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Wow. What a week. Another crazy week in this crazy news cycle. Before we get to all of the news, and there is a lot of it, I wanted to talk to you tonight and share some developments. First, we are launching a weekly live show starting later this month. The equipment is in. The team is ready. We are expanding the Parnas Perspective. Second, on September 21st, I am dropping a major investigation into the financial inner workings of the Trump Administration and the Trump family. Putting on my legal hat and following the money. We are not living through normal times. Right now, more than ever, independent journalism matters. I only do this to report to one person: you. Stand with me. Subscribe, share, and amplify this work. Not tomorrow. Not someday. Today. The fight for truth, for ethics, for accountability cannot wait.
We are also going international soon, bringing you stories from across the world, with journalists across the world. Tonight I just want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you. This isn’t always easy. The news is rarely fun. But we are making a difference. We are fighting for the release of the Epstein files and continuing the fight for survivors. We educate many, especially young people who don’t get news anywhere else. We are staying on the McConnell beat when almost no one else will. So thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And a special thank you to those who fund this work. With that, here’s the news: Republicans Tell Trump to Stay Away: Republicans are telling Trump to stay away in a major turning point for the party, with some battleground lawmakers relaying to Trump’s political team that they don’t want him campaigning in their districts and top GOP pollsters advising vulnerable candidates to avoid talking about him on the trail. “We’ve told them he cannot come,” one senior Republican involved in a competitive House race said, adding that Trump’s team wouldn’t send him without their approval and that they wouldn’t campaign alongside him if he showed up anyway.
According to Politico, interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, candidates and operatives show a party torn between needing Trump’s massive $400 million campaign war chest and fearing his sagging approval rating and the unpopular Iran war will drag down candidates in tight races. Trump himself wants to be heavily involved and told battleground Republicans at a Rose Garden dinner this week that he’ll campaign hard in the final 30 days, though he specifically named safer red states like Alaska and Texas rather than the true swing districts. The RNC and NRCC are pushing back against any distancing, with RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre warning that Republicans keeping Trump at arm’s length risk losing 15 to 20 percent of their base, even as some incumbents like Rep. Mike Lawler lean into publicly needling Trump to appeal to swing voters. First lady Melania Trump will skip President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas next week, a White House official confirmed to The Independent, joining at least 45 Republican lawmakers who have told Politico they won’t attend either. Some GOP members cited scheduling conflicts like weddings and college tours, others balked at the $25,000 entrance fee, and several signaled a reluctance to be closely associated with Trump as his approval rating sits in the low 30s amid the Iran war and affordability crisis. According to a Daily Beast analysis, Melania has made only 40 public appearances so far this year and has skipped high-profile events including the restaged White House Correspondents’ Dinner and Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral. She has, however, made notable second-term contributions, including a $40 million Amazon documentary, a press conference denying ties to Jeffrey Epstein, back-channel talks with Putin over captured Ukrainian children, and championing the anti-revenge-porn Take It Down Act. Trump himself will headline the convention on September 9 and 10, charging attendees as much as $250,000 for roundtable access, even as the event clashes with the NFL season opener and falls a day before the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
Trump Threatens Worldwide Trade Wars: President Trump called on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates Friday after the August jobs report came in far stronger than expected, with employers adding 162,000 jobs compared to the 53,000 economists had forecast. He touted the numbers before immediately pivoting to pressure the Fed, threatening on Truth Social to cut off trade with countries running trade surpluses with the US unless the central bank cuts rates. “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT,” he wrote, arguing a stronger economy justifies lower borrowing costs.
The Fed has held rates steady at 3.5 to 3.75 percent for its last five meetings as inflation remains stuck above its 2 percent target, with annual inflation at 3.7 percent in July by the Fed’s preferred measure. Ironically, the strong jobs report actually raises the odds the Fed hikes rates rather than cuts them, since it eases concerns that high rates are hurting the labor market and frees the Fed to focus on fighting inflation instead. Traders are now pricing in a 60 percent chance of a quarter-point rate hike at the Fed’s meeting this month, according to CME FedWatch. Trump also used the moment to pressure Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, whom he called a “great new leader,” even while pushing him toward rate cuts. Trump has a long history of feuding with Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, over the same issue, at one point threatening to fire him. “The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart – BE PATRIOTS for a change,” Trump said, adding that high rates put the US “at a very unfair disadvantage” that he won’t tolerate.
Trump Admits No One Will Build Him Monuments: President Trump made a startling admission to New York magazine about why he’s remodeling so much of Washington in his image: when reporter Ben Terris raised Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s theory that Trump builds monuments to himself because he knows no one else will memorialize him once he’s gone, Trump didn’t push back. “That’s true,” he said. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.” The admission came even as his approval rating sits at record lows, the war with Iran drags into its sixth month, and gas and grocery prices remain higher than when he took office, underscoring how much of his second term energy is going toward legacy building rather than the issues voters actually care about. That obsession centers on the $800 million ballroom rising where the East Wing used to stand, which Trump can see from the White House residence and reportedly checks on by staring out his window morning and night. Eric Trump told the magazine his father will call him at 9:30 p.m. to say he’s walking over to inspect construction, and that Trump is having “more fun building this ballroom than I can possibly tell you.” Trump has also ordered a helicopter pilot to circle Hains Point so he could eye a golf course he wants to redevelop from above, and an Associated Press review found he’s brought up grass at 45 public events this term, roughly once every 12 days. The ballroom is just one piece of a broader remodeling spree that has turned much of Washington into a Trump-branded construction zone: he’s paved over the Rose Garden for a patio, installed two towering flagpoles at the residence, added gold accents to the Oval Office, renamed the White House colonnade a “Presidential Walk of Fame,” and built a granite helipad on the South Lawn. Beyond the White House grounds, he’s botched a Reflecting Pool renovation, put his name on the Kennedy Center, and is now planning a 250 foot “Arc de Trump” near Arlington National Cemetery, all while insisting the work will outlast any future president who might want to undo it.
Lindsay Clancy: Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday in the Lindsay Clancy murder case after jurors told the court, with a “heavy heart,” that they could not reach a unanimous verdict for a third time on whether Clancy is criminally responsible for killing her three children. The declaration came after a brief delay while the defense pursued an emergency appeal to a higher court, which cleared the way for Sullivan to move forward. Addressing the jury directly, Sullivan thanked them for what he called “an incredible commitment and dedication” to the case and said they should be proud of their service. President Trump also weighed in from the White House, calling the case a “horrible tragedy” and a “terrible situation,” predicting a retrial and saying Clancy would eventually have to pay “a price,” either in “a mental institution or jail or something.”
 Defense attorney Kevin Reddington told reporters outside the courthouse that he “crushed” the prosecution’s case, though he stressed it was “not a time for gloating.” He described Clancy as “a fantastic, wonderful individual” who sat through seven weeks of trial with nothing bad said about her except by the two prosecutors. Reddington was far harsher toward the single holdout juror who forced the mistrial, accusing that juror of pursuing some kind of “agenda” and saying “I hope they can sleep at night” for costing the other 11 jurors seven weeks of work. He said Clancy and her parents are doing “not good” but that she will remain at Tewksbury State Hospital and “will be ready” for a retrial likely sometime this fall, adding he’d want the same 11 jurors back if possible. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said no decision on a retrial would be made Friday, telling reporters he would meet with his team and address the case further “at the appropriate time in the context of an official court proceeding.” Cruz praised assistant district attorneys Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham, both mothers themselves, for handling what he called one of the most difficult trial assignments with professionalism while keeping Clancy’s three children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, in mind throughout. He pushed back on defense arguments centered on postpartum psychosis, saying the evidence showed Clancy was “in control of her actions when she committed those homicides,” while distinguishing that condition from postpartum depression. Cruz also acknowledged the emotional toll on the Duxbury community and the media covering the trial, saying the case “has always been about getting justice for those three little babies.”
Other news: President Trump said Friday that the Iran war is “small potatoes” for the United States, downplaying the conflict a day after Vice President JD Vance said he wouldn’t even call it a war. “A lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing. We did Venezuela, and we did this,” Trump told reporters. That comment contradicted his own Truth Social post from earlier that same morning, in which he referred to it as a war multiple times. Vance, for his part, argued Thursday that there’s “no active shooting” right now and that major combat operations ended after about six weeks, even though an Air Force email from August obtained by CBS News showed the Pentagon was still instructing personnel to stop referring to the operation as “Operation Epic Fury” three months after the administration had already declared it over.
 When pressed on whether the US is at war, Trump downplayed the conflict, insisting it’s not a war but a “military conflict” that amounts to “small potatoes” for the country. The reporter pushed back, noting that 18 service members have died and deployments have stretched to record lengths. Trump dismissed the concern, seemingly minimizing the record-long deployments by comparing them to the far lengthier US involvement in Vietnam.
 For a decade, Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt was tangled up in a Justice Department probe into a billion-dollar money laundering scheme that allegedly embezzled funds from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, but federal prosecutors in Miami quietly closed the investigation on orders from then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office. The move came as Trump White House officials and Secretary of State Marco Rubio worked to enlist Betancourt to broker a massive new oil deal with Venezuela’s government after the US military snatched Nicolás Maduro from Caracas in January. Trump has since announced the venture, with Betancourt’s company partnering with the Pentagon in a deal Trump says will secure US control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil reserves. Betancourt was never charged, though he was reportedly listed as an unnamed co-conspirator in transactions tied to charges against one of his cousins, and Blanche also reached out to Swiss authorities to help drop warrants restricting Betancourt’s travel. A Justice Department spokesperson denied Blanche personally intervened, calling the claim “a complete fabrication,” while Rubio has defended the arrangement by saying Betancourt was thoroughly vetted and faces no charges in the US. Hurricane Lowell, a major storm, is on track to threaten Hawaii’s western islands starting Monday, marking the third storm to menace the state in as many weeks amid an El Niño-supercharged Pacific hurricane season. Gov. Josh Green declared a state of emergency for the entire state, activating National Guard units and deploying high-water vehicles to Kauai, while officials urged residents to stock 14 days of supplies. Forecasters say the storm’s exact path is still uncertain since it’s expected to make a sharp turn north this weekend, following a track eerily similar to 1992’s Hurricane Iniki, Hawaii’s worst storm on record. Computer models show a wide range of outcomes, from a direct hit on Kauai or Oahu to a track passing more than 500 miles away, but forecasters are confident that dangerous rip currents, rough surf and coastal flooding are likely regardless, especially with tides near their monthly peak. The storm follows Hurricane Lala and Tropical Storm Moke, both of which already hit the Big Island with flooding in August.
 A newly filed federal lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accuses the Justice Department of stonewalling FOIA requests about whether it’s quietly arranging taxpayer-funded settlements for pardoned January 6 rioters after the administration publicly killed its planned $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Hundreds of pardoned defendants have filed claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act seeking what one of their attorneys says is typically $1 million to $10 million each, funneled through the government’s permanent Judgment Fund rather than requiring a new congressional appropriation. Attorney General Todd Blanche formally rescinded the original slush fund to win over skeptical Senate Republicans, but Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward once responded “We’re on it” to a post from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham about compensating “victims” of the Biden administration, before deleting it. Trump has said he “loves” the idea of compensating January 6 defendants, telling reporters in July “it’s dead, but you know, I wish it weren’t,” while stopping short of ruling out payouts even to those who attacked police officers. The administration has already tapped the same Judgment Fund for other settlements benefiting Trump allies, including nearly $5 million paid to the family of Ashli Babbitt. The Supreme Court sided with Republicans on Friday, blocking a 4th Circuit ruling that had struck down an FCC policy letting party committees claim the same discounted ad rates as individual candidates, with only liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. The NRCC and NRSC, backed by the Trump administration, had asked the justices to step in after broadcasters started declining to give committees those discounted rates. The unsigned order found the committees would suffer “irreparable harm” if the lower court ruling stayed in effect. It follows a June Supreme Court ruling that already struck down limits on coordinated party spending, and together the two rulings give Republicans a real financial edge since the RNC has more than $100 million more banked than the DNC even though individual Democratic candidates tend to outraise their opponents. Senator Jon Ossoff and other Democratic candidates had challenged the FCC’s March notice, and the case stemmed from the 4th Circuit’s August 25 ruling that found committees weren’t entitled to candidate-level ad discounts.
Juan Carlos Orona, 29, turned himself in to Las Vegas police Tuesday evening after fatally shooting his girlfriend, Nohani Flores-Osuna, and her two children, ages under 10 and a teenager, after she admitted to cheating on him with an ex-boyfriend. According to an arrest report, Orona confronted Flores-Osuna after spotting her car near the ex’s, and she confirmed the affair and reportedly told him the other man was “better in bed,” after which Orona said he “blacked out” and came to holding his Glock 9mm with the bodies on the ground. He was treated and released for a “superficial” gunshot wound of unclear origin, and his father drove him to the Southeast Area Command to turn himself in. Orona has been charged with three counts of open murder with a deadly weapon and ten counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, with his next court appearance set for September 9. Police Lt. Robert Price called it “a very tragic, tragic situation” and urged anyone experiencing domestic violence to seek help, noting it remains one of the department’s top causal factors in homicides. Federal regulators have opened a safety investigation into Tesla’s newly launched driverless “Cybercab” taxis just one day after Elon Musk debuted the service in Austin, Texas, sending Tesla shares down more than 5 percent to $357.38 in early Friday trading. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is examining whether Tesla fully complied with federal rules given that the two-seat vehicles lack steering wheels, mirrors, or brake pedals normally required on the road, relying instead on a self-certification process the agency says it isn’t yet confident meets standards. Musk plans to fold the Cybercabs into Tesla’s existing robotaxi network, which has operated in Austin for more than a year and recently expanded to five other Texas and Florida cities using conventional Tesla vehicles with safety drivers able to intervene. This is not Tesla’s only active federal scrutiny: separate investigations are examining crashes tied to its self-driving software in low-visibility conditions including a pedestrian death, dozens of incidents where the software ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road, and allegations that Tesla failed to report crashes to regulators promptly. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new probe. The United Nations General Assembly voted 164 to 1, with the United States casting the lone no vote and six abstentions, to formally retire the 16th century Mercator map projection in favor of the more geographically accurate 2018 Equal Earth design, in a resolution spearheaded by Togo on behalf of the African Union. The Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for sea navigation, dramatically shrinks the visual size of equatorial regions like Africa while inflating high-latitude areas, making the continent appear similar in size to Greenland when it is actually 14 times larger. Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, called it a scientific rather than political matter and said the vote marks a chance to “change the narrative,” while France’s foreign minister announced the country will adopt the similar Eckert IV projection. The resolution is non-binding, meaning no country or institution is required to stop using the Mercator map, but supporters expect it to prompt updates to classroom curriculums and mapping technology like Google Maps given the projection’s widespread use in education and governance. Togo plans to host an implementation event in Lomé early next year with UNESCO, the African Union, and major tech companies to coordinate the rollout. A Department of Labor Inspector General report alleges Trump’s former labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, drank alcohol during work hours in her federal office, kept liquor on federal property, and once directed a security agent to hand cash to a partially nude dancer at a strip club she asked to visit during personal travel to Oregon. The 38 page report, based on testimony from 38 witnesses following an anonymous complaint, also accuses Chavez-DeRemer of having an “inappropriate relationship” with a bodyguard, misusing agency travel funds for at least 13 personal trips including five to Las Vegas, and directing staff to perform personal errands like organizing her bedroom closet during work hours. It further describes a “toxic, intimidating and humiliating” workplace under her chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright, both of whom left the agency in March amid the investigation, including allegations Wright judged job applicants by weight and once discouraged an employee from cutting her hair short to avoid “turning into a lesbian.” Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned in April 2026 amid the probe, denied any lawbreaking through her attorney, who called the report “untimely, moot” and based on “undisclosed individuals,” while the Department of Labor deferred all comment to the Inspector General’s office. She had previously served in Congress before her brief tenure leading the department. According to The Guardian, immigration judges across the country have been instructed in a mandatory training to sharply limit the time given to some of the most vulnerable people in court, including abused and abandoned children and survivors of violent crime, before deporting them, according to training materials shared exclusively with The Guardian. The session, led by Board of Immigration Appeals judge Keith Hunsucker, who denied over 80% of asylum cases during his time on the bench, discouraged judges from giving people more than 10 days to find an attorney and pushed them to deny continuances even when more time would let immigrants receive visas or green cards they’ve already qualified for or been approved for. The training specifically targeted special immigrant juvenile status for abused or neglected youth and U non-immigrant status for crime survivors, arguing delays caused by federal processing backlogs shouldn’t pause deportation proceedings. It also warned that attorneys who take on more cases than they can “responsibly and professionally handle” could be referred for discipline, even though only about a fifth of immigrants had representation when ordered deported in June, and unrepresented immigrants are far more likely to be removed than those with lawyers. The Justice Department and the Executive Office for Immigration Review defended the push as necessary to clear a backlog of roughly 3.2 million pending cases, saying delays hurt both immigrants with legitimate claims and the public. A six-week-old infant in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania died from measles, the county coroner determined, marking a third measles-related death in the county following two others announced last week amid a growing outbreak. Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said the infant had Amish lethal microcephaly, a condition that typically limits survival to five or six months and heightens vulnerability to respiratory infections, though state health officials have not confirmed whether this death was one of the two previously announced. Pennsylvania has now logged nearly 400 measles cases across 28 counties, with almost half concentrated in southern Lancaster County and most cases among adults ages 18 to 49, though official tallies typically undercount actual infections. The deaths have deepened a public dispute between Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has criticized Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism as unhelpful to containing the outbreak, and Kennedy, who has accused Shapiro’s team of fabricating the deaths for political gain and running “the Democrats’ Covid playbook.” As of this week, top federal health officials were still excluding the earlier measles-associated deaths from official counts, prompting former CDC officials to write that “chicken noodle soup and vitamin A are not substitutes for vaccination.” Maria Bartiromo’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, sharply denied reports that she was fired from Fox News after allegedly leaking the network’s internal editorial guidance to the White House, calling the claims “absolutely and unequivocally false” and threatening that supporting evidence will “come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” Fox announced her departure Thursday after more than 12 years with the network without explanation, saying only that it was “effective today” and thanking her for her work, while a Fox spokesperson referred back to that statement when pressed further. The dispute stems from a Status News report claiming Fox told senior staff to avoid covering a Trump primetime address containing false 2020 election claims, and that Bartiromo, a vocal Trump supporter, shared that internal guidance with the White House in violation of company policy before being pulled off the air. Freedman, who has previously represented ousted anchors including Don Lemon, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson, praised Bartiromo as “one of the hardest-working journalists” of her career. Trump himself posted in her defense, calling her “a total professional, and a true warrior,” which has fueled speculation she could be a contender to replace outgoing press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
See you soon. — Aaron You’re currently a free subscriber to the Parnas Perspective. For the full experience, more content, and to support Aaron, upgrade your subscription.
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