BP Daily

Reliable reporting on politics, policy, democracy, ethics & world news. 100% independent. No spin, just substance.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has overtaken Gavin Newsom as the top Democratic 2028 presidential contender on Polymarket, with a 19.1 percent chance of winning the nomination compared to his 17 percent. Jon Ossoff sits third at 15.4 percent. Neither AOC nor Newsom has announced or denied the prospect of a run. While prediction markets are not polls, the direction of travel is worth noting.

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The Trump administration permanently gutted a bipartisan law requiring American companies to disclose who owns them, a law that prevented criminals from using shell companies to launder money and traffic dr*gs.
The law was co-sponsored by Marco Rubio in 2021, who called it the "most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades." Congress overrode Trump's own veto to pass it in 2021.
The repeal overrides even Trump’s own promise to publicly crack down on money laundering and dr*g trafficking.

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Mike Lindell lost Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial primary by more than 10 points and refused to concede, questioning the AP's authority to call the race on his own streaming channel. Trump endorsed him.
Lindell built his career on claiming the 2020 election was stolen and last month settled a $1.3 billion defamation suit over those claims. He lost to the Minnesota House speaker by 45,000 votes and still won't concede.

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Karoline Leavitt is out as White House press secretary, effective at the end of August, with no successor named and the midterms three months away. She returned from maternity leave on July 16 and gave notice less than a month later.

Trump called her one of the best press secretaries in history. Critics noted she was also on the decoy Air Force One during Trump's secret Turkish flight, something which might have driven her resignation.

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Taylor Swift had her song "August" pulled from a Team Trump TikTok after the account used it without permission in a video of Donald and Melania watching fireworks, captioning it "I'm sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song."
By Friday, the track had been replaced with a copyright block. Taylor Swift: 1. Team Trump: 0.
The feud that started in 2018 over a Tennessee Senate race is still very much ongoing.

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Trump blamed Biden for the munitions shortage on Tuesday, claiming Ukraine aid depleted U.S. stockpiles. The U.S. is short on long-range missiles because Trump has been firing them at Iran for six months. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says the country has "enough missiles to continue fighting this war under any plausible scenario." Trump is simultaneously claiming he inherited a shortage and that there is no shortage.

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Progressive Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan has won Minnesota's Democratic Senate primary over moderate Representative Angie Craig, NBC News projects, despite being outspent nearly four to one.
Flanagan ran on Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and removing corporate money from politics. If she wins in November, she would become the first Native American woman in the Senate. Republicans are fielding former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya in what they believe could be a competitive fall race in a state Trump lost by just four points in 2024.

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Trump refused to rule out declaring a national security emergency to seize control of the November midterms, telling a far-right host "stranger things have happened" after being asked to consider imposing voter ID, proof of citizenship, and mail-in ballot restrictions without a Senate vote.
No president has ever used emergency powers to alter U.S. elections. Courts have already blocked two of Trump's executive orders on elections this term. The Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, authority over elections.

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President Trump signed an executive order Monday cutting the recommended childhood vaccine schedule to 11 shots and splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate visits, falsely claiming it will reduce autism. "It's inconvenient, it's five stops, but it's something that I think will have a huge impact on autism," Trump said. There is no scientific evidence linking vaccines to autism. Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, was direct: "The President does not have the expertise to make these changes. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism." The U.S. is currently recording its worst measles outbreak in decades.

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Trump's top White House lawyer David Warrington is out, with no explanation given months before the midterms.

His replacement, Will Scharf, previously chaired the commission that approved Trump's $400 million White House ballroom while serving as a Trump appointee. Warrington gave Trump legal cover to accept Qatar's $400 million jet.

The lawyer leaving approved the jet. The lawyer arriving approved the ballroom. The pattern is unmissable.

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Villagers in Albania wrote to Jared Kushner's development firm nearly two years ago, warning that the land for his $1.4 billion luxury resort was allegedly stolen by a suspected gangster accused of forging property records. Kushner's firm went ahead with the deal anyway.

The chairman later told the Wall Street Journal, "We did not see or hear of any dispute at all." Albanian prosecutors have since charged that gangster with money laundering and dr*g trafficking.

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Melania Trump has appeared in public on just 38 days in the first seven months of 2026, averaging once every six days, according to a Daily Beast analysis of her schedule.

She skipped the dignified transfer for soldiers killed in Iran, the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and Lindsey Graham's funeral in July. Michelle Obama gave 130 speeches in the equivalent period.

Melania has given 29 total since January 2025. Trump biographer Michael Wolff says insiders told him the two "barely speak."

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Families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are going public about the conditions on the ship after 208 consecutive days at sea, the longest stretch without a port call for any U.S. carrier in the modern era.

Toilets out of service, laundry rooms closed, and one sailor's meal came to two tortillas and a half-cup of rice. "You've essentially stranded them out there," said one family member who voted for Trump. Trump promised the Iran war would last a few weeks—it’s been months.

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A $20 burrito complaint went viral and Republicans spent last week fighting each other about it instead of addressing why prices are still rising. The economy shed 23,000 jobs in July, and estimates for May and June were revised down by 103,000 more, while Trump called the affordability crisis a "hoax."

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President Donald Trump admitted Sunday that contractor error contributed to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's deterioration while still insisting former Olympian David Hearn vandalized it, despite charges against him being dropped.

"Unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself," Trump wrote. Prosecutors from his own U.S. attorney's office previously said "the rush to complete the project led to hasty and botched work."

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a Christian-right prayer group last month that a "permanent" victory on abortion was coming to "every single state." The remarks only became public this week after a recording surfaced on YouTube.

"Rest assured that we're working hand in hand with HHS and the FDA and the White House and President Trump's team to get permanent solutions so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state," Blanche said. The Justice Department confirmed the comments referred to mail-order abortion medication.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's teleprompter stopped working at a news conference Wednesday, and he responded with a pointed jab at Donald Trump: "Unlike a certain world leader, I do not view this as a conspiracy."

The reference was to Trump's UN General Assembly speech last year, where the president demanded an investigation into a stopped escalator and called for those responsible to be arrested. Trump called Canadian leadership "nasty" in Las Vegas the same night.

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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a chilling message to attorneys on Wednesday after he was asked whether Donald Trump could fire D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for dropping the Reflecting Pool vandalism, and whether Blanche stood behind Pirro’s decision.

"Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a United States attorney, it turns out he's allowed to do that, because he's the president of the United States," Blanche said. Federal prosecutors are supposed to be independent of political pressure, but Blanche just told every U.S. attorney in the country what happens if they fall out of line.

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President Donald Trump appeared in Las Vegas Wednesday with a noticeably fuller head of hair than he had just days earlier, sparking immediate online debate.

"Is Trump rocking a wig, or what the he!l is going on here?" journalist Aaron Rupar wrote. Video from Sunday showed wind revealing significantly more of his scalp than was visible at Wednesday's event.

However, the more significant question is why his team feels the need to manage every detail of his appearance so aggressively, rather than answering concerning questions regarding Trump’s health.

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President Trump filed an emergency motion Wednesday to block the BBC from accessing financial records for more than 400 of his business entities, one day before a court-ordered deadline to hand them over.

"The moment those records reach the BBC, the injury is complete and irreversible," his lawyers wrote. Trump sued the BBC for $10 billion over a documentary on January 6. The lawsuit is now threatening to expose the very finances he was trying to protect.