Check out Mini-memeorandum for simple mobiles or memeorandum Mobile for modern smartphones.
10:40 AM ET, August 3, 2026

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
New York Times:
Blanche Gives G.O.P. Senators Written Assurances on Trump's I.R.S. Deal  —  Todd Blanche's confirmation as attorney general has been held up over concerns about a planned $1.8 billion fund for Trump allies and the president's immunity from tax scrutiny.  —  Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general …
RELATED:
Jeremy Roebuck / Washington Post:
Blanche formally rescinds plan for ‘weaponization’ fund, in deal to advance AG nomination  —  Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) had threatened to vote against Todd Blanche's nomination if their concerns were not addressed.  —  Acting attorney general Todd Blanche issued …
Chris Marquette / Politico:
Todd Blanche on track for confirmation after Cornyn strikes Trump settlement deal  —  Todd Blanche took a crucial step towards confirmation as attorney general late Sunday, after Sen. John Cornyn said he had reached a deal with the Justice Department to rein in a controversial settlement …
CNN:
Exclusive: US military asks troops for ‘creative and unconventional’ ideas to punish Iran  —  The Middle East Donald Trump Federal agencies US military  —  The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump's war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.
Discussion: The Independent and Raw Story
RELATED:
Noah Berlatsky / Public Notice:
The right-wing bubble seals in the GOP with Max Miller  —  This edition of PN is made possible by paid subscribers.  Become one ⬇️  —  🧠 Subscribe to PN 🧠  —  “The left-wing media already has a narrative,” Ohio Rep. Max Miller declared Sunday morning in a livestream on X.
RELATED:
Annie Karni / New York Times:
Max Miller, Accused of Abuse, Is Not Stepping Aside.  Here's What We Know.  —  The Ohio Republican who is seeking a third term defiantly denied domestic abuse allegations ahead of a deadline to replace him on the ballot.  —  Representative Max Miller, the Ohio Republican whose re-election campaign …
New York Times:
Inside the Secretive Boards Deciding Trans Troops' Fate … Capt. Kai Proce before his separation board hearing at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in June.Kate Warren for The New York Times  —  She had lost 26 of her last 27 cases, a string of defeats and disappointments unlike anything she had experienced in her legal career.
Liam Knox / Bloomberg:
McMahon Asks US Colleges to Pledge Campus Reforms by End of 2026  —  Education Secretary Linda McMahon is sending a letter Monday to the leaders of US universities asking them to commit to a slate of campus reforms by the end of 2026 in the Trump administration's latest effort to overhaul higher education.
Justin Fox / Bloomberg:
The New York-ification of Media Keeps Growing, Warts and All  —  Why has New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani become nationally prominent so quickly?  Part of it has to do with his bold and controversial policy proposals, his undeniable political skills and his wholehearted embrace of social media.
Jim Wyss / Bloomberg:
Cuba Suffers Fourth Nationwide Blackout in Less Than a Month  —  Cuba was hit by its fourth island-wide blackout in less than a month, as US energy restrictions and decrepit infrastructure continue to hammer the Caribbean nation.  —  Havana's energy ministry said Monday it had restarted three power plants …
Paul Krugman:
How China Won the Iran War  —  Trump has shattered American power, and Beijing is picking up the pieces  —  Make America Great Again?  Hah.  Donald Trump has weakened us with astonishing speed.  Under his “leadership” America's influence, reputation and credibility have peeled away like the liner in the Reflecting Pool.
G. Elliott Morris / Strength In Numbers:
Democrats strongly favored to take the House, Senate tilts Democratic in our new election forecast (crosspost)  —  Our brand-new election forecast for the 2026 congressional midterms puts Democrats at above even odds to take control of both chambers  —  Today's the day we've all been waiting for.
Discussion: Blue Virginia and FiftyPlusOne
Ariana Baio / The Independent:
Trump denigrates fellow golfers as lacking ‘talent’ as he boasts about winning trophy on his own course  —  Like last year, the president posted on Truth Social announcing he won a club championship trophy at his own golf club in New Jersey  —  President Donald Trump boasted Sunday …
Discussion: HuffPost and Raw Story
RELATED:
Politico:
MAGA vs. Mullin  —  With help from Eli Okun, Ali Bianco and Irie Sentner  —  Good Monday morning, we're back with a MAGA world dispatch on the movement's latest displeasure with the Trump administration.  Refresh the X app and get in touch.  —  In today's Playbook ...
Discussion: Washington Examiner and Raw Story
Shane Goldmacher / New York Times:
Author of Democrats' 2024 Autopsy Says Party Left Out Key Chapter  —  A dispute over the chapter between the author and the Democratic National Committee has added to the party's turmoil as it tries to look forward, not backward.  —  TIMES EXCLUSIVE  —  A dispute over the chapter between …
Martin Austermuhle / NOTUS:
Let's Talk About the Massive Parking Garage Trump Wants to Build at Dulles  —  It won't exactly be the eighth wonder of the world, but it will be big — like, Guinness World Records big.  —  That's what President Donald Trump promised last week when he unveiled plans to build a parking garage …
Discussion: Joe.My.God.
Jamie Stengle / Associated Press:
Kay Granger, first Republican woman from Texas to serve in the House, has died at age 83  —  Kay Granger, the first Republican woman from Texas to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and who served for nearly three decades, died Sunday at the age of 83, her son J.D. Granger said.
Politico:
Senate finalizes funding patch that would block Trump's grant overhaul  —  Senate appropriators released text Sunday of a stopgap funding bill to avert a shutdown come Oct. 1 and punt broader government funding negotiations until after the midterms.  —  Under the bipartisan plan …
RELATED:
John Wilkerson / STAT:
STAT+: Senate measure would block Trump plan to politicize federal grants, for now
Discussion: Washington Post
Politico:
We're about to find out how powerful progressives really are  —  Michigan is ground zero for the Democratic Party's ideological war.  —  Its marquee Senate race and two of its House primaries on Tuesday — in Michigan's 7th and 13th Congressional Districts — will provide another crucial test …
George David Banks / Washington Examiner:
Canada is choking America.  Trump is right to make them pay  —  Dense smoke from Canadian wildfires is once again choking U.S. cities.  President Donald Trump has accused Canada of failing to maintain its forests and has threatened to impose “pollution” tariffs on that country's exports …
Politico:
Inside Ashley Moody's very cautious Senate campaign in Florida … MIAMI — Florida's recent GOP stars have thrived on brash confrontations, political stunts, big personalities and a relentless media presence.  —  And then there's Sen. Ashley Moody's quieter path to power.
Discussion: Raw Story
John Fritze / CNN:
Trump's mail voting appeal tests Supreme Court's anti-chaos election rule  —  Supreme Court Donald Trump Supreme Court justices  —  President Donald Trump's emergency appeal aimed at limiting the use of mail ballots is poised to test a controversial, 20-year-old Supreme Court principle …
Collin Anderson / The Washington Free Beacon:
Troy Jackson's Son Charged Nearly $200,000 Lobbying the Maine Senate in Jackson's Final Year as Its President  —  Maine's newly minted Democratic Senate nominee, Troy Jackson, says he's running for office because he's “tired” of “high-priced lobbyists and corporate greed” killing “good bills” that would “protect workers.”
Discussion: NewsMax.com
Ryan King / New York Post:
Former Biden COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha says pandemic ‘probably was a lab leak’  —  Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, revealed Sunday that he now favors the so-called lab leak theory as the most plausible origin story of the pandemic.
Discussion: The Daily Wire and CNN
Jose Lev Alvarez / Washington Examiner:
Spain forfeited its borders.  Trump should hand Ceuta to Morocco  —  Diplomacy is often an exercise in willful blindness, but there comes a point when reality completely shatters the fiction.  For America's foreign policy establishment, that moment has arrived in Spain.
Discussion: Reuters, Politico and Military.com
M. Gessen / New York Times:
Trump's Smithsonian Attacks Are Attacks on America's Future  —  “We live in a country with an unpredictable past.”  This was a saying among the intelligentsia in the Soviet Union when I was growing up.  We never knew which part of our history would be obliterated next.
Discussion: Fox News
Emily Badger / New York Times:
Park Service Finds Trump's Arch Could Detract From Dozens of Historic Places  —  The 250-foot-tall edifice would alter views across Washington and Arlington Cemetery.  —  President Trump's proposed 250-foot-tall triumphal arch would change the skyline of Washington to such an extent …
 
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of memeorandum at 10:40 AM ET, August 3, 2026.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 See Also: 
memeorandum: site main
memeorandum River: reverse chronological memeorandum
memeorandum Mobile: for phones
memeorandum Leaderboard: memeorandum's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
memeorandum RSS feed
memeorandum on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Corey G. Johnson / ProPublica:
FCC Commissioners Face Ethics Complaints for Taking Luxury Gifts From Paramount
Kevin Downey Jr / PJ Media:
COVID-19: Fauci's Holocaust
Discussion: RedState
James Franey / New York Post:
Under-fire FIFA boss Gianni Infantino begs Trump White House to save his job, set for talks with Marco Rubio: sources
Discussion: NewsMax.com
Ian Millhiser / Vox:
How a fringe idea about race took over the Supreme Court
José Olivares / The Guardian:
‘Stark example of brutality’: Trump's ICE used court orders in plan to force-feed at least 10 hunger strikers in detention
Joseph Choi / The Hill:
OMB's proposed grantmaking rule will destabilize biomedical research, experts warn
Washington Post:
How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
Emilio Perez Ibarguen / Politico:
Michigan's GOP governor primary is getting weird
 Earlier Items: 
Melanie Mason / Politico:
Kamala Harris keeps Democrats guessing about 2028
Discussion: Legal Insurrection and NewsMax.com
Marc Caputo / Axios:
Energy Dept. draws fire for slow pace of Venezuelan oil deals
Discussion: NewsMax.com and CNN
Washington Post:
Loomer's Ukraine reversal deepens split in Trump's ‘America First’ movement
Discussion: Raw Story
Margherita Stancati / Wall Street Journal:
Spitting Attacks Show Rise of Anti-Christian Hate in Israel
Discussion: The Times of Israel
WTVG:
Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur hospitalized after hit-skip crash on her way to church service
 

 
From Techmeme:

Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba says its 2.4T-parameter Qwen3.8-Max tops Moonshot's Kimi K3 on some benchmarks and it plans to release Qwen3.8-Max's and Qwen3.8-27B's weights next week

Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:
Artificial Analysis: DeepSeek's V4-Flash costs $0.14/1M input and $0.28/1M output tokens, or $0.03 per test, far below Kimi K3's $0.86 and GPT-5.6 Sol's $1.86

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
UK court filing: in July, Apple launched a new legal challenge against the UK government's attempt to create a “backdoor” to access encrypted customer data

 
Sister Sites:

Techmeme
 Top news and commentary for technology's leaders, from all around the web
Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page