Editorial Note
There are bad news days, and then there are days when you should probably stop checking your phone because every notification seems personally designed to piss you off.
Donald Trump had the second kind of Monday.
No single thing that happened on August 17 is likely to define his presidency. Taken together, though, they produced one of those days when the machinery that usually bends around Trump stubbornly refused to cooperate. Judges told him no. Voters told pollsters they’d had enough. A border project ran into bipartisan resistance. An American ally got threatened with bombing. And somehow that still wasn’t everything.
Trump began Monday with the Supreme Court once again refusing to rescue him from the $5 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. The justices declined his request to reconsider their previous refusal to hear his appeal, leaving intact the 2023 jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll. The Court is still considering whether to hear his separate appeal involving the $83.3 million defamation judgment Carroll won in 2024. (Reuters)
There’s something almost poetic about losing the same appeal twice. Trump asked the Supreme Court to take the case. It said no. He came back and essentially asked, Are you sure? The answer was still no, and this particular legal fight has reached the end of the road.
Then the 9th Circuit joined the festivities.
A three-judge panel ruled that Sigal Chattah, Trump’s choice to run the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada, was not lawfully serving as the state’s top federal prosecutor. Chattah’s original 120-day interim appointment expired, after which the Justice Department tried to keep her in place by making her first assistant U.S. attorney and invoking the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. The appeals court said the law doesn’t work that way: the person stepping into the acting role generally has to have been first assistant when the vacancy arose. (Reuters)
That part matters for another reason. The opinion was written by Judge Eric Miller, a Trump appointee, and another member of the three-judge panel was also appointed by Trump. This wasn’t some blue-state judge being dragged from central casting for Trump’s next Truth Social tantrum. It was another court saying there are still rules governing how federal offices get filled, even when following those rules is inconvenient. (Reuters)
The administration already lost a similar fight over Alina Habba’s appointment as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, when the 3rd Circuit ruled in December that she too had been unlawfully installed. At some point, repeatedly discovering that federal law does not contain an “unless Donald Trump would rather do something else” clause should become less surprising. (Reuters)
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And then came the number Trump probably hated more than either court ruling: 33 percent.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Monday put Trump’s job approval at 33 percent, the lowest level of his current presidency and equal to the low point of his first term in December 2017. Sixty-four percent disapproved. Eighty percent said they expect U.S. involvement in the war with Iran to continue for an extended period, while only one in five Americans said the war has been worth it. (Reuters)
Those numbers would be ugly enough by themselves. The political erosion underneath them is worse. In the same polling, Democrats led Republicans 38 percent to 35 percent on who voters trust more to handle the economy, part of a shift Reuters says has put Democrats ahead on that issue for the first time in about a decade. Republicans still led on immigration, but their advantage had collapsed from 26 points in January 2025 to just two points—40 percent to 38 percent. (Reuters)
Polls move. One survey does not predict an election, and anybody telling you the November midterms are already decided should have their crystal ball confiscated. The Reuters/Ipsos poll also carries a three-point margin of error, which is worth remembering when people start treating every individual number as holy scripture. But 33 percent approval and 64 percent disapproval aren’t background noise, either, especially when Trump’s traditional strengths on the economy and immigration are weakening at the same time. (Reuters)
When nearly two-thirds of the country says it disapproves of the president and voters are walking away from Republicans on issues that were supposed to be their safest ground, somebody at Republican headquarters is staring at a spreadsheet and saying words you can’t print in a family newspaper.
Fortunately, this is not a family newspaper.
The day wasn’t done.
The Trump administration also temporarily stopped construction on its controversial border project through Big Bend National Park after fierce bipartisan opposition. Customs and Border Protection chief Rodney Scott said all construction activity in the park would pause while he conducted an “on-the-ground evaluation” and listened to local officials and other stakeholders. Critics argue that the project is damaging an unusually pristine area while trying to solve a problem that Big Bend’s rugged and remote terrain already does a pretty effective job discouraging. (Associated Press)
The pause could be temporary, so declaring the project dead would be premature. But getting a Trump administration border project stopped long enough for somebody to go look at what the hell they’re doing qualifies as a fairly unusual development. And when opposition to a border project becomes bipartisan, it becomes harder to dismiss every critic as somebody who secretly wants the Rio Grande turned into an express lane.
Speaking of allies wondering what the hell is happening, Trump also ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea. He complained about their cost, criticized Seoul for declining to participate in U.S. actions against Iran, and again pointed to what he called his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. South Korea’s military said the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises nevertheless began Monday as scheduled. (Reuters)
The exercises involve roughly 18,000 South Korean military personnel and are designed around threats that now include drones, cyberattacks and GPS disruption. North Korea routinely denounces them, and Trump has objected to them before—including during his first presidency, when he suspended major exercises after meeting Kim. None of Trump’s previous diplomatic efforts with Kim produced changes in North Korea’s nuclear weapons or ballistic missile development. (Reuters)
That alone would have been enough foreign-policy weirdness for a respectable president’s Monday.
Trump is not a respectable president’s Monday.
He also threatened Oman.
Oman and Iran have been negotiating over restoring commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies before the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began in February. During a Fox News interview Monday, Trump warned, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” Asked about Oman later in the Oval Office, he said he didn’t think the country had behaved very well and added that the United States could “handle them very easily.” (Reuters)
That sentence deserves a moment to breathe.
Oman is a country the United States has routinely dealt with as a diplomatic and regional partner, and it has played an intermediary role between Washington and Tehran. Apparently that relationship now comes with the exciting possibility of being bombed by one of the parties you’re trying to help negotiate with. Nothing oils the machinery of diplomacy quite like wondering whether your mediator needs to check the sky for American aircraft.
And because Threaten Other Countries Monday apparently needed a Western Hemisphere edition, the administration is simultaneously expanding its military campaign against suspected drug traffickers in Latin America.
The United States has killed more than 200 people in more than 60 strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that it accused of drug trafficking. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth now says Washington wants to carry the campaign onto land through joint operations with governments in the region. During a military exercise in Panama, Hegseth described the goal this way: “like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats” with the “same effect on land.” (Associated Press)
The administration has designated 20 Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations, while Hegseth has begun talking about traffickers in the same language traditionally used for ISIS and al-Qaida. AP reports that the Pentagon has provided little public evidence establishing that many of the more than 200 people killed in the boat strikes were actually the “narco-terrorists” the administration says it targeted, and the legality of those strikes has been questioned. (Associated Press)
To be precise, Trump is not threatening to attack Colombia, Honduras or Ecuador. The administration is seeking cooperation from those governments. Colombia’s new president has requested greater U.S. military involvement, Ecuador has already conducted joint raids with American forces, and Hegseth says Honduras has agreed to joint operations. Guatemala is the outlier: President Bernardo Arévalo says his country did not agree to such operations and that they would be illegal without congressional approval. (Associated Press)
That distinction matters because reality is interesting enough without decorating it. It also leaves us with a much bigger question than one day’s Trump roundup, which is why I’m not going to bury the Latin America story in here. We’ll come back to the rather stunning fact that America’s decades-old “War on Drugs” has quietly developed into a war in which suspected traffickers can be killed by military force.
For Monday, though, just appreciate the itinerary.
Trump’s day included a second Supreme Court rejection in a case where a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, another federal appeals court telling his administration it could not manipulate appointment rules, the lowest approval rating of his current presidency, bipartisan resistance to a border project, new friction with South Korea, an explicit bombing threat against Oman and an expanding military campaign in Latin America. (Reuters; Reuters; Reuters/Ipsos; Associated Press; Reuters; Reuters; Associated Press)
That is not what political professionals call winning the news cycle.
What makes the day interesting isn’t that Donald Trump received a bunch of bad headlines. Presidents get bad headlines. Trump has probably generated enough of them to wallpaper the White House.
What’s interesting is where the resistance came from.
Courts aren’t automatically accepting the administration’s workarounds. Bipartisan opposition was enough to at least pause a border project. Traditional Republican advantages with voters are shrinking. An American ally went ahead with military exercises after Trump ordered them reduced. Even a Supreme Court containing three Trump appointees isn’t functioning as a customer-service desk for Donald Trump’s personal legal problems. (Reuters; Associated Press; Reuters/Ipsos; Reuters)
For years, Trump’s greatest political talent has been convincing everyone around him that resistance is pointless. Push hard enough. Threaten enough. Sue enough. Fire somebody. Replace somebody. Call the story fake. Call the judge crooked. Make enough noise, and eventually somebody moves.
Monday, quite a few people didn’t.
And according to Reuters/Ipsos, 64 percent of Americans now disapprove of the job he’s doing. (Reuters)
That may turn around. Wars end. Gas prices fall. Polls bounce. Voters have short memories, and Democrats have demonstrated a remarkable ability to step directly on every rake available to them.
But Monday offered a glimpse of something Trump probably finds much more frightening than another court case.
The possibility that the old tricks are losing some of their magic.
THE RECORD
Supreme Court: The justices declined for a second time to hear Trump’s challenge to the $5 million E. Jean Carroll verdict. (Reuters)
Nevada: The 9th Circuit ruled Sigal Chattah was not lawfully serving as Nevada’s lead federal prosecutor. (Reuters)
Polling: Reuters/Ipsos put Trump at 33 percent approval and 64 percent disapproval, while only 20 percent said the Iran war has been worth it. (Reuters)
Big Bend: The administration temporarily paused construction activity in Big Bend National Park amid fierce bipartisan opposition. (Associated Press)
South Korea: Trump ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint military exercises, which nevertheless began Monday as scheduled. (Reuters)
Oman: Trump threatened to bomb the country if it interfered with U.S. objectives surrounding negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz. (Reuters)
Latin America: The Pentagon is seeking to expand its lethal anti-drug campaign from boat strikes to joint land operations with governments in the region. (Associated Press)
FROM OFF SCRIPT: THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR
No, HAARP Did Not Cause the Colombia Earthquake
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake devastated western Colombia last week, killing hundreds of people, so naturally the internet dusted off HAARP. Posts claimed the Alaska atmospheric research program somehow caused the quake. Seismologists say the earthquake resulted from natural strike-slip faulting roughly 110 kilometers underground, and the energy involved was millions of times greater than anything HAARP produces. It studies the upper atmosphere. It does not contain the “Earthquake” button from a Bond villain’s control room. (Associated Press Fact Check)
No, Abdul El-Sayed Didn’t Say America “Deserved 9/11”
A 2019 comment by streamer Hasan Piker was recycled online and attributed to Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed after he won his primary. Reuters found no evidence El-Sayed ever said America deserved the September 11 attacks or celebrated them. Piker made the remark years ago and later apologized for the wording; El-Sayed himself called it a “dumb statement” and said America did not deserve 9/11. Apparently copy-and-paste has now become opposition research. (Reuters Fact Check)
The COVID Miscarriage Statistic Is Still Bullshit
Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Johnson revived a long-debunked claim suggesting an enormous miscarriage rate among women vaccinated against COVID-19 and used newly released Fauci texts to argue officials knew the shots posed a danger. The texts show officials discussing a theoretical concern in early 2021 while pregnancy data were still limited; later evidence did not bear that concern out. Studies have found no connection between COVID vaccination during pregnancy and increased miscarriage risk. Dead bullshit, unfortunately, has excellent cardio. (FactCheck.org)
The Bullshit Detector
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ELSEWHERE IN TOM HICKS MEDIA
Lotus Purrspective — Humans keep finding new ways to complicate things that cats solved thousands of years ago. Lotus has thoughts. Of course she does.
Tom’s Number Ones — We’re going back to August 18, 1974, when Roberta Flack, Paper Lace, Wet Willie and a very different radio world were fighting for space on the dial.
Panic Room Sports — The NFL isn’t even finished with preseason and people are already losing their minds. Fortunately, that’s why the Panic Room has a door.
BUY ME A CUP OF TEA
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
Which part of Trump’s Monday matters most to you: the collapsing poll numbers, the courts pushing back, or the increasingly casual way he talks about using American military force?
I’m genuinely curious which one you think we’ll still be talking about six months from now.
#DonaldTrump #Trump #OffScript #Politics #USPolitics #SCOTUS #EJeanCarroll #Iran #Oman #Midterms2026
Definitely, the courts not giving in to TRUMPUS. And this trend will continue in more impressive ways…he best stop defaming E.J. Carroll. That foul mouth of his will cost him even bigger bucks. He cannot control himself. I recorded Rosie hosting Jimmy Kimmel. Saving it for breakfast time with some hazelnut vanilla coffee. It’s the little pleasures.