The good news for Republicans is that Trump is prepared to start spending some of that money. The bad news for Republicans is that the president apparently intends to spend the money on advertising that celebrates him, not them. The Atlantic reported:
President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections. […]
Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues. But Trump himself has rejected that approach.
The Atlantic’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, went on to note that the president “ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record,” adding that Trump “suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently surprised the bond market by announcing that the Treasury would repurchase a larger amount of longer-duration bonds to ease longer-term yields, which have surged lately.
The announcement has received a lackluster response. Many believe the move is unlikely to constrain yields, while others are confused by the Treasury's decision. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond has come off its highs after surging to 5.32% and was slightly below 5.19%, as of this writing (Aug. 25).
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s relentlessly aggressive personnel purge has generated bipartisan condemnations, but arguably the most indefensible move came in April, when the former Fox News host fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, removing the Army’s top officer amid an ongoing war.
It was never altogether clear why, exactly, the Pentagon chief ousted the general, but nearly six months later, an apparent answer is coming into focus. The Washington Post reported:
Days before the Army’s top officer was abruptly fired earlier this year, he was advised by a fellow general now vying to replace him to stop the military’s investigation into an unauthorized helicopter flyby of musician Kid Rock’s Tennessee estate, three people familiar with the matter said.
Gen. Randy George, whom Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed as the Army chief of staff without explanation, felt it was important to follow typical protocol and determine whether any safety regulations had been violated during the March 28 flyby, these people said.
The Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that Gen. Chris LaNeve, the Army’s No. 2 officer, told George that Hegseth wanted a halt to the investigation.
It was five months ago that an entertainer named Kid Rock, who had a Top 10 hit nearly a quarter century ago, shared videos via social media of Apache helicopters doing a flyby at his home in Nashville, Tennessee. The clips showed the entertainer, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, saluting and applauding the troops.
The
unfortunate stunt obviously wasn’t an appropriate use of military
resources, and the Army quickly did what everyone expected: It suspended
the crew members and temporarily barred them from flight duties pending
a review of the incident.
Even Donald Trump conceded that the helicopter pilots “probably shouldn’t have been doing it” since “you’re not supposed to be playing games.”
Hegseth, however, came to a very different conclusion about the value of playing games, reversed the crew members’ suspension and abruptly closed the Army’s investigation. The New York Times reported that the moves represented “a remarkable intervention from the highest level of the Pentagon,” adding that the decree “was another indication of his contempt for legal guardrails in the military.”
***LETTER HERE***
ICYMI: AtSpotlight Forum on Dobbs Anniversary, Murray Highlights How Republicans’ Efforts to Rip Away Reproductive Health Care Has Harmed Women & Families
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), led her colleagues in sending a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expressing outrage over the Trump administration’s efforts to ban abortion nationwide and limit access to reproductive health care for women across the country. The senators called out this administration’s harmful restrictions on mifepristone as well as their moves to threaten access to essential preventative care, contraceptives, and abortion care.
“The decades-long Republican attacks on reproductive health, rights, and justice have culminated in a nation where women today have less autonomy over their bodies and their medical care than their grandmothers did,” writes Senator Murray. “And with women already suffering and dying as a result of your policies, you are doubling down with an even more aggressive and dangerous anti-women agenda.”
In the letter, Senator Murray calls out the Trump Administration’s “pro-family” claims, highlighting their hypocrisy. “Despite proclaiming to be a “pro-family” administration, the Trump administration has orchestrated a coordinated attempt to limit access to reproductive health care and move closer to a national abortion ban by whatever means necessary. From partnering with Congressional Republicans to defund clinics that provide preventive care like annual physicals and cervical cancer exams, because they also provide abortion care; terminating women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health; withholding millions in already awarded and appropriated Title X funding, the only federal stream solely dedicated to family planning; to terminating more than 50 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grants, a program that has shown great success in lowering the teen birth rate; this administration has stopped at nothing to strip access to providers, basic services, and health information.”
Senator Murray continues by outlining the administration’s ongoing attacks on every possible aspect of reproductive health care, including: spreading misinformation, politicizing federal funding and grants, attempting to restrict access to mifepristone, and implementing regulatory strategies that grossly violate women’s privacy and autonomy.
“Women are less safe, less free, and less able to see a doctor today because of the choices this administration has made. Senate Democrats will keep fighting in every way possible to protect every woman’s right to the care they need and the freedom to make their own decisions about their own body and their own future,” Senator Murray concludes.
In addition to Senator Murray, the letter was signed by U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Adam B. Schiff (D-CA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Angela D. Alsobrooks (D-MD), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Michael F. Bennet (D-CO), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Christopher A. Coons (D-DE), Gary C. Peters (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Cory A. Booker (D-NJ), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
The full letter is available HERE and below:
Dear Secretary Kennedy,
We write with outrage over the numerous actions taken by the Trump administration to threaten and limit access to reproductive health care for women and girls across the country, including essential preventive care, contraceptives, and abortion care. The decades-long Republican attacks on reproductive health, rights, and justice have culminated in a nation where women today have less autonomy over their bodies and their medical care than their grandmothers did. And with women already suffering and dying as a result of your policies, you are doubling down with an even more aggressive and dangerous anti-women agenda.
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the constitutional right to an abortion has had life-threatening consequences for women across America, especially in states with abortion bans. We know that Republicans’ ultimate goal is to ban all abortions nationwide. Currently, women in 13 states live under total abortion bans and those in 28 other states live under gestational bans, some as early as six weeks—often before a woman even knows she is pregnant. These bans create a system in which women can’t get the health care they need, requiring them to travel across state lines when abortion care via telehealth is unavailable, and in some circumstances forcing them to carry a pregnancy to term. In too many devastating cases, these bans have forced women to wait until their lives are at risk before they can receive adequate care. A 2025 report released by the Gender Policy Equity Institute showed that women living in states that banned abortion were nearly two times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after giving birth, compared to women living in states where abortion is legal and accessible.
Despite proclaiming to be a “pro-family” administration, the Trump administration has orchestrated a coordinated attempt to limit access to reproductive health care and move closer to a national abortion ban by whatever means necessary. From partnering with Congressional Republicans to defund clinics that provide preventive care like annual physicals and cervical cancer exams, because they also provide abortion care; terminating women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health; withholding millions in already awarded and appropriated Title X funding, the only federal stream solely dedicated to family planning; to terminating more than 50 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grants, a program that has shown great success in lowering the teen birth rate; this administration has stopped at nothing to strip access to providers, basic services, and health information. Instead, the Trump administration has promoted, through moms.gov, “crisis pregnancy centers” that spread misinformation and employ deceptive practices to further an anti-abortion agenda. People cannot make informed decisions about their bodies if they do not have medically accurate information to begin with, or access to providers who can provide that education. Furthermore, the recently proposed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulation on federal financial assistance will politicize the entire grants process, undermining federal agencies’ ability to carry out the programs enacted by Congress and significantly hampering the grantees’ work on programs and services related to women’s and reproductive health. The dismantling and politicization of reproductive health care programs is a thinly veiled attempt at ensuring politicians have even more control over women’s bodies.
The administration has also systematically attacked mifepristone, one of the medications commonly used for abortion care. Mifepristone is safe and effective, has been used for decades by over 7.5 million people since its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000, and is part of the two-drug regimen used in more than 60% of abortions in the U.S. each year. In September 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it would conduct, through the FDA, “its own review of the evidence” on the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone, despite the overwhelming evidence already proving this. This exercise seeks to disregard the vast safety evidence of mifepristone and further politicize the medication as part of your attempts to limit abortion access nationwide. The Department of Justice has repeatedly cited the FDA’s baseless “review” in ongoing litigation brought by anti-abortion extremists in an attempt to gut access to mifepristone, including in a brief filed at the Fifth Circuit just last month. In November 2025, all Democratic Senators sent a letter to you and then-Commissioner Makary demonstrating our concern over this review and requesting additional information. We have yet to receive a response.
Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration often pretend these restrictions to reproductive health care are designed to give power back to states. However, the Trump administration continues to undermine this argument and attack states that do protect access to reproductive health care. Most recently, the then-Acting Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche stated on a private call that the Trump administration’s anti-abortion efforts are “taking longer than we want” and promised that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is working hand in hand with HHS, the FDA, the White House, and President Trump’s team to get permanent solutions. And in Blanche’s July confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he doubled down on restricting abortion, committing DOJ’s resources to an effort clearly aimed at further limiting access to mifepristone. In March 2026, the Trump administration misused the Weldon Amendment, a harmful refusal of care law, to launch an investigation into 13 states with laws that require state-regulated insurance plans to cover abortion care. In April, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), at the request of the Republican Speaker of the House, House Majority Leadership, and other Members of Congress, sent interview requests to a number of states that require abortion coverage in their Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace Plans. If the administration’s goal is to make abortion care a state issue, the federal government should not be interfering and investigating states with lawful abortion protections.
On July 3, the Trump administration released its 2026 Unified Agenda and annual Regulatory Plan. This agenda includes regulatory actions that seek to entrench “fetal personhood,” the idea that fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses should receive full rights and legal protections. Granting “fetal personhood” could have enormous consequences, and could ultimately lead to criminal charges and conviction of pregnant and postpartum women for seeking necessary health care.4 The agenda also includes a regulatory action that may roll back access to abortions for unaccompanied immigrant children in detention, a policy that the first Trump administration tried to implement in 2017.5 After legal proceedings, the 2017 policy was eventually abandoned and replaced with a new policy that prohibited the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) staff from interfering with unaccompanied pregnant minors’ access to abortion.
The attacks on reproductive health care don’t stop there. Just last month, on July 7, the Department of Justice asked the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow any employer to opt out of the ACA’s requirement that insurance plans include coverage of the full range of birth control without additional cost, a provision that has helped millions of people to use contraceptives more consistently and effectively, furthering their health and wellbeing. The FDA has also newly imposed a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) on two birth control products, adding new burdensome certification, reporting, and dispensing requirements. Of note, the use of REMS is extremely rare; of the over 20,000 FDA-approved drugs, there are only 73 drugs that have a REMS. This administration has imposed REMS on these products under the guise of ensuring the benefits of the device outweigh its risk of complications, however the agency has failed to answer detailed questions about the research that informed its actions. We believe that, just as politicians shouldn’t be able to make decisions about women’s bodies, neither should their employers. Decisions about birth control, pregnancy, and abortion should be made between a patient and their provider.
If this administration was truly committed to helping families, President Trump would work to lower the cost of living and make health care and child care more affordable and accessible. Instead, the President has stated on the record that we must prioritize “fighting wars” and that we simply cannot afford to address these issues. In fact, in the year and a half they’ve been in charge, President Trump and Congressional Republicans have made the largest cut to Medicaid in our nation’s history. This action directly impacts reproductive health care access for women, as Medicaid pays for more than half of the births in our country and has already led hospitals to close their doors and cut services.
From the moment Donald Trump returned to office, this administration has waged a relentless, coordinated assault on women’s health and the freedom to make their own medical decisions. Stripping away the emergency-room protections that guarantee women can get life-saving care, moving to restrict access to safe and effective medication like mifepristone, gutting the maternal health programs that keep moms and babies safe, and so much else—your policies constitute serious attacks on women’s health that are not rooted in safety or science, but would simply advance an extreme ideological agenda that is wildly out of touch with America’s pro-choice majority.
Women are less safe, less free, and less able to see a doctor today because of the choices this administration has made. Senate Democrats will keep fighting in every way possible to protect every woman’s right to the care they need and the freedom to make their own decisions about their own body and their own future.
Sincerely,
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