America woke up today to discover that apparently no institution is too boring, technical, local, or previously settled to escape political interference. Trump is trying to reshape childhood vaccine recommendations by executive order, election officials are preparing for possible federal interference with ballots, DHS is outsourcing migrant surveillance to private contractors, and artificial intelligence companies are quietly expanding from selling tools to competing with the customers who trained them. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner’s diplomatic résumé continues accumulating catastrophes, Todd Blanche inherited an Epstein problem roughly the size of Manhattan, and Massachusetts decided doctors might actually know more about complicated pregnancies than politicians. Wild concept.
Key Takeaways
Trump Is Trying to Rewrite the Childhood Vaccine Schedule by Executive Order
Trump signed an executive order directing sweeping changes to childhood vaccine recommendations, including moving several vaccines away from routine recommendation and directing officials to pursue separate measles, mumps, and rubella shots that are not currently licensed separately in the United States. The order does not itself rewrite state law, but apparently decades of infectious disease science were getting entirely too comfortable.
Election Officials Are Preparing for Possible Federal Ballot Seizures
Miles Taylor warns that the administration could attempt ballot seizures during close midterm races after the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of Fulton County election materials earlier this year, although his prediction about future seizures remains analysis rather than a confirmed government plan. DOJ has also repeatedly lost court battles seeking unredacted state voter files, which apparently has not diminished its enthusiasm for asking again.
DHS Has Built a $281 Million Private Migrant Tracking Network
Eyes on ICE documents thirteen contracts worth up to roughly $281 million that allow private companies to conduct database research, commercial data searches, digital investigations, and physical surveillance for immigration enforcement. We have apparently reached the stage where government surveillance has been successfully outsourced to people with invoices.
Communities Are Organizing Against Flock Surveillance Cameras
Local organizers are pushing municipalities to reconsider Flock automated license plate readers and the enormous databases created when cameras continuously record vehicle movements. Turns out residents are weirdly attached to the radical concept that driving to Target should not generate an intelligence file.
Trump’s Own Mortgages Resemble Conduct His Administration Has Called Suspicious
ProPublica found that Trump signed mortgages seven weeks apart in the 1990s declaring two neighboring Florida properties his principal residence even though reporting indicates they were intended as rentals, conduct similar to what his administration has cited while pursuing political opponents. Mortgage experts caution that multiple primary residence mortgages do not automatically establish fraud, which is precisely why using them as a political flamethrower was a stupid idea in the first place.
Taxpayer Funded Private Schools Are Exploding While Oversight Barely Exists
ProPublica found at least 1,500 additional private schools listed across thirteen voucher states compared with five years ago, bringing the total above 9,600 while many states provide minimal oversight of who operates them, what they teach, or how students perform. Apparently public education required endless testing and accountability while publicly funded private education gets a check and a cheerful little wave.
AI Companies Are Starting to Eat Their Own Customers
Sree Sreenivasan examines how major artificial intelligence companies are embedding themselves inside industries and then building products that compete directly with their customers, including design, pharmaceuticals, recruiting, and software development. Silicon Valley has apparently upgraded “move fast and break things” to “move in, learn your business, and become your competitor.”
Taylor Farms Expanded Its Recall After a Salmonella Outbreak
Taylor Farms recalled salsa, guacamole, dips, and prepared foods containing jalapeños connected to a multistate Salmonella investigation that has sickened hundreds of people, although the company says no illnesses have been tied directly to the recalled finished products. Grocery shopping has officially become the least entertaining epidemiology course in America.
Todd Blanche Inherited an Epstein Problem That Is Not Going Away
Scott MacFarlane and Tara Palmeri examine why the Epstein files could become an especially difficult accountability test for newly sworn in Attorney General Todd Blanche, including an Epstein related email Palmeri says could create new problems for Trump. Turns out becoming Attorney General does not magically make several million pages of Epstein records climb into a shredder by themselves.
Connecticut’s Primary Is Getting an Epstein Records Audit
Greg Conners traces documented Epstein connections to Connecticut through emails, property references, social contacts, and JPMorgan records while examining candidates in today’s congressional primaries. Proximity does not prove complicity, but elections are an excellent time to ask candidates whether they support releasing the damn files.
Jared Kushner’s Foreign Policy Portfolio Is Not Exactly Screaming Success
Popular Information reviews Kushner’s involvement in negotiations involving Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine while noting that major conflicts in each area have deteriorated despite repeated Trump administration claims that breakthroughs were near. Perhaps international diplomacy requires slightly more experience than marrying the president’s daughter and owning distressed Manhattan real estate.
Massachusetts Expanded Access to Abortion After 24 Weeks
Massachusetts changed its law to allow abortion after 24 weeks when a physician determines it is medically appropriate and removed a requirement that later procedures occur only in hospitals. Somewhere a politician just learned that complicated medical decisions can actually be handled by patients and physicians without his personal supervision.
Closing Thoughts
Today’s stories have one deeply irritating theme: systems designed to protect the public are being tested at exactly the moment powerful people are discovering how much they can bend them.
Public health recommendations are becoming political targets. Election records are becoming federal battlegrounds. Immigration enforcement is becoming a private surveillance industry. Public education money is pouring into institutions receiving dramatically less scrutiny. Artificial intelligence companies are becoming infrastructure, vendors, competitors, and possibly landlords of the digital economy all at once.
And then there are the Epstein files.
They remain sitting there like the world’s most inconvenient filing cabinet while another Attorney General inherits responsibility for explaining why the public still cannot see everything it was promised.
None of this means panic.
It means pay attention.
Read the contracts. Watch the courts. Check your voter registration. Follow public health guidance instead of politicians cosplaying as epidemiologists. Ask who owns the surveillance system. Ask where the education money went. Ask what happened to the Epstein records.
Most importantly, keep showing up.
Authoritarian politics depends heavily on convincing ordinary people that resistance requires some enormous heroic act. It does not. Sometimes resistance is a lawsuit. Sometimes it is a public records request. Sometimes it is a physician refusing political interference. Sometimes it is six people standing over an interstate with a banner.
And sometimes it is simply refusing to stop asking the fucking question.
Claws out.
Featured Resisters and Resources
- HRT at Home is an online educational and healthcare access resource focused on helping transgender and gender diverse individuals learn about hormone replacement therapy, telehealth care options, informed consent clinics, and gender affirming healthcare services.
- If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice. A national nonprofit network of lawyers, law students, and advocates using legal expertise to defend and advance reproductive justice — including abortion, pregnancy, and birth decisions — in courts, communities, and policy arenas. If/When/How operates a legal helpline and defense fund, provides training and technical assistance, and mobilizes legal and allied networks to resist criminalization of reproductive choices.
What We Are Watching Today
- 9:03 AM EDT
Secy. Duffy and FAA Administrator Bedford News Conference at Newark Airport - 10:00 AM EDT
U.N. Security Council Holds Meeting on Tensions in the West Bank Live - 10:00 AM EDT
Ohio Governor Candidate Amy Acton Holds Healthcare Roundtable in Steubenville Live - 11:30 AM EDT
Rep. Maggie Goodlander Speaks at Rotary Club in Concord, NH - 2:00 PM EDT
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) Joins Michigan Dems. Rally in Ann Arbor - 7:00 PM EDT
Primary Night in SC, WI, MN, AL, CT & VT
Today’s Call to Action
1. Read Today’s Resistance Survival Guides
2. Sign these Petitions and Send These Pre Written Letters
- Investigate Trump’s Foreign Bribery Deals
- Sign the petition to Congress: Launch a full investigation into ICE’s surveillance of online critics, following an explosive report this surveillance from the Wall Street Journal.
- Sign the petition denouncing Donald Trump’s pardons of 2020 election subverters.
- Add your name to the petition denouncing the Department of Justice for scrubbing its website of all press releases documenting charges, convictions, and sentences tied to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
- Sign if you agree: Congress must reject Mike Johnson’s ideas to “fix” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
- Add your name to the petition denouncing the Trump administration’s cancellation of hundreds of energy-related research grants worth a total $8 billion solely because they were going to blue states. The Trump administration has admitted to doing this in court.
- Lifesaving programs are shutting their doors. Add your name to our open letter today.
3. Verify your voter registration status and help at least one other person check theirs
4. Save contact information for local legal aid and voting support organizations
5. Attend an Event
- Ground Truth New Volunteer Orientation Tuesday, August 11, from 8:00 to 8:30 p.m. ET. Learn how to help contact voters and strengthen competitive House campaigns.
- Ground Truth Virtual Phone Bank Wednesday, August 12, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. ET. Training and support are provided for new callers.
- Fridays at 4 Letter Writing and More Friday, August 14, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. ET. Write voter letters, contact lawmakers, and amplify democracy campaigns online.
6. Contact Your Lawmakers Directly
- “Hi, I’m a constituent calling to demand the full release of the Epstein files, with survivor privacy protected. Congress must subpoena missing records, investigate deleted evidence, and stop protecting powerful people.”
- “Hi, I’m a constituent calling to oppose federal surveillance of pregnancy and abortion information. Please protect private medical records and block funding for any system designed to monitor pregnant people.”
- “Hi, I’m a constituent asking you to protect congressionally approved funding from political interference. Public money must be released as Congress directed, with full transparency and consequences for officials who unlawfully withhold it.”
- Join The Epstein Justice Comment Bomb: We have a new tactic guaranteed to grab the attention of our representatives. You’ve been calling a rep each week. Now we’re adding something easier, but far more visible.
Everyone drops a comment on the same rep’s Instagram post at the same time. When we all show up together, it’s impossible to ignore. Next Up: Rep. Ayanna Pressley
We believe she’s open to doing the right thing but we need your help getting her attention.
1. Go to https://bombcongress.com/ (goes directly to her post)
2. Drop the Comment: “Please stand with @epstein_justice”
7. Boycott Fascist Businesses
