Morning Announcements

Today's Headlines: The US launched strikes in the Strait of Hormuz for the second day in a row without saying what they were targeting, two more oil tankers got attacked, and JD Vance's Yale buddy Dan Driscoll quit as Army Secretary after Hegseth got paranoid about their friendship and blocked Driscoll's plans to modernize the Army for drone warfare — so the guy who wanted to prepare for the future of war got pushed out by the guy who built himself a salon at the Pentagon. On the financial beat, Global bond markets are selling off, US interest rates just hi...

Today's Headlines: And we’re back to actual warring again. The US and Iran are shooting at each other again for the first time in a month — US strikes on Iranian rocket launchers, Iran hitting US bases in Jordan and the UAE — and when reporters asked Trump if he'd rule out nukes, he said yes and no in the same breath and called it a stupid question, which is on brand. Trump also personally called Apple to ask them to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America on Maps, and is apparently "confident" it'll happen soon, Apple however did not commen...

Today's Headlines: This weekend was a mixed bag of news so let’s start with good news. Olivia Rodrigo raised $10 million at her Daisy Chain Fields festival for women's charities including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, then Melinda French Gates walked onstage and doubled it to $20 million. MapQuest made a surprise comeback to number two in the App Store as a result of Google Maps changing Lake Ontario to Lake America in compliance with US government sources. And back to regularly scheduled craziness, Trump threatened to report Kristen Welker to the FCC for covering his declining ap...

Today's Headlines: Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America — yes, really — musing that maybe he'll rename the Atlantic and Pacific next, while Canadian PM Mark Carney responded that "Ontario" is a 400-year-old Wendat word meaning "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big," which is a more dignified response than the moment deserved. Back to actual issues, Iran has been running an AI-powered disinformation operation on Instagram and Facebook, posing as average Americans to spread political misinformation about immigration and the Israel-Palestine war, with Meta taking down 35 accounts — which is a lot of effort from a...

Today's Headlines: We’re almost to the weekend and we’re starting off with tech and medical science. Meta settled its youth addiction trial for $17 billion paid over ten years across 47 states — with new safety requirements for minors including time limits, night mode, and hidden like counts. Of course the company's stock went up after the settlement, which tells you everything about who won. Bill Gates published a 5,784-word AI warning blog post saying there is "no plan" for the transition to the AI era, too late the hero, Bill. In medical news, the FDA approved a new pancreatic cancer...

Today's Headlines: Dolly Parton, the legendary country singer, songwriter, actress, and philanthropist, has died at 80. Beyond music, she leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of generosity and her work supporting medical research. Shifting gears, the CIA director made an attempted secret trip to Moscow with the plane sitting on the ground for eight hours and no explanation of who Ratcliffe met with or why, with possibilities ranging from hostage negotiations to addressing Russia's recent NATO provocations. Pivoting to the trade war, Canada announced 50% retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion in American goods effective September 8th, matching Trump's tariffs dollar for dollar on...

Today's Headlines: The Wall Street Journal revealed that Trump personally called a senior DOJ official to settle the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation — days before trial, after Live Nation's CEO met with Trump at the White House to "discuss Kennedy Center bookings". Live Nation reportedly promised $10 billion in US investment in exchange for a favorable settlement so generous that most states refused to join it and kept suing, ultimately winning a jury verdict in April finding Live Nation illegally monopolizing the concert ticketing market. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to let Trump's mail-in voting restrictions move forward — not on whet...

Sami Sage sits down with comedian and political commentator Alex Pearlman to talk about why the Democratic Party has no leader, why politicians under 45 who grew up online (Ossoff, Mamdani, AOC) actually know how to communicate, and why Alex is touring 12 cities to get people off their phones and back into real conversations. They also cover Kamala's 2028 odds, the DSA's messaging problem, and getting money out of politics.

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Today's Headlines: It was quite a weekend! Trump turned DC streets into a 1.7-mile IndyCar speedway for another Freedom 250 event, took a ceremonial lap in the presidential limo with Melania — not Natalie — while his Qatari plane did a flyover. In other shady news, Trump announced he's importing up to 300,000 metric tons of "product for ground beef" without specifying what the product is, where it's from, or how it'll be discounted 25% — which landed one day after a New York Times investigation revealed the Bureau of Land Management has been selling wild horses to buyers who ship them to slaughter plants throug...

Today's Headlines: Melania Trump made a surprise White House appearance — her first in weeks or possibly months — to announce a foster care initiative, opening with "I heard you missed me, here I am," which nobody would have thought twice about if it hadn't come directly after Jon Ossoff's comment that Trump wants to "travel with Natalie." The timing really did the heavy lifting there. Walmart posted its weakest growth since 2020, the FDA upgraded its frozen berry recall to its highest risk level over e.coli contamination, sourdough bread in Seattle was recalled for metal shards, and 65,000 people in Gary, Indi...

Today's Headlines: Trump spent yesterday morning showing off his new White House helipad and giving an unprompted infomercial for Scott's Miracle-Gro that spiked the company's stock — a useful distraction from reporting that his aide Natalie Harp, the Human Printer, worked at the White House for a year without a security clearance because she refused until Trump personally intervened. He also TACO’d again, the Canada tariffs Trump announced at 50% were paused before they went into effect because they're "probably going to make a deal," and the US national debt hit $40 trillion for the first time, doubling in a decade, so t...

Today's Headlines: The Trump family received a conditional bank charter for their crypto firm World Liberty Financial — co-run by Eric Trump and Steve Witkoff's son — allowing them to issue their own stablecoins, which means more money for them and more risk in the financial system. Meanwhile, Disney and ABC are suing the FCC for retaliating against them politically by reviewing their broadcast licenses two years early over Jimmy Kimmel, The View, and DEI — citing Trump's own Truth Social posts. In other news, Meta's jury trial started in California with four states seeking billions in damages and platform reforms, alleging the co...

Today's Headlines: Trump threatened to "bomb the shit out of" Oman — a longtime US ally and the country currently facilitating Iran negotiations — because Iran and Oman are having side talks about the Strait of Hormuz that don't include him, and when asked why, he said "I don't think they behave very well," which confused even Fox News. Jared Kushner and Netanyahu spent several hours reaching the conclusion that Hamas should hand over weapons to an American general before any Gaza reconstruction begins, Netanyahu won't redeploy the IDF, and two working groups will be formed — all of which Netanyahu is naviga...

Today's Headlines: Todd Blanche went on Meet the Press and admitted he cannot pledge DOJ independence from the White House, and that the DOJ may ask the Supreme Court to intervene in 22 cases where judges blocked Trump's election interference efforts — specifically the administration's attempt to get voter rolls including names, addresses, and partial social security numbers from 30 states and DC. Trump also asked the Supreme Court to let him finish the $900 million White House renovation after courts ordered construction to stop by August 21st, now openly calling it a "national security structure" and "military complex" rather than a ballroom, po...

Today's Headlines: The USS Abraham Lincoln is being replaced by the USS George Washington after reporting that sailors who had been at sea for over 250 days without disembarking attempted to take their own lives — Hegseth insists the conditions are being "completely misrepresented," Democrats in Congress are demanding answers, and the Pentagon quietly swapping out the carrier while denying there's a problem is its own kind of answer. Meanwhile, US intelligence officials were actually fairly skeptical about the credibility of the Iran assassination threat that sent Trump fleeing Air Force One in a catering truck, and it was relayed to th...

Today's Headlines: Karoline Leavitt is leaving her job as White House Press Secretary at the end of August, officially to spend more time with her family, though the timing — coming weeks after her boss used the press corps as an Iran assassination decoy — raises some questions. On the never-ending reflecting pool drama, Jeanine Pirro convened a rare special grand jury to investigate the reflecting pool vandalism case, even after admitting there's no case against the former Olympian they arrested. Meanwhile, cyberattacks have hit water systems in 12 states over the past few years, with 30 Minnesota systems targeted last month alone, and...

Today's Headlines: Trump secretly escaped Air Force One in a catering truck at the NATO summit in Turkey due to an Iranian assassination threat — leaving the press corps and cabinet members including Marco Rubio sitting inside the plane he'd just abandoned as a decoy. The plane he fled was the Qatari hand-me-down that clearly wasn't secure enough for the president. When asked if he'd declare a national emergency around the November midterms, Trump said "stranger things have happened, I'll leave it at that" and then actually left it at that, which is alarming, to say the least. Meanwhile, the DO...

Today's Headlines: Trump signed an executive order overriding the CDC's vaccine schedule authority, requiring the MMR vaccine to be broken into three separate shots at separate visits — while claiming he broke up his own kids' vaccines into five stops because he's "seen proof" that vaccines cause autism, which he described as a soda bottle poured into a child's body. Trump also admitted there was "some contractor error" with the reflecting pool while continuing to accuse a former Olympian of vandalism even though charges were dropped, and appointed a Project 2025 co-author as inspector general of the department that will review th...

Today's Headlines: Todd Blanche was confirmed as attorney general 50-49 at 4am on Saturday — with spineless Bill Cassidy, who already lost his Senate seat thanks to Trump, casting the deciding vote anyway — cementing the man responsible for Ghislaine Maxwell's emotional support puppy as the top law enforcement officer in the United States. On an equally depressing note, Ohio congressman Max Miller, facing allegations of holding his daughter's stuffed bunny hostage among significantly more violent accusations, missed the deadline to drop out of his reelection race. Speaking of people with no shame, Meta was caught paying neo-Nazis through its invitation-only mone...

Today's Headlines: Iran may have hacked over 30 Minnesota water systems, with the FBI investigating amid existing warnings that Iranian hackers have been specifically targeting water and wastewater infrastructure. Speaking of hacking, Anthropic's AI models hacked into three companies during tests, topping OpenAI's model which only hacked one, which is either a quality gap or a concerning arms race depending on how you look at it. On this administration’s shenanigans, Trump is threatening to pull Todd Blanche's attorney general nomination after Cornyn and Tillis refused to vote for him, though his plan appears to be waiting until their terms en...

Today's Headlines: Congress was quite busy. Rand Paul turned the Senate into a personal vendetta circus, dragging Anthony Fauci in for a hearing where he pleaded the Fifth almost 100 times — because the entire point was to find something to criminally prosecute him for despite Biden's preemptive pardon — and Paul is now threatening to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for asserting his constitutional right. Todd Blanche's attorney general confirmation vote was cancelled because Thom Tillis and John Cornyn want the bare minimum assurance that he won't create Trump's insurrectionist slush fund or give Trump permanent IRS immunity — things Blanche won't...

Today's Headlines: Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear issued Mitch McConnell an ultimatum — prove you can serve or resign — pointing out that if Mitch can chat with Scott Jennings for 20 minutes he can call into a Kentucky news station. Lindsey Graham's memorial service at the Capitol brought together an unlikely guest list including Zelensky and Netanyahu, both of whom used the funeral as an opportunity for behind-closed-doors Trump meetings — Netanyahu called it "one of the best conversations I've had with Trump, and Zelensky said it was "good" and they discussed Patriot missiles and Ukraine diplomacy. In other Trump adjacent news, FIFA presid...

Today's Headlines: Mitch McConnell's office released a photo with his wife and a doctor's note confirming he's still in a rehab facility and won't make it to the Fancy Farm Kentucky annual picnic, because THAT’S what everyone was concerned about. To add to the depraved and morally corrupt Republicans news, Ohio congressman Max Miller, whose ex-wife filed roughly 2,000 pages of court documents alleging he threw boiling water at her, pointed a gun at her head, and broke their two-year-old daughter's collarbone, is being defended by House Speaker Mike Johnson who said "the key word is allegation" — while Pete Butt...

Today's Headlines: The White House Correspondents Dinner happened over the weekend — Trump did an hour of his greatest hits, mocked Kaitlin Collins and his own guest Nicki Minaj, and Wolf Blitzer presented the Wall Street Journal with an award for uncovering Trump's Epstein ties while noting the reporter had to move after Trump doxxed her home address in a lawsuit, which is a sentence about the current state of press freedom. The Trump administration is moving to rename New York Penn Station — renderings obtained by Gothamist already show a presidential seal with Trump's name on it — because courts blocked his Ke...

Today's Headlines: Trump announced a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, then posted a P.S. the next day conditioning the whole thing on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel — a condition so significant it threw the entire deal into jeopardy before Congress even had a chance to reject it — while simultaneously telling Axios he's "close" to ordering a massive Iran strike "bigger than ever before" and that Israel would "join in two minutes" if asked, which is a casual thing to say about starting a regional war. The House passed a War Powers resolution to stop Trump's Iran strikes with...

Today's Headlines: Trump attended the dignified transfer of four service members killed in Iran, then immediately posted that the US would bomb a bridge or power plant in Tehran every time Iran fires anything at a Strait of Hormuz ship — which legal experts would describe as a war crime — before heading to Georgia for a rally where he called the Iran war a "skirmish," invented a weak nickname for Jon Ossoff, and called affordability a Democratic scam, while a guy behind him spent the whole time visibly mocking him. The US also signed a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia givi...

Today's Headlines: Pete Hegseth went to Congress to ask for $1.5 trillion more for the Iran war — on top of the $37.5 billion already spent — while the Pentagon has been quietly underreporting troop injuries, with the New York Times revealing over 400 Americans have been hurt, nearly 100 just in July, which the Pentagon characterized as "mostly mild concussions" which is indeed, an injury. The 17 service members killed in a war we supposedly won several times were also not mentioned with particular urgency. In another Oval Office mess of an interview, Trump met with Lebanon's president to discuss the Israel-Lebanon peace agreement, then took...

Today's Headlines: Kash Patel scheduled a trip to Russia in October with no disclosed agenda or meeting list, which is a perfectly normal thing for the FBI director to do while leading an agency that investigates Russian interference. In tariff news, Trump dropped new tariffs on Canada — specifically cars, alcohol, cheese, and hockey sticks — on products covered by the USMCA trade deal he negotiated himself in 2020 and called "the best deal ever," though they don't kick in for 30 days so this is probably a stunt. Meanwhile, the cyclospora lettuce saga got weirder when the FDA announced the positive test on T...

Today's Headlines: Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Miami by US Marshals at the UK's request, facing 59 total charges including rape, sex trafficking, assault, and charges related to indecent images of a child — their attorney says they're innocent, they'll fight extradition. On the corruption beat, Trump is now selling hedge funds early access to his Truth Social posts for $100,000 a month through a service called Truth API, which is institutionalized insider trading dressed up as a subscription service — and he owns 41% of the company selling it, so that's clean. Meanwhile, Trump's primetime election fraud document dump turned out to c...

Today's Headlines: Trump's Big Boy speech was overhyped, overproduced, and deeply disappointing — with NBC and ABC refusing to air it. In true Donald fashion, he threatened to shut down both networks and the content itself were his greatest hits of repeatedly disproven 2020 election claims delivered at an off-pace that makes more sense now that we know his teleprompter operator was placed on leave for making $100,000 on Kalshi bets predicting the content of Trump's speeches — a guy who has operated Trump's teleprompter since 2016, personally takes his last-minute edits, and was questioned about how the January 6th speech came together. The actu...

Today's Headlines: Pete Hegseth announced that the military will now annually screen all service members over 30 for testosterone deficiency with voluntary testing for under-30s who are concerned, and testosterone replacement therapy available to anyone who wants it — which is gender-affirming care, offered by the guy who banned gender-affirming care. In Congress hearings, Todd Blanche's attorney general confirmation hearing featured him calling himself "the president's lawyer — was the president's lawyer" in real time, being grilled about the Epstein files coverup, Ghislaine Maxwell's prison spa with an emotional support puppy, and the fake IRS settlement, while Texas Senator John Cornyn said...

Today's Headlines: ICE has halted most traffic stop arrests nationwide after killing two people in one week who weren't even their targets — and before that pause could even be properly announced, a third ICE-related death occurred in Florida when a man fleeing an early morning gas station stop was hit by a tractor-trailer, bringing the week's total to three. Elon Musk has been referred for potential criminal prosecution in Wisconsin after a bipartisan election board found probable cause he violated the state's bribery law by handing $1 million checks to voters during last year's Supreme Court race — his guy lost by t...

Today's Headlines: Lindsey Graham's sister Darline Graham Nordone was appointed to his Senate seat within days of his death — never held office, framed as a neutral placeholder, and now South Carolina's first female senator, which would be more historic if it weren't handed to her by Trump as a favor. The FBI also showed up at Graham's DC home less than 48 hours after his death with at least 8 agents, claiming "abundance of caution" and "nothing indicated foul play." On the administration's ongoing efforts to undermine election integrity, Trump announced a primetime speech Thursday night, which MSNBC immediately reported will be...

Today's Headlines: Senator Lindsey Graham died Saturday night at 71 from a ruptured aorta, just hours after returning from Ukraine where he'd met with Zelensky and signed a new sanctions deal against Russia — the internet immediately blamed the Russians, his office says it was heart disease. South Carolina's governor will appoint a replacement to finish his term, a special Republican primary is set for August 11th, and Nancy Mace — who came in last in the governor's race one month ago — is already considering running against Democratic candidate Dr. Annie Andrews, which would be must-see television. On a related note, Mitch McConn...

Today's Headlines: Mitch McConnell is still missing with zero health updates, Elaine Chao's spokesperson says she left for China two days before he was hospitalized and has since returned. Mitch’s absence is now actively complicating Senate business since he sits on the Appropriations Committee that needs to pass a government funding bill by September 30th — so the republicans need him conscious and present, which remains unconfirmed. In other news, The Secret Service apparently made Trump swap planes leaving Turkey out of "an abundance of caution" over Iran escalation concerns about how quickly the Qatari hand-me-down was retrofitted, despite Trum...

Today's Headlines: Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear had to write his own senator a letter asking if he's alive, after Trump blew up the cover story that multiple Republican senators had "just spoken to McConnell" by telling reporters on Air Force One that he has "no idea" what condition Mitch is in. The clock is ticking to August 4th, when Kentucky's Democratic governor loses the ability to appoint a replacement, and the suspicion is that McConnell's office is very deliberately running it down. Graham Platner dropped out of the Maine Senate race Wednesday night with an 11-minute video blaming corporate...

Today's Headlines: Graham Platner still hasn't dropped out of the Maine Senate race despite Bernie withdrawing his endorsement and a second sexual assault allegation — this time from an ex-girlfriend who says he removed condoms during sex without her consent, which is classified as sexual assault in several countries — and his campaign's response was to call it politically motivated and bring up Brett Kavanaugh. Even better, Platner is now reportedly negotiating what he wants in exchange for leaving, including demanding his replacement come from Bernie's political orbit, while the Maine Democratic Party has told his campaign they have no role in t...

Today's Headlines: The US lost to Belgium 4-1 in the World Cup Round of 16 despite Trump personally calling FIFA to get Balogun's red card suspension reversed, which worked, and Belgium won anyway — so the meddling was both successful and pointless. On the election beat, Graham Platner, who won Maine's Democratic Senate primary a few weeks ago despite a Nazi tattoo is now facing a heavily corroborated sexual assault allegation so severe that nearly every major backer including Hasan Piker and Ro Khanna immediately called for him to drop out — Democrats have until July 27th to find a replacement if he e...

Today's Headlines: Trump's July 4th celebrations were a disaster on every front — his Mount Rushmore speech was cancelled by a hailstorm, the National Mall events were evacuated due to severe wind and rain with guests sheltering in the African American History Museum, and his record-breaking fireworks show was obscured by its own smoke, leaving DC with the worst air quality in the world by 7am. Making it worse, Democrats released a report alleging Freedom250 was a wire fraud scheme that redirected donor money from the legitimate bipartisan America250 celebration, pressured corporate donors to switch their commitments, and diverted $75 million of...

Today's Headlines: Mitch McConnell has apparently been on death's door for three weeks and nobody thought to mention it — Punchbowl News reported yesterday that he was found unconscious after likely suffering a heart attack, with EMS dispatch audio referencing CPR in progress for a cardiac arrest, while his office has been telling us he's "working closely with staff," which is one way to describe being in a hospital after cardiac arrest. Harvey Weinstein is also in Bellevue Hospital with heart failure as a complication of pneumonia after being rushed from Rikers, awaiting his September sentencing for sexual assault. America's 250th...