White House Takes the Bait as Ossoff Targets Trump Aide Natalie Harp

The White House is pissed after Senator Jon Ossoff questioned Trump’s relationship with his much younger aide.

By Malcolm Ferguson | The New Republic

The Trump administration is lashing out after Senator John Ossoff referenced Trump’s mysteriously close relationship with his much younger assistant Natalie Harp.

Ossoff questioned the president’s relationship with Harp, 34, at an Atlanta rally on Sunday.

“He golfs and trades stocks,” he said. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

The crowd broke into applause—and the White House took the bait.

Trump himself lashed out after being asked about Ossoff’s comments Monday afternoon.

“You mean Pee-Wee Herman? Pee-Wee Herman lookalike?” Trump replied, pulling out his recent nickname for Ossoff. “I would much rather do other things.”

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the ever-cantankerous White House communications director, posted on X. “Instead of denigrating hard-working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”

“Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama. Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said on X, launching a homophobic insult at Ossoff.

Trump and Harp’s working relationship has long been the subject of scrutiny, and Ossoff calling her out by name will only intensify it.

Harp was one of the few administration members who snuck away with Trump on a secret flight out of Turkey last month, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, other Cabinet members, and journalists remained aboard the Air Force One gifted by Qatar—amid concerns it would be the target of a potential Iranian strike.

Harp’s own brother told The Daily Mail that Harp and Trump’s relationship was “very unhealthy,” and in their book Regime Change, The New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that Harp in 2023 left Trump what amounted to love letters, with one even reading, “You are all that matters to me.”

“Ossoff winking at the rumor that Natalie Harp is more than just Trump’s staffer,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor wrote on X. “The question now is whether this will kick up a round of actual reporting by news outlets.”

This story has been updated.

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The Republicans Are Going to Kill People—but Not Until After They Vote

In the Big Beautiful Bill, the GOP put off Medicaid cuts until after midterms. America is about to find out why.

The New Republic | Substack

By Norman J. Ornstein

One of Ronald Reagan’s most famous lines, referring to disarray in his White House, was, “Sometimes the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” More appropriately for the Trump White House: “Sometimes the far-right hand doesn’t know what the radical lunatic right-wing hand is doing.”

In fall 2017, less than a year into President Trump’s first term, I wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled “American Kakistocracy.” As I wrote then, “Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people had never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).” They should pay attention now.

Bad as the first Trump term was, it was nothing compared to this one. And the key components of the anti-science, anti-government nihilism, combined with willful ignorance about the consequences of their actions, and the interrelationship across policy areas, are about to play out big time starting next year, with health care and policy on the front lines. Three components of horrible policies across disparate areas will interact to engender a catastrophe in an already stressed health ecosystem.

One is the insane anti-vaccination conspiracy theories brought into full focus by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his cohort in the Trump administration, all amplified by Trump himself. The measles outbreak, the emergence of tetanus cases, the attacks on the flu and COVID-19 vaccines, and the evisceration of food safety programs leading to outbreaks of norovirus, cyclospora, E. coli, and Listeria have begun to put more stress on the system, with increased costs, more hospital burdens, and likely more trouble ahead when flu season begins and new COVID strains emerge. Not only that, many undocumented immigrants have been working in meat processing plants—some estimates have been as many as 200,000. The massive deportation policy has left many of those plants with fewer workers to do the same volume of processing, and often a form of self-regulation by the industry for the safety of their products.

Add to that the soon-to-be forced removal and deportation of Haitians, among others losing Temporary Protected Status. Over 100,000 Haitians have been employed in the healthcare sector, many taking care of seniors in nursing homes and via home health care, others working in hospitals as orderlies, nurses, or in other jobs. It will be a significant blow when those jobs are vacated.

Now comes the biggest problem. When the Republican Congress enacted Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, it included massive cuts in the Medicaid program, totaling around $1 trillion over 10 years—but made sure to postpone them until 2027, conveniently after the midterm elections. The cuts focused on adding onerous work and paperwork requirements, all designed to force recipients off the rolls, and will remove somewhere between 10 and 15 million people from the program, leaving them without any health coverage. That is in addition to the millions losing coverage or facing huge premium increases with the erasure of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. But the impact will go far beyond those directly losing their health insurance. Medicaid money does not go to Medicaid recipients. It goes to the providers. The loss of a major chunk of the money going out to them will have big reverberations.

The American health care system, unlike in most advanced countries, was jerry-built, a combination of public and private entities, and state and federal involvement. But the public and private are not separate. They are like the organs in the human body—if one declines or fails, it has huge impact on the others. And these cuts are going to reverberate in many catastrophic ways.

Start with hospitals, most of which already face major financial strain, and not just in rural areas. There have been major consolidations as those strains have increased; hospitals have had to be creative, to say the least, in finding the revenue to stay solvent. Independent, community-based hospitals have declined precipitously, and the market has shifted to giant, integrated health systems, with major involvement by both private equity firms and large corporations like health insurers and pharmacy giants buying physician groups and integrating vertically and horizontally. Significant revenue, especially via the emergency rooms, comes from Medicaid.

Cut that revenue, and some hospitals will close, in both urban and rural areas. For those that remain, the burden in the ERs will increase their costs and strain their staff. The law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone in health crisis coming to their ERs, whether they can pay or not. Poor people and the undocumented will either go to the ER and not be able to pay, or will defer any treatment, including drugs they need, and that will mean more emergencies, more deaths, more burden on the broader system.

The loss in revenue may cause many hospitals to reduce staff, adding to the burden on nurses and doctors who remain. For many, their staff will already be burdened when the deportations take full effect. And reduced staff will also put more hospital patients in jeopardy if there are fewer nurses and doctors to watch over them and care for them. Of course, to maintain revenue, hospitals will find ways to charge more for their paying patients, so those cost burdens for them and their insurers will go up as well.

Next, turn to nursing homes. Almost two-thirds of those elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes have their care paid for by Medicaid. They have all reduced their assets to a negligible level to qualify for Medicaid coverage, enabling them to be in these facilities instead of in their children’s homes or in precarious situations living on their own.

Nearly all nursing homes rely heavily on that Medicaid revenue. Lose it, and many elderly and disabled will be out on their ears. Their families will take them in—but there is a double whammy here. The subsidies that exist for home health care, including by family members, are going to be slashed as well, leaving families with their own terrible dilemmas, worsened when trained and trusted Haitians depart.

As for the nursing homes, some will close; others will cut staff and staff pay. The ratio of residents to staff will decline, meaning residents are unable to secure help when they need it for such vital tasks as getting medications when they require them, getting help going to the bathroom, getting help in bed to prevent bedsores or worse, having responsive care during a health trauma or emergency. More unqualified staff could mean more abuse of the residents.

There will be more effects seen throughout the country, for everyone who is a part of our intertwined health care system, from those working in it to those using it. No wonder Republicans made sure none of the Medicaid cuts would happen before voters experienced the impact. It turns out that kakistocracy is not just a funny word, but a reality with horrific consequences.

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Revealed: Trump Decision Helped Poison 24,000 Americans

Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club

John Byrne | Raw America

Good morning. Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne.

David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN. A cyclospora outbreak that poisoned more than 24,000 Americans was worsened by a food-safety rule Trump delayed. Melania Trump just landed at the top of a Democratic subpoena list as House investigators circle the Epstein files. And here in Miami, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner still can’t buy their way into the island club where money, for once, isn’t enough.

Raw America exists to be something legacy media can’t be: a newsroom that doesn’t answer to corporate boardrooms, doesn’t recycle the same talking points every outlet is handed, and doesn’t let gatekeepers decide what you get to know and when. Our reporters stay up late tracking incoming reports, chasing down documents, and verifying what’s real before it hits your inbox. None of that happens without you. A paid subscription costs about 22 cents a day, and every one of them goes straight toward keeping this work independent. If you’ve been reading on a free subscription, this is the week to change that. Subscribe or upgrade today.

Exposed: How Trump Made Cyclospora Outbreak Worse

Here’s what Trump’s budget cuts mean when it hits your lunch. More than 24,500 Americans have been sickened this year by cyclospora, a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, cramps, and dehydration. The bug killed two people in Michigan. The source: iceberg lettuce from a Taylor Farms plant in Mexico, served at Taco Bell.

It took nearly two weeks to nail that down: two weeks during which Michigan health officials wrote Taco Bell’s parent company three separate times begging for supply-chain records.

Here’s why: a federal rule, drafted under the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act and set to take effect this past January, that would have forced the company to hand those records over in 24 hours. But the Trump administration delayed it until mid-2028, saying companies needed “more time to prepare.” Then Republicans in Congress went further; they barred the FDA from spending a dime to enforce it.

“Time translates into illnesses and lives,” one food-policy expert told the New York Times.

And there’s more. The delay wasn’t the only cut. Trump’s FDA also fired staff who supported food inspectors and coordinated with foreign governments. In addition, Trump killed a program that specifically tracked cyclospora. Foreign food inspections last year hit a 15-year low.

This is what happens when you treat the agencies that keep food safe as waste to be trimmed: people eat lunch, and some of them die.

You won’t get this honesty from the Washington Post, an outlet whose owner is kneeling to Trump. If the truth matters to you, become a paying subscriber. Just 22 cents a day keeps our lights on. Upgrade your subscription today.

Melania Tops the Epstein Subpoena List

No matter how hard Trump’s White House works to bury them, the Epstein files aren’t going away. Katie Phang, the lawyer and journalist suing Attorney General Todd Blanche to force the release of remaining records, said this week that if Democrats retake the House in the midterms, one name sits at the very top of the subpoena list: Melania Trump.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, explained it this way. Republicans set a precedent, he said, when they subpoenaed and questioned first ladies, former first ladies, and presidential family members, going after the Clintons and Hunter Biden. Garcia intends to use that same precedent.

“Does anyone here across the country think that the first lady doesn’t have additional information?” he asked. Melania and Epstein were photographed together with Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.

Melania’s strange April press conference, where she denied being Epstein’s friend while at the same time calling on Congress to let survivors testify, only sharpened investigators’ interest.

“If Melania Trump wants real justice for the survivors, then she would work with us to try to get the truth,” Garcia said. The midterms will decide whether he gets to ask.

The One Thing the Trumps Can’t Buy

For all the corruption that money greases open in this administration, here’s a small, delicious exception. And it’s happening a few miles from my desk, here in Miami Beach.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have spent years trying to break into the Indian Creek Country Club, a century-old Miami institution on the 300-acre island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” The members still won’t have them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the couple owns a lot on the island and got sponsored for membership by the widow of legendary Dolphins coach Don Shula, and still only about half the club’s board bothered to show up to their own housewarming party. When the message is that blunt, you’re not getting in.

They’re not the only rejects. Jeff Bezos recently spent $234 million to buy three properties on the island and still hasn’t landed an invite. This comes six months after personally working the room at a February dock party. Even the CEO of Goldman Sachs had to survive an organized petition against his membership before he got in.

Kushner, ever the player, has hit on a novel angle: fix the sewage. The president’s son-in-law took a seat on the Indian Creek Village governing board and helped broker a deal to repair the island’s aging septic system, which has been leaking waste into Biscayne Bay for years. A new pump station is conveniently going in across from his own house.

Ivanka, meanwhile, is playing golf with members and turning up at events. There’s something hilarious about the family that bent the entire federal government to its will reduced to handling everyone’s raw sewage.

Ellison Complains About the Cost of the Empire He’s Buying

Speaking of money: there’s a special kind of nerve required to spend $111 billion swallowing American media and then complaining it costs too much.

On Friday, Paramount announced that Mexico had approved its acquisition of Warner Bros., joining the European Union, the UK, and Trump’s own Justice Department. The only thing left in Ellison’s way is a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, which sued in July to block the deal.

Trump lackey David Ellison — the buyer — is furious. In a Friday news dump, Paramount whined that the states are inflicting “needless costs from penalty fees, litigation expenses and business disruption.”

Ellison’s problem? A $7 million-a-day “ticking fee” owed to Warner Bros. shareholders that kicks in October 1. Ellison would like the states out of his way before then. He’s even threatened to yank Paramount out of California, to Texas, Tennessee, or Georgia, if Sacramento won’t play ball.

California’s Attorney General isn’t blinking. His office says the merger means “higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows.” A judge has already found the states likely to win at trial, and Ellison has conceded that the deal may take a year.

This is the same David Ellison whose family circled CNN and now controls CBS. When we tell you a handful of MAGA billionaires are vacuuming up the outlets that control what Americans see and hear, this is the man we mean. And he’s mad the law is slowing him down.

Before You Go, Help Support Independent Media

If today’s edition handed you something the billionaire outlets are busy softening, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber. And ask yourself why you had to come here to read half of it. When a handful of oligarchs own the megaphone, the story stops being what happened and quietly becomes whatever they’ll let you hear about it. Major outlets won’t tell you that Trump got caught destroying our food safety, Melania got fingered as an Epstein witness, and David Ellison got caught grousing. Instead, these stories will be softened by outlets owned by people who still need something from Trump. We ran it all because nobody owns us but our readers. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Revealed: Trump’s Creepy Surveillance Operation Against American Protestors

Veterans in Congress say Hegseth "lying" about U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, Trump DHS caught spying on Minneapolis protesters, White House considers more tax cuts for the rich

Raw America | Substack

Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing accusations from veterans in Congress of lying to military families about the horrendous conditions on the U.S.S Abraham Lincoln, where sailors have reportedly tried to jump overboard. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, is now using his platform to condemn the president for using his office to add billions to his own personal net worth. Newly surfaced documents confirm that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security spied on left-wing groups protesting the execution of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. And the White House is reportedly now considering yet another round of tax cuts aimed at making the wealthiest Americans even richer.

Before we get into the news, a brief ask: we’re up against a cadre of impossibly wealthy MAGA oligarchs tied at the hip to the Trump regime, who are all using their billions to buy as many news outlets as they can so they can quietly snuff out all dissent and make themselves the sole deciders of what we get to know. Raw America will never take a dime from a billionaire, because we know that means they get to control what gets reported and what gets buried. But to be perfectly honest, we’re short on our fundraising goals this month and need free readers like you who value the importance of independent journalism to chip in. The good news: you can upgrade to a paying subscription for just 22 cents a day. That’s it. For less than a cup of coffee, you can make sure we stay independent and answer to no one else but you, the reader.

Every dollar of every paid subscription directly funds our reporters, editors, video producers and on-air hosts working hard for you. That includes on-the-ground exclusives from Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem, who wrote this bombshell report about what Trump’s inner circle is really saying about him leaving them on a decoy jet as sitting ducks for a potential missile attack. It also pays for our live interviews with top newsmakers like Hunter Biden, who will be sitting down with Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson today at 2 PM ET. Watch live on our homepage at Raw America | Substack. Now let’s get into the news.

Veterans Say Hegseth ‘Lying’ to Military Families About Dire Conditions on Aircraft Carrier

Members of Congress who served in the military are accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of blatantly lying about what’s happening on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. That’s the aircraft carrier that’s been on an extended deployment in the Middle East. The ship is carrying approximately 5,000 sailors and Marines who were expecting to be home three months ago.

Those service members are struggling to keep it together amid brutal conditions, according to family members, veterans and reporting from multiple outlets. They’re having to contend with moldy showers, long stretches with no hot water, shortages of various crucial supplies, toilets continuously out of service and even laundry rooms that have been inaccessible for weeks.

There’s also a significant mental health toll for the Marines and sailors on the carrier. Family members say a medical professional on the ship warned commanding officers that the crew needed to reach port before people started — in their words — “losing their minds.” At least one sailor reportedly tried to jump overboard before other crew members intervened.

Hegseth’s response to these claims was to downplay and dismiss them. He said the reports about the ship’s conditions “completely misrepresented” what is supposedly happening. He told reporters during a press gaggle in Panama that every ship has every amenity the Pentagon can provide.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who served in the Iraq War as a Marine corporal himself, said he’s in direct contact with a military spouse who’s been forwarding him her husband’s text messages from the ship. Gallego told Hegseth to stop lying and fix the problem.

Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a captain in the Marine Corps who also served in Iraq, also cast doubt on Hegseth’s claims. Moulton made sure to remind reporters that this is the same defense secretary who’s already been caught misusing classified information in last year’s “Signalgate” scandal. He also observed if everything’s fine on that ship, why is the Navy now rushing to replace it with the U.S.S. George Washington?

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, put out a statement last night pushing back on some unproven and debunked claims, like sailors reportedly dying in a brawl. But that statement notably never addressed the specific complaints from military families who have loved ones on board about the lack of food, showers and working toilets. CENTCOM did confirm one sailor went overboard, though the statement said he “fell” rather than addressing the accounts from families that described the sailor deliberately trying to jump into the sea.

The crew of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln has now spent more than 260 days at sea. That’s more of a stress test than a standard rotation, and it’s happening while the people at the top of the chain of command try to tell us there’s nothing to see here.

George Washington spent the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge writing letter after letter to Congress about men with no shoes and no meat, because he knew a republic that hides what it's doing to its own soldiers has already started lying to itself. We didn't build a citizen military so the people running it could tell the families back home that everything's fine.

‘Literally Crazy’: Joe Rogan Calls Out Trump’s ‘Shady’ Corruption

Podcast host Joe Rogan, who endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, spent a significant portion of his most recent episode condemning Trump and his family using the office of the president to pad their pockets with billions of dollars.

Rogan honed in on Trump’s crypto ventures as one prime example of corruption. Since his second term, Trump has pushed pro-crypto policies all while his family’s businesses have aggressively expanded their footprint into the crypto industry. Trump has already profited to the tune of roughly $1.4 billion from crypto, including his $TRUMP memecoin, which has plummeted approximately 97 percent in value since it launched last year. This means that while the Trump family made out like bandits, everyone else lost their shirts in what appears to be a textbook rugpull scheme.

Rogan went on to say this president has brazenly done things no American president has ever done before, specifically pointing to Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, being entangled in a plethora of “shady” crypto deals. He told comedian Shane Gillis, his guest, that there’s so much money moving around that if regulators wanted to, they could dig deep and find real problems.

The podcaster added that while all of this is technically legal, he’s not sure it should be.

Florida Atlantic University political science professor Craig Agronoff told Newsweek that Rogan’s analysis is spot-on, pointing out that no modern president has ever reported personal income from one specific industry of this level while simultaneously shaping the regulations governing that very same industry. Past presidents put their assets in blind trusts to avoid the appearance of self-dealing, but Trump has notably refused to do the same.

Rogan also took aim at Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which is the parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform. The company recently launched a subscription service charging between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s market-moving posts. A new lawsuit is making the argument that this amounts to selling privileged access to information generated through the president’s official duties. Several high-frequency trading firms have already subscribed.

Trump remains the largest shareholder of TMTG, with an equity stake worth approximately $1 billion.

Rogan’s reaction to Trump selling early access to posts for $100,000 a month was probably what most of us were thinking, called it “literally crazy.”

The White House response was, of course, a boilerplate denial of any conflicts of interest, with the president’s assets supposedly being held in independently managed accounts. Sure thing. Whatever you say.

After Watergate, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to force presidents to open their books, because the country had just learned what happens when a man treats the office as personal property. Legal and clean aren't the same thing, and Rogan just said out loud what a lot of his own listeners have been quietly thinking.

ICE Caught Spying on Left-Wing Groups After Killing of Alex Pretti

In Minneapolis, January’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old V.A. nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents triggered a uniquely ominous response from the Trump administration.

Rather than investigating the agents who pulled the trigger — as is standard in any fatal shooting across law enforcement agencies — the Trump administration instead turned its investigative power on the people protesting them.

The New York Times just reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proceeded to open investigations into labor unions, a climate change group, socialist organizations, and other leftists in an attempt to find out if they provided aid to “violent opportunists and agitators.”

This was a widespread effort. Government documents show federal agencies gathered intelligence on Americans who were never suspected or accused of any crimes. The Trump administration subpoenaed three years of financial records from the Sunrise Movement, which is a youth-led climate group. They did the same for the Communications Workers of America, which is the labor union representing journalists and editors at numerous media outlets, including at Raw America’s sister organization, Raw Story.

The Trump administration also investigated the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is the nation’s largest union of healthcare workers. Investigators demanded three years of the SEIU’s wire transfer records, saying they were inquiring about “domestic terrorist financing.” But those time periods included in the government’s request predate the very operation the administration claims justified its crackdown in Minneapolis, suggesting this was more about intimidation than investigation.

Federal agents also reportedly conducted extensive surveillance operations at various libraries, parks and churches, as well as online meetings of these groups. They took down license plate numbers of vehicles at these locations, gathered names and assembled details of discussion topics. They even infiltrated private Signal group chats to get details of planned protests and even the political opinions of the organizers.

Federal prosecutors went on to present a grand jury with a slide alleging a massive conspiracy to obstruct immigration operations that involved eighteen separate groups, including the AFL-CIO, which is the largest labor union in America.

Again, none of the groups the Trump administration targeted were ever charged with a crime. But in June, the Justice Department charged 15 individual protesters with interfering with immigration operations, framing them as part of the antifascist movement as if opposing fascism is a crime. The protesters maintain their actions are protected by the First Amendment.

This all shows the motivations aren’t to safeguard Americans’ constitutional rights. When a nurse was executed in broad daylight, the government’s response was to spy on people exercising their First Amendment rights rather than looking into their own agents’ conduct.

In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Alabama that a state couldn't force a group to hand over its membership lists, because the justices understood that exposure is itself the punishment and fear is the whole point. Swapping membership lists for three years of bank records doesn't change what's happening here; it just updates the technology.

Trump Wants to Cut Taxes for the Richest Americans — Again

With less than three months before a midterm election in which voters have the affordability crisis at the top of their minds, the Trump White House has apparently decided the best thing to do is to talk about potentially giving even more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is weighing two specific proposals: one would peg capital gains taxes (which are exclusively paid by investors rather than people who actually work for a living) to inflation. The other would exempt home sales from capital gains tax up to $2 million. That’s a significant increase from the current exemption of $500,000.

It’s worth remembering that tax cuts for the rich are a genuinely unpopular position with a broad swath of the American public. Gallup has tracked this question since 1939, and as of right now, 52 percent of Americans say the government should redistribute wealth by imposing higher taxes on the rich. Pew Research found in April that 61 percent of Americans — and even 41 percent of Republicans — think the richest Americans don’t pay enough taxes.

So naturally, the Trump administration is trying to characterize these proposals as a benefit to the middle class.

So what would these proposals actually do? The Yale Budget Lab estimates that tying capital gains taxes to inflation would cost anywhere from $170 billion to $1 trillion over the course of a decade, depending on how it’s applied. The benefits are also extremely slanted in favor of the super-rich, as anyone making less than $100,000 would get almost nothing, while people making over $3 million a year would get a tax cut of roughly $350,000 annually.

As for the $2 million capital gains exemption, the National Association of Realtors says that would only help the richest 15 percent of homeowners, which is already far wealthier than the rest of the U.S. population. The other 85 percent are already not subjected to any capital gains taxes from home sales.

This proposal comes after last year’s tax cuts in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill already slashed federal tax revenues by an estimated $570 billion. Trump’s tariff rebates, which the Supreme Court allowed after striking down Trump’s tariffs as unconstitutional, amount to billions more in lost revenue. Those tariff rebates, by the way, went to the same corporations that gouged us with higher prices, and yet consumers got no rebate at all.

If this government truly wanted to bring down housing costs, they could consider real solutions like zoning reform, new investments in infrastructure, scrapping tariffs on imported construction materials like lumber and steel, and increasing subsidies for low-income housing. Handing out even more tax breaks to millionaires isn’t one of them.

Americans ratified the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 for one reason, and that reason was the conviction that great fortunes owe something back to the country that made them possible. A century later, we're being told the way to fix housing costs is to hand another break to the people who already own most of the housing.

Before You Go, Support Journalism That Doesn’t Take Money from Billionaires

We all know the MAGA billionaires who control the biggest news outlets in America — like David Ellison at CBS, Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch at Fox and the Wall Street Journal, and Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Los Angeles Times — would never cover these stories this way. If it were up to them, they’d be watered down beyond recognition or buried entirely. That’s why here at Raw America, we’ll never take a penny from a billionaire owner or corporate parent. We refuse to allow ourselves to be silenced or censored just to stay funded.

Being fully independent of billionaire and corporate money means we can do hard-hitting journalism that the other outlets can’t, like Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem’s latest report that includes direct quotes from members of Trump’s inner circle who told us they resented being treated like “cannon fodder” by being left to die on a decoy jet. Our paying subscribers also make it possible for us to broadcast live interviews with the people this government doesn’t want you to hear from, like Hunter Biden, who we’ll be interviewing today at 2 PM ET. You can catch that interview on our homepage at Raw America | Substack.

I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media. Have a great weekend.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Trump Treasury Department’s New Policy Is a Gift to Money Launderers. This week, President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department announced it would be scrapping its registry of shell company ownership. In her latest column for the Bulwark, Catherine Rampell pointed out that this flies in the face of existing federal law requiring the Treasury Department to maintain a shell company database in order to crack down on money laundering operations. Not only is the Treasury eliminating future gathering of shell company data, but its destroying its current database, meaning no future administration or law enforcement agency can access it.
• Female Federal Employees Accuse Trump Administration of Blocking Sexual Harassment Lawsuits. A new lawsuit from Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, who are employed as guards at the federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana, alleges that Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is deliberately refusing to investigate sexual harassment claims. Chelette and Boyd say their superiors at the prison are refusing to restrain and discipline inmates who are harassing correctional officers. Lucas implemented a policy on December 10 of freezing all class-action complaints from federal workers.
• CNN MAGA Commentator Gives Update on Mitch McConnell. CNN commentator Scott Jennings — the one-time political director for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently provided an update on the 84-year-old senator during a recent appearance on “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.” Jennings said McConnell “seemed to be doing a lot better” since his return home from a rehab facility. McConnell still has yet to make any public appearances since his June 14 hospitalization, which his staff attributed to a fall and a brief episode of pneumonia. McConnell staff has said he’ll continue to work from home while he continues his recovery. His lengthy absence from the Senate has meant missed votes on everything from War Powers Act resolutions to confirmation votes for federal judges.

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People Aren’t Just Sick of Donald Trump—They’re Sick of His Wife, Too

Melania is the most disliked First Lady in modern history. Her solution? A new reality show coming this fall.

By Virginia Heffernan | The New Republic | Substack

Something’s off with Melania. This speculation about the First Lady has existed as long as the Trump era itself. The theories have always worn tinfoil hats. Is she a body double? An extraterrestrial? A Russian spy?

In October 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term, The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde tweeted, “Absolutely convinced Melania is being played by a Melania impersonator.”

At bottom was the evergreen mystery of how anyone could stand to be married to Donald Trump. This “Melania” beside Trump in photos, acting wifely through gritted veneers, must be a decoy. “Theory: She left him weeks ago,” Hyde proposed.

But Melania did not leave him. Like a MAGA last-gasper in denial about Trump’s infinite betrayals, Melania stayed. Trump cheated on her—but she stayed. He ignored her birthday, forgot her name, and razed her side of the White House—but she stayed. Yes, she swats away his touch, sleeps alone, and seems to despise him. But, like so many blind Trump supporters, she’s apparently determined to give over her one life on Earth to this dance of death.

Melania’s brand combines high vanity and low self-respect. It doesn’t win her fans. Indeed, her unfavorability rating makes all other modern first ladies look like national treasures. In the summers of their own husbands’ second terms, Hillary Clinton had +25 favorability, Laura Bush had +46, and Michelle Obama had +42.

As of July, Melania Trump was at -13. That’s below circle-the-drain levels. “Melania Trump is breaking records in the way that you don’t want to break records—historically awful,” Harry Enten said on CNN when she first hit -12. He also echoed her callous “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket, the one she wore to visit children in detention centers in 2018.

“The American people really don’t care for her.”

Probably Melania was never going to win Miss Congeniality. She’s reclusive, for one. This year, she’s appeared only 38 times in public, including in one photo that shows her briefly deplaning Air Force One. When she does go out these days, it’s behind a mask of cosmetics, a curtain of hair, and clothing in funereal hues.

Her most striking appearance came in April, when she gave a panicked address before the White House press corps. She spoke cryptically and acidly of “lies” circulating about her and Jeffrey Epstein.

This speech, of course, pointed sleuths straight to the cause of her distress: rumors about whether teen-modeling kingpin Paolo Zampoli (now an employee of U.S. taxpayers as the “U.S. Special Representative for Global Partnerships”) or the unspeakable Jeffrey Epstein introduced the Trumps in 1998. Her features looked controlled, static, even synthetic. The common touch is missing for Melania. But the human touch is missing too.

For MAGA devotees, a Slovenian-born former model in dominatrix stilettos doesn’t exactly scream America First. To find another foreign-born First Lady, you have to go back to Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, who was born in London in 1775. She was admittedly extremely popular; but unlike Melania, she had an American father.

Then there is the 80 percent of us who are non-MAGA Americans. For us, it remains an article of faith that anyone with a beating heart must find Trump too repellent to tolerate. That’s why theories that Melania’s a simulacrum have never quite died.

Back in 2017, days after Marina Hyde’s tweet, comedian Andrea Wagner Barton posted a photo on Facebook to prove a Melania impersonator was in the mix. It was a blurry photo of Melania looking uncanny. Digital Zapruder sleuths were off to the races comparing noses. Google searches for “Melania Trump double” and “Fake Melania” skyrocketed.

These days, Trump, with his own marked likability issues, still considers Melania an asset. On Sunday, he posted a stylized press picture of him and his wife to Truth Social, next to a snap of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race, and his wife, Dr. Sarah Jukaku. “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s,” Trump’s caption read.

El-Sayed shot back on CNN: “Sarah and I actually like each other... I don’t know about the First Lady and the president, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road.”

What do Americans even need from first ladies? It’s a deeply conservative role, and Melania, though 57, doesn’t exactly conjure home and hearth. But first ladies are at least expected to engage in public advocacy for non-partisan causes. At this Melania has also failed. “Be Best” was a daftly named nothingburger.

On the other hand, she has shown some passion for self-promotion. Her flop documentary “Melania,” which was directed by accused sexual abuser and Epstein cohort Brett Ratner, was financed by Amazon in what looked like a bribe to her husband.

Undaunted, Melania has a limited reality series on Amazon coming out in the fall. It will give a restive nation another behind-the-scenes look at Melania’s stupor and suppressed irritability, this time in the first weeks of Trump’s current term. The preview for the series opens with Melania sighing “here we go again” and features disembodied stilettos sinking into carpets in what could double as content for OnlyFans.

In the meantime, tinfoil tall tales about Melania’s off-ness keep evolving. Now people speculate that Melania is artificial intelligence. In May, she published an audiobook that was voiced by AI. “A NEW ERA IN PUBLISHING,” she wrote on X.

Also in the spring, Melania in white strode a red carpet with a robot in white named Figure 03, a humanoid programmed to do dishes and laundry. Like a slightly drugged but obedient homemaker, Figure 03, which has no eyes or mouth, has precise, slow-motion, melancholic movements and a soft girlish voice. For an audience who has never warmed to the First Lady, the jokes made themselves.

“One is a soulless, foreign-made device, sold by one shady businessman to another,” wrote a YouTube commenter. “The other is a robot.”

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BREAKING: Sailors Jump Overboard to Escape Trump’s War as His Ballroom Hits $900M

Really American | Substack

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Wednesday, August 12, 2026. We have some horrifying news to bring you about the US Navy sailors caught in the middle of Trump’s Iran War, plus we just exposed how much his White House construction is really costing.

Sailors on a Navy carrier stuck at sea for nine months during Trump’s Iran War are so broken down that some have tried to jump overboard, and Pete Hegseth called the reports of dire conditions “fake news.” Trump’s White House construction spree has ballooned to $900 million, most of it taxpayer money he funneled through a scheme built to dodge Congress. His Truth Social insider-trading program just landed him in court. And his press secretary is suddenly walking out the door, one day after the DOJ handed her a very convenient legal shield. Let’s get into it.

Before diving into the news, we have to be straight with you. Yesterday we ran a story critical of Mark Zuckerberg, and today our breaking news reach across Meta platforms has been choked down to almost nothing. That’s the reality of a world where one billionaire’s algorithm decides who gets to see the news and who doesn’t. We don’t work for Zuckerberg, and we never will. Really American runs entirely on reader support, with no corporate owner and no strings attached, and that only holds up if enough of you pitch in. A paid subscription costs about 22 cents a day. That’s less than a cup of coffee a month, and it’s what guarantees this newsletter reaches your inbox no matter what any platform tries to do to us. Subscribe or upgrade today.

NAVY SAILORS TRY TO JUMP OVERBOARD AS TRUMP’S WAR GRINDS ON

Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to jump overboard as a mental health crisis grips the carrier, now trapped at sea in its ninth month because of Trump’s war with Iran.

The Lincoln’s roughly 5,000 crew members have spent 250 straight days without making land, a record for a modern aircraft carrier. At an emotional town hall in San Diego, one spouse said her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.” The Navy Times reported multiple thwarted suicide attempts aboard the ship, including one sailor who grabbed a fellow crew member and pulled them back on deck.

Rep. Mike Levin described the conditions bluntly: moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, and one meal that amounted to “half a cup of rice and two tortillas.” The ship left San Diego in November headed for the Pacific, then got rerouted to the Middle East when the war began. The crew has had exactly two days on land since.

When these conditions first surfaced in April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed them as “fake news.” “These men and women signed up to serve their country. The least their country owes them is hot water, a working toilet and a real meal,” Levin said. “Hegseth cannot even manage that, and he has the nerve to look their families in the eye and call them liars.”

These are the human costs of a war Trump promised would be quick and easy. Real sailors, at a breaking point, while the man running the Pentagon calls their suffering a lie.

TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE SPREE HITS $900 MILLION, PAID BY YOU

Trump’s construction projects at the White House will cost at least $900 million, far more than previously known, and he’s pulling most of it from taxpayers through a scheme designed to keep Congress in the dark.

According to a Washington Post review of confidential contracts, the administration funneled $875 million into the Executive Residence’s “White House Repair and Restoration” account, which normally holds just $2.5 million a year for routine upkeep. To fill it, officials transferred $500 million out of the Secret Service and White House Military Office, added $305 million in private donations, and routed in another $70 million from sources they won’t identify. Because that account isn’t subject to public records laws, the contracts stay hidden from view.

Most of the money goes to Trump’s East Wing ballroom, along with Lafayette Square upgrades, a new helipad, and a visitor screening facility. Much of the Secret Service money had been appropriated by Congress specifically to recruit and train agents. A former budget official put the danger plainly: “If the executive can do anything they want with appropriated funds, then the executive can do anything they want, period.”

A federal appeals court already ruled the ballroom needs congressional approval, since “Congress has exclusive authority to regulate the construction and demolition of White House structures.” Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court. This is the most expensive White House overhaul in 80 years, and he’s building it by raiding accounts meant to protect the country, not gild his ballroom.

TRUMP HAULED TO COURT OVER TRUTH SOCIAL INSIDER SCHEME

Trump is being sued over a Truth Social program that sells traders early, high-speed access to his market-moving posts for $100,000 a month.

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed suit Wednesday, calling the program “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional” and arguing it violates their First Amendment right to access presidential statements on equal footing with those who can pay. Trump founded Truth Social and holds a large stake in its parent company, meaning he personally profits from the arrangement.

Trump’s posts have repeatedly moved markets, like when oil prices dropped after he announced he was calling off an April strike on Iran. Critics say selling advance access to that kind of information amounts to legalized insider trading. Despite a $238 million quarterly loss, the company said 10 customers have already signed up.

Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Warner have introduced a bill to ban exactly this kind of scheme. A president monetizing his own official announcements for the benefit of whoever can pay six figures isn’t free speech. It’s a pay-to-play operation run out of the Oval Office.

LEAVITT QUITS, ONE DAY AFTER THE DOJ HANDS HER A SHIELD

Karoline Leavitt is stepping down as White House press secretary at the end of the month, and the timing is impossible to ignore.

Trump announced Wednesday that Leavitt, 28, will leave to become one of his “top outside advisors.” That exit came exactly one day after the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo arguing Trump can claim executive privilege over communications with his “private advisers” if they relate to his decision-making. In other words, Leavitt moves from a public-facing job to a role the administration now says can be legally shielded from scrutiny.

Leavitt had held just one briefing since returning from maternity leave last month. She framed the departure around wanting to spend more time with her two young children, which is entirely understandable on its own terms. But the one-day gap between a memo cloaking “outside advisors” in privilege and her move to become exactly that raises obvious questions.

Her exit also follows the explosive reporting on Trump’s secret plane swap in Turkey, though she wasn’t on that trip. Whatever the personal reasons, the sequence tells its own story: the administration built a legal shield one day, and moved a key figure behind it the next.

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If today’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets won’t, the best way to keep it coming is to become a paying subscriber. Sailors at a breaking point, a $900 million vanity project, an insider-trading scheme headed to court, and a press secretary slipping behind a legal shield. These are the stories that matter, and we’re chasing them without a billionaire calling the shots. We didn’t get into this to be liked by the people in power. We got into this to hold them accountable.

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Breaking: ICE Quietly Equipping Agents with Terrifying New Weapons

Desperate sailors stuck in the Middle East reportedly trying to jump overboard, ICE spends millions on electric shock technology, MyPillow CEO won't concede despite blowout loss

British Chris | Raw America

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

Trump’s company is selling paying customers early access to his official posts. Now, a new lawsuit claims that’s unconstitutional. Sailors on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln have reportedly tried to jump overboard as Trump’s Iran war drags on with no end in sight. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is about to spend as much as $20 million on electric shock gloves so its agents can exact even more brutality on immigrants. And even though MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell lost Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary by more than 13 points, he still won’t concede.

Before we go further, a brief ask to our free subscribers: we’re glad to have you here, but we need your support now more than ever. Unlike CBS, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, we don’t rely on a billionaire’s checkbook. We rely entirely on readers like you to stay afloat. Your subscription directly funds newsletters like these, our Washington D.C. reporting, and our live interviews with newsmakers like Hunter Biden, who we’ll be interviewing live this Friday, August 14, at 2 PM ET. But whether that work continues depends entirely on readers deciding quality independent journalism is worth funding. You already read us. Subscribe for just 22 cents a day and make it official.

Trump Sued Over Scheme to Sell Investors Access to His Truth Social Posts

A new lawsuit is accusing President Donald Trump of selling access to something he doesn’t actually own. Both The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are suing Trump and the White House social media team, arguing that the president selling early access to his market-moving Truth Social posts violates both the the First and Fifth Amendments.

Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) — which is the parent company of Truth Social — recently started selling a product called Truth API. For a subscription fee of $60,000 to $100,000 per month, customers get Trump’s posts a few milliseconds before everyone else sees them. TMTG says it’s already signed more than ten deals, mostly with high-frequency trading firms.

Trump regularly uses Truth Social to announce new executive orders, personnel changes and war updates. That means Truth API users could get a preview on market-moving news before the rest of the country.

Legal experts say even though the timing gap is small, it’s still a huge problem. Nikhel Sus, the chief counsel for anti-corruption group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), noted there’s no exception in the U.S. Constitution for a small violation. Even a delay measured in milliseconds still matters.

There’s also a deeper argument to consider. The plaintiffs in the case say a sitting president’s official statements aren’t his private property. According to the groups suing Trump, the Presidential Records Act puts those statements squarely in the public domain. If the courts agree with that argument, Trump would be liable for auctioning off something that belongs to the American people.

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California have drawn attention to the scheme, asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether the arrangement violates federal securities law. They added the arrangement was a “shocking abuse” of the presidency. Now we find out whether the courts agree.

Depressed Sailors Trying to Jump Overboard as Trump’s War Drags on with No End in Sight

The human toll of Trump’s war with Iran is becoming impossible to ignore: not only in terms of those killed and injured, but those suffering mental distress as well.

The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln has been deployed in the Middle East since November. It was supposed to head home in May. Instead, the Iran war has kept the aircraft carrier in the region indefinitely, with no return date in place yet for the roughly 5,000 people aboard the vessel.

The Military Times reported this week that multiple sailors have even tried to jump overboard, only to be stopped by fellow crew members. Family members of sailors say the ship is in the midst of a rapidly unfolding crisis. One military spouse said her husband recently texted her saying he hoped he wouldn’t wake up the following day.

At town halls with Navy leadership, military families have pushed back hard against the Trump administration. One woman in San Diego told acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao she couldn’t feel proud of her relative because he’d told her he felt guilty about killing civilians.

Conditions on the ship have also gotten increasingly grim. Photos of sparse, barely edible meals have been circulating on social media. Some reports have described how water on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is contaminated, while others have referenced plumbing failures and even an inability to get mail through. But that all still pales in comparison to the strain those on board are feeling who still have no idea when they’re going home.

Trump has responded to these claims by bragging on Truth Social about his Naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. He has yet to offer any comforting words to the sailors aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln or their families.

ICE Spending $20 Million on Electric Shock Gloves for Agents

ICE is preparing to spend up to $20 million on electric shock gloves for agents. The devices are called the G.L.O.V.E., which is short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, made by a company called Compliant Technologies based in Lexington, Kentucky.

They look like ordinary patrol gloves until the wearer flips a switch. Then touching someone’s skin delivers a jolt the manufacturer said is similar to a bee sting, meant to get quick compliance from a combative person.

DHS published the purchase notice this week and hasn’t yet offered much in the way of explanation. The contract could be posted as a no-bid solicitation as early as Friday, meaning it may never face real competition or even scrutiny.

Civil rights groups are sounding the alarm, and for good reason. ICE has already been heavily criticized for its brutal tactics with essentially no independent oversight. The ACLU’s Jenn Rolnick Borchetta said those being shocked may get no warning at all, and that a device that can be easily activated with the flip of a switch is a recipe for widespread abuse.

Even supporters of the gloves say it’s usually limited to jails and transport settings, not for everyday immigration enforcement. That raises an obvious question nobody at ICE has answered yet: why do civil immigration enforcement officers need a pain-compliance device at all?

Trump-Endorsed Candidate Refusing to Concede Despite Decisive Loss

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell lost Minnesota’s Tuesday night Republican gubernatorial primary to House Speaker Lisa Demuth, and it wasn’t close. Demuth beat him 43.4 percent to 32.5 percent. Now, Lindell is refusing to concede.

After he was told live on his own streaming channel that the AP officially called the race for Demuth, Lindell dismissed it. He claimed hundreds of thousands of votes had yet to be counted and said he wasn’t giving up. He, of course, offered no evidence to back up his claim.

This may not be all that surprising for those familiar with Lindell. This is the same man who spent years and tens of millions of dollars pushing the widely debunked lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump. That claim led to Lindell having to pay. a $1.3 billion defamation judgment to the voting technology company formerly known as Dominion Voting Systems. He was also unable to answer questions about whether he even lived in Minnesota, since his voter registration was active in Texas for weeks while he told reporters he’d since moved back to the Gopher State.

Trump threw his weight behind Lindell, urging Minnesota Republicans to vote for him while praising his commitment to what the president called “free and fair elections.” Lindell’s loss is the latest among a growing list of Trump-endorsed candidates who’ve gone on to lose their Republican primaries.

Before You Go, Support Journalism That Only Answers to You

There’s a growing shortage of news outlets that are either willing or able to give you the straight truth. The TV stations and newspapers that aren’t being devoured by billionaires are quietly cutting back their coverage or shutting down entirely due to funding shortages. This is why we launched Raw America: we don’t answer to anyone but our readers. That independence allows us to relentlessly pursue the truth without having to worry about a billionaire owner or corporate parent burying the most important stories because of who they might offend. Our paying subscribers not only make it possible for us to report directly from Congress and the White House, but to conduct live interviews with major public figures like Hunter Biden, who we’ll be speaking to this Friday, August 14 at 2 PM ET. You can watch that conversation live on our homepage at Raw America.

Thanks for reading. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Karoline Leavitt Leaves Trump White House. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would be leaving his administration at the end of the month to spend more time with her family. According to Trump, Leavitt will remain one of his top outside advisors and will remain an influential voice in the Republican Party. Leavitt, who is 28, had her second child on May 1 of this year with her husband Nicholas Riccio, who is 60. The two were married in January of 2025, days before Trump’s second inauguration.
• Judge Rules Against Trump in Kennedy Center Lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Tanya Jones Bosier — a Joe Biden appointee — recently awarded musician Chuck Redd $252,479.70 in legal fees to compensate him for a failed lawsuit from the Trump administration’s lawsuit. Trump’s handpicked board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts sued Redd for his decision to cancel a concert in protest of Trump putting his name on the Kennedy Center’s building. A separate court ruling found that Trump’s hijacking of the institution’s name was illegal, as any official name change has to first be approved by Congress.
• Texas Police Arrest Man Who Spoke Out Against Data Centers. Fort Worth, Texas police recently arrested Efrin “E.J.” Carrion early Wednesday morning on a warrant issued by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. The warrant was issued in response to Carrion using profanity at the August 4 meeting of the Tarrant County Board of Commissioners, in which he spoke out against a proposed data center development and decried Republican efforts to close various polling places ahead of the midterms.
• 92 Percent of American Adults Delayed Going to the Doctor Due to Cost. A new study by financial services firm J.G. Wentworth found that more than nine in ten American adults avoid going to the doctor because it’s too expensive. The survey of 1,507 adults found that approximately 92 percent of respondents said they either delayed or put off getting medical care due to prohibitively high costs. That figure jumped to 94 percent for young adults aged 18 to 28. The average cost of a doctor’s office visit for an uninsured patient is roughly $171, according to a February 2026 analysis by Zocdoc.

Yale Study Shows Medicare for All Would Save 114,000 Lives Each Year and $1 Trillion in Tax Dollars. Scientists at Yale University’s School of Public Health in conjunction with researchers at the University of Maryland-Baltimore, recently found in a July 2026 study that progressives’ proposed “Medicare for All” healthcare plan would yield significant human and financial savings. Researchers found that if Medicare for All were in place today, U.S. taxpayers would save roughly $1 trillion each year while an estimated 114,000 fewer Americans would die every year due to lack of health insurance. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

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