Good afternoon everyone. An active-duty Air Force major went on CNN and said he’s willing to be dishonorably discharged, lose his pay, and go to prison, rather than stay silent about the war in Iran. Major Jason Watson called Trump’s war “unconstitutional,” compared it to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and told viewers, “you do not have to be somebody special to take action and reject this government.” He’s now facing a military justice system that hasn’t confronted a case quite like this in years.
That’s just where today starts. The national debt is about to blow past $40 trillion, months ahead of schedule, and it’s not slowing down. Trump just sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court as fears mount over war crimes accountability. Fox News got caught quietly correcting a gas price graphic that made a dollar’s worth of inflation vanish overnight. And we’ve got a GOP congressman caught on camera rifling through a stranger’s mailbox, a Minnesota AG suing Texas to extradite an ICE agent, and a Pennsylvania governor turning hard against Big Tech’s data center land grab.
Here’s the news:
Air Force Active Duty Calls for Impeachment:
Air Force Major Jason Watson, arrested earlier this year after publicly calling for President Trump’s removal over the Iran war, said on CNN that he’s willing to accept punishment for his dissent, framing it as a calculated choice: “If I don’t put myself out there in a big way, then it’s just noise. What is the highest price that I am willing to pay?” He characterized the war as an act of American aggression, comparing it to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and said Trump pursued the conflict despite pushback from his own cabinet, calling the decision “unconstitutional.” Watson said his dissent was rooted in his “oath to the Constitution” and urged other Americans to speak out as well, adding “you do not have to be somebody special to take action and reject this government.” He also clarified that he is not a member of the Democratic Party.
In July, Watson was arrested at the US Capitol after attending a news conference organized by the Removal Coalition, an activist group pushing for Trump’s impeachment, conviction, and removal from office, alongside Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas. Afterward, Watson stood on the Capitol steps holding signs calling for the president’s removal, and Capitol Police arrested him for unlawfully protesting on the House steps. The DC attorney general’s office declined to prosecute him, but the Air Force subsequently took him into custody, and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced an investigation into his conduct, saying the service “takes allegations of misconduct seriously,” including any that might undermine the military’s nonpartisan nature. The Department of Defense referred further questions to the Air Force, which did not immediately respond to the Times.
Watson’s case hinges on military law provisions rarely tested this publicly: Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice punishes commissioned officers who use “contemptuous words” against the president, vice president, Congress, or other civilian and military leaders, while Article 134 punishes statements intended to “promote disloyalty or disaffection toward the United States.” An active-duty officer found guilty under these provisions can face dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay, and a months-long prison sentence. Watson’s public willingness to face these consequences marks an unusually direct confrontation between an active service member and the commander in chief over a live military conflict. His stance also raises broader questions about the boundaries of political speech for uniformed personnel and how the Air Force will balance disciplinary action against the constitutional principles Watson says motivated his protest.
US Debt Soars:
The U.S. national debt is set to surpass $40 trillion this week, months ahead of earlier projections, driven partly by billions in lost revenue after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, an estimated $250 billion hit that forced Treasury to borrow faster to cover federal bills. The debt stood at $39.9 trillion as of Monday, already exceeding the CBO’s six-month-old forecast of $39.4 trillion for the full fiscal year, and investors are simultaneously dumping government bonds over inflation, the Iran war, and rising global debt levels, pushing 30-year Treasury yields to their highest level in nearly two decades. Annual interest payments on the debt are now projected to top $1 trillion this year, roughly the size of the Pentagon’s budget, and BPC president Margaret Spellings warned that “our current fiscal trajectory is plainly unsustainable, and that’s the best-case scenario.”
Faster borrowing also means the next debt-ceiling fight will likely arrive early, with the $41.1 trillion limit Congress set last year now projected to be hit sometime between late winter and midsummer 2027, trending toward the earlier end of that range. Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged “$40 trillion in debt, seems to me that should get our attention,” though lawmakers left for August recess without acting despite Trump’s calls to address the “ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster.” Unlike past debt-limit increases that included spending cuts, the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act added $5 trillion to the ceiling while also piling on $4.7 trillion in projected deficits over the next decade, and any resolution could get complicated if Republicans lose Congress in the November midterms, forcing either a lame-duck push or concessions to Democrats. Peterson Foundation CEO Michael Peterson called the pattern “immoral,” warning that interest costs, now consuming 19% of federal revenue and projected to hit 26% by 2036, are “paying for your past, not paying for your future” and deferring the burden onto future generations.
Fox News Called Out for Fake Gas Prices:
Fox News aired a graphic Tuesday falsely showing gas prices had barely changed year-over-year, comparing today’s $4.06 to an incorrect $4.13 from a year ago, when AAA data actually put last summer’s price around $3.14, more than a dollar lower.
The network quietly corrected the error over 24 hours later without a new on-air graphic, drawing criticism for masking the real price increase and fueling skepticism about media accuracy on household costs.
Trump Sanctions ICC President:
Trump’s fear of international war crimes prosecution appears to be driving an escalating campaign against the ICC, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing new sanctions Tuesday against ICC President Tomoko Akane of Japan and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, who has been investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Rubio accused the pair of “directly engaging in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” and called the Hague-based court a “corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court.” The move follows a state department push last month to “dismantle the threat” the ICC poses to US sovereignty, explicitly aiming to “disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.” Trump has said the campaign is meant to shield Israel from the court’s reach, and Rubio has called on all 125 ICC member states to withdraw from the body entirely.
This latest round builds on a pattern of targeting ICC officials tied to cases against US allies and, implicitly, the US itself. The administration previously sanctioned prosecutor Karim Khan after he successfully sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Gaza war crimes, and Trump sanctioned the court outright in a 2025 executive order accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions” against the US and Israel. Israeli media report that Seye is also overseeing an investigation into Israeli funding of illegal West Bank settlements and weapons distribution to settlers, with Israeli officials warning in May that the court could seek five more arrest warrants for ministers and senior military officials over West Bank violence. The US has now sanctioned at least 11 ICC officials total, in cases that also touch on investigations into US soldiers’ conduct in Afghanistan, an area where American exposure to the court’s jurisdiction has long been a sensitivity for Washington.
Neither the US nor Israel are ICC member states or recognize its jurisdiction, but the sanctions carry real-world consequences for the court’s ability to function and for victims seeking accountability. Four human rights groups sued Trump last week over the ICC sanctions campaign, arguing in their lawsuit that the measures prevent war crimes victims from pursuing justice. Rubio did not specify exactly which actions triggered the sanctions against Akane and Seye individually, leaving ambiguity about how directly tied the move is to ongoing Gaza-related investigations versus a broader institutional pressure campaign. The timing, arriving as questions swirl around accountability for wartime conduct in both Gaza and potentially US operations abroad, has fueled speculation that insulating American and allied officials from prosecution, rather than just Israeli officials, is a core motivation behind the expanding sanctions list.
Other news:
A 404 Media investigation placed a tracking device inside a shipment of rare books suspected of being purchased for AI training data and followed it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas known internally as VGT3, where employees say incoming books are stripped of their bindings and rapidly scanned, destroying the physical books in the process, revealing a previously unreported book-buying and scanning operation feeding Amazon’s AI training pipeline.
The Trump administration moved Tuesday to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected nearly 59 million acres, about 30% of the National Forest System, from logging, roads, and mining, shifting authority instead to local national forest managers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins framed the change as a way to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk amid one of the worst wildfire years on record, with 7.3 million acres burned across roughly 49,000 fires so far this year. Environmental groups strongly disagree, arguing the rollback would increase wildfire risk by exposing more forest to human activity, citing a 2025 Wilderness Society analysis finding that wildfire density is lowest in protected wilderness areas and highest near roads. The Wilderness Society’s Josh Hicks warned that communities, ecosystems, and local economies depend on keeping these forests undisturbed, and that more roads and development “is also not a wildfire solution, and never will be.” The USDA will accept public comment on the proposed rule change through September 21.
Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Fine was caught on a Ring security camera Sunday peeking into and rifling through the letters in an Ormond Beach woman’s mailbox while wearing campaign gear, an act that would violate federal law barring anyone but a postal worker or homeowner from tampering with mail, though the homeowner declined to press charges and Fine faces no federal charges.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday to force the extradition of ICE agent Christian Castro, who Minneapolis prosecutors charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime after allegedly firing a gun during the agency’s Minneapolis crackdown that struck and wounded Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in a January 14 shooting, with the bullet also lodging in a child’s bedroom wall. Ellison said he’ll seek a temporary restraining order barring Texas’s Cameron County Sheriff’s Office from releasing Castro and requiring Abbott to sign the extradition warrant, warning that Castro could otherwise be released from jail next week under Texas’s 90-day detention limit and flee the country from the border town where he’s held. “Christian Castro is not above the law and Greg Abbott isn’t either,” Ellison said, arguing Abbott should have granted Governor Walz’s extradition request long ago. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty called the lawsuit “completely unnecessary,” noting that jail officials and local Texas prosecutors have otherwise been cooperative and that Texas has extradited three unrelated defendants to Minnesota without issue since Castro’s arrest. Ellison said Abbott’s office has been in ongoing communication but that Minnesota is treating the lack of action as a refusal to honor the extradition request.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order Tuesday imposing sweeping new restrictions on data center development, requiring projects to win local approval, sign binding commitments on power costs, local hiring, transparency, and water conservation, and banning nondisclosure agreements, while also stripping data centers from the state’s fast-track permitting program. The move marks a sharp reversal for Shapiro, a potential 2028 Democratic contender who previously championed the industry’s growth in Pennsylvania, framing it as necessary for competing with China on AI; he now says he won’t let developers “bully” or “bulldoze” communities. Shapiro said the shift came from direct feedback from residents as speculative proposals, many from developers he says show “no regard for local communities,” have swamped the state, and he pointed to a specific Montgomery County project he called a “hell no.” The announcement comes amid a broader bipartisan recalibration on data centers ahead of the midterms, with New York’s Kathy Hochul signing a moratorium and Texas’s Greg Abbott pausing projects to audit them. Industry representatives argue the backlash has outpaced the facts, citing job creation and tax revenue benefits, while Shapiro insisted only a handful of the roughly 100 proposed projects in Pennsylvania have actually been permitted so far.
On the opening day of a landmark federal trial in Oakland, California, lawyers representing 29 states accused Meta of covering up internal research showing Instagram was addictive for teens, citing documents like “the young ones are the best ones” and “teens are hooked despite how it makes them feel, Instagram is addictive,” while California Deputy AG Megan O’Neill argued “time and again, profits won” over child safety. The six-to-eight-week trial will feature testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, and whistleblower Arturo Béjar, with potential damages as high as $200 billion and demands that Meta redesign its products to be safer for kids. Meta’s defense called the evidence cherry-picked, pointed to more than a million disabled under-13 accounts as proof of good-faith effort, and dismissed the states’ claims as an “outlandish payout” attempt, while the states counter that features like infinite scroll, constant notifications, and “likes” were deliberately engineered to maximize engagement among vulnerable young users. The case lands amid a broader legal reckoning for Meta, following a recent $567 million New Mexico judgment (bringing its total liability there to $942 million), an ongoing Tennessee trial, and thousands of related suits nationwide, with attorneys general explicitly modeling their strategy on the 1990s tobacco litigation; as Kentucky AG Russell Coleman put it, “we did it with the tobacco settlement in the 1990s. We did it with the companies behind the opioid crisis. We’ll do it again with Meta.”
The Pentagon has ordered 30 US universities, including Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Cornell, Duke, NYU, USC, Penn State, and several University of California campuses, to review and cut foreign academic partnerships it deems national security risks by August 31 or risk losing federal funding, with Pentagon chief technology officer Emil Michael declaring “zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security.” The directive builds on the Pentagon’s updated list of 130 foreign institutions, mostly Chinese along with some Russian and Iranian ones, that it says pose research misappropriation risks, and follows a broader administration campaign against universities that has included threats to Diplomacy Lab participation over DEI hiring, a dismissed lawsuit against Harvard over alleged failures to protect Jewish and Israeli students, and an ongoing DOJ probe into whether Harvard let Chinese donors fund scholarships that excluded American students. China’s embassy pushed back, accusing Washington of politicizing “normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges” and urging it to abandon a “cold war mentality.”
Two explosions tore through Brent Industries, an industrial recycling and textile reconditioning plant in Toledo, Ohio, early Tuesday during a shift change, killing two employees and sparking a large fire that was still burning that afternoon. Toledo Fire Chief Allison Armstrong said two or three other workers suffered minor injuries, and crews had to contend with hazardous materials and runoff while searching for victims, though environmental officials found no hazardous threat in the air. The cause of the explosions hasn’t been determined, and OSHA has opened an investigation that could take up to six months. This isn’t the company’s first deadly incident: its Alabama location saw a fatal 2015 explosion tied to flammable mineral spirits vapor igniting in a washing machine, and its Toledo plant was previously cited by OSHA in 2004 for exposing workers to a steam release; fire officials confirmed tanks of mineral spirits were present at the Toledo site as well.
Bill Rasmussen, who co-founded ESPN in 1979 after being fired from a public relations job with the WHA’s New England Whalers, died Tuesday at his Florida home at age 93 from the effects of Parkinson’s disease, a diagnosis he first announced publicly in 2019. Rasmussen and his son Scott conceived the idea of a 24-hour, all-sports cable network, originally envisioned as a Connecticut-focused channel before pivoting to a national satellite broadcast, and ESPN launched on September 7, 1979, with its first “SportsCenter” and a slow-pitch softball game. Despite securing financial backing from Getty Oil and a rights deal with the NCAA, Bill and Scott were forced out of the company after just a year once Getty took majority ownership; ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro credited Rasmussen as “a visionary and an innovator” without whom the network wouldn’t exist. Rasmussen remained estranged from ESPN until 1999, when he was invited back for the network’s 20th anniversary, and he later toured for its 40th anniversary and was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2025. He was predeceased by his wife of 56 years, Lois, who died in 2011, and is survived by his children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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