House Speaker Mike Johnson
PHOTO: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Furor over disclosures from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation brought the House to a standstill.
“Republican leadership cut short this week’s session ( read for free) and put off any action until September as some GOP members demanded votes on more releases related to the disgraced financier and sex offender. Meanwhile, the Justice Department wants to interview longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years for sex trafficking. D.C. is dealing with fallout from the DOJ’s decision not to release more documents from the FBI’s Epstein probe. Some allies of President Trump saw that as a betrayal. A WSJ article published last week described a bawdy letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein.” [Wall Street Journal]
DOJ reaches out to Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys, expects a meeting with her
The Justice Department is seeking to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, the co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein who is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Tuesday.
The move comes as the Trump administration faces pressure from both his MAGA base and Democrats to release more Epstein-related files and unearth new evidence in the case of the deceased financier. For years, far-right influencers, sometimes encouraged by Trump himself, have spread conspiracy theories that prominent politicians and other public figures were involved in Epstein’s crimes.
But Trump has faced growing discontent from his own supporters in recent weeks over its handling of the Epstein situation after a joint DOJ-FBI report said in early July that there was no further evidence to release. The sudden decision to seek a meeting with Maxwell appears designed to appease Trump’s base.
It also raises the question of whether Maxwell may try to leverage the meeting for a reduced prison sentence by telling the Justice Department what it wants to hear. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for child sex trafficking and other crimes.”
Read the latest at POLITICO
President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tour "Alligator Alcatraz," a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, July 1, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Florida signs $245 million in contracts for ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ Here’s a look by the numbers
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ’ administration has already signed contracts to pay at least $245 million to set up and run a new immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” according to a public database. The amount — to be fronted by Florida taxpayers — is in line with the $450 million a year officials have estimated the facility will cost. Read more.
Why this matters:
All the contracts were awarded under an executive order declaring an illegal immigration emergency the governor first enacted in 2023. The order grants the state sweeping authority to suspend ‘any statute, rule or order’ seen as slowing the response to the emergency, including requirements to competitively bid public contracts.
State officials say at least some of the cost will be covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But in court documents, attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security stated that the federal government had yet to reimburse Florida for any of the costs. The department made clear that ‘Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority.’
One of the contracts shared with The Associated Press shows Critical Response Strategies was set to hire a warden for the temporary facility at $125 an hour and potentially spend more than $400,000 in overtime pay. It’s not clear how long staffers can expect to work at the facility. Corrections officers at the facility can expect to earn up to $11,600 a month, plus overtime, according to a job posting for the company on LinkedIn.” [AP News]
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
E.P.A. Is Said To Have Drafted a Plan to End Its Ability to Fight Climate Change
“According to two people familiar with the draft, it would eliminate the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten human life by dangerously warming the planet.”
Read more New York Times
US says it's leaving UNESCO again, only 2 years after rejoining
“The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will once again withdraw from the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, an expected move that has the U.S. further retreating from international organizations.” Read More at AP News
Obama stands by intel conclusion that Russia meddled in 2016 election
READ FULL STORY→ USA Today
“Trump deflected questions yesterday about the Epstein case, shifting the focus to an old controversy: Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This comes after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated last week that she released evidence that former President Barack Obama and his national security officials manipulated intelligence to target Trump. The documents released include nearly 100 pages of newly declassified Obama-era emails, leading up to and after the 2016 election.
Many of the emails focused on whether Russian hackers had or could successfully hack the election, says NPR’s Jenna McLaughlin, who read through the documents. The Obama administration's national security officials said it was unlikely Russian hackers could breach election infrastructure on a large scale without detection. After Trump won the 2016 election, Obama asked intelligence officials to write an assessment on everything they knew about Russian interference in the election cycle. The report never stated that Russia hacked the election, but did state that Russia attempted to influence the election using tactics such as disinformation on social media and bot farms.” [NPR]
Judges vote to oust former Trump lawyer Alina Habba as New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney
“New Jersey’s federal judges declined Tuesday to appoint Habba, President Donald Trump’s pick for the state’s top federal prosecutor, to continue serving in that role, delivering a resounding rebuke to one of his most polarizing Justice Department appointees. The state’s U.S. district court judges made the announcement in a brief order that did not offer any explanation for their decision.”
Read the story at Washington Post
A Pattern of Antipathy
(Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty)
“President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to be on a mission to erase women from the top ranks of the U.S. armed forces. Last week, they took another step along this path by removing the first female head of the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Naval Academy was founded in 1845, but didn’t admit its first class of women until 1976. The head of the school is known as the superintendent, and Annapolis would not get its first female admiral in that position until 2024. Now the first woman to serve as the ‘supe’ has been reassigned and replaced by a man, and for the first time in the academy’s history, the role went to a Marine. Last week, the Navy removed Vice Admiral Yvette Davids from her post and replaced her with Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte. (Maybe Hegseth thinks Marines are more lethal, to use his favorite Pentagon worship word.) Davids has been sent to the Pentagon, where she will be a deputy chief of naval operations, a senior—but relatively invisible—position.
No reason was given for reassigning Davids. Superintendents typically serve for three to five years, but Davids was pulled from the job after 18 months. (A short tenure can be a sign of some sort of problem; for what it’s worth, the secretary of the Navy, John Phelan—who has never served in the Navy and has no background in national-defense issues—offered rote praise when announcing her de facto firing as the supe.)
Trump and Hegseth have been on a firing spree throughout the military, especially when it comes to removing women from senior positions. This past winter, Hegseth fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations; Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female Coast Guard commandant; and Lieutenant General Jennifer Short, who was serving as the senior military assistant to the secretary of defense, all within weeks of one another. I taught for many years at the U.S. Naval War College, where I worked under its first female president, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. In 2023, she became the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee—and then she was fired in April, apparently in part because of a presentation she gave on Women’s Equality Day 10 years ago.
At this point, women have been cleared out of all of the military’s top jobs. They are not likely to be replaced by other women: Of the three dozen four-star officers on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, none is female, and none of the administration’s pending appointments for senior jobs even at the three-star level is a woman.
Some observers might see a pattern here.
Discerning this pattern does not exactly require Columbo-level sleuthing. Hegseth’s antipathy toward women in the armed forces was well documented back in 2024 by none other than Hegseth himself. In his book The War on Warriors, Hegseth decried what he believed was ‘social engineering’ by the American left: ‘While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.’ (This is probably why Hegseth also fired the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C. Q. Brown, who is a Black man; Brown was let go for ostensibly being too interested in promoting diversity in the armed forces.)
Not that the secretary hates women, you should understand. Some of his best friends … well, as he put it in his book last year: ‘It’s not that individual women can’t be courageous, ambitious, and honorable. I know many phenomenal female soldiers. The problem is that the Left needs every woman to be as successful as every man, so they’ve redefined success in a counterproductive way.’
I’m sure that the more than 225,000 American women who serve their country in uniform are relieved to know that they, too, can be courageous, and all that other great stuff. But Hegseth seems to be implying that many women in today’s military might have had their fitness reports massaged ‘in a counterproductive way’ to meet some sort of ‘woke’ quota. And that, you see, is why the U.S. military’s most-senior female officers had to be removed: They were clearly part of some affirmative-action scheme. Thank you for your service, ladies, but let’s remember that the Pentagon’s E-Ring is for the men.
Oddly, Hegseth has no problem with ‘social engineering’ as long as it’s engineering something closer to 1955 than 2025. Indeed, he writes, the military ‘has always been about social engineering—forging young men (mostly) with skills, discipline, pride, and a brotherhood.’ One might think that the goal is also to instill respect for one’s comrades, regardless of gender, and to defend the country and honor the Constitution, but Hegseth is more worried about what he fears is the distracting influence of women in the military. ‘Men and women are different,’ he writes, ‘with men being more aggressive.’ (I read this in Cliff Clavin’s voice: ‘Yes, Diane … hold on to your hat, too, because the very letters DNA are an acronym for the words Dames are Not Aggressive.’) Hegseth goes on: ‘Men act differently toward women than they do other men. Men like women and are distracted by women. They also want to impress, and protect, women.’
In other words, after forging these neo-Spartans with some of the finest training from the most powerful military the world has ever known, Americans still must worry that these carbon-steel warriors, ready to do battle with any number of global menaces, might have their ‘lethality’ sabotaged by the fluttering eyelashes and shapely gams of their sisters in arms.
I was teaching senior officers, male and female, from all branches of the armed forces when Hegseth was still in high school. His view of women in the U.S. military would be beneath serious comment were he not, through the malpractice of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, the sitting secretary of defense. Instead of defending the nation—or keeping track of the security of his own communications—he is trying to make the American military inhospitable to half of the nation’s population.
As Nora Bensahel, a scholar of civil-military relations at Johns Hopkins University, told me, the firing of Davids and other women ‘is deliberately sending a chilling message to the women who are already serving in uniform, and to girls who may be thinking about doing so, that they are not welcome—even though the military would not be able to meet its recruiting numbers without those very same women.’
Today is my late mother’s birthday. She enlisted in the Air Force and served during the Korean War. She came from a poor family, and had to leave the military when her father was dying. But she was deeply proud of her service in America’s armed forces; I remember watching her march in uniform in hometown parades. She would be heartbroken—and furious—to know that more than a half century after her service, the message to the women of the United States from the current commander in chief and his secretary of defense amounts to a sexist warning: Feel free to join the military and serve your country—but know your place.” [The Atlantic]
President Joe Biden, walking with his son Hunter Biden, heads toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, on July 26, 2024. | Susan Walsh/AP
“BLAME GAME — Hunter Biden suddenly has a lot to say. In multiple interviews released this week, he addressed his drug addiction, his infamous laptop, his father dropping out of the race for president and media coverage of his family, with some particularly choice words reserved for CNN anchor Jake Tapper, the co-author of a recent book about Joe Biden, actor George Clooney and The New York Times.
It’s understandable that the president’s son might want to defend the family in the wake of recriminations over Biden’s legacy, as a wave of books and negative press accounts have come out about the 46th president’s health in his final years in office. But the decision to air his grievances — and crowd out the news cycle at a moment when Donald Trump and his party are desperately trying to divert attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein saga — isn’t being welcomed by Democrats.
In Hunter’s most notable interview, spanning over three hours with online documentarian Andrew Callaghan and his network Channel 5, the younger Biden pontificates at length on his own addiction and recovery, before tearing into the party apparatus that he believes pushed his dad to abandon his 2024 campaign. Hunter’s lengthy comments, filmed a month ago, represent an unvarnished look into the collective psyche of the close-knit Biden family since the former president dropped out. What it reveals is a lack of awareness and accountability for Biden’s own role in losing the 2024 election, in favor of an alternate history.
One profanity-laced tirade stands out.
‘Fuck [George Clooney]! Fuck him and everyone around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice,’ Biden said. ‘Number one, I agree with Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney is not a fucking actor, he’s a fucking — I don’t know what he is, he’s a brand … Fuck you, what do you have to do with fucking anything, why do I have to fucking listen to you? What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his fucking life to the service of his country, and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in fucking The New York Times to undermine the president? Which, by the way, what do you think people care about the most? Why do you think the Republicans have an advantage? Because they’re unified.’
Hunter remains convinced that his father should not have dropped out of the race. He admits the debate was a disaster, but chalks it up to the time his dad had spent on a plane prior and an Ambien he was given in order to sleep. He says ‘my dad grew old in front of everyone’s eyes,’ and that Americans need to reconsider ‘how we handle people who age in front of our eyes,’ while insisting he was politically viable because of the 81 million votes he received in 2020.
At the time Biden dropped out, Gallup polling showed his job approval rating at an anemic 36 percent, the lowest of his presidency, and aides working on the campaign were consistently fretting about their chances to the press. One reportedly insisted, ‘no one involved in the effort thinks he has a path [to victory].’
Hunter, however, contends his dad had ‘cleared every hurdle they set up for him.’ On the post-debate Democratic collective freakout, Hunter says, ‘He goes and does [ABC News’ This Week with George] Stephanopoulos. Everyone says, ‘that’s not enough. We’ve got to see him give a press conference.’ For what? You remember that, it was about a two-hour long press conference, and he gave a tour de force, around the world history lesson about the existence of NATO, Russian aggression and Ukraine.’
President Biden became vulnerable again, according to Hunter’s telling, after he got COVID, which was when he said the Democratic Party elite vultures descended and insisted they’d destroy the party if he didn’t drop out. Notably, Hunter doesn’t blame Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he calls very loyal. At another point, he insists she’s still the future of the party.
In whole, the interview is a view of history that is simply inconsistent with the facts. Biden was in position to suffer a historic loss, according to publicly available polling that kept getting worse. And Hunter Biden’s account is full of contradictions — according to him, Americans need to learn to deal with a president who’s getting old and who’s undone by an Ambien, yet that same president also gave a ‘tour de force’` press conference and never should have dropped out.
Most remarkable is the way in Hunter’s mind, his dad is a victim. As he notes multiple times with pride, Biden was a leader in the Democratic Party for over half a century. He was a senator for decades, vice president for eight years and president for four. He had better relationships with congressional leaders than President Obama. But at the same time, somehow he’s free of all responsibility for the party’s current unpopularity. Instead, it is the fault of Democratic elites, which somehow does not include Joe Biden himself.
The majority of the younger Biden’s interview with Callaghan is consumed by questions of addiction and a lack of humanity in our politics. When he’s speaking on those topics, he can be erudite and remind viewers of our collective fragility. His situation — much of the worst of his life exposed to a media and public hungry to devour it — is an unfortunate and ugly outgrowth of modern American culture (it’s also won him a legion of fans). And he’s able to directly diagnose a big problem for Democrats, a widespread perception that they are increasingly the party of only the elite. He’s engaging insofar as he is willing to be impolite and unhinged in a political milieu dominated by evasion and artifice. He’s likely channeling the true feelings of his family. But his beliefs also involve constantly shifting blame — to Rudy Giuliani, Tapper, Clooney, Pod Save America or whoever else is closest at hand.
That makes his recent media tour seem at times like a public temper tantrum, a chance to excuse himself and his dad and lash out indiscriminately at everyone else.
At the end of the interview, Callaghan, the documentarian, tells Biden about another project he’s working on, involving interviewing adults who dress up and act like babies, wearing diapers, playing with childhood toys and sucking on pacifiers or their thumbs. It’s a very funny and strange concept to Biden, who laughs heartily for the first time across the three hours. He concedes he knows the feeling.
‘Some days I identify as a baby,’ he tells Callaghan, laughing. He might have even more in common with this American subculture than he’s ready to admit.” [POLITICO]
Bill Clinton in 1992. Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
The wilderness
“I’ve reported on the last 11 presidential campaigns.
The Democratic Party had just lost another presidential election. It was hemorrhaging support among blue-collar voters and was seen as out of touch on cultural issues. It was struggling to find its next generation of leaders. The future seemed bleak.
The year was 1984. Eight years later, Bill Clinton — a moderate governor from Arkansas who presented himself as a ‘new Democrat’ — unseated an incumbent president, George H.W. Bush. His victory was the culmination of a campaign by a renegade organization of moderate Democrats, most from the South and the West, to move the party to the center, recruit new candidates and win back working-class Americans.
For Democrats today, that history offers a glimmer of hope. But it’s also a reminder of how deep a rut the party is in. Democratic leaders still don’t agree on why they lost the election or who might lead them back, and today’s electorate is much different from the one in the 1990s.
The renovation
The rebuilding process in the 1980s took nearly a decade — and the route back to power meant ending the party’s leftward drift.
It followed debilitating ideological battles pitting the party’s liberal establishment against moderates, many of whom came from what were already becoming red states. The turnaround came only after Democrats suffered three consecutive lopsided presidential defeats, in 1980, 1984 and 1988. Republicans in those contests won over critical blue-collar voters in some key states.
Eventually, a group of centrists formed the Democratic Leadership Council to promote moderate candidates and ideas. The party pushed aside liberal leaders like the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Clinton, a politician of unusual skill who unified the factions, ran for president in 1992 promising to ‘end welfare as we know it.’ With his victory, the pivot was complete.
The reprise
Today, the party is at the start of its next reinvention. And it will probably not be easy. Party leaders are quarreling about why they lost to Donald Trump, what to do next or who their next champion might be.
And a return to the center might prove difficult. When 120 Democrats, including some original D.L.C. leaders, gathered in Denver this year to chart a path back to power, some argued that Clinton’s agenda — especially on trade — had fueled the blue-collar alienation that put Trump in the White House. ‘What they promoted turned out to be quite corrosive to the middle class,’ said Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who attended the conference.
In interviews, many of the veterans of that last battle said the Democratic Party’s problems today were not as bad. (Joe Biden left the White House just seven months ago, and he defeated Trump decisively in 2020.) But they see echoes in the despair that led to the creation of the D.L.C. Many Democrats said it was difficult, at least right now, to imagine unifying the party behind a similar change mission.
The left is stronger, and politicians often fear angering it, said Matt Bennett, the founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank based in Washington
The issues have changed. Trump and Elon Musk have already tried to reinvent government, as Clinton promised to do. Voters haven’t stressed much about the welfare system since Clinton signed a bipartisan bill scaling it back.
The electorate has shifted. After trade deals that preceded a decades-long contraction of U.S. manufacturing, followed by the trauma of the 2008 housing crisis, few Democrats are talking up free trade or free markets.
The future
The D.L.C.’s effort to pull the party to the center was immediately divisive, a lesson in what Democratic leaders of today now face.
The council floundered in its early years, battling with the Democratic National Committee, labor unions and some groups on the left. Four years after the organization was founded, the party stumbled again after nominating Michael Dukakis, a liberal Massachusetts governor, who lost the presidential election in 1988. Voters saw Democrats as out of touch — much as they saw Kamala Harris last year on issues like inflation and immigration. For Dukakis, the issue was crime.
The Dukakis defeat was a turning point, says Will Marshall, an early D.L.C. leader. ‘It struck a lot of people that we were right — that the party was on a terrible presidential losing streak.’ The next year, the D.L.C. drafted Clinton to help craft its platform: getting tougher on crime and welfare, breaking with unions in embracing school choice.
The solution this time almost certainly requires the party to head down a new path. It may mean another turn to the center or something completely different and more populist. The only way to find the answer may be to muddle yet again through the wilderness.
More on Democrats
Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a progressive platform in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary. But for the general election, he has started to shift some positions.
In Minnesota, a young state senator with an immigrant story is also winning. Is he Minneapolis’s Mamdani?” [New York Times]
INTERNATIONAL
In Kyiv, Ukraine. Stanislav Kozliuk/Reuters
“Ukraine had its first major antigovernment demonstration in three and a half years of war, after Volodymyr Zelensky moved to weaken anticorruption agencies.
The Israeli military attacked a city in central Gaza that, until now, had remained relatively unscathed. It also raided a World Health Organization building there.
In Iran, weeks of mysterious fires, including at oil refineries and apartment blocks, have officials searching for saboteurs.” [New York Times]
Weaponizing Aid
Palestinians push to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on July 22.AFP via Getty Images
“Foreign ministers from 28 countries issued a joint statement on Monday condemning Israel’s military actions against Palestinians and calling for an end to the war in Gaza. ‘The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,’ the statement said. ‘We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.’
The letter—signed by 24 European governments as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand—demanded that Israel lift its restrictions on the flow of aid into the territory and allow the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations to deliver basic supplies unimpeded.
‘The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,’ the countries added, likely referring to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli- and U.S.-backed distribution system that has forced Palestinians to travel long distances to access a limited amount of food at just four distribution sites across Gaza. The U.N. human rights office said in a new report on Tuesday that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid since late May, mostly at or near GHF locations.
Rights organizations have previously accused Israel of weaponizing aid in Gaza. According to the U.N. report, the Gaza Health Ministry has recorded at least 101 Palestinian deaths due to malnutrition in the past few days, including around 15 deaths within a 24-hour period. And U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Monday that ‘the last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing’ in Gaza as the territory barrels toward levels of mass starvation.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the foreign ministers’ joint statement as ‘disconnected from reality,’ adding that it ‘fails to focus the pressure on Hamas and fails to recognize Hamas’s role and responsibility for the situation.’ Instead, Israel accused the militant group of prolonging the war by refusing to accept an Israeli-backed cease-fire and hostage release deal. ‘Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides,’ Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein posted on X.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned the letter as ‘disgusting’ and said the international community must instead pressure Hamas to end the war. Germany—which, due in part to its history, has strongly supported Israel since the war in Gaza began—remained silent on the statement, though German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul wrote on X that he had spoken with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar to express concern about Gaza’s ‘catastrophic humanitarian situation.’
Past joint efforts to pressure Israel to stop its military actions in Gaza have largely failed. In May, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom threatened ‘concrete actions’ if Israel did not stop its offensive in the territory, but as FP columnist Steven A. Cook argued at the time, Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage has not forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course for fall 2025.” [Foreign Policy]
“US-funded contraceptives worth nearly $10 million are being sent to France from Belgium to be incinerated, after Washington rejected offers from the United Nations and family planning organisations to buy or ship the supplies to poor nations, two sources told Reuters.” [Reuters]
“1 percent less. U.S. President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with the Philippines on Tuesday following a White House meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Under the terms of the deal, the United States will impose a 19 percent tariff on goods from the Philippines—down just 1 percent from the original rate that the White House threatened to impose on Manila come Trump’s Aug. 1 deadline. U.S. goods will face zero tariffs in the Philippines.
Efforts to secure a trade deal were challenging, with Trump implying earlier in the day that Marcos’s negotiating style was hindering talks. ‘[W]e’re not there because he’s negotiating too tough,’ Trump said of Marcos. ‘In fact, I used to like him better than I do now. He’s too tough, but we’ll probably agree to something.’
But behind closed doors, the two leaders were able to cement a trade agreement similar to that between the United States and Indonesia, which also faces a 19 percent U.S. tariff under a recently negotiated deal. This makes the Philippines the fifth country to secure a new trade arrangement with the United States since Trump announced his proposed tariffs in April (the other four being China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom).
‘Our strongest partner has always been the United States,’ Marcos said.” [Foreign Policy]
“Nuclear talks. Iranian officials met with officials from Russia and China on Tuesday to discuss the possible return of U.N. sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program. The talks came just days before Tehran is set to meet with representatives from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in Istanbul on Friday to discuss a potential nuclear deal. The three European countries have vowed to reimpose so-called snapback sanctions on Iran if no progress toward a nuclear agreement has been made by the end of August. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi warned on Tuesday that such sanctions would only further complicate the situation.
One of the biggest points of contention remains Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities, which Israel and the United States say are a threat to the Middle East but Tehran maintains are vital for civilian purposes. The White House has previously said it will not accept any nuclear deal that allows Iran to continue uranium enrichment. But Iran appears unwilling to concede.
Tehran’s uranium enrichment program is now stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe,’ Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday, referring to Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure last month. ‘But obviously, we cannot give up our enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists, and now, more than that, it is a question of national pride.’” [Foreign Policy]
“Increasing authority. Ukrainian lawmakers passed legislation on Tuesday that would give President Volodymyr Zelensky greater influence over the country’s independent anti-corruption bodies by effectively eliminating the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and its partner organization, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Under the bill—passed with 263 votes and fast-tracked to Zelensky’s desk for final approval—both agencies would be placed under the authority of Kyiv’s prosecutor general.
Supporters framed the move as a vital wartime measure to help investigate reports of missing people. But critics warned that the bill would concentrate authority within Zelensky’s administration and silence his opponents. ‘What’s happening is the demolition of the anticorruption infrastructure in Ukraine,’ said Daria Kaleniuk, the co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which helped establish NABU after Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.
Experts suggest that the legislation could hamper Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union, as independent anti-corruption mechanisms and government transparency are key considerations for accession. Ambassadors from the G-7 told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that they ‘have serious concerns and intend to discuss these developments with government leaders.’” [Foreign Policy]
“The alleged cheating scandal at a Coldplay concert, in which the married CEO of U.S. tech company Astronomer was caught on a ‘kiss cam’ in a romantic embrace with another of the company’s senior employees, has taken the world by storm. Now, even Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is offering his two cents on the matter.
On Sunday, Pashinyan suggested that the kiss cam canoodlers have more integrity than Karekin II, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, because the CEO of Astronomer resigned over the incident, whereas Karekin has not stepped down following accusations by Pashinyan that the church leader broke his vow of celibacy. Pashinyan and Karekin have long feuded over allegations that Pashinyan is uncircumcised and therefore not Christian—a scathing accusation in a country where around 94 percent of the population identifies as Armenian Orthodox.” [Foreign Policy]
BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
The S&P 500 ticked up to a new high.
“The index set a record after Trump announced trade deals with Indonesia and the Philippines and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered support to embattled Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Investors hope the trade pacts will be followed by further deals. Bessent also said that trade with China was in a ‘very good place’ and that the current U.S.-Chinese trade truce would likely be extended beyond Aug. 12.” [Wall Street Journal]
1 big thing: Trump Coke, coming this fall
Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
“The Coca-Cola Co. is launching a new Coke product this fall made with U.S.-grown cane sugar, Axios' Ben Berkowitz reports.
The move follows President Trump's statement on social media that the company would use sugar, rather than high fructose corn syrup, in its sodas.
That surprise ‘announcement’ led to confusion about the company's plans, with farm groups warning a full switch could cost thousands of U.S. jobs.
Today's statement makes clear Coke will launch a new product, rather than replace corn syrup in its existing line.
The company hasn't announced specific timing or branding.
U.S. consumers have long been able to get various forms of cane sugar Coke.
"‘Mexican Coke,’ made with cane sugar and imported from Mexico, has long been popular in U.S. restaurants and stores, and is sold by Costco.
The company also uses cane sugar in its annual runs of a kosher product often called ‘Passover Coke.’
Ben's thought bubble: Coke's response to Trump may end up as a road map for other companies in similar circumstances.
Publicly put on the spot by the president in a costly way that would fundamentally change a beloved product, Coke simply pivoted to making more of what it was already making and slapping a new name on it.
A brief crisis could turn into a marketing and political win.” [Axios]
Trump Says U.S. and Japan Reach Trade Deal
“The U.S. and Japan have struck a trade agreement, President Trump said in a social media post, saying he would set his so-called reciprocal tariffs at 15% for the country.”
Read More at Wall Street Journal
GM Profit Shrinks After $1.1 Billion Tariff Hit
“General Motors managed to beat analyst expectations when it reported second-quarter results, but new tariffs on imported cars and auto parts took a $1.1 billion bite out of its bottom line.”
Read More at Wall Street Journal
The estate of tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died last summer when his superyacht sank off the coast of Italy, might be wiped out.
“A U.K. court ruled the estate and Lynch’s former business partner owed Hewlett Packard Enterprise about $945 million stemming from the tech company’s ill-fated takeover of Autonomy, the British software company they ran. A representative for Lynch’s estate said they’d consider an appeal. In 2022, the High Court found Autonomy hadn’t provided an accurate financial picture when Hewlett Packard bought it in 2011 for over $11 billion.” [Wall Street Journal]
WEF Probe of Klaus Schwab Finds Unauthorized Spending and Inappropriate Behavior
“An internal probe at the World Economic Forum found that its founder Klaus Schwab engaged in a pattern of workplace misconduct over the past decade, including unauthorized spending by him and his wife, bullying behavior and inappropriate treatment of female staffers.”
Read More at Wall Street Journal
TECH
Elon Musk is pulling every financial lever he can to keep pace in the AI arms race.
“Weeks after raising $10 billion, his xAI startup is working with a financier to secure up to $12 billion more, people familiar with the situation said. The money would buy a massive supply of advanced Nvidia chips that would be leased to xAI for a huge new data center to help train and power the AI chatbot Grok. Plus, SpaceX recently invested $2 billion into xAI, effectively moving cash from one Musk company to fund another.” [Wall Street Journal]
MEDIA
NPR editor in chief says she's stepping down days after Congress cut all federal funding for public broadcasting
“News veteran Edith Chapin says she is leaving her post at National Public Radio. NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in an email that Chapin’s decision came two weeks ago ahead of the Senate’s vote to pass President Donald Trump’s rescission bill, which stripped the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of $1.1 billion for NPR, PBS and member stations over the next two years.”
Read more at Washington Post
HEALTH AND MEDICINE
RFK Jr. targets organ donations
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The push by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to overhaul government health programs is extending to the troubled organ donation system, Axios' Maya Goldman reports.
Kennedy is latching onto dozens of instances in which organ removal was reportedly started while donors still showed signs of life.
HHS says it found evidence of systemic patient safety issues at a Kentucky organ procurement organization called Network for Hope.
The organization came under fire last year following reports that staff pressured doctors to move forward with removing organs after patients appeared to be regaining consciousness.
Network for Hope, which serves Kentucky, southwest Ohio and part of West Virginia, told Axios that patient safety is its top priority and that it looks forward to working collaboratively with HHS.
Kennedy said: ‘The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor's life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.’” [Axios]
HIGHER EDUCATION
“Over 70 Columbia University students are being disciplined for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest at the university’s Butler Library in May. The disciplinary actions include probation, suspensions, expulsions and degree revocations. More than two-thirds of the students were suspended or expelled. The move comes as university officials continue to negotiate a deal with the Trump administration to release frozen research funding. They say the frozen funds amount to about $1 billion in grants.
The disciplinary actions are significant because the Trump administration is paying attention to how universities handle protests as part of their efforts to combat antisemitism on campus, says Jessica Gould of NPR network station WNYC. Columbia’s Acting President Claire Shipman states that the university is working to make improvements to the campus climate, and the fact that they are facing pressure from the government doesn’t make the university’s problems less real. Many Jewish and Muslim students at the university have said they have faced harassment since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.” [NPR]
SPORTS
President Donald Trump presents Chelsea's Marc Cucurella with a medal after Chelsea won against Paris Saint-Germain in the Club World Cup final at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 13, 2025. | Kevin Lamarque/AP
“WHAT’S IN A NAME — Donald Trump’s weekend fusillade of social media posts may have fallen short in its aim of diverting attention from the firestorm surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.
But it succeeded in advancing what’s increasingly looking like the central project of his second term: planting himself at the center of American public life.
With his call for the Cleveland Guardians to change back to the team’s longtime name, the Cleveland Indians, and his threat to withhold a D.C. stadium deal until the Washington Commanders reverts back to its original Washington Redskins name, Trump signaled that dominion over Washington isn’t enough. Every other institution — Wall Street, Fortune 500 companies, Big Law, higher ed, the media — must also bend the knee.
That list includes professional sports.
As a master of the attention economy and a product of popular culture, Trump knows the traditional understanding of the modern bully pulpit is outmoded. To truly command attention — and to speak to those who aren’t engaged in the political process — a president must be everything, everywhere, all at once.
To Trump, that means railing about quotidian details of life — the kind of sugar used by Coca Cola; the water pressure in toilets and showerheads; T-Mobile’s service — but also establishing himself as a constant presence in the sports world.
As president-elect, he made much-publicized trips to an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight at Madison Square Garden and the Army-Navy football game. Since returning to the White House, Trump has attended another UFC fight in Las Vegas, the Super Bowl in New Orleans (where he was the first sitting president to attend), the Daytona 500 in Florida and the NCAA college wrestling championship (marking his second appearance there in three years).
A week ago, Trump unexpectedly showed up on stage to present the trophy at the Club World Cup at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where he stood center stage amid confused foreign players for English soccer giant Chelsea.
While sports has always been politicized by the left and right — and a White House visit has long been a reward for championship teams in all sports — Trump has taken it to another level, He has functioned as a sports fan — recently joining the fray with his thoughts on Shadeur Sanders, among other topics — but also as a would-be commissioner eager to wield the power and prestige of the Oval Office in the realm of pro sports.
After Trump said in February he’d pardon disgraced baseball great Pete Rose and criticized Major League Baseball, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred traveled to the White House two months later. Not long after, he reinstated Rose from baseball’s ineligible list, making him eligible for the Hall of Fame. Manfred later acknowledged Trump played a role in his decision.
Trump has even brought the mighty NFL — one of the world’s most lucrative sports leagues and owner of 93 of America’s top 100 most watched programs in 2023 — to heel. In May, with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell at his side in the Oval Office, the president announced that the 2027 NFL draft would be held in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall.
It’s a redefinition of the presidency for the modern age, one that reflects Trump’s populist bent. And it’s a stark contrast with Joe Biden, who twice declined the traditional pre-Super Bowl televised interview, giving up the chance to speak to the nation’s largest assembled live audience. He was absent from pop culture, except as the butt of jokes, and he paid for it. Carving out a beachhead in pro sports enables Trump to asymmetrically engage in the culture wars — weighing in on the policing of team names, for example — but without the partisan sheen. He understands instinctually that to project leadership across a fragmented media landscape, familiar political set-pieces, bland social media exhortations and the sit-down broadcast network interview aren’t nearly enough anymore. Nor is the occasional lions-den podcast appearance.” [POLITICO]
CULTURE
At the White House. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
“Republicans moved to rename the Kennedy Center Opera House after Melania Trump.” [New York Times]
TRANSITIONS
"Prince of Darkness" dead at 76
Ozzy Osbourne at the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Cleveland. Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
“Ozzy Osbourne, the "Prince of Darkness" and Black Sabbath front man, died at 76 today.
‘It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning,’ a family statement says. ‘He was with his family and surrounded by love.’
Osbourne's death comes just weeks after a farewell charity show during which he was honored by some of heavy metal's other greatest performers, including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax.” [Axios]
Unable to walk due to Parkinson's disease, Ozzy performed some of Black Sabbath's greatest hits while seated on a throne adorned with a giant bat — a callback to a 1982 Des Moines concert when he bit the head off a dead bat thrown on stage.
The show both reflected and cemented Osbourne's status as the godfather of heavy metal, with Sabbath pioneering the genre in the 1970s.
Younger fans might better remember him for "The Osbournes," a hit MTV reality show about his family life from the early 2000s.