Polls

Independent -   A Reuters/Ipsos survey indicates that 80% of Americans intend to celebrate July 4th this year. This includes 91% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, and 74% of independents. However, one in five Americans will not be celebrating, and just over half – 57% – primarily see the day as a break from work or an opportunity to spend time with friends and family, or simply as another day.

Traditional festivities remain popular, with 48% of the country planning to attend a cookout. 16% will prepare red, white, and blue-themed food, drinks, or desserts. Fireworks displays are also a key part of the holiday for many, with 34% planning to attend a show and 18% intending to set off fireworks themselves.

Displaying patriotic symbols is common, as 41% of respondents said they would have an American flag or bunting outside their homes. This figure rose to 64% among Republicans, who were also more likely to display the flag regularly throughout the year compared to independents or Democrats.

Credit card delinquency

WalletHub -  WalletHub today released its new report on the Cities Where Credit Card Delinquency Is Decreasing the Most, to highlight where people are struggling the least. You can check out some key findings below.      Increasing the Most Increasing the Least 1. St. Louis, MO 2. San Bernardino, CA 3. Madison, WI 4. Cincinnati, OH 5. Boston, MA 6. Minneapolis, MN 7. Anchorage, AK 8. Omaha, NE 9. Jersey City, NJ 10. Fort Wayne, IN 91. Lincoln, NE 92. Boise, ID 93. Chandler, AZ 94. Durham, NC 95. Chesapeake, VA 96. Chula Vista, CA 97. Garland, TX 98. Gilbert, AZ 99. Wichita, KS 100. Winston-Salem, NC For the full report and to see where your city ranks https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-where-credit-card-delinquency-is-decreasing-most/136688

Immigrant arrests surge

NY Times  - Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates.

Agency leaders in recent days ordered top ICE officials to focus more of their officers’ efforts on picking up immigrants they want to deport, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with federal officials. ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. The push has apparently yielded results, with recent arrest numbers roughly doubling from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year.

ICE officials were told that the White House wanted an increase in arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations. One of the officials said that it was unclear how long the pace could continue, but that ICE officials had been told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.

Climate change

The Guardian -   New data released on Tuesday showed the first six months of the year were the hottest ever measured for parts of eight western states.

That data arrives as a potentially record-breaking heatwave is underway in the east. The National Weather Service expects temperatures over the 4 July holiday weekend to approach all time highs from Washington DC to New York with sweltering heat indexes topping 115F (46C).

This week’s intense heatwave will affect more than 100 million Americans and will be intensified by the growing influence of El Niño and a massive drought affecting 45 states. A similarly intense heatwave in recent days pushed temperatures to their highest-ever level in France, Germany and Denmark, resulting in hundreds of deaths across Europe.

Across the western US, numerous wildfires have broken – including in the mountains of Colorado where a dearth of winter snows remain after a record-warm start to the year.

“Our communities are feeling the firsthand impacts of severe drought and imminent fire danger,” Jared Polis, the Colorado governor, said at a wildfire briefing on Monday.

Health

Nearly 450,000 New Yorkers are losing health coverage on July 1. They are among the millions of people expected to become uninsured over the next year because of federal changes to Medicaid funding. —TIME

A role model for Trump: Mussolini 

Change in jobs

Mail in voting

The Guardian - In a judicial setback for Donald Trump and his administration, a federal ⁠judge blocked a proposed restriction on mail-in voting across the US. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the US district court for the District of Columbia ruled that a US Postal Service plan to deny ballots to voters in states that did not turn over their voter rolls to the federal government should not proceed.

The ruling bars the postal service from enforcing an executive order issued by Trump in March that called for sweeping changes to the administration of elections nationwide.

Anthony Ashton, the senior associate general counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said “This ruling is a critical step in protecting the rights of voters. The proposed USPS changes would have created unnecessary and unlawful barriers, in direct violation of the USPS’s mandate to prioritize election mail. Those barriers could have disproportionately harmed Black voters, who are more likely to rely on mail voting due to longstanding inequities in access.”

Our profit making president

The Congressional Insider -  Trump disclosed over $1.44 billion in crypto income in 2025, including $635 million from meme coins and $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sales.

The Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States gives presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — and bars official acts from being used as evidence even in cases involving private conduct.

Some legal commentators argue the ruling could complicate investigations that involve both official presidential actions and private business activities.

A key legal gap remains: Trump’s crypto ventures appear to be private business activities, not official presidential acts — meaning the immunity ruling may not directly protect them.

President Trump’s financial disclosure for 2025 showed more than $1.44 billion in cryptocurrency income. That includes roughly $635 million tied to “Trump meme coins” and about $500 million from token sales through World Liberty Financial. A separate deal between World Liberty Financial and a company called Alt5 Sigma generated around $500 million more, with the president and his family listed as beneficiaries. The scale of the reported earnings has intensified debate over conflicts of interest and the separation between public office and private business.

Trump’s sons helped co-found World Liberty Financial. The company received $1.5 billion worth of tokens, giving the Trump family a direct financial stake in the venture’s success. A CNBC report found that some investors in the Alt5 Sigma deal suffered steep losses, even as the Trump family profited. Critics on both the left and right have raised concerns about whether a sitting president should be able to run profit-generating businesses that could be influenced by his own policy decisions

Alternet  -   The Wall Street Journal reports that not only did President Donald Trump make a cool $1 billion off his connections to the White House, he managed to do it in a way that made his MAGA fans and supporters catch the short end of the grifting stick.

Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire. But the WSJ reports the value of those tokens instead tanked.

“While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week.

“In crypto, people say a game is a game,” said Christensen, a digital-asset entrepreneur. “He played a better game than I did.”

Others were much less generous over their losses.

“My investment is trash now,” one user said of their WLF tokens.

"People backed Trump because they believed he would fight for them and were hoodwinked into thinking he cared about the working classes who brought him into power,” said a longtime Republican activist familiar with grassroots sentiment among Trump's MAGA base. “Seeing billions tied to crypto makes some loyal supporters uncomfortable and most of them have no idea what crypto is, let alone have the resources to invest in it. They feel this isn't public service anymore."

“The president raked in cash by issuing new assets — World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto,” reports WSJ. “Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.”

MS Now -   Since their father won a second term, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — President Donald Trump’s two eldest sons, neither of whom hold official roles in the administration — have become linked to investments in at least 10 companies with military applications. Those firms have collectively received about $3.7 billion in federal funds since the start of the second Trump administration, according to an MS NOW review of public records. Three hit record levels of Defense Department funding within the last year.

 Over the equivalent timespan at the end of the Biden administration, those same companies took in nearly $2.8 billion in federal contracts. Three had no federal contracts at all before Trump’s second term — including the drone startup, founded in 2025.

 

Polls

NY Times -   Republicans are defending seats in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas as they try to maintain their majority. Democrats are competitive in all six states - but not leading in enough to take the chamber.

….Democrats face an uphill battle to win control of the Senate but have pulled within striking distance of enough Republican-held seats to put the majority in play this fall, according to new New York Times/Siena polls in six Senate battleground states.

Republicans are hampered by the unpopularity of President Trump and his diminished standing on the economy, while most of the Democratic candidates are so far running ahead of their party's own struggling brand, the polls show.

Winning the Senate remains a stiff challenge for Democrats. Republicans hold 53 seats, meaning that Democrats would need to flip at least four seats while defending all of their own vulnerable ones.

The Times/Siena polls looked at the six states that are considered to be the Democratic Party's best shots at flipping Republican-held seats: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. The surveys found that while all six states are close enough to be competitive, if the election were held today Republicans would be favored in enough states to keep control of the Senate.

NPR - Even though nearly one-third of Americans say they are concerned about the direction the U.S. is headed, the majority say they're "proud" or "very proud" to be an American, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. Close to half of Americans believe the country has strayed significantly from the nation's founding principles. The way Americans feel about the country's current state is largely split along partisan, gender and generational lines. The survey of 1,340 respondents was conducted in early June and has a margin of error of +/- 3.0 percentage points, meaning results could be about three points higher or lower. NPR followed up with several participants to gather their thoughts about America ahead of the 250th anniversary. Read more about what they had to say.

Donald Trump

The Hill -   President Trump on Wednesday distanced himself from his recently released personal financial disclosures showing more than $1 billion in revenue from cryptocurrency sales and other ventures. “I don’t get involved in my personal. We have funds that run my money,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Md., ahead of his trip to North Dakota, when asked what message the disclosures send to average Americans.

….Trump went on to say the financial institutions that handle his personal finances create a “blind account,” and he “purposefully” does not speak to anyone involved in handling those funds.

“They invest my money. I don’t talk to them. I don’t even speak to them,” he said during the gaggle. “So, I have many people, I don’t know what they call them, closed accounts or something, you put their money and that’s it. I don’t talk to them. They’re big institutions, and they run it.”

…Trump’s personal financial disclosures released on Tuesday showed he raked in more than $500 million from the cryptocurrency venture he co-founded with his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who were seen with the president as he took questions on Wednesday.

The 25th Amendment

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
25th Amendment, Section 4

“If the Congress [...] determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the President shall [not] resume the powers and duties of his office.”

Middle East

The Nation -  Just two weeks after it was signed, the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States to wind down Donald Trump’s feckless war is in such serious trouble that diplomats are now gathered in Qatar trying to contain the damage. This, like all the other follies associated with this purblind imperial errand, was an entirely foreseeable development: the agreement-in-process seeks to secure the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for near-total American capitulation on decades of policy red lines for the United States, from the empowerment of regional proxies for Iran to the continued development of ballistic missiles and ongoing nuclear-enrichment initiatives.

Climate change

Washington Post -  A heat dome was strengthening above the Ohio Valley early Wednesday, with more than 150 million Americans covered by heat alerts from the National Weather Service.  This sprawling area of hot air will soon move eastward and spend Thursday to Saturday squarely over the Mid-Atlantic, sending temperatures toward 105 degrees there, and breaking records from Florida to Maine.

So far, the most intense heat and humidity from this weather system have occurred in areas where such conditions aren’t common. On Tuesday, parts of the Midwest experienced higher humidity than some of the world’s muggiest places. Stretches of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin experienced humidity that rivaled or even exceeded that of Dubai, a notoriously humid city on the Persian Gulf.

Demcratic socialists

Alternet -  In one of the most notable upsets of the Democratic primaries so far, Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros, 29, yesterday won the nomination over incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette to represent Colorado’s hotly-contested First Congressional District...

Democratic Socialist elected officials now include U.S. representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib (both elected in 2018), New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle mayor Katie Wilson (both elected in 2025). Democratic Socialist Janeese Lewis George is set to follow as mayor of Washington, D.C....

Colorado’s DeGette has held her seat for nearly 30 years. Kiros was born the same year DeGette was first elected to Congress. Kiros is poised to become the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress. Her win in the solidly blue district that makes up most of Denver means Kiros is likely headed to Washington next year.

Kiros is a fighter who understands what’s worth fighting for, and expresses it clearly. “The thing is, fighting Trump is just one piece of the problem. Trump is not the cause,” Kiros said during a debate earlier this month. “He’s a symptom of a system that is broken and has been broken for a really long time because our party has failed to understand the role that they need to take in getting money out of our politics.”

A former lawyer and Ph.D. candidate, Kiros easily presents herself as a politician for the working class. Her family immigrated to Denver from Ethiopia when she was a baby.

Kiros has never before run for elected office, but she won support from a range of voters with a message of fundamental reform of the American system.

Ford recalls 741,000 vehicles

Independent -  Ford is initiating a recall of over 741,000 vehicles across the U.S. due to a critical transmission defect that could compromise the park system, significantly elevating the risk of a crash or injury.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has detailed that the recall encompasses specific Ford F-150, Lincoln Aviator, Ford Explorer, Lincoln Navigator, and Ford Expedition models manufactured between 2018 and 2021.

According to the report, affected vehicles may experience the temporary engagement of their transmission parking pawl while in motion, particularly when certain shifts are commanded. This can lead to damage to components of the park system. Should this damage occur, the transmission's ability to securely hold the vehicle when in "park" – especially if the parking brake is not engaged – could be impaired. This potential for unintended movement poses a serious safety hazard.

Number of billionaires up 13%

Guardian -   The number of billionaires in the world has jumped by 13% to a record 3,302 people, new figures show, as the super-rich accumulate wealth at an accelerating rate.

Billionaires’ wealth grew by 25% on average in the year ended in April, compared with a 10.8% rise in average personal wealth around the world, the Swiss bank UBS found.

There were 18 people who had amassed wealth between $50bn and $100bn, with a further 19 people who were worth more than $100bn. Of these people, 15 were based in the US.

James Mazeau, an economist at the bank, said billionaires had benefited from the AI boom in the stock market.

“Most [billionaire] wealth is tied to listed companies,” he said. “So part of the rise is due to equity markets.”

….The millionaire class has also been rapidly expanding, according to UBS, which found the global millionaire population reached more than 57.5 million last year…

The US, where more than 440,000 people became millionaires for the first time, made up almost half of the growth in 2025. \

Word

Robert Reich -   Today’s Supreme Court decision ending the independence of independent regulatory agencies, and directly overruling a Court precedent, was justified by a pernicious idea advocated by the conservative Supreme Court majority — that the framers of the Constitution envisioned a so-called “unified executive.” In fact, the framers central focus was to prevent a United States president from becoming too powerful — like the king they were displacing — so they could not have sought a strong, centralized executive branch.

Supremes screw democracy again

NY Times -   The Supreme Court lifted limits on Tuesday on how much political parties can spend on advertising and other expenses in coordination with candidates.  The 6-to-3 decision, divided along ideological lines, is a major victory for Republicans and could undercut one of the Democrats’ financial advantages going into the midterms.

The question before the justices was whether current federal limits on such spending — called coordinated party expenditures — violate the First Amendment. During oral arguments, Noel J. Francisco, a lawyer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which brought the legal challenge, told the justices that such limits were “at war” with previous decisions by the court that have found that restricting how money can be spent in politics amounts to limiting speech.

…. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling was a recipe for corruption, allowing donors to skirt contribution caps to candidates. “With no limits on coordinated expenditures,” she wrote, “the party can serve as the candidate’s checking account.”

She said that the upshot of the court’s campaign finance decisions was “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions’ democratic legitimacy.”

Supreme Court to consider assault weapon ban

NBC News  - The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether states and local governments can ban semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15, which are popular among gun enthusiasts but have also been used in high-profile mass shootings.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority that generally backs gun rights, will hear challenges to laws in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, which covers the Chicago area. The two combined cases will be argued and decided in the court’s next term, which starts in October.

Born in US? You're a citizen

 NBC News -  Delivering a major blow to President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked his contentious attempt to limit citizenship at birth for those born on U.S. soil. The court, divided 6-3, ruled that the executive order Trump issued Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, was unlawful. Five justices said the order fell foul of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which has long been interpreted to bestow birthright citizenship on almost anyone born in the United States. One justice, conservative Brett Kavanaugh, said the order violated federal law but not the Constitution.

It is the third significant Supreme Court loss for Trump in recent months, following the February ruling that invalidated his sweeping tariffs and Monday’s decision that barred him from immediately firing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve.

Supreme Court upholds transgender athlete bans

The Hill -   The Supreme Court ruled states can bar transgender girls from competing on girls' and women's school sports teams, upholding bans in Idaho and West Virginia on Tuesday in a decision set to impact similar laws passed in more than half the country.  Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected arguments that transgender athlete restrictions unconstitutionally discriminate on the basis of sex or gender identity.  

Meanwhile . . .

NPR  - Clergy sexual abuse survivors reached a nearly $400 million settlement with the Archdiocese of San Francisco, advocates announced. The agreement affects around 530 individuals who have filed abuse claims against current or former members of the city's Catholic clergy. (via KQED)

Murders

NPR - The national murder rate in the United States is nearing a record low. Crime data analyst Jeff Asher says that the country in 2025 likely experienced the lowest murder rate ever recorded. Asher shared this prediction in late May, using data he collects from about 600 police agencies for his site, The Crime Index. This nationally representative sample indicates that murders dropped by 18.7% in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year. All violent crime decreased by 6.4%. An important caveat is that this would be the lowest murder rate since the FBI started publishing national murder numbers in the 1950s. There are some older records of national rates of homicide (a larger category than criminal murder) kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Middle East

NPR  - The United States and Iran have sent delegations to Qatar, after exchanging attacks in recent days. The White House said that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff were on their way there for talks about a long-term peace agreement. Iranian officials have made it clear that they will not meet with them. For Iran, this meeting appears to be more focused on discussing with Qatari officials the release of approximately $6 billion in frozen assets. The release of this money, which is about half of the assets frozen in Qatar, was included in a memorandum of understanding signed by the U.S. and Iran.

 Both countries' haste in these talks seems to stem from a lack of trust, NPR’s Ruth Sherlock says. Iranians, in particular, are concerned that the Trump administration might go back on its commitments, especially given the history of failed talks. Iran is also furious about a separate deal brokered by the U.S. between Israel and Lebanon on a road map to end the war. Israel is still fighting the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. The Israel-Lebanon deal stipulates that Hezbollah must disarm, and it makes Israel's withdrawal from the large areas of land it occupies contingent upon Hezbollah disarming first. Hezbollah, which was not part of the agreement, has rejected the deal outright, calling it a “surrender of Lebanese sovereignty.”

Climate change

PBS - A new online tool out of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health (YCCCH) strives to provide hyperlocal information about the range of extreme weather risks on mortality, including the potential impact on older adults.  Researchers used peer-reviewed mortality data from 2007-2020 for the XToll climate dashboard. It visualizes how each relevant weather extreme in the county compares to all the others in the U.S. For example, Hartford County has a heat ranking of nearly 67%, while The Bronx, which has some of the highest heat vulnerability in NYC, has a ranking of almost 95%.

Newsworthy News -  Several European countries recorded their hottest day ever during the June 2026 heat wave. World Weather Attribution said the event would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. Researchers said high nighttime temperatures are about 100 times more likely today than two decades ago. Europe has warmed faster than the global average, adding pressure to power grids, health systems, and public trust.

A former Maine chief justice explains how to do it

Sam Smith -  Your editor has noted  how different his mornings and early afternoons feel next to the hours that follow. Starting in the morning I report the grim story of where America is going these days. But when I’m done I soon realize that I’m living in Maine and how different that feels. Which is why this piece by a former Maine chief justice struck me.

Daniel Watham, Maine Morning Star -  As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worth reflecting not only on what the Founders rejected, but on what they tried to build. They objected to arbitrary power, to laws imposed without meaningful representation, and to courts dependent on political authority rather than justice. In the Declaration, they accused King George III of undermining colonial legislatures and making judges dependent on his will alone.

Those grievances were not historical footnotes. They were warnings. The Founders understood that liberty requires more than inspiring words. It requires institutions, laws, checks and balances, and citizens willing to defend them.

Our system has never been perfect. The promise of equality and self-government announced in 1776 was denied to many Americans for far too long. But the genius of the American experiment is that each generation has been called to make the country more faithful to its founding principles.

That work continues today.

Here in Maine, the institutions of self-government are not abstractions. They are made up of people in our own communities: local officials who administer elections, judges who apply the law, clerks who maintain public records, lawyers who help resolve disputes, jurors who weigh evidence, and citizens who participate in civic life. These institutions may not always make headlines, but they are the backbone of our republic.

Our republic depends on trust — not blind trust, but earned trust. Citizens have every right to ask questions, demand transparency, challenge decisions through lawful means, and expect accountability from those who serve the public. But our republic cannot endure if every institution is presumed illegitimate simply because it produces an outcome we dislike.

As a former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Court, I have seen this work up close. During nearly twenty five years on the bench and thirty four years in private practice, I saw firsthand how much our constitutional system depends on the steady, often quiet work of people who serve their communities. Our republic is sustained not only by founding ideals or public speeches, but by citizens and public servants who take their responsibilities seriously: following the law, respecting established procedures, weighing respecting established procedures, weighing evidence, correcting mistakes when they occur, and accepting lawful outcomes even when they are disappointing or politically inconvenient.

The rule of law is what separates self-government from raw power. Courts do not exist to favor one party, one candidate, or one public official. Judges do not serve a political cause. Election administrators do not serve a political cause. Public servants, judges, and local officials swear oaths not to personalities, but to constitutions, laws, and the people they serve.

New study finds insects greatly undercounted

Time -  The generally accepted figure for the number of insect species on the planet is about six million. Or at least that was the number. According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, that head count is also likely an undercount, with the actual number of insect species topping out at anywhere from 14 million to 20 million—or more than three times the current estimate. Within that census there are still local collapses: populations of pollinators like bees and monarch butterflies are declining precipitously, and climate change and habitat loss are claiming other insect species, disrupting the food chain, which is built in part on those tiny creatures at the bottom. The tripling of the overall known species count has implications not only for basic entomological research, but for efforts at conservation as a whole.

Donald Trump

Alternet -   "Trump is essentially beyond the reach of the law in terms of actions,” Jonathan Swan, who with Maggie Haberman co-authored the book “Regime Change,” told Peter Slen from C-SPAN on Monday. “Trump has told senior advisers in the Oval Office that he's going to pardon anyone who came within 250 feet of the Oval Office. I don't think they feel any real concern about illegality."

Trump has undertaken a number of actions that cause people to worry he plans on becoming a dictator. The Atlantic assistant editor Marc Novicoff explained in April that Trump has acted like a dictator in that he “prosecutes his political opponents; deports immigrants … to foreign prisons without due process; solicits tribute payments from corporations and foreign governments; deploys soldiers to American cities that are not, in fact, in civil-war-level chaos; and puts his name and image on government buildings that quite obviously don’t belong to him.”

Trump has renamed government buildings and institutions including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the U.S. Institute of Peace, Trump Coin, Trump Accounts, TrumpRX, the Trump Gold Card and future U.S. paper currency. He has also unfurled banners with his image over the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor and urged lawmakers to pass a bill to carve his image onto Mount Rushmore.

"Dictators, once they've secured their grip on near-absolute power — and often once they start to get older — have a tendency to lose touch with reality, which often manifests in the form of grandiosity," UK-based i Paper journalist James Ball said in April. "Stalin was still relatively young when he renamed the city of Tsaritsyn as 'Stalingrad,' but building monuments and renaming things is very much the stereotypical out-of-control dictator move: Saddam Hussein had endless statues and monuments built in his image, while Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan renamed months, animal breeds, days of the weeks and cities…. The combination of endless flattery from courtiers, unbridled ego, lack of restraint from constitutional processes — and, quite often, the effects of an increasingly superannuated brain — drives many despots in this direction.

Trump Was Indicted Under the Espionage Act. Why Can’t We Read the Report?

NY Times -   Three years ago this month, the Justice Department indicted Donald Trump under the Espionage Act for concealing and refusing to return classified documents after his departure from the White House. Mr. Trump hasn’t had to face trial, and he hasn’t had to fully account to the public for his actions, either.

The Justice Department abandoned the case against Mr. Trump after he won the 2024 election, citing a longstanding departmental policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Justice Department has worked hand in glove with his current lawyers to suppress the department’s report about its investigation of his actions. Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a Trump appointee who presided over Mr. Trump’s case, has issued an order prohibiting the Justice Department from disseminating the report — and effectively prohibiting Jack Smith, the special counsel who wrote it, from speaking about it publicly or even testifying about it to Congress.