The New Republic

President Donald Trump and other Republicans are threatening retaliation against Canada for the wildfires ravaging Ontario, smoke from which has caused hazardous air quality in a significant swath of the United States this week.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has yet more blood on its hands. An employee at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado, shot a protester Thursday evening, Aurora Police Department shared in a written news release. The woman was hit in her lower body but is expected to survive. The suspected shooter is Brandon Booth, a 42-year-old who works for ICE contractor GEO Group.

Tilman Fertitta, Texas billionaire and President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Italy, is conducting a two-month tour along the Italian coast on his luxury, 384-foot superyacht, supposedly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. The voyage has not been well received. The so-called “Coastal Diplomacy 250” tour, which began last month, has made a handful of its 13 planned stops.

House Republicans released a much-anticipated continuing resolution Friday—and it omits Donald Trump’s biggest ask. Despite Trump specifically ordering his congressional allies to include his unpopular voter restriction bill in the government funding mechanism during a late-night address to the nation the night before, Republicans’ 15-page C.R. makes no mention of the SAVE America Act. “Congress must pass the SAVE America Act. How easy is that to do?

The Trump administration has promised to stonewall federal grants unless states “scrub” their voter rolls and to imprison state officials who refuse to comply. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference in Washington Friday that state officials who refuse Washington’s new election demands could be jailed for their disobedience.

The government shelled out almost $2 million in a no-bid emergency contract to clean up a diesel spill that occurred under the watch of Freedom 250, the shadowy organization through which President Donald Trump is administering semiquincentennial celebrations. In May, Freedom 250 and a Trump-tied event management company, Event Strategies Inc., installed temporary lighting while setting up the Great American State Fair on the National Mall.

Donald Trump promised federal cuts under the Elon Musk–led Department of Government Efficiency would “drive out the massive waste.” Indeed, waste is now being expelled on an incredible scale, across the country: A diarrhea-causing parasite, cyclosporiasis, has sickened thousands of people in more than two-thirds of U.S. states. And the outbreak’s severity—evidence increasingly shows—can be attributed at least partly to DOGE.

President Trump’s rant to the nation about election fraud Thursday night was full of inaccuracies, previously known information, and claims unsupported by evidence. On the biggest conservative TV network, Fox News, which Trump watches regularly, no one is giving it much attention Friday morning. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a nonprofit that monitors right-wing media, wrote that Fox News’s Friday morning programming prioritized several other stories over Trump’s speech.

Whatever distinctions may exist between the eight candidates to replace Graham Platner as Maine’s Democratic nominee for the Senate, they weren’t on display in the first and likely only debate on Thursday night.

Despite recent evidence to the contrary, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear isn’t so sure that Senator Mitch McConnell is actually alive. Speaking with journalist Katie Couric in an interview published on YouTube July 15, Beshear explained why he had requested a formal update from McConnell’s office earlier this month. In his explanation, Beshear revealed that he had received information from multiple officials indicating that the 84-year-old Republican had passed away.