A Texas appeals court has handed Attorney General Ken Paxton a setback in one of the state’s highest-profile abortion enforcement cases, ruling that prosecutors failed to present enough evidence to justify shutting down the clinics of a Houston-area midwife accused of illegally providing abortions.
In a decision issued Thursday, the Fifteenth Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s injunction against midwife Maria Margarita Rojas and her clinics, finding that the state relied largely on affidavits filed in a parallel criminal case rather than admissible evidence in the separate civil proceeding.
“The trial court abused its discretion by considering incompetent evidence in support of the temporary injunction,” the three-judge panel wrote.
The ruling does not dismiss the underlying allegations or the criminal charges against Rojas, who in March became the first person charged under Texas’ near-total abortion ban. Prosecutors allege she illegally performed abortions and practiced medicine without a license. Rojas has pleaded not guilty.
Paxton’s office filed the civil lawsuit shortly after the criminal charges were announced, seeking to permanently close Rojas’ clinics and impose financial penalties. The appellate court concluded, however, that the state failed to meet the legal standard necessary to support the injunction because much of its evidence could not be considered in the civil case.
The attorney general’s office said it plans to appeal the decision to the Texas Supreme Court.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Rojas, welcomed the ruling, saying the state had failed to produce evidence supporting its claims and arguing the injunction should never have been granted. The organization also noted that the criminal prosecution remains pending.
Although the decision technically removes the court order shuttering the clinics, Rojas’ attorneys said the facilities are not expected to reopen while the criminal case continues.
The case has drawn national attention as one of the first major tests of Texas’ abortion ban since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The law generally prohibits abortions except when necessary to save the life of the pregnant patient, with providers facing severe civil penalties as well as potential criminal prosecution for violating the statute.
The appeals court’s ruling addresses only whether the state presented sufficient evidence to obtain the temporary injunction, leaving the broader legal fight over the allegations — and the future of the criminal case — to continue.
Years ago on “Rick and Morty,” President Andre Curtis fumed that he can’t coexist with Rick Sanchez, a living god who won’t submit to his will. Giving the man his own spinoff is one way to fix that.
In “President Curtis,” America’s POTUS is an egomaniacal ’80s-vintage superhero who treats the White House as his lair. That’s not too far removed from the real commander-in-chief’s mindset, but any suspicions that co-creators Dan Harmon and James Siciliano are parodying Trump 2.0 are off base. The show’s only satirical tool is Curtis himself, a myopic blowhard (voiced by the charismatic Keith David) who, to paraphrase one skeptic, uses taxpayer dollars to play Batman. Flanked by his cyborg chief of staff (Stephanie Beatriz) and a half-leprechaun special agent (Jim Rash), Curtis would rather police America than govern it. (To that end, the show’s “Hill Street Blues”-adjacent theme is another genius grace note.)
But “President Curtis” is only as strong as the viewer’s affection for “Rick and Morty.” If you can’t get enough of that show’s visual irony, metatextual references and winking at entertainment tropes, here’s 10 more episodes of the same feeling, only Earthbound. Not that I’m complaining. There’s something about David, the mellifluous voice of Ken Burns’ America, committing to every expletive-laced punchline that makes me absolutely giddy.
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Sealing this TV candidate’s victory are all the ways Curtis shows himself to be more effective and dangerous than real politicians, in that he gets the job done. As he brags about singlehandedly ending Paul Bunyan, “I’ll say this much to anyone who thinks they’re taller than the law: ‘Timber, b***h.’”
“President Curtis” premieres at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, July 26 on Adult Swim and streams the next day on HBO Max.
Summer, a season of good eats and fresh produce, has been tainted by a rampant parasitic outbreak that’s made us all scared to indulge in a generous plate of Caesar salad.
Within a few short weeks, an ongoing outbreak of Cyclospora, a foodborne parasite that can contaminate raw fruits and vegetables — and lead to several unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms — has fueled a nationwide panic. Bagged salad mixes and kits, which have been linked to previous outbreaks in the United States and Canada, were suddenly a no-go. Same with precut or packaged lettuce, fresh cilantro, fresh basil, raspberries, snow peas and green onions.
As the number of reported infections continued to rise and fears over our favorite seasonal eats reached a fever pitch, the exact source of the outbreak remained a mystery.
A culprit had been named: shredded iceberg lettuce grown by Taylor Farms, the pro-Trump produce supplier, and served at Taco Bell, the Washington Post reported on July 16. A recall was promptly issued the following day. The outbreak was soon coming to an end — or so it seemed.
Then came more confusion. Just two days later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) retracted its initial finding that a lettuce sample from Taylor Farms de Mexico tested positive for Cyclospora, classifying it as a false positive. The FDA, however, doubled down on the severity of the investigation, saying in an X post that the false positive doesn’t change “the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”
To clarify, this false-positive lab sample DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.
As it stands, the exact source of the outbreak remains largely unclear. And while lettuce shouldn’t be given up entirely, experts are advising to consume it with caution.
Keep in mind that washing your produce, even in a vinegar bath, isn’t enough to effectively kill the parasite. Instead, it’s best to cook them to an internal temperature of 158°F (70°C) or higher, health officials urged.
Now may not be the time to whip up your favorite cold salads or overload on the “L” in your BLTs. But fret not, because lettuce can still be enjoyed to its fullest when cooked. And it’s actually really delicious.
From Nigella Lawson’s riff on a Caesar salad to creamy lettuce soup, here are a few ways to cook and enjoy a produce item that’s typically eaten cold and raw.
Grilled Caesar salad
Summer also happens to be peak grilling season. While you’re grilling meats and corn on the cob, throw on a few romaine hearts (washed) and make a grilled Caesar salad as a delicious appetizer.
Courtesy of Loves Food Loves to Eat and shared by Food52, this recipe serves two when eaten as a meal and four to six when enjoyed as a side. To start, whisk together Parmesan, lemon juice, oil, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt and pepper. Cut the romaine heart(s) in half lengthwise, along with half of a baguette, and char them both on the grill over medium to medium-high heat. On a large dining plate, serve the romaine hearts whole alongside the bread. Finish with the homemade dressing and more parm.
Nigella’s riff on a Caesar salad
On the theme of Caesar salad, Nigella Lawson’s controversial recipe — which was criticized by fans and culinary professionals more than a decade ago — has earned its redemption by being timely, useful and effortless.
Unlike grilled Caesar salad, Lawson’s riff on a classic is essentially baked lettuce. A romaine heart (cut in half lengthwise) is first coated in olive oil, grated garlic and chopped anchovy fillets before going into the oven. It’s then taken out, seasoned with lemon zest and juice and baked once more. The finishing touch is shaved parm.
Sure, some may call it crazy or far-fetched. But during these trying times, Lawson’s revamped Caesar salad is pure genius.
Petits pois à la française
Lawson marries frozen peas and shredded Little Gem lettuce in her version of petits pois à la française, or French-style peas. The lettuce is cooked with buttery garlicky scallions and, once wilted, frozen peas and hot chicken stock. It’s then left to simmer and soak up all those flavors.
The finished dish is beautifully green, tender and, yes, gentle on your stomach.
Creamy lettuce soup
Almost anything can be made into a soup — even fresh, chopped lettuce. Epicurious’ recipe for a delicious summertime lettuce soup seasons, boils and purées a whole head of lettuce, including both the leaves and ribs, coarsely chopped.
The soup is built in a four-to five-qt. heavy pot and starts with chopped onions, scallions, leeks (or shallots) and a chopped garlic clove. Everything is cooked with unsalted butter, then seasoned with ground coriander, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Peeled russet potatoes, lettuce and three cups of water are then thrown into the mix, boiled and, finally, simmered.
A blender is used to purée the soup in batches before it’s simmered one last time and finished with more butter, salt and pepper.
Enjoy the soup as is, hot or cold. As for toppings, finish each bowl with a drizzle of olive oil or a dollop of Greek yogurt if you’re craving protein.
Cooked iceberg lettuce works excellently in this soup, the recipe notes. You can also add depth and variety to your soup by adding any salad greens, like arugula, spinach, kale, or watercress.
An iceberg and a romaine stir-fry
Similar to other leafy greens, lettuce leaves can be tossed, stirred and cooked in hot oil. In fact, stir-fried lettuce is a beloved dish in Chinese culture, often eaten for good luck during Lunar New Year. In Cantonese and Mandarin, the word for lettuce (“saang choy” and “sheng cai,” respectively) sounds similar to “growing wealth,” according to The New York Times.
Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe calls for a head of iceberg lettuce, stir-fried, then topped with crispy garlic and a fried egg and served over a warm bowl of rice. There’s also plenty of ginger and soy sauce, sesame oil and vegetarian stir-fry/oyster sauce.
There’s also Claire Saffitz’s recipe for a beef and romaine stir-fry, which combines cooked scallions and ginger and a head of romaine (sliced crosswise into 2-inch pieces), seasoned with a pinch of salt, in a large, hot skillet. The lettuce mixture is later cooked alongside short ribs (which have been prepped with cornstarch, red pepper flakes, salt and soy sauce) and a simple sauce made with vinegar, wine and soy sauce.
Coconut milk braised lettuce
Inspired by traditional Indian cooking and Southeast Asian flavors, this Food52 recipe bathes and simmers sautéed heads of romaine in a delicious mixture of gingery coconut milk, fresh lime juice and fish sauce. The cooked lettuce is then topped with fragrant crushed peppercorns and minced garlic, both cooked together in ghee over medium-high heat.
President Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Friday night, three months after gunfire abruptly ended the original event, delivering an hourlong speech that opened with a solemn tribute to the victims and first responders before gradually giving way to familiar grievances, campaign-style riffs and renewed attacks on political rivals and the media.
“As I said three months ago, the show must go on,” Trump told the roughly 700 guests gathered under heightened security at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria, where the annual dinner was rescheduled after the April shooting. He praised the Secret Service officers and law enforcement personnel who responded that night, calling the attack “an assault on our democracy itself” and declaring that “we do not yield to political violence.”
Trump acknowledged he had abandoned the harsher speech he originally planned before the attack.
“I was so psyched, I was going to rip people,” he said, adding that “something changed.” Moments later, however, he promised the audience “we’ll do a little ripping if you don’t mind,” signaling a shift away from the night’s opening message of resilience.
From there, the speech frequently wandered between jokes, political attacks and extended tangents. Trump ribbed journalists about wearing bulky bulletproof vests, revisited complaints about media coverage, praised White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and joked about another presidential campaign despite the Constitution’s two-term limit.
One of the night’s longest detours centered on Trump’s planned White House ballroom. Standing inside the Waldorf ballroom, which he built when the property operated as the Trump International Hotel, the president touted bulletproof glass, future drone defenses, underground security upgrades and Czech crystal chandeliers before predicting future White House Correspondents’ dinners would someday be held in the new venue.
Trump also congratulated New York Times reporter Tyler Pager, one of the journalists whose subpoena over reporting on the Qatari-donated Air Force One replacement was withdrawn by the Justice Department a day earlier, even as he renewed complaints about what he called “fake news” coverage. The president argued that speaking directly with reporters can improve stories, while insisting many outlets continue to treat him unfairly.
After one hour and four minutes, Trump closed out his speech by donning a “Trump 2028” red hat to continue to tease a possible third term.
The rescheduled dinner was smaller and more tightly controlled than April’s event, with a single entrance, multiple security screenings and no traditional red carpet. The association honored Secret Service agent Victor Gonzalez, who was shot in his protective vest while confronting the gunman, along with Washington Hilton employees who helped guests during the attack.
“We are back,” outgoing WHCA President Weijia Jiang told the audience. “We refuse to let an act of violence have the final word.”
By night’s end, the evening had come full circle. What began as a ceremony emphasizing resilience after political violence ultimately settled into the freewheeling, often meandering style that has become a hallmark of Trump’s public appearances, mixing condolences, boasts, policy asides and personal feuds into a single address.
Somewhere in the halcyon years of internet writing, I read — or, at least, I remember reading — a piece titled “Holden Caulfield was the first millennial dipsh*t.” I’m almost positive this piece existed, and the fact that I couldn’t find any mention of it in the sad, hollowed-out husk of the 2026 internet offers no proof that it didn’t. What did turn up are a newer generation’s takes on Holden, many of them unexpectedly harsh: He’s “the most insufferable character ever written,” “an entitled brat,” the “original ‘needs to touch grass’ guy,” a “clueless rich kid who’s never had to try,” a “self-important, spoiled and worthless little sh*t,” and “an emo narcissist with an inflated sense of his own self-worth.”
Millennials were the first generation to anoint old Holden as “problematic” — a 2009 New York Times piece titled “Get a life, Holden Caulfield,” quoted educators who still taught “The Catcher in the Rye,” a book that turns 75 this year, and was once a standard in the English curriculum for grades 9–11. One educator said that, when she taught at a public charter school, “I had a lot of students comment, ‘I can’t really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City.’” A teacher who taught the book over 3 decades noted that “Holden’s passivity is especially galling and perplexing to many present-day students . . . “[T]hey do not have much sympathy for alienated antiheroes.” And one recalled a boy telling her, “We just wanted to tell him, ‘Shut up and take your Prozac.’”
One of the timeworn accusations against Holden Caulfield is hypocrisy: This guy calls everyone else phony, but he’s just as phony!
Reddit threads and Goodreads reviews suggest that Gen Z has similar smoke for Holden, which makes sense when you consider that for these kids, active-shooter drills are as much a part of grade school as multiplication tables, and creepy full-grown adults are sliding into their DMs asking for nudes. You can’t really blame them if their response to the self-absorbed internal monologues of an unreliable narrator is, Oh, boo hoo. Get some real problems.
But they’ve got another bone to pick with Holden Caulfield: He is being used as a prop by performative men to impress those around him. “Among Gen Z, books have become a symbol not of intelligence but of ‘hotness,’ an accessory to be worn with a good outfit, wedged in the bottom of a designer bag or pretentious tote,” wrote one young woman in a piece for the Times of London. And she has some pitiless words for the callow young men toting “The Catcher in the Rye” pretentiously around: The book, she writes, “has become a go-to summer read for incel types who overly identify with the petulant protagonist Holden Caulfield . . . [W]henever [my friend] sees a man with J. D. Salinger in hand, she assumes he must still be at school: ‘It screams English literature A-level.’” Another piece, this one written by two Gen-Z women, posits that Holden himself is “the ultimate performative male.”
This take is ungenerous but not surprising, given that one of the timeworn accusations against Holden Caulfield is hypocrisy: This guy calls everyone else phony, but he’s just as phony! It did make me wonder, though, whether Gen-Z readers who are assigned “The Catcher in the Rye” still get the same decontextualized introduction to the book as I and the rest of Gen X did. I don’t remember how old I was the first time I read the book, but each time I’ve returned to it as an adult, and there have been a few, I reach the end thoroughly baffled. Are students still introduced to “Catcher” as a novel about disaffection and anomie rather than one about grief, trauma and other things that were absolutely not talked about in Salinger’s day and rarely talked about in mine? And if so, why?
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The idea that the art can be separated from the artist has never made sense to me — and the way it was foregrounded within the cultural discourse of #MeToo too often felt like a disingenuous avoidance of the clear reality that great art has been made by people who cause profound harm to others. “The Catcher in the Rye” is a text that is flatly impossible to decouple from its author: A book about trauma written in the midst of trauma by a traumatized man. This doesn’t mean that anyone reading the book needs to know Salinger’s whole deal, but both its creation (much of it was written during World War II, when Salinger served as a counterintelligence agent and was one of the first G.I.s to see the human toll at Dachau) and its wild commercial success (which repelled the author and led to his withdrawal from public life.)
Are students still introduced to “Catcher” as a novel about disaffection and anomie rather than one about grief, trauma and other things that were absolutely not talked about in Salinger’s day and rarely talked about in mine? And if so, why?
As Mikki Halpin noted in these virtual pages following his death in 2010 at the age of 91, Salinger’s quasi-hermithood, among other things, gave cover to his relationships with inappropriately young women; his desire for privacy was inflated into mythology by a “literary establishment,” Halpin wrote, whose collective investment “in the fictional, reclusive Salinger . . . is a convenient cudgel with which to silence any discussion of Salinger’s personal life, particularly any revelation of unsavory truths.”
I would add that the Salinger myth also delayed a reckoning with his most famous character’s mental health. Gen Z men are not the first to use “The Catcher in the Rye” as a prop, after all: Years before I read it, I knew it only as the book Mark David Chapman was carrying when he assassinated John Lennon in 1980 and that, in 1981, was left in the hotel room of John Hinckley Jr. shortly before he attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan. (In 1989, it resurfaced in another high-profile shooting when Robert John Bardo murdered actor Rebecca Schaeffer, dropping his copy as he fled her Hollywood home.) There’s been plenty of skepticism about whether the latter two were Chapman copycats rather than murders actually inspired by the book. Either way, reluctance to associate either Salinger or his most indelible creation with crazed murderers meant keeping their own wounds at arms’ length.
(MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) “The Catcher in the Rye”
This is, in part, why I’m surprised at Gen Z’s dismissal of Holden Caulfield as a whiny white rich-kid hypocrite. This cohort has come of age having open conversations about mental health that were unthinkable as recently as 4 decades ago; they understand the way formative traumas burrow into the minds and bodies of those affected and eventually grow unmanageable. I can definitely understand why there might not be, let’s say, a surplus of empathy for a privileged young man carelessly and repeatedly squandering his expensive education. But brushing by consequential facts of Holden’s life — parents who treat him as an out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem, the death of his brother, the suicide of his classmate, a history of being molested by older men — to call him performative feels awfully heartless for a generation this conversant with how trauma works.
Listen, I don’t know anyone who liked Holden Caulfield the first time they read the book, probably because he is not supposed to be particularly likable; Salinger wrote the book for adults, not teens. But reading “The Catcher in the Rye” as an adult, and again as the parent of a Holden-aged boy, has made me realize that if the circumstances in which young readers meet the character have been slow to change, and the lens on him informed largely by a calcified reputation of youth in revolt, that’s on the adults in the room who, like the adults in his life, can’t hear everything he’s telling us.
The shift was as swift as it was cold. Standing before reporters in the briefing room on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked a direct question: Would President Donald Trump or his administration intervene to stop the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate to the United Kingdom on 59 charges of rape, sex trafficking, assault and extreme pornography? Her single-word response — “No” — denied the brothers, who have been championed by many MAGA media figures as examples of white male persecution, a lifeline.
On Thursday, federal marshals in Miami took the Tates into custody. In addition to the charges they face in the U.K., the brothers remain embroiled in grave human-trafficking and minor-exploitation proceedings in Romania and investigations in Florida about new allegations.
In the days since their arrest, their attorney Joseph McBride — who has also represented Jan. 6 defendants — has insisted the arrest is political persecution, and he has been amplifying supportive commentary online from media figures with close ties to the Trump administration. MAGA influencer and white nationalist Nick Fuentes wrote that it would be a “national humiliation” if Trump agreed to extradite the brothers to Britain over what he called “trumped up ‘Me Too’ charges.” Other far-right influencers reportedly joined in, but to no avail.
For years, the brothers were treated by the MAGA ecosystem not as alleged traffickers facing serious criminal scrutiny, but as useful avatars of male grievance and anti-feminist rebellion.
Trump’s refusal to intervene in the Tates’ extradition fight is a much-delayed correction. For years, the brothers were treated by the MAGA ecosystem not as alleged traffickers facing serious criminal scrutiny, but as useful avatars of male grievance and anti-feminist rebellion. That bargain is now boomeranging in the direction of a different Trump: Barron.
The key to understanding how the Tate brothers rose to such political heights — and why their collapse now threatens to drag the president’s youngest son into a potentially damaging congressional spotlight — can be found in the conservative media ecosystem that laundered Andrew Tate into a right-wing icon.
When mainstream platforms like YouTube, Meta and TikTok finally moved to deplatform the Tate brothers in 2022, the right-wing media apparatus stepped in to grant Tate a second — and far more dangerous — life. Tucker Carlson first gave Tate a platform on Fox News back in 2022 and later hosted a long, sympathetic interview. Elon Musk reinstated Tate’s X account, restoring his reach to over 11 million followers while repeatedly tweeting defenses that hand-waved sex trafficking allegations as political distractions. The late Charlie Kirk chimed in on behalf of Tate: “What he says is so powerful. Our society is configured towards collapsing the American man.” MAGA podcaster Candace Owens dedicated hours of airtime to declaring the Tates’ innocence while launching vicious smear campaigns against their victims.
The brothers were indicted in Romania in 2023 on charges of rape and human trafficking, accused of running a criminal operation that lured women — including, prosecutors allege, a 17-year-old — into pornography and prostitution. But in February 2025, weeks after Trump’s second inauguration, Romanian authorities lifted the travel restrictions that had kept the Tates in the country, and the pair immediately boarded a private jet to Florida. At the time, the country’s foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu said that a U.S. official had expressed interest in the case. Trump, for his part, said he knew “nothing about” any pressure his administration might have applied.
The reporting since then has filled in the blanks. ProPublica reported that federal authorities were told to return electronic devices they had seized from the Tates during an investigation and chided by political appointees like Paul Ingrassia — a vocal Tate defender appointed to the General Services Administration. Heidi Blake, the New Yorker reporter who has covered the Tates more exhaustively than perhaps anyone else, has traced a direct line from a Munich Security Conference conversation between U.S. special envoy Richard Grenell and Hurezeanu to Romanian prosecutors reaching out to the Tates’ lawyers within days, asking what the Americans wanted. Experts labeled the political interference highly inappropriate, but it worked. The travel ban on the brothers was lifted.
Within days of Andrew Tate landing back on U.S. soil, another woman came forward accusing him of assault and strangulation — the same pattern of abuse, Blake has said, described by victim after victim in this case.
This machinery surrounding was never a secret. What has been less investigated, at least until this week, is how deep the personal relationships ran — specifically, the friendship between Andrew Tate and the president’s 20-year-old son.
According to reporting in the New York Times, Tate spoke with Barron Trump over a Zoom call last year with a mutual friend present, and the two discussed their shared belief that the Romanian case against Tate was an effort to silence him. That claim — the idea that a rape and trafficking prosecution amounts to censorship — is the same framing Tate’s MAGA allies have pushed for years. Barron’s older brother, Donald Trump Jr., has called Tate’s 2023 detention “absolute insanity.” Tate publicly boasted about his access to MAGA’s top circles, bragging in 2024 that he was “very close with the Trump family” and that he was looking forward to reminding Donald Trump that he was a “bulletproof bada*s.”
For Trump’s presidential campaign, the alliance delivered results. By leveraging the manosphere media network that Tate helped anchor, the campaign mobilized a wave of low-propensity young male voters in 2024.
So why did the Trump White House suddenly cut the Tate brothers loose? The breakdown was not sparked by a sudden moral awakening regarding sex trafficking or rape. It was likely sparked by the cardinal sin of the MAGA media universe: political disloyalty.
In February, as the administration weighed military action in the Middle East, Andrew Tate took to his livestreaming platform to launch a furious, unhinged tirade against Trump’s strike on Iran.
“I do not support war with Iran for Israel,” Tate raged to his audience, accusing the administration of driving the country into disaster while ignoring domestic collapse. “If you’re at home in America right now and you feel like your country is f****d… and moral degeneracy is out of control . . . why would the U.S. going into a war with Iran benefit anybody in America at all? Give me one possible reason. NOBODY WANTS THIS WAR.”
For a White House that demands absolute, unyielding fealty, Tate’s high-profile attack was an unpardonable breach.
When the British government authorized 38 new criminal charges against the Tates and submitted an updated extradition request to the Justice Department, the White House’s calculation was simple. The political cost of protecting two alleged serial rapists, one of whom was actively attacking the president on foreign policy, far outweighed any remaining value they brought to the youth-culture strategy. The administration threw them to the wolves.
While the administration may hope that cutting the Tates loose will close the book on this embarrassing chapter, the fallout from their tangled relationships with the first family and the wider MAGA sphere may just be beginning.
Rep.Yassamin Ansari, D-Ariz., has formally urged House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to open a swift investigation into the Tate brothers’ relationships within Trump’s inner circle. In a searing letter, she highlighted grave diplomatic and ethical concerns regarding whether political networks leveraged their influence to shield accused human traffickers.
It doesn’t help the administration’s case that the Tate brothers were, by multiple accounts, still socializing with Trump-world figures in Washington in the days before their arrest. Ansari said she learned only this week that the brothers had traveled to D.C. for meetings, including one with Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas.
The Arizona congresswoman wants the committee to subpoena communications between the Tates and administration officials, and she wants Barron Trump to testify under oath about whether he “influenced official actions or administration policy” about the brothers.
There is no evidence that Barron engaged in criminal wrongdoing or played any role in the government’s decisions involving the Tates. But his choice to enthusiastically fraternize with a self-described misogynist facing dozens of horrific felony counts has exposed him to scrutiny.
Barron Trump was not an unwitting bystander dragged into a media storm. He was an active participant in defending Andrew Tate, using his influence to validate an accused predator because it fit the edgy, anti-establishment aesthetic of the modern manosphere media. Now, as congressional scrutiny looms and the Tate brothers prepare to face trial in a U.S. federal court before being extradited to London, the president’s youngest son is left facing the stark consequences of his MAGA alliances.
Major cannabis companies have donated millions to PACs aligned with President Donald Trump, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings. But the donations are not just a symptom of an increasingly pro-marijuana administration; they’re also indicative of an ongoing lobbying war between the marijuana, hemp and alcohol industries.
Over the past couple of months, four major marijuana companies — Verano, Curaleaf, Trulieve and Vision Management Services, a subsidiary of Green Thumb Industries — each gave $2.5 million to America First Agriculture Action Inc., a Trump-friendly super PAC. They weren’t alone in their donations. Ascend Wellness and Arboretum Bidco, two additional major cannabis companies, also gave $500,000 and $1 million to the PAC. Trulieve gave another $250,000 to the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund, a pro-Israel super PAC.
Taken together, these donations account for the vast majority of the $13 million that America First Agricultural Action Inc. has raised so far this cycle.
Charles Gantt, who serves as the treasurer for Trump’s major super PAC, MAGA Inc., also serves as the America First Agriculture Action Inc.’s treasurer. Though the industry’s PAC is relatively new, filing its statement of organization in March, it’s already released ads praising Trump’s marijuana policy.
The pro-Trump (and pro-Republican) turn of major marijuana companies marks an odd twist of fate as some of the industry’s biggest players are embracing a party that has been historically hostile to liberalized drug policies like marijuana legalization.
The pro-Trump (and pro-Republican) turn of major marijuana companies marks an odd twist of fate as some of the industry’s biggest players are embracing a party that has been historically hostile to liberalized drug policies like marijuana legalization. Notably, it’s also coming at a time when support for legalizing marijuana is sharply declining among Republican voters.
The main divide in cannabis in the United States comes down to the legal distinction between hemp and marijuana. Though both products are cannabis and are scientifically considered the same plant, they are distinguished legally. Hemp refers to cannabis containing less than 0.3% THC — the plant’s main active compound — by volume, whereas marijuana refers to cannabis with a higher THC concentration.
This minor biological difference has major regulatory implications as marijuana remains federally illegal and hemp has become de facto legal thanks to a provision in the 2018 Farm Bill. Despite the similarity of the products, marijuana companies operating in states that have legalized the sale of marijuana face significantly higher regulatory and tax burdens than hemp companies.
The situation is further complicated because the Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug, which would keep it illegal, but remove some red tape around research and taxes. Similarly, the psychoactive hemp market is facing an existential threat following a provision slipped into a bill to reopen the government following last year’s government shutdown.
The modification would close what was essentially a loophole created by the 2018 farm bill, which has allowed for the sale of psychoactive hemp products. This provision, however, won’t take effect until November, which has set off a flurry of activity in the recreational hemp industry to try and save their businesses, as well as proposed legislation that would keep hemp legal.
The alcohol industry also has a stake in both the legal status of hemp and marijuana. Many in the alcohol industry see their cannabis counterparts as competitors, even as other alcohol companies have themselves entered the cannabinoid seltzer market.
Joe Gerrity, the CEO of Crescent Canna, which sells hemp-infused seltzers, told Salon that from the hemp side of things, there’s the perception that “Republicans are a lot stronger.” This in part owes to the fact that hemp farmers often live in more GOP-leaning areas, but also because fewer red states have legalized marijuana.
“The reality right now is [that] Congress isn’t getting anything done and the Trump administration has shown a willingness to move otherwise stagnant issues forward,” Gerrity said. “There’s no doubt it’s politically popular to embrace the cannabis industry from a party perspective, and frankly, it shocks me that we still haven’t seen a Democrat come out of the fold in a leadership position wholly embracing marijuana and pro-cannabis legalization.”
Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer at Spherex, a company that sells cannabis infused vape cartridges and other products, said that the current political landscape is shaped not only by the regulatory tangle, but by two individuals: Teulieve CEO Kim Rivers, advocating for the marijuana industry, and Howard Kessler, who champions the hemp industry.
“This is how Trump operates,” Hunter said. “You’ve got to grease the palms — whatever metaphor you want to use — and um so here we are. It’s not surprising to see these large amounts of money flowing into PACs that he’s in favor of. It’s just, unfortunately, how the game is played in this current era.”
Hunter also called the lobbying a “sign of maturity” for the industry, which is a sentiment shared by other hemp and cannabis businesspeople interviewed by Salon. At the same time, he said, the fact that the same plant is treated legally differently in cases of recreational marijuana, marijuana grown at home, medical marijuana and hemp is a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
“We need to rationalize this,” Hunter said. “There’s no valid reason for the hemp industry to exist. You know, the amount of business that’s being done there, primarily around the beverages. I saw the other day that there were about 1.6 million cases of intoxicating hemp beverages sold last year. When you compare it to the number of cases of beer, which is around 2.5 billion, it’s de minimis.”
How regulatory changes happen, however, is a delicate issue. Josh Kesselman, Founder of RAW Rolling Papers, told Salon that “if Washington gets this wrong, reform could end up favoring the players who spend the most on lobbying while leaving small farmers, independent operators and the people who built this movement behind.”
“This plant should not be handed over to cannabis oligarchs who profit at the expense of everyone beneath them,” he said. “Any real reform has to protect access, protect small businesses, support research and move us closer to full normalization, not create a system where the culture gets pushed aside and the benefits flow only to insiders, lobbyists and billionaires.”
Morgan Fox, the political director at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said he doesn’t see comprehensive reform that would bring all cannabis products under a single national regulatory framework in the immediate future.
Fox noted that this sort of legislation already exists, it just doesn’t have the support to pass. He attributed this in part to powerful prohibitionists, like gambling billionaire Miriam Adelson and the Sembler family, whose donations to conservative political causes dwarf those of either hemp or marijuana companies.
“There’s certainly opposition from very, very powerful people within the Republican Party and within Congress that would make it very difficult to get any sort of legislation to the floor without severe pressure from the president,” Fox said. “I think that that’s relatively unlikely, at least in the near term, unless there’s a chance that it could potentially help him in the midterm.”
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