<After President Donald Trump shut down all trade talks with Canada, the country retaliated by hiking duties on American steel imports.

Canada imposed an import quota late Friday and if it is exceeded, certain American steel sent to the country will face a new 50 percent surcharge.

Canada's Finance Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, said the government was acting to protect domestic industry from 'unjust US tariffs,' NBC News reported.

The response came hours after Trump posted on Truth Social about how Canada is a 'very difficult country to trade with.'

His reason for suspending trade negotiations came down to a tax Canada is set to impose on major tech companies starting Monday.

'Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,' Trump wrote, adding that the levy 'is a direct and blatant attack on our Country.'

Last week, the finance minister said he would not delay the implementation of the digital services tax, which applies to any firm making more than $15 million from Canadian internet users.

The three percent tax will strike at the heart of American companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb.

And because the tax is retroactive back to 2022, one tech lobbying group said American firms will soon have to pay up to $3 billion directly into Canada's treasury.

Canada has not ruled out further action to strike back at Trump for ending negotiations, with the government saying it 'remains prepared to take additional steps as needed.'

How Canada's hike on US steel imports will affect the industry, which has been struggling for years, is yet to be seen.

US Steel Corporation, once one of the most valuable companies in the world, just merged with Japan's Nippon Steel earlier this month after years of declining sales.

Canada remains the second largest trading partner of the US, despite all the trade turmoil.

Right now, the US has 25 percent tariff on Canadian imports that aren't covered by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the trade deal Trump signed in his first term.

Canadian energy is exempt from the 25 percent rate but is still tariffed at 10 percent, as are most products that have entered the US since early April.

Canada is also hugely impacted by Trump's 50 percent tax on steel and aluminum imports, as the country is largest foreign supplier of those materials to the US.

Canada's steel industry has laid off a staggering 1,000 workers since the first US tariffs in March, Reuters reported.

It has also been impacted by the 25 percent duties Trump has levied on foreign-made vehicles and parts.

This comes as the US rapidly approaches Trump's July 9 deadline to renegotiate trade with countries around the world so they can avoid so-called reciprocal tariffs.

Trump first announced the reciprocal tariffs on April 2, which he dubbed 'Liberation Day.'

More than 60 countries were hit with import charges of as much as 50 percent. The announcement from the White House led to widespread market panic and falling bond values, which led to Trump enacting a 90-day pause on April 9.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said early Friday that the pause could be extended to Labor Day - and that country-by-country tariffs could be negotiated down in that time.

Hours later, Trump echoed a similar sentiment. He said the initial July 9 deadline was not set in stone and could shortened or extended.>

<"Daddy’s home.” So said a social media post from the White House, accompanied by a video featuring the song Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home) by Usher and images of Donald Trump at the Nato summit in The Hague.

The US president’s fundraising allies were quick to market $35 T-shirts with his image and the word after Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, referred to Trump’s criticism of Israel and Iran over violations of a ceasefire by quipping: “And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get [them to] stop.”

Yet even as Trump seeks to project an image of global patriarch, there are signs of trouble on the home front. His polling numbers are down. His party is struggling to pass his signature legislation. Millions of people have marched in the streets to protest against him. Critics say the president who claims to put America First is in fact putting America Last.

Trump is not the first president to find the foreign policy domain, where as commander-in-chief he recently ordered strikes on nuclear sites in Iran, less restrictive than the domestic sphere, where a rambunctious Congress, robust judiciary and sceptical media are constant irritants. But rarely has the gap between symbolic posturing abroad and messy politicking at home been so pronounced.

“There’s two presidencies,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “The one on the domestic front is gruesome and involves long-drawn-out and disappointing negotiations with Congress and that’s exactly what Donald Trump is engaged in now. What emerges from Congress is not going to be as ‘big’ or ‘beautiful’ as he promised.

“Meanwhile you’ve got staggering photographs of bombs falling from the sky, Donald Trump’s flamboyant description of what he’s achieved in Iran and Europe. That’s the kind of Hollywood performance that Donald Trump wants.”

The president stunned the world last Saturday by announcing, on his Truth Social platform, that he had ordered more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – to hit three targets in Iran to prevent the country obtaining a nuclear weapon.

He followed up with a White House speech, choreographed to project an image of power, in which he declared: “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

That narrative has since been cast into doubt by a leaked intelligence report suggesting that the operation set back Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months. Still, Trump pivoted to the role of peacemaker, again using Truth Social to announce a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, prompting Republicans to gush that he should win the Nobel peace prize.

Trump’s barrage of speeches, interactions with reporters and social media posts about the Middle East were likened by some to a daily soap opera, dominating Americans’ attention and distracting them from his one big beautiful bill, a budget plan that threatens to slash the social safety net that many of his own supporters depend on.

Jacobs observed: “This is a classic deception. He’s like the carnival barker who’s waving his hands to keep the attention of the audience even as he’s hiding the part for the next trick.

“What’s coming out of Congress is going to absolutely harm many of his voters. Politicians like to cover their tracks; there’s no covering the tracks here. There will be known cuts to widely used popular programmes like the healthcare for Medicaid and there will be no doubt as to who’s responsible. These are traceable, highly visible consequences of Donald Trump.”

Now in the sixth month of his second presidency, Trump’s domestic honeymoon is over. A poll of 1,006 likely voters nationwide by John Zogby Strategies on 24 and 25 June found the president’s approval rating down three points to 45%. About 49% of voters approve of his handling of immigration while 47% disapprove but on the economy 43% approve and 54% disapprove.

Asked if they expect Trump’s presidency will make them financially better off or worse off, 40% said better and 50% said worse. Zogby commented: “There is a lot of anxiety domestically, first and foremost on the economy. People are confused and insecure. The numbers are plunging.”

Consumer confidence unexpectedly deteriorated in June, a sign of economic uncertainty because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The anxiety reported by the Conference Board was across the political spectrum, with the steepest decline among Republicans. And the share of consumers viewing jobs as plentiful was the smallest since March 2021....>

<....Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator, argued in a floor speech this week that Trump had broken him promise to lower costs “on day one”. She said: “American families don’t need another war – they need good jobs and lower prices, and that is what we should be focused on.”

Warren listed 10 ways in which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would raise costs for families, from rent to groceries to prescription drug prices, and warned that it will take healthcare away from more than 16 million people. Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate continue to haggle over the contents of the bill as a 4 July deadline looms.

Neera Tanden, president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress and a former domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, told an audience on Thursday: “This legislation is the greatest Robin Hood-in-reverse legislation that I have ever seen in my lifetime. It is cutting healthcare for working-class people and using those dollars to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

Meanwhile discontent is simmering over Trump’s signature issue of immigration, even among some of his own voters. Videos of people being snatched off the streets or beaten by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have provoked widespread revulsion.

There have also been cases such as that of Ming Li Hui, a popular member of staff at a restaurant in rural Missouri who was arrested and jailed to await deportation. Her friend Vanessa Cowart told the New York Times: “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

Meanwhile aggressive workplace raids are hurting hotels, restaurants, farms, construction firms and meatpacking companies, including in conservative states. The alarm recently got through to Trump, who admitted that some undocumented immigrants were actually “very good, longtime workers” and ordered a temporary pause, only to then yield back to hardliners in his administration.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “In a restaurant, if you lose your cooks, you can’t serve people and you lose money. If you are in a factory where people have been swooped up by Ice, you have to do more work.

“It puts more of the burden on the same people who might have voted for Donald Trump – lower-income or middle-income factory workers or meat-processing people. They’re feeling the effects of this immigration sweep in ways that the administration did not anticipate.”

Trump’s second term has been further marred by the tech billionaire Elon Musk leading a “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, that fired thousands of federal workers but fell far short of its cost-saving target before Musk left amid acrimony. The president’s authoritarian attacks on cultural institutions, law firms, media organisations and universities fuelled “No Kings” protests involving more than 5 million people in more than 2,100 cities and towns across the country on 14 June.

In that context, it is perhaps not surprising that Trump should relish the global stage, where any world leader is just a phone call away and where he is now being feted as statesman and father figure. It has proven easier to drop bombs on Iran or pressure Nato to agree to a big increase in military spending than to tame Thomas Massie, a rebellious Kentucky Republican defying him over both Iran and the spending bill.

Schiller added: “It is true for every president, Republican or Democrat, that when things are going south domestically they turn to foreign affairs. Trump feels in some ways more powerful on the global stage than he does trying to get Congress to do what he wants. The House Republicans are giving him a hard time. The Senate Republicans are giving him a hard time. He’s annoyed by this so then he goes, well, we’re a global military power.”>

<If there is a defining characteristic of President Donald Trump’s second term — aside from shameless self-enrichment out of the executive branch — I’d argue it’s the proliferation of unabashed and outspoken racism espoused by the president and many of his most loyal followers.

The online attacks launched by Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., against New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani demonstrated this in stark relief, such as here:

As did many of the other GOP responses to Mamdani’s Democratic primary victory this week, which my MSNBC colleague Steve Benen highlighted for MaddowBlog. This reactionary post from Charlie Kirk, which reads like Ku Klux Klan propaganda, is a prime example:

During a recent conversation with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, author Ta-Nehisi Coates said that one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest successes has fallen apart in the Trump era: People no longer feel ashamed to express “open bigotry.” Coates added that one of Trump’s most successful political instincts has been his bet that conservative voters are broadly more comfortable with the racist rhetoric that previous Republicans have flirted with a bit more obliquely.

Indeed, this administration has spent its opening months seemingly grooming the MAGA movement to be OK with blatant racism — or, at minimum, accept it as a natural part of political discourse. Even when compared with Trump’s first administration, which promoted diversity programs and parted ways with a speechwriter after it was revealed he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists, Trump 2.0 has been far more permissive of unabashed bigotry.

Indeed, this administration has spent its opening months seemingly grooming the MAGA movement to be OK with blatant racism.

Trump welcomed the aforementioned speechwriter, Darren Beattie, into his second administration despite the fact that he wrote last year that “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” Trump’s administration rehired after initially firing a Department of Government Efficiency staffer who had called for the normalization of Indian hate. And a host of other figures in the administration have a history of promoting various other blatantly bigoted ideas.

Trump himself has peddled false claims, spread broadly by white nationalists, that white people are facing systemic oppression in South Africa, and he has targeted an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that discredits racist pseudoscience. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security itself has spread propaganda promoted by overtly racist social media accounts, and his White House has frequently relied on cruel memes meant to dehumanize and mock nonwhite immigrants.

To be clear, MAGA racism is not a new phenomenon. But the president certainly seems to have given his followers a green light to embrace and express any racist hate they may be feeling. And all of this has the feel of a far-right psyop — as if the administration is attempting to train Americans’ gag reflexes in such a way that grotesque exhibitions of bigotry that may have made them squeamish in the past no longer do so.>

<Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Vice President Vance struck a deal Saturday night with a group of Senate conservatives who want bigger Medicaid spending cuts to save President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” from stalling.

The deal hatched in Thune’s office late Saturday evening paved the way for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to flip his “no” vote on proceeding to the bill to “aye” and for Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) to also vote for the bill.

Without their votes, the 940-page bill to boost spending on border security, immigration enforcement and the military and to cut an array of taxes could not have advanced on the Senate floor. It advanced 51-49.

The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes’s and 50 no’s.

For much of that time, the four conservatives — Johnson, Scott, Lee and Lummis — huddled off the Senate floor to negotiate a way to add new language to the bill to further cut federal Medicaid spending.

The language in the revised Senate bill is projected to reduce Medicaid spending by $930 billion over the next decade, according to a preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget office.

But Scott and his allies wanted to do more to reduce the amount of money spent on able-bodied adults who are allowed to enroll into Medicaid in states that expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act, which was former President Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

“I met with the president today, met with him quite a bit. Met with the vice president. We all wanted to get to yes and we’re all working together to make sure that happens,” Scott told reporters after voting to advance the bill.

He said conservatives want to “stop Blue State governors from taking advantage of Red States.”

“Paying for health care for illegal immigrants with federal tax dollars is going to end,” Scott said.

Senate conservatives say that Thune and Trump have committed to support Scott’s proposal to lower the 90 percent federal matching share for new Medicaid enrollees in expansion states.

“We have been working behind the scenes,” Johnson told reporters who flipped his initial “no” vote on beginning debate on the GOP megabill to “aye” to allow it move forward.

Johnson said conservatives got an agreement from leadership to vote on an amendment “that we’re confident of.”

“At a certain point we just don’t allow single working-age, able-bodied childless adults to sign onto ObamaCare expansion and get that 9-1 match,” he said.

Johnson said that states receive a much lower federal matching share for disabled children enrolled in regular Medicaid.

He said that conservatives whipped “something very similar” Scott’s proposal within the Senate GOP conference and asserted “it’s very close” to getting the 50 votes in needs to be included into the legislation....>

<....Senators will now spend up to 20 hours debating the reconciliation package before holding a marathon series of amendment votes known as a vote-a-rama. A final vote may not happen until Monday.

Senate conservatives feel confident that Trump can help secure a majority vote for cutting the federal Medicaid match share in expansion states, even though the proposal is likely to be a hard sell with Republicans who have already complained loudly about the Medicaid cuts already in the bill.

“The leadership wants to do this, too,” Johnson said. “This is what was key about the two-hour meeting with the president.”

He said Trump is “willing to do what needs to be done to put this nation on a path of eventually balancing our budget.”

The cap on enrolling new people into expanded Medicaid would be implemented at a future date to give states some time to adjust to the change.

Selling the proposal to more centrist Republicans in both the Senate and House, however, won’t be easy.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared in early May that a proposal to directly reduce the enhanced federal match for states that expanded Medicaid was off the table.

And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who negotiated with Thune to increase funding for a rural hospital relief fund and to increase the flow of federal Medicaid dollars to Missouri over the next four years, warned GOP colleagues to stay away from bigger cuts to the program.

“I think that this effort to cut Medicaid funding is a mistake,” he said. “We’ve been able for Missouri to delay it. … That’s not true of all the states. And unless changes are made, after 2030 you’ll see Medicaid reductions in my state. I’m going to do everything I can to defeat that.”

“I think that this has been unhappy episode here in Congress, this effort to cut Medicaid. And I think, frankly, my party needs to do some soul-searching. If you want to be a working-class party, you’ve got to deliver to working-class people. You cannot take away health care from working people,” he said.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has also voiced strong concerns about the Medicaid funding cuts in the bill, said she voted to proceed to the bill Saturday out of deference to her leadership but warned that does not mean she will necessarily vote for the bill on final passage.>

<President Donald Trump on Saturday attacked Sen. Thom Tillis for opposing the party's sweeping domestic policy bill, threatening to meet with potential primary challengers to the North Carolina Republican.

Tillis, who faces re-election next year in a battleground state, was one of two Republicans, along with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, to vote against advancing the "big, beautiful bill" in the Senate Saturday evening.

"Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against 'Senator Thom' Tillis," Trump wrote Saturday night. "I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America."

Trump' social media criticism came hours after Tillis said in a statement that he "cannot support this bill in its current form," pointing to expected cuts to Medicaid he said would "result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities."

Trump accused the two-term senator of grandstanding "in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult re-election."

"Looks like Senator Thom Tillis, as usual, wants to tell the Nation that he’s giving them a 68% Tax Increase, as [he is] opposed to the Biggest Tax Cut in American History!," Trump wrote, adding, "Thom Tillis is making a BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!"

Tillis is one of Democrats' top targets for defeat in the 2026 midterm elections. He won his previous two Senate races by fewer than two percentage points.

Prior to Trump’s post, Tillis told reporters Saturday evening that he gave the president a heads up about his opposition during a call he characterized as "very professional" and "very respectful."

“I had a very good discussion with President Trump last night. I told him at that point that I had problems with the [Medicaid] implementation. And I said the House bill, I think, would be a good mark,” Tillis said. “I do believe the president is really focused on getting the tax portion of the bill done, and I support that, full stop. But it has evolved from a tax bill to one that includes health care and other things. And I said that in non-tax areas, we have a problem.”

Asked if he was concerned about Trump endorsing a primary challenge to him, Tillis responded, “No.”

Trump has threatened to primary GOP lawmakers critical of him in the past, wielding his influence to unseat Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including then-Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. Last week, two Trump advisers launched a super PAC aimed at removing Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., another frequent critic of the administration's agenda.

But Trump hasn't always followed through on the threats. For example, he stood down on a threat to back a primary challenger to Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., who endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis's 2-24 presidential bid.>

<Senate Republicans on Saturday narrowly voted to advance a sprawling 1,000-page bill to enact President Trump’s agenda, despite the opposition of two GOP lawmakers.

The vote was 51-49.

Two Republicans voted against advancing the package: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes a provision to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who says the legislation would cost his state $38.9 trillion in federal Medicaid funding.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) changed his “no” vote to “aye,” and holdout Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also voted yes to advance the bill.

The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground.

The vote itself was also full of drama.

Signs of trouble started to pop up 50 minutes after the vote opened when three GOP senators who had expressed misgivings about the bill — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Lee and Scott — still hadn’t showed up on the Senate floor.

Three other Republican senators, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Johnson, announced well in advance of the vote that they would oppose the motion to proceed and could not support the bill in its current form.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) stood along the back wall of the chamber — appearing somewhat nervous — waiting for his missing colleagues to arrive on the floor.

Thune was surrounded by members of his leadership team, including Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), the deputy whip, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

When Murkowski finally appeared on the floor, she was quickly surrounded by Thune, Barrasso, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who barraged her on all sides with points and interjections.

Then Murkowski walked away from the leadership group and sat down next to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to have a quiet tête-à-tête.

Murkowski eventually voted in favor of advancing the measure, but the vote remained open.

Almost three hours after the vote began, Johnson, Lee, Scott and Lummis walked out of Thune’s office with Vice President Vance and headed to the Senate floor to cast the final votes to advance the bill.

Earlier in the week, perhaps the most notable setback was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian earlier this week that a cap on health care provider taxes, which is projected to save billions of dollars in federal Medicaid spending, violated the Senate’s Byrd Rule. GOP leaders were able to rewrite that provision for it to remain in the bill.

And the legislation appeared in danger moments before vote when Sen. Tim Sheehy, a freshman Republican from Montana, threatened to vote against the motion to proceed if the bill included a provision championed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) directing the Interior Department to sell millions of acres of public lands.

Sheehy agreed at the last minute to vote for the legislation after GOP leaders promised he would get a vote on an amendment to strip the language forcing the sale of public lands from the bill.

In the end, Thune pulled off a major victory by moving the legislation a big step closer to final passage.

Thune hailed the legislation Saturday as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver legislation to create a safer, stronger and more prosperous America.”

He cited $160 billion to secure the borders and beef up immigration enforcement and $150 billion to increase the Pentagon’s budget, as well as an array of new tax cuts in addition to the extension of Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts.

He pointed to the bill’s elimination of taxes on tips and taxes on overtime pay for hourly workers as well as language allowing people to deduct auto loan interest when they buy a new car made in the United States.

President Trump has set a July 4 deadline for Congress to get the bill to his desk....>

<....Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) blasted his Republican colleagues for unveiling the 940-page Senate substitute amendment late Friday night, giving senators only a few hours to review the legislation before the vote.

“Hard to believe, this bill is worse, even worse than any draft we’ve seen thus far. It’s worse on health care. It’s worse on [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.] It’s worse on the deficit,” he said.

Schumer slammed Republicans for advancing the bill before having an official budgetary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

“They’re afraid to show how badly this will increases the deficit,” he said. “Future generations will be saddled with trillions in debt.”

A preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget Office circulated by Senate Finance Committee Democrats Saturday estimates the bill will cut Medicaid by $930 billion, far more substantially than the legislation passed last month by the House.

Tillis cited the impact on Medicaid as the reason he voted “no” on the motion to proceed and plans to vote “no” on final passage.

“I cannot support this bill in its current form. It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities,” he said in a statement.

“This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population,” he warned.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critical swing vote, said she voted to advance the legislation out of “deference” to the GOP leader but warned that doesn’t mean she will vote “yes” on final passage.

She said that Senate negotiators improved the legislation before releasing it Friday but added that she wants to make additional changes.

“Generally, I give deference to the majority leader’s power to bring bills to the Senate floor. Does not in any way predict how I’m going to vote on final passage,” Collins told reporters.

“That’s going to depend on whether the bill is substantially changed,” she said. “There are some very good changes that have been made in the latest version but I want to see further changes and I will be filing a number of amendments.”

Former senior White House advisor Elon Musk blasted the Senate bill on social media shortly before the vote, calling it full of “handouts to industries of the past,” referring to the oil, gas and coal industries.

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,” he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.

Schumer told Democratic senators before the vote that he would force the clerks to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the Senate floor, which is estimated to take up to 12 hours and delay the start of debate and the start of a marathon series of amendment votes, known as a vote-a-rama.

It’s unclear whether Republican senators will keep the Senate in session overnight Saturday into Sunday morning to have the bill read aloud on the floor, an exhausting process for the Senate floor staff.

An overnight reading of the bill would leave the clerks and floor staff weary before senators are scheduled to hold 20 hours of debate on the legislation and then launch into a multi-hour vote-a-rama.>

<I have a deeply held religious conviction that, by divine precept, lying, bullying and paying $130,000 in hush money to an adult film star are all immoral acts....>

This is most peculiar.

<....So it is with great thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and its recent ruling allowing Maryland parents to opt their children out of any lessons that involve LGBTQ+ material that I announce the following: Attempts to teach my children anything about Donald Trump, including the unfortunate fact that he is president of the United States, place an unconstitutional burden on my First Amendment right to freely exercise my religion.

In its June 27 ruling, the high court cited Wisconsin v. Yoder and noted, “The Court recognized that parents have a right ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their children’ and that this right can be infringed by laws that pose ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that parents wish to instill in their children.”....>

What is the problem? The regime et al are allowed what We, the People are allowed to think and read, how we express ourselves and dictate others' views by merely the act of objecting. One person's rights supersede all else.

<....Supreme Court shows I can fight to keep kids from learning about Trump

Well, I wish to instill in my children the belief that suggesting some Americans are “radical left thugs that live like vermin” and describing a female vice president of the United States as “mentally impaired” and “a weak and foolish woman” are bad things unworthy of anyone, much less a commander in chief.

So any attempt to teach my children that Trump exists and is president might suggest such behavior is acceptable, and that would infringe on my right to raise my children under the moral tenets of my faith. (My faith, in this case, has a relatively simple core belief that being a complete jerk virtually all the time is bad.)....>

This man has some bizarre concepts as to right or wrong.

<....Alito clearly doesn't want schools teaching kids that Trump exists

As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his opinion regarding the use of LGBTQ+ books in schools, some “Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”

Exactly. I wish to present a moral message to my children that when a man is found liable for sexual abuse and has been heard saying things like “I moved on her like a bitch” and “she’s now got the big phony tits and everything” and “Grab ’em by the pussy,” that man is deemed loathsome by civil society and not voted into the office of the presidency.

That wish is undermined by any book or teacher exposing my student to the fact that Trump is president....>

Sam the Sham is a paragon of morality.

<....Supreme Court is protecting children from the tyranny of love

Alito cited several books that were at issue in Maryland schools, including one called “Love Violet,” which “follows a young girl named Violet who has a crush on her female classmate, Mira. Mira makes Violet’s 'heart skip’ and ‘thunde[r] like a hundred galloping horses.’ Although Violet is initially too afraid to interact with Mira, the two end up exchanging gifts on Valentine’s Day. Afterwards, the two girls are seen holding hands and ‘galloping over snowy drifts to see what they might find. Together.’”....>

In Sam Dumpty's world, 'love' means exactly what he says it does--neither more nor less.

<....While my religion would define such a story as “sweet” and “loving,” Alito and his fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court find it “hostile” to parents’ religious beliefs.

As Alito wrote, “Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”

OK. By that same logic, any class discussion or history lesson involving Trump and his status as president has the potential to teach my children that it’s normal to have a president who lies incessantly, demeans transgender people and routinely demonizes migrants.

Any in-class acknowledgement of Trump as president would, in Alito’s words, be "clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.”....>

As he again arrogates himself the divine right to decide how well over 300 million people are allowed to believe--or not.

<....I will now object to any book or classroom mention of Donald Trump

I simply will not stand idly by while a taxpayer-funded school indoctrinates my children into believing a fundamentally dishonest and unkind person like Trump has the moral character to be president of the United States. My faith has led me to teach them otherwise, and any suggestion that Trump’s behavior is acceptable would undermine that faith....>

<fallen taco> is another moral beacon, ready at a moment's notice to lead the wayward into the light.

<....Opinion: As a teacher, Supreme Court siding with parents' religious freedom concerns me

Elly Brinkley, a staff attorney for U.S. Free Expression Programs at the free-speech advocacy group PEN America, said in a statement following the Supreme Court ruling in the Maryland case: “The decision will allow any parents to object to any subject, with the potential to sow chaos in schools, and impact students, parents, educators, authors, and publishers.”

Amen to that. I object to the subject of Donald Trump. Let the chaos ensue.>

I can't wait: we will soon have state-sanctioned bonfires fuelled by books to which one random parent or parishioner objects, because one person's right outweighs those of the many--so long as the state decrees it.

And they have.

<In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.

In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.

“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.

ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.

In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.

Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.

Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.

While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds....>

<....Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.

American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to its tax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.

In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.

The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.

In the intervening years, American Resolve has maintained a low public profile. In March, it purchased Facebook ads attacking a local news outlet in South Dakota, which had been reporting on Noem’s use of government credit cards. Noem’s lawyer did not answer questions about whether the group paid her more money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing is available.

The nonprofit has an affiliated political committee, American Resolve PAC, that’s been more active, at least in public. Touting Noem’s conservative leadership under a picture of her staring off into the sky, its website said the PAC was created to put “Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America.” Noem traveled the country last year attending events the PAC sponsored in support of Republican candidates.

American Resolve’s treasurer referred questions to Noem’s lawyer. In his statement, Noem’s lawyer said she “did not establish, finance, maintain, or control American Resolve Fund. She was simply a vender for a non-profit entity.”

While Noem failed to report the fundraising income Ashwood Strategies received on her federal financial disclosure, she did provide some other details. She described the LLC as involving “personal activities outside my official gubernatorial capacity” and noted that it received the $140,000 advance for her book “No Going Back.” The LLC also had a bank account with between $100,001 and $250,000 in it and at least $50,000 of “livestock and equipment,” she reported.

The fact that Ashwood Strategies is Noem’s company only emerged through the confirmation process for her Trump Cabinet post. South Dakota has minimal disclosure rules for elected officials, and Noem had not previously divulged that she created a side business while she was governor.

Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according to Lee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. The law requires top officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.

“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”

Noem’s lawyer said South Dakota law allowed her to receive income from the nonprofit.>

<Over his 22 years in Congress, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has amassed untold power within the Republican Party, serving on high-ranking committees and ascending his party’s leadership ranks.

But the Republican base that sent Cornyn to the Senate in 2002 has transformed. GOP voters have turned to the right, prizing partisan fighters like President Donald Trump and championing culture war issues over the traditional pillars of fiscal prudence and small government.

Out of that movement has come Cornyn’s 2026 primary challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is harnessing his reputation as a no-holds-barred conservative to position himself as the president’s warrior from outside the Washington beltway in which Cornyn has been ingrained.

With Cornyn’s establishment ties putting his reelection bid in jeopardy, Texas’ senior senator is going all in on emphasizing his support for Trump — something he has been previously wary to do — to court the MAGA base that will be key to winning next year’s primary. Over the past several months, Cornyn has played up his conservative bona fides and allegiance to Trump's agenda through the bully pulpit of his office, issuing public declarations, holding hearings and embracing the president's favorite issues — even posting a photo of himself reading Trump’s “Art of the Deal” book.

Those efforts appear aimed at combating the perception among some GOP voters that Cornyn is not conservative enough and has spent too long in Washington, fueled by his role in passing the first gun safety bill in a generation and his ties to Senate GOP leadership.

His close ally, former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, has vocally opposed Trump at several turns, making him a pariah among some on the right. During Trump’s first term, Cornyn served as the Senate whip, McConnell’s second-in-command tasked with counting votes and arm-twisting senators into backing the party’s agenda. He parlayed that role into a failed bid to succeed McConnell, further underscoring his establishment ties to skeptics.

The narrative that Cornyn is out of step with Trump is being challenged by his campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign wing of the Senate GOP.

Nick Puglia, a spokesperson for the NRSC, said the group is throwing its weight — which includes a multimillion-dollar war chest — behind Cornyn, highlighting his alliance with Trump “to deliver big wins for Texans and fight for the president’s agenda in the U.S. Senate.”

Cornyn, meanwhile, has marched in lockstep with the president. His team has hired operatives from Trump’s orbit, including the president’s former campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio and adviser Chris LaCivita. And he has voted to confirm all of Trump’s cabinet nominees, including several controversial picks opposed by some of his Republican colleagues, like McConnell.

The senior Texas senator has also made efforts to praise Trump at nearly every turn.

When the president was considering strikes against Iran earlier this month, Cornyn took a measured tone. He called the possible use of U.S. munitions “a continuation of the current policy” toward Israel but emphasized that the American military did not need “to take the lead in this effort.”

After Trump ordered a strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities, Cornyn praised the commander-in-chief, saying he “made the courageous and correct decision to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat” and called Trump “indomitable.”

As Trump’s 100th day in office approached, Cornyn wrote an op-ed boasting that he was working “hand-in-glove” to implement the party leader’s agenda in Washington.

The senator has also taken up some of Trump’s pet issues. In March, Trump first questioned the validity of pardons issued by former President Joe Biden due to his alleged use of an autopen to sign the documents — a tool used by presidents dating back to Barack Obama. Pairing claims of mental decline with the pen, Trump alleged that Biden was unaware of documents being signed in his name, so they were “null and void.” Biden has denied the allegations.

Cornyn has since capitalized on the issue, wielding his senatorial powers to hold a recent hearing into the allegations and sending a May letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking the attorney general to launch a probe into the matter. Two weeks later, Pardon Attorney Ed Martin opened an investigation, according to a senior administration official who noted that Martin was acting independently of the White House.

Courting Trump’s support has become routine in a Republican Party whose leaders have displayed remarkable deference to the president and his whims, given the sway he holds over the GOP base.....>

<....But gladhanding Trump is something Cornyn has vacillated on. He started out as a Trump skeptic in 2016, calling him an “albatross around the down-ballot races” before eventually backing him. When Trump first tried to emerge from political exile in hopes of being re-elected in 2024, Cornyn was wary, saying Trump’s “time has passed him by.” He again changed his tune once Trump won the New Hampshire primary, going public with an endorsement.

Despite his past skepticism, Cornyn seems to recognize just how much sway Trump has over this election, with his coveted endorsement carrying the potential to bolster Cornyn’s conservative cred — or compound his uphill climb if Trump backs Paxton.

Matt Mackowiak, a senior adviser on Cornyn’s campaign, said Cornyn “has been a strong supporter of President Trump, and that’s really not up for debate.” He highlighted the senator’s time serving as the GOP’s Senate whip, during which he wrangled his colleagues’ votes to push through landmark legislative achievements during Trump’s first term, including tax cuts and confirmation of Supreme Court nominees.

Cornyn has been in touch with the president directly, Mackowiak said, to pitch “our plan to win the primary and the enormous cost and political risk if Paxton is the nominee.”

Paxton’s team has also been privately lobbying Trump’s circle for the president’s backing, according to a senior staffer with the Paxton campaign who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Cornyn’s efforts to align himself with Trump have yet to strengthen his record in the eyes of primary voters as he trails Paxton in a two-way hypothetical primary by more than 15 points in multiple polls.

Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist who ran Cornyn’s successful 2014 reelection, said he views the senator’s recent positions as an authentic reflection of his conservative ideology. But Steinhauser added that he’s “not going to pretend like the primary has nothing to do with all this,” noting that the tough race has forced Cornyn to message a little differently by “highlighting his conservative record.”

Mackowiak also insists that Cornyn’s recent moves do not mark a change in his views.

”There’s a false perception about Cornyn’s actual record, and it’s part of our job to make sure that people understand what it actually is,” he said.

Sam Cooper, a strategist for the Paxton-aligned Lone Star Liberty PAC, thinks voters will see through this strategy.

“I don’t think it’s lost on anybody that he’s picked up a lot more interest in these issues in an election year,” he said.

Texas’ attorney general has his own baggage to contend with. He was indicted in 2015 on security fraud charges before agreeing to perform community service and pay restitution in exchange for prosecutors dropping the case. The GOP-controlled Texas House also impeached Paxton in 2023, before the state Senate ultimately voted to acquit him. The Associated Press also reported that the DOJ decided not to prosecute Paxton in the waning weeks of Biden’s term, effectively closing a federal corruption investigation.

Nick Maddux, a Paxton adviser, painted these accusations much as Trump did in the 2024 election: as notches in the attorney general’s warrior-like record.

“Everyone’s come after him, and he literally won’t stop fighting — and he's won every battle,” Maddux said.

Cooper drew explicit parallels between Paxton and Trump’s alleged wrongdoing, saying, “just like President Trump, Attorney General Paxton has received his fair share of lawfare, and each and every time he's stood up and won.”

Mackowiak said Paxton’s legal history is certain to play into Cornyn’s campaign messaging, as they are “not sure” whether the electorate has come to grips with the attorney general’s past actions. He also sent a shot across the bow at the Paxton camp, warning that there is more to the attorney general’s record than what “has been out there for voters to see, hear and read.”

In this political minefield, many elected Republicans have remained on the sidelines, having found themselves in a lose-lose situation where they would incur the wrath of fellow Republicans no matter who they support.

Sen. Ted Cruz has told Dallas’ ABC affiliate that he will not endorse in the primary.

Rep. Michael McCaul, who served under Cornyn when he was the state’s attorney general over two decades ago, declined to say which candidate he was backing. But he criticized the race itself, calling it “unfortunate.” The Austin Republican’s biggest gripe was with the millions of dollars that are certain to pour into the race for both candidates, rather than in states “where we could pick up seats.”

<Lawyers for President Trump have dropped a lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, according to a Monday court filing.

An attorney for Selzer told NPR that there has been no settlement. Attorneys for Trump and for the Des Moines Register did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump sued the newspaper and the longtime Iowa pollster following the release of a poll in the last days of the 2024 presidential contest that found then-Vice President Kamala Harris winning the Hawkeye State by 3 percentage points, a result that temporarily buoyed Democrats’ hopes. Trump won Iowa by 14 points.

Selzer announced in November that she would retire from polling, having previously decided not to continue her contract with the paper.

In December, attorneys for Trump filed suit against her and the Des Moines Register in state court, accusing them of violating Iowa’s consumer fraud laws and charging that the polling miss was intentional.

“While Selzer is not the only pollster to engage in this corrupt practice, she had a huge platform and following and, thus, a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters,” the lawsuit read.

The suit was moved to federal court in February.

Trump in his personal capacity has grown increasingly litigious with media organizations in the past year. Last year, he brought a defamation case against ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately described a jury’s determination in a lawsuit against the president by writer E. Jean Carroll. ABC settled the case for $15 million.

Trump has a lawsuit pending against CBS News’s “60 Minutes” stemming from an interview it aired with Harris last fall, a conversation Trump and his attorneys argue was intentionally edited to cast his challenger in a positive light.

Last week, Trump threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN after the organizations reported on a preliminary intelligence report that pushed back on the president’s claims that American airstrikes had “obliterated” three Iranian nuclear facilities. >

<In ordinary times, someone could read the Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of so-called “universal injunctions” as just the latest example of an old dispute: the proper way to interpret the Constitution and the jurisdiction of federal courts. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion saying the federal district courts do not have the authority to issue such injunctions is a classic in the genre of “originalism.”

In contrast, the dissenting opinions by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson read the law through the lens not just of its origins but with an eye to how an interpretation would affect the world beyond the courtroom. They understand that these are not ordinary times and do not want to disable the judiciary from responding when fundamental rights are at stake, in the face of an ongoing assault on the rule of law itself.

To put it simply, with its decision in Trump v. Casa, the court has become an accomplice in President Trump’s ongoing assault on our constitutional republic. The decision has effectively removed the federal courts as a check on the Trump administration.

But it also does grave damage to the court itself — Trump v. Casa now takes its place among the high court’s most infamous rulings. As Stephen Lubet says, it returns us to the world of its discredited Dred Scott decision, which found that the rights of Black people depended on where they lived. Just like Blacks in the antebellum world who had one status in free states and another in slave states, immigrants and others may now find themselves in a legal nether land.

To thoroughly appreciate the impact of Trump v. Casa, it is important to remember that “universal injunctions” allow courts to grant immediate relief that benefits not only the party who requests them but also anyone harmed by an action of the government. Individuals or organizations can go to court seeking such orders while they pursue further legal action.

Even before last week’s ruling, they had to get over a high bar to persuade the courts to step in, including showing that in the absence of such an order, they would suffer “irreparable harm.” One commentator rightly notes that, “In many situations, there is no other way to stop widespread illegality, especially that perpetrated by the federal government. Nationwide wrongs require a nationwide remedy.”

None of that seemed to matter to Barrett and her conservative colleagues, though. They insisted that because nationwide injunctions were not issued by English courts, federal district and appellate courts should not be able to use them today.

They are living in the past rather than dealing with the realities of the present. As Barrett put it, “because the universal injunction lacks a historical pedigree, it falls outside the bounds of a federal court’s equitable authority.”

But there is nothing new about the practice of granting such relief. More than a century ago, in a case involving an alleged infringement of freedom of the press by a postal regulation, the Supreme Court issued a nationwide injunction to stop such infringement until it could hear and decide the merits of the case. They have been used frequently in federal court rulings against presidents for many years.

And there is nothing new about the current conservative justices’ criticisms of them. Eight years ago, in another case involving Trump, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions. … If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.”

Thomas got his wish....>

<....While you would never know from reading the majority opinion that Trump has been claiming authority to ignore the law whenever it suits him, including the right to curtail the constitutionally protected right to birthright citizenship, in their dissents Sotomayor and Jackson went to great lengths to ensure that his actions would not be ignored.

As Sotomayor argues, the majority now holds that “No matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the executive to stop enforcing it against anyone.” Sotomayor condemns her colleagues’ attachment to a “rigid historical test” that allows “a grave and unsupported diminution of the judicial power of equity,” and chastises the majority for its “complicity” in the president’s “‘mockery’ of our constitution.”

Her opinion conjured the jurisprudence of the Dred Scott era when it warned that the court’s new decision creates a “two-tiered scheme” in which someone’s citizenship status depends on whether they live in a state where an injunction has been issued or a state where no court ruling has been made. Jackson echoed Sotomayor in her worry that the court is acquiescing in the administration’s desire “to operate in two different zones moving forward: one in which it is required to follow the law (because a particular plaintiff has secured a personal injunction prohibiting its unlawful conduct) and another in which you can choose to violate the law with respect to certain people (those who have yet to sue).”

The creation of law-free zones reminds Jackson of “history’s horrors,” and she notes what the majority has authorized will disproportionately impact the poor, uneducated, and the unpopular.”

We can only hope that someday soon the Supreme Court will come to its senses and repudiate Trump v. Casa. In the meantime, it is left to the American people to resist the administration’s effort to hollow out the Constitution and preserve what it promised, a century and a half ago, to anyone born in this country.>

<A new report suggests that President Donald Trump may soon be setting his sights on the Fourth Estate, and his administration is already allegedly looking for a "test case" to see how much it can get away with in the courts.

That's according to a Monday article in Rolling Stone, which reported that unnamed sources close to the White House say Trump is considering the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who report on leaks obtained from inside the administration. According to Rolling Stone, the president was so incensed about reporting on a leaked Pentagon report that undermined his claims about Iranian nuclear sites being "obliterated" as a result of strikes he ordered in mid-June that he contemplated using the 108 year-old law to bring cases against reporters.

"Why not the press?" Trump reportedly said during the conversation.

The source said that the Trump administration would not only charge individual journalists under the Espionage Act, but would also indict their employers as "co-conspirators" and bring cases against publications. A separate source described as a "senior Trump administration official" affirmed that the question of whether to invoke the Espionage Act wasn't merely theoretical.

"All we’d really need is one text or email from a reporter telling a source: ‘Can you pull something for me?’ or something very direct of that nature,” the senior official told Rolling Stone. “If somebody in the media wasn’t careful even for a split second, that could make the difference between a reporter, and a criminal.”

Rolling Stone's Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng recalled a comment from an unnamed conservative attorney close to Trump who suggested in December that Trump's second term would be "brutal" in his approach to whistleblowers, leakers and journalists who they speak to. That attorney promised that Trump's second administration would "be even more aggressive" in its crackdown on leaks and reporters that publish them.

Trump isn't the first president to use the Espionage Act against journalists, however. Bort and Suebsaeng reported that former President Barack Obama's administration indicted eight sources under the law, though Trump had already surpassed that number just two years into his first term.>

<Facing the possibility of losing control of the U.S. House next year, Republicans are weighing aggressively redrawing congressional districts in two states in hopes of ousting several longtime Democratic lawmakers.

In Ohio, a quirk in state law is giving Republican state legislators another run at drawing new lines for the state’s 15 congressional districts. The goal would be to knock off two Democratic members of the House, giving the GOP a 12-3 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation. State lawmakers could go even further and target a third Democratic seat.

In Texas, meanwhile, Republicans are considering whether to hold a special legislative session to undertake a rare mid-decade map-drawing that supporters hope could result in the GOP picking up as many as five additional seats.

Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to win the House, raising the stakes for Republicans and President Donald Trump, who could see a Democrat-led House block his legislative agenda and open new investigations of him in the second half of his final term.

But redistricting is a double-edged sword: In drawing new lines, both states could also endanger GOP lawmakers by moving safe Republican territory into districts currently represented by Democrats.

Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, favors an aggressive redistricting approach.

“It’s a priority to keep the House, and Republicans should be looking for as many seats as we can get,” he said.

The GOP’s redistricting gains in 2022 were key to the party flipping the chamber in that election and retaining their majority in 2024, he added.

“There were a handful of seats that weren’t politically possible to get before that may be possible now,” he added. “It makes sense for Republicans to try ahead of 2026.”

Redrawing maps is potentially risky for GOP incumbents if 2026 proves to be a favorable year for Democrats. Republicans will have to run in a year when Trump himself is not the ballot, helping to boost conservative turnout.

“It’s both a gamble and an opportunity,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter published by University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “From the White House’s perspective, would an aggressive Texas redraw increase their chances of holding the House next year? Yeah, probably. But it wouldn’t guarantee anything.”

Redistricting generally happens at the start of each decade to account for population shifts and ensure that each congressional and state legislative district holds roughly the same number of people.

Some Democrats have denounced the potential rounds of mid-decade map-drawing, arguing that Republicans are trying to rig the process.

“Republicans are exploring further manipulation of egregious gerrymanders in red states like Texas and Ohio for one reason: they are terrified of the voters,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, in a statement. “It’s a brazenly corrupt attempt to shield themselves from accountability at the ballot box and it must be stopped.”

A third redistricting battle, meanwhile, is playing out in Wisconsin where two legal actions filed last month are challenging a congressional map that favors Republicans in a battleground state that’s narrowly divided along partisan lines. Both cases are before the state Supreme Court, which has a liberal majority.

Texas could go after border Democrats

All but one Republican member of the Texas congressional delegation won their seats with more than 60% of the vote last November. All 25 GOP-held districts voted for Trump by at least 15 points in 2024, Kondik noted.

A new GOP map in Texas is likely to shift voters from safely red districts into ones held by Democrats to help boost the number of Republicans that Texas sends to Congress. Currently, under a 2021 map, Republicans control 25 of the state’s 38 House seats. (One safely Democratic seat in the Houston area is vacant following the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner. The current Texas congressional maps are the subject of litigation brought by groups representing Black and Latino voters who contend the lines drawn in 2021 discriminate against voters of color.)

Clear targets include Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who represent border communities that have shifted to the right in recent years. Trump won both districts in 2024, part of a broader realignment among Latino voters.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, argued recently that an aggressive redraw could backfire on Republicans.

“If you make any changes to that map … they are going to endanger four to six Republican incumbents who are serving in the Congress right now,” he said to reporters. “Be careful what you wish for.”....>

<....Other Democrats have condemned any effort to change the district lines to further benefit the GOP.

“Texas Republicans should stand by the rule of law and the maps they drew four years ago, or they should finally work with Democrats to draw fair, independent congressional maps,” state Rep. Gene Wu, who chairs the Democratic caucus in the Texas House, said in a statement. “Anything less is a desperate power grab from a party that knows Texas voters are ready to show them the door.”

The White House did not respond to a CNN inquiry about the effort, which has been the subject of recent closed-door meetings in Washington among members of the state’s congressional delegation.

The state legislature, which finished its regular session earlier this month, is not scheduled to meet again until 2027. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has the authority to call special sessions and determine the issues lawmakers will address.

Aides to the Texas governor did not respond to CNN inquiries.

Last week, Abbott told reporters that he had not “identified a need for a special session,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

The governor, however, did not close the door on the possibility, saying he was reviewing bills from the regular legislative session that could result in vetoes that would require him to summon lawmakers back to Austin to address outstanding matters.

Abbott also declined to tell journalists whether Trump had asked him to order a redraw.

Ohio GOP looks for as many as three seats

In Ohio, the mid-decade redrawing of its congressional districts is an outgrowth of a state law that requires maps approved without bipartisan support to be redrawn after four years. Crafting new maps for next year’s midterms will ultimately fall to the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

The current map, crafted by a GOP-led legislature in 2022, has 10 Republicans and five Democrats.

Two Democratic incumbents are viewed as likely targets of the GOP: Reps. Marcy Kaptur, a veteran lawmaker who represents northwestern Ohio, and Emilia Skyes, whose district includes Akron.

Last year, Kaptur eked out a win even as her district went for Trump. Skyes, meanwhile, represents a highly competitive district that former Vice President Kamala Harris barely won.

If Republicans choose an even more aggressive approach, a third Democrat, Rep. Greg Landsman, who represents Cincinnati, could be endangered.

State lawmakers and a redistricting commission are expected to take turns trying to craft a map with the goal of winning bipartisan support for the new lines. But, in the end, the state legislature has the power to approve a partisan map by a simple majority vote.>

<Republicans are already laying the foundation to undermine a fair 2026 midterm election in Georgia, where they’re working to install voting skeptics on local election boards.

One of the DeKalb County GOP’s two nominees for the local election board has a record of lodging mass voter challenges that is alarming voting advocates. The other had his nomination rejected by an administrative judge, based on his public statements about the board and a lawsuit he filed against it.

And in Fulton County, the Republican party is suing officials who rejected their two nominees. One nominee, already a board member, has refused to certify election results, while the other has sued the board over a dispute stemming from challenges he made to voters’ eligibility.

Fulton County is Georgia’s largest county, and DeKalb is its fourth largest. The two majority-Black counties are home to hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters in the Atlanta area. President Donald Trump narrowly won Georgia in the 2024 presidential election with 50.7% of the vote, but former Vice President Kamala Harris won 71.9% of the vote in Fulton County and 81.9% in DeKalb County. Installing conspiracy theorists on local boards in these counties could help the GOP suppress Democratic turnout in 2026.

Republicans nominated Bill Henderson and Gail Lee to serve on the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections, but Chief and Administrative Judge Shondeana Morris rejected Henderson’s appointment, partly due to the fact that he is suing the board for its refusal to consider voter challenges he filed.

“Having considered all those things, I do not believe that appointing Mr. Henderson to the Board would further the goals of ensuring that elections are credible and trustworthy in the eyes of the public. Rather, I am concerned that his appointment would do the opposite, as he has already sought to do through his public statements in the past,” Morris wrote in a letter posted by the DeKalb County GOP on social media.

Voting advocates are raising the alarm about Lee, as well. Shortly before the 2024 election, Lee challenged more than 200 voter registrations, arguing the residents were registered in more than one state. The DeKalb board narrowly voted not to pursue her claim because it was too close to the election.

One voter whose voter registration address was challenged by Lee the previous year told CBS News, “I didn’t know Gail Lee from a can of paint.”

DeKalb County Democrats organized against the nominations, urging members to contact officials and share their opposition to appointing board members with a “consistent history of frivolous voter challenges.”

“Putting a known election denier who has repeatedly tried to remove voters from the rolls on the Dekalb County elections board is a slap in the face to Dekalb voters,” All Voting is Local Action Georgia state director Kristin Nabers said in a statement about Lee.

“Those who repeatedly push lies about voting and support dangerous attempts to overturn the results should have no say over our elections,” Nabers continued.

In neighboring Fulton County, the local Republican party filed a lawsuit this month arguing the county’s board of commissioners violated state law by rejecting their nominees.

The party sought to reappoint Julie Adams and add right-wing activist Jason Frazier. Adams refused to certify last year’s primary election results. She also has ties to the far-right Election Integrity Network, while Frazier has challenged voter registrations in Fulton County and sued the board last year over its response to his challenges.

“It’s not possible to work with folks trying to sow discord and chaos,” Commissioner Mo Ivory said before voting to reject Adams’ reappointment.

However, the GOP insists its nominees meet the specified qualifications and therefore must be approved by the board.

“Laws are meaningless in Fulton!” Frazier posted on social media after his appointment was rejected. “We “Shall” not give up!”>

<The SAVE Act has stalled in the Senate since April, but a group of influential right-wing activists have hatched a plan to get it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Tea Party Patriots, the political arm of the long-running Tea Party movement, is launching a campaign aimed at pressuring lawmakers to prioritize the bill, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Voting rights advocates warn the legislation could disenfranchise millions of eligible Americans, particularly women, young voters, low-income people and naturalized citizens.

Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, told supporters in a Zoom call that was reviewed by Democracy Docket that the group aims to convince lawmakers to attach the SAVE Act to a must-pass piece of legislation this fall — likely either a continuing budget resolution or the National Defense Authorization Act.

Launched not long after former President Barack Obama took office, Tea Party Patriots has a record of mobilizing large numbers of conservative voters, and enjoys relationships with key Republican lawmakers. Martin was among the conservative leaders who spoke at a press conference led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last year to promote an earlier version of the SAVE Act.

“We’ve learned over the course of our movement that when you want to get something done, you have to attach it to must-pass legislation,” Martin said.“We need to get the SAVE Act and the requirement for proof of citizenship to register to vote added to that must-pass piece of legislation that will move through Congress in September.” she added.

To pressure lawmakers to do that, Martin said, the group is launching “Only Citizens Vote Month” in August. Volunteers will knock on doors, hold rallies and push Republican lawmakers to commit to attaching the SAVE Act to must-pass legislation.

The group’s website allows volunteers to sign up to get involved in the effort.

The plan isn’t new.

Johnson previously tried to include the SAVE Act in a budget bill last year, but dropped it after the measure failed to advance in the House.

But Martin, who stood outside the Capitol with a bullhorn on January 6, 2021, assured supporters this campaign is not just symbolic.

“This is truly an effort to get this passed into law,” Martin said. “I’m tired of messaging bills. I’m tired of things where we don’t win and we don’t finish the job. This is something we should be able to win with and we should be able to finish the job on.”

“It isn’t just, like, a petition to grow our list or something like that,” Martin continued. “It is truly something we want to make a difference with.”>

<A federal court in Rhode Island on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to stop a series of planned layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

In a 58-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose, a Joe Biden appointee, granted a motion for a preliminary injunction which bars the government from "taking any actions to implement or enforce" and firings or planned restructuring.

The judge took the government to task for trying to avoid spending money already allocated by Congress in spending legislation.

"In the case at hand, Congress directed HHS to maintain specific initiatives with the support of the Congressional appropriations pursuant to the applicable statutes," the order reads. "HHS cannot decide for itself whether it has exceeded its statutory authority because there are Congressional statutes in place to serve as guardrails to the Agency's actions."

The court later rubbished those efforts using exceedingly strong language.

"[T]his Court concludes that the Defendants usurped Congressional power to manage the public health appropriations at stake and that the States are likely to succeed on their 'contrary to law' claims," the order goes on.

DuBose, in ruling for the plaintiffs, all but summarily rejected the government's litany of arguments and defenses – and denied the government a pre-requested stay of the injunction.

The plaintiffs, led by New York state, welcomed the ruling.

"HHS is the backbone of our nation's public health and social safety net — from cancer screenings and maternal health to early childhood education and domestic violence prevention," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a press release. "Today's order guarantees these programs and services will remain accessible and halts the administration's attempt to sabotage our nation's health care system. My office will continue fighting to stop this unlawful dismantling and defend the essential services that protect our most vulnerable communities."

On March 27, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 employees would be fired and dozens of sub-agencies would be shuttered in service of the Trump administration's so-called "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) campaign.

Relevant here, HHS began "terminating the people necessary for it to meet its own mandates, and paralyzing it by means of a confusing reorganization," the plaintiffs alleged in their 101-page complaint.

"Abandoning the Department's core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather, the intended result of the March 27 Directive," the original petition reads. "Incapacitating one of the most sophisticated departments in the federal government implicates hundreds of statutes, regulations, and programs. But Secretary Kennedy refused to undertake this restructuring legally or carefully. In fact, Secretary Kennedy has since said that he knew that possibly twenty percent of the reductions in force (RIFs) were going to be 'mistakes' even before the RIFs were executed."

The judge agreed with the state plaintiffs about the negative effect the layoffs had on several departments and sub-agencies within HHS.

"[T]his Court finds the March 27 Communiqué and RIF of nearly 10,000 HHS employees has launched several HHS programs into a rapid freefall away from their statutory obligations, thereby irreparably harming the States," the order reads.

The order spends considerable time detailing a list of hardships the plaintiffs have had to endure due to lack of resources within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the affiliated National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

"Critical public health services have been interrupted, databases taken offline, status of grants thrown into chaos, technical assistance services gone, and training and consultation services curtailed," the order goes on. "These are not unsubstantiated fears. Further, none of these harms can be compensated by money damages. The Court finds that the States have established irreparable harm stemming from the Communiqué."

The government, for its part, tried to defend against the lawsuit by arguing the plaintiffs waited too long to sue for relief....>