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The Dictatorship

At least 11 dead, 180,000 forced to flee their homes as L.A. wildfires rage

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At least 11 dead, 180,000 forced to flee their homes as L.A. wildfires rage

By Clarissa-Jan Lim

At least 11 people have died and 180,000 residents have been forced to evacuate as devastating wildfires continue to scorch the Los Angeles area for a fifth day.

A series of wildfires have sparked since Tuesday because of extreme dry conditions and powerful Santa Ana winds. Two of the biggest blazes — the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire — have destroyed a total of 35,000 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection(Cal Fire).

Officials have said the true death toll remains unknown, as the fires continue to sweep through several areas.

Here are the latest numbers from Cal Fire:

  • The Palisades Fire has consumed more than 21,000 acres and is still growing in sizeforcing officials to extend evacuation orders. It is 11% contained. City Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley has called it “one of the most destructive fires in the history of Los Angeles.”
  • The Eaton Fire has burned through more than 14,000 acres and is 15% contained. L.A. County Fire Chief Deputy Jon O’Brien said more than 5,000 structures are estimated to have been destroyed.
  • The Hurst Fire has destroyed 771 acres and is 70% contained.
  • Further north, the Lidia Firenear Acton, has swept through 395 acres and is 98% contained.
  • The Kenneth Firewhich began Thursday afternoon in the Woodland Hills area near Calabasas, has razed through more than 1,000 acres so far. It is 50% contained.
  • The Archer Firesparked Friday, has burned through 19 acres and is 0% contained.

Several emergency alerts were mistakenly sent to millions of L.A. residents who were far from where the wildfires were burning, setting off panic.

Although officials had hoped that weaker winds late Friday would help to slow the spread of the blazes, the Palisades Fire tore through dry terrain overnightmoving closer to residential areas. Strong gusts are expected to resume later on Saturday.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

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The Dictatorship

Senate confirms Jay Clayton as Trump’s director of national intelligence

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July 29, 2026

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Senate confirms Jay Clayton as Trump’s director of national intelligence

The Senate voted Tuesday to install Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as director of national intelligence despite a tense confirmation hearing that eroded the once broad bipartisan support for his nomination.

Clayton was confirmed 51-47 along party lines, with all of the chamber’s Republicans and none of its Democrats voting to hand him the reins of the nation’s sprawling intelligence apparatus.

The final vote came after a combative July 16 confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, during which Clayton said under oath that he is not an “election denier” but refused to directly state that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden.

That unnerved Democratic lawmakers on the panel, some of whom had expressed support for Clayton’s nomination amid their enthusiasm to replace acting Director Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head and a Trump loyalist. Since taking over for former National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from her Cabinet-level position after a tumultuous tenure in May, Pulte has overseen multiple rounds of layoffs across the agency.

In Clayton, who served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, some Senate Democrats had seen an experienced public servant who could be entrusted to lead the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies after more than a year of clashes with Gabbard, who they accused of making false election fraud claims and furthering Trump’s political agenda.

But his refusal to answer questions about who won the 2020 election and his stumble during a series of questions about Trump instructing Gabbard to attend an FBI raid of the election office in Fulton CountyGeorgia, earlier this year swiftly shattered that support.

During a heated exchange with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Clayton said he had only been made aware of Gabbard’s presence at the raid during a private conversation with the Georgia senator the day before the hearing.

“The first time you learned that Director Gabbard was present at that raid was in my office yesterday?” Ossoff asked, visibly stunned.

“It was the first time that, in my recollection, I’ve thought about it recently,” Clayton answered.

Democrats and election experts have repeatedly warned that Trump is launching an unprecedented effortto discredit and potentially steal the midterm elections. They have expressed fears that Trump will ask Clayton to attend another FBI raid in November involving the seizure of ballots and election records, as Gabbard did. Clayton’s performance in the confirmation hearing, which took place hours before Trump delivered a primetime address to the nation in which he said with no evidence that the country’s elections are being “rigged and stolen,” did not assuage those fears.

“I’m bitterly disappointed,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, told Clayton of his refusal to say who won the 2020 election and his answer regarding Gabbard’s role in the Fulton County raid as the hearing wrapped. The committee narrowly referred Clayton’s nomination to the full Senate in a 9-8 vote the following week.

“You’re going to be in a room with [the president] many times, and at times you should have a difference of opinion. And if you can’t disagree with him when he’s not in the room, are you going to be able to disagree with him when you’re sitting across from him in the Oval Office or Situation Room?” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., asked Clayton at one point, reflecting the growing tension in the hearing room.

After Clayton’s confirmation, Warner called on the new director of intelligence to resist pressure from Trump to manipulate intelligence for political gain or use it to cast doubt about U.S. election results or interfere in U.S. elections.

“Having known and worked with Jay for years,” Warner said. “I came away from his confirmation process with serious reservations about whether he would be willing to stand up to political pressure when it matters most. Now that he has been confirmed, I sincerely hope he proves those concerns unfounded.”

“Clayton now has an opportunity – and the responsibility – to demonstrate that intelligence will never be shaped to fit a political narrative, that analysts will be free to deliver their best independent judgments, and that the extraordinary authorities entrusted to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will never be used to manufacture doubt about the integrity of our elections or justify interference in their administration.”

David Rohde contributed to this report.

Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.

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Partial block of Texas’ censorship law is upheld in court

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July 29, 2026

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Partial block of Texas’ censorship law is upheld in court

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.

Texas’ censorship law still partially blocked

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld an injunction partially blocking a Texas law aimed at preventing minors from being exposed to harmful content. The portion of the SCOPE Act that requires some digital service providers to adopt monitor-and-filter strategies had already been hit with an injunction, which the 5th Circuit upheld after Texas appealed.

Read more at Bloomberg Law.

House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed ignorance when questioned about plans by President Donald Trump’s social media company to sell premium access to market-moving posts. On Monday, the Louisiana Republican told BLN’s Manu Raju that it was the first time he had heard the news, which was reported last week.

Watch Johnson’s response below.

GOP lawmakers largely silent amid Trump making $2B in his first year of second term — and of potential conflicts.

“First I’ve heard of it,” Johnson said of Truth Social selling quicker access to market-moving posts.

Others won’t comment, some shrug it off.

$2B raise any red… pic.twitter.com/I6ph3RgDy5

— Manu Raju (@mkraju)”https://x.com/mkraju/status/2081708925758382111?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>July 27, 2026

Administration sued over alleged database

Privacy and civil liberties advocates have sued the Trump administration, accusing it of adopting “a secret policy of collecting, maintaining, and using personally identifying information of protestors and observers.” The lawsuit centers on claims — some of which have been made by federal immigration agents — that the government is maintaining a database to spy on critics of the president’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.

Read more at Common Dreams.

SpaceX’s stock collapse

SpaceX’s stock price fell again Monday amid ongoing concerns in the market about spending on artificial intelligence. The stock’s overall collapse since its peak after its initial public offering in June has reportedly played a role in erasing owner Elon Musk’s trillionaire status.

Watch Bloomberg Tech’s report below.

Trump administration exempts SpaceX

Speaking of SpaceX, the Trump administration — perhaps, in keeping with the president’s campaign vow to “make life good” for people like Musk — agreed to exempt the company’s Starlink routers from the Federal Communications Commission’s ban on foreign-made routers. Starlink makes some of its routers in Vietnam.

Read more at Ars Technica.

High-tech voter suppression

AlterNet published a report on the high-tech tools enabling conservatives to challenge voters’ eligibility en masse, posing potential threats to voter participation in the upcoming midterms.

Read more at AlterNet.

Senate crypto bill in danger

A Senate bill regulating cryptocurrencies — and banning federal officials, including presidents, from issuing digital assets like Trump’s crypto coins — is at risk of languishing as Democrats raise concerns that the bill’s ethics provisions aren’t strong enough.

Read more at CNBC.

The Justice Department is prosecuting a critic of Atlanta’s massive “Cop City” compound over an allegation that the activist gave authorities planning to looking through his phone a so-called duress password that triggered the deletion of his data.

Read more at Tech Crunch.

Kalshi’s midterm moves

Kalshi, the glorified betting platform that has financial ties to Donald Trump Jr. and which has been used to promote baseless election conspiracy theories, unveiled its “midterms hub” ahead of this fall’s elections. What could go wrong? Plenty, it seems. A Kalshi board member joined MS NOW’s “The Weekend” to discuss the scrutiny the company is facing.

Watch the interview here.

MAHA misinformation

“Make America Healthy Again” influencers are spreading misinformation about women’s menstrual cycles, and The Guardian spotlighted how the influencers are spreading falsehoods about women’s luteal phases — claims that seem designed to malign birth control and fuel pronatalist talking points that have gained steam in the MAGA movement.

Read more at The Guardian.

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.

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Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 7.28.26

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July 29, 2026

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Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 7.28.26

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest on the Japanese earthquake: “A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture on Tuesday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, ​rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall. Speaking to reporters from her office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said authorities ‌were still assessing the full extent of the damage in the area, which was devastated by a deadly quake a decade ago.”

* Tehran contradicts Trump: “Iran’s skies have been free of the sound of explosions and airstrikes for the past several days, after a bout of renewed fighting with the United States. But Iranian officials say they have not agreed to a cease-fire and are in no hurry to hold direct talks with American negotiators. Instead, Iranian officials insist that they are in a position of strength, military leaders boast of battlefield successes, and diplomats dismiss U.S. claims that they are eager to return to negotiations.”

* The six-month mark: “Soon after the war began on Feb. 28, President Trump declared that Iran was ‘totally defeated and wants a deal.’ Then in March, Mr. Trump said the U.S. military would wrap up its campaign against Iran in two to three weeks. ‘We will be leaving very soon,’ he said. Now the conflict is entering its sixth month and a period of deep uncertainty. After nearly two weeks of attacks and counterattacks, Mr. Trump has held off a major escalation. But major issues between the two sides remain unsettled.”

* Putin’s latest offensive against dissent: “The Kremlin has initiated a new crackdown on anti-war voices ahead of Russia’s parliamentary elections in September, barring candidates from running if they show any sign of opposing the bloody, expensive and increasingly unpopular military operation in Ukraine.”

* The latest ethics probe: “The House Ethics Committee said in a statement Monday it is investigating Rep. Lance Gooden, a four-term Texas Republican. It’s unclear what the committee is probing, but the Office of Congressional Conduct, an independent investigative branch of the House, sent over findings regarding Gooden to the committee June 10.”

* A striking report out of Louisiana about how state and local officials agreed to give a tech giant everything it wanted as part of a secret deal: “The New York Times’s examination shows for the first time how Meta used secrecy and speed to pave the way for its giant project, which it calls Hyperion. At a pivotal moment for the A.I. boom, Hyperion could be a blueprint for other companies intent on avoiding local opposition in order to get massive data centers built fast.”

* Evidence of a toxic political climate: “Last week, former Justice Department lawyer Liz Oyer testified in the Senate against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Then came the death threats.”

* The pressure on McConnell persists: “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has asked Sen. Mitch McConnell to ‘directly and verbally address’ their constituents or resign, the Democratic governor’s latest demand for transparency regarding the 84-year-old Republican lawmaker’s condition as he recovers from a fall and pneumonia.”

See you tomorrow.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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