Good morning. Trump is bracing for a fresh wave of staff departures as the midterms approach, with insiders telling Politico that people “see the writing on the wall.” Iran’s currency has collapsed to a record low as the Treasury Secretary promises an “economic D-Day,” even as tensions in the Strait of Hormuz keep escalating. And a new report reveals the White House already has a secret nuclear-proof bunker, undercutting Trump’s security case for his $600 million ballroom.
Also today: an arbitrator ordered the Washington Post to reinstate a columnist it fired over her comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the family of a USS Abraham Lincoln sailor says his father was detained by Border Patrol while he’s deployed overseas, RFK Jr.’s frustration with Trump helped trigger a sweeping vaccine order, the data center backlash is spreading across party lines, an 8-year-old Louisiana girl has died from a brain-eating amoeba, and California is demanding Paramount sell off channels before it’ll approve the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
I also want to update you on the censorship I’m facing. My TikTok now has a strike on it, and my videos are being flagged with “check your sources” labels, something media companies on the platform don’t have to deal with.
Here’s the news:
White House Staff Exodus:
Trump is bracing for more departures from his top team as the midterms approach, with a former administration insider telling Politico that staffers are “seeing the writing on the wall” and quietly weighing their next moves. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt already announced her resignation this month, and she’s since been joined by Director of Legislative Affairs James Braid, White House Counsel Dave Warrington, and U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, all confirming they’re heading for the exit. The exodus is driven by staffers’ expectations that Republicans may lose the House and possibly the Senate, which would stall Trump’s agenda and open the administration up to congressional investigations, compounded by the unpopular war with Iran and an approaching GOP presidential primary. One unnamed source described the calculus bluntly, weighing the daily political battles against post-administration business prospects and whether staying is worth the private-sector cost. A person close to the administration added that anyone wanting a “decent job downtown” needs to leave now, while relationships built during the majority still have trading value. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers pushed back, insisting Trump’s movement is “bigger than any one staff member” and that his agenda will continue unabated.
This isn’t the first wave of turnover this term — Trump had relatively few departures in 2025 beyond national security adviser Mike Waltz’s ouster over the “Signalgate” scandal, but the pace picked up sharply this year. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was dismissed in March, quickly followed by the departures of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Trump has also publicly raged at U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, suggesting she could be next, and vowed to “hunt down” whoever leaked details of an alleged Camp David confrontation with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over depleted munitions stockpiles. No successors have yet been named for any of the four most recent departures. Leavitt is seen as the hardest to replace, since she gave the press secretary role a stability Trump struggled to achieve in his first term, and he’s praised her combative style with reporters in the past, once joking about her “lips” moving “like she’s a machine gun.”
Trump himself addressed the press secretary vacancy over the weekend, claiming he’s received numerous applications for the job because Leavitt had made the role “glamorous.” The comment came even as the broader staffing picture points to genuine uncertainty inside the West Wing rather than eagerness to join it, given how many senior officials are actively planning their exits. The contrast between Trump’s public framing and the private assessments described anonymously to Politico underscores a widening gap between the administration’s messaging and internal morale. With the midterms still ahead and no clear successors named for Leavitt, Braid, Warrington, or Martin, the coming months could bring further reshuffling as remaining staffers reassess their positions. Whether this turnover accelerates or stabilizes will likely hinge on how the midterm elections actually play out for Republicans in the House and Senate.
Iran’s “Economic D-Day”
Iran’s rial has dropped to a record low of more than two million to the US dollar on the open market, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to unveil what he’s calling “economic D-Day,” a sanctions push he described in a Financial Times op-ed as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.” Iran’s Central Bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati tried to calm businesses Monday, promising $20 billion in foreign currency for the industrial sector by year’s end and guaranteeing supplies for essential goods and medicine. A former Treasury official told CNN the US is more likely to enforce existing sanctions more strictly than expand them, targeting Iran’s oil ecosystem since Beijing buys roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports, though China doesn’t acknowledge this in its own customs data. The International Monetary Fund expects Iran’s economy to contract more than 5% this year, with food inflation exceeding 100% and unemployment rising. Analysts note that without China’s cooperation, which is unlikely given strained leverage and Xi Jinping’s planned US visit next month, the sanctions push is unlikely to force Iran’s capitulation, and one expert pointed out the US has sanctioned Iran continuously since 1979 without ever achieving that outcome.
Tensions over the Strait of Hormuz continue escalating, with Iran’s state-controlled Persian Gulf Strait Authority warning that ships violating transit rules could face detention or confiscation, and Iran’s security chief vowing to “neutralize the economic war” while threatening to halt oil flow through the strait entirely. A tanker, likely the Saudi-flagged AMZAN, was struck by an unknown projectile 63 nautical miles west of Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, catching fire on its main deck; all crew were reported safe, and a maritime intelligence group assessed Houthi involvement as the leading explanation. Oman’s Foreign Minister will visit Tehran Tuesday to discuss the strait and other regional developments, continuing talks between the two countries on new shipping routes through the waterway, while Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is also visiting Iran for talks with senior officials. Iran separately warned NATO member Bulgaria against allowing its territory to be used for US or Israeli military action, with a foreign ministry spokesperson saying Iran reserves the right to strike the source of any attack, after refueling aircraft reportedly left Bulgarian territory. The spokesperson added that Iran has been “playing chess for a long time” and has “also learned to play poker,” a swipe back at Trump’s earlier comment that Iranians “are good poker players, but they’re dying.”
There appear to be growing divisions within Iran’s leadership over how to handle the conflict, with President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledging the country “cannot continue with war forever” even as other officials continue rejecting dialogue with Washington. Pezeshkian said Iran is “apologetic that these problems exist” as the country endures what he called a “full-scale economic, military, and security war,” an unusually candid admission given the toll of sanctions and the six-month military conflict with the US and Israel. Inside the US, the economic fallout is also being felt, with gas prices remaining elevated and a Federal Reserve official saying Sunday that the US inflation target may stay out of reach until the war ends. The current sanctions regime traces back to 1979, when the US embassy in Tehran was seized after the Iranian Revolution, and a Congressional Research Service report calls US sanctions on Iran “arguably the most extensive and comprehensive” the country maintains against any nation, though exceptions exist for food, medicine, and telecommunications equipment meant to help Iranians bypass government internet blackouts. Despite the pressure, Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi argued that while past sanctions rounds have devastated Iran’s economy, none have led to actual capitulation or surrender.
White House bunker:
Former officials say Trump’s security justification for his $600 million White House ballroom is undercut by the fact that a secret nuclear-proof bunker already exists beneath the complex, according to a Washington Post report citing three ex-officials. That bunker was commissioned after 9/11, completed under Barack Obama, sits 60 feet below street level, and is reachable by private elevator, stocked with a month’s supply of food and its own air system, and built to withstand threats including a weapon of mass destruction. It succeeded the older Presidential Emergency Operations Center built for FDR during World War II, which sheltered Laura Bush and Dick Cheney on 9/11. The former officials note the security rationale being used for the ballroom now echoes the reasoning used to justify the bunker during the War on Terror, raising doubts about whether the new project is actually necessary. White House spokesman Davis Ingle disputed this, tying the “East Wing Modernization Project” to security needs and pointing to a foiled attack on a UFC event at the White House as proof of the need for drone-proof structures and drone ports.
The ballroom’s fate currently rests with the Supreme Court, after Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order Friday allowing construction to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal arguing the project needs congressional approval to proceed. Both a district judge and a federal appeals panel have already ruled that majority support from the House and Senate is required for the ballroom, though they carved out an exception for the underground military complex specifically. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll have separately defended that subterranean complex as essential for “continuity-of-government” and uninterrupted command during an attack or crisis. Lawyers for the White House told the Supreme Court the ballroom project is 65 percent complete, with a 250-person crew working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
Trump has aggressively defended the project, calling opposition to it “disloyal” and attacking the National Trust for Historic Preservation for suing to block it, arguing the lawsuit risks exposing sensitive military details. He complained in the Oval Office last week that the suit forced information about “military things in this ballroom” into public view that ideally would have stayed hidden. The dispute pits the administration’s continuity-of-government rationale against critics who argue the existing bunker already fulfills that role, making the ballroom’s security framing look more like justification after the fact. The Independent said it reached out to the White House for further comment on the bunker report but has not yet received a response noted in the piece.
Other news:
An arbitrator ruled that The Washington Post must reinstate opinion columnist Karen Attiah with back pay, finding the paper “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire her and violated its labor agreement when it terminated her last September over Bluesky posts about “white men who espouse hatred and violence” following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The Post had argued the posts harmed the organization’s integrity and violated its social media civility standards, while Attiah maintained she was doing her job as an opinion writer commenting on the discourse around political violence. Testimony revealed that opinion editor Adam O’Neal flagged the posts as “beyond the pale” to HR chief Wayne Connell, and the two then met with then-CEO Will Lewis before deciding to fire her. Attiah, represented by Democracy Defenders Action and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said the ruling confirms it was wrongful termination and hopes it sends a message that “freedom of expression is always worth fighting for,” while a Post spokeswoman said only that the company respects the arbitration process. The case unfolded against the backdrop of owner Jeff Bezos’s broader push to reorient the Post’s opinion section toward “personal liberties and free markets,” a shift that had already prompted subscriber backlash and accusations that Bezos was courting favor with the Trump administration.
Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from Sunday night's Indiana-Chicago WNBA game after Sky guard Natasha Cloud confronted him near the baseline, where he was wearing a shirt reading "WOMAN noun. adult human female."
Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a Nicaraguan man detained by Border Patrol during a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida, is the father of Joshua Aviles, a sailor who has been deployed for over nine months aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East; Joshua learned of his father’s arrest by phone on Saturday and wrote on Facebook that he’s “fighting for a country that has given me everything” while his dad, who held a driver’s license, Social Security card, and work authorization, sits in ICE custody. The family says they’ve been going through the legal process to get Aviles Roa a green card and are still waiting on approval, with Joshua writing it’s been hard to keep working 12-plus-hour days not knowing how his father is being treated. DHS confirmed Aviles Roa entered the country unlawfully and will stay in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, stating “having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws.” The story lands alongside broader scrutiny of the USS Abraham Lincoln’s deployment, which just ended a record-breaking 200-plus consecutive days at sea without port access, and amid ongoing criticism from civil rights advocates that the administration’s immigration enforcement raises due-process and racial-profiling concerns.
An executive order signed this month scaling back the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule was driven largely by Trump’s frustration that his administration wasn’t moving fast enough on what he believes is a likely contributor to autism, according to five current and former officials who say the order alone doesn’t fundamentally change immunization policy or satisfy either Trump or Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” base. The directive cuts the recommended childhood immunization schedule from 17 shots to 11, calls for splitting the combined MMR vaccine into three separate doses (something manufacturers say could take years), and directs the Justice Department to challenge state school vaccination mandates; a similar Kennedy-led effort in January was blocked by a federal judge in March, and the administration is still bound by that ruling while it appeals. Kennedy’s own promised timelines for autism answers, first September 2025, then pushed to March 2026, repeatedly slipped, and tensions boiled over at a televised July 31 cabinet meeting when Trump pressed Kennedy on autism research progress and got only “we will have an answer for you,” which officials say signaled to aides that the executive order needed to be rushed out.
The tech industry is increasingly alarmed that the swift, bipartisan backlash against data centers isn’t a fleeting election-year issue but a lasting political crisis stretching into 2028, with politicians across the spectrum, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers, embracing curbs like moratoriums and local approval requirements even after previously courting the projects as economic wins. States have moved on the financial front too, with eight enacting legislation this year rolling back data center tax subsidies and 17 more considering it, while public frustration centers on fears of higher power bills, strained water supplies, and landscape damage. Some industry insiders describe this as an “oh shit” moment, while others dismiss it as a temporary storm, though national party organizations, including the NRSC in a memo about Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, are now treating it as a real electoral threat. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tried to get ahead of the backlash with a $1 billion community investment fund, though critics question whether one company’s PR effort can fix what’s increasingly seen as an industry-wide reputational problem, and even an OpenAI executive admitted “we have real work to do” to win over communities living near the facilities.
8-year-old Lillian Smart of Ruston, Louisiana died from primary amebic meningoencephalitis after likely contracting the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri while swimming at Lake Claiborne, with her family writing on Facebook that “the injuries to her brain were too severe for her little body to recover from”; she died just a day after her birthday, and the Louisiana Department of Health noted the infection is nearly always fatal but extremely rare, with only 180 U.S. cases and three in Louisiana recorded between 1937 and 2025.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is expected to require Paramount to sell off select cable channels and keep its film studio operationally distinct from Warner Bros. Discovery before he’ll approve the $110 billion merger, with Paramount and California officials meeting Monday to try to settle the state’s antitrust lawsuit, which was filed in Oakland federal court on July 13 alongside 11 other states over concerns the deal would hurt competition, raise consumer prices, and cut industry wages. Paramount CEO David Ellison has pledged the combined studios would release 30 movies a year to counter those concerns, though regulators call that promise legally unenforceable, and the company is separately asking a judge to force the suing states to post a $1.88 billion bond, since delays are costing it a contractual $7 million daily penalty plus mounting “ticking fees” to Warner Bros. shareholders that could reach $1.7 billion by June. Bonta fired back sharply at the bond request, accusing Paramount of trying to “blackmail” the states into backing down from a timeline the company itself agreed to. Paramount notes regulators in at least 68 countries have already cleared the deal, leaving the state lawsuits as the last obstacle, with its DOJ clearance set to expire February 19 and a trial over the states’ challenge scheduled to begin in March.
Tropical Storm Moke was passing south of Hawaii’s Big Island on Sunday, expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain (15 in isolated spots) on communities still recovering from Hurricane Lala, which caused two deaths, flooding, mudslides, and power outages (over 6,500 customers still without power) after dropping a record 43.54 inches of rain on the island’s northeast coast. Hawaii County Mayor Kimo Alameda urged residents to stay off roads and shelter in place, with county shelters open, while Gov. Josh Green had already told residents to restock food and medicine ahead of the storm. Separately, Tropical Storm Iselle formed in the eastern Pacific far from Mexico’s coast and could strengthen into a hurricane within a day or two, though it poses no immediate coastal threat.
Former Cirque du Soleil acrobat Mariia Konfektova is suing the circus for $16.75 million after falling 15 feet during a Kooza performance in Portland, Oregon in August 2024, which she says left her with a concussion, double vision, and fractures to at least seven facial bones plus her skull, wrist, and lower back. Her lawsuit claims Cirque du Soleil failed to install adequate safety mats, nets, or fall protection, and that she had previously raised concerns about the rigging winch and the weight of the hoop she was using. Oregon OSHA fined the circus $8,070 for safety violations, though it’s appealing at least one citation, and the report noted the floor material had “some ability to reduce the severity of the impact.” Cirque du Soleil said at the time it followed emergency procedures and prioritized her health and safety; Konfektova alleges she was later fired over the company’s stated concerns about her mental fitness to work, and she’s said ongoing medical, insurance, legal, and immigration complications have left her unable to fully return to her career while awaiting further legal processes.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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