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Good evening, everyone. We have a lot to cover tonight. The Trump administration admitted to a major constitutional violation in court today. There is also significant news involving journalism, as former CBS reporter Cecilia Vega accused Bari Weiss of pressuring journalists to push unverified claims and administration talking points. I spent more time today at Mitch McConnell’s hospital and have an update for you. We’ll also cover major public health outbreaks, congressional efforts to investigate Barron Trump, new government planning for a potential military draft, and much more.
Something amazing happened today. A 12-year-old from Arkansas recognized me while he and his mom were shopping at Whole Foods because he watches our news. Moments like that remind me why we do this. Knowing the next generation is paying attention and staying informed makes me incredibly proud.
On another note, I know some people who identify as MAGA have been angry with my reporting, whether it’s on Mitch McConnell or Jeffrey Epstein. My answer is simple: I’m not going to stop. In fact, tonight I’ll be digging through the Epstein files instead of attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. If you’re able to, please consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription. Your support makes this reporting possible. Let’s keep fighting for the truth together.
Here’s the news:
Major News About Journalism:
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega accused CBS News leadership of pressuring journalists to reshape reporting in ways that favored the Trump administration. Speaking at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, Vega said executives objected to her story on SNAP benefit cuts in West Virginia because it did not include Vice President JD Vance or reference his memoir, even though Vance is from Ohio, not West Virginia. She said the incident reflected a broader effort by CBS’s new leadership to influence editorial decisions. Vega made the remarks while discussing the circumstances that preceded her departure from the network.
Vega also alleged that CBS executives pushed reporters to include material that could not be substantiated or reflected administration messaging. She said she was asked to insert footage of protesters attacking undercover ICE officers in Minnesota, but her team determined no such video existed. Vega further claimed she was instructed to add language stating that Iran was “totally outgunned” by U.S. and Israeli forces, which she described as a Trump administration talking point. The allegations add to ongoing scrutiny of CBS News under Bari Weiss, whose tenure has coincided with the departures of several prominent journalists and accusations of editorial interference.
Paramount Skydance has agreed to freeze its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery until June 1, 2027, unless a federal judge rules sooner on an antitrust lawsuit brought by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general. The suit, led by California’s Rob Bonta and joined by nine other states plus New York, argues the merger would violate the Clayton Antitrust Act by extinguishing competition in theatrical distribution, top grossing film releases, and basic cable channel distribution, ultimately raising prices and reducing quality for audiences. Paramount has rejected the claims as one of the weakest merger challenges in modern antitrust history, and a company spokesperson called the pause a win because it sets up a direct path to trial based on evidence.
The deal, which would combine Paramount Pictures with Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount+ with HBO Max, and CBS News with CNN, has already cleared Justice Department review along with regulators in countries including Australia and China. New York Attorney General Letitia James called halting the merger a critical victory for protecting the film and television industries while the case proceeds.
Mitch McConnell:
I went to Mitch McConnell's hospital again today. I tried to speak with a member of McConnell's security detail after spotting them sitting in a vehicle outside, but I could not get them to comment. I plan to return this weekend and will continue trying to obtain an update on the senator's condition.
Even CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings is now calling on Mitch McConnell to be more transparent about his health, 40 days into his hospitalization, saying he hasn’t spoken to the senator again since his earlier claims that McConnell was preparing to return to work, claims CNN publicly distanced itself from as not being network reporting. Jennings said he expects another update from McConnell’s office by Monday and argued more transparency would have saved the senator “a whole lot of grief,” though he stopped short of calling for McConnell’s resignation given he was elected to a full term in 2020. The pressure has built for weeks, including a July 8 letter from Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear demanding clarity and a July 10 CNN video reportedly showing first responders transporting McConnell on a stretcher after being called to his D.C. home. McConnell finally issued a statement and photo on July 12, saying he’d fallen, briefly lost consciousness, and developed mild pneumonia, ruling out a heart attack, stroke, tumors, or hemorrhages, and said he would return to the Senate floor once able but not immediately.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is facing growing calls to take action over Sen. Mitch McConnell's extended absence from the Senate following his hospitalization, but legal experts say the governor has no authority to declare the seat vacant or appoint a replacement while McConnell remains alive and has not resigned. Even if the seat were to become vacant, a 2024 Kentucky law requires a special election rather than a gubernatorial appointment, though Beshear has argued the law may be unconstitutional. Legal analysts say any dispute would likely end up in federal court because the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures broad authority over how Senate vacancies are filled. The situation has also created political pressure for Beshear as he draws national attention while speculation over McConnell's health continues.
Major Constitutional Violation:
A major constitutional violation, confirmed in court. The Trump administration admitted in court filings this month that it canceled 284 Biden era clean energy grants worth billions of dollars based solely on whether the recipient state voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and had two Democratic senators. A lawyer for the Energy Department conceded that none of the terminations were based on any programmatic, statutory, cost reduction, or performance related factor, directly contradicting Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s June congressional testimony that no decisions were made on politics. The Energy Department disputes any contradiction, saying Wright was distinguishing between the review process and the timing of the cancellations, but hundreds of additional grants the department had itself recommended for cancellation were left untouched simply because they sat in states that backed Trump.
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Real projects and real money were caught in the fallout. The politically targeted cancellations halted funding for hundreds of energy projects, including electrical grid upgrades in California and Oregon, methane leak reduction efforts in Colorado, and clean hydrogen fuel hubs in California and the Pacific Northwest. The cuts came in October alongside a broader White House push to pressure Democratic lawmakers during a government funding standoff, with Trump publicly threatening to slash what he called Democrat agencies. Some grant recipients have since sued to try to recover their funding, and this is not the first time the Energy Department has admitted politics played a role, since a federal judge already ruled in two earlier cases that more than a dozen grants were improperly canceled for political reasons, though this latest admission is far broader and more detailed.
Democrats say it exposes a dangerous pattern with more to come. Senator Patty Murray and Representative Marcy Kaptur called the cancellations an outright un-American weaponization of government and accused the administration of corruptly abusing its power to punish states over how they voted. The controversy lands as the administration finalizes new rules, expected by October, that would give Trump’s political appointees direct control to review, block, or revoke federal grants across the entire government, worth more than a trillion dollars annually. Budget office director Russell Vought has defended the changes as necessary to ensure democratic control of spending, but critics, including antipoverty groups, scientists, and city leaders, have flooded the government with comments warning the rules would let the administration extend this kind of political targeting far beyond energy grants. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities fellow Devin O’Connor said the willingness to be this blatant in court should be taken as a serious warning about what the new framework could enable nationwide.
Public Health:
The CDC says a multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak has expanded to nine states, adding Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania to previously connected cases in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and hard hit Michigan, with 1,947 confirmed cases across those states. Shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico is the likely source, identified after many sick people reported eating at Taco Bell in June, and the company has voluntarily recalled the product. FDA officials say they’re still investigating whether additional growers may be involved, though the data so far keeps pointing back to growers already identified. The lettuce outbreak likely isn’t the only source of illness nationwide, since there are nearly 12,000 confirmed or suspected cyclosporiasis cases in total, including 632 in New York and 561 in North Carolina, where parsley and cilantro are suspected in a separate cluster.
Confusion is deepening around the sprawling cyclospora outbreak, which has now sickened people across at least 41 states, as a newly identified cluster of at least 72 cases from an unknown source joins an already messy Taylor Farms lettuce investigation. Experts say the Taylor Farms recall itself was badly handled, with the company privately warning some businesses before FDA announcements, meeting with the White House and FDA to distance itself from the outbreak, posting and then deleting denials on Facebook, and issuing a recall notice that identified products by internal codes instead of brand names, making it nearly impossible for stores and consumers to know what was affected.
The CDC says the US has logged 2,318 measles cases so far this year, already surpassing all of last year’s total and marking the highest count in 35 years, with 93% of infected people unvaccinated. Health experts say the surge stems from a decadeslong decline in childhood vaccination rates, tracing back to a West Texas outbreak that began in January 2025 and grew to 762 cases, including the first US measles deaths in over a decade. New outbreaks are now emerging in Arizona, Delaware, and Wyoming, while Pennsylvania has 132 cases, South Carolina’s Upstate region has been hit hardest with 997 infections, and Utah has surpassed 700 cases since last June. It remains unclear whether the ongoing spread will cost the US its measles elimination status, a designation the Pan American Health Organization is expected to revisit in November.
Iran war:
The Pentagon’s public war casualty website remains uncorrected nearly a day after four deaths and dozens of injuries vanished from its Iran war totals, dropping the official death count from 18 to 14, an inconsistency officials blamed on a data disruption. Twelve Democratic senators on the Armed Services Committee sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a letter Thursday demanding a full accounting, saying the public deserves accurate and timely casualty reporting. The four missing deaths, three in Jordan and one in Iraq, occurred over the weekend and Trump himself confirmed the 18 total during a Thursday press appearance, even attending the dignified transfer of the remains at Dover Air Base, though he downplayed the toll by comparing it to Vietnam.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell insisted the discrepancy was a technical site anomaly rather than an intentional effort to obscure the war’s toll, but CNN reported the Pentagon did not respond to questions about when or whether the numbers would be corrected. The episode adds to a broader pattern of delayed disclosure, since officials have also been slow to report injuries, previously citing security needs even as Hegseth has criticized media coverage of service member deaths as an attempt to make the president look bad.
During a press exchange, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Trump about the discrepancy between his claim that Russia and China aren’t helping Iran and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assessment that the two countries are “enabling” Tehran. Trump said he wasn’t sure they were enabling Iran, and said he trusts President Xi and President Putin, both of whom he said have told him personally they will not get involved in the conflict.
Other news:
Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona is calling on the House Oversight Committee to subpoena Barron Trump to testify about his and his family’s reported ties to Andrew and Tristan Tate, who face potential UK extradition on charges including rape, sexual assault, and, for Andrew, possession of indecent images of a child. Her letter to Chairman James Comer cites recent reporting, including a New Yorker piece, that touches on apparent communication between Andrew Tate and Barron Trump, which I have not independently confirmed and a Tate spokesperson has denied, along with earlier reporting that special envoy Richard Grenell may have helped pressure Romania to let the brothers leave the country while they faced trafficking charges there, something Grenell denies discussing substantively.
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Ansari wants the committee to investigate whether back channel communications between the Tates, presidential advisers, or Barron Trump influenced any official action on their prosecution or extradition, and she’s requesting related White House and federal agency records. Neither the White House nor Comer’s office has responded to a request for comment, and given Republican control of the Oversight Committee, the request is unlikely to advance unless Democrats retake the House in the midterms.
The Selective Service System is seeking to develop a new computer simulation to test how a future U.S. military draft would function as it prepares to transition to automatic draft registration later this year. Beginning Dec. 19, men ages 18 to 26 will be automatically registered using existing federal databases, replacing the decades-old system that required individuals to sign up themselves. The simulation will model the entire draft process, including registration, selection, medical screening, classification, and alternative service, while identifying staffing needs and potential bottlenecks. Officials say the project is needed because the agency’s current planning tools rely on outdated data and assumptions, though the system is expected to use anonymized information and comply with federal privacy requirements.
Trump threatened the EU with additional substantial tariffs after Brussels fined Google 890 million euros for breaching online competition laws, accusing Europe of taking direct aim at American companies including Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Google. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the US would immediately investigate the EU’s practice of robbing American companies and taxpayers, warning Europe would pay a very big price. The threat came a day after his administration imposed a sweeping 10% tariff on the EU and more than 80 other countries, officially framed as a response to unfair labor practices. Google welcomed Trump’s intervention, with a spokesperson saying the company had worked to comply with EU rules while voicing concerns about the European Commission’s recent decisions.
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A group of small businesses, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, sued the Trump administration Friday over its newest round of tariffs on 60 trade partners, filed less than a day after the duties took effect and just hours after Trump's temporary 10% global tariff expired at midnight. The suit, brought on behalf of New York based spice retailer Burlap & Barrel and California based Collective Horology, seeks to block enforcement of the new duties, which range from 10% to 12.5% under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and asks the trade court to refund any duties already collected. Liberty Justice, the same group that won a major Supreme Court ruling last year against Trump's earlier emergency tariffs, argues the USTR acted arbitrarily by imposing near uniform tariffs across 60 different economies without country specific justification, and litigation director Jeffrey Schwab called it the third time the administration has tried to impose global tariffs without following statutory limits.
Connor Read, a British-born 29-year-old who has lived in the US since age nine, has been held in ICE detention for more than six weeks after being arrested during what he believed was a green card interview in Tampa on June 3. Read moved to the US as a child in 2007, later gained DACA status at 16, but lost eligibility to renew it at 22 after minor convictions for narcotic equipment possession, liquor possession, and resisting an officer, which the Trump administration now cites in labeling him a criminal illegal alien. He was separated from his wife Jaelin and their three-year-old twin sons during the arrest, held eight days in a Florida jail, then transferred to an ICE facility in Louisiana, and is now appealing a final removal order with a decision that could take up to six months. ICE defended the arrest in a statement, citing his 2011 removal order and criminal history, and said the agency is targeting the worst of the worst under Trump and DHS Secretary Mullin.
A federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration's bid to redetain Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow married to a US citizen who was arrested by ICE in March 2025 over his social media criticism of Israel's war on Gaza. The Fourth Circuit's 2-1 decision upheld a lower court ruling that had freed Suri on bail after nearly six weeks in Texas detention, and also rejected the government's attempt to move the case from Virginia to Texas. The ruling directly contradicts two other recent appeals court decisions in similar pro-Palestinian speech cases, including one against former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and another against Mohsen Mahdawi, both of which sided with the government and effectively barred federal court review until immigration proceedings fully play out, setting up a likely Supreme Court showdown.
ICC member states voted Friday to permanently remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan after the court’s governing body found he committed serious misconduct connected to sexual abuse allegations, with 82 of 125 member states voting to oust him. The allegations, first raised in 2024 by a woman who worked for Khan, include claims of coercive and non-consensual sexual behavior over an extended period, and a second woman separately accused him of mistreatment while she worked as his intern years earlier. Khan has denied all the claims, and his lawyers say the disciplinary process was procedurally unfair and plan to challenge the decision, while an ICC investigation found no evidence supporting his team’s suggestion that the allegations were part of a plot tied to his 2024 decision to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu. Those warrants, along with the one issued for Vladimir Putin during Khan’s tenure, remain unaffected by his removal.
Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week sparked a fresh wave of wildfires in western Canada, with 90 active blazes and 25 evacuation orders in British Columbia as of Friday, part of what Prime Minister Mark Carney called one of the country’s most intense wildfire seasons on record. Ontario is also battling 139 active fires, 32 of them uncontrolled, and Environment Canada issued a poor air quality alert for Banff, Alberta, though conditions were expected to improve over the weekend. Carney said the federal government is mobilizing more than 5,300 firefighters and about 300 aircraft, with Mexico set to send up to 200 additional firefighters in the coming weeks. Roughly 2.95 million hectares have burned nationwide this year, above the 10-year average, with more active fires right now than at this point in either of the past two years, while Quebec has managed to bring its blazes under control with help from neighboring provinces, France, and the US.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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