July 25, 2026 – Short News

A court found him not credible. Weeks later, ICE handed him a badge and a gun.

On November 17 of last year, Judge Amy Dieterich of Maine District Court denied Brouillette's request to end his child support payments to his second wife. Over the course of 2 days of hearings, he testified that he was sick, barely making any money, and had lost his driver's license because he had failed to pay child support. The judge wasn't buying it. In her ruling, she wrote that his claims were not credible and that he was voluntarily underemployed. State records back up those doubts. Maine's Bureau of Motor Vehicles has no record showing his license was ever suspended over unpaid child support. The only suspension on file happened once, in 2008, for a few weeks after he failed to provide proof of insurance following a traffic accident. In a 2019 divorce settlement, he also claimed he worked for the Hallowell Police Department. The department's police chief says he never worked there. He applied several times, but he was never hired.

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According to his first wife, Brouillette told her ICE hired him in November, right around the same time Judge Dieterich issued her ruling. It was during the rush to put thousands of new officers on the street, a hiring push that former Homeland Security officials say could not possibly have included proper background checks. In the very same week that a court found his testimony not credible, a federal agency brought him on, handed him a badge, and armed him with a firearm. Whether the agency knew about the court case remains unknown because the department refuses to answer questions about it. John Roth, who served as Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017, says that matters. If a court has already found that someone made false statements, he says, it seriously undermines that person's credibility when describing what happened during a shooting. In his words, that's a very big deal.

Because testimony is all there is. On July 13, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old asylum seeker from Colombia who held a valid work permit issued by this administration itself, was killed in Biddeford. There is no body camera footage of the moment the shots were fired. What exists is Brouillette's own account claiming he acted in self-defense, while his involvement has still not been officially confirmed.

This is where you see what a constitutional democracy is really built on when everything is on the line. Not cameras, but the assumption that an officer's word carries more weight than anyone else's because the office itself gives it credibility. Credibility is the real currency of this system. It cannot be measured. It is granted. Once someone loses it, the case becomes one person's word against another's, except one of those voices belongs to a dead man. Even the agency's own version has already changed. The Department initially told Senator Angus King's office that Durán had been the target of the operation, then later walked that claim back. Court records show there was no final removal order against him and that his first immigration hearing had been scheduled for May. The white Kia officers tried to stop belongs to a friend named Jonathan Ramirez, who has a valid work permit, pays his taxes, and is not subject to a removal order either. Who the actual target of the surveillance was remains unanswered, and much of the evidence points to the fact that the man who was killed was not that person.

Brouillette himself has not responded to requests for comment, and neither has his attorney. What remains is an equation nobody wanted to solve. A court found his testimony not credible, a federal agency hired him anyway, and now the truth about a man's death depends on the word of that very same man. Our investigation will continue.

Trump Media and its Truth Social network: What would secretly be insider trading anywhere else is sold here as a subscription with an invoice.

Starting August 1, Trump's Truth Social network will begin selling access to something that sounds technical but says everything about the condition of this country. Anyone willing to pay $100,000 a month will receive the president's posts through an API almost the instant they are published instead of retrieving them like everyone else. The advantage amounts to fractions of a second. That advantage is the entire product. The company says so itself. Acting CEO Kevin McGurn stated that financial markets already move based on Truth Social posts and that the API delivers a licensed real-time feed of the platform's most market-moving Truths while creating lasting value for shareholders. On that platform, there is exactly one market-moving user. What is being sold is not access to a social network. It is access to one man, and that man owns roughly 42 percent of the company selling him. He is both the product and one of its largest shareholders.

Take a closer look and they're not really selling information at all. Information everyone receives at the same time has no value on Wall Street. Value only exists when some people know before everyone else. What is really being sold is not knowledge, but everyone else's delay in getting it. Normally, governments are praised for making information public. Here, money is made by slowing it down. The system is possible because of a 2022 agreement. Trump publishes his content elsewhere only after it has appeared on Truth Social for 6 hours. On April 9, he announced there that he was pausing most tariffs, and the markets surged. Whoever had that sentence 300 milliseconds earlier made money from it.

One Wall Street executive called it outrageous while admitting in the very same breath that he was considering buying the subscription anyway because his fiduciary duty to investors pushes even the people who are disgusted by it into becoming customers. Extortion doesn't require a threat once the market itself does the work. The company's filings have said for years that its success depends on the president's continued presence and that his death or serious illness would represent a major business risk. A publicly traded company lists the life expectancy of a sitting president as a business risk, and that same president is now selling early access to his own decisions. What used to be called a conflict of interest has become a revenue model, and nobody is even trying to hide it.

Poland's Largest Opposition Party Is Tearing Itself Apart in a Power Struggle

What started as an internal dispute has turned into an open split inside Poland's largest opposition party. Party leader Jarosław Kaczyński announced that more than 30 lawmakers had lost their membership after refusing to sign a loyalty declaration. Among them is former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, whose organization "Development Plus," founded in April, pushed the internal power struggle to the breaking point. The conflict has been simmering for months. Morawiecki wanted to broaden the party and bring back more economically liberal and moderate voters. Kaczyński saw it as an attempt to build a second power center inside PiS. The party leadership issued an ultimatum. Anyone belonging to another political organization had to leave it or leave the party. Once the deadline expired, Kaczyński followed through.

Morawiecki rejects accusations that he wanted to split the party. He says the split was forced on him and insists he fought until the very end to keep PiS united. His group now includes about 40 members of parliament, one senator, and several members of the European Parliament. He says he has no plans to form a new party for now, but the separation is, in reality, complete. For PiS, it's the deepest crisis since losing its governing majority in 2023. While new conservative parties are competing for voters on its right, PiS is now losing part of its own moderate wing. Just ahead of the next parliamentary elections, the opposition risks weakening itself from within. What was fought behind closed doors for years is now out in the open. Poland's largest opposition party is no longer focused first on Donald Tusk's government. It's fighting itself.

Trump Wants Warning Signs Placed Outside the Smithsonian Museum

Donald Trump is escalating the fight over how American history is presented. In a new executive order, the president is demanding that visitors to the National Museum of American History in Washington be warned before they even enter the building that, in his administration's view, the museum does not accurately present the history of the United States. Warning signs and additional informational displays are to be placed outside the museum. They are supposed to tell visitors that parts of the exhibits need to be renovated. At the same time, they are supposed to direct people to other locations and resources where American history is, according to the White House, presented more accurately. The order, however, never says where those places are.

The order is based on a 162-page White House report accusing the Smithsonian, and especially museum director Anthea Hartig, of promoting political activism. According to the report, the museum portrays American history in an overwhelmingly negative light and undermines public confidence in the nation's institutions. In the White House's view, the museum also failed to properly honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during the country's 250th anniversary year.

Hartig has already spent this week under intense pressure during two congressional hearings. Republican lawmakers accused her of presenting visitors with a distorted version of American history by focusing almost exclusively on the country's failures, injustices, and social conflicts. Exhibits dealing with sexuality and gender identity among young girls were singled out repeatedly. Hartig firmly rejected the accusations. History, she argued, is not being rewritten. Instead, previously overlooked sources, artifacts, and perspectives are being added so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in their nation's story.

Trump isn't stopping at criticism. His order directs several federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House Domestic Policy Council, to take steps to restore trust in the Smithsonian and implement the recommendations outlined in the White House report. Since the Smithsonian is funded largely with federal money, the administration argues that Washington has a special responsibility to act. The order goes even further. Temporary exhibits and signs are to be placed on National Park Service property surrounding the museum to correct what the administration considers inaccurate or incomplete information inside the exhibits. Visitors are supposed to be told before they even walk through the doors that the museum's displays should be changed.

The decision has sparked fierce criticism. Democrats call it an unprecedented attempt to place an independent cultural institution under political control. Historians say they cannot recall another case in which the federal government has tried to directly influence the content of a major American museum. The White House argues it is simply trying to restore a version of history that gives greater recognition to America's achievements. The fight over the nation's past has now become a political battle in its own right.

Apple, China, and Trump - The President Is Now Caught Between Two American Giants

Donald Trump wanted two things at the same time: cheaper electronics for American consumers and a stronger domestic semiconductor industry. Now those two goals are colliding head-on. Behind the scenes, Apple is pushing the administration to allow the use of Chinese memory chips in products sold outside the United States. Micron, America's only major memory chip manufacturer, is fighting just as hard to stop it.

According to people familiar with the discussions, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other top executives have personally presented the proposal to Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Under the plan, memory chips made by China's ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies would be used in Apple products sold outside the American market. Apple argues that the global shortage of memory chips has driven prices higher and that expanding the supplier base would ease the pressure and eventually benefit American consumers as well. Micron sees the proposal as a direct threat to the domestic industry. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has reportedly warned administration officials that bringing Chinese suppliers back into the supply chains of American technology companies could trigger the same kind of collapse that devastated parts of America's steel and manufacturing industries. Making the issue even more sensitive, both Chinese companies have long faced national security concerns. Yangtze Memory Technologies is on the U.S. entity list, and other Chinese chipmakers have been designated by the Pentagon as companies tied to China's military.

That leaves the decision sitting squarely on Trump's desk. On one hand, his administration has spent months promoting domestic chip manufacturing and reducing America's dependence on China. On the other, the White House is also trying to lower the cost of consumer electronics. In this case, those two goals cannot easily coexist. The dispute is also the latest chapter in a business rivalry that has been building for years. Apple spent years using its enormous purchasing power to force suppliers into lower prices. But the artificial intelligence boom has completely changed the balance of power. Data centers now buy massive quantities of memory chips at premium prices, giving manufacturers far greater leverage. Prices have multiplied over the past year, and Micron's profit margins now exceed 80 percent. Apple accuses the company of taking advantage of the shortage while expanding production too slowly. Micron responds by pointing to its planned $250 billion investment in new manufacturing facilities across the United States.

For Trump, this has become far more than a dispute between two corporations. It is now a choice between protecting America's semiconductor industry and allowing greater use of Chinese technology in exchange for lower prices. No matter which path he chooses, one of his biggest economic priorities will lose.

Trump Returns to the White House Correspondents' Dinner - But the Fight With the Media Is Bigger Than Ever

TRUMP: Sometimes I really do think that some of you don't like me. In fact, I read a report I get 93% negative publicity. 93... I said, ‘How the hell did I win the election by so much?’ But this place is really the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome people ever put together at one time, I suspect.”

Three months after the attack that shattered the traditional White House Correspondents' Dinner, Donald Trump finally appeared before Washington's press corps on Friday night. The event, originally scheduled for April, had been abandoned after an armed attacker stormed a security checkpoint, forcing a full evacuation of the ballroom. This time, the dinner was held on a much smaller scale inside the Waldorf Astoria, under heavy security and with only about 700 guests. The red carpet was gone, and every attendee had to pass through multiple security checkpoints before entering. Trump opened his remarks with the same message he had delivered after the event was postponed. "The show must go on." At the same time, he largely abandoned the aggressive speech he had originally planned. Instead, he mixed jokes, sharp digs, and more serious remarks throughout the evening. Looking out across the ballroom, he joked that it was probably the largest gathering of people suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome" ever assembled in one place.

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For the White House Correspondents' Association, the evening was about far more than sharing a meal. Association president Weijia Jiang said the organization refused to let violence have the final word or allow intimidation to succeed. That was the reason the dinner was rescheduled instead of canceled. The association also honored Secret Service agent Victor Gonzales, who was injured while working the security checkpoint during the April attack, along with staff members from the Washington Hilton, where the original dinner had been scheduled to take place. But outside the ballroom, the conflict continues to grow. For months, the Trump administration has steadily intensified its confrontation with major parts of the American press. Reporters have lost White House access, broadcasters have faced regulatory pressure, and lawsuits have continued to pile up. Just this week, the administration withdrew subpoenas against three New York Times reporters after a federal judge sharply criticized the government's legal work.

That is exactly why this year's Correspondents' Dinner remained deeply controversial. Hundreds of former journalists and press freedom organizations urged the association not to simply welcome Trump as the guest of honor. They argued that anyone celebrating the First Amendment could not stay silent while the same administration was attempting to pressure independent journalism. In the end, both sides once again found themselves in the same room. The tone was polite. The distance between them has never been greater.