Evening Roundup, July 23
Featuring The Contrarian Pod with Pasha Dashtgard, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, Tom Malinowski, Meredith Blake, Tom Joscelyn & Jen Rubin, Brian O'Neill, Shalise Manza Young, and Eliza Orlins
The state of men with Pasha Dashtgard
Today on The Contrarian Pod, we are so excited to have Pasha Dashtgard, the Director of Research from PERIL, to discuss a new report called “The State of American Men 2025.”
Tennessee opens a new front in its unrelenting attacks on bodily autonomy
Abortion restrictions are never only about obtaining abortion care. Bans on gender-affirming care or bathroom access are never just an attempt to discriminate against trans people. One thing is certain: These kinds of laws double as an affront to democracy.
Democrats can wrangle back checks and balances with the 2026 budget
In his war with the Constitution to grab the power of the purse, President Donald Trump won a partial victory last week. Despite three Republican defections in the Senate, Congress approved a “rescissions package” allowing him to cut $9 billion from foreign aid and public broadcasting programs that Congress had previously approved for the 2025 fiscal ye…
Tom Joscelyn on the moral depravation of the Trump administration: Epstein, Bove & Pirro
Jen is joined by Tom Joscelyn to discuss the controversial nominations of Emil Bove and Jeanine Pirro to the position of a jurist on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., respectively. The two also discuss how Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files may be the kryptonite of the unified MAGA base.
After Yet Another Scary Aviation Mishap, Season 2 of The Rehearsal Remains Painfully Relevant
Last Friday, a regional passenger jet approaching Minot International Airport came terrifyingly close to colliding with a B-52 bomber doing a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair.
The secretary who broke the Pentagon
Walking through the halls of the Pentagon can be both awe-inspiring and unsettling. Not just for its scale—a five-story structure with five concentric rings stretching nearly 18 miles—but for its formality. On the outermost “E-Ring,” where the highest civilian and military leaders reside, the walls are lined with oil …
Eliza Orlins on the institutions that enabled Jeffery Epstein
Jeffery Epstein may be dead, but the institutions that enabled him are still alive, still thriving, and still not being held accountable. Career public defender Eliza Orlins explains how Epstein wasn’t just a lone predator, but rather the product of a network of power and privilege that protected him.
Trump is falling all over himself trying to exit stage right. There are too many witnesses and abused for him to make a getaway. We have to look for ways to undo his damage. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/the-damage-done?r=3m1bs