CNN's Erin Burnett, host of the show "OutFront," made Trump's distraction efforts a key part of her opening monologue on Monday. Her comments come as the Trump administration continues throwing red meat to its base by announcing potential investigations into former President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Burnett reported that at least 10 Democrats are supporting a GOP-led effort to force a vote to release the Epstein files. However, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) appears to be stonewalling the effort. Johnson said Monday that a vote to release the files wouldn't happen until September at the earliest.
"That's a real kick the can down the road," Burnett said. "September is a long way away. I mean, it is only July."
Several MAGA lawmakers like Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have called on the president to release the files, as he promised to do during his 2024 campaign.
However, Trump appears happy throwing new distractions at his base. Over the past week, he has threatened to pull support for an NFL football team stadium unless they changed their name; ordered the Department of Justice to release files related to the MLK Jr. assassination despite the objection of the King family, and made numerous posts on Truth Social about seemingly innocuous topics like the University of Idaho killings.
"It's like throwing spaghetti at a wall," Burnett commented.
A prominent White House reporter revealed what he called the "most striking" detail to come out of Hunter Biden's meltdown Monday at the media and Democrats.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper brought Axios' Alex Thompson, who co-wrote a damning book about President Joe Biden and an alleged cover-up over his mental fitness, onto his show, "The Lead," on Monday to discuss Hunter Biden's lash out.
"Hunter made headlines of his own in a more than three-hour-long interview on a podcast, touching on a number of issues, including the 2024 campaign. He vehemently defended his father while revealing a new detail about the debate," said Tapper.
In the clip, Hunter Biden said he knows "exactly what happened" in the disastrous debate between Joe Biden and then-candidate Donald Trump, in which a frail Joe Biden fumbled through answers and sent panicked Democrats into a frenzy.
"He flew around the world basically and the mileage, he could have flown around the world three times. He's 81 years old. He's tired as s---. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights," said Hunter Biden.
Tapper asked co-author Thompson what he made of the new detail about the Ambien being a part of the performance.
"Well, the fact that we didn’t know it beforehand, even though the doctor had been public about trying to say what Joe Biden was on, what he was taking, the fact that we did not know that the President of the United States was on Ambien, I would also imagine it is very difficult to do the proverbial '3 a.m. phone call' crisis when you are on Ambien in the middle of the night. I think it’s really striking," said Thompson.
Thompson acknowledged that while the public hasn't heard from a doctor that Joe Biden was on the sleeping medication, the fact that his son said Joe Biden was taking the drug in the weeks before the debate "is a telling new detail about the president’s abilities at the time."
Tapper later played a clip of Hunter Biden melting down at Democratic strategists James Varville and David Axelrod, in which Hunter Biden unleashed a profanity-laden rant aimed at the two.
"James Carville, who hasn’t run a race in 40 f---ing years. And David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life and that was Barack Obama. And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of f---ing David Axelrod. And David Plouffe, and all of these guys — and the Pod Save America guys — who were junior f---ing speechwriters on Barack Obama’s Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars."
He then tore into what he called the "Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40, $50 million off the Democratic Party. They’re all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times?"
Thompson flagged the eyebrow-raising statement.
"The most striking thing is that he attacked Anita Dunn, who, by the way, helped steer his father to the Democratic nomination in 2020. She was also in the White House for the majority of those four years, until, basically, she was driven out because of this rift with Hunter Biden. She is also set to be interviewed by the House Oversight Committee in the coming weeks."
Democratic strategist Karen Finney noted Dunn didn't want Joe Biden to drop out, either.
"100%. And — I write it in our book. It is striking: Hunter is clearly establishing himself as the carrier of the family’s grievances. And he is also, you know, completely obliterating the fiction from last summer that Joe Biden was doing sort of the honorable thing. Joe Biden was driven out of this race by the elites of the Democratic Party. And Joe Biden — his entire family — deeply resent it.
President Donald Trump's administration announced a new investigation on Monday, which one analyst said should be seen as a "blinking red light" for the MAGA movement.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that it had uncovered evidence that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama conspired to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election. On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondiannounced that the Department of Justice would also be releasing information about former FBI Director James Comey's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.
Progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen responded to the news on his show, "No Lies," calling it "perplexing."
"Trump is reverting to his old strategy of throwing out the most obvious distractions he can find, including and up to Hillary's emails," Cohen said. "He'll threaten football teams, President Obama, and anybody else he can think of so that he can fool the rubes."
"Therein lies the real embarrassment for Trump's voters," Cohen continued. "The people he is trying to fool are not the Democrats. The Democrats understand that the guy is very clearly trying to hide something, and where there's smoke, there's fire. It is the Republicans whom Trump is targeting. Those are the people he believes are dumb enough to fall for this stuff. His own voters!"
Cohen's comments come at a time when Trump is attempting to distance himself from the Epstein saga. However, those efforts appear to be alienating a large swath of his base.
"Those are the people he despises enough to spend all of his time and energy fooling," Cohen said. "The people who should be angriest here are Trump's voters who are being deceived in real time."
Hundreds of NASA scientists issued a rare public rebuke on Monday against the agency's funding cuts.
More than 285 scientists signed a public letter to NASA interim administrator Sean Duffy, who also leads the Department of Transportation. The letter describes the funding cuts, which President Donald Trump requested, could "waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission.
"We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources," the letter reads in part. "These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law. The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire."
The letter was published at a time when Republicans on the Hill seem eager to help Trump cut funding for government agencies, including funds that were previously approved by Congress.
Last week, Republicans passed a rescissions bill to claw back $9 billion in Congressionally-approved funding for public media and foreign aid.
A proposal circulating through House committees seeks to cut funding for NASA by $6 billion, representing 50% of its overall budget, including a 33% reduction to aeronautics.
The letter's signatories also objected to policy changes implemented within the department. For example, NASA leaders recently proposed cutting its Technical Authority capacity, which is an internal system of checks and balances. The signatories also dissented from reducing funding for active missions, non-strategic staffing reductions, and canceling NASA's participation in international missions.
"Employees across the agency have raised concerns about recent actions to NASA leadership, yet we remain pressured to implement harmful measures," the letter continues.
Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mark Warner (D-VA) wrote a letter to Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian on Monday, demanding answers for recent reports that the company intends to use artificial intelligence to adjust airfares individually per passenger for maximum profit.
Delta has said that its test AI program was successful, and plans to expand it — sparking consumer rights fears.
"Delta's current and planned individualized pricing practices not only present data privacy concerns, but will also likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer's personal 'pain point' at a time when American families are already struggling with rising costs," the senators wrote. "As recently reported, Delta plans to deploy AI-based revenue management technology across 20 percent of its domestic network by the end of 2025 in partnership with Fetcherr, a company specializing in using AI to set prices to maximize company profit for large airlines."
The senators noted that former FTC Chair Lina Khan "cautioned against a particularly egregious but conceivable example of an airline using AI to charge a higher fare to a passenger 'because the company knows that they just had a death in the family and need to fly across the country,'" and added that as it stands, "Consumers have no way of knowing what data and personal information your company and Fetcherr plan to collect or how the AI algorithm will be trained."
They urged Delta to answer a number of questions they have about their planned consumer practices, including "What data inputs does Delta use to train its revenue management system algorithm for purposes of setting customized prices for fares or any other product, and what other data inputs, if any, has Delta discussed using for those same purposes in the future?" and information on how many passengers and routes will be affected by their current expansion target.
Delta has denied that their use of AI is anti-consumer, telling Fortune, "Our fares are publicly filed and based solely on trip-related factors like advance purchase and cabin class, and we maintain strict safeguards to ensure compliance with federal law."
This comes at a moment when AI and the regulation around it is growing more contentious in political debate. A controversial provision to prohibit states from regulating AI for ten years was intensely debated in President Donald Trump's tax cut megabill, and ultimately dropped over public outcry.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) described a scene in the House in which a Republican saluted him for his ongoing persistence in obtaining the investigation files around Jeffrey Epstein.
Swalwell, who spoke to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on "Deadline: White House" Monday, responded to Republican complaints that Democrats could have released the files while President Joe Biden was in office. It inadvertently admits that it's President Donald Trump who is currently refusing their release, and has the power to release the million-plus pages of documents.
Swalwell recalled his demands dating back to 2019 with the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who sought the files after Epstein died in prison. He noted that he, along with several others, called for the resignation of Trump's former Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, who gave Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in a 2008 Florida case.
"Last week, when I was walking to a vote, I kind of came right into a Republican as we were coming from different hallways, kind of almost clashing to each other, and he put out his fist and gave me a fist bump and said, Thank you," Swalwell said. "Now, I had, just over the last couple days, been pretty loudly calling for the release of the files. And so Democrats are doing what Republicans are not willing to do."
He noted that the Democrats are open to speaking with whistleblowers who are willing to come forward. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that he was made aware that the “FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline."
Any of those FBI agents would be given whistleblower protections if they came forward, as an example.
Democrats can't force any votes to mandate the release of the files in the House, because they don't currently hold the majority. Still, Swalwell said that he and other Democrats will force votes in key committee hearings on the matter and that they'll use the Congressional subpoena power.
"But I wouldn't count on these guys [Republicans] one bit to do the right thing and release the files," said Swalwell. "And they have the subpoena power. They have that power! It doesn't take a vote in Congress. The Speaker of the House could subpoena it today, but he won't because he's going to do everything possible to protect Donald Trump."
A fake alias could be the linchpin of the upcoming GOP senate primary race in Texas, according to a new report.
The race includes political heavyweights such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has recently come under scrutiny for the divorce proceedings initiated by his wife. Texas Reps. Wesley Hunt and Ronny Jackson are also reportedly contenders for Cornyn's seat, according to The Washington Post.
But the race could come down to how voters perceive a fake alias that's been following Paxton since allegations of adultery surfaced about two years ago.
Paxton allegedly used the alias "Dave P." to conduct extramarital affairs and meet with a local real estate developer who is at the center of corruption charges against the attorney general.
Cornyn's team is running ads to connect the Dave P. alias, which Paxton has denied using, to his MAGA opponent. The ad claims Paxton is “at it again” after “embarrassing his family once," the Washington Post reported.
Paxton's supporters have argued that his marital troubles are not disqualifying.
“If a divorce proceeding and a not-so-friendly divorce … disqualifies a person to be a member of Congress, I don’t think we could establish a quorum up here," Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told the outlet.
But the race does pose a political problem for President Donald Trump. Both Cornyn and Paxton are close allies of the president, and choosing one over the other could be detrimental to the MAGA base, the Post reported. Currently, public polling favors Paxton over Cornyn.
Even so, Hunt has made his pitch to the president that he can help solve this "Texas-sized political problem" by winning the primary and general elections. Hunt has already amassed a war chest of more than $2 million and is running ads in places where Trump lives.
“The reality is Paxton has never faced anything like he will over the next seven months and this latest saga represents a tectonic shift in the race,” Aaron Whitehead, executive director of the pro-Cornyn Texans for a Conservative Majority, told the outlet.
A report published Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists details how U.S. President Donald Trump "has led a systemic and coordinated attack on science" during the first six months of his second administration as "part of a larger strategy to strip public protections, consolidate power, and remove scientific evidence from policymaking."
The UCS analysis states that the second Trump administration has carried out 402 attacks on science, defined as "an action, statement, or decision that originates from an elected official or political appointee in a federal agency that results in the censoring, manipulation, forging, or misinforming of scientific data, results, or conclusions conducted within the government or with federal funds."
The 402 attacks are nearly double the 207 UCS said that Trump oversaw during his first full term, and over four times the number committed during eight years of George W. Bush's presidency. UCS said the Obama administration carried out 19 attacks on science, while former President Joe Biden oversaw just two attacks.
UCS accused the Trump administration of gutting scientific expertise, halting science and innovation, ignoring public input, eliminating independent expertise, and censoring and suppressing scientific information.
"The first six months of President Trump's second term have been characterized by destruction of democratic processes, divisive and vindictive actions, and chaos in federal government agencies," UCS said in a summary of the report. "The Trump administration's actions are not normal. This is an illegal power grab—a wholesale attack on the democratic systems upon which this nation was built."
In the past six months, the Trump administration has systematically and recklessly undermined federal science. Read our new report here: act.ucsusa.org/Trump6Months
"People are already paying the price of these attacks on science: children unnecessarily exposed to lead, families denied clean air, and lives needlessly lost in preventable disease outbreaks," UCS noted. "Dismantling science harms every member of the U.S. public—but especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, rural, and low- and-moderate-income communities."
The report offers recommendations "to protect science and the public good," including:
Passing the Scientific Integrity Act—introduced in February by Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.)—which would require federal agencies to uphold evidence-based policymaking free from political interference;
Opposing the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, a bid by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to give Congress veto power over regulations based on expert consensus;
Passing the EXPERTS Act (formerly the Stop Corporate Capture Act), legislation proposed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to limit industry influence on science-based rulemaking;
Strengthening whistleblower protections for federal scientists;
Restoring diverse, independent, and empowered federal advisory committees; and
Reinstating and strengthening public participation in rulemaking and other government decision-making processes while restoring public access to censored scientific data.
Darya Minovi, the report's lead author, said that "the pace and severity of the administration's attacks on science is extremely alarming."
"These attacks are about power," she continued. "By silencing science that does not align with its agenda to line the pockets of polluters and billionaires, the Trump administration is stripping the public of its right to information, participation, and protection."
"Science is a cornerstone of democracy," Minovi added. "When science is sidelined, people get hurt. Lawmakers and agency leaders must act with urgency to defend the institutions and people who safeguard our health, environment, and future."
A federal court in Maryland has responded to President Donald Trump's out-of-the-box plan to sue judges who ruled against him — and pulled no punches.
Last month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland instituted a two-day pause in deportations as part of a habeas ruling in favor of immigrants challenging their detention in that state. Trump's Justice Department responded by suing the court and every judge sitting on it.
“Every unlawful order entered by the district courts robs the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect. In the process, such orders diminish the votes of the citizens who elected the head of the Executive Branch,” said the complaint.
This lawsuit, the court wrote, "is impermissible."
"It is an effort by one branch in its institutional capacity to sue another branch in its institutional capacity seeking what amounts to an advisory opinion unmoored from any specific case or controversy. The courts have confronted similar efforts by legislators to sue in their official capacity, and have routinely rejected them on nonjusticiability grounds."
"While the Executive enjoys the distinct power to sue in the name of the United States to enforce laws and ensure that they are faithfully executed, it does not enjoy any free-floating authority to sue a coordinate branch of government," the response continued. "Such a suit is nonjusticiable, and the fate of the standing orders can and should be resolved in an ordinary case or controversy."
The District Court of Maryland went on to add that Trump could simply have appealed their decision if he disagreed with it, that judges are immune from being sued over their rulings, and that even if Trump did have the power to sue judges over the habeas ruling, "the executive’s claims fail, as the standing orders are valid exercises of federal courts’ inherent authority to afford themselves time to determine their own jurisdiction."
Some Republicans aren't buying House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) insistence he will not put a Jeffrey Epstein-related resolution on the floor this week.
Debate has surged in the House over whether to hold a floor vote on a measure demanding the release of documents related to the Epstein case. Johnson publicly declared there will not be a vote on the resolution before the House leaves for its August recess, despite mounting bipartisan pressure for Congress to do so.
The measure calls for the release of all unclassified records, flight logs, communications, and other materials concerning Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, their associates, and any implicated documents held by the Department of Justice or other agencies.
The showdown comes after the Wall Street Journal fanned the flames by reporting President Donald Trump sent a bawdy birthday letter to Epstein that included a sketch of a nude woman and an imaginary conversation between the two in which Trump said the too had a lot in "common."
Andy Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, told Punchbowl News he doesn’t believe that Johnson "won’t put the Epstein resolution on the floor this week," reported Jake Sherman.
"I told him Johnson said it on camera. 'Alright. This is Monday,'" Harris replied, according to Sherman.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is refusing to allow a vote on the legislation that would mandate the release of files in the investigation of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. His position is something that MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said should be an "easy" decision for the GOP leadership.
"My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing, and if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we'll look at that," Johnson told reporters on Monday. "But I don't think we're at that point right now because we agree with the president."
"So, no vote, no vote on this resolution," CNN reporter Manu Raju can be heard saying in the recording.
Wallace said it was " the White House director of legislative affairs," before adding, "I'm just kidding. That was the Speaker."
She noted to fellow ex-Republican Tim Miller, "This is an issue that should be easy for them. Like, even easier than tariffs, which their voters don't want. Even easier than, I mean, it should all be pretty easy because the voters, their voters, do not want cuts to Medicaid, but their voters are ravenous for the Epstein files, and they can't even vote to release them. What is this?"
Miller called it a "pickle" for Johnson and the House GOP.
"I know you think it's an easy one, but here's the problem: Yeah, sure, it's an easy one with the base voters," said Miller. "It's easy to know what they want and the grand scheme of things. But he can't get on the wrong side of Donald Trump. I mean, there's a graveyard of past Republican speakers who got on the wrong side of Donald Trump on various issues."
Miller said the top priority of Johnson's office is not ending up under the Trump bus like those former speakers.
"But there's good reason that he would not be read-in on whatever it was that was behind the decision for Donald Trump or Pam Bondi to not release these additional files," Miller noted. "And, so, if you're Mike Johnson, it's like, I guess I let's try to kick the can down the road."
The head of one of America's most influential right-wing advocacy groups has vowed to force certain Wall Street CEOs out of their jobs as a show of force against "wokeness," investigative reporter Lauren Windsor wrote for Rolling Stone on Monday.
Lisa Nelson, who runs the American Legislative Exchange Council, "was discussing Larry Fink of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country," wrote Windsor. "She appeared to be speaking metaphorically, as she struggled to refer to an unknown movie. Nelson made the comments at the Consumers’ Research Summit in Sea Island, Georgia. Rolling Stone has obtained exclusive audio and documents from the event."
“Whether it’s Larry Fink or Brian Moynihan, we have got to take one of these guys out,” said Nelson. “Brian Moynihan is the guy, or Larry Fink is the guy that we should have their scalp.”
These two CEOs have become top targets for the MAGA movement because they have not only promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, but also adopted environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, investing, which essentially tries to factor the long-term impact of things like climate change and social unrest into portfolio risk.
ALEC is best known as a so-called "bill mill" for right-wing state legislators, drafting sample bills that they can introduce in various states that further conservative goals like energy deregulation. The group has been behind a number of anti-ESG bills introduced or adopted in states around the country, which declare state pension funds cannot work with asset managers who consider issues like climate as part of investment strategies.
This comes shortly after Windsor's report on how officials in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office were caught bragging about how they used the threat of antitrust investigations and a ban on municipal bond access to strongarm a number of U.S. banks, including Wells Fargo, into pulling out of the global Net Zero Banking Alliance, which encourages banks to invest in ways that further the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
A new CBS News poll found that most Americans want the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation released in their entirety. Instead, on Monday, President Donald Trump's administration announced files around the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaking about the matter on CNN to Kasie Hunt, New York Times reporter and podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro noted that the public is infatuated with the story. The Netflix documentary and books on Epstein have gained significant attention over the month of July, CNN reported Sunday.
"So I think exactly this, the narrative arc has broken containment," said Garcia-Navarro. "I'm going to bring you two together and use those things. The other thing I will say is just this one thing, as we were speaking, The Associated Press just sent a news alert saying that the FBI miraculously is just handing out all these files on the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and so suspicious timing, I mean, it's all I'm going to say. I'm sure it's very welcome, but strange that the FBI would be releasing those files at this particular moment, isn't it?"
Indeed, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed to be releasing the MLK files in April.
Hunt recalled reporting over the weekend that the FBI was told to "scrub" the Epstein files.
