Oops: Sen. King says he shouldn’t have taken Hawley’s advice when he voted to confirm an anti-abortion judge this week. “In retrospect, I think it was a mistake, from what I’ve learned about Mr. Devine since. But sometimes, you rely on your colleagues.” huffpost.com/entry/angus-ki…

Trump now has the lowest early-first-term and early-second-term average approval ratings since at least JFK.

The suspicious timeline of the Trump team's handling of the Epstein files Trump was told in May that he was in the files. This coincided with a pretty abrupt shift in how the admin talked about the files. edition.cnn.com/2025/07/24/pol…

getting edits back on a story

July 1: Paramount agrees to pay $16 million to settle Trump's personal lawsuit against CBS. July 22: Trump and Paramount dismiss the case, formalizing the settlement. July 24: Trump-appointed FCC approves $8 billion Paramount merger. nytimes.com/2025/07/24/bus…

GOP Rep. Eric Burlison on constituent calls over Epstein files: “It's the No. 1 phone call that we get by far. It's probably 500 to 1.” GOP Rep. Norman on if it will die down over summer recess: “You’d have to have your head in the sand to say that this is going to go away.”

New: a novel legal maneuver and an offer to compromise from Senate Republicans How Trump’s fraught effort to install political appointees in permanent roles as US attorneys across the country gained momentum this week W/⁦Paula Reid⁩ cnn.com/2025/07/24/pol…

Vance clarifies that he’s not definitively saying the Trump-Epstein letter is fake. Which is notable, given that is very much Trump’s line.

Maxwell's attorney keeps saying nice things about the Trump administration, for some reason.

It’s mostly forgotten in all of this, but Trump was the first person to bring up Epstein at all in the context of politics to repeatedly attack Bill Clinton in 2015. He did this at CPAC and in an interview with Bloomberg at the time.

SCOOP: Two senior NOAA officials were just placed on leave. Both led ‘Sharpiegate’ inquiry cnn.com/2025/07/25/wea…

Wrote about a dynamic that's fascinated me for a while: The TACO trade—where Wall St ignores Trump and bets he won't actually impose more tariffs—has backfired, and instead convinced WH aides that markets support them following through with higher tariffs cnn.com/2025/07/24/pol…

Trump's Epstein claims keep falling apart cnn.com/2025/07/25/pol…

A survey of Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric in recent years reveals an unhealthy interest in Jews—indeed an obsession. | James Kirchick trib.al/Oho4DBM

"Japanese officials said there was no written agreement with Washington — and no legally binding one would be drawn up", and surprise surprise, they deny giving Trump $550b to arbitrarily spend however he wants. ft.com/content/c1183b…

Joey's been basically the best in the biz at showing 1. Yes, Trump's tariff plans keep changing as he delays, backs down, steps back up, delays again, etc 2. "TACO TACO TACO!" is not a useful summary of our new economic reality. Annualized tariff revenue is running $200b+ above

The White House didn’t deny this when it was first reported two days ago. It instead said it wasn’t surprising that he would be in them.

Andry Hernandez Romero, whom the Trump admin sent to CECOT: “In my particular case, I was sexually abused by the same Salvadoran authorities who guarded us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” “We believed we would never see our families again." advocate.com/news/andry-her…