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12:20 PM ET, August 18, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
Axios:
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.
RELATED:
emptywheel:
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 …
Erkki Forster / The Daily Beast:
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 …
Gideon Rachman / Financial Times:
Zelenskyy in the lion's den  —  European leaders need to get Trump off the dangerous path laid out for him by Putin  —  Memories of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's last disastrous trip to the Oval Office will hang over the Ukrainian president's visit to the White House on Monday.
Wall Street Journal:
What Kind of Peace in Ukraine?
Franco Ordoñez / NPR:
Trump to meet Zelenskyy with 2 big issues in focus: security guarantees and land
New York Times:
Putin's Proposal for Land Deal, Made to Trump, Shifts Pressure to Zelensky
Jarrett Renshaw / Reuters:
Trump vows to target mail-in ballots ahead of 2026 midterm election  —  U.S. President Donald Trump pledged on Monday to issue an executive order to end the use of mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a move likely to spark legal challenges by the states.
RELATED:
Greg Sargent / New Republic:
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 …
Discussion: ABC News
Matthew Mpoke Bigg / New York Times:
Trump Says He Wants to Get Rid of Mail-In Ballots  —  President Trump has claimed mail voting was a source of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, although his former attorney general said his assertions of widespread fraud couldn't be proven.  —  President Trump said on Monday …
Discussion: Scripps News and Althouse
Nikki McCann Ramirez / Rolling Stone:
Trump Pledges Unconstitutional Order to Limit Mail-In Voting After Putin Chat  —  The president demanded that states do what the federal government “tells them,” after announcing an executive order aimed at banning mail-in voting … Despite lacking any sort of constitutional power on the matter …
Reuters:
Trump says he will sign order targeting mail-in ballots, voting machines ahead of 2026 elections
Donald J. Trump / Trump's Truth:
Truth Details  —  I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also …
John McCormick / Wall Street Journal:
Meet the Democrat That Republicans Fear in Red-State America  —  Rob Sand's campaign for Iowa governor could offer template for others in his party  —  DES MOINES, Iowa—Rob Sand could almost pass for a Republican: He frequently quotes the Bible, owns two SIG Sauer handguns …
RELATED:
Brian Beutler / Off Message:
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 …
Nick Reisman / Politico:
Why this swing seat House member is doubling down on Trump's megalaw
Discussion: NewsMax.com and Semafor
Joey Cappelletti / Associated Press:
Where Trump is popular, Democrats look to a new crop of candidates to help win back the House
Discussion: KXTV
Associated Press:
Texas Republicans set to resume push for redrawn US House maps
Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
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 …
RELATED:
Brian Stelter / CNN:
MSNBC is getting a new name as part of its split from NBC News  —  As the cable news channel MSNBC splits up with NBC News, it is also dropping the NBC from its name.  —  Later this year, the channel will become MS NOW, which stands for My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.
Laura Reiley / New York Times:
What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life 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 …
Jessica Piper / Politico:
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 …
Discussion: Washington Examiner
RELATED:
Rick Bright / New York Times:
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.
Discussion: Bloomberg
Corinne Ramey / Wall Street Journal:
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 …
RELATED:
David Kurtz / Talking Points Memo:
Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin's Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats
Discussion: Raw Story and Washington Examiner
Rosie Thomas / 404 Media:
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 …
Discussion: The Verge
Max Tani / Semafor:
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 …
Amanda Marcotte / Salon:
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 …
Discussion: Raw Story
Whitney Curry Wimbish / American Prospect:
Tuberculosis Spawning in Crowded, Dirty ICE Detention Centers  —  Doctors and medical researchers expect more outbreaks of infectious disease as the Trump administration crams thousands more people into miserable conditions.  —  The ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, seen on March 21, 2025
Corey Atad / Defector:
Selling Zohran  —  On a cool Sunday in November, a few days after Donald Trump's re-election, Zohran Mamdani stood on a street corner in Jamaica, Queens, holding up a hastily drawn cardboard sign that read “DID YOU VOTE?” on one side and “LET'S TALK ELECTION,” on the other.
Public Notice:
Gavin Newsom's moment  —  Democrats have found their fight.  Newsom is leading the charge.  —  ∙ Paid … Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he's moving forward with a ballot initiative which would allow Democrats to put in place a partisan gerrymander in the state.
 
 
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 More Items: 
Just Security:
Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell Law Enforcement Failures (1996-2025)
Dana Sherne / Foreign Policy:
Debriefing the Trump-Putin Summit
Adam Liptak / New York Times:
Marco Rubio Once Filed a Brief Embracing Birthright Citizenship
Discussion: Raw Story
Isabel Kershner / New York Times:
Protests Highlight Growing Discontent With Netanyahu and the Gaza War
Diana Stancy / Fox News:
Rubio's State Department yanks more than 6K student visas due to assault, burglary, support for terrorism
Discussion: Reuters
 Earlier Items: 
Ruth Marcus / New Yorker:
Pam Bondi's Power Play
David Rohde / NBC News:
The Trump ally fighting for criminal investigations of Obama, Biden and Clinton
J.D. Wolf / MeidasTouch News:
Trump Flooded Social Media With Self-Praise After Putin Meeting Disaster
Paul Krugman:
AI Is Power-Hungry  —  And consumers are paying the price  —  This is a post about AI …
Peter Stone / The Guardian:
‘Hallmarks of authoritarianism’: Trump banks on loyalists as he wages war on truth
Margaret Sullivan / American Crisis:
Heartbreak (but also hope) at the still-essential Washington Post
Discussion: Fox News
WUSA:
ICE boasts about ripping Mount Pleasant sign with anti-border patrol message