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Russia accuses Telegram CEO Pavel Durov of aiding terrorism in its latest digital crackdown Russian authorities said Wednesday they had charged Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram, with aiding terrorism, the latest step by the Kremlin to bring the internet and digital communications under its control. https://apnews.com/article/russia-telegram-pavel-durov-ukraine-a6efe4692f3415c2046f0893d114174b?

Times Square was originally called Longacre Square until it was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly built Times Building. James

🚆 Parting shot: Mountain rails Photo: Bruce Bosse Reader Bruce Bosse and his wife, Sharon, took in the stunning scenery last weekend aboard a train in Skagway during their first trip to Alaska. Based in Knoxville, they've become avid travelers since retiring a few years ago.

The mouth-longevity link Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios "Say ahh." Nobody likes it, but your mouth may be one of the most revealing windows into how well — and how long — you live, Axios' Natalie Daher writes. The big picture: Scientists are finding that gum disease may do far more than threaten your teeth, The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link). 🪥 Zoom in: Bacteria from diseased gums and the inflammation they trigger may be linked to heart disease, diabetes, cognitive decline and other conditions that shape how well we age. Stunning stat: Nearly half of all adults 30 and older have periodontitis, a serious form of gum disease that can cause bone loss around the teeth, according to the CDC. That share rises to nearly 60% for those 65 or older, just as the risk of other chronic conditions increases. 🩺 Between the lines: Better coordination between dentists and doctors could help identify health risks earlier and improve patient care. But first, the health system needs to overcome the traditional divide between medicine and dentistry through more record-sharing and cross-referrals. "We envision a future where a heart doctor asks patients if they are seeing their dentist regularly, and whether they are aware their periodontal disease could mean they have a much worse heart situation," Wenyuan Shi, head of the American Dental Association Forsyth Institute, tells the WSJ. 🦷 Friction point: Many older Americans lack dental coverage, and Medicare doesn't generally cover routine dental care. 🔬 What to watch: Researchers and startups are developing new ways to detect, prevent and treat gum disease. That includes therapies that target inflammation, AI tools for reading dental X-rays, saliva tests, and sensors that monitor changes in the mouth and even connect to wearables. A recent Journal of Periodontology report predicted those technologies could power better detection and treatment. The bottom line: Brushing and flossing aren't just saving your teeth. They're supporting your whole body.

Sen. The post What 1,141 pages of Anthony Fauci’s diary actually prove about sincerity appeared first on ReligiousLiberty.TV. View the full article

Judge John P. Cronan held that the Commission’s membership satisfies the Federal Advisory Committee Act and that its record releases during the case left the plaintiffs with nothing left to win. The post Federal Judge Dismisses Interfaith Challenge to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission appeared first on ReligiousLiberty.TV. View the full article

🫟 House Dems' Michigan mess Sen. Elissa Slotkin has rankled some colleagues and fellow Michigan Democrats by boosting retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam in the state's 7th House District Democratic primary. Why it matters: Slotkin's support for Maasdam has exacerbated infighting between establishment Democrats, some of whom prefer Bridget Brink, a career foreign service officer who resigned in protest as ambassador to Ukraine last year. ‼️ That potentially creates an opening for William Lawrence, a progressive who many Democratic strategists and lawmakers are skeptical can win the seat in November. The three Democrats are vying to take on Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) in a district that President Trump won by just over a single percentage point in 2024. 📺 Slotkin, who represented the seat before Barrett, recruited and endorsed Maasdam — and then cut an ad on his behalf last week. She also has lent her name to his fundraising texts and paid for internal polling on his behalf, according to emails and texts we viewed and multiple sources familiar with the matter. 💬 What they're saying: Several Michigan Democrats fumed that Slotkin's support for Maasdam risks eating into the lead that Brink has held for much of the campaign and creating an even larger opening for Lawrence. State Rep. Jennifer Conlin, who described Slotkin as a mentor, told us she "found it so perplexing" the senator endorsed Maasdam, given that Brink shares her background as a woman in national security. Another local elected official expressed confusion at Slotkin's support for Maasdam because, they told us, the senator has told local allies "very plainly" that any Democratic nominee in the district "has got to be a woman." The other side: "Senator Slotkin is singularly focused on one thing: flipping her old seat from red back to blue. Her entire goal is to help win back the House and put a real check on President Trump," said Slotkin spokesperson Josh Stewart. Stewart added: "Matt Maasdam is the best candidate to do that." — Andrew Solender

Senate confirms Jay Clayton as nation’s intelligence director WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed Jay Clayton to become head of the nation’s intelligence agencies, putting a permanent director in place weeks after President Donald Trump sought to delay his nomination. https://apnews.com/article/clayton-trump-pulte-intelligence-2020-election-7e080a06252a97c9afa8733d7876e887? 🤠 Party in Dallas House and Senate Republican leaders are heading to Dallas to embrace the president who has done the most to shape — and complicate — their political fortunes. Why it matters: Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson don't have much of a choice about attending September's midterm convention. President Trump doesn't tolerate high-profile dissent, and both leaders know their best chance of staying in power is by staying united. But for Republicans in tight races, the two-day political extravaganza presents a difficult choice. 💪 They can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump, raise money from big-dollar donors and bask in the MAGA media glow. 🏠 Or they can stay home and create some separation from a president whose approval ratings are sinking. 🔎 Zoom in: Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, are both planning to attend, according to people familiar with the matter. So is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, another GOP Senate candidate. However, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the only Republican who represents a state that President Trump lost, is unlikely to make it and will be campaigning in her home state, according to a person familiar with the matter. Spokespeople for Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) and Michael Whatley, the GOP Senate nominee in North Carolina, declined to comment or didn't preview their boss' plans. Hinson and Collins are also seeking Senate seats. In addition to Johnson, Majority Leader Scalise (R-La.) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) plan to attend. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) are both scheduled to be in Dallas. 🌎 Zoom out: The Sept. 9-10 convention is still six weeks out, and senators and representatives have never been confronted with a mid-September, mid-cycle political convention. 💰 Party committees are starting to ask donors about attendance, but details — and programming — are sparse. "The upcoming Midterm Convention is an opportunity for Republicans across the country to rally behind President Trump's America First agenda that's brought lower drug prices, lower taxes, and a secure border," RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre said. What they're saying: "I'm proud that Dallas will host the RNC Midterm Convention this September," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). "Texas is leading the nation in defending freedom and advancing conservative principles, and I look forward to welcoming Republicans from across America as we celebrate the landmark victories achieved this Congress and work together to elect Republicans up and down the ballot in November." 🤔 The intrigue: For all the sniping between Trump and Thune this week, the majority leader recognizes that he and Senate Republicans stand a better chance of victory by presenting a united front. But he'll be in Dallas during a Senate recess that the president wants canceled until the SAVE Act is passed. 🏈 The bottom line: The convention is expected to be part pep rally, part "Friday Night Lights": Clear eyes, full hearts — and Republicans hope the last line writes itself. — Hans Nichols and Kate Santaliz

Moment of Truth View in browser In a court filing earlier this month, a government lawyer did something radical: He laid out the truth in plain English. The surprise was not just the honesty from a chronically dishonest administration but also the substance: The Trump administration admitted that it had withheld federal money in retaliation against its political rivals. The disclosure, first reported by The New York Times on Friday, is part of a lawsuit from a group of researchers in California whose grants were canceled. In lieu of turning over documents to the plaintiffs in discovery, an Energy Department attorney acknowledged in a filing that decisions about which grants might be terminated had been “based solely” on a goal of political retribution. “With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators (‘Blue State’ grants),” the filing stated, contradicting previous public statements by officials. Every administration has its own policy agenda and preferences, but this goes beyond that, subjugating science to partisanship and holding research and infrastructure money hostage throughout much of the country. If the United States is to remain legally and civically coherent—and scientifically dynamic—the rules have to apply consistently. Even before Donald Trump returned to office, the country was in some ways pulling apart into two different policy worlds: one governed by Democrats and one by Republicans, as the journalist Ronald Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic in 2022. This was being driven largely by decisions at the state level, producing widely varying economic, health, and social outcomes. Trump is now using the power of the federal government to drive the two sections further apart, a glaring act of division as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. (Punishing states that lean Democratic also punishes many Republican voters. More Californians cast a ballot for Trump in 2024 than voters in Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee did combined.) In some ways, the retaliation acknowledged in the suit is in step with other Trump-administration actions. Trump is not coy about his desire for political retribution, especially against high-profile critics, or his sense that he is president to only those who voted for him. This is not his first example of using federal funds to reward red states while punishing blue ones. Earlier this year, Politico calculated that in his first 14 months in office, Trump approved 89 percent of requests for disaster assistance from GOP-led states but just 23 percent of those from Democrat-led states. Yet when asked about the disparity, the White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson denied any political motive, saying, “There is no politicization to the president’s decisions on disaster aid.” Jackson faced no legal penalty for such an obvious falsehood—which is one reason courts remain a vital bulwark against Trump’s abuse of power. I wrote during Trump’s first presidency that many depositions demonstrated a huge gulf between the president’s public bluster and balderdash and his meeker, franker statements made when under oath. The same has been true of attorneys representing his second administration. In several high-profile cases, they have been forced to admit in court that public claims by officials were false. Last year, for example, the official White House line was that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a dangerous MS-13 gang member who had been rightly shipped to a Salvadoran prison. In court, however, lawyers acknowledged that his deportation had been the result of an “administrative error.” This past spring, charges against a group of people arrested at a protest near Chicago fell apart after federal prosecutors conceded a series of major mistakes to a judge: They impermissibly vouched personally for the credibility of evidence before a grand jury, spoke with grand jurors outside a courtroom, and, after failing to obtain an indictment, excused grand jurors who’d voted against charges and tried again. They then redacted transcripts to try to hide this from the judge. And last week, the Department of Justice dropped subpoenas issued to Times reporters after prosecutors admitted to a judge that they had not followed either DOJ policy or court precedent by not exhausting other options first. (In some other instances, a related but inverted dynamic has emerged in which it’s not court statements that contradict the public ones, but the other way around: Government lawyers attempt to argue that administration decisions were made deliberately and without regard to politics, only for judges to point to public statements by the president that appear to reveal the true, improper motivations for the actions.) Statements by government lawyers that contradict the official White House line are not merely the results of pangs of conscience. Attorneys understand that they can face sanctions, including disbarment, for lying in court. Earlier this month, a federal judge overseeing the lawsuit that produced Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for political allies blasted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for testimony that was “at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.” She also referred Blanche, who faces a confirmation vote on his elevation to permanent status, to the New York State Bar Association. An Energy Department filing could put Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a tight spot too. Last month, he told a House panel, “No decisions were made on politics.” The Times reported that, according to a department spokesperson, Wright had been “making a distinction between that review process and the timing of when certain cancellations were announced.” Was he trying to mislead, or was he himself kept in the dark, and which would be more troubling? Trump sees his time in office as a chance to settle political scores, and aides who pretend otherwise risk making themselves look like fools—or worse. Related: The “presumption of regularity” is evaporating. America is growing apart, possibly for good.

Yes, stuff like that. 100% incompatible with what the Bible teaches about Christ.

I read the article in the link you posted. 1st: I don't deny that Ellen used the term "godhead" in her Desire of Ages book. What I'm saying is that Ellen's use of godhead no more supports Trinitarianism than when Mormon writers use the term godhead. The key here is that Ellen repeatedly affirmed Christ could have eternally ceased to exist due to non-compliance with Devine law. There is literally nothing else that needs to be said when Ellen so militantly gloated about this.

15-year-old arrested at Seattle food festival shooting was armed with a ghost gun, police say SEATTLE (AP) — The 15-year-old arrested after a shootout at a food festival near Seattle’s Space Needle over the weekend was armed with a ghost gun with an extended magazine, police said Tuesday. https://apnews.com/article/seattle-center-shooting-food-festival-space-needle-b4c73c1745663fe5b3e656a64602ddb2?

🇯🇵 Dozens of people are missing or hurt after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit southern Japan, causing part of a shopping center to collapse. Get the latest.

Canadians skip U.S. travel Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios Canadian travel to the U.S. fell 25% last year, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes from a new report. The decline has persisted into 2026, the Canadian government report finds. The findings offer the clearest look at the pain the U.S. tourism industry is suffering amid trade tensions, tariffs and President Trump's repeated "51st state" comments. Canada is typically the largest source of international visitors to the U.S., making the decline especially painful for tourist towns near the border. 📉 By the numbers: Statistics Canada says that Canadians' return trips from the U.S. declined year over year for 11 consecutive months in 2025. That's the longest sustained decline since digital records began in 1972, aside from the COVID-19 pandemic. 💸 Canadians' spending on visits to the U.S. fell to about $13.3 billion in 2025, down from about $15.7 billion in 2024. They replaced many U.S. trips with domestic vacations or overseas travel, the report finds. What we're watching: More recent data suggests the decline in Canadian visits to the U.S. may be easing, driven by a bump in car trips. Explore the data ...

Trump’s Oval Office Humiliation of RFK Jr. Is Leaked The president is pressuring his health secretary to prove a debunked claim surrounding vaccines. An irate Donald Trump told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he would be considered a failure if he could not prove a long-debunked link between vaccines and autism, according to a report. During an Oval Office meeting in June, the president chastised the health and human services secretary for not doing enough to prove an alleged connection between childhood vaccines and autism, and felt he should have accomplished more over the past year and a half leading the Department of Health and Human Services, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Trump had also pointedly asked Kennedy why he wasn’t doing more to investigate the alleged connection between vaccines and autism during a lunch at the president’s golf course in Virginia in May. Trump accused the health secretary of getting the “yips” for not investigating the issue more aggressively. Kennedy was said to be taken aback by the pressure from Trump. The White House had previously urged the health secretary to tone down his public distrust of vaccines, fearing it could hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. Trump, 80, is not a vaccine skeptic on the same level as the 72-year-old Kennedy. During his first term in office he advised people to get the COVID-19 vaccine and publicly revealed that he received a booster shot. The president has also frequently complained that he does not get enough credit for the rollout of Operation Warp Speed, the first Trump administration’s effort to rapidly accelerate vaccine development in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Trump has long been skeptical about vaccinating children, including questioning whether there is a link between vaccines and autism—a claim that has no scientific basis.The Journal reported that Trump is so obsessed with the issue that he “steers nearly every conversation” he has with Kennedy back to investigating the claim. In May, Trump signed an executive order to drastically reduce the number of vaccines administered to American children. The order backed an HHS report recommending reducing the number of routine childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11. Trump has also considered changing the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine by splitting it into three separate shots. This is despite there being no scientific justification for doing so and multiple studies showing there is no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. In a statement to the Journal, White House spokesman Kush Desai said concerns from parents about “America’s skyrocketing autism rates have long been ignored if not mocked,” and that Trump is now changing this. “The Trump administration is committed to leaving no stone unturned to finally address these concerns with Gold Standard Science,” Desai said. A HHS spokesperson said they would not comment on purported private discussions between Kennedy and Trump. “Secretary Kennedy and President Trump are aligned in their commitment to confronting the chronic disease epidemic affecting America’s children through rigorous, gold-standard science,” the spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “HHS will continue to pursue evidence-based research to identify the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases, advance prevention strategies, and improve the health of the American people.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-oval-office-humiliation-of-rfk-jr-is-leaked/? ps:How pathetic!!

Trump Costs America Billions as Canadians Snub the U.S. Canadian visitors spent $2.3 billion less in the U.S. in 2025. President Donald Trump is costing America billions as Canadians increasingly turn their backs on the U.S., according to new data. A report released by the Canadian government last week shows that Canadian visitors spent $2.3 billion less in the U.S. in 2025 as travel across the border plunged. According to the report, total spending by Canadians on U.S. trips dropped to C$18.8 billion ($12.8 billion), down from C$22.1 billion ($15.6 billion) the year before, as Canadian travel to the U.S. dropped by 25 percent. The decline in Canadian travel to the U.S. marked an unprecedented shift, with return trips falling year over year for 11 straight months in 2025—the longest sustained drop outside the pandemic era since records began in 1972. That is a huge blow for the Trump administration, with Canada traditionally sending the most tourists to the U.S. But Trump’s recent antics have upset his closest neighbors, according to the report. So now Canadians are opting to travel domestically or to go to other countries outside of the U.S, taking roughly 5 million more domestic trips within Canada and 1.3 million additional trips overseas. It comes after Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian-made goods, ramped up immigration enforcement, and repeatedly threatened to swallow Canada as America’s “51st state.” “Following the change in the U.S. administration in early 2025 and the implementation of America First policies, Canadian travel sentiment shifted abruptly,” the report says. Similar research by the University of Toronto from May also found that visits by Canadians to major U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Houston and Grand Rapids, have crashed by a staggering 42 percent during Trump’s second term. The president’s trade war with Canada has also been blamed for a sharp drop in Canadian tourism to Las Vegas, a city where Canadian visitors typically make up a major share of international travel. After Trump imposed tariffs on Canada last year, visits from Canadians fell by 17 percent, contributing to a 7.5 percent overall decline in tourism, Politico reported. But it’s not just Canadians who are snubbing the U.S. A CNN report from May showed that the U.S. had roughly 4 million fewer international visitors in 2025 than the year before, marking a 5.5 percent decline in overseas tourism, with foreign visitor spending falling by more than $8 billion. Visitor numbers declined from several countries, including Germany, India, France, Australia, Chile, and China, but the largest drop came from Canada. Aside from the collapse in travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, it represents the sharpest annual drop in international tourism in roughly 20 years. The decline in U.S. tourism stands out globally. International travel increased sharply globally in 2025, with roughly 80 million more people traveling abroad than the year before. But people are opting to travel elsewhere other than the U.S. And that is a concerning trend, according to Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. “We used to be a country that others wanted to emulate. That narrative no longer exists,” Kayyem told CNN. “The long-term harm is that the world will not know America… the narrative of the United States is now a country that is at best, not to be respected, and at worst, a democracy that is floundering.” The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-costs-america-billions-as-canadians-snub-the-us/?

Green Slime Pool Case Witness Makes Bombshell Admission The government’s own witness called its case against a former Olympian into question. A key witness in the case against a former Olympian charged with vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool admitted that the landmark was already damaged—and would have needed thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs anyway. The president spent months hyping his renovations of the famed monument, only for the $16 million “repairs” to result in peeling blue sealant and a record-breaking algal bloom that turned the water slime green. Instead of blaming the companies that received no-bid contracts to complete the work, Trump claimed the damage was the work of vandals and ordered a law-enforcement blitz at the site. Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was arrested and charged with felony destruction of property—a charge that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison—after he stopped at the Reflecting Pool during a bike ride and put his hand in the water. But during the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment, the sole government witness who testified about the damage Hearn allegedly caused “could not quantify any loss” attributable to Hearn’s conduct, according to a new court filing from Hearn’s legal team. The witness, who was not identified, testified the property was already damaged before Hearn touched it, and that about $6,000 to $15,000 was needed to fix the immediate area. Those repairs would have still been necessary “before the defendant interacted with the pool,” according to the witness, who could not answer a grand juror’s question about the difference in estimated costs before and after Hearn’s actions, according to the filing. “Simply put, the government’s witness could not identify any additional cost caused by Mr. Hearn’s alleged conduct,” the filing said. “Indeed, the witness did not even say or suggest that the alleged conduct had compromised the liner at all.” The testimony was included in partial grand jury transcripts provided to the defense, which is now seeking the full transcripts and legal instructions provided to the grand jurors. The witness’ answers raised questions about whether the grand jury was properly instructed about elements of the case—including the fact that the felony charge required Hearn to have caused more than $1,000 in damages, Hearn’s lawyers argued. The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment. The case was brought by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which is headed by former Fox News host and staunch Trump ally Jeanine Pirro. Over the past several months, federal judges have found that prosecutors with Trump’s DOJ engaged in—and at times tried to cover up—grand jury misconduct, including improperly speaking to jurors outside the courtroom, coaching them on the evidence presented, and dismissing grand jurors who refused to indict defendants. In asking for the release of the full transcripts, Hearn’s lawyers argued that the historic “presumption of regularity” afforded by courts to the DOJ “has been thoroughly eroded by current Department leadership, including in the District of Columbia.” The DOJ has previously said that reported cases of jury misconduct were isolated incidents that did not reflect on the department’s overall record. https://www.thedailybeast.com/witness-in-david-hearns-lincoln-memorial-reflecting-pool-case-makes-bombshell-admission/?

Trump’s Tribute to Lindsey Graham Immediately Goes Off the Rails There were a few awkward moments when the president called into Fox & Friends to discuss the legacy of his former golfing pal. Donald Trump began an awkward tribute to the late Lindsey Graham by trashing the MAGA Senator’s golf game.As memorial services for Graham began on Tuesday, the president called into Fox & Friends to discuss the legacy of his former golfing pal. But things immediately went slightly off the rails when co-host Steve Doocy asked Trump to tell viewers about what it was like teeing off with the 71-year-old senator, who died suddenly earlier this month with heart complications. Trump began by saying Graham “loved golf”, “worked hard at it”, and was “getting better all the time.” But the 80-year-old added: “Let me put it this way. He loved it—but he wasn’t born to be a golfer.” The president then went on to talk about Graham’s bloodlust, declaring that the Senator “never met a war he didn’t like.” “I’d say: you’re a nice guy, how come you like war so much?” Trump recalled. “He was very much into that.” But this, too, became somewhat awkward when co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed out that Graham’s sister, Darline, had said the opposite during an interview with Sean Hannity last week. “She said he didn’t love war,” Earhardt, who is dating Hannity, told the president. “He loves peace and he loves the end of the war, but sometimes war is necessary.” The interview kicked off two days’ worth of services honoring Graham, starting on Tuesday morning with a ceremony with his casket in the Capitol Rotunda, followed by a funeral at the Washington Cathedral. The services will continue on Wednesday in Graham’s home state, South Carolina. Trump is expected to deliver remarks on Tuesday afternoon at the funeral of his longtime ally, which will also be attended by congressional and military leaders. Among them are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, two world leaders who Graham consistently supported. Indeed, the MAGA Senator had just returned from his 10th trip to Ukraine hours before he died overnight July 11, not long after emergency personnel responded to a report of cardiac arrest at his Washington, D.C., home. The sudden death sent shockwaves across Trumpland as major MAGA figures raised questions about its apparently suspicious timing, so soon after Graham’s visit to Ukraine to publicize his drive to step up sanctions on Russian oil and gas sales. Almost instantly, wild theories began surfacing across the internet, fueled a few hours later by a post by FBI director Kash Patel declaring that “the FBI is assisting local authorities and has made every necessary resource available.” However, a medical examiner subsequently ruled that the cause of death was an aortic dissection resulting from cardiovascular disease. Graham’s sister Darline was appointed to fill the vacancy in his South Carolina seat, and intends to run for a full term after Trump’s endorsement. “There would be nobody better to honor the legacy of her beloved brother, Lindsey,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-tribute-to-lindsey-graham-immediately-goes-off-the-rails/?

👋 Good morning! Happy (Taco) Tuesday. In today's edition: Mayo breaks the curse, Stanford football sparks union push, Peacock in the black, what losing out on LeBron means for the Warriors, squirrel on the field, and more. Yahoo Sports AM is written by Kendall Baker and Jeff Tracy. Let's sports...   🇮🇪 ACROSS THE POND MAYO BREAKS THE CURSE Mayo players celebrate with the Sam Maguire Cup. (Seb Daly/Sportsfile via Getty Images) The year of the sporting exorcism continues. First, it was Indiana football breaking through after decades of futility. Next it was Arsenal winning its first Premier League crown in 22 years. Then it was the Knicks ending a 53-year NBA title drought. And now it's Mayo breaking a 75-year curse to win the All-Ireland title in Gaelic football. Victory at last: Mayo won the All-Ireland final in 1951 but legend has it that they upset a priest when doing so. That resulted in a curse being placed on the team, which had lost 11 straight finals since 1989 before finally breaking through on Sunday with a win over Kerry. The scenes were absolutely incredible at Dublin's Croke Park, with tens of thousands of fans breaking down in tears and announcers losing their minds on the radio broadcast. Mayo supporters celebrate their side's first goal on Sunday. (Ben McShane/Sportsfile via Getty Images) Malachy Clerkin, Irish Times: Nothing else feels like this. Croke Park untethered, the whole place afloat for an hour on a lake of the sweetest tears that were ever cried. The people of Mayo, raddled and belittled all their lives, looking at each other in wonder and collapsing into each other's arms. The decades of hurt and hope and loss all melting away forever. They gave a Kerry team boasting the greatest player of the age a seven-point head start and still turned it around. They sent out a couple of teenagers to play in the forward line and watched them run all the old truths ragged and turn all the ancient voodoo inside out. Mayo 1-20, Kerry 1-17. Chisel it on the gravestones, scribble it in the sky. Congrats from across the pond: Joe Biden, who pledged his allegiance to the team when he visited his ancestral home in County Mayo in 2023, toasted the win on Instagram. He was joined by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, who called himself "a proud son of County Mayo" in a congratulatory post on X. Wait, what is Gaelic football? The strictly amateur sport* combines elements of football, soccer and rugby. 15 players per side compete on a rectangular pitch with an H-shaped set of goalposts at either end. Teams advance the spherical leather ball up the field with a combination of carrying, bouncing, kicking and hand-passing. There are three types of scores: Goals (ball goes into the net under the crossbar), points (ball goes over the crossbar between the posts) and 2-pointers (same as points, but the ball must be kicked from outside the 40 meter arc). *Gaelic football is completely amateur in Ireland, meaning players compete for pride rather than pay. The funds generated from ticket sales (there were 82,300 fans at Sunday's match) are directly reinvested in local clubs across the country, many of them pillars of community life, particularly in rural areas, notes The Athletic.   🎓 FIRST CHAPTER STANFORD FOOTBALL SPARKS UNION PUSH (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) The momentum for collective bargaining within college athletics took another significant leap this week. Driving the news: A group of Stanford football players are establishing the first-ever chapter of the College Football Players Association in a move intended to create a foundation for eventual unionization and collective bargaining, the association and players announced on Monday. In the fifth year of the CFBPA's existence, Stanford became the first school to reach the membership threshold of players necessary to elect representatives. What lies ahead is a long, arduous process of rallying players at more ACC schools and beyond to create chapters, eventually sign union cards and then, as a group, present to conference leadership. CFBPA leaders are in active conversations with players from at least three other schools and executives are confident in the announcement of more chapters in the coming weeks. Ross Dellenger, Yahoo Sports: The creation of the Stanford chapter is noteworthy in a time of upheaval as multiple players association leaders, college executives and even congressional lawmakers attempt to bring stability and regulation to a college sports industry crippled by legal losses. Conference commissioners, NCAA leaders and university presidents for years have publicly condemned any employment or bargaining model, but many of their coaches, and even athletic directors, are gravitating toward the concept out of frustration with the current environment. In a way, some believe that bargaining may be to the benefit of the schools and conference, which for now find themselves in a rudderless environment of unlimited athlete movement, loose compensation restrictions and growing legal woes around athlete eligibility. What they're saying: "The time is now to do something," said Stanford senior center Fisher Anderson, who expects players at other schools to follow their lead. "This is college football and it's increasingly becoming more like the NFL. At some point, we're likely going to need a CFBPA."   🦚 FEATHER IN THE CAP CHARTED: PEACOCK TURNS A PROFIT It took only six years, but NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service finally turned a quarterly profit. Sports, man: It's a monumental occasion for a platform with a rich array of sports rights, and it was on the shoulders of the NBA Playoffs and World Cup additions that Peacock finally clawed into the black. This chart first appeared in Yahoo Sports Biz, our new newsletter authored by Dylan Dittrich. Sign up here to start receiving it every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.   📚 GO DEEPER GOOD READS (Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images) 🏀 Dan Devine: What losing out on LeBron James means for Stephen Curry and the Warriors James' decision disappointed suitors in Cleveland, Miami and Minnesota, among other locales. But it might not have hurt anybody more than Golden State, arguably the biggest loser of the whole saga, both for losing out on adding James and for what coming up short in his decision-making calculus represented about the current state of play in the Bay. (Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images) 🏈 Jay Busbee: What the NFL can (and will) learn from the World Cup's global takeover As popular as the NFL is — and make no mistake, the NFL is still America's most popular form of entertainment in any medium — it's a minnow in the ocean compared to the World Cup. Millions more viewers, billions more in revenue. Here are a few lessons that The Shield will likely incorporate from the inspiring, thrilling and so, so lucrative tournament that comes around every four years. (Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images) 🏀 Candace Bucker, The Athletic: Cathy Engelbert may be unpopular with WNBA players, but she's not paid to be their bestie Engelbert might never be considered as chill, down for the cause, or the kind of boss the players would want to sit down with and sip a cocktail. But last we checked, the WNBA is booming. The average WNBA salary has risen 450% under her watch, from roughly $130,000 in 2020 to $600,000 now. If money is the marker for progress — and yes, in professional sports, money is always the main thing — then she's doing her job.   📺 VIEWING GUIDE WATCHLIST: TUESDAY, JULY 28 (Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports) The WNBA returns from the All-Star break tonight with a five-game slate. The national spotlight will be on Caitlin Clark and the East-leading Fever as they go for their fourth straight win in Seattle. Schedule: Sun at Mystics (7:30pm ET); Tempo at Lynx (8pm); Fever at Storm (9:30pm, ESPN); Liberty at Sparks (10pm); Fire at Aces (10pm). More to watch: ⚾️ MLB: Cubs at Cardinals (7:45pm, TBS) … Chicago (60-46) leads the NL Wild Card race; St. Louis (53-53) is 1.5 games back of the third spot. 🎾 Tennis: Mubadala DC Open (11am, Tennis) … Alex de Minaur, Ben Shelton and Venus Williams headline today's action in Washington, DC. Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events in your city.   🎨 NAME GAME BIG FOUR TRIVIA (iStock/Getty Images Plus) Question: Can you name the 10 "Big Four" sports teams with a color in their nickname? Hint: 5 NHL, 4 MLB, 1 NFL. Answer at the bottom.   🐿️ RALLY SQUIRREL PHOTO FINISH (Duane Burleson/Getty Images) A black squirrel managed to break onto the field at Comerica Park on Monday during the Tigers' loss to the Orioles, and it led the grounds crew on a chase in the outfield. On the call: "No, I won't be hemmed in! I have freedom on my mind!" yelled Tigers broadcaster Jason Benetti from the booth.   Trivia answer: Blackhawks, Blue Jackets, Blues, Golden Knights, Red Wings (NHL); Blue Jays, Reds, Red Sox, White Sox (MLB); Browns (NFL)

Education Department opens parental rights case against Ann Arbor schools over transgender policy The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it is taking action against Ann Arbor Public Schools for what it believes to be likely violations of FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, in the district’s policies regarding transgender students. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/repub/education-department-opens-parental-rights-case-against-ann-arbor-schools-over-transgender-policy/?

Administration asks US Supreme Court to uphold sweeping Trump order restricting vote-by-mail The Trump administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a district court ruling that blocked President Donald Trump’s broad March 31 executive order restricting vote-by-mail. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/repub/trump-administration-sustains-defeat-on-vote-by-mail-order-in-federal-appeals-court/?

Measles cases have reached a 35-year high Measles cases this year have surpassed all of 2025 to become the worst since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, with cases now in 44 states and the District of Columbia, according to a federal report released Friday. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/repub/measles-cases-have-reached-a-35-year-high/?

Yes it also is a big deal!! One of my grandsons is autistic!!

Democrats urge Trump administration to rethink Endangered Species Act rollback Florida manatees and panthers are suddenly much more vulnerable, environmentalists say, thanks to the Trump administration’s recently announced rollback of Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/democrats-urge-trump-administration-to-rethink-endangered-species-act-rollback/? Florida judge refuses to boot Fishback from the ballot, won’t ‘decide the race’ A Leon County judge refused Monday to kick Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback off the ballot, agreeing that he hadn’t meant to establish residency in D.C. and pointing out that it’s not the court’s job to decide who becomes Florida’s next governor. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/florida-judge-refuses-to-boot-fishback-from-the-ballot-wont-decide-the-race/? Attorneys for Florida death row inmates seek stays of execution from U.S. Supreme Court Barring a last-hour intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, two Florida death row inmates will be executed within hours of each other Tuesday at Florida State Prison near Starke. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/07/27/attorneys-for-florida-death-row-inmates-seek-stays-of-execution-from-u-s-supreme-court/?