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THE BIG PICTURE
Trump is engineering a nearly $2 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for himself and his MAGA allies by dropping his own $10 billion IRS lawsuit. He’s openly bragging that he was hours away from bombing Iran before Gulf allies talked him down — a confession that reveals the chaos driving U.S. foreign policy.
His approval rating just hit 37%, the lowest point of his second term, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial board is now calling him a "lame duck. Happy Tuesday? By the way: Clicking an ad costs you nothing and helps us keep covering… all of this. Carry on!
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS
1. The $1.776 Billion MAGA Slush Fund Is Real and It's Operational
This is a corruption story that has legs beyond the usual 24-hour news cycle, and it is escalating fast. Trump quietly moved to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS (AP Politics) in exchange for a settlement that creates a $1.7 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — with payment recipients kept confidential (The Daily Beast). The fund can pay out to January 6 rioters and anyone claiming to be a victim of "lawfare" by previous administrations (Huffington Post News).
When reporters asked Trump and his own D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro about it, neither could explain what the fund actually does (Huffington Post News). Rep. Jamie Raskin says this is corruption of a scale we have never seen before (Huffington Post News). Democrats are calling it highway robbery and trying to block it (The Daily Beast). They are currently losing. Surprised?
Expect congressional Democrats to escalate calls for hearings today, and expect the "slush fund" framing to dominate cable and social for the next 24 hours. The regime has no clean answer for this one.
2. Trump Admits He Nearly Blew Up the Iran Ceasefire Himself
The most alarming development overnight isn't a leak — it's a confession. Trump posted on social media that he had a military strike on Iran scheduled for Tuesday and called it off only because Gulf allies intervened (AP Politics). He then raged at a journalist in a way that, according to political scientists, inadvertently exposed the core blunder of his Iran policy (The New Republic). Meanwhile, Fox News's Brian Kilmeade was on air Monday making the case for restarting military action (The New Republic), Marjorie Taylor Greene is threatening a "revolution" over the war (Huffington Post News), and Rick Scott is calling for Trump to "bomb the living daylights" out of Iran before they build a nuclear weapon (The New Republic). The ceasefire is fragile, oil markets are already reacting (AP Politics), and European airlines are preparing for "Armageddon" scenarios if the Strait of Hormuz closes again (The Daily Beast). The foreign policy situation is being managed by the impulses of one man who is telling on himself in real time.
3. Trump's Approval Rating Hits 37% — and the Damage Is With His Own Voters
Multiple polls converging on the same number this morning: 37% approval, the lowest of Trump's second term (The Guardian US). The NYT/Siena poll shows voters especially distrust him on the economy, and the damage is concentrated among voters he flipped from Democrats in 2024 (Huffington Post News). A separate midterms-focused poll spells out the electoral math (The Daily Beast). The Wall Street Journal editorial board — Murdoch's paper — now says he is on track to be a "really lame duck" (The Daily Beast). When you've lost the Murdoch masthead, the political floor has dropped.
4. The EPA Just Repealed Drinking Water Protections for "Forever Chemicals"
While everyone watches the Iran drama, the EPA quietly moved to repeal Biden-era limits on PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — in drinking water (The Guardian US). This is a direct rollback of public health protections affecting millions of Americans, and critics are specifically naming RFK Jr. and Lee Zeldin as responsible (The New Republic). This is a slow-moving catastrophe that will outlast every news cycle that buries it.
5. An ICE Agent Was Just Charged With Assault in Minneapolis
A Hennepin County court charged ICE officer Christian J. Castro on four counts of assault after he shot a Venezuelan immigrant and then lied about it (The New Republic). This is a concrete, criminal accountability moment in Trump's immigration crackdown (Huffington Post News). However, most ICE agents — including those who killed 2 American citizens — are not being held accountable.
THINGS TO WATCH
Trump is using social media as an uncontrolled war room. His posts about calling off the Iran strike, his James Bond White House imagery, his "Death Star" posting during an evangelical prayer rally (Huffington Post News) — these aren't communications strategy. They're a man with nuclear authority and no filter broadcasting his real-time psychological state. This pattern is worth tracking systematically.
The insider trading around Trump's military moves is intensifying. Beyond the previously reported stock trades tied to federal contracts, there are now "wild allegations" around prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi) showing suspicious patterns correlated with Trump's war decisions (The Daily Beast), and a service member has already been indicted (The New Republic). This is becoming a systemic story, not a one-off.
The MAGA coalition is developing real fractures around AI regulation. Steve Bannon is now among 60 Trump loyalists pressuring the president on AI policy (The Daily Beast). This is an unusual configuration — Bannon and tech skeptics vs. the Silicon Valley wing of MAGA — and worth watching as the reconciliation bill moves.
Redistricting as slow-motion voter suppression is continuing to accelerate. South Carolina Republicans are formally moving to eliminate Jim Clyburn's district (The Guardian US), and the Supreme Court just sent a Native American voting rights case back down in a way that signals further erosion (AP Politics). The map is being redrawn in real time.
👀 KEPT OUT OF YOUR FEED
What the algorithm buried:
Mark Cuban showed up at the Trump White House — and what he posted afterward says everything about where his head is at.
The gun and notebook are in — here's what the judge ruled in the Luigi Mangione case and what it means for trial.
Javier Bardem just said what every person at Cannes was thinking about Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu — and he didn't bother cleaning it up.
Trump has now separated a truly staggering number of children from their families — and three-quarters of them are U.S. citizens.
Workers just won big on the Long Island Rail Road — the strike is over, raises are coming, and 250,000 daily commuters can finally get back on the train.
A Louisiana man waited 10 hours to call the GOP the "last breath of the Confederacy" — and now he wants to run for office.
Republicans have wrecked every economy they've touched — and The New Republic has the receipts to prove it.
A nine-person jury just handed Elon Musk a unanimous loss he absolutely did not see coming.
JD Vance just told a crowd to vote against "the crazy leadership in Washington" — apparently forgetting he is the crazy leadership in Washington.
Trump cashed in on a CoreWeave bond trade — one day after his administration handed the company a major government deal.
John Oliver turned Trump's nastiest insult right back on him — all because the president is throwing a tantrum over a ballroom nobody asked for.
Jon Stewart had to pause for 15 full seconds before he could respond to what Trump said about Xi Jinping — and honestly, same.
NOTICE POLLING
Yesterday, we asked, Do you trust the corporate media?
96% OF YOU SAID NO:
“The corporate media always frame developments as if these were normal time when in fact these are NOT normal time. This country is being run into the ground by a regime (NOT an administration)!”
- asbuffum
“For the most part, they are in Trump's pocket, do not pay taxes like the rest of us and do not care about democracy”
- bgroessl
“I have felt that they have been very one sided ever since the Clinton era. I blame them for the current situation the United States is in today. Their one sided reporting and spreading of the republican lies has practically single handedly handed us an unAmerican president whose only allegiance is to himself and whatever dictator he can suck up to.”
- twoasps“How can we trust anything in a pay to play dictatorship.”
-callajr.jc
“Not even slightly-! That distrust is what has led to the explosion of independent media and news outlets. Everyone knows that legacy media can't be trusted.... everyone except for legacy media.”
- a15anaya
“They seem to keep the whole truth from the public..I feel I get much more real news from independent news”
- mami.papi
““It's watered down news, and told in convoluted text whereby it's not clear what really happened. It's often not the whole truth, and cannot be relied on. This is because the owners have their own agenda, which strongly influences what's being reported.”
- lamakul
Until next time,
