“I basically think people who are 80 and above really should not be running the world or running the country.”

— Mitt Romney, in an interview with the Deseret News.

Alex Wagner: “Platner, accused by multiple women of violent and aggressive behavior so extreme that one of his exes characterized it as rape, never mentioned any of them, never addressed their myriad allegations, but instead bundled their accounts into a fantastical deep state plot on the part of the political establishment to keep Platner from claiming his rightful seat in the Senate…”

“It’s hard for me to believe that this is the posture of anyone other than a sociopath. Call me naive, but if most dudes were accused of rape, they would spend at least one minute out of twelve addressing those concerns—or at least the women who had expressed them.”

The Financial Times estimates that the total cost of President Trump’s vanity projects is likely to exceed $1 billion. 

Charlie Sykes breaks it down:

• East Wing ballroom, $400 million
• Ballroom bunker/security center, $400 million
• Kennedy Center, $250,000,000
• City fountains, $58 million
• National Garden of American Heroes, $40 million
• Lafayette Park, $17 million
• Reflecting Pool, $16 million
• Gilding statues, $5.1 million
• Rose Garden, $2 million

Ed Kilgore: “The lesson of the very limited history of Senate replacement candidates is that they aren’t especially handicapped if they are running in the right place at the right time. Despite Susan Collins’s strength, Maine hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential race since 1988, and the Platner substitute will have more than three months — a bit longer than replacement candidate Kamala Harris had two years ago — to establish a clear identity and make sure Platner’s excited backers are in the fold.”

“If Collins ultimately wins, Democrats will have nobody to blame but themselves. They had one shot and now another.”

New York Times: Maine Democrats hope to replace Platner as Senate nominee. Has that ever worked?

Punchbowl News: “Senate GOP leaders are about to launch into a four-week summer rush to confirm Trump’s nominees in what could finally be a productive stretch for Senate Majority Leader John Thune.”

“Next week alone, there are multiple Senate confirmation hearings for major executive branch roles, including three potential new members of Trump’s Cabinet. Their prospects for confirmation are good, despite the fact that some were at the center of recent controversies that roiled Senate Republicans.”

“Thune also plans to tee up a package of nominations and confirm them before the August recess, ensuring there’s no backlog at the start of the summer break. Thune isn’t ruling out keeping senators in town longer if there are judicial nominees in the queue.”

President Trump’s recent stock-trading frenzy was triggered by a court’s reversal of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s $500 million judgment against him, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Off the hook for that penalty, Trump quickly began investing the $175 million he had sitting in a Schwab account as collateral.

Within days, he was buying and selling dozens of stocks as an automated trading strategy put the cash to work.

President Trump said “he has ‘left instructions’ should Iran succeed in their plots to assassinate him — and there’ll be hell to pay,” the New York Post reports.

Said Trump: “I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with… The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.”

Shane Harris: “Since Donald Trump returned to office, the number of CIA employees who said they are concerned that the objectivity of analysis is being undermined by political influence has gone up significantly, according to the survey, which is conducted annually by the agency’s ombudsman for analytic integrity. The results haven’t been made public, but they were described to me by several people familiar with them.”

“It’s not clear how many of the thousands of career employees involved in producing reports, briefings, and other materials for the president and his advisers responded. But their comments show how acutely some of them feel pressured to reach preferred outcomes instead of following the facts wherever they lead.”

“The Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission on Wednesday voted to refer a set of alleged campaign finance violations by Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke’s campaign to the Attorney General’s Office for possible prosecution,” Honolulu Civil Beat reports.

“The commission’s executive director, Kristin Izumi-Nitao, filed the complaint with the commission in May accusing the campaign, Friends of Sylvia Luke, of mishandling funds in 2021 and 2022. It alleges eight counts of filing false reports and four counts of unauthorized handling of campaign funds.”

“Luke has been on unpaid leave since April after becoming the target of a bribery investigation by the Attorney General’s Office.”

“Florida’s anti-woke law restricting how professors can teach about race and gender at public colleges and universities violates the First Amendment, a divided federal appeals court ruled Tuesday,” CNBC reports.

“It’s a major blow to one of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature culture war policies.”

“The three-judge panel affirmed a preliminary injunction, meaning the law remains blocked while the case continues. Florida can ask the full 11th Circuit to rehear the case or petition the Supreme Court to review it.”

The Guardian: U.S. appeals court partially strikes down Florida law restricting campus race and gender discussions.

“A federal judge on Thursday confronted a Justice Department lawyer about President Trump’s plans to build a championship-level golf course on a peninsula in Washington, after she ordered the department to come before her with more specific details about possible construction,” the New York Times reports.

“It was the latest in a long series of standoffs and mistrustful interactions between federal judges and the Trump administration over the president’s second-term efforts to remake parts of the capital.”

“The U.S. overall death rate in 2025 fell to its lowest point on record, even as influenza and pneumonia are now among the nation’s top 10 causes of death for the first time in years, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The death rate fell 4.6% last year, to 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people, down from 722.1 in 2024… The death rate declined across every age group and nearly every demographic group tracked in the provisional report.”

“Migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border cannot apply for asylum until they set foot in the country, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday,” the Washington Post reports.

“The 6-3 decision clears the way for the Trump administration to resume a policy that allows federal agents posted at the border to turn back asylum seekers before they enter the country. The case hinged on how to interpret immigration laws that say any noncitizen who “arrives in” the U.S. must be allowed to apply for asylum.”

“Andy Burnham is all but certain to become the UK’s next prime minister after Darren Jones, who had been talked up as a potential rival, said he would not launch his own leadership bid,” Bloomberg reports.

CBS News: What has Britain’s likely next prime minister said about Trump.

“One of the Senate’s most prominent GOP Iran hawks is bashing President Donald Trump’s deal to end the Iran war, a blow to the administration and a sign of big problems ahead,” Punchbowl News reports.

“Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) said in a statement that the U.S. memorandum of understanding with Iran ‘negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President’s goals.'”

Washington Post: “So what was this all for?”

“That question is already dividing some Republicans and foreign policy hawks. The memorandum ends the fighting, reopens the Strait of Hormuz and gives Trump a chance to claim he prevented a broader economic crisis.”

“But many of its core terms appear to return the U.S. and Iran to roughly where they were before the conflict: with Iran’s government still in power and its long-term nuclear commitments still unresolved.”

“The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board of trustees blew past the court-ordered midnight deadline to remove President Trump’s name from the building on Friday,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“In a court filing just before midnight, the board said its work was delayed by thunderstorms in Washington, D.C., but that it expected to complete its work removing Trump’s name in the early hours of Saturday.”