CURE NEWS for June 25th
Mark David
1) How Badly Can Trump Meddle In The Midterms? By Adam Kinzinger
Here are 5 ways experts warn the midterms could be influenced by the President
Imagine if Barack Obama had demanded greater federal control over voter registration six months before a midterm election. Imagine if Bill Clinton had used federal agencies to scrutinize voter rolls while publicly questioning the legitimacy of election officials. Imagine if Joe Biden spent years insisting that any election he lost must have been stolen.
Republicans would have been outraged. And they would have been right.
Yet many of the same Republicans who once warned against concentrated government power are suddenly comfortable watching Donald Trump involve himself in the administration of the next election.
The danger facing the 2026 midterms is not that Trump will cancel them. He can’t. Elections are administered by states, protected by federal law, and scheduled by Congress.
The more important question is whether he can influence them. Here are five ways experts say that could happen.
2) AI agents are here for real this time by Megan Morrone for AXIOS
Why it matters: The frontier AI labs have spent years promising that effective AI agents will act as our minions in the workplace and at home, and that might soon be a reality.
The big picture: Use of Codex — OpenAI's agentic coding and work platform — is accelerating, according to a new report from OpenAI, Columbia, Duke and the University of Pennsylvania.
The researchers separate Codex users into three categories: OpenAI employees, outside organizations and individual users. Then they measured usage of Codex versus ChatGPT, by tokens.
- 99.8% of OpenAI employees' output tokens were produced with Codex, compared with 63% for organizations and 16.5% for individuals.
- OpenAI's own Codex use is meant to represent how users might turn to agents when cost, access, training and buy-in are mostly removed.
- Among active users of ChatGPT and Codex at organizations outside OpenAI, just above 0% used Codex in August 2025. That share is now around 17%.
3) What did we learn from the Iran War?
By David Wallace-Wells for NY Times |
Let’s assume, for now, that the Iran war is actually over — that the “memorandum of understanding” will be honored, that Israel will cease its attacks on Lebanon, and that Iran will relinquish military control over the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps this is an unsafe bet. But if it is over, what kind of war was it?
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4) The Filibuster Is Saving Trump
NEWSWEEK by Newsweek Editors June 24th
President Donald Trump’s Wednesday trip to a closed-door Senate GOP luncheon arrived with an awkward fact already laid on the table.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had said the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act was "just not realistic" under existing legislative math.
By killing the SAVE America Act quietly, the filibuster is protecting him from his own demand—and from the far costlier fight to abolish the rule, one that would force a Republican loyalty test and risk a party civil war at the worst moment.
5) SCOTUS Gave the Government a “Blank Check” to Weaken Due Process for Green Card Holders by Isabela Dias for MOTHER JONES
“The danger of this ruling is that it creates an incentive to use the border as a place where rights are diminished.”
6) Why Tucker Carlson's GOP Breakup Doesn't Add Up
Follow the power, not the rhetoric. By Mike Nellis for ENDLESS URGENCY COM
Tucker Carlson announced he’s done with the Republican Party — no more supporting GOP candidates, an independent man of conscience now, too principled for the party that made him. It pissed off Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and everyone else who relies on Tucker Carlson’s audience to keep their failed movement alive.
Then, before the story had even faded, he went right back to gushing about JD Vance. How much he loves him. What a great man he is. How Vance is the obvious choice to lead the GOP into 2028, the only one who can carry Trump’s legacy forward.
7) Why does our seemingly competitive two-party system produce so much stagnation and corruption?
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By David French for NY Times June 25th |
I wrote about it last month. Shane Massey, the Republican majority leader in the South Carolina Senate, spoke against a Trump-inspired plan to redistrict the state.
“I will tell my Republican friends: Republicans are stronger when the Democrat Party is vibrant and viable,” Massey said. “We are. Competition makes you better, y’all.”
I’m reminded of a conversation I had many years ago with a friend who was then a senior executive at McDonald’s (my favorite restaurant). When we spoke it was obvious that McDonald’s had decisively won the burger wars, and that its chief competitors, Burger King and Wendy’s, were no longer threats to dislodge Ronald McDonald from the Throne of Fries.
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8) On The Dobbs Anniversary, Taking Stock of Women's Health
Four years ago, the Supreme Court set women's health, not just abortion rights, back decades.
By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and Joyce Vance for THE CONTRARIUN June 25th
Today marks four years since the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revoked the federal right to abortion, catapulting the nation into an era of state-sanctioned deprivation of bodily autonomy for American women.
In total, 41 states now restrict abortion, including 13 with a total ban. But Dobbs hasn’t had quite the desired effect. For the moment, the number of abortions in the United States has not plummeted — it has actually increased. That’s thanks to the availability of medication abortion: a combination of widespread access to telehealth, the availability of abortion pills, and state shield laws that enable doctors to prescribe them.
9) Office Hours: How Will Trump's War Be Viewed by Midterm Voters?
Will Republican candidates be penalized by the war's failure? By Robert Reich
We’re coming to the end of Trump’s war in Iran, mainly because Trump is under huge pressure to lower gas prices and prevent additional inflation before the midterms. He was elected in 2024 mainly to reduce prices, yet prices are now 4.2 percent higher than they were at this time a year ago. Pay hasn’t kept up, meaning most Americans are poorer.
So the big question is how Americans are likely to judge this war when they vote in just 131 days (or earlier, if they can vote by mail). That’s the subject of today’s Office Hours.
10) Behind the Curtain: America's great political implosion
by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen for AXIOS
American politics, reordered and reimagined by a decade of President Trump's rise, fall and resurrection, is imploding in substantial ways.
- MAGA is splintering between Trump enthusiasts and true "America First" believers.
- Socialism is rising in popularity and clout. Democratic leaders are flailing.
- Israel is bleeding support with both parties. Pro-Palestinian politicians are winning elections.
- AI is dividing both sides of the aisle, with strong pro-worker coalitions forming among Republicans and Democrats.
- And Trump's unpopularity seems set and locked around 60%.
11) Water joins energy as top AI flashpoint by Amy Harder for AXIOS
Water is fast becoming one of the defining fights around the AI buildout.
Why it matters: After spending much of the past year defending data centers' electricity demands, major tech companies driving the AI boom are increasingly making the case that their water use is manageable too.
Driving the news: Over the past several weeks, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have each launched new efforts to explain and justify the water use of their AI infrastructure, highlighting measures such as water replenishment projects, recycled-water use and new cooling technologies.
- Nvidia — the world's dominant AI chip maker — claimed this week that water concerns could be largely addressed by its latest generation of technology.
What they're saying: "The growing conversation about water and energy use by data centers has forced these companies to scramble, to rethink what they're doing and to become more transparent about what they're doing," said Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a California-based water research nonprofit, and one of the nation's leading water experts.
- "They're starting to understand the reputational risk of the massive rollout of data centers that have big energy and water footprints."
Friction point: Roughly 70% of people in the U.S. said they would oppose data centers in their communities, with equal weight placed on water and energy use as top concerns, according to Gallup polling in May.
12) Trump changed the rules for Park Police. Now an innocent man is dead.
It was played for laughs during an August 2025 cabinet meeting. Since then, things have turned deadly.
BY Judd Legum for POPULAR INFORMATION
In a cabinet meeting at the White House on August 26, 2025, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised President Trump for spearheading a rule change for the U.S. Park Police, allowing them to freely engage in vehicle pursuits.
Burgum said he was “shocked” to find out that Park Police were not able to pursue vehicles in all circumstances. The prior rules limited police chases to incidents involving violent crimes. But, Burgum announced, “we got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump’s leadership.”
According to Burgum, “the next night” the Park Police had “so much fun” chasing “bad guys.” Trump and other cabinet officials laughed. He also characterized the new policy as “a lighter note.”