Congress is eagerly getting ready to take an enormous chunk of time off once again. The Republican House of Representatives even pushed their final day in session up by one day, to get a jump on their extended "August break." But to be fair, they didn't do this because they were over-eager to go on vacation, instead they did it out of political necessity, since they had earlier announced that there wouldn't be any more floor votes until after the break. And they did this because they are terrified of the entire Epstein files issue. So my question at this point is what are their own voters going to say to them when they do go back to their home districts? Are we going to see lots of videos of town halls where their constituents rake them over the coals for not forcing the public release of the full Epstein files, or will it be more of a non-issue?

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Why is Russia so special to Donald Trump? Why does Trump always give Vladimir Putin a free pass? Those are questions that have long been asked (for various reasons), ever since Trump entered politics. But no matter what the actual answer is (many have speculated, but nobody truly knows, other than Trump himself), the fact that Trump treats Vladimir Putin's Russia with kid gloves is an incontrovertible fact.

The most recent glaring example of this is how Russia has (up to this point) been declared exempt from Trump's global trade war. Trump has been all over the map with his tariff threats, but one part of it has remained consistent: a 10 percent tariff on all countries, no matter what. This initially included every country Team Trump could find on a map -- including one solely populated by penguins -- but not Russia.

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Once again, this week was consumed by an out-of-control political fire that is engulfing Donald Trump, his attorney general, the F.B.I., and all of Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress. They built a political Ponzi scheme out of the Epstein files, and it has now completely collapsed around them.

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I should start out by clarifying that headline. When I say "Trump Is Getting Weaker," I am not referring to the news today that Donald Trump is suffering from problems with the veins in his legs and the bruising on his hands. I speak not of physical weakness, but instead of political weakness. And I'm going to mostly set aside the continuing internecine battle among Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein files as well, since although the issue has been making headlines for weeks now, there is something much more interesting going on in the background. While Trump flails around desperately trying to somehow pin all the blame over the Epstein files cover-up on Democrats (which isn't convincing anyone), the widening schism within his own party has happened independently from some much larger trends. Democrats are gleefully trolling Trump and the Republicans over the Epstein files fiasco, but no matter what the upshot of it all turns out to be, the fact will remain that Trump is getting a whole lot weaker on pretty much every other issue under the sun. Sooner or later, Democrats should start making some political hay out of this weakness (assumably, after the Epstein files tempest blows over).

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House Democrats are moving quickly to capitalize on the growing schism in the Republican Party, hoping to jam a wedge between Donald Trump and his own MAGA base over the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory. Democrats are now the ones forcing votes on releasing "the Epstein files," because they know what an untenable position it puts the Republicans in. They can either vote to release the files or they can (gasp!) vote for the cover-up to continue! You can see why Democrats are having so much fun with it all.

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Representative Ro Khanna seems to be following one of James Carville's pithy bits of political advice: "When your opponent is drowning, throw the son-of-a-bitch an anvil." Khanna announced that today he would be introducing a resolution in the House which would force the Trump administration to release all the remaining files on Jeffrey Epstein.

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Remember when Donald Trump pitched a hissy fit because he didn't like the way a portrait of him looked, in Colorado? He actually made them take it down and create a new painting. So we're wondering if someone's about to get fired in the White House, after they used an official White House social media account to post an image of Trump as (are you sitting down?) Superman. Now, the idea of "Trump as Superman" isn't all that shocking, since both he and all his acolytes operate at the mental level of a spoiled elementary-school-aged narcissist, but what is truly hilarious is the image they used -- because they didn't bother to edit out his gut. It's just sticking right out there for all to see. Usually when Trump has these he-man fantasies he uses fake images with lots of muscles and a ripped body, but this time someone forgot to tell the A.I. program to slim him down. So, as we said, we're anticipating someone in the White House communications department getting unceremoniously booted from their job real soon now. It's kind of surprising they'd even use the Superman theme in the first place, since the MAGA folks all hit the ceiling when the director of the new Superman movie pointed out the fact that Superman is actually (gasp!) an immigrant. And it is highly doubtful that the Kent parents ever bothered to inform the federal government of the fact, so that would actually make Superman an undocumented immigrant. Oh, the horror!

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That headline is somewhat confusing, since it is not actually "Taco Tuesday," but instead merely the day which followed "TACO Monday." The latter, of course, refers to the neologism "Trump Always Chickens Out," which was created to describe exactly what took place yesterday. But it is also applicable to a different foreign policy stance (or "crouch," more like) that Donald Trump has been taking, which he is now threatening to change (but probably won't).

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Is Elon Musk serious? That question, of course, can be read two ways. The first is sarcastically, as in: "Are you serious?!?" -- which conveys the same concept as stating: "You cannot be serious!" The second way is non-sarcastically, as in wondering: "Is Elon Musk truly serious about starting up his own third political party?" And the easy answer to that is: "Who knows? This is Elon Musk we are talking about, after all."

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So Donald Trump just got a big political win, as the House Republicans held their collective noses and voted for the Senate version of their budget bill today, which will allow Trump to hold his Independence Day signing ceremony on schedule. This is a momentous development, and in fact it might wind up being the defining issue for the midterm elections next year. Democrats know this and are already planning on politically capitalizing on the worst aspects of the bill.

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