The Consumer Price Index slipped to +3.5% in June, from +4.2% in May, the Labor Department reports Tuesday morning. Month-over-month CPI was -0.4% in June (from +0.5% in May) largely from the energy index’s 5.7% drop. But that energy index drop follows a 3.9% hike in May, 3.8% in April and 10.9% in March. The June index for food was 0.2%. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Full-On War – There seems to have been some question in recent days about whether what’s going on with Iran amounts to the war being back on. A 60-day ceasefire fell apart last week after a couple of weeks negotiating over an MOU that gave Iran serious advantages [the fifth paragraph essentially put Iran in charge of restoring shipping through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, with a pledge Iran would ensure safe passage and remove military obstacles such as its mines, The Wall Street Journal noted].
Meanwhile, the US has reimposed a naval blockade and is upping airstrikes after Iran attacked ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, The Associated Press reports Wednesday.
Iran has attacked Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain with drones and missiles, NPR’s Morning Edition reports.
US Central Command says it’s striking Iran during daylight hours after days of attacking only at night, The Guardian reports, with hits “designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping” in the Strait. Seven Iranian Army personnel were reported killed, prompting the army to vow a “decisive response.”
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Trump Pays – Author and former “Ask E. Jean” Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll has been paid the $5.6 million awarded her in her 2023 defamation case against Donald J. Trump, The New York Times reports, citing a note added to the court’s online docket last week. Damages awarded in E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump in 2023 were held in escrow while Trump exhausted his appeals, all the way up to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
Carroll accused the president of sexual assault and defaming her when he called her accusations “a Hoax and a lie” on social media.
Her attorney, Robert Kaplan said he was “pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict.”
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Let’s Get This Strait – A gallon of unleaded regular Wednesday is up 3.1 cents over Tuesday to $3.89, according to AAA’s national average. That’s up $1.088 from February 27. Diesel is $4.938 Wednesday, up 5.6 cents from Tuesday for a $1.164 premium over late February. –TL
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TUESDAY 7/14/26
Another ICE Shooting – Six days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a Mexican immigrant, for allegedly using his vehicle as a “weapon” as he drove a work crew to a construction site, it has happened again. This time in Biddeford, Maine, a small town about half an hour south of Portland.
There, an ICE agent Monday fatally shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a Colombian man whom immigration advocates say was authorized to work in the US. An ICE agent fired four shots into the windshield of Guerrero’s white Kia. Witnesses described seeing Guerrero bleeding from the head as he was being pulled from the car, telling agents “I tried to stop,” the Portland Press Herald reports. Bystanders shouted at agents as people believed to be family members, including a pre-school girl thought to be Guerrero’s daughter, watched.
A spokesperson for Sen. Angus King (I-ME) told NPR that Guerrero was “not the target of the warrant” connected to a house under ICE surveillance in connection with an alleged illegal alien facing a final order of removal.
King told Morning Edition that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullen told him that Guerrero allegedly “weaponized” his car, then claimed the ICE officer worried Guerrero’s car “posed a threat to public safety” by potentially driving into a crowd.
“Police officers are trained all over the country not to shoot into cars,” King said.
Stephen Miller’s secret police? … There is no body camera footage of ICE’s fatal shooting of Guerrero, King said. As an independent, King voted with Senate Democrats against a bill that funds ICE through the end of President Trump’s term. But the Republican majority passed the funding while rejecting Democrats’ demands that it include requirements that ICE agents carry badges, identification and body cameras.
It took ICE nearly 12 hours to issue a statement, to just before 7 p.m. Monday confirming Guerrero’s shooting, according to the Press Herald. There has been no comment from DHS.
A Biddeford police officer’s involvement at the scene was limited to providing security at the scene, according to the newspaper’s report, and the unnamed officer has been placed on leave.
“This has to be a clear and transparent investigation,” King said.
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Trump Can’t Sue Himself – US District Judge Kathleen Williams accused President Trump and his attorneys of having manipulated the court system when Trump sued his own Internal Revenue Service for $1.776 billion, thus bypassing the requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests, The Associated Press reports.
Trump had said the $1.776 billion would create a fund to compensate allies who believed they had been unjustly persecuted, including possibly those charged in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.
This comes just as Acting Attorney Gen. Todd Blanche testifies before the Senate Appropriations committee Tuesday in his quest to become Trump’s permanent AG.
Williams stopped short of voiding the part of the deal that would shield Trump from IRS scrutiny in perpetuity, but she referred Alejandro Brito, the attorney who filed the case for the president in Florida, for possible disciplinary action before the state bar. Williams also said attorney Daniel Epstein will not be granted permission to file cases within the Southern District of Florida for up to one year.
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About that Gas – Relief at the pump comes Tuesday for the first time since the 60-day Memorandum of Understanding ceasefire fell apart late last week. National average for a gallon of unleaded regular is $3.859 Tuesday, AAA reports, down 1.3 cents from Monday and up $1.057 from February 27. Diesel is up 0.7 cents, however, to $4.882 over Monday and $1.108 from late February. --TL
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MONDAY 7/13/26
UPDATE: South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has appointed Lindsey Graham's sister, Darline Graham Norton, to finish his fourth term ending January 3, 2027, The Hill reports. President Trump had recommended McMaster appoint Graham's sister.
In the meantime South Carolina will hold a GOP primary for US Senate, with filing for the primary opening July 21 and closing July 28, according to the Post and Courier. If a runoff is necessary it will be held August 25.
Graham Dies -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a traditional Republican military/foreign relations hawk who somehow became one of President Trump’s staunchest allies after initially rejecting his MAGA politics, died Saturday evening after returning from Ukraine earlier that day. The Washington, D.C. medical examiner’s office says in a preliminary report that Graham, 71, died of an aortic dissection tear in his main artery, caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, The New York Times reports.
Graham was scheduled to appear Sunday morning on Meet the Press for what NBC News said would have been his 64thappearance.
Graham had convinced President Trump to back a bipartisan bill to impose “scorching” tariffs and sanctions on Russian oil that has been paying for dictator/President Vladimir Putin’s war scheme against Ukraine, said Graham’s co-sponsor on the bill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
“In my last conversation with Sen. Graham, he was absolutely exultant calling from Kyiv,” Blumenthal told NPR’s Morning Edition Monday, “seeking final approval from the White House for our Russia sanctions bill, which he was going to discuss with President Zelenskyy.”
Graham briefly ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. In 2015 told CNN; “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
That changed quickly as Trump claimed primary election victories leading up to his first win in November 2016, and particularly after Trump’s second win eight years later, Graham had become his closest ally in the Senate.
Trump on Sunday called Graham “one of the greatest people and senators I have ever known.” … “He was always working and was a true American patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed.”
Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster now must choose a temporary replacement to serve the remainder of Graham’s current term, to January. Graham was running for a fifth Senate term with Annie Andrews his Democratic Party challenger.
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Gas Update – The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular on Monday came down from Sunday’s prices, according to the AAA, though at $3.872 still higher by 2.6 cents over last Thursday, the most recent day we chronicled. That’s $1.07 costlier than unleaded regular prices on February 27. Diesel was up 6.5 cents over last Thursday to $4.875 per gallon. That’s $1.101 over late February.
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Plane Intimidation? – FBI agents knocked on the doors of New York Times reporters late Friday with subpoenas to investigate leaks about President Trump flying on his old Air Force One to return from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, last week. That flight left behind Trump’s Qatari-gifted Boeing 747, which he used as Air Force One to fly to the summit.
The FBI subpoenas demanded that reporters give evidence of leaks about the Qatari jet to a grand jury.
According to The New York Times’ report on the story Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel cancelled a trip to Chicago last Friday and spent “roughly eight hours” at the White House to run the investigation instead of doing so at his agency’s Washington headquarters. MS NOW as well as the NYT broke the story last week that Trump switched airplanes for his return to the US after the Secret Service voiced concerns to the administration that the über-luxurious 747 Qatar gave to Trump lacks the advanced anti-missile capabilities and other defensive countermeasures of the quotidian Air Force One.
Iranians loyal to the governing regime last week called for the death of President Trump during the funeral procession of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the first US attacks on Tehran last February (New York Post), apparently prompting the Secret Service to have the president change airplanes for his return. Trump switched back to the Qatari 747 at Mildenhall Air Force Base in England for the final leg of his return to the US last week.
Justice Department Director of Public Affairs Emily Covington “sought to downplay” the unusual nature of the subpoenas, the NYT reported Sunday.
“Every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information,” Covington’s statement read. “To the extent that we have to investigate breaches of national security, that’s something that we will continue to do.”
But the investigation smacks of the same sort of Capt. Queegian White House crackdown on Trump’s embarrassing, at least, no-bid contract attempt to “clean up” the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington – a pet project, like the East Wing ballroom that could not legally be made fun of, in a totalitarian regime such as China, Russia or North Korea. – Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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MONDAY 7/13/26