Political News

Long before today’s tech giants forced their way into co-chairing the Met Gala, Google co-founder Sergey Brin positioned himself in the front row of Diane Von Furstenberg’s 2013 spring show, sporting an early prototype of what would be known as Google Glass. Von Furstenberg herself donned a pair of the wearable smartglasses as she directed models, some also wearing Google Glass, down the runway. It seemed like a promising partnership between a powerful tech company and the woman who popularized the iconic wrap dress.

Yet despite the celebrity-packed promotions, generous Vogue spreads, and proclamations of one of the “Best Inventions of the Year,” Google Glass infamously flopped. It turns out there wasn’t much clamoring for clunky lenses that did little more than take photos and send alerts of incoming text messages. Which is to say nothing about the intense privacy concerns the technology appeared to present.

In pushing AI technology, the Meta-Jenner partnership reads like a poor misreading of our cultural moment, as well as a willful disregard of just how badly Google Glass pissed off people a decade prior.

It was around this time that the public was introduced to King Kylie, the internet persona fans bestowed upon the youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner machine as a testament to her cultural clout. In fact, Kylie Jenner was seemingly everywhere in the mid-2010’s, with a social media dominance that in 2018 commanded $1 million per sponsored Instagram post and an immensely popular cosmetics line.

So it makes sense, in a way, that Meta, which owns Instagram, is now turning to a veteran of the platform to sell its new line of AI glasses. “Cutest night with @metaglasses! My meta glasses are out now,” Jenner posted in a carousel from a party in New York, where she celebrated this week with Mark Zuckerberg. One can only imagine the regret felt by Snapchat, which Jenner also gamely used to fuel her rise and is now in the AI glasses business, upon seeing Jenner palling around with Zuck.

At the Meta Connect developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg, head of the Facebook group Meta, shows the prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses. Andrej Sokolow/dpa/Zuma

But outside Meta’s monied party on Tuesday, the reception has been scornful. “Meta glasses are cybertrucks for the face,” read a comment that has since gone viral. In fact, much of the negative feedback felt ripped straight from the criticism once aimed at Google Glass: “Mass surveillance predator glasses yesssss,” one user wrote on Jenner’s Instagram. “Legit people are putting others in danger with this technology.”

To be sure, Meta Glasses appear to avoid some of Google Glass’s pitfalls. For one, Meta’s glasses, designed in partnership with Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica, are more aesthetically pleasing than their Google forebearer. They’re also significantly cheaper, starting at $299. (Jenner’s limited Starfire edition is slightly more at $399.)

But in pushing AI technology, the Meta-Jenner partnership reads like a poor misreading of our cultural moment, as well as a willful disregard of just how badly Google Glass pissed off people a decade prior. After all, is there a bigger unifying force than our current animosity for AI? Just look at all the college graduates, perennially the demographic of cool in any given era, roasting AI en masse. When they’re forced to use it, Gen Z absolutely loathes it.

But the hostility runs far deeper than young people. People on both sides of the aisle are actively rejecting the data centers popping up in their backyards; we have near-universal agreement that the aesthetics of AI suck; and there’s outright antipathy for the billionaire overlords, Zuckerberg included, hoping to shove AI into every inch of the public sphere. It feels appropriate, then, that a company that has been stuck in cultural freefall is trying to make AI glasses happen, when the same, decades-old question—who even wants them?—still looms large.

As for Jenner, the influencer remains relevant, and a willingness to cozy up to the worst people in any given room appears to run in the family. But it’s Jenner’s ability to sell things—which is ostensibly the root goal of the Meta-Jenner partnership—that is far shakier in 2026: Kylie Cosmetics is nowhere near as popular as it once was, and Jenner’s clothing line, KHY, has yet to make an impact since launching in 2023. As for Jenner’s boyfriend, Timothée Chalamet, the actor was also at Tuesday’s event, though apparently not wanting to be seen and, even perhaps even more notably, not wearing a pair of Meta Glasses.

Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and his family were the victims of a false child protective services report, he wrote on his Substack Friday.

“Many times over the years, I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled. I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war. But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began,” Buttigieg wrote.

Buttigieg said that earlier this week, a police officer and CPS worker showed up at his Traverse City, Michigan, home, where he lives with his husband, Chasten, and their twins, Joseph August and Penelope Rose. They told Buttigieg that a serious allegation had been made against him regarding his children, and that he couldn’t be alone with them until they received a forensic interview the next day, without him or any relatives present. Then they would discuss the allegations with the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor.

The officer and social worker wished to see the two 4-year-olds, so Buttigieg told them to wait until Chasten would be returning with the children from summer camp. When they arrived, the kids were fascinated by the police officer’s car, and the adults agreed that the children would stay with their grandparents overnight before their interview the next day.

“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained,” wrote Buttigieg.

After the children were interviewed, they went to stay with their grandparents, Buttigieg wrote, and then the police officer and CPS worker met him at his home for an interview. The officer said that an anonymous woman had contacted CPS, saying that she had met Buttigieg years ago at a conference in Alabama, who allegedly told her that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”

The police officer asked if Buttigieg had been to a certain town in Alabama, to which he replied no, as well as “a couple of obvious questions.” After that, the officer said that he believed the accusation was politically motivated and that it would not be referred to a prosecutor. The CPS worker also said the allegation could not be substantiated, although her process would take longer to complete.

But Buttigieg was allowed to be alone with his children again, and Chasten was told the same information from the officer and CPS worker, and the two were able to pick up their children.

“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime,” Buttigieg wrote.

“We’re used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family. But this is the first time someone managed to invade our lives like this—and drag our children into it,” Buttigieg added.

Buttigieg has been targeted by the right for his same-sex marriage and position within the Biden administration, facing false allegations of sexual assault in 2019 and, bizarrely, receiving mockery and criticism for taking paternity leave as a Cabinet secretary during the Biden administration. Making a false allegation and targeting a politician’s children is an egregious crime, and should be roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Let’s see if conservatives actually do the right thing.

After successfully prosecuting anti-ICE protesters in Texas and giving them long prison sentences, the Trump administration has its next free speech targets.

The government is looking to prosecute protesters against the Cop City project in Atlanta, The Guardian reports. The $109 million police training center in Georgia has faced heavy opposition from activists against police militarization and the clearing of a forest to build the facility. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted two protesters for allegedly attacking a contractor for the facility and two of its employees.

The federal indictments come despite the fact that Georgia authorities have tried and failed to bring cases against protesters. In August 2023, the state attorney general tried to RICO indictment against protesters in Fulton County against three protesters, only for that case to be dismissed more than two years later in December. In April, state prosecutors tried again in neighboring Cobb County, only for a judge to dismiss that case on Monday.

The DOJ may be emboldened by the March guilty verdicts from its Texas case, referred to as Prarieland, against protesters who were demonstrating against an ICE detention facility. On Tuesday, Texas activists received prison sentences of more than 50 years in prison based on terrorism charges, with the Trump administration claiming they were part of an “antifa cell.”

Just like in Texas, the Cop City protesters set off fireworks, giving the Trump administration the same justifications to invoke terrorism charges.

“The Cobb county protest matches the narrative of what they’re looking for. It’s similar to what they did with Prairieland—they’re crafting a certain narrative on protests and trying to indict based on the narrative,” Xavier de Janon, an attorney for one of the Georgia protesters, told The Guardian.

“Fireworks become explosives. Communities become ‘antifa cells.’ The power of language is going to become central to everything the government is doing moving forward,” said filmmaker and author Will Potter, who researches government responses to protests, to the publication.

Trump’s Department of Justice’s inspector general has handed Senate Republicans highly-sensitive interview transcripts concerning its report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In response to mounting pressure from Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the DOJ’s inspector general in March began releasing transcripts regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Bloomberg Law reported Friday.

The DOJ’s inspector general office warned senators about the “potential for a chilling effect on whistleblowing, and on the cooperation of witnesses,” should the contents of the interviews become public, but has no power to actually prevent the release of sensitive information.

The shocking disclosure comes as the Trump administration and its allies have made clear their interest in uncovering improprieties of the FBI’s original investigation into collusion.

In 2019, the DOJ’s inspector general found that the FBI’s investigation was dysfunctional and marred by serious errors—but was in no way a biased plot against Trump. Now, Republicans are hoping to pour over the raw interviews in the hopes of cherry-picking pieces to malign attorneys and agents, possibly in order to get paid from a future “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

This latest move indicates the DOJ watchdog’s startling lack of independence in the face of the Trump administration’s political objectives. It also will likely discourage government employees and whistleblowers—who can be sure that their government is not committed to safeguarding their disclosures—from participating in future investigations.

President Donald Trump spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, but seemed hyperfixated on something that has nothing to do with neither faith nor freedom: New York City’s rent freeze.

“Mayor Mamdani—who came to the White House and seems like a nice guy—he said he was going to do this in his campaign. Nobody thought he was serious,” Trump said.

On Thursday, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board passed a rent freeze, enabling Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make good on one of his key campaign promises. The freeze will go into effect in October, and will impact tenants living in the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments.

“First time ever, with a ruling, zero rent increases for landlords … despite the fact that energy, supplies, real estate taxes, and just about everything else has gone up,” Trump said. “They’re basically confiscating their property.”

Contrary to what Trump said, rent freezes in NYC have been enacted in the past, most recently for three years under Mayor Bill de Blasio. But he’s right that prices are rising, partially due to his bungled tariffs and the war in Iran.

“What the mayor doesn’t say is that these buildings will soon turn into ghettos and slums, and that everybody will continue leaving New York. And as this spreads throughout the country very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer, the country itself will be taken down,” the president said.

Trump on Mamdani Rent Freeze: What the mayor doesn't say is that these buildings will soon turn into ghettos and slums, and that everybody will continue leaving New York. And as this spreads throughout the country very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer. The country… pic.twitter.com/EJccGtPfPC

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 26, 2026

Later in the speech, Trump went on to attack Mamdani’s DSA allies who won the Democratic primary in New York this week. “They will close your churches in this country, big old communists, and they’re trying to. They will kill your people…. This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago, what’s happening right now. It’s the greatest threat.”

“They’re animals, they’re animals. In many cases, they’re not smart, but in some cases they are.”

It’s obvious that Trump is nervous, but maybe Mamdani’s rent freeze is just hitting a little too close to home for the NYC slumlord. In the 90s, Trump worked with his father to scam tenants in rent-regulated buildings, raising their rents while funneling money to each other, as uncovered by the New York Times in 2018. And in the 1980s, he made life a living hell for his rent-regulated tenants, trying to force them out of their homes so that he could tear down the building and make condos.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday tried to issue a warning about what’s at stake if Democrats win control of Congress in the November midterms—an outcome that at this point is more likely than not. But his warning was inadvertently a great case for why voters should hand Democrats the reins. “If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, … y’all, impeachment’s not even the biggest…

Source

A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Iran soccer team calls foul on Trump’s World Cup ‘disaster’…

Source

Immigrants, faith leaders, and advocates in Springfield, Ohio, had cautiously hoped that when the Supreme Court decided whether to allow the expiration of Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS), they would celebrate outside City Hall. Instead, as the clouds over downtown Springfield cleared Thursday evening, they hastily gathered to grieve together. Hours earlier, the Supreme Court cleared the path for the Trump administration to deport 340,000 Haitians and Syrians back to the violence- and disaster-stricken nations they had fled. In a small city where up to a quarter of its residents are Haitians with TPS, the decision feels personal—and fatal: For Haitians who will be forced to return to an unsafe country, some after years of living in Springfield, and for a community that has grown to love and rely on their immigrant neighbors.

A sign planted in mulch outside City Hall in Springfield, Ohio.Sarah Szilagy

Before the gospel and protest songs, prayers, and calls to action, immigration advocates took to the podium to share urgent messages for the Haitian members of their community, first in English, then in Haitian Creole. “If you wish to stay in the United States, and you are afraid to return to your home country, you should speak with an immigration attorney,” one said. “Our immigrant community…they need to decide what will happen with their children if they are detained.” Only a handful of Haitians were around to hear them.

Under an overhang emblazoned with channel letters spelling the phrase “forward together,” hundreds of Springfield advocates stood solemnly in sticky summer heat as an immigration attorney explained the court’s ruling and consequences. “We’ve been talking about this moment for four or five years, and it’s here,” said Kathleen Kersh, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit firm Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE). “None of us are free until all of us are free, and the way you stand up in the next year is going to define who you are.” This was where, nearly two years prior, the white supremacist group the Blood Tribe claimed Springfield as its “property.” But Thursday evening, the mostly white crowd gripped signs reading “Immigrants make America great,” “Hillbillies for Haitians,” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Chalk-wielding children doodled on the concrete while a Haitian pastor prayed and a local choir sang songs created in Minneapolis during the wide-scale and often violent immigration enforcement operations there last winter.

Haitian Pastor Jimmy Pierre, who has a green card, prays in Haitian Creole while Springfield faith leaders stand behind him.Sarah Szilagy A local choir led the crowd in singing protest and gospel songs.Sarah Szilagy

Advocates told me that soon after the court’s decision came down, ABLE’s phone started ringing. On the other end of the line were Haitian immigrants, some so terrified they could only weep. The vast majority of Haitian TPS holders live in Florida. But Springfield, Ohio, was thrust under the national microscope during the 2024 campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitians were “eating the pets” of their American-born neighbors. Singling out Springfield, Trump promised to deport the Haitian residents there upon his reelection. The only thing standing in his way, he argued, was TPS, a humanitarian designation Congress established in 1990 for people fleeing war, natural disasters, epidemics, or unrest. Despite the “temporary” nature of TPS, many countries’ designations have been renewed for years because conditions remained unlikely to improve.

Such is the case in Haiti, which never recovered from a devastating earthquake in 2010 and whose government effectively collapsed after the 2021 assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse. Speaking to reporters after the rally, Rev. Carl Ruby, a Springfield pastor and one of the leaders of G92, a local faith-based immigrant rights group, recalled the horrors Haitians endured before escaping to the US. He could not forget the story of the young boy he had met who watched a pack of feral hogs eat human remains that were left out in the open. “That’s what we’re sending them back to,” Ruby said. “We ought to be ashamed of that as Americans.”

“That’s what we’re sending them back to. We ought to be ashamed of that as Americans.”

Thursday morning, while waiting to learn whether the court would hand down its decision, Ruby sat with Vilès Dorsainvil under a wooden cross at Ruby’s Central Christian Church, which has become a refuge for the Haitian community and the home base for Springfield’s immigration advocates. Between the evidence of Trump’s racist claims against Haitians—calling Haiti, for example, a “shithole country” whose citizens had AIDS—and newly-discovered evidence that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem decided to terminate TPS despite DHS officials initially recommending otherwise, they hoped the justices would at least take a more measured approach—perhaps the court wouldn’t wholly save TPS but would nevertheless recognize the racism underlying Trump’s anti-Haitian rhetoric as unconstitutionally prejudiced. Instead, in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the justices further cemented Trump’s executive power and the inability of federal judges to limit or even question it.

Dorsainvil came to the US in 2020 and, since 2021, has lived in Springfield, where he founded the Haitian Support Center, as thousands of Haitians settled there. A TPS holder himself, Dorsainvil knows what devastation awaits Haitians in the US and back on the island. As I previously reported:

Dorsainvil’s cases are a litany of awful experiences: women and men vulnerable to human trafficking because they lost their work authorizations; families coming home to eviction notices with less than $20 in their bank accounts; people who have “nothing” and nowhere to go. There is a parallel desperation between Haitian immigrants and the families they support back home that Dorsainvil can’t ignore; if a Haitian in the US gets detained or deported, it’s a matter of “life and death” for them and every person in Haiti who relies on them.

“My hope is that the United States, including our current government, will once again place its trust in justice, compassion, and human dignity,” Dorsainvil said Thursday. “This is not the time for people to be judged by the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the country from which they come.”

Vilès Dorsainvil, a TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center, thanked community members and the legal teams that fought for Haitians’ TPS at the Supreme Court.Sarah Szilagy

Dorsainvil was among the few Haitian TPS holders who attended Thursday evening’s vigil. Organizers, legal advocates, and immigrants didn’t know what to expect: Would ICE begin mass detainments that very day? Would they appear at all? Ruby said when he and Dorsainvil met with ICE officials months ago, they warned the advocates they would take a “carrot-and-stick” approach, which meant they intended “to make life so unbearable that they leave on their own.” But where would they go? Presumably not Haiti, because the country is under the State Department’s highest travel warning, and US commercial airlines cannot fly there.

Ruby told reporters that should ICE come to town, local churches were “committed” to offering sanctuary to Haitians. Advocates, meanwhile, told me they hoped that it wouldn’t come to that point; ICE may have learned its lesson in Minneapolis, and Springfield has had years to coordinate a sprawling volunteer defense and support network. One potential option for protection advocates pointed to was the US Senate, which could advance an existing bill that would extend TPS for Haitians for three more years.

As the sun sank behind downtown Springfield’s mid-rise apartments and office buildings, the crowd dispersed almost as swiftly as it arrived. Stragglers lingered in the courtyard, embracing their neighbors, while the few police officers stationed outside City Hall unhurriedly patrolled the grounds.

Hundreds of Springfield residents gathered Thursday evening, many bearing signs of support for Haitian immigrants.Sarah Szilagy

Community members left with to-do lists: Donate to the Haitian Support Center and the local St. Vincent de Paul chapter, a Catholic nonprofit that immediately launched a diaper and food drive after the decision came down; call Ohio’s US Senators, urging them to extend Haitians’ TPS; keep an eye on their Haitian neighbors. But even with the community’s steadfast support, Biassu Pierre, a Haitian TPS holder and community organizer with ABLE, said in the wake of the ruling, fellow immigrants have questions he cannot answer: What will happen to my children if I am deported? How can I feed my family without lawful work? One woman, Naomi, called him in tears. Her husband was deported to Haiti in December, and he has since “disappeared.” Her three children are among the 1,300 children of Haitian immigrants who were born in Springfield, and who, as American citizens, now face the increasing likelihood of family separation.

“Haitians are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbor, your co-worker, member of your church,” Pierre told the crowd. “We love Springfield. We would like to stay, to live with you.”

“We want you here!” a man in the crowd shouted back.

Billionaire investor Leon Black received two subpoenas Friday after he refused to answer questions about NDAs he’d allegedly signed with women in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit.

“I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking,” Black began in the House Oversight Committee during his closed-door testimony. “I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”

The proceedings were derailed when House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed Black after he and his lawyer insisted he could not discuss the terms and contents of certain nondisclosure agreements, according to MSNOW.

Prior to the interview, Comer said he was “pretty confident” that Black had allegedly signed NDAs with survivors of Epstein’s abuse. The chair issued two subpoenas, one compelling Black to appear for a deposition on July 16, and another requiring him to produce the NDAs. Black left the interview after only an hour.

The billionaire former CEO of Apollo Global Management departed from his role in 2021 after an internal review discovered he’d made $158 million in payments to Epstein for financial advice between 2012 and 2017. In 2023, Black was accused of raping a 16-year-old at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse two decades earlier.

Black defended his choice to do business with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender. “Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not,” Black said. (Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008.)

Still, Black insisted he knew nothing of Epstein’s heinous sexual misconduct.

“I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” said Black.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the German pharmaceutical and agrochemical giant Bayer cannot be sued in state courts for failing to warn that glyphosate—a key ingredient in its subsidiary’s bestselling weedkiller, RoundUp—could cause cancer. Make American Healthy Again activists, who have been irate about the Trump administration’s embrace of glyphosate, were predictably furious.

A few hours later, the White House threw them a few scraps. Trump signed an executive order Thursday afternoon promoting pesticide “alternatives.” The order comes with no new federal funding, regulations, or enforcement powers, instead resolving to encourage “creative solutions for evaluating the exposure, diagnosis, and treatments of cumulative chemical exposures on individual health.” SCOTUS’s decision, by contrast, could be worth billions to Bayer. The ruling overturns a $1.25 million state court verdict against RoundUp maker Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018, in a suit brought by non-Hodgkins lymphoma patient John Durnell. More importantly, it stands to toss out thousands of similar suits still making their way through state courts. When the decision was announced, Bayer’s stock jumped.

Eager as Republicans are to keep the so-called MAHA Moms on their side, paying lip service to pesticide alternatives won’t make up for just how helpful the GOP has been to pesticide producers. Republicans are the party of Big Pharma and Big Ag. The question is whether they can continue to be the party of MAHA too.

In the lead-up to yesterday’s decision, the Trump administration lent several critical assists to Bayer. Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, the EPA is required to regularly assess pesticides’ safety and require manufacturers to place warnings on products that may pose certain dangers. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has recently moved to ban states from placing their own warnings on products that the EPA deems safe at the federal level; the agency took aim specifically at California’s warning labels on glyphosate. Because the EPA’s most recent review of glyphosate still says that it’s safe—and because states can no longer issue warnings that contradict the EPA—Bayer has leaned on that Trump 2.0 revision to argue to SCOTUS that it is under no obligation to put any warning labels on its products. Accordingly, Bayer has maintained that it can’t be made to pay the cancer patients who are suing it for having failed to put warnings on RoundUp.

A key basis for Bayer’s case and SCOTUS’s decision—repeated several times in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion—is that the EPA has continually maintained that glyphosate is safe. The court ruled that since successful failure-to-warn suits would require states to add non-EPA approved warnings to labels, that would run afoul of FIFRA’s requirements for labeling uniformity. The EPA, however, is currently in the process of reassessing the safety of glyphosate and other active ingredients in pesticides. That review is due to wrap up by October 1. At that point the EPA could, at least in theory, find that glyphosate is not safe, invalidating a large part of Kavanaugh’s justification for the majority’s opinion.

There have been recent allegations, as well, that research the EPA has leaned on to argue that glyphosate is safe was influenced by the only company that makes it in the United States. Monsanto has played a hand in several putatively objective studies concluding that glyphosate is safe. That includes one influential 2013 paper cited repeatedly by the EPA. As Mother Jones reported this week, an internal investigation by the EPA concluded in 2017 that the paper had been ghostwritten by a Monsanto employee; the study’s authors have disputed the investigation’s finding. The agency has nonetheless continued to cite it as evidence for the compound’s safety.

The timing of this case has been extraordinarily convenient for Bayer. The company petitioned SCOTUS to sharply limit failure-to-warn claims last April, and warned that an onslaught of litigation could cause it to pull glyphosate off the market. As I wrote a few months back, representatives from the company then met with staff from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s office in June. They thanked Zeldin’s team for its “work on MAHA,” and, seemingly, for having updated the EPA’s website to reflect its withdrawal of a Biden-era provision allowing California to require warnings on glyphosate. Trump’s Justice Department officially sided with the company in December.

As it continued to fend off lawsuits at the start of this year, Bayer ramped up its lobbying spending. In February, the White House invoked the Korean War–era Defense Production Act to declare glyphosate production “critical to the national defense,” and specifically protected glyphosate producers (read: Bayer) from lawsuits related to material or products produced in accordance with the act. Bayer poured considerable resources into backing “Cancer Gag Act” legislation to grant pesticide producers immunity against health-related lawsuits, which Republicans have championed.

The takeaways from Monsanto Co. v. Durnell are pretty straightforward: A huge corporation paid a lot of money to get the outcome it wanted. Republicans helped at nearly every step of the way, and it will now be much harder for people who believe that a Bayer product is responsible for their cancer to sue the company. Whatever its claims to the contrary, the Trump administration is less interested in Making America Healthy Again than it is in Making Life Easier for Agrochemical Executives.

Caitlin Clark is in danger, but thankfully she has the good citizens of right-wing media to protect her.

On Wednesday night, Clark’s Indiana Fever took on the Phoenix Mercury when, in the second quarter, Clark lost her footing while driving to the basket. During a brief scramble for the ball, Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas lodged a fist into Clark’s throat. Thomas, known widely to people in the know as one of the more physical players in the league, was eventually given a flagrant 2 foul, the league’s most serious penalty, after league review and suspended for one game.

That’s not enough for right-wing media, which has gone overboard in her defense. Noted conservative commentator Benny Johnson, for instance, wanted justice, tweeting the next day to his four million followers, “This is our George Floyd.”

This is our George Floyd pic.twitter.com/TLEy6a7aPR

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 25, 2026

As of this writing, the pile-on continues:

This is absolutely vile.

I’m no WNBA fan but Caitlin Clark is CLEARLY being assaulted constantly just because she’s White.

I’m sick of pretending otherwise.

They are beating her because they are anti-White and they hate she’s better than them. pic.twitter.com/YNktm2bxGB

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) June 25, 2026

Boomer Esiason, a former pro football player turned radio personality, even floated the idea of Clark taking her talents over to Europe. “If I were Caitlin Clark, I would seriously consider going to play overseas somewhere and get the royal treatment,” Esiason said. “She’s a straight, white basketball player. And she is not being treated with any sort of respect.”

"If I were Caitlin Clark, I would seriously consider going to play overseas somewhere and get the royal treatment…she's a straight white basketball player. And she is not being treated with any sort of respect" – Boomer Esiason pic.twitter.com/zeFRdOMLVn

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 25, 2026

And look, maybe Boomer has a point. Maybe players are being unnecessarily mean to Caitlin Clark. After all, young, popular athletes in other leagues are never targeted like this by their peers, and it’s only been Black women who have publicly challenged Clark’s dominance. Maybe she should go to some peaceful majority-white oasis where she can be free of dumb squabbles about race and gender. She could probably become the multi-million dollar face of a league, even get her own signature shoe. Caitlin Clark could become an icon.

Oh, wait.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson tried to fearmonger by … just reading the Democratic Socialists of America’s agenda out loud.

At the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference Friday, Johnson warned of a “dangerous trend” he’s observed: “Little mini Mamdanis popping up all over the country, running for Congress.”

Earlier this week, DSA-backed candidates saw huge wins in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sway seems to be holding strong.

And apparently, nothing is scarier to Republicans than the DSA platform.

Johnson: The DSA… this is their platform. They put this on paper!

Abolish the electoral college or replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy, expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and rank choice voting in all elections…… pic.twitter.com/UxUxi3TaY8

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 26, 2026

“I don’t know if you’ve seen this,” said Johnson.

“This is their platform, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published about a day or two ago.... They put this on paper! They’re saying the quiet things out loud.”

Johnson continued: “Abolish the Electoral College, replace the two-party system with a multi-party ‘democracy,’ expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and rank choice voting in all elections,” Johnson said.

He continued, describing how the DSA would establish public ownership of large corporations, abolish ICE, and end sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

“End all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza,” Johnson continued.

It should be noted that while the DSA does support most of these points in its official platform, there is a debate about others, like ranked-choice voting and the merits of abolishing the Senate. But all in all, Johnson appears to be trying to fearmonger by threatening the American people with a good time.

The Trump-appointed Federal Emergency Management Agency official, who made international headlines with the claim that he had the ability to teleport, has been quietly removed from his position. Gregg Phillips was picked by Trump to lead the disaster response agency’s Office of Response and Recovery last December, but his time at that position has ended. The Washington Post, citing their sources…

Source

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Department of Justice admitted to breaking the law by failing to release the majority of its files on Jeffrey Epstein to the public, giving acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a week to release more information.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his opinion that Blanche failed to address allegations from journalist Katie Phang that the Trump administration failed to release the files in full. Phang sued the DOJ in April over a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last year.

“The Attorney General does not respond substantively to any of these arguments,” Sullivan said in his ruling. “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”

Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction giving Blanche one week to release information redacted from the files, including names, or provide detailed reasons for the redactions. Some of the files in question include the FBI’s notes from interviews with a woman who accused President Trump of assaulting her in the 1980s as a 13-year-old.

The files covered by the injunction also include email exchanges with Epstein concerning an alleged “torture video” and sex acts with minors; the names of co-defendants from a draft indictment; the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators and DOJ employees who sent messages about them; and information in “foreign languages” that the DOJ said it couldn’t translate and redact.

The DOJ has said in the past that its unreleased Epstein files were not verified, and contained “unfounded and false” claims about Trump. But the law passed by Congress leaves few exceptions, and now Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, will have to answer for why some of the files remain hidden.

“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” said Brendan Ballou, Katie Phang’s attorney, to Politico. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”

Stephen Miller is very, very excited about the Supreme Court’s big ruling Thursday allowing Donald Trump to summarily end protections from deportation for hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the United States. After the decision came down, Miller enthused: “We can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants.”

If we take Miller at his word, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is about to hit a Trump-backing county in red Ohio with a big, disruptive operation. Around 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian immigrants live in the area in and around Springfield, a small Rust Belt city in Clark County, which Trump won in 2024 by 30 points. Many enjoy Temporary Protected Status, which grants protections to people from dangerous, crisis-ridden countries—status that Trump has scrapped. Now that the high court has sided with Trump, many will be subject to immediate deportation.

The name “Springfield” might jog your memory a bit. During the 2024 campaign, Trump and JD Vance targeted Springfield when they pushed the vile smear that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets. The Trump-Vance demagoguery unleashed searing social tensions in this postindustrial Midwestern city, and it temporarily became the center of our political universe before other controversies intervened.

Now, however, Springfield has taken on an overlooked role in the Supreme Court’s new ruling. The case involves Trump’s 2025 decision to end TPS for around 330,000 Haitians nationally and a smaller number of Syrians. Plaintiffs sued, arguing in part that race drove the decision. Exhibit A was Trump’s language about Haitians in Springfield, such as his claim that they are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” of the city’s residents.

In a widely condemned move, the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito, found a way to rule that none of those statements were “overtly racial” and that the decision to end TPS “could” be motivated by “race-neutral justifications.” Intriguingly, their ruling didn’t bother to print any of Trump’s supposedly non-overtly-racial statements. But in her searing dissent, Justice Elena Kagan marshaled tons of racist statements from Trump, noting that race was obviously a partial motivator behind nixing TPS—enough to demonstrate an equal-protection violation.

In a sense, this whole saga shows what happens when the deranged world of MAGA make-believe becomes the basis for real-world policy. At the time, the pet-eating smears about Haitians in Springfield were entirely made up. Indeed, JD Vance openly said the meme was designed to draw attention to the more important story: that Springfield had been “ravaged” by Haitian immigrants.

But the thing is, the underlying story that Vance piously claimed to care about was also made up. Vance buttressed his “ravaged” slur by falsely insisting that Haitians had brought a “massive rise in communicable diseases,” thus pushing the vile smear that immigrants are diseased.

Indeed, you might have forgotten what happened after Trump and Vance targeted Springfield: Many locals forcefully debunked the bigger story Vance purported to be telling. They vociferously defended those Haitians, and spoke up emotionally about their contributions to local economies and communities.

This even included Republicans like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Springfield Mayor Rob Rue. DeWine hailed the Haitians as “hard workers” who just want “the chance for a better life,” having escaped “one of the poorest and most dangerous places on earth.” Local business owners powerfully seconded these sentiments.

So will ICE now descend on this small Ohio city and turn it into the next Minneapolis?

Miller seems to suggest as much. An alternate possibility is this: Rather than big, splashy raids, ICE could proceed with what Ohio-based immigration advocate Lynn Tramonte calls a strategy of “attrition.” This would entail taking quiet steps to make the Haitians’ lives more and more unlivable, perhaps with pressure on local employers to fire all their Haitian workers, who will now lose their work permits.

Such a move would avoid drawing too much attention to the removals, which would likely prove deeply unpopular, both in Springfield and even in the redder areas outlying it. After all, the Haitians are deeply interwoven into the area, both economically and in terms of community. Jim Swift of The Bulwark reports this from on the ground in Springfield:

Haitians have helped reverse decades of decline in Springfield since 2010. They filled factory jobs, opened businesses, started churches, and helped stabilize the city’s population after years of shrinkage.

As the Ohio Capital Journal details, local officials are now bracing for these removals, because their impact would be deeply disruptive. They would slash the local workforce while eliminating $300 million in annual spending throughout Clark County, possibly leading to an economic loss of $400 million.

Great job, MAGA! Way to own the pet-eating immigrants and their lib defenders!

Springfield looms large in the MAGA imagination. In Vance’s mythology, it’s a typical example of a small Rust Belt city that got hammered by deindustrialization, and then got hit again when elites callously allowed immigrants to savage the place. The real story, though, is much more complex. While the influx did produce some social tensions, local leaders have regularly described them as manageable and immigrant workers have helped drive the town’s growth and revitalization.

Thus it is that even in one of Vance’s storybook postindustrial towns, turning ICE loose would likely encounter serious opposition—yet another sign of how toxic Trump’s real immigration agenda becomes when people get a close look at it. Time will tell whether ICE will be unleashed or whether removals will be more subtle. But however that goes, local officials predict that Clark County, which has benefited from Haitian migration to the tune of 10,000 workers, will take a hit.

Here’s the thing: If you vote for the ticket that tells you immigrants are eating your pets—the ticket that tells you mass removals are needed to purify and revive the nation and its heartland towns—what you’re actually going to get is social turmoil, violent ethnic purges, and serious economic disruption. If you are upset at the prospect of law-abiding immigrants being violently wrenched from your communities, next time don’t vote for the guys who lied in your faces so viciously about them.

The fallout from the implosion of the “Broadview Six” prosecutions lingers on, and it doesn’t look like it’s stopping any time soon. After the grand-jury shenanigans by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois caused the comical collapse of the case against a group protesting a federal immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, the office is scrambling to hide…

Source

Texas is poised to make the Bible required reading for five million public school students.

The Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote Friday to approve legislation to scrap teaching about “World Cultures” and make Bible stories and verses a permanent part of the K-12 curriculum—a blatant violation of the separation between church and state.

Critics of the measure argue that the changes risk alienating children from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds and infringe on the ability of parents to guide their children’s moral and religious education, CNN reported.

If the proposed reading list is approved, primary school-aged students would be taught stories like Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Middle school students would study the Shepherd Psalm from the Book of Psalms, as well as the religious writings of poets like Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. High schoolers would read from the second chapter of Genesis, detailing the creation of Adam and Eve—a story that exists across multiple religions but in vastly different forms.

Students would be able to opt out of these lessons, but as the texts would be made a part of the official curriculum, that could potentially affect their grades.

The proposed curriculum would only allow the use of verses from specific Bible translations, including the King James Bible, which is not embraced by the Roman Catholic Church but is widely used by Protestant and Evangelical churches, according to CNN.

In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains in schools, and the next year the state offered extra money to public schools willing to provide optional Bible instruction. Last year, Texas became the largest of a slew of red states to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

These newest proposed changes come as President Donald Trump’s administration takes up the guise of “Christian nationalism”—while practicing policies that aren’t very Christian or particularly nationalist.

In February 2025, Maksym Chernyak had a medical emergency. There were multiple signs that Chernyak—a 44-year-old from Ukraine detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida—was suffering a severe stroke. But ICE’s medical personnel missed those clues. By the time 911 was called, it was too late. Chernyak’s systolic blood pressure was more than 280 when he got to the hospital. He died soon after.  

Chernyak is one of 52 people who died in ICE custody during the 500 days after President Donald Trump returned to office. A new report from two watchdog groups argues that ICE’s mistakes “almost certainly” cost Chernyak his life. It also reveals that he was far from alone in receiving abysmal medical treatment while in immigration detention. 

The analysis—released on Thursday by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights—found that the mortality rate for people in ICE custody has skyrocketed during Trump’s second-term mass-deportation campaign. It’s nearly three times what it was during Joe Biden’s presidency and about two times higher than during Trump’s first term—a period that covered the first 10 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, far more people are now in ICE detention than in prior administrations, and a far greater percentage of those detainees are dying.

The report combines statistical analysis with detailed reviews of specific deaths in ICE custody. It states that PHR—whose medical experts investigate allegations of abuse across the world—identified a “high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care” in several deaths that raised “serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.”

Along with calling for improved medical care within ICE detention, the report recommends that ICE reduce the number of people in detention and prevent overcrowding. Reagan Williams, a researcher in the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms division at HRW, told me that could partly be done by ending mandatory immigration detention, which has been greatly expanded under Trump.

The current policy, which is the subject of an ongoing legal battle, subjects people who entered the country without inspection to mandatory detention regardless of criminal history or how long they have lived in the United States. In the past—including during Trump’s first term—the people covered by the policy would have been eligible for bond hearings and could be released as their immigration cases proceeded.

NBC News reported on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is launching a review of the increase in deaths in ICE detention centers. ICE did not respond to my request for comment.

Williams said that HRW and PHR are also asking Congress to mandate detailed independent reviews of deaths in ICE custody. Additionally, HRW and PHR are calling for a new independent entity that would have authority and jurisdiction over the quality of medical services that are provided to people in detention.

Some of the most disturbing sections of the report focus on the medical treatment received by men like Chernyak in the lead-up to their deaths. In Chernyak’s case, HRW and PHR were able to gain a much more detailed understanding of what happened after obtaining medical records from his family. In other cases, they had to rely on inadequate information released by ICE that can obscure the scale of the agency’s mistakes. 

Oksana Tarasiuk shows a picture of herself and her late husband, Maksym Chernyak, inside the couple’s apartment in Florida.Rebecca Blackwell/AP/AP

Dr. Katherine Peeler, a PHR medical adviser and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard, told me that Chernyak’s case was “shocking” on many levels. One of the most concerning things noted by ICE’s medical staff while Chernyak was at the detention center was that he was unresponsive and had “dilated equal but nonreactive pupils.” He also experienced “seizure-like” activity. Peeler said medical staff should have recognized that Chernyak may have been experiencing potentially life-threatening brain swelling. 

Nevertheless, it was recommended that Chernyak be sent to an emergency room via “non-emergency, medical transport.” Thirty minutes later—while Chernyak was still waiting at the detention center—he began having “additional seizures, vomited, and his pupils became unequal and remained non-reactive,” according to the report from HRW and PHR. Medical staff at the detention center then finally called 911. At the hospital, Peeler said, medical professionals immediately recognized that he was suffering from what proved to be a fatal stroke.

While conditions in ICE detention have deteriorated since Trump returned to office, HRW and PHR’s investigation makes clear that many of the problems are longstanding. That can be seen from the death of Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, a 45-year-old man from Ethiopia, on January 29, 2025. Dejene—who was first detained during the Biden administration in August 2024—began suffering from back pain around November 2024, according to information released by ICE. 

During one six-week period, he was evaluated four different times by medical staff at an Arizona detention center. On the last of those visits, after a nurse noted that he had an “abnormal slow gait,” he was provided with pain medication and instructions for spine exercises. The nurse recommended a follow-up in two weeks, but Dejene needed medical attention again just four days later.

This time, medical staff noted that Dejene had lost 20 percent of his body weight and sent him to a local emergency room, which then returned him to the detention center with a diagnosis of “probable lymphoma.” Dejene’s condition quickly deteriorated and he was sent back to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. 

Dejene died soon after. Peeler said the autopsy revealed that Dejene had a number of conditions that stemmed from AIDS that somehow went unnoticed by medical providers. According to the autopsy, those included “central nervous system toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis, Diphyllobothrium tapeworm, pneumocystis pneumonia, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Candida albicans, and Cytomegalovirus.” (ICE’s detainee death report for Dejene states that he denied having “any medical history.”)

“He was immunocompromised, which led him to have all these infections,” Peeler explained. “Which is how people used to die from AIDS. But people don’t typically die from AIDS in this country anymore because we have such effective antiretrovirals.” Peeler emphasized that ICE medical staff had multiple opportunities to potentially save Dejene’s life. “He must have looked sick,” she said. “There’s no way that he looked okay.” 

“This one I found really, really egregious,” Peeler added. “It was over so many weeks. There were so many opportunities that he presented where they should have drawn labs.” 

Williams, the HRW researcher, said she was struck in her research by just how little information is provided to people whose loved ones have died in ICE custody. She mentioned talking to a mother who “was desperate to know more about what had happened to her son.”

Williams stressed the human lives behind the numbers in the report. “When we talk about a rising death rate,” she explained, “we’re talking about a mother losing her son who cooked for her, who cared for her, who she loves deeply, and who she is now suffering without.”

The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to allow President Trump to end temporary protected status protections for Haitian immigrants in the U.S. is being celebrated across the Trump administration, despite continued violence plaguing Haiti.

White House adviser Stephen Miller was asked by a reporter shortly after the ruling if the administration considers “Haiti a safe country.” His answer didn’t address any concerns.

“For Haitians? Absolutely,” Miller said, failing to say whether he thought the country was safe in general. “Haitians live in Haiti. It’s not of our position that Haitians should leave Haiti. It’d be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country.”

"Does the Administration consider Haiti a safe country?"@StephenM: "For Haitians? Absolutely. Haitians live in Haiti... It'd be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn't live in Haiti. It's their country." https://t.co/eEjl4F9ye7 pic.twitter.com/69adUrp5c6

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 25, 2026

When Fox News asked James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, on Friday morning if Haitians losing their TPS status would get a grace period before having to leave the U.S., Percival echoed Miller’s callousness.

“President Trump has been trying to end these programs for nine years, so these people have been on notice for nine years that this day is coming. So what we would say now is that it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home,” Percival said.

“The T in TPS stands for temporary…It is closing time. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home.” @DHSGenCounselhttps://t.co/YGo3uuNvrE pic.twitter.com/JDClLseFgA

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 26, 2026

Haiti’s security situation is very unstable. The FAA has barred U.S. flights from landing in the capital, Port-au-Prince, until at least September, citing risks from armed groups. In 2024, three commercial jets were hit by gunfire in the country. Armed gangs control the country, with no president in power or election scheduled.

Haiti’s national soccer team even had to play their World Cup qualification matches outside of the country in Curaçao because gangs had taken over the national football stadium in Port-au-Prince. Haiti still made it to the World Cup, even hanging with powerhouse Morocco for three-quarters of their third match before succumbing 4-2 and being eliminated from the tournament.

But despite the security situation in Haiti, the Trump administration doesn’t think Haitians deserve asylum in the U.S., and thinks that Haitian-Americans without citizenship or permanent residency can just pick up and go even if they’ve built lives or started families.

“People are running away from their homes,” said Don Deedson Louicius, a striker for the Haitian national team and professional player for FC Dallas in the U.S., to ESPN in November. He grew up near the Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince and still has family there.

“They can’t live well, and all the places are closed because of the gangs, and violence is crazy.”

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty on Friday to keeping security information from his work in his personal records—an act less egregious than what Donald Trump and Joe Biden previously got away with unscathed.

A Florida judge dismissed Trump’s case in 2024 for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, saying that special counsel Jack Smith, who filed the charges against Trump, was illegally appointed by the Justice Department—rather than the President and confirmed by the Senate. 

And Biden was not charged for purportedly keeping documents in a former D.C. office and his personal residence in Delaware. One reason given was that Biden would likely present himself before a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” which would make it difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him for “a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

But, as of Friday, Bolton has pled guilty to one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information out of a total of 18 official charges. Prosecutors said that Bolton faces a prison sentence of up to five years and agreed to pay $2.25 million in fines. His sentencing date is set for October 28.

Since leaving his position in the first Trump administration in 2019, Bolton has become a vocal critic of the president. When he was first indicted last October, Bolton said the case was an attempt by Trump to use the Justice Department to punish his political enemies. The president has gone after officials like former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. 

The Justice Department under Joe Biden continued to gather evidence in the case and the 18-count indictment focused on Bolton’s private messages containing national security information—not the contents of the memoir. The indictment alleged that Bolton used his personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1000 pages of notes with two family members. 

The indictment said that Bolton’s emails were later hacked by someone with ties to the government of Iran. “A representative for Bolton notified the U.S. government of the hack in or about July 2021,” the filing reads in part, “but did not tell the U.S. government that the account contained national defense information, including classified information.”