This is all about American weakness and an incompetent President.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2012
Putin has shown the world what happens when America has weak leaders. Peace Through Strength!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2014
Putin has no respect for our President --- really bad body language.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2012
🚨🚨 The final draft map from the California state legislature is now public.
— VoteHub (@VoteHubUS) August 16, 2025
Our partisanship index (2024/2020 presidential results composite) shows:
🔵 48 Democratic seats (+5)
🔴 4 Republican seats (-5) pic.twitter.com/StPeUKEk6V
TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I "STOLE THE CAMERAS" THIS WEEK WITH “THE MAPS”?…
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 15, 2025
As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to announce that he would take on President Trump’s redistricting plans on behalf of California, scores of federal immigration agents massed outside the venue Thursday.
Newsom was set to speak at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, when Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading the immigration operations in California, arrived in Little Tokyo, flanked by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns.
“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves,” Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter in Little Tokyo. “We’re glad to be here, we’re not going anywhere.”
When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”
Newsom’s office took to X to share that agents were outside, posting: “BORDER PATROL HAS SHOWED UP AT OUR BIG BEAUTIFUL PRESS CONFERENCE! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!”
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is on an ominous course.
Homan: President Trump doesn’t have a limitation on his authority to make this country safe again. There is no limitation on that pic.twitter.com/fFcWciVEso
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 13, 2025
Trump on DC: “The White House is in charge. The Military and our Great Police will liberate this City, scrape away the filth, and make it safe, clean, habitable and beautiful once more!” pic.twitter.com/BJ5nAWzHcP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2025
REPORTER: Your federalization of the police has a 30 day limit unless Congress acts. Are you talking to Congress about extending it?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2025
TRUMP: If it's a national emergency we can do it without Congress pic.twitter.com/8p0yOUT1cN
According to a commencement program from Northern Illinois University, Antoni earned a master’s and Ph.D. in economics from that school in 2018 and 2020, respectively, and a bachelor of arts degree from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. Antoni’s LinkedIn profile says he attended Lansdale Catholic High School outside Philadelphia from 2002 to 2006.
According to the profile, Antoni went to work in 2021 as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin that has sued the federal government to overturn climate-change regulations. The following year, he joined the conservative Heritage Foundation as a research fellow studying regional economics. He is now the foundation’s chief economist and an adviser to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a group of conservative economic commentators.
Past BLS commissioners have had extensive research experience, and many have climbed the ranks of the agency itself. Antoni doesn’t fit that profile. He doesn’t appear to have published any formal academic research since his dissertation, according to queries of National Bureau of Economic Research working papers and Google Scholar. Much of his commentary on the Heritage website praises Trump’s policies and economic record. He frequently posts on X and appears on conservative podcasts such as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” where he criticized the economy under President Joe Biden and lauds Trump’s economy.
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According to Google Scholar, Antoni’s paper has earned one citation, by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2021, while he worked there. Publications by Erika McEntarfer—the BLS commissioner who was ousted by Trump on Aug. 1, midway through her term, after a weak jobs report—have been cited 1,327 times.
Trump fired McEntarfer after a report showing significant downward revisions to prior months’ job growth. Trump supporters have since seized upon the agency’s tendency to revise some of its numbers, as well as other issues they see with the data.
Economists said they found Dr. Antoni’s history of distorting economic statistics to support partisan positions more concerning.
They cited numerous examples of Dr. Antoni’s appearing to misunderstand the same government data that he will now, if confirmed, be in charge of. In one case, he cited the rising number of Americans who aren’t in the labor force, without acknowledging the role of the aging population; in another, he appeared not to know that the bureau’s measure of import prices did not include the effect of tariffs.
“He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them,” said Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
And apparently, he was a J6er:
Trump’s new pick for Bureau of Labor Statistics claims to have been a “bystander” on J6 who just wandered over because he heard about it on the news.
— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🏴☠️🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) August 14, 2025
That is a flat out lie. This is all the way up front. Tens of thousands are behind him.https://t.co/B5jDQlGmQt pic.twitter.com/6JX2omRktV
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the Republican who represents much of California’s rural north, had barely begun his prepared remarks at a town hall in Chico early Monday when a chorus of boos and jeers overpowered him.
The raucous interjections didn’t relent for nearly 90 minutes.
The crowd of more than 650 people at the local Elks Lodge peppered him with obscenity-laden comments and slammed him for his vote for President Donald Trump’s budget bill, which cuts more than $1.1 trillion in federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare and plans under the Affordable Care Act over the next decade. The crowd excoriated LaMalfa for supporting legislation they said will “devastate” rural hospitals and hurt vulnerable people with disabilities and poor families.
But LaMalfa claimed the legislation makes “no cuts to the people themselves” in California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, and instead only targets “waste, fraud and abuse” – a common and misleading line that House Republicans across the country have employed to defend the legislation.
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The in-person, open mic town hall has gradually become a relic in the age of social media, as fewer elected officials are willing to prostrate themselves in today’s hyperpartisan era. House Republicans even discouraged their members from hosting face-to-face forums after a wave of negative headlines out of viral town hall confrontations – including with their own GOP supporters – earlier this year.
Nicholas Wu, Cassandra Dumay and Mia McCarthy at Politico:
Such scenes of angry constituents confronting lawmakers are nothing new. They were commonplace in 2009 as Democrats pressed forward with a health care overhaul and in 2017 when Republicans sought to undo it.
This time around, there is a fierce debate underway about whether the town hall explosions are part of a genuine backlash to GOP governance in Washington — one that could presage another wave election as seen in 2010 and 2018 — or just another reflection of America’s political polarization.
Many Republicans are dismissing the outbursts, concluding they have been choreographed by Democrats and groups aligned with them and do not reflect genuine voter sentiment. Some — including Trump — have claimed without evidence that paid protesters are responsible.
“I think Democrats have been organized to actually act out in town halls, and I think if you’re going to have a town hall where you’re inviting people to come in with the intent of protesting, that’s what you’re going to get,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Tuesday.
But left-of-center activists say the GOP dismisses voters’ outrage at their peril. Groups might be helping to publicize and organize protests around lawmakers’ events, they say, but that is merely harnessing a real grass-roots backlash to what Republicans are pursuing in Washington.
Researchers were using high-performance computing and big data to discover new materials and analyze proteins before AI… but AI massively accelerated & improved such data-intensive efforts. Gerrymandering dates to 1812 in the U.S. Party strategists have been leveraging voter data and computing to draw advantageous maps for decades. AI promises gerrymandering on steroids — weapons of mass division in the 2025 redistricting wars — with powerful AI models able to (1) precisely-sift unprecedented amounts and unprecedentedly-personal data, (2) compare unlimited potential maps to optimize outcomes. But while AI-enabled cramming could reduce the paltry 20% of seats that are currently competitive, AI-drawn maps might also create more competitive seats by shifting voters out of safer seats (where risk-averse incumbent politicians often prefer them).
ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE: A similar gap exists on the right, as Cornyn faces a primary challenge from Texas AG Ken Paxton. Senate Republicans would much prefer Cornyn, worrying that Paxton could lose to a Democrat in the general under the right conditions.
But Paxton has adapted to our new, disruptive attention-based political era. He has run to where MAGA eyeballs are. Yes, that means doing hits on Fox News, but it also means going into less-mainstream media appearances, including as a guest on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “We had you really early on this — before it got kicked off,” Bannon told Paxton in a gerrymandering-centric appearance earlier this week, effectively vouching for his MAGA bona fides.
Cornyn has taken a more institutionalist approach. Perhaps his most prominent foray into the redistricting fight came in the form of a sternly worded letter to the FBI asking for their help in tracking down the absconding Texas Dems. To be fair, that move was successful in generating its own earned media and resulted in the FBI approving a request to locate the contingent of quorum-breaking Democrats, though it remains unclear what that means in practicality and the FBI is declining to comment, as POLITICO’s Gigi Ewing writes.
Cornyn is also using tactics that have failed against Paxton in the past, POLITICO’s Andrew Howard sharply observes. In May, Cornyn’s campaign launched a website attacking Paxton titled CrookedKen.com, highlighting a number of Paxton’s flaws. The site’s content is almost identical to a website rolled out by George P. Bush during his primary race against Paxton in May 2022, called KenTheCrook.com. Bush’s political team had a lot of overlap with Cornyn’s, and Paxton won that primary by more than 30 points.
Cornyn declined an interview with Playbook.
“Every campaign I was ever on, including in 1980, our objective was to get in the local paper when we visited it, and get on the local radio station, and get on TV as much as possible,” Dave Carney, the Abbott strategist, told Playbook. “The difference between that — which is the exact same strategy, get as much attention as you can earn — now is: There’s 600,000 … places to get noticed.”
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The gerrymander war is the big news of 2025.
Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News:
Republicans are hoping to net a minimum of three House seats in Florida, as we scooped Thursday. Add that to the five seats in Texas, one each in Missouri and Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio, where state law mandates a redraw ahead of 2026.
The Supreme Court also has yet to rule in a high-profile Louisiana redistricting case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act that could further alter next year’s congressional landscape.
The Sunshine State effort, officially announced by Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez on Thursday, is only the most recent Republican initiative to cushion the blow from what’s expected to be a difficult midterms for the GOP. Republicans are hoping to redraw three districts in their favor, likely those of Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowitz in Trump-tending South Florida, as well as Darren Soto in the Orlando area.
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California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — a 2028 hopeful — is doing everything he can to sidestep his commission, but he’ll need Golden State voters to back his efforts in a special election. This will be extremely expensive and may not work. If it does, the prize could be five new blue seats, which could negate the proposed Texas map.
Where else can Democrats find more seats? Maryland could offer one. But Democrats tried to pass such a map in the 2022 cycle and a court shot it down as an illegal partisan gerrymander.
Oregon is another possibility, although Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. It’s possible that Democrats could gain a seat out of Illinois, although the Land of Lincoln is already heavily gerrymandered in their favor.
Democrats in other blue states would have to amend their own constitutions in order to get into the redistricting fight. The deadline has passed to do this before the 2026 elections in New Jersey and Colorado. Democrats don’t have the votes in Washington State. New York would require court intervention, and state judges haven’t favored Democrats in redistricting there in recent years.
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Shortest political honeymoon ever
— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) August 5, 2025
Hispanic Republicans in the U.S. House say they are increasingly concerned that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign could backfire with Latino voters, as they look for ways to protect some undocumented immigrants from deportation.
These Republicans expressed fear that the inroads Trump and the GOP made with Latino voters in 2024 could erode because of what they see as a haphazard approach to mass deportations, which are starting to disrupt their communities and threaten local businesses. They are growing especially anxious about the push to arrest and deport migrants whose only crime is crossing the border illegally.
“We’re all against criminals and gang members and those with deportation orders. But as this is starting to touch some folks who have known somebody who’s been here 20 years, more and more [people] are starting to see it, and there’s more and more response in the districts,” Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R), who represents a predominantly Hispanic district in South Florida, said in an interview.
The concern from Latino Republicans — along with some of their conservative colleagues — comes as the Trump administration, through White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has directed immigration officials to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests daily.
And the leakage of Hispanic support could cause the looming Texas gerrymander to backfire. Pooja Salhotra at NYT:
Texas Republicans are hoping that the surge of Hispanic support for President Trump in 2024, which was especially sharp in South Texas, will last through the 2026 midterm elections. They also hope that voters, Hispanic or not, in districts like the currently Democratic one around Laredo will not be overly angry about the Republicans’ aggressive mid-decade redistricting push, a hardball tactic to retain power in Washington that is being pressed by Mr. Trump.
More than a dozen conversations with voters in South Texas over the weekend showed that neither hope is a sure thing.
“The Republican Party is going to lose a lot of votes around here,” said Ricardo Sandoval, 35, a trucking and warehousing businessman in Laredo who supported Mr. Trump in November.
Mr. Sandoval said he agreed with Mr. Trump’s campaign promises for tax cuts, tariffs on China and an immigration crackdown along the border. But now, he said, he feels he was misled. The roller coaster of on-again-off-again tariffs has depressed cross-border trade and upended his business, pushed prices up and forced him to lay off more than a dozen employees. Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions have been disrespectful to the thousands of Hispanics who supported him, Mr. Sandoval said. And he said the Republicans’ redistricting effort in Texas was an unethical way to try to hold onto power.
“There’s a sense of betrayal,” he said.
Recent polling has suggested that misgivings like Mr. Sandoval’s might be spreading among Hispanic voters, especially those who say they are feeling the impact of rising prices for groceries and imported goods, as well as a slowdown in the labor market.
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Two of California’s safest House Democrats say they’re preparing to take one for the team — accepting slightly more competitive districts as part of the state’s quest to find five new blue seats.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to counter President Donald Trump’s effort to increase the number of GOP seats in Texas with a midcycle gerrymandering of his own. State lawmakers could vote soon after they return from recess on Aug. 18 to hold a November special election asking Californians for the power to redraw congressional districts ahead of the midterms.
But decreasing the number of Republican seats means some deep-blue California districts will take on a slightly more purple tinge.
San Diego Reps. Scott Peters and Sara Jacobs — both of whom represent overwhelmingly Democratic areas — are among the members who would likely see an increase in Republican voters if lines are redrawn. Both told Playbook they would prefer to avoid the sudden redistricting, but that Trump’s Texas push warrants it.
“This is bigger than me and my seat,” Jacobs said. “This is about the survival of democracy and our country. I don't think any of us want to go forward with this, but it's the only way to respond to what they're doing in Texas.”
Peters said he actually agrees with Northern California Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley’s crusade to outlaw redistricting outside the typical 10-year time span. But, he added, “We’re not the ones who picked this fight.”
Which gets to the cold reality for GOP lawmakers in California and New York: The very Republicans who helped deliver their party’s congressional majority by winning in the two mega-states in 2020 and 2022 could be collateral damage to Trump’s gambit.
That includes House veterans such as Reps. Darrell Issa and Ken Calvert, both of California, but also younger, promising Republican lawmakers such as [Kevin] Kiley, 40, and Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.), 38.
“This creates a situation where you’re going to lose blue state members, which over the long haul are critical to keeping the majority,” Lawler told me.
It’s all, Lawler said, “mutually assured destruction once people go full throttle.”
The redistricting threat is especially cruel to Lawler, who was already eager to avoid yet another tough race in his Hudson Valley district by running for governor next year. But Trump made clear he preferred Rep. Elise Stefanik, a born-again MAGA disciple, as the standard-bearer even though running a Trump acolyte statewide may only ensure Stefanik ends next year where she started this year: hoping for a Trump cabinet appointment.
For Kiley, the Newsom reprisal to Trump may extinguish a congressional career that just began in 2023.
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Last year, Trump was already showing signs of cognitive decline.
President Donald Trump bragged on Sunday that he had lowered drug prices by up to 1500 percent—an arithmetic absurdity, even by his standards. https://t.co/Sk6dJdzNtd
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 4, 2025
Donald Trump’s frequently bizarre public appearances, which this month have seen the president claim, wrongly, that his uncle knew the Unabomber and rant unprompted about windmills on his recent trip to the UK, have once again raised questions about his mental acuity, experts say.
For more than a year Trump, 79, has exhibited odd behavior at campaign events, in interviews, in his spontaneous remarks and at press conferences. The president repeatedly drifts off topic, including during a cabinet meeting this month when he spent 15 minutes talking about decorating, and appears to misremember simple facts about his government and his life.
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Over the weekend Trump, during a meeting with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, abruptly switched from discussing immigration to saying this: “The other thing I say to Europe: we’ve – we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery.”
Trump proceeded to speak, non-stop and unprompted, for two minutes about windmills, claiming without evidence that they drive whales “loco” and that wind energy “kills the birds” (the proportion of birds killed by turbines is tiny compared with the number killed by domestic cats and from flying into power lines).
The abrupt changes in conversation are an example of Trump “digressing without thinking – he’ll just switch topics without self-regulation, without having a coherent narrative”, said Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in the psychology department at Cornell University and in the psychiatry department at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Trump was spotted on the roof of the White House raising concern that if your grandpa was taking a “little walk” on the roof, you’d probably put him in a home. #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/VDa78l3bnj
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) August 6, 2025
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Eleanor Klibanoff at Texas Tribune:
The Texas House voted Monday afternoon to track down and arrest more than 50 Democratic lawmakers who were not present when the chamber gaveled in. After the 85-6 vote, House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would immediately sign civil warrants for each of the legislators, empowering the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms and state troopers to arrest and bring them to the Capitol.
They will not face civil or criminal charges from the arrests. The warrants apply only within state lines, making them largely symbolic as most of the legislators in question decamped to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts to forestall passage of the GOP’s proposed redraw of Texas’ congressional map.
The House used the same tactic to try to force Democrats back to work in 2021, when a majority of them left for Washington, D.C., to protest GOP voting restrictions. Some of the lawmakers challenged the warrants in court, obtaining an injunction against arrests that was later struck down by the Texas Supreme Court.
While the Texas Constitution “enables ‘quorum-breaking’ by a minority faction of the legislature, it likewise authorizes ‘quorum-forcing’ by the remaining members,” the court ruled.
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Democrats left the state Sunday afternoon to deny the House a quorum — the number of people necessary for the chamber to advance legislation — and delay passage of a new congressional map.
The current congressional map, drawn by a Republican-dominated Legislature in 2021, has netted 25 GOP seats in the last two elections. But after pressure from President Donald Trump’s team, Abbott directed lawmakers to redraw the map during the special legislative session, which started July 21. Last week, the House proposed new congressional lines dividing up existing districts in Austin, Houston and Dallas with the aim of netting five more Republican seats.
Michael Wilner, Laura J. Nelson, Seema Mehta and Taryn Luna at LAT:
A last-ditch effort by California Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional map for the 2026 election, countering a similar push by Texas Republicans, is now up against the clock.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that Democrats are moving forward with a plan to put a rare mid-decade redistricting plan before voters on Nov. 4. But state lawmakers will craft a “trigger,” he said, meaning California voters would only vote on the measure if Texas moved forward with its own plans to redraw Congressional boundaries to add five more Republican seats.
“It’s cause and effect, triggered on the basis of what occurs or doesn’t occur in Texas,” Newsom said. “I hope they do the right thing, and if they do, then there’ll be no cause for us to have to move forward.”
[L]obbyists, political consultants and others in the influence industry have capitalized on Mr. Trump’s aggressive fund-raising while in office to deliver for clients and earn chits with a president who keeps close tabs on who is delivering cash and listens to their appeals. It is a cycle that has helped Mr. Trump fill the coffers of his political groups, defying the gravity that sometimes drags down the fund-raising of term-limited presidents.
The degree to which this dynamic has benefited Mr. Trump, his donors and their lobbyists — while shutting out regular people seeking assistance from their government — was laid bare in MAGA Inc.’s financial report. The group, which can accept unlimited donations, raised an astounding $177 million in the first half of the year. That was nearly twice as much as the amount raised during the same period by the Republican National Committee, which is subject to contribution limits.
MAGA Inc.’s report included donations from a mother seeking a pardon for her son, as well as people who had been, or would later be, appointed to posts in his administration and companies in industries seeking more lenient treatment than they had gotten under the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
It is not just MAGA Inc. that benefits.
Since Mr. Trump’s election last fall, fund-raisers and lobbyists have been steering corporations and donors to a buffet of options for unlimited giving, some of which are less overtly political or allow anonymous donations, that can bring access to the president.
The president’s inaugural committee raised a record-shattering $239 million, including about $18 million from crypto interests and $1 million each from tech giants like Meta and Amazon that had drawn his ire in the past and were looking to smooth things over headed into his second term.
A nonprofit group called Securing American Greatness, which is affiliated with MAGA Inc. but is not required to disclose its donors, can accept cash from interests willing to pay for access without the controversy that can come with having that known.
An old rule in Washington holds that you are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. President Trump seems determined to prove that wrong.
Don’t like an intelligence report that contradicts your view? Go after the analysts. Don’t like cost estimates for your tax plan? Invent your own. Don’t like a predecessor’s climate policies? Scrub government websites of underlying data. Don’t like a museum exhibit that cites your impeachments? Delete any mention of them.
Mr. Trump’s war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy isn’t doing as well as he claims it is. Mr. Trump declared that her numbers were “phony.” His proof? It was “my opinion.” And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact itself.
The message, however, was unmistakable: Government officials who deal in data now fear they have to toe the line or risk losing their jobs. Career scientists, longtime intelligence analysts and nonpartisan statisticians who serve every president regardless of political party with neutral information on countless matters, such as weather patterns and vaccine efficacy, now face pressure as never before to conform to the alternative reality enforced by the president and his team.
Mr. Trump has never been especially wedded to facts, routinely making up his own numbers, repeating falsehoods and conspiracy theories even after they are debunked and denigrating the very concept of independent fact-checking. But his efforts since reclaiming the White House to make the rest of government adopt his versions of the truth have gone further than in his first term and increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries have sought to control information.
The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.
The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.
The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.
The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Even as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason.”
The release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”
And Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”
In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.
Re those Hillary conspiracy emails: if a native English speaker wrote this, I'll eat Kash Patel's MAGA hat
— Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪 (@CathyYoung63) August 1, 2025
("pour oil into the fire" is literal translation from Russian idiom, dumbasses: "podlit' masla v ogon'") pic.twitter.com/Ym0bJ2jK8v
The July jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls expanded by 73,000 last month, well beneath the consensus estimate from economists polled by Dow Jones that called for a 100,000 increase to payrolls. Prior months were significantly revised down. June job growth totaled just 14,000, down from 147,000. The May count came down to 19,000 from 125,000, signaling the labor market has been weakening for a while now.
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Not helping sentiment overnight were Trump’s updated duties ranging from 10% to 41% overnight at the Aug. 1 deadline. Goods that have been transshipped in a bid to avoid the tariffs will face another 40% levy, according to the White House.
Probably most shocking to markets was that for Canada, one of the U.S.′ biggest trading partners, goods imported into the country will now have a 35% levy, up from 25%.
Trump spent every day for 4 years saying that Biden was about to start World War 3 and if he got elected he would end the war in Ukraine and we would have peace with Russia because he has a great relationship with Putin. Here is today’s update on all that. pic.twitter.com/YDCUCgWPpK
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 1, 2025
Ghislaine Maxwell quietly moved to cushy new Texas prison as she pushes for deal to tell-all on Epstein, his associates https://t.co/ldvrFhSVTM pic.twitter.com/W4xceQKtPA
— New York Post (@nypost) August 1, 2025
The Community Note. pic.twitter.com/11B3zQOPLz
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 1, 2025
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. It is abusing religion to achieve its ends.
Trump has literally claimed that God is on his side.
Eileen Sullivan at NYT:The Trump administration released guidance on Monday reminding federal agencies that religious expression in the workplace is protected by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act — guidance that protects employees and supervisors seeking to recruit fellow federal workers to their religion.
Such expressions are protected as long as they do not cross into harassment, the guidance says. Wearing religious symbols and staging them in office cubicles is also protected, the guidance says, as are hosting prayer groups in empty offices and posting about religious events on office bulletin boards.
The Clinton White House issued similar guidelines in 1997, though at greater length and with more detailed examples and caveats. The Trump administration did not say whether its guidelines superseded those issued in 1997. Neither set of directives affects the First Amendment to the Constitution or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths,” said Scott Kuper, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, which released the policy, said in a statement.
On July 7, David A. Fahrenthold reported at NYT:
The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.
The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.
From the Christian Defense Coalition:
In the video, a man’s voice quotes Isaiah 6:8, which says: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’"
(Here is a link to the video)
DHS is implying it is the Lord, and not the government, who is issuing this call to be sent which is deeply troubling and manipulative.
The video takes an even darker turn as it states: “And who will go for us?” signaling the “us” of Isaiah 6:8 is not God but rather the government and the DHS.
Liking the voice and purposes of God to the voice and purposes of the United States government is offensive and must be challenged.
Also offensive is a song playing in the background with the lyrics: “Run on for a long time, Sooner or later God'll cut you down” which focuses on undocumented immigrants who cannot avoid God’s judgment.
Alexei Laushkin, Founder of Kingdom Mission Society, comments:
“We need to let DHS do their critical work free of politics. Using a video on Isaiah 6:8 is very misguided. The twitter account for DHS should be for critical informational tweets that protect our homeland. The DHS account should not be used to make a mockery of faith.
"God calls people to serve in DHS and throughout the government, but that message should be coming from the pulpit not a government ad.
"We want DHS to uphold the rule of law, to uphold due process, and fulfill its mission, not be a substitute for the voice of the Church. Things are best when there is collaboration, not co-opting.”
Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Washington, DC based Christian Defense Coalition, adds:
“The Trump Administration and DHS have manipulated and misused Scripture by releasing this offensive recruitment video. The DHS video is using the Bible verse, Isaiah 6:8, to imply it is the Lord Himself and not the government who is issuing the call to be involved with the DHS.
"As a Christian minister, I take issue with the Word of God being used by the Trump Administration as a marketing and promotional tool to deal with the immigration challenges facing America.
"Likening the voice and purposes of God to the voice and purposes of the United States government is harmful and must be challenged.
"The video takes an even darker turn as it states, 'And who will go for us?' implying the 'us' of Isaiah 6:8 is not God but rather the government and the DHS.
"The Bible should be used to reveal the nature of God, point people to a relationship with Jesus Christ and instruct us in understanding the purposes and will of God. It should never be used as part of a manipulative and misleading recruitment ploy by the DHS.”
For more information please contact
Rev. Patrick Mahoney at 540.538.4741
SOURCE Christian Defense Coalition
CONTACT: Rev. Patrick Mahoney, 540-538-4741
Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives have released a proposed new redistricting map that seeks to fulfill President Trump's desire to add up to five additional GOP congressional seats in the state.
New district lines in Texas and elsewhere could play a key role in determining which party controls the U.S. House after next year's midterms.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott added redistricting to the agenda for a special legislative session, citing concerns raised by Trump's Department of Justice that certain current districts are unconstitutional. But Republicans have also been explicit that they intend to undertake mid-decade redistricting for partisan aims.
According to Dave Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report, the proposed new map could help Republicans achieve a gerrymander of 30 Republican districts, to eight for Democrats. Currently, Republicans hold 25 of the state's seats.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday that he believes there is a “legal pathway” for Democrats to present new congressional district maps directly to voters on a statewide ballot, without input from the state’s independent redistricting commission.
Such a move, he suggested, would allow the state to counter Republican efforts to tilt next year’s midterm election by pushing redistricting measures that favor the GOP in conservative states such as Texas. If successful, Republicans would have a better chance of holding their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and protecting President Trump’s ability to enact his agenda.
“I think the governor could call a special election that the voters of the state of California would participate in, and present to them a pathway forward that’s different than the independent redistricting commission, that has maps presented to them ready [and] tangible and specific, and then the people vote,” Bonta said, adding that his staff had been discussing the matter with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s team.