The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. The administration is remaking the Justice Department's civil rights division into an instrument of the president's agenda. Harmeet Dhillon has pushed out hundreds of longtime attorneys, replaced many with inexperienced ideological allies, and turned the division's enforcement powers toward the White House's aims — the machinery built to protect the vulnerable repurposed to serve power.
The same department now says it is investigating five television networks under antitrust law over the halt in pool coverage. The pool of five broadcasters ceased presidential coverage last month after the administration barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House — the state moving to punish the press for a blackout it provoked.
In small-town Louisiana, Republican Christopher Paul is on course to be elected police chief unopposed, despite two pending charges of child rape over allegations he raped two girls 20 years ago — a community left to weigh what a badge is worth.
Capital grinds on elsewhere: a nurse, Hannah Bates, 31, has spent nearly two years representing herself against the private lender that sued her and garnished her paycheck. Senator Roger Marshall paid a Kansas baker's $678.75 cookie bill from his 2020 election watch party only after her story went viral, six years on, while Trump lines up red-state rallies in Montana and Arizona.
In New York, protests erupted after ICE shot a father in front of his young son. And the climate bites both coasts: Storm Rachel brings flash-flood warnings to Southern California as Hurricane Simon strengthens into a Category 4 storm bearing down on Mexico's Pacific coast.
Zoom out: Thirty-five years after Anita Hill's testimony made workplace sexual harassment a national reckoning, the day's news is dominated by a Justice Department bent to the president's agenda — hollowing out civil rights enforcement and menacing the networks the White House locked out.
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