June 26th
Mark David
1) The Many Embarrassments of Pete Hegseth Adam Kinzinger Jun 26, 2026
The flu vaccine fiasco is the just the latest in a long line of problems created by a man unfit for his job
Hundreds of young Air Force recruits arrived at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland this spring expecting to begin military training. Instead, at least 275 of them spent their first weeks in uniform confined to their bunks, fighting high fevers and influenza. Some were hospitalized. Training was disrupted. And after the whole base was threatened with a mission-crippling outbreak, the Pentagon eventually reinstated the flu vaccine requirement it had abandoned only weeks earlier.
By now, Americans should recognize the pattern. And the culprit. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth makes a decision designed to generate headlines, provoke applause, or advance a culture-war narrative. Experts warn about the consequences. The warnings are ignored. Then reality hits and everyone in the administration acts shocked.
This week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced out General Christopher T. Donahue, the highly respected commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa with a reputation for competence that transcends partisan politics. His abrupt departure came after a series of other removals of senior military leaders under Hegseth’s watch, reinforcing concerns that professional expertise is increasingly being displaced by political loyalty and ideological conformity.
2) Six Unelected Justices Just Gave Trump the Power to Ignore Congress and Every American Should Be Terrified by Thom Hartman
Congress passed the laws. Previous presidents signed them. The Supreme Court has now declared they can be ignored whenever this particular president chooses (but not Biden)...
June 26th for THE HARTMAN REPORT
Something happened inside the Supreme Court chamber on Thursday that almost never happens: Justice Sonia Sotomayor was so disgusted by what the six radical, on-the-take Republican appointees had just done that she read her dissent aloud from the bench, and Justice Samuel Alito, who’d written the majority opinion, snapped back at her in real time, a breach of the Court’s normally stage-managed decorum that left veteran reporters in the room visibly startled in slack-jawed amazement.
On the surface they were fighting about asylum seekers. But Sotomayor understood, as Alito surely did, that the real question wasn’t who gets to cross the border: it was whether the laws Congress writes still mean anything once a neofascist, imperial president (like Alito and his peers want) decides he’d rather not follow them because he’s above the law.
3) Trump administration asks OpenAI to limit next model release AXOIS
BY Ashley Gold, Sam Sabin and Mike Allen June 26
The Trump administration has asked OpenAI to limit the release of its next model, GPT-5.6, to only a small set of government-approved partners before any wider release, citing security concerns, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: This marks the first time the U.S. government has preemptively asked an American AI company to restrict the launch of a model before release.
Driving the news: The White House's Office of the National Cyber Director and Office of Science and Technology Policy asked OpenAI to limit the rollout of GPT-5.6 as the administration builds a framework for testing and evaluating the security of new models, per the source.
4) Americans are not as well off as people in peer nations – US safety net’s shortfalls show up in global data THE CONVERSATION June 26th
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Associate Professor Emerita of Economics, University of Connecticut
As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, the global data we collect and analyze shows that the country is failing to “promote the general Welfare,” as the Constitution’s framers promised a little more than a decade later.
We are scholars of human rights. Alongside the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, a nonprofit that tracks how well more than 200 countries and territories are meeting the human rights commitments their governments have made, we annually update scores measuring whether people can actually get the basics of a decent life, such as healthcare, adequate food and a quality education.
5) Trump's Zombie Presidency Part I: The Body in the Oval Office
By Rick Wilson Jun 26, 2026 for LINCOLN SQUARE
Twenty-two doctors walked into Walter Reed to examine the moldering, shambling carcass of Zombie President Donald Trump, and the White House won’t tell you why.
Not eleven, the number that looked at him in 2019. Not fourteen, last year’s tally. Twenty-two. A record, but weirdly, not the kind Trump enjoys boasting about.
The most specialists ever assembled for a single presidential physical in the modern history of the office, and when the cardiologist who used to keep Dick Cheney’s heart beating asked the obvious question, the answer came back in corporate fog: “a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation consistent with best practices for executive-level medical care.” Translation: shut up and read the three-page memo Trump drafted for us.
6) Will There be a Tax Revolt? The BAROWITZ REPORT June 26th by Andy Borowitz
Donald J. Trump aka Metamucilini is forcing taxpayers to pay for things they despise: masked goons terrorizing our cities, a gold ballroom fit for a Mafioso, and the stupidest war in American history.
We’re about to mark the 250th anniversary of an uprising that was sparked by, among other things, taxation without representation. So it’s worth asking: could we be on the brink of a tax revolt? And what would it achieve?
These questions aren’t the kooky musings of a fife-blowing Battle of Bunker Hill reenactor. There was, in fact, a major tax revolt in the not-so-distant past—and it succeeded in bringing down a government.
7) Trump’s Swamp of Lies
When something feels true — when it neatly and viscerally fits with your beliefs about immigrants, the economy, or the country’s direction — the details become almost irrelevant.
Jun 26, 2026
Susan J. Demas is Lincoln Square’s Executive Editor and a 25-year journalism veteran. Subscribe to her Substack.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is turning as green as the swamp Trump once promised to drain.
We’ve been watching this happen, in real time, since the Trump’s administration spent more than $16 million on a no-bid contract to paint it “American flag blue” earlier this month for our country’s 250th anniversary. The paint peeled within two weeks. Then the algae arrived (as it does in a warm ornamental pool, especially after renovations disrupt the balance of nutrients in the water).
Science doesn’t care about symbolism.
Trump’s response, of course, was not to acknowledge facts. Because, as it turns out, facts hurt his feelings. So instead, he devised fantastical stories blaming vandals for his own folly. People have been arrested. Prosecution been threatened. No evidence of vandalism has been provided, because there isn’t any.
8) Behind the Curtain: The cost of blind loyalty
By Jim VandeHei, and Mike Allen for AXIOS
President Trump trained elected Republicans to obey him, even when they disagreed.
- Elected Republicans trained Trump to expect obedience, even as his demands grew impossible to satisfy.
Why it matters: Years of Republicans submitting to Trump, often against their own judgment, have curdled into a rolling crisis as Washington nears the likely end of the GOP's two-year monopoly.
The big picture: Trump has spent his second term steamrolling his own party, confident the lawmakers he humiliates will keep voting his way. You see it everywhere:
9) The Reflecting Pool debacle becomes a national flash point
Liberals think it encapsulates the Trump administration. Conservatives think it’s blown out of proportion.
By Justin Klawans, The Week US June 25th
With the White House in murky waters due to ongoing changes to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that have caused unmitigated algae growth and peeling paint, many liberals claim President Donald Trump’s obsession with the pool encapsulates the mayhem of his administration. Many conservatives, conversely, say liberals are obsessed with the minute details of the presidential pond.
‘Another story typical of the Trump era’
The images of “workers vacuuming algae out of the pool, oily green slime, a dead duckling floating in the muck — these visuals can capture the public imagination, even among Americans largely fed up with and tuned out of politics,” Michelle Cottle said at The New York Times. Genuine policy decisions like the Iran war “upend more lives, but those policy failures take a lot of intellectual and emotional bandwidth to process.” But someone “wasting a pile of money on a shoddy remodel? Everyone gets how pathetic and hilarious that is.”
10) USPS wouldn't deliver ballots in states that refuse to fork over mail-in voter info under proposed rule FOX NEWS by Alex Nitzberg Thu, June 25, 2026 at 10:43 AM CDT
U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner indicated to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gary Peters, D-Mich., during a Wednesday hearing that under a proposed rule, if a state declined to furnish the federal government with its absentee voter list, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) would not mail election ballots in that state.
Peters asked Steiner whether, under the proposal, the USPS would mail ballots from a state that "refuses" to provide the federal government with the state's absentee voter list.
"Under our proposed regulation, no," Steiner said.
https://www.aol.com/articles/usps-wouldnt-deliver-ballots-states-154313000.html
11) The War on Women Trump and MAGA strike again Dan Rather and Team Steady
Jun 25, 2026 THE STEADY
We are constantly bombarded by propaganda posing as news from this administration. Every day, the egomaniacal president demands attention — and gets it — dictating his agenda to an all-too-often pliant press. The president speaks and the media reports, no matter the quality or the veracity of what he says. That’s the reality of Washington today.
But so much is happening beyond the periphery of the president, especially in like-minded circles, that you need to know about. Look no further than Project 2025 to understand how right-wing ideology can quickly become policy. That is especially true for women’s rights.
Trump’s campaign promise to protect women, “whether the women like it or not,” has become more of a threat. His policies and executive orders undermine women’s economic and reproductive freedoms while pushing them out of the workforce and into the home.
https://steady.substack.com/p/the-war-on-women?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=247881&post_id=203617130&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=5jaee&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email