July 14, 2026 — the independence test

0:00 Today, the second-highest law enforcement job in the country went to a man whose job until recently was keeping the president out of prison.

0:09 And in Utah, two national monuments lost ninety percent of their land to drilling and mining — a blueprint written years ago, now stamped into law. Let's start with the confirmation hearing that mattered most today.

0:26 Todd Blanche — Donald Trump's personal criminal defense attorney, the lawyer who stood beside him through a felony conviction in Manhattan — sat before the Senate to answer for a nomination to become Associate Attorney General.

0:41 That's the number three job at the Justice Department, overseeing the Criminal Division, with direct authority over the same prosecutors who once investigated his client.

0:52 The framing you'll hear in a lot of coverage is that Blanche is a loyalist, a lackey. That misses the point. The danger here is structural: you don't need to question his character to see the conflict.

1:06 A president's personal defense lawyer should not be the person who decides whether to close the cases he worked to beat. That is not about loyalty.

1:16 It is about whether the institution can hold the line when the boss's lawyer runs the place. Then there's what happened on public lands.

1:25 President Trump signed proclamations under the Antiquities Act that shrank Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah from more than three million acres combined to just over three hundred thousand.

1:40 That is a cut of about ninety percent. The released land goes to the Bureau of Land Management and the state of Utah — meaning oil and gas leases, mining claims, development.

1:54 The Interior Department laid the groundwork months ago: a secretarial order from February, a May memo from DOJ arguing the president can fully revoke monuments.

2:06 For the Navajo Nation and other tribes who hold Bears Ears sacred, this is not a policy shift. It is the removal of protections that took years of organizing to win.

2:18 Conservation groups and tribal nations are expected to sue, and the legal fight will test whether the Antiquities Act actually permits a president to undo protections on this scale.

2:31 The outdoor recreation economy in Utah — worth about one-point-five billion dollars a year — is also on the line.

2:40 Across the country, twelve state attorneys general — led by California — filed suit to block the hundred-and-ten-billion-dollar merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.

2:54 The Justice Department cleared the deal last month with no conditions whatsoever.

2:59 So the states are now the only check on what would be the largest media merger in Hollywood history — combining two of the five biggest film distributors, two of the five biggest cable programmers.

3:12 The states are asking for a temporary restraining order to keep the companies from closing the deal before a judge can rule.

3:20 If they lose, consolidation tightens further — higher streaming prices, less bargaining power for workers, fewer outlets for independent media.

3:32 Meanwhile, the Supreme Court — without ruling directly on the issue — laid groundwork in its Trump v.

3:39 United States decision that could eventually allow presidents to fire the heads of independent agencies like the FTC, SEC, and FCC for any reason. The immediate effect is doctrinal, not operational.

3:55 But the reasoning, especially in concurrences from justices like Thomas, calls into question a nearly century-old principle — Humphrey's Executor — that shielded regulators from political firing.

4:09 The shift is in the intellectual foundation. The lawsuits that will test it are almost certain to come.

4:16 Also today, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the first state moratorium on hyperscale data centers — the giant facilities that power AI and drink enormous amounts of electricity and water.

4:31 The order pauses new air permits for a year and sets up a task force to write higher standards. It is not a permanent block, but it flips the default from build-first-ask-later to a precautionary pause.

4:47 The burden is now on the tech industry to prove its data centers can meet higher energy, environmental, and community standards before they expand in New York.

4:58 And in the federal courts, the Justice Department indicted three Russian nationals for a cybercrime scheme that stole more than sixty-one million dollars from hospitals, schools, and banks in twenty-one states.

5:13 That is classic after-the-fact enforcement: charges filed, victims absorb the loss.

5:20 At the same time, the administration's proposed budget cuts funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — CISA — by about four hundred ninety-five million dollars.

5:34 That is the agency that helps hospitals and schools patch systems before the thieves get in. You can see the imbalance.

5:43 A few others in the mix: Teacher misconduct in California — a ProPublica investigation found the state failed to revoke credentials for sixty-seven educators despite findings of serious abuse.

5:59 The Education Department threatened to cut federal funding to schools that pass such teachers along. The problem is that threatening to pull money from poor districts does not help them fix the problem.

6:12 The Supreme Court said it needs more security funding — justices Kagan and Barrett testified personally, a rare move that reflects a four-hundred-percent increase in threats since 2015.

6:25 And the BBC lost more than half a million licence fee payers, giving ammunition to those in the UK who want to shrink or privatize the broadcaster during its Charter Review. This is not only today's news.

6:40 The watch on Project 2025 is constant, piece by piece.

6:45 One hundred forty-seven of its actions have been read, reframed, and logged so far — out of a total of eleven hundred seventy-five distinct actions now on the record and mapped. The work goes on.

7:00 We do not claim to have reversed anything. But we track the whole arc. What comes next: The Senate will vote on Todd Blanche's confirmation, likely later this week.

7:12 Legal challenges to the Utah monument reductions are expected from tribal nations and conservation groups.

7:20 A judge will soon rule on the states' request for a temporary restraining order blocking the Paramount-WBD merger.

7:28 The Supreme Court's reasoning on independent agencies will be tested in lower courts in the coming months. And New York's task force has one year to write new standards for data centers. That is the day.

7:43 Not a catastrophe, not a victory — a set of choices and consequences, happening now, and now, and now. We will be back tomorrow.