This morning, a headline within the Guardian learn: “RFK Jr lied in Senate affirmation hearings, newly revealed paperwork point out.” The story by Michelle R. Smith reviews that letters, newly obtained by members of the press, contradict Kennedy’s repeated assertions to members of Congress in early 2025 throughout his affirmation course of to move the Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS) that his 2019 go to to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines.” The truth is, in a letter to the Samoan prime minister earlier than the journey, Kennedy stated explicitly that he needed to analyze the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine used there.
Observers declare that Kennedy’s go to empowered anti-vaccine activists in Samoa. After he left, a measles epidemic killed 83 individuals. Smith notes that knowingly mendacity to Congress is against the law, though it’s not often prosecuted. Nonetheless, Smith factors out, the obvious proof that Kennedy lied to Congress is a transparent opening for hearings into Kennedy’s testimony, historical past, and conduct in workplace—together with altering the vaccine schedule after promising to not—that will illuminate what has been taking place to the U.S. authorities, data that will probably show embarrassing to the Trump administration.
The U.S. is now within the midst of its personal measles outbreak, which has killed two unvaccinated individuals in Pennsylvania. Considered one of them was a new child, too younger for the vaccine and thus depending on herd immunity. Yesterday, Kennedy steered that Democratic governor Josh Shapiro’s announcement of the deaths would possibly “have been altogether fabricated by one of many Governor’s hopeful staffers.”
Smith reviews {that a} spokesperson for HHS stated: “Secretary Kennedy’s go to to Samoa in 2019 was unrelated to vaccines. Any declare or insinuation primarily based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied below oath or to Congress just isn’t solely false however outright defamatory.” Kennedy was not below oath within the hearings.
This afternoon, Aram Roston of the Guardian reported that Trump’s struggle on Iran has “pushed the US navy right into a extreme monetary disaster.” Roston reviews that the U.S. Navy, which is bearing the brunt of the operation, is transferring cash from payroll to fight operations, creating shortfalls. Officers are overlaying that shortfall by raiding different accounts.
This problem has already come up in a July listening to earlier than the Senate Appropriations Committee, when Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the highest-rating Democrat on the committee, famous that Protection Secretary Hegseth was utilizing a funding mechanism that “doesn’t make loads of sense.” Hegseth responded by blaming the “gross negligence” of the Biden administration and its “woke” insurance policies. The methods through which he has spent the division’s finances weren’t intently examined.
Protection analyst Todd Harrison of the conservative American Enterprise Institute instructed Roston that the shortages are not any secret, however speculated that “that could be a deliberate choice of the civilian leaders within the Pentagon, beginning at secretary, that that is for political causes, that they don’t wish to appear like they’re damaging future navy readiness over a struggle that’s turning into more and more a political legal responsibility.”
A former navy officer who now works for a corporation that contracts with the navy instructed Roston: “They’re f*cked. They shot all their weapons; they trashed all their ships; they ran out of their cash.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Navy denied that funds for upkeep and operations have been run down. “The Division of the Navy,” the assertion stated, “is actively managing its assets to satisfy present pay obligations on time. We proceed to work intently with Congress to handle ongoing operational calls for and maintain our personnel and readiness all through the fiscal 12 months.”
Within the Washington Submit, Evan Halper reported that the administration’s newest transfer to cancel an offshore wind undertaking and nurture the fossil gasoline trade will funnel a fortune to Australian billionaire Michael Dorrell, who donated about one million {dollars} to Trump’s inaugural committee. The best way it really works is that this: the German firm RWE will get $1.2 billion from the U.S. authorities to surrender its wind leases for tasks off of New York, California, and Louisiana if it invests as a substitute in “standard power” tasks. RWE will spend $900 million of that $1.2 billion for a stake in an enormous liquefied pure fuel undertaking in Louisiana.
Halper reviews that that stake is at the moment owned by a personal fairness fund run by Dorrell, which means that the $900 million RWE invests within the “standard power” undertaking after abandoning its wind tasks will go to Dorrell’s non-public fairness fund.
Administration officers instructed Halper they’d nothing to do with RWE’s choice. White Home spokesperson Taylor Rogers stated: “This story is a brazen try to insinuate a battle-of-curiosity that doesn’t exist.”
Consultant Jared Huffman (D-CA), the highest-rating Democrat on the Home Pure Assets Committee, had already referred to as for investigations of the greater than $4 billion the administration has spent shopping for the abandonment of offshore wind growth. After the brand new story dropped, he instructed Halper “These pretend ‘settlements’ have been already an insane waste of taxpayer funds and a ridiculous charade that appears to be blatantly unlawful. This now provides the stench of corruption.”
Huffman stated of the buyouts of offshore wind tasks: “The offers are deeply corrupt and unlawful. When the accountability comes, and I promise you accountability is coming, everybody concerned in them will reply for it.”
Final week, Kenneth P. Vogel and Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Occasions reported that three days after Trump administration officers awarded a 5-12 months federal contract value $85 million a 12 months to the non-public jail firm GEO Group to deal with individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a subsidiary of GEO Group donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a political tremendous PAC run by Trump’s allies. Two days after asserting one other ICE contract value $80 million yearly, the corporate donated one other $413,000.
White Home spokesperson Lauren Bis stated in an announcement: “Any allegation that political donations play a task in businesses awarding authorities contracts are [sic] false. It’s not stunning that ICE is asserting extra contracts to detain unlawful aliens as President Trump carries out the most important deportation operation in American historical past.”
In a significant story for Public Citizen, Zach Everson examined the Trump household’s cryptocurrency merchandise, reporting that Trump seems to have made no less than $1.4 billion off crypto in 2025, though he put none of his personal cash into the ventures. The cash, Everson says, comes from international governments, pardon seekers, company pursuits, and targets of presidency investigations.
It additionally comes from retirement accounts and MAGA supporters who imagine Trump when he tells them his cash are a very good funding. Everson reviews that “Trump’s crypto schemes have left buyers no less than an estimated $4.7 billion underwater.” The losses replicate “wealth transferred to a small group of early consumers quite than cash that merely vanished.
The White Home claims: “Neither the President nor his household have ever engaged, or will ever have interaction, in conflicts of curiosity.”
This afternoon, Rebecca Ballhous, Sam Kessler, and Angus Berwick of the Wall Avenue Journal reported that the Trump household’s new crypto financial institution is backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the nationwide safety advisor of the United Arab Emirates who can be the brother of the nation’s president. Final 12 months, the Abu Dhabi royal invested $500 million within the Trumps’ World Liberty Monetary.
Such an funding in a president’s firm by a international authorities official is unprecedented. Much more alarming is that Trump is at the moment negotiating with the UAE over whether or not it could have entry to U.S. synthetic intelligence chips that consultants concern will make their manner from the UAE to China. “What number of purple flags do we’d like?” ethics lawyer Kathleen Clark instructed the reporters. “Trump is promoting out our nationwide safety in change for his personal wealth maximization.”
If voters put Democrats in command of both or each chambers of Congress this fall, investigations and hearings into the machinations of administration officers will likely be epic. It’s no surprise Trump seems frantic on the concept of midterm losses.
And the ranks of his supporters seem like thinning. G. Elliott Morris of Power in Numbers reported yesterday that Trump approval amongst American adults is underwater on each single problem, together with border safety. And there’s a robust depth hole: 49% strongly disapprove of his job as president, whereas solely 17% strongly approve. Morris notes that the “motion in opposition to the president is now primarily in his personal coalition, with important softening within the share who say they ‘strongly assist’ the job he’s doing.”
As his reputation falls, Trump seems to be adopting the assumption that folks don’t like him as a result of they don’t perceive all he’s carried out for them. Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Michael Scherer, and Ashley Parker of The Atlantic reported Tuesday that Trump intends to purchase a blitz of midterm adverts that concentrate on him, quite than the candidates on the poll, making the election all about him.
He’s already attempting to promote that story. Yesterday morning, he tried to recast his disastrous Iran struggle as successful, posting an AI picture of himself in entrance of an enormous American flag, an plane provider, and navy plane. Within the picture, he leans over filth as if it have been a desk, with President George W. Bush within the decrease left nook of the picture surrounded by flames and a pair of empty soldier’s boots. In entrance of Bush is an indication that reads: “MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED 2001–2021.” Within the decrease proper nook of the picture is an image of the previous chief of Iran, killed in Trump’s strikes, with an indication that reads: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.”
Journalist Jim Acosta famous, “That is delusional for Trump to publish this and it ought to be coated as such. It was a large story when Bush declared ‘mission completed’ through the Iraq Battle. The picture dogged Bush all through a lot of his presidency. Must be the identical for Trump.”
After the “mission completed” publish, Trump reposted another person’s social media publish warning that voters are mad on the Republicans not due to Trump however as a result of Republicans in Congress haven’t gone far sufficient in implementing Trump’s will.
“I don’t assume the [Republicans] absolutely grasp how badly they’re f*cking up proper now,” the publish learn. “I’m speaking to individuals who usually have ZERO curiosity in politics who’re legitimately pissed off. They aren’t seeing the most important reform they thought would occur and are REALLY MAD about it. No true accountability. No true mass deportations. No significant lower within the deficit. A number of very lengthy holidays and no work. No payments being handed that REDUCE the federal government involvement of their lives.”
The poster continued: “I’m very apprehensive the [Republican Party] is sleepwalking towards a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming. Individuals are pissed off that they voted Trump into workplace after which the [Republican Party] continues to gradual-stroll each reform individuals need.”
Later this afternoon, in what appeared to be an try to bully Canada—though Canadians and Individuals each have made it very clear that technique is backfiring—Trump signed an govt order directing Inside Secretary Doug Burgum to alter the title of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” in official U.S. authorities paperwork and communications, in addition to the Geographic Names Info System.
As Marianne LeVine, Natalie Andrews, and Amanda Coletta of the Wall Avenue Journal reported, in Trump’s dialogue of his govt order, he harked again to his change of the title of the Gulf of Mexico in official U.S. paperwork.
“We took one thing referred to as the Gulf of Mexico, we modified it,” the president of the USA stated. “So if you concentrate on it, we have now a gulf and we have now a lake, now all we’d like is an ocean. So possibly we’ll have to alter the title of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”
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Notes:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/27/trump-iran-war-navy-budget
https://www.citizen.org/article/donald-trump-crypto-investors-4-7-billion-underwater/
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trump-canada-lake-ontario-executive-order-e66b7512
https://www.inquirer.com/health/measles-deaths-pennsylvania-rfk-shapiro-dispute-20260826.html
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/health/measles-deaths-pennsylvania
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/08/trump-midterms-ads-maga/688409/
https://www.military.com/hegseth-says-not-giving-dod-15-trillion-funding-greatest-threat-us-faces
https://www.dw.com/en/lake-ontario-lake-america-trump-renames/a-78537838
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