TrumpWatch publisher

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

By now you’ve heard about Trump falling asleep in the Oval Office on August 10, during an event related to an absurd and unacceptable change to the nation’s childhood vaccine schedule.

There’s a pattern to this behavior: he falls asleep during daytime meetings in front of the press, he has problems communicating…

Shocking Reason Trump Can’t Stay Awake: Psychology & Body Language | Dr. G. Explains, August 10, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0YDwJcQj1A

and then his hand(s) will appear bruised but covered with makeup:

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com

yikes! Trump’s hand is looking nasty today (Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty)

1:41 PM · Aug 14, 2026 : Everybody can reply

The Independent’s Indy100 documented at least 26 times when Trump has fallen asleep in public since his term began. Trump’s attacks on “Sleepy Joe” Biden were projection; the public dozing looks like a degraded sleep-wake cycle common among people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The confusion he experiences as he fights off the dozing combined with his inability to communicate effectively may also be symptoms of sundowning.

Trump’s neurological and other health problems are affecting him beyond falling asleep in meetings or the right side of his body jerking.

Trump Is Losing It & It’s Getting Worse: Psychology & Body Language Analysis | Dr. G Explains | August 7, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEXpDcwRqM0

(Dr. G is Dr. Garrison, a clinical and forensic psychologist.)

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist to former VP Dick Cheney, wrote an op-ed published this past week in NYTimes:

I Was Dick Cheney’s Cardiologist. Trump Has Not Looked Well, and We Should Know Why | August 12, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/opinion/trump-health-questions.html

CNN’s Erin Burnett interview with Dr. Reiner about the op-ed and Trump’s health | August 13, 2026
video: https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/13/health/video/ebof-vertical-jonathan-reiner-nyt-oped-trump-health-sleeping-bruises-swollen-legs

In an interview with David Pakman, certified speech-language pathologist Hilary Shae discussed Trump’s verbal decline 11 days before Trump’s Oval Office nap:

Pathologist reveals Trump’s worst symptoms | The David Pakman Show, July 30, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuTn8NtMQo

This interview sheds light on Trump taking cognitive tests multiple times — the repeated testing is a flag in itself.

I’ve discussed Trump’s cognitive and other health problems before. They’re continuing to get worse in my non-professional opinion; his inability to plan and execute plans as well as his delusional thinking continue to damage our nation’s security. The GOP has failed and continues to fail the country and our allies by refusing to deal this this challenge constructively. They’re failing Trump with elder abuse by neglect; they’re failing their own party.

We need to discuss this problem more widely so that voters who’ve voted for Trump in the past realize Trump is not competent, and his party isn’t doing anything about it, nor are they doing anything about the damage Trump’s incompetency is doing to the nation and the world.

Voters are the ones who will have to do something effective about this situation in November. Until then constituents should continue to contact their members of Congress and demand action, before Trump does something even worse to abuse his office than he already has (which is difficult to imagine but here we are).

This is an open thread but let’s put an emphasis on Trump’s cognitive decline and his failing health.

__________
Cover photo: Trump with golf legend Gary Player at Trump’s Bedminster course in New Jersey on August 9, 2026 (photo by Icon Sportswire/Getty via The Independent, featured here under Fair Use). This image Trump manipulated to appear younger and healthier before sharing the manipulated version on Truth Social.

The post Open Thread: Trump’s Continuing Decline appeared first on emptywheel.

Congressman had pledged to implement president’s agenda if he gained governor’s seat

• Democratic socialist Angie Nixon clinches surprise primary win in Florida US Senate race

Byron Donalds, a congressman backed by Donald Trump, won the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday in the race to succeed Ron DeSantis.

Donalds, who has represented south-west Florida since 2021, trounced three reasonably prominent Republican rivals, including Jay Collins, DeSantis’s handpicked lieutenant governor.

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Welcome to today’s Trump Tyranny Tracker…

Trump threatening emergency powers over the midterms, more corruption and attacks on independent oversight, a lawless ICE, and new dangers from the Iran war were among today’s top stories.

Today at a Glance

• Trump refuses to rule out using emergency powers to control the midterms.

• Federal judges have ruled against ICE detention tactics more than 16,000 times.

• Trump eliminates ownership disclosure requirements for U.S. companies.

What We Need to Pay Attention To

Trump declines to rule out declaring a national security emergency to control the 2026 election

What Happened: Trump declined to rule out declaring a national security emergency to impose new rules on the 2026 midterms after an interviewer suggested using emergency powers to require voter ID and proof of citizenship and restrict mail-in voting. Trump responded, “Stranger things have happened,” and said he would “leave it at that.”

Why It Matters: Trump is openly considering using emergency powers to seize control over the midterms. Using presidential power to manipulate the rules of an election is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

Source: CNN

Corruption

Trump Media has struggled to grow. Now it’s selling $100,000 contracts for access to Truth Social.

What Happened: Trump Media is selling trading firms faster, automated access to Trump’s Truth Social posts for up to $100,000 a month. More than 10 customers have signed up, potentially giving traders an advantage when Trump posts market-moving announcements on tariffs, foreign policy, or other government actions.

Why It Matters: Trump controls policies that move markets, and his company is charging Wall Street firms for faster access when he announces them. He continues to use the presidency to line his pockets and is so emboldened he doesn’t even bother to hide it.

Source: CBS News

Analysis: Alito Made Up To $2.9 Million From Fossil Fuel Assets While Serving on Top Court

What Happened: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made between $390,000 and $2.9 million from fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, according to an analysis of his financial disclosures. He has refused calls to recuse himself from a major case that could shield oil and gas companies from climate lawsuits.

Source: Mother Jones

Power Consolidation

Judge Widens Block on Trump Mail-in Voting Plan for Midterms

What Happened: A federal judge issued a nationwide order blocking Trump from using the Postal Service to potentially refuse delivery of mail ballots in states that reject his election directives. The judge said Trump was attempting to “unconstitutionally insert” the executive branch into election regulation months before the midterms.

Why It Matters: Trump is trying to seize control of midterms, including over how lawful ballots are handled. Courts are blocking these efforts, but the bigger question is whether Trump will obey those rulings.

Source: Bloomberg

White House Asks Justice Department to Consider New Reflecting-Pool Prosecution

What Happened: White House officials asked DOJ to explore prosecuting Olympic canoeist David Hearn again after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped the case and acknowledged that a botched renovation, not vandalism, caused the damage. Trump publicly attacked Pirro and demanded that she revisit the case.

Why It Matters: Prosecutors concluded there was no evidence, but Trump wants the man prosecuted anyway. The White House continues to weaponize the DOJ to pursue Trump’s enemies while shielding his allies.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Trump Picks Project 2025 Co-Author for Role That Would Oversee Any Reflecting Pool Review

What Happened: Trump nominated Project 2025 co-author Dennis Kirk as Interior Department inspector general, where he would oversee investigations into the agency. Democrats are currently seeking an inspector general investigation into Interior’s botched Reflecting Pool renovation and its use of no-bid contracts.

Source: New York Times

Weaponization of Institutions

Trump administration finalizes ownership reporting exemption for US firms

What Happened: The Treasury Department finalized a rule exempting U.S. companies and individuals from requirements to disclose their true owners, rolling back a major 2021 anti-money laundering law. FinCEN will also delete ownership information Americans previously submitted.

Why It Matters: Shell companies are used to hide dirty money, evade sanctions, commit fraud, and launder criminal proceeds. Trump is eliminating one of the government’s most important tools for finding out who is actually behind them.

Source: Reuters

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Media Suppression & Authoritarian Tactics

ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

What Happened: ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of gloves that allow officers to deliver painful electric shocks through direct contact with a person’s skin. The devices are designed to force compliance and could reach officers by March.

Why It Matters: ICE is giving its lawless officers another way to inflict pain while operating with virtually no accountability for abuse. Electric shock gloves give agents even more power to use violence against people in their custody.

Source: Associated Press

Human & Civil Rights Abuses

Human rights groups sue Trump administration over International Criminal Court sanctions

What Happened: Four human rights groups sued Trump over sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court, arguing they illegally punish organizations and individuals for working with the court. The groups say the sanctions violate constitutional rights to free speech, association, and religion.

Source: The Washington Post

‘We’ve never seen anything like this’: ICE’s detention crackdown swamps the courts

What Happened: Federal judges have ruled against ICE’s detention tactics more than 16,000 times over the past year after Trump officials expanded mandatory detention to people who previously could seek bond. At least 469 federal judges have concluded the policy is unlawful, while emergency cases have overwhelmed courts nationwide.

Why It Matters: The government continues using a detention policy that hundreds of federal judges have found unlawful. Ignoring thousands of court rulings is another sign that the rule of law is optional for Trump and his officials.

Source: Politico

Government Disruption

Researchers, advocates rail against government’s efforts to end workforce data collection

What Happened: Trump’s EEOC is moving to eliminate a 60-year-old requirement that tens of thousands of employers report workforce data by race, gender, and job category. Regulators use the data to identify patterns of workplace discrimination and enforce civil rights laws.

Source: Associated Press

Imperial & Geopolitical Watch

U.S. Fires on Ship Breaking Its Blockade of Iran

What Happened: U.S. forces fired two Hellfire missiles into a Panama-flagged cargo ship after it ignored warnings and attempted to enter an Iranian port in violation of Trump’s blockade. The U.S. has now redirected 55 commercial ships, disabled three, and boarded two since the blockade was reimposed in July.

Source: Wall Street Journal

How Iran Adapted Its Attacks as U.S. War Munitions Dwindled

What Happened: Iran is using waves of drones and maneuvering missiles to overwhelm U.S. air defenses, forcing the Pentagon to rapidly burn through Patriot interceptors. More than 1,500 have been used, with fewer than 1,700 left. Last month, an Iranian missile penetrated U.S. defenses in Jordan, killing three American soldiers and wounding more than 100.

Why It Matters: Iran is getting better at penetrating U.S. defenses while Trump’s war burns through critical interceptors faster than America can replace them. American troops are increasingly vulnerable, while depleted stockpiles leave the U.S. less prepared for the next crisis or conflict.

Source: New York Times

Far-Right & Russian Influence Watch

Top German General Says Russia Is Probing NATO Defenses With Hybrid Attacks

What Happened: Germany’s top military officer, Gen. Carsten Breuer, said Russia is systematically using drones and other hybrid attacks to probe NATO defenses and identify weaknesses for a future conflict. He said Russia is already shifting its economy and military to prepare for a wider war with the West.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Economic News

More Americans are having a harder time keeping up with their home and car payments

What Happened: Mortgage delinquencies have reached their highest level since 2015, while serious auto loan delinquencies are at their highest since 2010. Americans are facing high prices, sluggish job growth, and higher gas prices from Trump’s Iran war.

Source: CNN

July Home Sales Fell After Higher Mortgage Rates Scared Off Buyers

What Happened: Existing home sales fell 1.7% in July as higher mortgage rates continued to push buyers out of the market. The median home price rose to $434,100, the second-highest level on record.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Resistance

Check out 50501 for local and nationwide events…

Source: 50501

Kennedy Center must pay over $250,000 to artist who opposed Trump name change

What Happened: A judge ordered the Kennedy Center to pay $252,000 in legal fees after it unsuccessfully sued jazz musician Chuck Redd, who withdrew from a performance after the center was renamed after Trump. The judge previously dismissed the lawsuit because the center failed to establish that Redd had a binding contract.

Source: The Washington Post

By the Numbers

• 16,000+ — Times federal judges have ruled against ICE’s detention tactics over the past year

• 469 — Federal judges who have concluded ICE’s detention policy is unlawful

• $100,000 a month — What firms can pay Trump Media for faster access to Trump’s market-moving Truth Social posts

• $20 million — Amount ICE plans to spend on electric shock gloves

• 1,500+ — Patriot interceptors the Pentagon has already used in the Iran war, with fewer than 1,700 remaining

• $434,100 — Median existing home price in July, the second-highest on record

What to Watch Next

Trump is openly considering emergency powers over the midterms — How far will he go to seize control over the midterms?

A judge blocked Trump from interfering with mail ballots — Will the White House find another way to pressure states that reject his election directives?

Judges have ruled against ICE detention tactics more than 16,000 times — How long will the regime continue a policy hundreds of federal judges have found unlawful?

U.S. air defense stockpiles are rapidly shrinking — How much longer can Trump’s Iran war continue before shortages put American troops and other U.S. commitments at greater risk?

Russia is probing NATO for weaknesses — Will Moscow escalate its attacks as it prepares for a possible wider confrontation with the West?

Key Takeaways

Rising Costs — Higher oil prices, new tariff threats, and growing trade tensions are pushing up the cost of groceries, school supplies, and other everyday essentials.

Corruption in Plain Sight — Trump is profiting from faster access to his market-moving posts while Alito refuses to recuse from a case that could benefit an industry from which he made up to $2.9 million.

Election Power Grab — Trump is openly considering emergency powers over the midterms while courts block his attempts to interfere with state election rules.

ICE Lawlessness — ICE continues using detention tactics rejected by federal judges more than 16,000 times while expanding its use of force with electric shock gloves and operating with impunity.

Oversight Replaced by Loyalty — Trump is replacing an independent Interior watchdog with a Project 2025 ally while pressuring DOJ to pursue a case prosecutors already dropped.

Call to Action

Document Everything: Document purges, corruption, and power grabs. Share credible information with journalists, watchdogs, and legal experts. Silence enables authoritarianism—see something, say something.

Defend Press Freedom: Support independent journalism by subscribing to and sharing reporting that challenges Trump’s power grab.

Contact Lawmakers: Demand accountability for Trump’s unchecked power and war on oversight.

Mobilize for Action: Organize or join legal efforts and resistance movements to protect democracy and human and civil rights.

Thanks for reading the Trump Tyranny Tracker. Stay tuned for more updates.

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Potential presidential hopeful running for re-election in Georgia intensifies White House feud after remarks about ‘Natalie’ drew ire of president and allies

The Democratic senator Jon Ossoff called Donald Trump a “draft-dodging, crook president” while defending the senator Mark Kelly as a hero during a Tuesday campaign appearance in Georgia, escalating his public feud with the US president.

“I don’t think anything illustrates the times more aptly than that the draft-dodging, crook president, who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win, tried to imprison this man, who embodies American heroism,” Ossoff said while appearing alongside Kelly and his wife, the former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

National Trust for Historic Preservation filing comes after president made emergency bid for construction to continue

A historic preservation group that sued to block construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom urged the US supreme court on Tuesday to suspend the project while it considers whether the work can continue.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed its request less than a week after the Trump administration asked the nation’s highest court to allow the White House to continue construction on its $400m ballroom project during the appeals process.

Semiconductor and AI giant Nvidia announced this week that it would guarantee up to $105 billion in lease and power payments for a single data center campus in rural Ohio. That cleared the way for a 20-year lease by OpenAI to build a campus on a site once used to enrich uranium during the Cold War. The project, to be constructed by SoftBank’s SB Energy, envisions 9.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired power.

Similar announcements have dropped repeatedly over the past year: another monster facility burning enormous amounts of fossil fuels, creating noise and environmental damage, straining water supplies, driving up local utility rates and remaking a rural county seemingly overnight.

Ohio activists have already tried to stop data center projects like this one. A grassroots campaign called Conserve Ohio spent months gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment that would have banned any data center drawing more than 25 megawatts, effectively outlawing the type of facility Nvidia just financed. But organizers conceded in June that they’d come up short of the roughly 413,000 signatures required for the November ballot this year.

Big Tech has taken note. In response to anti-data center referenda and growing state restrictions, the industry has moved aggressively to accelerate its buildout. That in turn has created significant political heat ahead of the 2026 midterms, as the industry faces broad opposition across the political spectrum. The blowback has already cost some officials their seats in states from Georgia to Utah to California.

Despite the widespread unpopularity of new data centers, Donald Trump remains their biggest champion. He spent the summer as the tech industry’s most visible cheerleader, talking up the need to keep pace with foreign competitors while highlighting the jobs that the centers create. His position may endear him to the industry, but it exposes him and his own party on an issue that resonates increasingly with voters of all stripes.

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The rise of the machines

A data center is, at its simplest, a building full of computer servers. Data centers are the physical infrastructure behind cloud storage, online streaming and, more recently, the training and operation of artificial intelligence systems.

The current wave of “hyperscale AI facilities” stands out from earlier buildouts because of its sheer scale. These data centers draw far more electricity and water than the server farms that powered the internet’s first decades, and they are rising up from once empty fields at a pace local governments have never faced before. Seeking to manage and regulate that pace, lawmakers in more than 30 states have introduced upward of 300 bills addressing data centers in 2026 alone, covering moratoriums, tax incentives and energy policy.

The dollars behind the buildout are equally unprecedented. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and AI developers including OpenAI and Anthropic are projected to spend $7.6 trillion on data centers, power plants and machine learning through 2031. National electricity demand from data centers is projected to nearly double, from 80 to 150 gigawatts, between 2025 and 2028. That’s roughly equivalent to adding a country the size of Spain to the American power grid in just three years.

Two states have absorbed most of the data center construction now underway. According to a map compiled by Visual Capitalist, Texas and Virginia had more than 100 projects actively under construction as of the end of the first quarter: 140 in Texas and 136 in Virginia. Georgia and Ohio are a distant third and fourth, at 56 and 51. Virginia’s concentration of existing centers sits in Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties, the corridor known as Data Center Alley. But Texas is projected to soon overtake Virginia as the overall leader, once projects announced but not yet begun are included.

California has anywhere from fewer than 100 to more than 400 existing data centers, depending on how they’re categorized and whether a large campus is counted as one site or many. Nearly every tracker places California third in the nation, behind only Virginia and Texas. But the number of centers in the Golden State has plateaued rather than accelerated; power constraints and high land costs have capped how much new capacity the state can add.

Georgia’s announced pipeline, by contrast, is growing faster than almost anywhere else, anchored by developments like OpenAI’s Project Camellia in Effingham County. And Ohio, now home to the largest single financing commitment, has drawn billions more in investment commitments from Amazon and Microsoft around Columbus.

The nuisance next door

While many state and local officials have proved eager for investment dollars from the boom in data centers, their constituents are paying the price. In Loudoun County, Virginia, residents living beside one of the region’s data center clusters describe diesel generator fumes that irritate bronchial passages and awaken them at night. One neighbor called the facility “a curse on our life here.”

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute has cataloged similar complaints from data center neighbors elsewhere: headaches, vertigo, nausea, sleep disturbances, ear pain and hypertension, which residents attribute to the constant hum of cooling systems, generators and fans that operate around the clock. Backup generators at some sites can reach 105 decibels, louder than a running snowmobile. Residents in some states have now sued over the ceaseless noise.

Water use is another recurring grievance. In El Paso, Texas, a Meta data center is projected to draw roughly 480,000 gallons of water a day on average, spiking to 2.5 million gallons on the hottest days. That has become a flashpoint for organized protest in a city with a history of drought restrictions. A single mid-sized facility can use as much water as a small town; the largest campuses draw close to 5 million gallons daily, comparable to a city of 50,000 people.

Then there are the added costs to consumers. Data centers accounted for four percent of total U.S. electricity use in 2024, with demand expected to more than double by 2030. In states with heavy data-center concentration, wholesale electricity prices have climbed as much as 267 percent over five years. Georgia offers a concrete example of that curve: the average residential Georgia Power bill climbed more than $43 a month between 2022 and 2025, a rise utility watchdogs have tied to building out grid capacity for large data center customers. Utilities have largely passed those costs on to ratepayers.

Polling worse than nuclear

Opposition to data centers crosses partisan lines. In a survey taken in March 2026, Gallup found roughly seven in 10 Americans opposed to data center construction in their own area. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found similar resistance in June: 57 percent of respondents, including two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans, said they would oppose a data center built in their community, while just 14 percent said they would be comfortable with one nearby. The same poll found opposition climbing to 59 percent opposed and 10 percent in favor, when a proposed site would sit within 10 miles of a respondent’s home.

A separate national survey found that data centers are less popular locally than gas-fired power plants, wind farms or even nuclear facilities. Heatmap’s polling analysis called the result notable, given that nuclear has “long been the go-to reference for ‘scary energy facility.’”

The backlash has already produced a coordinated national response. On July 18, 2026, the advocacy group HumansFirst — co-founded by a former Tea Party leader who compared the movement to that 2009 populist wave — organized 142 protests across 42 states. It was the first nationally coordinated day of action against data center construction. Organizers pointed to a broader pattern already underway: tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure projects delayed or blocked by local opposition, according to research firm Data Center Watch.

Labor’s split loyalties

Organized labor has a love/hate relationship with AI and data centers. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler has spent months balancing members who see data center construction as a genuine source of job growth against those who fear AI will ultimately eliminate their jobs.

Construction unions, unsurprisingly, have positioned themselves as champions of the buildout. North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) has negotiated project labor agreements on some of the industry’s largest developments, including OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate campus in Michigan and the Project Blue data center in Arizona. Meta signed a first-of-its-kind national partnership with NABTU, which represents more than 3.2 million skilled craft professionals across the U.S. and Canada, covering future data center builds. The labor composition of data center construction likely mirrors commercial construction overall, which is roughly one-third union, according to an Associated General Contractors of America survey.

This week’s big Ohio announcement extends the pattern. OpenAI and SB Energy say their Nvidia-backed campus will generate 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent operating positions once complete. These are the kinds of numbers unions point to when they defend such projects.

Unions can bring money, organizing infrastructure and credibility with working-class voters into fights where the industry badly needs local political cover. Construction unions in particular “also often provide companies with critical political support in local communities, especially where data center construction remains unpopular,” Bloomberg observed. In practice, that makes them the tech industry’s most effective on-the-ground counterweight to the ratepayer and nuisance complaints driving local political opposition.

Where the people have spoken

In June 2026, Monterey Park, California, became the first city in the nation to pass a permanent, voter-approved ban on data centers. Measure NDC passed with more than 86 percent support, after residents organized against a proposed quarter-million-square-foot facility that opponents said would have tripled the city’s electricity use.

Port Washington, Wisconsin, delivered a similar message two months earlier, through a narrower mechanism. Voters there approved, with 66 percent of the vote, a referendum requiring voter approval for future tax-incremental financing districts valued at more than $10 million. The vote came in direct response to a $15 billion AI campus backed by OpenAI and Oracle, already approved for $458 million in local tax benefits before the referendum reached the ballot. The measure does not undo the tax break already granted, however, and it faces a legal challenge from a coalition of business groups led by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.

Primaries have told a parallel story, with some lawmakers’ careers ended over their support for data centers. In Utah, Senate President J. Stuart Adams, one of the most powerful Republicans in the state, lost his June primary after backing the Stratos data center project near the Great Salt Lake. His challenger, Stephanie Hollist, made the project the centerpiece of her campaign. Asked at a June forum what she’d prioritize on water management, she didn’t hesitate: “I might start by not proposing the largest data center in the country.” The line drew loud applause. Former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry, defeated in the same cycle over the same project, cited the cause plainly after conceding: “Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do.”

In Georgia, Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard flipped two statewide seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission in November 2025, marking the first Democratic statewide constitutional office wins in Georgia since 2006. Both won with roughly 60 percent of the vote after campaigning on anger over utility bills tied in part to grid expansion for data centers.

In Festus, Missouri, four incumbent city council members up for reelection in April 2026 lost to challengers who ran explicitly against a proposed $6 billion data center, in an election where turnout was more than double the previous year’s. A separate push to recall the mayor and the council’s remaining data-center supporters is still working through signature verification, indicating the fight in Festus isn’t finished.

In 2023, in what’s now cited as an early reference point, voters in Cascade Locks, Oregon, recalled two port commissioners over a data center negotiation; the project was canceled within weeks.

Statehouses have begun to act on their own, often without waiting for a ballot measure or primary. New York became the first state to impose a statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers when Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order last month that paused certain discretionary environmental permits for up to a year on projects using 50 megawatts or more of power. The pause allows regulators to build a framework covering ratepayer costs, water use and community benefits. The order was narrower than the Responsible Data Center Development Act, which the legislature had already passed that covered data centers at just 20 megawatts and up. Hochul has not yet signed that bill. Her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Bruce Blakeman, opposes the statewide pause and argues local governments should be free to negotiate their own data center deals.

Texas took a narrower, more contested route. In early August, Gov. Greg Abbott directed state regulators to audit every data center project still moving through the grid connection process, covering tax breaks, water use and community impact, before any can proceed. The directive reaches only projects connecting to the ERCOT grid, so a data center capable of generating its own power can bypass it entirely. Critics on the right and left called it insufficient: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a fellow Republican, dismissed it as “all hat and no cattle — empty political rhetoric wrapped in meaningless fluff,” while Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa called it “another strongly worded letter” that “no one buys.”

The holdout in the White House

Against this national pushback, President Trump’s posture on data centers stands out. Despite lawmakers losing primaries and city council seats to local anger over the issue, Trump spent the summer praising and promoting the buildouts. When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott paused approval of new data centers in early August, Trump called the move “a mistake.” He stated, “I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it’s a mistake… because there are other communities that want it. When a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community.”

A CNBC analysis of the coalition organizing against AI infrastructure, which includes religious leaders, labor unions and local activists, flagged the political gambit for Trump. That coalition, it concluded, “poses a political problem for anyone who gets on the wrong side of that issue. And President Donald Trump is the person most at risk.” CNN reached a similar conclusion, describing data center opposition as close to “a true populist issue built for this moment” and calling Trump “one big exception to the growing political stampede away from data centers.”

Democratic officials elsewhere have made the opposite bet. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has repeated a version of the same line since her campaign: “I do think it’s important that the brunt of data centers not be put on ratepayers, and in fact that they pay their own way and their fair share.” It became the animating principle behind Virginia’s first-ever statewide data center energy consumption tax, signed into law this year.

The White House’s response to voter anger has been to insulate the buildout from complaints, not slow it down. Trump has expanded what the White House calls the Ratepayer Protection Pledge. It was signed by 23 governors, all Republicans, and at least 187 companies, including utilities, cooperatives and developers. The signatories committed that data center growth won’t raise electricity costs for households. But the pledge is voluntary and nonbinding, and it has created new sore spots for opponents.

Nvidia’s guarantee of up to $105 billion to support the new OpenAI-SB Energy campus in Ohio, for example, came without any companion commitment on ratepayer costs. The announcement arrived just as Ohioans faced projected average summer electricity costs topping $800, a 17 percent jump over last year.

The White House continues to frame deals like the Nvidia-backed OpenAI campus as evidence of American AI dominance. But the voters who organized Ohio’s ballot campaign, and those who have already unseated officials elsewhere over similar projects, see it far differently. To them, it’s evidence of unbridled corporate greed and abuse, visible in their own backyards and on their ever-rising utility bills.

With the midterms now just two and a half months away, support for data centers is fast becoming a defining populist issue. This is especially true among rural voters whose elected representatives turned a deaf ear to their concerns and whose president continues to bat for a tech industry that has now become a curse on their lives.

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MAGA, the GOP, and the Trump administration don’t really care about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking. The MAGA GOP made a lot of noise during Biden’s single term because they were sure the files would show a Pizzagate’s-worth of Democratic political figures engaged in the ritual abuse of underage girls.

Once Trump was elected in 2024, the furor died down. While the MAGA faithful were willing to take down their own just to put a few Dems’ heads on spikes, they were suddenly less audible once they realized any document dump would take down a few of their own. Even Donald Trump seemed to know this, which is he why he shifted his focus elsewhere.

It took a literal act of Congress to get the Epstein files released, despite Trump and other GOP figures having promised to put this at the top of the MAGA to-do list if they retook the White House. Trump engaged in multiple rounds of spin, hoping to make it look as though demanding the release of the files and refusing to release the files were both the same side of the MAGA coin.

Trump’s DOJ then reluctantly began complying with the law. Millions of records were withheld. Those that were released were riddled with redactions, forcing politicians on the other side of the political divide to demand more releases with fewer redactions. Meanwhile, a handful of leaks and unforced errors revealed the Trump DOJ was doing whatever it could to cover for Trump and anyone else Trump might want to have redacted from rolling Epstein File releases.

FOIA requests are incapable of expediting the full release of the Epstein Files. But they are capable of sniffing out the details of the Trump administration’s attempts to maintain control of the “this was mainly Dems” narrative even as it seeks to satiate the MAGA base that has been demanding access to these files for years.

This report for Bloomberg — written by “FOIA terrorist” Jason Leopold and Harry Wilson — not only details FBI Director Kash Patel and former DOJ deputy director Dan Bongino attempts to spin Trump’s refusal to release documents as demonstrative of his “full transparency” promises.

It also shows the DOJ’s pre-release review of the files had President Trump in mind the entire time. While pretending to be engaging in radical levels of transparency and complying with both the letter and the spirit of law, the DOJ was actually flagging anything that might include Trump for the apparent reason of keeping these files out of the public’s hands.

In addition to the discussions about Ferguson and Hervey, the documents contain other noteworthy details, including a spreadsheet dated March 25, 2025 and titled “DOJ Document Flag List.” The first page, labeled “FLAGGED Items List, per case – per DOJ guidance,” includes a case number associated with the FBI’s 2006 investigation of Epstein by its Miami field office.

[…]

There are 16 entries on the list where the reason for the flag was simply marked “POTUS.” Those items include magazine and newspaper articles, message pads, phone message books and one unidentified record.

The report notes that some of these flagged files have since been released. But others have not and this FOIA release by the DOJ perhaps points to why they have not been. The DOJ could have cleared everything up with an explanation, but of course it didn’t, because why would it.

DOJ referred a request for comment on the “Flag List” to the FBI, which declined to comment.

Assuming every “no comment” is an admission of guilt is as fatuous as assuming everyone who pleads the Fifth is guilty of whatever they’ve been accused of. We won’t be doing that here. But it is strange that agencies that treat every request for comment as an opportunity to engage in attacks on journalists and/or personal attacks on the person making the request would have absolutely nothing to say here. Read into that what you will.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani shows Britain’s Andy Burnham that confronting billionaires need not mean the end of cooperation with Donald Trump

In November, Californians will vote on a one-off 5% levy on residents worth more than $1bn. The union-backed plan could raise $100bn, more than enough to replace federal healthcare funding stripped away by Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. About 200 very rich people would pay. But the referendum is becoming a test of whether extreme wealth can buy the political power to defeat a popular redistributive policy. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has already spent $100m backing opposition to the tax – a fraction of the $13bn bill he could face. Other billionaires are joining him. Whether voters can impose costs on the super-rich once their fortunes are big enough to shape the political process is now an open question. That alone should trouble any democracy.

It’s a long way from Mr Brin’s west coast lair of Mountain View to Andy Burnham’s Makerfield constituency. But the prime minister should heed the call from prominent progressive academics – led by the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – urging Britain to join a new global push to tackle inequality. Prof Stiglitz wants help creating a new UN International Panel on Inequality (IPI). This stems from the G20’s first-ever inequality report, which warned that the yawning gap between rich and poor was a human-made crisis corroding democracy and social cohesion while blocking efforts to tackle the climate emergency.

I wrote about Isaac Sant’s blockbuster court filing the other day, the exhibits to which revealed the conspiracy theory that clearly lay behind the Minnesota 15 indictment (which I predicted here).

That filing works on three different levels. The first was tactical: to get a bunch of exhibits released showing wide-ranging and feckless surveillance. Both local and national media outlets picked up the filing on that level.

At a second level, this was a motion for more discovery, which I’ll explain in this post.

At a third level, this motion maps out a monstrous effort, starting last year in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, to criminalize any opposition to Trump. I’ll come back to this in a follow-up post.

Sant — the lead defendant and separately charged with stalking for following an ICE goon into Wisconsin in May — asks for the following in discovery that would allow him to situate his own prosecution: he plans to use it to file a selective and vindictive prosecution motion.

• “The Court should require the government to produce all reports related to surveillance of Minnesota unions, non-profit organizations, protesters and activists.” This would disclose whether the mentions of spying on unions like SEIU and CWA went further than what defendants have obtained in discovery.
• “The Court should require the government to produce the withheld Project Whipple Shield ROIs.” The government has withheld five Reports of Investigation from the Project Whipple Shield investigation (the sub-investigation of a larger investigation), claiming that those relate to an ongoing investigation.
• “The Court should require the government to produce reports generated pursuant to CUC Operation Keyhole.” The sub-investigation of Project Whipple Shield is part of a larger MN investigation, Operation Puppet Master, which is part of a broader investigation, Operation Keyhole. Sant is demanding the overarching documents.
• “The Court should require the government to produce all of the Clearview AI reports it generated of protesters and activists during Operation Metro Surge.” Sant showed that HSI developed a Clearview dossier on him (with some inaccuracies); he’s demanding all of them.
• “The Court should require the government to produce internal communications related to Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield.” Sant argues this investigation was predicated on criminalization of First Amendment protected activities; he wants records that may show that.
• “The Court should require the government to produce downloads of all UCA ‘undercover phones’ and ‘undercover laptops.'” DOJ has not turned over the phones and laptops from informants. Sant wants them.
• “The Court should require the government to produce DOJ and DHS communications related to the charging decisions, defendant self-surrender, and doxxing in the AFO cases.” Sant — who is represented by Kevin Riach, who also represented one of the people Pam Bondi doxxed, Paul Johnson — wants records on that doxxing that DOJ withheld by dismissing cases (including Johnson’s).

Many of these would serve to expose the scope of the spying in Minnesota and its direction from DC — but it’ll be a tough reach to get those communications without first demonstrating that this is a vindictive prosecution.

More interesting is his bid to get communications relating to the doxxing of 16 previously arrested defendants that Pam Bondi rolled out as trophies on January 28.

To support this request, Sant describes what happened in the wake of the Renee Good shooting, as DOJ refused to investigate that shooting, but instead tried to criminalize the opposition in Minnesota to retroactively rationalize first her, then Alex Pretti’s killing.

On January 13, 2026, a cadre of experienced and highly-respected federal prosecutors – including the entire management team– resigned en masse in protest of the politicization of federal criminal law enforcement in Minnesota.14 Unfortunately, these resignations – which should have served as a wake-up call to DOJ – did little to slow the decline of a once great U.S. Attorney’s office into a political prosecution factory.

In the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s murder, [Todd Blanche fixer Aakash] Singh directed federal prosecutors to aggressively charge protesters in Minnesota. According to the New York Times:

In a conference call in late January, the official, Aakash Singh, laid out the department’s basis for prosecuting demonstrators: National Security Presidential Memo 7, a sweeping directive issued by President Trump last September. It expanded the definition of domestic terrorism to include not only violent crimes like assault, but also relatively minor ones, like revealing the personal details of agents or getting in the way of immigration enforcement.

Mr. Singh said that “coordinators” in U.S. attorneys’ offices responsible for charging protesters under NSPM-7 should be “hounding” federal agents to make cases, according to people familiar with his remarks. He also suggested that the department wanted headlines along with indictments, promising that officials in Washington would be “blasting out” prosecutors’ work.

“Go big,” Mr. Singh said, “and go loud.”15

On January 28, 2026, DHS and the U.S. Attorney’s office put Singh’s direction into action. In one day, DHS both initiated “Operation Puppet Master” and also conducted the orchestrated self-surrender and doxxing of sixteen individuals charged with assaulting federal officers. The names and photos of these individuals were disseminated on Pam Bondi’s and DHS’ X (twitter) accounts, leading to widespread online harassment. The whole episode was clearly pre-designed to intimidate and deter other protestors from exercising their First Amendment rights – the same purpose as this prosecution.

Because these AFO cases had everything to do with public relations, and nothing to do with public safety, they quickly collapsed. Cursory review of the evidence showed that agents had lied and defendants were innocent. The government has voluntarily dismissed eight of the sixteen cases. 16 Others await dismissal. A week after the AFO cases were filed, eight more experienced AUSAs resigned in disgust, including the civil chief. 17 Again, the alarm bells should have gone off at DOJ. Instead, it doubled-down, opening Project Whipple Shield, expanding its surveillance of Minnesotans, and beginning the process of indicting this case.

14 https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/13/us-attorney-on-minnesota-fraud-joethompson-resigns-from-office

15 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/politics/justice-dept-prosecute-protesters.html

16 U.S. v. Sager, Case No. 26-mj-69 (MJD/DJF); U.S. v. Tschida, Case No. 26-mj-54 (SGE); U.S. v. Williams, Case No. 26-mj-70 (SGE); U.S. v. Adbebe, Case No. 26-mj-77 (DJF); U.S. v. Valentine, Case No. 26-mj-28 (DLM); U.S. v. Ahmed, Case No. 26-mj-24 (DLM); U.S. v. Johnson, Case No. 26-mj-81 (SGE); U.S. v. Rank, Case No. 26-mj-56 (SGE). [Note, I believe Riasch is missing

17 https://www.npr.org/2026/02/05/nx-s1-5702356/more-frustrated-prosecutors-at-the-u-sattorneys-office-in-minnesota-call-it-quits

Sant is arguing that those trumped up arrests and Pam Bondi’s use of them as trophies were used as the predicate to create this investigation.

The nested case opening memos rely on the pre-existence of imagined assaults on cops. HSI opened Operation Puppet Master, which is the predicate to investigate imaginary funding, on February 16, long after the infiltration of activists started. It claimed that “violent opportunists” had “perpetrated multiple assaults against federal officers.”

Since November 28, 2026, ongoing protests and incidents of civil unrest have occurred in public areas throughout Minneapolis, MN. During these events, violent opportunists (VOs) have exploited the protests as cover to attempt breaches of federal properties and have perpetrated multiple assaults against federal officers tasked with protecting these facilities.

In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated a coordinated, agency-wide deployment to support the Federal Protective Service (FPS) in fulfilling its mission to safeguard federal property. As part of this effort, HSI St. Paul has identified an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators involved in impeding federal law enforcement, rioting, destruction of Federal property and assaults on Federal agents and Officers.

Then on March 10, HSI approved the retroactive opening of Project Whipple Shield, which it claimed also started on February 11. It also relies on claimed assaults on HSI officers to justify the investigation.

Since November 2025, ongoing incidents of demonstrations and civil unrest have occurred in the Minneapolis, MN area. Some individuals have exploited these incidents to engage in criminal activity, including impeding law enforcement, assaults against law enforcement officers, and damage to property. In accordance with National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 (NSPM-7), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) St. Paul has opened an investigation into instances where individuals and organized networks have exploited events to engage in acts of violence, destruction of property, intimidation of federal officers and employees, and attempts to impede federal operations. This investigation is focused on identifying and disrupting sophisticated, organized campaigns supporting and engaging in this behavior and to prevent such unlawful activities, while continuing to safeguard the rights of peaceful demonstrators and the public.

In other words, HSI justified infiltrating activist groups based off claims that ICE protestors had assaulted ICE goons.

And almost all of those cases have fallen apart (or are in the process of falling apart), many of them when attorneys, including Sant’s attorney, Kevin Riach, pointed out that the trophy photos were a violation of the sealing order that DOJ itself demanded (in that case, HSI also took photos while Riach’s client was hospitalized recovering from his assault by ICE). I wrote about these challenges here; I’ve updated below what has happened to the 16 activists that Pam Bondi paraded around as trophies even as HSI turned to infiltrate the anti-ICE activists in Minnesota.

But something David Schultz, the Magistrate Judge presiding over the pretrial proceedings in this case, said in the case of Gillian Etherington (who was accused of backing into CBP later on the same day, but after, Good was killed) in a hearing on April 28 is worth noting. When Schultz scheduled a hearing to discuss Etherington’s motion for details about their arrest, Schultz described how the HSI officer who attested this and related cases did not have personal knowledge of what happened.

Let me start by saying one of the motions that Mr. Morrison filed was for — or was alleging duplicity, in response to which the government filed a bill of particulars in this case. The bill of particulars is not verbatim a copy of the affidavit that was filed with the original criminal complaint charging Ms. Etherington with a felony, but it’s pretty darn close.

That affidavit was filed by Agent Richard Berger. And the affidavit states in paragraph 4 that “This affidavit is based on my personal knowledge, as well as information that I have learned.”

Now you, Ms. Stark, or the folks observing this hearing, may not be aware of this; but while I was on criminal duty in January, when a good number of these assault on federal officer cases were being filed by way of criminal complaint and we had affidavits from Mr. Berger, in all of them I became concerned with the veracity of the affidavits.

And so I questioned Mr. Berger about the basis for his affidavits, and specifically I asked him to outline the process by which he and other agents were conducting the information download at the Whipple Building.

It became quite clear, it is without doubt in the court’s mind, that Mr. Berger does not, did not have any personal knowledge of the events described in the affidavits that he has submitted to this court as sworn affidavits. He swore that the affidavit was based on “personal knowledge,” among other things. That’s a false affidavit.

Schultz accused Richard Berger of submitting false affidavits to him (something other HSI agents were doing in the Cities Church case in the same time period), and went on to lay out how even the Bill of Particulars differs from what the video evidence actually shows.

Shortly after that hearing, Etherington’s case was continued 180 days (I’ve laid out the status of that and the other 15 trophy arrests below; though have not updated all the JAGs they’ve cycled through as SAUSAs).

But it matters that the Magistrate Judge in this case believes that HSI lied to him back in January to gin up claims of assault against ICE and CBP. Because, Isaac Sant argues, that is the excuse they used to infiltrate the anti-ICE activist community in Minnesota in the first place.

They lied about those assaults, then used the assaults to spy on anti-ICE activists.

1. Gillian Etherington
Defense Attorney Aaron Morrison
26-mj-56
Charged for January 7 conflict with CBP in affidavit attested (by FaceTime) on January 23 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.

• MTD failure to state offense.
• MTD lack of probable cause.
• MTS for unlawful stop.

May 15: Case continued 6 months.

2. Paul Johnson
Defense Attorney Kevin Riach
26-mj-81
Charged for January 22 conflict with CBP in affidavit attested on January 26 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance. William Richards files notice of appearance.

• Motion for grand jury transcripts.
• Motion for discovery on assault and hospitalization.
• Motion to strike JAG officer (Amicus).
• Opposition to protective order.
• Motion to dismiss for outrageous government conduct and vindictive prosecution.
• MTD failure to state an offense.
• Motion to suppress.

July 6: Case dismissed

3. Matrim Charlebois
Defense Attorney Lisa Lopez
26-mj-59
Charged for January 13 incident at Whipple in affidavit attested on January 23 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance. Robert Tucker filed notice of appearance.

• Motion for grand jury transcripts.
• MTD failure to state a claim.

May 18: Case continued 6 months.

4. Ilan Wilson-Soler
Defense Attorney Patrick Cotter
26-mj-84
Allegedly sprayed a fire extinguisher at ICE at Roosevelt High and hit someone with it while running away. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance. Richard Hoover files appearance.

• Motion for grand jury transcripts.
• Show cause, protective order.
• MTD failure to state an offense.

May 18: Case continued six months, motion to dismiss denied without prejudice.

5. Abdikadir Noor
Defense Attorney Dane DeKrey
26-mj-62
Charged for January 12 incident in St. Cloud in affidavit attested on January 23 by HSI Richard Berger; Abdikadir’s name initially misspelled. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.

Noor chose to file no motions (I would be unsurprised if they mistook him for some other Somali they were trying to racially profile); his trial has been scheduled for August.

Late last month, Noor changed his approach this this case and asked to go to trial; it is now set for a December trial.

6. Margaret Sager
Defense Attorney Bruce Nestor
26-mj-69
Alleged to have jumped on ICE goon’s back and put him in a stranglehold blocks away from where Renee Good was killed and area where Aliya Rahman was assaulted. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed appearance. Richard Hoover filed appearance.

• Motion for discovery regarding assault of Aliya Rahman.
• Order to show cause, seal order.

May 19: Case dismissed.

7. Kirubele Adbebe

Defense Attorney Manda Sertich
26-mj-77
Charged for January 13 incident at Whipple in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 26 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance. Robert Tucker filed notice of appearance.

• Motion to show cause (sealing order).
• Motion for grand jury transcripts.

June 3: Case dismissed with prejudice.

8. Nasra Ahmed

Defense Attorney Jordan Kushner
26-mj-24
Charged for January 14 incident with ICE ERO in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 20 by HSI SA Bronson Day. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance. Robert Tucker filed notice of appearance.

• MTD outrageous government conduct.
• Disqualify counsel.

June 12: Case dismissed with prejudice.

9. Helicity Borowska

Defense Attorney Aaron Morrison
26-mj-61
Charged for January 16 incident with CBP in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance. Robert Tucker filed notice of appearance.

• MTD failure to state claim.
• MTD lack of probable cause.
• Motion for grand jury transcripts.

Update: On April 30, Borowska withdrew their pretrial motions and asked for a 6-month continuance, which was granted.

10. Joshua Doyle

Defense Attorney Aaron Morrison
26-mj-80
Charged for January 21 incident with HSI at DuPont and Colfax in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 26 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.

• Motion for gag order (delete post).
• MTD failure to state offense.
• MTD lack of probable cause.
• Motion for grand jury transcripts.

May 21: Case continued for 6 months.

11. Nitzana Flores

Defense Attorney Aaron Morrison
26-mj-57
Charged for January 7 incident with CBP by Roosevelt School in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance. William Richards files notice of appearance.

• Objection to protective order.
• MTD failure to state offense.
• MTD lack of probable cause.
• Motion for grand jury transcripts.

May 27: Case continued 6 months.

12. Christina Rank

Defense Attorney Bruce Nestor
26-mj-56
Charged for January 12 incident with ICE in Inver Grove Heights in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.

• Show cause, sealing order.
• Motion for discovery on retaliating against observers.

July 22: Case dismissed with prejudice.

13. Madeline Tschida

Defense Attorney Joseph T Dixon, III
26-mj-54
Charged for January 16 incident with ICE ERO in Monticello in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.

February 23: Case dismissed.

14. Alice Valentine

Defense Attorney Siri Carlson McDowell
26-mj-28
Charged for January 12 incident in St. Cloud with named Executive Associate Directors of ICE ERO. Affidavit attested by Bronson Day to Douglas Micko via Facetime on January 20. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.

• MTS claiming she was unlawfully seized.

April 20: Case dismissed.

15. William Vermie

Defense Attorney: Aaron J Morrison
26-mj-71
Charged for January 13 incident on Park Ave in affidavit attested via FaceTime and email on January 23 by Richard Berger. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.

• MTD failure to state a claim.
• Motion for grand jury transcripts.
• MTD outrageous government conduct (because ICE pushed him first).
• MTD lack of probable cause.

May 12: Case continued 6 months.

16. Quentin Williams

Defense Attonrey: Bruce Nestor
26-mj-70
Charged for January 7 CBP invasion of Roosevelt High School in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.

March 24: Case dismissed.

The post DOJ Used Pam Bondi’s Trophy Arrests as an Excuse to Spy on Minnesota’s Anti-ICE Community appeared first on emptywheel.

Words used to mean things. The MAGA GOP strategy lately seems to be pulling a page from the 1980s playbook (a Trump specialty) and declaring anyone they don’t like to be “communist.” The whole thing is laughable. Even if you disagree with some of the policy positions of far left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (and they do have some wacky, nonsensical things on their platform) they are (1) not even remotely close to communism and (2) have zero chance of actually being put into policy.

But, really, so much of it seems to be projection. Former UBS CEO and regular Fox News contributor Robert Wolf went on that network earlier this week, where the host clearly expected him to trash Mayor Mamdani’s proposals in NYC as communist. Wolf seemed to surprise the host by pointing out that the only real activity that seemed communistic was coming from the Trump White House.

“Let me reverse this a little. If Mayor Mamdani did the following: if he put price controls on products like pharmaceuticals, if he bailed out farmers, if he took private stakes in public companies, if he said to energy companies ‘you’re making too much money,’ if he proposed credit card caps, you would all go apoplectic, as would your viewers. That’s what President Trump’s doing. You could argue he’s the most powerful socialist in the country today.”

When the host finally comes back in, she laughs nervously and says “I’ll have to think about that, Robert,” before quickly changing the subject. Wolf gets in a final: “Well, all those five points I made, he did, the President, so…” The host then immediately… goes back to claiming that Democrats are going to destroy NYC with socialism, without ever addressing a single one of Wolf’s five points about Trump’s actual “socialistic” tendencies.

Meanwhile the left wingers over at [checks notes…] the Cato Institute, are pointing out that the federal government taking ownership stakes in private companies has become “routine”.

Since December, the CHIPS Research and Development (R&D) Office has announced 19 final or proposed company awards totaling up to $3.8 billion. They cover 18 companies because GlobalFoundries has two separate projects. Three agreements are final, while 16 remain letters of intent. All 19 have been publicly tied to equity.

Commerce’s current funding rules state that award recipients may be required to provide equity, warrants, intellectual property licenses, royalties, revenue sharing, or other instruments to generate a government return. The Biden administration, by contrast, used the same CHIPS R&D appropriation through separate competitions to award funds to private companies without taking ownership stakes. That makes the Trump administration’s insistence on equity a policy choice. The CHIPS Act itself authorizes Commerce to make grants, cooperative agreements, and “other transactions” but doesn’t expressly authorize the department to acquire stock. 

Last time around, you’ll recall, Trump and MAGA also tried to make out Biden as a far left “communist.” Yet, given the chance he didn’t setup the apparatus for government ownership of private companies. Trump is now using the law passed under Biden’s guidance, which didn’t require ownership stakes, and using it that way. Which one is more of a communist?

We’ve talked a little about this before, with regards to Trump taking an equity stake in Intel and getting a golden share in US Steel. But in any other administration — especially a Democratic one — the business press and Republicans would be up in arms over so much government ownership of private companies.

This is the opposite of free market capitalism. It’s the government picking winners and losers, and then demanding a cut of the winnings for doing it. Even if the bets work out (and Trump keeps hyping up how successful the Intel investment has been), it’s still the sorta thing that is fundamentally against the principles of free markets. Hell, when the Obama administration merely guaranteed a loan to Solyndra — no equity, no ownership, no board seat, just a loan guarantee — it became an albatross Republicans hung around his neck for the better part of a decade.

Here, as Cato notes, Trump is normalizing the US government taking significant ownership stakes in private companies:

A year ago, these deals looked like a scattered series of one-off improvisations. Commerce now announces companies in batches and openly describes a “portfolio approach.” As I argued in a December 2025 essay, the administration has been assembling a pseudo-sovereign wealth fund under executive control, one deal at a time.

The latest six companies are not especially remarkable. What is remarkable is that federal corporate ownership is becoming routine under a Republican administration, while a Republican-controlled Congress is not just letting it happen but may even enshrine the practice in statute. 

Republicans warning that communists are taking over the Democratic Party might first ask why their own administration is so eager to have the government acquire pieces of private companies.

And don’t sleep on the bit buried at the end of that second paragraph: the Republican-controlled Congress is trying to write more of this into the NDAA and hand the Pentagon its own equity portfolio with which to further nationalize and take equity stakes in more companies. A president doing weird one-off deals is one thing. But now we’re having Republicans literally build into the law the machinery of government ownership of private companies.

And they want you to believe the other guys are communists?

Every Republican currently warning that the communists are coming to take over American business might want to consider what they’re actually building here. They’re the ones picking winners and losers. They’re the ones normalizing the federal government taking ownership stakes in private companies. They’re the ones putting into law that this is to be expected.

So then, when Democrats eventually get back in power, it will have been the GOP that handed them the tools for government ownership of companies. It’s difficult to see how the GOP can whine about “communism” while building the fundamental infrastructure to enable the government to nationalize industry.

“Socialism” and “communism” are just bogeymen at this point, words deployed to scare people away from voting for Democrats — because the alternative is running on their actual record, we can all see how that’s going.

Network alleges FCC is trying to send ‘chilling message’ in retaliation for content the administration disapproves of

ABC has sued the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), arguing that it is being retaliated against for content-based reasons in a move it warns threatens the independence of the press.

The network filed the lawsuit on Tuesday after being forced to apply early to renew its license to broadcast on the eight local television stations it owns. It is waiting to hear whether the Brendan Carr-led FCC approves its renewal requests, or, more likely, holds a hearing on their merits.

This live blog is now closed.

• Donalds and Jolly to face off in Florida governor race

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President Donald Trump posted an image of a map of the strait of Hormuz on his social media platform Truth Social, with a circle around the strait and the words “New US Territory” as the title on Tuesday morning.

This follows comments made on Friday at a speech at a police academy on Long Island, New York, where Trump said “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz strait a territory of the United States. … Essentially, that’s what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”

Health data appears to be most affected by administration’s attempt to wipe findings that don’t align with its priorities, tracker shows

A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world.

These are among the hundreds of federal datasets that the Trump administration has taken down or altered as part of its aggressive campaign to wipe all mentions of data findings that do not align with the administration’s priorities.

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Introduction

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Today’s Report

1. Overview

2. White House News

3. Truth Social Posts

4. Government Department News

5. 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates

6. AI & Tech Company News

7. Congressional Watch

8. Policy Impact Analysis & Heatmap

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1. Overview

The White House announced that President Trump’s “Most Favored Nation” policies and the TrumpRx platform have achieved the largest annual decline in prescription drug prices since 1963. Seventeen major pharmaceutical companies agreed to lower costs to match international levels, with insulin and fertility drugs seeing price reductions between 50% and 90%. Additionally, First Lady Melania Trump facilitated her 34th family reunification related to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, emphasizing the power of her humanitarian efforts. Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command reported that the USS Abraham Lincoln’s crew remains “high-achieving” and operational, with previous morale and supply issues reportedly resolved.

On Truth Social, President Trump advocated for the “SAVE AMERICA ACT,” citing the Indian electoral system’s use of photo identification and restricted mail-in balloting as a model for the United States. He also issued a robust slate of endorsements for Republican candidates in Florida and North Carolina ahead of the August 18th elections. Across these posts, Trump emphasized his platform of border security, energy dominance, and the protection of the Second Amendment while urging voter turnout for his preferred candidates.

The Department of War ordered 30 academic institutions to conduct security audits of collaborations with foreign entities to prevent intellectual property theft, warning that partnerships compromising national security will result in a loss of federal funding. The Department also awarded a $22.9 billion contract to RTX for increased Tomahawk missile production and finalized several modernization contracts totaling nearly $1 billion. HHS, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., launched the STREAM program to advance regenerative agriculture and awarded $96.7 million for behavioral health and suicide prevention. Furthermore, HHS and HUD announced a policy shift away from “Housing First” models in favor of a “Treatment First” approach to homelessness, while the Treasury Department sought public comment on stablecoin regulations under the GENIUS Act.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation authorizing the formation of what is described as the world’s largest union for gig workers, criticizing the Trump administration for failing to address family affordability. Governor Wes Moore celebrated a U.S. District Court ruling blocking the relocation of the FBI headquarters, accusing the administration of engaging in “illegal” and “political games.” Governor JB Pritzker touted Illinois’ high national education rankings following a $2.5 billion increase in funding, while Governor Tim Walz opened the application process for a judicial vacancy in Minnesota, encouraging applicants who reflect the state’s diversity.

OpenAI announced a partnership with SB Energy and NVIDIA to develop an 8-gigawatt data center at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, a project expected to create 35,000 construction jobs. OpenAI is also investing $40 million into a local community grant fund and providing significant Codex credits to Ohio college students to bolster regional development. NVIDIA confirmed its role in securing the power and infrastructure for these AI factories, noting that its multi-year collaboration with OpenAI represents approximately $600 billion in compute revenue opportunities through 2030. OpenAI also emphasized its commitment to cybersecurity by utilizing frontier models as “cyberguardians” to automate vulnerability detection.

Government-mandated prioritization of munitions production bolsters the revenue outlook for large defense prime contractors, though the resulting surge in state spending threatens to fuel long-term sector-specific inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. Conversely, administration-led drug pricing interventions aimed at aligning domestic costs with international benchmarks exert downward pressure on pharmaceutical profitability and may constrain future therapeutic innovation by reducing research and development budgets. Simultaneously, the imposition of rigorous intellectual property audits on academic institutions serves to mitigate geopolitical risk, yet these security-driven controls risk stifling private-public collaboration and may “inadvertently alienate” the international talent necessary for sustained technological advancement.

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2. White House News

ICYMI: “USS Lincoln: Performance For the Ages”

U.S. Central Command Commander Adm. Brad Cooper visited the USS Abraham Lincoln, describing the crew as a “strong group of high-achieving Americans standing tall.” Addressing recent media reports regarding morale and operational challenges, Adm. Cooper stated that “issues related to food, hot water and other concerns raised months ago were addressed by leadership and resolved.” He noted that while the crew is tired after 260 days at sea, “they continue to fire on all cylinders” during what he considers one of history’s most consequential naval deployments.

Reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/08/icymi-uss-lincoln-performance-for-the-ages/

President Trump Delivers Largest Prescription Drug Price Drop in Over 60 Years

President Trump has implemented “Most Favored Nation” policies and the TrumpRx platform, which the administration credits for the “largest annual decline” in prescription drug prices since 1963. By aligning U.S. prices with those in comparable nations, 17 major drugmakers have agreed to lower costs, ending what the administration calls “decades of Americans subsidizing cheaper drugs abroad.” Consequently, many medications, including insulin and fertility drugs, have seen price reductions of 50–90%, with the TrumpRx platform reportedly generating $700 million in savings to date.

Reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/08/president-trump-delivers-largest-prescription-drug-price-drop-in-over-60-years/

First Lady Melania Trump’s Efforts Prove Successful in Ukraine-Russia

On August 17, 2026, First Lady Melania Trump facilitated the reunification of a child separated by the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. This achievement marks the 34th reunification orchestrated by her office since she authored a “Peace Letter to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.” Emphasizing the significance of these humanitarian efforts, the First Lady stated, “There is nothing more powerful than reuniting a mother with her child after an extended period of time,” and affirmed her ongoing commitment to reuniting families affected by the war.

Reference: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/08/first-lady-melania-trumps-efforts-prove-successful-in-ukraine-russia/

3. Truth Social Posts

Trump highlighted the electoral standards of India, citing a conversation with Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar regarding the necessity of photo identification and the rarity of mail-in ballots in that nation. Citing these practices as a model, Trump emphasized the urgent need to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.

Trump issued a comprehensive series of endorsements for Republican candidates in Florida ahead of the August 18th election, as well as one for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. He endorsed Jennifer Balkcom for Congress in North Carolina, while simultaneously backing Florida Senator Ashley Moody, supporting Byron Donalds for Governor, and endorsing Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. Furthermore, he offered his support for Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, championed State Representative Meg Weinberger, and endorsed Jon Maples for the state legislature.

Regarding federal representation in Florida, Trump backed Jimmy Patronis, endorsed Kat Cammack, supported Aaron Bean, backed John Rutherford, endorsed Randy Fine, supported Mike Haridopolos, backed Gus Bilirakis, endorsed Anna Paulina Luna, supported Laurel Lee, backed Sydney Gruters, endorsed Greg Steube, supported Scott Franklin, backed Catalina Lauf, endorsed Brian Mast, supported Mario Diaz-Balart, and backed María Elvira Salazar. Across these endorsements, Trump consistently highlighted his platform of economic growth, border security, energy dominance, and the protection of the Second Amendment.

Reference: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump

4. Government Department News

State Department (state.gov)

The Gabonese Republic National Day

Secretary of State Marco Rubio extended congratulations to the people of Gabon on the 66th anniversary of their independence, celebrated on August 17. The statement highlighted the growing commercial ties and deepening security cooperation between the two nations, noting a shared commitment to Gabon’s stability, prosperity, and sovereignty. The United States reaffirmed its role as a steadfast partner as Gabon moves toward its future, offering well wishes for the health and peace of the Gabonese people.

Department of War (war.gov)

Department of War Orders Research Security Audits at 30 Academic Institutions

The Department of War has directed 30 academic institutions to audit their research and financial collaborations with foreign entities of concern, including those associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes. The mandate seeks to protect taxpayer-funded research from “unauthorized technology transfer, intellectual property theft and adversarial exploitation.” Under Secretary Emil Michael stated the Department has “zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security.” Institutions must report their findings and mitigation plans, such as terminating problematic partnerships, by August 31, 2026, to maintain federal funding eligibility.

Department of War and RTX Accelerate Critical Munitions Production Through Navy Tomahawk Award

The Department of War announced a $22.9 billion Navy contract with Raytheon, an RTX business, to increase Tomahawk missile production. Under Secretary Michael P. Duffey stated the award addresses the need to expand munitions production to ensure “our Warfighters never face a fair fight.” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao emphasized the investment’s role in accelerating delivery at “unprecedented speed” to equip the Joint Force. The contract aims to fortify supply chains and reduce procurement lead times as part of the Department’s Acquisition Transformation Strategy.

Contracts for Aug. 17, 2026

The Department of War awarded several major contracts. Twenty-four companies received a multiple-award contract with a $920 million ceiling for aerospace and ground equipment modernization through 2036. Parsons Government Services Inc. was awarded $664,805,774 for technical, logistics, and program management support. Additionally, Elroy Air Inc. received a $46,058,871 contract for autonomous vertical take-off and landing aircraft development, while Lockheed Martin secured two contracts totaling over $55 million for engineering services and Air Commando training support.

Department of Health and Human Services (hhs.gov)

HHS Launches STREAM to Advance Next-Generation Weed Management

HHS and ARPA-H launched the Systems for Tracking and Resilience in Efficient Agricultural-input Management (STREAM) program. Supporting President Trump’s Executive Order on regenerative agriculture, the initiative seeks to develop technologies that control resistant weeds while reducing reliance on chemical herbicides. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stated the program aims to “Make America Healthy Again” by protecting agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment. STREAM focuses on improving precision agriculture and monitoring chemical residues in water and food supplies to strengthen long-term food security.

HHS Awards Over $96 Million to Strengthen Mental Health, Suicide Prevention, and Substance Use Disorder Services

HHS, through SAMHSA, announced $96.7 million in grants to bolster behavioral health services nationwide. The funding supports initiatives including suicide prevention, substance use disorder treatment, peer support, and emotional assistance for those affected by disasters. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stated the investments help Americans “recover and live with dignity” by expanding treatment access. The funds are intended to provide crisis support for individuals, including those experiencing homelessness, to help them move toward lasting recovery and community stability.

HHS & HUD Advance Trump Administration ‘Treatment First’ Policies to Address Homelessness, Addiction & Mental Illness

HHS and HUD are shifting federal policy away from “Housing First” models toward a “Treatment First” approach. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and HUD Secretary Scott Turner stated the previous policies “failed” to address addiction and mental illness. The new directive mandates that housing be paired with mandatory treatment and recovery services to promote self-sufficiency. As part of President Trump’s Great American Recovery, the administration will prioritize funding for programs that address the root causes of chronic homelessness rather than housing alone.

Treasury Department (home.treasury.gov)

Treasury Seeks Public Comment on GENIUS Act Proposed Rulemaking

The Treasury Department has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement section 3 of the GENIUS Act. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the rule aims to provide “regulatory certainty” to “cement the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency” and “keep America the crypto capital of the world.” The proposal defines terms for issuing, offering, and selling payment stablecoins in the U.S. Public comments on the proposed framework are requested within 60 days of its Federal Register publication.

5. 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates

Gavin Newsom (gov.ca.gov)

Governor Newsom signs legislation 8.17.2026

Governor Gavin Newsom announced the signing of several pieces of legislation into law. The full text of the signed bills is available for review through the official California Legislative Information website.

ICYMI: Law signed by Governor Newsom helps pave the way for the world’s largest union of rideshare drivers

The California Gig Workers Union has reached the threshold to represent gig drivers statewide, establishing the world’s largest union for rideshare drivers. This follows the 2025 signing of AB 1340, which authorized collective bargaining for these workers. Governor Newsom stated that while families struggle with affordability “because of the Trump administration” and “in an era when Trump is abandoning people,” California is “standing with unions to protect workers.” The union may be certified following a mandatory 30-day waiting period overseen by the Public Employment Relations Board.

Wes Moore (governor.maryland.gov)

Governor Moore Statement on Maryland Victory in FBI Headquarters Lawsuit

Governor Moore praised a U.S. District Court ruling that blocked the Trump administration from relocating the FBI headquarters from the planned Greenbelt, Maryland site to the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. Moore stated that “President Trump tried to take from Maryland what Maryland had already won” and characterized the administration’s efforts as an “illegal” attempt to “play political games.” He called for immediate progress on constructing the facility in Prince George’s County, emphasizing that the project is essential for national security and public servants.

JB Pritzker (gov.illinois.gov)

Illinois Begins New School Year with High Marks in National Education Rankings

Governor Pritzker highlighted Illinois’ recent national education rankings, noting the state is among the country’s leaders in K–12 and higher education outcomes. The Governor credited these achievements to sustained investments, specifically citing an increase of $2.5 billion in Evidence-Based Funding, bringing total formula funding to a record $9.2 billion. As the new school year begins, the administration aims to continue lowering costs and expanding opportunities to ensure student success.

Gov. Pritzker Announces Three Appointments to Boards and Commissions

Governor Pritzker announced the appointment of three members to the Illinois State Police Merit Board, pending Senate confirmation. The appointees are Monica Argumedo, a forensic psychiatrist and founder of 1st Response Psychiatry; Sean McCoy Britton, a criminal defense and personal injury attorney operating his own firm; and Cynthia Bryant, a Chief Investigator with the City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General and pre-licensed therapist. These appointments are part of the Governor’s ongoing effort to build a team of diverse experts.

Daily Public Schedule: Monday, August 17, 2026

Governor Pritzker has no public events scheduled for Monday, August 17, 2026.

Tim Walz (mn.gov)

Commission on Judicial Selection Opens Application Process for Sixth Judicial District Vacancy

The Minnesota Commission on Judicial Selection is accepting applications to fill a judicial vacancy in the Sixth Judicial District, created by the upcoming retirement of the Honorable Leslie E. Beiers. The position is chambered in Duluth, St. Louis County. Applicants must possess integrity, maturity, legal knowledge, and experience. Applications are due by 4:00 p.m. on September 8, 2026, with interviews expected in October. The commission encourages candidates who “reflect Minnesota’s full diversity” to apply.

6. AI & Tech Company News

OpenAI (openai.com)

The Defender’s Window

Following the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, Greg Brockman highlights the urgent need for organizations to improve cybersecurity as AI increasingly automates both cyberattacks and defensive measures. OpenAI is strengthening its safety requirements and utilizing AI as a “cyberguardian” to identify and fix software vulnerabilities. The strategy focuses on foundational controls and leveraging frontier intelligence, such as using models to write secure code and verify software, to shift the economics of security in favor of defenders.

OpenAI joins PORTS-Pike project

OpenAI has partnered with SB Energy, NVIDIA, and the U.S. Department of Energy to develop an 8-gigawatt data center at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio. The project, supported by the administration of President Trump, is expected to create 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 long-term positions. OpenAI will fund the capacity through its own growth and investor capital. Additionally, the company is committing $40 million to a community grant fund and providing $84 million in Codex credits to Ohio college students.

NVIDIA (nvidia.com)

Securing the Infrastructure of Intelligence

NVIDIA is partnering with SB Energy to secure Land, Power, and Shell (LPS) capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio to host NVIDIA AI factories for OpenAI. This initiative addresses infrastructure constraints for frontier AI labs that lack the financing to secure long-term capacity independently. The project targets an initial 4.25 gigawatts of capacity, with potential for further expansion. OpenAI has committed to substantial NVIDIA infrastructure deployments through 2030, representing a total opportunity of approximately $600 billion in compute revenue.

7. Congressional Watch

Covers the 2026-08-16 session — the Congressional Record is published with a one-day delay.

No Congressional Record found for 2026-08-16.

8. Policy Impact Analysis & Heatmap

This analysis is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Impact on Market

Based on today’s policy developments, our analysis identifies the following market impact themes:

THEME 1. DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION

The government’s massive investment in munitions production underscores a prioritize-production mandate that benefits large prime contractors. While shareholders see immediate demand growth, potential bottlenecks in specialized supply chains remain a critical constraint. Critics warn that such high-level state spending may exacerbate inflationary pressures within the defense sector over the long term.

THEME 2. PHARMACEUTICAL PRICING INTERVENTION

The administration is aggressively using its influence to align domestic drug prices with international benchmarks, directly impacting sector profitability. While the policy aims to alleviate cost burdens for the electorate, it risks stifling domestic research and development budgets. Industry observers suggest that sustained price caps could lead to reduced pipelines for future therapeutic innovation.

THEME 3. SECURITY-DRIVEN RESEARCH CONTROLS

New audits at academic institutions signal a strategic shift toward controlling intellectual property in critical technology sectors. This oversight is designed to mitigate geopolitical risk but threatens to dampen private-public collaborative efforts. Opponents argue that such mandates impose significant administrative costs and may inadvertently alienate international research talent.

Policy Impact Heatmap with Market Direction

Each cell shows an estimated impact score on a fixed scale of -10 to +10, reflecting how today’s policy developments may affect each market sector. Positive scores (green, ▲) suggest bullish impact; negative scores (red, ▼) suggest bearish pressure. Rows and columns are sorted by impact strength, and sectors and policy events with no meaningful impact are omitted. The heatmap, the analysis below, and the Impact on Market themes above are produced from a single unified analysis: the heatmap visualizes the magnitudes, while the text explains the causal reasoning behind them.

Government fiscal expansion in the defense sector via the massive RTX contract provides a substantial tailwind for military contractors. This infusion of capital ensures long-term revenue visibility, bolstering sentiment within the defense industrial base. Conversely, aggressive regulatory intervention in the pharmaceutical market via the TrumpRx platform exerts downward pressure on pricing power. While the administration frames these moves as cost-saving measures for consumers, industry analysts express concerns regarding the erosion of margins for large-cap drug manufacturers.

Heightened scrutiny of university research by the Department of War signals a tightening of the regulatory environment for dual-use technologies. This creates operational friction for academic and tech partnerships, potentially slowing the velocity of innovation. Meanwhile, the STREAM initiative introduces a potential supply-side disruption for traditional chemical herbicide producers. By pivoting toward regenerative agricultural tools, the government is shifting market dynamics away from incumbent crop-science incumbents. These moves collectively demonstrate a pattern of state-directed resource allocation and heavy-handed pricing oversight, driving volatility across affected verticals.

DC Residents want National Guard Troops out of their city. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMGWashington DC—On Saturday afternoon DC residents rallied in opposition to street patrols of armed National Guard Soldiers. Organized by the Party of Socialism and Liberation, multiple speakers told of the negative effects from the deployment of thousands of armed troops throughout the city. They also called on residents to increase pressure on city leadership to end the armed patrols and request National Guard be returned to their States. They also demanded DC be given Statehood.

Statehood would afford the rights to self-governance and representation under the Constitution. The National Guard occupation would not have been allowed within the District limits had its residents enjoyed full Statehood, several speakers said. There are currently 4600 National Guard assigned to patrol the District and they are being moved from hotel rooms to apartments at a cost of $292 million, according to a published report on the WJLA News website. Their patrols are being extended to January 2029, the end of Trump’s term.

The National Guard Soldiers have been occupying city neighborhoods and public spaces since August 11, last year. One year ago Trump ordered the activation of National Guard units from several States to patrol the downtown area near Union Station, Metro train stations, and the National Mall. He had falsely claimed the District was experiencing a “crime emergency.” National Guard troops enjoined federal law enforcement agencies already surging in DC under the guise of fighting a city wide “crime wave.” Trump also took over control and oversight of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) website conflicted with his claims of a DC violent crime wave. Historical crime statistics show the violent crime in the District was trending at an unprecedented 30 year low. The DOJ website page breaks crime down by category and also showed some minor crime type statistics marginally increased year over year from 2024. But it showed serious crime had decreased significantly in 30 years.

On September 4, 2025, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed suit against Trump, Hegseth, and the Department of Justice for deployment of National Guard. In its filing, Schwalb wrote, “Defendants’ actions flout the Posse Comitatus Act and its counterpart, 10 U.S.C. § 275, which enshrine the nation’s foundational prohibition on the participation of military forces in domestic law enforcement absent the most extreme exigencies, such as an invasion or rebellion. Defendants have established a massive, seemingly indefinite law enforcement operation in the District subject to direct military command.”

The Posse Comitatus Act forbids U.S. Armed Forces for policing unless there is a declaration of an emergency such as an insurrection, civil unrest, a hurricane, or other natural disaster. DC is currently under none of these conditions, yet an appeals court declined to order a stop to the deployment as appeals courts have ordered in other States where suits were brought against National Guard deployments.

Speakers Denounced Troops As An Illegal Occupying Force

A spokesperson from the Party of Socialism and Liberation said there was no crime emergency in the city. “A year ago the Trump administration told us these troops were going to be placed here to make the city more safe and to lessen the crime in our communities, even going so far as to declare DC a public safety emergency,” said Madoca, an organizer with PSL. “But anyone living in this city knows that this is far from the truth. The guise of safety has always been a falsehood,” they said.

Cam, a lead organizer with the Answer Coalition, was emphatic about the National Guard troops being used to further tropes of racism and oppression in a city that is predominantly African American. “Before their arrival these Soldiers were fed a distorted image of our city. In the media [they were told] that what is unfamiliar and feared is a threat. The social media [told them] that our city is plagued with viciousness and ineptitude giving way to neglect and crime. This image is widespread on social media. But putting them [here], they recognize that their neighbors are not criminals, that poverty is not filth, and the only sector of our city that needs cleaning are the halls of government.”

Statehood Would Give DC Residents A Voice In Their Government

DC has a an overwhelming progressive voter base and Statehood would add two seats to the Senate and one seat to the House chamber. These would likely be Independent or Democratic Party Senators and an Independent or Democratic Representative. A two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, with Presidential signature would be required under the Constitution to pass the Statehood Act. In 2016, 85% of DC residents supported Statehood.

In 2020 Eleanore Holmes-Northern helped gain 223 cosigners for H.R. 51, a Bill that would provide a path to DC Statehood. According to her website, “Support for Norton’s bill has been overwhelming. H.R. 51 has a record number of House cosponsors (223) and the Senate’s D.C. statehood bill, introduced by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), also has the most cosponsors ever (34). Earlier this year, the House passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which contained extensive findings supporting D.C. statehood, marking the first time in history either chamber of Congress has endorsed D.C. statehood.”

DC Statehood And Autonomy Would Have Prevailed In Court Over Occupational Forces

DC Statehood is justified for many reasons, the least of which are the occupation forces now patrolling District streets. Another reason is the absence of just taxation in a democratic system. Taxing sales revenue without giving citizens a voice was the basis for the revolt by the Colonists against the British Crown in the 1770s. Their rallying call was that there should be ‘no taxation without representation.’ And DC residents pay some of the highest taxes in terms of property taxes, income taxes and corporate taxes. DC lines up as collectively the 48th most heavily taxed zone in comparison to all States’ tax rates. DC also has no representation in neither the House of Representatives nor in the Senate. A ceremonial House seat was set aside and is “elected” every 2-years by DC citizens and held presently by Eleanore Holmes Norton, but she has no voting power and no official voice in the House. Therefore DC residents are actually citizens in name only. They are similar to nomads in another country, locked out of their own democratic system.

Meanwhile all other States enjoy representation in both legislative chambers giving their residents access to redress grievances through their representatives. The State of Wyoming, for example, has one House representative and two Senators though it has far fewer residents than the District. Wyoming only has 588,000 residents, and the District has 702,000. That’s 114,000 more than Wyoming. Further, Wyoming residents pay a per capita tax rate of $4,009.00 while District of Columbia residents pay a per capita tax rate of $15,009.00. While Wyoming is ranked first in tax competitiveness (the lowest taxes average per person), the District is 48th in tax competitiveness (one of the highest taxed zones in the country).

DC also has one of the highest costs of living in the country and unlike other States, DC cannot charge out-of-state workers income taxes because it is not a State. Workers in adjacent states enjoy the higher paying jobs DC has to offer but pay less in taxes in both Maryland and Virginia. This therefore places DC residents at a greater economic disadvantage, causing them to depend on Congress for funding for shortfalls.

DC also may also lose its ’Home Rule’ status under Trump, something that took decades to achieve. Home Rule, or the ability to set its own statutes because it is the prerogative of the Congress to give it autonomy. Since the majority party has ceded its power to Trump, he could take Home Rule by executive order with the stroke of a pen. It would be challenged in the courts but by not having Statehood, there is no guardrail to protect what limited autonomy District residents have.

Push For DC Statehood Spurred By Military Occupation

The occupying military forces patrolling DC Streets and the resulting mobilization of citizen’s rights groups have virtually guaranteed a future positive outcome for Statehood. When the balance of power within the legislature is contested in November 2026, its power is certain to shift back to Democrats in the House and possibly in the Senate too. With this shift will come increased pressure to give DC the Statehood it has been demanding for decades.

The post DC Residents Rally To End National Guard Occupation appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

CNN says attack ‘beneath the office’ after Kristen Holmes asked president about Jon Ossoff’s comments on key aide

The White House launched a personal attack against a CNN reporter on Monday with a social media post that mentioned her children and accused her of asking a “disgusting and inhumane question”.

A White House post targeted Kristen Holmes, a senior White House correspondent for the network, after she asked Donald Trump to respond to a widely shared comment by the Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a speech on Sunday.

President, who has decried mail-in ballots amid false claims of election fraud, issued March order to curb voting by mail

Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, Politico reports, citing Palm Beach county voting records. The White House has confirmed the president’s mail-in vote, according to the New York Times, which added that this was at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot.

In March, the president signed an executive ⁠order restricting the ​use of mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of US Congress. Trump has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, calling for restrictions on the policy for years and falsely claiming that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud.

Donald Trump berated a CNN reporter at a press availability, insisting that she 'be quiet' after she asked about a reduction in US military exercises with South Korea. The CNN correspondent, Kristen Holmes, pressed Trump on whether Kim Jong-un had requested a reduction in military activities. When another reporter asked about the extensive accounts of deteriorating living conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln during its lengthy deployment in the strait of Hormuz, the president dismissed the complaints: ' It was fake news reporting from CNN'

• Trump dismisses USS Lincoln criticism and snaps at CNN reporter to ‘be quiet’

President says US carrier is ‘beautifully maintained’ and calls network ‘fake news’ over reports of poor conditions

Donald Trump claimed he had third-hand reports that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was “beautifully maintained” despite extensive accounts of deteriorating living conditions during its lengthy deployment in the strait of Hormuz.

At the White House on Monday, the president berated Kristen Holmes, a CNN reporter, at a press availability, insisting that she “be quiet” and describing the reporting as fake news.

President hosts Nathanial Rai and lifeguard Ryder Williams at White House after video of California rescue went viral

Nathanial Rai had been swept off his feet along the California coast, was rescued by a 16-year-old lifeguard – and was now sitting in the Oval Office with Donald Trump.

Of the rescuer, Ryder Williams, Trump said to Nathanial: “He’s a real hero. I don’t know if I’d do it.

US president’s abrupt order to scale back joint exercises with Seoul is meant to ‘flatter’ North Korea’s dictator, top Democrat says

Donald Trump’s move to gut Washington’s 73-year-old military alliance with Seoul has been called “inane” and “shortsighted” as lawmakers warned it risked strengthening Russia’s hand in Ukraine.

The US president abruptly ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint exercises with South Korea just days after North Korea test-fired ballistic missiles, justifying the decision by citing his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong-un, the nuclear-armed dictator such exercises exist to deter.

1. Overview

President Trump directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to significantly scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, citing cost concerns and North Korea’s current “respectful posture.” He announced the liberation of former hostage Kevin Rideout, noting this brings the total number of American captives freed during his second term to 110. Furthermore, Trump lauded the newly signed Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan as a “big, bold, and important first step” for regional security.

Trump formally recognized the swearing-in of Attorney General Todd Blanche and expressed appreciation for counsel regarding the White House Military Complex. He voiced strong frustration regarding vandalism at the World War II Monument and the Reflecting Pool. Additionally, the President championed his administration’s policy outcomes, pointing to reductions in prescription drug costs and crime rates in Washington, D.C., while emphasizing ongoing initiatives to restrict child sex-change procedures and maintain high tariffs on foreign imports.

Trump directed a sharp critique toward Fox News Sunday and host Shannon Bream, labeling their coverage “biased” and criticizing their use of outdated footage of the White House construction project. He contrasted his administration’s achievements—such as border enforcement and military expansion—against the network’s reliance on what he termed “fake polls.” He warned that continuing to feature hostile guests would ultimately harm the network’s ratings, while reiterating his belief that his 2024 electoral win was a “landslide.”

The State Dept issued formal statements recognizing the 81st anniversary of Indonesia’s independence and the 66th anniversary of the Gabonese Republic’s independence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted the U.S. commitment to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Indonesia, focusing on defense, digital economy growth, and critical minerals. Regarding Gabon, Secretary Rubio emphasized deepening commercial ties and affirmed that the United States remains a “steadfast partner” in supporting the nation’s future stability and sovereignty.

The expansion of a protectionist trade regime through the enforcement of de minimis tariffs forces e-commerce and retail firms to internalize higher landed costs, creating a structural headwind for margin-sensitive business models reliant on low-value imports. Simultaneously, a strategic reduction in Indo-Pacific military exercises introduces uncertainty into the defense industrial base, as the shift away from established security norms potentially limits long-term procurement visibility despite being characterized by the administration as a “cost-saving measure.” Finally, intensified regulatory scrutiny targeting elective care providers creates significant operational and reputational risk, inducing sector volatility as private healthcare entities navigate an increasingly interventionist policy environment.

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2. White House News

No White House news found.

3. Truth Social Posts

Trump addressed significant international developments today, instructing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost and the respectful posture of North Korea. He also celebrated the signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan as a “big, bold, and important first step” for Middle Eastern security. Additionally, he announced that former hostage Kevin Rideout is returning to the United States, marking the 110th captive American liberated during his second term.

Regarding domestic policy and administration, Trump noted the swearing-in of Todd Blanche as Attorney General and expressed gratitude for input on the construction of the White House Military Complex. He highlighted media coverage concerning his support for law enforcement, and lamented the vandalism of the World War II Monument and Reflecting Pool. The President also shared a variety of news reports covering his administration’s accomplishments, including the dropping of prescription drug prices, successes in reducing crime in Washington, D.C., efforts to combat fraud in child sex-change procedures, and victories in maintaining tariffs on cheap imports. Other linked reports addressed FBI investigations (no link), the removal of DEI directives (no link), science policy (no link), immigration fraud (no link), and Democratic political challenges (no link).

Trump also issued a sharp critique of Shannon Bream and Fox News Sunday, characterizing the coverage as “biased” and criticizing the use of outdated imagery of the White House construction site. He contrasted this unfavorably with the broad achievements of his administration, such as border control, economic records, and military rebuilding, while reiterating his conviction that his 2024 election victory was a landslide. He warned that the network’s reliance on what he deemed “fake polls” and hostile guests would negatively impact their ratings.

Reference: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump

4. Government Department News

State Department (state.gov)

Indonesia Independence Day

Secretary of State Marco Rubio extended congratulations to Indonesia on its 81st independence anniversary. Highlighting the nations’ Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Rubio emphasized cooperation in democratic governance, defense, security, trade, energy, and technology. The Secretary noted plans to expand collaboration in critical minerals and the digital economy. Additionally, Rubio offered condolences to those affected by the recent earthquake in East Nusa Tenggara.

The Gabonese Republic National Day

Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated the people of Gabon on the 66th anniversary of their independence, celebrated on August 17. The Secretary highlighted the strengthening commercial ties and security cooperation between the two nations, affirming a shared commitment to Gabon’s stability, prosperity, and sovereignty. Rubio stated that the United States remains a “steadfast partner” as the country looks toward its future.

5. 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates

JB Pritzker (gov.illinois.gov)

Daily Public Schedule: Sunday, August 16, 2026

Governor Pritzker has no public events scheduled for Sunday, August 16, 2026.

6. AI & Tech Company News

No relevant AI & tech company updates found for this date.

7. Congressional Watch

Covers the 2026-08-15 session — the Congressional Record is published with a one-day delay.

No Congressional Record found for 2026-08-15.

8. Policy Impact Analysis & Heatmap

This analysis is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Impact on Market

Based on today’s policy developments, our analysis identifies the following market impact themes:

THEME 1. PROTECTIONIST TRADE REGIME EXPANSION

The court ruling upholding de minimis tariffs accelerates the shift toward higher landed costs for retail and e-commerce firms. By removing the tax-free entry for small-package shipments, the administration forces companies to internalize tariff costs or shift sourcing strategies away from traditional low-cost hubs. Critics worry this policy acts as a hidden tax on consumers and risks supply chain disruptions for firms reliant on high-frequency, low-value imports.

THEME 2. DEFENSE POSTURE REALIGNMENT

The announced reduction in joint military exercises signifies a retreat from traditional security norms in the Indo-Pacific. This policy shift introduces new risk premia into regional security frameworks while altering the long-term outlook for defense procurement spending. While the administration frames this as a cost-saving measure, opposition voices warn that diminished readiness could weaken deterrence and impact the long-term growth trajectory of the defense industrial base.

THEME 3. REGULATORY PRESSURE ON HEALTHCARE

The targeting of specific elective care providers marks an expansion of the administration’s interventionist social agenda. By launching investigations into funding and business practices of medical entities, the policy creates significant legal and reputational risk for private healthcare organizations. Industry observers highlight that such focused regulatory campaigns can lead to service closures and increase overall sector volatility.

Policy Impact Heatmap with Market Direction

Each cell shows an estimated impact score on a fixed scale of -10 to +10, reflecting how today’s policy developments may affect each market sector. Positive scores (green, ▲) suggest bullish impact; negative scores (red, ▼) suggest bearish pressure. Rows and columns are sorted by impact strength, and sectors and policy events with no meaningful impact are omitted. The heatmap, the analysis below, and the Impact on Market themes above are produced from a single unified analysis: the heatmap visualizes the magnitudes, while the text explains the causal reasoning behind them.

The administration’s directive to curtail joint military exercises with South Korea introduces uncertainty regarding regional defense architecture. This shift potentially diminishes demand for regional defense sustainment contracts and supply chain logistics, reflecting a pivot away from established security commitments. Critics argue such moves invite regional instability and risk eroding long-standing tactical partnerships.

Simultaneously, the judicial validation of tariffs on de minimis imports imposes significant cost pressures on retailers reliant on low-cost international fulfillment models. By closing this regulatory loophole, the administration effectively forces a reassessment of global supply chain economics for consumer discretionary firms. These actions reflect a broader protectionist policy environment aimed at prioritizing domestic manufacturing over globalized retail logistics. Furthermore, the intensified scrutiny of specific healthcare services creates heightened regulatory risk for providers, potentially increasing compliance costs and chilling investment in specific medical sub-sectors. These policy shifts demonstrate an aggressive use of executive and legal levers to reshape domestic economic and social outcomes.

Democratic senator Jon Ossoff attacked Donald Trump and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, over the Iran war, saying they lied 'the nation into a war'. Ossoff, who is running for re-election in Georgia in November, made the comments while speaking at a rally in midtown Atlanta on Sunday afternoon

• Jon Ossoff calls Trump’s handling of Iran war ‘uniquely despicable’ in excoriating speech

I want to unpack the latest propaganda campaign John Solomon rolled out (er, latest before his new hit job on Eric Swalwell, which had been packaged up in March before Swalwell dropped his gubernatorial race) — serving in his dual role of unpaid Special Government Employee permitted to troll through highly classified intelligence records and demand their release, and his long-term role of Trump’s favorite propagandist, funded by unknown sources. This latest installment turns his propaganda campaign back on himself, casting himself as a hero in his own disinformation.

Before I unpack it, let me explain the challenge: Solomon tells his rubes none of the key details they would need to know to test the story or assess his credibility (nor have propagandists like Catherine Herridge or Paul Sperry, who have magnified it).

Solomon’s latest propaganda dump is based off: a spreadsheet the date and source of which he refuses to share. An undated presentation Tulsi Gabbard’s team did last year but did not release — David Warrington approved its release on August 4 (the day Jay Clayton would be sworn in), meaning Bill Pulte released in the period he was burning the IC down. And the only validation of any of these claims is in a letter Solomon claims Kash Patel wrote on a scrap of paper, not FBI stationary, that bears no signature nor date. Of the five Ws that journalists aspire to explain, Who, What, Where, When, and Why, Solomon doesn’t bother with at least three of them. Neither do his rubes, or the President, care about all that.

This thing is entirely devoid of any specific anchor in space or time.

Solomon succeeds in building stories off fumes because the far right has trained its adherents to create mobs based off the mere whiff of allegation, not because there’s any there there.

Here’s what Solomon claims he has shown based off that obscured spreadsheet cited but not released by Tulsi and backed by a letter the FBI Director may have written, but if he did, without any trappings of official capacity.

The FBI and U.S. spy agencies received derogatory evidence about Joe Biden from 14 different informants but embarked on a secret operation to tamp down a Ukrainian corruption scandal engulfing his family during the 2020 election by formally designating Attorney General Bill Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, key members of Congress and journalists as Russian disinformation “conduits,” according to explosive intelligence community documents declassified by the White House.

None of this is backed by the three documents Solomon released.

Start with Solomon’s claim the FBI and spooks received derogatory evidence about Biden from 14 informants. Solomon ignores who those informants were or whether they were credible (I guess we can add “Why” to the list of five Ws Solomon has dispensed with). His own write-up refers to the guy who pled guilty to making shit up and hanging around with senior Russian spies, and the spreadsheet refers to one of the guys who Trump’s own administration labeled a Russian asset.

Instead of describing these informants’ lack of credibility, Solomon jumps immediately to the part where he claims — based on a single spreadsheet, all the most important details of which he has hidden!! — proves a “secret operation to tamp down a Ukrainian corruption scandal,” a scandal that Solomon treats as if it were true.

Remember when The Hill had to caveat Solomon’s bullshit claims about such a scandal in February 2020? Remember what those caveats were? That John Solomon “failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources” and that his hybrid role at the outlet created an illusion of credibility.

Solomon is attempting to resuscitate the old Ukraine tale that fell apart in 2020, using the very same discredited techniques he uses here.

Solomon gets that number — 14 informants — from “an FBI letter made public Wednesday,” which is the unsigned undated letter he attributes to Kash. That unsigned undated letter seems to talk about something radically different than Solomon is talking about. Kash describes those 14 to be a subset of 53 informants all of “whose identities were potentially known to foreign intelligence and under hostile control.”

As you know, Round River identified at least 53 Confidential Human Sources (CHS) whose identities were potentially known to foreign intelligence and under hostile control. At least 14 of these CHSs reported derogatory information on Joe Biden. At my direction, this FBI will take the unprecedented step of providing you with the source reporting from all 53 sources so you can finally see the facts.

That is, Kash is not claiming these were worthwhile informants. He’s saying the informants and their role providing information to the US government were at least potentially known to foreign spies who could, as I suspect happened with Christopher Steele, feed the informants bullshit. But Kash also describes that this list of 53 informants also may include people fully controlled by America’s enemies.

John Solomon calls them informants and suggests they are credible. Kash says at least some of them are working for and controlled by America’s adversaries.

And Solomon — who has been given privileged access to some of America’s most sensitive secrets — says discounting information from them was a bad thing. A scandal.

Now look at the means by which, Solomon claims, the Deep State tamped down on the Ukraine conspiracy theory that fell apart the first time Solomon was, literally, peddling it. The Deep State “tamped down” on this information by designating a bunch of people, including Bill Barr, conduits and discussing whether to tell them they were talking to known spies or shitty informants.

Seven paragraphs after introducing his inflammatory lead, Solomon explains that the spreadsheet whence he gets this claim was a list of people “identified as potential candidates for defensive briefings.”

Remember how, in 2019, the far right was outraged that Trump did not get a defensive briefing that his incoming National Security Advisor was being recruited by at least Turkey and probably also Russia? And then a centerpiece to the Durham Report was a claim — which is actually debunked if you read the report closely — that Hillary was being briefed on potential infiltration by foreign spies but Trump was not? But at the same time, in 2020, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson were furious that their attempts to implicate Hunter Biden in precisely the Ukraine scandal that fell apart in Solomon’s hands were thwarted when DOJ told them one of their key sources was a Russian spy? By the way: The new Swalwell package doesn’t show him getting a defensive briefing that he had fucked someone the FBI suspected was a Chinese spy.

The far right has been all over the map about how they feel about defensive briefings. In this case, Solomon does some work to obscure how that impacts the meaning of his spreadsheet. Solomon never explains the What of this spreadsheet. For example, he never explains what “conduit” and “target” mean, which is a bit nutty since he himself is named as a conduit and the description of some of these people as being targeted in a “Soros related conspiracy theory” suggests target does not mean they did anything wrong, but instead were lied about by people of the sort Solomon likes to platform. But even before you get there, Solomon refuses to tell us the date of this spreadsheet, which is rather telling, because at one point he claims it dates to the 2020 election, in another he suggests it ties to the side channel Bill Barr set up to ingest disinformation from Rudy Giuliani (which Solomon misleadingly describes as an effort to mainstream the criminally false claims of Alexander Smirnov) in January 2020, in still another he (or rather, Tulsi) describes it occurring in December 2019. I don’t know when this spreadsheet was created. I find it exceedingly interesting, though, that there was a date on which Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were arrested in October 2019, were considered “conduits,” with no FBI equities, but Rudy Giuliani (and Pete Sessions) were already deemed FBI equities (in all the other known cases listed as FBI equities, like Hunter Biden, those were people under criminal investigation), while Solomon himself was only listed as a conduit for his role in an OANN film, and not for his role in laundering bullshit stories that the Hill would later need to caveat heavily.

The known investigation into Rudy arose out of a criminal investigation into Lev and Igor, one that survived long after Bill Barr intervened to make Rudy’s exposure go away. I could struggle to find explanations for what point in time these descriptions would have been applied, but most of them point to more intervention from Bill Barr than we knew. Or, cherrypicking other Ukraine counterintelligence inquiries by John Solomon to hide the ones that were far more damning to him.

Whatever the explanation, that makes this treatment of Paul Manafort all the more interesting.

Solomon’s attempts to obscure the date of this spreadsheet is especially interesting given that he makes it clear a key part of it focuses on Andriy Telizhenko in the line of the spreadsheet just above his own entry — thanks for explaining that the FBI really did have reason to keep investigating Michael Caputo, John! — and a time that apparently preceded when he was installed at DHS to fuck up Trump’s COVID response!

As I have noted, Bill Barr likely met, on or before September 26, 2019, with one or several of the people sanctioned on the same day as Telizhenko, which would provide an explanation for his inclusion on this list that accords better with the timeline than Solomon’s tale than his attempt to launder information Rudy picked up, including from other known Russian spies.

Again, having espoused about 100 different views towards how defensive briefings work, here Solomon says that merely telling — say — the Attorney General that the Ukrainians peddling dirt to him are likely recruited Russian spies is instead an attempt to “tamp down” real data showing corruption on the part of the Bidens.

Solomon ascribes credibility to the informants, some of whom Kash says may be foreign spies, by pointing to this presentation done under Tulsi, which (among other things) reveals that this entire effort to review Round River is doing what Solomon accuses the FBI of doing. That presentation appears focused exclusively on Ukraine sources, and not at all on the 39 other suspect informants Kash mentioned.

Solomon gins up outrage by claiming that the Feebs who reviewed this material labeled each CHS file with a notation stating these allegations were false.

Remarkably, the DNI report alleges, the Round River team amended each of three informant files to portray their long-term reporting as false.

“The team of analysts had administrative accesses to all reporting and drafted intelligence products that were later added to each CHS file to show the reporting was deemed Russian disinformation,” the DNI memo stated. “The FITF-R team also provided defensive briefings to any Congressional member who obtained reporting related to any aspect of the Ukraine narrative.”

See how that “portray their long-term reporting as false” not only is not in quotes but is not remotely reflected in what Solomon quotes right after it? I see nothing in the presentation that substantiates that claim and much that debunks it. Start with the fact that none of the three informants described were closed in 2019 or 2020, when this supposed nefarious activity was going on. The informants were closed in December 2023 (when prosecutors was discovering that Alexander Smirmov made shit up), April 2022, and April 2025.

April 2025?!?!? You mean one of the informants Solomon is fluffing was deemed not to be credible by Trump’s own Deep State?!?!

What Tulsi’s report does say is, “The Round River team did not corroborate any of the allegations of the ‘Ukraine Narrative’,” which is different than saying that it’s all false. It’s saying that the spooks made an effort to corroborate it but could not … the same way they couldn’t corroborate the Steele dossier.

So in spite of the fact that Solomon has been given privileged access to highly classified files, he has nothing new.

His claim that any of this is credible retreats back to his old debunked propaganda.

Hunter Biden would eventually be convicted of tax and gun crimes before his father pardoned him, and legacy media would eventually pivot and be forced to acknowledge the corruption concerns from 2020 were real as Congress produced evidence of Joe Biden’s complicity with his son and business partners and the first family’s collection of millions of dollars from foreign interests.

An impeachment probe by the House Oversight Committee ultimately concluded in August 2024 that Joe Biden engaged in impeachable conduct by helping to enrich his family with millions of dollars in business schemes that traded on his name and then defrauded voters by lying to cover up the scandal. The committee specifically cited meetings between Biden and his son’s Ukrainian business partners, arguing the president “actively participated” in an influence-peddling conspiracy. [Second link replaced]

And even there, Solomon has to engage in deceit to make the claim. James Comer did indeed file a report making allegations of corruption (much of it focused on China, contrary to what Solomon said). But not enough right wingers believed it was credible to vote to impeach, not even in an election year! And the sole proof that the former AP and WaPo journalist points to to claim that the “legacy media” conceded he was right is a Glenn Kessler column (in the WaPo, though the impeachment report cited him rather than John Solomon’s propaganda), the week Kevin McCarthy approved the impeachment inquiry that itself, which still noted the consensus was that Viktor Shokin had to be fired. (Note, too, that Solomon does not release nor mention the still active investigation into Zlochevsky that Trump shut down in this period.) All Kessler conceded is that Biden changed his plans, not that anyone objected with it.

None of this salvages all the reasons Solomon’s past propaganda has been discredited. On the contrary, this is all unreliable for the same reasons his Hill propaganda is unreliable. He chooses not to examine the most basic context behind the breathless claims he makes.

It does, however, get him privileged access to the most sensitive intelligence files.

The post John Solomon’s Propaganda Technique: Keeping the “Who” “What” “When” Secret to Fool the Rubes appeared first on emptywheel.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is on a diplomatic mission in the Middle East to meet Hamas officials and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an attempt to salvage a ceasefire in Gaza. The talks come after Netanyahu rejected the US-backed 15-point peace plan for the territory in a rare public break with the Trump administration this month. Nosheen Iqbal speaks to global editor Devika Bhat

Georgia Democratic senator has stoked speculation for 2028 presidency bid by delivering stinging attacks on Trump

Democratic senator Jon Ossoff has attacked Donald Trump’s “uniquely despicable” handling of the US-Israel war on Iran, accusing the US president of “re-rigging” a corrupt system for himself in an excoriating speech.

Ossoff, who is running for re-election in Georgia in November, has repeatedly stoked speculation that he is laying the ground for a bid for the US presidency in 2028 by delivering a series of stinging attacks on Trump and his administration.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is on a diplomatic mission in the Middle East to meet Hamas officials and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an attempt to salvage a ceasefire in Gaza.

The talks come after Netanyahu rejected the US-backed 15-point peace plan for the territory in a rare public break with the Trump administration this month.

Nosheen Iqbal speaks to global editor Devika Bhat – watch on YouTube

Energy prices have been high since the US-Israel war with Iran began and the strait of Hormuz was blocked

US gas prices this month are so far the highest ever recorded for August as peace talks between the US and Iran have stalled and Donald Trump launched fresh threats against Oman.

The national average price of gas was $4.06 per gallon on Monday, according to data from AAA, $0.05 higher than last week and $1 more expensive than a year ago. In California and Hawaii, averages hit about $5.50 a gallon.

Decision leaves intact $5m civil judgment against Trump after jury found him liable for sexually abusing writer

The US supreme court has rejected for a second time Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn a jury verdict in 2023 that found him liable for sexually ​abusing writer E Jean Carroll, and later defaming her.

The court announced the decision in an unsigned order on Monday, without providing an explanation of their decision. The order just listed the US president’s petition, along with several other petitions, under “rehearings denied”.

President issues threat to ‘bomb the shit out of them’ after previously threatening Gulf ally in May

Donald Trump has again threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of his effort to end the US-Israel war on Iran, as the two-month window to negotiate peace with Iran expired on Monday with no end to the conflict in sight.

The latest threats against Oman, which is not a party to the war, have illustrated how Trump’s unpredictable and often outrageous approach to diplomacy has upset US partners and failed to achieve the breakthrough that he has promised to end the war.