Angry Trump Accidentally Blurts Out Unnerving New Plot to Rig Midterms  —  President Donald Trump raged at Democrats Monday for supposedly cheating in elections in a long and unhinged Truth Social rant—and buried in his tirade is a clear indication of how he hopes to corrupt the 2026 midterm elections …

Gut Check Time For Democrats  —  Send this to your senators.  —  ∙ Paid  —  Every lengthy government shutdown in my lifetime has been a consequence of Republican extortion.  —  The structure and rules of our government all but demand that annual budgeting be a cooperative enterprise …

Trump's Chaotic Truth Social Meltdown Hours Before High-Stakes Meeting  —  RAMPAGE  —  The president clearly had a lot to brain-dump before bedtime.  —  Donald Trump fired off a dizzying barrage of Truth Social posts on Sunday evening, raging at criticism over his summit with Vladimir Putin …

Trump-Zelensky summit: The suit question, again  —  The White House asked Ukrainian officials if President Volodymyr Zelensky will wear a suit to his meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, two sources with direct knowledge tell Axios.

MSNBC to Change Its Name—And Lose the Peacock Logo  —  The cable news network will adopt the new name MS NOW ahead of its spinoff from NBCUniversal  —  MSNBC is changing its name in its spinoff from Comcast's NBCUniversal.  —  The left-leaning cable network will rebrand as My Source News Opinion World …

Conservative network Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims  —  The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday.

Pam Bondi Secretly Betrayed Matt Gaetz to Get Attorney General Gig  —  SHE GAETZ IT  —  The attorney general went behind the disgraced former congressman's back to secure her nomination, a new report claims.  —  Attorney General Pam Bondi betrayed her old friend Matt Gaetz in a bid to secure the top job at the Justice Department.

What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life  —  Sophie's Google searches suggest that she was obsessed with autokabalesis, which means jumping off a high place.  Autodefenestration, jumping out a window, is a subset of autokabalesis, I guess, but that's not what she wanted to do.

Inside the DNC's money problems … Major Democratic donors have withheld money this year amid skepticism about the party's direction, while the small-dollar donors who have long been a source of strength are not growing nearly enough to make up the gap.  And the party has quickly churned through …

America Is Giving Up a Lifesaving Medical Breakthrough: mRNA  —  In early 2020, when the first genetic sequence of the new coronavirus was posted online, scientists were ready.  Within hours, they began designing a vaccine.  Within weeks, clinical trials were underway.

TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers  —  TikTok Shop is selling GPS trackers marketed with viral videos that have voiceovers explicitly encouraging secretly tracking a romantic partner.  Some of the videos have millions of views, and TikTok Shop's own metrics show …

Trump Confesses that the United States Is a Client of Russia  —  There's a great deal of normalcy bias in the reporting on Trump's capitulation.  NYT reports (based on watching the Sunday shows) that Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff “hint” that Putin will make concessions to reach a plea deal with Ukraine …

Court Split Leaves Trump's Civil Fraud Appeal Stuck in Slow Lane  —  New York court typically moves fast but it has been nearly year since it heard president's arguments  —  The New York court weighing President Trump's appeal of a roughly $500 million civil-fraud judgment typically acts swiftly …

Why MAGA calls Trump “Daddy”  —  Yes, it's a weird sex thing.  But it also reveals secret insecurities  —  The MAGA movement is determined to make politics as disgusting as possible, destroying democracy one juvenile 4chan meme at a time.  It turns out that American fascism isn't just wrapped …

The left gets a new publication  —  The Scoop  —  A group of left-leaning writers and journalists are starting a new publication on Monday aimed at arguing in favor of what liberalism is for, rather than just what it's against.  —  Jerusalem Demsas left The Atlantic in recent weeks to launch The Argument …

Putin, Trump, and the Elusive “Peace” … At the August 15 Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin performed as expected.  He desperately wants an end to Western sanctions, détente with the U.S., and assurances that the U.S. will not impose a disastrous anti-Russian secondary boycott—and, apparently, some additional Ukrainian territory.

173. Justice Kavanaugh and the Equities  —  Thursday's ruling in the NetChoice case appears to suggest that one of the key justices is either being inconsistent or completely hypocritical in how he is voting on emergency applications.  —  Welcome back to “One First,” a weekly newsletter …

As attorney general, William Barr personally investigated Jeffrey Epstein's death.  Now Congress has questions.  —  In the hours after convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan detention cell, then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr pledged to intervene personally to lead the investigation into Epstein's death.