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

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?The big number

Chart: Francesco Muzzi for The New Yorker. Used by kind permission President Trump and his family stand to net around $3.4 billion by the end of his second term, David Kirkpatrick reports for The New Yorker in a piece out today, "The Number." Why it matters: No U.S. president has monetized the highest office in the land quite like this. ? "Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies," Kirkpatrick writes. Trump and his family have been profiting from crypto ventures, five mega-projects in the Persian Gulf, luxury gifts, MAGA merch, exclusive club fees and more. Estimates of Trump's personal wealth have ranged from $5 billion to $10 billion. But the true bottom-line profit from his presidential term remains unknown. Go deeper.

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• ? President Trump suggested he's ready to hear Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposals for ending the war in Ukraine and who gets what parts of Ukraine. Trump said he'd "try to get some ... territory back for Ukraine." Go deeper.
• ?? Trump will extend the China tariff truce that expires tomorrow for another 90 days, a White House official told CNBC.
• ⚖️ The Justice Department bid to unseal grand jury transcripts in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking case was rejected. A federal judge dismissed the idea that unsealing the materials would reveal "meaningful new information" as "demonstrably false." Go deeper.

DC National Guard

President Donald Trump declared a public safety emergency in Washington, DC, yesterday, activating 800 DC National Guard members over concerns of violent crime. He also invoked the 1973 Home Rule Act to take control of the city’s police department for a maximum of 30 days. Over 100 FBI agents will be temporarily reassigned to nighttime patrol duties.    Federal data found crime in the district is at a 30-year low. Trump has cast doubt on the findings, pointing to a police commander who was recently suspended for allegedly falsifying crime data. He also highlighted recent violent incidents in DC, including a former DOGE employee who was attacked in a carjacking and an intern for Rep. Ron Estes (R, KS-4) killed last month.    Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee federal control of DC’s police, with DEA Administrator Terry Cole serving as interim federal commissioner. Trump hopes the federal takeover will model crime reduction tactics for other cities. See the US' deadliest cities here.

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Military as a Prop (Andrew Leyden / Nurphoto / Reuters)

View in browser For years, prominent voices on the right argued that Democrats were enacting a police state. They labeled everything—a report on homegrown extremism, IRS investigations into nonprofits—a sign of impending authoritarianism. Measures taken by state governments to combat the spread of COVID? Tyranny. An FBI search of Mar-a-Lago? The weaponization of law enforcement. Now that a president is actually sending federal troops and officers out into the streets of the nation’s cities, however, the right is in lockstep behind him. This morning, Donald Trump announced that he was declaring a crime emergency, temporarily seizing control of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department and deploying the D.C. National Guard to the nation’s capital. “This is liberation day in D.C.,” Trump said. Nothing says liberation like deploying hundreds of uniformed soldiers against the wishes of the local elected government. District residents have made clear that they would prefer greater autonomy, including congressional representation, and they have three times voted overwhelmingly against Trump. His response is not just to flex power but to treat the District of Columbia as the president’s personal fiefdom. Trump’s move is based on out-of-date statistics. It places two officials without municipal policing experience in positions of power over federalization and the MPD, and seems unlikely to significantly affect crime rates. What the White House hopes it might achieve, Politico reports, is “a quick, visually friendly PR win.” Trump needs that after more than a month of trying and failing to change the subject from his onetime friend Jeffrey Epstein. But what this PR stunt could also do is create precedent for Trump to send armed forces out into American streets whenever he declares a spurious state of emergency. Some of Trump’s supporters don’t seem to mind that fact: “Trump has the opportunity to do a Bukele-style crackdown on DC crime,” Christopher Rufo, the influential conservative personality, posted on X, referring to Nayib Bukele, the Trump ally who is president of El Salvador. “Question is whether he has the will, and whether the public the stomach. Big test: Can he reduce crime faster than the Left advances a counternarrative about ‘authoritarianism’? If yes, he wins. Speed matters.” Rufo seems to view everything in terms of a political battle to be won via narratives; the term authoritarianism appears to mean nothing to him, and maybe it never meant anything to others on the right who assailed Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Democratic governors. It does have a real meaning, though, and Bukele is its poster boy. Despite the constitution having banned it, he ran for a second term in office; his party then changed the constitution to allow “indefinite” reelection. Lawmakers in his party also brazenly removed supreme-court justices, and his government has forced journalists into exile and locked up tens of thousands of people without due process. This is apparently the America that Chris Rufo wants. To justify the crackdown, Trump has cited an alleged carjacking attempt that police records say injured the former DOGE employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine. But MPD has already arrested two Maryland 15-year-olds for unarmed carjacking. That’s good news. Carjacking is a serious crime and should be punished. But Trump has used the incident to claim that violent crime is skyrocketing in Washington. This is, put simply, nonsense. During a press conference today, Trump cited murder statistics from 2023, and said that carjackings had “more than tripled” over the past five years. He didn’t use more recent numbers because they show that these crimes are down significantly in Washington. Murder dropped 32 percent from 2023 to 2024, robberies 39 percent, and armed carjackings 53 percent. This is in line with a broad national reduction in crime. MPD’s preliminary data indicate that violent crime is down another 26 percent so far this year compared with the same timeframe in 2024, though as the crime-statistics analyst Jeff Asher writes, this drop is probably overstated. Trump’s descriptions of Washington as a lawless hellscape bear little resemblance to what most residents experience. Not only is D.C. not "one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World,” as Trump claims, but his prescription seems unlikely to help. He said he is appointing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to help lead the federalization effort and MPD, but neither has any experience with municipal policing. They have not said what they will do differently. If the administration deploys its forces to high-profile areas such as the National Mall, they won’t have much impact on violent crime, because that’s not where it happens; if they go to less central areas with higher crime rates, they won’t get the PR boost they seek, because tourists and news cameras aren’t there. Throughout his two presidencies, Trump has treated the military as a prop for making statements about which issues he cares about—and which he doesn’t. He deployed the D.C. National Guard during protests after the murder of George Floyd in summer 2020. Earlier this summer, he federalized the California National Guard and sent Marines to Los Angeles to assist with immigration enforcement, but they were sent home when it became clear that they had nothing to do there. Yet according to testimony before the January 6 panel, Trump did not deploy the D.C. National Guard when an armed mob was sacking the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help Trump hold on to power. Good policing is important because citizens deserve the right to live in safety. Recent drops in crime in Washington are good news because the district’s residents should be able to feel safe. But Trump’s militarization of the city, his seizure of local police, and his lies about crime in Washington do the opposite: They are a way to make people feel unsafe, and either quiet residents’ dissent or make them support new presidential power grabs. Many of Trump’s defenders are angry when he’s called an authoritarian, but not when he acts as one. Related: Trump’s farcical D.C. crackdown Emergency powers are about to be tested. (From January)

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AI Chip Exports Deal

Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will pay the US government 15% of revenues from AI chips sold to China in exchange for export licenses—an arrangement legal experts say may violate the Constitution’s ban on taxing exports. (Read the clause here.)   The deal, confirmed yesterday and expected to generate more than $2B in federal funds, comes amid concerns that access to American chips could help Beijing leapfrog the US in AI development. The Commerce Department began issuing licenses for Nvidia’s H20 Friday and AMD’s MI308 over the weekend, following last month's export ban reversal. Only these less advanced chips, which were developed in response to Biden-era export controls, are approved for sale under the agreement. They can't train new large language models quickly, but can power pretrained models. Learn how AI chips work here.   Separately, last week, Trump announced companies would face 100% tariffs on AI chips and other semiconductors made abroad unless they invest in US manufacturing.

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Inside Trump's takeover

When President Trump announced a federal takeover of D.C. law enforcement yesterday, he figured it'd draw muted opposition from the city's mayor — and was likely to garner support among many residents, Axios' Marc Caputo and Alex Thompson write.

• Why it matters: Trump's move marked an unprecedented peacetime expansion of presidential control of the capital city.

The announcement was widely condemned by national Democrats as an authoritarian overreach — and a prelude to takeovers of other cities in blue states.

• Trump advisers say there are no concrete plans to replicate it elsewhere.

? Zoom in: Trump has long criticized D.C.'s management and sought more federal control of the city during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

• He showed yesterday that his desire to score political points in the Democrat-run city — and dramatically exaggerate its problems — is very much alive.

White House insiders said Trump's move was also prompted by his anger at seeing pictures of a wounded Edward Coristine, a former DOGE staffer known as "Big Balls" who was beaten and bloodied last week on a D.C. street.

Data: Metropolitan Police Department. (Includes homicide, sex abuse, assault with a dangerous weapon and robbery.) Chart: Axios Visuals

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump's move "unprecedented" and "unsettling" in a city where crime rates actually are declining. But her response was far more muted than many of her fellow Democrats.

• "It doesn't matter if crime has gone down if you were a victim," Bowser said at a news conference where she said she opposed the federal takeover but couldn't do much to stop it because of the unique nature of how the federal city is governed.

Between the lines: Bowser has developed what both sides describe as a good working relationship with Trump, in part by avoiding the type of verbal spats with him that have ensnared other leaders in her party.

• While other Democrats warned of peril in federal officers enforcing laws on D.C. streets, Bowser said she saw a potential upside: "The fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in neighborhoods, that may be positive."

A backdrop to all of this: Bowser is seeking to maintain Trump's support for a massive redevelopment project on federal land that would include a new stadium for the Washington Commanders and thousands of residences, plus retail and green space.

?️ The big picture: Trump's team was mindful of stats indicating that crime in D.C. has fallen significantly from COVID-era highs (charted above).

• But they said many residents still don't feel safe — a claim backed by a Washington Post/Schar School poll in May in which half of those surveyed in the capital said crime was either an "extremely serious" or "very serious" problem.

Big-city crime and immigration are core targets of Trumpism and, advisers say, the president believes that perceptions about public safety can outweigh statistics about declining crime.

Today's two Posts.

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Trump's command economy

Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

President Trump built a reputation as a consummate capitalist, but his dealmaking mirrors that of command-style economies, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes. Why it matters: In the Trump 2.0 era, the White House routinely makes extraordinary interventions in the economy and corporate America. The big picture: Big-money commitments from foreign nations and domestic companies to placate Trump will inject billions into the U.S., if the investments materialize as planned. Economists fear that it will set a dangerous precedent: the government picking winners and losers based on how much private capital companies are willing to put on the line. ? Zoom in: Nvidia and AMD's deal with Trump to give the federal government a cut of Chinese sales in exchange for permission to export key chips demonstrates his firm imprint on corporate America and the world economy. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan visited the White House yesterday in a bid to smooth over tensions with Trump, who said last week the executive "must resign, immediately." Europe, Japan and others have collectively committed more than $1 trillion in investments as Trump threatened to escalate global trade wars. Last week, Trump said Apple would be exempt from future chip tariffs because of the company's plans to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next five years. ? P.S. Trump said he will nominate Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Steve Bannon backed Antoni as a preferred MAGA candidate for the role.

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?‍♂️ Charted: Who relies on noncitizen workers

Data: U.S. Census Bureau. Chart: Axios Visuals The U.S. construction, agriculture/mining and accommodation/food services industries have the greatest shares of foreign-born noncitizen workers, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj write from census data. Why it matters: President Trump earlier this summer acknowledged that his massive immigration crackdown is "taking very good, longtime workers away from" the farming and hotel industries, and promised changes. ? By the numbers: Foreign-born noncitizens — including those who are legal residents or have work visas — make up 8.3% of the country's civilian workforce age 16 and older. Explore the data.

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Sex Secrets of Trump, Epstein, and Andrew Laid Bare: Author

British historian Andrew Lownie tells The Daily Beast Podcast about the trio’s relationship.

Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Prince Andrew were “all part of the same little group,” British historian and author Andrew Lownie said on The Daily Beast Podcast.

Lownie, the author of the forthcoming book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, told host Joanna Coles about what drew the trio together.

“Certainly Donald Trump and Andrew were close. They moved in very much the same circles. They had the same interests in golf, money, and sex,” Lownie said.

“One of the diplomats at the New York consulate said that Andrew was always hanging around the consulate, basically looking to do things, trying to bring Epstein in on any of his business trips,” Lownie continued. “And I mean, they were shocked in the embassy when they were caught overheard talking about one of Trump’s favorite words: ‘p---y.’”

Lownie then gave one example of an interaction between the future president and Prince Andrew.

“Trump was swapping a list of masseurs with Andrew that he could use when he came to New York. So, I mean, it was a pretty buddy-buddy relationship, Andrew and Trump,” he said.

“Of course, though, Trump has denied knowing anything about Andrew,” Lownie went on. “I mean, there’s plenty of photographic evidence with them together in New York, in Mar-a-Lago, and elsewhere, and indeed in London... They’re all distancing themselves, but they were all part of the same little group... So I don’t think anyone can deny these people were extremely close in a particular period at the beginning of the century.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

In 2022, Prince Andrew settled a civil sexual assault lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed Epstein had trafficked her to the British royal for sex when she was just 17 years old. Prince Andrew denied any wrongdoing.

On Aug. 1, following two meetings with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, Maxwell was transferred to a lower-security, perk-filled prison in Bryan, Texas—though the president claimed to have no knowledge of her transfer.

In 2024, Trump campaigned on a promise to declassify files related to Epstein’s crimes—a task Attorney General Pam Bondi initially seemed to relish. In February, Bondi repeatedly teased the impending release of documents related to Epstein, telling Fox News that Epstein’s rumored client list was “sitting” on her desk at that very moment. Just a few days later, she even commented on the content held within these documents to Jesse Watters, telling him: “It’s pretty sick what that man did.”

By early July, both the Department of Justice and the FBI had changed their tune by declaring in a bombshell memo that there was no client list at all, and confirming that Epstein had died by suicide. The Trump administration also made it clear that they had no plans to release any more of the so-called “Epstein files.”

Trump has spent much of the past month seeking to deflect questions about his ties to both Epstein and Maxwell, calling the matter “pretty boring.”

New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sex-secrets-of-donald-trump-jeffrey-epstein-and-prince-andrew-laid-bare-author/?

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Trump Nemesis Is Bringing Epstein Victims to Capitol to Push for Files Release

Several of the late pedophile’s victims will be speaking out for the first time.

A rebel Republican congressman has invited multiple victims of Jeffrey Epstein to a press conference at the U.S. Capitol as part of a bipartisan push to force the release of legal files linked to the late pedophile.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a thorn in Donald Trump’s side for his frequent objections to the president’s spending bills and foreign policies, said that he and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna will be co-hosting the Sept. 3 conference.

The event will feature survivors of abuse by Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, several of whom “will be speaking out for the first time,” according to the two lawmakers.

Massie and Khanna will also provide an update on their discharge petition which would force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files, as well as discuss their Epstein Files Transparency Act which, if passed, would require Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all documents related to the billionaire financier in a “searchable and downloadable format.”

“The survivors deserve justice and Americans deserve transparency,” Massie and Khanna both posted on X.

The move from the lawmakers echoes a stunt Trump tried to pull to embarrass his 2016 election rival, Hillary Clinton. Ahead of the October 2016 televised presidential debate, Trump appeared at a press conference with three women who accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual assault–Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey—as well as a fourth woman who was raped as a child by a man that Hillary Clinton defended during her legal career. Bill Clinton has denied the three women’s allegations.

Trump’s team even planned to have the women sit next to Bill Clinton in the family boxes during the debate, but it was thwarted with just minutes to spare, according to The Washington Post.

Even before Massie helped pile on the pressure on Trump over the administration’s backpedaling on its promise to release the Epstein files, the Kentucky congressman had felt the wrath of the president.

Massie has made a name for himself for dissenting on GOP-backed legislation, including twice voting against the president’s “One Big Beautiful” spending bill.

Massie has also been highly critical of the U.S. backing of Israel over the war in Gaza and of Trump’s decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities in airstrikes.

Trump hasn’t been subtle in expression his hatred of Massie, and has frequently called for him to be primaried and voted out of office.

In a July 21 post on Truth Social, Trump called Massie the “worst Republican Congressman” and an “embarrassment to Kentucky.”

“He’s lazy, slow moving, and totally disingenuous - A real loser! Never has anything positive to add. Looking for someone good to run against this guy, someone I can Endorse and vigorously campaign for,” he added.

Trump, a longtime friend of Epstein whose name is reported to feature in the files, has been unable to shake off claims of a cover-up over the pedophile, who died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, despite his multiple distraction attempts.

Last week, Trump denied reports that several of the top officials in his administration, including Vice President JD Vance, Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel, held a secret meeting to discuss the best way to handle the Epstein crisis.

Trump suggested the “whole thing is a hoax,” orchestrated by the Democrats.

“It’s put out by the Democrats because we’ve had the most successful six months in the history of our country, and that’s just a way of trying to divert attention to something that’s total bulls--t,” Trump said.

The White House, Massie, and Khanna did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-nemesis-thomas-massie-is-bringing-jeffrey-epstein-victims-to-capitol-to-push-for-files-release/?

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Laura Loomer Erupts After Blocking Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘Loud Mouthed B****’

Loomer has launched a relentless public crusade against the MAGA Rep., declaring, “I hate her with a passion. She will burn in hell.”

Far-right influencer Laura Loomer has launched a series of vulgar public attacks against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—calling her a “b----,” a “lunatic hooker,” and a “harlot”—as their bitter feud escalates.

The latest spat between the GOP’s two most notorious provocateurs erupted Monday morning, when Greene, 51, blasted Loomer, 32, on X for badmouthing a Medal of Honor recipient.

“Shut up Laura,” the Georgia Republican said, calling her a “coward” for blocking her on X and declaring her “not MAGA.”

Loomer retaliated a few hours later with a scathing assault on Greene’s faith and personal life.

“MTG isn’t a Christian. How do you call yourself a Christian when you’re wearing a cross while getting bent over backwards inside the gym by every man who isn’t your husband?” Loomer wrote on X. “She’s on her knees all right. And it’s not for praying.”

She attached a 2021 Daily Mail article which reported that Greene cheated on her then-husband Perry Greene with a “polyamorous tantric sex guru” as well as a gym manager in the early 2010s.

Greene, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist, previously denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous tabloid garbage” and “another attempt to smear my name” in a statement to the Mail. She and Perry divorced in 2022.

In a follow-up post, Loomer doubled down, calling Greene a “loud mouthed b---- who turned on [President Donald] Trump and ruined her marriage when she got to Congress because she can’t keep her mouth or her legs closed.”

Loomer added, “She hasn’t done anything. She’s the most ineffective member of Congress.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to Greene and Loomer for comment.

Greene, who sits on the powerful House Oversight Committee, was first elected to Congress in 2020 and was re-elected in 2022 and 2024.

Both women have touted their close ties to Trump over the years, but Loomer appears to be the president’s closer confidante at the moment. In his second term, he has reportedly ousted scores of administration officials at the urging of Loomer.

Loomer went on to post yet another furious diatribe, claiming that “many people inside the White House have taken notice of how ANTI TRUMP AND FAKE” Greene has supposedly been.

“I hate her with a passion. She will burn in hell,” Loomer wrote.

Meanwhile, Greene called out Loomer during an appearance on the right-wing network Real America’s Voice, blasting Loomer’s MAGA loyalty tests and labeling her an “attack dog” who “manipulates her stories” to go after Republicans.

She also suggested that Loomer was targeting her because of her opposition to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby and implied she is being funded by a foreign government or intelligence agency.

Not an hour passed before Loomer responded to the clip.

“If you can’t take the heat, don’t dish it out, b----,” she wrote, adding, “Typical harlot behavior.”

A few minutes later, she was at it again, calling Greene “incredibly low IQ” and dragging up Greene’s other potential sore spots, including Trump’s reported snub of her Senate aspirations and her eyebrow-raising stock trading.

“She couldn’t get Trump to endorse her Georgia Senate campaign so she’s lashing out like the lunatic hooker she has always been,” Loomer wrote. “She should walk around with a bag over her face in public and live in shame to spare all of us her deranged rants. Truly a witch.”

It all started after Loomer on Friday slammed the Army for recognizing Capt. Florent Groberg, who received a Medal of Honor for throwing himself at a suicide bomber in Afghanistan in 2012, in an X post on the anniversary of the incident, calling Groberg an “anti-Trump leftist.”

On Monday, Greene responded, “Laura Loomer has ZERO respect or reverence for even the most heroic people in America. Ask any veteran, military member, and American, no one cares about his politics, the man was willing to die to save others from a suicide bomber.”

Both women have a history of peddling conspiracy theories and claim MAGA status, though Greene has recently hinted at a break with the Republican party.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/laura-loomer-erupts-after-blocking-marjorie-taylor-greene-loud-mouthed-b/?

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CHART OF THE DAY

 

The big, beautiful bill will account for the largest upward transfer of wealth from a single piece of legislation in American history. (Source: Bobby Kogan/Congressional Budget Office)

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Trump Threatens Powell With ‘Lawsuit’ as His Economy Sinks

The president blasted the Fed chair as the latest CPI report showed some price increases as tariff costs kick in.

Donald Trump threatened a “major lawsuit” against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as the cost of the president’s tariffs showed up in the prices Americans are paying on Tuesday.

The president raged that Powell “must NOW lower the rate” in a Truth Social post in which he also blasted his former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, saying, “Steve ‘Manouychin’ really gave me a ‘beauty’ when he pushed this loser.”

In an escalation of his months-long war against Powell, he threatened a lawsuit against him for the $2.5 billion cost of the Fed renovation.

“I am, though, considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed because of the horrible, and grossly incompetent, job he has done in managing the construction of the Fed Buildings,” Trump wrote.

His attack on Tuesday came as the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) released that morning showed core inflation, which excludes food and energy, came in slightly hotter than expected and had its largest one month increase since January when the president took office.

The CPI found core inflation was up 0.3 percent for last month and up 3.1 percent from a year ago, the largest annual increase since February.

While the numbers were largely on target with economists’ expectations and slightly below expectations when it came to overall inflation, Trump’s tariffs appear to be having an impact as businesses pass the costs on to American consumers.Economists do not believe that the latest data will deter the Federal Reserve when it comes to cutting rates in September, but Trump has been livid with the Fed holding them steady for months.

The president’s team has been adamant that his tariffs imposed on other countries are not causing price increases in the U.S. but the latest data shows otherwise.

Powell warned at his press conference late last month that tariffs were starting to show up in consumer prices.

It was a mixed bag when it came to where the price increases were hitting. The prices of household furnishings and supplies were up 0.7 percent in July after a one percent increase the month before. The cost of apparel has been trending upward over the last two months after dropping previous months.

The prescient also appeared to acknowledge on Tuesday that the cost of tariffs is passed on to consumers to some extent, saying “it has been shown that, for the most part, Consumers aren’t even paying these Tariffs.” Instead, he claimed, it was “mostly Companies and Governments” are picking up the tabs.

Trump has allowed some of his threatened tariffs to go into effect, but he has postponed implementing others. Widespread tariffs that kicked in last week would not be reflected in the July CPI report.

On Tuesday, the president signed an executive order to delay high tariffs on imports from China for another 90 days.

While the president ranted against Powell, the White House on Tuesday touted the CPI report. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that inflation “beat market expectations once again and remain stable.”

Her statement comes as the Trump administration has been actively working to undermine confidence in the Bureau of Labor Statistics which supplies the CPI, and Trump fired the BSL commissioner following last month’s brutal jobs report.

Trump announced late on Monday that he was nominating E.J. Antoni, chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, as the next BLS commissioner.

Economists across the spectrum have slammed him as unqualified for the job and lacking the necessary experience.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-threatens-powell-with-lawsuit-as-his-economy-sinks/?

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Fuming Loomer Goes Nuclear on Marjorie Taylor Greene in All-Night Attack

The far-right influencer, who has the ear of President Trump, called the Georgia lawmaker a “lying fake Christian whore.”

Laura Loomer is out for blood.

The far-right provocateur has gone after her fellow MAGA Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene with a level of vitriol that is striking even by Loomer standards, calling the lawmaker a “rabid dog” and a “lying fake Christian whore.”

“This is a woman who allowed her sexual impulses to tear her family apart,” Loomer, 32, wrote in a social media post. “She wants to now tear our country apart to try to steal [President Donald] Trump’s movement away from him. Don’t let this home wrecker become a country homewrecker.”

“Go find a chair to hump like the dog in heat you’ve always been,” Loomer added.

Several hours later, she posted a follow-up calling Greene, 51, a “lying fake Christian whore” and “one dumb b----.”

The tirades were in response to a post from Greene accusing Loomer of “viciously attacking” and lying about Trump’s “most original MAGA supporters.”

“She has no long-time relationships because she psychotically turns on everyone,” Greene wrote. “Laura Loomer is the most unstable person and worst liability to ever walk in the Oval Office.”

The fighting began after Loomer stunned some of her own supporters by ranting against the military’s decision to celebrate a Medal of Honor recipient, former U.S. Army Capt. Florent Groberg, on social media.

Greene then told Loomer to “shut up” and accused her of working on behalf of a foreign government or intelligence agency, causing Loomer to go full scorched earth and accuse Greene of “getting bent over backwards inside the gym by every man who isn’t your husband.”

She attached a 2021 Daily Mail article reporting that Greene cheated on her then-husband, Perry Greene, with a “polyamorous tantric sex guru” as well as a gym manager in the early 2010s.

Greene, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist who regularly promotes weather manipulation conspiracy theories, previously denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous tabloid garbage” and “another attempt to smear my name” in a statement to the Mail. She and Perry divorced in 2022.

Both women have tried to used their proximity to Trump as evidence of their MAGA bonafides, though Loomer—a self-described Islamophobe who has called 9/11 an “inside job”—has never held an official role with the administration.

She has, however, taken it upon herself to “vet” administration officials, pushing Trump to oust anyone she deems “disloyal” to the president—a definition that includes non-partisan career civil servants who also happened to serve under Democratic administrations.Trump has tried to downplay her influence, but has fired more than a dozen of her targets since March. Loomer has also clashed with fellow MAGA influencers like Tucker Carlson, though not with the viciousness of her feud with Greene.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fuming-laura-loomer-goes-nuclear-on-marjorie-taylor-greene-in-all-night-attack/?

ps:Do I hear just a bit of jealousy from these two woman? Why??

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‘I Am American, Bro!’: MAGA Supporter Regrets Trump Vote After ICE Confrontation

Jason Brian Gavidia confessed after he was targeted by the very administration he voted for.

Jason Brian Gavidia is a proud American. He even has the first words to the Constitution—“We the people”—tattooed in large black lettering across his back.

He voted for President Donald Trump. Then, he was stopped by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And now he has changed his mind.

“I am American, bro!” Gavidia, 29, protested as two masked, rifle-toting immigration agents held him against the wall, asking for proof of his citizenship. The ICE agents had stopped him and his friend, Javier Ramirez, 32, another U.S. citizen, as they walked the streets of Montebello, a majority-Latino city east of Los Angeles.

“What hospital were you born?” one agent barked at Gavidia. “I don’t know, dawg!” he said. “East L.A., bro!” Ramirez recorded the altercation on his phone before Ramirez himself was wrestled to the ground and driven to a detention center.

“I believe I was racially profiled. I believe I was attacked because I was walking while brown,” Gavidia told NBC Los Angeles.

Gavidia, shaken by the experience, has pivoted his political views. Though he was once a Trump supporter, Gavidia now condemns the Trump administration’s immigration raids. “He ran on lies,” Gavidia told NBC. “We were all manipulated, we were all brainwashed, and now look at us. We’re all suffering because of it. And I feel guilty 100 percent.”

“Where’s the freedom? Where’s the justice?” Gavidia said, waving a pocket constitution he now carries with him. “That’s why I’m protecting the constitution.”

Gavidia is now one of the plaintiffs named in a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the Trump administration. NBC Los Angeles reported that the lawsuit resulted in a court order protecting individuals in seven Southern California counties from being arrested by federal agents due to their race, accent, or place of work.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the White House for comment.

Now, Gavidia says he is repenting for his voting history by holding “Know Your Rights” workshops and by distributing cards to immigrants that inform them of their rights when interacting with federal agents.

Gavidia is not the first Trump supporter that the administration has targeted, and will likely not be the last.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-supporter-regrets-trump-vote-after-ice-confrontation/?

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Trump Wants His Own Troops to Crush Unrest in U.S. Cities

The proposal calls for 300 troops to be stationed in Arizona and Alabama and to be constantly on standby to be flown to wherever the president orders.

An increasingly power-crazed President Donald Trump wants a specialized force of U.S. troops to be ready around the clock to quell whatever he deems as unrest across America.

A plan being weighed by the Pentagon would designate 600 National Guard soldiers as being on standby every day, ready to rapidly deploy from HQs in Arizona and Alabama to wherever the president wants them to go, reports The Washington Post.

If approved, the project is expected to cost hundreds of millions to operate, with a significant amount of the expense being the potential need to have military aircraft ready on a moment’s notice.

Documents shared internally in the Pentagon say guardsmen will need to be able to deploy in as little as one hour after Trump’s order comes down, according to the Post.

The plan was first discussed during Trump’s first term, the Post reports, as genuine civil unrest erupted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Trump has used his executive powers more loosely in MAGA 2.0, most recently to authorize the mobilization of 800 National Guard troops in Washington, despite the capital’s District Attorney’s Office asserting in January that violent crime is at a 30-year low.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser called Trump’s latest power grab “unsettling and unprecedented.” Democrats in California, where Trump ordered a similar deployment in June amid anti-ICE demonstrations, have challenged the president in court.

The tentative name for the garrison of guardsmen is the “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force.” If put in place, it would further normalize the deployment of U.S. troops against their countrymen—something once considered to be a rare, last-ditch necessity in extreme cases, like to quell riots after the Rodney King verdict in 1992 or to protect Black students enrolling in college in the South after segregation.

An official at the Department of Defense confirmed to the Daily Beast that such a plan is being considered, but declined to divulge any details about it.

“The Department of Defense is a planning organization and routinely reviews how the department would respond to a variety of contingencies across the globe,” the official said. “We will not discuss these plans through leaked documents, pre-decisional or otherwise.”

Documents viewed by the Post listed task force discussions as “predecisional,” with time stamps as recent as August. It is unclear when such a task force might begin work, but the documents note Fiscal Year 2027 is the earliest this program would be able to receive funding through the Pentagon’s traditional budgetary process.

The White House may try to expedite the force’s creation, as Trump has skirted the traditional budget process for several other issues this year—like his mass cuts within the federal bureaucracy.

The rapid deployment concept was tested during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. The Post reports Trump was eager to deploy troops to quell demonstrations at the time, but was talked out of it by his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials.

If implemented this term, the 600 guardsmen who make up the response force would be split into two groups—300 to Arizona, to deploy to events west of the Mississippi River, and 300 to Alabama, to do the same for the eastern half of the country. The Post reports the troops will be outfitted with “weapons and riot gear.” Guardsmen would be on task for 90 days at a time to “limit burnout.”

Critics say that the repeated deployment of the military against its fellow citizens is not something the president should make a habit of.

Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in legal issues germane to the U.S. military’s domestic activities, told the Post that “you don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”

Nunn said that, if the response force is approved, Trump is inevitably going to use it.

“When you have this tool waiting at your fingertips, you’re going to want to use it,” he said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-wants-his-own-troops-to-crush-unrest-in-us-cities/?

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Trump Fantasizes About Renaming the Kennedy Center After Himself

The president might have revealed his next big change to the cultural hub in Washington, D.C.

President Donald Trump has fantisized out loud about renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.

Having long blasted the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for being too “woke,” Trump crowned himself chairman, elevated his loyal lieutenant Richard Grenell, and stacked the board with White House insiders—prompting a slew of artist walk-outs and staff departures.

Now, in a Truth Social post on Tuesday morning, Trump mused about putting the cherry on top of the center’s transformation as he announced that nominations for its award ceremony would be dropping soon.

“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” he quipped, jokingly renaming the cultural hub in his image.

“They will be announced Wednesday. Tremendous work is being done, and money being spent, on bringing it back to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment,” he added.

“It had fallen on hard times, physically, BUT WILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!! President DJT.”

While Trump’s social media post appears tongue-in-cheek, his recent influence on the center has been deep. The nominees he has touted could take on a very different shape to those that have gone before.

Trump has complained in the past about a lack of MAGA representation in the Kennedy Center Honors, traditionally a bipartisan event. In March, he floated expanding the event to include politicians, executives, athletes and dead people.

The honors aren’t handed down posthumously, but that didn’t stop Trump from musing about his vision for the awards. “Elvis sells better as a dead man,” Trump reportedly said, after also suggesting bestowing honors on Luciano Pavarotti and Babe Ruth.

He detailed his gripe with past nominees and their apparent wokeness. “In the past, I mean, these are radical left lunatics that have been chosen. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t watch it. And the host was always terrible,” he said, throwing shade at Queen Latifah, according to audio of a meeting obtained by the Washington Post.

“We’ll go slightly more conservative, if you don’t mind, with some of the people,” Trump said, referring to future honorees, the Post reported in March.

“There are people out there that would not be considered that are much bigger stars than the ones that were being honored. Just get some good people, some people who are worthy,” Trump added. “Because some of the people that they put on are just, just terrible.”

He also brought up the idea of hosting the honors ceremony himself because he’s “the king of ratings, whether we like it or not.”

Earlier this month, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that the organization could be planning to drop the rainbow-colored ribbon which it awards to annual lifetime achievement honorees and symbolizes diversity in the performing arts.

CBS News reported that the honors weekend will be changed, with a new streamlined schedule, instead of several events at the White House, State Department, and other locations.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fantasizes-about-renaming-the-kennedy-center-after-himself-in-awards-announcement/?

ps:Oy Vey

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Trump Picks Project 2025 Mastermind to Be Put in Charge of Stats

The president fired the nation’s top labor statistician earlier this month after receiving a disappointing jobs report.

President Donald Trump has named a Project 2025 architect to replace the labor statistics chief he fired earlier this month after receiving a disappointing jobs report.

Trump is nominating E.J. Antoni, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to serve as the next commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” the president announced Monday on Truth Social. “I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role.”Antoni, who contributed to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 initiative, had the backing of MAGA hardliners, including Steve Bannon. As a longtime skeptic of BLS data, Antoni is in step with Trump’s line of attack on the agency. The president accused the last BLS commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, of manipulating numbers after the July jobs report showed U.S. employers added far fewer jobs than expected. The report also revised May and June figures downward by a sharp 258,000. Trump fired McEntarfer on Aug. 1, only hours after Antoni bashed her as “incompetent” and called for new leadership at the agency. McEntarfer was appointed under the Biden administration in January 2024, after a bipartisan Senate vote.Economists condemned the firing, warning that it could erode trust in U.S. economic statistics and mark a dangerous encroachment on democratic norms and data integrity.

Former BLS Commissioner William Beach, whom Trump appointed in his first term, decried McEntarfer’s dismissal as “damaging” and said periodic revisions are common.

Antoni, however, argued that the BLS had already lost credibility and appeared to preview his agenda in an X post last week.

“There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data—that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years,” Antoni wrote.

While Trump outright claims that McEntarfer “rigged” BLS numbers, Antoni’s criticism has focused on the large revisions the job reports have and the falling response rates to BLS surveys.

He indirectly contradicted Trump’s insistence that the economy is “booming” when he addressed the downward revisions while speaking on Bannon’s podcast.

“There’s clearly a negative bias in the revisions, which means there’s a positive bias in the initial numbers. In other words, we get an overly optimistic report, and then we later find out that it wasn’t that great. And so now we see that for the last several months, most of the jobs that we thought we were adding didn’t actually exist,” he said, noting that the downward revisions occurred during the Biden administration as well.

Antoni, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Northern Illinois University, contributed to Project 2025, the ultraconservative blueprint to overhaul the federal government that became so controversial even Trump sought to distance himself from it on the campaign trail last year.

However, the president has implemented a number of strategies Project 2025 had laid out since taking office.

Antoni now faces confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s nomination.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-nominates-project-2025-mastermind-ej-antoni-to-be-put-in-charge-of-bureau-of-labor-statistics/?

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• ? President Trump's nominee to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni, suggested he'd suspend the bureau's flagship monthly jobs report — one of the world's most fundamental pieces of data to gauge the U.S. economy. Go deeper.

Mexico expels 26 cartel figures wanted by US authorities in deal with Trump administration August 12, 2025 Mexico is expelling 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks sending drugs across the border, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Read more   ‘Courts are helpless’ Six months into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration is at war with federal judges. He’s evading court orders blocking his agenda, suing judges for alleged misconduct and veering toward what some say could turn into a constitutional crisis.   Trump and congressional Republicans are no longer promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but that doesn’t mean they have given up on rolling back the landmark health reform law. They’re chipping away at it quietly.

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Choosing Between Bad Options

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Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker has made himself a spokesperson for Democratic resistance to Republican plans for a brazen mid-decade gerrymander, and on Sunday, he appeared on Meet the Press to state his case. “It’s cheating,” Pritzker said of the Texas redistricting that the president has demanded. “Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he’s trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.”

It’s a clever line. But it would have been better if not for the fact that some of Pritzker’s fellow Democrats, including the governors of New York and California, are now trying to redraw their state’s maps to squeeze Republicans. (It might also have landed better if Illinois’ maps weren’t already gerrymandered, as Representative Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat, recently acknowledged.)

If they’re going to strike back, Democrats in some of these states don’t just have to draw new maps—they have to find ways to circumvent structures they enacted in recent years to make maps fairer. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has been the driving force behind Democrats’ work for fairer districts, but he’s now in the awkward position of calling for cutthroat maps. “My hope would be you have these temporary measures,” he told The New York Times. Of course, everyone always hopes that. The political scientist Sara Sadhwani, who helped draw the Golden State’s current maps, argued for tossing them, telling Politico’s California Playbook, “These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times often call for extraordinary measures.”

This reasoning feels both dangerous and alluring. Democrats pushed for fairer districts to bolster democracy; if they remain pure and Republicans rig the system, then it was all for naught. Yet if they abandon the push for fairness, what are they preserving? Saying that Americans should resist tyranny is all well and good, but the past decade has shown that resisting involves a lot of risky judgment calls. Part of Trump’s political genius, and his threat, is that he forces his opponents to choose between bad options.

During the first Trump administration, for example, some of his aides simply refused to execute on things the president told them to do—or, in one case, reportedly even swiped a draft letter from his desk to prevent it from being signed. On the one hand, they were probably right on the merits: Trump has lots of bad ideas, some of which might have endangered the country if enacted. On the other hand, they were unelected officials refusing lawful commands from the elected president. What’s right in the short term can set perilous precedents in the long run.

This week, Trump dispatched the D.C. National Guard and federal officers to the streets of the capital. Five summers ago, amid major protests, he did the same—and reportedly contemplated calling in active-duty soldiers. Then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was able to talk Trump out of that, but the price he paid was participation in a photo op with the president as he walked across Lafayette Square from the White House. The resulting images “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” as Milley put it. He quickly came to regret that decision and apologized. Knowing which choice was better is nearly impossible.

Once Trump left office, federal prosecutors had to grapple with how to handle both his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s misdeeds were not especially murky or covert: Everyone watched him try to subvert the election in real time, culminating in the January 6 insurrection; the documents in question were demonstrably at Mar-a-Lago, and the government had subpoenaed them.

Declining to prosecute Trump for these actions would have encouraged his own further abuses and also fostered the impression that not everyone is equal under the law. Yet political leaders in functioning democracies generally do not charge their political rivals who have left office with crimes, because it injects partisanship into the system, eroding it for the future. Trump falsely accused President Joe Biden of engaging in banana-republic-style politics, but now that Trump is in power, his government is reportedly pursuing an absurd investigation against former President Barack Obama.

Once criminal charges were set in motion, the judges presiding over the cases had their own challenges. Would they give Trump a gag order—standard procedure to prevent a defendant from attacking witnesses publicly—and create an opportunity for him to claim “election interference,” or would they allow attacks that no other defendant could get away with? (They mostly tried to split the difference.) The country ended up with perhaps the worst outcome: Trump faced charges, he reaped political benefit from claiming persecution, and now he has avoided convictions or even trials in all but one case, evading accountability by running out the clock.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser is now facing her own tough choice: If she forcefully opposes the president’s temporary takeover of the city’s police force, as well as other measures that he says he is taking to fight crime, then she risks inviting even more aggressive action from an angry Trump. If, however, she mostly acquiesces, then she is yielding the city’s powers and surrendering her constituency’s preferences to his. Meanwhile, university presidents are weighing whether to give in to Trump’s attempts to seize control over their operations. Is it better to strike a costly settlement and regain some limited autonomy, or to fight the administration and risk even greater damage?

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said during his 1964 presidential bid. “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Americans resoundingly rejected that vision at the time, but now many of Trump’s opponents and targets are adopting it as a philosophy. Forcing Americans who care about democracy into these dilemmas is part of what gives him such power.

Related:

• How Democrats tied their own hands on redistricting
• How the Texas standoff will (probably) end

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Pre-summit scramble

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Getty Images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team are doing everything in their power to influence President Trump's thinking before he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. His last big chance could come today, Axios' Barak Ravid, Dave Lawler and Marc Caputo write. Why it matters: Zelensky faces a perfect storm — a sudden Russian battlefield breakthrough, mounting discontent at home, and a high-stakes summit in Alaska on Friday that could back him into a diplomatic corner. Driving the day: Trump is expected to hold a virtual meeting today with Zelensky and a group of European leaders. Zelensky has been downplaying Russia's recent gains, and working the phones to leaders in Europe and beyond to hedge against an unfavorable outcome in Alaska. ? Behind the scenes: After a series of largely fruitless phone calls over the last six months, Trump has been itching to meet Putin face to face to gauge his willingness to make peace, U.S. officials say. "The President feels like: 'Look, I've got to look at this guy across the table. ... I want to look this guy in the eye,'" Secretary of State Marco Rubio told radio host Sid Rosenberg yesterday. Trump said Monday at his presser on D.C. policing that he'll probably in "the first two minutes, I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made." Zelensky and other European leaders are concerned that when Trump looks Putin in the eye, he will actually agree with his hardline demands. "Nobody knows what Trump wants to get from Putin on Friday," a Ukrainian official told Axios. "We don't know how much influence we can have on Trump, but we have to keep trying." ? Behind the scenes: U.S. officials argue that if Trump's rhetoric sounds pro-Russian at times, it's because he believes that kind of public messaging will help him get a deal. One told Axios that Trump is still "pissed off" at Putin: "The general view for months is that we can bring down the Russian economy tomorrow. There are more ways to ruin Ukraine. But if he had to choose a side, he would start to bring down the Russian economy. He's really had enough." "Maybe Trump can't get this done, but he's going to do his level-best," the official said.

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Trump taps economist from far-right foundation to head agency that tracks jobs numbers

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump nominated conservative economist E.J. Antoni to fill the top spot at the Bureau of Labor Statistics after abruptly firing the previous statistician following a disappointing jobs report earlier this month.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/08/12/repub/trump-taps-economist-from-far-right-foundation-to-head-agency-that-tracks-jobs-numbers/?

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Trump Is Plotting This Desperate Move to Distract From Epstein: Wolff

In the new Daily Beast podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, Michael Wolff reveals the secrets the president doesn’t want known.

President Donald Trump is desperately seeking a “big thing” to distract from Jeffrey Epstein—and is willing to sacrifice Ukraine to achieve it, his biographer Michael Wolff has revealed.

In the debut episode of the new Daily Beast podcast, Inside Trump’s Head, the best-selling author told co-host Joanna Coles that the president is making “relentless” calls to aides and allies to demand something to get past the unending questions over his links to the dead pedophile and his surviving lover-turned-sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

And, Wolff disclosed, not only have successive plans failed or fallen flat, but Trump is now willing to give up Ukraine to Vladimir Putin when they meet in Alaska on Friday to achieve the distraction he needs.

Inside Trump’s Head, a new twice-weekly podcast, will explore what is really motivating and shaping the world’s most powerful and most polarizing man, using Wolff’s unique access, insight and authority as the author of four best-selling books on Trump. It grows out of the success of The Daily Beast podcast, on which Wolff has been a regular guest. Episodes of the podcast regularly draw more than 500,000 and even 1 million views on YouTube—and have set the agenda on Trump and Epstein.

Wolff’s reporting has drawn consistent fire from the White House. In response to questions from the Daily Beast Tuesday about Wolff’s reporting that Trump was willing to sacrifice Ukraine to distract from his Epstein crisis, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--- and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

The central theme in the debut episode is of Trump’s frantic need to move on from Epstein.

The firestorm began last month when the Department of Justice quietly announced at a weekend that there was nothing more to say about Epstein—despite Attorney General Pam Bondi claiming in February that the files were on her desk, and the White House handing MAGA influencers folders of “Epstein Files,” promising more to come. In the backlash, conservatives accused Trump and Bondi of a cover-up, prompting the most dramatic break between the president and his base to date.

Wolff told Coles, “Let me go back about a week or so, or 10 days, when Trump started to say to everyone who would listen—and everyone listens to Donald Trump—to staffers and on the phone calls, the relentless phone calls that he’s constantly making, he said, ‘I need a big thing. I need a big thing.’

”What’s the ‘big thing?’ And everyone understood that this was code for I need a distraction from Epstein. What’s the thing that will move us beyond that?”

Options included making New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani the next MAGA enemy. The New York Times reported that Trump spoke with Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s chief rival, about the race in recent weeks, though both denied it. But that plan didn’t pan out, Wolff said.

“It didn’t get that traction,“ Wolff said. ”I mean, Epstein still goes on behind everything. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, that drum beat."

Then came the next solution, which played on the apparent success of seizing headlines in June by deploying National Guard troops and then active duty Marines to Los Angeles: to flood soldiers and federal law enforcement into Washington, D.C., a move bouncing off the reported assault on 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Coristine in the capital at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning a week before.

Trump announced it on Monday but, Wolff said, is still seeking something “big” for the MAGA base—leading to the focus on Ukraine.

“That is what he got to,” Wolff said. “‘I’m going to have to do Ukraine.’”

Wolff explained that Trump would likely pull the U.S. out of any involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict—something which would please, in his judgment, the MAGA base, which has been opposed to U.S. involvement and particularly to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“He’s going to sacrifice Ukraine for Epstein,” Wolff said. “Essentially, this is, in his mind, a trade. It is the MAGA people who have pressed this Epstein issue constantly. I mean, they’re the threat.”

White House staffers were befuddled by Trump’s renewed direct involvement in brokering a settlement—including meeting with Putin directly, Wolff said—and they still weren’t sure what Trump would ultimately do. “Nobody in the White House can see this turning out so well for Ukraine,” he said.

But, Wolff said, the distraction appears doomed.

“The Epstein drumbeat is real,” Wolff said. “It is unceasing and it is threatening, most of all, to Donald Trump.”

Trump and Epstein were friends for decades before he said he severed ties with the pedophile in the mid-2000s. Multiple outlets have reported on Trump’s ties to Epstein, including The Wall Street Journal, which Trump sued for its bombshell report that he sent Epstein a lewd greeting for his 50th birthday, hinting at a “secret.” Trump denied sending it.

Wolff’s tape of one of his interviews with Epstein—who asked the author to be his biographer—was first revealed by the Daily Beast in November and featured the pedophile financier describing himself as Trump’s “closest friend” and detailing their long relationship.

Find and subscribe to Inside Trump’s Head with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes of incomparable insight into the psyche of the world’s most talked-about man drop every Tuesday and Thursday evening on YouTube and Wednesday and Friday mornings on other podcast platforms.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-plotting-this-desperate-move-to-distract-from-epstein-wolff/?

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Newsom Trolls ‘TACO Trump’ With a Truth Social-Style All-Caps Rant After Missed Ultimatum Deadline

The California governor vowed to fight red-state gerrymandering with “NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS.’”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom trolled President “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP” with an all-caps social media post, complete with run-on sentences and random quotation marks, announcing California’s response to Republican gerrymandering.

Facing the prospect of losing control of the House of Representatives during next year’s midterm elections, Trump has pressured several red states to immediately redraw their congressional districts to give Republicans an advantage.

The maps are usually redrawn once every 10 years, after the census is completed, and not mid-decade. On Monday, Newsom sent the president a letter asking him to call off the “unprecedented, mid-decade, hyper-partisan gerrymander to rig the upcoming midterm elections.”

“If you will not stand down, I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states,” he wrote. “But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.”

Newsom then followed up Tuesday with a trolling all-caps post saying Trump had 24 hours to respond to his letter, and when that failed, he went full MAGA, writing in a social media post:

“DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!).”

Among Wall Street traders, the president’s flip-flopping on tariff policy earned him the nickname “TACO” for Trump Always Chickens Out.

Newsom’s post further announced a “BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

Facing record-low polling numbers, Trump launched a redistricting arms race last month when he asked Texas for “just a simple redraw” of its congressional maps to help Republicans pick up five seats in the Lone Star State.

Democrats vowed to retaliate in states like California, New York and Illinois, prompting Republicans to eye states like Republican-controlled states such as Ohio and Indiana.

Unlike Texas, though, California has an independent commission that draws political maps, and Newsom will need to push through a special ballot measure in November to carry out his redistricting plans.

During an interview Tuesday with Fox News, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed California’s commission was a “ruse” and the state map is already gerrymandered.

“The Thirst Queen has emerged,” Newsom’s office hit back on social media. “We will not be lectured on democracy by someone who lost to a cartoon mouse with gloves.”

Florida became locked in a battle royale with The Walt Disney Company in 2022 when Disney’s former CEO Bob Chapek vowed to work to overturn a 2022 state law—colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law—that prohibited classroom discussion of sexuality.

DeSantis retaliated by working with Republican lawmakers to pass a measure revoking Disney’s self-governing status. Disney sued, and the case was settled in 2024.

The Daily Beast has reached out to DeSantis’ office for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gavin-newsom-trolls-taco-trump-with-all-caps-rant-after-missed-redistricting-ultimatum-deadline/?

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Leavitt, 27, Scrambles to Justify 79-Year-Old Trump’s Senior Moment

It comes after the president declared he was going to Russia on Friday.

No one at the White House quite knows how to spin President Donald Trump’s increasingly frequent string of senior moments—least of all White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, 27.

After declaring a “public safety emergency” to deploy troops against street crime in Washington, D.C., the 79-year-old president inexplicably told reporters—twice—that he was “going to Russia on Friday.”

In reality, Trump’s upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin isn’t in Russia. It’s in Alaska. He later corrected himself, clarifying that he would not be leaving the U.S. for the summit.

But even after Trump’s own concession, Leavitt refused to acknowledge the blunder. In fact, she took it one step further, floating the idea that Trump may soon become the first U.S. president to visit Russia in 12 years.

“Perhaps there are plans in the future to travel to Russia,” the 27-year-old press secretary told reporters Tuesday, when pressed on Trump’s comments.

This was just one in a string of recent verbal fumbles by Trump that have raised eyebrows.

Last week, during a White House event with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump appeared to forget who was standing right behind him.

“I’d like to welcome to the White House one of the great and most esteemed business leaders and geniuses and innovators anywhere in the world, Apple CEO Tim Cook,” Trump began. “Thanks as well to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for being here, wherever you may be.”

Lutnick, who had been standing directly behind the president the entire time, piped up: “I’m right behind you.”

“Oh hey, fellas,” Trump said, briefly startled. “I missed you.”

While introducing members of his Cabinet during the signing of an executive order related to the 2028 Summer Olympics, Trump referred to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem—who was standing just feet away—as “Cristie Kerr,” the name of a professional golfer.

And on July 31, while flanked by GOP Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Mike Bost at a veterans’ bill signing, Trump paused mid-sentence and asked: “Where’s Derrick? Derrick?”

Van Orden was standing directly next to him. “Right here,” the congressman said.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-scrambles-to-justify-donald-trumps-senior-russia-moment/?

[phkrause]

Trump Shares Telling Picture in Late-Night Truth Social Post

The president had earlier fantasized about renaming the arts center after himself.

President Donald Trump shared an ominous photo of himself in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center in a late-night Truth Social post, after earlier fantasizing about renaming the center after himself.

Shared as a quote post with no caption, the image was added to his earlier post praising the “GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” which will be announced on Wednesday.

Trump has sought to redesign the iconic Kennedy Center in his own image in a number of ways since becoming president, including by appointing himself chairman of the board, firing several board members, and installing his allies in their place.

He has also previously sought to ensure the center stages “non-woke musicals” like Cats, and complained that the center’s annual Kennedy Center Honors has failed to sufficiently honor his friends and political supporters in the past.

The president even specifically floated Rocky actor and Trump ally Sylvester Stallone as a possible nominee during a meeting with the Kennedy Center board in March.

“We’ll go slightly more conservative, if you don’t mind, with some of the people,” Trump said at the time while speaking about who to honor in future, according to the Washington Post. “There are people out there that would not be considered that are much bigger stars than the ones that were being honored.”

Sources also told CBS News that the center may be scrapping the famous rainbow-colored ribbons it bestows upon lifetime achievement honorees.

Trump will travel to the Kennedy Center on Wednesday—the same day the recipients of this year’s honors will be publicly announced. The Center appeared to gave hints about who will be nominated in a social media post saying: “A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House…”

Last month, Republicans in Congress began working to rename the Kennedy Center’s Opera House in honor of First Lady Melania Trump before following it up with a bill that would rename the center in honor of the president, removing President John F. Kennedy’s name from the center entirely.

This suggestion drew significant criticism, including from JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, who wrote on Instagram, “Trump is obsessed with being bigger than JFK, with minimizing the many heroes of our past, as if that elevates him. It doesn’t.”

In another post, Schlossberg, who was recently appointed to the America 250 Commission that oversees plans for the country’s 250th birthday celebrations, argued that the law prohibits the renaming of the center.

“Plain reading of statute makes clear: YOU CAN’T DO THAT,” he wrote, before jokingly offering to help him change the center’s name if he would release the Epstein files.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-shares-telling-picture-in-late-night-truth-social-post/?