From The Hill
President Trump is turning back to diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking a new deal with Iran that his administration failed to secure through waves of military strikes. But the negotiations, which the president claimed would resume Monday, got off to a rocky start, with Iran denying any resumption in talks with the U.S., while…
From The Hill
Republicans are getting increasingly nervous about the political fallout from the allegations of domestic abuse leveled against Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) by his ex-wife Emily Moreno, whose father, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), publicly called for Miller to resign. Republican leadership aides grew more concerned about Miller’s situation after developments over the weekend and have been…
From The Hill
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation to the permanent post faces hurdles in the Senate even after the dramatic deal involving Republican Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (N.C.), as several other key GOP senators remain undecided over his nomination. Centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who faces a tough reelection contest in a Democratic-leaning…
From The Hill
It’s crunch time in the fiercest and most divisive Democratic primary battle of the year. On Tuesday, Democratic voters in Michigan will decide whether progressive Abdul El-Sayed or centrist Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) will be their Senate candidate as the party tries to retain the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters (D). The race…
UPDATE (Aug. 4, 2026, 12:45 p.m. ET): The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday advanced Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general to the Senate on a 12-10 party-line vote.
It took weeks of arm-twisting and a stalled confirmation process, but Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina got what they wanted from Todd Blanche. The acting attorney general signed a document Sunday evening rescinding a previous order setting up a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, better understood as a slush fund, to be doled out to President Donald Trump’s supporters. The move leaves a clear path for Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department to finally advance out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But crucially, neither the document Blanche signed nor another unsigned press release issued from his office Sunday alters the other part of the supposed “Settlement Agreement” between Trump and the IRS. Left untouched is the addendum that barred the IRS from carrying out, or completing, audits of the president, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as the Trump Organization. Without forcing Blanche to also strike down that part of the agreement, Cornyn and Tillis have, in effect, provided the go-ahead for one of the most apparently corrupt schemes to ever emerge from the White House.
There’s a common trope in horror, mystery and related genres of fiction: “Always check the body.”
The second document released by Blanche’s office only gestures toward the IRS audit ban his May 19 order announced. It merely confirms that Blanche stands by his testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee and “restates that…the Order only has any effect, including on any release of claims, on the named parties in the lawsuit.” In other words, it is only Trump, his co-plaintiffs and the IRS that are party to this agreement despite the sweeping language of the announcement.
Blanche also confirmed during his testimony that the deal was only retroactive in nature.
“It’s not forward-looking, so to the extent there are taxes filed by the president or his sons or the Trump organization after the date of that agreement, there’s no protection,” he told Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., during questioning. But any ongoing or potential audits for tax filings up to then are still off-limits — including those covering Trump’s first year back in office despite the family’s crypto windfall and other potentially shady business deals that they have undertaken.
With its massive and highly symbolic total, and potential payout for Jan. 6 rioters and other far-right extremists, it makes sense that the slush fund part of the deal drew more attention and outrage. The surprise settlement proved to be a major wrench in congressional Republicans’ plans, prompting many to line up in opposition to it. Only 15 days after announcing it on May 18, Blanche was forced to confirm during a June 2 hearing that the DOJ was “not moving forward with the fund.”
Blanche reiterated that claim during his confirmation hearing — but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Cornyn and Tillis.
There’s a common trope in horror, mystery and related genres of fiction: “Always check the body.” No matter how certainly a mortal wound has been landed, or how unsurvivable a fall might seem, there’s no substitute for putting eyes on the corpse of whatever villain has apparently been laid low. And there was every reason to be skeptical of Blanche’s claims, even those provided under oath, when Trump has repeatedly hinted that the fund could be resurrected.
To their credit, both GOP senators refused to advance Blanche’s nomination without something in writing affirming that the fund was dead and would not be resuscitated. But though their campaign was laudable, it also focused on an easy target.
While the Senate GOP majority demurred when given the chance to formal blocking it, Cornyn and Tillis were doing their colleagues a favor in holding up Blanche’s nomination. The reaction to the slush fund’s creation was wildly negative, with one Economist/YouGov poll showing only 24% of Republicans supporting it and 45% of self-described MAGA Republicans opposing the scheme. In effect, the fund was all but indefensible politically, but it still fell to two retiring senators to hold the line against any potential resurrection of the fund.
Meanwhile, the IRS audit ban has benefitted from the massive shadow the slush fund cast, leaving it less politically radioactive. But while Trump has floated the idea of the slush fund coming back, and threatened to veto any limitations on it, his outrage over its death has been relatively muted.
Getting Blanche to cave on something that could affect his boss’ wallet would have been a much harder lift.
The same can’t be said of the president’s likely response if Blanche were to sign off on removing the audit protection part of the deal. As The New York Times has noted, an audit launched in the aftermath of an IRS inquiry before his first presidency could have resulted in Trump owing $100 million or more for double-dipping on certain tax breaks. (Eric Trump told the Times that the matter was previously settled and “only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office.”) Getting Blanche to cave on something that could affect his boss’ wallet would have been a much harder lift.
If anything, Sunday’s statement confirms that the part of the deal that most directly stands to benefit Trump will remain in place despite resulting from a case where, as a federal judge ruled, Blanche and his subordinates “ignored ethical norms, court rules, and legal authority to manipulate the judicial process.” And as my colleague Jordan Rubin noted, once confirmed, there’s little stopping Blanche from continuing “to use his position to benefit Trump personally, whether through this specific agreement or any new schemes that the attorney general and the president concoct.”
Blanche’s mea culpa on the slush fund may be enough to convince Cornyn and Tillis to clear him through committee — but it can’t be the end of this story. Those GOP senators who remain skeptical of Blanche’s fitness to run the nation’s top law enforcement agency must not overlook this massive benefit he’s provided the president. Even though he’s no longer collecting fees as Trump’s personal attorney, it’s hard to see his nomination as anything but payment for a job well done.
The post Blanche killed the slush fund but Trump still wins big in his IRS case appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
For the legions of weary Michiganders who have endured Democrats’ brutal and eye-wateringly expensive primary campaign to succeed outgoing Sen. Gary Peters, Tuesday marks the end of one battle and the beginning of another. A Democratic Party establishment that just spent months poisoning voters against progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed must now figure out how to put together their fractured party to hold a critical Senate seat in November.
Democrats’ mess in Michigan, and El-Sayed’s ability to weather what should have been a debilitating coordinated effort by Democratic leaders to dislodge him from front-runner status, should be a wake-up call to the party’s Washington elite.
Almost every ad attacking El-Sayed originated not from Republicans but from his fellow Democrats.
Whether voters select El-Sayed or his main opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democratic Party will face the monumental task of restoring trust among the many rank-and-file Democrats who suspect the party establishment would rather surrender the state’s senate seat to a Republican than legitimize El-Sayed’s outsider candidacy.
Follow MS NOW’s midterm elections live blog for the latest updates and analysis on today’s biggest races across Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Virginia and Washington.
Perhaps voters would have listened to the criticism from establishment Democrats like strategist James Carville and former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison about El-Sayed, and progressive candidates in general, if the party’s centrist strategy had won the White House and recaptured one or both houses of Congress in 2024. But that isn’t the case.
Recent polling shows that the Democratic Party and its leaders are still scraping all-time low approval ratings with their own base, and Democrats nationally are even less popular than President Donald Trump. With all due respect to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DNC, they aren’t in a position to be telling anyone much of anything.
The fight between El-Sayed and a rotating cast of Democratic challengers first drew the party’s national leaders into a damaging public brawl that blanketed voters’ screens with almost $100 million in attack ads. Nearly all that money came from outside groups opposing El-Sayed or supporting Stevens, yet a tidal wave of negativity did not appear to dim voter enthusiasm for El-Sayed, who has maintained a 9-point lead heading into Election Day.
To the party’s progressive base, the Democratic leadership’s clunky efforts to rally Michigan voters first behind state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (who dropped out in early July) and then Stevens felt like an effort to stage-manage the state’s politics. That didn’t play well with Michigan Democratic voters, who routinely voiced their frustration with national leaders they described as “weak” and inept. Democrats faced a similar backlash in Maine, where efforts to position Gov. Janet Mills as the party’s presumptive Senate nominee earlier this year fell flat with voters. Like McMorrow, Mills unceremoniously abandoned her Schumer-backed campaign amid surging support for outsider progressive candidate Graham Platner, who dropped out after allegations of sexual assault and abuse from previous relationships. (He has denied the allegations.)
Like Platner, El-Sayed’s unapologetically leftist candidacy was incendiary from the start. His strong criticism of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza led centrist Democratic groups like Third Way to accuse El-Sayed of antisemitism, an attack Stevens adopted five days before Election Day. In an essay for The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait described El-Sayed as an Israel-obsessed conspiracy theorist “fus[ing] together two toxic ideologies.” At times during the primary, almost every ad attacking El-Sayed originated not from Republicans but from his fellow Democrats.
In a New Yorker profile published last month, El-Sayed seemed to wear the Democratic establishment’s anger toward him as a badge of honor earned as much for his embrace of Bernie Sanders-style left-wing economic policy as for anything he had said about Israel. At the same time, El-Sayed and his network of progressive allies turned the party’s unceasing attacks into an opportunity to organize new voters by portraying Democratic leaders as overbearing and reactionary. It worked: The campaign’s July fundraising report showed El-Sayed raking in more than twice as much grassroots money as Stevens despite all the bad press.
After delivering unexpected victories to Trump in 2016 and again in 2024, Michigan voters are certainly used to surprises.
That doesn’t mean Tuesday night’s results are guaranteed. After delivering unexpected victories to Trump in 2016 and again in 2024, Michigan voters are certainly used to surprises.
If Democratic leaders want to mend the ideological rifts tearing apart Michigan, Maine and other key races nationwide, they’ll need to stop treating the party’s progressive wing as an unwelcome infection that must be eradicated at any cost. That self-defeating strategy will only succeed in driving down Democratic voter enthusiasm ahead of the general election in November and solidifying a rift that will continue to hobble the party into 2028 and beyond.
Changing the party leadership will be a critical step toward mending those frayed and fractured relationships. Schumer has become the most visible face of opposition to his party’s leftward shift, and his willingness to publicly tip the scales in races like El-Sayed’s sends the message that Democratic voters’ wishes matter less than what the Democratic Party’s long-serving leadership in Washington wants. That’s exactly the kind of paternalism that voters disdain about Democrats. The only way to shed it is to actually trust voters to know their own political priorities.
Win or lose, El-Sayed’s campaign has forced Democrats’ boiling ideological rift out into the open. Now that the wound is exposed, good politics and good conscience demand we address it — by actually understanding the reasons why so many Democratic voters now view their party as an obstacle to real political change.
To paraphrase the message that catapulted El-Sayed to national prominence, listening simply isn’t enough. If Democrats want to become a unified and nationally competitive party again, Democratic leaders need to stop undermining popular candidates who speak to the issues that are moving so many of their voters leftward.
The post Win or lose, El-Sayed’s campaign in Michigan has forced a Democratic reckoning appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
Reach for your red lifebuoy; Baywatch is heading back to Europe and beyond. Fox’s reboot of the 1989 drama has been picked up by Amazon Prime Video across Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Canada, Latin America, and India. The deals, brokered by Fremantle, follow Sky acquiring Baywatch in the UK and […]
Source: Deadline.
It’s time for spicy, gourmand, and powerhouse floral notes to come to the fore. The best fall fragrances by Maison Margiela, Tom Ford, Guerlain, and more match the depth of the season.
Source: Vogue
The web-swinging and villain foiling is great fun, but ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ is, above all, a multilayered love story.
Seafood, history, and the occasional celeb sighting awaits—book a Newport Airbnb and let your Rhode Island holiday officially kick off.
Source: Vogue
This post was originally published on Politico.
The battle to become the country’s next progressive leader in the mold of Bernie Sanders is heating up ahead of Democrats’ direction-defining Michigan Senate primary.
Nowhere is the jockeying and strategy unfolding behind the scenes more pronounced than between Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California, who have taken disparate approaches to the midterms as they build out their political brands. Khanna’s go-everywhere mentality versus Ocasio-Cortez’s more selective involvement in key races this cycle will test their political acumen and relationships, potentially setting them up for a 2028 presidential race that could decide who will
NYC’s official emergency notification system said to expect delays on on Brooklyn-bound 4 and 6 trains.
Source: ABC News