The governor of Kentucky picked up the phone twice — and twice, someone on the other end suggested Mitch McConnell was dead.

Not tipsters. Not trolls. Agencies. “Not state agencies,” Andy Beshear specified — which leaves exactly one level of government to wonder about.

Beshear dropped the bombshell in a Katie Couric interview published Wednesday, explaining why he’d spent early July publicly demanding answers about the 84-year-old senator’s vanishing act. “It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell,” he said. “In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies — not state agencies — suggesting he’s passed.”

He never said which agencies. He never said exactly when. And McConnell’s office, asked to respond, went with its signature move: nothing.

Rewind to June 14. McConnell is found unconscious at his Washington residence and rushed to the hospital. Then — silence. No diagnosis, no timeline, no statement. For nearly a month, the most powerful Republican in modern Senate history simply ceased to exist in public, while GOP colleagues issued eerily similar testimonials about “lengthy” phone calls with their “old friend” and the internet convinced itself he was brain dead or worse.

Somewhere in that vacuum, by the governor’s account, the death calls came in.

By July 11, Beshear had had enough, publicly telling McConnell to end the “crazy speculation.” The next evening came the now-infamous photo: the senator beside wife Elaine Chao, clutching a July 12 Washington Post like a hostage holding the day’s paper. The statement blamed a fall, brief unconsciousness, and pneumonia — no stroke, no heart attack, no tumors, per the Capitol’s attending physician. The internet declared the photo AI; a Washington Post forensic review authenticated it. Sleuths fixated anyway — the bruised hand, the missing wedding ring — and Chao, fresh off a China trip during her husband’s hospitalization, was photographed Tuesday slipping out of the rehab facility in a face mask.

Beshear is not treating the photo as case closed. He wants a video, a call-in, anything a functioning senator does. His office, he says, has had zero contact with McConnell’s since June 14.

And the governor has already revealed his next move. “I might make some news right here,” he teased on Al Sharpton’s show Sunday — before pointing to a Kentucky constitutional provision he says lets him “appoint all state officers” when a vacancy hits — the GOP’s 2024 special-election law be damned. If the seat opens, the Democratic governor may simply name a successor and dare Republicans to sue. State Rep. Josh Calloway is already warning him off, and one name floating for the pick, per the Washington Times: Charles Booker — the Democrat already running for the seat.

The clock makes it combustible. If the vacancy comes after August 3, the untested law leaves no window for a special election — the seat sits empty until January, unless Beshear grabs it and the courts decide.

“If we end up there — and I hope we don’t — there’s at least going to be probably a disagreement,” the governor said.

Seventeen days to the deadline. Still no video.

Elon Musk has 40 days to find out if he’s a felony defendant.

A bipartisan Wisconsin panel — three Democrats, three Republicans — voted 5-1 Thursday to refer the world’s richest man to prosecutors, finding probable cause that his $1 million voter checks before the April 2025 state Supreme Court election were election bribery. In Wisconsin that’s a Class I felony: up to 3.5 years in prison.

Rewind to March 30, 2025. Musk takes the stage at a Green Bay convention center wearing a cheesehead, which he flings into the crowd, and tells more than 1,000 people the race will steer “the course of Western civilization” — possibly “the entire destiny of humanity.” Then he hands oversized $1 million checks to two voters. One of them, Nicholas Jacobs, chaired the Wisconsin College Republicans. Random drawing, indeed.

Musk knew exactly how it looked. His original post announcing the visit was deleted and revised, and after critics pointed out he’d initially promised money to people who had already voted, the winners were hastily rebranded as PAC “spokesmen.” Wisconsin’s attorney general sued to stop the checks; the courts let them go out anyway. The commission has now concluded what the lawsuit couldn’t stop: the social media offer of $1 million to people who voted was made “in order to induce them to vote in that election.”

And what did $20 million-plus buy him? His candidate, Brad Schimel, lost to Susan Crawford by 10 points — in the most expensive judicial race in American history, north of $100 million. Schimel even lost Brown County, the home turf where Musk wore the hat, by 3 points.

Musk’s verdict on the defeat: “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary.”

The corruption-of-the-judiciary crowd may want to check the docket. A watchdog lawsuit seeking to ban Musk from ever paying Wisconsin voters again is pending in Brown County. A judge last month ordered Musk to testify under oath in a class action alleging his 2024 giveaway defrauded petition-signers because winners weren’t actually chosen at random. And through it all, Tesla has been suing Wisconsin over its dealership ban — a case that could land before the very Supreme Court Musk spent millions trying to flip.

Now the decision belongs to one man: Brown County DA David Lasee, a Republican, who hasn’t said a word about the referral. Neither has Musk’s camp. Neither has Musk — a notable silence from a man who never met a legal fight he wouldn’t live-post.

The clock started Thursday. Lasee has 40 days to decide: no charges, and Musk walks away clean — or he can put the world's richest man on trial for handing out checks in a cheesehead hat.

The checks cleared 15 months ago. Elon's bill is still being written.

The water is gone from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool again, and what’s left on the bottom is two long, parallel scars of shredded blue paint.

Photos of the drained basin started ripping across social media Monday, and the reading was instant and brutal: those aren’t knife cuts. Those are tire tracks — and everyone knows whose.

Because there is video. On May 7, while the fresh “American Flag Blue” coating was still going down, Donald Trump’s motorcade — including the roughly 20,000-pound presidential limousine known as The Beast — rolled straight across the empty pool floor so the president could inspect the color he’d personally picked. NBC cameras caught the convoy crossing wet paint and leaving tire marks behind. The White House wasn’t embarrassed. Communications chief Steven Cheung posted the video himself, captioned “they see me rolling!”

Three days earlier, Trump had stood at the pool bragging that the new coating was indestructible. “If you had a knife, you can’t even cut it,” he said on May 4. “So strong, so powerful. It’s like powerful rubber.”

Within weeks of the pool refilling, the uncuttable coating was peeling off in chunks and the water had turned swamp green. Trump’s explanation: vandals. Sick people with “a box-cutter or a knife of some kind,” he said, who slashed a 350-foot slit in the lining. Six people were arrested. One of them, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, has pleaded not guilty — he says he stopped mid-bike-ride, touched a flap of lining that was already loose, and got swarmed by Park Police and held five hours without a phone call.

Coating specialists never bought the knife story. The blue material is polyurea, which needs each layer applied inside tight curing windows — and this job was crushed into roughly eight weeks to hit a July 4 deadline it missed anyway. The pool spent America’s 250th birthday behind a fence.

Now it’s empty for the second time in three months. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum laid out the plan with a straight face: “Drain the water, clean up the fireworks stuff. Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.”

The repair bill tells its own story. Trump launched this as a $1.5 million spruce-up. It now stands at $14.7 million and climbing — flowing through a no-bid contract to Virginia’s Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the same firm now hired to redo its own work. Asked about the timeline and the new cost, the owner declined to answer. Senator Richard Blumenthal has a probe open into the contract.

The White House has heard the tire-track theory and hates it. “This is dumb and unfounded,” spokeswoman Taylor Rogers snapped when it first surfaced in June. Even the skeptics’ experts stop short of a verdict — the motorcade, one coating-industry chair said, is one of several suspects in a proper failure analysis, alongside the rushed job itself.

But here’s what no one in the administration has explained: why the convoy drove across an unfinished pool floor at all. Or why the damage keeps showing up where the internet swears the wheels went. Or how a coating a knife supposedly couldn’t cut got slashed for 350 feet by a guy on a bicycle.

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I was watching Trump meet with Putin the way you watch a dog sniff at an electric socket: fascinated, slightly horrified, and dimly aware that if something went wrong, it would be both catastrophic and oddly satisfying. The commentators on television kept talking about “historic optics” and “geopolitical shifts,” while I sat there on my couch, fascinated by Putin’s face filler. Between him and Trump, it felt like a contest to see who could be more visually exhausting. Both men are exceptionally hard to look at — one too smooth, the other too sagging — like two wax figures left too close to a space heater.

Trump, of course, looked like he was actively decaying — slumping and bloated in a way that suggested the Big Macs were finally winning. There he was, shaking Putin’s hand as though it might suddenly turn into a novelty buzzer. And when it was all over, he declared to Fox News that Zelenskyy — poor Zelenskyy — was the one who now had to “get it done.” The phrase was repeated with such confidence you’d think “it” was a minor plumbing repair rather than the survival of a sovereign country.

I couldn’t help but imagine Zelenskyy, sitting in Kyiv, hearing this clip and pausing like I did when my dentist once told me I had “a lot of interesting teeth.” What do you even do with that? Do you thank them? Cry? Pretend it’s normal?

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In case you missed it:

• Following California Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan to add more Democrat seats to Congress, more blue state Governors have announced plans to follow suit

• No matter how hard Alex Jones tries, he is going to lose InfoWars as a result of repeatedly smearing school shooting victims as “crisis actors” - and he may actually lose it to The Onion this time

• E.J. Antoni is Donald Trump’s latest hire, but his resume is a bit strange: he’s an economist for The Heritage Foundation, one of the authors of Project 2025, and he was LITERALLY A PART OF THE JANUARY 6 INSURRECTION

All that and more in today’s ICYMI!

How does that one meme go - ‘Some men would rather buy Twitter for $44 billion than go to therapy’? In the case of Donald Trump, it’s more like ‘Some men would rather sell Alaska to Russia than admit they’re in the Epstein files.’ 

That’s more or less the vibe in America right now: Donald Trump is doing things increasingly more erratically and desperately than ever before. He’s meeting Vladimir Putin to allegedly put an end to the invasion of Ukraine, but he told the American people he was meeting Putin in “Russia,” something that concerns the people of Alaska just a little bit. He’s federalizing Washington D.C., having deployed the National Guard as a result of his boy Big Balls getting beaten up by a random gang of little girls.

And he’s even trying to say that Texas is “entitled” to five more Congressional seats, seemingly in an attempt to rig the midterms.

Yeah. About that…

Blue State Gerrymandering?

Blue state Governors are teaming up to stop Donald Trump from stealing the 2026 midterms - by gerrymandering?

It all started with the Texas plot to redistrict in an attempt to create five more Congressional seats for Republicans. To avoid voting on the redistricting in a vote Democrats surely would have lost, Texas Congressional Democrats simply fled the state to kill the vote a few weeks ago. Just yesterday, they announced that they would finally be returning, following threats of arrests, removals from office, and countless fines (which, to be fair, is something that WILL happen in the best case scenario).

Yet Governor Greg Abbott is undeterred by the delay, with Texas Republicans announcing they would end their current special session today and immediately start a new one. But you know who was inspired to fight back against this clear attempt at election rigging? California Governor Gavin Newsom, who announced this week he’s going to have a special election on November 4 to have California voters decide on redistricting in the blue state.

The goal, Newsom said, is to redraw the maps to give California an additional five seats - which would effectively cancel out any gains made in Texas by Republicans. This plan, known as The Election Rigging Response Act, is still somewhat in the works, with lawmakers having until August 22 to create a redistricting measure to put on the ballot, but sometime soon we should have the rough new district lines drawn out in a map.

Response to the move has been opposed by Republicans and some independents, but Democrats, for the most part, seem energized by Newsom’s actions. It gives off the impression of somebody actively fighting not only to give Democrats a fighting chance in a now-rigged system, but to protect democracy itself (and not just my special hat, in my store now okay sorry for the plug). 

Yet the move has also seen states across the nation rushing to get into this redistricting game. Maryland Governor Wes Moore said “all options are on the table” when it comes to redistricting, something Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has also stated. New York actually has laws against gerrymandering, but Governor Kathy Hochul is exploring all options available to potentially revise those laws. According to NPR, the gerrymandering requests are going both ways now, however, with Missouri, Indiana, and Florida looking to get in on the action for Republicans, too.

Let me be clear: under any other circumstances, redistricting for blatantly partisan reasons is bad. It’s typically a sign of an easily exploitable system being taken advantage of, and the only real losers in these situations are the voters. But folks, we’re through the looking glass right now looking into the eye of a really volatile storm. Donald Trump is all but admitting he plans to steal the 2026 midterm elections, and if redistricting across the country is the most effective way to combat this, then we absolutely need to do whatever we can to save the things that ACTUALLY make America great ALREADY.

The Completely Satisfying Death of InfoWars

It finally happened: three years after losing a set of lawsuits for defaming the families of children whose lives were lost in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting back in 2012, Alex Jones is officially going to lose everything.

When Jones initially lost the cases, he was on the hook for $1.4 billion, something he was unable to pay as a result of his bankruptcy. Yet three years have gone by with little being done to procure the money for the families, so a Texas judge ruled this past Wednesday that InfoWars was to be liquidated - and everything sold off following the liquidation would be used to pay back the families what they are owed.

One of the first steps here, according to The New York Times, is for a court-appointed receiver to take possession of InfoWars’ parent company Free Speech Systems, LLC, within the week. This includes everything Jones physically owns for the show, such as mixing boards, microphones… and all intellectual property. I’m assuming that means all of Jones’ weird supplements, but it also includes the rights to basically everything Alex Jones has ever made.

But it gets better. Because The Seattle Times broke it down a bit further and revealed that there is a lot of uncertainty over the timeline for most of this, and the only thing we REALLY know is that the receiver is going to change the locks on every building Free Speech Systems owns by this weekend. This leaves Alex Jones in an uncertain place, not knowing if he’ll even be able to stream next week at all

According to the Times, he stated he was certain someone was going to buy Infowars to keep it on the air. Yeah, about that. According to The New York Times:

“Last year, a bankruptcy judge ordered that assets from Infowars be sold to pay the families. The Onion, a satirical website, won an auction to acquire Infowars, saying it wanted to turn the site into a satirical platform that would ridicule the kind of conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones has spread.

But in December, a judge rejected the sale, saying that the auction didn’t maximize the amount of money it would provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors. Instead, the judge suggested the families pursue their case in state court. The ruling on Wednesday, from a state court in Texas, came as part of a continuation of their efforts.”

And according to this headline from The Hill:

“Judge clears way for The Onion to revive bid for Alex Jones’s Infowars.”

Folks, do you remember around a decade ago when Peter Thiel helped finance Hulk Hogan’s defamation trial against Gawker, effectively destroying Gawker out of what seemed to be sheer and utter spite? It’s a case that’s widely regarded as one of the absolute worst things that has ever happened to the free press in America, and is part of why Peter Thiel is viewed as one of the most insidious men behind the scenes in American politics. Well, and there’s also… that other thing.

The purchasing of InfoWars by The Onion, in any case, would be the exact opposite of Peter Thiel’s destruction of Gawker: a net positive for the press, a decimation of one of the worst forces of disinformation in America, and a likely contributor to a future video of Alex Jones openly weeping about the death of his poor baby.

But I don’t know if I buy the death of InfoWars. I think it’s just a crisis actor.

MORE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Following several months of embarrassingly low jobs data, Donald Trump has hired Project 2025 co-author E.J. Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Turns out he was also a January 6 insurrectionist, meaning Antoni is probably just REALLY BAD AT NUMBERS, since he’s denying low jobs numbers AND a landslide election loss for Trump!

• Following up on THAT story, it’s now being reported that CONSERVATIVES don’t want Antoni in office, either. 

• A THIRD war plans leak has hit the group chat: 404 Media has revealed that this time, it was an ICE agent who added “a random person” to a group chat, exposing every detail of a manhunt they were on to catch an alleged murderer.

• Mark Zuckerberg has gone out of his way to kiss the ring of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend Donald Trump at every opportunity since 2024. His company Meta also recently had data leak showing that its chatbots could “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.” I’m sure the two aren’t related in any way.

• Back in 2015, Republicans believed strongly in a conspiracy theory known as Jade Helm that claimed Obama was going to federalize cities to declare martial law. It was so silly that even Barack Obama said it was silly. Steve Benen at NBC has noticed the irony in who was concerned about it then and who embraces it now.

• Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen went on the Tara Palmeri Show to discuss the “one” Trump-Epstein case he ever worked on, and he may have accidentally confirmed more details regarding the “Katie Johnson” case.

• “RFK Jr. Awkwardly Hauls Dr. Oz Up a Cliff in Bonkers MAHA Stunt,” writes The Daily Beast. “This is the single dumbest government ever,” writes Keith Edwards.

• Donald Trump was bullied by virtually every European leader for his braindead meeting with Putin. Reportedly, Trump was “fuming” after the call, and what I wouldn't give to see footage of that call.

• A British pub’s employees told management they would “stage a mutiny” if a reservation was accepted for JD Vance. A reservation was accepted for JD Vance. The pub was forced to shut down. 

• Under Trump’s new tax law, veterans are likely not going to have work requirement exemption for food stamps. I never thought I’d see a day where Republicans would be so far gone they can’t even PRETEND to care about the well-being of veterans.

• A number of rabbits have been seen in Colorado with “horn-like warts,” which scientists say are harmless. Listen. If they’re so harmless, then why are THE GUARDIAN literally calling them “demon rabbits”?

• A Department of Justice employee threw a sandwich at an ICE agent’s face and now faces federal charges. Again: he threw a sandwich at an ICE agent, was fired from the DoJ, and faces felony assault charges. 

• Reporters Without Borders, an organization that tracks press freedoms across the world and are the originators of the World Press Freedom Index, have been deemed by Russia to be an “undesirable organization.” It could have to do with the fact that Russia has effectively banned independent media, has currently 50 known jailed journalists, and out of 180 countries monitored by the organization, is ranked 171st.

• Ron DeSantis has announced a sequel to Alligator Alcatraz: a new immigrant detention facility he’s called “Deportation Depot.” It’s only a matter of time before DeSantis really meets the alliteration where he wants it to go and creates his own SS.

• Deepfake videos are being pushed online of AI-generated doctors giving medical misinformation. Not at all concerning: CBS News’ investigation found 100 KNOWN examples of this. 

In case you missed it:

• ‘Big Balls’ of DOGE fame was assaulted, and now Trump has threatened a federal takeover of Washington D.C.

• Jim Acosta has made basically everybody very mad following an interview he conducted with an AI avatar of a shooting victim

• Charlie Kirk has proposed arresting more people… to solve homelessness

All that and more in today’s ICYMI!

This might be a hot take, but I think Donald Trump’s on the Epstein list, guys.

Everything about the developments in the Epstein saga as of late feel like a very public and poorly disguised attempt to launder that point of view out of existence. First, Trump tried gaslighting the American people into thinking the Epstein saga was never a big deal. Then, he denied being a part of that world altogether. And now, after a conviction for sex trafficking, which followed a dismissed perjury charge for LYING about said sex trafficking, he expects us to believe anything Ghislaine Maxwell has to say?

But there’s more to life than the slow drip of Epstein updates. This is an unusually packed news week, so there’s a good chance you may have missed out on some, and maybe even most, of the following stories. This week, we’ve got everything from an alleged hate crime hoaxer making his triumphant return, to Linda McMahon being trolled on live TV, to the following:

TRUMP IS COOKING UP SOMETHING WEIRD

On August 5, 2025, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, also known as Big Balls of DOGE, was on his way to his car in Washington DC when he was allegedly surrounded by 10 young men and was viciously assaulted. Following the assault, Trump took to Truth Social to share a photo of the young man, battered and bleeding and missing his shirt, claiming that crime in DC was “totally out of control.”

And then he drops the bomb:

“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City…The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14.”

You know, the Epstein list intro has been a recurring bit so far on ICYMI; it’s been a way to talk about the Epstein updates without having to make this the “Epstein list newsletter.” But how am I supposed to talk about the fact that Donald Trump is proposing making 14 year olds adults, an ODDLY SPECIFIC AGE TO NAME, without ALSO talking about the fact that he is alleged to be a client of a dead man who trafficked 14 year old girls alongside his convicted madam, who ABDUCTED and GROOMED those 14 year old girls? Is this an attempt at a Reverse Uno of those memes that tell you “Wow, did you know Jared Leto credits ‘nine women’ with his success? Google nine women to find out more!”

But what makes this even more suspicious is that this is yet another one of Donald Trump’s attempts to seemingly declare martial law for minor reasons. As Nicholas Nehamas and Campbell Robertson write for the New York Times, “The president has floated the idea of a federal takeover since the earliest weeks of his second term, a threat bolstered by legislation introduced by congressional Republicans who want to impose their policy agenda on the city’s Democrat-led government. The city has had a limited degree of self-government since the Home Rule Act of 1973. So far, Congress and the Trump administration have taken a series of smaller bites out of Washington’s autonomy, including handing the city an unexpected $1.1 billion budget hole and creating a federal “D.C. Safe and Beautiful” task force to work with local police officers.”

And I’m not just saying this is for “minor” reasons, for NO reason: later in the article, the Times point to DC’s falling crime rates, with officials pointing out that violent crime in the city had reached a 30-year low - 26 percent lower than 2024. This actually matches with findings that Trump’s own FBI found a few days ago that violent crime has been RAPIDLY declining, not just in DC, but across the country. 4.5% down, in fact, from 2023 to 2024. This includes a 14.9% decrease of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, an 8.9% decrease in robbery, and a 5.2% decrease in rape.

I’m not going to pretend that Big Balls wasn’t assaulted by a gang of teenagers, because the photographic evidence seems to point to that being a reality. But I’m also not above speculating that Donald Trump would SEE that happening and use that as a way to potentially take over DC AND redefine what an adult actually is. Because if a 14-year-old is actually an adult in the United States… did Ghislaine Maxwell even commit a crime? Does it legally matter if Donald Trump was involved?

Charlie Kirk Solves the Housing Crisis (by making it worse)

There’s a housing crisis that’s exacerbating the amount of homeless people there are in America. According to USA Today, homelessness increased over 18% from 2023 to 2024, with over 771,800 known people living without a home in the United States. Again: that’s just what we know. And the problem seems to be getting worse and worse by the day.

How do we solve it? A rational solution can be found by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, who suggest we start by addressing systemic issues forcing people out of their homes, like a lack of affordable housing and limited healthcare access, as well as creating an emergency response system that can provide people with immediate shelter, support services, and clear roads to permanent housing.

Seems like it’s a lot harder than it sounds, but it sounds like THE most rational place to start… but if you’re Charlie Kirk, nope, those ideas are BAD. In a clip from his podcast shared by The Daily Beast, Charlie Kirk believes that the absolute best way to solve homelessness… is by arresting them.

“One of my hopes is to turn the Republican party into a resolutely stronger party on crime,” Kirk said. “We are not harsh enough on crime in this country...and this is not just about stopping criminals. If you enforce the law, housing will be cheaper because more of the country will be livable.”

The Daily Beast goes on to correctly point out that Charlie “does not have a formal background in finance, economics, or real estate” and that he is also a “college dropout.” Needless to say, this is an absolutely hilariously wrong idea from Charlie, especially because it comes only a few months after a study found that criminalizing homelessness does not work. As stated in the abstract:

“Local criminalization policies draw on the logic of deterrence to levy costs on individuals who engage in behaviors that are closely associated with various public concerns, such as those criminalizing behaviors associated with homelessness, thereby potentially reducing community-level costs. Yet, it is unclear whether the presence of these policies can be relied upon to reduce the frequency of a social crises within a local municipality…Contrary to the deterrence logic, the results indicate that these local criminalization ordinances cannot be relied upon to reduce the social crisis rate (i.e., the number of people experiencing homeless) and therefore do not provide the intended community-level benefit.”

Charlie Kirk is not only wrong, he’s PROVABLY wrong. Not that this is a surprise in any way, but in this particular instance, it’s worth highlighting that he is wrong about something that the equally stupid and malicious Trump administration COULD adopt if they were convinced by his insanity.

MORE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Hey, that was pretty crazy when Tulsi Gabbard announced Russiagate was a hoax, right? Would be even crazier if it turned out she ignored CIA experts and released the information before it was ready, and EVEN CRAZIER if the advice was so “classified” spying methods weren’t revealed to the public.

• Jim Acosta has “interviewed” an AI avatar of Joaquin Oliver, a teen who died in the Parkland shooting, that was created by the deceased teen’s father. It’s… it’s something.

• HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has revealed that Donald Trump calls him “three or four times a week” and asks him, and I quote: “Where are you? Why aren’t people healthier yet?” 

• SHOCKING NEWS: Donald Trump lied about banning Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after discovering he was a creep! He was a member until October 2007 - a year after he was indicted. Most honest man in America!

• Jussie Smollett allegedly faked a hate crime and definitively ruined his career in the process; or did he? Six years later, he’s back on a “military boot camp-style” reality show called Special Forces. Nobody REALLY stays canceled forever!

• Elon Musk has KILLED America… or more specifically, the America Party, with reports coming out that he has ghosted his third party consultants and hasn’t even filled out the paperwork to create the party.

• After DOGE cut hundreds of jobs from the National Weather Service, which evidence shows is part of why the Kerrville flooding was so bad, the National Weather Service have announced 126 new jobs.

• Elon Musk keeps talking about how family friendly the new Grok is. In other news, Grok made deepfake nude photos of Taylor Swift without being prompted (the photos are NOT in the link).

• Remember earlier when Donald Trump said he wanted teenagers to be considered adults? That news came on the heels of OTHER news that ICE is now recruiting teenagers! We are truly in Hell.

• It might sound insane to say this, but ChatGPT is telling teenagers the kind of things that adults get accused of grooming for. According to Euronews, a new study has found that ChatGPT is encouraging 13-year-olds to get drunk and high… and is also writing suicide notes for them.

• “GOP Senator Changes Child Rape Law After Relative Accused of Sex With Minor.” I mean, the headline tells the whole story, no?

• After over 40 years, The Howard Stern Show is coming to an end.

• The Atlantic have conducted a fascinating investigation into why the Proud Boys are so irrelevant in 2025. Spoiler alert: Enrique Tarrio is a fed, the group is splintered, and the pardoned January 6 insurrectionists are unsure about their loyalties.

• In just six months, Donald Trump has already accomplished nearly half of Project 2025.

• Iran has executed one of its nuclear scientists, alleging that he was a spy for Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad.

• Somebody called Laura Loomer “Trump’s Rasputin.” She is now calling herself that.

• Linda McMahon had exactly the day she deserved.

• An Epstein victim has written the Department of Justice, stating “I am not some pawn in your political warfare.” 

Donald Trump is not trying to win the next election. He is trying to invalidate it. With his latest move — a mid‑decade census aimed at excluding undocumented immigrants — and the firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report, he has laid bare the strategy of the autocrat in decline: if you can’t win under the rules, change them.

This is not just a policy proposal. It is a direct assault on the United States Constitution, which mandates that the census count the “whole number of persons” — not citizens, not voters, not the politically convenient, but persons. That constitutional clarity is being replaced with exclusionary data, produced by a system where the storyteller now controls both the microphone and the script.

Let’s be honest — no numbers that emerge from this Trump‑controlled census, or any economic metric overseen by appointees loyal to his narrative, can be trusted. When the July jobs report revealed only 73,000 jobs added and massive downward revisions to May and June, Trump reacted not by addressing the economy — he shot the messenger. BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer was summarily fired, accused of rigging the numbers without a shred of evidence.

And to be clear: this mid‑decade census is not authorized by Congress. It has no constitutional mandate. It has no moral legitimacy. It is a propaganda mechanism, parading as a policy initiative. And when you pair that with a staffing purge meant to silence or replace statistical guardians, you’re breathing life into an authoritarian rule.

If those we rely on to provide objective information — from the BLS to the Census Bureau — can be fired for telling uncomfortable truths or ignored for counting the inconvenient, then we are no longer in a representative democracy where voters choose their leaders.

We are in a system where leaders choose their voters.

I used to think the White House was big enough. Not “big” like Texas or a suburban Cheesecake Factory, but big enough for the modest goal of running a country. You have the Oval Office, the Lincoln Bedroom, a press room for pretending you have answers—why mess with that? But Donald Trump apparently woke up one morning, glanced at 245 years of democratic tradition, and said, “What this democracy needs is an event space.”

They’re calling it a ballroom, but that’s like calling a cruise ship a canoe. Ninety thousand square feet—nearly twice the size of the White House itself—slapped onto the East Wing like an afterthought from a man who thinks restraint is a character flaw. It’s a $200 million “privately funded” project, which is to say: funded by a mystery bag of money we’re all pretending not to see.

I’m not sure how this is legal. Shouldn’t Congress have to approve “making the White House unrecognizable”? If the president wanted to replace the Statue of Liberty with a Chick-fil-A, we’d at least have hearings, right? But apparently, as long as you call it “private money,” you can bolt a luxury conference center to the side of the People’s House and no one can stop you.

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This is for all the democracy defending Americans who want to counteract the MAGA hat - it’s something you can wear and something that, if you see someone else in it, you know you’re on the same team.

Ordering now ensures the hat will ship within a week, and they’re only going to be available for a limited time, so act quickly if you want a piece of Keith Edwards history. Thank you for supporting me for all these years - and thank you for supporting democracy.

In one of the most horrific examples of a Nightmare Blunt Rotation imaginable, it’s looking increasingly likely that Donald Trump is going to drop a #pardonbomb on the three worst people imaginable: convicted sex pest Sean “Diddy” Combs, disgraced ex-Congressman and convicted fraudster George Santos, and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Possibly even on the same day.

You may have noticed a lot of seemingly unrelated news dropping all at the same time over the past few weeks. On August 4, Christopher Wiggins for Advocate reported that Donald Trump said he had “the right” to pardon George Santos, but “nobody’s asked.” Incidentally, within a few hours, it was reported that Marjorie Taylor Greene had sent a formal letter to the Department of Justice, requesting that Trump grant Santos clemency for his crimes.

And just one week prior, on July 29, Dominic Patten reported for Deadline that Trump was “seriously considering” pardoning Diddy. Insiders told Patten that this wasn’t just a small murmur being made at the White House, but it had evolved from “just another Trump weave to an actionable event.” Trump later said pardoning him would be “hard” because of Diddy’s very public hatred of Trump’s presidency, all while conceding that Diddy had been found “half-innocent.”

Which leads to what John Mac Ghlionn at The Hill refers to as what will become Donald Trump’s “defining moment” in office: the pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker and friend of Trump’s. This has seen more press coverage and speculation than either of the other two on account of Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased co-conspirator in the sex trafficking operation and former best friend of Donald Trump. 

Like Diddy, Trump has stated that it is his “right” to pardon Maxwell should he please. Yet the very strongly rumored pardon, coming off of Maxwell getting moved into a federal prison camp so posh it’s been nicknamed “Club Fed,” has sparked backlash not only from Democrats and some of his base, but from the survivors of Epstein and Maxwell’s trafficking and their families. The most reported example, of course, being the family of Epstein whistleblower Virginia Giuffre, who have literally BEGGED Trump to not pardon the woman who trafficked their now-deceased sister.

“The government and the president should never consider giving Ghislaine Maxwell any leniency,” Giuffre’s family said in a statement. “Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life for the extraordinary violence and abuse she put not just our sister Virginia through, but many other survivors, who may number in the thousands.”

I think today might be as good of a day as any to remind people why it would be a complete travesty for any and all of these people to be pardoned. What were they convicted of? What does Trump look to gain from pardoning them? And what is the most likely outcome from him pardoning them?

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In case you missed it:

• Trump is BULLDOZING the White House

• The U.S. is slipping further and further down a Human Rights watchlist

• Donald Trump was DESTROYED by the president of Mexico

All that and more in today’s ICYMI, my new weekly newsletter.

Death, taxes, and Donald Trump’s placement on the Epstein list: these are the only things truly certain in life. 

To be honest, with the sheer scale of misinformation that Donald Trump and his administration have thrown at us over the past few weeks, I’m surprised that the Epstein list scandal has not only stayed alive, it’s seeing updates coming multiple times per day. You may have noticed that over on my YouTube page, this week alone, I’ve covered the story behind the missing minutes from the Epstein prison video being found, Trump flipping out over an Epstein survivor going public, Melania being outed as an Epstein girl, Trump slipping up and admitting he’s read the Epstein files, and Trump making a strange admission that Epstein “stole” one of his employees (more on that one later).

And yet, what if I told you there was more? There’s always more. Despite the fact that none other than Sydney Sweeney temporarily derailed the river of Epstein news, the focus is renewed. We are so back, y’all, and to kick off this week’s newsletter…

VIRGINIA GIUFFRE’S FAMILY IS PRETTY PISSED AT TRUMP:

In case you missed it, Donald Trump admitted that Jeffrey Epstein “stole” a 14-year-old girl from Mar-a-Lago. But it wasn’t just any 14-year-old: it was Virginia Roberts Giuffre, debatably the most well-known of Epstein and Maxwell’s survivors, who had previously implicated Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Jean-Luc Brunel, Les Wexner, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, and former MIT professor Marvin Minsky. More often than not, when you hear stories about Epstein’s very famous friends that allegedly raped young girls, they’re a story that originated from Giuffre.

Giuffre tragically passed away in April of this year, so she can’t confirm or deny whether Epstein “stole” her. However, her surviving siblings have come forward with concerns over Trump stating she was “stolen” because to them, it seems to imply that Trump knows more than he’s letting on.

“It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey ‘likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it,’” Giuffre’s two brothers and her sisters-in-law told The Atlantic. “We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this.”

According to her siblings Sky and Amanda Roberts, and Danny and Lanette Wilson, all of the recent news getting to the bottom of the Epstein list is bittersweet, because on one hand, the press is finally getting to the bottom of Epstein and Maxwell’s depravity… but on the other hand, they just lost their sister a few months ago, and they’re horrified by the potential for Ghislaine Maxwell to receive a pardon for her testimony to Congress.

“If our sister could speak today, she would be most angered by the fact that the government is listening to a known perjurer, a woman who repeatedly lied under oath and will continue to do so as long as it benefits her position,” the siblings wrote in a statement, referring to Maxwell’s overturned perjury charge.

Lost in the sauce of this story is that Trump admitted to more than one girl being “stolen” by Epstein, which means that there is currently another potential Epstein survivor out there that ALSO worked at Mar-a-Lago. This is just another “coincidence” in the long, storied history of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s friendship, just like the coincidences that Trump rode on Epstein’s jet eight times, or that Epstein was at Trump’s wedding, or that the two had a Victoria’s Secret party where they were the only men present, or that Trump knew Epstein well enough to send him a cryptic naughty birthday letter.

Yeah. It’s just one big coincidence.

Human Rights Org Specializing in Civil Society Does Not Find United States a Civil Society:

CIVICUS, a global civil society alliance, defines themselves as “an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels, and spans the spectrum of civil society.” They’ve been keeping tabs on countries via a Watchlist that monitors whether or not they’ve begun to “decline” as a civil space. To put it simply, they’re looking to see which countries have begun to plunge into fascism, or are CONTINUING to plunge into fascism.

On July 30, they issued a press release raising some concerns about civic freedoms on six countries: El Salvador, Indonesia, Kenya, Serbia, Turkey… and the United States of America. I’ll say that again: on a list outlining countries falling into fascism, the United States is sitting pretty alongside El Salvador and Turkey.

“The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism. Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back,” said Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary General of CIVICUS, in the press release. “Six months into Donald Trump’s second term, a bizarre assault on fundamental freedoms and constitutional safeguards has become the new normal.”

So… why is the United States sliding deeper into authoritarianism? According to CIVICUS, it’s a rise in political violence, with the assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman being directly cited, alongside the crackdowns on peaceful assembly and protests, the rise in deportations, the National Guard and Marines being deployed to Los Angeles, and the attacks on journalists Lauren Tomasi and Mario Guevara. But that’s not all, because they also highlight the defunding of PBS, NPR, and local stations, as well as the rollback of foreign aid, slashing humanitarian, and development and global health programs.

The press release is somehow even longer than Donald Trump’s history with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and CIVICUS makes a compelling case that the United States has become “narrowed” - in their list of rankings, that means the U.S. is a state where people can exercise their rights and freedoms, but “violations of these rights also take place.” Compare this to countries that are doing fine, or “open,” with “both enables and safeguards the enjoyment of civic space” and its citizens live in lower levels of fear, or the worse off, or “closed” countries, that are in “complete closure - in law and in practice - of civic space.”

That means the United States is slipping far beyond its reputation as “home of the free,” and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.

I’m not really sure what we can do about this except get Donald Trump out of office, and even then, is it too late to fix what Trump has already done? As we’ll see in a story later on about DOGE, the damage has already been done - and might be completely irreversible.

MORE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• On X, an alleged “bombshell” was dropped by Tulsi Gabbard claiming to prove Hillary Clinton created a “treasonous” plot to frame Donald Trump for colluding with Russia. The New York Times has revealed this is based off the work of - get this - Russian spies.

• DOGE was supposed to eliminate government fraud and waste, wasn’t it? To nobody’s surprise, it didn’t. Instead, it wasted $21 billion, and is projected to continue to waste $29 billion per year from aid organizations affected by the shuttering of USAID. I guess the real government fraud were the friends we made along the way.

• The Smithsonian has removed Donald Trump from an exhibit on impeachment within their American history museum, with the exhibit now slated to claim that only three presidents have ever faced impeachment in U.S. history. Which is strange, since Donald Trump is the only president to have ever been impeached twice, and we all know how much Trump likes to flex on things nobody else can claim.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has exposed his own game and revealed that the long con is to privatize social security. I don’t have a joke for this, it’s one of the more disturbing pieces of news this week that’s been unfairly buried.

• De minimis shipments, the tax loophole that allows duty-free low value shipments of $800 or less from overseas, will be dead on August 19. Another win for the “kill all poor people” initiative set in place by Donald Trump, experts claim that low-income families are going to be hit with anywhere between 10.9 and 13 billion in additional costs.

• President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum has once again destroyed Donald Trump, by getting yet another extension on Donald Trump’s big “beautiful” tariffs on Mexico. The woman the Washington Post once called “the world’s leading Trump whisperer” is less a whisperer than a wrecking ball, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up convincing Trump to tariff himself instead of Mexico.

• $200 million for a new, tacky gold ballroom at The White House, in place of the East Wing - and only The Daily Beast seems to have noticed that the East Wing used to be Melania Trump’s wing. Meaning: Trump is tearing down his wife’s part of The White House. Easily the most divorced guy energy he’s exuded in his second term.

• Senate Democrats are investigating the Paramount-Skydance merger following their quick $16 million settlement with Trump. But Skydance disputes that they broke any laws, specifying they stuck to anti-bribery laws - yeah totally, they just really like Trump and wanted him to have some money. Makes sense.

• I’m not sure we’re going to see a month this year without meaningful protests against Donald Trump. 50501 has announced that, following the success of the No Kings protests, more than 300 demonstrations are set to take place across the US on August 2. Fun fact: August 2 is just a day later than the two year anniversary of Mike Pence publicly denouncing Trump for his Jan. 6 indictment.

• “Radioactive wasp nest found at site where US once made nuclear bombs,” says ABC News. Is this nature’s revenge against that time Trump tried to kill all the bees?

• In the latest case of “water is wet,” it turns out Los Angeles protesters, the same protesters that kicked off what became the No Kings protests, were arrested on false pretenses. What - the Trump administration lying? That doesn’t make ANY sense.

• Nate Silver has released an analysis of the media’s focus on Jeffrey Epstein, asking the question of whether the Epstein saga is the new Russiagate. As of right now, the top comment reads, “Leave it to Nate to write a galaxy brained take about how the Republican president of the United States being credibly associated with a child sex trafficker is bad news for the Democrats.”

• One of the authors of Project 2025, Paul Dans, is going to challenge Lindsey Graham in the 2026 Republican primaries. Paul Dans edited ALL of Project 2025 and co-wrote the chapter declaring that most governmental bodies need to be privatized, so this would be a true example of replacing a paper cut with a stab wound.

• El Salvador has removed term limits and has extended the presidential term to six years, meaning Nayib Bukele can run for President indefinitely.

• The official GOP X account has posted a meme stating that Donald Trump is “making automobiles great again.” Unfortunately for him, the car is a Lada - a Russian automobile. Make Russia Great Again?

There’s a furious debate happening for the soul of decency raging across Twitter, Threads, TikTok, and anywhere debate can take place online. One that separates the smart from the dumb. The strong from the weak. The Nazis from the normies. One that draws the thickest possible line in the sand and asks the question:

Is Sydney Sweeney promoting eugenics?

This debate stems from a recent string of ads released by American Eagle featuring the White Lotus star, most of which rely on Sydney Sweeney’s sex appeal and a bit of dumb wordplay - many of them include a variation of the phrase, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” because get it? She’s hot? Great GENES ahem great JEANS? PS. buy our jackets too.

But there’s one in particular that has set the internet on fire, leading to one of the most sudden backlashes we’ve seen yet in 2025…

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After half a year of news cycles resetting every five minutes as a result of the Trump administration “flooding the zone,” we’ve finally settled into a steady drip-flow-drip-flow rhythm based around one story and one story alone: Donald Trump’s placement in the Epstein list.

The irony isn’t lost on me that the one thing that has finally managed to wrestle control of the messaging away from Donald Trump’s fat fingers, is also the one thing his base would not stop talking about for an entire decade. And now that we’re discovering everything from Donald Trump’s coded love letter to a dead pedophile to the fact that Epstein once pleaded “the fifth, the sixth, and the fourteenth” in regards to whether he’d ever seen Trump with underage girls, there’s even more irony in the fact that the opponent very suddenly does NOT want to talk about this. C’est la vie, I guess.

But while I’ve been tirelessly keeping you updated over on my YouTube with the latest in the saga of the “Never-Aged Enigma,” the world keeps turning and the news keeps churning. 

So, now is as good a time as any to introduce my new weekly newsletter, where I’ll be covering some of the biggest stories from throughout the week that I’m not covering over on YouTube. The zone is still being flooded, and we need to learn how to swim.

HOW TO BURN $1.26 BILLION IN THE MOST INHUMANE WAY IMAGINABLE

Buried three paragraphs into a memo released Monday from the Department of Defense is a curious announcement: Acquisition Logistics, a company from Virginia, has been awarded a “$231,878,229 firm-fixed-price contract” to create a 5,000 capacity immigration detention center for ICE. Though it is worth pointing out that despite the nearly $232 million advance, the contract is ACTUALLY worth $1.26 BILLION. Located on Fort Bliss army-owned land, this is going to be the single largest immigration detention center in the country, since despite Alligator Alcatraz also being able to hold 5,000, this new Fort Bliss detention center will have 5,000 beds.

All of this is interesting, because Acquisition Logistics is

• A small company that specializes in supply chain management

• A relatively new company, founded in 2008

• And most importantly, an inexperienced company, with little-to-no documented experience in detention centers

This inexperience shows in the Fort Bliss Project’s plans to detain immigrants in tents, rather than rooms, which is raising red flags for immigration advocates who correctly point out that it’s unlikely the living standards will even meet the already low standards set by current detention centers because, again, it’s five-thousand tents in a poorly-constructed space in the already volatile conditions of west Texas. 

As pointed out in New Republic, this news came out around the same time as a Human Rights Watch report that shows that it’s “now routine for basics like access to time outside of cells and meetings with lawyers to be denied. Medical emergencies are dismissed or met with punishment. Lockdowns are declared to cover for ICE’s being short-staffed. One man reported that he and others were forced to eat “like dogs,” bent over with their hands restrained behind their backs.”

As of right now, we are witnessing one of the biggest mass human rights violation events in American history, and we’re witnessing it happen in real time. If you find yourself approached by ICE, just remember: you have the right to remain silent. Remain calm, and don’t run. You have the right to a warrant from a judge before letting anyone into your home. You have the right to a lawyer. And document EVERYTHING. 

PARAMOUNT TRIED GLAZING TRUMP. SOUTH PARK BLEW UP THEIR GAME.

You’ve probably seen a lot of the clips online already from this Wednesday’s episode of South Park, and the absolutely brutal critique of Donald Trump - but have you seen any of the parts where South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone systematically tear apart Paramount, their parent company? This might be one of the most savage takedowns in television history - and it could lead to more manic Trump posts, lawsuits, and possibly the cancellation of South Park itself. I’m not joking about any of this - The White House have already released a statement, claiming South Park hasn’t “been relevant for over 20 years” and their popularity is hitting “record lows” due to “hanging by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

For anybody who hasn’t seen the episode, there are a few intersecting plots at work, but the most important one to know is that Jesus Christ, the person, has literally been forced into hanging out at South Park Elementary, which leads to the residents of South Park protesting - and being sued by Donald Trump for $5 billion. The reason this plot is important is because it introduces us to a few concepts that explain why this is one of the boldest pieces of television ever produced. 

• Donald Trump is an egomaniac with a very small penis, who threatens litigation over increasingly frivolous things, such as a painter making his penis anatomically correct or an Instagram commenter asking his boyfriend Satan (yes - Satan) if Trump is on the Epstein list.

• The only reason Jesus is being forced into schools is as a result of this litigation, which is requiring him to be in schools. When he reveals this, he goes on a hushed rant to the town that directly names Paramount, Stephen Colbert, and a “merger.”

That last point is important, because it reveals that South Park isn’t just ripping Trump to shreds for no reason - they’re getting revenge on their parent company Paramount. Why? To put it as simply as I can: two lawsuits happening in tandem directly led to delayed production on South Park, and Trey and Matt were not happy about it.

In Lawsuit #1, Donald Trump was suing Paramount on the grounds that 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a deceptive way, which CBS (owned by Paramount) denied doing. Despite the lawsuit being completely baseless and clearly built on nothing more than a wounded ego, Paramount decided to settle out of court for $16 million with Trump, on top of an additional $20 million in “coverage” of Trump. This move was criticized by EVERYBODY, including Stephen Colbert - whose Late Show was canceled two weeks later on the grounds that it was “purely a financial decision,” but is very transparently politically motivated. Paramount clearly wanted to suck up to Trump to get out of his crosshairs. As we’ll soon see, that likely did not work. 

Lawsuit #2 is far more complicated and spans many, many years. The shortest way I can put it is that South Park’s exclusive streaming rights were in a years-long tug-of-war between HBO Max and Paramount Plus, which coincided with Parker and Stone trying to negotiate a higher overall deal for themselves. THIS, however, was complicated by a long-delayed merger between Paramount and Skydance… a merger delayed due to complications with the FCC, who have to approve any such mergers… the FCC, run by Donald Trump, a man who was in the process of suing one of the companies in the merger.

Because of the delayed merger, Parker and Stone were in purgatory, having had to delay the release of season 27 by two weeks, which resulted in them publicly slamming Paramount for the merger being a “shit show.” But finally, on the evening of July 21, Parker and Stone inked a new deal for themselves to be EXCLUSIVELY at Paramount for five years, valued at $1.5 billion. 

And not even two days later, they released an episode lambasting Paramount for being cowards that accused the president of being a fragile litigious weirdo that is in bed with Satan. Oh, and in case you missed the subtlety, the episode ends with the town settling with Trump for $3.5 million, and creating a court-ordered pro-Trump PSA (which is a very convincing deepfake)  that involves a fat Donald Trump walking naked through the desert.

It’s insane. It’s all insane. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are BEGGING Donald Trump to sue them and Paramount, right after Paramount settled their last lawsuit - and it’s, strangely, one of the strongest and most potent acts of resistance against this administration in 2025 we’ve seen yet.

ICYMI:

• French president Emanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are suing Candace Owens for 22 counts of defamation, due to Candace Owens “staking her entire professional reputation” on the claim that Brigitte Macron is actually a trans woman. In response, Owens told Macron to “bring it.” Famous last words?

• Disgraced former congressman George Santos begins his 87-month prison sentence today, following his guilty plea to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He spent his last day of freedom doing what he’s best at: being incredibly annoying on Twitter.

• Remember Pete Hegseth? He’s disappeared into the ether in recent days due to his lack of involvement in Epsteinworld, but his Signalgate fiasco is getting worse behind the scenes for him, with The Washington Post revealing that the information he provided about a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen came from a classified email marked, and I quote… “SECRET.”

• According to the United Nations, 9% of all children are “severely” malnourished in Gaza right now.

• Would you believe me if I said some people out there don’t think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is ENOUGH of an antivaxxer? Famous for being anti-vaccine, RFK is somehow being sued by the anti-vaxx organization Children’s Health Defense for failing “to set up a task force to promote safer childhood vaccinations.” “This is not the Bobby we knew,” they’re quoted as saying, though I’d argue he’s the exact same Bobby _I_ know.

• Here’s another throwback: Kim Davis, the woman famous for a disgusting fashion sense AND denying gay couples their marriage licenses in an attempt to overturn Obergefell v Hedges, is BACK… unfortunately. She and her unfortunate skirt are trying once again to be heard by the Supreme Court to see if her First Amendment religious liberty rights were infringed upon when she unsuccessfully fought Obergefell a decade ago.

• In New York, there’s a work placement program for youth known as the Summer Youth Employment Program that pays its workers with prepaid debit cards. Somehow, a “hack” has gone viral on TikTok involving the cards being able to withdraw nearly endless amounts of money - resulting in $17 million having been withdrawn in just three days.

Don’t say TikTok never did anything for you, kids!

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. - Proverb

I am convinced now that nothing good is accomplished and a lot of damage can be done if you tell a person straight out that he or she is wrong. You only succeed in stripping that person of self-dignity and making yourself an unwelcome part of any discussion. -Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Democrats have a problem with tolerance. Though we call ourselves the party of diversity, we attack Democrats with divergent views. Though we profess to be a big tent, we alienate potential allies and drive them into the GOP’s arms. Though we claim openness, we don’t spend enough time persuading, and if we do try persuasion, we’re incapable of agreeing to disagree. This bullheadedness is especially dangerous because the other half of America’s two-party system has gone completely insane. If we can’t convince a majority of Americans to join our side by accepting them as they are, we soon may find ourselves without much of a system to disagree about. Practicing tolerance of diverging views – that is, practicing pluralism – is not just a moral decision, but a vital political strategy.

There have been multiple occasions when I have thought twice before expressing a political opinion publicly. Whether it’s been a tweet or a video or even just standing up in a room full of people, it’s never been conservatives’ reactions that made me hesitate, but those of people in my own party. It’s paradoxical, but I know I’m not alone in this feeling. I call this “the politics of scolding.”

In fact, Americans in general feel muzzled by our political culture. According to a CATO Institute study from 2020, "strong liberals" were the only ideological group in the country who felt free to express their political views without causing offense. At that time, 52% of liberals felt they had to self-censor, as did 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. Overall, 62% of Americans said they had views they were afraid to share. Fast-forward five years, and this anxiety has manifested itself in high levels of alienation from the Democratic Party, with most Americans believing that it does not share their values.

Subscribe ?? 😃

Despite what should have been a humbling loss in 2024, many on the left are doubling down on the politics of scolding. Amid the recent shakeup at MSNBC, I contested the idea that the personnel changes were due to the hosts’ races. To be clear, I knew exactly what I was getting into: I’ve been doing social media for a long time, and I have a good idea when something will go viral, and a good idea when something will touch off a war in the comments. So when I pointed out that several minority hosts were in effect receiving promotions amid Joy Reid’s firing, I was not surprised to receive many responses like the following (emphasis added):

“Bro, read the room. Awful take, not the time and you're not the person. Your demographic is notorious for being on the wrong side of racism and I'm not just talking about your skin color and gender. The white LGBT+ community is as notorious as white feminism/feminists for using Black movements but then not supporting calling out anti-Black racism. This is definitely not the time and not the correct take. Sit this one out until you get to the right position on the topic. Jesus this was cringe af.”

Now, I promise No Lies Detected will not become a place where I litigate social media flame wars, but I thought this particular response exemplifies the left-half of the political spectrum’s problem with pluralism:1

• read the room: Multiple replies actually started with this phrase. Its implication, regardless of whether my contrarian take was true or not (I’m sure this person disagreed with me anyway), is that it ran contrary to the prevailing consensus on the issue. In other words, better for me not to have said anything.

• you're not the person… your demographic… The white LGBT+ community is… white feminism/feminists: The reason I shouldn’t have said anything is in turn because I am white and gay, and my identity invalidates my opinion on those topics.

• Sit this one out until you get the right position on the topic: I should remain silent until I arrive at or submit to the orthodox opinion on this topic.

I’ll grant that this was an extreme response: most forms of leftwing intolerance are not this extravagant. However, it manifested three chief pitfalls I think many liberals and progressives fall into when engaging in political discussions: 1) enforcing discipline, 2) deploying prejudice, and 3) shutting down debate.

Such people seldom see the irony in the tactics they use: Making sweeping claims about someone based on who there are is also known as prejudice. Imagine replacing the word ‘white’ above with ‘Black’ in that person’s statements. Or imagine if this person’s addressee were Black. This person would be shunned and cast out of the Democratic Party! Somehow, however, it became acceptable in Democratic circles to talk like this to white people and white men in particular. In the America we as Democrats strive for, shouldn’t it be unacceptable to deploy prejudice against anyone?

These tactics don’t bring that sought-for America closer, because they only serve to alienate voters from the Democratic cause. In these situations, it seldom matters whether the scolder is right, because the scoldee is no more convinced than before and if anything is now hostile to people with similar views.

How did Democrats get here? How did we, as the old storytelling trope goes, become what we hate? I believe we learned the wrong lessons from the Obama years. Between 2008 and 2016, we elected a Black president, we as a country began to recognize the pernicious role of institutional racism, and gay people earned the right to get married. It became easy to believe the good guys had won the culture war, and now it was simply a matter of enforcing the new norms.

It turned out the victory was a false one, and the winning coalition was not as strong as it seemed. As dialogue with opponents gave way to disciplining them, Democrats increasingly acquired the reputation of being joyless scolds. People felt left out by a liberal cultural hegemony that didn’t bother to ask them what they thought. Donald Trump successfully harnessed this resentment (among many others) and claimed the mantle of countercultural hero pushing back against culturally oppressive elites. The rest of course is history.

Democrats are already starting to fall into the trap of becoming the party of the square cultural establishment. Recently I watched the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, and it struck me how cool it was to be a Democrat. Madonna, Dr. Dre, TLC all embodied progressive causes. By contrast, Republicans – personified by the square, ancient (72 used to be old for a politician) Bob Dole – were the butt of every other joke. Today, it’s decidedly less cool to be a Democrat: Kamala Harris of course barely beat Donald Trump among 18-to-29-year-olds, and some of the most popular podcasts and Twitch streamers among young men are conservative.

To crawl out of this hole, we have to re-learn what we have forgotten in the last decade: the art of persuasion. As a trans rights advocate recently said, “We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds… We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.” Most Americans are fair-minded people who believe everyone should be treated the same regardless of their background. The key is convincing enough of these people that they have a home in the Democratic Party, especially if we don’t completely agree with them.

So if a friend, neighbor, or stranger expresses a view you disagree with – maybe they are uncomfortable with trans women in women’s sports – resist the urge to pounce. Take a breath. Rather than disciplining the other person, marshal your arguments and deliver them without raising your voice or showing your exasperation. Rather than use prejudicial language, make the other person feel heard and not judged. Rather than shut down debate, continue to engage even if you feel frustrated. More likely than not, you won’t change their mind. I promise you though that just as often you’ll find at least some common ground with him or her.

I can speak with some experience on this issue. I come from a working class part of suburban Detroit, and my mom voted for Donald Trump. When we talk about politics it usually feels like we’re speaking two different languages in two different worlds. To our credit, however, we do a good job never letting our debates turn hostile or personal. I can’t say I’ve done much to change her mind yet, but I’m prepared for a long campaign. In the process, she has become one of my libbed-up YouTube channel’s biggest fans. That surely is a sign of progress. Check back in with me in November 2026.

Just like with my mom, this will be a long process for Democrats. But in order to build our vision of a fairer, more inclusive, more benevolent America, we as Democrats need to start by being fair, inclusive, and benevolent with our fellow Americans.

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I started this newsletter the day before the election, not quite sure what to expect. In a media landscape that often flattens complexity, I wanted a space where we could think things through — where nuance wasn’t a liability but the whole point.

It’s been an incredible journey. To those of you who have read, shared, disagreed, or engaged: thank you. And to those who support this work financially, making it possible to keep this going: my deepest gratitude.

(It’s always a good time to upgrade)

Onwards to 10,000 more.

Democrats are finally free. We spent four years trying to wield power responsibly amid bad-faith Republican attacks and obstruction. Democrats can return the favor from the politically more comfortable position of opposition party: Trump and the GOP will now own whatever havoc they wreak on the country. Some Democrats – especially online – seem not to understand this, however. To hear them tell it, Democrats need to save USAID. Democrats need to protect the Department of Education. Democrats need to keep the planes in the air. And sure, Democrats can and should do everything they can to protect the American people from Donald Trump’s misrule.

The American people however are getting the government they voted for. That is, they didn’t vote for Democrats, so why are Democrats taking responsibility for someone else’s mess? It’s not only logically confounding but politically self-defeating. If we ever want to win Americans back to our side, we have to stop knifing each other publicly and remind them nonstop that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are responsible for their multiplying sufferings.

In short, we need message discipline.

History’s liberals have always been bad at unity in the face of authoritarian threats on the right: Germany in the 1930s, Russia in the early 21st century, Hungary, Turkey, and India today. It probably has something to do with the fact that liberals by definition value pluralism – that is, tolerance of a diversity of views – and hence set less store by party discipline.

This fractiousness on the left, however, opens the way for the right to divide and conquer. This threat is made all the more acute by the fact that the new American right values order even more than it does freedom, making its party loyalty virtually bottomless. (Think of how many times Republicans ultimately fell in line after each and every Trumpian outrage, Access Hollywood Tape, Impeachment #1, Impeachment #2, Trump’s Meme Coin…)

This is not a call for Democrats to copy Republicans’ spineless deference to authority with a Blue MAGA movement of their own; our strength as Democrats must always be our big-tent openness to debate and the meritocracy of good ideas. It does mean, however, that Democrats must adopt a tactic that Republicans have long practiced: blaming the party in power for everything. 

The difference is, of course, the blame is very much warranted.

Already, Trump’s laziness, corruption, and incompetence are starting to hurt ordinary Americans, as are their dissatisfaction with Trump’s handling of the economy and with Elon Musk’s smash-and-grab of the U.S. government. This will only get worse with time. As it does, Democrats everywhere – both in and out of government – must continually remind their fellow citizens under whose watch it happened. When a plane goes down? It’s because of the hacks Trump installed at the FAA. When American farmers can’t buy equipment, it’s because Trump took away government loan-assistance programs. Most importantly, when prices go up, Trump, Trump, TRUMP.

Like all forms of marketing, effective political communication requires you to repeat yourself to ensure your message sinks in. And then again and again and again and again. Remember: the American people aren’t freaks like us glued to their newsfeeds at all hours of the day. This is going to take time. Think back to Fox News’ nonstop “MIGRANT CARAVAN” chyrons under President Biden. Think of how long Republicans beat the drum over Hunter Biden’s stupid laptop. Think of how hard Republicans – and the media – worked to smear Hillary Clinton over her goddamn emails! If Democrats want their message to outcompete Republicans’ (because they’ll have theirs too), it’s going to have to be consistent, persistent, and personal. These efforts will not immediately bear fruit, so we need to start now.

Consistency and persistence does not mean reflexive opposition to everything Donald Trump does, however. No, this is not about “finding common ground” with him; the more his agenda emerges, the more unambiguously awful we see it to be. It’s because being the party of Not-Trump is a trap, and Trump loves to set it. Republicans salivate at the idea of Democrats defending foreign aid or fired bureaucrats, because it allows them to distract from their own unpopularity. 

So rather than opposing Trump’s every move, Democrats need to supplement their blaming of him and the GOP with positive messaging of their own. What should Democrats’ message be? I wrote a couple weeks ago that Democrats need to rebuild their brand with the American people by putting the American people first, and some Democrats appear to be listening. It is laser-focused on working people, without wading into culture-war topics. This is a good start, but we need a lot more of it. A people-focused message doesn't mean we don't care about women or trans rights or undocumented immigrants, but we can't protect these groups if we don't win elections.

Democrats’ exile in the political wilderness will be trying. Donald Trump will continue to undermine America’s standing in the world. The state of American democracy will deteriorate. Ordinary Americans will suffer. But whether this trial lasts two years or four years or longer turns largely on whether Democrats remember the maxim: “When Trump fucks up, fuck Trump up.” 😃

Before human beings were reading and writing, we were telling each other stories. Our relationship with storytelling not only predates civilization, it’s hardwired into our brains. It makes sense that politics, as a fundamentally human activity, is also intricately linked with narrative. The best political candidates have intriguing life stories (even if they aren’t true!). The best political ads tell a story. Democrats, though, tend to skip right to the moral of the story: we often fall for the trap of believing the righteousness of our cause speaks for itself without bringing people along for the “why.” In so doing, we violate the number one rule of good storytelling: Show don’t tell. When we tell – lecturing voters about high-minded abstractions – it leaves us open to accusations of being out-of-touch and arrogant. When we show – by positioning ourselves as the party that defends people rather than processes or institutions – we win.

People clearly didn’t feel defended by Democrats during Trump’s first two weeks. After watching Democrats wring their hands behind lecterns – telling them about “outrage” and “crisis” – as Donald Trump and Elon Musk took an authoritarian blowtorch to the Constitution, Americans took to the streets in all fifty states last Wednesday. They did so not only to oppose Musk’s brazen assault on the federal government, but also to vent their frustration with Democrats. Democratic leaders have hastily ditched their capitulationist “pick your battles” mantra, drafted legislation, held up Trump’s cabinet nominees, and taken to the streets. Democrats are at least doing something, I guess.

Simply doing something, however, is not a strategy. First, we continue to resort to cheap stunts: Senator Schumer could barely contain himself when he announced his anti-DOGE legislation would be called the “Stop the Steal Act.” I promise you Senator, no conservative is seething that you reclaimed their slogan, and if anything it just makes you look insincere when only moments before you repeatedly called Musk’s effort “dangerous.”

More importantly, we continue to expend a lot of energy making abstract appeals to “defending institutions.” This strategy is doomed to fail simply because many Americans believe those institutions are broken. They watched as the government bailed out bankers from their own greed in 2008, leaving ordinary people to lose their homes. They saw rich people make off with $200 billion – taxpayer money! – in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan scheme. They witnessed the combined might of the most powerful government on Earth unable to prosecute an obvious criminal or prevent him from once again becoming the President of the United States. Americans are familiar with these stories: The bad guy wins.

So many of them will cheer Donald Trump and Elon Musk for taking a battering ram to those institutions. Fifty-six percent of Americans think government is wasteful and inefficient, so they are unlikely to hear about slashing billions of dollars from the Department of Education and think “constitutional crisis.” Foreign aid is unpopular among Americans, and so Trump killing USAID will be “the end of a raw deal,” despite the real good it does around the world. Accordingly, when Democrats reflexively rush to defend these institutions as they did this week, they risk becoming – I almost hesitate to say – the “bureaucrat party.” Republicans will be able to say that the party that is panicking about losing out on government largesse, another story that will be easy to understand. 

Instead, Democrats need to focus on the human consequences of Trump’s recklessness, especially if they have ready narrative appeal. The recent plane crashes present a readily understood narrative structure of beginning, middle, and end: Trump becomes president, Trump fires FAA employees, planes fall out of the sky. These have the added element of implicating the visceral popular anxiety about the safety of air travel. Some Democrats were quick to point out this sequence of events, but the Party writ large has not made it a part of its core message. 

Donald Trump intuitively understands the narrative power of spectacle, and as president he has performatively exploited it to score political points without actually solving problems. For example, Trump last week made a public show of opening California reservoirs to combat Los Angeles wildfires. In typical Trumpian fashion, the “solution” was nothing of the sort: the fires were already contained and the reservoirs don’t even flow to the Los Angeles area. Democratic representative Ted Lieu pointed this waste out, astutely adding that many farmers were consequently going to be left without water this summer. Ideally, Lieu also would have found one such farmer and put him on camera, but if the price of produce skyrockets in the next year, Democrats should be ready to hammer Trump with it. 

The consequences of Musk’s campaign against the federal government will in many cases only be felt slowly over time. Without accompanying political messaging, people moreover are often hard-pressed to think of ways government policy has helped or hurt them. Democrats therefore will have to be ready with a message that identifies viable stories and connects them to Trump and Musk as their victims emerge. Already Musk has signaled his next target is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a watchdog set up in response to the 2008 financial crisis that has returned $21 billion to consumers ripped off by banks and credit card companies. If and when Musk’s victim factory descends upon it, someone will eventually get ripped off again, and Democrats must be ready.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy seems to get it: On Thursday he condemned Trump’s “handover of our government to billionaires and the theft of wealth and resources from ordinary Americans to make the billionaires happier.” He doubled down Sunday morning on ABC by referring to “billionaires stealing government from the people.” This type of messaging is easy to understand because it connects what’s happening with the suffering of ordinary people. 

In the same way Republicans mercilessly tied Laken Riley’s death to alleged Democratic toleration of open borders, Democrats must hang Musk and Trump’s abuses on the GOP with the faces of the people he hurt. 

Sadly, there will be many stories to choose from.

Yesterday, after Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing for the role of FBI Director, I spoke with Senator Adam Schiff about the erosion of democracy, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, and the dangerous rise of loyalists like Patel.

Below is a transcript of the interview, which has been edited for clarity and length.

Keith Edwards:

I think Kash Patel acted like a petulant child during his hearing. He came across as entitled and unwilling to face accountability. One of the most striking moments was when he refused to turn around and acknowledge the Capitol Police, instead telling you to ask them your questions.

What did you think about that moment?

Adam Schiff:

Well, it was telling. I asked him to turn to those camera police officers whose fellow officers on January 6th were attacked and bear sprayed and pepper sprayed, and assaulted in part by members of his January 6th choir that he was so proud to promote.

Read more

Donald Trump handed Democrats a golden opportunity yesterday to expose his incompetence. When his director of the Office of Management and Budget paused “all agency grant, loan, and other financial assistance programs,” Democrats had the chance to show the American people concretely how chaotic, dangerous, and cruel Donald Trump’s administration is. Democratic leaders had to have seen this type of chaos coming after all, considering their decades of experience in politics and years of working against Donald Trump. So naturally they launched a coordinated campaign across media platforms using their hundreds of elected members and surrogates to spread their message, right? Wrong. 

Here’s what we got instead. Please watch all of this. It’s everything wrong with how we message.

We got seventy-four-year-old (only?) Chuck Schumer crustily reading prepared remarks, flanked by some very concerned-looking colleagues. Schumer looked down to read the words “It is just outrageous.”1

What year is it? 

Why do we need a script to channel our outrage?

Where is the urgency in the message?

Sure, after Schumer spoke Senator Maggie Hassan somewhat more emotively described the costs of Trump’s incompetence, but ultimately it’s still just old rich people furrowing their brows and reading from a script. I’ve written recently about how our party leadership is too old, and it showed today. As one Democratic comms strategist I spoke to put it, “We’re using a 1980s press conference playbook, with messengers no one cares about.” 

Let me be perfectly clear. This is a messaging war. Our opponent is a walking meme factory backed by an entire extremist media ecosystem. His smallest utterance commands universal press attention. The world’s richest man – with his own social media company and fanboy army – is one of his top lieutenants. Against this legion of media doom we trotted out a cranky septuagenarian reading off his list of grievances at the city council meeting.

Winning a war requires strategy, preferably one that throws your opponent off balance and takes away his ability to react. Democrats have long resorted to outrage in response to Trump’s abuses of power. Outrage, however, can either motivate or repulse an audience, so it matters how you do it. In 2024, Democrats used outrage to attack Trump’s anti-democratic conduct, and the message didn’t land with voters. Today, still apparently unchastened, Democrats tried more of it, decrying Trump’s money grab as unconstitutional. Understandably, we want to be the party that defends institutions from the Republicans who seek to destroy them. However, the way we do that is by being the party that defends people first.

Democrats should focus their messaging on how Trump’s bungling hurts ordinary people. 

If single moms are crying into their cameras on social media about how Trump is taking their money away, get them on camera! (Watch that video and compare it to Schumer's remarks. Which do you find more compelling?) 

As Democratic strategist told me, “Use the opportunity to get voters alarmed and mobilized that Trump is hurting their homes, pocketbooks, schools, churches, health care, parents, kids – this isn’t what they voted for.” People are all of a sudden remembering how bad Trump was at this job, so Democrats should be talking about nothing else. As another Democratic communications strategist told me, “sometimes widespread outrage works.”

Democrats must be ready to seize every political opening – these moments are rare, and wasted chances have lasting consequences. Trump and his team will learn and adapt. Capitalizing on their mistakes matters immensely for Democrats’ chances to recapture congressional seats in 2026 and impose some check on Trump. It will also go a long way toward setting the terms of the 2028 campaign.

Unfortunately we as Democrats often do not know how to exploit an advantage when it is given to us. In the months after January 6th, Republicans lacked any coherent counter-message. Some tried alleging that the insurrectionists were actually leftwing ‘antifa’ radicals from the BLM protests. Others ducked and covered when asked. Still others even ran up the white flag and admitted that the attack was Trump’s doing. Democrats, however, failed to press their advantage in that moment, to prosecute an obvious criminal when he was at his weakest, and let us have done with Trump once and for all. The rest, of course, is history.

Look, I get it. it’s easy to second-guess a strategy from the sidelines. Most communications teams in our elected officials’ offices consist of one person, or two if a member is lucky. But I also know something about media strategy myself, so I am out here trying to be useful in any way that I can. 

Trump owns this decision. We have to shove it down his throat.