deconstruct

During a rambling and largely nonsensical presser in Los Angeles on Friday, Trump constantly tripped over himself, outright rejecting important questions from reporters while making absurd claims, such as the fact that the country was “perfect” in January 2021.

In one portion of his speech, Trump badly botched the name of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, by referring to her as “Comrade Howard” while shaking his head. He also referred to Harris as a “radical left Marxist Communist fascist,” an ideological combination that is technically impossible, and attacked her for her “woman-made destruction.”

Shortly after the speech ended, Trump had one final thought to share, which he posted in brief on Truth Social: “#.” At the time of publication, the post had more than 2,700 likes.

In another bizarre attempt to “own the libs” just by confusing them, openly anti-LGBTQ+ performer Kid Rock has been enlisted to headline a fundraiser for the self-loathing Log Cabin Republicans, the gay conservatives group.

The onetime Detroit rapper-now MAGA acolyte will headline the fundraiser “Red White & Rock,” the LCR announced over the weekend. The gay conservatives billed the event as a “star-studded concert uniting conservatives and celebrating American spirit.”

The high-dollar event takes place in Nashville on September 29, with special guests Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s out, onetime acting director of National Intelligence in the last, chaotic days of the twice-impeached president’s administration, and forever-fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle, who’ll serve as emcee of the event, if never Donald Trump Jr’s bride.

For a variety of reasons, including operational security, a crew’s internet access is regularly restricted while underway, to preserve bandwidth for the mission and to keep their ship safe from nefarious online attacks.

But the senior enlisted leaders among the littoral combat ship Manchester’s gold crew knew no such privation last year, when they installed and secretly used their very own Wi-Fi network during a deployment, according to a scathing internal investigation obtained by Navy Times.

As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship’s chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them.

So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed “STINKY” to check sports scores, text home and stream movies.

Asking to leave work on time or taking some time off can be tricky enough. Even trickier is tendering a resignation, which can be seen as the ultimate form of disrespect in the world’s fourth-biggest economy, where workers traditionally stick with one employer for decades, if not for a lifetime.

In the most extreme cases, grumpy bosses rip up resignation letters and harass employees to force them to stay.

Yuki Watanabe was unhappy at her previous job, saying her former supervisor often ignored her, making her feel bad. But she didn’t dare resign.

“I didn’t want my ex-employer to deny my resignation and keep me working for longer,” she told CNN during a recent interview.

Robert Morris, who founded and led Gateway Church for nearly 25 years in the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, Texas, resigned after the scandal came to light in June. His exit sent thousands of evangelicals into a season of struggle that has lasted months.

Last week, a pastor who oversaw all of Gateway’s campuses departed amid an undisclosed “moral issue,” becoming the latest in a series of changes for the church: The cancellation of its annual conference. The departure of Morris’ successor. The renaming of its Houston campus and an exodus of worshippers.

At each weekend service, worshippers continue to face reminders of the scandal, with interim or guest pastors kicking off their sermons saying “I’m sorry,” talking about grief or finding hope in difficult times. They’ve noticed people who have sat and prayed around them for years are once again not showing up for service.

The church has seen a decrease of 17% to 19% in weekend services attendance, a church spokesperson told CNN.

At an anti-vaccine conference in Georgia on Friday, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed his commitment to the cause and spoke to his base about how he, as president, would serve the movement he built.

“I feel like I’ve come home today,” he said to a standing ovation, crediting the assembled audience with his candidacy.

He then laid out his vision for a Kennedy presidency, which would include telling the National Institutes of Health to take “a break” from studying infectious diseases, like Covid-19 and measles, and pivoting the agency to the study of chronic diseases, like diabetes and obesity. Kennedy has suggested without evidence that researchers and pharmaceutical companies are driven by profit to neglect such chronic conditions and invest in ineffective and even harmful treatments; he includes vaccines among them.

“I’m gonna say to NIH scientists, God bless you all,” Kennedy said. “Thank you for public service. We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.”

A judge in New York rejected a request by attorneys for Fox News to subpoena billionaire George Soros as part of the cable news channel’s ongoing legal fight with voting systems company Smartmatic.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen on Monday shot down a request from Fox to compel Soros to provide documents and testimony as part of its process of discovery in the case.

Soros is a progressive billionaire who often draws the ire of conservative media figures and Republican politicians.

Fox, in a court filing earlier this month, sought to depose Mark Malloch Brown, who is the president of the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation and served as chairman of Smartmatic’s parent company.

“I base that on the finding that the crux of Smartmatic’s claims is that Fox has asserted they were part of rigging [the election], not that Smartmatic was affiliated with George Soros, Alex Soros, or the OSF,” Cohen said in open court on Monday, CNN reported. “That’s a peripheral matter — at best, it’s a possible rationale for defamation.”

America’s drug overdose crisis is out of control. Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat it, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing.

In 2018, Republicans, Democrats and then-President Donald Trump united around legislation that threw $20 billion into treatment, prevention and recovery. But five years later, the SUPPORT Act has lapsed and the number of Americans dying from overdoses has grown more than 60 percent, driven by illicit fentanyl. The battle has turned into a slog.

Even though 105,000 Americans died last year, Congress is showing little urgency about reupping the law since it expired on Sept. 30. That’s not because of partisan division, but a realization that there are no quick fixes a new law could bring to bear.

Aiming to expand access to treatment, Congress in December eliminated the waiver and training requirements physicians needed to prescribe buprenorphine, which helps patients stop taking fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently extended eased pandemic rules for prescribing it via telemedicine through the end of 2024.

A bipartisan group of representatives focused on mental health and substance use has proposed more than 70 bills this Congress to fight the overdose crisis, but none of them has inspired the kind of urgency lawmakers showed five years ago when they packaged bills into one landmark package: the SUPPORT Act.

The law’s expiration on Oct. 1 means states are no longer required to cover all of the FDA-approved treatments for opioid use disorder through Medicaid but public health advocates don’t expect any state to drop that coverage.

A $10,000 reward is now being offered for information that leads to the arrest of a man accused of fatally shooting a Maryland judge in a "targeted attack" outside his home.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that it is seeking the public's help in finding Pedro Argote, 49, who is wanted in connection with the killing of Washington County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson. The shooting occurred hours after the judge gave the Argote's estranged wife custody of their four minor children, according to officials.

Argote has ties to multiple areas outside of Maryland including Brooklyn and Long Island, New York; Columbus, Indiana; and Tampa and Clearwater, Florida, the Marshals Service said in a news release. He also has connections to unknown locations in North Carolina.

Argote should be considered armed and dangerous. He may be driving a silver 2009 Mercedes GL 450, authorities said.

Wilkinson was the judge overseeing Argote’s divorce case, filed in June 2022. On Thursday morning, hours before the shooting, he had presided over a hearing in the case and granted Argote's wife an absolute divorce from him as well as sole legal custody of their four children, ages 12, 11, 5, and 3.