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US Monthly Headline News
by Finya Swai

Democrats are reacting to the Justice Department’s move to drop its Reflecting Pool vandalism case against a former Olympian David Hearn, saying the move validated their longstanding criticism that the administration is weaponizing the Justice Department.

The Justice Department on Friday moved to dismiss its felony destruction of property charge against Hearn after finding that the damage to the pool’s lining was caused by a “rushed and botched installation,” not vandalism as alleged.

While the department’s conclusion cited construction faults in its reasoning to dismiss the case, the Trump administration rejected the conclusion and continued to argue vandalism was the reason for the botched multi-million dollar renovation.
Exclusive: Daphy Michel, from Haiti, was dropped off in Pittsburgh in 20F temperatures wearing summer clothes
Alba Asenjo Domínguez

The family of a Haitian immigrant who froze to death in early March at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh after she was dropped off in the city by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is poised to file a lawsuit this month against the United States and “multiple other governmental and non-governmental entities”, the Guardian has learned.

Daphy Michel, 31, had been in county jail for six months after a reported mental health crisis and street incident, and then was arrested by ICE before being released with a ankle monitor.

She was left to make her way home to Charleroi, a small community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh about 20 miles (32km) away, but was found dead three days later. In June, Pennsylvania officials said she died from hypothermia and ruled her death a homicide.
By Julie Watts

California's High-Speed Rail Authority repeatedly missed key deadlines to buy its trains, a failure federal officials cited when they pulled $4 billion in funding a year ago. More than a year and a half after the original deadline, the authority still cannot say when it expects to award the contract. The state says that the date remains "TBD."

Approved by voters in 2008, the project was originally designed to link San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours with electric trains capable of reaching 220 mph. There's no direct line between the two major cities, and the ride now takes 10.5 to 12 hours.

But the current plan is limited to the middle section of the route — a flat 171-mile stretch between Merced and Bakersfield in the Central Valley, selected because construction was expected to be easier, with no need to drill any tunnels. It's estimated that high-speed rail would cut that three-hour train ride in half.  
The lawmaker has previously been accused of concealing her own health struggles.
Julia Ornedo
A 73-year-old Republican senator is coming to Mitch McConnell’s defense as many demand transparency about his health mystery.

Maine’s Susan Collins lashed out at those demanding answers about McConnell’s weeks-long absence from Congress, following a fall that sent him to the hospital on June 14.

“Mitch was the longest-serving leader in Senate history,” Collins told The New York Times.
The president vowed to push for the payout fund if Senate Republicans fail to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general, reigniting a dispute over the settlement.
By Mark Walker

President Trump said on Saturday that he would revive a proposal for a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund that would compensate his supporters if the Senate does not confirm his nominee for attorney general.

The administration had backed off plans to establish such a fund in June as it was criticized as a scheme to reward political allies with taxpayers’ dollars.

But in a social media post, Mr. Trump reacted to skepticism about his nomination of Todd Blanche, his former defense lawyer, to be attorney general, saying that he would keep Mr. Blanche as the acting attorney general if the Senate failed to confirm him, and added that he would “push hard” to pass legislation creating the fund.
Story by Anushka Basu

・Capital One reportedly said it closed more than 300 Trump Organization accounts after a months-long review of anti-money laundering.

・The bank is seeking to dismiss a suit by the Trump Organization and Eric Trump, saying the political debanking claims lack merit.

・Trump-linked entities say the accounts were shut down for political reasons following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021.

Capital One Financial (COF) reportedly said that it closed the bank accounts of the Trump Organization after a months-long review by its anti-money laundering (AML) team, marking the first time a bank has publicly linked AML concerns to the President's family business.

The bank moved to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Trump Organization and Eric Trump, claiming the allegations of political debanking were “misguided” and “based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context” of documents submitted to the court, Reuters reported on Saturday.
Story by Joseph McBride

Donald Trump has famously claimed that he is very hard to beat at golf and once reacted with hostility after losing to a 15-year-old during the 2007 Westchester Men’s Club Championship.

Trump, 80, celebrated winning the annual Trump National Golf Club Bedminster club and senior championship this year, allegedly carding 70 on a Par-72 course. This follows Trump's double victory in Florida two years ago, as he continues to dominate at his own clubs.

His latest success takes his number of victories at his clubs to over 40, though his scores have been questioned during his two presidential terms. Trump has faced allegations of cheating on the course, but back in 2007, he suffered a humbling defeat. It all comes as Trump rudely showed where his priorities really were when greeting military troops.

Sportswriter Rick Reilly has accused Trump of cheating on several occasions and decided to examine his tournament history in an article for The Guardian. Reilly once said of Trump, "When it comes to cheating, he’s an 11 on a scale of one to 10."

Reilly has continued to call out Trump, and before his Bedminster championship in 2025, he wrote on social media, "Hey Trump, tomorrow is the Senior Champ at Bedminster. Are you shameless enough to pretend you won it? Even after the whole planet saw you cheat in Scotland? Is your ego that sick."
Story by Alexander Willis

Amid his bid for confirmation, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a notice Sunday night declaring that the Justice Department had rescinded its controversial “anti-weaponization fund” designed to award payouts to Capitol rioters, but journalists immediately noticed “the fine print” told a different story.

“Look what they just tried to sneak through at midnight,” wrote Brett Meiselas, co-founder of the progressive media organization MeidasTouch. “What a scam!!!!”

Reading the “fine print” of Blanche’s notice, however, MeidasTouch argued that the DOJ not only neglected to terminate Trump’s IRS immunity, but had actually reaffirmed it.
Story by IdahoLearningNews Editorial Team

The number has become a shorthand for the case, but it is often flattened in retellings. The setting matters because civil courts can treat silence differently than criminal courts.

Donald Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment 440 times in the New York civil fraud case, but the 440 invocations happened in a deposition, not at trial. New York judge Arthur Engoron counted the answers in a written decision, making the figure a court-record reference point rather than a campaign-trail estimate.

That distinction matters because a deposition is sworn pretrial testimony, and because civil litigation gives silence a different role than it has in a criminal case. The number is consequential, but it is not the same as a criminal conviction or an admission of wrongdoing.

The figure came before trial
The 440 count traces to Trump’s Aug. 10, 2022 deposition in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud investigation and lawsuit. Engoron, who presided over the case, cited the number in connection with that sworn testimony.
Story by Steve Benen

Donald Trump’s Reflecting Pool renovation project was already an embarrassing fiasco. The president obsessed over the renovation project, which he apparently saw as a metaphor of sorts: He would tackle a lingering problem that had vexed previous administrations, while delivering impressive results quickly and cheaply.

It wouldn’t just be a triumph for his presidency, it would be a totemic success story, demonstrating how Trump’s unique approach to problem-solving is fundamentally superior to what Americans have come to expect from traditional officials.

We soon learned otherwise. Indeed, reality quickly left little doubt that the water was too green, the costs were too high, the no-bid contract was too indefensible, the timeline was too long, the blue paint floated to the surface too often, and the draining and refilling of the pool was too frequent.

The Republican proved the opposite of his intended point. Instead of demonstrating the superiority of his model, he offered timely evidence that his approach — rooted in cutting corners, controversial contracts, rushed timelines, etc. — simply doesn’t work.
Story by David Edwards

Court documents revealing that President Donald Trump was de-banked after a money laundering probe have been linked to a reinvigorated effort to protect him from prosecution by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Capital One's July 31 filing marked the first time a bank formally tied anti-money laundering concerns to Trump's business empire, according to Al Jazeera.

Two days later, Blanche tried to lock in a written guarantee barring the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his business entities for conduct predating the settlement, according to NPR.

"Friday: Capital One reveals Trump was debanked bc he was laundering money. Sunday: Acting Attorney General solidifies promise his tax crimes won't be punished," national security blogger Marcy Wheeler wrote on X.
Story by Nicolai Haugsted

Donald Trump is once again facing accusations over his conduct on the golf course after celebrating another club championship victory, with critics questioning whether the win was as straightforward as the president claimed.

The latest controversy erupted after Trump declared himself champion at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, before posting footage of the decisive shot that quickly became the focus of online scrutiny.

Trump competed in both the Senior Men’s Club Championship and the Super Senior Men’s Club Championship at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on August 2.

Soon after the event, he announced his victory on Truth Social, claiming he had finished with a score of 70 despite having little time to practice because of his presidential duties.

“The Winning Shot in the Bedminster Club Championship! Thank you very much to all of those who participated. I won with a score of 70… It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke about Todd Blanche ahead of the confirmation vote on whether to make Blanche Attorney General.
Story by Kathrine Frich

When high-stakes political moments are broadcast live, a single question can derail an entire press event.

A routine document signing is supposed to project calm control. Instead, one recent ceremony spiraled into a heated outburst that left audiences at home completely stunned.

Meltdown on camera
During an August 3 Fox News broadcast, President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office to establish a new commission. Then, an MS Now reporter shifted the topic to a high-profile legal defeat.

The journalist asked about the Justice Department abruptly dropping its criminal case against former Olympian David Hearn. Authorities had originally accused the athlete of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The president immediately directed his fury at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. “I guess she choked! I don’t know what the hell happened,” he told the press pool, according to Fox News cited by the Irish Star.
Story by Matt Naham

Nearly three dozen former federal judges backed the sanctions imposed on Donald Trump's attorneys and said there should be no stay pending appeal, given the "strong evidence of collusion and lack of adversity" and "bad faith" underlying the president's lawsuit against the government he heads.

As Law&Crime has reported, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on July 13 found Trump's lawyers filed a "non-adversarial, collusive" lawsuit to "manipulate the judicial process" and improperly force the IRS into a $1.776 billion "settlement" with "no viable basis in law or fact."

Consequently, the Obama-appointed judge imposed both monetary and non-monetary sanctions against Trump's attorneys, going so far as to refer Alejandro Brito to the Florida Bar. The monetary sanctions were "appropriate […] reimbursement" for the 35 former federal judges and ex-IRS officials who separately intervened as amici curiae or friends of the court, the ruling said.

Unsurprisingly, the former judges sought $4,610.83 and ex-IRS officials asked for $39,000 in attorneys' fees. Just as unsurprisingly, Trump's legal team has, on an expedited basis, sought a stay of Williams' order pending an appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming the judge's bar on "referring to the settlement in official proceedings" and "wrongful invitation to seek fees" exceeded her authority.
Opinion by John Stoehr

I am a republican liberal in every way except one.¹ When it comes to the very obscenely rich in the United States, I take an aggressive zero-tolerance attitude. Break their monopolies. Seize their estates. Confiscate their wealth. They have built a system by which to steal our freedom as well as our money. They are criminals. We should treat them as such.

I have been pretty consistent. I have always believed in the fundamentals: enumerated rights, separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and so on. I have believed in an active government that does more than protect individual liberty and property. It should promote civic virtue and advance the common good, too. (These concerns for the republic put the republican in "republican liberalism.") And I have believed in economic equality. To me, taxing the very obscenely rich makes America a place that's fairer and more prosperous for all.

But we are no longer talking about billionaires who merely exploit racism and bigotry to achieve policies, like deregulation and tax cuts. (Think the Koch Brothers.) We are talking about billionaires who are trying to turn themselves into a permanent ruling class presiding over naked structures of exploitation. They have conspired to bribe the president, control the government, drain public coffers, skyrocket public debt, and extort the American people – forcing us to make choices we would not make if we were truly free. (Think Elon Musk.)
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