Saturday, June 20 — the slow pull

0:00 A federal appeals court says the administration cannot gut the consumer watchdog that was created to stop another 2008 crash.

0:09 And the biggest private development in the Mediterranean, backed by the president's son-in-law, is facing tens of thousands of protesters in the streets of Albania.

0:21 Let's start with the one that matters most to your wallet, and your rights as a customer.

0:27 On Thursday, a federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration's attempt to immediately slash the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's staff.

0:37 The administration had wanted to cut the agency from about 1,700 employees down to just 200 — effectively crippling the watchdog Congress created after the 2008 financial crisis. The court said no. For now.

0:54 That ruling means the CFPB can still go after predatory lending, deceptive mortgages, abusive debt collection. All the things that blew up the economy last time.

1:06 This fight is not over — the administration will keep trying — but for today, the agency survives. Across the Atlantic, a different kind of power is being tested.

1:19 Jared Kushner — the president's son-in-law and former senior adviser — has a luxury resort project in Albania, on protected coastal wetlands that are home to some of Europe's last wild bird habitats.

1:33 Those wetlands had legal protection. That protection was quietly changed to make way for the development.

1:41 Tens of thousands of Albanians have been protesting for more than 20 days straight, carrying signs that say 'Albania is not for sale.' The Trump administration has said nothing.

1:55 That silence, in itself, is a policy choice — signaling that a foreign government altering its own environmental laws to benefit a presidential relative is fine by them.

2:08 Closer to home, California is trying to build a wall around its election machinery.

2:14 Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law last month that prohibits law enforcement from seizing ballots, accessing voter lists, or touching certified voting machines.

2:25 This is a direct response to the Trump administration's threats to commandeer election infrastructure — including the widely reported seizure of ballots by the Riverside County Sheriff.

2:37 At the same time, the Department of Justice is trying to build a national voter surveillance and purge database, which voting rights groups have sued to block.

2:48 The Brennan Center has documented that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare — amounting to nothing significant. But the machinery to purge voters is being built anyway.

3:01 Now, a story about a single person that explains a systemic crisis. Veronica Arreola learned her picture book, 'J Is for Justice!', had become one of the most banned books in America from People magazine.

3:17 She's not alone. PEN America recorded almost 7,000 instances of book bans during the 2024-2025 school year, with books by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ characters targeted most often.

3:33 This is not a random local thing. Groups like Moms for Liberty are running a coordinated campaign, pushing vague 'parental rights' laws that let a few activists decide what every kid in town can read.

3:49 Then there's the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously on Thursday that the federal ban on gun possession by marijuana users cannot automatically apply to someone who uses a few times a week — without proof of addiction or dangerousness.

4:05 The ruling does not overturn the law, but it guts enforcement against casual consumers. The practical effect is a two-tiered system where prosecution depends on which state you're in and what the prosecutor can prove.

4:20 And it leaves a vacuum in states with weak gun laws and high violence rates — especially in communities of color, where federal firearm charges have been one of the few tools to disrupt gun trafficking.

4:34 And finally, a cautionary tale about procurement. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — the one on the National Mall, the one in all the photos — is now full of algae and peeling paint.

4:49 The National Park Service gave a $1.7 million no-bid contract to a company owned by a Trump donor, waiving the rules that require competitive bidding. The contractor had never managed a project of this scale.

5:05 Now taxpayers are paying for the manual cleanup, too. And as all this unfolds, we keep reading Project 2025 — the blueprint for the conservative takeover of the federal government.

5:20 We have now tracked, reframed, and logged 147 of its specific actions. That is part of a larger watch: 819 distinct actions across the whole government are now on the record. We document what is happening.

5:36 We do not reverse anything alone. But we do watch constantly.

5:41 Next week, the House is expected to take up the budget resolution that includes the cuts to CMS program management — the same cuts that weaken Medicare fraud prevention.

5:54 California's billionaire tax measure is now on the November ballot, with Governor Newsom opposing it.

6:00 And the fight over the CFPB will return to court, as the administration presses for permission to resume the workforce reductions. That is the shape of this Saturday. A court, a protest, a contract, a ban, a ruling.

6:18 Nothing is settled. But everything is being watched. I'm Gus Calloway. Take care of yourselves.