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For weeks, Donald Trump’s fury has been growing at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation, demanding that they end the filibuster to do so. In a late-night tirade, he urged them to attach the SAVE Act to a must-pass defense spending bill, a dramatic move that reveals his deep frustration with them. As everybody knows, Trump sees restricting voting as the only way to stave off a midterm calamity. Meanwhile, in a striking piece, NBC News reports that Trump’s angry pressure has left Senate Republicans at wit’s end. They privately fear Trump is laying the groundwork to pin a midterm fiasco on their failure to pass something. They also blame Trump for letting this obsession take his focus off costs. One GOP Senator even tells NBC: “He’s a bully, and he’s f------ things up as fast as he can.” We talked to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein. He walks us through the details of the GOP predicament, decodes the real reason Republicans aren’t nixing the filibuster, and explains why it’s premature to rule out passage of the SAVE Act, offering a road map to what’s next. Listen to this episode here.

I get a lot of things wrong—but never when I’m predicting that President Donald Trump will screw over his own party. “Trump prepares to squander his midterm war chest,” read the headline on a story of mine from February, when Democrats were freaking out over the $483 million he had amassed. My argument was simple: Trump would spend that money purifying his party of his critics and…

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Trump’s pointless helipad is going to cost us a fortune Will the expensive vanity projects never end? ICE is now coming for US citizens over strongly worded emails And it could happen to you. Bernie Sanders sure knows how to pick ’em Graham Platner is…

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President Donald Trump has been known to hold onto a grudge, but his desire to take control of Greenland is eyebrow raising. On Tuesday, the president reignited his open desire to seize the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” Trump said to reporters while at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

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The Department of Homeland Security has purchased two privately-run detention facilities from the for-profit prison company CoreCivic, the company announced Monday, in a move that may serve to shield the facilities from state oversight.

DHS bought the two Southern California prisons, Otay Mesa Detention Center and California City Detention Center, for about $1.5 billion on Monday. But the facilities will still be operated by CoreCivic employees, meaning the company will still generate income, over and above the sale price, from both prisons. 

California law requires that privately held detention centers be subject to oversight by local and state authorities, as well as members of Congress. 

Now that DHS owns the buildings, finding out what’s going on inside of them is likely to become harder.

“It seems like a very clear attempt to evade oversight and accountability,” said Alexa Van Brunt, a civil rights attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center. “If they own the building, then there is a very good argument that a state law cannot trump federal ownership,” Van Brunt explained. That sets up a potential oversight battle between California’s state government and the Trump administration. 

DHS said as much. “ICE can not rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” where “politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible,” an agency spokesperson said in response to a request for comment. “Now, with federal ownership of these detention centers which are crucial to ICE’s detention network on the west coast ICE retains the detention capacity needed to arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens,” the spokesperson concluded.

The purchase could also protect the detention centers from legal attacks. As Katya Schwenk of The Lever put it in March, when the plans were first reported, federal ownership may help ICE evade not only state monitoring but “some lawsuits tied to alleged abuse, including labor violations.” 

One such lawsuit concerns Otay Mesa: Owino v. CoreCivic, ongoing since 2017, is a massive class-action suit alleging forced labor practices there. It’s one of many attempts to curb or regulate ICE detention in California: just this week, the state sued to stop the construction of a new detention center outside the town of Gilroy. 

“California created oversight for private detention facilities because we have seen too many abuses, including deaths, behind closed doors,” said state Sen. María Elena Durazo, who co-sponsored legislation to strengthen state oversight. “It is shameful for any government agency to try to sidestep basic health and safety protections for people in its custody. If the federal government believes that purchasing these facilities allows it to avoid oversight, that is unacceptable.”

CoreCivic representative Ryan Gustin did not respond to questions about how federal ownership of the facilities might impact oversight. “Asset transactions of this nature are not uncommon for government,” Gustin said in a written statement. “We have previously completed facility sales to government partners, and operating government-owned facilities is a well-established model within our business.” 

Other firms are indeed exploring the model. George Zoley, CEO of GEO Group—the other major ICE detention contractor—said on an earnings call in May that “as some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership,” as The Appeal’s Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg reported.

If the federal government owns the buildings, it will “provide stronger credibility in the courts,” Zoley added, such that “states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.” 

ICE facilities across the country, both privately and publicly owned, have been slammed with lawsuits over detainee mistreatment, forced labor, health code violations, and deaths in custody. At least 21 people have died in ICE custody this year, according to data collected by lawyer and journalist Andrew Free, as the number of people detained by ICE skyrockets from around 45,000 last year to more than 63,000 as of this week. Denying state officials the right of inspection makes investigating those deaths—as UN human rights chief Volker Türk demanded this week—far harder. 

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) conducted oversight visits at Otay Mesa when it still belonged to CoreCivic—and, like lawmakers in other states, was sometimes denied entry.

“Too many people who pose no threat to public safety and should not be in detention are nevertheless being held in unacceptable conditions with inadequate access to medical care, legal counsel, clean water, nutritious food, and other basic necessities,” Padilla said. “Whether these facilities are operated by a private contractor or owned by the federal government, my expectations remain the same.”

Setareh Ghandehari, of the advocacy group Detention Watch Network, described the purchase as one facet of ICE’s mass expansion of incarceration: converting warehouses into detention centers, buying existing jails, and contracting to build new ones, all of which will “intensify the already cruel and inhumane conditions in ICE detention and streamline the agency’s ability to target and dehumanize immigrant communities to achieve its stated goal of ‘Amazonification’ of mass detention and deportation,” Ghandehari said. 

“There still will be avenues for accountability,” Van Brunt, of MacArthur Justice, said. Even without the right of inspection, ICE-owned detention centers could be sued on constitutional grounds. But this purchase “does make it harder for people to get in those detention facilities at the state level and find out what’s actually going on,” Van Brunt continued. “It makes it much more of a black box, and it makes the people who are held there much more vulnerable to abuses and to poor conditions.”

Welcome to the latest installment in our informal series about how everyone hates acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom President Donald Trump has nominated to be his next head of the Department of Justice. From the posh folks at Washington’s Metropolitan Club trying to block him from joining their ranks to the 101 former federal and state judges filing a bar complaint against him…

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I always understood Graham Platner’s political appeal, but I wish more people would admit how much aesthetics played a role. The Maine Democrat’s press photo—his ruddy, sun-splashed face, tousled dirty-blonde hair, matching beard, and pecs bursting underneath a fitted black Henley—could easily be confused with the cover of a romance novel. But no, this youngish, handsome, salt-of-the-earth oysterman and military veteran was running for political office. What’s more, he said all the right things on the campaign trail. His unstudied, gravel-voiced speeches made him sound like the working-class champion the Democrats needed to unseat longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins in their bid to take back the Senate. That Platner’s only obstacle to the Democratic nomination was the centrist 71-year-old governor, Janet Mills, made his appeal even stronger.

So I understood the hype, but I never thought he was a great candidate. The political class who backed him—overwhelmingly white, male progressives—should have been more discerning, especially as one scandal after another emerged. The fact that his sketchy past, like his troubling Reddit posts and Nazi tattoo and “unsettling” behavior toward women didn’t imperil his campaign until a woman came forward with rape allegations on Monday shows how toxic some reaches of the left can be, as willing as the right to dismiss misogyny and other disqualifying offenses when it’s politically inconvenient. In fact, Platner’s checkered history may have been part of his appeal, as some on the left romanticize the working class and think we should cling to an outdated masculine ideal to win them back.

For starters, Platner’s working-class bona fides were questionable. His grandfather was an architect, and his father was an attorney in Ellsworth, Maine. He attended private schools as a teenager. His father lent him $200,000 to buy his house, which he pays about $950 a month toward, and his mother owns a restaurant that buys his oysters. In an interview with NPR’s Leila Fadel, in June, Platner rebutted charges that he was “cosplaying” by effectively broadening his definition of working class. “If the bulk of the money that you get to live comes from wages, comes from working, and you are not just sitting on an immense amount of hoarded wealth, which generates income for you, then you work for a living,” he said.

While I’m sympathetic to that broader definition, the bulk of working-class folks who don’t have some amount of family privilege to fall back on might quibble with it. Much of Platner’s adolescence and early adulthood—being expelled from school, working odd jobs, eschewing college, serving in the Marines in Iraq before his mother helped get him into oyster farming—speaks to the kind of privilege someone with a solid middle-class upbringing knows they can rely on, not the kind of panicked effort to find solid ground I witnessed in my working-class upbringing in Arkansas.

Platner has attributed his alcohol abuse and other troubles in adulthood to PTSD related to his military deployments (he also served in Afghanistan with the National Guard). That is useful context for some of his problems but not all of them—and it’s certainly not cause enough for wholesale forgiveness. Yet, despite these setbacks, Platner continued to get extra chances to make it in society. It’s hard to imagine someone who grew up with less money and connections (or anyone but a white man, for that matter) bouncing back from his checkered history and lack of professional experience to run, not just for any political office, but for a U.S. Senate seat held by a five-term incumbent—and then somehow successfully convincing voters to back him in the primary over the sitting (woman) governor.

As a candidate seeking the je ne sais quoi of authenticity, Platner conveniently eschewed his family history and instead implored voters to consider his experiences as a working-class adult. But at the same time, we were asked to discount some of his other experiences and actions in adulthood. When it was revealed that he had a Totenkopf tattoo, he said he was drunk when he got it and didn’t know its history. I can maybe buy that. But are we also meant to believe that in the intervening 20 years he never learned—from, say, a World War II documentary, a book, or a friend—the truth about his tattoo? That is harder to believe.

When Platner’s questionable treatment of women first surfaced, he hardly needed to defend himself because other people were happy to do it for him. It wasn’t just that his fans dismissed these accusations, but that they had nothing but contempt for the people who did worry about them. In fact, when he clinched the Democratic nomination in the June 9 primary, his fans doubled down. Journalist Ken Klippenstein called it the end of “smoothgroin” politics, comparing certain politicians to real-life Ken dolls. “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly,” he wrote, and went on to describe politicians he thought fit that mold. “In the real world, it seems everyone and anyone can have dark present and past,” he wrote.

Matt Stoller, the anti-monopoly journalist, declared it the end of “Dem HR lady politics.” After some backlash, he tried to claim he was making the case against “authoritarian corporate officers.” But it was hard not to envision what he meant in his first post. You can make any case against corporations you want, but the fact is that in most workplaces sexual harassment claims are handled by HR offices—often populated by middle-class women, by the way—and to the extent they still exist, most of us encounter HR officers as the person who makes sure you get your vacation time and sign up for your health insurance and 401(k). Stoller wants us to believe that lurking behind HR is a corporate machine that protects itself from liability by being unfair to men. (The MeToo movement showed how wrong that is, because it took outrageously horrendous examples of sexual assault to bring down powerful men—and even then many of them got a second or even third chance.)

For some of Platner’s male supporters, or perhaps many of them, his violent edge was always part of his appeal. He seemed like he could punch someone, and people are angry and want a fighter. But that is not what it means to be working class—and working-class voters in Maine apparently sensed that Platner was a phony. While it’s still early in this midterm election year, with most voters still tuned out, a recent New York Times poll showed that Collins led him by 30 points among white men without college degrees. She’s a known quantity in the state with a lot of name recognition, and a newcomer like Platner had some campaign work to do. But most of his support was coming from those with bachelor’s degrees, 66 percent of whom backed him over Collins.

That may seem surprising given how Platner portrayed himself on the campaign trail. But it’s less surprising when you consider that his loudest supporters online were that same demographic. They, at least, were fooled: To lefty college graduates who pay close attention to politics, no matter the month or year, Platner did indeed appear authentically middle-class—or at least close enough not to question it, given that he adopted all of the progressive positions that this online cohort supports. Perhaps Platner’s press photo was modeled on a romance novel after all, because these people swooned over him.

As Platner appears poised to drop out of the race, many progressives are pushing for the Maine Democratic Party to tap Troy Jackson, a former president of the state senate, to take on Collins. It’s easy to see why. He’s a staunch union supporter with a history of fighting for strong labor protections, but he’s also a middle-aged white guy with working-class bona fides: He’s a fifth-generation logger. Let’s hope he’s been a better man than Platner has been.

During his 2015 State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama announced what he promised would be an ambitious public health project. “Tonight, I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes, and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier,” Obama said with confidence. “We can do this.” He was met with applause. 

That announcement introduced the National Institutes of Health’s “All of US” initiative, designed to organize and provide to researchers the health data of up to a million Americans who opted in to donate their blood, general electronic health records, and more. People’s names are replaced with a code before researchers access their data, and NIH asserts that only a few people have access to the list of codes that correspond with names. As of late June, data from nearly 750,000 participants is available to researchers who are studying such diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, as well as overall health patterns like sleep.

Since then, proponents of the program have highlighted how it has addressed urgent issues. A 2022 study from the University of California, Irvine, study that used the NIH data, for instance, was the first to find that Latino immigrants have higher rates of liver cancer than Latino people who were born in the United States. In a 2024 speech, the head of the All of US initiative said that 87 percent of its participants belong to “underrepresented groups in biomedical research,” such as Latino and Black people.

“Palantir is not a company that is pro–public interest or welfare, or public health.”

What many participants may not know is that the defense technology and data giant Palantir, which has deep links to both the intelligence community and the Trump administration, is one of the firms involved with the project—the same Palantir that the Trump administration has tapped to gather information for ICE and which already worked extensively with the Department of Defense.

Palantir’s involvement with All of US is a matter of public record; it has been announced in press releases. However, experts I spoke with about the firm’s connection to the massive federal health data project have raised ethical concerns about what it means for a company involved in Trump’s deportation machine—a choice that has reportedly troubled even some of Palantir’s own employees—to manage such sensitive information. 

Palantir’s involvement with All of Us was announced in 2023, through its role in the Center for Linkage and Acquisition of Data, which is now hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The company was brought in by an NIH awardee, the University of Colorado Anschutz, a major medical research center. An NIH press release from October 2023 announcing the center boasted that the sub-awardees were “comprised of leading academic, data, security, and software organizations.”

“That it was approved during the Biden administration only underscores how much unfortunate buy-in the tech industry has across both Democrats and Republicans,” said Anita Chan, chair of Indiana University Bloomington’s department of information and library science and author of a 2025 book that looks at the use and misuse of data.

“Palantir’s CLAD role is limited and non-research: no participant interaction, no study administration, no scientific analysis,” an NIH spokesperson said in response to a request for comment, adding that “data aren’t owned by Palantir or available for independent use, and can’t move into external corporate databases,” and that Palantir “doesn’t control the data, use it independently, or decide how it’s shared or analyzed.

“To be clear, there’s no partnership with Palantir,” the spokesperson said, emphasizing that the firm was a subcontractor.

A University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill spokesperson noted in response to a separate request for comment that “Protecting privacy is a top priority for the university while using technology in research,” and that “Every action on the data is captured in tamper-proof audit logs, and because the data stays inside this controlled environment, it cannot be copied out, sold, or used for any purpose” not approved by the research project.

Palantir’s involvement in the sphere of personal health data is fairly expansive. In 2020, near the end of the first Trump administration, NIH awarded Palantir a contract to work with data related to Covid, a database that has also been used for Long Covid research. Palantir also has a contract worth the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars with the UK’s National Health Service to create a health data platform.

“[It] is concerning to have one company that has such a large role in [handling] so many different kinds of data,” Center for Genetics and Society executive director Katie Hasson told me. “I don’t think people hoping to benefit public health by sharing their genetic data were really thinking that that’s the kind of company that would be handling their information.”

Kenny Morris, of the American Friends Service Committee, which is running a campaign to encourage divestment from Palantir, said he was concerned that the company was “involved in health data at all,” citing its relationships with the Israeli military, which has used Palantir technology in Gaza, the US military, which has employed it in attacks on Iran, and the Department of Homeland Security, which relies on Palantir’s “ImmigrationOS” and other software to help carry out the dictates of Palantir stockholder and White House deputy Stephen Miller.

A still from a March 2026 protest in New York City against Palantir. Camara Porter/AdMedia/Zuma

A Palantir spokesperson said that the firm was “not in the business” of storing, collecting, mining, or selling data: “We don’t ‘use’ data from customers for other efforts,” the spokesperson said. “In all cases, our customers control and retain their own data. We are simply the software that helps them make sense of it. And in all deployments of our software, we strictly uphold our enduring commitment to protecting privacy and civil liberties.”

All of Us has been able to attract a diverse set of participants through the outreach of community engagement partners, including the Asian Health Initiative, the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, and the American Association on Health and Disability. (The University of California, San Francisco’s hospital system reached out to me in 2024 to ask if I wanted to participate Palantir’s potential involvement wasn’t mentioned.)

“I don’t know if all of the hospitals or institutions that have been involved in recruiting people into the study at various times would necessarily even know” about Palantir’s involvement, Hasson said.

There are many questions about how visible Palantir’s involvement is, including if any hospitals disclose it to patients and if researchers are acutely aware of Palantir’s involvement, despite the public press releases. Sample consent forms for patients on NIH’s website do not mention Palantir.

“Palantir is not a company that is pro–public interest or welfare, or public health, or sort of traditional obligations of democratic institutions and states,” Chan said. “Its vision of civic accountability is non-existent.”  

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Republican nominee for Senate, is under fire once again after a video surfaced online that purportedly showed on vacation in London around the Fourth of July holiday. The video, obtained by The Daily Mail, appears to show Paxton sightseeing in London alongside a woman reported to be Tracy Duhon, a Christian influencer who has been romantically…

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Trump fails miserably to throw America a birthday party…

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A content creator who runs a satirical cat account trolling Vice President JD Vance on Instagram is suing after being banned from one of his events by the Secret Service.

Amanda McGonigle, who has nearly two million followers for her massive “CatsOnACouch” Instagram account, was stopped in line at a Maine event for the vice president in May.

“They got me. So, while I was in line to go into the event, Secret Service … came up to me and said, ‘Hey Amanda, you can’t come in.’ And I was basically like ‘but I have my registration,’ and they were like ‘well since it’s a private event , you can’t come in,’” McGonigle said on her Instagram account back in May. “I was like … ‘You realize that’s silly, right? I’m a cat account.’”

While she was waiting in line, McGonigle was also told by the Secret Service, “We know where you stand.” She insists that the event was advertised as public.

“Either it was a public event as advertised and I was denied entry because I think JD Vance is a sentient jar of mayonnaise, or it was a private event and taxpayer dollars were being used to fund JD Vance’s little ‘safe space,’” McGonigle said again after the event. “Either way, it’s giving lawsuit vibes.”

McGonigle is suing the U.S. Secret Service and the Executive Office of the President for infringement on her constitutional rights.

“The First Amendment protects every person’s right to express their opinions and political views, free from fear of government retaliation or retribution,” ACLU of Maine attorney Anahita Sotoohi said in a statement. “Ms. McGonigle uses her platform to criticize and satirize elected officials, using humor to garner support for causes important to her and inform her followers about political developments. The freedom to mock has been a central tenet of American political discourse since the founding. The First Amendment cannot be revoked just because one of the country’s most powerful people can’t take a joke.”

McGonigle created the account in 2024 in the wake of Vance’s comment deriding “childless cat ladies.” It exists with the aim to “have more followers than JD Vance by the time he leaves office and to troll him mercilessly every single day,” according to McGonigle.

The White House has yet to comment on McGonigle, although they seem to very aware of—and bothered by—her account’s existence.

Senator Mitch McConnell’s medical condition remains unknown, and his office won’t address questions about the former Senate majority leader being “brain dead.”

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery reached out to McConnell’s staff Tuesday about the speculation. A day earlier, far-right influencer Laura Loomer and independent journalist Desirée Townsend, who first flagged the EMS call to McConnell’s home that revealed he was unconscious, declared that the Kentucky senator is “officially brain dead.” Bendery said the senator’s staff did not confirm or deny the report, instead directing her to a week-old statement that doesn’t clarify McConnell’s condition.

“Senator McConnell appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital,” a spokesperson told Bendery. “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”

Earlier in the day Tuesday, several Republicans publicly insisted that McConnell was still alive and that they had just spoken to him. CNN commentator Scott Jennings said, “He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history.”

Senator Scott Barrasso and Senate Majority Leader John Thune also said they had spoken to McConnell about Senate business. However, other Republicans, such as Senator Mike Lee, said they still don’t know what’s going on with McConnell.

“Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee said on X.

Trump’s MAGA base has demanded proof that McConnell is still alive, and his office’s response Tuesday will only fuel their conspiracy theories. There’s speculation over whether Republicans are trying to avoid a quick special election, as is required under Kentucky law, that could open the door for Representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic, to run for the seat. For now, McConnell remains in the hospital without any explanation.

Even Graham Platner’s volunteers are reportedly closing the chapter on the politically troubled Maine Democratic Senate candidate.

A damning new rape allegation emerged against Platner Monday evening, marring the Maine oyster farmer’s candidacy and prompting a slew of progressive lawmakers to revoke their endorsements of the firebrand.

It was, apparently, the final straw for Platner’s team, who had largely stayed by his side through previous controversies, including the uproar over his Nazi-themed chest tattoo, prior accusations related to Platner’s heavy drinking, revelations about his extramarital sexting, and allegations from his former romantic partners about his violent propensities.

Within hours of the Politico report, some 1,400 volunteers on Platner’s statewide organizing Discord server had called for him to withdraw from the race, reported Drop Site News Tuesday, noting that the cohort included door knockers, canvassers, digital organizers, and tablers.

“I don’t necessarily want Graham to win. I want our political ideas to win. He is not coming back from this and we should find someone to carry on the ideals now,” Dante Cusolito, a volunteer and recent college graduate, told Drop Site. “People can be flawed and become better, but hanging your movement on the coattails of somebody credibly accused of sexual assault is the exact thing we are trying to be better than.”

Instead, local political organizers are turning to former State Senator Troy Jackson, a Bernie Sanders–backed logger from northern Maine, as Platner’s possible replacement.

A spokeswoman for Jackson, Christine Kirby, told Drop Site that their campaign had been flooded with calls, texts, and emails encouraging Jackson’s candidacy since the rape allegations emerged.

“He is clearly the strongest option to replace Graham Platner and take on Susan Collins in the general election,” Kirby told Drop Site. “This movement is greater than any one person, it’s about a coalition of Maine people fighting for a future that doesn’t have to belong only to the wealthy and powerful. And Troy is up for the fight.”

Jackson, who served as president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024, came in third place in the Maine Democratic gubernatorial primary last month. By Tuesday, he had already repositioned himself, filing exploratory committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission for a potential Senate run.

But he’s not the only Mainer trying to throw his hat in the ring to supplant Platner. Bangor-born David Costello, who lost the state primary race to Platner last month, wrote on X that he’s “back in” to replace Collins if Platner formally withdraws.

Nirav Shah, a visiting professor at Colby College who similarly failed to gain ground in Maine’s gubernatorial primary, also released a statement indicating his interest in the Senate race.

The writing is on the wall for Graham Platner, who after being credibly accused of rape by a former girlfriend and multiple other red flags is now facing calls to drop out of the Maine Senate race by Democrats on all sides of the ideological spectrum. Platner has yet to announce whether he’ll drop out, but it is clearly untenable for him to continue as national Democrats are pulling the plug…

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Election experts are raising serious red flags after learning that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton voted in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live, ProPublica reported Tuesday.

The Texas attorney general has been registered to vote at his Collin County home—where he has not lived since his divorce two years ago, according to filings by his ex-wife, State Senator Angela Paxton.

It’s not entirely clear where Mr. Paxton has resided since, but prior reporting linked him to another home in Denton County—making him ineligible to participate in elections in Collin County. Doing so is a second-degree felony punishable by a fine up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Election lawyers have cautioned that this kind of voter fraud is incredibly hard to prove.

Voter rolls showed that Paxton voted in Collin County in the March Republican primary, and again in May when he became his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate.

David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer, told ProPublica that Paxton would be allowed to remain registered there if he had a reasonable expectation of returning, but his contentious and highly publicized split from his ex-wife suggests that is not the case.

“I think there would be questions raised about a residence where someone does not live, does not spend the night, and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside,” Becker said. “Those would probably raise red flags in any state.”

“Certainly, the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Texas, someone who has made claims about election integrity and made it a priority of his office, should be charged with knowing the laws of residencies of the state of Texas with regard to voting,” Becker said.

Forget “knowing”—Paxton’s office published the very guidelines he broke. When Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for suspected voter fraud in February, he shared guidelines for voter registration, including the requirement to “provide the address where you reside when registering to vote.”

Attorney Clark Birdsall told ProPublica that it was “especially egregious that someone such as Ken Paxton appears he’s not conforming to the law.”

Paxton, a fierce ally of President Trump, has previously advocated for cracking down on voter fraud, while also threatening to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Madison Cercy, Paxton’s campaign spokesperson, called the report a “baseless, lie-filled tabloid story.”

An “explosive” diarrhea virus is tearing through the Midwestern United States, presenting yet another challenge for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the weakened Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC initially only reported 145 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis last month in the U.S. But on July 1, Michigan health officials confirmed 100 more cases in only nine days, a troubling spike.

The cyclosporiasis infection—caused by “a one-celled parasite too small to be seen with the naked eye”—has impacted nearly 700 people in Michigan and Illinois. It can be found in contaminated water and unwashed leafy produce, and is most active in the spring and summer.

Symptoms begin with diarrhea, then can include appetite loss, bloating, nausea, cramping, and fatigue. Confirmed cases include those aged five to 86, with over 60 percent of them being women. There have been no deaths, although 20 people have been hospitalized. While this parasite appears every year, this many cases is certainly abnormal. Last year there were only 50 confirmed cases in Michigan, according to NBC Chicago.

“Outbreaks of cyclosporiasis have been occurring across the United States and now here in Michigan,” the state’s chief medical executive, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, said in a statement. “Based on the unusual number of cases we have identified in a little over a week, we anticipate additional cases of illness being reported. We recommend Michiganders contact their health care provider if they experience sudden, ongoing diarrhea and reach out to their local health department if additional members of their family are suffering from the same symptoms.”

The temperature is extremely high in many parts of the United States, and public trust in the CDC is extremely low. The next few weeks will be a significant test on their ability to manage outbreaks like this.

Republicans are rushing to Mitch McConnell’s defense as rumors swirl that the former Senate majority leader might be dead.

Conservative commentator Scott Jennings wrote on X that he spoke to his “old friend” Tuesday morning.

“He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Teddy Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history,” Jennings said. “I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.”

McConnell also reportedly spoke with Senator John Barrasso earlier in the day, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday, according to NOTUS’s Al Weaver.

“Leader Thune spoke with Senator McConnell yesterday by phone,” a Thune spokesperson told Weaver. “They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.”

But lawmakers on the other side of the conservative caucus weren’t so confident. At least one MAGA-aligned legislator, Utah Senator Mike Lee, shared online that most of Congress had stayed mum on the subject because they were completely and utterly in the dark as to the state of McConnell’s health.

“Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee wrote on X Tuesday.

Rumors about McConnell’s health spiked late Monday, when far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that McConnell is “officially brain dead.” In a separate post, Loomer claimed that McConnell is in organ failure, and that the White House had been told he “isn’t ever coming back.”

Shortly afterward, the reporter that first broke the story that McConnell had gone into cardiac arrest in mid-June—Desirée Townsend—said that her sources had shared the same information.

Within hours, far-right influencers were demanding proof that McConnell was still alive, questioning why his office had not shared a video of the 84-year-old lawmaker if he was able to talk. McConnell’s office has not yet done so. In the weeks since McConnell was hospitalized, his team has released only vague and repetitive statements that have failed to acknowledge the senator’s condition or why he was receiving care.

Last week, we learned that although President Donald Trump has essentially had a cheat code for the Supreme Court over the past 18 months, one which allows him near-infinite lives and near-infinite wins, he simply can’t abide being refused even the smallest treat. So he’s racing back to the nation’s highest court to demand that they hear his endless arguments against why he should have to…

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A woman who dated Graham Platner said he sexually assaulted her, allegations that followed the stories of several other women who reported abuse at the hands of Maine’s democratic nominee for US Senate. 

The woman, Maine resident Jenny Racicot, provided substantiated details of the alleged incident in a Monday Politico report. 

“These allegations are troubling, serious, and false,” Platner responded in a Monday statement. “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”

While several Democrats have begun dropping their endorsements of Platner as their US Senate nominee following Racicot’s credible rape allegations, many have not, as of Tuesday morning.

The Democrats who have pulled their endorsements since Monday did not do so after several women detailed Platner’s abuse in a June New York Times report. Some even campaigned for Platner. Perhaps they believed the Democratic nominee’s repeated denials. Perhaps they simply didn’t care.

They did not rescind their endorsements when reports revealed Platner’s tattoo with Nazi paramilitary organizations, including Adolf Hitler’s SS police. Perhaps they believed Platner when he dismissed it as just a design he got while drunk with fellow US Marines during his third deployment, or were satisfied when he said he later covered the tattoo. Perhaps they simply didn’t care.

Prominent voices across the “left–of–center” political spectrum backed Platner—from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the hosts of the popular podcast Pod Save America (Both Sanders and Pod Save America have since called on Platner to drop out of the Senate race). Some called the allegations against Platner politically motivated. Many justified their endorsements with Platner’s so-called progressive values and the idea that the party must oust Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to have a better chance at winning a majority in the November midterms.

“We all say Democrats should fight harder, but what does it mean to fight harder?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said at a June campaign event for Platner regarding the effort to flip the Senate. “To me, it means you show up when an ally who challenges power is under attack.” The event took place one day after the New York Times report, which detailed Platner physically assaulting one woman he dated, Lyndsey Fifield, and trapping her in a bedroom during an argument and saying he would rape or kill people he considered a threat.

One only has to look at the reaction to Platner’s Monday announcement that he would continue his campaign, taking time “to reflect on the best path forward.” Considering his denial of “non-consensual behavior,” Platner’s statement suggests public relations strategizing rather than accountability. The Senate nominee and others have spread conspiracy theories that political opponents are actively coordinating the allegations.

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But this perspective only considers the good abusive men like Platner can contribute and dismisses the people they abuse. It treats survivors with disdain, devaluing what they add to their communities. It slams shut any pathway to speak out and denies survivors personhood by condemning them for even daring to exercise the right to speak. It forces survivors to feel like they should stay silent due to fear that it could hurt others.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Racicot told Politico. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

As many have stated, Platner already hurt his chances of becoming a senator with his abuse. The Democratic Party must reckon with how it continued to support an abusive man and prop up a system that allows those in power to skirt responsibility and actively harms survivors.

An Afghan man who worked with the United States military for more than a decade died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody due to an allergic reaction—but the release of his death certificate brings more questions than answers.

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal suffered “an adverse drug reaction” to an unidentified substance, which triggered anaphylaxis and exacerbated his asthma, according to his death certificate. The document was certified on June 25 and released Monday, three months after his death.

AfghanEvac, an advocacy group, reported that the death certificate falsely states that Paktiawal died on March 12—a day before he was even taken into custody. It also lists the effects of methamphetamine, which Paktiawal’s friends and family say he did not use.

“If my brother never used that drug in his life, how did it get into his body while he was inside an ICE building?” said Naseer Paktiawal, the deceased’s brother.

The family has still not received an autopsy report explaining Paktiawal’s death certificate. In a June 24 letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said it would continue to withhold his full autopsy report because of a pending federal criminal investigation.

Paktiawal was detained by federal immigration agents in Richardson, Texas, on March 13 while dropping off two of his children at preschool. After 24 hours with ICE, he was dead.

The evening of his arrest, Paktiawal complained of shortness of breath and chest pain while being held in the ICE’s Dallas field office. He was then transferred to Parkland Hospital, where he received treatment and remained for observation. The next morning, medical staff observed that his tongue had become swollen. Later, after cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other lifesaving measures, Paktiawal was declared dead.

Before emigrating to the United States in 2021, Paktiawal was a member of the Afghan special forces who were hired by the U.S. government. He worked with them for more than a decade.

According to ICE, Paktiawal was “paroled into the U.S. by an immigration officer,” or granted temporary permission to enter the country under Operation Allies Refuge, an evacuation effort for allied Afghan nationals that took place under the Biden administration.

ICE claimed they had no record of his military service, and said his parole expired in August 2025. The agency also claimed that Paktiawal had previously been arrested for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fraud and theft.

More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office—a marked increase from past administrations—but Paktiawal’s death is the first to be ruled an accident.