Bruise on Trump’s hand won’t go away, and neither will questions about his health
A large bruise on the back on Donald Trump’s right hand, which the president appeared to be hiding, poorly, under a daub of makeup last week, was clearly visible during public appearances on Monday, renewing speculation that the White House might be concealing information about his health.
Last month, after similar speculation over Trump’s swollen ankles prompted questions, the White House physician, Sean Barbabella, revealed in a memo that the president was suffering from chronic venous insufficiency.
In the same memo, Barbabella said that images showing bruising on Trump’s hand were “consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking” and his use of aspirin as a precaution against heart attacks.
However, more than five weeks later, photographs of Trump shaking hands with the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, on Monday suggest that the bruise extends across a far larger area of his hand than that impacted by a handshake.
While sitting at his desk in the Oval Office on Monday and speaking to reporters, Trump appeared to make an effort to keep his right hand covered with his left, hiding the bruise from the cameras.
Last week, images of Trump’s hand clumsily covered in makeup that did not match his skin color circulated widely.
Responding to those images, Dr Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine, observed: “The problem involving the dorsum of the president’s hand doesn’t seem to be getting better. Rather than issue unlikely explanations, if the position of the White House is that the health of the president is a private, matter they should simply say that.”
Key events
Trump says he is firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook
Donald Trump wrote to Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on Monday, telling her that he was removing her from her position, “effective immediately”, based on the allegation from one of his allies that she had obtained a mortgage on a second home she incorrectly described as her primary residence.
Trump posted the full text of the letter on social media on Monday night. In it, he said that he found “sufficient cause” in the allegation against her to remove her from her position.
In May, the US supreme court suggested that the president does not have the power to fire governors of the US central bank, an independent agency whose members do not serve at the pleasure of the president, without cause.
In a 6-3 decision, when the court’s conservative majority ruled that the president did have the power to fire “without cause” members of two independent agencies, the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, they added that their order had no bearing on “the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections” for members of the Federal Reserve Board
“The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the conservative justices wrote.
Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent, wrote that there was simply no logic to the exception the conservative had carved out for the Fed, since “the Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on”.
Last week, after Bill Pulte, head of the US Federal Housing Finance Agency and a close ally of the president, accused Cook of “potentially committing mortgage fraud”, Cook said she had “no intention of being bullied” into stepping down.
Cook, whose current term on the Fed’s board extends until 2038, previously served on the council of economic advisers under Barack Obama. When she took office in May 2022, she became the first Black woman to sit on the central bank’s board.
Lauren Gambino
As we reported earlier, California Republicans went to court on Monday to challenge a plan devised by the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries in response to a redistricting plan sought by Donald Trump that aims to give Republicans in Texas five more US House seats.
The legal challenge comes days after the Democratic-led California state legislature swiftly approved a redistricting ballot initiative that will go before voters in a special election this fall. Trump on Monday also threatened to bring a challenge against the state’s redistricting proposal, even as he touted a “A BIG WIN for Republicans in Texas”. In response to Trump, Newsom replied: “bring it.”
The California constitution requires that an independent commission draw its political maps, not lawmakers, as was done in Texas. The ballot measure will ask voters to temporarily suspend the constitution to create five new districts that favor Democrats – a direct response to the five new US House seats created to give Republicans an advantage in Texas.
The Texas redistricting plan, which passed the state senate over the weekend, is also facing legal challenges.
The petition filed on Monday asks the state supreme court to intervene to keep Proposition 50 off the ballot.
“The Constitution requires redistricting be done by the Commission with transparency and public participation, and only once per decade,” said Mike Columbo, a partner at the Dhillon Law Group, which filed the petition on behalf of the lawmakers. “They broke all of those rules, and that is why we’ve gone to the Supreme Court today.”
This is the second attempt by California Republicans to challenge Newsom’s redistricting plan. Last week, the state’s supreme court rejected an emergency petition to stop Democratic lawmakers from moving forward with the effort.
“This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s about good governance,” said the California Republican party chairwoman, Corrin Rankin, who accused Democrats of striking “backroom deals” to fast-track the measure through the state legislature. Democrats were working against a Friday deadline set by the secretary of state’s office to ensure enough time for the measure to be put on the ballots.
Newsom’s team was unfazed by the challenge.
“Trump’s toadies already got destroyed once in court. Now, they are trying again – to protect Trump’s power grab and prevent the voters from having their say on Prop 50,” said Hannah Milgrom, a spokeswoman for the Yes on 50 campaign. “They will lose.”
The law firm representing the California Republicans was founded by Harmeet Dhillon, who is now assistant attorney general overseeing the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division. Dhillon was known for her efforts to sue California’s university system to overturn policies which barred controversial conservative speakers from appearing. She sold her firm to her brother Mandeep Singh Dhillon after Trump nominated her to take over civil rights enforcement in his administration.
The petition requests that the court respond by 8 September, before counties begin printing ballots for the special election.
Bruise on Trump’s hand won’t go away, and neither will questions about his health
A large bruise on the back on Donald Trump’s right hand, which the president appeared to be hiding, poorly, under a daub of makeup last week, was clearly visible during public appearances on Monday, renewing speculation that the White House might be concealing information about his health.
Last month, after similar speculation over Trump’s swollen ankles prompted questions, the White House physician, Sean Barbabella, revealed in a memo that the president was suffering from chronic venous insufficiency.
In the same memo, Barbabella said that images showing bruising on Trump’s hand were “consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking” and his use of aspirin as a precaution against heart attacks.
However, more than five weeks later, photographs of Trump shaking hands with the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, on Monday suggest that the bruise extends across a far larger area of his hand than that impacted by a handshake.
While sitting at his desk in the Oval Office on Monday and speaking to reporters, Trump appeared to make an effort to keep his right hand covered with his left, hiding the bruise from the cameras.
Last week, images of Trump’s hand clumsily covered in makeup that did not match his skin color circulated widely.
Responding to those images, Dr Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist and professor of medicine, observed: “The problem involving the dorsum of the president’s hand doesn’t seem to be getting better. Rather than issue unlikely explanations, if the position of the White House is that the health of the president is a private, matter they should simply say that.”
Republican lawmakers ask California supreme court to block vote on new Congressional maps
A group of Republican lawmakers in California filed an emergency petition to the state supreme court on Monday asking that a redistricting initiative devised by the state’s Democratic leadership be removed from a special election scheduled for November.
Last week, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill to put Proposition 50 to the state’s voters, which would temporarily suspend an independent redistricting commission, until after the 2030 election, and put in place a new map of congressional districts, which is tilted in favor of the Democrats. The new map, which would likely give the Democrats an extra five seats in the US House, is intended to cancel out a new map drawn by Texas Republicans at the request of Donald Trump.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four Republican members of the state legislature, three California voters and a former member of the state’s independent redistricting commission. Last week, the same court declined a request from one of the same Republican lawmakers to block the Democrats from putting the proposition on the ballot.
The Republican lawmakers are represented by the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, formerly represented the conservative media activists James O’Keefe and Andy Ngo, and is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the justice department.
Trump administration plans to halt another wind farm off the coast of another blue state
In a court filing on Friday, the Trump administration said that it intends to withdraw federal approval for an offshore wind farm off the coasts of Maryland and Delaware.
The filing, in a case challenging the 2024 approval of US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project in US district court in Delaware, came the same day that the interior department issued a stop-work order that halted the construction of a nearly complete wind farm off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Lawyers for the justice department told the Delaware court that the interior department, which is now run by the former North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, who has close ties to oil and gas producers, would move to vacate approval of the facility’s construction and operations plan by September 12.
When the interior department approved the offshore wind project, in December 2024, the government said the project had the potential to power over 718,000 homes, using up to 114 wind turbine generators located approximately 10 nautical miles offshore Ocean City, Maryland, and approximately 9 nautical miles offshore Sussex County, Delaware.
US Wind is owned by funds managed by Apollo Global Management, an American investment firm, and Renexia SpA, a subsidiary of Italy’s Toto Holding SpA. The project was scheduled to begin construction in 2026.
After the scuttling of the wind farm off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut was reported over the weekend, Lee Zeldin, the was asked by a Fox News anchor, “What’s the problem with this wind farm in Rhode Island?”
Zeldin replied: “President Trump has been very consistent: he’s not a fan of wind”.
Trump says he wants a ‘Department of War’ not a ‘Department of Defense’
Donald Trump just said for the third time today that he plans to rebrand the “Department of Defense” by returning to the pre-1947 name, the “Department of War”.
The president, whose pre-politics business career was largely focused on marketing, first raised the idea on Monday morning, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, standing behind him.
“So Pete, you started off by saying the ‘Department of Defense’, and somehow it didn’t sound good to me, you know, it didn’t sound good. ‘Defense’ what are we ‘defense’, why are we ‘defense’? So it used to be called the ‘Department of War’ and it had a stronger sound”, the president said.
He then told the handful of officials lined up behind him – namely: JD Vance, the vice-president; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff; Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and Hegseth – “if you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote and you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s okay with me”.
Later, while taking questions alongside the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, Trump again raised the idea, out of the blue.
“Pete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the ‘Department of War’. You know, we call it the ‘Department of Defense’, but, between us, I think we’re going to change the name”, Trump said during a riff about border security.
By way of explanation, the president added: “We won the World War I, World War II, it was called the ‘Department of War’. And to me, that’s really what it is”.
Trump raised the idea a third time during a meeting on Monday afternoon with family members of 13 US military personnel who were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber, along with 170 Afghan civilians, at Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate in 2021, as the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan.
Asked by a reporter how he plans to rename the defense department the ‘Department of War’, since that would require an act of Congress, Trump said: “We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don’t think we even need that”.
“It just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate… the other is, ‘Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better”.
Lauren Gambino
Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, delivered a blistering – and, by his own account, petty – denunciation of Donald Trump in his remarks to the DNC summer meeting in Minneapolis.
Had Kamala Harris won the election in November, Americans would have woken up each morning to an “adult with compassion and dignity and vision and leadership” in the White House, “not a man child crying about whatever’s wrong with him,” Walz said.
“May his fat ankles find something today,” he added, as the crowd of Democrats oohed and clapped. “Petty as hell.”
Walz, considered a possible presidential contender in 2028, bemoaned the focus on Democratic infighting, which he likened to a marital squabble. “Don’t take the bait,” he implored fellow Democrats.
“Think of how easy it would be to be a damn Republican,” the governor went on. “What should I wear today? This stupid freaking red hat. What should I say today? I don’t know. Just make sure it’s cruel. Who do we listen to? ‘That guy.’ ‘Oh, the felon in the White House.?’ ‘Yeah, listen to him.’”
But Walz did weigh in on several issues roiling the party. Amid calls for generational change, he said he wouldn’t tell anyone “you are too damn old” to run again for office. And he boasted that Minnesota was considered a safe haven for transgender people in the US.
“Can I just say we can talk about economic growth and feeding children and growing the economy and creating jobs simultaneously with talking about everybody’s human rights matters,” Walz declared to applause. “You can do both.”
House oversight committee subpoenas Epstein estate for ‘birthday book’
The House oversight committee also subpoenaed Jeffrey Epstein’s estate today, as part of their ongoing investigation.
Republican congressman and committee chair, James Comer, wrote that the estate is in “custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals”.
Last week, at the committee’s request, the justice department sent over the first tranche of records relating to the late sex-offender.
Comer notes that recent reporting suggests the estate is in possession of the notorious “birthday book” – an album of messages to Epstein for his 50th birthday, compiled by his associate, convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump was a contributor.
‘Administration needs to put up or shut up in court,’ says Democratic senator on Kilmar Ábrego García’s Ice detention
Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic senator from Maryland, said the Trump administration “continues to spread lies about the facts” of Kilmar Ábrego García’s case. The Maryland man was detained earlier, after reporting to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Baltimore.
In April, Van Hollen visited Ábrego García in El Salvador, while he was being detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center, otherwise known as Cecot.
Today, Van Hollen said that Ábrego was entitled to due process:
Instead of spewing unproven allegations in the press and social media, the Trump Administration needs to put up or shut up in court and allow Mr. Ábrego García the opportunity to defend himself.
House oversight committee launches investigation into allegations of ‘manipulated’ police data
The House oversight committee is launching their own investigation into claims of “manipulated” crime data by the Metropolitan police department (MPD).
In a letter, Republican congressman James Comer, who chairs the committee, asked DC police chief Pamela Smith for transcribed interviews with the seven commanders of DC’s patrol districts. Comer added that the investigation was the result of reports that commander Michael Pulliam was suspended from MPD for allegedly falsifying data. Charges that denies.
Comer also notes that a whistleblower informed the committee that “crime statistics were allegedly manipulated on a widespread basis and at the direction of senior MPD official.”
Federal prosecutors have also launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Washington DC police systematically manipulated crime statistics to make the city appear safer than it actually is, according to various reports.
A reminder that Donald Trump has routinely accused city officials, without evidence, of producing “phoney” crime data.
