Author: Sky York Journal

Sky York Journal Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson is on track to become the official Democratic Senate nominee as the Saturday convention will cap a surprisingly smooth process to replace Graham Platner. A fifth-generation logger, Jackson’s deep labor ties and union support helped him dominate the delegate nominating contests. His performance was so impressive that the other serious Maine Senate contenders — including former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention Nirav Shah, who placed ahead of Jackson in the gubernatorial primary they both ran in this cycle — dropped out of the race. A planned debate was…

Sky York Journal Weeks after the Iran War began, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) predicted to TPM that it would become a billion-dollar-a-day “mess.” Now, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth taking to Capitol Hill to request almost $67 billion in supplemental war funding, Morelle says his fears have been confirmed. And though Morelle is a member of two key committees with oversight of the Pentagon, he claims Congress has been given little information about where all the money is going.  “We had Hegseth in front of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and he couldn’t give us an accounting and wouldn’t give…

Sky York Journal Almost five months into President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, the Trump administration still has not asked for authorization from Congress to continue hostilities. They, however, did present Congress with a supplemental request — which includes, among other things, an ask for $67.1 billion for the Department of Defense to fund Trump’s war. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday afternoon on the details of the Pentagon’s request. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) used a significant portion of her time asking Hegseth if the administration plans to use an Iran war supplemental…

Sky York Journal This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes. On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a homebuilder in Houston, woke up before sunrise, ate breakfast prepared by his wife, and drove his construction crew to work. Around 6:50 AM, federal immigration agents surrounded Salgado Araujo’s van and shot him through an open window. Struck in the stomach, he died at a hospital a few hours later.  The Department of Homeland Security put out a statement that evening which claimed that immigration officers stopped Salgado Araujo’s van as part of a “targeted” operation,…

Sky York Journal By now, you may have heard that the company behind Truth Social, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to sell extra-fast access to the most influential posts on the platform to high-paying clients. Trump is the most-followed person on Truth Social, and so the product, called Truth API, appears aimed at monetizing early access to Trump’s market-moving “truths,” selling it to Wall Street banks and trading firms. Outrage at the mind-boggling scheme was instantaneous. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called it “an egregious scheme to profit off the presidency and enrich Wall Street while doing nothing to help…

Sky York Journal Thanks for reading this last month as we soft-launch what we’re now calling “The Brief.” I’m taking a week off to bring my toddler to the beach. I’ll be back July 27. If you’re enjoying this morning dispatch, we’ll have the option for you to sign up for it as a newsletter by early August. See you all soon. Stay cool, and breathe fresh air if you can find any. Primetime Flop Trump’s election speech last night, which Democrats, election administrators, and Republican legislators were dreading (each for somewhat different reasons), was a dud. Trump insinuated, lied…

Sky York Journal Things got really weird during President Donald Trump’s big speech on “election security” Thursday night.  The centerpiece of the event was a document dump that was posted to the White House website, which Trump claimed to summarize during his televised primetime address. The supposed evidence contained in the reams of pdfs included a wild anecdote about the iconic 1990s computer shooter game “Doom” that underscored just how far the president was reaching as he tried to substantiate his theories.   In the address to the nation, which was only carried by some networks, Trump reiterated his thoroughly debunked…

Sky York Journal As a smoke jumper, Sam Forstag fought a relentless game of inches.  The job is a hard one. Firefighters who parachute in when blazes break out deep in the forest need to build a barrier to beat back the flames. They use chainsaws and other tools to cut down to the hard mineral soil, creating a fire line with no fuel to keep feeding the inferno. It’s grueling work that can be set back in an instant by a fresh bolt of lightning. And Forstag learned all too well that, even when the forecast seems set to…

Sky York Journal Blanche’s Top Prosecutor of Political Violence Marched at Jan. 6 TPM’s Josh Kovensky revealed yesterday that a top federal prosecutor heading up the Trump DOJ’s task force on political violence marched on January 6. At least one image TPM reviewed showed him in an area outside the Capitol that was restricted, but that Trump supporters nonetheless stormed into, a lead prosecutor in the DOJ’s since-disbanded Capitol Siege Section told Josh. The DOJ told us that Lynch “was present but never entered the capitol, left the grounds after a brief period, and did not commit and was never…

Sky York Journal Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton Are on the Hill Two figures who will play decisive roles in the future of the Trump retribution and election-meddling agenda will be on Capitol Hill for their Senate confirmation hearings today.  Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche will be before the Judiciary Committee for hearings Wednesday and Thursday. And Jay Clayton — Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence and the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — will be before the Intelligence Committee.  Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has since January 2025 played a central role in…