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  • Trump goes unmentioned but not ignored as Clinton, Bush, and Obama step up as essayists on presidents

    Trump goes unmentioned but not ignored as Clinton, Bush, and Obama step up as essayists on presidents

    WASHINGTON — When George W. Bush wrote an essay this year about another president named George, he avoided mentioning the one named Donald.

    So did Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The three ex-presidents joined a roster of historians and authors in contributing to the In Pursuit project, a 250th-anniversary series that had each writer produce an essay about a president or first lady.

    Though the project was explicitly designed to transcend today’s politics, some of its essays nevertheless reflect anxieties that are flaring in the era of President Donald Trump over the use of power, the health of the democracy, and the integrity of the presidency.

    The project is being curated by Colleen Shogan, the U.S. archivist who was fired without explanation by Trump last year. She instructed contributors not to be partisan or ideological. “Everybody took those instructions and that guidance very seriously,” she told the Associated Press. The goal was for all Americans to “feel welcome to be able to read these lessons and essays and learn something from them.”

    The mission, Shogan said, “is to surface the lessons from the past 250 years of American history, so that we can learn from those lessons, from both our successes and our failures, so we can plan for the present and the future. It’s what has been described as debriefing the American story.”

    The essays cover 43 presidents — all but Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Trump — and 30 first ladies. They are being published online at inpursuit.org and on Substack chronologically and weekly into December.

    Trump and Biden were judged too fresh to be appraised by history, a call that may have also set aside passions of the moment.

    Without naming Trump, Bush’s essay is difficult to read without thinking of Trump’s reluctance to cede power after his 2020 election defeat and his musings about a third term in defiance of the Constitution’s two-term limit.

    Bush hails the heroism of humility

    Bush’s essay celebrates George Washington, the original “No Kings” guy. Bush, a Republican, hails a man whose legacy only grew larger because he modeled the limits of the presidency for centuries to come.

    “Our first president could have remained all-powerful,” Bush writes, “but twice he chose not to. In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.” First, Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army, then set the precedent of serving only two presidential terms before that limit was enshrined in the Constitution.

    Bush went on: “George Washington’s humility in giving up power willingly remains among the most consequential decisions and important examples in American politics.” Bush’s essay, released Presidents Day as the first in the series on Substack, drove heavy engagement.

    Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led U.S. and international forces in the Afghanistan War, sized up a fellow general, Ulysses S. Grant, in another essay that drew much attention for its parallels with today.

    History offers lessons on ‘law over loyalty’

    McChrystal presents the Union general and post-Civil War president as a leader who displayed “an absolute commitment to principles larger than personal ambition” and who, before his presidency, resisted pressure on military leaders to “align with political factions and be loyal to a person rather than the Constitution.”

    The emphasis on personal loyalty resonates in a time when Trump has repeatedly demanded fealty from officials in his administration.

    The “temptation to bend institutions toward personal power is not unique to Grant’s era,” McChrystal writes. “Our future still depends on whether our leaders choose law over loyalty.”

    This month, in the latest In Pursuit installment, Democrat Bill Clinton writes about Theodore Roosevelt, focusing on that president’s drive to expand the universe of “we the people” at the expense of powerful corporate interests, while also emphasizing Roosevelt’s exclusionary views on Black and Indigenous people.

    The essays frequently address presidents’ failures alongside their accomplishments, a contrast with Trump’s calls for federal cultural institutions to stick to patriotic interpretations of American history.

    Presidents, the chief justice, and first ladies contribute

    Among the In Pursuit contributors are Chief Justice John Roberts (writing about William Howard Taft, the only president who also served on the Supreme Court); Hillary Clinton (Eleanor Roosevelt); Michelle Obama (Jacqueline Kennedy); GOP operative Karl Rove (William McKinley); documentarian Ken Burns (Franklin D. Roosevelt); and historian Michael Beschloss (Lyndon Johnson). Democrat Barack Obama presents Abraham Lincoln.

    The project is being staged by More Perfect, a nonpartisan alliance of dozens of presidential centers along with academics and organizations dedicated to advancing democracy. It is where Shogan now practices her archivist craft that Trump shut down by firing her in February 2025.

    She still has not been told why. Nor has Congress apparently been notified of the reason. The law requires Congress to be told but does not specify a deadline. The National Archives is the central repository of federal documents both precious and routine, and its leader has discretion over which records to preserve and display, and how.

    “That is a position that used to be a nonpartisan position, much like the Librarian of Congress, the secretary of the Smithsonian,” she said. “And I took that very seriously and acted the entire time when I was archivist in a nonpartisan way.”

    The White House did not respond when asked why Trump fired the archivist and whether the administration will tell Congress the reason.

    Trump has long begrudged the archives for notifying the Department of Justice of his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office following his first term, though Shogan was not working for the agency then.

    Shogan sees hunger for history without a slant

    Shogan said she has been overwhelmed with the public response to the series so far and figures that speaks to a hunger for history shorn of partisanship. The essays have received more than 1 million cumulative views on Substack and her podcast of the same name registered 160,000 audio downloads and nearly 64,000 YouTube views at last count. A documentary about the series is scheduled to air on PBS in October.

    In the essays, readers learn something new not just about the giants, but about presidents such as Millard Fillmore — “a historic punchline — best remembered, ironically, for being so forgotten,” in the words of his essayist, former New York congressman Steve Israel.

    Then there was Franklin Pierce, presented by his essayist as a pro-slavery president and “permanent victim” of Washington’s alcohol-soaked culture.

    Yale history professor David W. Blight recounts how Pierce won the presidency for the Democrats in 1852 despite vicious trolling by the Whigs. Fielding Mexican War veteran Gen. Winfield Scott in that election, they labeled Pierce, who also served in the war, the “hero of many a well-fought bottle.”

  • Philadelphia Historic District’s ‘firstivals’ have drawn super fans who have traveled from the nation’s first circus to its first zoo

    Philadelphia Historic District’s ‘firstivals’ have drawn super fans who have traveled from the nation’s first circus to its first zoo

    Christine Barnabic had already run a 5K at Belmont Plateau on Saturday morning when, still in her running gear, she hopped on her scooter and headed from her home in Fairmount to the Philadelphia Zoo. Her purse held commemorative pencils and a tattered punch card.

    When she arrived, the punch card had 10 holes in it — one for each “firstival” she had attended so far this year. At the zoo, she got her 11th hole punched, and a hat to celebrate her attendance.

    “It’s just really neat to recognize these firsts in America,” Barnabic, 42, said.

    The Philadelphia Zoo, for its part, was the first public zoo to open in the United States, in 1874. It is just one stop along the Philadelphia Historic District’s “52 Weeks of Firsts” events that celebrate Philly’s history and cultural significance by showcasing things that happened here first.

    The series launched Jan. 3, commemorating the first balloon flight in America. Barnabic missed the first run of events, but once she attended an event marking the first circus performance in the U.S., she was hooked.

    Amanda Meiluch displays her hat adorned with pins for America’s 250th as part of the city’s 52 Weeks of Firsts celebrations Saturday, Aug. 8, 2026.Brett Sholtis

    She started posting selfies taken at each firstival and was stunned to learn she had won a prize pack including a Slinky, a record of old songs, tickets to the Betsy Ross House and Eastern State Penitentiary, and free admission to adult circus classes — each gift celebrating a historic milestone that happened in Philly.

    Barnabic said she is no history expert, but she is an enthusiast. She manages a company that does fitness tours for people who are in town for conferences or staying at hotels. To her, checking off the firstivals also boosted her knowledge.

    “And people are very friendly here,” she said.

    Todd Marcocci at Under the Sun Productions has been coordinating the events for the historic district. He said he knows at least four people who have attended all 32 events so far.

    The firstivals are often held at popular public locations, and many, like Barnabic, have been drawn in and kept coming back, Marcocci said. The zoo commemoration, for example, was held near the Ferris wheel, which is open to the public, no ticket required.

    “It’s been great, because each week there is variety. It’s beyond education. You think you know a lot about history, but everyone learns something here,” Marcocci said.

    Retired historian Lee Arnold agreed. In March, he attended the first flower show event at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and kept coming back.

    He has his own side quest: He is gathering commemorative items from all of the firstivals that he plans to give to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for posterity.

    These days, Arnold leads history tours a couple of days a week for Grim Philly. He said he enjoys showing people the U.S. post office, the First Continental Congress, the first use of the phrase “United States of America,” and the invention of the Slinky, which can all be traced back to a four-block area in Old City.

    Artist Gwenn Seemel’s No. 1 captures many of the Philadelphia Zoo’s first milestones.Gwenn Seemel and Colibrí Workshop

    “It’s just wonderful. As I say to my tourists, everything started here,” Arnold said.

    For anyone feeling left out, 20 more firstivals remain on the calendar. They highlight everything from the first people to live in the region (at Penn Museum’s new Native North America Gallery) to the first modern detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” written in 1841 by then-Philadelphia resident Edgar Allan Poe.

    (And yes, Philly invented cheesesteaks and water ice, according to the historic district, and forthcoming food-themed celebrations are on the list, too.)

    For the firstival diehards, the weekly events have also fostered a kind of community, said Amanda Meiluch, who took the train in from Penndel to volunteer at the event.

    She did not start out as a volunteer, but after a few weeks, she decided to make it official.

    In the process, the retired accountant has befriended other regulars — one of whom gave her a hat after dealing with a particularly sunny day. A week later, they saw each other again, and her friend was delighted to see that Meiluch had adorned the hat with pins celebrating the city’s history.

    “She made me happy. And I made her happy. That’s all you can do in this world,” Meiluch said.

  • The manager at Trump’s North Jersey golf club set up the botched renovation of the Reflecting Pool, according to a NYT investigation

    The manager at Trump’s North Jersey golf club set up the botched renovation of the Reflecting Pool, according to a NYT investigation

    The person who set up the botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington is the manager at President Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., according to an investigation by the New York Times.

    The Times found that David Schutzenhofer, who has run the Trump Organization’s golf club in North Jersey since 2006, was chosen by Trump to lead the renovation of the national landmark, which had leaked for years and was full of algae.

    The Times reported that Schutzenhofer does not have formal training in architecture or engineering and is Trump’s private employee, but that the golf club manager “played an off-the-books role in government decisions” regarding the project.

    The company that Schutzenhofer chose to do the renovation partnered with a company that enlisted the help of a third company that had never won a government contract, and applied the pool’s lining that later peeled away.

    Charles Birnbaum, president of the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation, told the Times that paying millions of dollars to a first-time contractor to undertake a plan orchestrated by a golf-club manager to fix a national landmark was “like asking the museum guard to restore a painting in the Met.”

    In January, Schutzenhofer attended the World of Concrete trade show in Las Vegas in search of ideas for fixing the Reflecting Pool, according to the Times. Vendors recommended he call Rodney Jarboe, president of Creative Polymers, a company based in Missouri.

    Jarboe told the Times he first spoke with Schutzenhofer in March and was told the president wanted the work done in time for the Fourth of July, which Jarboe called “a very tight deadline.”

    He said Schutzenhofer decided to coat the Reflecting Pool with a polyurea liner, but Trump’s tariffs made getting polyurea coatings difficult. So Jarboe partnered with a California-based company called Rhino Linings, which then got a Virginia-based company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to help apply the coating.

    Soon after the Trump administration said the renovations were finished in early June, the blue lining began to peel. Algae also returned. The Reflecting Pool was then drained so it could be repaired.

    Spokespeople for the Trump administration defended the project in statements to the Times. Neither Schutzenhofer nor Rhino Linings responded to questions about their roles, according to the Times. Atlantic said in a statement that a “very small part” of the liner needed repairs but otherwise declined to comment.

    Trump has claimed without evidence that vandalism was behind the damage to the Reflecting Pool. But in a court filing, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, admitted that “the damage was the result of a botched installation.”

    A judge this week dismissed felony charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn after he was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. And Pirro has moved to dismiss cases against several others.

  • Lake Mead hits historic low water level as Colorado River struggles

    Lake Mead hits historic low water level as Colorado River struggles

    BOULDER CITY, Nev. — Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has plummeted to its lowest water level since it was filled some 90 years ago, another sign of the crisis plaguing the Colorado River system.

    Water levels at Lake Mead hit 1,040.4 feet above sea level on Friday, according to federal data. That’s just below the elevation of 1,040.58 feet recorded on July 28, 2022, at the reservoir that straddles the Arizona-Nevada border outside Las Vegas.

    The record follows a winter that produced the worst snowpack on record in the Colorado River Basin. Melting snow feeds the river, which is relied upon by farmers, industries, wildlife, hydropower producers, and more than 40 million people across seven U.S. states, tribal nations, and Mexico.

    It comes a week after federal officials announced a short-term proposal to stave off a crisis in the beleaguered waterway. Federal officials stepped in after states that rely on the river — California, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah — failed to reach an agreement on how to share the dwindling resource long term. Under the proposal, California, Nevada, and Arizona would share water cuts.

    Years of overuse combined with drought and rising temperatures have been depleting Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the country’s second-largest reservoir. Together, the two bodies of Colorado River water are the lowest they’ve been in nearly seven decades.

    To protect the strained system’s ability to produce hydropower, federal officials said Thursday that they will not release cool Lake Powell water from Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona to protect a threatened native fish whose habitat is between the reservoirs.

    Severe drought in 2022 on Lake Mead, which is held back by the Hoover Dam, exposed human remains and forced water officials in Las Vegas to pump water from deeper within the reservoir to continue to supply water to millions of people.

  • Pirro, Trump’s longtime champion, is on the outs over Reflecting Pool move

    Pirro, Trump’s longtime champion, is on the outs over Reflecting Pool move

    Jeanine Pirro swept into Washington last year as a camera-ready prosecutor and staunch ally of President Donald Trump. Suddenly she was everywhere: crime scenes and community forums, court hearings and TV interviews, TikTok-style videos and black-tie dinners.

    But after more than a year in office as U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, Pirro now finds herself at odds with Trump — with her job at risk — over scraps of blue liner that peeled off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

    Pirro, who left her job as a Fox News host to become the top federal prosecutor in D.C., immediately began seeking the toughest charges possible for violent crimes. She launched criminal probes of more than a half-dozen public officials who had drawn Trump’s ire — then punted the blame to judges and juries when those efforts collapsed.

    But her moves to drop several cases of alleged vandalism at the newly renovated pool contradicted Trump and blamed the administration’s handpicked contractor for botching a project the president had championed. And in the end, they exposed a crack in Pirro’s ability to balance Trump’s demands with her legal responsibilities.

    “She thought she had covered all of her bases — that’s what she thought — and then, of course, things went south,” a person who has known Pirro for decades said of her current predicament with the president.

    People who have followed Pirro’s trajectory as a judge, district attorney, conservative author, and TV personality say she is a prosecutor at heart who has long been passionate about fighting crime and protecting victims, and who found a renewed sense of purpose when Trump tapped her to run one of the busiest U.S. attorney’s offices in the country.

    Her detractors say few in the Justice Department have been as willing as Pirro to gin up prosecutions or test the boundaries of the system in pursuit of Trump’s fixations and antagonists.

    This account of Pirro’s tumultuous time as U.S. attorney, and how she has handled being the prosecutor in Trump’s backyard, is based on court records and interviews with 11 people familiar with key events. Almost all spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of Pirro while her job is seemingly on the line. Pirro, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request.

    Her troubles began after the Trump administration installed a coat of blue sealant at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in anticipation of this year’s July Fourth festivities. Pieces of paint quickly started coming apart and floating to the surface, and some visitors who reached out to grab them were arrested, court records show.

    Trump claimed vandals had torn up the pool’s “beautiful facade,” and Pirro initially filed criminal charges against four people, including a former Olympic canoeist who was indicted on a felony count of destruction of property. In her booming New York brogue, Pirro castigated that defendant at a news conference and said her office was “committed to protecting our national resources, our monuments, and our parks from vandals.”

    But Pirro abruptly dropped all four cases weeks later, blamed the Interior Department for misleading prosecutors into filing unsupported criminal charges, and was soon inside the Oval Office to explain herself.

    A former judge and district attorney who served for decades in Westchester County, N.Y., Pirro arrived at the White House on Monday with boxes of evidence showing that the Interior Department had awarded a no-bid contract to a company that misapplied the liner, according to people familiar with the matter. That evidence is detailed in an explosive, 20-page court filing that the U.S. attorney’s office submitted last week, which stated that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”

    Pirro had personally reviewed and signed off on the filing, and it conveyed her frustration that the documents from Interior were not quickly turned over to prosecutors, as well as her view that they “demolished” any chance of building a winning case against the alleged vandals, according to people with knowledge of her thinking. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pushed back, writing on X that the “evidence is clear” that vandalism was what damaged the pool.

    One person familiar with Pirro’s thinking described her approach to the White House meeting as: “Stand her ground, be focused, make her case, and do the right thing.”

    The rift between Trump and Pirro, over peeling bits of paint at a national monument, came after she had launched criminal probes into six Democratic lawmakers who criticized the administration’s military actions, as well as the Federal Reserve chair at the time, Jerome H. Powell, who refused Trump’s demands to resign or institute lower interest rates.

    A federal judge rejected Pirro’s attempts to issue subpoenas in the Fed investigation, and she later closed that probe without seeking criminal charges, but Trump praised her doggedness in taking the case as far as she could. A grand jury declined to indict the Democratic lawmakers, and Trump soon moved on to other issues.

    This time, Pirro’s office said in the Reflecting Pool court filing, prosecutors were voluntarily dismissing the charges. Trump said Pirro “folded like an umbrella.”

    “I just think she was totally wrong,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, noting that National Park Service employees had told authorities they saw vandals in action. He described problems with the contractor as “a couple of little things” and said he hadn’t made a determination on whether to keep Pirro on the job.

    Trump continued his criticism Friday, saying on social media that “U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should revisit her hastily made decision.”

    Pirro had befriended Trump decades ago in New York’s social circles, but they had never worked together, and one dynamic underlying their rare public break is that both are more comfortable calling the shots than deferring to others, said the longtime friend, who has seen them together.

    “She has a lot of respect for the president,” this person said, adding, “They have a relationship that for the first time has now transformed into a professional subordinate situation.”

    Pirro, 75, leads the only U.S. attorney’s office in the country with the dual mandate to prosecute local crimes and complex federal cases. Trump named her interim U.S. attorney in May 2025. She was later confirmed by the Senate, earning support from Republicans that Trump’s first pick for the job, Ed Martin, couldn’t muster.

    She came into a deep-blue city where only 6.5% of D.C. voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 election. Protests flared when immigration raids and street arrests swept up hundreds of people after Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. last year, bringing in teams of federal officers and National Guard troops to patrol city streets. Pirro has often been the one absorbing the blowback from heated community meetings and in court, where juries have voted down felony charges for some defendants and acquitted others of assaulting federal officers.

    “The truth is that with the federal surge — whether you like it or you don’t like it — crime is down,” Pirro told the dozens of community members in the D.C. police’s Fifth District office in Northeast Washington after a tense weekend last October in which 12 people were shot.

    Homicides last year declined by roughly one-third, totaling 127, according to D.C. police statistics. They have dropped another 32% this year, and stood at 66 as of Thursday. Robberies and property crimes also have declined, but assaults with dangerous weapons have risen 42% this year, to 758 instances, according to the police data.

    “President Trump said, ‘I’m going to make D.C. safe and beautiful,’” Pirro added at the October meeting. “And you know what? He’s going to do it. … Every day we’re pushing. Pushing against juries, pushing against judges.”

    On social media, she frequently repeats a similar message, crediting the president with making the city safer.

    Those who have worked with Pirro describe her as a decisive boss, quick to grasp legal nuances and less abrasive than her brash TV persona. She has taken a particular interest in a new task force to disrupt international cryptocurrency scams, and she has called on the D.C. Council to toughen sentencing laws for juvenile crimes and partnered with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on efforts to strengthen domestic violence legislation. Pirro, according to those who know her, is meticulous about her fashion choices, known for her sweet tooth, and on friendly terms with some of her staff, attending trivia night at a brewery/pizzeria this year.

    Pirro has attempted to rebuild the U.S. attorney office’s ranks, which were decimated by staff departures and Martin’s purge of prosecutors who had investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Justice Department is now offering $25,000 bonuses to lawyers who sign a commitment to stay at the office for two years, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

    “I think that U.S. Attorney Pirro, over the past year and a half that she’s been there, has led an unprecedented effort to literally turn this city on its head to be a safe place for all of us to live and eat,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche said at a news conference Wednesday, a notable show of support that buoyed Pirro’s allies. Blanche added that Trump was allowed to dismiss any U.S. attorney.

    Although Pirro’s office has had a mixed record with jury trials in U.S. district court over the past year, there have been no major setbacks in the office’s biggest cases. Those include the prosecutions in the killing of a 21-year-old congressional intern; the fatal shooting of a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year; the ambush-style attack in which one National Guard member was killed and another wounded; and the case of Cole Tomas Allen, who has been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner this year. The trial of an alleged terrorist behind the infamous bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is scheduled for this year in D.C., with Pirro’s office running the prosecution.

    But critics say Pirro has curtailed prosecutors’ autonomy and jacked up their workloads by ordering them to seek the maximum possible charges in every case. Judges and public defenders have criticized Pirro’s office for bringing cases during Trump’s federal law enforcement surge that were based on incomplete or shoddy investigations, leading to multiple instances in which the U.S. attorney’s office dismissed charges after the defendants spent time in jail.

    “I think many Americans have a sense that in Trump 2.0, prosecutions are being brought for reasons other than public safety,” Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor, said in an email assessing Pirro’s record as U.S. attorney. “We are now seeing many jurors more carefully scrutinizing cases, and that’s a good thing in terms of how the system is supposed to work.”

    Longtime defense attorney Joe Flood, who practices in the D.C. area, recalled that he first encountered Pirro in the 1990s when she was the Westchester County district attorney, and he was defending people facing the death penalty in New York. She made death-penalty cases central to her political ambitions, he said, as she geared up for a potential run for state attorney general or governor, but she never got a defendant sentenced to death and eventually left elected office for her television career.

    In Trump’s second term, Flood said, some U.S. attorneys in key offices have discovered that being a responsible prosecutor is sometimes a fireable offense. He noted that Erik S. Siebert, whom Trump had appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was forced out last year after declining to seek criminal charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career prosecutors in both cases had said the evidence was too flimsy to take to court.

    “The reality is if you’re an ethical U.S. attorney, and you won’t be bent to Trump’s will, you’re gone,” Flood said. Of Pirro’s decision to drop the Reflecting Pool cases, he added: “She gets some credit for standing up to Trump.”

    Judges have also criticized Pirro’s office for wiping out the most serious convictions from the Jan. 6 riot — the seditious conspiracy cases against the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

    Members of the extremist groups stockpiled firearms and led the charge into the Capitol, according to the evidence presented at their trials. Pirro this year signed on to key court filings to clear those charges as a matter of loyalty to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. But she declines to take questions about those moves, even as federal judges bemoan the historical consequences of undoing convictions for crimes against the country.

  • Ukraine honors its ‘collector of souls’ killed while recovering the war dead

    Ukraine honors its ‘collector of souls’ killed while recovering the war dead

    KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine paid tribute on Saturday to Oleksiy Yukov, a volunteer who spent more than two decades recovering the bodies of civilians and soldiers — many of them Russian — killed by war. He was 40.

    An Orthodox Christian service was held at the Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr, in central Kyiv, where thousands of people gathered to pay their respects following his death in a landmine explosion during a recovery mission on Aug. 5. Mourners also gathered at Kyiv’s main Maidan Square before the service.

    Yukov founded the Platsdarm (“bridgehead”) organization because he believed all the dead require a proper burial. He became known as a “collector of souls.”

    Yukov, from the war-torn Donbas region, was a martial arts instructor. He began recovering the dead as a teenager after encountering the remains of Soviet and Russian soldiers from World War II.

    Platsdarm’s volunteers go into fields and forests, among ruins and across territory, where the ground is often mined.

    Yukov’s widow, Evhenyia Kaluhyna, promised to continue his work, sobbing as she spoke at the funeral, wearing an embroidered white dress and standing over her husband’s open casket.

    “The work was difficult and terrifying,” she said. “But I promise you we will continue it because the (dead) deserve it, and you deserve it for everything you did.”

    Yukov had suffered leg injuries and lost an eye in a mine blast in 2022. Still recovering from those injuries, he returned to the front line.

    In a social media post last month, Yukov described the landscape in which he worked.

    “Remote mines, shelling, drones — everything is against you. But you go and do everything to ensure that every soul returns home,” he said.

    He also addressed those who believed Russian bodies should simply be left behind: “When they say: ‘Let them rot,’ I do not agree. This is how we fight for every soul.”

    Yukov spoke of his work in religious terms, saying a body was a soul waiting to go home.

    “This is action,” he wrote. “Action every day in the fields, in the forest belts, among the ruins, where your life can end at any moment.”

  • Hunter Biden opens up about his pardon and Joe Biden’s cancer

    Hunter Biden opens up about his pardon and Joe Biden’s cancer

    Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, opened up about his father’s prostate cancer, saying he has been in a lot of pain as the disease has spread.

    In a wide-ranging interview Friday with BBC Newsnight, Biden said that it has been “really sad to watch” his father suffer. The cancer has spread and “metastasized into his bones and further,” he said.

    He said that despite that, Joe Biden has continued to speak out in public about issues that he cares about.

    “He so believes in this country,” Hunter Biden said. “And as long as he is alive, I promise you, he is going to continue to fight.”

    He also discussed his feelings about receiving a presidential pardon from his father, saying that it was not good for the country.

    BBC correspondent Paddy O’Connell pressed Biden on whether he thought his father went “too far as a dad” in issuing a pardon to his son. In December 2024, as one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son despite having previously promised not to intervene in Hunter Biden’s legal problems.

    Hunter Biden said it was “not fair” and that he is “the most privileged person in the world” as it related to getting that kind of treatment from a father and president.

    “Was it good for our constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad’s legacy?” he asked. “No. On all counts.”

    However, Biden said they did not discuss the pardon before it happened. He is “eternally grateful for it because I think Donald Trump has proven to be exactly who my dad thought he was going to be, as it relates to revenge and retribution.”

    Critics had a good reason to lambaste the move, Hunter Biden said. But then he asked: “What would you have thought of my dad if he did not do it for me?”

    After steering clear of the spotlight during much of his father’s presidency, Hunter Biden has in recent months taken on a higher public profile, including engaging on social media with critics and supporters alike and granting media interviews, including one with right-wing podcaster Candace Owens.

    In the BBC interview, O’Connell also asked the former president’s son if his yearslong descent into drugs, alcohol, and legal issues “precipitated more decline” for Joe Biden’s health.

    “This is a very difficult thing to talk to you about,” O’Connell said. “But do you think you made life worse and the health worse for Joe Biden?”

    After a pause, Biden responded: “Of course I did.”

    The former president refused to shut the door on him or let him go, his son said, but the stress took a toll.

    “My dad never let me off the hook,” he said. “But what my dad did was always make it clear that, when I was ready to come back, the door was open.”

    In response to questions about his father’s controversial decision to seek a second term, Biden said that he wielded no influence over Joe Biden, nor did anyone. He was, however, just as shocked as everyone at the former president’s state during the June 2024 debate with Trump, during which Joe Biden struggled to finish sentences.

    “I could tell as soon as my father came out that something was wrong,” Hunter Biden said. “I have never seen him with kind of the hundred-yard stare that he had.”

    In May 2025, Joe Biden’s office revealed that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones.

  • Voter turnout surges in Tennessee after Black-majority district is erased

    Voter turnout surges in Tennessee after Black-majority district is erased

    Democratic turnout for House primaries in a majority-Black Tennessee county surged to the highest level in a decade Thursday, the latest sign that redistricting may be energizing Black voters across the South.

    A fifth of active registered voters cast a ballot in three Democratic U.S. House primaries held Thursday in Shelby County, which includes Memphis. That’s more than double the turnout percentage for similar contests in 2024.

    Organizers said the outpouring was motivated by anger over the Republican-led legislature’s action to break up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated minority voter protections in the Voting Rights Act this year. Lawmakers dispersed the Black voters of Shelby County into three separate districts that stretch into rural white communities.

    “People are pissed off,” said Kristal Knight, chairperson of the voting rights group Organize Tennessee. Memphis is “the densest part of the African American vote in the state, and people really took it personally — you are trying to come into our county, break up our county, and split our vote? And what better way to push back than to say we’re going to turn out.”

    President Donald Trump has pushed red states to draw new congressional districts to help the GOP maintain control of the House in elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s gutting of protections in the Voting Rights Act made that easier. Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee quickly drew new maps that dilute Black voting power, raising fears that the civil rights gains of the past 60 years are being destroyed.

    But the actions have galvanized Black voters, who have mobilized protests in many states and turned out in historic numbers in primaries in South Carolina. That turnout helped prompt the South Carolina legislature to abandon plans to dissolve a majority-Black district. The Georgia legislature also opted not to act after an outpouring of opposition.

    “People are really amped up about … what is happening across the South,” Knight said. “People need to show the rest of America, this is not the way you treat voters.”

    Democrats and voting rights organizers had worked overtime in Tennessee over the past few weeks to ensure a big presence in primary elections there for governor, a U.S. Senate seat, and the state’s nine House districts, even though Republicans are heavily favored to win those races in November.

    “A night like last night lets you know it’s not all in vain,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, pastor at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, who was among an outspoken, ardent group of faith leaders in the city who ramped up turnout efforts after redistricting.

    Memphis resident Harmony Lucas, 26, was one of the young voters who helped to boost turnout — urging friends, family, and even co-workers to join her at the polls. Lucas said she has voted in the past, but the GOP effort to break up the state’s only majority-Black district “made me realize I had to get more serious that my voice is heard. It matters.”

    Ian Randolph, who founded the Shelby County Voter Alliance to boost voter participation, attributed the jump in turnout in part to such efforts, including by unions and other civic organizations. In recent months, they have had poll parties, done texting and phone banking, and gone door to door to canvass voters.

    “Everything that touches a voter, we are involved in,” Randolph said. “Working those things got us a better turnout.”

    Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee’s lone Democratic congressman, decided not to seek reelection after the 9th District, which he represents, was overhauled. Justin Pearson — a charismatic Black preacher who received national attention in 2023 for his expulsion from the state legislature after protesting at the Capitol in Nashville — won the Democratic nomination to wage the uphill battle to replace Cohen.

    In his victory speech Thursday night, Pearson depicted his candidacy as an act of defiance against redistricting and the undermining of the Voting Rights Act, calling those steps “a blatant attempt to keep people like us out of power and an attempt to make us quit.”

    GOP strategist Ward Baker, who is working in the 9th District with Republican nominee Brent Taylor, disputed the idea that Black voters are turning out in bigger numbers out of anger over redistricting.

    “It’s the first time there’s a contested primary in a long time, and several people are running,” Baker said. He pointed out that Republican voters overall still outnumber Democrats by a wide margin.

    Beyond redistricting, Randolph said voters in the majority-Black county have been energized by other issues including an attempted state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the presence of federal immigration agents and the National Guard in the city.

    Democrats’ task gets harder heading into general elections this fall. Tennessee’s 9th District, which had been the state’s only blue seat, is now rated Solid Republican by the Cook Political Report and went for Trump by 21 points in 2024.

    “Everyone that came out last night — that needs to double for November,” Knight said.

    Fisher said he and other pastors have been planning another “Souls to the Polls” rally like the one that drew more than 1,000 people this spring. Thursday’s show of force gives him cautious optimism for November.

    “At least some of what we did worked,” Fisher said. “It’s one of those instances where you can log it as a win and build on it, but it’s not like a victory lap.”

  • A pillar of environmental enforcement is targeted by Trump and Musk’s AI company

    A pillar of environmental enforcement is targeted by Trump and Musk’s AI company

    WASHINGTON — Right-leaning legal activists along with Elon Musk ‘s artificial intelligence company have brought sweeping challenges against a cornerstone of legal enforcement in the United States: the right of private groups, people, and local governments to sue over violations of many major laws.

    Their argument, supported by the Trump administration, is that the Constitution reserves tremendous power for the president and federal agencies to decide how — or whether at all — to enforce federal law. They contend Congress should never have handed that power to others through so-called citizen suits that are part of environmental, campaign finance, and certain other laws.

    Environmentalists say it would be devastating to lose this essential, decades-old tool that is used to impose fines and halt lawbreaking by bad actors. Citizen suits, for example, have extracted millions from heavily polluting oil and gas operations, and ensured that lead pipes in Flint, Mich., would be removed after its water crisis.

    Legal experts say four pending federal cases — one of them filed last week — are moving forward at a time when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gives opponents of citizen suits a greater chance than ever of success. The hard part for those opponents now is winning early federal cases and creating disagreement between the country’s appeals courts, which may help convince the Supreme Court the issue is important enough for a nationwide ruling.

    Back in 2000, a Supreme Court opinion opened the door for that possibility.

    “Many of us who worked in this area have been waiting basically 26 years for this shoe to drop,” said Richard Lazarus, a Harvard professor with decades of experience in environmental law.

    A more inviting Supreme Court could take up the issue

    Lazarus was referring to former moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments in a Clean Water Act case that citizen suits raised “difficult and fundamental” questions about whether they improperly dilute executive power. The late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissenting opinion in the same case that citizen suits turn “over to private citizens the function of enforcing the law.” He avoided explicitly saying they were constitutional.

    “The court is more like Scalia’s court since he died than it ever was when he was there,” said Lazarus.

    He observed that those who lost cases where Scalia dissented are rushing back to today’s court hoping for a more favorable result.

    The critical issue for citizen suits is who — the government or private citizens — collects fines and has control. A person filing a citizen suit must tell the government ahead of time. The government can stop the suit if it sufficiently pursues the case itself, but its options are limited and the person suing can stay involved. Citizen suits can force compliance with the law and result in fines, which go to the U.S. Treasury.

    Prominent law firms, companies push against citizen suits

    Efforts to increase presidential power and limit who can sue have grown in recent years. They gained vital federal support this summer.

    That’s when the Pacific Legal Foundation, a right-leaning organization with recent Supreme Court success, chose a routine citizen suit in Tennessee federal court for a broader constitutional challenge.

    They signed on as attorneys for Springfield, a town of roughly 19,000 north of Nashville, that was in the early stages of fighting allegations brought by Tennessee Riverkeeper that it had let too much sewage flow from its treatment plant into a nearby creek, violating the Clean Water Act.

    It was the thirty-first citizen suit Tennessee Riverkeeper had filed under the Clean Water Act since 2010. Pacific Legal argued this was part of the problem — a private group of unelected activists had repeatedly forced others to expend resources defending themselves.

    It’s better when “the government is the one wielding the power because the government remains accountable to the people,” said Sean Radomski, a Pacific Legal Foundation attorney on the case.

    Radomski isn’t targeting every lawsuit a person can bring under federal law — he takes exception to those where fines go to the Treasury and where he says people are improperly taking on the government’s powers. Civil rights lawsuits, for example, where damages are paid directly to those wronged, wouldn’t be touched. Nor would many procedural challenges.

    Musk’s AI company also getting into the fight

    Elon Musk-led xAI argued many similar points in its ongoing bid to rid itself of the NAACP’s lawsuit accusing it of operating dozens of gas turbines near Memphis to power a data center without first getting permits. The civil rights group told a Mississippi federal court that the turbines are a pollution threat to those who lived nearby, many of whom are Black. One of their demands was to halt the gas turbines until the company complied with the law.

    The Trump administration intervened in support of Musk’s company, arguing that turning off the power to artificial intelligence that supports the Department of Defense would harm national security. Because the Trump administration wants the suit dismissed, the NAACP shouldn’t be allowed to proceed with it — prudent enforcement requires balancing interests, including national security, the DOJ said.

    Laura Thoms, director of enforcement at Earthjustice, which is representing the NAACP, said the government traditionally gets involved in cases to enforce the law, not to argue that it doesn’t matter if the law is broken.

    “This administration has determined that the company should be allowed to continue to pollute and that therefore, they should have the unilateral and unreviewable authority to veto our citizen suit,” she said.

    Changing the law would have profound consequences

    Citizen suits were written into foundational environmental laws because Congress understood that the federal government had limited resources to go after polluters and that the politics of some cases could be dicey — the government sometimes is the polluter. That’s why outside groups are necessary to fulfill the law’s purpose, according to Lazarus.

    Some argue that dynamic is especially important now. The Trump administration has slashed air and water protections and promoted fossil fuels. They’ve also constrained enforcement that could slow energy projects to only the most extreme cases, such as an “imminent and substantial threat to human health,” according to a federal guidance memo. Environmentalists say citizen suits are vital for filling the enforcement gap this administration created.

    Leaner budgets in many states make the problem worse.

    Thoms said the potential for corruption could increase, too — the president could unilaterally waive laws to benefit friends.

    She said that those who live in states with strong protections may be fine if citizen suits end, but other areas will be “sacrifice zones” where citizens have few options to fight pollution in their backyard. And the unprotected are more often poor and majority-minority communities.

    Many experts are skeptical of the challengers’ claims of a powerful president that gets to unilaterally shape enforcement even outside of criminal law. They argue the country’s history is rife with examples of that task falling to private individuals, too — a contention the challengers reject.

    David Adelman, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said before the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court, he would have thought there was a close to zero percent chance the challenges would succeed.

    “But this court has been so protective of the executive branch’s complete control of implementation of federal law,” he said, “that it’s not implausible that something like this could prevail.”

  • Senators head for the exits without meeting Trump’s demands for voting bill

    Senators head for the exits without meeting Trump’s demands for voting bill

    WASHINGTON — Senators headed for the exits in the predawn hours Saturday, ending for now a crushing standoff over President Donald Trump’s demands that they stay in session to pass a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill before the summer recess.

    While they wrapped up many key priorities in the overnight votes, advancing Trump’s SAVE America Act was not among them.

    Instead, Republican senators who had brought the chamber to a standstill spoke to Trump late in the evening about an alternative plan: They would try again to approve elements of the voting bill as part of a broader GOP budget package to fund the Iran war and replenish the Pentagon when they return to work in September.

    “Obviously, with the president at his direction, this is what he wants to do,” said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the GOP budget committee chairperson, flanked by Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Rick Scott (R., Fla.) after their phone call with the president.

    The sudden wind-down after weeks of Trump ramping up his demands shows just how deeply the president is able to reach into the halls of Congress to set the agenda or disrupt it, the executive directing the affairs of the legislative branch. While Trump is often seen as a de facto speaker of the House, he is trying his hand at mastering the Senate.

    Trump had poked and prodded Senate Majority Leader John Thune for weeks to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that does not have enough support from the Republicans who hold majority power, let alone the Democrats whose votes would be needed to advance it in the Senate.

    The president has gone so far as to insist the Senate abandon its filibuster rules to jam the SAVE America Act past the 60-vote threshold that is typically needed to advance legislation in the chamber — something Thune and most senators have no interest in doing.

    “John’s trying. He’s trying hard. I really believe that. But if he doesn’t get there, it would be unfortunate,” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News that posted Friday.

    Trump’s pressure couldn’t overcome Thune’s reality

    Thune himself has worked to carefully balance the often unusual demands of the president with the political reality of his slim GOP majority. Republicans are down one vote with the prolonged absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former leader, who said this week he was released from a rehabilitation center and is recovering at home.

    “I think everybody’s, for the most part, on the same page,” Thune (R., S.D.) said about the trio’s call with Trump, adding that eventually the Senate would have to tackle another budget bill.

    During a daylong session that dragged for nearly 20 hours, Thune successfully powered through a lengthy list of other Trump priorities. Senators confirmed the president’s pick of Todd Blanche as the attorney general, passed a sweeping Russian sanctions package to aid Ukraine, and approved a bipartisan package to fund the government into December in an early step toward avoiding a government shutdown.

    The Republicans also tried to push forward a slimmer voting bill that would require people to show IDs before casting ballots for federal elections. It failed to advance, largely on a party-line vote with Democrats opposed.

    But the failure to make progress on the SAVE America Act had erupted as an online crusade for Trump’s allies in Congress, amplified by activists urging them on.

    Led by Lee, a growing group of senators was refusing to adjourn for the summer break without passing Trump’s priority voting bill.

    At dinnertime, Thune gathered all the Republican senators for a meeting as the standoff deepened at the Capitol. There was no immediate way forward for the SAVE America Act or the broader budget bill. Thune encouraged the trio of senators to talk to the president, which they did, before regrouping back at Thune’s office.

    “We had about a two-hour conference meeting trying to figure out, you know, what we need to do to, to come to an agreement, to accomplish what the president wanted,” Johnson said. “Then we had discussion with the president, he agrees.”

    Lee acknowledged he was disappointed by the outcome, but said he understood the political reality of the situation.

    “We are not in a position right now where we have the wherewithal to pass it,” Lee told reporters at the Capitol, after the three senators emerged from Thune’s office following their call with Trump.

    Near daybreak, when the Senate did call for the vote to adjourn, Lee and others objected with hearty nos.

    On the simple voice vote, the ayes had it, and the motion to adjourn was adopted.