BRING ON THE 👊 🇺🇸 🔥

Donald Trump spent years railing against “stupid wars.” Now, his so-called “Department of War” seems super amped to blow stuff up.

• Imagine a deadly team of foreign supersoldiers secretly emerging from the waves onto a Florida beach in the dead night, on a clandestine mission to plant a listening device to monitor President Donald Trump. Suddenly, the operation goes totally wrong. The team believes it has been spotted by a nearby fishing boat and opens fire, killing everyone on board. The militants flee.… leaving American authorities wondering how to react.

• Well, that’s the kind of botched, risky mission U.S. forces actually pulled in North Korea in late 2019 — in a plot personally approved by President Donald Trump. The top secret operation was carried out by the same team of Navy SEALs tasked with killing Osama bin Laden, as revealed in a bombshell story by The New York Times. Trump gave the go-ahead despite the massive risk of enraging Kim Jong Un, the infamously short-tempered, nuclear-armed, unpredictable North Korean dictator.

• Trump may talk about keeping the U.S. out of “stupid wars” and insist he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But this new Times story illustrates that he’s also got a macho-man instinct for using the American military in dangerous ways to kill people and break things. And, lately, he seems to be leaning into that impulse — in a worrying trend with uncertain future consequences.

By renaming America’s military agency the “Department of War,” Trump seems to be signaling that caution and deterrence are for sissies. Real men fight wars.

• Like a tiny man with a loud muscle car, Trump, of course, is compensating. He never served a day in uniform in his life, and famously avoided the Vietnam War by claiming bone spurs (which was bullshit, according to the family of a Queens podiatrist said to have given Trump the diagnosis). Trump privately disparaged America’s World War II veterans as “suckers” and “losers,” and didn’t want to be seen with military amputees, according to his own former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

• Lately, this same guy is on a global rampage. He’s threatening to forcefully seize Greenland. He’s toying with taking over the Panama Canal. He gleefully bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. This week brought perhaps the clearest example of the military’s new mission: Trump ordered a military strike on a Venezuelan drug boat, killing everyone aboard — without providing evidence that the boat posed a threat to the United States or notifying Congress. Legal experts believe the president exceeded his authority.

• “I can’t see how this can be considered anything other than a nonjudicial killing outside the boundaries of domestic and international law,” Frank Kendall, who served as Air Force secretary during the Biden administration, told the Wall Street Journal.

• The big idea is “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” according to newly-minted “War Secretary” and former weekend talk-show host Pete Hegseth. (Speaking of “legality,” Congress still needs to approve this name change.)

• Trump’s aggressive moves in the Western Hemisphere appear to be just beginning. The U.S. reportedly ordered the deployment of 10 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for future operations against drug cartels, beefing up the military presence in Latin America to levels not seen in decades. The State Department also designated two Ecuadorian gangs as terrorist organizations, in a sign that Trump seeks to combine the War On Drugs with the War On Terror.

Does Trump think the “Department of War” will help him earn his long-coveted Nobel Peace Prize?This sure is a funny way to go about it!

OMG, HHS

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the brainworm survivor, roadkill enthusiast and anti-vaccine crusader, is expected to release a report tying pregnant women’s use of Tylenol to autism in children.

The move appears to mean he’s ready to put his agency’s stamp of approval on what’s been called an “unproven link.” I asked Crooked’s Erin Ryan, co-host of the Hysteria podcast, for her thoughts.

“If RFK Jr. and his goons are so concerned with the cause of autism, maybe they should devote more resources into investigating the link between autism and the sperm of middle-aged and old men (Google it),” she said. “Or maybe, just maybe, they could focus on promoting the health and well-being of mothers and babies without sounding like new-age eugenicists.”

WHAT ELSE?

American job growth has sputtered to a near halt, according to fresh economic data. Thanks, business genius Donald Trump! U.S. employers created just 22,000 jobs in August, and the country posted a net jobs loss in June for the first time since 2020, during Trump’s last term. But don’t worry! During a dinner with the world’s foremost tech bros last night, Donald Trump attempted to get ahead of the report: “The real numbers … will be in a year from now on.” Phew! I am sooo relieved.

On that note, Trump’s pick to be in charge of America’s jobs data, right-wing economist E.J. Antoni, ran a Twitter account that promoted tweets that implied Kamala Harris had furthered her career through sexual favors, as well as derogatory comments about gay people, according to CNN. The White House, naturally, defended Antoni, because of course they would.

Tech weirdo Elon Musk’s car company, Tesla, just hatched a plan to make him the world’s first trillionaire. Musk would only receive the trillion dollar payday IF the company hits several lofty business milestones. The lucrative package is designed to entice Musk to stay at the company. But I dunno… given how much his toxic political persona has hurt the company, you guys might be better off paying him $1 trillion to leave!

We all know NYC Mayor Eric Adams loves the Middle East, or at least its deep-pocketed businessmen. Well, now the Trump administration is crafting a plan to make him ambassador to Saudi Arabia… if he drops out of the race to keep his current job. It’s all part of Trump’s plan to prevent democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani from becoming NYC mayor: “I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one-on-one, and I think that's a race that could be won,” Trump said on Thursday, implying he favors former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett shrugged off concerns about a constitutional crisis, saying that “the Constitution is alive and well.” But she also muddied the water, saying: “I don’t know what a constitutional crisis would look like.” Take a look around, maybe! Or read about how federal judges are deeply concerned about the high court enabling Trump.

Israel bombed high-rises in Gaza City today, claiming that Hamas uses them for military operations. But Israel rarely provides evidence that militants are using these buildings, and has repeatedly destroyed civilian infrastructure throughout its war. Just look at this before and after video of a once-bustling main street in Gaza that has been reduced to ruins.

Details of Trump’s UFC cage match at the White House, planned for next year’s Fourth of July celebrations, are starting to leak. One eye-popping idea: Fighter weigh-ins and a press conference on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Wall Street Journal reports. Anyone else think Trump will bodyslam Vince McMahon, like he did on WWE in 2007?

The State Department is considering barring Iranian diplomats from going to Costco or Sam’s Club during their upcoming trip to the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. God forbid we let them taste our triple chunk chocolate cookies!!! Marco Rubio gets a big DOOM! for this.

Light at the End of the Email…

A Kentucky woman used CPR to save the life of a drunk raccoon, which had eaten too many moonshine-infused peaches. Apologies to skunks everywhere, it turns out raccoons are the drunk ones.

A new photo released by NASA shows millions of sparkling stars, which looks more like a painting on a Tarot card box or a video game simulation than our own universe. The picture shows a “nearby star-birthing center” near a cloud, known as the Lobster Nebula.

An adorable 1-year-old toddler named Cooper is going viral for sitting on a curb and watching cars pass his house. “To see other people have so much love for him, and they don’t even know him, it just literally makes my mom heart burst and explode even more than I thought possible,” his mom said. Thank you for your service, Coop on a Stoop!

Meet Lily, an adorable 15-year-old cat!

“Her likes are drinking water out of the sink tap, playing with her mini pool table, and carrots (for some strange reason). Her dislikes are costumes and dogs.”

— Carly