I hope you had a great Labor Day. The news does not stop, but quick note: this may be my final update tonight, as I’ve got a sick baby at home and my attention is going to be there for a bit. I’ll pick things back up as soon as I can.
Republicans are increasingly running away from their own president heading into the midterms, with at least 45 congressional Republicans and even First Lady Melania Trump skipping his two-day midterms conference in Dallas this week, and a new Financial Times poll finding that three in ten Republicans themselves say Trump is making it harder for GOP candidates to win in November. It’s not just the convention snub either. A coalition of veteran lawyers and former judges is ramping up legal fights against what they’re calling Trump’s “full-out assault on democracy,” and the administration has quietly scrubbed language critical of the Confederacy from a sign at Arlington National Cemetery. Even South Park got a dig in this weekend, trolling Trump with an Emmy joke tied to his years-old grudge over “The Apprentice.”
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Here’s the news.
A new poll from the Financial Times and Focaldata finds that Donald Trump is becoming a major liability for Republicans heading into the midterms, with 46% of respondents, including 30% of Republicans themselves, saying his record in office has made it “harder” for GOP candidates to win their races this November. The same poll put Trump’s overall approval rating at just 33%, with even Republican support slipping from 80% at the start of his second term to 72% now, and found that 43% of people overall believe a Trump endorsement would do a Republican candidate more harm than good. That anxiety is playing out in real time, with at least 45 congressional Republicans and First Lady Melania Trump skipping his two-day midterms conference in Dallas this week, some citing the $25,000 entrance fee and others candidly telling Politico they don’t want him campaigning in their district, with one GOP strategist quoted saying “you’re fed if you mention him too much, and you’re also fed if you don’t stay in his good graces.” Republican strategists point to Trump’s dismissiveness on affordability concerns, his reluctance to release his PAC’s $400 million war chest, and his focus on projects like a new White House ballroom as compounding the problem. Despite the warning signs, Trump has shown no sign of pulling back, telling guests at a recent Rose Garden event that he plans to be “front and center” of the party’s campaign messaging for the final 30 days before the election.
Trump Sparks International Incident:
Today, on Labor Day, Donald Trump sparked an international incident as he suggested making Mexico, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and parts of the Caribbean parts of the United States.
Some American citizens who work in Laredo, Texas, are moving across the border into Mexico and commuting up to an hour each way to escape a cost-of-living crisis worsened by Trump’s war in Iran and his tariffs on imported goods, according to The Telegraph. Mexico’s cost of living runs roughly 45% lower than the US, and residents cited gas as their biggest expense, with prices up more than 30% since Trump’s strikes on Iran led Tehran to block the Strait of Hormuz, pushing the national average to a record $4.15 a gallon heading into Labor Day. Laredo, a heavily Latino border city that backed Biden in 2020 before flipping to Trump in 2024, has also seen cross-border trade and tourism drop sharply, with some local businesses reporting up to 35% less traffic amid trade restrictions and Trump’s immigration crackdown. Taxi driver Jesus Alvarado, who voted for Trump, said he’s “not happy with Trump” and will likely vote Democratic in the midterms, while bar owner Quique Pantoja said “absolutely, I regret voting for Trump.” Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has been courting these disillusioned Latino voters by promising to restore cross-border trade and lower tariffs, and polling shows him running neck-and-neck with Republican Ken Paxton.
A tale of two Labor Day messages today:
Republican Convention has Attendance Issues:
The Republican Party is scrambling to give away free tickets to Donald Trump’s midterm convention, dubbed “Trump-A-Palooza,” in a frantic bid to pack the Dallas arena as countless GOP lawmakers and candidates stay away. Organizers have resorted to a public lottery promising VIP treatment, urging GOP operatives to hand out passes to their networks, and blasting unsolicited “FREE TICKETS” text messages linking to the registration page. The $25,000 cost of attending has irritated many Republicans, and most in competitive House races aren’t planning to attend, with some declining to even say whether they’ll show. Trump and his allies are also using the event, held in Dallas, to try to boost embattled Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, who’s locked in an unexpectedly tight race against Democrat James Talarico in a traditional GOP stronghold. The White House confirmed First Lady Melania Trump is skipping the event too, denying the president one of the party’s most recognizable figures at a gathering meant to project unity.
The RNC is simultaneously treating the convention as a major fundraising opportunity, charging donors $250,000 to attend a roundtable with Trump plus another $88,600 for a photo, while a similar package with Vice President JD Vance runs $75,000 for the roundtable and $35,000 for a photo. The speaker list, released over the weekend, includes 109 speakers and items across two days, with Trump and Vance speaking Wednesday night and Trump giving another keynote Thursday. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s spot on that list has raised questions about whether his participation violates the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from using their position to influence elections. Organizers are trying to fill the roughly 21,000-seat American Airlines Center, with the RNC initially claiming the event would be the largest midterm convention since 2016, though that’s an ambitious bar given the 2024 Milwaukee convention drew an estimated 50,000 people over four days. Despite the scramble, RNC Chairman Joe Gruters and Trump himself have talked up the event, with Trump calling it on Truth Social “the Greatest RALLY of them all” and promising “lots of music” on night two.
Right Wing Beliefs Surge in Germany:
The AfD surged to first place in Saxony-Anhalt’s state elections with 44% of the vote but fell three seats short of an outright majority, meaning the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian party must now find a coalition partner or attempt to govern from a minority position. Possible paths include a deal with the left-wing populist BSW party, which shares some of the AfD’s criticism of German immigration and Ukraine policy, or courting right-wing factions within the mainstream Christian Democrats, though Chancellor Friedrich Merz has flatly ruled out any cooperation with the AfD. The stakes are high since Germany’s federal system gives its states major control over education, culture, policing and public broadcasting, and the AfD, classified by German domestic intelligence as “confirmed right wing extremist,” has openly said it wants to use power in Saxony-Anhalt as a blueprint for the rest of the country. Party candidate Ulrich Siegmund insisted a win is a mandate to govern, saying “if this result is not a mandate to govern, then what is?”
The AfD’s 258-page manifesto centers on an aggressive overhaul of migration policy it calls “remigration,” including immediate deportation of irregular migrants, expanded mass detention facilities, and returning non-ethnic-German citizens to their countries of origin, including a push to send Ukrainians home by claiming large parts of Ukraine are now safe. On education, the party wants to “de-ideologize” schools by banning the Pride flag, segregating refugee children into separate classes taught by other refugees, separating disabled children as well, and shifting curriculum focus away from Germany’s Nazi past toward earlier history, summed up by one regional official as “more Bismarck, less Hitler.” Researcher Johannes Kieß warned that migration policy in particular would likely trigger “a great deal of legal uncertainty and chaos” since states are constrained by federal law, and predicted Saxony-Anhalt would grow “poorer, both materially and culturally” under AfD governance.
On culture, the AfD has pledged a “new, patriotic cultural policy” that would defund what it calls “anti-German art,” requiring artists and institutions seeking state funding to sign a pledge not to hold Germany or its culture in contempt, with one party spokesperson specifically criticizing Germany’s celebrated Bauhaus art school for lacking sufficient German identity. Critics, including Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer, have drawn direct parallels to Nazi-era attacks on modern art, saying the AfD is “attacking the Bauhaus, using the very same words the Nazis used 100 years ago.” The outcome in Saxony-Anhalt is being closely watched as a bellwether, since the AfD is also polling around 35% ahead of elections this month in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the party, despite only forming in 2013, would reportedly win the most votes nationally if a federal election were held today.
Other news:
A senior staffer for Sen. Mike Rounds has quietly worked as a registered lobbyist for Meta, Altria, and more than a dozen other clients in South Dakota, an arrangement experts say raises serious ethics questions. Robert Skjonsberg, who has worked for Rounds for over a decade and earned more than $153,000 from his Senate office last year, is also listed as a co-owner of a South Dakota government affairs firm, even as Rounds has introduced AI-related legislation since Skjonsberg registered to lobby for Meta and worked on agriculture bills affecting trade groups he also represents. Rounds’ office says Senate ethics counsel confirmed there’s no conflict, but outside experts strongly disagree, with congressional ethics expert Meredith McGehee calling it “wholly inappropriate” and saying “this is pretty much a no-go.” Public Citizen lobbyist Craig Holman went further, calling it “the most obvious conflict of interest I can imagine,” since Skjonsberg is simultaneously supposed to serve the public through his Senate role while being paid directly by private interests. Meta and one other client say their contracts with Skjonsberg have already ended, though Altria and several agriculture groups did not respond to requests for comment.
Thirty-four days before she reported to prison, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes gave filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim access to document her every move. What began as that limited window turned into a three-year documentary project. A24 will release the resulting film this October. The project offers an unusually close look at Holmes in the lead-up to and following her imprisonment, built from years of access most subjects never grant.
France’s wine production is expected to fall below 3.4 billion liters this year, potentially the country’s smallest harvest since 1957, after drought and repeated heat waves battered vineyards nationwide. The Champagne region was hit hardest, with growers racing to bring in the earliest harvest on record before rising sugar levels pushed potential alcohol content too high, and output there expected to be roughly halved with grape bunch weights at a 20-year low. Southern France’s Languedoc-Roussillon region is expected to see a modest 5% rebound from last year’s weak harvest, though it remains 8% below the five-year average overall. The damage extends well beyond wine, with farm group Copa-Cogeca estimating maize losses of 50 to 70% in Slovenia, 40% in France, and up to 70% in some unirrigated Italian areas, while Croatia expects fruit and grape output to fall around 30%. French Environment Minister Monique Barbut estimated the summer’s total economic damage at €10 billion to €15 billion, and while Paris has unveiled more than €1 billion in emergency farm aid, agricultural groups say it falls short.
South Park won its fifth Emmy for Best Animated Show on Sunday, its first since 2013, following a season that repeatedly mocked and belittled President Trump and drew a huge spike in viewership. The show’s official Instagram account celebrated the win by trolling Trump again, posting an image of him clutching an Emmy trophy alongside the show’s characters with his pants and underwear around his ankles, captioned “you finally got your Emmy.” The jab plays on Trump’s long history of complaining that he was snubbed by the Emmys for “The Apprentice,” which he hosted from 2004 to 2015 and which received eight nominations but never won, prompting Trump to call the awards “rigged” and say in a 2016 debate response to Hillary Clinton that the show “should have gotten it.” Co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker explained in an earlier New York Times interview that they leaned into political material not out of a specific agenda but because “politics became pop culture,” with Stone adding that criticizing the Trump administration had become “taboo” and that he and Parker are “attracted to that like flies to honey.” Parker insisted the show remains even-handed, saying “we’re just very down-the-middle guys” who mock “any extremists of any kind,” pointing to their years of satirizing “the woke thing” as evidence they aim at all sides.
According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration has quietly removed language critical of the Confederacy from a sign at Arlington National Cemetery marking the former site of the Confederate Memorial, part of its broader effort to reshape how the Civil War is portrayed. The 32-foot bronze statue, unveiled in 1914 and removed in 2023 under a congressional mandate to strip Confederate names and symbols from military property, had been described on a Defense Department website and cemetery marker as depicting a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy” with “highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” including an enslaved woman shown as a “Mammy.” That language, along with text explaining how the statue’s Latin inscription framed secession as a noble “Lost Cause,” has now been scrubbed from both the website and a new marker at the site, which instead says the statue is expected to be reinstalled at Arlington in 2027 after conservation work. Historian Stephen West, who noticed the change during a cemetery visit, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the removal, arguing the original language “described the Memorial correctly” since the sculpture “did sanitize slavery, and it did mythologize the Confederacy.” Retired Army Brigadier General Ty Seidule, who served as vice chair of the commission that ordered the statue’s removal, called it “the cruelest monument that I have ever seen” and “a pro-slavery, anti-United States monument,” warning that restoring it would go “against the will of the American people through their elected representatives in the law that they created.”
Donald Trump called for ending sales of Bombardier jets in the United States. Hundreds of employees in Kansas, where the jets are made, will likely lose their jobs if the boycott continues.
A coalition of veteran lawyers, voting experts, and former judges is expanding legal challenges against what they call Donald Trump’s “full-out assault on democracy,” targeting his executive orders on voting and other actions seen as undermining the rule of law. Groups including the Democracy Defenders Fund, the Campaign Legal Center, and the ACLU have already won key rulings, including federal judge Indira Talwani’s permanent injunction blocking Trump’s order restricting mail-in voting, which she said would otherwise “threaten disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens.” The DOJ has repeatedly appealed to the Supreme Court to lift that injunction, while separately warning state election officials they could face criminal liability over noncitizen voter rolls and announcing plans to deploy roughly 1,000 lawyers to monitor voting nationwide, a move critics say risks voter intimidation. Legal experts like former DOJ inspector general Michael Bromwich and law professor Barbara McQuade praised these advocacy groups for stepping in where they say Congress has failed to check the administration, with McQuade specifically crediting groups like the Democracy Defenders Fund for “protecting the rights of all Americans.” Trump has continued to make unsubstantiated claims about widespread mail and noncitizen voting fraud, despite voting twice by mail himself this year and despite a rightwing database citing only about 100 confirmed noncitizen voting cases over a quarter century.
A nearly complete nuclear reactor secretly built during the rule of ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad would have been capable of producing fissile material usable in nuclear weapons, according to the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi. IAEA inspectors visited two sites last month, including a previously undisclosed location where they found roughly 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods, material Grossi said inspectors had to “tear down walls” and navigate narrow hidden passages to reach. Syria notified the IAEA of the site in a July letter and invited inspectors in, a striking shift after Israel struck and destroyed an earlier suspected reactor site in a secret 2007 raid it only publicly acknowledged in 2018. Grossi said the uranium is now under IAEA safeguards with cameras installed at the site, though whether the material stays in Syria or gets moved to a third country remains up to the Syrian government. A nuclear security expert noted the natural uranium metal isn’t directly weapons-usable but could theoretically be diverted into a covert program and further processed into weapons-grade material, meaning any future transport would require robust security against theft or sabotage.
The Trump administration has formally objected to UK plans that would force platforms like YouTube to give more visibility to established broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV, warning the proposal risks “facilitating censorship.” In a statement issued through the US embassy in London, the administration said such rules could “establish a template that authoritarian regimes could invoke to justify more control over online content” and could amount to “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.” The UK government has argued the changes are needed to counter misinformation as audiences increasingly shift to less regulated platforms, and has said it may legislate if platforms don’t act voluntarily to prioritize trustworthy content. UK content creators have echoed the US administration’s concerns, with one YouTuber, Simon Squibb, saying he was relieved an “entity that I think politicians will listen to” shared his fears about the plan functioning like state control over rankings. The intervention comes as Trump remains locked in a separate lawsuit against the BBC over an edited Panorama broadcast, and as his administration continues to accuse major traditional outlets of “fake news” while favoring less regulated online platforms to reach supporters directly.
Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, will remain nonworking members of Britain’s royal family following their return to the UK, according to a letter sent Monday on behalf of King Charles III. The letter, signed by the Lord Chamberlain, confirmed the couple still cannot use the titles of His and Her Royal Highness, stating their position “is akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.” A Buckingham Palace source said the letter was made public to avoid confusion after receiving “a number of requests for guidance,” and to preempt any appearance of secrecy since it likely would have leaked anyway. The couple moved back to Britain last month for an “extended” stay with their children Archie and Lilibet after six years in Montecito, California, though relations with the royal family have remained strained since Harry and Meghan’s explosive allegations of racism and bullying in their Netflix documentary and Harry’s memoir “Spare.” Questions remain over the location of their new home and their security arrangements, following a lengthy legal battle between Harry and the British government over the removal of his security protection.
See you soon.
— Aaron
