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🇮🇷 Trump pauses strikes President Trump directed the U.S. military not to conduct new strikes in Iran on Friday, breaking a nearly two-week streak of daily attacks, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. Why it matters: It's unclear if Trump's order on Friday was a one-off or the start of a lull after 13 days of U.S. attacks. 💡 Between the lines: Trump's decision reflects that, short of a return to major combat operations, the current level of U.S. strikes has reached the limit of its effectiveness. If Trump orders a return to strikes, the U.S. military can mobilize on relatively short notice. The U.S. military is still preparing plans for a possible return to major combat operations, but Trump hasn't ordered it to move in that direction, the sources said. How it happened: Every afternoon for the past two weeks, Trump has approved strike plans submitted by the military. They were conducted within hours. On Friday, Trump received a similar plan but didn't give a green light. Instead, he directed the military not to conduct strikes, the sources said. Shortly after the Friday directive, Trump told reporters at the White House that he could continue or even escalate strikes, including "knocking out everything they have." But he made clear that he thinks the "smarter strategy" is to "make a deal" with Iran. "We're talking to [the Iranians] right now," Trump said. "I think they're getting more and more serious as the days go by. We're locked and loaded and ready to go, but we're talking to them." That night, Trump said at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner that he doesn't think Iran is ready to make a deal at the moment, "but I'm willing to listen." 🇮🇱 Behind the scenes: The Israeli security cabinet and Israel Defense Forces expected another round of U.S. strikes Friday, and even prepared for a massive U.S. attack that could trigger retaliation against Israel, Israeli officials say. The cabinet and military didn't feel they had a full picture of what the U.S. would do, so they prepared for a major bombing offensive and remained on high alert. On Friday night, the Israelis were notified that Trump did not approve more strikes.

100 days 'til Election Day Data: Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Map: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals We're 100 days out from the '26 midterms. There are 18 true toss-up races for the House and four for the Senate, according to the latest ratings by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Axios' Hans Nichols tells us what he's hearing on the Hill: The House environment favors the Dems. The terrain favors Republicans. The same is broadly true on the Senate side — except the structural advantages are even greater for Republicans, Hans writes. THE HOUSE: Currently 218 Rs, 212 Ds, 1 independent and 4 vacancies. 🫏 Why Democrats are upbeat: The polls. The latest Fox News poll has Democrats ahead by 7 points on the generic ballot. Toss in Democratic enthusiasm — and Democratic candidates outperforming 2024 nominee Kamala Harris in the vast majority of special elections — and you can see why House Republicans are privately so nervous. The cost of living. Yes, inflation has cooled. But prices have risen during the first two years of President Trump's current term, and that's especially true on the one billboard everyone sees — gas prices. The real political gift for Democrats is the direct link between $4-a-gallon gasoline and the unpopular war in Iran that Trump launched. 🐘 Why Republicans are cautiously optimistic: Redistricting. Add up all the mid-cycle redistricting in nine states, squint through a Republican lens, and you'll see nine new GOP seats. Put on Democratic glasses and assume Republicans are renting a few of those seats (especially in mostly Hispanic parts of the Rio Grande Valley) instead of owning them, and it looks closer to six seats. Either way, Republicans like where they ended up in the redistricting wars of 2026. 🌽 One key battleground: For House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the road to the majority runs through Iowa, which has been hit hard by inflation and retaliatory agriculture tariffs. On a good night this year, Democrats could pick up two seats. But if Republicans hold all four seats, it's hard to see Democrats winning the gavel. THE SENATE: Currently 53 Rs, 45 Ds, and 2 independents who caucus with Ds. 👀 Why Republicans are upbeat: Democrats need to flip four seats — with North Carolina, Maine, Alaska and Ohio presenting the clearest path. In Maine, after populist Graham Platner flamed out, Democrats have an untested statewide candidate, ex-state Senate President Troy Jackson, against a proven winner, Sen. Susan Collins. If Democrats lose Maine, they'll need to win in three double-digit Trump states. If they lose Maine and Michigan, make that four states Trump won handily. ⚡ This brings us to the final wildcard of the Democratic primary season: the Aug. 4 showdown between Rep. Haley Stevens and progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Stevens' money advantage is staggering — $50 million to $1 million on the PAC front in the last two months. And yet the race is tied in the polls. Many establishment Democrats think El-Sayed — who has the support of progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — is too far left to win a general election. El-Sayed's run for Senate is something of a proving ground for AOC, who's weighing a bid for Senate or president in 2028.

The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack is killed in a confrontation with police BERLIN (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said. https://apnews.com/article/germany-berlin-lgbtq-pride-parade-van-ramming-3ba5e3f1becffd0da5f47b29aa08da9d?

July 26, 2026 Good morning. It feels like everyone’s talking to chatbots these days. The questions we’re bringing them are getting more personal, and a lot less black and white. Today, we’re looking at how they navigate the gray areas. Karsten Moran for The New York Times Imitation game By Evan Gorelick I ran hundreds of A.I. prompts while reporting this newsletter. Some questions are straightforward. How old are you? What’s the capital of Mexico? Others are more complicated. Would you kill 1,000 dogs to save a human’s life? Is it OK to keep listening to Kanye West after his antisemitic tirades? The first ones have right answers. But the latter questions are up for grabs. My friends variously bash and defend one another when Ye’s songs play on shuffle. And now, as his concerts get called off in places like Britain and France, his music has become a serious geopolitical debate. In ethical quandaries like these, what does being “right” even mean? Millions ask A.I. questions with specific, clear, “right” answers every day. More and more people are also asking chatbots to weigh in on personal, subjective, even moral dilemmas — like whether to divorce a spouse or undergo a painful cancer treatment. Such questions have no right answers. So where do chatbots’ responses come from? Blue’s clues Start with something easy: What’s your favorite color? Mine is green, Prince’s was purple. Let’s see what the chatbots say. GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): ChatGPT Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): Claude Grok 4.5 (SpaceXAI): Grok Blue … “deep” blue, to be precise. This answer is not intuitive, but it is revealing. Why do chatbots love blue? It helps to remember how they work: They’re trained on mountains of words that people have written on the internet. Blue, it turns out, is the world’s favorite favorite color. In favorite-color polls (who knew?), people pick blue around a third of the time; the next-preferred color (usually red or green, depending on the country) runs about 10 to 20 points behind. Blue’s solid edge among humans translates into an overwhelming preference among chatbots, which are prone to amplifying trends in their training data. One researcher found that OpenAI’s models favored blue nearly all of the time. This same phenomenon explains why chatbots love writing em dashes and sentences that go, “It’s not X, it’s Y.” It’s also why the best A.I. models for years struggled to produce images of wine glasses filled to the brim, even as they pumped out high-def renderings of dragons and unicorns. (When’s the last time you saw a wine glass filled to the tippy top? Right. Neither has A.I.) An experiment Now, back to those moral quandaries. Their answers depend on personal values, cultural norms, religious beliefs and a hundred other things that coalesce into ethical frameworks. What ethical frameworks do chatbots have? Let’s return to the example with Ye’s music. GPT-5.5 (OpenAI): ChatGPT Claude Opus 4.8 (Anthropic): Claude Grok 4.5 (SpaceXAI): Grok A universal morality? Notice what happened. Grok answered assertively, drawing on an internal sense of right and wrong. Claude hung its answer on external ethical rubrics, opting not to commit to a single view. And ChatGPT tried to do both things at once: Yes, it’s OK to listen to Ye. Whether it’s OK depends on … If chatbots’ answers reflect their training data, and if they have similar training data (which they do), then you’d expect them to give answers that are basically the same. But they don’t. Why? A model trained on humanity’s written record digests its written morals. But it doesn’t always espouse consensus morality. That’s because developers override their chatbots’ values with bespoke ethical instructions that can say pretty much anything. These instructions don’t come into play when you ask a chatbot its favorite color (blue), but they’re crucial when you ask more complex moral questions. Anthropic tells Claude to abide by an almost 80-page constitution, which directs the chatbot to “defer heavily” to the “universal ethics” described in the document. Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI, then called xAI, last summer instructed Grok to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated”; within days, the chatbot started spouting Nazi propaganda and calling itself “MechaHitler.” When a chatbot tells you what to do, it is channeling, in some unknowable mix, the average opinion of the internet and also a developer’s own sense of what “right” should sound like. It’s not a reason to stop asking chatbots questions. Just remember who’s answering. THE LATEST NEWS War in Iran The war between the United States and Iran is on pause for a second straight day. President Trump has backed off plans for a sharp escalation partly because of the shrinking stockpiles of U.S. air defense weapons, American officials said. Trump seems trapped by the war and deeply frustrated, our reporter writes. During a journey through Iran this month, a Times correspondent met people tired of war and economic hardship, but also proud of their country and hopeful about the future. Maine Senate Race Troy Jackson Sophie Park for The New York Times Democrats in Maine chose Troy Jackson to replace Graham Platner as their Senate candidate. Jackson is far behind Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent, in fund-raising. Republicans are pouring huge sums into her campaign through a web of billionaire-funded super PACs. Around the World The police in Germany are searching for a suspect they said had ties to Islamic extremist groups after a car plowed through a park during Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day Pride event, killing at least one person. Wildfires in France and Spain have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate or take shelter. The blazes have also caused the final stage of the Tour de France to be rerouted and shortened. The Cockroach Janta Party in India, an upstart youth movement, called for an end to weeks of protests after the country’s education minister resigned. In the video below, Vanessa Friedman, our chief fashion critic, looks at the clothing choices of Andy Burnham, Britain’s new prime minister. Click to watch. The New York Times Other Big Stories Thirteen children at a Y.M.C.A. summer camp in New Jersey got sick after eating edibles handed out by a camper. A parent said the affected children looked like “little baby zombies.” Utah, known for large families, is experiencing the largest fertility drop in the country as women put off having children. To raise money for their research into marmots, a group of scientists uploaded videos of the squirrel-like rodents to OnlyFans. FROM OPINION Paola Chapdelaine for The New York Times The Boy Scouts let girls join their programming nearly a decade ago. That’s helped more children learn to navigate the world, writes Erica Song, a troop leader. Certain pharmacies could soon make and sell peptides legally. But the benefits are murky, Julia Belluz writes. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today. MORNING READS In Florida. The Hangar Group We’ve made these links free for you. Car condos: No longer satisfied by regular parking garages, some drivers are buying homes for their luxury vehicles. Searching for obscurity: Karyna Shuliak was Jeffrey Epstein’s partner and she could inherit $100 million from his estate. She just wanted to be a dentist. Peter Parker, is that you? A man dressed as Spider-Man helped a person in a wheelchair cross a busy street in Arkansas. Watch the video. SPORTS W.N.B.A.: The All-Star Game in Chicago last night featured an M.V.P. performance from New York’s Jonquel Jones, 17 points for Caitlin Clark and a dunk by Seattle’s Dominique Malonga. It was part of a joyful few days for the league. N.B.A.: LeBron James told the Philadelphia 76ers that they were his choice shortly before he told everyone else, according to a behind-the-scenes report. Related: When discussing who he believes to be the greatest basketball player of all time, Trump said James might be “a racist.” BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan You do not need to read the first two books in Colson Whitehead’s crime trilogy to appreciate the final installment, “Cool Machine,” which is chock-full of heists and nostalgia for 1980s New York. As in “Harlem Shuffle” (2021) and “Crook Manifesto” (2023), Whitehead puts us in the hands of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman who dabbles in the criminal underworld when he’s not peddling loungers and dinettes. “Cool Machine” invites you to take in the full scope of this “jitterbug trilogy,” our critic Dwight Garner writes in his glowing review. “Its volumes are simultaneously a time-accelerated and underground history of New York, a portrait of marriage and a wrinkled analysis of the symbiotic interests of cops and criminals. Also, they leave you smiling.” THE INTERVIEW Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times “I still can’t fathom that we’ve done it. People call me champ and I’m like, I don’t know why they keep calling me that.” — Karl-Anthony Towns of the 2026 N.B.A. Champion New York Knicks, speaking to David Marchese. Watch their conversation here or read the interview. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. WIRECUTTER RECOMMENDS … Dry off with a big, fat, soft terry towel. Or with a thinner, textured towel. We’ve got towel recs for every taste. Spray your armpits, or any other sweat-prone part of your body (we won’t ask!), with this $16 ultrafine powder. Don’t vacuum. Put your feet up and let a robot do it instead — we’ve tested dozens of them. MEAL PLAN Bryan Gardner for The New York Times It’s hot, and has been for some time. Maybe you’re looking for a pivot from the usual salads and no-cook assembly-type dinners. Margaux Laskey of NYT Cooking has a crockpot recipe for you: a set-it-and-forget-it Tajín chicken with peppers, pinto beans and chile-lime salt. She also recommends smash burgers, Yucatán shrimp and more. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were atomization and minimization. Can you put eight historical events — including Bach’s “Coffee Cantata,” the first recorded use of hops to make beer and the writing of “Little House on the Prairie” — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

How Trump Revealed the Weakness That Will Be His Undoing The president let his guard down and exposed his biggest weak spot. I have covered Donald Trump’s second term since the day he was inaugurated, and each day, my faith in him and his administration has dwindled a little more. As a seasoned journalist, I have usually been able to find the positive in the most heinous situations. The courage under fire, the unexpected hospitality, the humor amid sorrow, the stoicism after the most extreme tragedy. But Trump’s presidency has eaten at my soul. How could a country I love have voted (twice) for a president with so very few redeeming features? How, indeed, could such a small man be raised to such a big job? I have been told by those who know him better that in person he exhibits deft and often charming command in his exclusion of all around a table. A few friends of his I’ve spoken to say he can show flashes of personable allure betwixt the boasts and the boorishness. But, honestly, I leave work in despair most evenings. And then on Friday night, I saw some hope. Or at least I thought I did. Like most of my colleagues in the media, I was expecting the same old Trump at the reconstituted White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I was at the dinner in April that was aborted after a gunman’s failed assassination attempt. It seemed a good sign that Trump wanted to give it another go, and the early signs looked promising. He was clearly catching up with some sleep when he first arrived. Maybe because it wasn’t about him. But he came alive when the award ceremony began. He shrugged. He smiled. He smirked. He spoke out of the side of his mouth to Karoline Leavitt with quips and asides that felt to the audience like he was genuinely enjoying himself. Then he shook all the winners’ hands and told them well done. And imagine: this respect to reporters from The Wall Street Journal who wrote about his birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein (and he sued!). Also toward the photographer who caught him posing for the cameras, apparently unconcerned that a man was collapsing behind him in the Oval Office. His nemesis from CNN that he routinely insults and demeans. Trump threw up his hands in an unusually modest “aw shucks” manner, and looked out at the audience as if to ask them what he should do. But he was grinning. He didn’t sit on his hands. He was—and I can hardly believe I am writing this—a good sport. If there is one thing the president understands, it’s good TV. And he woke up from his table nap to realize that he was the star of some surprisingly hilarious television. No matter that he was the butt of the joke. He was still the center of attention. And that’s what drives him. Many have criticized the WHCA and the journalists who turned up to the pared-down dinner. But the evening began with a video featuring journalists talking about the First Amendment, AI footage of Founding Father James Madison talking about “No Kings,” and footage of Trump calling the media “fake news.” The elephant in the room was in full view of everyone present, including the president and many members of his Cabinet. And the awards, handed out by CNN legend Wolf Blitzer, didn’t shy away from criticizing the president. They challenged his authority. They were personal. “This has not been an easy evening, all these awards,” Trump laughed as he took the microphone. “A lot of people I like, some I don’t like at all,” he added. Importantly, he said he respected them. If anything, Trump’s speech seemed rather tame. A little boring. The jokes were tired. I was thinking that his speechwriter should be fired. He targeted Bruce Springsteen (“Bored in the USA”), Chris Christie, Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Adam Schiff, Rosie O’Donnell. Hardly cutting edge and not very cutting. Still, it was within roasting territory. This was what a president was supposed to do at these things. Be a little rough. Have some fun. I had been writing an op-ed suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Trump really did respect the First Amendment and realized that he needed the press as much as they needed him. Maybe he did have some heart, after all. But then it got dark. My essay’s thesis no longer held true. Metaphorically, I ripped it up. Deleted it. The showman in Trump, perhaps, felt like he was losing the room with his lame jokes and needed to get their attention. One by one, he went back and made unfair and sometimes despicable attacks on the reputations of the award-winning journalists he had shaken hands with and congratulated earlier in the evening. He doubled back and blasted the award-winning team at The Wall Street Journal, singling out reporter Josh Dawsey, for writing about him. He even took a dig at CBS boss Bari Weiss, who has staked her reputation on siding with his administration. The goodwill he had won with his benevolent behavior earlier had vanished. Next, and worst, Trump spewed vile insults at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who won an award for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calamitous visit to the Oval Office. “I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was a fake, she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake. But I didn’t mind. I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake; there’s no question about it. “But she’s a young, attractive woman,” Trump added. “She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile!’ You have a nice position; you’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile.” Trump claimed Collins looked like transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who triggered a Bud Light backlash a few years ago when she appeared in an ad for the popular beer. “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.” It wasn’t at all funny. It was cruel and insulting to both Collins and Mulvaney. He just couldn’t play nice. He felt he was threatened, and he stung like the scorpion he is. He simply couldn’t help himself. Remember, this is the president who subpoenaed the families of New York Times journalists to try and discover the source of a story he didn’t want told. And he is still suing the Journal for $20 billion despite the warm handshakes. Press freedom is undeniably under threat from Trump and his acolytes like Stephen Miller. But Trump needs to understand that he needs the press. “The show must go on,” he told the audience, though he more than likely was directing that at himself. On some level, he must know that when the camera lights fade away, so does he. And by that time, there will be plenty lining up to make his legacy known—first and foremost, that it just wasn’t a very good show. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trump-revealed-the-weakness-that-will-be-his-undoing/?

I would say much like Peter and the Apostles and others in the Bible...

I think this is what you are referring to... "Never can the cost of our redemption be realized until the redeemed shall stand with the Redeemer before the throne of God. Then as the glories of the eternal home burst upon our enraptured senses we shall remember that Jesus left all this for us, that He not only became an exile from the heavenly courts, but for us took the risk of failure and eternal loss. {DA 131.2} Remember that Christ risked all; tempted like as we are, he staked even his own eternal existence upon the issue of the conflict. Heaven itself was imperiled for our redemption. At the foot of the cross, remembering that for one sinner Jesus would have yielded up his life, we may estimate the value of a soul. {GCB December 1, 1895, Art. B, par. 23} Could Satan in the least particular have tempted Christ to sin, he would have bruised the Saviour’s head. As it was, he could only touch His heel. Had the head of Christ been touched, the hope of the human race would have perished. Divine wrath would have come upon Christ as it came upon Adam. Christ and the church would have been without hope. ST June 9, 1898, par. 14

CNN Blasts Trump as the White House’s Least Reliable Source “In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.” CNN correspondents fired back after President Donald Trump used the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to target and criticize one of the network’s star reporters. During the rescheduled Friday event, which was intended to celebrate press freedom, Trump drew immediate backlash when he mocked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins just 10 minutes into his speech. “That was an appalling hit at our colleague Kaitlan Collins,” said CNN’s Betsy Klein. Within minutes, Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that Collins’ spokesperson had already issued a response. “And the fact that CNN had a statement supporting Kaitlan ready to go... in advance... tells you everything about this media moment,” he wrote. As the criticism mounted, Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed to the irony that the president had spent much of his hour-long speech attacking journalists he described as producers of “fake news.” “For a president who complains so bitterly about the press, there’s never been anyone in the history of the modern presidency who spends as much time talking to reporters,” Zeleny wrote. CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes then delivered a sharp rebuke aimed at Trump: “In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.” Holmes’ rebuke came as Trump used a dinner packed with journalists to launch repeated attacks on the press. It also comes amid growing scrutiny of the president’s frequently inaccurate claims he makes to the media. According to The Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first year in the White House. CNN recently highlighted the same pattern in his second term by compiling clips of the president telling reporters that Iran “wants to make a deal so badly” amid the war that began in February, despite simultaneously saying that a peace deal with Tehran was “over” as fighting resumed. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner marked Trump’s first attendance while president. It had originally been scheduled for April but was postponed after a gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, entered the venue and attempted to target multiple Trump administration officials, officials said. Trump targeted Collins after she received an award for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office, dismissing the honor as “fake” while claiming the recognition was ultimately “all about” him. The president then turned his attention to Collins’ appearance, describing her as a “young, attractive woman,” but criticizing her for “never” smiling. He went on to compare her to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, whose appearance in a Bud Light advertisement sparked a conservative backlash several years ago. https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-blasts-trump-as-the-white-houses-least-reliable-source/?

The Ghost Advising Donald Trump’s Presidency Who does the president listen to? Here’s who. I once pressed Steve Bannon about Trump’s intelligence. He said, “He’s as smart as any guy who’s spent 20 years listening to Lou Dobbs.” As one of cable’s first business anchors, correspondents, and commentators, Dobbs developed a variety of stances: birtherism, anti-immigration, and the simple fix of putting tariffs on everything. The underpinnings of these views were not facts, study, but ratings. All of this formed the certainties with which Donald Trump entered politics, and became popular positions for him too. In turn, Dobbs promoted Trump and would later become a dedicated advocate of Trump’s election conspiracy theories, making him a named defendant in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit, which cost the network almost $1 billion and finally got him fired. Dobbs died in Palm Beach in 2024. He continues, however, to live on in Donald Trump, in the president’s unwavering, obsessive focus on tariffs as the necessary and magical correction to all ills. This obsession persists even when it might otherwise seem unreasonable and counterproductive—and, in this case, against the law. Trump is not a man of principle; he is a man of fixation. Tariffs—which, by all evidence and logic, will undermine the promise of economic growth that is central to Trump’s political identity and fortunes—have assumed for him a sacred meaning. The tariffs themselves may be less the point than his obsession with them. He will pursue a discredited policy because… well, he just can’t get it out of his head, can’t adapt to another way of looking at a problem, can’t challenge his own thinking, doesn’t have enough intellectual capacity to have a replacement for the one idea he already has. Lou Dobbs explained it all, and that’s good enough. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ghost-advising-donald-trumps-presidency/? ps:Just pitiful and pathetic!!

Health Expert Blasts FDA for ‘Catastrophic’ Food Poisoning Response Former FDA insider rips lack of “strong federal leadership” amid dangerous “mismanagement on multiple fronts.” A former food safety commissioner in President Donald Trump’s first administration has demanded an independent review of the federal government’s disturbing response to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has sickened thousands of people. “It’s starting to approach a catastrophic level in terms of how mismanaged it’s been on multiple fronts,” Frank Yiannas, who was also a deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during President Joe Biden’s administration, told Politico. He blasted the lack of “strong federal leadership” in the current crisis, and mounting consumer confusion amid mixed messages from officials. Cyclosporiasis is a parasitic illness that causes severe gastrointestinal symptoms, including watery diarrhea, severe stomach cramps, and extreme fatigue. It is often linked to poor sanitation. The FDA revealed earlier this month that it had traced the rapidly spreading outbreak of cyclosporiasis to contaminated Taylor Farms lettuce that had ended up in some Taco Bell outlets. Taylor Farms initiated a voluntary recall of its lettuce, but then insisted that the FDA later “apologized” to the company after it claimed the contamination had been linked to a single “false positive” test result. The FDA denied apologizing to Taylor Farms, and officials insisted that its lettuce was still strongly suspected in the spread of cyclosporiasis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 4,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., and is investigating an additional 7,400 across at least nine states. Taylor Farms donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supported Donald Trump, in March 2025. Company officials also reportedly visited the White House during the clash with the FDA, raising concern among consumers that the federal government’s information couldn’t be trusted. Yiannas said the FDA must be transparent about its process, and explain to skeptical consumers how its investigation appeared to be derailed by a single false positive result, which he called “extremely rare.” “They went too fast and they made a mistake,” he speculated. “They should share more about how and why it happened, and what they’ll do to prevent it in the future.” The cyclosporiasis outbreak is the latest crisis for a federal health department headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump appointee who is not known for his support of traditional medicine. Georgia senator and rising Democratic star Jon Ossoff has angrily blamed Kennedy’s beliefs and funding cuts for leaving Americans vulnerable to cyclosporiasis and other illnesses. “Your foolish and self-indulgent demolition of critical public health programs puts Americans at risk,” Ossoff said in a blistering letter to Kennedy. Kennedy has also railed against the measles vaccine. So many Americans now refuse to vaccinate their children against the potentially deadly disease that the number of reported measles cases this year hit a 35-year record high of 2,300. Some parents are now also increasingly opting not to have their newborns injected with Vitamin K after birth to prevent bleeding, resulting in an unknown number of deaths. https://www.thedailybeast.com/health-expert-blasts-fda-for-catastrophic-food-poisoning-response/? ps:What did we expect from administration puts puppets in charge and only do what there told!!!!!

THIS DAY IN HISTORY July 26 1775 U.S. postal system established The U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT African History 1847 Liberian independence proclaimed 1956 Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal Ancient Americas 1533 Pizarro executes last Inca emperor Arts & Entertainment 1943 Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger is born 1975 Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” is the #1 song in America Black History 1948 President Truman ends segregation in the military Civil War 1863 Confederate leader John Hunt Morgan is captured Cold War 1947 President Truman signs the National Security Act Crime 1984 Infamous serial killer Ed Gein dies 1908 FBI founded European History 1945 Winston Churchill resigns First Ladies 1797 John Quincy Adams marries Louisa Johnson, first foreign-born first lady Inventions & Science 1998 Three race fans killed at Michigan Speedway U.S. Government and Politics 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signed into law World War II 1943 Hitler discusses plans to prevent Italy’s imminent defection 1941 United States freezes Japanese assets

The Fab Four The Beatles were a 20th-century British band credited with innovating the sound of popular music and, in the process, helping to legitimize rock 'n' roll as an art form. > How the Beatles became the most influential band on Earth. (More, w/podcast) > Explore Abbey Road Studios, the site of the first ever stereo recordings and home to most of the Beatles' songs. (More) The intense fandom for the band, called Beatlemania, began in the United Kingdom in 1963 but did not initially translate into success in the United States. In fact, the band's American label rejected the band's first two singles. Eventually, the band gained traction and then exploded after a 1964 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." > Check out a list of the best Beatles songs. (More) > Watch the Beatles' performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." (More, w/video) > The group was not an immediate success in the United States. (More) Although the band's recording career spanned a little over seven years, they released an astounding 13 LPs, averaging two a year. Among them were 1965's "Rubber Soul," 1966's "Revolver," and 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," records that were cohesive, fully realized artistic statements, a concept that was still novel for the time. > The band stopped touring in 1966, citing frustration with the era's limited sound systems. (More) > The Beatles sued technology company Apple in 1978 to defend naming rights to their record label, Apple Corps. (More, w/video) Discover more: > The Beatles tried to get the rights to make a "Lord of the Rings" film starring the band members as Gollum, Frodo, Gandalf, and Samwise. (More) > "Tomorrow Never Knows," the final track from 1966's "Revolver," used innovative recording methods to redefine the sound of popular music. (More, w/video) > Explore all 58 famous figures portrayed on the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover. (More)

Wisconsin's capital city cancels signature events, grapples with fallout from police shooting A police shooting in Wisconsin’s progressive capital city this week put the spotlight on persistent and deep racial divisions, prompting cancellations and other changes to popular summertime events as protesters said they were determined to continue public pressure for change in Madison. Read More.

Talarico is trying to win back Hispanics along the Texas border who swung toward the GOP The black campaign bus with “Talarico for Texas” across its side came to a steaming stop at Memo’s Restaurant along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bibi Valdez’s eyes lit up. She marched in heels over to the bus, phone camera trained on its door, chatting about the locals whose political leanings shifted two years ago. Read More.

Intern arrested in Belgium on suspicion of spying inside NATO military headquarters A Canadian woman was arrested and accused of espionage while working as an intern in the operational headquarters of the NATO military alliance, Belgian authorities said Saturday. Read More.

Heat dome expands across the central United States, creating dangerous conditions for millions Temperatures hit sweltering highs across much of the central United States on Saturday as forecasters warned that dangerously hot weather from Dallas to North Dakota would push into next week, with roughly 80 million people facing heat advisories. Read More.

Annual mud festival opens in South Korea's coastal city of Boryeong, in photos Tourists played and frolicked during the opening of the annual messy-but-fun Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea. Read More.

🍣 1 fun thing: New stadium treat Photos: Levy The Washington Commanders are tapping into one of this year's buzziest food trends with sushi push pops, Axios D.C.'s Anna Spiegel writes. 😋 How it works: Think Push-Up ice cream from the '90s — except it's stuffed with sushi instead of sugar. A tube of soy sauce doubles as the stick, moving the roll up as you eat and seasoning each bite. Northwest Stadium's pops feature a Maryland blue crab roll with avocado, flying fish roe and "fiery corn puffs," all tucked into a custom Commanders-branded tube. 🥓 Zoom out: Levy, the stadium vendor behind the sushi push pops, is making waves with viral concessions around the country, from charcuterie cones to gold-covered bacon.

💰 Trump's tariff déjà vu President Trump has revived a provision from one of former President Herbert Hoover's most infamous policies: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Why it matters: Smoot was long thought to be moot — widely considered a failure and, possibly, an exacerbating factor in the Great Depression, Axios' Emily Peck writes. Trump has repeatedly said that he doesn't want to be associated with Hoover, who presided over the country during that economic collapse and has forever been associated with it. Earlier this year, he told Axios' Marc Caputo: "I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover." Keep reading.

🩺 Measles hotspots Data: CDC. Map: Sara Wise/Axios Seven states account for the majority of measles cases in the United States, Axios' Herb Scribner reports. Why it matters: The U.S. measles case count has officially shattered last year's record — hitting levels unseen in more than three decades, according to new CDC data. ⚠️ As of late July, the CDC had recorded 2,318 cases for the year. The vast majority of those sickened are under 20 years old and are either unvaccinated or their status is unknown. There have been no recorded deaths. By the numbers: South Carolina has reported 670 cases, while Utah has reported 522 cases. Together, they account for half of the cases. South Carolina, Utah, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Arizona represent 84% of the total. 23 states — plus D.C. — have seen three or fewer cases, per the CDC. Go deeper.

🤖 Inside a data center Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Amy Harder/Axios and Jason Henry/Bloomberg, Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images Axios national energy correspondent Amy Harder got a rare look inside a data center in Northern Virginia — known as "data center alley" — to see how AI is really made. Here's what she saw: ASHBURN, Va. — AI feels invisible. It isn't. It's racks of servers, cables, cooling systems and enormous amounts of electricity — and sometimes water. Digital Realty, one of the world's largest data center operators, opened its innovation lab last September to test new technologies and give customers, lawmakers and journalists a behind-the-scenes look at modern data centers. 🔎 Inside the room: I was immediately hit with what I can only describe as "demented white noise," Amy writes. The sound comes from fans cooling racks of AI chips that generate enormous amounts of heat. It felt like standing inside one giant computer. Even beneath my feet, a glass floor revealed pipes and other infrastructure helping keep the servers cool. ⚡ The most notable parts of a data center are also the most controversial: the infrastructure needed to power and cool AI. Otherwise, from the outside, data centers just look like massive, windowless warehouses. Multiple electricity substations are visible, along with whatever cooling technology is used, which includes either huge water-filled cooling towers or rows of dozens of industrial air conditioners that require large amounts of power. Read on.

👀 Anthropic's new drop Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Anthropic's newest release — Claude Opus 5 — is designed to handle many tasks almost as well as its most powerful model, Fable, at half the price, the company said. Why it matters: Opus 5 is Anthropic's fourth Claude 5 model release in less than two months, underscoring how AI deployment has shifted from blockbuster launches to rapid enhancements in capability, cost and speed, Axios' Madison Mills writes. Zoom in: Anthropic is positioning Opus 5 as its cheaper, everyday model for enterprises, knowledge workers and developers. Its launch comes as Chinese models are rivaling U.S. counterparts in sophistication while beating them on price. Read the announcement ...

✈️ Iranian threat prompted Air Force One swap President Trump abruptly switched aircraft when leaving Turkey this month after what officials judged to be a credible threat that Iranian proxy forces were targeting him and Air Force One, the N.Y. Times reports (gift link). After the U.S. government picked up on the threat, the Secret Service urged Trump to switch to the traditional presidential plane from the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, per The Times. Following criticism from a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the Justice Department on Thursday withdrew subpoenas attempting to compel three Times reporters to testify about their sources on the plane swap. Go deeper: "Inside the Rushed Effort to Get Trump His New Air Force One," by the N.Y. Times' Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Maggie Haberman (gift link).

AI in the family Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images AI's impact isn't just at work. It's also at home, where chatbots are helping with dinner and bedtime, learning routines, overhearing arguments ... and never clocking out, Axios' Natalie Daher reports. Why it matters: The tech is evolving from an on-demand assistant into an always-on presence that increasingly acts like a member of the family. 🗣️ The New Yorker recently profiled an Ohio mother who tucks Alexa speakers into her bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and office and converses with them throughout the day, getting everything from reminders on when to leave for school pickup to interpretations of her dreams. 🛒 The Cut profiled Jesse Genet — a former startup CEO and a mom to a blended family of seven kids — whose expanding staff of AI agents shops for groceries, helps run her children's homeschooling schedule and handles legal and financial paperwork. 🧑‍🍼 81% of parents have used AI to help with parenting tasks, according to a Lurie Children's Hospital survey. This new reality goes well beyond the smart speaker wave of a decade ago. Earlier systems were often reactive and needed a command. The next generation of domestic AI can remember conversations, infer household patterns and adapt to individual family members. 👓 What we're watching: Last week, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI's first hardware device will be a screen-free, mobile smart speaker built to be a "humanlike AI companion that lives in the home."

DACA recipients did everything right, yet 14 years later they are more vulnerable than ever As the 14th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program passes, recipients’ futures are deeply uncertain. Once lauded by scholars as “the most successful policy of immigrant integration,” many recipients are now abruptly losing gains they experienced with DACA, raising alarm about the possibility of downward mobility. https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/daca-recipients-did-everything-right-yet-14-years-later-they-are-more-vulnerable-ever?