 |
Good evening. Today was supposed to be the day Senate Republicans finally put Jack Smith on trial. Instead, it turned into one of the most embarrassing hearings of the Trump era. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MISSOURI) accused Smith of perjury and called him a “total dirtbag” over an Atlanta Hawks game Smith never attended, only for Smith to calmly explain he was at a women’s college game in Maryland watching the Iowa Hawkeyes. Smith also revealed that the late Lindsey Graham, whose sister spent her time painting him as a victim, “likely would have been a witness” against Trump, and even Republican Thom Tillis broke ranks to warn his colleagues about cheering on vindictive prosecutions. And the bad news for the GOP didn’t stop at the hearing room. A Trump adviser admitted to CNN that the midterms are “obviously going to be f***ing rough,” the NRSC is now scrambling to defend seats in Texas, Iowa, Maine and Alaska, and Sen. John Kennedy conceded Republicans “haven’t done a damn thing” on costs as the Senate spent its final week passing a college sports bill. Elsewhere, the Supreme Court cleared the way again for Trump’s “third country” deportations, the DOJ charged a DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE based on the word of an agent with no bodycam, and former “American Idol” singer Caleb Flynn was convicted of murdering his wife. Reminder: tomorrow I’m dropping significant Epstein news exclusively for you all. If you haven’t yet, become a paid subscriber today so you don’t miss it. It’s what lets me keep digging instead of repeating the White House’s talking points.
Here’s the news: Before getting to the full news, I wanted to share an interview I did this afternoon with Summer Willis. In light of the law of consent, the horrific news out of Cornell, and more, Summer joins me to share her story. In 2014, Summer Willis, then a 19-year-old University of Texas student, was drugged at a fraternity party and sexually assaulted, but when she reported the crime, she ran into a Texas law that made prosecution nearly impossible because it required proving a drug was intentionally administered or that the victim was completely incapacitated. Rather than let that gap define her, Willis set out to run 29 marathons before turning 30 to raise awareness for survivors and founded Strength Through Strides, a nonprofit that uses fitness and community to support them. At the 2025 Austin Half Marathon, she crawled part of the course to symbolize the pain survivors carry before standing up and running the rest, a moment that drew wide attention. Her advocacy helped pass the Summer Willis Act (HB 3073), which redefines consent under Texas law and expands legal protections for survivors, though the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center notes the state still lacks a consistent, survivor-centered definition of consent.
 Jack Smith’s Senate Hearing Backfires on Republicans as Schmitt Accuses Him of Perjury Over the Wrong Basketball Game: Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee he stands by his prosecutions of Trump and will not be silenced by threats. Appearing voluntarily for his second public hearing before Congress, Smith told senators, “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.” He said his team “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” and condemned the administration’s “vilification” and firing of the agents and prosecutors who worked for him. Pressed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Smith warned that purging experienced DOJ staff “makes our country less safe” and has cost the department its credibility with courts across the country. He also voiced concern about the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling, saying “nobody should be above the law, regardless of what job they hold.”
 Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Smith of perjury over a basketball game Smith never attended, and it blew up in his face. Schmitt waved a poster of text messages he claimed placed Smith at an Atlanta Hawks-Golden State Warriors game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Fani Willis and Nathan Wade acknowledged their relationship, implying Smith was coordinating with the Georgia prosecution. When Smith denied it, Schmitt accused him of lying under oath and told him “you will go down as a total dirtbag.” Smith then explained he had actually attended a women’s college game in College Park, Maryland between the Maryland Terrapins and the Iowa Hawkeyes, accompanied by US Marshals, meaning Schmitt apparently confused two teams with “hawk” in their names. Klobuchar said Schmitt owed Smith an apology for smearing him “based on a confusion about the name of a team,” while Ted Cruz refused to comment, claiming he hadn’t seen the exchange. Schmitt went on the Charlie Kirk Show afterward, where the host praised him for catching Smith “on this NBA game,” and Schmitt offered no apology, insisting “my job is to ask the questions.”
  Republicans tried to paint the late Lindsey Graham as a victim, and Smith revealed Graham likely would have been a witness against Trump. Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister, used her time to attack the subpoena of her brother’s phone toll records and the non-disclosure order attached to it, asking, “Do you really believe that Lindsey was going to destroy evidence?” Smith replied that he believed her brother was a “patriotic public servant” who was not a target, adding that “he likely would have been a witness in our case” because he had investigated Trump’s election claims and found them false. Smith explained that the non-disclosure orders were never about senators obstructing, but about Trump and his associates, who “had done it, and they did it again.” He cited Trump suggesting Gen. Mark Milley should be put to death and the racist death threats Georgia election workers faced after Trump targeted them.
 Ted Cruz’s theatrics misfired while a fellow Republican broke ranks. Cruz called Smith’s conduct “the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice” and tried to shame him with a reference to Inspector Javert from “Les Misérables,” a comparison CNN noted backfires, since Javert is the character who ultimately realizes his rigid pursuit of a man was wrong. Cruz repeatedly interrupted Smith, asked “Is it a crime to be a Republican?” (Smith: “Absolutely not”), and called subpoenas of pro-Trump groups a “fishing expedition,” though CNN has reported that inquiry focused on whether Trump’s super PAC donors were defrauded after the 2020 election. Sen. John Kennedy told Smith “you make me want to throw up in my mouth.” Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis warned his colleagues against claiming only one party is “right and righteous” on vindictive prosecutions, pointing to the Trump DOJ’s case against James Comey over the “8647” seashell photo as “probably not the right way to spend our time.”
 The GOP’s central complaint rests on phone records Smith says were lawful and necessary. Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called Smith’s office “a partisan weapon that broke the rules” and claimed it also obtained records on Republican donors and journalists’ communications with officials. Smith obtained call logs, not content, from several Republican senators around Jan. 6, and reviewed texts from 44 lawmakers in material from White House aides, prompting House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan to refer him to DOJ in July for alleged false statements. Smith said the records were essential because investigators had evidence Trump and his allies tried to reach senators during the riot to delay certification. Ranking Democrat Dick Durbin called the attacks “petty, personal and political” and “a smokescreen,” while Sen. Cory Booker said the committee was “putting on trial the investigators” instead of investigating the crimes.
 Republicans Brace for a Blue Tsunami as Trump’s Own Adviser Admits the Midterms Will Be “F*ing Rough” A Trump adviser broke with the White House’s upbeat spin and admitted the midterms will be brutal for Republicans. “It’s obviously going to be f***ing rough,” the unnamed aide told CNN, saying the best-case scenario is a repeat of 2022, when the president’s party lost the House but held the Senate. CNN’s Harry Enten has highlighted a 50% job disapproval rating for Trump, rising to 56% among independents, with Enten describing “record hatred” for a president heading into a midterm. Trump is so toxic that candidates are cutting him from TV spots, dropping him from their websites and asking him not to campaign for them, even as he insists voters treat the election as a referendum on him. Asked what Republicans could do to improve their chances, one campaign operative answered: “Go back in time and never start the war with Iran.” The GOP’s Senate campaign chief warned his caucus that 2026 will look nothing like 2024, as once-safe red states come into play. NRSC chair Tim Scott told Republican senators in a closed-door briefing to “run like they were behind” so the committee could focus on “a record number of toss-up races,” with priorities now defending seats in Texas, Iowa, Maine and Alaska. GOP outside groups are spending millions in once-safe Nebraska and Kansas, while South Carolina, Mississippi, South Dakota and Arkansas are drawing attention amid fears of a historic blue wave. In Iowa, which Trump won by 13 points, conservative radio host Steve Deace said House Republicans’ own pollsters told them candidates in +15 districts are within the margin of error, those in +10 districts are underwater, and the environment could be worse than 2006. Some Republicans are already writing off North Carolina and Georgia to Democrats Roy Cooper and Jon Ossoff, while polls show Democrats Abdul El-Sayed and Chris Pappas with small leads in Michigan and New Hampshire. Republicans are pouring staggering sums into defending seats Trump won easily, while candidates run away from him. A Thune-blessed super PAC is on track to spend more than $100 million to boost Ken Paxton against James Talarico in Texas, with the GOP’s total cost of keeping that seat approaching $200 million. House Republicans and their allies have reserved $485 million in ads between Aug. 1 and Election Day in districts Trump carried alone, according to Politico. Iowa Rep. Zach Nunn voted to curb Trump’s Iran war a month after campaigning with Pete Hegseth, and Senate nominee Ashley Hinson is running ads touting her work with Democrats rather than her Trump endorsement. Even Speaker Mike Johnson looked visibly annoyed on Meet the Press when repeatedly asked about Trump’s promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans keep Congress, as the Iran war nears its eighth month and gas prices keep climbing. Senate Republicans admitted they’ve done nothing to lower costs and are paying the price. The Senate spent its final week before leaving to campaign passing Ted Cruz’s college sports bill, prompting Sen. John Kennedy to say lawmakers were “trying to make the football coaches happy” while American families worry about bills. “We haven’t done a damn thing,” Kennedy said of affordability, “and it’s biting us in the ass right now.” Sen. Josh Hawley quipped that the college sports bill had better be “the most perfect and pristine piece of legislation ever” given how much time was spent on it, while Thune’s last-minute data center utility cost bill is expected to fail. When asked about JD Vance’s plea for voters to “give us another chance,” Sen. Thom Tillis replied: “If it works, it’ll be a first.”
Other news: Supreme Court Clears the Way for Trump’s “Third Country” Deportations Over Liberal Dissent. The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to block a 1st Circuit ruling that found its “third country” deportation policy unlawful because immigrants weren’t given a real chance to raise safety concerns before being sent to countries they have no connection to, with the court’s three liberals dissenting. It’s the second time the justices have sided with the administration in the case, and they’ll hear oral arguments in December before issuing a final ruling. Thousands have already been deported to countries including South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda, with about 15,000 sent to third countries in 2025 alone, and plaintiffs allege some have been detained indefinitely or subjected to physical and sexual abuse. DHS general counsel James Percival gloated that it was “a bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists,” while plaintiffs’ attorney Trina Realmuto warned that people are “once again at immediate risk” of being sent somewhere with no meaningful chance to seek protection. The lead plaintiff, a Cuban man with severe mental illness, fears being deported to a country where he couldn’t get psychiatric treatment. Lindsay Clancy’s defense argued in court that there is no evidence she killed her children, a claim prosecutors called “laughable.” In the first hearing since her triple murder trial ended in a mistrial on Sept. 4, defense attorney Kevin Reddington moved to dismiss the case under Massachusetts Rule 25, a sharp turn from a trial defense built on the argument that Clancy was in a state of postpartum psychosis when her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan, were strangled in January 2023. Assistant DA Shanan Buckingham countered that “the entire record is voluminous” with evidence that Clancy did it, and Judge William Sullivan took the motion under advisement, pushing decisions on it and other motions to Nov. 2 without setting a retrial date. The jury had deadlocked 11-1, with 11 jurors favoring a verdict of not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility and a lone holdout, Michael Desronvil, who wanted to convict and has denied jurors’ claims that he refused to deliberate. Prosecutors have also asked for a gag order on Reddington’s media statements, which the Boston Globe and WBZ-TV oppose on free speech grounds.
 A federal watchdog found key data missing on more than half of US child labor deaths, as violations have surged fivefold over the past decade. A GAO report released Tuesday found an average of 24 children under 18 died each year from work-related incidents between 2013 and 2023, but over half of the 260 cases lacked information on the cause of death or the industry involved. Among cases with known data, 75% of the children worked in agriculture and two-thirds of deaths were caused by transportation incidents. The GAO found the Labor Department’s collaboration with other agencies to fight child labor has “largely diminished” since January 2025, while several federal datasets tracking child injuries have ended entirely. Rep. Bobby Scott, who requested the report, said the Trump administration’s upheaval of federal agencies “has harmed children,” as illegally employed minors rose from 1,012 in fiscal 2015 to 5,272 in fiscal 2025, and 19 states have moved to loosen child labor laws since 2021. Former “American Idol” Singer Caleb Flynn Found Guilty of Murdering His Wife After Jury Deliberates Just Over Two Hours. An Ohio jury convicted Caleb Flynn, a 40-year-old former music pastor who auditioned for “American Idol” in 2013, on all nine counts of murder, assault and evidence tampering in the February shooting death of his wife, Ashley Flynn, a 37-year-old teacher and volleyball coach. Flynn had told a 911 dispatcher that an intruder shot her multiple times in the head while he slept on the couch, but prosecutors said he staged the home invasion and that his electronic devices showed him awake and moving in the hours before the killing. His former mistress, Alleigha Botner, who met him as a 20-year-old church intern, testified that he said he hated his wife, and texts shown in court included one from August 2025 in which Flynn wrote that he was up until 4 a.m. “trying to think of ways to kill her and not go to jail.” The defense rested without calling a single witness, arguing that being “unfaithful doesn’t equal murder,” and the murder weapon was never found. Flynn broke down in tears as the verdict was read and faces up to life without parole at sentencing on Oct. 5. The DOJ charged a DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE in Austin with assaulting officers, based on an account from an agent who wasn’t wearing a bodycam. Wilber Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan immigrant, was shot through his car’s rear window during a Sept. 20 traffic stop, and an unsealed affidavit accuses him of striking the officer, identified only as “L.G.,” in the torso with his side-view mirror before leading agents on a high-speed chase. The affidavit itself describes the initial exchange as “pleasant and not aggressive,” and admits L.G. had no body camera while the second officer switched his off during the pursuit, meaning there’s no footage of the shooting, only L.G.’s claim that Garcés Pérez tried to hit him. Garcés Pérez says he thought the unmarked SUV was an aggressive driver trying to hit him, and his lawyer says he was moved to an ICE detention center within four hours with a bullet still lodged near his spine, where he writhed in pain without a bed or medication until complaining of paralysis. DHS claims he entered illegally, but his attorney says he came in legally through the CBP One app, whose blanket status cancellations a federal judge ruled unlawful in March, and a hearing on his lawsuit seeking release is set for Sept. 30. Electricity shutoffs surged 28% during the hottest month in US history as Americans struggled to afford soaring power bills. In July 2026, 173,598 households across 10 states were disconnected from their electricity, according to data from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, and roughly one in six US households are now behind on their energy bills. Twenty-seven states allow shutoffs regardless of the heat, and NEADA’s Mark Wolfe said people are cutting back on food or medicine to keep the power on, calling the situation “just cruel.” Bills have been climbing since 2021 due to AI datacenter demand and grid upgrades, a trend accelerated by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which Trump has defended by saying “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.” Meanwhile, the administration has tried to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and NEADA warns homes heated by oil face winter bills 50% higher than last year. The CDC reported a second US measles death while leaving out four deaths in Pennsylvania, the nation’s hardest-hit state. The CDC has confirmed 3,659 measles cases across 47 states as of Sept. 24, the most in any year since 1991, nearly three decades after the disease was declared eliminated in the US. Pennsylvania alone has reported more than 900 cases, four deaths and 176 hospitalizations, with 114 new cases in the past week, a third of them children. The discrepancy stems from an ongoing dispute between Gov. Josh Shapiro and HHS Secretary RFK Jr., after the CDC stopped collecting death data directly from states and switched to National Center for Health Statistics mortality data. The outbreak comes as the CDC has lost roughly a third of its civil service workforce in the past year, according to the largest federal employee union. The FBI warned the hacking group that breached its jobs portal after Dutch police arrested an alleged ShinyHunters leader. Dutch authorities said they arrested a 24-year-old Amsterdam man on Sept. 15 suspected of being a ShinyHunters hacker, who is separately being investigated for allegedly ordering two murders abroad. The FBI isn’t tying the arrest to its own breach, which happened Sept. 21, after the man was detained, but Cyber Division Assistant Director Brett Leatherman used it to warn remaining members, saying “I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.” ShinyHunters claimed to have stolen agents’ personal information from FBIJobs.gov, and a DOJ notice to lawmakers said the system holds Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and emergency contacts. Some FBI employees were frustrated they learned of the breach from the media, while ShinyHunters has since backed down, calling its threat “a marketing campaign” and promising not to publish the stolen data. Manchester City was found guilty of nearly all of the 115 financial charges it faced, in one of the biggest scandals in English soccer history. An independent commission found City guilty of every charge tied to serious breaches of Premier League financial rules over nine seasons from 2009 to 2018, and most charges of failing to cooperate with the investigation. The league said City used “sham” sponsorship contracts to artificially inflate revenues and cut costs by more than £900 million ($1.19 billion) while hiding the true state of its finances from auditors and regulators. City, the current league leader owned by Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Mansour, now faces sanctions that could include a massive points deduction or even expulsion from the Premier League. The club said it was “disappointed and surprised,” insists it is innocent, and has until Friday to appeal, while rival clubs are expected to file lawsuits seeking compensation. Trump hosted nearly 20 tech titans at the White House as he dismisses AI safety warnings as a “hoax.” The lunch, co-hosted by Speaker Mike Johnson, includes Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, even as Amodei and Sam Altman have recently called for more government oversight of AI. Johnson pushed for the summit after Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon resigned warning AI builders believe it could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” but Johnson says existing product liability laws are enough and “we do not need a moratorium.” Earlier Tuesday, Trump unveiled America.gov, an AI-powered government services portal built on Gemini and Grok, claiming it “cannot, in theory, be hacked” while adding he’d shut it down if it ever were. With the House out until after the Nov. 3 midterms, Congress is showing no urgency to act on any of the dozens of AI bills introduced in recent years. Estonia accused Russia of sabotage after an arson attack on a company supplying unmanned military vehicles to Ukraine. Estonia’s Internal Security Service concluded that an Aug. 15 fire at a Tallinn building used by Milrem Robotics, which supplies THeMIS unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine, was a pre-planned attack “commissioned by Russian security services.” Three Latvian suspects were detained in Latvia days after the fire and handed over to Estonia, and Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires, calling the act “absolutely unacceptable.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusation as unfounded, saying Moscow “won’t” take it seriously. The AP has tracked around 200 incidents of sabotage and malign activity across Europe blamed on Russia since the 2022 invasion, including an attempted explosive-laden drone attack at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport in August.
See you soon. — Aaron
|
Comments
Post a Comment