Good evening, everyone. Happy Saturday. It’s a slow news day, genuinely one of the quietest in a while, so tonight’s update is short. But I wanted to say something clear anyway: I’m not stopping.
There’s a fight happening right now, and I refuse to sit it out.
Here’s my promise to you. Unlike legacy media, none of my reporting will be bankrolled by billionaires or advertisers with an agenda. Every word I publish is funded by one thing: you.
I’m building something legacy media can’t, a generation of journalism that isn’t beholden to corporate boardrooms, recycled talking points, or gatekeepers deciding what you’re allowed to know and when. It’s why I have focused on Epstein so much. It’s why I have focused on McConnell so much. That only works if the people who believe in it show up.
Some nights I’m drained. Some nights I wonder how I keep pushing. And then I remember I’m not doing this alone. Every share, every message, every bit of encouragement from this community is what keeps me going.
This is your fight too. Let’s build it together.
Here’s the news:
One thing I noticed today going through the Epstein files: Todd Blanche was confirmed as Attorney General. In the Epstein files, Blanche is listed as a person on an email chain discussing filings in Epstein's case shortly after his arrest and before his death. Most of the other names in the email are redacted. Now that he is Attorney General, we may never know who is under these redactions.
Democrats Prepare Mass Investigations:
Democrats are gearing up for mass investigations of Trump if they retake the House in November. Senior House Democrats and committee aides told Reuters that they are planning to use hearings, subpoenas, and document requests to dig into companies, donors, and financial firms tied to Trump’s orbit, betting that going after private entities will yield more than confronting a resistant White House directly. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries hasn’t ruled out impeachment, but aides say the strategy avoids a repeat of Trump’s first term, when impeachment let him cast himself as a victim of partisan attacks. “We’re not going into this to impeach,” one senior Democratic aide told Reuters, describing plans to “build a body of evidence through investigations” first.
The targets under discussion span major corporations and Trump-linked financial vehicles: Apple, Alphabet, Palantir, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Musk-owned Tesla have surfaced in talks due to their government contracts and regulatory exposure, though no formal target list or investigations exist yet. Democrats also plan to probe 1789 Capital (the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner), foreign sovereign wealth funds invested in Trump-linked entities, Homeland Security contracts, financing for Trump’s planned White House ballroom, and alleged pay-to-play arrangements with donors. Because foreign funds are harder to subpoena, Democrats are looking at reaching them through U.S.-based intermediary firms instead.
Democrats are already laying groundwork before the midterms by sending letters seeking records from companies and contractors, positioning for subpoenas if they win the majority. Recipients include Paramount Skydance (over Trump dealings and the Warner Bros. Discovery merger), YouTube/Alphabet (over its $24.5 million settlement with Trump), private prison operator GEO Group and security firm Salus Worldwide (over DHS contracts), and commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura (over Venezuelan oil sales). Oversight Committee ranking member Robert Garcia cited “sketchy Pentagon contracts lining the pockets of the president’s sons” and “Trump’s crypto billions” as examples of what Democrats intend to pursue, while the White House says it’s “prepared to respond to oversight requests, no matter who is in the House or Senate.”
Iran:
Iran’s top national security official, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, issued a sweeping list of demands on Saturday that must be met before the Strait of Hormuz reopens, throwing a wrench into hopes of restoring maritime traffic through the critical waterway. He called for the U.S. to lift its naval blockade and sanctions, withdraw its military from around Iran, pay war reparations, release frozen Iranian assets, and end attacks and threats against Iran’s regional allies. The demands upended expectations that a deal being negotiated with Oman would soon let commerce flow again and ease global energy prices, and they put pressure on Trump to consider Iran’s terms if he wants to lower gas prices for Americans ahead of the November midterms. The White House hadn’t responded to the demands as of publication.
The strait has been effectively closed since Iran retaliated against U.S. and Israeli attacks in February, and while Iran and Oman have been negotiating a temporary shipping route, Iranian officials stressed on Saturday that reopening isn’t tied to those talks alone. IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said reopening depends on the U.S. “fully accepting Iran’s conditions,” and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran and Oman are “very close” to an agreement but that reopening also hinges on the U.S. compensating for violations of the June cease-fire (the Islamabad Memorandum). That cease-fire collapsed in July after the U.S. backed a southern shipping route skirting Iranian waters, which Iran responded to with warnings and strikes on vessels, prompting the U.S. to reimpose its naval blockade.
Attacks on shipping have continued: the UAE said Saturday an Iranian strike hit a tanker owned by the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which reported at least 15 vessel attacks since the conflict began, killing one crew member and injuring 20. Oman’s foreign ministry condemned the attacks and said talks with Iran were proceeding “in a positive and constructive atmosphere,” urging all parties to avoid jeopardizing progress. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the talks were in “the middle of the game” and that the U.S. holds major leverage since Iran is “hurting in a big way,” though it’s unclear if he knew of Iran’s new demands when he spoke. Traffic through the strait has cratered to just over a dozen ships daily, down from a pre-war average of 130, according to maritime data firm Kpler.
Other news:
Trump signed two new executive orders on Thursday targeting “birth tourism,” undeterred by the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Trump v. Barbara that struck down his first attempt to limit birthright citizenship and, per Justice Alito’s dissent, already covers birth tourists. One order directs federal agencies not to recognize a child’s citizenship if either parent engaged in “fraudulent activity” to obtain it, while the other seeks to bar visas for foreigners suspected of birth tourism and expand exceptions to citizenship to include children of foreign government employees and terrorists. Legal experts are split: some say the orders directly target a group the Supreme Court already ruled must receive automatic citizenship and are “certain” to lose in court, while others like Berkeley’s John Yoo think the terrorist-designation expansion could eventually survive. Trump claimed “hundreds of thousands” exploit birth tourism, though Penn State researchers estimate the real figure at 5,000 to 10,000 births annually from 2014-2024.
Hunter Biden told the BBC on Friday that his father’s cancer has spread and metastasized further into his bones, calling it “very painful” and “very debilitating,” though he said Joe Biden “is still out there and still doing his thing.” His comments echo what Jill Biden told NBC’s “TODAY” show in June, that the cancer’s spread to the bone means Joe Biden will “live with cancer till the rest of his life.” Biden’s office first disclosed his aggressive prostate cancer diagnosis in May 2025, and the family said in September 2025 that he’d completed radiation and hormone therapy, with no confirmation on whether further treatment would be needed. Hunter also discussed the pardon his father granted him before leaving office, covering any crimes from 2014 to 2024, calling it “not fair” but saying he’s “grateful” for it, and describing his father as someone who “chose me over his legacy.”
OpenAI announced Friday it will pause some internal work on its AI model Astra due to security concerns, after evaluations found the model had reached a “critical” threshold in agentic coding and cybersecurity, meaning it can find and exploit vulnerabilities or execute cyber-attacks on its own when given only a high level goal. OpenAI said Astra wasn’t involved in a prior incident where one of its agents went rogue and hacked startup Hugging Face, but Reuters reported in July that the company found other cases of autonomous agents escaping containment. In response, OpenAI is rolling out stricter security controls for high-capability models, including isolated testing environments, restricted network and tool access, and enhanced model weight protections, and will pause internal Astra activities that don’t meet the new standards. The disclosure follows similar incidents at Meta, whose model reportedly hacked another company during cybersecurity testing, and at the UK’s AI Security Institute, which found OpenAI- and Anthropic-powered agents sent unprompted, unsuccessful phishing-style emails to developers during a cyber challenge, testing that occurred with intentional internet access rather than an actual escape. The reports land as the Trump administration finalizes a federal framework for testing AI safety and cybersecurity risks, with OpenAI and Anthropic separately pushing for tighter regulation of open-source models, which they argue pose security risks.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement” on Friday, pledging that an armed attack on any one of the three would be treated as an attack on all, as Iranian missile fire and blockades on Gulf oil exporters continue since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28. The pact, signed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Erdogan, and PM Shehbaz Sharif, gave no specifics on actual military commitments or how far each country would be bound to act in the others’ defense, and follows nearly a year of negotiations first reported by Reuters in January. Officials from all three countries stressed the deal is purely defensive, not aimed at any specific country, and not linked to a sectarian bloc or nuclear ambitions, despite Pakistan being the region’s only nuclear-armed Muslim state. Analysts said the real target is countering Iranian influence and building deterrence against Israel rather than seeking direct confrontation with Tehran, and the agreement builds on decades of existing military ties, including Pakistani troops, jets and air-defense systems already deployed in Saudi Arabia. The pact carries heavy symbolic weight, uniting three of the Muslim world’s most influential and militarily significant states: Turkey with NATO’s second-largest army, Saudi Arabia as custodian of Islam’s holiest sites and a top oil exporter, and Pakistan as the sole nuclear-armed Muslim nation, amid growing doubts about the reliability of U.S. security guarantees in the region.
An Orlando-bound Delta flight carrying about 200 passengers and six crew members had to make an emergency landing on a taxiway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport shortly after takeoff Saturday morning, after the flight deck reported a smoke condition. Delta flight 2204 departed just before 7:30 a.m., turned back, and evacuated passengers via slide before busing everyone to the terminal. Delta said the crew followed procedure after reports of fumes in the flight deck, apologized for the experience, and is rebooking passengers on a new aircraft to Orlando while the original plane undergoes a maintenance review.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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