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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has a bone to pick with government staffers sharing insider information with the press—so he breathlessly announced a joint task force to “IDENTIFY AND PROSECUTE LEAKERS.” “Leaked information risks lives,” the former Fox News host said in a video posted to X on Monday. “Access to confidential and secret information is a sacred trust, and those who betray that…

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Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Monday called for an investigation after a Colombian immigrant legally authorized to work in the U.S. was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Collins’ home state of Maine. “The shooting in Biddeford requires a full and impartial investigation of what happened,” Collins wrote in a post. “It is my understanding that the Biddeford…

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On Sunday, after four weeks of absence from Congress caused by a medical emergency—which led to extensive speculation about his health—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released a letter to his constituents saying that his hospitalization was the consequence of a fall. The 84-year-old former Senate Majority Leader noted that he has lifelong mobility issues related to a childhood case of polio. 

Polio—largely eliminated in the US following the pathbreaking development of the Salk vaccine in 1955, when McConnell was 13—is a life-altering disease: if it doesn’t kill a person, it can lead to disabilities. Even decades after a polio infection, people can develop what is called post-polio syndrome, which contributes to symptoms such as muscle weakness and pain. Falls like McConnell’s are often related, at least in part, though McConnell has not publicly said whether he’s been diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and falls not related to the condition are not unusual at his age.

Despite over a century of knowledge of the impacts of polio, and seventy years of widespread vaccine availability, some American parents are either delaying or avoiding getting their kids vaccinated against it. According to CDC data published in March, around 8 percent of toddlers born in 2021 and 2022 did not receive at least three polio vaccines by age two, with similar data available for kids born in the early 2010s. Unlike with measles , there have yet to be polio outbreaks as a consequence, with just one recent recorded case in the United States in an unvaccinated adult in 2022 (and none in children).

McConnell has consistently advocated for vaccines and spoken about his experience with polio decades after his infection at two years old—a voice that might help sway vaccine-hesitant parents who lean conservative, and a counterpoint to President Donald Trump’s expression of anti-vaccine sentiments, and appointment of anti-vaccine activists to top public health posts.

McConnell voted against confirming anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary in February 2025. In a statement released at the time, McConnell made his views on anti-vax sentiment clear. 

“I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” he wrote. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

It would be ahistorical to portray McConnell as any sort of health care hero. As Senate Majority Leader during the first Trump administration, McConnell led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, bans insurance companies from refusing to cover chronically ill people based on their disabilities. He also voted for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the 2025 budget bill that has already resulted in major public health cuts and which will strip millions of people of Medicaid through administrative burden.

Texas pediatrician and vaccine advocate Vincent Iannelli, who maintains a website tracking anti-vaccine propaganda, says voices like McConnell’s have been important in containing anti-vax sentiment. Trump, meanwhile, has questioned whether McConnell truly had polio—and various anti-vaxxers have done the same.

“The polio vaccine in particular is one of the greatest accomplishments of our science innovation,” American Public Health Association executive director Dr. Georges C. Benjamin told me. Benjamin noted that polio has been detected in wastewater domestically, suggesting that there are further unreported cases. “In communities that are not picking up the vaccine, the risk of polio is occurring,” he added.

New York University Grossman School of Medicine professor emeritus Arthur Caplan had polio when he was six years old and experienced temporary paralysis. Decades later, Caplan is experiencing the effects of post-polio syndrome, and now uses a mobility aid.

“It’s hugely important that polio survivors bear witness to the terrible damage that polio did in the US,” Caplan told me.

Asked what he thought about parents not vaccinating their children on the grounds of parental autonomy, Caplan, a bioethicist, says: “That is utter bullshit.” 

Grace Rossow contracted polio in India as an infant in 1992, shortly before being adopted by a family in the United States. Despite access to quality medical care, Rossow’s symptoms, including paralysis in one leg and fatigue, persist. She’s had 19 surgeries to address the fallout.

Recovery from health problems, due to underlying neuromuscular issues, takes much longer after polio, Rossow, now 34, told me.

Right now, polio risk remains very low, Iannelli says. But if vaccination rates drop—as they have for other conditions, including measles, where such a drop was once hard for public health officials to imagine—that could change. Caplan cites the Florida surgeon general‘s efforts to end vaccine mandates in schools. 

“Polio can hide. It hides in animals. People are asymptomatic. You cannot let your guard down against polio,” Caplan said. “It’s especially important for McConnell and other people who had polio to speak up.”

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has filed 31 federal lawsuits seeking to force 30 states and Washington, D.C., to hand over their unredacted voter rolls. As of Monday afternoon, its record is 0-13.

On Monday, Judge Thomas E. Johnston of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia dismissed the federal government’s attempt to acquire sensitive voter information from the state.

The judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, ruled that the Trump administration’s demand was legally deficient. It failed to provide a “factual basis” and “statement of purpose,” as are required by the statute invoked by the administration, Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960. For that reason, he wrote, the government had “failed to state a claim.”

The growing string of defeats suggests the administration is simply throwing lawsuits against the wall to see what sticks. None have so far.

In the 13 rulings against the administration thus far, judges appointed by various presidents, including Donald Trump himself, shot down his administration’s attempts to acquire voter data—which anti-authoritarian advocacy group Protect Democracy has described as “an unprecedented and unconstitutional incursion” that seeks to set the stage for “purges of eligible voters, election subversion in 2026, and the invasion of fundamental privacy rights.”

A scathing footnote in Johnston’s ruling lays bare the groundlessness of the Trump administration’s crusade: “Given the lack of an adequate basis or purpose, one is left to wonder what the real purpose was for the Justice Department to go to the trouble of filing civil actions like this one all around the nation,” the judge wrote. “Troubling though this question is, it is not before the Court at this time.”

News broke over the weekend that the administration had subpoenaed multiple New York Times journalists over the crime of reporting unfavorably on the antics of Dear Leader. The administration is very unhappy that the Times reported on the big switcheroo where President Donald Trump, after soaking the taxpayers for untold millions for his fancy new bribe plane, was forced to use his old, sad…

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A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Trump’s latest ploy to avoid paying E. Jean Carroll is just pathetic…

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South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone Monday to finish out the Senate term of her belated brother, Senator Lindsey Graham.

“Today under the law, it’s my duty—and honor—to name someone to serve and replace this irresistible man, this irreplaceable man, this extraordinary man, for the remainder of his term,” McMaster said. “Lindsey took care of his little sister, in years long departed. It’s my honor to ask his little sister, Darline Graham, to finish his work for him now.”

Graham passed away on Saturday night following what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The next morning, a preliminary medical report found that Graham had died from a tear in his aorta due to the hardening of his arteries.

McMaster, addressing Nordone, recalled how she broke into tears when he initially asked her to serve in the wake of her brother’s death.

“Lindsey has always been there for me, and now I will be there for him,” Nordone said at a press conference. “I think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honor him in this way.”

Donald Trump recommended Nordone in a post on social media Monday morning, claiming that her appointment “would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

McMaster is singularly responsible for tapping Graham’s replacement, as outlined by South Carolina law. Graham was up for reelection in November, having just won his state’s Republican primary last month. South Carolina Republicans have until mid-August to pick his replacement for the ballot.

Nordone does not bring any legislative experience to the role. Instead, the bulk of her experience has been related to disability services. According to Nordone’s LinkedIn, she worked for years as the director of public information for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, and currently serves as a commissioner for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind.

Nonetheless, other prominent South Carolinians have come out in support of Nordone’s appointment following Trump’s announcement. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott wrote on X that, after speaking with Nordone, he believes “there is no one better who understands Lindsey’s love for family, our state, and our country.”

Representative Joe Wilson told the New York Post that he has known Nordone “for years and she’s a constituent of mine.”

“I have faith in Gov. McMaster that he will make the right decision, but I would support the president’s recommendation,” Wilson told the Post.

McMaster’s appointment hands Nordone the power to serve out the remainder of Graham’s term, through January 3, 2027. It’s been just two days since Graham passed, but already a number of South Carolina Republicans have expressed interest in running for a full term in the seat, including Representatives Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman.

Nordone will have to settle into her new position quickly, as the coming week will require her to weigh in on several critical votes, including the National Defense Authorization Act—the preeminent funding bill for the military—and the confirmation of Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department.

The pace won’t let up through the rest of the summer, either: other major upcoming Senate duties include confirmation hearings for Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence, Erica Schwartz for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Keith Sonderling for secretary of Labor, and David Cummins to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

She will also likely take over her brother’s duties on the Senate Budget Committee, of which Graham was the chair, as a new reconciliation bill moves through Congress.

Other Senate priorities include a new Russia sanctions bill, an attempt to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and yet another effort to push through Trump’s voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act.

Nordone and Graham shared a close relationship. In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Nordone described Graham—nine years her elder—as “kind of like a brother, a father, and a mother rolled into one.”

“Our mom got cancer and passed away, and about a year and a half later, we lost our dad too. I was just a kid,” Nordone recalled in a May ad spot for Graham’s campaign.

“He’s always been there for me, no matter what,” she said at the time.

In a CNN interview Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that after speaking to McMaster and Nordone, he believed her appointment would make “a lot of sense.”

“I’ll let the governor make an announcement,” he told the network, adding that “I think in many respects it would be a way of extending Lindsey’s legacy here and certainly something that—if that’s what they decide to end up doing—I think there’d be a lot of support for it.”

One obstacle House Speaker Mike Johnson faces in advancing the GOP agenda in Congress: Outgoing House Republicans are exhibiting a congressional variation of senioritis.

A new analysis by Bloomberg Government finds that, “overall, House Republicans who aren’t coming back next year have missed an average of 39 votes each, more than double the House’s overall average of 18 missed votes per member.”

House absenteeism is coming in large part from Republicans who lost in primaries or elections for another office. Such lawmakers have missed 60 of 595 House roll call votes, or about 10 percent, on average.

That group is made up of almost 10 lawmakers, Bloomberg notes, but it will soon grow, as Arizona Representatives David Schweikert and Andy Biggs are both vying for their party’s nomination for governor. “These reluctant retirees have missed, on average, more than triple the average votes of the rest of the House,” Bloomberg reports.

Representatives Nancy Mace and Wesley Hunt are the House Republicans who have played hooky the most. Mace, who lost her bid for her party’s gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina, has missed 105 votes. Hunt, who unsuccessfully ran in the GOP Senate primary, missed 156, but his attendance actually improved after his loss.

Bloomberg notes that these senior skip days aren’t solely a GOP phenomenon. But Republicans have evidently racked up most of them. And they are yet another thorn in the side of the House speaker, who’s dealing with intraparty strife as Republican insurgents such as Representative Anna Paulina Luna have blocked floor business in hopes of forcing certain far-right priorities.

New footage from ICE’s fatal shooting in Maine Monday morning shows the victim’s car still running in circles after they shot him at the wheel.

The Portland Press Herald released footage from immediately after the shooting in Biddeford, Maine, showing ICE agents attempting to stop the small white car. When the agents finally succeeded in opening the car door, they let the man’s body slump to the ground before putting him in handcuffs.

OMG. They still dropped him on the ground and handcuffed him after a bullet through his head. pic.twitter.com/AsKoHCkZPO https://t.co/pNKH95bryc

— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) July 13, 2026

It’s a gruesome scene, and an eyewitness told the Press Herald that he saw agents pull the man from the car, “bleeding profusely from the head.”

“He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop,’” the witness said. Other footage appeared to show agents surrounding the man on the ground in an intersection, with the car sporting several bullet holes. A young child, reportedly the victim’s daughter and no older than three years old, was at the scene crying in her Bluey pajamas, according to another witness who spoke with the Press Herald.

Immigration advocates say the man, who has only been identified as a 26-year-old from Colombia, was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number. One eyewitness told Reuters that the ICE officer who shot the man said the victim tried to ram him, a story similar to those that ICE has told in previous violent confrontations.

Maine Representative Chellie Pingree and Senator Angus King said Monday afternoon that the ICE agents were not wearing body cameras at the time of the shooting. The incident has touched off protests against ICE in Biddeford, with the town’s residents marching around the city and reaching Republican Senator Susan Collins’s local office, where they chanted “vote her out.”

Protesters swarmed Senator Susan Collins’ office and entered through the front doors, chanting "vote her out,” after a young man was killed by ICE in Biddeford.

DETAILS: https://t.co/0r4yLML2Ac pic.twitter.com/XF6S5frOWK

— CBS 13 News (@WGME) July 13, 2026

Last week, ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, and claimed that he tried to ram and kill ICE agents with his car, contradicting witnesses who said ICE agents boxed in his car.

Donald Trump’s first speech after Lindsey Graham’s passing didn’t include one word about the prominent South Carolina Republican’s shocking death. Instead, the president opted to use his time before the American public to stump for an upcoming IndyCar race.

Trump didn’t seem out of sorts in the slightest Monday as he advertised the two-day August race, slated to take place on the National Mall to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Instead, he ribbed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for being named a three-time world champion in the 90-foot lumberjack speed climb, and joked with the CEO of Fox Sports, Eric Shanks, about what he predicted would be “big ratings.”

“It will be an awesome display of American patriotism and raw horsepower, ingenuity. You’re going to see cars at the level that they’ve never been at before, with cars racing more than 190 miles and even higher than that down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump said, pegging the event as a spiritual successor to his UFC 250 fight.

“It wasn’t exactly designed for that, but what Sean Duffy has done with these incredible, brilliant people is really amazing,” he continued. “It’s going to be a sight for the ages.”

Graham passed away on Saturday night after what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The next morning, a preliminary medical report found that Graham had died from a tear in his aorta due to the hardening of his arteries.

Speaking in several interviews Sunday, Trump described Graham as “like a member of the family,” and said that his death was “very tough.” In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump recalled that he had spoken with Graham on Saturday night after the senator returned from his trip to Ukraine, and said that, at the time, Graham had “sounded a little bit tired, but perfect.”

“It’s devastating. I thought he was fine. He called me last night,” Trump told CNN. “What a terrible loss it is. He was a great politician. He was a natural. There are very few of them.”

The president also lauded what he considered some of Graham’s finest moments as a senator, including his impassioned defense of Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018.

“I think it was a top ten, maybe a top five, moment in the history of the Senate,” Trump told CNN. “It was an incredible display, and he did it from the heart. He felt strongly about Brett, and he did it from the heart—and it turned that whole thing around.”

But Trump was far less effusive about Graham’s legacy by Monday morning when he called in to Fox News, boiling down Graham’s 23-year Senate career to his political flip-flop after the January 6 insurrection.

“He had one bad moment, and that was on the Jan. 6 thing when he stood up [and said], ‘All right, now I’ve had it. That’s it. I can’t do it anymore,’” Trump recalled, laughing. “Then he called me like about 40 minutes later, and he said, ‘Did I really say that? I can’t believe it.’ And he took it back. So I give him a 99 instead of a 100, ‘cause most people, a lot of people are at 100, but he did have that one little moment and it was sorta funny.”

At the time, Graham said “enough is enough,” regarding Trump’s 2020 presidential election conspiracy. He quickly changed his mind when Trump returned to power.

But that was practically all Trump had to say on the matter. Fox’s hosts could barely get a word in edgewise as they tried to steer the president back towards his thoughts on Graham’s death. Instead, the president was fixated on his wildly unpopular SAVE America Act, opting to spend the remainder of his time on the broadcast complaining about mail-in ballots and California’s supposedly rigged elections.

On Monday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were involved in yet another fatal shooting. This time in Biddeford, Maine.

The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine said the victim was a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States, according to the Portland Press Herald. “He was a member of our community, a neighbor, and a human being whose life was cut tragically short. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and everyone now grieving this unimaginable loss,” the two immigration organizations said in a statement.

Daniel Boucher, who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting, told the Portland Press Herald that he was getting ready for work in the lead-up to the killing. After hearing what sounded like fireworks, he witnessed agents remove the driver of the sedan. “He was bleeding profusely from the head,” Boucher told the Press Herald. “He was talking. He said, ‘I tried to stop.’” 

A representative of the Biddeford Police Department said that calls about the shooting should be directed to ICE. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. FBI agents were photographed at the scene of the shooting as part of an apparent federal investigation.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told the Associated Press that he spoke with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the shooting. Mullin reportedly told him that the victim “weaponized” his vehicle. Similar claims by DHS have fallen apart after video footage of shootings have come to light.

It is unclear whether video of Monday’s shooting will emerge. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, according to King.

Monday’s victim is one of more than 20 people who federal immigration agents have shot at since last year, according to the New York Times. Most of those shootings have involved people who were inside their cars. At least nine people have now been killed during encounters with immigration agents during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Another witness to the aftermath of Monday’s shooting, who asked to be identified as Em, told the Press Herald that she heard the gunshots then saw a white car whose driver appeared to have lost control of his vehicle. ICE then rammed into the car to get it to stop, she said.

Lucas Scott told the paper that he saw an ICE agent draw his weapon as he was yelling at the driver of the car. Scott then said he witnessed the driver try to hit the ICE agent with his car before the agent opened fire.

Images from the scene of the shooting show what appear to be bullet holes through the windshield of a white Kia sedan. The victim can be seen lying on the ground alongside the car.

A Kia sedan reportedly driven by the victim of a fatal shooting can be seen with bullet holes in its windshield on Monday.Gregory Rec/Getty

Governor Janet Mills of Maine said she has been “briefed on the shooting” and that the Maine State Police are on the scene. Other Maine politicians have been more outspoken. Ryan Fecteau (D-Maine), Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, was quick to name ICE as the agency involved. Troy Jackson, who is running to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s Democratic nominee for Senate, called for ICE to be abolished. “For too long, ICE agents have been abducting our neighbors in brazen violation of the Constitution, and today they have tragically escalated even further,” Jackson said. “This rogue agency must be abolished.” 

Last week, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who lived in Texas for three decades. As Mother Jones has reported: 

Salgado’s son Ronaldo Salgado held a press conference Wednesday calling for an independent investigation into his father’s death. “I want to tell you about my dad,” he said. “He was a hardworking family man. He was also a man of routine.” Every day, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo got up before dawn and drove to work on a construction site, just as he had done for 35 years.

“At 6:45 a.m., he should have been picking up the last of his guys before heading to North Houston to finish up construction on some houses,” Ronaldo Salgado said. By 6:55, his father had been shot by ICE agents who followed him in an unmarked car.

In a statement, DHS said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo had attempted to evade arrest and “weaponized his vehicle,” echoing language used in the hours after an ICE agent shot and killed US citizen Renée Good in her car in Minneapolis in January.

DHS ran with the same story to justify the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago. In both cases, video evidence greatly undermined the government’s claims. DHS’s lies following the killing of Alex Pretti in January further eroded the department’s credibility. 

After Good’s killing in Minnesota earlier this year, Seth Stoughton, a former Florida police officer who is now a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, made clear in a Q&A with Mother Jones that cops have been trained for decades not to place themselves in front of a potentially moving vehicle and to avoid shooting at drivers. “If you imagine a vehicle driving toward you, shooting the driver is not going to cause that vehicle to stop,” Stoughton explained. “One, you might not actually incapacitate the driver. But even if you do, you’ve just gone from having a guided missile to having an unguided missile.”

Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, called for accountability in a statement shared with the press. “We are grieving, we are furious, and we will not allow his death to be treated as routine or inevitable,” Chitam said. “How much more harm must our communities endure before those with the power to act acknowledge that this has gone too far?”

A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general announced Monday that they filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the looming merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Discovery. The suit alleges that the merger would violate federal antitrust law due to the control that the combined companies—led by the pro-Trump Ellison family—would have over the entertainment and media industry.

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The Republican Party is firmly against paid sick leave for workers, making the United States the only advanced economy that does not require it. But two Republicans—Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey—have recently received months of paid sick leave, even though they have a track record of voting against it for U.S. workers.

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Twelve Democratic-led states on Monday sued to stop Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing that a merger of two of the country’s largest media companies would hurt American consumers.

The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington joined together to file the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit argues that the merger will hurt the market for film distribution and give the new company too much power over the market for distributing basic cable channels.

“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

If Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. is successful, the company would own two major news networks in CNN and CBS News, the movie studio Warner Bros., and the streaming service HBO Max. Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, staunch supporters of President Trump, own Paramount Skydance, and would effectively have their own conservative media empire.

The merger has also raised concerns that CNN would be overhauled to reflect the conservative political views of the Ellisons. The two Trump allies have already steered Paramount’s CBS News to the right, causing its ratings to plummet and, in the process, an employee exodus from its flagship 60 Minutes program.

Trump is very much in favor of the merger, holding a longtime vendetta against CNN over its critical coverage of him, and has discussed who he wants to be fired at the network once the takeover is complete. Other officials in the Trump administration, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have openly cheered on pro-Trump changes at CNN.

The Department of Justice said last month that it would not challenge Paramount’s move, saying it was “not likely to harm competition or American consumers.” Now that decision will go to federal court, where a judge will determine if the damage to the public breaks the law.

By now, nearly everyone is no longer even really pretending that the Trump sons are legitimate businessmen making their own way in the world. Even the Washington Post, currently in the midst of transforming itself into a hype man for the Trump administration, can’t quite avoid saying what we all know: Don Jr. and Eric have “amassed a portfolio of defense technology start-ups that are…

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | GOP desperately insists Mitch McConnell is alive and well…

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A federal judge just nixed the settlement underlying Donald Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion slush fund.

The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for the unlawful leak of his tax returns in 2019. The honey pot payments were pitched as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger that felt targeted by the previous presidential administration.

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in a 56-page order Monday.

Williams ruled that any entities affiliated with the slush fund settlement—including the president, the Treasury Department, and the IRS—were “prohibited” from using the details of the arrangement in any official capacity. She also referred Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar for possible professional discipline.

She noted that while Trump had the right to pursue legal action over the unauthorized publication of his tax returns, he chose not to do so while he was still a private citizen. Instead, Trump did not bring the charges until he had returned to the White House and subsequently appointed his former lawyer, Todd Blanche, atop the Justice Department.

“These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House Counsel, to reach a ‘settlement,’” Williams assessed. “It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties.”

The settlement between Trump and his government also included a curious addendum from Blanche that immunized Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote, would be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business.

But as Williams observed, the jaw-dropping components of the case—such as the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds proposed for undefined grievances, or the blanket immunities offered to Trump—were not put before the court. Instead, the question underlying the legality of the president’s slush fund centered around whether the entities engaged in the settlement arrangement, from government representatives to Trump’s personal attorneys, ever represented different parties while they pretended to engage in a legitimate court proceeding.

“The answer is a resounding ‘no’: the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest,” Williams wrote.

That was evidenced before the nation in June, when Blanche testified before the House of Representatives that the Anti-Weaponization Fund would not be moving forward. That slip of the tongue showcased Blanche’s confidence that he could speak for, and bind, both sides of the matter, according to the judge.

“In sum, the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail,” Williams concluded.

This story has been updated.

In his latest attempt to assert his leadership despite the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iran, President Donald Trump turned once again to his allies at Fox News on Monday morning, proclaiming that he intends to turn the U.S. into the “guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s comments come on the heels of another weekend filled with the U.S. and Iran exchanging fire…

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In the latest instance of Donald Trump’s family lining their pockets during his time in the White House, the president’s sons are cashing in on the administration’s military spending strategy with investments in defense technology.

A new analysis from The Washington Post found that investment funds associated with Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have “invested in more than a dozen defense tech companies and other firms seeking businesses from the Pentagon and federal agencies.”

Since the brothers’ investments, those firms have secured at least $3.2 billion in federal contracts in total, as well as $3.1 billion in future contract options. Some have even gained entry to exclusive preapproved contractor shortlists and, with that, the opportunity to “bid exclusively on up to nearly $200 billion in future work.”

The companies are benefiting from a ramped-up approach to military spending, which started under Joe Biden but escalated significantly under Trump, reports the Post.

Unsurprisingly, in statements to the newspaper, spokespeople for the administration, the Trump brothers, and the defense contractors have dismissed the plain conflict-of-interest concerns raised by the story. They insist that the contracts have been awarded solely on merit and that there is no corruption afoot.

Far-right conspiracy theorists still aren’t convinced that Mitch McConnell is alive.

The Kentucky senator hasn’t been seen since June 14, when he was found unconscious in his Washington residence. For weeks, McConnell’s office has refused to provide a clear explanation regarding his absence, offering scant details regarding the 84-year-old Republican’s hospitalization.

The media blackout ended on Sunday, when McConnell’s office shared a photo of the lawmaker beside his wife, holding a copy of The Washington Post’s Sunday sports section in his lap.

“My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke,” McConnell purportedly said in a statement released by his office. “I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past several weeks, I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.”

He added that he’s since been moved to a rehabilitation facility, and while he isn’t “able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet,” he is still “working closely” with legislative staff.

But some figures on the far right were still not satisfied by the update, openly speculating that something was gravely wrong with McConnell.

“How come Mitch McConnell’s staff won’t release a video of him? A photo could have been taken at any time. I call BS. The American people aren’t stupid,” wrote political influencer and Trump loyalist Laura Loomer.

In a string of social media posts, Loomer further claimed that there’s “no way Mitch McConnell wrote that essay,” and questioned whether the newspaper in the photograph had been AI-generated, despite the fact that the pictured stories accurately represented the Post’s Sunday coverage.

“The text is blurry and the tag on his shirt is blurred. Also, if he’s in the hospital, why is there no IV connected to him to monitor his health?” wrote Loomer. “This is such bullshit. His staff are liars.”

Former Utah representative and Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz also urged McConnell to get on video, writing on X: “Let’s see you say it. A written statement is far different than saying it on camera.”

Former Fox News producer Kylie Jane Kremer demanded to see the “metadata on the original photo” of McConnell, and argued online that “the public deserves clear, direct proof that Senator McConnell is recovering and able to communicate.”

“A brief, unedited video would put nearly all of these questions to rest,” Kremer said.