Good morning,
Welcome to MS NOW’s Sunday Spotlight, where you can find a selection of the week’s most interesting and important stories.
We don’t know enough about the cause of the diarrhea outbreak for several reasons. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump returns to election denial, immigration agents’ traffic stops are inherently dangerous and Vice President JD Vance may be enjoying a perk of the office too much. Plus, the Pentagon is “T-maxxing” the military.
Don’t forget to check out more top columns and videos from the week below.
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Tip of the iceberg: Reports of a microscopic parasite infecting people in several states, blamed on contaminated lettuce and/or salad greens, are multiplying. Cyclospora is a single-celled parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, but an incubation period that can last as long as two weeks is just one reason it’s so hard to track, writes epidemiology professor Tara C. Smith. Confirming a case is also more difficult than a typical bacteria, requiring multiple stool samples. The Trump administration’s removal of cyclospora from the FoodNet surveillance system and the dissolution of the Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria may have also slowed detection and response. But the biggest issue right now is a lack of confirmation that the cases are related, or that lettuce is even to blame. Read more.
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The Trump tell: The president tried to revive his tired claims about the 2020 election in a primetime address this week. But the wording of the speech and the declassified documents he offered as supposed proof both had tells that his own team knew he had nothing, argues disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz. In the speech, Trump referred to China’s supposed interference as “attempts” that it was “working on” because he has no evidence that any such efforts succeeded. The documents he released, meantime, only show that the intelligence community considered the possibility, which it ultimately rejected. That’s a sign of responsible intelligence work, not a cover-up. Read more.
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Traffic stops: After the killings of two motorists in two weeks in Maine and Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement briefly suspended most vehicle stops to retrain its agents. But Trump quickly overruled the agency, ordering it to resume and writing on social media that traffic stops are one of ICE’s “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” But the nature of ICE’s stops is what is leading to the problems, argues immigration expert David J. Bier. In the past, agents only used traffic stops during carefully planned operations, but last year it reportedly eliminated the planning process to speed up arrests. Neither immigrant shot and killed by federal agents in the last two weeks was even the individual targeted by the operation. Read more.
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Vance grievance: Secret Service agents assigned to the vice president’s family are increasingly frustrated by demands that agents consider inappropriate and unprecedented, write Carol Leonnig and Vaughn Hillyard. Agents said they have become “fed up” with last-minute travel demands, including a recent request for a military helicopter to fly Vance’s elementary-school-aged son to a golf lesson and trips to look for a new home in Virginia. (The golf trip was later canceled due to thunderstorms and high winds, according to two people with knowledge of the flight plans.) Operating Marine Two costs between $16,000 and $24,600 per hour, according to military estimates. Read more.
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The tea on ‘High T’: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon would begin screening soldiers over the age of 30 for their testosterone levels. In a video captioned with the phrase “the High T military,” he said they would also be offered voluntary testosterone replacement therapy. But this pseudoscientific proposal, which draws on the right’s current obsession with the hormone, gets a few things wrong, argues Ryan Teague Beckwith. There is no single “right” amount of testosterone, which fluctuates throughout the day as a result of exercise, diet and sleep. It also varies wildly with little effect from person to person. Required testing would likely result in false positives and unnecessary treatment that can have bad side effects. Read more.
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As prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Mimi Rocah and Perry A. Carbone worked alongside Todd Blanche for several years and once considered him a close friend. But they argue that since he’s become part of the Justice Department leadership in 2025 he has repeatedly turned his back on the principles they were taught are key to pursuing justice fairly, impartially and independently. “It has been painful to watch many of his actions as deputy attorney general and acting attorney general, especially his participation in the firing of career prosecutors and FBI agents based purely on political considerations,” they write. While they regarded him highly when they worked with him, they said they are joining more than 1,200 other former DOJ employees in opposing his nomination as attorney general. Read the column here.
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Terry Lynne Hale of Kansas City, Missouri, writes:
I am writing in response to Matthew Bartlett’s July 17 op-ed, “The omissions from Trump’s primetime address tell their own story”:
I am a retired independent voter. I believe in facts, such as Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by 306 to 232 electoral votes and approximately 51.3% of the popular vote, vs 46.8% of the popular vote for Donald Trump.
In 2024, Trump played the same tired election fraud campaign, begging the American people to distrust our elections. He won by 312 electoral votes to 226 for Vice President Kamala Harris. The popular vote totals were much closer than in 2020, with Trump at 49.8% and Harris getting 48.3%. If our elections are rife with fraud, how does Trump explain his 2024 win?
You can read the rest of Terry Lynne Hale’s letter here. To send your own letter to the editor, review our submission guidelines and use this form.
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This week on “The Best People,” Nicolle Wallace is joined by former CNN White House correspondent and anchor Jim Acosta to discuss his departure from the network and his experience covering President Trump across his two terms. Subscribe to MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and a special bonus episode featuring Nicolle’s conversation with Rachel Maddow.
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