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July 1, 2025
Trump Threatens to Launch DOGE Investigation Into Elon Musk, Send Billionaire 'Back Home to South Africa'
(Mediaite) President Donald Trump has threatened to launch a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) investigation into its former chief Elon Musk after Musk tore into Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and called for the creation of a third party. “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate,” Trump wrote Trump (sic) in the early hours of Tuesday morning. “It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one.”
Go to discussionTrump global aid cuts risk 14 million deaths in five years, report says
(BBC) President Donald Trump's move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal. A third of those at risk of premature deaths were children, researchers projected. Low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock "comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict," said Davide Rasella, who co-authored the report.
Go to discussionFederal judge seeks clarity on whether birthright citizenship order means babies could be deported
(AP) A federal judge on Monday questioned when the Trump administration will try to enforce its birthright citizenship executive order and asked if the government would attempt to deport U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally or temporarily before restrictions on birthright citizenship might take effect in late July.
Go to discussionTexas Democrat Colin Allred launches 2026 U.S. Senate campaign
(Texas Tribune) Allred is the first major Democrat to announce his candidacy for the seat currently held by Cornyn, but several others have indicated their interest, including Beto O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman and statewide campaign veteran; U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a longtime San Antonio legislator; and state Rep. James Talarico, a four-term lawmaker from Austin who is seen as a rising star in the party.
Go to discussionRoy Cooper leans toward N.C. Senate bid, potential Trump showdown
(Axios) North Carolina Democrats are getting closer to the gift they've have been asking for all year, with former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) leaning toward a Senate run in the state President Trump has won three times. The field is essentially frozen until Cooper and Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, decide if they want to be their party's nominees. In their own way, they both have the "right of first refusal" in their party's primaries. "Governor Cooper continues to strongly consider a run for the Senate and will decide in the coming weeks," said Morgan Jackson, Cooper's top political adviser told Axios.
Go to discussionTop Democrat questions 'special treatment' for Alaska, Hawaii in GOP SNAP proposal
(The Hill) Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, questioned why only two states should receive “special treatment” in a GOP-backed plan to reduce federal dollars for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the coming years. As part of a major package being considered in the Senate to advance President Trump’s tax priorities, Republicans also include a major change that would require some states to cover a share of SNAP benefit costs, which are currently funded by the federal government, for the first time.
Go to discussionYoung Men Who Elected Trump Just Realized They Screwed Up
(Daily Beast) The young men who helped get Donald Trump back into the White House are now realizing they made a massive mistake, according to a Harvard polling expert. During the 2024 election, Trump won narrow margins in key battleground states after making an outreach to disaffected young men, using right-wing influencers and anti-woke rhetoric to secure their votes. “I believe younger people were responsible for putting Donald Trump in office to start with, specifically younger men,” Della Volpe said. However, he also suggested that these voters feel they have seen no return on the campaign promises made by Trump regarding the economy and other domestic concerns.
Go to discussionLeopards eating faces update
(KOSU) Born in Guatemala and brought to the state at 16 to reunite with his parents, Cesar Reyes has studied and worked in Oklahoma City since, learning to call it home. By his late twenties, he found himself advising Gov. Kevin Stitt as part of an ad hoc Hispanic Advisory Council the governor had assembled following his 2022 reelection. He and Stitt took a selfie together when the council first met last year, which Reyes posted on Facebook, celebrating Latinos’ increased influence in the governor’s policy agenda. This February, Reyes was deported back to Guatemala. He has no criminal record.
Go to discussionAmericans Have Never Hated Being American More, New Poll Finds
(New Republic) As fireworks will rocket into the sky this weekend, national pride has, under Trump, sunk to its lowest point in recent memory, per a new Gallup poll. Since January 2001, the polling firm has asked Americans whether they are proud to be an American, and this year’s results—published with the Fourth of July on the horizon and the semiquincentennial a year away—have proven to be the most dismal on record.
SCOTUS has become as much of an existential threat to American democracy as Trump has been
(Signal Press) Trump has used the same standards of incompetence and character flaws to make his Supreme Court appointments as he has to build his cabinet. So we have this wonderful gift, from the past two Republican Presidents of the United States, a Supreme Court made up of individuals who not only did not possess the credentials in the federal judiciary or legal field to advance to a job with the kind of Constitutional responsibility as the Supreme Court, but who seem almost deliberately inept and incompetent, as if they think their job is to sabotage the court, upset the carefully crafted balance of power in the Constitution and throw the government into confusion, by undermining it.
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