a MAGA mogul who expressly sought to curry favor with Trump had seemed like a done deal just weeks ago; now it may come to naught thanks to a major public campaign by the media/entertainment community and the diligent efforts of state AGs determined not to allow the feckless Department of Justice have the last say," said Rubin.

Trump also dropped his effort to subpoena a list of Jewish people at the University of Pennsylvania, as part of a lawsuit that has been going on for a year. Politico reported, “Court documents filed Thursday reveal that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the university reached an agreement in which the agency will not enforce its subpoena seeking information on university employees.”

Then there was the DOJ's 17th consecutive loss, cited Rubin. It's part of Trump's demand that states turn over all of their election rolls. The assumption is that the White House wants to do its own search to find whether undocumented immigrants are registered to vote and use the data on their voting records to locate them or claim they've voted illegally.

"District Judge Claria Horn Boom, the eighth Trump appointee to slap down this effort, cited a Sixth Circuit ruling rebuking the Trump voting intimidation scheme," wrote Rubin.

It all comes as four more American soldiers were killed as a result of the Iran war. The election is 99 days from Monday.