Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Donald Trump's Latest Job Approval Numbers
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,616 adults (including 1,450 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.
Voters Are Very Unhappy With Trump's War On Iran
The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,450 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.
It's Time To Put An Age Limit On Elected Federal Officials
The following editorial is by Dr. Anahita Due at MS NOW:
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., died suddenly over the weekend after what his office described as a “brief and sudden illness.” The following day, Sen. Mitch McConnell released a statement for the first time after three weeks in the hospital for a fall. Those two incidents are part of a broader issue. Former Sen. Dianne Feinstein spent her final years in office with multiple colleagues questioning her fitness to serve. Five members of the House of Representatives have died in this Congress alone. President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign amid persistent questions about his age and cognitive stamina. President Donald Trump has faced scrutiny about his health as well.
Enough. This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It is an American problem.
The U.S. political system has virtually no objective standards to ensure that the people entrusted with the highest offices in the country remain physically and cognitively capable of performing some of the most important and demanding jobs in the world. That is no longer acceptable.
Every profession carries responsibilities. As a vascular surgeon, if I developed a serious medical condition that impaired my judgment, concentration or stamina, I would have an ethical obligation to step away from the operating room. My patients deserve a surgeon whose complete focus is on them, not someone distracted by illness or struggling through a medical crisis. If my attention wavered at the wrong moment, a patient could die.
We accept this principle throughout society. Airline pilots undergo regular medical examinations. Members of the military must meet physical standards. Physicians are credentialed and can be evaluated for fitness for duty. These requirements are not discriminatory. They exist because the consequences of impaired performance are too great.
Politics should be no different. Serving as president or in Congress requires extraordinary judgment, focus, stamina and resilience. These positions involve national security briefings, crisis management, sensitive negotiations, economic policy, military decisions and consequential choices. If someone is battling a significant medical illness or cognitive issue, their attention should be where any reasonable person’s would be: on their health and recovery. Why should we expect less from the people making decisions that affect 340 million Americans?
As a surgeon, I believe we should consider three reforms.
First, we need an independent, nonpartisan system of routine medical evaluations for candidates seeking the nation’s highest offices and for those who hold them. While the president undergoes physical exams at Walter Reed Medical Center, that is inadequate so long as the White House can pick and choose what information to release. Those examinations should be conducted by physicians who are independent of any campaign or administration using standardized criteria that include physical and cognitive assessments. Voters deserve transparency regarding whether the people asking for their trust are capable of performing the job.
Second, we need to look at term limits. Such rules would have to be carefully constructed: the Supreme Court has ruled that congressional term limits require a constitutional amendment, and if the limits are too strict, they risk the loss of valuable experience and institutional knowledge. But no elected office should become a lifetime career simply because incumbents possess clear fundraising advantages and decades of accumulated name recognition.
Finally, age limits must be considered as well. We accept that reality in countless other areas of society. We establish minimum ages for driving, voting, military service and even kindergarten. We have maximum ages for commercial airline pilots, federal law enforcement personnel and the boards of most S&P 500 companies. Many states have age limits for judges. The same principle should apply to those who govern us. Yes, many Americans remain remarkably sharp well into their 70s and 80s. But there will always be individuals who defy expectations. Public policy, however, cannot be written around those exceptions.
Our nation’s founders also remind us that transformative leadership does not require spending decades in office. Many of the architects of the American republic were remarkably young by today’s standards. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. James Madison was 36 during the Constitutional Convention. Alexander Hamilton was in his early 30s when he helped shape the new nation. They did not need decades of experience to be capable, energetic, innovative and willing to challenge convention.
None of these reforms will be easy. All will require bipartisan cooperation. But the status quo is no longer tenable. This is not about Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Democrats, Republicans and independents — all of us deserve leaders who are healthy enough to shoulder the responsibilities of public office, transparent enough to earn our trust and humble enough to know when to pass the torch.
That is not ageism. That is responsible governance.
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Talarico Has Nearly 7-Point Lead Over Paxton Among Texas Hispanic Business Owners
The chart above reflects the results of the survey the U.S. Hispanic Business Council did between June 2 and June 15 of 1,012 Hispanic business owners in Texas.
Five Reasons Why Todd Blanche Should NOT Be Confirmed As Attorney General
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich gives us 5 reasons Todd Blanche Should not be confirmed at Attorney General:
1. Illegally suppressed the Epstein files
Blanche has conceded that the Department of Justice violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act by making improper redactions in the public release of Jeffrey Epstein’s records but continues to drag his feet. Under Blanche, the department is currently battling lawsuits from journalists and demands from the state of New Mexico to unseal the unredacted documents.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the department to either unredact and release specific files — including emails, potential co-conspirators, and interview notes summarizing allegations against President Trump — or justify why they must remain withheld. But under Blanche’s direction, the department has repeatedly missed or delayed fulfilling orders to unredact the records completely, leading plaintiffs and transparency advocates to accuse Blanche of ongoing noncompliance.
Blanche also personally interviewed Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, in prison, before Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security facility. Minimum-security prisons are generally reserved for inmates with far shorter sentences than Maxwell’s 20 years. Did Blanche make a bargain with her? We don’t know.
2. Prosecuted Trump’s “enemies”
Blanche has assured White House officials that he will move faster and more efficiently against Trump’s targets, and at executing other White House priorities, than did his predecessor, Pam Bondi. Bondi was fired presumably because she didn’t deliver what Trump wanted quickly enough.
At Trump’s insistence, Blanche is moving ahead with investigations into several targets whom Trump regards as enemies — including John O. Brennan, the former CIA director who helped investigate Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Blanche is overseeing the Brennan inquiry, examining whether he lied to Congress in testimony in 2023, and relating to what Trump’s allies have cast as Brennan’s involvement in a “grand conspiracy” by Obama and Biden administration officials to keep Trump out of office each time he ran.
Blanche has also given the green light to inquiries into Cassidy Hutchinson, a young former White House aide who outraged Trump four years ago after she implicated him in the violence that erupted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Under Blanche, prosecutors have also revived a botched attempt to bring charges against James B. Comey, the former FBI director, after a federal judge threw out charges last year that Comey had lied to Congress.
Blanche’s new indictment of Comey is for posting on social media an image of seashells he took while walking on a North Carolina beach. Blanche’s prosecutors are casting it as threatening because the image spelled “86 47” (the number “86” is slang for “getting rid of” someone or something, while “47” refers to Trump). Comey says that he quickly deleted the post as soon as he heard that the numbers were associated with violence.
There appears to be nothing Blanche won’t do that Trump wants done. Blanche is prosecuting the Democratic fundraising organization ActBlue. He’s prosecuting the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit in Alabama. In terms of turning the Department of Justice into the Department of Trump’s Grievances, Bondi was bad, but Blanche is far worse.
3. Sought to erase January 6, 2021
Blanche is also doing Trump’s bidding in seeking to erase from the public record the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Blanche delivered Trump’s pardons to those who were found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Under Blanche’s direction, the Department of Justice has even removed from its website news releases about the criminal cases related to what occurred on that fateful day, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”
Blanche also signed off on a $1.8 billion fund that could have been funneled to those who stormed Congress as part of the so-called “settlement” agreement between Trump and, well, Trump, after Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service. After lawmakers from both parties criticized the deal, Blanche said, during a June 2 hearing before the House, “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” But his flat refusal to put his reversal in writing is an indication that he could devise an alternative.
Meanwhile, Blanche has said there’s a “ton of evidence” the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, though he couldn’t provide a “definitive answer” and has pointed to ongoing investigations in Georgia and Florida as possibly answering the question.
4. Tried to immunize Trump and his family
Blanche personally signed — and was the only name on — the “settlement” document that would immunize Trump and his family from all future prosecutions. The breadth of this agreement is staggering. It prohibits the U.S. government from looking into any of the corrupt sh*t Trump and his family have gotten into.
And there’s a lot of corrupt sh*t. Trump is easily the most corrupt president in American history. Since being in office for a second time, he’s so far increased his wealth by an estimated $4 billion, and his sons’ and daughters’ wealth by billions more.
If the immunity part of the “settlement” remains in force, we may never know the true extent of Trump’s corrupt transactions, because the agreement — devised and signed by Blanche — may result in the largest cover-up of presidential wrongdoing and illegality in American history.
5. Overseen the largest exodus of talent in the department’s history
Blanche’s tenure has seen the departure of a record number of Department of Justice attorneys, including the termination of personnel who previously worked on January 6 cases or on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.
The resignations and departures amount to over a quarter of what had been the department’s entire legal staff. For example, roughly 70 percent — 250 — of the Civil Rights Division’s attorneys have departed. Two-thirds (69 out of 110) of the lawyers tasked with defending executive actions have either resigned or announced their exit.Staffing of the Voting Section unit has fallen from 30 attorneys to just three. High-level resignations have also occurred in the Southern District of New York and the Public Integrity Section.
For all these reasons, Blanche should not be confirmed as attorney general of the United States.
If you’re with me on this, please contact your senator’s office and tell them to vote NO on confirming Blanche. Your senators need to hear from you, now. Please do it today.
The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Elected officials prioritize their own voters, so please share your name and your city/town so the staff knows you live in their state.
Are We Getting The Truth About McConnell? I Doubt it!
McConnell's people have released the photo above of the senator. They are now saying that he just had an fall and a mild case of pneumonia, and is now in a rehab facility.
If that's the truth, why did we have over a month of secrecy about his condition?
I believe his problem was much more serious.
The folks at Really American Media also doubt we are getting the truth. Here is what they had to say.
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