Good morning. I’m John Byrne. Before we dive in, take a second and tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. These algorithms were built to smother reporting like the stories below, and a share from you is what breaks through.
Trump’s press secretary is quitting the podium, and the tabloids want you to believe The View is fighting to hire her. A federal judge in Washington is done being lied to about the Epstein files and is inching toward throwing Trump’s attorney general in contempt. Pete Hegseth is telling friends he might run for president. And in Georgia, the one Democrat with every reason to go soft is instead calling the president a crook to his face — and winning. Four stories, one thread: the difference between what power wants you to see and what’s actually going on.
Before the news, one thing you need to know. Facebook has severely limited our content distribution, which means many of our own followers aren’t even seeing our reporting in their feeds anymore. This came after we did reporting on Zuckerberg cozying up to Trump. That is not a coincidence; it is what happens when independent media tells the truth about a billionaire. The one thing no algorithm can switch off is a direct subscription. If this work matters to you, if you want reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. If you believe this reporting matters, subscribe right now or upgrade your subscription. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down.
Here’s how the machine works. Karoline Leavitt wrapped up her final week as White House press secretary, and the Daily Mail ran a barn-burner: “Karoline Leavitt in secret talks to join TV’s most controversial show.” Trump’s thrilled, the story said. A conservative firebrand set to storm the liberal fortress of The View.
Then CNN’s Brian Stelter made a phone call — the kind of thing that used to be standard before outrage became the product.
An ABC source told him the truth: Leavitt was invited to appear as a guest, once. She wouldn’t even be a guest host. She wouldn’t join in any official capacity. All six current co-hosts are returning for the new season. The whole “secret talks to join the panel” saga was, in a word, manufactured.
A twenty-nine-year-old who spent two years berating reporters from the podium gets a routine booking invitation, and it’s inflated into a culture-war epic. Leavitt says she’s heading home to her kids and back to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, to “cheer him on.”
That’s the real story, and it’s a small one. The invented version got the clicks.
While the tabloids chased a bogus story, something real is happening in a federal courtroom. Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Justice Department is edging toward a contempt finding over Jeffrey Epstein records it was ordered to produce under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wants handwritten FBI notes tied to a woman who says she was sexually abused by Donald Trump when she was thirteen years old. He wants a redaction log. He wants a sworn declaration.
What he got, according to legal analyst Michael Popok on the Legal AF podcast, was a two-page filing he described as gibberish backed by no affidavit. It claimed a hard-luck account of DOJ lawyers toiling through Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. A pity party, Popok dubbed it, dressed up as a legal reply.
The lawsuit was brought by journalist and attorney Katie Phang, who alleges the department improperly redacted the files and is stonewalling their release. One of her lawyers flatly contradicted the DOJ’s claim that it had never produced handwritten notes in the matter, pointing to more than a hundred examples of exactly that.
Popok’s read on Sullivan: the judge has had it. Produce the notes, or he’ll start finding people in contempt. The judge can also threaten jail. When a Justice Department would rather risk contempt than let the public see what’s in a file, the file is the story. We want to know what’s in there.
In news that should be in The Onion, Pete Hegseth has told close friends he’s weighing a run for president in 2028. He’s convinced he shares the toughness and defiance that made Trump a phenomenon. His surprise turn at the Iowa State Fair this month (Iowa being the traditional first stop to the White House) did nothing to quiet the chatter.
The Pentagon insists it’s foolish speculation and Hegseth’s only focus is the job.
About that. Hegseth is running a war on Iran that most Americans don’t want — even Fox News finds 66% disapprove of Trump’s handling of it. Gas has jumped from under three dollars a gallon to just over four. Eighteen American servicemembers are dead. Iran keeps rattling global oil shipping, and there’s no end in sight.
Three former defense secretaries — Panetta, Hagel, and Cohen — told NBC that Hegseth’s partisan campaign swings are inappropriate.
“My God, we’re at war,” Hagel said, incredulous that a sitting Pentagon chief is stumping in Iowa.
No defense secretary in American history has ever made the jump to president. Hegseth is auditioning for the role while his decisions kill U.S. troops overseas.
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And then there’s Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. As the only sitting senator up for election in a state Trump carried in 2024, politicos say he should be tacking to the center. The safe play is to soften and moderate; Ossoff has successfully done the opposite.
Ossoff — who seems like he’s already auditioning for president — calls Trump a “draft-dodging, crook president” and his administration “an obscenity.” He labels his Republican challenger Mike Collins a Trump “puppet.” He talks about the “Mar-a-Lago mafia.”
And it’s working: he leads his opponent in every major poll and holds a commanding money advantage less than three months out. His theory, as he put it to The New York Times, is that Trumpism feeds on the sense that government doesn’t care and can’t deliver, so he delivers: an $8.4 million grant to fix one small town’s gas lines, a cellphone number thousands of Georgians actually have. A lifelong Republican mayor who voted against him six years ago is backing him now, because, she says, he calls and asks what they need.
His opponent rejoins with “common sense versus communism crazy” and jabs about a “trust fund kid,” while contending with reporting about former staffers who trafficked in racist and antisemitic material.
Ossoff’s bet is that competence plus spine beats Trumpian grievance. As national Democrats waffle, he’s showing that shouting might be the winning move.
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. A lie spun about Trump’s press secretary, a judge ready to bring the Epstein hammer down, and a buffoon considering a run for president. We chase these stories down without a billionaire deciding what reaches your eyes, and Facebook keeps throttling how far they travel, so we are betting everything on this page instead. If this work matters to you, if you want independent reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Your support helps us bring you these stories to millions of people and keeps the pressure on those in power. Subscribe today or upgrade your subscription now.
Tap the ❤️ and restack this one before you head out. It makes a bigger difference than you’d think, and it helps these stories reach people the algorithm would rather they didn’t. Thank you for everything you do.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, thanks for fighting, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
