Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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📺 Trump's media legal battles skyrocket

Data: Axios research. Chart: Christine Wang/Axios Media-related lawsuits involving President Trump — along with a broader set of Trump-related defamation cases — have surged over the past two years compared with the decade prior, Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn write. Trump, his businesses and his administration have been involved in 61 media and defamation lawsuits since 2015, including 16 in 2025 and nine so far in 2026, according to an Axios analysis. Keep reading ...

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Trump says US and Canada reached last-minute deal to delay 50% tariffs The two sides reached agreement less than two hours before the sanctions were to go into effect for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States. They agreed to a three-day delay while negotiations continued. Read more.

Why this matters: The deal avoids, for now, another strain in already tense relations between the historic allies. A White House proclamation said Canada had expressed a commitment to remove measures the Trump administration considers discriminatory against U.S. alcohol, dairy and motor vehicle exports. Canada did not immediately confirm those commitments. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement “substantial progress” had been made but that important work remained.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Ex-Fauci adviser pleads guilty to plotting to conceal COVID-19 research records during pandemic Trump administration moves ahead to end roadless rule on national forests Whistleblower alleges political pressure, lack of evidence in antisemitism probes targeting schools ICC slams US decision to sanction the court’s president and a senior prosecution lawyer  Preservation group urges Supreme Court to suspend Trump’s White House ballroom project Judge rules paint tests on Eisenhower Building can proceed, advancing Trump’s makeover plans for now

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South Korean and US militaries shorten exercises at Trump’s order South Korea’s military said in a statement the ongoing drills with the U.S. would end Friday, not Aug. 27 as initially planned, while the allies also agreed to downsize some joint field training exercises. Read more.

Why this matters: President Donald Trump had ordered his Pentagon chief to downsize joint drills just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support him over Iran. The move likely reflected Trump’s hopes to reengage with Kim but could undermine U.S.-South Korean defense readiness.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump says US has no talks planned with Iran Trump is threatening to bomb Oman, but why?

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Trump’s Deportation Ploy Blows Up in His Face

Last-ditch efforts to keep ICE out of the headlines appear to have been in vain.

The Trump administration’s push to keep ICE out of the headlines before the midterms does not appear to have convinced voters, with half of Americans saying its immigration crackdown is still too aggressive.

After the White House faced bipartisan backlash over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents earlier this year, President Donald Trump ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Her successor, Markwayne Mullin, pledged to make the White House’s mass deportation campaign more discreet, including by making fewer arrests in public. He also threw Noem under the bus by publicly calling her signature billion-dollar warehouse crusade a mistake in humiliating testimony.

But with less than three months until the midterm elections, a Politico poll published Wednesday suggests the makeover has failed to shift public opinion.

Half of Americans, including nearly a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, still say the 80-year-old president’s immigration campaign is too aggressive, according to Politico. That figure is “virtually unchanged” from polling in January and April, when outrage mounted over federal agents killing U.S. citizens Renee Good, 37, and Alex Pretti, 37.

Non-MAGA Trump voters are more than twice as likely as self-identified MAGA voters to believe that Trump’s mass deportation campaign has gone too far, with 31 percent describing it as too aggressive compared with 15 percent of MAGA voters, according to the poll conducted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 12.

The findings point to a potential vulnerability for Republicans heading into the November midterms on an issue that has traditionally been a source of strength for the party.“Voters really did want border security, but they did not want to see abuelita taken away because she’s been here for 40 years but without documentation,” Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson told Politico.

The poll, conducted by London-based polling firm Public First, found a notable proportion of Americans have noticed the administration’s attempts to change course. But those changes have done little to improve trust.

A 56 percent majority of Americans say there has been at least a “small shift” in how ICE is carrying out its immigration crackdown. But 44 percent of those respondents say the changes have made no difference in how much they trust the administration, while 30 percent say they have made them less willing to trust officials on immigration.

Whit Ayres, a Washington-based Republican pollster, told Politico that the stubborn public opposition is “not that surprising at all.”

Even with a lower-profile approach, the administration is still pushing to ramp up arrest and deportation numbers.

“It’s a lot easier just to go into an airport and find somebody who had overstayed a visa, had applied for an extension … and throw them into handcuffs and put them in a detention center. That’s the easy way to get the numbers up, and a great way to thoroughly antagonize public opinion,” he said.

Another Republican strategist, who spoke with Politico on the condition of anonymity, said Trump “ran on border security, and he’s following through.”

“But the visuals of wins are unfortunately overshadowed by the visuals of chaos,” they said. “There’s no question that the wall-to-wall coverage of the chaos that follows ICE makes voters squeamish.”

When contacted for comment, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told the Daily Beast that “Americans sent President Trump back to the White House with a clear mandate to deport criminal illegal aliens.”

“Every single day the Trump Administration is delivering on his promise to the American people to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members from American communities,” she added. “Americans are grateful to the President for removing these criminals from their neighborhoods and for Making America Safe Again.”

ICE raids during Trump’s second term in the White House drew headlines for sparking protests nationwide. The aggressive enforcement campaign has also put pressure on the agents tasked with carrying it out.

John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, told Politico in an interview published last fall that ICE agents were “under tremendous pressure.”

“They’ve been under a lot of pressure to ratchet up the number of arrests. They’ve been forced to adopt some of these more aggressive tactics, because the [Trump] administration seems more interested in the quantity of people arrested, more so than the quality,” said Sandweg.

Reuters reported in July that at least seven people have been killed in immigration enforcement operations since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, while 53 people have died in ICE custody since the president’s second term began.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-deportation-ploy-blows-up-in-his-face/?

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Trump’s New Deportation Plot ‘Looks Like Human Trafficking’

A new draft contract for the administration’s self-deportation scheme has been branded “gross and un-American.”

The Trump administration is looking to pay up to $2.3 billion for a follow-on to its scandal-hit self-deportation scheme that will include payouts for unaccompanied migrant kids who “choose” to remove themselves. The original $915 million award went to Salus Worldwide Solutions in May 2025, a company barely two years old with no prior work as a lead federal contractor that has since faced corruption allegations over how it won the contract. The new deal contains no provisions for protecting the children it intends to target, and states their payouts will go only to “Government-designated adult recipients.” Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an award-winning immigration attorney, told PunchUp, the Daily Beast’s sister Substack, that the arrangement “looks and feels a lot like human trafficking.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, called the focus on minors “gross and un-American.” The new contract also contains provisions for crews to enroll migrants already detained at 35 facilities, with mobile “rover” units roaming across the country on request. A DHS spokesperson said it would be “inappropriate to comment” until the award process ends. Salus did not respond to requests for comment.

Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.

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Trump picks Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, to lead the Food and Drug Administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, has been picked to lead the Food and Drug Administration, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday.

https://apnews.com/article/fda-donald-trump-heidi-overton-marty-makary-a54907d62a2482bd462410c0778266b9?

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Guileless Old Party (Anna Moneymaker / Getty)

View in browser For many observers of American politics, the past few years have been disillusioning, knocking down hopeful beliefs about what the people of the United States will support or tolerate. Even some of Donald Trump’s backers have become disaffected. Yet somehow, a small caucus of non-MAGA Republican senators has managed to remain preciously naive about the president and the administration he runs. No matter how many times Trump or his aides show who they are and how they operate, these senators seem flabbergasted and saddened. No case illustrates the ease with which they are fooled like the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Blanche was confirmed last week on a 50–49 vote, but only after GOP Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn extracted a written assurance from Blanche that a $1.8 billion fund for payouts to Trump allies would not proceed. Senator Bill Cassidy also wavered, but said he was persuaded by the vow. (All three men will leave the Senate at the end of this term: Tillis is retiring, and Cornyn and Cassidy lost primaries to Trump-backed challengers.) This weekend, Blanche was interviewed on Meet the Press. Kristen Welker asked whether he could “pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House.” Blanche refused—likely an honest answer, given his demonstrated willingness to follow Trump’s lead, but one that should worry anyone who believes in the rule of law; witness Trump’s repeated demands for political prosecutions, irrespective of evidence. Yet Blanche insisted to Welker that Trump “will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal. He never has. He never will.” That might reassure someone whose political memory stretches back only as far as early August. But anyone old enough to remember the slush fund, or Blanche’s starring role in negotiating it (as laid out by Federal Judge Kathleen Williams in May), would know that Trump not only has asked Blanche to do something unethical, but that Blanche complied. In order to vote to confirm, Cornyn, Tillis, and Cassidy had to convince themselves first that Blanche’s conduct in that case is not indicative of his basic moral compass; and second that he would be more accountable once permanently confirmed by the Senate than he was when he still had to win over their votes. If Trump finds or attempts to find some way to resuscitate the slush fund—as some experts believe he might—many people will be dismayed, but only this trio of guileless senators will be shocked. Cassidy’s willingness to vote for a Trump yes-man is all the more puzzling because he voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, and because the president led the charge to defeat him in a primary. (The impeachment vote was Trump’s main reason for targeting him.) But Cassidy has a long record of credulity. As my colleague Nicholas Florko has reported, Cassidy—a physician—cast a deciding vote to confirm Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but only after the nominee made promises about preserving the existing vaccination regime, a pledge he promptly broke. On ABC’s The Week this past Sunday, Cassidy said “it’s pretty evident” that Kennedy’s vow was a lie. And on CNN’s State of the Union, he called the White House’s latest vaccine move, attempting to unbundle the measles, mumps, and rubella injection, “a crazy, stupid thing.” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, another doctor, voted for Kennedy and has since been upset about the administration’s anti-vaccine steps. Who could have foreseen that the prominent vaccine skeptic would undermine federal vaccination policy? Two other moderate Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted against Blanche’s confirmation, issuing statements that noted the politicization of the Justice Department under his watch as acting attorney general. But they are not always so clear-eyed. Murkowski delivered one of 2025’s most unintentionally hilarious statements when she cast a crucial vote to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act through the Senate. “My sincere hope is that this is not the final product,” Murkowski said in a statement. “This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.” Naturally, that didn’t happen; the mystery is why she thought the White House, or Mike Johnson’s House, would improve the bill once she’d surrendered her leverage. Collins, however, is the dean of the credulous caucus. The Mainer, who faces a tough reelection campaign this fall, is perpetually concerned about Trump-administration actions, but seldom ready to actually use her power. Collins is a rare pro-abortion-rights Republican who previously said she wouldn’t support any Supreme Court nominee who opposed Roe v. Wade. In 2018, she voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who said Roe was “settled as precedent.” When Kavanaugh was part of the majority that voted to overturn Roe in 2022, Collins lamented the ruling but now says she didn’t regret her vote for Kavanaugh and would do it again. More recently, Collins helped pass a huge appropriation for ICE with few strings attached, then expressed dismay at the use of the funds to buy “shock gloves” for agents. Even her vote against Blanche was symbolic, because he had enough votes to be confirmed without her. One could easily write these senators off as cynical, but if they’re acting for political gain, it’s not working well: Cassidy’s and Cornyn’s mild deviations from Trump led to the end of their careers; Tillis’s retirement helped him avoid what might have been a stiff primary challenge. Many of their concerns appear earnest. Perhaps they really just are that gullible, unable to adapt to a Trump age that is leaving them behind. In defending his Blanche vote, Cassidy shrugged off attacks: “I’ll be criticized for this vote. What’s new?” But voters might reasonably expect that their elected officials are savvier about the world than a babe in the woods. Related: Why did Bill Cassidy do it? What Trump officials mean by “never”

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🚨 Bessent's bond alarm

Data: Mortgage Bankers Association. Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios Axios' Courtenay Brown, who co-writes our midday Macro newsletter, explains why you should pay attention to chaos in the bond market: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moved to calm the bond markets yesterday after a recent selloff made mortgages and other consumer loans more expensive. Why it matters: The bond market impacts how much it costs everyone — the government, consumers, and companies — to borrow money. The rising borrowing costs could deepen the affordability crisis, a political problem for President Trump heading into the midterms. Bessent's move to increase repurchases of long-term government notes and bonds (increasing demand for them) is largely symbolic but could still help bring those costs down. 🖼️ The big picture: The bond market is getting squeezed from multiple directions. War in the Middle East is reviving inflation fears, deficits are ballooning, and the AI boom is gobbling up cash — all pushing up the rates investors demand to lend the government money for decades. 🔮 What's next: Wall Street is skeptical the relief will stick, given that the Treasury Department's purchases are tiny compared with the roughly $30 trillion market for government debt. But the signal is important: Washington is showing it is willing to step in as high borrowing costs become an economic and political liability. More on Bessent's move.