Tuesday, July 7, 2026. The Iran War continues, Chump's failures continue, what's going on with Mitch McConnell and Graham Platner, and much more.
Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes this morning more clashes in the Strait of Hormuz.
Eric Schmitt and Qasim Nauman (NEW YORK TIMES) note:
Strikes on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz presented another test of the fragile cease-fire between the United States and Iran, as President Trump flew on Tuesday to a NATO summit where discussions about the war were expected.
Iranian missiles hit two ships in the strait, but there were no casualties, a U.S. official said late Monday Eastern time.
According to a notice issued early on Tuesday by United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring center led by the British navy, the crew of a tanker off the coast of Oman reported a strike by an unidentified projectile, which caused a fire on the vessel.
The report did not identify the tanker or its cargo, and said that no casualties or environmental effects were reported. The tanker was near the eastern mouth of the strait when it was hit, according to the report.
So, yes, the war goes on. The war Chump started. The war that's destroying the economy.
A new Financial Times poll has added to a growing body of evidence that Americans don’t want President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. The survey, conducted between June 26 and June 30 among 1,795 registered voters, found that 58% believed the conflict was not worth the cost. The same study found that 44% believe the war has strengthened America's position against Iran and put Trump’s approval rating at just 36%.
The data also showed that independents were most likely to withdraw their support for the president over the war.
President Donald Trump has added nearly $1 million to the price tag of his new helipad as he races to finish the project before a coveted guest arrives.
Construction crews began tearing up the iconic White House South Lawn last week to install a landing pad, the latest chapter in Trump’s unprecedented makeover of the People’s House.
The 80-year-old president appears to be in a hurry to get the $13 million project done.
Clark Construction, the contractor handling the construction of the helipad, was told in a last-minute directive from the government to wrap up work no later than Sept. 17, The Washington Post reports, citing documents related to the project.
The new deadline cut more than a month from the original timeline and drove up the cost by $875,000, according to the Post.
The government’s directive came days after Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the White House on Sept. 24. Trump extended the invitation during his May trip to Beijing, where he groveled to Xi, declaring his “respect” for the authoritarian leader and telling him, “You’re a great leader.”
The South Lawn is traditionally where the White House welcomes its most prestigious foreign visitors.
It was already bad enough that he was kissing Xi Jinping's butt but now he's spending an extra million of our dollars in order to try to impress Jinping?
Senate Republican leaders are delivering dire warnings about upcoming midterms, as President Donald Trump's approval ratings plummet amid an anti-incumbent wave.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) warned colleagues privately that Republicans are underperforming in the polls, and the president is losing support from all groups, reports Alexander Bolton for The Hill.
Senate Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-AR) presented polling data showing independents fleeing the GOP in "significant numbers" toward Democrats, leaving attendees "visibly shaken."
Former Republican pollster Whit Ayres explained, "We know that the party in power tends to lose House seats in a midterm election, but the number of seats lost is highly correlated with the president’s popularity."
In addition, Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) reports:
The "cavalry" isn't arriving, and Republicans are freaking out, according to a new report.
With the midterm election four months away, GOP candidates and their campaign advisers expressed alarm that Donald Trump shows no inclination to spend the approximately $350 million sitting in his MAGA Inc. super PAC. While the money is there, Trump may not deploy it, according to Politico.
"We've beenwaiting for the cavalry," one campaign consultant told Politico, summing up the Republican desperation in five words.
A GOP lobbyist and donor laid out the strategic case bluntly: "We didn't leave our most powerful missiles on the ships when we were trying to crush Iran. Money is the political equivalent in politics. The electorate's mindset on the economy is normally locked in stone by Labor Day after a summer of backyard conversations and paying for summer vacation gas. Now is the time to sell the message."
But Trump hasn't been selling anything, Politico reported.
"MAGA Inc., hasn’t spent directly on a race since March, when it spent $17,900.88 to support Rep. Clay Fuller’s campaign for his House seat in Georgia," the report noted.
Chump is doing nothing to help the Republicans with re-election. The bipartisan housing bill? He refuses to sign it and says he's not singing anything until his SAVE AMERICA ACT makes it through Congress. Thomas Kika reports:
Republican lawmakers are increasingly fed up with President Donald Trump's insistence on pushing for a doomed voting reform bill, with some telling MS NOW that he should drop the idea because the math behind it just "don't work."
The SAVE America Act has emerged as one of Trump's biggest legislative goals in the last year, verging on an obsession. If signed into law, it would require Americans to produce documents proving their citizenship status, like a birth certificate or passport, when registering to vote, among other provisions, like a rollback of mail-in voting. The bill was drafted largely as a response to Trump's long-debunked claims about non-citizens committing widespread voter fraud.
Despite passing in the House multiple times, the SAVE Act has stalled out in the face of the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold, with across-the-board opposition from Democrats sinking any hope of it prevailing. GOP leaders in the chamber have repeatedly told the president that the votes for the bill just do not exist, and they are also unwilling to nuke the filibuster as it currently is to get around the problem, putting them in a heated stalemate with Trump.
Now, in an MS NOW report from Monday morning, some Republicans are venting about how fed up they are becoming with the ordeal, including noted Trump critics, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.
“He wants to go it alone, his way to the highway, and it don’t work,” Bacon told the outlet. “He’s trying to pound the square peg through the circle, and it doesn’t work.”
Ahead of the July Fourth holiday, there were some reports that Donald Trump might help celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial by issuing 250 pardons. That hasn’t yet happened, though the day before Independence Day, the president did sign a new batch of pardons that were controversial in their own right. The New York Times reported:
The White House announced on Friday that President Trump had issued pardons to 11 men, most of whom had been convicted of crimes related to the Clean Air Act, a bedrock environmental law.
The president also pardoned Adam Kidan, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump. He had served about two and a half years in prison for his role in a fraud scheme involving the disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
By way of his social media platform, Trump boasted about some of the pardons, writing, “It is my Great Honor to have just signed Pardons for six people who were persecuted by the Biden Administration, and were in, or being sent to, prison, for ‘fixing their car.’ While I know this sounds ridiculous, it is nevertheless a fact, and part of the Weaponization and Stupidity that our Country had to endure during four long years of Sleepy Joe Biden. I AM SETTING THEM ALL FREE, RIGHT NOW!”
None of this reflected reality. The men the president referred to weren’t convicted of auto repairs; they were convicted of selling or installing truck devices designed to help them pollute more and circumvent the Clean Air Act. What Trump described as “a fact” wasn’t factual in the slightest.
For
that matter, the Republican characterizing enforcement of environmental
laws as “weaponization” suggests that he’s effectively rewritten the
definition of the word. It now means “punishing people for committing
crimes I like.”
Margo Oge, a former director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the Environmental Protection Agency, told The Washington Post, “These pardons don’t just forgive a paperwork violation — they reward people who ran businesses stripping pollution controls off diesel trucks for profit. She added that the devices “released far more nitrogen oxides, which worsen asthma and drive up heart attacks and hospitalizations. … That’s the protection these individuals were undermining — clean air we breathe.”
Rachel Maddow provided her perspective on Chump's Fourth of July last night on MS NOW.
Let's note some other commentary on Chump's failed fair.
Let's go back to Congress. Catie Edmondson (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition.
The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece together information on what happened.
We are seven days short of a month since McConnell had his health crisis. The American people have a right to know what's going on. Now let's move over to the junkyard fire that is Graham Platner's senate campaign. Graham has been championed by so many. They were often the same ones who championed John Fetterman a few years back when he ran for Senate. And they attacked those who questioned Fetterman. They did the same with Platner. Taylor Lorenz and the rest of the whores.
Today on MS NOW's MORNING JOE, they covered the latest.
He's now accused of assault, of rape. Bayliss Wagner (NEW YORK TIMES) notes:
Jenny Racicot, who accused Graham Platner of sexual assault in an interview published in Politico on Monday, detailed her recollection of the alleged attack in an extended interview with the CNN host Jake Tapper that aired on Monday evening.
She said that Mr. Platner had drunkenly assaulted her at her home in 2021, and she described the encounter as rape. Detailing the violent struggle that she said took place, she recounted that a sewing cabinet had been knocked over, causing a needle to be stuck in her leg.
“This is something that I tried for many years to forget,” Ms. Racicot said.
Mr. Platner, 41, called all allegations of nonconsensual behavior “categorically false” in a video posted on social media on Monday.
Ms. Racicot, 41, said that she met Mr. Platner on a dating app in 2019 and found him “intelligent” and “charming,” but that he also self-medicated with alcohol.
Elaine noted last night:
This latest revelation has left people calling for him to step down and one-time supporters announcing they are no longer endorsing him.
US House Rep Ro Khanna has withdrawn his endorsement and called for Platner to drop out of the race. Senator Ruben Gallego has also pulled his endorsement. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand withdrew their support and the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee which they are leader and chair of. Senator Martin Heinrich says Platner "should step aside."
You didn't want to listen earlier. You didn't want to listen when there were already enough warning signs.
This morning, Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck (THE NEW YORK TIMES) report:
By Tuesday morning, it was clear the party had turned against him. Officials from the Democratic Senate campaign arm and an aligned super PAC — the most powerful engines of the party’s infrastructure — urged him to withdraw, and top party leaders in Maine called on him to abandon his bid.
“With so much at stake, the best path forward is for Graham Platner to step aside as the Democratic nominee and address these serious allegations outside this Senate race,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had campaigned with Mr. Platner and championed his bid.
Her withdrawal of support was a major blow to Mr. Platner, underscoring how even the left wing of the party was pulling away from him.
In a private call with his campaign staff on Monday evening, Mr. Platner did not announce plans to withdraw but implied such a decision would be coming, according to three people familiar with the conversation. He said that he believed he still had leverage to influence which candidate would replace him on the ticket and wanted to ensure that the movement his campaign had built would continue, the people said.
One thing that would be really helpful? If people stopped pimping and protecting candidates. When you have to use all your times to defend someone due to tattoos, due to comments made online, due to women coming forward, at that point, you might want to grasp that your personal savior has a problem and stop attacking those noting reality.
But Taylor Lorenz and others use their platforms to pimp their desired candidate and attack the rest. She's attacked Jasmine Crockett non-stop, for example. Even though Taylor's hand picked won the primary, she has continued to attack Crockett. She's not concerned how it looks, a White entitled woman attacking a Black woman. She's not concerned how it sounds. She just goes in for the kill day after day after day. And Crockett supporters do not trust her.
And that's what you whore away when you can't play fair.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Ron Wyden's office:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley today wrote Gov. Tina Kotek’s data center advisory committee to convey concerns both senators have heard from Oregonians as the state panel works on solutions that balance data centers’ economic benefits with their financial impacts on utility consumers and environmental impacts on entire communities.
“Thank you for coming together to tackle the challenges posed by the rapid expansion of data centers in Oregon,” Wyden and Merkley wrote committee members. While we acknowledge that data centers are critical to American national security, can help ensure technological advancement, and create good union jobs, your work to strike a balance between pursuing economic development opportunities in alignment with sustainable utility costs and environmental impacts is critical for Oregon and the Northwest. Several issues have been raised by constituents regarding responsible data center development with our offices, ranging from local to state to federal jurisdiction.”
The Oregon senators asked the state data center advisory committee to consider the following concerns that accompany the growth of data centers around the state:
- Increasing energy demand to power and cool equipment.
- Increasing electricity costs for consumers because of increased demand.
- Water quality and quantity issues because of data centers’ use of large water volumes from surface, ground, municipal or reclaimed water sources to cool servers and prevent overheating.
- Visibility issues from steam, and noise pollution from cooling systems and fans.
- Land use decisions dealing with the rezoning of productive agricultural land.
- Tribal rights and consultation that respect treaty rights, including rights to hunt, fish, and gather food and medicine.
- Transparency and public accountability that reflect community concerns about environmental and infrastructure impacts that data centers can present for future energy and water needs, as well as impacts to utilities and municipal services.
Wyden is a cosponsor of the AI Environmental Impacts Act and has pressed Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon for answers about the impact of their data centers on water usage. He is also developing legislation to ensure that data centers pay their fair share in taxes to address the various stresses they create on local infrastructure.
“We are grateful for your work to embody the ‘Oregon way’ to hear from all perspectives and chart a path forward,” Wyden and Merkley wrote the data center advisory committee. “We stand ready to partner with you on data center policies best for Oregon.”
The entire letter is here.
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Madonna's homage to survival" went up last night and the following sites -- plus Rebecca's "accountability for 1 j-6-er (and general hospital)" -- updated:
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Day Off1 hour ago
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Platner implodes8 hours ago
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Spinach Apple Salad in the Kitchen8 hours ago
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Elderly Chump falls asleep in public8 hours ago
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Grifter Sarah Ferguson8 hours ago
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