Political News

The Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s stay of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to commandeer state vote-by-mail systems in a 6-3 vote on Monday night. Its explanation for the decision began with a lie. “About five months ago, President Trump issued an Executive Order designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections,” the court claimed in an unsigned order.

In reality, Trump has no interest in maintaining public confidence in federal elections. He has spent the last 14 years publicly undermining confidence in election results, even in ones that he won. His executive order was intended to sow discord in and seize control of state election processes ahead of the midterms, where his party is preparing to lose one or both chambers of Congress.

Monday’s order in Trump v. California does not give Trump a full green light to pursue his plans. A separate lower-court injunction in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump remains in effect for now. The Supreme Court’s order also left room for the states to renew their challenge to a key part of the executive order at a later date.

At the same time, the court’s framing of the dispute in Monday’s order inspires little confidence that it will protect state vote-by-mail processes from Trump’s attacks. It gives extraordinary deference to the executive branch while ignoring the systemic threat that Trump’s efforts represent to the midterm elections. That does not bode well for future litigation against the executive order.

“For its part, the court has opted to take a blinders-on approach to evaluating the merits of the government’s arguments about the order’s directives, present impact, and anticipated effects, despite this court’s admonition that courts ‘are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free,’” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion, quoting from a 2019 ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also dissented separately.

This case springs from the president’s opposition to American democracy. Trump has treated any presidential election result that he dislikes as illegitimate for the last 14 years. Since 2020, he has been obsessed with promoting the phantasmal threat of significant fraud from mail-in ballots, despite uncovering no evidence that it exists or has played a role in any U.S. presidential election. (And despite the fact that he casts his own vote by mail.)

After news outlets called the 2012 election for Barack Obama on Election Night, Trump posted on Twitter that the result was illegitimate. “This election is a total sham and a travesty,” he wrote in a since-deleted post. “We are not a democracy!” Other tweets complained that “more votes equals a loss” and called for “revolution!” Finally, he called on Americans to “march on Washington and stop this travesty,” foreshadowing his own coup attempt eight years later.

In 2016, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by narrowing winning key battleground states to secure a majority of electoral votes. Clinton, however, secured a majority of the popular vote by a margin of three million ballots. Trump had suggested ahead of Election Day that voter fraud might be his undoing before his surprise victory. When the size of Clinton’s popular-vote margin became apparent, he brought it up again. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he lied.

Trump’s plan to retain the White House in 2020 centered on a convoluted and half-baked scheme to dispute the results in key states, create fraudulent slates of electors, and eventually have then-Vice President Mike Pence discard the legitimate ones during a joint session of Congress. Trump hoped to claim an early victory on Election Night when the states showed him ahead and then challenge subsequent ballot counts as illegitimate. This plot fell apart after Fox News’s election analysts swiftly called Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night. Courts rejected Trump’s subsequent lawsuits, Pence declined to carry out the plot on January 6, and a mob summoned by Trump to D.C. attacked the Capitol later that day.

In 2024, Trump again planned to use legal challenges and other procedural tactics to undermine public confidence in the election results if he lost. Those plans never came to fruition because Trump won a majority of electoral votes and the popular vote on Election Night. Faced with this indisputable proof of the American election system’s integrity—if the results were rigged in 2020, why not do it again in 2024?—Trump nevertheless pursued his plot to attack mail-in voting earlier this year ahead of the midterms.

This time, he hopes to wield the machinery of the federal government against state election officials. Trump’s executive order in March had three interlocking parts. One requires the Department of Homeland Security to create “state citizenship lists” of voting-age U.S. citizens for distribution to state election officials. Another provision instructs the Department of Justice to “take all lawful steps to deter and address noncompliance with federal law,” including by prosecuting state and local election officials and withholding federal funds from states.

Taken together, those two provisions strongly imply that state and local officials who do not use the “state citizenship lists” will be prosecuted by the Justice Department. Finally, the order also directs the United States Postal Service to, among other things, not transmit mail-in ballots from states that don’t submit their own voter registration lists to the agency. It would require states to conform their own ballot tracking procedures to federal control.

This amounts to an unprecedented attempt to bring American elections at least partly under direct presidential control. The Constitution gives no role whatsoever to the president in the running of federal elections. Article One reserves that power to the states, which actually run elections, and to Congress, which can legislate rules about the “time, place, and manner” of federal elections. The vice president has a purely ministerial role in presiding over the joint session of Congress that counts votes from the Electoral College every four years.

To that end, a coalition of states led by California sued earlier this year to block the executive order from taking effect, describing it as an unconstitutional attack on how they run their elections. A federal district court judge in Massachusetts agreed and enjoined the executive branch from carrying out the three aforementioned provisions.

In explaining its decision, the conservative majority described the March executive order as generically as it possibly could. “The order is an internal directive from the President to his subordinates mandating that certain agencies pursue certain policies,” it claimed in Monday’s order. “It neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the executive branch.” From there, they adopted a backbreakingly deferential reading of the executive order’s text in favor of the White House.

On the state citizenship lists, the court said the order’s provision “is an internal directive from the president to a subordinate” that “imposes no concrete harm on the states.” Therefore, the court said, the states had no standing to challenge it. The same is true in the majority’s eyes for the prosecution directive. “Setting prosecutorial priorities lies within the president’s Article II power,” they noted, arguing that the investigation and prosecution is based on “existing federal laws.”

If this was all that the executive order contained, perhaps that reluctance to enjoin the executive branch might be understandable. The courts could still intervene when the Justice Department brought subpoenas or indictments down the road. But the court also rejected—only for now, as I’ll explain later—the states’ challenge to the USPS rulemaking process.

Part of the justices’ reasoning was that the lower court’s stay was premature because the Postal Service hadn’t yet released a rule to comply with the order. That rendered the states’ claims hypothetical in its view. “[The district court] first had to speculate about whether the Postal Service would propose a rule,” the majority wrote. “Then it had to speculate about how the agency would weigh the comments it received. Then it had to speculate about whether the agency would issue a final rule. Then it had to speculate about what the final rule would say. Finally, after all that, the district court still had to speculate about whether the text of a hypothetical final rule would harm the states.”

One small flaw in this reasoning is that the district court’s speculation was correct. The Postal Service announced its final rule on Friday, three days before the Supreme Court’s order to lift the stay was issued. (The Justice Department said the agency would take no action on the rule until the court issued a decision on its legality.) As expected, it set out regulations that would allow it to not deliver mail ballots in states that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration’s “requests” for state voter data.

If the USPS rule goes into effect, it could upend the midterm elections altogether. Many states allow mail voting; some, such as Oregon, rely on it entirely. The USPS rule imposes specific requirements for state mail-voting envelopes that those states could not have known about until recently. Allowing Trump’s executive order to stand for the midterms opens the door to widespread confusion among election officials and the possibility that millions of Americans will be disenfranchised by an illegal presidential act.

Whoops! Not to worry, the majority said in Monday’s order, because it had to evaluate the states’ standing claims at the time that they filed the lawsuit. It was hardly speculative that Trump and his subordinates were trying to engineer a very specific outcome here. An executive order is hardly a suggestion, and Trump’s public comments made his priorities clear. If you thought otherwise, you were intruding on the president’s constitutional prerogative to issue constitutionally dubious orders to his subordinates.

Instead, Monday’s order leaned heavily on deference to the “internal operations of the executive branch” when weighing the irreparable-harm standard for shadow-docket relief. “Because reversal of the district court’s judgment would come too late for the 2026 midterms, the district court’s errors deal ‘a serious setback’ to the executive’s ‘goals’ while this litigation unfolds,” the majority claimed, quoting from earlier rulings. “When a federal court ‘improperly intrudes on a coordinate branch’ in this way, interim relief is justified.”

The dissenting justices found this argument absurd. They noted, as I already have, that the Constitution allocates the power to run federal elections to the states. “The majority says it was speculative to think there would be a final rule at all when this suit was filed, seemingly accepting the government’s representation that it may not actually implement the executive order,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which Kagan joined. “Yet even as the government represents that it may not implement the executive order at all for purposes of defeating standing, it insists that it seeks to implement the executive order immediately for purposes of establishing irreparable harm. The government cannot have it both ways.”

Thanks to the six conservative justices, apparently it can. The problem is not so much what Monday’s ruling did—though that was deeply flawed as well—but how the court reached its decision and how it appeared to process the situation at hand. The majority could have hardly done more to express sympathy with Trump’s order and its goals. At every turn it treats the Trump administration’s goals as legitimate and defensible; the states’ interests are deemed abstract, hypothetical, groundless, intrusive, or premature.

“What makes today’s ruling so off-base is the [majority’s] lack of situational awareness regarding this equitable judgment,” Jackson explained. “It treats the government’s stay application as if the whole point is merely to demonstrate that the plaintiff states’ claims are not justiciable. Taking its eye off the ball, the majority misses the government’s actual objective: to secure our imprimatur for its effort to foment chaos ahead of the November elections.”

Even this may be an understatement. The entire posture of Monday’s ruling is that the real constitutional violation here is from the states and the lower court as they intrude into the sacred space of internal executive-branch deliberations, as if they were wiretapping the Postmaster General instead of asking a judge to uphold the Constitution. Again, for procedural reasons, Monday’s order is not the end of the legal battle against Trump’s attack on the midterms. Even so, it strongly suggests that he may have already won the war.

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.

Minneapolis was a major hub of racial justice activism in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd and then again earlier this year, aggressively protesting the anti-immigration actions of the Trump administration. Why Minneapolis? Michelle Phelps, a University of Minnesota sociologist, discusses the city’s activism in the latest edition of Right Now. She explains that the anti-ICE protests built on the infrastructure and some lessons learned from the 2020 activism. At the same time, she argues that too many on the left, both in Minneapolis and nationally, have wrongly concluded that the protests of 2020 were ineffective and resulted in a backlash that helped elect Donald Trump in 2024. In reality, Phelps says, backlash to racial justice movements are inevitable. Phelps is the author of “The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America.”

Donald Trump’s rage at Canada is growing more unhinged. He just posted a deranged threat to rename Lake Ontario with the phrase “Lake America.” But it gets worse: He also intimated that the U.S. won’t be “doing much business with Ontario any longer.” That would be seismic, but here’s the thing: Trump appears to actually want this outcome. That’s why he’s plunged us into a trade war with our ally. But it’s backfiring: Canada just released its list of American products that will face retaliatory tariffs, and it appears aimed at harming local economies in ways that will hurt GOP incumbents and candidates. We previously reported this would create problems for Republicans. Now that it’s happening, we recorded an episode about it with Democratic strategist Christina Reynolds, a veteran of midterms. We discuss why the trade war could have outsized impact in the Midwest, how this might badly hurt GOP chances, what the Midwest’s political transformation reveals about the decline of Trumpism, and how Democrats can seize this moment going forward. Listen to this episode here.

I’ve been laughing at President Donald Trump’s idiotic midterm political convention for several months now (here and here). In short, Trump wants to make the midterm elections about himself, because of course he does. He wants to be onstage, humping an American flag, with the cameras rolling and his crowds looking on adoringly. Never mind all the people actually running for office.

Source

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Conservative justices take a wrecking ball to the midterms November is going to be one bumpy ride. Fox News goes quiet on Natalie Harp—after introducing her to Trump When in doubt, just ignore that it’s a huge news story. Trophy deficit Does the number…

Source

Now more than ever, we modern-day court jesters need your support! Become a paid subscriber to any (or all!) of the platforms below to keep Keef gentleman-cartooning into the future and beyond! www.patreon.com/keefknight keithknight.substack.com ko-fi.com/… kchronicles.com/… Related | Sean Duffy says video gamers can speedrun air traffic control crisis…

Source

Usually when someone loses an election decisively, by, oh, let’s say 11% or 45,000 votes, they just go away and lick their wounds. But those people are not Mike Lindell, who, two weeks after that really kind of staggering loss, is still challenging Lisa Demuth’s GOP primary win for Minnesota governor. This is what you get when you have President Donald Trump endorse the world’s most low-rent…

Source

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Beloved musician and cultural icon Dolly Parton has died at 80…

Source

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire numerous top generals has put America’s military between a rock and a hard place in its war against Iran.

The Army has been without a chief of staff since Hegseth fired General Randy George in April; he has forced out at least three senior officers that were believed to be in the running to be George’s replacement, according to current and former officials that spoke with The New York Times.

All in all, Hegseth has forced out at least half a dozen senior officers, according to inside sources that spoke with the Times, who say this purge has damaged the service’s expertise and has eroded its top ranks.

Those affected include General James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff that Hegseth forced out last year with little explanation, and General David Hodne, whom Hegseth hired and then fired just eight months later.

Other axed officers include Major General William Green, General Christopher Donahue, and General James Slife, the Air Force vice chief of staff.

General CQ Brown Jr. was also fired from his position as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, and General David Allvin retired early last fall.

Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the Army’s top civilian leader, is also believed to be on his way out in the coming months, according to the Times, which reported that Driscoll has already moved out of the large family house he was renting outside Washington.

“Hollowing out the most battle-tested and most lethal, proven leaders in a time of war means troops are less safe and we’re less likely to win,” Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York and a former Army intelligence officer, told the daily newspaper. “We’re doing generational damage to the sense that the military is an apolitical trusted organization that swears an oath to the Constitution, not to a president.”

Hegseth’s decision to undermine top military leadership has left a definitive vacuum in the highest echelons of the Army. At the time of Hegseth’s confirmation, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. Now, there are just five—the smallest number to lead the service in years.

Meanwhile, the Army’s Middle East bases have been battered by Iran’s seemingly endless supply of cheap drones since late February. The conflict has so far killed at least 18 U.S. servicemembers and wounded more than 776 others. It has also taken an enormous toll on daily life in the U.S., inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs.

The Financial Times reported Tuesday that farmers in America’s Corn Belt region are facing their toughest economic crisis in 40 years. Last month, the American Farm Bureau Federation, an industry group, projected that without government intervention, farmers growing nine principal crops will face $32 billion in losses in 2027, after losing an estimated $31 billion in 2026.

“This is the worst financial downturn in the sector since the 1980s,” John Hansen, president of Nebraska Farmers Union, told FT.

Matt Bailey, who grows corn and soybeans in eastern Nebraska, told FT the strain was a result of rising input costs. Bailey said that 10 years ago, phosphorus-rich fertilizer used at planting time cost $470 per ton; the same product now costs more than $900. “Where do you start with that? How do you budget for that?” Bailey said.

The alarm bells have been blaring for months. Trump’s war with Iran halted trade through the Strait of Hormuz just as farmers in the Northern Hemisphere would typically order fertilizer for the upcoming planting season. The American Farm Bureau Federation has warned that the shock to the fertilizer supply chain would drive prices even higher and threaten food security and national security.

That’s not the only reason farmers may not be happy with Trump. Last week, the American Farm Bureau Federation voiced concerns that Trump’s plan to import tariff-free beef would create long-term damage to the already struggling American beef industry. On Monday, the group urged the Trump administration to resume trade talks with Canada after Trump detonated negotiations.

Trump has historically relied on the support of Corn Belt voters, where farming-dependent counties backed him by an average of 78 percent in 2024. Now, with Trump’s approval rating reaching record lows and midterm elections just around the corner, the president may need to act quickly if he hopes to hold onto their support—and his Republican congressional majorities.

The agricultural sector has been struggling ever since it helped President Donald Trump win a second term. His tariffs have constrained key overseas markets, with China shifting major soybean and other commodity purchases toward countries like Argentina and Brazil. Immigration raids have created labor shortages and driven up the cost of harvesting crops, some of which have been left rotting…

Source

During a Q&A on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continued to deftly handle attempts to draw him into conflict and controversy. “As the mayor, my job is to respond to the needs of everyone, no matter how they feel about me or whether they voted for me or whether they voted at all,” Mamdani replied when asked if he saw unaffiliated voters as a threat, noting that about 1 in 10 Trump…

Source

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Why the GOP loves to use ‘communism’ as an attack…

Source

With hours on the clock until polls close, Republicans are betting that Senator Darline Graham—the temporary fill-in for her late brother, Lindsey Graham—will be iced out of South Carolina’s GOP runoff race. Graham is up against Representative Ralph Norman, a five-term lawmaker who has represented the Palmetto State in various legislative capacities since 2005.

The junior Graham took the reins of her sibling’s powerful office last month, after the 71-year-old suddenly passed away from an aortic dissection. Despite having zero relevant experience or qualifications, Graham gained the president’s endorsement and was subsequently appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster.

Within the span of a few short weeks, the 62-year-old undertook a gambit to make her interim responsibilities more permanent, throwing her name on the ballot to be formally selected by the state electorate. The money poured in behind her, with chief executives, lobbyists, and prominent Republican donors pumping thousands of dollars into her nascent campaign, violating the weekly thresholds set by the Federal Election Commission.

The country was stunned earlier this month when Graham pulled ahead of more than half a dozen candidates in the Republican primary—but now, some Republicans believe that may have been the zenith of her political career.

Public opinion on Graham plummeted last week when she flopped on a softball debate question regarding Taiwan, confessing that “national security is not my thing.” In the same debate, Graham forgot the population of her own state, falsely claiming that South Carolina’s population is 50 million people—more than New York and Florida combined. Fact check: The state’s population is fewer than six million people.

Multiple Republican sources told NOTUS that, despite Donald Trump’s efforts, the sexagenarian is increasingly unlikely to win South Carolina’s primary runoff.

“You’re running a campaign with a virtual unknown that took on all of her brother’s unfavorables without any of the goodwill that her brother has in a very short-sprint special election,” one Republican operative told NOTUS. Exactly why Graham is in a bad position in the race “isn’t rocket science,” according to the source.

A lack of reliable or neutral polling has left much of the country’s electoral odds in the dark, including in South Carolina.

“Tomorrow’s election is the biggest black box in recent memory here,” a South Carolina–based Republican operative told NOTUS.

Whoever pulls through the runoff Tuesday evening will eventually have to face off against Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the November general election. (Though the last time South Carolina elected a Democrat to the Senate was in 1998.)

But unlike other midterm-bound candidates who have been advised by party leaders to separate themselves from the president’s negative polling, Graham still needs to ride Trump’s brand if she wants to win big.

“Her only good is hyper-engaged Trump voters. There is no Darline Graham voter,” the operative told NOTUS. “No one’s voting for Darline because of Darline.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins refused to speak on what countries President Trump plans to import tariff-free beef from amid growing backlash over his emergency effort to lower beef prices as midterm elections approach. 

“About the beef imports, what specific countries have been in talks with the U.S. about stepping up those beef imports, aside from Mexico?” a reporter asked Rollins on Tuesday.

“I am not privy to talk about that. I think the conversations are still going on, and that’s Ambassador [Jamieson] Greer who’s finalizing what exactly that looks like, and I think the president’s involved in that as well,” she said.

Q: Which specific countries have been in talks with the US about stepping up beef imports?

BROOKE ROLLINS: I am not privy to talk about that pic.twitter.com/CXKMSvspaI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 25, 2026

It’s certainly alarming that Rollins is unable to be transparent and honest with Americans about where the cheap beef is coming from. 

“The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture is not privy to talk about 300,000 metric tons of food that, according to the President, is right now making its way to the dinner tables of countless ordinary Americans?” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote on X. “Isn’t she curious about this? Didn’t she ask Trump for clarification of it?”

This beef import is something Trump cooked up to offset the cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by his war on Iran, as well as a historic cattle shortage—although the Trump administration blames former President Biden for that.

“As we work to rebuild this herd and help our ranchers, for the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff.  We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again.”

Many within his own party disagree, voicing concerns about American beef farmers being priced out of the market by these mystery foreign importers. 

“Americans want U.S. beef on the table—not foreign imports. Wyoming ranchers produce the highest quality beef in the world. Our ranchers don’t ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace,” Republican Senator John Barrasso wrote. “It needs to be easier—not harder—for Wyoming ranchers to feed America. I will continue to fight for policies that strengthen Wyoming beef producers and invest in the American cattle herd.”

“I want to lower prices but this is a bad idea. Iowa cattle producers raise the highest quality beef in the world. They’ve faced tough market conditions for years, and increasing beef imports would lead to more uncertainty and instability for our farmers,” Iowa Representative Ashley Hinson added. “We should be focused on cutting red tape for cattle producers, lowering the cost of production, and supporting market-based solutions to support Iowa producers and lower costs for consumers.”

Actual farmers seem to feel similarly as well.

“I believe that this is a raw deal by the president. You know, here’s the president who keeps making the announcement that he loves farmers, he loves cattlemen, and then undermines us with that 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef that we don’t even know where it’s coming from,” farmer, activist, and National Black Farmers Association founder John W. Boyd Jr. said Tuesday on MS NOW.  

“[This is] the worst time in history for America’s farmers, going out losing our farms every day, and the president makes another sour deal, and punches the American farmers in the face.” 

“This president makes another sour deal and punches the American farmer in the face.”

“We’re losing 77 farmers and cattlemen every single day in the United States.”

“There’s no guarantee that the American people are gonna see any savings in the local grocery stores.”

Importing… pic.twitter.com/QpBVo66vrP

— Farm Action (@FarmActionUS) August 25, 2026

A federal judge has ordered the government to release one of the witnesses to ICE’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. 

U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett ruled Tuesday that Daniel Tirado Pantoja, who was a passenger in the van driven by Salgado Araujo when he was shot on July 7, should be released from ICE detention as he “has no criminal history, is not a flight risk, and does not otherwise pose a danger to the community,” The Texas Tribune reports. 

Bennett wrote in his ruling that the government has 48 hours to release Tirado Pantoja and that he must be given three hours’ notice of his release, along with the time and location. Federal authorities also can’t re-detain him without proving to an immigration judge that he is a danger to the community or a flight risk. 

“Courts in the Southern District of Texas have held that the continued detention of a noncitizen who has no criminal history and has not been shown to be a flight risk or danger to the community violates procedural due process,” Bennett wrote. “The Court sees no reason to reach a different conclusion here.”

Last month, Salgado Araujo was driving his brother Victor, Tirado Pantoja, and José Trinidad Rojas Pliego to a construction job. ICE agents in two unmarked cars began following them through Magnolia Park in Houston, which has a large Latino population. ICE claimed they had to fire on Salgado Arajuo in self-defense as he tried to ram the agents with his vehicle while trying to get away. 

But the other men in the van refuted that account, saying that the ICE cars hit the van from behind and from the side before one agent fired, hitting Salgado Araujo in the stomach. ICE detained all of the van’s surviving passengers, and a different judge ordered Rojas Pliego’s release last month, but not before the government tried to pressure all three to self-deport. Of the three, Victor Salgado Araujo remains in ICE custody at a Conroe, Texas, detention center.

ICE continues to act with minimal, if any, restraint and appears to be openly flouting the law in its arrests and deportations. The families of its targets live in fear of their loved ones suddenly being detained or worse. Salgado Araujo’s son only found out about his father’s death from a video he saw on Facebook. These family members also can’t expect justice from the Trump administration, and the name of the ICE agent who pulled the trigger on Salgado Araujo has yet to be released.  

President Donald Trump is apparently not satisfied with his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. On Tuesday, Trump angrily suggested that Lake Ontario be renamed “Lake America” as he was mocked by U.S. and Canadian lawmakers for another round of unproductive tariffs levied against Canada. “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America…

Source

Dolly Parton, the award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and all-around all-star human being, died on Tuesday at the age of 80.

Her death was announced by Bryan Seaver, her nephew and head of security, in a video posted to her official Instagram. As a prolific country singer and humanitarian, Parton’s work transcended the stark political boundaries that have set in across the modern cultural landscape.

“I don’t do politics,” Parton once said on a podcast. “I have too many fans on both sides of the fence. Of course, I have my opinion about everything, but I learned years ago to keep your mouth shut about things.” She even joked about avoiding political rallies. “I think my joke is that my daddy was a Republican, and my momma was a Democrat, and I’m a hypocrite!”

Rather than shilling for politicians or parties, Parton’s values were brightly illuminated in her more than 3,000 original songs—including the pro-labor anthem “9 to 5”—as well as her extensive work as a humanitarian.

Here, she revealed her beliefs without ever having to declaim them. Over the course of her career, Parton urged her fellow Christians to accept and embrace members of the LGBTQ community and defended the rights of transgender people—making her a target for certain figures on the right. She was an outspoken supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and she donated the royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” to the Black community in Nashville. During one of this country’s darkest moments in 2020, Parton donated $1 million to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University, which helped fund Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine.

She also founded the Dollywood Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at improving education and uplifting children, donated money for cancer research and treatment, and set up funds for victims of natural disasters. Her Imagination Library provides free books to children all around the world.

Already, politicians who didn’t agree with Parton’s actual values are mourning her death. President Donald Trump posted a statement calling her “one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER.” Even he can’t deny that essential truth—nor could he deny her the memorial she deserved by flying the American flag at half-staff.

In the end, everybody loved Dolly Parton, and she loved everybody too. There’s probably something we can learn from that.

Remember when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was planning to run for president, a brief moment when he was going to stand up to Donald Trump? But then when that collapsed, he returned to form, becoming a sort of mini-Trump—literally, with those lifts in his shoes. Vanity, thy name is Ron. However, one thing that DeSantis is sincere about is kicking low-income people in the teeth.

Source

Calls for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation are growing after two unvaccinated people died from measles in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There have been 393 confirmed measles cases in 28 counties in Pennsylvania this year, and 2,777 total cases nationally—a 35-year high.

These are the first measles deaths in the United States this year, and in Pennsylvania in more than three decades.

“RFK Jr.’s lies and conspiracy theories are making Marylanders sick,” Democratic Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks wrote Tuesday on X. “RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Vaccines are safe and effective. Listen to your pediatrician.”

“Measles is officially out of control. How many more people need to die before there is a nationwide call for RFK Jr. to resign?” said Shaughnessy Naughton, president of the pro-science organizing group 3.14 Action. “His anti-science, anti-vaccine policies are killing people and infecting a generation of Americans with dangerous vaccine skepticism that will take years to recover from.”

These are just the latest calls for Kennedy Jr.’s resignation as he systematically sabotages vaccine science.

“There is one effective way to reduce the spread and severity of measles: vaccination. And RFK Jr. has undermined it at every turn,” Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock wrote on X last month. “He is a hazard to our health and must resign.”

While Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro stopped short of calling for Kennedy Jr.’s resignation Tuesday, he did tell reporters he had a “blunt” conversation with the health secretary.

“His actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Sharing conspiracy theories and misinformation does not help the cause of public health—and it leaves people less healthy and less safe, and it leaves parents in a position where it’s harder for us to do our jobs to protect our children.”

PA Gov. Shapiro on RFK Jr.: I made very clear that his actions, and the rhetoric that is coming from this administration, are having a negative impact on communities across America. Sharing conspiracy theories and misinformation does not help the cause of public health — it… pic.twitter.com/k2F84WOzTg

— Protect Our Care (@ProtectOurCare) August 25, 2026