by Richard Wolffe | Aug 4, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
It’s hard to keep up with the shape-shifting forms of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Half Democrat, half Trump ally. Half environmental lawyer, half New Age health guru. Here’s a politician with a dead worm in his brain and a dead bear in his car.
Trump’s secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is a strange fish. So it’s no surprise to find him cooking fish, strangely, in a new video series funded by your tax dollars.
Some people have called “The Real Food Show,” which premiered July 30 on YouTube and the HHS website, a cooking show. But Kennedy does far less food prep for it than your regular hosts of NBC’s “Today” show do for theirs.
Kennedy does far less food prep than your regular hosts of NBC’s “Today” show.
Kennedy mostly lectures the poor unsuspecting viewer about his new food pyramid, which prioritizes protein and recommends full-fat dairy. He also goes on about the thinning of cattle herds in the country and what might be good for your microbiome.
Somehow, his HHS team found a chef, Andrew Gruel, to stand alongside him and talk even more. Gruel is also now a politician. The conservative commentator, who is a frequent Fox News guest, was appointed last year to the Huntington Beach, California, City Council.
We could count the ways that this “cooking show” is a waste of the public’s time and money. Never mind the talk about substituting salmon for abalone or adding nutritional yeast to your salmon cakes.
This is plainly not a video series to help struggling Americans prepare healthy and affordable meals for their family.
The videos that were formerly recorded to do that were funded by the
by Ja'han Jones | Aug 4, 2026 | Opinion
In their efforts to exert influence over the U.S. banking system, President Donald Trump and his two oldest sons have baselessly accused various banks of shutting down their accounts for political reasons after Jan. 6.
Trump has promoted this unfounded allegation while casting himself as a victim, a claim MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle helped debunk earlier this year when she laid waste to Trump’s lawsuit against JPMorgan. And some Republican state attorneys general — such as Florida’s James Uthmeier, for example — have pursued separate investigations into similarly baseless allegations.
But Capital One essentially threw down the gauntlet on Friday in a legal filing alleging that the actual reason for the closed accounts was a concern about potential money laundering.
As Reuters reported:
Capital One Financial hit back on Friday against a lawsuit over its decision to close the Trump Organization’s bank accounts years ago, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money laundering experts.
The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business. Capital One is seeking to dismiss the case by casting doubt on claims of illegally debanking — or denying services on religious or political grounds — the Trump Organization.
Reuters said the Trump Organization and Capital One didn’t immediately respond to its requests for comment.
The report continued:
Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering. But Friday’s filing argues that “documents and Plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (“AML”) reasons. The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s AML
by Zeeshan Aleem | Aug 3, 2026 | Business, Opinion, White House
When Markwayne Mullin succeeded Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in March, he was expected to be less spotlight-seeking than his predecessor, but no less dedicated to Trump’s deportation policies. As a freshman senator from Oklahoma, Mullin had defended the federal immigration agent who reportedly killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, opposed birthright citizenship and called for shutting down airports in “sanctuary cities.” President Donald Trump called him a “MAGA warrior.”
Yet this MAGA warrior apparently isn’t good enough for MAGA die-hards. They’re furious and calling for his ouster over comments he made Saturday at a National Governors Association meeting in which he drew a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and also suggested immigration reform would be a good idea in the long term because it’s needed to help the economy grow.
These pundits and activists seem to be angry that Mullin dares suggest any immigration into the country is acceptable.
“If we’re looking to grow our economy, we need more permanent solutions on [work visas], because this narrative that it steals American jobs is true in some industries, it’s not true for all industries,” Mullin said in one of the comments that drew the MAGAsphere’s ire. He added, “It is America. We want to take care of Americans first. It’s our economy, it’s our homeland, but there’s a way to utilize labor where we’re not having the participation rate we need to, and we can plug those holes.”
Right-wing conspiracy theorist and media personality Laura Loomer slammed Mullin — whom she called “Markwayne Muslim” in an attempt to use “Muslim” as a slur — saying he was excited
by Ja'han Jones | Aug 3, 2026 | Opinion, White House, World
President Donald Trump’s deadly war with Iran, which he vowed would be quick and easy, is not going according to plan.
As of yet, aside from Trump’s public tantrums, one of the clearest signs of this failure is that the Pentagon is reportedly opening its suggestion box in search of “creative and unconventional” ideas to help end the war.
According to CNN, U.S. Central Command sent an email last week to military analysts soliciting feedback. From the outlet:
The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.
“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.
The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable — options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms.
MS NOW hasn’t independently confirmed the email, but the Pentagon isn’t denying it. Here’s what CENTCOM told CNN:
“U.S. Central Command has a long history of thinking and working in innovative ways,” Capt. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesperson for CENTCOM, said in a statement. “Admiral Cooper, in particular, reaches out to members of our great team, regardless of rank, to achieve the highest levels of operational performance possible.”
Keep in mind that
by James Downie | Aug 3, 2026 | Congress, elections, Opinion, White House
“One thing has never changed,” Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told The Wall Street Journal last week. “President Trump can’t be bought.”
Alvarez’s comment was included in a Journal report with considerable evidence to the contrary.
“Interviews with dozens of donors, executives, lobbyists, Trump advisers and others indicate a staggering fundraising and influence operation,” the Journal reported, “with Trump at the center of it all.”
Even under far cleaner administrations, investigating corruption can be a powerful weapon for legislators from the opposition.
The president reportedly keeps close track of which companies contribute to his presidential library, ballroom, political action committees and other entities. Apple, Microsoft and Meta all have donated at least $10 million.
“Several top Washington lobbyists have been asked to raise $50 million or more, including from their clients, for Trump projects,” the Journal said.
This “Trump Transaction Tax,” as one Wall Street analyst called it, as well as his crypto profiteering, his plane from Qatar, the “anti-weaponization fund” and the many other money-grabbing acts of his second term make his corruption an obvious target for Democrats this fall and beyond. Even under far cleaner administrations, investigating corruption can be a powerful weapon for legislators from the opposition party. But in this case, Democrats can contrast what Trump promised to what he’s done. As former Trump staffer Marc Short told the Journal, “One of the things that most rallied his crowds in 2016 was draining the swamp. The crowds would go wild.”
Play
‘The boss wants his money’: Bombshell report unmasks Trump’s corrupt multimillion-dollar operation
July 31, 2026 / 10:25
Now the president has abandoned even the pretense of ridding Washington of corruption. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates, like Sen. Jon Ossof of
by Ann Keller | Aug 2, 2026 | Congress, Opinion, Science
I was not surprised to see Republican senators try to take down Dr. Anthony Fauci last week. But I am disappointed.
When the first cases of Covid-19 were discovered in a hospital in Wuhan, China, I had already studied the U.S. public health response to seven epidemics and pandemics. The political theater and shoot-the-messenger tactics deployed in Wednesday’s hearing are nothing new. But the current focus on public health officials’ errors during a time of crisis and ever-shifting information isn’t about improving readiness for the next pandemic. It’s about assigning blame in a black-and-white binary, and that’s a mistake.
Skepticism is essential in the process of separating fact from fiction. We have more confidence in results that have survived such pressure testing.
Imagine if, when the next novel infectious disease threatens our health, we celebrate learning instead of punishing it? If we anticipate learning and are ready for it, that could go a long way toward improving our experiences in the next pandemic. But for this to happen, we need to come to terms with the messy reality of learning in the sciences. One can hope that scientists, as they gather data during a pandemic driven by a novel infectious disease, will be able to reduce uncertainties in a linear and predictable fashion. But that is not the norm.
I am a social scientist. When I discover something new and present my findings to my colleagues, the most likely result is that they will tell me all the ways they think I might be wrong. Skepticism is essential in the process of separating fact from fiction. We have more confidence in results that have
