Todd Zwillich

The letter, for Epstein's birthday, includes a message depicting a fake exchange between Trump and Epstein: "Enigmas never age" "wonderful secret."www.wsj.com/politics/tru...

In Iowa, Trump Begins Task of Selling His Bill to the American Public

No mention of Trump’s “Shylock” slur in this NY Times article about his “victory lap” speech in Iowa.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/u...

Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Set Off a Wave of Disinformation After Iran Bombing Trumpworld has been trying to spin the US military’s bombing of Iran as a complete and total victory, even as independent experts and MAGA loyalists object.

Minutes after we published this article, Sean Hannity removed a video from his Instagram account that falsely claimed to show an explosion at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran.

The post had been up since Saturday night and viewed over 5 million times

www.wired.com/story/donald...

Trump chooses the timing of salient announcements like this. This one obv has the added effect of pushing down tonight’s cable coverage of embarrassing developments like Elon Musk’s “kill the bill” and escalation in Russia.

PAPERLESS ORDER: Plaintiffs' request at ECF No. 177 for leave to file a motion for sanctions pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37 is GRANTED. Plaintiffs shall file their motion no later than June 11, 2025. Defendants shall file their response within seven days of the motion's filing. Signed by Judge Paula Xinis on 6/4/2025. (heps, Deputy Clerk) (Entered: 06/04/2025)

NEW: In the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, Judge Xinis grants the plaintiff’s request to file a motion for sanctions.

Motion due June 11.

As a side matter, reporters & headline writers calling reconciliation Trump's "domestic agenda" are incorrect. Most of the agenda--deportations, tariffs, gutting due process, pardoning criminal allies, attacking institutions, crippling govt, & gathering money--has been accomplished without Congress

The abomination squad How Elon Musk learned to start worrying and hate the GOP budget bill

New from me, still filling in at @brianbeutler.bsky.social's Off message: A user's guide to Trump's budget bill in the Senate: Medicaid, the parliamentarian, WH disinfo and what's at stake for the future of the GOP. open.substack.com/pub/brianbeu...

Between this and the Venezuelan TPS ruling, #SCOTUS has now cleared the way for removing more than one million non-citizens who, until now, were *legally protected* against removal.

This also ratchets up the stakes in the "third-country" removal case, since many of these folks *can't* be sent home.

Pay Me Trump is exploiting the Presidency with relentless consistency. Just look.

You've heard about the scale and variety of the ways Trump is inviting corruption and openly exploiting the presidency for personal gain. It's in the news all the time, but confronting it all in one place is staggering. open.substack.com/pub/brianbeu...

Bringing the joy to @brianbeutler.bsky.social’s community

Charging Into Oblivion This time, the electric car can't be killed. But American workers' chance to benefit from it can be, and a lot of them are Trump voters.

From me, in Off Message: The GAO concluded Trump's killing of the federal EV charger program was a no-brainer illegal impoundment. Now the US has months, not years, to undo the damage to workers and industry. Even if courts reverse it, it's probably too late open.substack.com/pub/brianbeu...

Memory holed: 2 mos ago RFK forced out Dr Peter Marks, FDA’s head of vaccine review & regulation. Marks said: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/...

Spent hours working on this post and RFK just...tweeted it out.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk...

Strategic Ambiguity, Preventable Misery RFK Jr. has Trump Administration officials cosplaying "pro-science" while staying true to his anti-vax roots. The result will be more disease.

New from me, guesting on @brianbeutler.bsky.social's Off Message: RFK Jr. and Trump officials are embracing strategic ambiguity to balance anti-vaccine propaganda with responsible-sounding public health policy. That balance doesn't exist. open.substack.com/pub/brianbeu...

“They didn’t let me talk to my attorneys...they didn’t let me talk to my wife.”

“They just nabbed me and disappeared me. My body was chained, shackled, treating my like an animal.”

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour WATCH: Georgetown scholar says he was 'chained, shackled' in ICE detention

EXCLUSIVE: In their first broadcast interview since his release from ICE detention, Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri and his wife, Mapheze Saleh, spoke to @lbarronlopez.bsky.social
about Khan Suri's release after nearly two months in a detention facility in Texas. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e4X...

“chicago pope” is one of the shows jack donaghy greenlit when he was tanking nbc

“TeleMessage is largely unknown and untested among cyber experts. NBC News asked five cybersecurity experts about Telemessage. Each said they had not heard of it before learning about Waltz’s apparent use of it Thursday.”

Company Boasts Spending Up To $20 Million On Trump Crypto Coin To Buy Influence The arrangement puts money in Trump’s pocket in return for the opportunity to change policy — exactly the sort of pay-to-play scheme critics warned about.

An international trucking logistics firm is buying as much as *** $20 MILLION *** worth of President Donald Trump’s crypto coins to influence the administration’s trade policy.
www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

Trump appears confused here. He is suing Perkins Coie in Florida in a case before Judge Middlebrooks that has been dismissed and resulted in sanctions against him and Alina Habba.

Perkins Coie is suing HIM before Judge Howell over his retaliatory executive order.

Hegseth’s judgment & behavior so worried senators that he promised he would stop drinking if confirmed as SecDef. I haven’t heard any reporter ask, “Mr Secretary, since your confirmation, have you had a drink?”

Not a troll, it’s the standard Hegseth publicly set for himself.

Trump officials demanded criminal charges for Hillary, Biden for classified leaks. They’re silent on SignalGate. | CNN Politics Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and other Trump administration officials who demanded punishment for Clinton’s and Biden’s classified scandals are quiet on SignalGate

NEW on CNN: As the White House says SignalGate "case has been closed" we ran through comments of all the top DOJ/FBI officials Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Ed Martin.

All called for length prison sentences for mishandling classified information.

www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/p...

Looking forward to being a part of this discussion in troubling times

Trump Commutes Ozy Media Founder’s Sentence Just Before His Surrender Carlos Watson, who started the now-defunct digital media company, had been sentenced to almost 10 years in prison for trying to defraud investors and lenders.

Trump, himself a convicted felon, commutes the sentence of Carlos Watson, co-founder of the now-defunct digital media company Ozy Media, on the day he was to surrender to prison for trying to defraud lenders and investors. @danielledkaye.bsky.social Maggie Haberman www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/b...

A correction of you were listening to the News Roundup on 1A/ NPR this morning. I incorrectly said Perkins Coie folded to Trump’s demands and agreed to $40 million in free services. Of course I should have said Paul Weiss. Regret the live error.

Hegseth, Waltz, Gabbard: Private Data and Passwords of Senior U.S. Security Officials Found Online Donald Trump's most important security advisers used Signal to discuss an imminent military strike. Now, reporting by DER SPIEGEL has found that the contact data of some of those officials, including ...

"Not only are Trump‘s advisors discussing attack plans on Yemen on Signal-their mobile #'s, E-Mail & passwords can be found in commercial databases & publicly available leaks"- @fschmid.bsky.social

"Most of these numbers & email addresses are apparently still in use"
www.spiegel.de/internationa...

Mike Waltz Left His Venmo Friends List Public A WIRED review shows national security adviser Mike Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and other top officials left sensitive information exposed via Venmo—until WIRED asked about it.

NEW: Mike Walts, the infamous National Security Adviser who added The Atlantic to the Signal group chat, also left his Venmo friends list public. So did White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

read @dmehro.bsky.social and @timmarchman.bsky.social:

.@shaneharris on CNN addresses Ratcliffe's charge that Goldberg implied an "undercover" CIA agent in the Signal chat.

"We took out the name of that CIA officer at the CIA's request."

The article does not say it's an agent, nor undercover. As Ratcliffe has acknowledged, it's his CoS

misdirection

Rep. Jim Himes on the Signal chat strike plans, vicious:

"A lot of this suggest a sort of lack of sobriety.... I don't mean that literally."

Vaccine skeptic hired to head federal study of immunizations and autism A long-discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic will conduct a government study on whether vaccines cause autism.

“This is a worst-case scenario for public health,” Steier said. “It’s a slap in the face to the decades of actual credible research we have.”

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...