Trump just posted the worst approval numbers of either of his terms. But don’t worry, his walking emotional support blanket is there whispering in his ear and helping him post AI slop fantasies about walking around the White House with George Washington (very normal stuff).

Meanwhile, the bills are coming due everywhere else: at the border, in the school-supply aisle, and on the national credit card.

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News Hits & Misses

Trump’s approval craters to a new low: A new Reuters/Ipsos poll puts Trump’s approval at 33%, the worst rating of his second term and a tie for the lowest of his political career. The Iran war is dragging him down — 80% of Americans, including most Republicans, expect the conflict to drag on, and only 20% think it was worth it. For the first time in a decade, Democrats lead Republicans on who’s better for the economy, which could be a big help for the party in the midterms.

Back-to-school sticker shock: Families are on track to spend roughly $4,000 per student this year, with supply costs up nearly 8% and school lunch prices up 11%. Things suck all over. Manufacturers like Newell Brands (maker of Sharpie and Elmer’s glue) and Logitech are blaming Trump’s tariffs for the price hikes. Nearly half of parents say they’ll have to go into debt just to cover the basics, but have they seen plans for Trump’s gilded ballroom? Try to focus on what’s important, folks.

Many children left behind: After her mother was arrested over allegedly forgotten Walmart items and both parents were deported, 19-year-old Dulce Zepeda spent nearly a year raising her 13-year-old sister alone in Fort Worth. She worked at McDonald’s, drove her sister to school, and sold her mom’s jewelry just to pay the bills. Nearly 8,900 parents of U.S. citizen kids have been detained by ICE this term, leaving an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 children in similar limbo.

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Florida Republicans dump Cory Mills: GOP primary voters ousted Rep. Cory Mills after accusations that he threatened to release nude photos of an ex-girlfriend, who won a protective order against him. Gov. Ron DeSantis stayed out of the race, two fellow Florida Republicans endorsed his opponent, and Trump quietly dropped him from his endorsement list. Mills is the fourth congressman this year to lose his seat over misconduct allegations involving women (three of whom are Republicans). Is it possible the party may be developing standards (Trump not included?) Don’t hold your breath, but it’s still a positive development.

The debt clock won’t stop ticking: Remember when we used to care about the national debt? There was an entire presidential campaign about this very issue in 1992. Independent Ross Perot ran infomercials about it and everything. Now we’ve twice elected Trump because he’s a businessman who was supposed to be good for the economy and fiscal policy. How’s that working out? Well, the national debt is closing in on $40 trillion, months ahead of schedule, with debt-to-GDP now at 122%. The Treasury is paying about $3.18 billion a day just in interest, up 14% from last year, and the CBO now expects this year’s deficit to hit $2.1 trillion. So it’s going great.

Trump uses the Census Bureau to fight 2020 ghosts: Trump is touting a seven-page, unauthored Census Bureau analysis claiming more than 24,000 noncitizens voted in 2020 — a number he predicts will “explode.” The work reportedly involved people tied to a Trump-aligned think tank rather than career staff, and election researchers call the methodology “laughable,” noting the figure represents just 0.02% of the votes analyzed. But that won’t stop Trump from exploiting these figures to try to rewrite the history of his 2020 loss. And more disturbingly, we can bet his administration will use this as part of their ongoing crackdown on voting for the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump wants a Kim Jong Un reunion: Earlier this week, Trump called for join military exercises with North Korea, a huge betrayal to our longtime ally, South Korea. Now he says he expects to meet Kim Jong Un again sometime this year, praising their rapport and noting North Korea now has “57 — very powerful — nuclear weapons.” (That’s because their three prior summits produced no disarmament deal — great work).

McConnell’s nine weeks of paid leave: Sen. Mitch McConnell has drawn his full $193,000 salary through more than nine weeks of medical leave since taking a fall in June (and occasionally posting hostage photos). Meanwhile, new parents in the U.S. have no federal guarantee for paid leave, unlike virtually every other Western country.

Blanche won’t promise to keep politics out of the DOJ: Attorney General Todd Blanche said the quiet part out loud on Meet the Press. He wouldn’t pledge that the Justice Department will operate independently of the White House — breaking with the department’s longstanding policy. He also said Trump’s opinions could factor into prosecutions, insisting the president “would never ask me to do something unethical.” Republicans like John Cornyn and Thom Tillis should feel so proud for enabling this.

The unvetted aide who controls Trump’s inbox: Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant and self-described devotee, has become a household name overnight, thanks to an expertly-delivered barb from Sen. Jon Ossoff. Now we’ve learned that Harp spent a full year in the White House without a security clearance while sitting in on Situation Room meetings, Oval Office huddles, and private Air Force One conversations. World leaders try to worm their way onto Trump’s schedule by calling Harp, who also answers to no one but Trump himself. What could go wrong?

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Photo of the Week

Culture Break

The anti-trans activist who abandoned her son: Renton Sinclair is going public about his mother, Tania Joy Gibson, a former Miss Illinois turned anti-trans influencer who refers to her son by his dead name and frames his transition as demonic. He’s talking now because her platform — and the rhetoric it amplifies — has only grown, alongside legislation targeting vulnerable trans kids.

A 9-year-old conquers the Tahoe Rim Trail: Matilda Nibouar, who goes by “Tilly,” just finished the full 170-mile loop around Lake Tahoe. The trail that goes through both California and Nevada and climbs from lake level to above 10,000 feet typically takes adult thru-hikers more than a week to complete. She did it in 13 days and helped raise over $1700 for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association. Fun fact: this wasn’t her first time on the trail. Her parents carried her on the hike when she was just 1 year old.

News Judgment

White House reporters just can’t quit Trump: Despite a chaotic 2026 White House Correspondents’ Dinner — rescheduled after a security scare, with Trump using the mic to insult CNN’s Kaitlan Collins — the WHCA has already locked in his invite for 2027. Association president (and Fox News correspondent) Jacqui Heinrich, brushed off the blowback: “This dinner precedes President Trump. It will continue after President Trump. And we will invite the president no matter who the president is every year.” Critics note the RSVP came days after the administration reportedly left the press pool as sitting ducks on Air Force One during an active Iranian threat — hardly the moment for the White House press corps to be smoothing things over.

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What I’m Reading

The White House hates sign language: In The Progressive, Mike Ervin digs into the Trump administration’s appeal of a court order requiring ASL interpreters at White House briefings, which you would think would be a weird thing to fight over. But it’s part of the Justice Department’s disturbing broader argument that disabled people shouldn’t be able to sue federal agencies at all.

What the MAGA right sees in a child: In Liberal Currents, Alan Elrod argues the modern right treats children less as people than as property. I think we got a clear view of this during the pandemic when schools became a battleground over masking and health orders (which often didn't even involve parents in the district). We’ve also seen this with curriculum fights over CRT, LGBTQ+ issues and DEI, adoption politics, and, most disturbingly, demographic “race war” rhetoric from powerful figures like Elon Musk and Stephen Miller.

Climate change supercharged Europe’s wildfires: Europe is burning. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers a new World Weather Attribution study in Grist, finding human-caused climate change made this summer’s fire conditions at least twice as likely in France and at least 20 times as likely in central Spain. And abandoned farmland and flammable pine plantations are making things worse.

ICE is about to arm agents with electrified gloves (what could possibly go wrong?) and Republicans are planning their first-ever midterm convention around highlight reels of progressive boogeymen instead of, you know, a record to run on.

But when Trump always has to be the Main Character, you’re going to get stunts like this, even if it makes downballot…

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This week, Trump blamed a Democratic governor for a cyberattack instead of Iran, lashed out at his own U.S. attorney for failing to prosecute a case to massage his ego, and insisted the military has “far more than we need” of long-range weapons, despite reporting showing the exact opposite.

It’s going great.

Meanwhile, the FCC chairman is partying hard wi…

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Grampa Trump’s approval rating just cratered to a career low and his administration is lying about Iran war casualties. So he celebrated as only he knows how: with another bizarre campaign rally, where he told the crowd: “I’ve done more for you than your parents, OK?”

Meanwhile, Rand Paul is playing prosecutor against one of the few voices of reason in T…

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Trump told reporters this week that every servicemember killed in his Iran war said, with their dying breath, apparently, “We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” It would be darkly funny if it didn’t happen while flag-draped coffins were landing at Dover.

Meanwhile, tariffs are back, baby. The pardon economy is booming and a civics contest for teenag…

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This week was all about MAGA entitlement dressed up as necessity. A vice president who treats the Secret Service like a car service. A secretary of state trying to strong-arm a court the U.S. never even joined. A “temporary” military deployment that just picked up a 2029 expiration date.

Meanwhile, the people getting real scrutiny this week weren’t the o…

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The republic turned 250 last week. Given everything, it’s remarkable we’ve made it this far, especially with Grampa Trump stumbling around the NATO summit and droning on about the “Islamic Republic of Japan” (???)

Meanwhile, a Haitian father is in critical condition after being shot on the way to church in Springfield, Ohio — the subject of countless Tru…

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This week, I spent some time hiking in my favorite place on earth, the Eastern Sierras. As I was climbing to one of the region’s endless alpine lakes, I was reminded why I chose this name for the newsletter. Trekking above 10,000 feet often feels like a slog. And that’s what living though this moment in history feels like. Now I can’t guarantee that the…

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The lies are getting more expensive to maintain. That’s the thing about this week that keeps sticking with me — the gap between the official story and reality is now wide enough that the administration has to deploy the National Guard to guard it. The resistance, meanwhile, keeps showing up: in courtrooms, in primary elections, in $50 million civil libe…

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It’s been a week that felt, somehow, like several at once.

Trump signed his Iran “peace deal” at Versailles — yes, that Versailles — apparently blissfully unaware of the fact that the palace is most famous for hosting the most humiliating surrender in modern European history. This deal is a huge loss for Trump, America, and our standing in the world — an…

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Why call it that? Because that’s what living though this moment in history feels like. So let’s try to get through it together.

It’s Trump’s 80th birthday this weekend. And we all have a ringside seat to him working through his demented bucket list in real time, w…

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