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The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

(ProPublica) When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism. The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism. But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.

Talarico targets Paxton's scandals in Texas Senate race, pivoting from his sunny primary message

(AP) Texas Democrat James Talarico launched his general election campaign for the U.S. Senate Wednesday by framing his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, as part of a corrupt political establishment that uses power to serve itself rather than the people. Talarico has given Democrats their best chance in years of winning a Senate race in Texas and has boosted their still-uphill chances of retaking the majority in the U.S. Senate in November. Talarico, a former middle school teacher and a state lawmaker from Austin, laid out a clear strategy for the months ahead: Litigating Paxton’s scandals to a weary electorate.

Republicans brace for money problems in Texas after Ken Paxton's win

(NBC News) President Donald Trump may be celebrating that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won Tuesday’s Senate primary, but some Republicans now worry that they have a Texas-sized problem on their hands. Paxton, with Trump’s endorsement, handily defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff. Democrats largely viewed Paxton as the weaker candidate because of his many controversies. But his fundraising struggles are also raising alarm bells among Republicans. “Economically, it’s a disaster. Texas is extremely expensive,” said a GOP consultant working on Senate races, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about party resources.

Trump administration 'drawing up plans' to stop processing international flights in sanctuary cities

(The Guardian) The Trump administration has threatened to stop processing international flights in major cities around the country as a reaction to protests against immigration enforcement. Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that the administration is “drawing up plans” to take the action, in response to days of clashes at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New Jersey.

Thursday's Condensed News Cartoons

ICE detainees are dying by suicide at an 'alarming' rate, an AP investigation finds

(AP) Brayan Rayo Garzon was distraught. Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was on his fourth day of isolation in a Missouri jail as he battled the fevers and chills of COVID-19. His request for mental health treatment had been put off, records show, and staff had forbidden Rayo from making his nightly call to his mother as a precaution intended to prevent the spread of illness.

ICE agents privately admit to horrific conditions in Manhattan facility: report

(Raw Story) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents privately admitted to each other how horrific the conditions were in their section of 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, Courthouse News reported on Wednesday — including the proliferation of dangerous diseases in the facility. Nancy Zanello, a New York-based ICE assistant field office director, raged in a 2025 email that “This week has been one gross contagion after another,” leading to “multiple” cases of detainees requiring hospital treatment for “cardiac and seizures.”

Americans know something is deeply wrong. They're not imagining it.

(Salon) Civil rights activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer was weary when she spoke alongside Malcolm X at a church in Harlem in December 1964. “I’ve been tired so long,” she said, “now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” More than 60 years later, many Americans share this feeling but in a different context. More than ten years of the Age of Trump — and the great problems that birthed it — have left us full of dread and weariness. The evidence is clear: Donald Trump’s return to power is taking a deep toll on the American people’s psychological and overall health.

Trump appointees push $250 banknote with his portrait

(Washington Post) Trump administration officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait, according to four current and former employees, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years. Starting last year, two political appointees at the Treasury Department — U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and his senior adviser, Mike Brown — repeatedly urged staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the note, according to the employees, who said the move raised concerns because federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills.

Newt Gingrich says impeaching Clinton over sex scandal was a mistake

(The Independent) Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich admitted in an interview that it was a “mistake” to impeach former President Bill Clinton over the sex scandal involving Monica Lewinsky, saying it drew attention away from Clinton’s perjury charge. Gingrich, a Republican congressman from Georgia and Speaker of the House, led the 1998 House impeachment inquiry into Clinton, which arose after the affair between Clinton and Lewinsky became public.