Week 93 — The Return

In a relatively quiet summer week, with Congress out of session, Trump pushed forward on his personal agenda, while the issues impacting most Americans got left by the wayside.

There was nary a focus on the issues impacting Americans like affordability, healthcare, and rising rates. Instead, Trump and his regime pushed full steam ahead on his D.C. pet projects, and pursuing his petty grievances and political adversaries. Trump continued to lose the support of the American people, with his approval hitting new lows, while 7 in 10 Americans said his business dealings were influencing his decisions as president. In a sign of his waning influence within his own party, Trump-endorsed candidates lost three primaries this week, bringing the total this season to 10, the highest number since 2022.

Trump’s Iran war came to a standstill, with no end in sight, and seemingly no strategy going forward. Reports of poor living conditions and sailors’ mental health issues aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships made headlines, while Trump and his Pentagon denied and deflected. Meanwhile, Trump saved much of his ire for longtime U.S. allies, like South Korea and Canada, with his continued erratic and nonsensical foreign policy.

1. On Wednesday, a media outlet and non-profit sued Trump over his plan to offer advance views of his Truth Social posts for $100,000 a month, calling it an “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional” scheme, that would allow Trump “to profit from selling government information.”
2. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network quietly ended beneficial ownership reporting requirements for businesses formed in the U.S., meant to combat money laundering and other crimes, and said it would delete information already collected.
3. NYT reported that Trump’s DOJ had dropped charges against corporations and issued pardons for wealthy white collar criminals, and was instead focused on prosecuting small businesses for minor fraud cases like accepting SNAP cards to exchange for cash.
4. For decades, federal prosecutors had set a floor of half a million dollars for pursuing fraud cases, but the Trump regime pursued some cases for less than $10,000. Experts expressed concern with the unevenness of enforcement, and the focus of the DOJ’s already shrinking ranks.
5. WSJ reported that the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a bank. With final approval, WLF would be able to issue, redeem, and safeguard its USD1 stablecoin.
6. AP reported that WLF was collaborating with WorldClaw, a Hong Kong company that offered AI models from Chinese companies flagged by the U.S. government for national security concerns, including having ties to the Chinese military and technology theft.
7. A Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that 69% of Americans believed that Trump’s businesses influenced his decisions as president, including 48% of Republicans. The poll also found 63% said it was not appropriate for Trump and his family to earn money on cryptocurrency.
8. Top Democrats called on Trump in a letter to list the money managers in charge of his investment decisions, citing people’s right to know he was “not using his office to increase the value of his stock portfolios.” The move suggested Democrats were gearing up for post midterms.
9. On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury reported a record U.S. budget deficit of $432 billion for July, due to higher government spending. The deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2026 totaled $1.8 trillion, already exceeding the 2025 deficit.
10. On Thursday, the U.S. government faced the highest borrowing cost for issuing 30-year bonds in 25 years, amid the risk from inflation, the rising U.S. national debt, and geopolitical risks.
11. On Wednesday, GasBuddy reported that gas prices had reached the “highest ever” national average price per gallon for this time of year.
12. NYT reported that nearly 450,000 New Yorkers had already lost their health insurance as of July 1, after federal funding cuts by Trump, with more expected to drop in the coming months. About 242,000 joined new plans, which for most were more expensive and offered less coverage.
13. On Friday, the CDC said there were 2,566 confirmed cases of measles so far in 2026, the highest number in 35 years. Cases were recorded in 45 states, with 38 new outbreaks in 2026.
14. On Wednesday, Trump said on the possibility of serving a third term, people were “screaming at the event, ‘2028!’” adding, “everybody wants me to do it,” but adding, “the law is very strong.”
15. On Sunday, WSJ reported while the U.S. had put its faith in a June memorandum of understanding, Iran’s hard-liners had secretly planned to escalate the conflict, including giving the Revolutionary Guard more control of the army and ramping up missile and drone output.
16. The Revolutionary Guard had also coordinated with allied militias, sending advisers to Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, to expand the battlefield to include U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia.
17. On Monday, Trump told Fox News he was in “no hurry” to negotiate a deal with Iran as the 60 day deadline in the June MOU passed, adding of Iran, “They should put up the white flag of surrender.” He also said he would not extend the ceasefire.
18. Trump also commented on Oman, which had been working with Iran to restore commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, saying that if Oman “gets in the way” of U.S. efforts to reach a peace deal with Iran, then “we’ll bomb the s — out of them.”
19. Later Monday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump again said he would not extend the ceasefire with Iran, but claimed they “want to make a deal.” Asked about Oman, he said the country had not “behaved very well,” adding, “But we’d handle them very easily.”
20. When Trump was asked by Kristen Holmes about conditions of the USS Lincoln, Trump told her to “be quiet,” adding of CNN that “You’re fake news. You’re a loud, boisterous person.You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”
21. The White House posted on X that Holmes was a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession,” and that “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question…They will be sickened and embarrassed.”
22. On Wednesday, Military Times reported that multiple sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln had attempted to jump overboard, as their deployment was repeatedly extended with no publicly announced return date. After 250 days at sea conditions aboard had significantly deteriorated.
23. Reported issues included widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, adequate food, water contamination, broken toilets, moldy showers, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system. Sailors suffered from exhaustion and declining morale.
24. MS NOW reported one sailor successfully jumped overboard from the USS Abraham Lincoln, and was in the water for about one hour before he was rescued. The sailor’s wife was not notified by the Navy until four days later.
25. Defense Department Sec. Pete Hegseth denied poor conditions aboard the ship, claiming, “We ​make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide ​them at every single moment.” The Navy sent the USS George Washington to relieve the Lincoln.
26. Trump also dismissed concerns about conditions. When a reporter asked about families being concerned, Trump said, “No, they’re not,” and when asked if the deployment had gone on too long, responded that the deployment was “not nearly long enough.”
27. On Monday, Hegseth campaigned in Iowa with a GOP candidate, telling the audience, “According to the lawyers, I’m only here in a personal capacity today.” The move was highly unusual for a defense secretary, especially amid an ongoing war and turmoil on Navy ships.
28. On Monday, Reuters/Ipsos found Trump’s approval fell to 33% approve, 64% disapprove, the lowest of his presidency. On Iran, 80% believed the Iran war would go on for a long time, while 16% said it would end soon.
29. WSJ reported Trump signed a national security memo ordering the Navy to replace electromagnetic catapult systems on future aircraft carriers with steam catapults. Navy officials had pushed back on Trump’s idea for years, which will cost billions of dollars to implement.
30. WAPO reported the Navy was considering the second major redesign to warships based on Trump’s preferred aesthetics, this time to move the command centers of the new Ford-class ships farther forward, in order to make them look more like warships used during World War II.
31. CNBC reported that the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve had tumbled below 300 million barrels during the Iran war, for the first time since it was filled in the early 1980s. Experts warned that the rapid drawdown of reserves could damage the caverns that hold the oil.
32. WAPO reported that the U.S. military had lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, roughly 25% of the fleet. The cost per drone was $30 million to $50 million, bringing the total cost to taxpayers to roughly $1.3 billion.
33. WAPO reported the National Symphony Orchestra, which is owned by the Kennedy Center and has performed there since 1971, saw ticket sales collapse and a mass exodus of donors since Trump’s takeover, leaving the group on the hook for record losses and the upcoming season in jeopardy.
34. On Thursday, the Kennedy Center board voted to inscribe Trump’s name on the building, beneath the main signage, saying, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” to baselessly honor him for bringing the center back from “the brink of disaster.”
35. The board also voted to close the main building at the center for two years. Both moves went against the judge’s recent order. The Plaintiff, ex officio member Rep. Joyce Beatty, speculated that the closure was meant to mask the financial downturn resulting from Trump’s takeover.
36. On Friday, the Trump regime asked the Supreme Court to allow the construction of Trump’s White House ballroom to continue, calling the August 11 injunction “extraordinary and unlawful,” and claiming it put Trump’s life at risk after six “recent assassination attempts.”
37. The regime also argued that the National Trust for Historic Preservation lacked standing to bring the lawsuit, and that the ballroom construction was “on time” and “under budget” and “beyond the point of no return,” and that it required no taxpayer funding.
38. Late Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the National Trust for Historic Preservation were “TREASONISTS,” and posted an AI-generated video of him giving a tour of his envisioned ballroom to former president George Washington.
39. NYT reported that while Trump waited on the Supreme Court, he hired a team of 250 workers to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, continuing to push forward on the construction, in order to help make the argument that the project is too far along to stop.
40. On Saturday, Trump posted AI-generated images of him and George Washington riding horses together, and the two writing together on a map. He also posted an AI image of himself wearing a “TRUMP 2028″ hat, with the caption, “We are going to win.”
41. On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social, baselessly blaming “vandals” for damaged grass in the spot where he held his July 4 celebration, posting, “Look what VANDALS did to the grass,” and adding, anyone who thinks the pool “wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!”
42. On Monday, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro pushed to keep a woman accused of spray-painting the World War II memorial in jail, pending trial on two felony counts. The judge declined, and Pirro’s office filed a motion, asking the judge to reverse his decision.
43. On Wednesday, videos made public showed an ICE agent pointing a gun at a woman in a car, after she had yelled at agents as they detained people on a nearby sidewalk. The ICE agent later claimed the woman tried to run agents over with her car, but videos showed that not to be true.
44. On Wednesday, an ICE agent who had pushed an activist to the ground in Chicago at a gas station while off duty pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge, and was sentenced to 12 months of supervision and to having no contact with the activist.
45. NYT reported the Trump regime conducted an expansive surveillance operation in Minnesota, four days after Alex Pretti was killed, dubbed Operation Puppet Master, on labor unions, a climate change group, and socialist collectives that had protested ICE’s deployment.
46. Homeland Security used invasive tactics against groups and individuals who were never accused of any crimes, including using administrative subpoenas to get three years of financial records and wire transfers, breaking longtime norms. Ultimately, 15 people were indicted.
47. NYT reported that the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago investigated Authentic Campaigns, a fund-raising firm once co-owned by Loren Merchan, the daughter of Juan Merchan, over the past six months. Juan was the Manhattan judge who presided over Trump’s hush-money trial.
48. Andrew Boutros, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, ordered the firm to turn over internal communications with clients, including former president Joe Biden, former VP Kamala Harris, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and the DNC.
49. NYT reported that Homeland Security paid $464 million on no-bid contracts last fall to purchase 10 airplanes from a firm in Virginia. Since then seven of the airplanes have largely sat idle, while DHS sought to loan or lease the three luxury business jets to other federal agencies.
50. On Monday, the Trump regime asked a federal appeals court to reinstate criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after a lower court found the charges by the regime to be vindictive in nature, claiming charges of human smuggling were “based on the evidence.”
51. The Trump regime moved forward with building a border wall in Big Bend National Park, despite bipartisan opposition from local, state, and federal officials in Texas who said the wall was not needed because of rough terrain, and that less than 1% of illegal migration came this way.
52. On Monday, construction was temporarily halted, pending a visit from a Trump regime official, amid widespread criticism. Several lawsuits were also filed to stop the work.
53. On Tuesday, the Trump regime advanced a plan to open nearly 45 million acres of national forests to road construction and logging, repealing the 2001 “roadless rule,” meant to preserve forest land. The move came as Trump pushed his claim that thinning forests would prevent wildfires.
54. On Friday, at a Trump rally in New York to endorse the Republican gubernatorial candidate, both Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel were featured speakers, despite the Hatch Act prohibiting federal employees from engaging in partisan activities.
55. Trump targeted Democrats, saying, “they continue their war on police and their destruction of the rule of law,” calling them “communists” and saying they “want to turn America into a Third World country, into a hellhole of crime and filth.”
56. Trump also said Americans should accept paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline,” claiming, “you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have” a nuclear weapon. He lied that the war was going so well, he planned to declare the Strait of Hormuz as a U.S. territory.
57. On Friday, BBC sought to subpoena Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Jared Kushner in Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit, saying the three “without question have personal knowledge” about Trump’s intentions in his Jan. 6 speech to his supporters.
58. On Sunday, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” AG Blanche refused to pledge his independence from Trump, saying, “No, I’m not going to pledge that, and no attorney general should ever pledge that,” and lied that Trump never asked him to prosecute specific people.
59. Later Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that based on his “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” and because South Korea did not “join us in the Denuclearization” of Iran, he had instructed the Pentagon to reduce joint military exercises with long-time ally South Korea.
60. Trump claimed that the exercises, which had been happening since 1955, were “not only costly,” but also sent “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said had been “unthreatening and respectful” to the U.S.
61. NYT reported senior officials at the Pentagon were taken aback by Trump’s announcement. Exercises began on Monday, and it was unclear how the Pentagon could scale back its role. Risk was heightened as North Korean troops gained experience fighting with Russia in Ukraine.
62. More than 200,000 people signed a petition sent to the Canadian Parliament calling for U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra to be expelled, citing he was a faithful messenger of Trump’s aggressive stance, including normalizing “threats to annex Canada as the 51st state.”
63. On Tuesday, Trump paused a punitive 50% tariff on Canada during negotiations, 90 minutes before his deadline, claiming a trade deal was near. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney cited “substantial progress” and an effort to build “a stronger, more independent” economy.
64. On Monday, for a second time, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to rehear his $5 million defamation case against E. Jean Carroll. Trump had paid the judgement upon losing on appeal.
65. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that the DOJ launched a probe into the College of William & Mary over whether its financial aid and scholarships discriminated against white people. The school had until Sept. 8 to turn over requested materials.
66. On Tuesday, Haley Van Erem, a former longtime lawyer at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said leadership at the DOJ and HHS pressured career civil servants to investigate allegations of antisemitism at Ivy League schools, even though there was no factual or legal basis to do so.
67. On Monday, Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon told Bloomberg that the DOJ was preparing to send 1,000 monitors for voting oversight during midterms, saying they would observe and follow up with any investigations. Dhillon claimed the monitors would instill confidence.
68. On Monday, a federal judge dismissed a DOJ lawsuit seeking Minnesota’s voter rolls, marking the 23rd consecutive loss for the regime in their efforts to seek voter rolls.
69. Politico reported that Trump had again voted by mail, this time for the Florida primary. Trump continued to push for his SAVE America Act, and as recently as July had undermined mail-in voting, saying, “Mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.”
70. On Tuesday, Disney’s ABC sued the FCC, saying the agency’s efforts to challenge its broadcast license renewal and to regulate “The View” are illegal, and saying, “Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech” and tried to quash speech that it finds objectionable.
71. ABC also accused the FCC of carrying out a “retaliatory campaign,” including launching probes into the company’s DEI practices and equal-time rules, and was violating the company’s First Amendment rights.
72. On Tuesday, in a sign of Trump’s waning influence, three more Trump endorsed candidates lost their primaries, marking six Trump-backed Republicans losing primaries over the last two weeks, and 10 this year, the most since 2022.