Mitch McConnell has not been seen in public in almost a month. The senator from Kentucky and former majority leader was hospitalized on June 14, and his staff has declined to elaborate, instead recycling the same statement: “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.
For one night, in the heart of deep-blue Washington, D.C., a fenced-off section of the National Mall became an oasis for members of the MAGA base. They had believed in President Trump from the beginning and carried him triumphantly back to power in 2024, and now they came to the grand opening of America’s 250th-birthday celebration in red-white-and-blue headbands, draped in flags, and sporting dangly blue AMERICA earrings.
Twelve hours after Donald Trump warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”—after he’d previously threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”—the president agreed to a temporary cease-fire. Since then, initial peace negotiations failed and Trump responded with a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; a new round of talks may begin soon.
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Even before his son was in high school, Mylo Simmons told me, there was something about flying that fascinated him. Some days, Simmons and his son, Tyler, would sit in the car together, pulled over on a street with a clear view of an airport runway, watching planes take off and land. Tyler was “looking up at the sky all the time,” his father said. “He wanted to be up there.
The name Stanley McChrystal might bring a few things to mind: the U.S. Army general who led NATO forces in Afghanistan; a legendary Special Forces operator; a decorated military career cut short by reported tactless remarks about a vice president; a daily food intake of just one meal—a “reward” dinner after a hard day. One thing that might not come to mind: a Dolly Parton fan.