“A federal judge in New Jersey blocked the Justice Department from gaining access to the state’s unredacted voter rolls on Wednesday. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, ruled that handing over the rolls could give rise to privacy concerns for voters. The ruling is the latest defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration after the DOJ sued Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and New Jersey for access to their voter rolls earlier this year. The administration argued that Title III of the Civil Rights Act granted federal authorities access to the lists, but Quraishi disagreed.” (07/30/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“We have been ambushed. We should be talking about the dangerous, destabilizing things being done to this country. … Instead, we are trapped in a vicious loop of nonsense, mania, political demagoguery and manufactured spectacle while the country goes to hell in a handbasket. Every day—sometimes every hour—brings another outrage, another threat, another vulgar display of power, another self-glorifying meme, another political provocation and another distraction demanding our attention. Before we can fully comprehend one assault on the Republic, another takes its place. That is not merely the chaos surrounding this government. It is one of the ways this government maintains power.” (07/30/26)
“Roughly 594 bitcoin, worth about $38 million, was swept out of around 500 separate wallets between 01:31 and 01:56 UTC on Friday in an attack traced to a flaw in how Coldcard hardware wallets generated their keys. The theft moved 1,324 chunks of bitcoin across 500 transactions inside a three-block window, with 562 BTC then consolidated into a single address that has not moved. … Coldcard is a hardware wallet built by Canadian firm Coinkite, a small standalone device that stores bitcoin keys offline, away from internet-connected computers. Mk2, Mk3, Mk4, Q and Mk5 are successive generations of that product, released over several years the way a phone maker ships numbered models. Exposure depends on the firmware the device was running at the moment the wallet was first created, not on when the hardware was bought.” (07/31/26)
“We’ve reached a point where Bill Kristol can be a featured speaker at a ‘liberal’ conference. It’s hard, in this context, to know which way is up, yet we can see clearly that all ways now point rightward. Kristol is far from alone; this cottage industry includes a who’s who of bloody-handed, Bush-era conservatives who now pretend to care about the rule of law, when their whole careers were spent writing thin apologies for the many constitutional violations of the post-9/11 years. … What the good-faith liberals aligning themselves with this reanimated corpse of the neoconservative right seem not to understand is that these dynamics, migrating the entire acceptable political spectrum firmly into the right, will long outlast Donald Trump. In the end, Trump will have had two terms as president. But the range of politically feasible options could remain bolted down on the far right for many decades or even longer.” (07/30/26)
“President Trump on Thursday evening announced a deal for Hamas to disarm in ‘carefully structured phases,’ which, if carried out, would address one of the main sticking points for a broader peace deal in Gaza. … Amit Segal, chief political analyst for Israel’s N12News, outlined some terms earlier in the day, saying Hamas would surrender all weapons within ‘weeks’ to depots guarded by multinational forces, as well as ending all military activity and recruitment. Israel would not withdraw its military behind the ‘yellow line,’ the demarcation that has divided Gaza since a peace framework was announced in October, until disarmament is complete.” (07/30/26)
“Throughout the first two decades of the 21st century, as the collection of our personal data became commonplace, traditional notions of privacy have increasingly felt antiquated. But a little over two years ago something unexpected happened: a broad, non-partisan wave of opposition to government surveillance began to rise like a tsunami over America. … Libertarians leaned into their bedrock opposition to intrusive government. MAGA adherents saw mass surveillance as an extension of the Deep State. Traditional conservatives viewed mass surveillance as antithetical to their small government preferences. Progressives rallied to defend the vulnerable populations who mass surveillance most frequently targets. … Despite their different starting points, all arrived at the same conclusion: mass government surveillance needs to be reined in. It was within — and perhaps because of — this climate that on June 29 and 30, 2026, we witnessed two events that collectively produced a watershed moment for the restoration of privacy in our digital age.” (07/30/26)
“Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh pulled back the curtain this week on an economy making more progress than people feel. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index stood at minus 31 in July, and two-thirds of people said conditions were getting worse. Yet consumers continue to spend, workers are holding on to their jobs, and businesses are investing heavily in the technology and productive capacity that will shape what comes next. People may feel uncertain, but they are not acting defeated. Warsh called the economy’s resilience ‘impressive’ after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady. He pointed to solid growth, job gains keeping pace with the workforce, and an unemployment rate that has changed little, even as inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.” (07/30/26)
“President Donald Trump said Thursday he may pull acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination for the full-time post to avoid making concessions to a few Senate Republicans who want him to scale back protections for his family business and potential payouts for his allies that the president negotiated with his own Department of Justice. Trump doubled down on choosing his former personal lawyer as the nation’s top lawman, calling him ‘a STAR,’ and said he will keep him in the role as acting attorney general until Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina leave office. … Cornyn and Tillis, who both leave office next year, have sought additional assurances in writing spelling a final end to that an ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ as part of Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.” (07/30/26)
