Trump Sued Himself. A Judge Ended the Scam
Plus: Graham's death reshapes the Senate, and four NYT reporters face a grand jury for accurate reporting.
This is "What I'm Hearing" — a somewhat daily guide to the stories that matter, drawn from the best pro-democracy political writers working right now, with my analysis on top.
Lindsey Graham Died.
Sen. Lindsey Graham died Saturday night at 71 from an aortic dissection, a tear in his main artery, two days after his birthday. I don’t believe in speaking ill of the recently deceased, so I’ll keep this section to just the facts and others’ reactions.
Trump told NBC that Graham’s death is “a big blow to the SAVE America Act.” He told CNN Graham “was tough and nasty but I was nasty too.” His Truth Social tribute, as Zeteo cataloged, featured a photo of himself in a “Make Iran Great Again” hat. And on Fox & Friends Monday morning, Trump graded his most loyal Senate ally “a 99.9 instead of 100,” docking him a tenth of a point for criticizing Trump after January 6. Sen. Mike Lee suggested that the best memorial would be to pass the voter-suppression bill this month.
Robert Hubbell wrote the counter-obituary, resurfacing what Graham said before the conversion: “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell” (2015). “My party has gone batshit crazy” (2016). Against the epitaph he chose instead: “I am his north star.” That arc — from truth-teller to courtier — is the story of the modern Republican Party, and Graham wrote it about himself, in public, knowing exactly what he was doing.
The practical fallout is immediate. The GOP majority drops to 52. Graham’s death also narrows the Judiciary Committee to 11–10 the very week of Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing, and McConnell’s absence deadlocks the Rules Committee 8–8. Gov. Henry McMaster appoints an interim senator ahead of an August 11 special primary; Nancy Mace has started polling her prospects.
Read more: Robert Hubbell, Zeteo, The Hill, Punchbowl
Wednesday: One Man Answers for the Epstein Coverup
Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, now acting attorney general, sits for confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee starting Wednesday. Bill Kristol’s advice to Democrats is the right one: give the hearing to the Epstein survivors.
The record Blanche has to answer for is specific. He attended the July 2025 Situation Room meeting about the political fallout of the Epstein files. He personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell a week later. He presided over her transfer to a minimum-security prison. And Robert Reich adds four more counts: conceded violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, revived prosecutions of Trump’s enemies, a settlement bearing only Blanche’s signature that grants Trump’s family immunity from financially related prosecution, and a DOJ exodus that has cut the Voting Section from 30 attorneys to 3.
Kristol cites polling showing that 75% of Americans, including 66% of Republicans, believe the government is still hiding information about Epstein. Sarah Longwell’s focus groups find Trump’s own voters saying, “obviously it’s all a cover-up.”
A single Republican — Cornyn, Tillis, or Cassidy — can stall the nomination. The Hill reports Tillis and Cornyn are both noncommittal. Cornyn just lost his primary by 30 points and owes Trump nothing. Let’s see if any of them have grown a spine. Don’t hold your breath.
Read more: The Bulwark, Robert Reich, Robert Hubbell, The Hill
Trump Sued Himself, Settled With Himself, and Signed His Own Immunity. A Judge Just Torched It.
This morning, a federal judge nullified the most brazen self-dealing arrangement of Trump’s presidency.
The scheme, briefly: Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion over the 2019 leak of his tax returns. He didn’t file the suit as a private citizen when he had every right to. He waited until he was president again and his own former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, ran the Justice Department. Then the two sides “settled.” The settlement created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate right-wingers who felt targeted by the previous administration. And the day after the deal was announced, Blanche quietly signed an addendum declaring the United States “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his businesses, and barring the IRS from auditing their past returns. The New York Times estimated Trump was facing roughly $100 million in liability from one pending audit alone.
Today, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams threw the whole thing out. Her 56-page order is the most withering judicial description of this administration. The lawsuit was brought “for an improper purpose — to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” There was “never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail” — because “the Lead Plaintiff and the Government are one, a fully realized unitary interest.” Trump and his two oldest sons, she found, “acted in bad faith.” The tax amnesty “directly contravenes” the federal law barring presidents from influencing audits. She barred every party from citing the settlement in any proceeding, ever. This means the immunity Blanche signed is now worthless as a legal defense if a future administration comes calling.
And she didn’t stop at the deal. Williams referred Trump’s personal lawyer to the Florida Bar for discipline, and sent her order to the New York and D.C. bars, where proceedings against Blanche and Associate AG Stanley Woodward are already ongoing. She noted the case was reopened because 35 former federal judges filed a brief calling the settlement “a fraud on the court,” and she invited them to seek monetary sanctions. In a footnote, she wrote she was “extremely troubled” by Blanche’s congressional testimony that no court had any role in reviewing the arrangement.
Read more: CNN, CBS News, CNBC, The New Republic
They Subpoenaed the Reporters.
On Friday night, federal agents showed up at the homes of New York Times journalists with grand jury subpoenas.
The four reporters, Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt, had reported that the Secret Service urged Trump not to fly home from the NATO summit on the Qatari-gifted Air Force One, because the $400 million retrofitted plane lacks the defensive countermeasures of the old one, while Iran is actively threatening him. Trump himself told reporters, “I have a threat all the time. I’m No. 1 on their list.” The reporting was accurate. Trump was enraged anyway.
FBI Director Kash Patel spent roughly eight hours Friday running the leak hunt from the White House rather than FBI headquarters, and by evening, the DOJ had subpoenaed the four to appear before a Manhattan grand jury this Wednesday. The Times’ top newsroom lawyer, David McCraw: the appearance of federal agents on reporters’ doorsteps “should shock the conscience of any American.”
It is extremely rare for the government to compel reporters to reveal sources before a grand jury, and this became possible when Pam Bondi rescinded the Biden-era protections for journalists’ records last year. In January, FBI agents searched a Washington Post reporter’s home.
The subpoenas were issued by SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, whose confirmation hearing is Wednesday. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is demanding senators hold him accountable. So picture the split screen: Clayton upstairs asking the Senate to trust him with the nation’s intelligence apparatus, while downstairs in Manhattan, his grand jury tries to force four journalists to name their sources for accurately reporting that the president’s gift plane isn’t safe.
Read more: NPR, CNN, PBS/AP, Letters from an American
That's your Monday. Lindsey Graham is dead. On Wednesday, Blanche answers for the Epstein files, Clayton answers for subpoenaing reporters — and four journalists face a grand jury for telling the truth.