Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation is stalled.
A meeting that was scheduled to take place between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Blanche was cancelled abruptly Wednesday morning — just a day before the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote to move Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General out of committee.
In new court filings last evening, James Comey unloaded a triple shotgun blast at the bogus “86 47” seashells prosecution against him.
I’ll get into the trio of filings — which include a cameo by Sammy the Bull Gravano and juicy details about President Trump’s intense personal interest in the case as relayed through internal Secret Service communications — in a moment. I promise.
But first let me orient you briefly to what I suspect is Comey’s strategy here.
As we discussed here yesterday, Comey had already filed another motion to dismiss the indictment on Monday before last evening’s flurry. That motion is the most straightforward, direct, least messy way for the judge to end this case, arguing (quite reasonably) that posting to Instagram a photo of an arrangement of seashells that spells out “86 47” is in no way a true threat to President Trump and in any event is constitutionally protected free speech.
Still, it’s a big step for a judge to dismiss an indictment — especially in a high-profile case like this — based solely on the indictment being facially insufficient. But the choice Comey is giving the judge makes that option seem like the easy way out compared to donning hip waders and venturing into the muck of a vindictive prosecution analysis, which involves peeling back the curtain on the rotten Trump DOJ, the over-involved Trump White House, and now the role of the Secret Service in this whole mess.
While Comey is clearly exalting in exposing some of the depredations of the Trump II presidency and its corrupt misuse of the Justice Department, he first and foremost wants to get out from under this indictment and spare himself and his family the risks of a conviction. And so the sequencing of the filings makes the judge’s hard lift of straight-up dismissing the indictment for failure to allege an actual crime seem a whole lot less heavy considering the alternative path this case could go down.
In one sense, this strategy could produce a disappointing result in a civics and democracy sense. Trump’s pursuit of Comey is a classic case of vindictive prosecution without precedent in American history. Yet, the corrupt and bumbling efforts are so inept that Comey may prevail in getting a prosecution thrown out for a second time without a judge even getting to the vindictive prosecution allegations.
In the Virginia case against him, Comey successfully disqualified Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney, which meant the indictment she obtained was no good. In this case, the indictment itself may also be so flawed that the case goes no farther. But probably the better way to view this is that corruptly predicated prosecutions produce corrupt investigations and shoddy lawyering. It’s all part of the same package of retributive conduct.
With the above framework in mind, here are the three new filings (for diehards, I’m linking to the substantive legal memoranda rather than the barebones motions themselves):
There is a key fourth filing: a 21-page affidavit from Comey attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (the former Chicago U.S. attorney) with a whopping 43 attached exhibits that is filed in support of all three motions and offers a narration of the discovery Comey has obtained from the government thus far that is relevant to the three motions.
Rather than analyze each motion separately, I’m pulling out some of the key themes from all three motions, which are also separately narrated by Fitzgerald, who provides specific citations to the supporting documents obtained in discovery.
If you’re still with me, this is where we get into the good stuff.
Some of the juiciest details from the discovery in the case offer a glimpse of President Trump tracking the Secret Service investigation in real time from Air Force One.
Internal Secret Service communications describe the head of Trump’s protective detail, Special Agent in Charge John Bush, “expecting to have to brief POTUS. He has since briefed the Chief of Staff on the below updates….”
Later, Bush emailed from Air Force One seeking a “readout” of the Secret Service’s imminent interview of Comey at headquarters: “As I am getting LOTS of questions, is it possible for me to get an immediate readout (call) of the interview?”
Another document obtained by Comey noted that “POTUS was requesting a copy of the interview notes to use in his 6 pm press conference.”
Bush responded: “It is a hot topic on the plane and [redacted code name for President Trump] is very interested.”
At one point, Bush asked about any further updates noting “the COS just asked me.”
Another document relays that a Secret Service official was told by the Protective Intelligence Operations Center “that they received a request from SAIC Bush who received a direct request from [Secret Service code name for the President] for a summary of the interview when available.”
Ultimately, an executive summary of the Comey interview was sent to Bush on Air Force One, according to the filings.
After Comey arranged to talk to the Secret Service in person when he returned from the beach in North Carolina to his home in Virginia, the Secret Service tracked his cell phone despite doubts revealed in internal communications that they had the proper legal justification to do so, according to the filings.
When a senior Secret Service official said it was a “bad idea” to ping Comey’s cellphone, Bush agreed it was “legally questionable” but indicated “we might anyway.”
The Secret Service agent who signed the emergency request to Verizon to ping Comey’s cellphone said he did so “with hesitation.” Another senior Secret Service official said that “the # 3 guy at DOJ ‘wanted to ping the cellphone via an exigency request.’” It’s not clear to whom at DOJ he was referring because there was not a No. 3 official in place at that time.
Once the Secret Service pinged Comey’s cellphone, they tracked him electronically and in person on his return trip from North Carolina to Virginia, although the agents surveilling him physically lost track of him when Comey and his wife stopped at the gravesite of their infant son. The electronic surveillance continued during the cemetery visit. In a striking parenthetical, Fitzgerald writes: “(The Government later seized—pursuant to the challenged March 2026 search warrant—a photo Mr. Comey took of the flowers at his son’s grave that day.)”
A recurring character in the filings identified only as Person-1 apparently knew the Comeys but had come to hold Comey in low regard. Person-1 texted Comey’s wife shortly after the Instagram post went up warning that “86” could be construed a violent term, according to the filings.
Person-1 said they initially thought “86” was a benign reference to the restaurant term but then heard a Rudy Giuliani media appearance and became convinced that Comey’s use of the term was nefarious and told the Secret Service as much when interviewed the day after hearing Giuliani.
Giuliani seems to have improbably kicked off an entire absurdist thread of the investigation when he claimed publicly that Comey had worked on organized crime cases where the term “86” was used to mean “kill.”
The most vivid scene that emerges from the slew of new filings, is a May 13, 2026, trip by the first assistant U.S. attorney and an FBI agent to the home of the notorious former mobster Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano to try to establish that the mob regularly used “86” in a violent sense.
Gravano is the former Gambino underboss who famously testified against John Gotti, admitted to participating in 19 murders, entered then left the witness protection program, and was subsequently convicted again. “He is now a podcaster,” Fitzgerald dryly observes in a footnote.
Gravano said he was convinced Comey had to know the violent connotation for “86,” but Gravano had no memory of talking about it with Comey, who as a young prosecutor was involved in the Gambino case. While mobsters did use the term “86,” Gravano told investigators, they were careful not to use it in the presence of law enforcement.
That set off an astounding search by Comey investigators for references to “86” in decades of FBI files. After searching the entirety of the FBI’s Sentinel database, an agent reported:
These searches produced inconclusive results regarding the use of “86” or “eighty-six” as a slang term. Additionally, the searcher was unable to determine if the subject would have had access or been exposed to any potential files meeting the search parameters.
Investigators did a separate search of the Gambino case file: The case file contained no references to the term “86.” Same with the trial transcript: nada. They also talked to two former FBI agents who investigated the mob who had never heard “86” used to mean “kill.”
The discovery in the case leaves the strong impression that after its initial investigation into Comey’s Instagram post, the Secret Service — which has a unit dedicated to the nonstop stream of threats directed towards its protectees — was satisfied there was no crime here.
After leading the May 2025 interview of Comey in person at Secret Service headquarters, a senior official emailed a group of other Secret Service personnel, suggesting that the case was “resolved,” as so many initial threat investigations are: “You all contributed, some in non-traditional ways, to this issue being resolved in a professional and efficient manner.”
Discovery shows the Secret Service treated the Comey investigation as a “non-referred” matter meaning under internal policy “the determination can be made based upon initial investigation that there is no risk of an unwanted outcome and there is no judicial outcome.”
The Secret Service investigation, after the initial flurry, went nowhere and by the fall of 2025 it seemed like it had died. But in October, it was revived by the FBI out of its Charlotte office.
The violation of Comey’s attorney-client privilege had already been an issue in the Virginia case and spawned an entire separate case involving Daniel Richman, the Comey attorney who is also a Columbia University law professor, who prevailed against the Justice Department.
But stunningly it happened again in the “86” investigation, Comey claims.
In the search warrant for Apple, “the government made no provision whatsoever to screen Mr. Richman’s communications,” Fitzgerald alleged. In addition, investigators only filtered for office landline numbers of another Comey attorney, and not his cellphone number.
Last month, prosecutors agreed to “quarantine” two text conversations Comey had with the second lawyer, according to Fitzgerald, but only after those communications had already been reviewed by the first assistant U.S. attorney, two other assistant U.S. attorneys, the FBI case agent and an FBI supervisor. They told Fitzgerald last month they had looked at the text thread only after they had obtained the indictment against Comey.
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This story was originally published by ProPublica
In a private ceremony on Sept. 17, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at a podium inside the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., and praised a Florida nonprofit for what he called a singular achievement in American education. The attendees were celebrating the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, which announced that it had reached 2 million children with civics education since its founding in 2016.
“I hope you understand how important this is,” Hegseth told the room. “What we pour into the next generation will determine whether we keep our republic or not.”
FLAG’s founder, Nick Adams, had spent nearly a decade building toward this moment. An Australian-born conservative commentator and MAGA influencer, Adams had created the nonprofit, raised $7.7 million for it over 10 years, and garnered repeated praise from President Donald Trump. In March, Trump appointed Adams as the special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism and values — a position created for him after his nomination as ambassador to Malaysia stalled the previous year.
But a review of FLAG’s finances, donor operations and online donation network reveals a less celebratory picture. There is little evidence that the nonprofit has provided the civics education it claims. And Adams and his nonprofit have engaged in a pattern of questionable financial arrangements, including paying Adams and his mother more than half its recent annual revenue, while raising much of its money through a sweepstakes operation that has promised donors a chance to win $1,000,000 — a prize FLAG’s records show no evidence of ever paying.
The SAVE America Act is playing a few roles in our politics right now.
On the one hand, it is a sweeping voter suppression bill, and one prong of Trump’s multifaceted assault on elections. Should it become law, it would add new hurdles for a wide range of Americans to participate in democracy, including voter ID for casting a ballot and proof of citizenship to register to vote. Republican supporters of the bill seem to have the impression that these restrictions would overwhelmingly hurt Democrats, and they are likely right: Recent polling by G. Elliott Morris at Strength In Numbers shows a greater number of Democrats — and Black Americans in particular — are likely to have trouble producing the documents needed to prove their citizenship. The law would hit Republicans, too — more than its supporters seem to realize. Among other things, women who change their names when they get married, a group that certainly includes many white, American-born, Republican voters, may have to provide additional documents to prove their citizenship under their new name.
So thats’s the reality of the SAVE Act, if it passes. Quite significant.
At the same time, the more expansive versions of the SAVE Act, including versions with national mandates around voter ID and proof of citizenship, have never had a clear path through the Senate — even as Trump sporadically attempts to up the pressure on his fellow Republicans to make it happen.
That, despite the seriousness of the legislation at hand, has led to an almost comic dynamic where everything the Senate, and much that the House, tries to accomplish is derailed by new Trump demands related to the SAVE Act. It has blown up primaries, too; Ken Paxton was able to prevent a Trump endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn (R), and ultimately win it for himself, by painting Cornyn as an insufficiently dedicated supporter of the legislation.
So we cover all this keeping two things in our mind at once: Should Republicans find a way to maneuver the SAVE Act through Congress — including by finally agreeing to nuke the filibuster for it, as Trump has demanded — it would create a sweeping distortion of the franchise. In the meantime, however, it has been a force for chaos, with Trump’s monomaniacal fixation on it leading to a far less effective Republican trifecta than we might have predicted in the early days of his second term.
Jay Clayton was confirmed last night, Khaya Himmelman reports for TPM, replacing Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte.
Breaking News: Ross Douthat, The New York Times opinion columnist, is joining CBS News’s “60 Minutes” in one of the first major hires since Bari Weiss’s takeover.
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) 2026-07-28T20:57:44.755968Z
It’s Ross Douthat, leaving his job as a top New York Times opinion writer to become the face of Bari Weiss’ 60 minutes. Good luck in the new job, Ross.
Yes, with a wave of missiles fired by Iran overnight and Saudi Arabia joining the U.S. in striking Iranian militias.
Jay Clayton was confirmed as the Trump administration’s new Director of National Intelligence in a 51 to 47 vote along party lines in the Senate on Tuesday evening.
Thank you to everyone who contributed yesterday. A big day of contributions that has gotten us near one of the biggest milestones on the way to our goal. TPM Publisher Joe Ragazzo and I have developed – both statistically and instinctively – a feel for the cadence of the Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive having run them now for several years. $0 to $250,000 is a sprint. There’s a lot of energy. $250,000 to $400,000 is a slog. Like pushing a boulder up a hill. Once we hit $400,000 it’s a bit like getting to the top of the hill and rolling the boulder down is a lot easier. Not easy. It’s still essential to remind people, make the case. (I have moments wondering: does it make sense to show how the drive sausage is made? Well, in for a time in for a dollar: knocking down that fourth wall has always been the essence of TPM’s reporting and how we communicate with the TPM community.) We’re now $21,350 from that $400,000 milestone. Can you help us get there? If you haven’t had a spare moment to join us this year today would be a great time. Just click right here.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters on Tuesday that there’s a chance the confirmation vote to move Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination out of committee may be postponed — or it may not.
Here’s a brief follow up, genetically if not literally similar to my post from earlier today about AI bubbles. Axios has a report on the public comments on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposal to “ease” (i.e., get rid of) the requirement that public companies issue quarterly disclosure reports. The SEC has received almost a quarter million comments (orders of magnitude more than normal) and they are almost universally against it. Some of this is organized, organizations or company that represent or advocate for investors trying to get people to write in. But it’s mainly that there is simply zero constituency for this: retail investors, institutional investors, former SEC chairs, academics who study business. According to Axios, the pro side was “the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and Exxon Mobile.” As they note, the agency has to consider the comments. It’s not a vote. They can move forward regardless.
What struck me here is that it’s almost impossible to look at the current state of the U.S. economy, equity markets, trends in retail investing, the widespread public exposure to mutual funds and index funds, and the increasing inattention to white-collar crime and think that what the economy needs is less transparency. The current head of the SEC, Paul Atkins, has pitched these changes as a way to “make IPOs great again.” First of all, it’s not entirely clear why IPOs should be great again. We want new companies. New companies finding new points of market need, devising new services, finding ways to chip away at the dead wood of monopoly and bureaucratic sclerosis is important to the economy. But that’s not the same as a high-octane culture of IPOs. Indeed, to the extent there are fewer IPOs, it’s more tied to the growth of monopolies. If there are new ideas to be nurtured, it’s happening within the monopolies, or they’re bought out or snuffed out early by those monopolies to ward off future competitors.
Like many others, I continue to be baffled and unnerved at how transactions that seem like definitional signs of a bubble (or possibly even fraud) are now so thoroughly baked into the very structure of the AI industry. This morning, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman starts a piece with this overview: “OpenAI and Anthropic need to borrow a lot of money but they don’t have profits or a track record of creditworthiness. Enter Jensen Huang.”
It goes on from there …
Multiple challenges to President Donald Trump’s March “election integrity” executive order are moving through the federal judiciary simultaneously, including one that has reached the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, an appeals court in Washington D.C. presiding over a separate challenge to the EO sided with the administration, agreeing that it is too early for plaintiffs to challenge the order that would overhaul the absentee voting system.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.
More than a year after arresting him, the Trump Justice Department moved Monday to drop the criminal case against California labor leader David Huerta arising from his June 2025 protest of an ICE raid in Los Angeles.
Huerta, who suffered a head injury during his arrest, was engaged in protest at the peak of tensions in the city over ICE raids. The next day, President Trump federalized the California National Guard and deployed it to the city.
Prosecutors had already downgraded the case against Huerta from a felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction, resistance, or opposition of a federal officer. Now the remaining charge will be dismissed.
Huerta’s case is just one of dozens of prosecutions of ICE protestors in Los Angeles to fall apart in recent months.
To try to save face in the Huerta case, prosecutors yesterday framed the dismissal as an “agreement of the parties” by which Huerta would continue to abide by the terms of his release for another 30 days, at which point the case would be dismissed.
“This is not where he’s been absolved of wrongdoing,” Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in L.A., told Politico. “He’s accepted responsibility.” (For those keeping track, Essayli is not the U.S. attorney, but is installed as the first assistant in the office as a way of avoiding Senate confirmation.)
For his part, Huerta hailed the outcome as complete vindication of him and his constitutional rights.
[I]t will come as no surprise that I’m thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration. Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I just need a change.
Former FBI Director James Comey has filed his first of at least two motions to dismiss the federal indictment of him in North Carolina for posting to Instagram an image of seashells arranged on a beach to spell out “86 47,” arguing that it’s preposterous to treat his actions as a true threat to President Trump and that, even if they were construed to be a threat, they amounted to constitutionally protected political hyperbole.
The Trump DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the fraud case against the alleged mastermind of a $722 million crypto Ponzi scheme, Bloomberg reports.
With the critical Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general set for Thursday, new comments from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) suggest he may not be driving as hard of a bargain for his vote as initially reported.
Last week, Cornyn said he wasn’t just interested in making sure the bogus anti-weaponization fund was dead, but also nixing the tax immunity Trump received when he settled his lawsuit against the IRS. To do this, Cornyn wants the settlement documents amended because by their own terms only the parties can modify the documents. But yesterday in remarks to reporters, Cornyn’s own description of what he was after seemed more narrow than at first appeared (emphasis added):
We just need for the documents to conform to what [Blanche’s] testimony was at the hearing, where he said the weaponization fund was dead [and] he said that the immunity from future audits does not extend to people beyond the parties to the lawsuit.
That sure sounds like the parties to the lawsuit — who include Trump personally, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization — would still receive the immunity contemplated in the settlement agreement.
Politico uses ambiguous language language on this point, reporting that the changes to the settlement agreement Cornyn wants include “restricting the scope of tax audit immunity granted to the president and his family.” It’s not clear whether that means limiting the scope of the immunity the Trumps are getting or limiting who gets immunity to only the Trump family.
Stay tuned …
After losing at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals last week, the Trump administration quickly went to the Supreme Court to try to revive the president’s executive order purporting to revamp mail voting ahead in time for the midterms.
WSJ: Two Wars Converge in the Caspian Sea as Ukraine Hits Iranian Supply Line to Russia
Trump: "I've done more for you than your parents, okay? Your parents are okay. I'm not gonna knock to your parents, but I have been better to you than your parents."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-07-27T19:19:06.280Z
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has once again formally requested proof of life from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been absent from the Senate since he was hospitalized on June 14.
Beshear sent a new letter to McConnell, his staff and the office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Monday demanding the 84-year-old senator “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and other Senate Republicans are resisting two aspects of Donald Trump’s latest demand that they pass the SAVE Act voter suppression bill: they don’t want to give up or delay their August recess to do so, and they don’t want to nuke the filibuster.
Scrapping the filibuster would allow the SAVE Act to pass with 51 instead of 60 votes. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Thune told ABC News yesterday.
“If the result is only achieved by nuking the legislative filibuster, we don’t have the votes to do that and so that’s not a — that’s just not a realistic option,” he reportedly added.
Trump in recent days has again demanded that both Houses of Congress turn their attention to the SAVE Act and the SAVE Act alone. He has threatened not to sign any legislation until the SAVE Act is passed. In a Monday Truth Social post, he insisted that the Senate delay its recess, and that it nuke the filibuster. “Stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!” he warned Thune. Other, vocal right-wing senators, including Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rick Scott (R-FL), are also calling for recess to be delayed.
Thune also dismissed the demands to nix recess, saying it was pointless for the Senate to stay in session without adequate votes for the SAVE Act.
All of this doesn’t entirely close the door on Trump’s push. The House and Senate still have some maneuvers they can try to advance the SAVE Act through budget reconciliation in the next few days, Punchbowl writes. And while the kind of SAVE Act that could be accomplished through reconciliation is not as dramatic as the sweeping election overhaul Trump has been pushing, it would still be ample reason for concern, as law professor and longtime congressional advisor Charles Teifer wrote for us last week.
A prong of Trump’s attack on the midterms has reached the Supreme Court, the first to do so. It has immediately become one of the most significant issues before the Court.
It’s Sen. Mitch McConnell, not yet back in Congress and drawing demands from Kentucky’s governor Andy Beshear (D) that he “directly, verbally” address his constituents to explain what’s going on.
Sort of. Trump claims there is a “good chance” for a deal with Iran during this lull. Hear that, stock market?
Lawyers for former Olympian David Hearn, charged with felony vandalism of Trump’s already falling apart Reflecting Pool refurb, went to court today and asked the judge in the case to allow them to review records of the grand jury that charged Hearn with a felony. (I first saw this referenced in an NBC article by TPM alum Ryan Reilly.) You’ll remember the basic details here. Trump’s botched Reflecting Pool job was already visibly peeling up from the bottom of the pool. Hearn appeared to touch one of the peeled up areas. And the Feds charged him with causing at least a substantial amount of the damage.
What’s notable about this is that the Trump DOJ has already been caught on several occasions either committing serious grand jury misconduct or improperly instructing grand jurors so as to secure indictments. That’s what Hearn’s lawyers say happened here. And they make a pretty good case.
It appears as though New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) will not comply with the Justice Department’s demands for the identities of the 6,600 noncitizens who were, through no fault of their own, placed on the voter rolls in 2023 and 2024.
President Donald Trump on Monday morning called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to cancel the upper chamber’s lengthy August recess until they pass the SAVE America Act — the voter suppression bill the president and his MAGA allies have been obsessively pushing Congress to pass for months.
“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “The Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership. Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”
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This short passage in an article (paywalled) in Haaretz focuses on a point that hasn’t been sufficiently visible in the US press. There’s been a decent amount of U.S. coverage of the increasingly violent and predatory escalation in the West Bank, in which the government has both encouraged and allowed the most violent members of the settler community to accelerate their campaign of harassment, violence and expulsions of Palestinian families and communities. But this isn’t just a broader expression of Greater Israel maximalism, though it’s also very much that. There’s a nearer term goal. It’s also an electoral strategy, one aimed at hyper-mobilizing the settler parties in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and also creating a security crisis he hopes he will benefit from.
This story was originally published by States Newsroom.
The Trump administration has a new plan for teenagers learning about pregnancy: Beginning this summer, it will steer millions of dollars toward organizations that focus on anatomy, fertility tracking, hormonal production and “reproductive goals counseling.”
The plan will also emphasize abstinence from sex and the importance of marriage.
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