Political News

The Trump administration, in their ongoing effort to shatter previous world records for spitefulness, is threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if they’re not allowed to put Donald Trump’s name on it.

In a court filing Monday, prosecutors suggested that the proposed $250 million renovation project—that includes tacking the president’s name to the facade of the building—was necessary for the institution’s survival, The New York Times reported.

“Without those efforts, the center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down,” the filing said, “with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.”

In reality, Trump’s overhaul of the prestigious national theater has only hastened its demise. The Kennedy Center is on track to fall $100 million short of its profit goal, and the shortfall can be directly tied to Trump changing the institution’s name. It expects to miss its budget target by 70 percent and contributed revenue by 25 percent, a projected $23 million deficit.

The Kennedy Center has become an outlet for the Trump administration’s shocking pettiness. The President Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board first tried to close the Center in May, after multiple artists cancelled their performances in response to his proposed name change. Democratic Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty successfully challenged the decision in court.

The renovations were blocked by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who argued that the board’s decision was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”Trump’s name was then scraped off the wall, and the building’s facade has remained concealed by a massive tarp.

Earlier this month, the board voted again, this time deciding to close the center for two years so that they can renovate the building in Trump’s image. Now, Beatty has asked a federal judge to once again keep Trump’s name off of another man’s memorial.

On Tuesday, Canadian officials announced funding to back businesses, workers, and industries, as they implement dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs on the US in response to the Trump administration’s newly imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. 

Senior members of Canada’s government announced a support package worth $7.5 billion Canadian dollars, or about $5.4 billion US, including $3 million in non-repayable loans for every small business and a further $2 million in interest-free loans—even for businesses only indirectly affected by tariffs.

Small and medium-sized businesses directly affected will be able to apply for a further $5 million through Canada’s business development bank, and the Canadian government has set aside $2 billion for medium-sized and large firms, more than half a billion dollars for retraining workers whose industries are affected by tariffs, and a one-year extension on temporary employment insurance benefits Canada already issued in response to the start of Trump’s trade war with Canada last year.

The package, and Canada’s reciprocal tariff plan, come after US-Canada trade negotiations collapsed late last week. According to the New York Times, discussions on automobiles, steel, and aluminum—among Canada’s key industries—were the first major setback: Canada’s proposal to lower tariffs on automobiles went beyond what the Trump administration deemed acceptable. American companies lobbied the Department of Commerce and other White House officials to “preserve their protections.”

While the plan aims more at support for businesses than direct funds for individual Canadians, it is a meaningful step that far exceeds any the Trump administration has taken or tried to take, with the White House largely ignoring the foreseeable harm of its tariffs on American workers and consumers. 

According to data released by the Center for American Progress, in the 10 months following the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last April—which introduced a baseline 10-percent tariff on all imported goods—the US lost 89,000 manufacturing jobs and 124,000 transportation and warehousing jobs, two industries that Trump’s tariffs severely affected. In fact, nearly every state has experienced blue-collar job losses as a result of the tariff agenda, even as the policies deliver few apparent results in improving US manufacturing or lowering the trade deficit.

Legendary music icon and beacon of American excellence Dolly Parton has passed away at the age of 80. One of twelve children born to a poor Appalachian family without electricity or running water, the singer-songwriter rose to become one of the most recognizable and beloved entertainers of the 20th and 21st centuries, known for classic songs like “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” and “9 to…

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A court has ordered the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to disclose to immigrants’ rights groups how involved it was in getting tax and Social Security information shared with the Department of Homeland Security. 

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled Monday that the government has to turn over the records after refusing requests to do so as part of a lawsuit against Trump administration officials, Bloomberg reports. The government has until September 14 to comply with the ruling, Talwani said, adding that its refusal constituted “another significant gap precluding the court from evaluating Plaintiffs’ claims.”

As part of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, DHS and the IRS reached an agreement to share taxpayer information to find undocumented immigrants. Immigration advocacy groups sued to stop the data sharing, and a federal court granted them a preliminary injunction in February limited to the IRS. 

Talwani rejected the government’s claims that it handed over all of the legally required materials to the groups suing it, saying that federal agencies also had to turn over DOGE’s communications, as well as those from inside the Social Security Administration. However, the judge granted the government one reprieve, saying that it does not need to turn over the actual data the SSA shared with DHS or the names and contact information of SSA employees involved in the data sharing. 

DOGE, spearheaded by tech oligarch Elon Musk, was given unprecedented access to internal government data from the start of Trump’s second term. Almost every agency was mined, including the SSA, the Treasury Department including the IRS, and Medicare and Medicaid records. All of this was ostensibly to root out waste, fraud, and abuse while increasing efficiency, although that never happened. 

Musk’s businesses, including his artificial intelligence company xAi, could have benefited from this information, but that is still under investigation. What is known is that the data definitely helped and continues to help Trump’s efforts to deport millions of immigrants. Now the public will get at least a small look into how DOGE helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s violent deportation efforts.  

Is the Republican Party going to spend the election season running away from Donald Trump? If Ralph Alvarado, a Republican candidate running for Kentucky’s 6th congressional district, is any sign of things to come, then maybe so.

This week, Alvarado stripped mentions of the president’s agenda from his campaign materials, apparently deciding that being too tied to Trump would hinder rather than help his odds come November.

Before-and-after screenshots of Alvarado’s campaign website, captured by NBC News’s Sahil Kapur, reveal that Alvarado’s messaging has switched from marking him as an “America First Fighter” to “Independent Leadership.”

On June 9, Alvarado’s website proudly displayed his loyalty to the president, claiming in a subheading that “President Trump needs more allies in Congress to deliver on his bold vision to Make America Great Again. With your help, I will be that fighter.”

By August 24, the physician’s tune had changed. The new text in that space reads: “Healthcare isn’t a talking point to me—it’s been my life’s work. In Congress, I’ll work with both parties to fight for affordable healthcare, lower costs, and practical solutions that help Kentucky families.”

A photo of Alvarado standing beside Trump was also removed from campaign materials. In place of a paragraph that once described Alvarado as “one of President Trump’s earliest supporters” and detailed his determination to “stop the woke agenda,” new language now frames him as an ardent supporter of bipartisanship, singularly focused on bringing down healthcare and affordability costs.

He’s not the only one to make a change. Andy Biggs, the MAGA Republican running in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, originally pushed campaign signs that championed the fact that he was “Trump endorsed” in bold, black lettering above his own name. That no longer seems to be the case. Biggs’s campaign has since erected modified signs that added the name of Biggs’s running mate, Sine Kerr, and stripped any mention of the president from his roadside advertising. (Unlike Alvarado, Biggs’s website still mentions that he was endorsed by Trump.)

Recent polling offers some insight behind these curious changes. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday suggests that the president’s influence is waning: Just 13 percent of Americans strongly approve of the president—down from 23 percent who felt the same way this time last year, according to data from a 2025 YouGov Poll.

Republican attitudes towards Trump have also changed, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Just 35 percent of conservatives surveyed said they “strongly approved” of Trump’s job during his second term. In the same poll, 41 percent of registered voters said that they would vote for a Democratic candidate if the presidential election were conducted today.

Midterm-bound Republicans were explicitly encouraged by the White House as well as party leadership last month to break from Trump in an effort to save their election chances.

“The understanding is pretty damn implicit: The president is going to say what the president is going to say,” a Republican operative working on the party’s midterm races told MS NOW in July. “You’re not going to have candidates or lawmakers running out to defend the president’s handling of the economy or the war—polling shows that most people don’t agree with his handling.”

President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has been a financial disaster for the revered cultural institution, even as Trump and his team have claimed that the center needs him to stay financially viable. Documents and internal communications uncovered by the Washington Post have revealed that after Trump installed his supporters to the board that runs the center and instituted…

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President Donald Trump’s administration was so triggered by a “woke” painting that it had it removed.

For years, a Kehinde Wiley painting titled “Young Artists After Siamesas 1960” hung in the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic. The piece, commissioned by the federal government in 2013, shows four Dominican models against a bright floral backdrop. Wiley is perhaps best known for his portrait of former President Barack Obama, which currently hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. It is perhaps that fact that has made the Trump administration so upset.

Either way, the Trump administration just can’t handle the prospect of displaying another one of Wiley’s works. After covering the painting with a large tarp, State Department officials removed the piece last week. Now they’re considering whether they’re allowed to sell it, The New York Times reported Monday.

Speaking on Sean Spicer’s podcast last week, Erin Scavino, the director of art in embassies, described the painting as “very woke” and “aesthetically terrifying”—whatever that means. According to her State Department bio, Scavino is a lawyer whose vague artistic background includes “cultural expression through fluid installation art” and “innovative design residency programs that integrate art with recycled materials, turning waste into creative wonders” (which sounds pretty “woke”). Her presence in the Trump administration probably has less to do with her fluid installations and more to do with the fact that she did a brief stint on The Apprentice and is currently married to eternal Trump flunkie Dan Scavino, who currently serves as the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office.

Virginia Shore, who served as director of art in embassies from 2000 to 2017, said there was no precedent for selling the piece. “Calling this ‘woke’ is difficult for me to understand,” she told the Times. “This is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders.”

The Trump administration wasn’t even willing to acknowledge what it is about the painting that offends its sensibilities. In a statement Monday, a state department spokesperson didn’t even address the actual work. Instead, the statement referred to allegations of sexual assault against Wiley, which he has denied, and criticized Wiley for once describing a different artwork as a “play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.”

“The work of an individual with such violent and racist words and depictions has no place in the America First State Department,” the spokesperson said.

If the Trump administration wanted to get rid of racist art, why reinstall a confederate statue? Well, because it’s not about that at all. The effort comes amid a wider trend of the Trump administration efforts to expunge Black history from American monuments and museums.

Leah Campos, the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, celebrated the painting’s removal on Instagram.

“In the Trump Administration and under my leadership we are turning away from globalist and woke ideologies and instead embracing American patriotism and the beauty of our great country!” she wrote, including a video of the painting’s removal edited with the Twisted Sister song, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Leave it to the Trump administration to put an anti-establishment song over a video of government censorship.

Canada has hit back at the United States, announcing retaliatory tariffs up to 50 percent on $20 billion worth of American goods, most notably aluminum, steel, and fish. Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on Canada last month, and threatened to levy even more this week.

Canada’s tariffs will affect a wide variety of U.S. goods beginning September 8, including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended trade talks with Trump last Friday after the U.S. demanded last-minute concessions regarding Quebec law requiring the U.S. to print manuals and packaging in French—a seemingly minute detail to make a dealbreaker. This of course led Canada to exit talks, as they took it as an attack on their culture and sovereignty.  

Now U.S. consumers will pay for the perceived slight. 

“Canada must respond, and today we are—in a proportionate, targeted, and strategic way. Today, I am announcing that Canada will match the United States tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate. Effective September 8, Canada will impose counter tariffs of up to 15, 25, or 50 percent on $27.6 billion in imports from the United States of America,” Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said on Tuesday. “For each product, our tariff would match the American tariff on the same type of Canadian goods. Those tariffs will have real consequences for Canadian workers, businesses, and communities across our nation. Canada must respond, and today we are in a proportionate, targeted, and strategic way.”

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne: "Canada will match the US tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate. Effective Sept 8, Canada will impose counter-tariffs of up to 15, 25, or 50 percent on $27.6 billion of imports from the US." pic.twitter.com/RQuxm9Td7j

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 25, 2026

These tariffs from Canada will inevitably make it more difficult for U.S. companies that do business with Canada to compete in the near future—and cause prices on those aforementioned key goods to rise. And more than anything, Trump’s chaotic, greedy vindictiveness has cost us a good relationship with perhaps our closest ally in the world. 

According to reports, CIA Director John Ratcliffe secretly flew to Moscow on Tuesday. The purpose of Ratcliffe’s Russia trip is unclear, though inside sources that spoke with CBS News said that he is attending meetings. His visit marks the first time since 2021—months before Russia invaded Ukraine—that a director of the CIA has visited the country.

News of Ratcliffe’s involvement came in the wake of intense speculation surrounding a U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17A Globemaster III transport plane that was spotted flying from Riga, Latvia, to Vnukovo Airport just outside Moscow.

An observer that flew out of Riga Airport Tuesday morning described seeing an aircraft similar in shape, color, and size as a U.S. Air Force C-40B—which are typically used to transport senior U.S. government officials and senior military commanders—alongside the C-17, as well as several cars with diplomatic plates.

Air traffic trackers recorded the C-40’s flight path originating at Joint Base Andrews and landing in Riga.

Moscow residents shared video of the envoy’s arrival, which involved multiple SUVs with tinted windows breezing through city traffic with a heavy police escort.

Neither the U.S. nor Russia has commented on the trip, or offered any insight into who is participating in the meetings. Rather, the Kremlin announced Tuesday that no talks between Moscow and U.S. envoys were expected this week.

“No, there are no such plans,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference when asked whether more talks had been scheduled to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Trump administration officials reportedly asked Kyiv not to strike Moscow, St. Petersburg, or the northern regions of Russia between Monday and Wednesday, to which Ukraine agreed, according to the Financial Times.

The CIA’s press office did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

Former CIA Director William Burns was the last CIA chief to visit Moscow. He did so in November 2021 to warn senior Russian officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin against war with Ukraine. Fast forward to today, four years into the war, and peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have made little progress.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is grappling with a domestic catastrophe alongside the violent conflict. Last week, Zelenskiy’s ousted Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov accused Zelenskiy’s administration of rampant corruption and called for a wartime poll to potentially unseat the former comedian, despite regional laws that prevent an election during wartime. Zelenskiy told reporters Sunday that he believed an election at this time would “destroy” Ukraine.

On March 9, President Donald Trump said the war in Iran was “very complete, pretty much.” That was Day 10 of the conflict. Now it’s nearly Day 180. 

After Trump and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran on February 28, the president predicted a quick military victory and said “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.” Within weeks, the hardline stance gave way to negotiations aimed at a deal that would deliver the core US demands of Iranian denuclearization and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Six months later, there’s still no deal and no end date to a conflict that has cost the US $37.5 billion, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s July testimony to Congress. And this week, the administration pivoted again, unveiling “Operation Economic Outcast,” a sweeping sanctions campaign to isolate Iran from the global financial system, a tacit admission that six months of bombing didn’t get the job done. 

In between, there has been a long trail of promises that a deal with Iran was close, mixed with threats that the US would “finish them off” if it wasn’t. Watch the timeline in Trump’s own words.

What do you get when you install a former Fox News host as a U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., one of the most important, high-profile gigs? You get loss after loss after loss, and this one is particularly humiliating. Welcome to your life, Jeanine Pirro! Remember how, before President Donald Trump got fixated on Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang, he used to be fixated on MS-13…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | ‘Here I am’: Melania Trump turns up amid Natalie Harp firestorm…

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The Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention is quickly becoming a Trump-style grift.

Puck reports that the National Republican Campaign Committee, which is hosting the September event, is asking for House members to pay a minimum of $25,000 to attend the two-day event in Dallas with a guest, with higher packages costing as much as $100,000. On top of that, the event is taking corporate sponsorship dollars, which are going to a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors.

All this is for a convention that doesn’t include any actual party business, since no candidates are being nominated like in presidential election years. The whole thing appears to have been planned haphazardly, with invitations only going out in the last few weeks to Republican leaders and lawmakers, many of whom have other commitments.

“It’s yet another opportunity to shake down corporate America,” one Republican strategist told Puck, adding that it has turned into a “shit show.”

“Nobody understands why we’re doing a midterm convention. It’s just another show that Trump is going to put on to remind the voters that he is sitting there, and maybe they don’t want to be reminded of that,” the strategist added.

The convention is also taking place on September 9 and 10, right before the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The images out of the event are going to be of the wealthy Republican elite partying right before commemorating one of the biggest tragedies in American history.

That’s a bit on the nose for President Trump’s second term, which has seen him focus on lavish, unnecessary projects and celebrations rather than the Americans struggling due to his unnecessary war in Iran and mismanagement of the economy. This convention, much like his Freedom 250 celebrations this summer, will most likely end up being an expensive, sparsely attended dumpster fire benefiting only himself and his wealthy allies.

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Inside Washington

The nationwide backlash to data centers has become so widespread that it’s even hard to find Republican politicians who openly embrace them—with the exception of President Trump, of course. So why is the Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin touting their benefits? It’s a question many puzzled Democrats are asking, given that the governor’s mansion is a crucial bulwark against the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

Wisconsin has the opportunity to become “an AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe,” David Crowley, who defeated progressive Francesca Hong earlier this month, said in a 2025 candidate forum. His opponent, GOP Representative Tom Tiffany, has pounced, dropping an ad last week with that quote and calling Crowley “Data Center David Crowley.” “My priority is protecting Wisconsin families, taxpayers, farmland, and water, not turning our state into a data center hub for the ‘entire globe,’” Tiffany said in a recent statement to WisPolitics.

Painting Crowley as pro–data center is a no-brainer for Tiffany, given voter sentiment on the issue. Polling suggests that voters are increasingly negative about data centers. In October, 55 percent of those asked in a Marquette Law School Poll survey of Wisconsin registered voters said that the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. But in a poll from July, that number jumped to 76 percent. No wonder even the most pro-business Republicans, like Senate candidate Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, have come out in favor of strict regulations on data centers.

But as much as Tiffany would like voters to believe he opposes data centers while his Democratic opponent supports them, the reality is a lot more complicated.

Ultimately, the two candidates have similar policy views on data centers, as a piece in Vox laid out last week. Neither one has called for a moratorium on building them, as Hong did. Tiffany has called for rolling back a state subsidy on data centers, which Crowley hasn’t matched, but otherwise the candidates are aligned on the issue, calling for local control over construction and environmental standards to protect natural resources.

Joe Zepecki, a Democratic political strategist who lives in Wisconsin, sees Tiffany’s portrayal of Crowley’s position as an act of desperation from a weaker candidate. “Tiffany is running uphill with an 800 pound anchor on his back,” he said. “I think the fact that the Tiffany campaign chose to engage on data centers right out of the gate is because they know he has vulnerabilities.”

But the race seems to be tight: The latest polls, from mid-August, show Crowley up by three or four percentage points with over two months to go until Election Day. Crucially, the governor’s race could also affect downballot races for the state Senate and Assembly, which have been in Republican control since 2011. During that time, Republicans gerrymandered the state to their advantage. Now Democrats have the best chance they’ve had in years to take back the legislature and try to undo some of the damage the GOP has done, like a 2011 law abolishing collective bargaining for public workers. “If we don’t nominate someone who can win statewide and bring legislative majorities with them, so much of the work of the last eight to ten years is for naught, and so the stakes are enormous,” Zepecki said.

Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy who directs the Marquette Law School Poll, said that Tiffany’s focus on data centers could help him appeal to independents who, as his polling suggests, are against data centers at higher rates than Republicans are. He also sees Tiffany’s rhetoric as a way to connect with rural conservative voters, who make up a large part of his base, and rally them. “He just did an event yesterday in western Wisconsin, saying he was, as governor, not going to let data centers take over farmland in this lovely rural area of western Wisconsin,” Franklin said on Monday. “He’s doing it in a way that speaks to the rural parts of the state, which [are] his natural electoral constituents, even if there’s not, in fact, bulldozers coming to bulldoze your farmland.”

In response to Tiffany’s attacks, Crowley is reminding voters that Tiffany hasn’t introduced legislation restricting data centers during his time in Congress. Meanwhile, Tiffany has said that Crowley takes money from data center proponents, which is likely a reference to donations from union interests. Some unions are in favor of data centers since their members would build the infrastructure, but Zepecki cautioned against characterizing all Wisconsin labor interests as pro–data center.

The stakes of this debate feel incredibly high in Wisconsin, explained Amy Barrilleaux, the communications director at Clean Wisconsin, an environmental organization that has called for a pause on data center development. “This is not normal times,” she said. “If we don’t take a minute and understand and prepare and ask questions and get some transparency, we’re going to be looking at a state that’s really different than the state our kids grew up in.”

—Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Nearly two weeks after massive storms with 100 mph winds tore through Indiana, nearly 30,000 residents are still without power, with roughly a third of them in the predominantly Black city of Gary. “We’re at day twelve, and twelve days is too long for families to be without power,” the city’s mayor, Eddie Melton, said in a video posted on Facebook. “Twelve days is too long for parents to worry about their children and for businesses to lose revenue and for families to wonder when the relief is finally going to come. I want you to know I share that frustration.”

“We’re always in survival mode in Gary,” hairstylist Shatiya Hardin told the Associated Press. “And I think that’s probably why it wasn’t so much of an uproar because the first few days, it was like, ‘OK, we’re used to this.... but this is the second week now. It’s not OK for us to continually be in survival mode, doing the best that we can.”

Gary has faced decades of neglect since the collapse of its steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s, a fact many residents and outsiders believe is directly related to its status as Indiana’s only majority-Black city. Its poverty rate is roughly 30 percent, and the energy grid that failed during the early-August storm was left vulnerable in part due to a failure to do routine tree maintenance by NIPSCO, northern Indiana’s power monopoly. Indiana is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country, with only two of its nine districts viable for Democratic candidates. The state’s 1st congressional district includes Gary—and currently “leans” toward incumbent Democrat Frank Mrvan, who won his primary last week and who welcomed FEMA’s recent federal emergency declaration.

—Alex Shephard

The Ideas Factory

In an issue brief for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth—the first in a three-part series—visiting fellow Mary Beech explores how weaknesses in federal data collection make it difficult to know how broadly artificial intelligence is being adopted by workers—and to what degree it is changing the labor market. “How does the adoption of AI by firms affect worker employment and unemployment, compensation, jobs lost, and job opportunities?” she writes. “As this brief demonstrates, no single data source can answer this question, federal or otherwise.” As Beech notes, there are several efforts in Congress to rectify this problem, in the form of two bipartisan bills—one sponsored by Virginia Senator Mark Warner, and one introduced by New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

Over at the Institute for Policy Studies, associate fellow Christine Ahn argues in favor of Trump’s order for the U.S. to “substantially reduce” its military drills with South Korea. “While any diplomatic overture from this administration should be viewed with skepticism,” she writes, “progressives shouldn’t miss an opportunity to take a principled position that advances peace, a reduced U.S. military footprint, and the security of the American and Korean people.” Ahn says that instead of “parroting the political establishment that benefits from forever wars, progressives should challenge … the belief that military superiority produces security, that militaristic ‘deterrence’ is stabilizing, and that allies exist for the U.S. to position them. This is not producing peace.”

—Ryan Kearney

In Closing: Four Questions For

Debru Carthan, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: I’m the vice president of SEIU-UHW, a union representing more than 120,000 health care workers across California. But before anything else, I’m a health care worker. Right now, I’m helping to lead our work on Prop 40. For me, this ballot campaign [to implement a one-time billionaire tax] is about protecting patients … and the fact that this health care crisis was started by the Trump administration giving more tax breaks to billionaires.

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

A: The hardest part is knowing that the decisions we make affect real people. Leadership requires you to listen to different perspectives, make difficult decisions, and sometimes move forward even when everyone doesn’t agree. You must be willing to sit in uncomfortable conversations and still keep people focused on what we are trying to accomplish together.

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?

A: My biggest success has been stepping into the role of vice president of SEIU-UHW and having our members put their trust in me to help lead this union. But I don’t measure success by my title. I measure it by what I’m able to do with the opportunity. I spent years as a rank-and-file leader, serving on our executive committee, bargaining contracts, developing leaders, and fighting alongside health care workers. Now I have the opportunity to take everything I learned in those roles and use it to help develop the next generation of leaders.

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

A: When the work gets difficult, I think about the health care workers who get up every day and take care of our communities. I think about the patients depending on us. I think about my children and the generations coming behind us. We have an opportunity to protect health care in California, to make sure that billionaires pay their fair share in taxes, and to show working people what is possible when we recognize our power and use it together.Interview by Monica Potts

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Democratic candidates are pretty well positioned to win governor’s races in both Ohio and Georgia, two states that haven’t had a Democratic governor in a while. Who were the last Democratic governors of those two states? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in Wednesday’s newsletter.)

President Trump has  hailed his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as an economic boon for the storied venue, claiming the historic theater “would be in financial ruin” without Trump, and that not putting his name on the building would “cause donors to flee.” 

Instead, it’s been a complete bust.

New reporting from The Washington Post shows that the center is on track to fall $100 million short of its profit goal directly because of Trump changing the name to the Trump-Kennedy Center. It expects to miss its budget target by 70 percent and contributed revenue by 25 percent, a projected $23 million deficit. 

“The center took a huge hit when the takeover happened,” an anonymous source close to the situation told the Post. While ticket sales plummeted after Trump’s officials launched their anti-woke takeover at the beginning of his term, things got even worse after the name change last December. “It was just an absolute fiscal cliff. Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared—like it was doomsday.”

This all comes as the center is multiple months late in delivering its independent audit during Trump’s first year of leadership. 

The Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board tried to close the center for two years beginning in July, but that decision was blocked by a U.S. district judge who argued that the board’s decision was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.” Earlier this month, the board again voted to close the center for two years so that it can renovate the building in Trump’s image—and add Trump’s name back. 

Trump has put this once iconic venue through absolute hell. His initial takeover, fueled by a right-wing spite for “woke” culture, led many high-level acts to cancel and donors and patrons to flee. But the name change—which hasn’t even officially, legally happened—may have been the true coup de grâce.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are expanding their probe of Jared Kushner’s alleged foreign corruption to include his suspicious purchase of land in Albania from a suspected gangster.

In April, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin launched an investigation accusing Kushner of serving as “Special Envoy for Peace” in the Middle East, while soliciting millions of dollars from Gulf monarchies. Kushner never responded to the letter.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Democrats updated their probe to include his latest shady dealings in Albania.

Kushner purchased the land for more than $120 million from Arthur Shehu, a suspected criminal with a history of drug trafficking. For years, the Albanian government has claimed that Shehu used fraudulent documents and forged Ottoman-era land records to claim ownership of large swaths of coastal property. Despite warnings from local residents, Kushner proceeded with the purchase of disputed land, sparking massive protests and violence.

Since returning to aid the Trump administration in its negotiations with Iran, Lebanon, and Ukraine, Kushner has continued to operate his investment firm, Affinity Partners, and court foreign funding.

“This episode reflects both your essential frivolousness as an erstwhile representative of the United States and the Trump-Kushner family’s overriding and seemingly insatiable appetite for engaging in political and financial corruption,” Raskin wrote in the letter. “While acting as our nation’s chief negotiator to end several international conflicts created or exacerbated by your father-in-law’s administration, you have taken the time to start another fraud-related international incident all by yourself.”

Lawmakers demanded that Kushner provide them with all records on any real estate, business deals, or protests in Albania by September 7.

The Trump administration is proposing a new rule that would basically give data centers the ability to pollute as much as they want.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s rule change, The Guardian reports, would remove the Clean Air Act requirement that data centers publicly disclose their air pollution, making the disclosures voluntary at the discretion of state and some local officials. But since many state and local governments have business agreements with data center companies, this would likely end most pollution disclosures for data centers nationwide.

Now people with data centers in their community won’t know what substances they’re being exposed to, and won’t have evidence to cite in any legal challenges. In effect, the move seems to be aimed at squashing public criticism and oversight of data centers, according to the EPA’s former assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation Joe Goffman.

The existing rule is supposed to protect members of the public, giving them “an ironclad promise,” Goffman told The Guardian.

“The administration is basically saying: ‘You all may have thought this was an ironclad promise, but it no longer is,’” said Goffman, who has co-authored comments on the proposed rule. While the rule’s public comment period just ended, it could still face legal challenges if finalized.

Data centers have faced heavy public opposition across the country due to their power consumption, pollution, the lack of jobs many create, and the noise they generate, among other issues. The response from President Trump has been denial and an insistence that data centers benefit communities.

“Frankly, communities that don’t take a data center, they’re making a mistake because there’s plenty of communities that want them. Because it means jobs, and it means tremendous tax revenue coming into the towns and cities that take them. So you know, it’s like the smart ones are saying, ‘I want them so badly,’” Trump said in an interview just last week.

The Supreme Court buoyed one of Donald Trump’s more aggressive voter-suppression efforts Monday, permitting the White House to move forward with a March executive order that effectively transfers control of the mail-in voting process to the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster general.

The preliminary Supreme Court decision—which came over the dissent of the three liberal justices—did not decide the legality of Trump’s scheme, and will likely not be the last time the court speaks on the matter. Nonetheless, it has steered attention toward the postal service which, thanks to the president’s machinations, is on the verge of being controlled by a cohort of Trumpian sycophants.

The postal service is led by a board of governors, similar to a corporation’s board of directors. Typically, the board hosts nine governors, the deputy postmaster general, and postmaster general, totalling 11 members. At the moment, only six people sit on the board.

Weeks before signing the executive order, Trump filed nominations to fill four of the vacancies. Rather than file nominees in bipartisan pairs—as is tradition—Trump opted to exclusively nominate Republicans. Three of the nominees have openly questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, and have claimed that America’s voting processes are not secure.

Two of Trump’s nominees are on a fast track for approval, and could enter office as soon as the Senate returns from its August recess. Their appointment to the board would effectively transform it and confirm a majority of Trump loyalists at the highest echelons of the postal service.

“It is clear to me that the president is looking for people who will do exactly what he says and will carry out his order without respect for the U.S. Postal Service,” Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, who oversees the agency as part of her duties on the Senate Homeland Committee, told The New York Times.

That fear is just as palpable inside the postal service. Jonathan Smith, the head of the American Workers Postal Union, told the Times that postal workers are already concerned they may be forced to implement legally or ethically dubious policies.

“They can direct the people I represent to follow procedures we perceive as possibly not constitutionally sound or legal or even ethical,” Smith told the newspaper. “Because the board of governors were put there for that purpose.”

The U.S. Postal Service is practically as old as the country. It was developed by the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and Benjamin Franklin was appointed as its first postmaster general.

Since then, the Postal Service has reinvented itself again and again, keeping up with the myriad shipping demands of the American public and supporting trillions of dollars in commerce.

It also “generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations,” according to USPS’s website.

Still, that hasn’t prevented America’s public mail system from becoming a favorite target of the president. Since the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump has repeatedly argued that the Postal Service should be dismantled to prevent voting by mail—a practice that he has repeatedly accused of fraud despite his own apparent preference for the absentee process.

Despite President Donald Trump first being introduced to his current aide Natalie Harp through Fox News, the network seems to be trying to cover up the recent controversy between the two. A TVEyes search of Fox transcripts from Aug. 18 through Aug. 24—which included more than 140 hours of news coverage—found that Harp was only mentioned 15 times. Even when Fox did mention the scandal—in…

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41 minutes agoWalter EinenkelTrade war with Canada reaches the Trump wants to rename things “Trump” level of dumb. Trump floats renaming Lake Ontario as 'Lake America' as trade war with Canada escalatesPresident Donald Trump says he is considering changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” as the trade war between the United States and Canada intensifies.apnews.

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