Martin Pengelly

Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersAfter the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Chevron deference, a 40-year precedent under which federal agencies were given leeway in regulating industry and business, a leading climate activist lamented “yet another decision that puts polluters and their profits ahead of our health and safety.”On the other side of the political divide, conservatives were quick to celebrate.Reading on Friday from his opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts said the conservative justices who control the court 6-3 were “finally end[ing] our 40-year misadventure with Chevron deference.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesJoe Biden may be immersed in debate preparation at Camp David, Maryland, but on Saturday at least, Donald Trump will not be following suit. Less than a week out from the first debate of the presidential election, in Atlanta on Thursday, the former president, convicted felon, penalized fraudster and adjudicated rapist will stage a campaign event in Philadelphia.Democrats say they know what Trump is up to.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via GettyFirst things first: In Apprentice in Wonderland, by Ramin Setoodeh, Donald Trump himself brings up and discusses the long-rumored hot-mic tape from NBC’s The Apprentice in which he is supposedly heard to say the n-word. But he does so only to strenuously deny it exists.More of that in a moment. First: news of a surprising crush Trump appears to have nurtured for years which has now, inevitably, turned sour.Trump Hates Fauci… but Love-Hates Debra MessingRead more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesA close Joe Biden ally has revealed the secrets of acting as an “unhinged” Donald Trump in preparation for presidential debates.In a new book, Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel who played Trump to help Biden prepare in 2020, says he was “as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be.”But when he tried to relax by playing fetch with one of Biden’s dogs, Bauer slipped and fell into a swimming pool, soaking himself to the waist.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesSouth Dakota governor and Trump VP hopeful Kristi Noem is not the first U.S. political figure to experience a scandal about killing a puppy: Anthony Fauci, of all people, got there before her—through no fault of his own.As the former chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden makes clear in his eagerly awaited new memoir, unlike in the now infamous case of Noem, Cricket the wirehaired pointer and a shotgun trip to the gravel pit, there was absolutely no truth to claims made against him.Nonetheless, “the far right had found a new line of attack against me,” Fauci writes in On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, which will be published next week. The Daily Beast has obtained a copy.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersDonald Trump thinks there “could be” alien life in the universe—in large part because U.S. pilots he met while president, who he found to be “like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller,” told him they saw unexplained things in the sky.“I met with pilots… like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller—handsome, perfect people,” Trump told Logan Paul in an interview on the YouTuber and mixed martial arts fighter’s podcast, Impaulsive.One Cruise-esque pilot, Trump said, told him, “Sir, there was something there that was round in form and going like four times faster than my super jet fighter plane.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mandel Ngan/GettyDonald Trump shouted foul-mouthed abuse at Anthony Fauci, then lurched into telling him he loved him—and claimed he would win the 2020 election in a “fucking landslide,” the top medical adviser reveals in his new memoir.In the eagerly awaited book, Fauci describes conversations with Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic in which the then-president would “announce that he loved me and then scream at me on the phone.”“Let’s just say, I found this to be out of the ordinary,” Fauci writes, of conversations peppered with f-bombs, including the claim Fauci had cost the U.S. economy “one trillion fucking dollars.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Anna Moneymaker/GettyDonald Trump “had a strong relationship” with Volodymyr Zelensky when he was in office, the U.S. senator and potential vice-presidential pick Tom Cotton (R-AK) claimed on Sunday, neatly sidestepping the fact of Trump's impeachment for trying to blackmail the Ukrainian president by withholding military support for his fight against Russia.“President Trump has said that he strongly supports Ukraine's strength and survival,” Cotton told Fox News Sunday. “He had a strong relationship when he was in office with President Zelensky. President Trump is the one that provided Ukraine the weapons they needed to fend off this Russian invasion that happened in large part because of Joe Biden's weakness.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRight-wing fundraiser Leonard Leo has floated a very personal theory about the timing of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.Leo, who has close ties to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, suggested to the authors of a new book that it may not have been a total coincidence that the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson came down on a Catholic holy day with special meaning for him.In an interview with Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias, New York Times reporters and co-authors of The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America, Leo notes that Chief Justice John Roberts “would have decided the order of decisions that would come out that day”—June 24, 2022.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Julia Nikhinson/ReutersWest Virginia U.S Sen. Joe Manchin left the Democratic party on Friday, announcing his new registration as a political independent.“Today, our national politics are broken and neither party is willing to compromise to find common ground,” Manchin said in a statement reported by Axios.“To stay true to myself and remain committed to put country before party, I have decided to register as an independent with no party affiliation and continue to fight for America's sensible majority.”Read more at The Daily Beast.