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Trump to Deliver ‘Policy’ Speeches as He Returns to DC, Weighs Timing of Expected Presidential Run Announcement: Reports
Donald Trump is ramping up his political efforts, with a series of planned “policy” speeches and conversations with top GOP donors as he weighs the timing for an expected announcement he is running for president. That announcement could come at any time but some close to the former president believe it will be before the November midterms.
Exactly when is anyone’s guess, unbeknownst to even the prospective candidate himself.
But amid criticism the Dept. of Justice’s investigation has offered no apparent evidence it is planning to indict the former president despite 58% of Americans saying it should, reports state Trump is expected to once again run for president.
“The former president is now eyeing a September announcement, according to two Trump advisers,” The Washington Post reports. “One confidant put the odds at ’70-30 he announces before the midterms.’ And others said he may still decide to announce sooner than September.”
“You can only hold him off so long,” one adviser told The Post. “One day he’ll wake up and say, ‘Put it out.’”
Trump faces many challenges, including news that broke Wednesday night that the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack plans to hold a second series of hearings starting next month. The Committee, whose hearings have drawn huge viewership ratings, originally planned to end its publicly televised hearings on the insurrection it lays at the former president’s feet with a primetime event next week.
Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans (59%) hold Trump responsible for the insurrection, and that same number believe he “misled” them about the results of the 2020 election. Two out of three (67%) also say Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Almost as many, (65%) say Trump claimed that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent without evidence.
GOP strategists and politicians have cautioned Trump to not announce until after the November midterms, on fears over his low approval rating and indications many of his former supporters have moved on and do not want him to run a third time.
“Public and internal party polls in several key states show that Trump rates behind even Biden, who has suffered a historic collapse in public support since taking office. Trump lost a recent hypothetical head-to-head poll against Biden in New Hampshire and trails Biden in favorability in Wisconsin, both sites of marquee Senate contests this fall.”
“Of all the selfish things he does every minute of every day, it would probably be the most,” a “prominent Republican strategist” told The Post.
Trump initially wanted to announce last year in August, but advisors urged him to wait, citing campaign financing rules that would “limit his ability to access funds in his Save America PAC, which has been paying for his staff and events, trigger equal time rules on television and allow Democrats to reframe the election away from Biden’s unpopular presidency,” according to The Post.
More recently, rumors of a July 4 announcement came and went.
“Trump has decided in recent weeks to stage a series of what aides dub policy speeches as he continues to plan the structure of his next campaign. He gave a speech on crime Friday in Las Vegas, where he resurfaced his old idea that drug dealers should be given the death penalty.”
Trump “will return to Washington on July 26 to deliver what’s being billed as a major policy speech,” CNN adds, noting it will be his first time back in D.C. since he left office, refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration. “Trump will deliver remarks at the America First Agenda Summit, a conference hosted by one of the MAGA-aligned outside groups that formed after his presidency.”
Axios reports that July 26 event will be attended by a huge number of his former aides, advisors, and cabinet officials. Among them, eight former cabinet-level officials, eight former administration officials, 13 GOP House members, 10 GOP Senators, three former GOP governors, and Newt Gingrich.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
