AVDD Press Round Up
28 July 2025
GOP leans into Trump administration’s Obama accusations; Politico, 27 July 2025
Key Points:
Some Republican lawmakers on Sunday supported the Trump administration’s recent claims that the Obama administration waged a Russia-related conspiracy against Trump, but stopped short of Trump’s allegation of “treason”. Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified a report from 2020 that she alleges proves the Obama administration “conspired to subvert the will of the American people” and engaged in a “years-long coup” against Trump.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for an investigation into the matter, saying “If there is evidence of a crime being committed, create a special council to look at it…I think that’s the best way to go.”
Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) chair of the House Intel Committee, in a Fox News Sunday interview slammed what he called the “Russia collusion hoax” describing it as a “fraud perpetrated on the American people at the expense of President Trump.”
In contrast, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, argued on Fox News Sunday that “no new information” was released. “It’s new to you, but all of this information has been available to the House Intelligence Committee, including in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 when all these investigations and reviews were done under the first Trump administration.”
In 2020, a Republican-led Senate panel affirmed the intelligence committee’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election and preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Judges Continue to Block Trump Policies Following Supreme Court Ruling; The Wall Street Journal, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
Despite the Supreme Court decision in June limiting the authority of federal judges to halt Trump administration policies nationwide, states organizations and individuals challenging government actions are finding a number of ways to notch wins against the White House.
In at least nine cases, judges have explicitly grappled with the Supreme Court’s opinion and granted nationwide relief anyway. That includes rulings that continue to halt the policy at the center of the high court case: President Trump’s effort to pare back birthright citizenship. Judges have also kept in place protections against deportations for up to 500,000 Haitians, halted mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and prevented the government from terminating a legal-aid program for mentally ill people in immigration proceedings.
To accomplish this, litigants challenging the administration have used a range of tools, defending the necessity of existing injunctions, filing class action lawsuits and invoking a law that requires government agencies to act reasonably: the Administrative Procedure Act.
“There are a number of highly significant court orders that are protecting people as we speak,” said Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group that has brought many cases against the Trump administration. “We are continuing to get relief.”
What to know about the metastasizing Jeffrey Epstein controversy; The Washington Post, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
The Jeffery Epstein controversy isn’t going away for President Donald Trump. In fact, it may be ramping up.
Three weeks after the Justice Department said there was nothing more to share about the years-old criminal case against Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in 2019, the clamor for additional details has consumed Washington. Some MAGA leaders are accusing the Trump administration of hiding the truth. Congress has launched its own investigation. And new revelations about Trump’s long and close friendship with Epstein are raising questions about what the president knew about Epstein’s crimes and when he knew it.
A third of Republican voters disapprove of how Trump is handling the case, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll–suggesting significant discontent among Trump’s usually unwavering supporters.
Trump’s base is largely brushing off the idea that he knew about Epstein’s criminal activity. Still, MAGA’s most vocal adherents have yet to let go of what they see as the underlying issue: that the president has a chance to bring down bad guys, promised to do so and now isn’t jumping on it.
Trump’s imaginary numbers, from $1.99 gas to 1,500 percent price cuts; The Washington Post, 28 July 2025
Key Points:
The president likes to cite specific numbers to bolster his claims. They are often wildly improbable–or just impossible.
President Donald Trump made a promise at a reception last week for Republican lawmakers that was as impossible as it was specific: He would drive down drug prices by as much as 1,500 percent–”numbers that are not even thought achievable,” he said.
A price cannot drop by more than 100 percent, but Trump went on to make several other precise but clearly false numerical claims. The cost of gasoline had fallen to $1.99 a gallon in five states, he said; according to AAA, it was over $3 in every state. Business had invested $16 trillion in America in the past four months, he added; the entire U.S. economy last year was worth less than $30 trillion.
Trump is hardly the first politician to toss out figures that wilt under scrutiny. But he attaches precise numbers to his claims with unusual frequency, giving the assertions an air of authority and credibility–yet the numbers often end up being incorrect or not even plausible. The bogus statistics are part of Trump’s long history of falsehoods and misleading claims, which numbered more than 30,000 in his first term alone.
Some analysts believe the misuse of numbers is growing, a reflection of an era when Americans increasingly inhabit separate realities. Ismar Volić, a mathematics professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said people often seize on numbers offered by politicians they trust as confirmation of their preexisting worldview. “Trump is an egregious example, but it’s not limited to him, nor did he invent this, Volić said. “It’s like absolute, final immutable truth–when you throw out a number or graph or chart statistic, people tend to believe it.”