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Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let him off the hook for a $1,000-a-day fine. This fine is Blanche’s latest setback in a series of back-and-forths surrounding a lawsuit brought against him by journalist Katie Phang, who has accused the Department of Justice of failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang sued the DOJ in April for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the law, which President Donald Trump reluctantly signed in November.Despite the Justice Department’s repeated assertions that the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and subsequent release of files has been conducted with “an unprecedented commitment to transparency,” millions of files are still either missing or redacted. In June, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Blanche to produce previously redacted materials from the Epstein files, including FBI notes from interviews with a woman alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1980s when she was 13 years old, as well as email exchanges with Epstein regarding a “torture video” and the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators. Sullivan gave Blanche until July 2 to produce the materials. When the acting attorney general failed to do so, Phang suggested a daily $1,000 fine until he complied. Blanche lashed out Monday in a melodramatic brief attacking Phang’s argument as “outlandish,” “absurd,” and “hyperbolic rhetoric seeking to impose punitive sanctions” on the Department of Justice. He called her lawsuit “sensational and unsubstantiated,” despite the reality that her entire argument is based on cold, hard facts.Phang’s ongoing lawsuit is yet another headache for Blanche, whose scheme to secure a permanent promotion to attorney general has not exactly been smooth sailing. After days of tense confirmation hearings in the Senate, an uncomfortable meeting with Epstein survivors, and hundreds of Blanche’s former colleagues opposing his nomination, $1,000 a day just might drive him over the edge.Too bad. Let’s see the money.

Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon isn’t just running out of weapons as the war on Iran intensifies—it’s also running out of money.The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is facing an upcoming budget deficit caused directly by President Trump’s war on Iran, forcing it to cut training, maintenance, and military preparations. Hegseth has also not been transparent or timely about the ultimate costs of the war, leading to more confusion and disarray.“We need to know what we’re purchasing and why we’re purchasing it,” Democratic Representative Betty McCollum, ranking member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, told the Post, noting that other Pentagon officials were “very concerned” about the lack of information they were receiving.The House is set to vote on a $73 billion defense package this week, more than the $67 billion the administration requested to help it out of the hole it’s dug. That request has not been well received, as most Democrats oppose any new funding for the Iran war.This news also comes as the U.S. is dealing with a dwindling stockpile of munitions, contributing to the administration’s financial requests.It’s absurd that the Pentagon is running out of money when its budget for this year was $1 trillion, with the Trump administration already requesting $1.5 trillion for 2027—a record-setting amount. They’re stacking up bills with your taxpayer dollars to go deeper into a war that the vast majority of the country does not support.

Drop Site Daily: July 21, 2026

Discover a few of the schemes US Healthcare uses to screw patients, and some great ways to fight back.

The proposal encroaches on a marine preserve, and French Polynesia banned seabed mining in 2022.

China’s AI were on full display over the last week.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that freed Columbia student and pro-Palestinian protester Mohsen Mahdawi from ICE custody.A Second Circuit panel, made up of one George W. Bush judge and two Donald Trump first-term appointees, determined that Mahdawi should not have been released from ICE custody in 2025. They argued that the Vermont-based federal judge that made the initial ruling lacked jurisdiction to do so.The panel concluded that only an immigration court could oversee Mahdawi’s detention challenge, as the case was inextricably linked to his deportation suit.“Today’s decision is a grave setback, although I am confident justice will ultimately prevail,” Mahdawi said in a statement provided by the American Civil Liberties Union. “It reflects a dangerous failure under political pressure, one that risks turning the federal courts into instruments of politics rather than guardians of constitutional freedom.”Mahdawi was arrested by masked agents in April 2025 during his scheduled citizenship interview. He later told ABC News that he felt the appointment was a “trap.”His detention was the result of an aggressive pressure campaign fronted by State Secretary Marco Rubio to push the West Bank refugee out of the country. Rubio at one point argued that Mahdawi’s presence in the U.S. could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy on the basis that his pro-Palestinian advocacy could create “adverse foreign policy consequences.”Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where most of his family remains. He has been outspoken about his experiences growing up in the occupied region, describing the murders of his friends and loved ones by Israeli forces, and the violence he experienced when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15.He co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside detained (and freed) peer Mahmoud Khalil, another legal U.S. permanent resident who was shipped to an ICE center in Louisiana last year shortly after being ripped away from his pregnant wife by plainclothes ICE agents. U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford in Vermont, who released Mahdawi after two weeks’ detention last year, ruled at the time that the 35-year-old enjoyed the same First Amendment rights as U.S. citizens. In Trump’s America, that is apparently not the case.“By weakening the First Amendment and creating different tiers of rights for citizens and non-citizens, this ruling hands the government a dangerous power: the power to intimidate, censor, and punish dissent without meaningful restraint,” Mahdawi’s Tuesday statement continued. “But I still have faith that the full court will correct the legal error and restore the constitutional principles that protect all people equally. This struggle continues for Palestine, for dignity and equality everywhere, and for the democratic promise of freedom that must belong to us all; until Palestine is free.”This story has been updated.

President-elect Abelardo De La Espriella has already begun declaring a radical departure from the political direction taken by progressive Gustavo Petro over the last 4 years.