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After FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup fell through due to heavy backlash, he tried to get in touch with President Trump.

The New York Post reports that Infantino attempted to call Trump over the weekend several times because he was worried about losing his job following an avalanche of negative press over his idea, which led to the European and North American soccer associations, UEFA and CONCACAF respectively, threatening to boycott all FIFA events. Unable to reach Trump, Infantino instead reportedly held a private call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday morning, hoping to enlist help in staving off pressure to resign.

“He wanted to get online with the secretary and talk about how soccer can be a form of soft power for America,” an unnamed source told the Post. “But we all know that it is about job protection. It is not about anything else at this point.”

Infantino’s plan was to create a commercial entity for broadcasting, sponsorship, licensing, and ticketing rights, and he enlisted financial backing from Thrive Capital, an investment firm led by Josh Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The plan was immediately attacked as yet another example of decades-long FIFA corruption, which has only gotten worse under Trump.

Now, if Infantino keeps his job, it will be seen as Trump further intervening in international soccer and cementing the corrupt relationship between the two. The threat of a World Cup boycott from major countries apparently didn’t scare Infantino enough, because getting Trump’s help will only increase soccer fans’ anger.

President Donald Trump has his eye on the ball—a golf ball, that is.

The president took to Truth Social Sunday to trash-talk his opponents at a championship tournament at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things,” Trump wrote. “It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”

Putting aside the fact that Trump just insulted all of the people who pay him thousands of dollars a year for membership at his clubs, the president’s talent for golf has long been disputed. In his 2019 book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, veteran sportswriter Rick Reilly claimed that when it came to golf, Trump “cheats like a mafia accountant.”

In any case, Trump’s victory was seemingly undercut by the small crowd of attendees who turned up to watch him play. No wonder he had to take to social media to share a video of his final stroke.

Trump’s latest golf triumph brings to mind a quote by Emmet Hughes, a political speechwriter and aide to former Presider Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Hughes asserted that as an intellectual, Eisenhower “bestowed upon the games of golf and bridge all the enthusiasm and perseverance that he withheld from his books and ideas.”

Nothing could be truer about Trump, who just put out an open call for “unconventional” new ideas to end his war in Iran. Maybe that will give him more time to work on his golf game.

Conference-goers may want to think twice about connecting to public Wi-Fi after Microsoft disclosed that Russian foreign intelligence operatives (SVR) are compromising captive portal networks to deliver infostealers, keyloggers, and other malware. With the help of ReliaQuest's earlier work, Redmond fingered Storm-2945, a subdivision of the SVR's Midnight Blizzard (aka Nobellium), in an attack campaign targeting users of public Wi-Fi networks at places like hotels, conference centers, and other shared venues in the hospitality sector. Microsoft is still trying to determine how the hackers initially compromise captive-portal networks. The broader AI-assisted operation dates to February 2026, with traffic manipulation observed since early May. After gaining control of the network layer, Storm-2945 manipulates DNS and HTTP traffic to reroute users through attacker-controlled infrastructure, Microsoft said. The crew also abuses operating systems' connectivity checks to trigger malicious prompts and redirects. This gives the attackers an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) position. Such prompts adopt ClickFix-style methods, which in some cases try to convince public Wi-Fi users to install malware under the guise of OS updates, driver repairs, and web verification failures. Users who follow through on the instructions provided in the prompts may then find their device infected with malware. Microsoft calls the campaign "CaptiveCrunch." One of the malware strains it delivers is CornFlake. Described as "a full-featured Windows RAT" written in Go, CornFlake is the SVR's go-to persistent implant in these hospitality network attacks. After presenting users with a "convincing" fake Windows update progress window, it provides attackers with a wealth of capabilities once installed. These include: Keylogging Clipboard monitoring Screenshot capture Audio surveillance Video surveillance Browser credential theft File exfiltration USB drive monitoring Security posture sweep Remote shell Microsoft also said that CornFlake exposes a localhost HTTP API server to transform the malware into a modular platform, delivering additional payloads such as ChocoShell, a PowerShell-based infostealer. ChocoShell is delivered and executed entirely in-memory, Microsoft said. SVR uses it primarily to suck up victims' browser session cookies, saved passwords, SSO tokens, and Wi-Fi credentials. Microsoft neatly summarized the two: "Where CornFlake provides the operator with a persistent, long-running foothold on the device, ChocoShell is designed to extract the most operationally valuable credentials, giving the operator access to victim cloud environments." The attacks primarily target Windows machines, but Microsoft has also seen indications of ClickFix prompts tailored to Android devices, encouraging users to download and install an APK file. In addition to the malware element, "a portion" of SVR's CaptiveCrunch activity is devoted to device code phishing. Users sent to attacker-controlled landing pages may be instructed to enter a device code on a legitimate Microsoft authentication page, unwittingly authorizing the attacker's session. Device code phishing exploits a legitimate OAuth flow, typically reserved for devices that struggle to open browsers, such as smart TVs. In such scenarios, attackers request an authentication code from Microsoft, which they then send to phishing targets. In the CaptiveCrunch campaign, this looks like a fake landing page, served to the user thanks to the AitM component of the attack. Targets are then asked to copy the code, which was originally given to the attacker, open a legitimate Microsoft authentication window, enter the code, and choose which account they wish to authenticate. Choosing the account completes the authentication flow, but in turn authenticates the attacker into the chosen account. This gives the attacker a valid OAuth token for the victim's Microsoft 365 account, potentially granting access to cloud data permitted by the token until it expires or is revoked. Device code phishing is not a new or unique attack, but can be an effective route to bypassing MFA, especially when an attacker already controls the flow of traffic after a captive portal compromise. "This activity is consistent with previously reported device code phishing operations conducted by Midnight Blizzard since August 2024," Microsoft said. "The observed technique does not appear fundamentally novel; however, integrating device code phishing into captive portal and traffic manipulation operations might increase the likelihood that users perceive the authentication request as legitimate." The main takeaway, in Microsoft's book, is to stop trusting public Wi-Fi so much. It did not discourage using hospitality networks' Wi-Fi services altogether, but said favoring personal hotspots and satellite internet connections over public networks is a safer bet. The majority of Redmond's advice could be brought under the user education umbrella: Don't trust public networks; teach users not to download updates over public networks or via prompts; educate users about what ClickFix attacks look like. That sort of stuff. But organizations have a role to play too. Among other technical implementations, passwordless authentication can thwart many phishing techniques, although device code phishing may bypass even passkeys. The best response would be for an employer to disable the device code authentication flow altogether, wherever possible, preventing staffers from surrendering their workplace cloud access to attackers. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• Fede Alvarez will not return as a director for the Alien: Romulus sequel, but he’s still going to be involved behind-the-scenes.
• Recently, rumors abounded that the Alien: Romulus sequel had been shelved. But 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell confirmed it was still in the works.

There’s a sequel coming after the success of Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, which earned $350 million globally. We know that film companies like 20th Century Studios like those kinds of numbers as well as critical praise. Sadly, the next Alien film will not have Alvarez behind the camera as its director… But happily, it IS still happening at 20th Century Studios, despite recent cancellation rumors. 

“We just finished the script, actually, for a sequel for Romulus. But I’m gonna pass the torch on this one as director,” Alvarez said to TooFab at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. “I’m going to produce it, with Ridley Scott, we’re gonna produce it together, and we’re right now trying to find a new filmmaker to come in.”

20th Century Studios

He did say that there are ideas brewing for what will happen in the Cailee Spaeny-led film. But, of course, those details are mum. Alvarez may not be returning to direct the Alien: Romulus sequel, but he has some pretty sharp opinions on when the film should drop. 

RELATED ARTICLE

Fede Alvarez Teases Going Into “Uncharted Waters” for ALIEN: ROMULUS Sequel

“My philosophy is that you should never make [a sequel] in two years. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to get the audience to really want it,” the filmmaker previously told The Hollywood Reporter. “If you think about Alien and Aliens, there’s seven years between them. But we definitely have ideas about where it should go.”

So far, it’s been approximately two years since Alien: Romulus. And that’s enough time for the internet to get restless. In June 2026, rumors abounded that the Alien: Romulus sequel had been shelved. But 20th Century Studios President Steve Asbell was quick to shut them down. “Nope.” He said in response to a now-deleted tweet claiming the Alien: Romulus sequel had been canceled. There you have it.

Nope. https://t.co/vDcGeCF1IU

— Steve Asbell (@steveasbell) August 1, 2026

Hopefully, it won’t take the full seven years for the movie to be released. But we are happy that the film is still a go and that Alvarez will still have a hand in what happens next.

Originally published on September 8, 2025.

The post Fede Alvarez Will Not Direct ALIEN: ROMULUS Sequel appeared first on Nerdist.

It’s hard to imagine a more consummate and humiliating debacle than the retreat the Department of Justice was forced to execute last Friday in the Reflecting Pool case. Having staked a large portion of its remaining credibility on the charges against David Hearn, the 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist it had accused of vandalizing the pool back in June, DOJ was reduced on Friday evening to confessing, in a 20-page filing, that its whole theory was false: The pool had been ruined not by vandals but by the administration’s own botched, rushed renovation.

Some observers gave the department credit for belatedly doing the right thing, In fact, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had zero choice. A grenade had been hurled into her office, and she was forced to fall on it. No points here for virtue.

Her motion even put her crosswise with the president, a friend and ally since the 1980s, who to this hour insists the pool was slashed with knives and box cutters and wants the case pressed. “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro,” Trump fumed on Truth Social. “I don’t know what she was thinking?” For a prosecutor who has spent this administration as one of Donald Trump’s most reliable instruments, dismissing his pet case and blaming his renovation looks like a rare act of conscience. Don’t believe it.

The move that forced Pirro’s hand was the receipt of documents from the Interior Department demonstrating that the pool’s lining was peeling because of a rushed, failed installation—not because David Hearn tugged at a flap of it. That revelation is what we legal types call classic Brady material: exculpatory evidence the government must turn over to the defense at once, in line with the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland. Pirro’s own motion piously recites the point, reminding the court that “prosecutors have an affirmative obligation” to produce such evidence—which takes some nerve, given that the reason she was writing was that the Brady bomb had just gone off in her hands.

Once those documents surfaced, she had two choices. She could either dismiss the case on her own terms—spinning the story as diligent prosecutors misled by a careless agency—or turn the material over to Hearn’s lawyers and let them present it to Judge Todd Edelman, a former career public defender who, a week earlier, had already warned the government it was “operating at its own peril.” Handed the Interior documents, he would have blown his top and dismissed the indictment himself, in open court. So Pirro’s dismissal was not virtue: It was damage control.

The hasty surrender served another purpose: It steered Pirro out of the path of two looming train wrecks, or so she hopes.

The first was a grand jury problem. Hearn had filed a motion on July 27 alleging that the government presented the grand jury with no evidence of damages at all. The administration had elevated what elsewhere were misdemeanor charges to a felony on the strength of a single element—$1,000 or more in damage—yet it apparently had no proof of that amount, or any amount.

And the hole was not incidental; the grand jurors saw it themselves. They asked the government’s witness about the cost of the damage, and he could not quantify it. He testified, moreover, that the repairs would have been necessary regardless of anything Hearn did—the pool was already leaking more than a million gallons a week, its expansion joints past their service life, the liner already torn. On that record, the grand jury somehow returned a felony. Hearn’s motion would have exposed how the prosecution steered it there. Dismissing the case makes that question go away.

The second was Pirro’s own conduct. When the indictment came down on July 2, she did not let the charging document speak for itself, as DOJ norms require. She called a news conference and went well outside the record. “This is not only a priority for the president, but for myself,” she announced—welding her office to Trump’s political grievance—and averred that she had witnesses who saw Hearn do the crime. Prejudicial extrajudicial statements about a defendant are improper in themselves; they are far worse when they are, as these seem to be, whopping lies. A bar complaint over her handling of the case has already been filed in New York.

None of this is peculiar to the Reflecting Pool case. It is a method. Across this administration, the Justice Department has brought cases that are built backward, from the outcome the president wanted to a theory that might sustain it. Grand juries now reject this department’s indictments with a regularity once almost unheard of, and Pirro’s office has been a repeat offender.

All the bluster gives the episode an element of farce—a Cabinet secretary insisting he could “absolutely” prove vandalism, a president raving about a 300-foot slit cut with a box cutter, a U.S. attorney promising tremendous evidence, all collapsing into a filing that concedes the pool fell apart on its own.

But the farce should not obscure the gravity. To prop up a talking point almost everyone knew was false, the government cast a private citizen with no quarrel with Trump and no connection to the pool as the villain of a fiction, and moved to put him in prison for years. The leader tells a lie everyone knows is a lie, and the machinery of the state sets about forcing the rest of us to repeat it—all the way to the felony prosecution of an innocent bystander. That is what makes it the most perfectly Kafkaesque prosecution I can remember outside the annals of fiction.

David Hearn went for a bike ride and grabbed at a flap of coating that was already peeling off on its own. For that, the government of the United States tried to take 10 years of his life. He is owed more than a dismissal; he is owed, for starters, an apology. And the rest of us are owed an accounting of how the Justice Department came to be a willing instrument of the president’s vanity, and what misconduct its dismissal may be attempting to obscure.

⚡ Quick Take

• Wonder Man showrunner Andrew Guest posted a video addressing the show’s abrupt cancellation months after season two got renewed.
• Wonder Man Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s schedule had nothing to do with the series’ cancellation.
• We learn that the Writers’ Room for Wonder Man season two was meant to begin in August 2026 and that Guest had already written the first episode.
• Guest shares that Marvel and Disney simply decided suddenly the show wouldn’t be profitable for them.

In March of 2026, MCU fans got a pleasant surprise when Disney renewed Wonder Man for season two. Then in June, out of nowhere, viewers got a much bigger, much worse surprise. Marvel unexpectedly announced it had canceled the show. The abrupt renewal reversal for a critically-acclaimed show didn’t seem to make any sense. Wonder Man had even been nominated for an Emmy. Why the big change just a few months later? The series showrunner and co-creator Andrew Guest doesn’t know either. He posted a video addressing fan support, rumors, and speculation. Guest also shared just how much work had already been done on Wonder Man season two before this shocking news. And it’s clear he’s just as confused and disappointed as everyone else.

@andrewgst

#wonderman #marvel #season2 #marvelwonderman #mcu

♬ Monologues – Joel P West Destin Daniel Cretton’s Schedule Had Nothing to Do with Wonder Man‘s Cancellation

Disney’s weird/upsetting cancellation of Wonder Man season two is “not a stunt” according to Guest, who says he’s been “listening” to fan support and concerns. He also confirmed there is no movie in the works and that co-creator and Spider-Man: Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton’s schedule was not an issue. That’s because a second season of Wonder Man was not only approved, it was on the verge of really getting going. “Contracts were signed” for all the show’s stars, schedules were cleared, and the writers’ room was set to start this month. Production on Wonder Man season two was going to begin early next year. Guest had even written the first episode and had an outline for the rest of the season. He said everyone “felt really good” about the plan for Wonder Man season two.

So Why Was Wonder Man Season 2 Canceled?

So seriously, what the heck happened to make Disney/Marvel Studios cancel Wonder Man before season two could become a reality? Guest, who sounded more disappointed and confused than bitter, says he isn’t privy to any “numbers.” All he could offer up was the obvious. He said Disney and Marvel made a decision internally. A second season apparently worked for both parties a couple of months ago. Then it didn’t.

Marvel Studios

Like with almost everything, the truth, whatever the specifics may be, comes down to “money.” It seems impossible that Disney and Marvel would have reversed course on the show if they expected to turn a profit on a second season.

Vote for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Wonder Man at the Emmys!

But if Guest gets the one thing he wants that is still possible, this cancellation will look even worse. He hopes Emmy voters recognized the work Yahya Abdul-Mateen II did on Wonder Man. We do, too. And maybe if they do, we’ll eventually get Wonder Man season two, too.

The post WONDER MAN Showrunner Talks Series’ Abrupt Cancellation appeared first on Nerdist.

On Sunday, Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller went live on camera to deny the horrifying domestic abuse allegations levied by his ex-wife, saying that her accusations are false because she returned to him days later. “My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her. Here’s what actually happened, and I have the Ring doorbell footage that backs that…

Source

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is backing off threats to replace Senator Mitch McConnell, noting that the Republican’s extended absence would hurt his party all the same.

Beshear announced Monday that the August 3 deadline to call a special election to replace McConnell had “no legal impact” on the governor’s options should there be a Senate vacancy.

“Worth a reminder, right now, there’s one less vote for the SAVE Act, Trump’s war with Iran, or the potential replacement of a SCOTUS justice,” Beshear wrote in a statement on X.

Beshear never had the power to force McConnell out of his seat.

Under Section 152 of the Kentucky state Constitution, McConnell needed to resign at least three months ahead of the vote in order to call a special election. Kentucky’s law on Senate vacancies, House Bill 622, eliminated the governor’s ability to appoint interim replacements for vacant U.S. Senate seats. That law remains legally untested.

Beshear has repeatedly called on McConnell to justify his absence from Congress or to step down in time for Kentucky voters to choose a replacement. Now, the Kentucky governor’s arguing that missing votes might be a punishment in and of itself for the Republican Party’s astounding lack of transparency.

Over the weekend, Beshear came under fire from Republicans for missing Kentucky’s annual Fancy Farm picnic. The Kentucky governor called them out for their obvious double standard.

“Funny how the Republicans are all mad I missed one political event to watch my son play baseball. But no outrage that Mitch McConnell has been nowhere to be seen for 50 days,” he wrote on X Saturday.

The Washington Post sure seems bent out of shape over wealth taxes. And I suppose that makes sense, given that the once-storied publication is owned by one of the five richest dudes on the planet, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who put the kibosh on the paper’s 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris, proceeded to kiss the ring of Donald Trump, and has remade the Post’s once-respected opinion section in his own image, declaring in February 2025 that its coverage would henceforth focus on “personal liberties and free markets.” Opinions Editor David Shipley promptly quit, to be replaced by Adam O’Neal, who jumped ship on Friday, citing personal reasons.

In any case, the Post has been pulling out all the stops when it comes to the wealth tax. They’ve run no less than 10 opinion pieces since March arguing against state and federal taxes on wealth and unrealized income—the “paper” gains that constitute the vast majority of the income of the richest Americans. The fact that the IRS can’t touch that income is how Bezos, according to ProPublica, managed to pay a true income tax rate of less than 1 percent from 2014 to 2018.

Here’s the Post’s recent lineup:

• March 2: “Bernie Sanders’s 2028 litmus test would strangle America’s golden goose” (Editorial board)
• March 8: “The myth of the billionaire wealth tax” (Megan McCardle)
• April 17: “This tax would rain a wealth of unintended consequences” (George Will)
• June 5: “The ‘buy, borrow, die’ myth” (Editorial board)
• June 27: “Gavin Newsom’s wealth tax two-step” (Editorial board)
• July 3: “Lower inequality does not guarantee better democracy” (Editorial board)
• July 16: “Socialists think wealth is stolen. They’re wrong.” (Marian L. Tupy, Cato Institute)
• July 21: “‘It should be laughed out of the room’: Four writers on midterm ballot measures” (Megan McCardle, again)
• July 19: “Medicare-for-all means taxes-for-all” (Editorial board)
• July 23: “I’m from Nebraska. Here’s what wealth-tax advocates don’t realize.” (Ben Nelson, former US senator; senior adviser for Saving America’s Family Enterprises)

This last one is particularly problematic for a publication whose editorial slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Saving America’s Family Enterprises (SAFE), the organization paying Nelson to promote its talking points, is a “dark money” group—a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that isn’t obligated to disclose who is funding it.

We’ll talk more about SAFE, but first let’s deconstruct this op-ed.

“As a factual matter, the threat of taxing the family farm out of existence is a myth.”

Nelson, an 85-year-old former Nebraska senator, was the Joe Manchin of his time—a Republican in Democrat clothing. Backed by the NRA and the notoriously anti-tax US Chamber of Commerce, he’s a staunch opponent of abortion rights and same sex marriage. More to the point, he was the only Democrat who voted for both of George W. Bush’s tax cut packages—Arlen Specter switched to Democrat only after doing so. In 2009, Nelson was the only Democratic lawmaker to sign Grover Nordquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a vow to oppose all tax increases.

His big revelation in the Post is that passing any of the proposed federal wealth taxes, or state-level proposals like California’s Billionaire Tax Act ballot measure, would be devastating…for farmers!

Are we stuck in a time warp?

That’s a semi-serious question. As I noted in 2024, and countless others have pointed out before me, the claim that wealth taxes—or the estate tax, in this case—hurts “family farmers” is “a well-worn Republican trope that amounts, fittingly enough, to a heap of cow manure.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, according to an exhaustive analysis published last year in Iowa Law Review, anti-tax zealots “discovered and capitalized upon an incredibly powerful image in the minds of voters: the threat to family farms. Tax opponents authored publications and held hearings detailing ‘family farm horror stories’ involving farms that would potentially have to be sold to pay the estate tax. It turned out not to matter that no policymaker, scholar, or journalist was ever able to uncover an actual example of a family farm that was sold to pay the estate tax.”

“As a factual matter,” notes the paper’s author, Kathleen DeLaney Thomas, a University of North Carolina law school professor and tax expert, “the threat of taxing the family farm out of existence is a myth.”

So, the Post knowingly published a pro-oligarchy opinion piece written on behalf of a dark money group and based on long-ago debunked propaganda, which makes one wonder whether the publishers view the paper’s slogan as aspirational.

Nelson (or whoever ghost-wrote his op-ed) concedes that most wealth tax proposals only target billionaires, but, he cautions, it’s a slippery slope. He cites a Hoover Institution study that concluded California would ultimately lose $25 billion in tax revenue if this one-time wealth tax passes, because billionaires would flee the state. But is that analysis any good? Not according to a group of prominent economists who support the wealth tax. In their rebuttal, they say the Hoover crew mischaracterized the proposal and made revenue estimates that rely “on a crucial and highly unlikely assumption.”

One hundred people were responsible for half the 2024 presidential election spending. That’s a democracy killer.

Speaking of billionaires, how many would actually leave the state? Nobody really knows. Peter Thiel, who purchased citizenship in New Zealand nearly a decade ago and is now reportedly trying to abscond to Argentina, never seemed inclined to remain in California. Allen Prohofsky, a former longtime chief economist for California’s Franchise Tax Board, told me that anyone who claims with certainty that a given tax change will cause an exodus is either lying or “delusional.” 

“The people who really hate, hate, hate taxes? Most of them have already left California,” he says. But for people thinking about it “there’s a host of variables: Where can I get employment? Where does my spouse want to live? What’s the cost of housing?”

“Where are your grandchildren in school? Where is your health provider?” adds Harvey Dale, a tax law professor at New York University who advises billionaire clients in his private practice. Leaving one’s state, or nation, is “a very complicated and ultimately personal decision,” Dale says, “but it doesn’t blend down easily into something simple.”

Nelson’s conclusion: The IRS should simply collect the estimated $700 billion in taxes that go uncollected each year, and that way “farmers wouldn’t be forced to sell their assets.”

Yes! The IRS should do that. But the agency couldn’t manage it even before Donald Trump rose to power. Historically, every time IRS special agents encounter rich Americans who are cheating the government and start digging in, the oligarchs call in favors and next thing you know the agency is defunded again and the investigations are shut down. Trump’s IRS will never collect the money. His minions and (former) trillionaire Elon Musk gutted the agency to such an extent that it can’t even handle basic customer service, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer recently revealed.

Even the fact we’re talking about Musk in this context should be the most compelling argument for taxing the unrealized gains his wealth was built on. The nation’s growing cadre of billionaires, more now than ever, is exercising vast, undeserved power over public affairs. As Jeffrey Winters, a scholar of oligarchy at Northwestern University, noted in a Mother Jones excerpt of his latest book, Musk was the biggest influencer of federal elections during the 2024 cycle, spending more than $291 million—a fortune for most, but a pittance for him.

What’s more, Winters wrote:

Former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s grandson Timothy, a man few Americans knew existed, spent about $197 million, and [Sheldon] Adelson’s widow, Miriam, ranked third with more than $148 million. All told, 100 individuals invested $2.4 billion in the 2024 election—almost half the total cost of the presidential contest and 16 percent of all federal election spending. The problem is bipartisan—oligarchs poured money in for Democrats and Republicans alike.

One hundred individuals. Half the presidential election spending. That, my friends, is a democracy killer, which underscores how the Post, with its relentless anti-tax rhetoric, is complicit.

Given that SAFE and its hired gun Ben Nelson want the taxman to collect all of those unpaid taxes, you might think that restoring ample funding for IRS enforcement would be among the group’s goals.

It is not.

According to IRS filings, SAFE exists “to advocate against federal tax proposals that complicate the tax code, encourage tax avoidance, or harm small businesses, family farmers, homeowners and the middle class.” Indeed, these salt-of-the-earth farmers, concerned young homeowners, and earnest middle-class folks (or actors portraying them) star in some highly misleading videos posted on SAFE’s website to warn against taxing unrealized gains.

One video implies, for example, that someone who buys a $500,000 house could be taxed annually on the increase in the home’s value. That’s completely false. If a couple buys a $500,000 house today and sells it for $1 million after two years—a realized gain, by the way—they won’t owe a dime, because the IRS exempts $250,000 in home-sale profits ($500k for a couple) from taxation.

This aligns with a standard—and false—Republican scare tactic: The IRS is coming for your middle-class family!

So whom does SAFE really represent? It doesn’t disclose its donors, but some clues can be gleaned from its personnel. Its president from June 2023 through May 2026 was Jim Doyle. He’s the owner of Portico Policy Advisors, “a research and strategic communications firm that conducts policy analysis for leading corporations, financial service firms, venture capitalists and nonprofits.” You may recognize some of his clients, like JPMorganChase, Citi, and TPG—an asset management firm with $306 billion under management that offers, among other things, “global wealth solutions.”

And nothing says “middle class” like global wealth solutions.

The vast majority of untaxed, unrealized income belongs to the richest 10 percent of Americans. Middle-class families have little.

SAFE’s treasurer is Matthew Mazzanti, a former intern for Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. Mazzanti, eight years out of college, is also Chief Administration Officer at PPHC, “a family of premier advisory firms specializing in government relations, public affairs, and strategic communications” that includes lobbying shops like Crossroads Strategies, which in 2020 merged with the lobby practice of former Republican House Majority Leader Trent Lott and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), both now Crossroads principals and board members. The PPHC conglomerate is led by, in its own words, “established founders and seasoned corporate executives.” It boasts: “Our clients include nearly half of the Fortune 100.”

And I’m sure it’s very concerned with the travails of middle-class America.

In September 2023, SAFE and Breaux co-filed a friend of the court brief in the Supreme Court case Moore v. United States. Like Nelson, Breaux supported the Bush Jr’s 2001 tax cut package. He also sided with a Republican attempt to repeal the estate tax—which the lawyers for America’s upper crust have turned into a punchline. His position on Moore was therefore no surprise; the brief asks the court to rule that taxing unrealized gains is unconstitutional.

It never came to that, because Charles Moore’s gains were in fact realized, the court found, even if the money in question wasn’t distributed to him and his wife. But the opinions of conservative justices in the case shocked many legal observers by making clear that the Roberts court would not tolerate taxes on unrealized gains (Federal wealth taxes are already, for all practical purposes, unconstitutional, as I explained in my recent piece “How to Tax a Billionaire,” though states are not beholden to the federal rules.)

The constitutional issue is really the only decent argument against such a tax—not farmers, logistics, venue-shopping moguls, or the concerns of first-time homeowners with infants. And certainly not to protect the interests anyone below the 90th wealth percentile. The richest 10 percent of Americans, after all, own 87.4 percent of all corporate stock and mutual funds. Most families have little to no unrealized gains—and those would be exempted in any piece of legislation intended to rein in the out-of-control, republic-distorting, oligarchic wealth disparities between affluent households and those just scraping by.

Maybe the Washington Post can just spare us the propaganda next time, and tell the truth: The Roberts Supreme Court, Trump administration, and oligarchs of both parties (including Mr. Bezos), care more about wealth protection than American democracy—would that it survives the present darkness.    

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is on thin ice.

It’s only been four months since Mullin took over from Kristi Noem as head of DHS, and influential MAGA allies are already calling for him to be replaced.

The latest surge of anger came Saturday after Mullin delivered remarks about immigration reform at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Oklahoma City. In the meeting, Mullin made the mistake of distinguishing between immigrants pursuing legal status and those who aren’t, calling for changes to work visas and broader immigration reform to address American labor shortages.

A few hours later, Mullin attempted to walk back his statement on X, posting “NO amnesty for illegal aliens. Ever. We are a nation of laws. If you are illegally present in the United States of America—you will be detained and deported. Period.”

But the damage was already done.

Influential voices on the right quickly began attacking Mullin for being weak on immigration.

“Mullin is the wrong guy at the wrong time for the wrong job,” Steve Bannon told Politico Saturday. “At a time when we need focus on ‘mass deportations,’ we get an amnesty advocate.”

Bannon’s sentiments were joined by those of a slew of right-wing advocates, including Laura Loomer, Nick Sortor, Robby Starbuck, and MAGA podcaster Jake Posobiec.

Even former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino got in on the action, posting that Mullin “celebrates your replacement as long as it’s done legally, without mentioning that 80% of legal immigrants will vote Democrat.… And we wonder why we’re going to lose the midterms?”

“It takes a lot to unite this administration around a cohesive point of view,” one senior Trump official told Politico. “Mullin deserves credit where credit is due. Everyone agrees he sucks donkey butt.”

Mullin’s tenure as DHS secretary has been dogged by a series of missteps and controversies, including his attempt to temporarily restrict Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle stops (there have been 11 fatal shootings by ICE agents since President Trump returned to office, many of which involved officers firing into vehicles), as well as his apparent willingness to interact civilly with the enemy across the aisle, including Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro and Democratic Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

Trump allies are already floating names for Mullin’s replacement, including acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

Still, the administration is standing by its DHS secretary—at least for now.

“The President has confidence in Secretary Mullin and his entire Administration to carry out the agenda the American people voted for,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson told Politico.

Say hello to our newest merch drop: “Go Touch Grassroots.” Sure, “go touch grass” and reconnect with nature and all that. But around here, we’d like to remember to stay in touch with our grassroots—the volunteers, organizers, neighbors, and everyday people who power real change. Whether you’re knocking doors, heading to a rally, writing GOTV postcards, or just grabbing coffee…

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⚡ Quick Take

• A Warhammer 40,000 animated series is in development from Henry Cavill, Prime Video/Amazon MGM Studios, Blur Studios, and Games Workshop.
• Nerdist Take: This Warhammer 40,000 animated series is a smart and safe bet for Prime Video. It has already been tested in Secret Level, fits into the platform’s game adaptations, and involves a Cavill, a big name and true fan.
• Not much is known about the plot of the Warhammer 40,000 animated series, but a few details have been revealed alongside creator information, including the presence of the Deathwatch in the series.

Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 live-action series recently showed signs of life when Mike Flanagan came aboard as a writer. But now, a second project is coming from Prime Video, Henry Cavill, and Warhammer 40,000—this time, it’s an animated series set in the franchise’s world, most likely starring the notorious Deathwatch. And, in all honesty, a Warhammer 40,000 animated series sounds like a truly safe bet to us.

Nerdist/Prime Video Nerdist Take: Prime Video Is Smart to Make a Warhammer 40,000 Animated Series

In our opinion, it makes a ton of sense for Prime Video to be pursuing a Warhammer 40,000 animated series for a handful of different reasons. First, this Warhammer 40,000, called an “event series” by Prime Video, has already been tried and tested. This animated series is actually a spin-off from Prime Video’s video game-based animated series Secret Level. Secret Level already had a Warhammer 40,000 episode in its first season, and it was incredibly popular, revealing an appetite for more in the vein.

Secondly, Prime Video has already made itself a home for gaming adaptations. In addition to Secret Level, Prime Video has created the wildly popular Fallout live-action series and is working on Tomb Raider, God of War, and Mass Effect series as well. A Warhammer 40,000 animated series will fit perfectly into the mix.

Finally, of course, there’s Henry Cavill. Not only is Cavill a big name, but he’s also a well-known and lifelong Warhammer 40,000 fan. There’s no one we’d trust more to bring us an amazing Warhammer 40,000 animated series. So ultimately, it’s good news on all fronts.

More About Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40,000 Animated Series

In sum, we know that Henry Cavill will executive produce this Warhammer 40,000 animated event series. Additionally, as mentioned, it’s a spinoff of the Prime Video show Secret Level, an anthology series that featured episodes set in the worlds of different gaming IPs.

The series is in development from Amazon MGM Studios, Blur Studios, who produced Secret Level, and Games Workshop, the manufacturer of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game. The director of Secret Level‘s Warhammer 40,000 animated episode, Dave Wilson, is co-creator and director of this animated series, alongside John Orloff. The series will stream on Prime Video, where you can also catch Secret Level.

Wilson shares, “Secret Level wasn’t conceived simply as an anthology. It was designed as a launchpad for larger stories. The response to the Warhammer episode was extraordinary, particularly from fans who understood how much care went into getting the world right. This series gives us the opportunity to build on that foundation and tell a much larger story. I’ve wanted to tell a long-form story set in Warhammer 40,000 for more than twenty years, and I’m incredibly grateful to Games Workshop and Amazon MGM Studios for the opportunity to do it.”

What Will the Plot of the Warhammer 40,000 Animated Series Be? Prime Video

For now, we don’t know much about the plot of the Warhammer 40,000 animated series. But we do know it will feature The Deathwatch, “an elite group of Space Marines that specialize in hunting down alien threats.” You can learn all about them in the Deathwatch: The Omnibus, an “action-packed omnibus that contains three full novels written by Steve Parker, Ian St Martin, and Justin D Hill, along with a dozen of the best short stories ever written about the Imperium’s premier xenos hunters.”

When Will the Warhammer 40,000 Animated Series Release?

The Warhammer 40,000 animated series is still in early development; there is no release date at this time.

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The post WARHAMMER 40,000 Animated Series Coming From Henry Cavill appeared first on Nerdist.

Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek is lining up $5 billion in financing to expand into AI datacenter silicon, targeting a slice of a market it expects to be worth up to $80 billion next year. The fabless chip producer is perhaps best known for its Arm-based smartphone and Chromebook chipsets, plus wireless silicon for Wi-Fi products. But the firm is the latest to see a "compelling growth opportunity" in the market for compute to power AI and so-called agentic AI in particular. MediaTek is targeting application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) rather than GPUs and reckons it can capture 15 to 20 percent of the market. The company's board has also approved $5 billion in financing to secure supply chain capacity and fuel an expansion from AI ASIC chips to full-scale systems and platforms, MediaTek stated. Chief exec Dr Rick Tsai spelled it out during an analyst call for the company's Q2 2026 earnings. "Recently, the release of increasingly capable frontier AI models, together with the rapid transition toward agentic AI, has become a key driver of compute demand across both cloud and edge AI," he stated. "Agentic AI, which executes a series of actions, including planning, reasoning, execution, and self-correction, further increases workloads. This represents a compelling growth opportunity for MediaTek, as we are well-positioned to support both the scaling of AI datacenters and the proliferation of agentic AI experiences across a broad range of edge devices." MediaTek says that its first ASIC family has been developed in "close partnership with major US cloud service provider customers," and is scheduled to enter production in the fourth quarter of this year. A second AI accelerator design is also progressing well and aims to offer a step up in compute performance. The chip biz expects its AI datacenter ASIC revenue to exceed $2 billion in 2026, scaling substantially next year, primarily driven by increasing customer demand for its technology, which boasts optimized performance for TCO and performance per watt at scale, Tsai claims. "With close collaboration with our advanced packaging partner, the yield and reliability of the second ASIC are on track for high-volume production in 2028. We're confident in capturing additional market share when this ASIC ramps up," Tsai told analysts. But MediaTek will be facing competition from rivals such as Broadcom and Marvell, which already design ASICs for the AI market, and even Google, which announced plans to start selling its custom tensor processing units (TPUs) to some customers earlier this year. According to a Bloomberg Intelligence report from January, the market for AI ASICs is projected to expand at a 27 percent compound annual rate to reach $118 billion by 2033, and grow from just 8 percent of the total AI accelerator arena in 2024 to 19 percent in 2033. MediaTek reported Q2 revenue of NT$152.18 billion ($4.68 billion), up just 1.2 percent year-on-year, but operating income was down by 22 percent to NT$22.87 billion ($705 million). ®

The Police National Legal Database (PNLD) is the latest UK public sector outfit to admit that cybercriminals made off with its data, including the names and work email addresses of police officers, justice staff, government partners, and customers. The legal lookup service relied upon by police forces and criminal justice agencies across the UK said it discovered the "data security incident" on July 26 and is investigating alongside specialist cybersecurity firms and the National Crime Agency. According to the PNLD, the leaked information includes the names, organizations, and work email addresses of police officers, police staff, criminal justice professionals, government partners, and customers. It insists there is "no evidence" that passwords or other authentication data were compromised. The breach also affected Ask the Police, a public-facing legal advice website operated by PNLD. There, the fallout appears limited to the names and email addresses of people who previously submitted questions through the service. That's about where the explanation ends. PNLD has yet to say how attackers got in, when the data was stolen, how many people were affected, or whether anyone tried to shake it down before the information appeared online. West Yorkshire Police, which operates PNLD, did not immediately respond to The Register’s questions. However, the breach appears linked to the same extortion crew that last week claimed responsibility for a similar breach of the Department for Education (DfE). The group, which calls itself "ExfilSquad," currently lists both the PNLD and DfE among its latest victims on its dark web leak site, seen by The Register. For PNLD, the crooks claim to have lifted a 1.9 GB dataset containing roughly 135,000 law enforcement contact records, including names, email addresses, and police force areas. The DfE listing boasts of around 600,000 parent and staff contact records, plus another 7,000 from its Turing Portal. The education department confirmed last week that more than 607,000 records had indeed been exposed. The DfE has confirmed that the compromised information was limited to customer service contact details from its Customer Help Portal and Turing Scheme, and said no other departmental data had been accessed. Like most cyber-extortion outfits, ExfilSquad doesn't exactly do understatement. Its leak site warns victims that once data appears there, it is "NEVER leaving the public eye," before suggesting any ransom would amount to little more than a rounding error compared with the legal bills that might follow. The DfE and PNLD's confirmations don't validate everything ExfilSquad posts on its leak site. It also lists Microsoft as a victim, alleging a 13 GB haul containing millions of records, password hashes, internal support tickets, and access permissions. Having two organizations confirm breaches claimed on its leak site makes ExfilSquad harder to ignore. Whether the gang's other boasts are equally well founded, or simply the usual cybercrook embellishment, remains to be seen. ®

The Trump administration is running out of ways to pressure Iran, with its airstrikes failing to end Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz or force the country back to the negotiating table. So now the military is asking for “unconventional” new ideas.

CNN reports that an officer in the U.S. Central Command’s intelligence branch sent a message Wednesday to military analysts “looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” It’s an unusual thing to ask over email, according to CNN, and shows that President Trump knows his options are limited as the war with Iran enters its sixth month.

The email was sent before Trump threatened new airstrikes against Iran and then relented, over the weekend, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Gulf leaders talked him out of it. Among the plans were attacking Pickaxe Mountain and other Iranian sites reportedly housing nuclear equipment or material.

Those sites are deep underground, however, and would have likely required deploying American ground troops, which Trump is trying to avoid. Eighteen American service members have been killed in the war, according to official counts, and the administration has been criticized for its lack of transparency on military casualties.

“At the end of the day, POTUS will want a deal, so he’ll continually look for ways to get tough and get out of this,” an unnamed source told CNN. “You need creative minds at times—especially if you’re running out of conventional options.”

But more bombing probably won’t change Iran’s negotiating position, according to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. Trump has effectively backed himself into a corner with his ill-advised war, and is having trouble with being able to walk away with anything he can call a victory. American missile stockpiles have dwindled, scores of civilians have been killed, and the global economy, including gas prices, has taken a massive hit. Trump needs a way out.

Negotiations to end the Iran war do not seem to be going well.

The White House and Tehran are apparently not even on the same page when it comes to resolving the nearly six-month conflict. Iranian officials directly contradicted Donald Trump Monday by telling Reuters that talks were not currently underway and that there were no plans to resume them.

Trump called off another slate of attacks against Iran Sunday, backing down yet again from the threat of a major assault.

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One that day, Trump said that he had scrapped the “massive” attack after being lobbied by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

“We were all set to go, but when our allies ask to call it off, you sort of have to say, ‘Well, let’s see,’” Trump said.

“And the reason they asked is they think there’s a deal. There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear—or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran. I call it the denuclearization of Iran,” Trump said. “So we’re holding it. We can do it anytime we want, but we were asked by the three primary groups, we were also asked by Iran very strongly actually. They said, ‘We’d like to make a deal.’”

The president then predicted that Tehran would turn around and say, “We don’t know what he’s talking about” with regard to a potential peace deal.

“Obviously they don’t want to be attacked,” Trump said.

The negotiations were set to take place Monday afternoon, according to the president.

Iran is currently in talks with Oman to establish a safe, temporary route for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei.

“To avoid any ambiguity, it should be clarified who the negotiations are with. We currently have no negotiations with the United States; the negotiations are with Oman,” Baghaei told CNN Monday, adding that the tentative arrangement would not automatically reopen the strait. “Whether this stage and this process can be connected to another process that leads to a reduction of tensions in the region, we must wait and see.”

Baghaei also blamed U.S. officials for blowing up the memorandum of understanding in June, prolonging the unpopular and bloody hostilities.

“It violated all of its commitments, reinstated the illegal maritime blockade, revoked the authorization for the sale of Iranian oil, and effectively declared almost all of the other commitments it had accepted under the memorandum null and void,” Baghaei said.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has stated "we simply will not fly it" if claims about the costs of the repurposed Mars rover engineering model prove anywhere near accurate. Isaacman was responding to the Planetary Society's chief of space policy, Casey Dreier, who had run the numbers on his plan to send a robot to the Moon, built from parts of engineering models of the successful Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity. Dreier estimated that the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration (PROMISE) mission, as discussed by Isaacman in a June presentation, would cost between $723 million and $1.33 billion. Dreier's figures include a low-end launch and landing cost of $234 million and a high-end estimate of $320 million. PROMISE is intended to put a rover on the Moon for a fraction of the usual cost. There are engineering testbeds for both Perseverance and Curiosity, dubbed OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments Sent to Mars) and MAGGIE (Mars Automated Giant Gizmo for Integrated Engineering) respectively. While not 100 percent identical to what was sent to Mars, the pair are designed to be close enough to allow engineers to perform activities such as plotting drives on simulated Martian terrain and seeing how the hardware will react to commands sent from Earth. NASA bosses looked at the engineering models, considered ways to score easy "wins," as Isaacman put it, and came up with an idea. Engineering models are common enough in spaceflight. A Development Test Model (DTM) of Voyager can be found hanging in the Exploring the Planets gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. The DTM's bus was liberated in 1987 for developing NASA's Magellan Venus spacecraft. The Register also paid a visit to a test model of the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter on a 2022 visit to the agency's Darmstadt site, which looked more like an explosion of wiring than a simulacrum of a spacecraft. MAGGIE and OPTIMISM are at least recognizable as engineering testbeds for Curiosity and Perseverance, but getting a hybrid using parts from both models into a state where it can do useful science on the Moon would be a challenge. As well as qualifying the components for launch and spaceflight, engineers would have to prepare hardware built for use on Earth to withstand lunar conditions. Power and communications would also need work: NASA has a "spare" plutonium radioisotope power system, but the rover would require substantial adaptation to use it. Then there are the consequences of taking engineering models away from active missions. "Regardless of whether one agrees with every estimate… one thing is clear: PROMISE is far from a 'freebie,'" Dreier stated. Isaacman did not challenge individual elements of Dreier's breakdown, although he excluded launch and landing because those costs "are a reality for any mission." Even so, he said, "if PROMISE costs even 20 percent of your low-end estimate, we simply will not fly it." "That said, it would be crazy not to take advantage of hardware taxpayers have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in." That hardware has already been taken advantage of. It was designed to be a testbed and used for that purpose. Repurposing them for a one-off mission to the Moon could prove more troublesome and expensive than designing a rover that can be mass-produced. ®

Georgia and Michigan are the latest US states to report cyberattacks on water systems, as the FBI investigates incidents across at least seven states. Iran-backed hackers are the leading suspects, although the bureau has not publicly attributed the campaign. Officials in both states told journalists over the weekend that water facilities had detected activity consistent with the attacks on more than 30 Minnesota sites last week. Neither state reported operational disruption. Nine Michigan water systems reported hostile cyber activity to the state's Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Department communications director Dale George said the state received "a small number" of reports consistent with the activity seen in Minnesota, but no public health consequences followed. "All systems continued to operate safely, issues were addressed by local operators, and there are no known impacts that posed a public health concern," said George. Georgia also confirmed to ABC News that it was affected, but said the damage was limited. Neither Georgia nor Michigan has published any form of public-facing notification about the cyberattacks. The three states are among at least seven affected by the intrusions, according to an FBI advisory posted last week. The bureau did not name a culprit or mention Iran. "Since 27 July 2026, Water and Wastewater Sector (WWS) utility companies in at least seven states have reported incidents to the FBI, and some of that activity degraded water operations," it stated in its advisory. The FBI said it had so far observed the activity only against Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley programmable logic controllers (PLCs), although it warned organizations deploying other manufacturers' devices to follow the same hardening advice. A broader CISA advisory, updated on July 22, warned that Schneider Electric, Siemens, and potentially other PLC brands were also being targeted by Iran-affiliated actors. Security researchers at Tenable were among the first to publicly suspect Iran's involvement, citing similarities with previous attacks by the IRGC-linked CyberAv3ngers group. Minnesota was the first state to confirm it was hit by the attacks, which took place over July 26-27. The state's IT department (MNIT), said more than 30 community water systems were targeted, but still has not officially attributed the attacks. According to WIRED, a restricted WaterISAC notice shared with water utilities said the Minnesota activity aligned with an earlier Iran-affiliated campaign. WaterISAC told WIRED that it had not assessed attribution "at any time" and publicly stated that it had not supplied the leaked document to the publication. President Trump also rejected the Iran link, offering no evidence for his alternative explanation. He told reporters following a cabinet meeting on Friday that "they blame it on Iran. I don't think so. I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent." He added: "I think the governor is behind it. I don't think there was an Iranian cyberattack." Tim Walz, Minnesota's Democratic governor, suggested Iran was indeed behind the attacks, and highlighted Trump's funding cuts leaving sites such as water facilities more vulnerable to cyberattacks. "Trump knows exactly who is responsible for this attack, and knows that other states were hit too," he said. "This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there's no plan to win a war in Iran. "DOGE took an axe to CISA and left the US exposed to cyberattacks. Thankfully, our experts in Minnesota were able to identify the vulnerability quickly and work with local communities to stop it." ®

The Department of Justice’s move to dismiss its criminal case against Olympian David Hearn exposed just how bad things have gotten inside the Trump administration.

In a new episode of his Justice Matters podcast, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner argued that the DOJ’s motion to dismiss revealed just how shoddy its case was to begin with.

Kirschner noted that Donald Trump’s DOJ blamed the Department of the Interior for initially claiming that the damage was “entirely caused by vandals” and admitted that the DOJ hadn’t fully investigated the matter.

“Talk about finger-pointing,” Kirschner said. “Talk about the refusal to take responsibility for your botched indictment. That is ugly. That is unseemly. As a career federal prosecutor, including decades that I served in that very office, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, you don’t indict first and investigate later. Nor do you take the word of another agency of government.”

In its filing Friday, the DOJ acknowledged that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was caused by flawed installation by the contractor—contrary to the narrative Trump has been pushing for weeks.

In a statement Saturday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum scrambled to keep up the story. “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera,” he wrote on X.

Kirschner also slammed the U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for mounting prosecution before fully investigating her own case.

“That is not the way prosecution works,” Kirschner said. “Not in the ‘Before Times,’ but in the legal upside-down [world] courtesy of Trump and Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, it is ready, fire, aim, and that is inexcusable. It’s horrific, and it is a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion and power.”

Trump criticized Pirro’s decision to drop the case. In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump admitted there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the lining installation, but “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”

“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” he wrote.

Ugh. Apparently MAGA chuds across the country have shown enough interest in traveling abroad with a sullen picture of Dear Leader adorning their passport that the State Department is issuing 250,000 more and making them available nationwide. Yes, starting Aug. 8, your xenophobic uncle who has never had a passport and likely will never set foot outside of the red state he lives in can go to a…

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